Showing posts with label common law. Show all posts

Tuesday, 17 May 2016

Who owns the earth?

Private land ownership is a beautiful dream gone badly wrong. It’s time to reinstate the forgotten ideal of the commons

USA. Montana. 1980. Photo by David Alan Harvey/Magnum

by Antonia Malchik

My mother likes to say she was born out of the back of a ’39 Ford. She wasn’t, actually. She was born in a hospital in Chicago. But less than a year later she and her parents returned to the Montana ranch that her family had homesteaded in the early 1900s, and where they still lived. That is where my mother counts her birth, when she got out of the back of that ’39 Ford and came home to the prairie, full of meadowlarks and fragrant soil and a big golden willow. ‘I count how God and nature do things,’ she says of her birth. ‘People have a home, and they know when they get there.’

If there is a greater thrill of belonging, of home, than turning the key in your first house, it’s land ownership. The ranch my mother grew up on still smells of sweet soil. Its acres roll out under Montana’s big sky, harbouring the prairie’s native yellow bells and buttercups. To belong to a place like that, to know it’s yours to care for and live on, is a powerful and steadying force. On your own land, you can send out the kind of roots we often speak of but don’t always treat seriously. ‘I’ve put down roots,’ we say sadly when moving away from a place we’ve become attached to. Those roots are real, and they become stronger and deeper the more closely we belong to a place.

For people like my great-great-grandparents and so many others who had lived under the yoke of tenuous tenancy rights in Europe, the US’s 1862 Homestead Act promised a sense of freedom that these days is almost unimaginable: the freedom to own the land that you worked on, the farm that sustained you, the riverbank where you stood to catch your dinner, the trees that shaded your house. You could lose it through bankruptcy or by giving up – pioneer life was less the delightful, rich adventure depicted in Little House on the Prairie than a stark, cold, lonely, and harsh life that drove many off the land within a few short years – but no capricious lord or absentee owner could take it from you or demand a percentage of your labour. White Americans who benefited from the opening of the West and the brutal, deeply unjust Indian Removal Act, would never again be subject to the equivalent of the Highland Clearances.

For me, like my ancestors, the Montana landscape is part of who I am. It’s beyond price. Love is the one thing about land that cannot be measured by use, real estate markets, or commodity prices. It makes a deep sense of home possible. Once established through the surety of knowing that the land you live on cannot be taken, it then spills out beyond its borders to encompass the surrounding lands. Private property might be the birthplace of husbandry and true sustainability as well as of self-sufficiency and self-determination, but ownership of land also allows us to invest in a community, including public lands and resources owned by all, with a sense of interdependence and mutual cooperation.

The ranch my mother was born on was not built solely by her family’s labour. It relied on water aquifers deep beneath the surface, the health of soil on plains and hills beyond their borders, on hundreds – perhaps thousands – of years of care by the Blackfoot tribe whose land it should have remained, the weather over which they had no control, the sun, seeds, and a community who knew in their bones that nobody could do this alone. These things comprised an ecosystem that was vital to their survival, and the same holds true today. These are our shared natural resources, or what was once known as ‘the commons’.

We live on and in the commons, even if we don’t recognise it as such. Every time we take a breath, we’re drawing from the commons. Every time we walk down a road we’re using the commons. Every time we sit in the sunshine or shelter from the rain, listen to birdsong or shut our windows against the stench from a nearby oil refinery, we are engaging with the commons. But we have forgotten the critical role that the commons play in our existence. The commons make life possible. Beyond that, they make private property possible. When the commons become degraded or destroyed, enjoyment and use of private property become untenable. A Montana rancher could own ten thousand acres and still be dependent on the health of the commons. Neither a gated community nor high-rise penthouse apartments can close a human being from the wider world that we all rely on.

We have been able to ignore and damage the commons without acknowledging the consequences for far too long. But now, the press of human population and the rise of industrialism make the question urgent: how will we own our shared resources? How will we protect them for the benefit of all? There are no more frontiers to run away to, and no more pretending that what we do on one piece of property has no effect not only on neighbours next door but on ecosystems hundreds of miles away. In my great-great-grandparents’ time, a driving question for European immigrants or descendants was how to gain the freedom granted by private property. For our future, it’s not just a question of who owns the earth, but how.

The commons are just what they sound like: land, waterways, forests, air. The natural resources of our planet that make life possible. Societies throughout history have continually relied on varying systems of commons usage that strove to distribute essential resources equitably, like grazing and agricultural land, clean water for drinking and washing, foraged food, and wood for fuel and building. As far back as 555 CE the commons were written into Roman law, which stated outright that certain resources belonged to all, never owned by a few: ‘By the law of nature these things are common to mankind – the air, running water, the sea and consequently the shores of the sea.’

The point was for an individual or family to gain the means for an independent life, not to grow rich from land ownership

The power of this tradition is difficult to explain but even more difficult to overstate, and its practice echoes throughout Western history. The Magna Carta, agreed to in 1215 by England’s King John at the insistence of his barons, protected those nobles from losing their lands at the whim of whatever sovereign they were serving. It also laid down the right to a trial by one’s peers, among other individual rights, and is the document widely cited as the foundation of modern democracy.

What is less well-known is the Charter of the Forest, which was agreed to two years later by the regent for Henry III, King John having died in 1216. With the Charter, ‘management of common resources moves from the king’s arbitrary rule’, says Carolyn Harris, a Canadian scholar of the Magna Carta, ‘to the common good’. The Charter granted what are called subsistence rights, the right that ‘[e]very free man may henceforth without being prosecuted make in his wood or in land he has in the forest a mill, a preserve, a pond, a marl-pit, a ditch, or arable outside the covert in arable land, on condition that it does not harm any neighbour’. Included was the permission to graze animals and gather the food and fuel that one needed to live.

These rights went over to America intact and informed that country’s founding fathers as they developed their own system of laws, with a greater emphasis on the rights of commoners to own enough land to live independently. (That this land belonged to the native people who already lived there didn’t factor much into their reasoning.) For Thomas Jefferson, according to law professor Eric T Freyfogle in his 2003 book The Land We Share, ‘[t]he right of property chiefly had to do with a man’s ability to acquire land for subsistence living, at little or no cost: It was a right of opportunity, a right to gain land, not a right to hoard it or to resist public demands that owners act responsibly.’

Benjamin Franklin, too, believed that any property not required for subsistence was ‘the property of the public, who by their laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other laws dispose of it, whenever the welfare of the public shall demand such disposition’. The point was for an individual or family to gain the means for an independent life, not to grow rich from land ownership or to take the resources of the commons out of the public realm. This idea extended to limiting trespassing laws. Hunting on another’s unenclosed land was perfectly legal, as was – in keeping with the Charter of the Forest – foraging.

The land itself, not just the resources it contained, was part of the commons. Consider the implications of this thinking for our times: if access to the means for self-sustenance were truly the right of all, if both public resources and public land could never be taken away or sold, then how much power could the wealthy, a government, or corporations have over everyday human lives?

The idea of the commons isn’t exclusive to English and American history. In Russia, since at least the 1400s and continuing in various forms until the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, land was managed under the mir system, or ‘joint responsibility’, which ensured that everyone had land and resources enough – including tools – to support themselves and their families. Strips of land were broken up and redistributed every so often to reflect changing family needs. Land belonged to the mir as a whole. It couldn’t be taken away or sold. In Ireland from before the 7th century (when they were first written down) to the 17th, Brehon laws served a similar purpose, with entire septs or clans owning and distributing land until invading English landlords carved up the landscape, stripped its residents of ancestral systems and tenancy rights, and established their estates with suppression and violence. The Scottish historian Andro Linklater examines variations on these collective ownership systems in detail in his 2013 book, Owning the Earth: the adat in Iban, crofting in Scotland, the Maori ways of use in New Zealand, peasant systems in India and China and in several Islamic states, and of course on the North American continent before European invasion and settlement.

But the commons are not relics of dusty history. The Kyrgyz Republic once had a successful system of grazing that benefited both herdsmen and the land. Shattered during Soviet times in favour of intensive production, the grazing commons is slowly being reinstated after passage of a Pasture Law in 2009, replacing a system of private leases with public use rights that revolve around ecological knowledge and are determined by local communities. In Fiji, villages have responded to pressures from overfishing and climate change by adopting an older system of temporary bans on fishing called tabu. An article in the science magazine Nautilus describes the formation of locally managed Marine Protected Areas that use ancient traditions of the commons, and modern scientific understanding, to adapt these communal fishing rights and bans to the changing needs of the ecosystem.

Preservation of the commons has not, then, been completely forgotten. But it has come close. The commons are, essentially, antithetical both to capitalism and to limitless private profit, and have therefore been denigrated and abandoned in many parts of the world for nearly two centuries.

One of the most persuasive and influential critiques of the commons in the second half of the 20th century came from the ecologist and microbiologist Garrett Hardin. In 1968, Hardin published an essay in the magazine Science that argued hard against commons systems of ownership and use. Titled ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’, the essay’s main point was that on a planet of finite resources, the right to reproduce shouldn’t be absolute, but it ranged over many areas of philosophy and morality. ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’ is a seminal piece of work that remained influential up to and beyond Hardin’s death in 2003.

Hardin insisted that a commons system of ownership, incorporating shared access and use, will always lead to disaster because individual selfishness will inevitably prevail over the needs of a community. And, once one individual acts selfishly, all others will follow. Not even Adam Smith, he said, had ever asserted that pursuit of individual interest would always lead to public gain.

Where Hardin’s argument fractures is in his assumption that any system of the commons must necessarily be anarchic. Picturing a pasture open to all, Hardin said that only disease, war, and poaching would keep the population within the land’s healthy carrying capacity. Once social stability had been achieved, and herdsmen could graze as many animals as they wanted, each would have an incentive to increase his individual herd, until the land was destroyed by overgrazing. ‘The inherent logic of the commons,’ Hardin argued, ‘remorselessly generates tragedy.’ What he neglected was the reality of the commons, in which agreed limits that benefit the community are an integral and necessary part of the legal and social system.

There are more stories than I can count of the right to property use destroying the lives, livelihoods, health, or homes of neighbours near and far

In both the Kyrgyz grazing system and Fijian Marine Protected Areas, the point of opening the commons is that the affected community uses scientific, ecological knowledge to agree on limits and ways of use. In the western United States, a system of grazing rights on public land is designed to allow small ranchers to survive by giving them access to ranges wider than they could ever afford to own privately, while at the same time preventing them from overgrazing to the detriment of the ecosystem. These practices simply extend into modern times the way that the commons have functioned throughout history. Unbridled use was never an acceptable part of the system.

What Hardin got right, though, seems almost unintentional. His dismissal of commons systems of ownership ignores how these systems function, but his claim that a commons system of waste and pollution is damaging to humanity goes right to the heart of where we’ve gone wrong with private property. ‘It did not much matter how a lonely American frontiersman disposed of his waste,’ he points out, but modern pressures of population density and industrial pollution put the integrity of the commons at risk. Here is where Hardin’s statement that ‘freedom in a commons brings ruin to all’ starts to ring true. The key to the commons, which should have extended to private property rights when they became widespread, was that they remained true to the ideas enshrined in the Charter of the Forest: use for subsistence was the right of all, but it only extended to activities that would not harm one’s neighbours. The idea of the commons isn’t exclusive to English and American history. A commons system of ownership cannot be a free-for-all; it only works when its use is managed in the interests of all.

In America, the shift to allowing intense industrial uses of land, despite its effects on neighbours, gained legal traction in the early 1800s, when court cases began to trickle out that held the pursuit of economic activity to be a public good. In a seismic upheaval in how property rights were perceived, mining operations could now discharge their waste into waterways, even at the expense of homeowners and fishermen downstream; railroad companies and farmers could act through eminent domain to acquire or use others’ land that they claimed was needed for their own operations, even when the owners were unwilling to sell.

This recognition of private profit as a public good increased globally throughout the 20th century with dizzying speed, leading to extensive loss of the public commons into the 21st century. Just in the past 10 years, Chinese oil companies have been given rights to drill in the last pristine Ecuadoran jungle over the objections of the native people whose home it has been for time out of mind. Decisions in Britain that allowed continued drainage on farmland and grouse-hunting estates put downstream villages at high risk of flooding, while a Cumbrian nuclear plant has contaminated shellfish in Scotland hundreds of miles away. There are more stories than I can count of the right to property use and profit destroying the lives, livelihoods, health, or homes of neighbours near and far. The common thread is in how they ignore, almost completely, the necessity of keeping the commons healthy and stable.

It is ironic that, just as the ancient traditions of successful commons ownership is regaining legitimacy in places like Fiji and the Kyrgyz Republic, the planet-wide commons themselves are under unfettered assault very similar to what Hardin imagined in his ‘Tragedy of the Commons’. The damage we inflict on our own land has never stayed within surveyed property lines. But even as our ecological understanding has increased, our willingness to limit intensive use of private property has shrunk. A coal mine, a hog farm surrounded by extensive waste lagoons that seep into watersheds, a subdivision built on wetlands, an oil well on ground held sacred – whether it’s private land or public, if the use will make money, it must be for the public good. This view is defended even when it destroys everything we need both for physical wellbeing and any sense of deeper connection we might still maintain with the earth beneath our feet and the sky overhead. Even if it severs our roots to the land and discards any sense we might have of ‘home’. We have come, almost inevitably, to a situation where the pursuit of economic growth, enforced by a belief in expansive private property rights, has put in peril the very ecosystems, the very planet, that we rely on for survival.

The dreams of freedom and self-sufficiency held by pioneers like my great-great grandparents still have mythical power in the US. That power is often used to make broad claims that any restriction on property use is too limiting to the kind of liberty my ancestors enjoyed, liberty for which many still pine. When armed militants took over and occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge south of Burns, Oregon in January 2016, they expressed a widespread opinion (but, it’s important to note, not an overwhelming or even majority one) that government ownership of vast lands in the American West was preventing them and others – ranchers, timber companies, and mining companies, specifically – from using that land in ways that most benefited them individually and the communities those lands are located in. The frustration they expressed was confusing to many, but the longing that seeped out from under their demands was a very familiar one. It contained a basic human instinct that we shouldn’t ignore: the desire to draw a living for oneself and one’s family from the earth beneath one’s feet.

It’s a warped instinct as expressed here, dismissing others’ desire to enjoy the same rights, neglecting a private user’s or owner’s obligation to neighbours and the surrounding community, and deeply ignorant of the widespread ecological damage caused by unregulated industry. It ignores even the fact that human beings are part of those same ecosystems and become damaged just as nature does. But strip away the Malheur militants’ ignorance of ecology, history, and the absolute necessity of balancing private use with the public’s right to a healthy commons, and we’re left with something familiar: a tiny cry for justice that says the individual right to subsistence from the land – not wealth, just ‘enough’, whatever that means – is one that should belong to us all.

The community benefit of land ownership and use has changed drastically since Roman times, since the Charter of the Forest was agreed, and even since America was first created as a country, and it will continue to do so. For a period of time that in human and geological history is brief but will nevertheless leave lasting harm, governments and courts have come to see a landowner’s most beneficial use of the land as the creation of private profit. But the view of land as a commodity to be exploited rather than part of the public commons is still relatively recent. If we’re to take environmental problems seriously, legal and societal understanding must reinstate the principle that a landowner’s freedom is restricted by the right of that owner’s neighbours to enjoy their own property undisturbed, and by a duty to leave the commons unharmed.

This understanding must necessarily include a more scientific knowledge of ecology. Earth is a sieve. Water flows not just visibly down rivers and streams but through bedrock and across aquifers. So do industrial chemicals. Overworked soil can drift and blow away, as can air pollution, settling on nearby or far-off people who are defenceless against its detrimental health effects. Carving up mountainsides for developments of affordable duplexes or multi-million-dollar vacation homes puts residents downhill at risk of mudslides, while destroying soul-restoring views and forests that could be the birthright of all. The commons saturate every part of our existence.

It is easy, or perhaps convenient, to forget that not so long ago much of the Western world accepted the private ownership of human beings with few twinges of conscience

Will we allow the rights of those commons, of the public trust, of the human being’s access to a simple, sustainable life, to pass out of memory? If we allow the answer to be ‘yes’, then we may find that we lose private property itself, along with the commons. Private property and the public trust coexist; there is no private realm without public, society-wide agreement that enforces rights and laws. Enjoyment of private property is not possible when the common resources that surround it are degraded. A well-ordered society needs both.

This is not purely a matter of dealing with climate change or other environmental damage. Property rights have always stretched long tendrils into every aspect of our lives. It is easy, or perhaps convenient, to forget that not so long ago much of the Western world accepted the private ownership of human beings with few twinges of conscience. Troubling implications of our fetish for private property abound, well beyond the question of land ownership: the rights of companies to patent and therefore privatise seeds, taking access to food out of the public realm. Battles over open-source computer programming and whether libraries should be privatised bring into question who gets access to the powers of information and creation. Rebecca Skloot’s book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (2010) brought to international attention the point that our very genes and tissues can be collected, traded, tested, and sold as private property, a prospect many people find appalling. It’s a long road from owning a mobile phone or a quarter-acre lot of surveyed subdivision to owning your genetic information, but all of these examples fall into the question of who owns what. Arguments in favour of preserving the public commons against private interest could be made for every one of them.

Decades of pollution and poison from mines, factories, automobiles, power plants, and industrial farms have barely moved the needle away from profit and private property as public benefits. Only the prospect – and now the reality – of global climate change has begun reframing the conversation in terms of society’s right to an undamaged commons.

In 2015, 21 children and teenagers from across the United States joined together to pursue legal action against the federal government for its inaction on climate change, claiming that continued support for fossil fuel extraction and use was putting their very futures at risk. Their case pits them against some of the most entrenched and powerful interests on the planet, whose trade groups have filed briefs noting that the Our Children’s Trust lawsuit is a ‘direct threat’ to their businesses. In Holland, citizens took their government to court for human rights violations in an effort to force it to cut carbon emissions. While the Children’s Trust case in the US hasn’t yet made much headway, The Hague court in Holland eventually ordered the government to reduce carbon emissions by 25 per cent within five years.

What these cases have in common – and there will very probably be more of them in the future – is their recognition that private ownership of land and resources needs to be hitched once again to its long-lost partner of owner responsibility. They open up again the acknowledgment that the commons are necessary to human life and remain the interests of all. If we truly believe in a long future for humanity, that we will spread into space and inhabit this planet for millennia beyond imagination, then the pursuit of economic interest and profit, and the right to use one’s land as one wishes, can no longer ride roughshod over the public’s right to an uncontaminated waters, a breathable atmosphere, and a liveable planet.

The question that opened this essay – do we need to relinquish private property to solve our most pressing environmental problems? – was not a proposal. Instead, it was meant to prompt us all to think differently about the relationship between public need and private ownership, between private property rights as regards use and the rights of the public to access and maintain the resources it needs to survive. Private property laws can allow us to own land in such a way that we feel free to invest in it both our work and our affection. A place where we can say, like my mother does, that we have a home, and we know when we get there, even if it’s not out of the back of a ’39 Ford. Those laws will only do so, though, if we at the same time keep the integrity of the commons intact. To say that we cannot eat money has become a cliché, but it is still true. Nor can we drink it, sleep on it or breathe it. The question of land ownership, and therefore of use, comes down to how much we will accept, how far we will go.

From Aeon @ https://aeon.co/essays/is-it-time-to-upend-the-idea-that-land-is-private-property

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Saturday, 17 October 2015

Corporations Masquerading as Government in Australia and World Wide

By Andy Whiteley

The Great Seal of the United Kingdom, atop the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1900 - and
The Great Seal of Australia, a trademark registered with United States Patent and Trademark Office.

Which represents real (de jure) government in Australia?

Which is seen on “government” literature ?

Would you be surprised to find a company with the same name as your country registered with the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) in Washington DC? Well, guess what?! Among those listed as corporate entities by the United States SEC are Israel, Turkey, Italy, Hungary, Sweden, Finland, Argentina, Colombia, Brazil, The Philippines, South Korea, Japan, Jamaica, South Africa, Canada, Australia… and my personal favourite (and I quote) “Her Majesty the Queen in Right of the Province of Alberta as represented by Alberta Investment Management Corp.”

Interesting! So what could all this mean? For the purpose of this article we will follow the example of Australia.

Australia…. the lucky country?

SEC Entity Name: COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA
SEC Central Index Key (CIK): 0000805157
SEC Standard Industrial Code (SIC): 8880 (UNKNOWN)
SEC Business Address: 1601 MASSACHUSETTS AVE NW WASHINGTON DC 20036
Fiscal Year End: 0630

Well, that certainly raises some questions!

Why is a company called ‘COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA’ registered in Washington DC? What reason could there be for a country to be registered as a company?

By definition, aren’t corporate and government entities mutually exclusive? And doesn’t government regulate companies?

Why would Australia be registered with the SEC in the United States? And why would it provide a ‘Prospectus’ and annual ‘Economic and Fiscal Outlook’ documents to the SEC? And be subject to SEC regulation?

Why is the Great Seal of Australia a trademark registered with United States Patent and Trademark Office?

Could the ‘Australian Government’ be a corporate entity masquerading as real government, for profit, and not for the purpose of governance? Does the ‘Australian Government’ truly represent “the people” and not shareholders in another country?

Why do today’s government departments have corporate mission statements like “we provide services on BEHALF of government” and “our CLIENTS include government…”?

What happened to “we ARE government”?? Does this suggest they are NOT true government, but a company masquerading as government?

If a company registered in Washington DC is falsely claiming government status in Australia, what happened to the real (de jure) government with a similar name? And when?

And are the laws in Australia therefore just rules for employees and contractors of the corporation?

Interesting. Let’s look a little closer…

Perhaps it is a requirement that the Commonwealth of Australia registers as a company entity in order to trade with the United States of America. Are all the other countries who trade with the United States also registered on the American SEC? Is ‘the United States of America’ also registered with ASIC, the Australian Securities & Investments Commission? And is Australia similarly registered with the corresponding trade regulators in other countries?

The answer appears to be NO.

International trade implies mutual agreement; reciprocity; a common method of exchange. But the reality is that the ‘COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA’ is registered as a corporate entity with the United States SEC, but not the other way around. There appear to be no comparable corporate entities registered in other countries with which Australia trades. And nations ranking among the United States’ biggest trading partners do NOT have corporate avatars registered with the American SEC. Perhaps registration in Washington DC is for the purpose of trading Government Bonds. Interesting…

… But this strange corporate entity is only half the story. Before government bonds can even exist, surely there must first be a legitimate government.

Government and the role of Governor-General in Australia

In Australia, the Governor-Generalis the representative of the Monarch (currently Queen Elizabeth II) and the Administrator of Government. Given that the Governor-General administers government in Australia, government can only exist in Australia with a valid Governor-General. The Governor-General is reliant upon the existence of the ‘Office of Governor-General’, which was originally constituted by the late Queen Victoria in Letters Patent dated 29th October 1900, passed under the Monarch’s seal – the Great Seal Of The United Kingdom (view Letters Patent 1900).

The power and authority to revoke, alter or amend those Letters Patent was reserved by the late Queen Victoria to her heirs and successors. Given those Letters Patent were issued under the ‘Great Seal of the United Kingdom’, surely any revocation, alteration or amendment must be issued by an heir and successor under the same Seal.

So what’s the problem?

In 1984, Letters Patent supposedly revoked the original Letters Patent of 1900 and provided new provisions for the Office of Governor-General (view Letters Patent 1984). This happened under the ‘Great Seal of Australia’, which we already know is a corporate trademark registered with the United States Patent & Trademark Office in the U.S. (view registration)

Surely such an attempt at revocation cannot therefore be lawful? And if not, what Office is the Governor-General in Australia presently occupying? Is the person we call “Governor-General” truly a representative of an “heir and successor” to the late Queen Victoria?

The answer appears to be NO.

Given that the Governor-General appoints Ministers, Judges, Commissioners and Justices of the Peace, and ascribes Royal Assent as the Monarch’s representative in Australia – using the Monarch’s Seal – in the absence of a valid Governor-General, are there any legitimate government offices in Australia?

Again… the answer appears to be NO.

So let’s test the theory…

A case study

Wake Up World friend and colleague Scott Bartle documented his recent dealings with ‘Australian Customs & Border Protection Service’ in his self-funded documentary “What The FUQ? – Frequently Unanswered Questions of the Australian Government”.

This simple, concise and sometimes hilarious case-study follows Scott’s ongoing interactions with a supposed “government” entity that simply does not behave as a genuine government agency should.

And all he did was ask them to demonstrate their validity!

Documentary Trailer – What The FUQ Trailer (2:47 mins)

See this documentary in full:. I highly recommended it -

So… IS the “Australian Government” the same government the original Office of Governor-General was intended to Administer?

It’s a question that officials at all levels of “Australian Government” have seem unwilling or unable to answer. Some readers may think I’m a crack-pot for even asking the question. “Break out the tin-foil hats!” they’ll cry! But please… Before you form an opinion or post a comment on this article, ask the Australian Government the same question yourself:

Can you please demonstrate that today’s Office of Governor-General is the same Office that was constituted by the late Queen Victoria in Letters Patent of 1900?

It is your right, after all. And there are certainly some details that don’t add up. But it gets better….

That’s odd, they certainly don’t ACT like a true government.

At first “Government” may just ignore you. But since anyone claiming government status has a responsibility to prove it, their silence is very indicative, don’t you think? So push your Government a little further, and see what happens when you really start to question who’s who. Taxes & fines are suddenly waived, and miraculously, licenses & permits are no longer required! And it doesn’t stop there.

Does this sound like the behaviour of legitimate government? NO, it does not. If challenged, does a legitimate government not simply demonstrate its validity and continue to act within its lawful authority? Or does legitimate government exempt that person’s responsibilities and wave them through the gates, quickly, quietly and with a minimum of fuss? “Nothing to see here!”

Is this situation unique to Australia?

Let’s find out!

To our friends and readers from the Commonwealth of Australia, we recommend you contact your local Members and Senators and ask them one simple question:

Can you please demonstrate that today’s Office of Governor-General is the same Office that was constituted by the late Queen Victoria in Letters Patent of 1900?

To our friends and readers outside Australia, we recommend you identify the documents that established the original offices of government in your country, then ask one simple question of your government representatives:

Can you please demonstrate that today’s government is the same one as established at the inception of this country?

Demonstrating its own legitimacy is a very simple thing that every government agency should be able to do. And in a true democracy, silence is an unacceptable response of government to questions of its very legitimacy. But today the “Australian Government” appears unwilling or unable to prove its legitimacy.

Is yours?

It only takes a few minutes to write to your local member’s office. Please come back to Wake Up World and tell our readers how your enquiry was met. Silence? Jargon? Or a simple demonstration of your government’s legitimacy?

We’d love to hear your stories, so please leave a comment or send us an email

So what the FUQ do we do next?

Written enquiries made to Ministers and Government agencies, to the Office of the Prime Minister and to the Office of Governor General remain unanswered. So in the absence of a response from Government, Wake Up World supports respectfully escalating this matter to the current Monarch, ‘Her Majesty’, The Queen.

Surely ‘Her Majesty’ must know the answer; why a corporation in the United States bears the name ‘COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA’; why in 1984 her authority to amend the provisions for the Office of Governor-General was granted on a company letterhead; why those claiming to represent true government in Australia have been unable to prove that status; and why some, when challenged, may suddenly overlook one’s obligations and run silently in the other direction.

SIGN THE PETITION

…and ask ‘Her Majesty’ for the truth.

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…we all have a right to know.

HOLD YOUR GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABLE

…it is just one simple question.

In a true democracy, silence is an unacceptable answer of government to questions of its legitimacy.

Which “Government” Can We Trust?

By Scott Bartle

It appears that Corporations are masquerading as government in countries around the world – for profit and not for the purpose of governance. We know the role of true government is to act as trustees for the people… to provide services to the community, to represent its interests. But do those claiming government status today truly act as our trustees? Does real government still exist? What the FUQ is going on in government today????

Let’s go right back to the beginning… before there was Government.

Natural Trust

When each of us is born, our parents take on the role of Executor of a trust. They appoint Trustees like nannies, school teachers, dentists etc. to return benefits to you as the Beneficiary. Your parents may make the determinations about your care, but they do so on your behalf until we reach maturity.

When we become of age (whatever age that is) we take on the role of Executor, and continue to appoint Trustees to return benefits to us as Beneficiaries. This is a global human phenomenon; even the most isolated tribes in the deepest jungles appear to behave in the same way. Let’s call this a Natural Trust.

How Does This Relate To Government?

In the same way we appoint nannies and dentists, we also appoint Government as a Trustee. They perform an administrative service and return benefits to us as Beneficiaries. We enjoy the benefits of roads, schools, public health services etc… or at least that’s how it should work. Most people, I believe, would be comfortable appointing Government as a Trustee – provided Government functions according to this Natural Trust, and more importantly that Government actually serves the people.

But what if somewhere, something went wrong..?

What if the Government, appointed as Trustee, started serving another master? What if the actions of Government were benefiting others – like shareholders? Would you trust them enough to appoint them your Trustee?

Inconsistencies in the Representation of “Government”

Let’s first look to the United States. The original Constitution reads “The Constitution for the United States”. As of 1871, a Constitution was substituted and reads “The CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA”.

So which is it? Which one is legitimate? How many constitutions are there?

A similar scenario appears to be taking place in Australia. The Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1900 (UK) tells us that Government is named “Government of the Commonwealth”.… yet occupying the country’s capital is the “Australian Government”.

Further inconsistency manifests in the name of the Parliament holding office in Australia. The Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1900 (UK) defines Parliament as “The Parliament” or “The Parliament of the Commonwealth”. This is in direct contrast to the entity called “Parliament of Australia” which is currently occupying the country’s capital.

Surely the Constitutions in both America and Australia aren’t so weak that legal entity names can so easily be substituted? It doesn’t take a constitutional lawyer to tell you there are strict rules for altering constitutions; that’s why we have referenda. But does anyone remember the referenda that enabled these changes to be made?

And is it just the name that’s different..?

Frequently Unanswered Questions.

When such questions are put to “Government”, answers are scarce – if not completely absent. In a recent case study involving the importation of a 1959 Chevrolet Corvette into Australia, “Australian Customs & Border Protection Service” were challenged to provide evidence they were in fact a legitimate Department of the de jure Government of the Commonwealth of Australia. After twelve months of questioning at all levels of Government, no answers have been forthcoming. “Ministers”, “Judges”, “Commissioners”, “Departments”, “Governors”, and even the Prime Minister – all remain silent.

So who are they? Are they really Government? So far, no “Government” official has been willing to attempt an explanation; to demonstrate their legitimacy as representatives of true government.

But is a government’s refusal to provide evidence of its legitimacy really good enough? Is that what you expect of a Government that is supposed to act as your trustee? What happened to accountability in Government? Should 12 months without answers be taken AS the answer…??

Accountability in Government… in the Words of JFK

So what happened to accountability in government? Surely questions related to the lawful validity of Government are not simply vexatious? Rather, isn’t a “Government” official who declines scrutiny into the lawful validity of their office claiming to be above the law?

In 1961 US President John F Kennedy made a speech to the American Newspaper Publishers Association that everyone in Government – and those who believe Government do not have to answer to the people – should listen to.

He stated: “Government at all levels must meet its obligation to provide you with the fullest possible information, outside the narrowest limits of national security…. We intend to accept full responsibility for our errors, and we expect you to point them out when we miss them” said Kennedy. Those are powerful words.

So if this is the case, does real government simply shut up when its validity is challenged? Or does it attempt to address the concerns of those it is supposed to serve, especially as public pressure to do so continues to mount? And if they don’t serve us…. who ARE they serving?? What would happen if the “Government” started to act as the Executor of a trust – dictating rules, codes and statutes to you? What happens if “Government” started demanding that benefits be returned to them..?

How could this happen..?

Corporate “Government” Trust

Let’s consider for a minute the scenario of a Corporate Government Trust, in which the “government” plays the role of Executor. Would a “government” acting as Executor take questions from it’s Trustee? Would the “Government” create a legal entity to which you act as Trustee? Perhaps upon the registration of your birth? Do governments address you … or a LEGAL ENTITY? More importantly, does the silence of government on these questions provide the “fullest possible information” that President Kennedy spoke about??

What can we do about this..?

The first action appears to be to determine the capacity in which “Government” acts. Who are they actually serving..? This question is critical. But I don’t expect this information to be any more forthcoming of government than the answer of their legitimacy. So in the meantime, there are other things we can do in our interactions with Corporate Government.

Some offer to accept the role of Trustee to their Corporate Government on the condition that they be paid an annual fee to be the Trustee… say $1,000,000 p.a.

Others provide terms and conditions to their Corporate Government, which set out fees and charges applicable for acts of the pretence to real government.

Either of these two approaches would collapse if those claiming government status were able to demonstrate their legitimacy. But these actions have been shown to stop Corporate Government agencies in their tracks. Does this sound like the actions of a Trustee of the people? Or an Executor and Beneficiary of a corrupted system?

More importantly, how many challenges to the lawful validity of government have been met with the proof demanded by its people?