Exit ramps

From 'Forensic Topology: The bank burglar as urban planner' by Geoff Manaugh in (2013) 49 Cabinet -

In the 1990s, Los Angeles held the dubious title of “bank robbery capital of the world.” At its height, the city’s bank crime rate hit the incredible frequency of one bank robbed every forty-five minutes of every working day. As FBI Special Agent Brenda Cotton—formerly based in Los Angeles but now stationed in New York City—joked at an event hosted by Columbia University’s school of architecture in April 2012, the agency even developed its own typology of banks in the region, most notably the “stop and rob”: a bank, located at the bottom of both an exit ramp and an on-ramp of one of Southern California’s many freeways, that could be robbed as quickly and as casually as you might pull off the highway for gas. 

In his 2003 memoir Where The Money Is: True Tales from the Bank Robbery Capital of the World, co-authored with Gordon Dillow, retired Special Agent William J. Rehder briefly suggests that the design of a city itself leads to and even instigates certain crimes—in Los Angeles’s case, bank robberies. Rehder points out that this sprawling metropolis of freeways and its innumerable nondescript banks is, in a sense, a bank robber’s paradise. Crime, we could say, is just another way to use the city. 

Tad Friend, writing a piece on car chases in Los Angeles for the New Yorker back in 2006, implied that the high-speed chase is, in effect, a proper and even more authentic use of the city’s many freeways than the, by comparison, embarrassingly impotent daily commute—that fleeing, illegally and often at lethal speeds, from the pursuing police while being broadcast live on local television is, well, it’s sort of what the city is for. After all, Friend writes, if you build “nine hundred miles of sinuous highway and twenty-one thousand miles of tangled surface streets” in one city alone, you’re going to find at least a few people who want to really put those streets to use. Indeed, Friend, like Rehder, seems to argue that a city gets the kinds of crime appropriate to its form—or, more actively, it gets the kinds of crime its fabric calls for. 

Of course, there are many other factors that contribute to the high incidence of bank robbery in Los Angeles, not least of which is the fact that many banks, Rehder explains in his book, make the financial calculation of money stolen per year vs. annual salary of a full-time security guard—and they come out on the side of letting the money be stolen. The money, in economic terms, is not worth protecting.

Exit ramps of a different kind in Australian Prudential Regulation Authority v Siminton (No 6) [2007] FCA 1608, one of those judgments about pseudo states that offers a perspective on sovereign citizens.

The Court states

 1 In this proceeding the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority ("APRA") seeks various forms of relief including injunctive orders against the respondent ("Mr Siminton"). APRA alleges that Mr Siminton has engaged in a number of contraventions of the Banking Act 1959 (Cth) ("the Act"). These contraventions are said to have occurred in the course of the implementation of a scheme, devised by Mr Siminton, under which a "country", the Principality of Camside , was established and that country became host to a "bank" called the Terra Nova Cache. Members of the public were encouraged to make deposits in the "bank" in return for high interest payments. Deposits were solicited at public meetings, through material placed on the internet and by other means. It will be necessary, later in these reasons, to examine the activities of Mr Siminton and some of his associates in greater detail. ...

 3 Section 7 makes it a criminal offence for a natural person to carry on any banking business in Australia unless APRA, acting under s 11, by order, determines that s 7 does not apply to a particular person. Section 5 relevantly defines "banking business" to mean "a business that consists of banking within the meaning of paragraph 51(xiii) of the Constitution." 

4 Section 66 of the Act makes it an offence for a person who "carries on a financial business" to assume or use the word "bank" in relation to such a business. Two definitional provisions should be noted. Section 66(4)(b) of the Act provides that: "(b) A reference to a word or expression being assumed or used includes the reference to the word or expression being assumed or used: (i) as part of another word or expression; or (ii) in combination with other words, letters or other symbols ..." Section 66(4)(c) provides that, in s 66, "a reference to a financial business is a reference to a business that: (i) consists of, or includes, the provision of financial services; or (ii) relates, in whole or in part, to the provision of financial services." ... 

  [30] On 15 January 2002 Mr Siminton registered a business name under Victorian legislation. That business name was "Principality of Camside ". He was identified as the only person who was carrying on the business at that time. The registered address of the business, its mailing address and the address of Mr Siminton was, in each case, given as "189/199 Toorak Road, South Yarra 3141." This was not the address of a unit within a complex situated at 199 Toorak Road. Rather it was a post box number (189) held at commercial premises which were situated at 199 Toorak Road. 

[31] There was no equivalent business name registration effected for the Terra Nova Cache. 

[32] Not long after the business name of the Principality of Camside was registered, on 5 March 2003, the Principality, under its "Great Seal" made what it described as a "Formal Declaration of War" against the Commonwealth of Australia. Mr Siminton was one of the signatories to the declaration. In a charade reminiscent of the screenplay in "The Mouse that Roared", the declaration was duly ignored by the Commonwealth government. It had, however, apparently, the effect desired by Mr Siminton. The website of the Principality thereafter contained an entry headed "Contacting Her Majesty’s Government of Camside " and, on its first page, referred to "Dr David R Siminton" as "Governor – State of Sherwood HM Government of Camside 189/199 Toorak Road, South Yarra 3141 Victoria, Australia." This website entry recorded that:

"...on 6 March 2003, due to the successful Declaration of War declared on the Commonwealth of Australia, by the Principality of Camside , the succession of these lands was overridden by the fact that the Principality of Camside , by default, won that war, due to the Commonwealth of Australia not turning up to battle. 

The law relating to the Declaration of War, state, that if the country on which war has been declared fails to turn up to battle, the country that declared war (Principality of Camside ), is declared the winner. For this legal reason the "spoils of war", namely the Australian National Estate, Crown Land, roads and freeways, are now the property and responsibility of the Principality of Camside ... 

The Principality of Camside is now be (sic) legally referred to as Her Majesty’s Government of Camside , as another of the consequences of the Principality of Camside having won by default, the war ..."

[33] In the course of 2005, if not earlier, the website maintained by the Principality of Camside had on the left hand side of its home page a link labelled "banking". That link contained the following statements under the heading "HM Government of Camside Banking Facilities":

"On 1st December 2003, HM Government of Camside opened "stage one" of its new banking facilities. Camside ’s new bank will be known by the name – "Terra Nova Cache." ... 

It has been a challenging time for us since January 2002, in preparing and planning the "first stage" opening of Terra Nova Cache. 

We often found ourselves having to remind ourselves, that the planning of our new bank’s future operations should not be based upon banking laws standards. Otherwise, this would have caused us to duplicate the current world banking behavioural rules, rather than offering our Citizens a new and legal banking alternative. 

Terra Nova Cache will rapidly become known world wide, as it sets the first precedent for a bank of its type, in the history of our planet. ... 

So what’s new about Terra Nova Cache? 

Below is a brief summary of the revolutionary benefits of banking with Terra Nova Cache. Greater detail with respect to each benefit will gradually become available behind new buttons that will be added to the left of this web page. ... 

01. Depositors automatically become owners of the bank. 

02. Depositor’s funds are guaranteed repayable to them at any time they call upon them, regardless of any "financial crash" that may be in progress. 

03. Depositor’s funds will be backed by a 100% equivalent value of precious metals. 

04. Terra Nova Cache will not engage in fractionalize banking practices. 

05. Terra Nova Cache will not engage in lending funds in excess of its legitimate deposit asset holdings. 

06. Terra Nova Cache will not charge interest, account or transaction fees. 

07. As depositor’s funds are cleared into Terra Nova Cache, these funds or precious metal equivalents will be stored outside any existing world bank or financial institution facilities. 

08. Owner/Depositors will receive pro-rata profit share on the distributable profit earnings of Terra Nova Cache. 

09. Terra Nova Cache will not affiliate with any other banks or financial institutions, and will report its trading activities to only HM Government of Camside . 

10. All accounts held with Terra Nova Cache will be numbered accounts, which will not carry any account name details. 

11. Soon Terra Nova Cache will be offering an opportunity to be trained and employed as Bank Treasury Traders. This business opportunity will offer Citizens, financial freedom, and a tax free home income earning business employment opportunity with the bank. 

12. It is envisaged that the next stage of Terra Nova Cache’s development, once deposits are established, profitably traded and fully precious metal backed, that the bank will be offering interest free loans to its depositor/owners. 

Terra Nova Cache will not be affiliated with any other bank in the world. 

Our bank will not enter into any transactional relationship with any other bank. 

We will not report our bank’s trading activities to any Reserve Bank, International Monetary Fund or Federal Reserve authority. 

HM Government of Camside is the only government structure, to whom our bank will report its financial activities and with whom it will co-distribute its profits. 

There will be no reporting facilities of individual client’s bank account activities to any authority. 

All accounts held within our bank will be number-identified accounts, details of which will also never be shared with any other banking authority. 

Anyone in the world can bank with Terra Nova Cache, and they may feel safe that none of their private trading/banking information will be disclosed to any government or taxation authority. 

Most banking transactions will be authorised, by way of the account holder providing their account number and signature, along with Internet computer IP and password confirming codes on any transactions. 

Only Camside "In The Truth" Court orders are legally binding on HM Government of Camside or its bank, Terra Nova Cache, and therefore all records, at all indicative times, will be highly encrypted (stored as unreadable data to unauthorised parties). The matching of account names to account numbers is not intended to be a need for either bank executives or its employees."

[34] Under the heading "Deposits" the website contained the following entries:

"Any Camside Citizen can open any number of numbered accounts with Terra Nova Cache, keeping in mind that as a subsequent owner of the bank, you are entitled to only one vote per Citizen on bank trading matters. There is no minimum amount that needs to be deposited, or held on deposit, in order to establish, or keep an account open with Terra Nova Cache. 

We ask you to understand, that Terra Nova Cache in its first stage of operation, is not operating as a trading bank. 

Initially, any funds offered for long term deposit, must be retained for a minimum 12 month period. These funds will attract a 10% p.a profit share, calculated on the value of the actual accounts deposited value. This profit share will be paid progressively as one/twelve of the 10% profit share p.a rate per month, into an account nominated by the depositor/owner. ... 

The calculation of Terra Nova Cache profit share, and the prior calculation of daily deposit balance history, commences upon the clearance of deposit funds into Terra Nova Cache, and continued until such time as all funds may be withdrawn by the depositor. 

Deposits in excess of $10,000 may attract higher profit sharing arrangements. 

These special larger deposits may earn annual profit share ranging up to 30% per annum. All profit share returns are paid to the depositor monthly, and for this reason, at this stage do not compound in their deposit accounts."

[35] Under the heading "Profit Sharing Arrangements" the website continued:

"Terra Nova Cache is a HM Government of Camside run bank, and eventually the bank trading profits will be shared with HM Government of Camside and all of the bank’s owners. 

It should be noted, that the bulk distribution of bank trading profits will be payable to HM Government of Camside , so that the government structure may grow, without the need to have any form of taxation of its Citizens. ... 

Regardless of the value of a depositor’s funds, or the number of accounts that any one depositor has with the bank, each person has only one vote with respect of having their voice heard re the running of the bank. This is one of the many major history-establishing differences with Terra Nova Cache, compared with any other bank in the world. 

For years, other banks have used their depositor’s funds to trade, without the depositor’s knowledge, and without sharing the consequent trading profits with anyone other than the bank’s shareholders. 

Now every profit earning opportunity engaged in by Terra Nova Cache’s Treasury is to be the profitable distributable benefit of those that choose to safely keep their savings with Terra Nova Cache."

[36] Under the heading "Owners of the Bank" the website says:

"As soon as a Citizen becomes a depositor of Terra Nova Cache, they will also be recognised as an owner of the bank. 

Only Citizens of HM Government of Camside can bank with Terra Nova Cache. ... 

Terra Nova Cache will at all times be a Camside Government run bank, and is therefore equally answerable to the Camside Government, as it is to its depositor owners for its trading and performance. ... 

All bank assets will be kept securely in Terra Nova Cache’s direct control at all times. No bank assets will be kept in any existing bank or financial institutions control, premises or facilities."

[37] The website also provided an interesting insight into the reason for adopting the name "Terra Nova Cache" for the "new banks name". The website explains:

"Initially we selected the name Royal Bank of Australia, until Citizens reminded us of how many non Australians are on our citizenship register. The Citizens that have helped us build out new bank’s concept, were also worldly enough to realise, that what we have created is going to be of world wide appeal. We also started to think bigger than just Australia wide banking facilities, and as you read through what we have planned for you with our bank, we are sure that you will agree, that Camside may well become the most sought after banking facilities in the world. 

That is why Citizens came up with the first two words Terra Nova. 

Terra meaning "land" and Nova meaning "bright star – with a burst of bright light", with both words together, Terra Nova, also meaning "new land", also shown in some dictionaries as "New, Bright Idea!". ... 

In pursuit of a replacement name for the word bank one of our Citizens found the name Cache, which means a "secure place to store valuables"."

[38] Initially, the evidence suggests that potential investors were attracted to the Terra Nova Cache through personal contact with Mr Siminton. Mr Andrew Vella was an early depositor. He had had discussions with Mr Siminton about the establishment of the bank. On 29 January 2004 he made a payment of $100,000 to the credit of a Commonwealth Bank account held in the name of the Principality of Camside . The deposit was subsequently acknowledged in letters, written on Terra Nova Cache letterhead, and signed by Mr Siminton. In about August or September 2004 Mr Vella sought to recover the funds he had invested. He was unsuccessful. 

[39] Most of the later depositors who gave evidence traced their involvement with the Terra Nova Cache to local meetings which they had been invited to attend. One such depositor was Mr William Ketelhohn. In about August or September 2004 he attended a meeting at the CWA Hall in Bundaberg. He had been invited to attend by two friends. Mr Siminton addressed the meeting. He invited those present to become citizens of Camside and to deposit money with him and earn high interest rates. Mr Siminton introduced Ms Karen Holzheimer and told those present that she was going to handle all of the financial matters. About a month later Mr Ketelhohn paid a $200 membership fee for citizenship of the Principality of Camside . On 31 July 2005 he attended another meeting at the Bundaberg CWA Hall. The meeting was addressed by Mr Siminton and proceeded along the same lines as the meeting which Mr Ketelhohn had attended in 2004. Mr Siminton spoke about making deposits into the Terra Nova Cache and said that interest could be earned at rates up to 50% per annum. Mr Ketelhohn understood from what Mr Siminton said that the Terra Nova Cache was a bank owned by the depositors. (I interpose here that others who attended these meetings had a specific recollection of Mr Siminton referring to the Terra Nova Cache as a bank set up by the Principality of Camside . One of these deponents was Mr Bernard Barry who attended a meeting at the Bundaberg CWA Hall on 30 July 2005. Ms Christine Bosch was present at three meetings in Bundaberg which were addressed by Mr Siminton. At all of them she recalls Mr Siminton saying that the Terra Nova Cache was a banking system run by Camside ). Ms Holzheimer was again present and Mr Siminton told those attending that they could contact her should they wish to make deposits. Ms Holzheimer wrote her contact details on a whiteboard and also wrote down details of the bank account into which deposits could be paid. As he left the meeting Mr Ketelhohn picked up a document which contained substantially the same information which appeared in the extract from the Principality of Camside website and which is set out above at [33]-[37]. Mr Ketelhohn decided to make a deposit of $3,000 in the Terra Nova Cache. He contacted Ms Holzheimer by telephone and she provided him with account details for an account in the name of Technocash Pty Ltd. He made the deposit at his local National Australia Bank on 1 August 2005. He received an acknowledgement of the deposit on Terra Nova Cache letterhead signed by Mr Siminton. The address on the letterhead was 189/199 Toorak Road South Yarra 3141. Adjacent to the address was the Principality of Camside ’s website details. The letter was addressed to Mr Ketelhohn and dated 24 November 2005. It is typical of letters which were received by other depositors. Relevantly, it read:

"Your last months deposit of $3,000 which earns a pre-agreed 40% per annum profit share, payable monthly, is calculated using a daily rate of profit share, of $3.29 per calendar day. Upon receipt of each monthly payment, always be careful to avoid paying your funds into any conventional banking or financial institution, so as to avoid any monitoring or recording of your income, by any of the various illegal Australian authorities. 

As best you can, we also suggest that you make payments against regular bills such as utility services in cash, using these creditor’s payments centers. In most cases, utility accounts such as electricity, gas, telephones etc, can be made via any Post Office at which you may choose to pay by cash, or at which you may also have chosen to cash your money order/s. 

It is a good idea to also vary the Post Office locations at which you cash any money orders. 

For regular fixed monthly payments amounts, may we suggest that you cancel any direct debit arrangements which you may have in place with your bank, and provide us with the details, so that we may make the monthly payment/s on your behalf, thereafter providing you with a monthly profit share payment, net of these monthly creditor payments. ... 

Monthly payments will vary from month to month depending on the number of calendar days in each month, as we have your money working for you, seven days a week, 365 days a year. 

Please let us know if you need any further details or clarification as to how Terra Nova Cache calculates your monthly profit share." 

[40] The second page of the letter was headed "A Banking Institution of HM Government of Camside ". Attached to the letter, again on Terra Nova Cache letterhead, was an account statement for the period 2 August 2005 to 30 September 2005. Mr Ketelhohn received two postal notes each for the value of $98.63 which were said to be for interest earned on his deposit in August 2005 and September 2005. He did not receive any other interest payments. In 2006 he rang Mr Siminton three or four times asking about his account. On each occasion Mr Siminton said he couldn’t help Mr Ketelhohn. 

[41] As already mentioned Mr Bernard Barry attended another meeting addressed by Mr Siminton at the Bundaberg CWA Hall on 30 July 2005. Mr Barry recalls Mr Siminton saying that the Terra Nova Cache was a bank set up by the Principality of Camside and that citizens of Camside could deposit their funds with the bank. The Terra Nova Cache was owned by its depositors. All profits would be distributed to the depositors. Mr Siminton advised the 15 or so people present that interest rates paid by the Terra Nova Cache would vary but that all those present could obtain a fixed rate of 40% regardless of how much they deposited. The offer was to be open for three weeks only. Mr Siminton said that deposits were for a minimum term of 30 days and that, after that, a deposit could be withdrawn. Withdrawals would be subject to a small administration fee. Mr Siminton continued that, in the near future, the Terra Nova Cache would be able to make loans to Camside citizens and he said that the interest rates on these loans would be between 0.5% and 1% to cover administration costs. After the meeting Mr Barry paid Mr Siminton $200 in cash to become a citizen of the Principality of Camside . On 8 August 2005 Mr Barry decided to make a deposit in the Terra Nova Cache. He obtained a money order worth $1,000 and then attended the house of a Ms Faye McGarry, the person who had invited him to attend the meeting. He gave her the money order in an envelope which he had addressed to the Terra Nova Cache post box. Ms McGarry told him that she would forward the envelope to Mr Siminton. This occurred and Mr Barry received a letter on Terra Nova Cache letterhead dated 28 September 2005 acknowledging receipt of the $1,000 on 15 August 2005. The first page of the letter was in substantially the same terms of that received by Mr Ketelhohn (above at [39]) down to the paragraph which concluded with the words "illegal Australian authorities." Mr Barry subsequently received two profit share statements on Terra Nova Cache letterhead. The first covered the period between 15 and 31 August 2005 and the second the month of September 2005. The first was accompanied by a money order for $18.63 and the second by a money order for $32.88. The second statement was accompanied by a letter on Terra Nova Cache letterhead dated 24 November 2005 and signed by Mr Siminton. That letter was, apart from particulars peculiar to Mr Barry, in the same terms as the letter received by Mr Ketelhohn which is extracted above at [39]. Thereafter Mr Barry received no further interest payments. His deposit has not been recovered. 

[42] Mr Ketelhohn’s experience and that of Mr Barry were similar to that of a score of other depositors who invested their funds with the Terra Nova Cache and who have filed evidence in this proceeding. In sum their deposits exceeded $1 million. All depositors have not been traced by APRA. 

[43] Some of the depositors reported making unsuccessful attempts to withdraw some or all of the funds which they had deposited in the Terra Nova Cache. Most were unsuccessful. An exception was Ms Janet English. Like Mr Ketelhohn she had attended a meeting at the Bundaberg CWA Hall which had been addressed by Mr Siminton. She was induced to purchase citizenship of the Principality of Camside and then to make a series of small deposits totalling $1,900 between September 2004 and February 2005. She received interest payments until February 2005 when they stopped. In September or October 2005 she was planning a trip to England. She telephoned Mr Siminton and asked to withdraw $600 to assist with her travel expenses. Mr Siminton told her he would look into it but he did not return her call. A money order for $600 arrived by post after she had left Australia in early December 2005.

De-extinction

Following up the September item on law and de-extinction …

'The Ethics of Reviving Long Extinct Species' by Ronald Sandler in (2013) Conservation Biology comments that

 There now appears to be a plausible pathway for reviving species that have been extinct for several decades, centuries, or even millennia. I conducted an ethical analysis of de-extinction of long extinct species. I assessed several possible ethical considerations in favor of pursuing de-extinction: that it is a matter of justice; that it would reestablish lost value; that it would create new value; and that society needs it as a conservation last resort. I also assessed several possible ethical arguments against pursuing de-extinction: that it is unnatural; that it could cause animal suffering; that it could be ecologically problematic or detrimental to human health; and that it is hubristic. There are reasons in favor of reviving long extinct species, and it can be ethically acceptable to do so. However, the reasons in favor of pursuing de-extinction do not have to do with its usefulness in species conservation; rather, they concern the status of revived species as scientific and technological achievements, and it would be ethically problematic to promote de-extinction as a significant conservation strategy, because it does not prevent species extinctions, does not address the causes of extinction, and could be detrimental to some species conservation efforts. Moreover, humanity does not have a responsibility or obligation to pursue de-extinction of long extinct species, and reviving them does not address any urgent problem. Therefore, legitimate ecological, political, animal welfare, legal, or human health concerns associated with a de-extinction (and reintroduction) must be thoroughly addressed for it to be ethically acceptable

'Reintroduction and De-extinction' by Dolly Jørgensen in (2013) 63(9) BioScience 719 argues

 We are entering an age in which species extinction may be reversible. De-extinction, as it has been labeled, can apply to any species for which DNA can be recovered, from woolly mammoths of the Pleistocene to thylacines and passenger pigeons from the twentieth century. These developments, which were showcased in March 2013 at a daylong conference called TEDxDeExtinction, held in Washington, DC, (http://tedxdeextinction.org), are exciting to some scientists and terrifying to others. If we are to embark on this de-extinction journey, an act some might label playing God, we need to establish the rules of the game. I want to suggest that the well-established standards for species reintroduction projects provide a solid foundation on which de-extinction can be built. 

Critics of de-extinction in the popular science media have quickly pointed out drawbacks. From an ethical perspective, they have pointed to potential violations of animal welfare standards, the potential drain on resources that could be used in the conservation of still-existing species, and the implication that species destruction might be seen as permissible if it is reversible. The ecological objections have included the lack of ecosystems in which the re-created creatures could live, the potential invasiveness of the species in the ecosystem, and the potential for new disease vectors. Exploration of de-extinction's ethical dilemmas will require serious scientific and public debate, including a significant contribution from humanities researchers, including philosophers and historians, who have the appropriate theoretical background for conceptualizing what is at stake. I will not tackle those ethical issues here. The solution to the ecological dilemmas, however, may already be at hand through the application of reintroduction standards.

Affinity

Alongside the 100 page Indian Supreme Court decision [PDF]  overturning the Delhi High Court's decision on section 377 of the Indian Penal Code I've encountered ‘A Gang of Judicial Assassins’: George Bateson and Colonial Sodomy Laws' by John Waugh in Intimacy, Violence and Activism: Gay and Lesbian Perspectives on Australian History and Society (Monash University Publishing, 2013) 25 edited by Graham Willett and Yorick Smaal.

The Supreme Court decision is poorly written and poorly conceptualised in terms of human rights protection under the Indian Constitution, dignity, privacy, 'Indian values' and the impact of the Code on consenting male adults.

Waugh comments -

 One night in November 1860, Melbourne police burst into the room where George Bateson, a 42-year-old Englishman, was in bed with a young man. Bateson was arrested and later convicted of sodomy. In prison, he poured out his outrage in a long series of letters in which he claimed to be the innocent victim of a conspiracy. 

This paper puts Bateson’s case in its legal context by outlining the laws that applied to sex between men in colonial Australia, and considers two highly unusual aspects of the case: the police entrapment of Bateson, and the cache of letters in which he gives his version of the events leading to his conviction.

Waugh notes -

One Monday night in November 1860, George Bateson, a 42-year-old stock agent, was walking along Bourke Street in Melbourne’s theatre district. He got into conversation with William Gardner, 19, a ship’s carpenter, who had been at the theatre. Bateson invited him to have something to drink; they went to a pub and then went walking near the city’s first exhibition building, in William Street, where, Gardner said, Bateson hugged and kissed him. Seeing a light in the sky, they walked to Batman’s Hill (near today’s Southern Cross Station) and watched a ship on fire in the distance. They finally separated around 2 am, after arranging to meet the following night. 

On Tuesday night the two men went to the theatre, where Bateson bought Gardner a ticket and a glass of ale. After the show, they had a cup of coffee and then went to the hotel where Bateson was staying. They had another glass of ale, and Bateson asked Gardner to stay the night with him. The two spent the night together in bed, during which (according to Gardner) Bateson had anal intercourse with him. The following morning they arranged to meet again on Friday. 

This much of the story could, with a few variations, be a seduction tale from many different times and places, but the conclusion brings it back to its actual setting, at a time when sodomy was a hanging offence. On Friday Bateson and Gardner went to the theatre again, then back to Bateson’s hotel and to bed. While they were in bed together, two detectives burst into the room, where they found Bateson on top of Gardner. They arrested the two men and took away the sheets, which a doctor later testified had semen on them. 

Gardner had gone to the police on Wednesday morning. They told him to keep his appointment with Bateson on Friday, when they would be watching. The two detectives hid in a closet outside Bateson’s room, and on a prearranged signal from Gardner they rushed in and arrested both men. Bateson was charged with sodomy and later convicted. His mandatory death sentence was commuted to fifteen years hard labour, the first three in irons. 

Robert French noted Bateson’s case briefly in his pioneering paper on archival sources for gay history in 1992, highlighting its connection with the theatre world, but extensive records that were unavailable to French give the case an added and somewhat different significance. My focus here is not on the questions of identity, sexual repertoire, language, legal severity and the development of subcultures to which attention has been given in other studies of colonial Australian prosecutions for sex between men. Instead, I put Bateson’s case in its legal context by outlining the laws that applied to him and others at the time, and I consider two aspects of the case that make it very unusual for its period: the police entrapment of Bateson, and a cache of letters which give his version of the events leading to his conviction. The official disapproval of Bateson’s entrapment indicates one of the reasons why this kind of police activity was much less common in the mid-nineteenth century than it became a century later. Bateson’s letters prompt some observations on the reasons why the voices of the accused are usually missing from the records of colonial sodomy prosecutions.

Ethics

'Moral Autonomy in Australian Legislation and Military Doctrine' by Richard Adams in (2013) 6(3) Ethics & Global Politics 135 comments that

 Australian legislation and military doctrine stipulate that soldiers ‘subjugate their will’ to government, and fight in any war the government declares. Neither legislation nor doctrine enables the conscience of soldiers. Together, provisions of legislation and doctrine seem to take soldiers for granted. And, rather than strengthening the military instrument, the convention of legislation and doctrine seems to weaken the democratic foundations upon which the military may be shaped as a force for justice. Denied liberty of their conscience, soldiers are denied the foundational right of democratic citizenship and construed as utensils of the State. This article critiques the idea of moral agency in Australian legislation and military doctrine and is concerned with the obligation of the State to safeguard the moral integrity of individual soldiers, so soldiers might serve with a fully formed moral assurance to advance justice in the world. Beyond its explicit focus on the convention of Australian thought, this article raises questions of far-reaching relevance. The provisos of Australian legislation and doctrine are an analogue of western thinking. Thus, this discussion challenges many assumptions concerning military duty and effectiveness. Discussion will additionally provoke some reassessment of the expectations democratic societies hold of their soldiers.

Adams argues that

No soldier can act for justice yet commit to action he or she considers evil. And, no just society can expect the soldiers who defend its ideals to turn a blind eye. Volunteering military service, soldiers pledge - or at least they should pledge - to act conscientiously to advance just causes by just means. Soldiers, therefore, face a challenge in Australian legislation and doctrine, which is insufficiently attentive to soldiers’ moral concerns, failing in particular to consider the dilemma of soldiers who are commanded to participate in operations they consider unjust. 

Though, as Adam Smith observes, the idea of ‘right’ or ‘justice’ is equivocal and interpreted in several relevant ways, the concept is foundational to the democratic ideal. Magna Carta offers celebrated expression holding, at Chapter 40, that ‘to no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice’. Thus, in a democratic society, legislation and doctrine should operate to secure the background conditions within which the military can function well, as a just instrument and for justice. This is not to suggest that legislation or doctrine can be perfectly just. There is no chance of agreement on what such instruments would be like. Yet, manifest injustice - such as the asphyxiation of soldiers’ conscience - can be redressed, and if it cannot be removed, at the very least such clear injustice can be minimised. 

Considering ideas of social justice, the present article is informed by the ideas of John Rawls who advanced the notion of justice as fairness, and whose basal concern was for the equal liberty of conscience: ‘one of the fixed points in [a] considered judgment of justice’. Rawls recognized that a just society will take the moral convictions of citizens seriously, and enable individuals to examine and to act upon these deeply held beliefs. In Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, Rawls described the equal liberty of conscience as a primary good and constitutional essential. He advanced a view of people as morally responsible and equally free to exercise moral judgment. The moral independence of soldiers is suppressed by Australian legislation and doctrine, which advance an argument typical amongst modern western militaries. 

Exploring the arguments of Australian legislation and doctrine, which together operate to curtail the rights of soldiers, this article accepts that just institutions, which advance individual liberty and fairness, are essential to just societies, which in turn are critical to global justice. The article’s importance derives from the fact Geoffrey Robertson observes, that ‘at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the dominant motive in world affairs is the quest - almost the thirst - for justice. [This thirst is] replacing even the objective of regional security as the trigger for international action’. 

The article is focused on provisions of the Australian Defence Act, and on argument advanced in military doctrine ‘pitched at the philosophical and high application level’. Doctrine, which is subordinate to legislation, ‘states the ADF’s philosophical military approach to the operating environment’. Taken together, ideas set down in legislation and doctrine, are critically important as part of what Walzer called the war convention: the ‘norms, customs, professional codes, legal precepts, religious and philosophical principles and reciprocal arrangements that shape our judgments of military conduct’. 

Though focused on the ‘conventions’ of Australian thought, this article identifies and critiques a thematic approach to military service, typical of many western powers, and deserving academic scrutiny.

He concludes -

This article argued against the provisions of Australian legislation and doctrine that soldiers subjugate their will to Government. Denying soldiers access to their conscience, the Australian convention was seen to be unworkable and wrong. The example of Commodore Richard Menhinick RAN, cited in The Age newspaper of 12 July 2012, illustrates the unsafe nature of the Australian position. 

The newspaper describes how, when commanding officer of HMAS Warramunga in 2001, the then Commander Menhinick defied direction to abandon asylum seekers at sea. Finding his orders neither ‘sensible nor ethically prudent’, Commodore Menhinick declined to follow legal command. Refusing to be subjugated, the Commodore is quoted as understanding ‘the importance of acting with integrity and in good conscience’. This principled officer reveals the absurdity of legislative and doctrinal provisions that assume military service entails soldiers’ moral quiescence, and demonstrates what Walzer calls the ‘long tradition’ of officers who ‘protest commands of their civilian superiors that would require them to violate the rules of war and turn them into mere instruments’. Acting deliberately as an agent of justice, the Commodore demonstrated the critical importance of conscience to the profession of arms, and the impossibility of the inelastic provisions within Australian legislation and doctrine. 

Australian legislation and doctrine presumes that no-one can cavil, no matter how iniquitous the pretext for action. Reinforcing the coercive power of military institutions, the legislative-doctrinal convention is oblivious to the fact that atrocities soldiers commit are their own.

Crafted to uphold jus in exercitu obligations, the convention should abandon the fable of unquestioning obedience. Debunked by the Nuremburg tribunal, this myth was made infamous by Himmler at Posen on 4 October 1943. On this occasion, in a speech to Nazi police fuehrers, Himmler argued that obedience to orders - no matter how ghastly - was a mark of honour. The Nuremburg testimony of SS Gruppenfuehrer Otto Ohlendorf illustrates how this impossible dogma was accepted. Formerly leader of the Einsatzkommandos, Ohlendorf admitted calmly to the murder of 90,000 Jews. Despite confessing to pangs of scruple, he said, ‘it was inconceivable that a subordinate leader should not carry out orders given by the leaders of the State’.

We need to think differently so as we might apply military power more wisely. Legislation and military doctrine need to acknowledge that soldiers who believe orders to be immoral, not merely illegal, have a duty to refuse. Alastair McIntosh writes:

For the first time in history we have at our fingertips utter destructive power, but matched to it, all the possibilities for greater understanding opened up by globalised communications. Now is the time to press the reset button at many levels of depth.

This is not the time to be comfortably complacent, to assume familiar ideas will serve into the future. A new position must be endorsed, and with it, a new way of understanding military service, military ideals and military functions. No longer must the legislation or the doctrine perpetuate notions of subjugation, which dehumanise soldiers and degrade the democratic foundations of the military instrument. These ideas place the world in peril of crimes of obedience, committed by morally repressed soldiers unable to discern an alternative. 

The war convention must recognise the moral justification for disobedience afforded by the conscience. Legislative and doctrinal instruments must acknowledge that the duty to obey is not absolute, and that the moral obligation to disobey may be prompted by more than manifest illegality.

Naming and the Noosphere

A year ago I noted that World Futures - the journal that's haunted (sorry, lame joke) by exponents of astral travel, reincarnation, remote healing, dowsing and other claims that raise both my wizened eyebrows and blood-pressure - had changed its name.

It is a strange publication, one that through the vagaries of ranking systems has a higher status (e.g. on the former ERA ranking used by Australian universities) than the law journals of most of those universities.

Over the years it has wandered from the Journal of World Futures to World Futures: A Journal of General Evolution to - briefly - World Futures: The Journal of Global Education.

With the latest migration it is now World Futures: The Journal of New Paradigm Research.

It remains associated with Ervin Laszlo, proponent of the Akashic Field and of claims that the dead aren't really dead, just not here in a familiar form (gone but oh so very conveniently contactable via a valve radio). It is unclear whether those undeparted - presumably we cannot call them undead - approve of the change. His belief that our brains are evolving to become 'quantum wave transceivers' (i.e. a 'shift' from being an "EM-wave and photon-wave receiver") is problematical or deliciously amusing.

The paradigm du jour appears to be the same old mix of quantum mysticism, vague moral uplift with just a dash of ecological catastrophism and references to imminent epochal change as we all self-actualise or become one with the universe, a universe in which everything has meaning and in which (if we are to believe some of the authors) both the rocks and vegetables have cosmic consciousness that spans past, present and future. (My coffee cup and vegetables refuse to communicate with me but perhaps that's because I'm stubbornly attuned to the wrong frequency.)

Laszlo - "The time has come for you and for me to evolve and find each other - in our life, in the cosmos, through the Akasha" - has founded a number of educational institutions that appear to be pitched at what one of my students rather tartly dubs the New Age market. They seem to change both their names and locations (e.g. WorldShift University becomes GlobalShift University becomes Giordano Bruno GlobalShift University becomes Giordano Bruno University, based on a "bio-epistemological non-subordinate horizontal model of education" that involves a "a cross-cultural social, interdisciplinary, and stereo-cognitive interaction-based academic platform").

All very confusing but I suppose less so if you are in touch with the infinite or the undeparted.

Laszlo is currently associated with what is variously identified as Wisdom University (formerly known as the University of Creation Spirituality) and the Wisdom School of Graduate Studies at Ubiquity University, which has chairs in Labyrinthian Studies, Transpersonal Psychology, Sacred Activism, Social Artistry, Conscious Evolution, Afterlife Studies and Energy Medicine.

Hoary old skeptic that I am, I am unlikely to rush to enrol in a university whose academics are enthusiasts for geomancy, astrology, alchemy, 'ancestral memory', dowsing, 'Egyptian bio-geometry', Rosicrucianism and the "spiritual practice of rain-water collection".

Yes, the "spiritual practice of rain-water collection", presumably more 'cosmic' and thus 'spiritual' than emptying the kitty litter or buying the groceries or smiling at a stressed undergrad at exam time or taking the kids to school or respecting the dignity of an incontinent senior while changing the sheets.

In a liberal democratic state where we are encouraged to heed the words of Freedoms Commissioner Tim Wilson there is space for people who a century ago would have kissed the hem of Edgar Cayce, Madame Blavatsky and Rudolf Steiner or earlier plucked miraculous hair from the donkey ridden by Peter the Hermit and believed that St Joseph of Cupertino (aka the patron saint of the intellectually handicapped) could actually fly.

Let us however resist the temptation to start offering PhDs in "the spiritual practice" of nail clipping collection or tea-leaf interpretation or divination by snail shell and roadkill entrails.

Laszlo is also on "the Faculty" of something called the Great Mystery. The Faculty includes an Astrologer and an Alchemist and other luminaries, including one savant who supposedly knows where the Holy Grail is secreted. Oh for Ambrose Bierce or H L Mencken.

Fellow Faculty member William Tiller (co-founder of The Academy of Parapsychology and Medicine) states on the Great Mystery's site that

My working hypothesis since the early 1970's is that we are all spirits having a physical experience as we “ride the river of life” together. Our spiritual parents dressed us in these biobody suits and put us in this playpen that we call a universe; in order to grow in coherence; in order to develop our gifts of intentionality, and in order to become what we were intended to become – cocreators with our spiritual parents!

To effectively have this learning experience, we need a suitable structural interface with the spacetime world. That became a biobodysuit constructed from the substance complex of Dspace//deltron//R-space materials. That type of biobodysuit is what we put on when we are “born” into spacetime and it is what we take off when we appear to die in spacetime. In between, when we are manifesting what we call “life”, this biobodysuit contains what I label our personality self. However, I feel that the whole person is much, much more than this!

Much, much more? Too much, much too much, alas, for me.

Tiller has elsewhere announced that

I and my colleagues have discovered that it is possible to make a significant change in the properties of a material substance by consciously holding a clear intention to do so. For example, we have repeatedly been able to change the acid/alkaline balance (pH) in a vessel of water either up or down, without adding chemicals to the water, by creating an intention to do so.

Presumably if my intention is that my glass of Canberra tap water will become champagne it will indeed morph - oh bliss - into one of the finer beverages from France. On the other hand, it might be easier just to wave the credit card in the bottle shop. Alas, lots of disabled people don't seem to be having much luck with the intention that their severed limbs reappear, intact and in perfect working order. Not enough intention?

Rebirthing

An item in today's Brisbane Times provides a perspective on the Australian vehicle and boat rebirthing regime, e.g. section 154G of the Crimes Act 1900 (NSW), Regina v Hamieh [2010] NSWCCA 189 and R v Trinh; R v Chieu [1999] NSWCCA 295.

The BT reports that

What started as a technological aid to police has turned into an international diplomatic incident, as German authorities are now convinced that scores of high-end autos stolen here have ended up in the possession of those with family or business ties to the president of Tajikistan.

Whodathunkit?  The Tajik government of President Emomali Rahmon has indicated that it would look into the matter - presumably by looking under the hood to disable the tattletale transponder - and described the allegations as a "provocation" and "astounding", claiming that

German cars cross several state borders before reaching Tajikistan. Any falsified documents would have been discovered by customs services on those borders.

The German government has supposedly been seeking a diplomatic resolution since 2011.

It began with reports of 200 stolen cars, including 93 high-end BMWs. German press reports note that while car theft is common in the capital, helping police in these cases was the fact that the high-end cars had secretly embedded GPS systems, installed as anti-theft devices and programmed to self-activate if the car shows an unusual driving pattern. 

Berlin detectives weren't surprised when the secret GPS reports indicated the cars had been stolen and taken outside of Germany. 

Lots of cars get stolen in Germany and then hauled off to points around Eastern Europe. Poland is such a common destination for stolen cars that there are even rhyming poems about it: "Heute gestohlen, morgen in Polen" (Stolen today, tomorrow in Poland), or the Berliners' mocking and oft-repeated notion for a Polish tourism slogan, "Come to Poland, your car is already here." 

Poland, after all, is only 50 miles from Berlin. 

But when police looked at the stolen cars on computer maps, they were pinging from Tajikistan. Even for German stolen cars that was a bit unusual. And unusual for stolen cars here takes some doing. For instance, the Ukrainian justice minister drives a Mercedes-Benz stolen from Germany. ...

Berlin detectives went to Tajikistan and reported that the cars were being used by Mr Rahmon's inner circle. The German newspaper Bild reported that Tajik officials denied the German allegations, though they also refused to produce the purchase records for the vehicles. Earlier this year, the Tajik foreign minister canceled an official visit to Berlin as a protest against the allegations.

The Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Report released earlier this month places Tajikistan at rank 154 (of 177) countries in its global corruption ranking  - the same level as the two Congos and slightly ahead of Myanmar and Zimbabwe.

'Tajikistan: The Rise of a Narco-State' by Letizia Paoli, Irina Rabkov, Victoria Greenfield and Peter Reuter in (2007) Journal of Drug Issues 951 more pointedly described it as a narco-state, commenting that 

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Tajikistan has experienced an extraordinary and devastating expansion of opiate trafficking and consumption. While heroin was virtually unknown in the country up to the mid-1990s and opium was produced and consumed locally only to a modest degree, in less than a decade Tajikistan has become a key transit country for Afghan opiates bound north- and westwards, at the same time as it has witnessed a rapid growth of domestic heroin use. Tajikistan now rivals Afghanistan for the unenviable title of the country most dependent on the illicit drug industry, with the opiate industry adding at least 30% to the recorded gross domestic product. The opiate trade is so important economically that it corrupts the whole political system. This article therefore argues that since the mid-1990s Tajikistan has become a narco-state, in which leaders of the most powerful trafficking groups occupy high-ranking government positions and misuse state structures for their own illicit businesses.

Sumptuary Regulation

"Beyond Sumptuary: Constitutionalism, Clothes and Bodies in Anglo-American Law, 1215-1789' by Ruthann Robson in (2013) 2(2) British Journal American Legal Studies 478 notes that

Current scholarship is peppered with casual references to “sumptuary laws” whenever regulations of clothing or bodies are at issue. Too often, these references are incorrect, or at best incomplete. This Article is a careful consideration of the various regulations of attire and bodily markings from the Magna Carta in 1215 to the adoption of the United States Constitution in 1789. This Article situates bodily regulation within Anglo-American constitutionalism, including nascent constitutional Tudor-era struggles between the monarch and Parliament, the status of colonial laws, the American Revolution, pre-constitutional slavery, and the formation of the Constitution, including a proposed “Sumptuary Clause.” 

Robson comments that

 It has become common to link current regulation of attire or grooming with former practices known as sumptuary laws. The classic definition of a sumptuary law is one directed at excess consumption. Such a law was arguably in the service of religious or ethical conceptions of the “good life,” and often, but not necessarily, the conceptions of excess varied by status. 

Yet we recognize that even medieval regulations of dress were rarely solely sumptuary. Mixed motive regulations contained proscriptions of excess, even as they addressed trade imbalances or other economic concerns. Moreover, many laws governing apparel, as well as regulations of hairstyles and bodily markings, were not directed at consumption. Instead, such laws policed other hierarchies, such as those involving sexuality, gender, poverty, criminality, and slavery. Additionally, they served the interests of nationalism and empire in both economic and political ways. 

Thus, all laws governing dress or grooming, whether solely sumptuary or not, implicate constitutionalism with regard to individual rights as well as the structures of governments. This Article centers the constitutional and nascent constitutionalism surrounding regulations of attire, grooming, and bodily markings, beginning with the Magna Carta in 1215 and ending with the creation of the United States Constitution in 1789. Section One begins with the regulation of textiles in the Magna Carta and continues through the Tudor era, describing the various provisions and their purposes. Section Two continues a focus on the Tudor era, arguing that disputes regarding the regulation of attire implicate nascent constitutionalism and democracy. The third section explores how the English used the regulation of dress, hair, and textiles as a method of national definition. Section Four moves to the American colonies, looking at laws and literature that structured society through the regulation of attire and the practice of branding, including in the important pre-Constitutional 1736 case of Rex v. Mellichamp and its relationship to slavery. Finally, Section Five examines the role of textiles in Revolutionary War rhetoric and politics and the rejected Sumptuary Clause of the United States Constitution. At the heart of these examinations and explorations is the intertwinement of the regulation of appearance with matters of democracy, sexuality, and hierarchy.

In discussing economic incentives and social regulation Robson notes that

a 1666 Act entitled “An Act for Burying in Wool Only” prohibited the burial shirt, shift, or sheet to be made of anything other than wool, and similarly prohibited the coffin from being lined with anything other than wool. While this may be called a sumptuary law, the stated rationale was not excess in apparel or over-consumption, but the encouragement of woolen manufacturers of the kingdom and the prevention of spending money on the importation of linen. Importantly, it applied uniformly across classes; the only exception was if the person had died of the plague.

An earlier and more well-known law was the Elizabethan Cap Act. A serious decline in employment for “cappers” and other wool workers was the stated motivation for the “Act for the making of Cappes,” passed by Parliament in 1571 during the reign of Elizabeth I. The Act’s remedy for the decline in the wool trades was to require “every person” above the age of six years to wear a cap upon Sabbath and Holy Days. However, although the Act recited that the wearing of the caps was decent and comely for all estates and degrees, the Act specifically exempted “Maydens Ladyes and Gentlewomen,” as well as those who were noble personages, Lords, Knights, and Gentlemen of possession of twenty marks land by the year, as well as their heirs.” Thus, the Act essentially mandated the cap as a marker for lower class status.

A similar marking of the lower classes occurred by the practice of “badging” the poor, prompted by economic interests of a different sort. Beggars were required to wear badges indicating their eligibility for alms in some English parishes and towns since the reign of Henry VIII, and the famous Elizabethan poor law of 1563 required licenses for those receiving poor relief in some cases. However, the “badging” requirement imposed by a Parliamentary statute of the realm in 1697 provided that every person receiving relief, including the wife and children of such person, shall

upon the Shoulder of the right Sleeve of the uppermost Garment of every such Person in an open and visible manner weare such Badge or Mark as is herein after mentioned and expressed that is to say a large Roman P, together with the first Letter of the Name of the Parish or Place whereof such poor Person is an Inhabitant cutt either in red or blew Cloth as by the Churchwardens and Overseers of the Poor it shall be directed.

The impoverished were subject not only to badging, but also to branding, which might be considered a permanent type of attire. During the brief reign of Edward VI, Parliament in 1547 passed An Act for the Punishment of Vagabonds and for the Relief of the Poor, providing that the punishment for both male and female loiterers who did not apply themselves to honest labor was to be marked with a hot iron in the breast with the letter V and to serve as a “slave” for two years to the person who captured him or her. If the vagabond attempted to run away, he or she would be branded again, this time with the letter S on the forehead or ball of the cheek and would then be a slave forever. A second attempted escape would result in the death penalty. Indeed, branding was not an especially harsh punishment, especially in comparison with an earlier statute under Henry VIII that provided the punishment of being tied to the end of a cart naked and beaten with whips throughout the town until the “Body be blody” or standing on the pillory and having an ear cut off. Slavery, however, was extreme, and soon repealed, although vagabond children over the age of 5 were allowed to be “taken into service.”A series of vagabond statutes throughout the Tudor era criminalized the impoverished, migratory laborers, and those who “refused” to work in an era that witnessed the end of feudalism, the plague, and the beginnings of manufacturing. 

In addition to economic hierarchies, statutes of attire addressed gendered ones, although often less explicitly. Most notably, the English acts of apparel were directed primarily at males, with the 1510 statute specifically exempting women (as well as, among others, minstrel players). Perhaps this was because males were more preoccupied by clothes than women, or perhaps it was because males in the targeted classes were more visible than women, or perhaps men were deemed to be citizens worthy of regulation while women were subsumed into their male-headed households. However, the statutes of apparel implicitly and at times explicitly presume a gendered division of attire, even if their regulatory focus was otherwise. 

The acts of apparel occasionally address sexuality. For example, in 1463 the Parliament of Edward IV criminalized men’s sexually revealing attire. It prohibited the wearing of any gown, jacket, or coat, “unless it be of such Length that the same may cover his privy Members and Buttocks.” The act applied to Knights who were less than Lords, Esquires, and Gentlemen, as well as other persons, and extended the prohibition to tailors who made garments of this short length. Women’s sexuality was also subject to attire regulations, although not in the major acts of apparel. The Parliament of Scotland passed a law in 1458 that regulated silk and furs in a familiar hierarchical manner, and provided that “no labourers or husbands wear any colour except grey or white on work days; and on holy days only light blue, green or red,” but also contained a specific prohibition for women: “no woman come to church nor market with her face hidden or muffled so that she may not be known, under pain of escheat of the cap.” More than a century later, the sumptuary laws were augmented with a moralistic imperative for women expressed in an exceedingly terse statute: “it be lawful for no women to wear above their estate except whores.”

Neoliberal vegetable patches

'Neoliberal Britain’s Austerity Foodscape: Home economics, Veg patch capitalism and culinary temporality' [PDF] by Lucy Potter and Claire Westall in (2013) New Formations examines

contemporary Britain’s foodscape in order to identify how mediatised life-quests uphold ‘boom-based’ culinary/consumptive motifs while mobilising a distinctive ‘austerity aesthetic’ that coincides and colludes with the British state’s neoliberal austerity narrative. In part one, ‘The British State of Home-Economics’, we examine this austerity aesthetic as it came to the fore during the ‘Great British Summer’ of 2012. In part two, ‘Localism, Veg Patch Capitalism and Austerity’, we unpack the fundamental contradictions found in the modesty claims of recent gentrified culinary activities and pastoralised localist discourses. And, finally, in part three, ‘Temporal Deficit and Culinary Work-for-Labour’, we analyse the foodscape’s investment in temporal presumptions, metaphors, promises and paradoxes in order to expose how the structure of deficit that shapes the way capitalism’s ‘economy of time’ is maintained through culinary ‘work-for-labour’. Throughout, we use the term ‘foodscape’ to ‘map food geographies’ onto cultural activities and socio-economic patterns, and to argue that Britain’s contemporary foodscape consistently fuels and reveals the self-contradictory yet self-perpetuating logic of capital as manifest in the neoliberal enterprise of state-led austerity.

The authors comment that

The ‘new age of austerity’, as invoked by David Cameron in 2009, has seen Britain’s Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government pursue new and existing neoliberal policies in the name of crisis management and deficit repayment. A legitimising narrative of austerity as financial and even moral compensation for the preceding debt-based bubble has intensified political demands for austere lifestyles marked by spending cuts, hard graft, individual ‘responsibility’, and a new ‘culture of thrift’. Despite reprimanding New Labour profligacy, this austerity narrative cogently reinvigorates neoliberalism’s aspirational promises and remains beholden to capitalism’s unstable and unsustainable growth paradigm. The British state’s self-protective allegiance to capital’s perpetuation means that it insists that its consumer-citizens continue to perform their consumptive duties in order to aid economic recovery, at home and internationally, but that they do so with austere self-restraint. This paper explores this austerity narrative, its home-economic messages, and the aesthetic dimensions of its deployment within contemporary Britain’s foodscape. We argue that the media-led food culture that took hold during the Cool Britannic ‘boom’ has continued to expand during our ‘bust’ times, in large part by maintaining its pleasure-based consumptive appeal and mutating into forms entirely consistent with consumptive-austerity. Specifically, we read the culinary encoding of austerity through the aesthetic motifs, participatory claims and nostalgic imaginary of the British foodscape of 2012. With media coverage of state-endorsed, corporate-sponsored celebrations invoking thrifty wartime resilience and postwar austerity-as-recovery, Britain’s 2012 ‘moment’ helped underscore the longstanding, but increasingly critical, disparity between the experience of food as economic burden and the culinary pursuit of frugal pleasure as consumptive self-fulfilment. The 2012 foodscape thereby enabled, and now requires, a provocative re-reading of the lifestyle programming, public-private interactions and labour-time relations that have structured British food culture and consumption patterns since the late 1990s. 

The socio-cultural importance of food has become an area of burgeoning academic concern, especially within cultural studies, the sociology of food and the interdisciplinary field of food studies. A number of works have been influenced by Pierre Bourdieu’s Distinction (1984), with its emphasis on cultural capital and class-based consumption; yet, following Zygmunt Bauman’s Freedom (1988), consumption studies commonly connects food habits with post-Fordist mechanisms of ‘individuation’, enhanced consumer ‘agency’ and self-narrating ‘lifestyle choices’ within what Anthony Giddens has called a ‘post-traditional order’. As Alan Warde notes, a key tension has arisen between such claims for self-actualising practices and the (often class-bound) ways in which ‘tastes are still collectively shared to a very significant extent’. Recent discussions have examined this tension in relation to both ‘alternative’ consumption habits, and the increasing prevalence of largely privileged forms of food-based activism. Discussions of international food activism and culinary diaspora also sit alongside interrogations of today’s globalised food system - often highlighting structural unevenness, agro-ecological (un)sustainability and resource (mis)management - as well as examinations of the multi-layered tensions surrounding local-global foodways. The 2011 ‘Food on the Move’ special issue of this journal marked the ‘troubled cosmopolitanism’ of food-based relations by navigating food’s ‘mobility in a lived multi-culture’ and as a ‘dynamic agent in the world’. Taking heed of Ben Highmore’s editorial, our discussion works from a similar understanding of food’s ‘at once revealing and concealing’ potential, but occupies a space left open by the issue as a whole; namely, the investigation of contemporary Britain’s foodscape and the multifaceted ways in which food, food culture and foodism are aestheticised and sold through British media, particularly the televisual, in accordance with the priorities of the state and its commitment to capital. This approach notably resonates with Tracey Jensen’s understanding of the government’s affective austerity rhetoric, especially its retrogressive and hypocritical ‘tough love’ claims and its role within the media-led inculcation of ‘austerity chic’. Our discussion also stands in close proximity to recent debates about food-based television, including Heather Nunn’s conception of ‘retreat TV’ and Lyn Thomas’ analysis of the ‘downshifting’ and ‘good life’ narratives circulating in contemporary British ‘lifestyle television’. Like Thomas, we recognise that food has played a significant role in UK televisual culture and its advocacy of the consumptive ‘good life’ since the 1970s, and similarly foreground the visible growth of prime-time food programming from the late 1990s - most notably via the ‘public-service’ state broadcaster, the BBC, and the ‘publicly-owned, commercially-funded’ terrestrial broadcaster, Channel 4. This growth has expanded the range, quality and personalities involved with food presentation, established a cacophony of celebrity chefs, personalities, critics and food enthusiasts, and created a plethora of notably formulaic and often highly didactic food-formats. Where Thomas suggests that the self-fulfilment quests of DIY, fashion, health and ‘heritage cooking’ shows reveal recession-based ambivalence towards consumptive lifestyles, we offer a panoramic picture of contemporary Britain’s foodscape in order to identify how such mediatised life-quests uphold earlier culinary/consumptive motifs while mobilising a distinctive ‘austerity aesthetic’ that coincides and colludes with the state’s neoliberal austerity narrative. 

In part one, ‘The British State of Home-Economics’, we examine this austerity aesthetic as it came to the fore during the ‘Great British Summer’ of 2012, tracking the tensions evident in spectacles of citizenly consumption and competition-orientated inclusion that characterised the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, the London’s Olympic Games and surrounding televisual events. We consider how these events functioned - individually and collectively - as home-economic festivities that served to reinforce state self-assertion at a time of obvious uncertainty, typically through faux-ironic nostalgia and feigned inclusivity. In part two, ‘Localism, Veg Patch Capitalism and Austerity’, we unpack the fundamental contradictions found in the modesty claims of gentrified culinary activities and pastoralised localist discourses - stretching from the late 1990s - positioning these as building towards, becoming part of and bolstering the state’s austerity narrative. Lastly, in part three, ‘Temporal Deficit and Culinary Work-for-Labour’, we analyse the foodscape’s investment in temporal presumptions, metaphors, promises and paradoxes in order to expose how the structure of deficit that shapes the way capitalism’s ‘economy of time’ is maintained through culinary ‘work-for-labour’, which has become more obvious since the 2007-8 financial crisis, especially when considered in relation to domestic spaces. Throughout, we use the term ‘foodscape’ to ‘map food geographies’ onto cultural activities and socio-economic patterns. Like Josée Johnston and Kate Cairns, we follow Arjun Appadurai by using the suffix ‘scape’ to mark ‘cultural flows’ of influence and ‘the fluid, irregular shapes of [...] landscapes that characterise international capital’. However, where Appadurai contends that the ‘global cultural economy’ has upheld ‘fundamental disjunctures between economy, culture, politics’, we investigate the continuities between the culinary economy of British food culture and the political economy of neoliberal austerity, reading this apparent lack of ‘disjuncture’ as part of the ideological foreclosure upon which the state, and capitalism more broadly, depend.

Cigarette Packaging

'No (More) Logo: Plain Packaging and Communicative Agency' by Alain Pottage in (2013) 47(5) UC Davis Law Review 515 comments [PDF] that

The tobacco industry’s archives suggest that the global campaign for the plain packaging of tobacco products originated in 1986, when the Canadian Medical Association passed a resolution calling for cigarettes to be sold in packages bearing only a brand name and the health message “this product is injurious to your health.” In most jurisdictions, regulations requiring the apposition of health warnings to cigarette packs have been in force for decades. Proposals for plain packaging aim to go further, and eliminate the visual and tactile features that turn cigarette packs into “badge” wrappers, and which express the subliminal messages that diminish or subvert the effect of even the most uncompromising health messages. Given that effective plain packaging regulations would severely restrict the tobacco companies’ ability to exploit their trademarks or rights in trade dress, the question of the domestic or international constitutionality of such restrictions has become an essential ground for the industry’s contestation of plain packaging measures. This Article argues that the contest over plain packaging is the latest, and perhaps the last, phase in a history of brand “positioning,” in which cigarette companies used their brands to exploit the dynamics of the health debate to “refresh” the image of their brands and products.

Australia passed the Tobacco Plain Packaging Act of 2011, which came into force on December 1, 2012, and became the first nation in the world to impose a mandatory scheme of plain packaging. In the process, Australia became the first jurisdiction to adjudicate on the constitutionality of plain packaging.

The Australian statute addresses the well-documented power of brands to induce young people to take up smoking. The tobacco companies have never been especially discriminating in their pursuit of prospective clients — as Philip Morris’s in-house advertisers once put it, “they got lips, we want ‘em” — but younger smokers have always been the prime target. To capitalize on the strength of brand loyalty in the cigarette market, rival tobacco companies seek to capture young “starters” just as they are embarking on their careers. The aesthetic of the cigarette package plays an essential role in these recruitment strategies. A report commissioned by Liggett & Myers in 1963 observed that “the primary job of the package is to create a desire to purchase and try. To do this, it must look new and different enough to attract the attention of the consumer.” Over the course of the twentieth century, the effect of youth advertising campaigns was progressively to reduce the average age at which young people began smoking. Cynically, as evidence of increased mortality rates among smokers became irrefutable, the industry characterized these initiates as “replacement smokers.” With this history in mind, the Tobacco Plain Packaging Act sought “to reduce the attractiveness and appeal of tobacco products to consumers, particularly young people” and to “reduce the ability of the tobacco product and its packaging to mislead consumers about the harms of smoking.”

The Act, which runs to 111 pages, augmented by regulations, seeks to disqualify all the media that resourceful advertising agencies might use to “dress” a cigarette pack — shape, size, texture, color, scent, and so on. The Act stipulates that tobacco packaging may have no “decorative ridges, embossing, bulges or other irregularities of shape or texture.” Cigarette packs or cartons must be rectangular and of prescribed sizes, with surfaces that meet “at firm 90 degree angles,” and the adhesives used on those surfaces must be transparent. The lid of a pack can be sealed by means of a perforated strip, but there may be no other re-sealable opening, and the inner lip must have straight edges, with no embellishment. The lining of the pack should be made exclusively of foil, which may be embossed only with the dots or squares that are necessarily produced by the manufacturing process. The color of the outer surfaces of all primary and secondary packaging must be Pantone 448C: “a drab dark brown [color] found in market research to be optimal in terms of decreasing the appeal and attractiveness of tobacco packaging, decreasing the potential of the pack to mislead consumers about the harms of tobacco use, and increasing the impact of graphic health warning.” The inner white surfaces, lined with silver foil backed with white, and the packaging may not “make a noise, or contain or produce a scent, that could be taken to constitute tobacco advertising or promotion,” nor may it contain any features that are designed to change after sale. The only proprietary mark allowed on the surfaces of these standardized packs is the name of the brand or company, and a variant, printed in Lucida Sans eight point font. The cigarettes themselves must be white, with an imitation cork wrapping for the filter and a white filter tip, and may be marked only with an alphanumeric code encrypting manufacturing data. These measures might seem unnecessarily exhaustive, until one recalls the canniness with which the industry has responded to attempts to regulate the packaging of cigarettes.

Plain packaging legislation raises a number of engaging theoretical and practical questions: about the legal qualities of the intellectual property rights that articulate branding strategies, about the relationship between the regimes of international trade law and world health policy, and about the history of regulatory initiatives to address the public health implications of smoking. Here, I am interested in questions about the communicative agency of the mass media: what does the example of Australia’s plain packaging law tell us about the role played by the surfaces of material wrappers and packages in branding practices?; how do brands articulate with the other strands of the mass media?

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Although nothing in the Tobacco Plain Packaging Act obstructs the bare identification of the source of a product, the only real scope left for developing brand identities is that which is afforded by the use of variant names. In September 2012, before the statute came into force, British American Tobacco launched its proposed plain cigarette packs, which bore thirty-eight different variants, including “rich,” “smooth,” “fine,” “ultimate,” “original rum and wine,” and, for menthol cigarettes, “release chilled,” “sea green,” and “cool frost.” These descriptors evoke the symbolism that the industry developed through the now-proscribed media of color, shape, texture, and brand, and there is evidence that these condensed formulae shape the smoker’s perception of the product. The tobacco corporations may now be unable to position these vestigial brand signifiers through advertising, but there are suggestions that brand identities are being kept alive in social media. Assuming, however, that these opportunities are of only marginal significance, and assuming that the Australian statute survives referral to a WTO panel, it seems likely that the statute will achieve its objective of extinguishing the power of brands to capture new smokers and bind established smokers to their preferred brand. This prompts a somewhat speculative concluding observation: what if the smoker’s addiction to nicotine were an apt metaphor for the nature of our attachment to brands? 

Robert Proctor observes that the smoker’s craving for cigarettes is motivated both by the charisma of brands and by the psycho-chemical agency of nicotine; in the tobacco business, “[m]arketing joins with psychopharmacology to transform a rare or ritual indulgence into brain-rewiring mega-morbidity.” Nicotine is obviously the more persistent agent of addiction; according to industry insiders, the charisma of the brand holds the smoker until the effects of nicotine kick in. And, once hooked to the brand, smokers will “taste” in the tobacco the lifestyle qualities that are projected by the aesthetic of the pack. Even connoisseur smokers cannot savor a cigarette without ascribing to the tobacco the psychic effects of cues such as the color of a pack. Louis Cheskin, one of the great marketing gurus of the twentieth century, called this the effect of “sensation transference,” in which the auratic effects of the branded package are translated into innate qualities of the product. 

It might be a stretch to characterize our attachment to brands as an effect of cultural “addiction,” but the hypothesis is that the notion of addiction gets at an essential feature of the agency of brands. Addiction is not a straightforward concept. The contemporary notion can be traced back to the moral and religious censure of alcohol consumption in the nineteenth century, and the old moralistic characterization of drunkenness as a “disease of the will” still echoes through to the expert categorization of addictions. Cigarettes illustrate the point rather well. The characterization of brands as culturally addictive is based not on the premises of neuromarketing, but on the implications of Luhmann’s theory of mass media information. What we are addicted to is knowledge: “[t]he desire for information becomes as socially essential as the intake of new food is biologically essential.” More precisely, we are addicted to the speed of knowledge in the age of the mass media. We are compelled to be up to date and in the know, in current affairs, sports, literature, entertainment, and fashion, and the aesthetic of brands presupposes, captures, and reinforces this compulsion.