All exclusive land-“rights,” except those small ones required to live and work somewhere, are claimed and practised at the expense of the rights and liberties of other people. Do apply the concept of “spaceship” Earth to this planet and keep in mind that none of us or of our ancestors has produced or planet-formed it. A few years to centuries of exclusive occupation or that one’s ancestors had been the first (as far as we know, our historical records are still very incomplete in this), are morally meaningless for present exclusive territorial claims that do go beyond the right to survive, by one’s own efforts, anywhere on Earth, if one can do so without infringing the clear property rights of others. Exclusive territorial claims by others, even when associated with religious, national, racial or ideological myths and feelings, habits of thought, customs or predominant theories, do not establish exclusive property rights in such territories and abolish the rights and liberties of others.
On the contrary, they are much more like a declaration of war or a claim to local domination over non-consenting others. How wrong these claims are is indicated by the fact that their supporters are lastly prepared to commit mass murder, with machetes to ABC anti-people devices, wrongly called “weapons,” to uphold their wrongful claims. Territorialism ought to be questioned and criticized wherever, whenever and whosoever it raises its ugly head.
Territorialists have by now “defined” Australians as “foreigners” in England and Englanders, including the Queen, as “foreigners” in Australia. Territorialism is wrong and irrational and leads to wrongful and irrational actions, even mad ones.
A Latter-day Altgeld?
Maybe it’s in the water. Another governor has stood up to the unjust judicial system in illinois and has pardoned and released a number of obviously innocent prison inmates. Those who were freed were jailed after false confessions were tortured out of them by police and were not only wrongly imprisoned, but were awaiting execution, as well. In addition to these pardons, George Ryan commuted the sentences of all others on death row in his state, a total of 167 people.
The last time multiple pardons by an illinois governor merited such widespread attention was in 1893, when John Peter Altgeld pardoned the three imprisoned survivors among the eight anarchists convicted of conspiracy to murder cops during the 1886 police riot at Haymarket Square in Chicago. Four of the others were killed by the state in 1887, while one killed himself to avoid hanging by the government he detested.
While many thousands of other innocent people remain behind bars all over the united states, and all but three of those who received sentence commutations last month will likely never be released from prison, Ryan’s actions are to be commended as a rare display of humanity on the part of a politician and a small step towards the abolition of the death penalty. While anarchists oppose not only executions, but the very existence of prisons and the “justice” system of which they are an important part, any time someone is freed from the clutches of the state or a prisoner’s life is spared is cause for celebration.