The Prometheus Post: Issue One

By Richard Pinder

The Prometheus Post is a monthly libertarian-conservative electronic magazine. It offers in-depth analysis of important political issues.

Specifically, the Post explores civil rights issues, offers analysis of law enforcement models, advocates free market economic principles, provides hands-on information for running a business and also advocates British withdrawal from the European Union through reasoned critique.

The Prometheus Post also offers monthly special features and general political commentary.

In the February 2013 edition the Prometheus Post will be doing a profile of perhaps the greatest civil rights leader of the twentieth century – the Reverend Martin Luther King. It will also be exposing the failure of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA), making the case for gay marriage and explaining the constitutional need for an elected House of Lords and a bill of rights.

Last November saw the introduction of elected police commissioners. The Prometheus Post will explain why this is such an important reform, a vital safeguard for our liberty and an important factor in defending our security.

It is often the political Left that claims that it is they who best represent the needs of ordinary people. The Prometheus Post puts this claim to the test and examines if it is indeed the Left that does the most to help those with the least, or if in fact it is the Right.

In this issue the Prometheus Post will also examine what economic measures we need to reform our banking sector, while explaining why state-controlled banking is such a poor idea for us, in terms of both our freedom and our prosperity.

We live in a period of great economic strife, with the banking crisis, the late credit crisis and now the Euro crisis. The Prometheus Post this month in business 101 will be covering business costing, explaining many ways in which business costs can be driven down – improving the chances of business survival.

Often the pro-European, without challenge, makes the bold claim that the United Kingdom wields far more power within the European Union than it ever could outside it.

This month the Prometheus Post as part of its on-going campaign for British independence will demonstrate why this claim is just hot air. We will also be explaining the latest in a long line of power grabs being made in the present by the European Union.

Also in this month’s issue there will be a full analysis of the leaders’ speeches at conference and an examination of what Alex Salmond is offering the Scottish people

• Language: English
• Publisher: Richard Pinder
• Release date: Nov 12, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301384105

Richard Pinder

Richard Pinder is an author, journalist and business owner. He is the author of the Libertarian's Handbook, an epic length (over 100,000 words) work on civil rights. While he is also the editor and owner of the Prometheus Post. The Prometheus Post is a monthly libertarian-conservative electronic magazine. It stands for the advancement of freedom, justice and prosperity. The Prometheus Post offers serious political analysis in areas such as civil rights, justice, economics and business. It is also actively campaigning for British withdrawal from the European Union, along with offering insight into, and critique of, general political affairs.

Book preview

The Prometheus Post

March 2013

Issue One

Richard Pinder

Copyright Richard Pinder 2013

Smashwords Edition

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Also by Richard Pinder, published at Smashwords:

The Libertarian's Handbook

Table of Contents

1. Editorial

2. Champions of Freedom - The history and ideas of Martin Luther King Junior

Early Life

The background of Martin Luther King's struggle

Dr King and equality

3. In the Defence of Liberty - News and comment on developments in civil rights

The Justification for scrapping RIPA

The need for a British bill of rights

Family, stability, justice and the case for gay marriage

Why the Leveson Inquiry represents a grave threat to liberty

Lords reform

4. In the Pursuit of Justice - The means to advance law and justice

The case for elected police commissioners

Immigration, justice and the case of Isimeli Baleiwai

5. Business 101 - Hands on articles for running a business

Business costing

6. The Free Economy - How we can make Great Britain more prosperous

How to reform the banking sector

'No' to state controlled banking

Who really helps the poor, left or right?

7. Special Feature - The leaders' speeches at conference

UKIP

The Liberal Democrat Party

The Labour Party

The Conservative Party

8. Independent - On why the United Kingdom would be better off out of the EU

Why an Independent Great Britain would be more influential

The European Union poised for yet another power grab

9. The Last Word - Comment on general affairs

Hate, hope and the Brighton TUC

Its official the Nobel Prize is now a joke

What Alex Salmond is really offering the Scottish people

10. Connect with the Post

11. Also by the Editor - The Libertarian's Handbook

The Prometheus Post - March 2013 Editorial

I welcome you my reader to this the first issue of The Prometheus Post. A new magazine dedicated to the advancement of freedom, justice and prosperity.

Through The Prometheus Post it is my intention to stand up for civil rights, exposing errors in present law that undermine our freedom, and to present ways such errors can be corrected.

It is through the correct application of our law that our rights are protected. So every month The Prometheus Post will follow developments in the law, exploring new ideas that have the potential to enhance our security and offering critical analysis of existing law enforcement principles that undermine either our security or justice itself.

Our prosperity is inherently linked to our liberty, for we are less free if we are limited by our finances. Recent economic disasters both at home and abroad have left the national economy in a perilous state. Every month The Prometheus Post will look at new ways in which the national economy can be helped, along with pointing out any errors in national policy that are making our situation worse.

The situation being as it is, we are not going to spend our way out of recession. Nor are we going to borrow our way out of debt. As a nation, we need to invent, build, trade, perform, provide and ultimately trade our way back to prosperity. To this end The Prometheus Post will present, every month, business articles on how we as a country will be able to do just that; articles designed to help the novice and the expert alike.

The Prometheus Post is a libertarian-conservative publication. As such, it greatly cherishes the ideas of freedom and democracy. The European Union represents a force that undermines democracy and stands as an ever-present threat to our liberty. Through this journal I will argue why we are better off out, exposing the failings of the European Union.

Rounding off The Prometheus Post will be a monthly special feature, along with analysis of general political developments over the last month. It is my sincere hope that you enjoy this first issue: a taste of things to come.

For the advancement of freedom, justice and prosperity.

Richard Pinder

Editor, The Prometheus Post

Return to table of contents

Champions of Freedom - Martin Luther King Jr

Early life

The Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Jr was born as Michael King Jr, in Atlanta, Georgia on 15th January 1929. He was the middle child of Michael King Sr and Alberta Williams King. He had an older sister, Willie Christine, and a younger brother, Alfred Daniel Williams.

In his youth he attended Booker T. Washington High School. He went on to enter Morehouse College in Atlanta in 1944, aged fifteen, graduating in 1948 with a degree in sociology. In 1955 at the age of twenty-five he earned his PhD from Boston University.

Michael King Sr later on changed his name to Martin Luther King, in honour of the German Protestant minister. Michael King Jr followed suit, becoming Martin Luther King Jr.

While studying for his PhD Martin Luther King met Coretta Scott, a musician and student of New England Conservatory School in Boston. He married Coretta in 1953. They had four children: Yolanda, Martin Luther King III, Dexter Scott and Bernice.

Also while finishing his PhD, Martin Luther King became a pastor at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church of Montgomery, Alabama.

The background of Martin Luther King's struggle

Racist law can best be understood through a single word; and that word is ‘segregation’. America in the mid-twentieth century was, in the American South especially, a nation blighted by racial inequality, with different laws applying to people of different colours.

These laws were known as the Jim Crow laws, legislation perverting law and justice as they gave more rights to one group through the law than to others and actively sought to build divides between the white community and the black community. Jim Crow sought to build a 'separate but equal' system in which blacks and whites were kept strictly apart from each other.

In terms of the Jim Crow laws and regulations, white people and black people were kept separate on public transport. Blacks were barred from juries and were purposefully pushed into black neighbourhoods, all of this being designed to create separateness between white people and black people.

Segregation and separateness breeds conflict. For when all are not treated equally before the law, it creates resentment. This resentment can turn into hate, a hate that feeds off ignorance and fans the flames that often lead to violence. The Jim Crow laws did indeed cause civil unrest in America, as they were unjust and bigoted.

Similarly in Africa there was law implemented that created even more visibly violent unrest. ‘Apartheid’ was the name of the official South African policy that sought to keep African whites and blacks apart from each other.

Apartheid means, quite literally, separateness. In Africa this led to deep violence with much blood being needlessly spilt, as resentment sprang from unequal treatment.

When people are forced to live apart it creates segregation. Segregation creates conflict, as people resent any special treatment some groups receive over others. This can and often does lead to violence. This sort of politics also accelerates and deepens racism, for racism - a fear of the other - is nought but the child of ignorance. An ignorance that only grows while people are kept ever more separate.

It was against this backdrop, in this time of racial injustice, against this modern leviathan of racial inequality and segregation, that Martin Luther King came to prominence, becoming the giant of liberty he is best known as today.

Dr King and equality

In 1955 Martin Luther King took his first major action as a civil rights leader. Rosa Parks, a black fifteen-year-old girl, while using the Montgomery bus routes was asked to vacate her seat to make way for a white man. She promptly refused and her action was in contradiction to local law, landing her in court.

Martin Luther, in opposition to this illiberal and racist move, organised a large bus boycott. His purpose was to draw attention to the inequality of this law. The boycott stood for 382 days, a long year for King and his followers. As a group they challenged the judgement against Rosa on the basis that such was unconstitutional.

They used the Supreme Court case of Brown v. Board of Education, and that judgement - that separate is never equal - for their defence. Their legal challenge was victorious and they forced their local authorities to change their rules on segregated buses.

Martin Luther's defining moment was, however, yet to come. In 1963 King and his followers organised a mass march on Washington. A rally that attracted more than 200,000 people. At this rally, on the steps of the Lincoln memorial, Martin Luther delivered his greatest speech. A speech in which he articulated his great dream.

He expressed in his great speech his dream of the brotherhood of all men. That we should all live together in peace and stand united as one people. He called on the American idea and that of American patriotism. Rather than attempting to further the dividing lines in America, he sought through his speech to abolish them.

His great speech brought great results. He moved much of America through his benevolent means and noble ideas. This in turn created pressure on the American government to change the law and end segregation, leading the American parliament to pass the Civil Right Act in 1964, which made it unlawful for public authorities to enforce segregation. A great step forward for America and an example to the world, of equality.

Martin Luther, though, was defined as much by his means as by his goals. While many in similar situations used violence to further their means, he stood by non-violence, recognising that one cannot arrive at justice through mob rule.

While black supremacists wanted to replace white rule with black rule, Martin Luther King turned his back on this completely. For his call was for a united and colour-blind society. He understood all too well that to replace one form of bigotry with another still leaves tensions in society, and conflict. It still leaves segregation but of another kind, segregation being what Martin Luther always fought against.

By calling on the American Dream and making it part of his dream, his words resonated with most Americans, calling them to action and making America a better place for all.

His way was peace, reconciliation and unity. A successful and just path that brought change to America and inspired the world, making this man one of the greatest and most effective civil rights leaders of the modern world.

Return to table of contents

In the Defence of Liberty

The justification for scrapping RIPA

The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) was introduced by the Labour Party in September 2000. This act gave government authorities sweeping powers to intrude upon the lives of the individual, enabling them to check phone and email records, to follow ‘citizens of interest’ and to employ the use of council spies to watch and listen to citizens’ private conversations.

When the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act was created, the then-Labour government claimed that these sweeping powers would by design only be used against terrorists or serious criminals. Yet from the loose wording of this act one must conclude that such could never seriously have been the real goal of RIPA.

The flaws within RIPA are so great, and the power it gives to those using it so penetrating, it cannot by any stretch of the imagination be considered a reasonable, a proportional or a just law. Quite simply, because of the severity of its flaws, it is time for it to be scrapped.

The surveillance powers granted by RIPA are split into two categories: higher-level surveillance and lower-level surveillance.

With higher-level surveillance, agents of the state have the power to bug people’s homes and directly intercept people’s private communication. Usage of these powers requires authorisation from either the Home Secretary or the Secretary of State for Justice.

With regards to lower-level surveillance, this allows government officials the power to access a citizen’s email contacts and to employ spies against that citizen, recording their movements and conversations; while also granting state officials the power to follow a citizen.

So-called 'lower-level surveillance' is by itself deeply penetrating. Not only is it deeply penetrating, but such powers are easily accessible. These powers one might think would be reserved to, say, the police and intelligence services, with strict levels of judicial approval needed to activate them. Under Labour this was not the case at all.

Activation of these powers only required the approval of a senior official of a local or town body. By ‘local official’ I mean, precisely, your local council. In terms of public bodies we are not talking about law enforcement agencies such as your local police station, but organisations such as the Department for Innovation and Skills and the Royal Mail. Bodies that should have no mandate at all to have access to such powers.

As the scale of invasiveness granted by these powers is so great, no organisation outside of law enforcement should have them. With RIPA, they do.

Nor are the weaknesses of RIPA limited to the open-ended nature of who can use these powers. The reason why organisations can use them is equally open-ended. Although one might consider usage of such powers for crime prevention to be reasonable but not proportional, this cause represents the only reasonable justification for such powers to be used.

These powers can also be used for the economic well-being of the UK, in the interests of public safety, for the purpose of protecting public health, to aid in the collection of tax, and for any other purpose as prescribed by order of the Secretary of State.

That the reasons for the usage of RIPA are so broad and entirely subjective means that it can be used for the most trivial of purposes. A report put together by the civil rights organisation Big Brother Watch, called A Legacy of Surveillance, shows a selection of these trivial purposes.

They reveal that seven local councils have used these powers to enforce the smoking ban. In another example they reveal that this 'anti-terrorist legislation' has been used by twenty-six local authorities to see whose dogs were responsible for dog fouling. This represents the clearest evidence possible that this legislation is being used in a purely arbitrary