No, Your Rights

You have the right to not remain silent

You have the right to not question, decide, remember, observe, create, nor otherwise consider yourself a free individual

You have the right to work long hours for less than fair pay, without holidays and sick leave, and subject to arbitrary dismissal without appeal

You have the right to remain in debit for life, and to engage in conspicuous over-consumption

You have the right to be kept alive and force-fed, but not to euthanasia

You have the right to remain indoors, stupefied in front of the TV, except on Sundays

You have the right to eat irradiated genetically-modified inorganic foods that are fat free, low cholesterol, high in carbohydrate sugar salt preservative and behavior modifying drugs

You have the right to be gouged by oil companies, insurance companies, supermarkets, privatized monopolies, taxation, and dentists

You have the right to second rate, high cost, and impersonal medical care from poorly trained doctors and overworked, tired nurses

You have the right to be scared by your government, and abused by public servants and their cut-outs

You have the right to believe this is not a quasi-police state, run by unprincipled authoritarians who can't tell the difference between an activist and a terrorist

You have the right to be watched, followed, and tracked, overheard, profiled, identified, classified, correlated, and suspected

You have the right to indefinite detention, to inadequate counsel, to declared guilty by media leaks and defamation, and to secret trials requiring you prove your innocence without being told the accusations

You have the right to be deported at your own expense, despite being a citizen, crippled, young, or mentally ill

You have the right to bank accounts that cost you money, while the executives are paid well to devise ways of outsourcing the staff

You have the right to be arbitrarily denied welfare, child care, health care, or work assistance

You have the right to the total absence of privacy, to always carry your ID, and to surrender your DNA and biometrics with complete trust

You have the right to be searched, insulted, manhandled, confined, menaced and rejected by overzealous security guards on every train, airport, and entrance, and at every event, gig, show, movie, birthday party or cake stall that you might even think of enjoying yourself at

You have the right to be poorly governed by a parliament that is dominated by extremists, segregated from the electors, unaccountable and undemocratic

You have the right to vote for liars, bible thumping red necks, charlatans, bigots, failed lawyers, and other upstanding self-interested cheats

You have the right to be lied to, persuaded, misled, misinformed, and kept ignorant by a media that is complacent, biased, contrived, and for sale to the most ruthless and wealthy

You have the right to be socially engineered, dog-whistled, pork barreled, demographically data mined, lumped with the lowest common denominator, and ignored

You have the right to become a statistic, a frangible entity defined by your patterns of expenditure

You have the right to be waited on by asylum-seekers who are temporarily welcome, provided they keep their children away from the water

You have the right to inform on your colleagues and friends; to ridicule the defenseless; and to blame, accuse, and libel without foundation

You have the right to have opinions conforming to those the officially mandated mainstream gives you, and to express them when it allows you

You have the right to attend, read, watch, and listen to commercially viable, advertising saturated, highly censored, warning stickered, sexist, unchallenging entertainment, approved by politicians, accountants, churchmen, and self-appointed eminences

You have the right to have your homes and your community destroyed at the whim and design of property developers

You have the right to a fundamentalist fee-paying education, to be fitted for the most menial and casual of jobs

You have the right to respect authority, to worship celebrities and sports stars, to disparage artists and despise intellectuals, to harbor racism and foster intolerance, and to deny that global warming is real

You have the right to be criminalised for smoking, but not for drinking; to be stigmatized for drug addiction, but not for gambling

You have the right to a small, heterosexual, god fearing, law abiding, car owning, fashionably dressed, tax paying family

You will attend places of instruction, worship, labour, diversion, and correction without deviation from the designated routes

You have the right to exploit the environment, pollute, degrade, and occupy without compassion for animals and other humans, and without respect for the indigenous

You will sleep, eat, work, play, fornicate, exercise, consume, barrack, and commute in the prescribed manner only

You have the right to not protest, demonstrate, or organize, and to be labeled and detained as an extremist if you do

You have the right to conduct yourself according to the edicts of the cartel that owns the government today

You have the right to be compliant customers of globalised corporations, who have neither responsibility, nor ethics, or constraints on their ability to make a profit

You have the right to be bombed, invaded, gassed, shot at, interrogated, shocked, interned, beaten, subjected to indignity, threatened, hooded and deprived, to encourage you to become a more co-operative and patriotic citizen

You have the right to be abandoned in time of crisis and need; to be sacrificed; to be forgotten, mocked, and overlooked

You have the right to endure fake terrorism, real war crimes, notional liberties, and military injustice

You have the right to be protected by expensive taxpayer-funded government advertising, and fridge magnets, while the police guard the property of the rich

You have the right to the arbitrary denial of civil rights as a refugee in your own modern 1950s styled free-market penal colony

You have the right to a future the same as yesterday, without evolution, relativism, feminism, socialism, post-anything-ism, or enlightenment to trouble your mind, or to interrupt the holidays of your superiors

You have the right to forget that you ever had rights, or that you will ever need them again.

- Andy Lonsdale, © 2005