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item0070C 1004, 1005 1004 26 May 2004
"I was a hopeless I have received a very remarkable letter, following my support for the Stapleford drug addiction clinics. It is a tribute to Dr Colin Brewer, from a former patient, a heroin addict now "clean" - Annmarie Jordan. Dr Colin Brewer is now arraigned, with several colleagues, before the General Medical Council, accused of unprofessional conduct, for running his successful addiction practice. I was a patient of Dr Colin Brewer. I had been a hopeless heroin addict for about five years – so were my brother and my cousin. We all saw Dr Brewer in 2001: we all did the “home detox” - which , for my family, was a very difficult task. But nevertheless, after a few days of being locked-in and given the medication prescribed, we all in turn succeeded....
If you are willing to play a supportive role in supporting Dr Brewer's Defence, contact
or we can look at the symptoms (or what we believe to be the symptoms) alone.
1005 3 June 2004 Our C ollapsing "State"
I think our very form of "State" is disintegrating. By that I mean the top-down, military model of a “Command State”. I mean the model which envisages those in authority bellowing commands to the crew, from on high. That is the form of unitary state which characterises Europe, the Commonwealth and the United States, and which we are trying to create in Iraq. Leftwing politics has indeed been conditioned by this model of the State. For hundreds of years, the Left has dreamed of taking command of Government, and changing society by bellowing new commands. That is what the Levellers wanted to do, what the French Revolutionaries did, and what the socialist and communist Lefts schemed and plotted to achieve. And throughout the Western world the principle of democratic election has won the day, giving to “the People” the right to select their High Command. That model has changed decisively – although we do not yet know how or why it is changing. It is partly that people no longer accept being patronised and bellowed at, as they used to. Another is that the hierarchies of property, once closely allied with Government throughout Europe, have taken their ball away, and moved into the impenetrable corporate sector. Company law is too fragile and ineffective a constitutional framework, to contain their abuses of power.One consequence of this is a new authoritarianism in Western democracies, with political leaders using any excuse to bolster their waning authority and legitimacy - “fighting wars” on everything in sight – on drugs, on terrorists, on climate change, on obesity, on smoking… The Command State has always drawn its rationale from the waging of wars and preparing to wage wars, and managing rumours of wars – it is understandable that, as the incidence of conventional war diminishes, our political leaders should wish to create new wars of their own. But is it working? I think not. Advocates of the New American Century were revealed, in Iraq, to be dinosaurs of past imperialist centuries. The collapse of the popular vote, in Western democracies, suggests that the model of the Command State is losing its attractions. I believe that our children will have to look elsewhere, for their models of legitimacy and civic organisation. And they will look more easily to the Ken Livingstones of this world, commanding city regions, than to those who command the echoing shells of erstwhile “Command States”. What do you think? Drop me a line
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