million campaign homepage

2007-03-09T02:02:00.000-08:00

NO PASARAN: RENEWABLE ENERGY, NOT TRIDENT RENEWAL

THEY SHALL NOT PASS: WRITE TO YOUR ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES FREE ONLINE TO TELL THEM WHY TRIDENT RENEWAL SHALL NOT PASS

On 14th March Parliament will debate and vote on the renewal of the Trident nuclear weapons system. The cost of renewing this system has been estimated at anything from £25bn. to £75bn.

The overriding moral issue is that apocalyptic weapons of mass destruction are profoundly wrong in anyone's hands. The current doublethink that divides the world into 'civilised' and 'barbarian' - allowing apocalyptic weapons to the former and banning them from the latter - ignores both the flows of weapons and other unethical trades between 'civilised' and 'barbarian' and also ignores the fundamental idiocy of such a binary pattern of thought.

Beyond the overriding moral issue, there are two major pragmatic concerns with the idea of Trident renewal. The first is that every single penny involved comes from our hard-earnt taxation. This current Rump Parliament is not representative (the governing party having over 50% of seats on around 35% of votes cast and a far lower percentage of the total electorate, given all those too alienated to vote or disenfranchised for one reason or another). Therefore a decision of this magnitude cannot be left to an 'elite' with a spurious mandate and an appalling Governmental record: surely developing these weapons of mass destruction would open us up to the possibility of being invaded without a UN Second Resolution by another country declaring itself 'civilised' and us 'barbarian' at some point in the future?

Secondly, the economic concept of opportunity cost is vital here. For every single penny spent on these apocalyptic weapons of mass destruction we fail to spend that penny on the welfare of our people. The recent stratospheric stock market falls emanating from China and the long-term decline of the dollar shows us how fragile our current economic system is. Given that, reliance on the oft-repeated mantra that "the economy is strong" looks increasingly like the hopeful incantation of a false magical spell in the face of unpalatable realities. The belt may have to be firmly tightened in the future and recent spending levels may not be sustainable: the only long-term decision of any morality and pragmatic value on 14th March is a loud, vociferous NO to Trident renewal.

Let's get creative. Since it is OUR taxation, why not write to our elected representatives to tell them what we think they should spend those scarce billions on instead of these apocalyptic weapons of mass destruction?

Or even better, why not stand in the likely General Election of 2007 and make your society a more harmonious and less violent place?

Here are some serving suggestions:

The Golden Age of Athenian Democracy under Pericles

Wikipedia: World Disarmament Conference, 1932-4

BBC: Wales on Air - Aneurin Bevan and the foundation of the National Health Service

Wikipedia: The Open University, 1969-

BBC News: Dutch pioneer floating eco-homes

Japan Guide: Shinkansen (Bullet Trains)

Alex Ramon: Alternative Energy News

Arts Council UK

The original Wembley stadium: when football was the people's game, not a corporate game

Indymedia UK

Trades Union Congress UK

New Economics Foundation

Jubilee Debt Campaign

Make Borders History

International Criminal Court Alliance

J.S.Mill: "On Liberty", 1869

Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948-

The good news from Canada is that the ranks of the cyber-crew of Alex Ramon have now been swelled by the entry of Kelly Riehl. Welcome aboard the MCH network Kelly and please enjoy helping our cybermosaic empire (or, indeed, anti-empire) to grow.

Also, we here in the UK are honoured to include the work of one of our most brilliantly talented young comedians, Mark Watson, on the site. Mr.Watson has a Radio 4 programme which is required listening and is soon embarking on an Australian tour.

Not only is Mr.Watson tickling our funny bones, he is also the architect of a burgeoning matryoshka of environmental campaigns with a vast retinue of collaborators - Crap at the Environment, Pimp My Plant Pot, Save the Water: Save the World, Green Feet, and no doubt a whole host of other projects we have not yet noticed.

Mr.Watson is proving emphatically that saving the planet can be a belly-laugh, not a belly-ache.

2007-02-13T02:06:00.000-08:00

BRIAN HAW LANDSLIDE

(Video: "Not the Queen's speech, Brian Haw's")

Firstly, the good news. Brian Haw was elected the Most Inspiring Political Figure in the Channel Four political awards (organised in association with the Hansard Society).

The majority was massive. Brian Haw polled 54% of the vote, with General Sir Richard Dannatt, who called for British troops to be withdrawn from Iraq, second on 18%. The poll was simultaneously an affirmation of Brian Haw's marathon peace protest, which has now reached 2082 days, and a negation of a Parliamentary system which is in a state of total crisis. Anthony Blair and David Cameron came last, with 8% and 6% respectively. This is further evidence of a fundamental sea-change in British politics.

Flawed legislation such as the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act of 2005 was the product of a long-standing alienation between people and Parliament. For a full resume of the infractions of liberty and criminalisation of peaceful and law-abiding people this law has entailed, please see this comprehensive collection of Indymedia reportage. This entire circus is the product of ever greater privatisation of public space into ever fewer hands: the Commons, and the commons, has not been this enclosed for centuries.

Perhaps the most farcical low-point of this law was that ringing a bell in a certain part of London was temporarily rendered illegal. Although we do not know for sure yet, this may have occured just as our taxation was being used to help the carbon-emitting airflow of a globally 'outsourced' network of torture without trial. The full extent of that is not yet disclosed. However, we do know that Michael Wood of the Foreign Office gave the opinion that receiving or possessing information extracted under torture is not prohibited per se by UN conventions. If we had a referendum tomorrow morning on whether we should use torture to find out information from people who have not been charged with any crime or given a trial, and a referendum on whether people should be arrested for ringing bells in public, how would the people of Britain vote?

TUCKER'S RETURN?

Secondly, the bad news. Barbara Tucker (see above - photo by Brian Haw) has been forced to curtail her peaceful protest in the 1km 'exclusion zone' around Parliament. She has been given conditional bail for five months until her trial and warned that she will be imprisoned if she even enters the SOCPA zone for any reason before then.

It is appalling to see the full machinery of the State treating a decent and kind woman like Barbara Tucker in this bullying fashion. Instead of building a network of universal and free hospitals, our taxation is used to abuse the health of individual citizens. Never before has Charter 88's call for a constitutional settlement enshrining and entrenching political, civil and human rights in the UK been so urgent.

In 1998 the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights was incorporated into British law through the Human Rights Act. What exactly is the point of passing such a statute if a bad law like SOCPA is used to intimidate, harrass, marginalise, silence, and villify people who are doing nothing more than peacefully expressing their will that their taxation be used for peace instead of war? In what sense does this tawdry spectacle have any connection to the social contract, without which democracy regresses into tyranny?

Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights prohibits torture and "inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" - with no exceptions or limitations. The European Court of Human Rights further prohibits the extradition of a person to a foreign state if they are likely to be subjected to torture there. This important principle is known as nonrefoulement.

Furthermore, Article 5 of the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights asserts that "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment."

Despite the Human Rights Act of 1998, the paranoia induced by the spectre of Islamic terrorism has allowed this government to covertly create 'memorandums of undersanding' (or MOUs) that, as far as we are allowed to know, may circumvent the European Convention, and also circumvent the UN Convention Against Torture. According to a report just released by Members of the European Parliament, CIA-operated aircraft have made 170 stopovers at UK airports. The sooner the shroud of secrecy is removed and we can have a full, independent audit of these activities, the better.

As the theorist of the separation of powers Montesquieu argued, unecessary law weakens the necessary law.

An ungentlemanly Memorandum of Understanding weakens a just international Convention.

Law that criminalises those who follow natural law merely makes respect for natural law decline. The bitter fruit of such unnatural law is that criminality of every kind flourishes in the land - and we move further and further into what Philippe Sands QC calls the Lawless World.

A Parliamentary Act such as SOCPA is fit for no purpose but repeal. It is a waste of the trees that it is printed on. The sooner it is recycled, the better.

LAWFUL WORLD

Conversely, the sooner that the UN Convention Against Torture, or the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are upheld, the better.

The rule of such international law must be global, and without exceptions or limitations.

As the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal of 1946 observed:

"War is essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined to the belligerent states alone, but affect the whole world. To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."

The thirteenth protocol of the European Convention on Human Rights, signed in 1999, confirmed the abolition of the death penalty in the UK, which had been first instituted in the 1965 Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act. While the judges of Nuremberg were correct to try on the basis of wars of aggression, the use of the death penalty as a sanction was not- for it was a perpetuation of the very cycle of violence it sought to prohibit.

Such enlightened law should apply to all equally - be they President, or be they pauper, be they master or be they client. We are crawling, like toddlers, towards a better world - a world based on the rule of international law founded on universal ethical principles.

There is much work to be done to make that world a reality. The statutes are in place, but our ability to apply them needs further evolution. Without that evolution we shall remain with the law of the jungle - life is a war of omnia contra omnes or all against all, and those with the greater physical force prevail until a stronger force arrives to replace them. Such a system, whether internationally or domestically, contains no justice whatsoever.

(photo by Brian Haw)

(Video: "Nuremberg Remebered" from Facing History)

2007-01-31T03:35:00.000-08:00

V FOR VIENETTA: VOTE BRIAN HAW

VOTE BRIAN HAW - Tel. 09011 27 27 05

"Let them pack cake" - Polly Toynbee

LISTEN TO V FOR VIENETTA
VOTE BRIAN HAW FOR CHANNEL 4
PARLIAMENT SQUARE PEACEFUL OCCUPATION

The polls close this Friday at midnight in Channel 4's awards for the most inspiring political figure of 2007.

The Million Campaign Homepage and Small Fish Online fully endorse BRIAN HAW as the most inspirational figure. He has protested for 2069 days since 2nd June 2001 through wind, rain, snow, and hail in Parliament Square against Mr.Blair and Mr.Brown's illegal invasions. He has endured every kind of physical and mental abuse. He has been criminalised, marginalised and ghettoised - all for saying that killing is wrong.

We are indebted to artist Mark Wallinger for re-creating the peaceful banners and images that were stolen from Brian by the Metropolitan Police on the spurious legal basis that a terrorist could plant a bomb underneath them. They are currently displayed in the Tate Britain Gallery in London.

TUCKER'S LUCK

31.01.07 - Barbara Tucker gains brief respite from possible jail sentence (Rikki)
30.01.07 - Barbara Tucker banned and arrested (Mark Vallee)
30.01.07 - Barbara Tucker faces jail tomorrow (Rikki)

Most mystifying of all is the idea that peaceful protestor Barbara Tucker may be sentenced to a prison term when we currently face a total crisis of prison spaces, as Anne Owers, the chief inspector of prisons, warned on Tuesday 30th January. The idea that Barbara Tucker is a criminal is itself criminal. If she is imprisoned, she would become our Rosa Parks. The absurd SOCPA law (Serious Organised Crime Prevention Act) that prevents unauthorised peaceful protest in a zone 1km. around Parliament needs to be repealed.

Since there was no second UN Resolution in the build-up to the Iraq invasion, it is curious that those who stand up for peace are being forced into courtrooms, rather than those who instigated the invasion in the first place.

It is now time for Brian Haw and the marvellous people who support him to go home and enjoy the rest of their lives. It is also time for every single British soldier to return home, and enjoy life with their families again.

Please vote for Brian in the Channel 4 poll. It is possible to vote by telephone, text message, or email.

He and his supporters deserve a landslide.

VOICES

Voices here
Gun shots there
Blood and bodies everywhere

My child is dead
and Mr Blair said,
in 45 minutes a bomb's going to fall on my head.

Now it's all fine
until a bomb similar to a mine
explodes and everyone dies.

- Julieta Batista Esteves (11)

VOICES

Bugles sang, saddening the evening air,
And bugles answered, sorrowful to hear.

Voices of boys were by the river-side.
Sleep mothered them; and left the twilight sad.
The shadow of the morrow weighed on men.

Voices of old despondency resigned,
Bowed by the shadow of the morrow, slept.

dying tone
Of receding voices that will not return.
The wailing of the high far-travelling shells
And the deep cursing of the provoking

The monstrous anger of our taciturn guns.
The majesty of the insults of their mouths.

- Wilfred Owen (unfinished)

2007-01-31T02:07:00.000-08:00

The Real McCain from Brave New Films

2007-01-07T14:51:00.000-08:00

2007 IS A YEAR OF TRANSFORMATION: FROM CRITICAL MESS TO CRITICAL MASS

MCH UK, 7th January 2007: we are five months old today, and one fifth of the way through our journey. We have 320 organisations and individuals linked up, and 200,000 of our 1,000,000 pixels given away. Canada is online. The only small downside is that our donations button has been remarkably untroubled over the past five months. Simon Cowell was recently offered a £20m deal, and Goldman Sachs bankers were given an average Christmas bonus of £320,000. What exactly are either doing to further social or environmental harmony? Why should we put up with this flagrant inequity when most of their loot will be hurried to offshore tax havens instead of flowing into our crumbling hospital system, education system, and infrastructure?

Two big shout-outs of gratitude. Firstly, to Mark from Ekoni, who provided us with a Merry Kiss-Mass card in December. For every card ordered from them, they plant a tree - a superb idea. The MCH tree will be planted in Dartmoor. Secondly, thanks to Nihil Matters for providing us with the Uncle Sam image above.

Here in the UK, we have just paid off our 60 year lend-lease debt to the US from the Second World War. After a shocking credit rating for so long, and the kow-towing that comes with it, it is not now unreasonable for us to reclaim our foreign policy and remove American military bases and nuclear warheads from our soil. We need neither.

It would be tempting to say that the current UK 'Government' ended the day Anthony Blair failed to make a statement on the vile, repellant, rotten and disgusting show trial and execution of Saddam Hussein. Given that capital punishment is illegal in the UK, and that Saddam Hussein was armed and supported throughout the period of his crimes against humanity by British and American Governments, the moral bankruptcy of the entire occupation of Iraq - itself a litany of crimes against humanity with the goal of oil theft - found its perfect echo in that silence. Unfortunately Anthony Charles Lynton Blair was too busy holidaying in a millionaire mansion in the Florida sun to comment - a holiday in the location where George W Bush was not elected in 2000.

However, a more accurate (and less extraordinary) rendering of this current Government is that it never actually existed at all. It was a bizarre postmodern experiment that accompanied the dot.com/telecoms/energy boom of the late 1990s. The Millennium Bug was not that predicted by doomsayers. It was, instead, the collapse of that bubble, perhaps the largest in human economic history.

Nothing sums up the confused, unreal nature of the 'New Labour' project more than the following anecdote. It is merely a vignette in the history of the past nine years. However, it speaks volumes.

In 1998, Anthony Blair endorsed a Downing Street statement backing a campaign for the release from prison of Deidrie Rachid. Alas, that campaign would not today qualify for inclusion on the Million Campaign Homepage. Rachid was a character in a soap opera. From its birth, this doomed project confused hype with reality, soundbites with substance, acting with reality. It was, like the bubble that gave birth to it, insane and schizoid from day one.

The 'New Labour' party conference in Blackpool, 1998, was sponsored by Enron. Enron also sponsored the Presidential campaign of George W Bush, who was not elected US President in Florida in 2000, and that of William Jefferson Clinton. We have, indeed, been blessed with the most hopeless plutocracy money can buy. Like Enron or WorldCom, these false 'Governments' are woeful pyramid schemes. Ask Albanians - they will tell you that every pyramid scheme in history has collapsed under the weight of its own internal contradictions.

The current axis of evil between Bush and Blair and whoever Bin Laden is or was is collapsing, and its graves are Iraq and Afghanistan. Addiction to oil is the death of all of them. The Middle East is the primary source of oil in the world, the Caspian Basin the second. The 'wars' of error we have endured since September 11th 2001 - after the bubble had already burst - have been all about peak oil, and nothing else. Not WMD, democracy, justice for war crimes, security, anti-terrorism, or anything else.

Oil supply has either peaked, or will do very soon. Demand rises each day.

That is not sustainable. We switch to alternatives now or we face premature human extinction.

The choice is ours. The choice is not that of our so-called 'Governments'.

Anthony Blair's silence speaks a thousand words. In the UK "Independent" newspaper this week, former Iraqi Defence Minister Ali Allawi and US Retired General Wes Clark, a Democrat Presidential candidate in 2004, have written cogent pieces on the civil war in Iraq which, if not entirely ethically perfect, are at least infinitely superior on a pragmatic basis to the current debacle. Senator Patrick Leahy, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has also just introduced a War Profiteering Act, which aims to impose stiff fines and prison terms on war profiteers. This was a direct result of the public response to the phenomenal film "Iraq for Sale" - an example of re-democratisation from the grassroots.

Let us have a spring clean in 2007. The cobweb voices of characters like Bush and Blair, and their phoney soap operas, have ended. In a time of universal deceit civil disobedience is a citizen's right and duty. We must all follow the 7th Recommendation of the World Tribunal on Iraq - "We recommend that citizens of the UK and US launch immediate non-violent action against the corporate profiteers of the illegal war in Iraq."

A 'surge' is suicide. It shall happen over our dead bodies. 2007 is the year for troops OUT, not troops IN.

Below please find links to two superb films currently available for free on line, "Ludicrous Diversion" and "Oil, Smoke and Mirrors".

The spotlight of relentless interrogation (although not quite Guantanamo Bay style, we trust) now turns on the events of September 11th 2001. The attack was either the fruit of Machiavellian machinations in the destabilisation of the Soviet empire, or it was an inside-job to license oil grabs in the Middle East and the Caspian basin.

In other words, al-Qaeda - from New York on September 11th 2001 to London on July 7th 2005 - is either the result of the disorder of geopolitical polis-tricks behind the scenes or, in the worst case scenario, a covert, false-flag Frankenstein's monster concoction from a CIA database.

The fact that George Bush's father and Bin Laden's father supped together as the Twin Towers crumbled at the Carlyle Group, the largest arms traders in the world, is either the greatest irony of human history, or the ugliest networking session of human history - at least since Hitler and Stalin's carve-up of Poland.

Either way, none of us ever voted for any of that, any of them, or any of it.

The other bitter legacy of the insanity of this decade has been a concentration camp archipelago from Guantanamo Bay to Uzbekistan, linked together by 'extraordinary rendition' flights. An Iron Curtain made up of spectacles of mass distraction in the corporate media has descended as a smokescreen on this network. We are indebted to intrepid investigators such as Dick Marty, the Swiss Parliamentarian and Rapporteur for the Council of Europe's Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights, and Craig Murray, the former British diplomat who lost his job and was publicly discredited by the 'Government' after he blew the whistle on Uzbek torture. One day we will open up all these concentration camps and forensically document what occured in them. Unlike General Pinochet, who hid behind infirmity and plutocratic friends like Mrs.Thatcher, the architects of this litany of criminality must not escape justice.

The new era we are in is the era of peak oil and global warming. The solution is not fighting infantile conflicts over declining resources. The solution is developing alternative energy sources, and massively cutting global consumption.

One is making a living. The other is making a killing.

Please watch both videos.

Add 2 and 2 together.

In Orwellian world they make 5.

In the real world, they might make another number, depending on the connections that WE make, and the evidence that comes with proper, fair, free, independent, public inquiries.

The mathematics all depends on whether we are still living in the lunacy of deregulated financial markets that gave us the pre Millennial bubble, or in the 21st century, where the bubble has burst, oil has (or soon will) peak, and there is a difference between a facade and a reality.

Today the UK is divided. Half of us are gazing in the rear-view mirror at a 1990s past that is no longer with us. The other half are coming to a new road.

A new road needs new roadmaps.

Only truth and reconciliation will re-unite us.

IT'S THE ECOLONOMY, STUPID!

LOG ON

TUNE UP

ROCK OUT

LIFE, LIBERTY AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS!!!

UK GLASNOST!!!!!

2007-01-06T11:51:00.000-08:00

Ludicrous Diversion

Ludicrous Diversion article in DogmaNet, Dec 2006

2007-01-06T11:48:00.000-08:00

"Oil, Smoke and Mirrors":

Oil, Smoke and Mirrors

2006-12-21T07:04:00.000-08:00

Kiyomori - "Not Scared of You"

Kiyomori

2006-12-08T05:41:00.000-08:00

Logic & Lowkey - New Place

Logic

Lowkey

NEW PLACE, NEW WAVE

In the late 1950s in Brazil Bossa Nova developed. It was a style of music that was stripped down, essential, fundamental...and which celebrated the flair and self-expression of its musicians. Today new waves are flowing through the UK, and Logic and Lowkey are at the crest. We are honoured to include this dynamic duo on the Million Campaign Homepage.

FREE DOWNLOAD

DECZLABSTUDIOS & LOGIC PRESENT 'THE ELDERS' CIRCLE'
FREE 80 minute MIXTAPE

Right-click here and 'Save As' to your desktop.

Special Thanks to Logic and Deczlabstudios

2006-12-08T02:26:00.000-08:00

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT (THOUGH IN SOME RESPECTS RATHER SIMILAR):

MILLION CAMPAIGN HOMEPAGE CANADA!

2006-12-07T12:40:00.000-08:00

Today the Million Campaign Homepage is four months old.

The progress of the project is far beyond expectations: we now have over 250 organisations and individuals linked to the UK site, all of whom we are honoured to include. Most excitingly, a Canadian site is now in the (peak oil) pipeline - we are very pleased to have the super-talented Alex Ramon of Alternative Energy News and Peak Oil News on board to orchestrate it.

Alex describes himself as an "Art Photographer, a Website Designer and Graduate of Langara College in Vancouver, BC"; he is also training to be a History Librarian at the Vancouver Public Library. The Canadian MCH is obviously in good hands. Judging by his test page, it will also be a rather serene blue colour.

We also have the foundations laid for a network of American Million Campaign Homepages. We are aiming at the creation of a federation of one per state, orchestrated by creative, talented, and resourceful cyber-governors and cyber-governesses. If you are interested, please email us at ussolidarity@gmail.com.

So the foundations are laid for our part in what Tim Berners-Lee, the weaver of the web, characterises as the 'Semantic Web' - the next stage of the internet's evolution. As he describes it:

"The value of the web increases in more than linear fashion with the number of links; this has been called the 'network effect'. The Semantic Web will derive its power in a similar way, but through the linking of data rather than documents.

The Semantic Web does not require that everyone use the same vocabluary, any more than we can expect the entire world to speak a single language. Instead, it provides tools for the translation from one set of terms to another. These translations will integrate larger and larger collections of information across the web.

Semantic Web technology can provide significant benefits within particular user communities. But the most exciting discoveries will come from the serendipitous combination and integration of data drawn from diverse sources."

This is a description of our aim for the Million Campaign Homepages. Although Berners-Lee is discussing the effects of increased integration in the pharmaceutical and financial fields, the same principles apply to the not-for-profit and co-operative realms. The Million Campaign Homepages are created as portals through which campaigners are freely permitted as much serendipitous combination and integration as their vision and creativity allow.

999 CLUB

It is imperative that we harness the non-linear potential of the "network effect", because the problems we face are also non-linear.

Today there was a tornado in London. Fortunately nobody was killed, although six people have been reported injured. In July 2005, Birmingham was struck by one of the strongest tornadoes ever recorded in the UK, with wind speeds estimated to have reached over 140 mph, injuring nineteen people.

Tornadoes are not new phenomena in Britain: for example, a tornado on May 21st 1950 killed two people.

However, the exponential growth of greenhouse gas emissions and of natural disasters are long-term trends of major concern. The former can be charted from the Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth century. Looking at the graph below, we might be more accurate in describing it as the 'Greenhouse Gas Revolution':

The graph for global natural disasters is also non-linear. In 1910-19, the total number recorded was 107; in 1960-9, 588; in 1980-9, 1,900, and in 1990-9 it reached 2,720. According to projections from the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters, the rate is scheduled to reach 4,650 over the period 2000-9.

In the light of this data, the Asian Tsunami and Hurricane Katrina are not anomalies. They are part of a pattern, a pattern that incorporates such disparate effects as the melting of Siberian permafrost and glacial retreat. That pattern is a spiral of environmental damage caused by human over-consumption and mistreatment of the planet. Reversing the spiral is not only possible, it is mandatory. There is no set path to that reversal: the multiplicity of voices and actions on the Million Campaign Homepage show us all that our pathways differ from person to person, place to place. The confluence points of meandering streams make mighty rivers.

BEYOND STERN: ECOLONOMICS, NOT ECONOMICS

The Stern Review has been an important landmark in the growth of environmental consciousness in the UK. However, we need to go beyond the correct observation that environmental damage has negative economic effects, and the correct observation that doing something now saves valuable resources and lives later.

Instead, as Gerrard Winstanley counselled, we need to turn the world upside-down. Ecolonomics, or ecological economics, is built on the premise that the environment is the economy. This turns over all the assumptions of the classical economic tradition from Adam Smith onwards, the classical economics that has fuelled the Greenhouse Gas Revolution. Both 'ecology' and 'economy' have the same Ancient Greek root: 'oikos', meaning 'house', 'habitation', and 'family'. The separation of the two has been the ultimate example of false consciousness, for they are branches of the same tree.

From now on, we need all the ecolonomic intelligence we can find.

We must replace old measures of economic 'growth', such as Gross National Product and Gross Domestic Product, with a measure of ecolonomic harmony such as the Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW) pioneered by the New Economics Foundation in the UK.

Nurturing ecology, our economies flourish.

Neglecting ecology, our economies, buildings, livelihoods and lives collapse.

Heard the latest? Even Stern is now going beyond Stern.

WORLD WIDE WEB

We are going to need to use every tool at our disposal, and every trick of our creative imagination, to reverse these trends and to stabilise the health of planet Earth. Hell hath no fury like a planetary goddess scorned.

On a personal level, creating the Million Campaign Homepage has been a revelation. In the light of the widespread cynicism that emerged during the 'war on terror' era, and with the dire predictions about the state of the planet from environmentalists, it has been easy to lose heart. The research involved in creating this portal has shown to me how many people are actively engaged in furthering social and environmental harmony every single day, and how powerful all of their actions are when added together, integrated and combined. There are heroes and heroines on every street corner and in every eco-house.

It is people like Dave of the Low Impact Living Initiative, who has been particularly helpful in the early days of the MCH, that are saving our planet - not through hot air, but through practical action on a daily basis. Mighty oaks grow from acorns.

As Alexander Litvinenko's countryman Mikhail Khodorkovsky, currently languishing in a Siberian prison, puts it:

"The year ahead will show which strategy the developed countries are going to choose to work their way out of the looming energy crisis.

1. Reindustrialisation based on a 'new competitiveness' deriving from an energy-efficiency advantage over the industry of China and other developing countries.

2. New colonial wars - this time for energy resources.

3. New leadership: abandonment of the model of increasing material consumption in favour of improvements in the quality of life, an increase in the intellectual component of the consumer basket.

Strategically speaking, only the third way holds promise for the future. Human nature is extremely conservative, and there is of course a strong desire to postpone making such a radical decision. But this is not possible - the decision will be made in 2007. Whether we are aware of it or not, the direction for the next decade or more is going to be decisively set."

In 2007 we must not only be aware of how the direction is set; we must be the ones setting it. The illegal occupation of Iraq showed us clearly how decisions can be made which are neither in our name nor in our interests. The lesson learnt from that disaster is that never again must such a decision be allowed to be taken.

In an emergency, ambulances are summoned.

Each and every one of us is a paramedic, a nurse, and a surgeon.

Our mission is to save this planet. There is no time for intermission.

2006-11-09T06:04:00.000-08:00

MC Riz - Post 9/11 Blues

MC Riz

2006-11-07T00:00:00.000-08:00

Sarah Bear - We Reap What We Sow

Add to My Profile | More Videos

Sarah Bear

2006-11-06T16:30:00.000-08:00

WE CONSIDER THESE TRUTHS TO BE SELF-EVIDENT.
WE DO NOT HAVE THE DEATH PENALTY IN THE UNITED KINGDOM. NEITHER SHOULD ANY CIVILISED SYSTEM OF INTERNATIONAL LAW.

The abolition of the death penalty is one of the proudest legacies of our democratic past. The word 'past', incidentally, is imperative, given the current alienation between Parliament and electorate. It is a level of 'democratic deficit' not witnessed since the 19th century, before the great enfranchisements in 1832, 1867, 1884 and 1918
that grew out of the Chartist and Suffragist movements.

The abomination of the death penalty is a barbaric practice which appeals to the lowest instinct of humanity - the impulse towards vendetta. It is also a dereliction of the duty to punish wrongdoing: a life in prison, with large segments of solitary confinement, is a far more fitting punishment for those found guilty, after assumption of innocence, of crimes against humanity.

For those who want to know the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth on the show trial of Saddam Hussein (a theatrical event whose denouement is probably timed to coincide with the US midterm elections), one need only consult Robert Fisk. Fisk is the Orwell of our epoch, a real journalist dedicated to the "revolutionary act" of "telling the truth in an age of universal deceit". Rather than a verdict in a court which eschews basic legal principles, and overrides our domestic prohibition on the state retribution that is the death penalty, Fisk's article on the kangaroo court in the "Independent" newspaper of Monday 6th November 2006 is a caesura to the sorry episode that has been the illegal and immoral occupation of Iraq. As Sarah Bear sings, we reap what we sow (see below). As Robert Fisk exhorts, those accomplices who provide weapons to war criminals are themselves guilty. A justice system which indicts 'them' and exonerates 'us' when both are caught red-handed is no justice system at all. In this case, 'they' were the gangster of Saddam Hussein and his entourage; and 'we' were the gangsters who sold him the chemical weapons he used. This show trial was merely the sound of one hand clapping.

The stage is set for the midterms. One does not need to be an eminent military historian to see that a war on two fronts, with a winter campaign in inhospitable territory, is the ultimate tactical error and the ultimate ethical betrayal of the complex responsibilities of Government. The third war the Bush regime faces is the final frontier - not its plans to militarise and privatise outer space, but its increasing inability to convince the people of its inner space, the people of the United States of America. From the UK we watch with anticipation, and we send our hopes that liberty, democracy, justice and peace will prevail at the polls.

Over here we are glad to have Fighting For Those Forgotten on the Million Campaign Homepage. We must ensure that our abolition of the death penalty remains in force, and that the United Kingdom is not reduced to being the set of a Wild West tragedy. Violence begets violence. An eye for an eye is making the whole world blind. The crude binary of 'us good, them bad' is making the planet ugly.

The illegal occupation of Iraq was a failed idea from its inception. In post-imperial Britain, the only thing we could have possibly added to it was humility and the wisdom of a long history. Our 'unelected dictatorship' chose to contribute neither. At no point whatsoever did they act in our name. Although we informed them relentlessly of that fact, they never deigned to listen. For that arrogance, history will judge them very severely indeed.

An elephant never forgets, and Bush's derogation of international laws are an ass. All decent Republicans should be shocked by the scale of the checks and balances the Bush regime has removed in office - and act accordingly, and patriotically.

To all future honourable US representatives: George W Bush, Senators, is no Abe Lincoln.

George W Bush, Senators, is no FDR.

Big UK Brother is watching you - with hope in our hearts. May life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness prevail at the polls.

We have declared our independence from George W.

Even the neo-cons are declaring their independence from George W.

WILL YOU?

Matthew Edwards
uksolidarity@gmail.com
ussolidarity@gmail.com

2006-11-01T06:38:00.000-08:00

STAR SPANGLED BANNER ITEMS AND MIDTERM MAYFLOWERS

November 1st 2006 - Over here at UK M.C.H. Towers we now have over 100 organisations and individuals on the site. 1/16 of a completed cybermosaic is a wonderful way to launch into November.

We are also proud to launch the template for a new branch of the Million Campaign Homepage tree. We now have the foundations laid for the US Million Campaign Homepage. Whilst utterly puritan on damage to the planet, hopefully our Mayflower will not be too puritan in spirit - and hopefully generous, open and humble in attitude to the indigenous people we discover across the Atlantic pond.

Instead of one website with a cybermosaic of 1,000,000 pixels given away free to 1600 organisations, we plan a 1,000,000 pixel cybermosaic for every state in the Union. We are currently questing for orchestrators for US M.C.H.s - there are full details of how to run one in the 'FAQ' section of the site.

Over here in the UK a mood of independence is declaring itself more assertively each day. Our unwritten constitution is in tatters. Nobody sums up more clearly what traumas and crisis Britain is going through in 2006 than Sarah Bear, whose supreme song and supreme video "We Reap What We Sow" is available online today. And nobody summed up the need for a profound declaration of independence more clearly than Robin Cook, a possible future Labour leader who suffered an untimely death last year.

On his most recent broadcast on BBC Radio 3, Andy Kershaw played Thunderclap Newman's 1969 hit "Something in the Air". He described the excitement of hearing it in a time where something was in the air of the global village, with the tragedy of Vietnam and the crystallisation of resistance and peace movements around the world giving events an urgency and an electricity encapsulated by the lyrics and mood of the song.

In the case of US and British foreign policy, Karl Marx's stipulation that history occurs first as tragedy and then as farce appears false. Vietnam was a farcical tragedy; so is the illegal occupation of Iraq and whatever chaos is currently occuring in Afghanistan. Tragedy is followed by tragedy - and nobody in power seems to learn any lessons and, worst of all, never seems to be held accountable for anything they do.

The British Empire ended in the dishonourable deceptions of Suez in 1956. It is not 1956 today. It is 2006. There is something in the air. The British Empire, and people from many other places around the world, are right here, in need of provision and representation, and what is happening at the moment is failure - pure and simple.

Chasing imperial shadows with guns and very little butter is insanity. We have already spent £4.3bn. of our taxation on the occupation and privatisation of Iraq instead of social and environmental welfare and, as Patrick Cockburn reports in today's "Independent" newspaper, Baghdad is now under siege. We are reaping the bitter fruits of the violence that we have sowed. Meanwhile Parliament fails to even organise an inquiry into the debacles in Iraq, displaying its utter alienation from public opinion.

The only thing that Defence Secretary Des Browne got right regarding that 'debate' was when he told the BBC that "When the time is right, of course there will be an inquiry". The time is right now - and it will be us who will create the inquiry, not this 'Government'. Mr.Browne's majority in his constituency is, incidentally, 8,073, which was down from 10,334 in 2001. It is likely to plummet further if Mr.Blair is not eliminated from the inquiries of the Metropolitan police under the 1925 Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act. After all, in the British political system the buck, rather than the bucks, must stop at Number Ten - although it must be stressed that in the British justice system we operate on the principle of innocent until proven guilty, unlike the Bush regime's torture camp archipelago. The British justice system must also work on the basis of tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime - and it must be curtains for all those found guilty of infringements of the law. Nobody is above the law in the UK apart from the Queen - and that is merely an abstract formality and a historical anomaly.

I recently went on holiday to the inspirational Eden Project in Cornwall. Amidst the geodesic domes was a display by the organisation Shelterbox, who provide an ingeniously compact solution to the kind of extreme weather effects that global warming makes more likely. We are honoured to include these philanthropists from Kernow on the Million Campaign Homepage. The Eden Project presents a vision of a future that is sustainable because we have made it so: the valley full of geodesic domes and the biomes full of hemp and bamboo (and several other kinds of flora) made me think of the work of R. Buckminster Fuller, one of the great American visionaries who was decades if not centuries ahead of his time.

On holiday I launched forays into John Dos Passos's epic literary masterpiece "USA", a great spiralling and sprawling journey across 25 years of American history. Today, in tidal waves and hurricanes across the Atlantic pond, there is something very much in the air. The temperature is warming. As, of course, is the sea temperature. Global warming is changing everything in the natural and the political climate. As the Siberian permafrost melts, so must the monoliths of repressive global regimes.

One of the portraits Dos Passos paints in "USA" is that of John Reed (not, incidentally, our current Home Secretary, who believes we are set for a 'Long War' - which is the rebranded 'war on terror' for those who still care about what they call military-industrial slaughter these days, and whose constituency majority is 14,084). Reed's work "Ten Days That Shook The World" documented the rapid emergence of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. What is happening in the USA may or may not be of that magnitude - only time will tell. However, dissatisfaction with the foreign and domestic policy of the Bush regime creates the prospect of a fascinating set of midterm election results - should the process be fair and democratic.

The unravelling of the agglomeration of lies and half-truths that has been the 'war on terror' is leading to a renaissance. John Pilger describes in detail in "The New Rulers of the World" how the conditions for the development of al-Qaeda - our supposed 'enemies' - were created in Afghanistan by our own 'Governments' and 'intelligence services' to destabilise our supposed 'enemies' of the 1980s, the Soviet Union. Sow, reap, sow, reap.

If you sow destruction and hatred, you reap destruction and hatred. I studied history at university. You only have to look at one page of a history book to see that war abroad leads to a tendency towards civil wars at home; to a loss of resources; to further wars in the future. You do not need a library of the magnitude of Edward Gibbon's to understand that. Let us hope that the voters of the USA decide, and are allowed to decide, a more humble and harmonious administration in November 2006 and in the Presidential election of 2008. The decline and fall of a 'blowback' born of arrogant and ignorant governance is in the interests of nobody - least of all the American people.

One of the most curious moments of the 1991 Gulf War was Norman Schwarzkopf's assertion that 'Desert Storm' was similar to Hannibal's victory over the Romans at Cannae. One does not have to be an eminent military historian to make the observation that one of the ultimate bitter fruits of Cannae was the destruction of Carthage by the Romans. When the wheel turns full circle, the dominant can all too easily become the dominated. Any fool can destroy, but it takes wisdom to create: waging long-term peace is infinitely more difficult, and infinitely more patriotic, than waging short-term carnage.

Whatever the weaknesses of political augury, and despite Gore Vidal's recent pessimistic assertion of the inconvenient truth that he felt like he was living in the last days of Carthage on BBC's Radio 4, many of the signs are good. I am no Alexis de Tocqueville, and I am attempting to limit my carbon consumption by not flying to the USA. Instead I explore it through cyberspace - and I find the results heartening. The times online they are a-changing. The unravelling of the Orwellian nightmares, the loss of their power, and the awakening of a million Winston and Julia Smiths is creating the nuclei of a profound reformation.

Sow, reap, sow, reap. Either the bombings of al-Qaeda are Reichstag fires and direct 'inside jobs' or, at very least, they are the bitter fruits sown by Machiavellian machinations in Afghanistan and elsewhere. The unravelling of the 'war on terror' and the growing awareness of the scope of the challenges of climate change are changing the voices that are being heard. Figures such as Barack Obama, Kinky Friedman, Kevin Zeese and Tammy Duckworth are illuminating the contest. Suddenly American politics is becoming vibrant again.

From the UK, with a Parliament that cannot even organise a proper public, independent, and thorough inquiry into Iraq, let alone into the deaths of David Kelly and Jean Charles de Menezes or the July 7th London bombings, we watch with interest and anticipation. Regime change does not need to happen across distant seas at the barrel of a gun; it needs to happen here, at the ballot box. In counterpoint to the new voices in the USA, there is the nucleus of a more interesting - and Hung - Parliament in figures such as Dr Richard Taylor MP, Dai Davies MP, and also Clare Short MP, who has resigned the Labour whip and will campaign for a Hung Parliament and electoral reform.

Thanks must be passed to the twelve Labour MPs with the courage to face ostracisation and worse from the New Labour machine for calling for an inquiry into Iraq. These are the true representatives of a long heritage. They are possible future Labour leader John McDonnell MP, Harry Cohen MP, Jeremy Corbyn MP, Mark Fisher MP, Glenda Jackson MP, Roger Godsiff MP, Alan Simpson MP, Peter Soulsby MP, Robert Marshall-Andrews MP, Gavin Strang MP, Robert Wareing MP and Mike Wood MP. They joined the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish and Welsh Nationalists in arguing out of conviction for an inquiry.

A more interesting and representative Parliament would also include talented people like Reg Keys, Rose Gentle and Craig Murray - all three of whom would quite possibly be MPs now if we had a fair electoral system. Although he was momentarily seduced by the worst of unreality television, the hard work of George Galloway MP has also helped pave the way for people like Salma Yaqoob and Yvonne Ridley into the House of Commons - representatives unthinkable when once the British Parliament was a place for a propertied, white, male elite that was forced to profess allegiance to a particular, and narrow, established religious tradition. The great inspirational figure of recent British politics is Martin Bell, who became an MP to help remove sleaze and corruption. He was instrumental in the Reg Keys campaign in Sedgefield. Mr.Keys would have made an excellent constituency MP.

Outside the arena of Parliament, a potent resistance movement has been developing. People such as Milan Rai, Maya Evans and Malcolm Kendall-Smith have campaigned for the liberties that have been stolen. The Stop the War Coalition has protested and demonstrated relentlessly. Bruce Kent has rightly urged in public that the instigators of the occupation be tried in the International Criminal Court in the Hague. The person who stands out, however, is Brian Haw - whose marathan day and night campaign in Parliament Square shames those members of the political elite who took us into the illegal and immoral occupation of Iraq. If all our politicians were as selfless, as dedicated, as honourable and as articulate as Brian Haw, our polity would be in good shape indeed. History will honour him and those who have supported him very deeply. He has been an inspiration to so many. Instead of party donations, it should be such total dedication that receives the highest honours in the land.

The publication of the Stern Review is heartening - it is an interesting read and can be accessed online for free. The caveats and critiques of Mark Lynas, a veteran environmental campaigner from the UK, are also required reading. And the caveat must also be borne in mind that a 'Government' which launches such an important review without allowing journalists to ask questions is not the force to deliver the fundamental changes required by the planet, some of which are sketched in Stern. Instead of the relentless game of seeking control and domination of others, it is time to pass control to Gaia - and follow her instructions. If the UK were an open society (our Glastnost is long overdue) or, indeed, if the UK were a sane society, then journalists would be employed precisely in order to ask questions - in the words of Amira Haas, an Israeli journalist often quoted by Robert Fisk, their vocation is to "interrogate the centres of power".

And following the sentiments of Hannah Arendt, let us have a true democracy again - a place where people learn to listen to one another, carefully and in detail, allowing as much free dialogue as possible. For as George Washington said, we must be able to talk about anything in the new Republic (even his own peccadillo of slavery, which, today, requires as much abolition as it ever did).

As Thunderclap Newman sang, "We have got to get it together" for, as Sarah Bear sings, "we reap what we sow". That old explorer of thunder and lightning Benjamin Franklin was right all along. If you surrender liberty to 'security', you deserve neither - and will lose both.

He was also right about chess. It is too important a game to be played for money. We here at M.C.H. Towers have somehow stumbled across a very new kind of chess board - the cybermosaic, pioneered by Alex Tew. Neither of us are as good as a Bobby Fischer or a Garry Kasparov (a likely future Russian President), but we do our best. Although we are emphatically not creating it for money, any donations are always extremely welcome as they allow us to extend the range and scope of what we are doing.

A final thought. The stress that we are putting the planet under must be reduced radically, and rapidly. Instead of petty politics, we need all the different tribes and groups to come together in the great spirit of the Chautauqua, in which Robert Pirsig wrote in "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintanence".

The machinery of our world economic system is not working. We are all engineers. Repairs and reparations are needed urgently; for as we know from history, when America sneezes, the rest of the world catches avian flu. The US is a proud and noble country with a proud and noble history - and it deserves proud and noble political representation. We have had enough of the Grapes of Wrath caused by the neoliberal hijacking of global institutions - the World Bank, the IMF, the World Trade Organisation - which were originally conceived as operating in the interests of the world as a whole, not for narrow vested interests. May the forthcoming generations generate more humane world institutions - from the United Nations down, and from the grass roots up.

A few November firecrackers for all the midterm Boston tea party-goers:

How do we fix the economy so that it harmonises with ecological systems instead of disrupting them?

How do we create an economics which is eco-logical?

How do we ensure that our future Eden Projects are not Suez-style debacles but sustainable and prosperous natural environments and locally devolved economies?

How do we ensure that global politics is run on the principles of Buckminster Fuller's World Game instead of a global prisoner's dilemma?

How do we educate forthcoming generations to develop their full creative capacities to live in the objective realities that they will actually face, and allow them "the liberty of their own spontaneous manifestations" instead of merely regurgitating outmoded lists of so-called 'facts' that merely embody the 'rear view mirror' of a world which has vanished because of our relentless depletion of resources to gratify short-termist egotistical wants rather than our real needs?

In other words, how do we transform the indoctrination of 'education education education' into real education which unites theory and practice, the academic and the vocational?

What better way of avoiding a possibly nuclear war with Iran is there than not starting a possibly nuclear war with Iran?

Why does anyone persist in these idiotic crusades when the central message of every religious and spiritual tradition is love? Isn't it time for global reformation in whatever terms each person understands?

Enjoy November - this time our plots will use ballot boxes and allotments, not gunpowder! Interpreting Kerouac, may the US midterms burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centrelight pop and everybody goes?

Awww!

Bonfires of the vanity fairs at the polls!

In solidarity,

Matthew Edwards
uksolidarity@gmail.com

2006-10-11T05:10:00.000-07:00

The latest hangover from the 'Cold War' - the Third World War which was hot in several under-reported parts of the world - is the announcement by North Korea that they have successfully tested a nuclear bomb.

For the ramifications of this latest accession to the axis of evil that is the global proliferation of nuclear weapons, please see the line taken by Maryland's Senate candidate Kevin Zeese, who argues that "North Korea shows the importance of negotiation and requires US to examine its own behaviour". We wish Kevin Zeese and his representation of the US people's voice all the best in the forthcoming midterm elections.

Morihei Ueshiba, the founder of the martial art of Aikido, urged humanity to abolish all nuclear weapons. We need the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and multilateral disarmament more than ever, and we are honoured to include CND on the MCH.

Imagine the myriad ways of helping our society and planet that could be funded by the £76bn. it would cost to replace and operate the Trident nuclear missile system.

Total Government spending per annum, as announced in the 2006 Budget, is £482bn. for current spending and £26bn. for net investment spending.

In what possible sense is it worthwhile spending £76bn. of OUR taxes because of the Mutual Defence Agreement, a treaty written in 1958 (just two years after the ignominy of Suez)?

The last time the Mutual Defence Agreement was renewed was 2004. Anti-nuclear MPs sought a debate on the matter. In this so-called 'democracy', their request was refused.

A more heartening piece of news from the North Korean one, and a far less widely published one, was the news in September that leaders from five of the Central Asian states had signed a treaty creating a nuclear weapon free zone.

2006-09-26T18:08:00.000-07:00

We are delighted and honoured tonight to include a link to the July 7th Truth Campaign, and we urge that everybody with an interest in justice and truth sign their online petition for free right now. Also, please watch the excellent film
Ludicrous Diversion free online.

As somebody who missed one of the Aldgate Underground bombs by ten minutes I feel close to that particular event.

Such events are, of course, daily realities for the ordinary citizens of many countries around the world: notably Iraq and Afghanistan in the wake of the invasions and occupations that - in the former case - Kofi Annan declared "illegal", but also in many other unreported and under-reported locations around the world where the global arms trade and our obsession with fighting for resources rather than sharing them wreaks its havoc.

The events of July 7th 2005 were deeply traumatic for us in the UK.

The July 7th Campaign are right to demand an independent public inquiry into the precise details and provenance of that trauma. In their own words:

"To date, not one piece of evidence has been released that could be used to convict someone in a court of law for what happened on July 7th and the government still has no plans to organise an Independent Public Inquiry into events that day.

We believe this will not suffice to stand as judge, jury and executioner for the victims, nor is it sufficient explanation for the injured and their families, nor London's commuters, or the wider British public who also have a right to know what happened and how it happened.

In order to address this, we have one simple demand, that the government RELEASE THE EVIDENCE which conclusively proves, beyond reasonable doubt, the official Home Office narrative."

Out of all the damage, the cynicism, and the fear from that day, the most heartening consequence of the carnage has been the steady, often subterranean process of growing solidarity in the UK - a drawing together, a willingness to co-operate more and compete less, and a dawning consciousness change that in the era of global warming and peak oil we can solve our problems only through dialogue, and not violence.

We are waging peace. We are bringing our troops home. Along with that, we must be humble - and apologise to the world for the many mistakes we have made, both at home and abroad. There is a time to hoist the white flag aloft and that time is right here, right now.

Independent inquiries are needed urgently.

2006-09-26T01:39:00.000-07:00

The Rebirth of MCH:

Gone Phishing - apparently.

We're back...

Well, well, well. It's been a strange few days for us here at MCH HQ. After being unexpectedly blown off course, the Million Campaign Homepage has been fixed and can now be found here.

We express our sincerest apologies for any trouble caused to pixel holders and surfers who had been trying to access the MCH page and reserve pixels.

A spanner was thrown in the works and our smooth sailing came to an abrupt halt when the site was suspended, quite suddenly and without any warning. At that point, 23 organisations had already taken up our offer.

However, it emerged that we had been accused by an unnamed organisation of 'phishing'. A stern letter of complaint has now been sent to our hosting provider, emphatically refuting that allegation, a portion of which is reproduced here:

"... The notion that the unsolicited emails we send out OFFERING pixels for FREE are spam, let alone phishing, is risible. We ONLY send emails to specifically targeted groups and orgnisations whom we believe may be interested. If people are not interested in our offer they are at perfect liberty to delete our emails. Equally we are not asking for passwords, bank details, credit card details, or any other sensitive information which could be used to defraud anyone. All we are asking for are logos or Favicons and web addresses - information freely available and impossible to use for fraudulent purposes..."

So let's summarise - just so we're absolutely CLEAR:

1) Pixels on the site REALLY ARE FREE. We know it might be hard to believe - but it's TRUE.

We are interested in BUILDING BRIDGES, not making money.

2) We wouldn't even know HOW TO 'PHISH' since our minds don't work that way. In fact, we were just as flattered as outraged to be accused of such serious, high-level internet fraud.

"Blimey," we thought, "They think we're gangsters!".

We hate to break it to you but we're just not that clever!

3) If you receive an email from uksolidarity@googlemail.com regarding our offer, don't be scared - it's just us!

MCH ONLY sends emails to small campaigns, groups & organisations across the UK who we believe COULD be interested in FREE pixels on our site. That's it.

So please don't accuse us of phishing.

It's not nice. And it's not true.

Thank You.

2006-09-20T16:51:00.000-07:00

THE MILLION CAMPAIGN HOMEPAGE IS TEMPORARILY UNAVAILABLE

Unfortunately we have been beset either with technical difficulties or, alternatively, foul play. At the moment the MCH is not available.

We are hoping to fix the rigging as soon as possible. Once it is repaired our ship will once again hit the ocean and sail into the deep blue yonder.

Matthew Edwards

2006-09-14T02:04:00.000-07:00

Far more rapidly than we had anticipated, our little MCH toddler has reached Volume 11!

Our aim, when the full million pixels have been reserved, is to have the Million Campaign Homepage screaming out at volume 1600.

2006-09-13T07:17:00.000-07:00

Amidst the sound of popping champagne corks (well, more like bottles of rum), The MILLION CAMPAIGN HOMEPAGE has now gone live and direct!

Conceived somewhere over the summer heatwave, the MCH was officially born on August 7th 2006. Now it is toddling around. We are honoured to have the first tiles in our cybermosaic dedicated to organisations and individuals furthering social and environmental harmony - the first one of all, rather symbolically, was a group called Leave Them Kids Alone who campaign against the hideous erosion and abolition of the rights of children in this totalitarian regime we are living in.

It is five years since the events in the USA of 11th September 2001, and it is high time for an audit of what has occured over those five years. There has been little else but an awful lot of tyranny, war, and fear. Vast accumulations of resources have been squandered on these risible and infantile squabbles. The fact of the matter is that either the whole episode is a case of direct and orchestrated collusion between both sides - the 'Reichstag burning' thesis - or, if nothing else, the seeds of al-Qaeda were sown by Western governments in the conflict in Afghanistan in an attempt to destabilise the Soviet empire. As the wonderful British singer Sarah Bear righty stresses, we reap what we sow.

Either way, it has been five years of pure failure. As a global commons we are charged with the responsibility of making a better world for future generations.

Firstly let me say an enormous thank you to a lady from the UK called Tina Louise who has been running a superb campaign called ArmsAgainstWar.

With her poetry and her activism she has kept us all positive during this dreadful era, and was the first person to express support for our Million Campaign Homepage idea.

If everybody in the UK who abhors the useless invasions we are involved in in Iraq and Afghanistan wears a white armband on October 9th, the day Parliament theoretically reconvenes, then we can make peace and bring British troops home.

I am currently reading Jared Diamond's beautiful book Collapse. It is a visionary book, ranging across time and cultures to explore what makes a society collapse and what saves a society.

Given the extent of the climate crises facing the planet, we need to get working together. This is a question of life and death - writ large. It will be solved by the principle of thinking globally and acting locally.

Another book I am looking forward to eagerly is George Monbiot's Heat: How To Stop the Planet Burning.

When there is an emergency, you rush for the paramedics and the surgeons. Whoever we are, we all have a path and a field of operation. However humble each part of the jigsaw, our actions added together forge powerful movements potent paradigm shifts.

Plan A - turbo-capitalism, consumerism, war, tyranny, deceiving politicians, plutocracies, oil gangsterism - is not working.

In the era of peak oil it is high time for Plan B!

2006-08-07T00:00:00.000-07:00

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