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.

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)

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)

The Real McCain from Brave New Films

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!!!!!

Ludicrous Diversion

Ludicrous Diversion article in DogmaNet, Dec 2006

"Oil, Smoke and Mirrors":



Oil, Smoke and Mirrors

Kiyomori - "Not Scared of You"




Kiyomori

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

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


MILLION CAMPAIGN HOMEPAGE CANADA!