Swindon Think Slam - 2nd Round - Why the UN P5 Security council is racist and anti-democratic

In 1887, Lord Acton wrote, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." The same applies to nations; great nations are almost always bad nations.

The Permanent 5 Security Council members of the United Nations are the world's greatest nations. They are the USA, UK, France, Russia and China.

They are all bad nations with long lists of misdemeanours:

In 1946, fresh from fighting the fascists in Europe, America went to the Tropical paradise of Bikini Atoll and forcibly removed the entire population which had lived there for thousands of years, burnt their houses to the ground and then started a nuclear weapons test programme which created a scorched earth that even Hitler could not have envisaged. Nobody else even had a bomb.

In 1952 Britain continued the scorched earth tradition by irradiating the Aboriginal homelands in Australia with its atomic bomb tests. Not content with this, they went on to do the same to the Christmas Islands with H-bombs.

France resorted to terrorism to blow up Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior; Russia and China became repressive nuclear dictatorships and remain so today.

All five continue to violate the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty.

To become a member of this club, it was not enough to be on the winning side of the Second World War, a nation also had to be an industrialised power.

Because India, Africa and the Middle East were not industrialised at this time, they were not invited, despite suffering massive losses in a war that was not even of their making. Bringing them in today would deprive the P-5 group of its power, so they are kept out. 

There is also no representation from the global indigenous communities, despite always being in the vanguard of the fight on climate change, environmental destruction and human rights. To acknowledge their rights would be to curtail industrialisation and economic growth.

So the purpose of the P-5 group is to preserve the power in perpetuity of the most powerful nations in the world. This is fundamentally anti-democratic and racist.

This illegal group has also determined amongst itself that the possession of nuclear weapons by its members is legal. They are now embarking on a collective upgrade of these that is as big as anything seen in the Cold War.  To enable this, they each need a high carbon military industrial complex and so must either directly or mendaciously stop climate change agreements.

It means the P-5 cannot address the main security challenge of today which is climate change. On the contrary, its very existence normalises destructive industrialisation and blocks the progress we need. It encourages other nations who aspire to have an equal say in world politics to acquire nuclear weapons and is thus inherently proliferatory. It embeds racism and nationalism into the world's political system.

It is time to replace it with an elected chamber, where the world's people have an equal say in its membership and whose purpose is to govern in the interests of the survival of the people and the planet.

Swindon Think Slam - 1st round, why 16-21 years olds should be the only ones to vote.

If democracy is so important that we send our young to die in wars to defend it, why does any fool or crook have a vote?

Why should the selfish fool who flies a polluting private jet have the same vote as someone who sacrifices all to cut CO2 emissions?

Why should a top banker who receives a million pound bonus by virtue of tax payer bailouts have the same vote as a pensioner whose savings were destroyed in the banking collapse?

Why should a tax evading crook like Richard Branson even be allowed to vote?

Why should the vote of a Trident submarine captain whose job is to comply with a command to destroy the planet, without question, be the same as a gardener who job is to create beauty from nothing?

These people were not born bad, but became corrupted by a society which values individual success above societal enhancement.

But most of us have not risen to the great pinnacles of society and are simply struggling to survive. In the face of runaway climate change, we are forced to prostitute ourselves to industries we know are destroying our planet. Anyone working in the arms, oil, car or travel industries along with many others do so in the knowledge that their actions contribute to ecological collapse. To enhance their short term prospects of survival they must be silent on this and vote for governments that will maintain the status quo of destructive industrialisation.

The struggle for survival in an industrial world corrupts us all. In so doing, we parallel the Kapos in the German concentration camps. They were the jews that did the dirty work the SS would not do. They pushed their brethren into the gas chambers and took their dead bodies out. They did it knowing it was wrong, but it was the only way they could survive and they had no choice in the matter. They also had to hope for train loads of new victims to keep coming, because without these they too would be destroyed.

In these circumstances, giving the successful SS guards and the corrupted Kapos a vote in the running of these nihilistic camps would never legitimise them. Yet we, who have a similar struggle for survival, legitimise our government’s inaction on climate change with our votes. 

So for a government to hold legitimacy, it must have a mandate from the people who are not corrupted by either success or the struggles for survival.

These are our youngsters. They are the group of people that have their morals mostly intact and care for the future because they will inherit it. So, if we are serious about democracy, the only group of people that should be allowed to vote are the 16-21 year olds.

This would change everything. General elections can still be held every 5 years, but political parties would have to campaign on important long term issues such as climate change, not on short term political advantage. Nor would they be able to recklessly send our young people to war.

It means the youngsters today, who are suffering from a plague of mental health issues as they see their future prospects squandered by the powerful elder generation, are put in the driving seat where they deserve to be.

We might then, just, get governments that will act in the best interests of everyone and the planet.

Sustainable avaition consultation and the threat to democracy

Letter to No. 10 Downing Street in response to the government decision not to proceed with the sustainable aviation consultation.


Dear Mr. Cameron,

Ref: Aviation consultation.

 

After spending considerable time preparing a submission for the Sustainable Aviation consultation on behalf of Plane Stupid and People and Planet, it is with horror and rage that I read in the press this weekend your government is not going to publish the result of its consultation because, according the FT, “the question is being handed over to an independent commission.”

  

If you decide not to publish the conclusions from your government’s year long study into the future of aviation, you are saying to the public that we should never again bother wasting our time engaging with any public consultation exercises, because when those in power do not like the result they will simply change the rules.

The aviation debate is of such importance that it must be resolved through our elected representatives, irrespective of how messy and distasteful this becomes. To delegate this to an independent commissioner says that our elected representatives are of no importance, and by inference the process of voting is a wasted effort. You should be fearful of what happens when you undermine the process of governance and democracy, especially as we enter hard times ahead and when we are already seeing the strains on our society.

Any proposition that the commission will be independent is nonsense. The commissioners will no doubt be powerful leaders of businesses, aviation and finance companies that have vested interests in expanding aviation. I am prepared to bet that no credible climate change experts or representatives from local communities that stand to be destroyed will be invited to the commission. Your commission will only be independent in as much that it will be independent of any environmental consideration.

We met with Theresa Villiers MP and the Department for Transport in July 2011 and were encouraged to make submissions to your consultation. We were assured of a fair and transparent process that would fully consider all evidence submitted. The Department for Transport presented their strategy for making aviation sustainable by controlling greenhouse gases through a combination of biofuels, carbon trading and new technological innovation. My report totally discredited all these approaches. Its “unpalatable conclusions” were:

1. The strategies of introducing new technology, biofuels and carbon trading which form the basis of the sustainable framework document will not deliver any reduction in aviation greenhouse gas emissions. This is an unacceptable position given the critical risk that humanity faces due to the unsustainable build up of greenhouse gases.
2. Aviation emissions can only be reduced by imposing a strict ceiling on plane movements or aviation fuel sales. This ceiling must then be reduced in line with the objective of reducing CO2 emissions by 80%.
3. The principle objective of the Department for Transport should be to work with other equivalent departments in other countries to implement similar policies (as point 2) and to find ways to reduce demand for transport.
4. The Department of Transport will have to show considerable courage to stand up to the advertising and lobbying campaigns that the aviation industry has already launched to subvert any movement towards recognising and taking action on climate change. The legal definition of fraud should be reviewed and test cases implemented against companies that make blatantly false environmental claims.
5. The final adjudication that the government makes must take cognisance of the impact that rising oil prices will have on both the long term viability of the aviation industry and the full risk of wider instabilities in society and in the international arena.
6. The forced reduction in aviation will fundamentally change the economic model and philosophies that our society has built on by forcing a clear acknowledgement that economic growth cannot continue indefinitely and limits have been reached. As such, this consultation must be integrated with the debate on the introduction of individual carbon rations or the imposition of a carbon tax, where the receipts are distributed directly to the population as advocated by James Hanson.
7. It will not be possible to achieve the large reductions in aviation within the debt based economic system that we operate today. However, to maintain the existing growth based system will result in large scale impoverishment of society, climate collapse and war.

I can only conclude that your decision to move to an independent commission and not publish the results of your consultation is to avoid addressing the points that I raised in my submission.

The rapidly unfolding events since preparing this report underline all the above: The rate of melting of the Arctic Ice cap far exceeds the worst scenarios of the IPCC report of 2007, with the real prospect of an ice free ocean by 2015 leading to the collapse of the climatic stability upon which we have built our fragile civilisation. Syria is enmeshed in civil war following the destruction of its economic stability after a prolonged drought wiped out 85% of its live stock and converted a wheat exporting nation to a wheat importing nation at the mercy of world food prices. World food production is in a state of collapse following extreme droughts and floods. The list goes on.

It is against this background that you and your government continue in a state of blind hubris to believe airports should be built to cater for the holiday needs of a society in 2050, which in all likelihood will have ceased to exist by that time, and you will pervert the processes of governance to ensure this happens. These policies of hell bent expansion in defiance of blatantly evident limits to growth make our democracy as illegitimate as a dictatorship hell bent on expansion through force of arms.

You need to recognise that we now live in a new age where we are systematically learning that the glories of our past are being exposed as lies in all their dirt and gore. We now know our banks operated fraudulently, that we went to war on fraudulent claims and that top athletes like Lance Armstrong cheated. They all crashed, destroying themselves and many innocent people in the process. However, the biggest lie is still being played out; it is the one that you are continuing, which is that we can make a better future by destroying what is left of our environment. Your lie like every other will crash taking many innocent victims with it. When our system of governance ignores the science and calls to reason; persecutes those that protest peacefully, you might want to wonder what the prospective victims are left with and what they should do.

Yours sincerely

Kevin Lister

Email to the commander of the Met Police (Jon Kay), thanking him for bringing his riot police to the Climate Camp. They made us feel so important.

Dear Commander Jonathan,

After listening to your interview on Radio 4’s PM, I would like to thank you for the excellent policing that I experienced at the Climate Change Camp from the men under your charge. Your policemen were truly wonderful and a true model for the type of policing that I would like to see in my street. In fact I think many areas of London and the other inner city areas elsewhere in the country would be delighted to see just a small percentage of the level of policing that you kindly provided during the week, and in particular on the day of protest.

If we had the level of policing that you provided we would never have to worry about burglaries, petty vandalism or anything else. I can only imagine the pleasing scenario, of my daughter going to the local shops and every time being escorted by at least three police officers fully equipped in riot gear. She would feel so safe. However, I have to say that strangely when your excellent chaps provided me with the same sort of protection on Sunday, I did not feel quite so safe. I work on the basis of three riot equipped police to escort my daughter to the shops, because that is about the ratio of riot police that seem to be surrounding me and the other climate change protesters.

I am delighted in the interview on Radio 4s PM that you explained that your officers had come under sustained missile attack. I now understand why your delightful men surrounded me. It was silly of me to miss the missiles that were obviously being thrown from the empty fields behind me and I must have missed the sound of the missiles landing on their helmets. I appreciate that this is an easy mistake that anyone can make in the heat of the moment.

It must have been one of these missiles that caused about nine of your officers to arrest a climate change protester just in font of me. I am so sorry if I misinterpreted your proportionate policing, because it did seem a bit brutal to me. Again we all make mistakes and I understand that in the heat of the moment your officers were scared and under the impression that we were going to attack them. That is me, an 86-year-old pensioner that I was helping, and two other protesters. If you do the maths you will realise that this is four.

When I asked the sergeant in charge what he was doing, he shouted in a somewhat threatening way for us to move back and one of his men shoved me with a riot shield. I asked if he was perhaps over reacting a bit. He said he was surrounded. I explained that there were four of us and about nine of his officers. We could try and surround him if he wanted, but it would be difficult. Fortunately, he was able to count and he seemed then to calm down. He also seemed to calm down even more when I took his photograph for my holiday snaps, which follows below. Perhaps he is just camera shy.



A few minutes later, another chap standing next to me got truncheoned over his head by one of your officers. Your officer was a strange sort of chap. He seemed rather aggressive, almost as if he enjoyed hitting things, perhaps that is one of the things that qualifies him for the job. The strangest thing of all is that he did not have number on his lapel, or on his helmet and he had a balaclava pulled right up to the bridge of his nose. So, as you can appreciate it is a bit difficult for me to describe him to you. All I can say is that he was standing next to another officer with the number 3678. Perhaps it is just a coincidence, that one of the most aggressive officers on your line had no number, or maybe I am drawing silly conclusions again. It did go through my mind that if I went into a petrol station like this I would not be served, it also stuck me as being a little strange when your web site you said “Some demonstrators were seen to cover their face.” Again, I may be have got this wrong, but it seemed to me that most of the covered faces were police faces.

I would also like to thank you for providing so much protection for the BAA offices. I realise that these offices were empty, like most offices are on a Sunday afternoon and that the protest was largely a token effort. But as you said in your interview, “You have got to believe a crime would be committed.” I would have been appalled if the BAA offices were blown up and I am quite sure that the risk of a protester carrying out a suicide attack on these empty offices would have been extremely high. After all, if you wanted to carry out a suicide attack, you would definitely choose the empty BAA offices rather than Terminal 1, where someone might get hurt.

You were also right to assume that protestors were armed and dangerous. Because you had stopped and searched just about everybody at the camp at least once, and found next to nothing, it was obvious that all the weapons were cunningly hidden and that your officers were in mortal danger. Also, you would have had no idea what the plans were because the protestors were so good at hiding from all the cameras that you had around the site, and they probably said very little to the undercover police who I am sure you must have had in the camp planning meetings. Certainly, given the rest of the policing I would be amazed if you did not have any undercover officers infiltrating the camp.

I am also delighted that you have allowed your organisation to be turned into a private army for BAA. They do after all have the right to make whatever profit they can manage irrespective of the environmental damage, and clearly a bunch of protestors who have noticed this need to be treated as dangerous terrorists. It does however seem a bit strange to me that a foreign owned company gets more protection from the police in this country than do the tax paying residents of this country. But, that is probably me being a cynical fool.


Perhaps you are just practicing for the future. The climate will get hotter in the coming years, the climate change protests will grow, the confrontations with short-term profit focused companies and the concerned population will intensify. Your position of out right and blatant support for those companies committing environment degradation will become morally untenable. To hear you acting as an apologist on the radio for your blatant over policing and the evident abuse of powers, with no media challenge, is the most damming threat to our democratic institutions and free speech that I have ever experienced, especially when virtaully all other means of democratic protest on the governements proposals have been removed and their current policies are so ill founded.

Yours Kevin Lister