RAPE

The scale of rape in the UK, as in the world, is the tip of an ugly iceberg of violence. Rape often comes as part of a package of abuse. Institutional abuse, cultural abuse, domestic abuse. Rape is violence, rape is a tool of warfare, rape is the sick subjugation of the abused by the oppressor and it is not to be tolerated for even one single moment, under any circumstances whatsoever, by any individual, institution or government.

The figures below represent a holocaust. A women’s holocaust without end.

1 out of every 3 women in the world has been raped, beaten or abused

30% of people in the UK think that violence against women is OK.
50% think it should be kept behind closed doors
More than 100 million women are missing from the world's population - a result of discrimination and female infanticide.
Two thirds of the 774 million adult illiterates worldwide are female
At least 60 million girls worldwide are forced into marriage before the age of 18.
An estimated 3 million girls are estimated to be at risk of female genital mutilation each year.
A third of teenage girls in a relationship suffer an unwanted sexual act.
A quarter of girls suffer physical violence, such as being slapped, punched or beaten by their boyfriend.
1 girl in 16 is raped
64% of students know women whose boyfriends or partners have hit them
25,000 men in England and Wales move from one relationship to another, serially abusing their partners
 

Everyone in society is responsible for these figures (from Amnesty International) by either looking away, or feigning blindness. And society will not change until each one of us changes. True equality means real respect. You do not beat or rape a person you respect, and you respect your equals. 

We must remove the shame and stigma from rape victims and honour those who are raped. Only by applauding the bravery and resolve of the abused can we turn the tables on these cowardly oppressors. 

Rape is the ultimate crime of an unequal world.

Limits to Growth

Queen Elizabeth 1^st took a bath once a year – whether she needed it or not.

Many people now take 2 showers - a day. This is very relevant to our current stage of consumption.

Consumption of our resources such as water, land, clean air and fossil fuels is now at an unsustainable level. 

At the time of Elizabeth 1^st the world population was about half a billion. Today it is 10 billion. That is a lot of showers. Clearly there have been many improvements since the year 1500: we are now more hygienic, warmer, better fed and more healthy, but the way we have gone about improving our lifestyles has come at a price. And although we might think everything is quite expensive enough already, we are not actually paying the full price.

The full price would include the cost to the environment. Trees don’t bill us for their loss of forests, endangered animals do not bill us for their loss of habitat. The oceans ask no price for the pollution humans pour into them, and the air will not send us an invoice for the extra greenhouse gasses it has to burden. If the fish and whales took us to court for murder of their family members we would at least have more life left in the sea.

In 1972 a group of eminent scholars, called the Club of Rome, published a book called Limits to Growth.  They spent years pulling information together, then modelled it to create a future trend scenario. Their conclusions were that we were using up the natural resources of the planet too quickly, and if we did not change our ways, collapse was inevitable. Limits to Growth was an early warning siren. Sadly few people listened. 

Please do look at this very good explanatory graph and updated info here: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/Looking-Back-on-the-Limits-of-Growth.html

In essence, they estimated that if human beings continued to consume more than nature was capable of providing, global economic collapse and abrupt population decline could occur at around 2030. In other words humans are taking too much, and not giving enough back, and sooner rather than later there is going to be a very big problem.

Governments baying for economic growth at all cost are digging us deeper into the quagmire. They pursue this because they measure success in money, not in wellbeing or protection of the ecosystems on which we all actually depend in order to stay alive. 

Ever more dangerous and unwholesome methods are being used to extract fossil fuels. Tar sands are huge wasters of energy and put more CO2 into the atmosphere in their extraction than when they are burnt. Fracking - or hydraulic fracturing – pumps toxic chemicals into the ground to release small pockets of gas, deep sea oil drilling has an abysmal record, but still they do it.

But there is another way of doing business. Growth is still possible, but only if we invest in technologies such as renewable energy supplies, allocate money for innovation and research so that we can overcome our dependence on dirty fuels and convert to clean energies such as wind, tide and sun. We need to stop wasting so much, and stop polluting the air with CO2 and poisons from incinerators and dirty industries. We need to reuse more of what we have, and recycle more of what we need such as metals and plastics. Recycling leaves more in the resource pot for the next generation.

If you had the choice between a car burning fossil fuels, and a long and healthy life for your children, which would you choose?

Limits to growth was updated in 2008, and the data was found to remain relevant. Update document can be read here http://www.csiro.au/files/files/plje.pdf

Avarice is a vice, the exaction of usury is a misdemeanour, and the love of money is detestable. - John Maynard Keynes

Poised on the brink of economic meltdown as we are, governments all over the world are baying frantically for growth. But growth is not the answer to our problems.

Way back in the 1700’s Adam Smith recognized a limit to economic growth. He predicted that in the long run, population growth would push wages down, and natural resources would become increasingly scarce. 

Consider a steady state economy - an economy of stable or mildly fluctuating size, minimal chance of the boom and bust cycle, less opportunity for outright greed. The term can apply equally to a national economy, a local, regional, or global economy. To be sustainable, a steady state economy must not exceed ecological limits, and that is it’s most important attribute.

Our recent and unprecedented growth in economic activity has significantly shifted the balance of nature with potentially disastrous consequences for the ecology of the planet, for our own well-being but particularly for that of the next generation. It is a mistake to believe that more growth will diminish our problems. In the long term more growth would be a disaster, as continuous growth is completely incompatible with sustainability.

A steady state economy does not imply a stationary state of human improvement. There would be as much scope as ever for all kinds of mental culture, and moral and social progress; as much room for improving the Art of Living (and a bigger likelihood of it being improved), when minds cease to be engrossed by the shallow art of obtaining more money.

The human economy is embedded in nature, completely. Without the natural world to draw upon, there is nothing to make money from. But we have been perverse. We have exploited nature to its very limits, maybe beyond its ability to absorb our delinquency. Economic processes are actually biological, physical, and chemical processes. Humans don’t create anything, they transform it into something else – plastics, cars, toxic waste.

Economic growth cannot be relied upon to alleviate poverty either. On the contrary, economic growth has polarized wealth – mostly into the hands of the few. If the pie isn’t getting any bigger, we need to cut and distribute the pieces in a fair way. Poor people who have trouble meeting basic needs tend not to care about sustainability - how can they when the priority is finding the next meal. At the other end of the scale, excessively rich people tend to consume unsustainable quantities of resources. Fair distribution of wealth, therefore, is a critical part of sustainability and the steady state economy.

60 years ago, John Maynard Keynes said “The day is not far off when the economic problem will take the back seat where it belongs, and the arena of the heart and the head will be occupied or reoccupied, by our real problems – the problems of life and of human relations, of creation and behaviour and religion.”

Economic collapse is extremely painful. But environmental collapse - the collapse of the planet's support systems which sustain life on earth as we know it - that is truly unbearable.

Governments have their heads stuck in the past. They can only think of recreating what has been – growth. But the future will be different. The future needs the fairness and sustainability only steady state economics can bring.

More here at http://steadystate.org and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steady-state_economy

Redefining Prosperity

50 years of incessant advertising and lies has made us think that prosperity means having more money to buy more ‘things’. Yet each of us knows that beyond a certain level, the ownership of ‘things’ makes us no happier and certainly no healthier. There is a perception that a bigger car or house increases our social status, but that perception is marginal at best. It does not make for a better human being.

Prosperity is defined as being flourishing, thriving and successful. To be a flourishing, thriving and successful human being depends more upon health and happiness than the size of your bank balance. The misplaced clamour for economic growth has put many economies into decline, and economic notions of prosperity are at last being seen for what they actually are – a negative impact on personal and national self esteem.  It seems that we have mistakenly equated the acquisition of monetary wealth with our feelings about ourselves.

If the crazy drive for economic growth has got us where we are – a society becoming less equal by the day, public borrowing at levels in excess of £1 trillion in the UK (US $15 trillion), shrinking tax receipts and rising unemployment - why oh why is the government baying for more growth?

Our socio–economic order is rotten. Greed and irresponsibility have fuelled little but disaster. Yet still we hear the cry for a return to ‘business as usual’. Certain groups and individuals know exactly what to do, because they know how much they have to gain from it. A return to the old order – as if that was possible – would continue to magnify the wealth of the few. We now know that the problems facing communities right now are a result of ‘growth’. We do not want a return to the old order. 

We live in a world of finite resources. No matter how deep we dig, the fossil fuels will eventually disappear, so for starters an oil based economy does not make much sense. Uranium too is a fossil fuel, and its supply is finite. Gas, coal – all the fossil fuels can only be mined for so long, and they will be no more.

Life for us all is poised to change. There are a lot of mouths to feed, so we must look to ourselves and our communities for the answers. Big Money and Big Corporations will be dragged screaming into their own decline, because the last thing they want to see is ordinary people managing their  our own way into the future – and it could be a lot better than the past.

A sensible government would be looking to real prosperity. It would be using sustainable energy sources and guiding us towards non-financial goals such as family life, health and community. The Buddhist definition of prosperity is based on collectivism and compassion, and that is not a bad place to start.

Government does not solve problems - it subsidizes them.

The global economy is in “a devil of a mess” according to Ken Clarke, UK Justice Secretary.

Thank you Ken, we already knew. And we know that none of you in government have the foggiest clue how to put it right. You are working on old solutions to old problems, and no amount of history will provide the answer. 

You haven't yet worked out that we need new solutions to new problems.  Rapidly widening inequality, pointless wars, diminishing resources, climate change; all new problems needing new solutions. The history books won't help us now. Taking the hard decisions will.

Problem - high inequality. The income gap had been closing since Victorian times, but now it's widening at a terrifying pace. Top company executives are now earning more than 75 times the average wage. In 1980 it was about 13 times. The Green Party has long considered that 10 times is about right.

Average UK wages have increased threefold since 1980, the chief executive's package at the now partly state-owned Lloyds Bank has increased by more than 3,000%. This is an astronomical pay rise for poor judgement, bad management, and downright fraud.

Tough talk about market forces is tantamount to bullying. The 1%ers are just well connected idiots whose proof of greed, mismanagement and foul play is on record. It's time to call their bluff. The High Pay Commission recommends transparency, accountability and fairness http://highpaycommission.co.uk/ I recommend pay cuts.

Problem - war.  There are always those who think wars can be a catalyst to move past a crisis. Military rhetoric surrounds us. War is not a tool to solve our current problems. It is an abhorrence. Mumblings about Iran grow louder. Israel and the US are about to start playing the war game entitled  Juniper Cobra 12 to check that their missiles can be properly co-ordinated in times of what can only be called blatant aggression. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27731

Israel is a nuclear power and more than willing to use it (but that's a secret of course). The US is a nuclear power and has already used it. What has Iran done to deserve our wrath- apart from not cowering to the whim of the West.

War with Iran will cost taxpayers dear. It will not solve our economic problems. It will make them worse. I recommend an outbreak of peace together with military spend being diverted to clean energy projects worldwide. The armed forces have the engineers, the logistics, the manpower.

Problem - diminishing resources. We cannot have unlimited economic growth in a world of finite resources.  Water scarcity looms. Land to grow unsustainable crops to feed and mobilise a massive increase in human numbers is in short supply, yet we cannot kick the old habits of thoughtless consumerism. We eat too much meat, use too much oil, pollute too much air. In short we are, unscrupulous, unethical, unsustainable. We have to change our ways and no government has the guts to tell the truth. Listen if you will to the tired old political rhetoric, but it won't solve the problem. Lifestyle change will.

Problem - Climate change. It's galloping up to us right now. Atmospheric CO2 has risen from 310 parts per million to an alarming 389 in just 50 years. Precious little is being done about it. NIMBY's don't like windmills, bird lovers don't like them offshore; governments spend fortunes (of our money) promoting nuclear because it gives them weapons grade material. It seems everyone likes the dirtiest power source of all - coal. Or do they want magic? I recommend New Education  for all based on ethical lifestyle and hands-on problem solving.

For too long governments have been put into office by big money and big media to do their bidding. The people and the planet are not even second. They were not even on the agenda - until now.

Hat's off to the Occupiers, to the Trade Unions, to the people waking up to the real world. We are on the agenda, and we might just write it!

White Poppies Make History

The outbreak of red poppy fascism across the British media is alarming. The red poppy has morphed into some kind of corporate uniform to the point that it seems probable that anyone attempting to enter the BBC last week, without said appendage, would be turned away.

Do the wearers understand what they are doing? Have they given it even a modicum of independent thought? Have they considered the White Poppy for peace?

I do not want to take anything away from the British Legion whose work in picking up the pieces of the war ravaged is very important, but I do wish to say that war is not the glorious sacrifice we are taught it to be. Today’s wars are about resources, destabilization of sovereign states, and big big money. The military /industrial complex cannot wait to do their version of ‘picking up the pieces’. The lucrative rebuilding contracts are the icing on the cake for the mega corporations who have already creamed off the tax-payer subsidised weapons manufacturing industry. The arms trade rub their collective hands with perverse glee as they watch the built-in obsolescence of their products obliterating countries where they personally have no chance of being harmed. Killing, maiming, genetically mutilating, destroying, indiscriminate and arbitrary execution - no weapon or tactic is too abhorrent to use. More bombs and tanks can easily be made – and sold - to governments who continue the relentless cycle in cruel denial of basic truths and human rights. Today’s wars are not the honourable red poppy event of misty-eyed valour they have been painted to be. Today’s wars are about as far from courageous self-defence as you can get.

As independent thought is being ground out of us, conflict resolution is shunned. Research into what makes a good peace is cast into the wilderness and the proposed Wales Peace Academy languishes in the back rooms of despair together with those great thinkers who know there is a better way. Peace has been given a bad name because there is no money in it for the greedy few. 

In the face of unrelenting moves to ever more vile wars, peace campaigners in Newport have resurrected the White Poppy, and it is to the credit of the British Legion in Newport (SE Wales) that for the first time, possibly anywhere, the White Poppy wreath was laid as part of the official rembrance ceremony at the Cenotaph in Clarence Place. For just one moment it was possible to think that the laying of White Poppy wreaths would no longer be a clandestine activity, as if peace was not to be talked about in polite circles and White Poppy wreaths laid only at dead of night. For one moment Peace was actually up front and on the agenda.

The Peace Pledge Union have this year sold more white poppies than any time since 1934. When they bother to consider the reality, people are thinking differently about war.

I Mind that You Have Bought My Government

The Greek government has defaulted. Should we rejoice? 

For the most part Greece has defaulted on the impossibly high interest rates it has been asked to pay for borrowing money to survive in a system of economic duplicity and political corruption. Any smidgen of growth Greece can wring from its depleted economy will go towards paying interest rates forced upon them by the undemocratic ratings agencies such as Standard and Poor, and the banking cartel who like to think they have us all firmly stitched up in their grubby little mits.

The third world – or that which we laughingly call the developing world – which has been prevented from developing largely by the sharp practice of the IMF, the World Bank, and utterly mis-named fair trade agreements, has been in this position for decades, with any economic surpluses being put not towards their own growth, but to the bottomless coffers of the banking fraternity in the form of interest rates, infamously known by its other name: usury.

Some of us look upon the panic in the EU and the US with wry amusement. Some of us are taking part in the downfall of the industrial-military-political complex of greed by getting out there and Occupying. Others are wringing their hands because life as we know it is ending.

St Paul’s Cathedral, the chair and trustees of which are drawn from the financial conglomerates of Lloyds Bank, Lloyds Banking Group and Pricewaterhouse Coopers , has, by a twist of fate been hosting the London Occupy movement in the face of enormous pressure from the Establishment. Yet it has remembered its first calling, the people, and faced down the bankers.

Italy is next in line to default, and the sharp suits lining up at the G20 belie the panic. The Euro currency is falling apart. When EU monetary union was formed, they forgot the story of the Three Little Pigs, and built their houses on straw. But it is not the Big Bad Wolf which is blowing their houses down, it is the quiet decisions of the people.

Peacefully they congregate in the face of violence. They know it will work. Governments send in the troops to put off other would-be occupiers, but still the movement grows.

Young people are rising above their tick box education with the vision to see right through this system of greed. The bankers, blinded by decades of unfettered greed, have wormed their way out of a mere 0.05% on financial transactions commonly known as the Robin Hood Tax. Aided and abetted by government they spontaneously combust at the thought of higher taxes on the rich – even though a one-off, one year only, tax of 20% on the top 10% UK wage earners would wipe out the £800 billion UK deficit in one foul swoop.

Their greed is paving the way to their own undoing. They think they can buy us all. They have bought our governments, and manipulated our systems for the furtherance of their own pointless gratification. Ordinary people are feeling stitched-up. They have stopped buying ‘stuff, they have stopped listening to the propaganda. The sword of Damocles hangs over every job in town and the belts are drawing tighter. Economic growth is no more. Bankers and governments are looking like ridiculous parodies of Canute as they try to force back the incoming tide of change.

We don’t want a new system, we want those who are being paid to improve our lives to get on and do the job – to work for the future health and security of people and planet.

http://www.greenparty.org.uk/news/the-bankers-backing-st-pauls1.html

http://www.glasgowmediagroup.org/content/view/44/45/