Dear Steve,
I have put some energy into thinking about your useful response.
1. "Calling for Social Responsibility"
In most of the work that I do, I rely on close, human and informal personal interactions in order to achieve what I need to get done. I find it very hard to communicate with people who cannot give the energy and time to get involved. If I send a letter or an e-mail, and there is no reply, I'm operating in a vacuum.
Even though democracy doesn't work very well in this country at the moment (people are too involved in work/leisure in places that are not "home"), I have tried to be in touch with local democratic representatives.
As for Councillors, I only get responses from the political party not in power.
As for Members of Parliament, an MP-in-waiting in a nearby ward has me on their mailing list, but doesn't seem to want to get the big picture.
I get very little by way of response from my Member of Parliament, in fact, it tends to zero in a very real sense.
The Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform don't talk to me any more since I bumped into their people informally and spilled some beans about what they said.
I suspect that there are a few "nexus" people floating around in both Government and Business who have the ear of the very small number of people with real influence.
Funnily enough, these "nexus" connector-type people (Malcolm Gladwell) seem to be very good at propagating memes (mind viruses), as their arguments turns up all over the media and in the minds of my friends and family, like foreign DNA contaminates a petri dish.
If we need to be "calling individuals and organisations to account", we do need to know these people, really, first. It's all very well reading about a politician in a newspaper, or in Private Eye (I love it !), but I can't justify passing comment on someone's attitudes unless I really know the person, until I've met them and sounded them out.
I occasionally make comical remarks in writing about the state of play, but I don't have much foundation for what I jest about. It's all supposition, burdening a public figure with a character or a trait that their nearest and dearest sure wouldn't recognise.
So, if I have not met someone, I cannot be confident of knowing their aims or their agenda.
And it's very dry and bland to try to critique the aims and agenda of an organisation. An outcome in the media or in a financial report, or plain old environmental observation or dumpster-diving, can give some clue about trends and traits, but you need to get the organisation to own up to this, and that can be very hard, particularly if they have employed a PR company to portray them as super green OK.
They can just "double plus good" everything that gets criticised about their operations.
2. "The International Crisis Deepens"
I've seen a number of important Climate Change and Energy reports bubble up in the Press this year (in print and online), that kind of fade as soon as they are born. I'm quite sure it is deliberate. Lack of connect-the-dots reporting causes things to fall by the wayside.
What kind of legal or social vehicle needs to be used to "challenge" corporate misdoings and Government mishandling, if you can't be like Mark Thomas and jokingly say "we know where you live" ?
And what kind of timescale is it necessary to scope in order to get anything effective done ? And what kind of support, financial assistance and personnel does it take to challenge, say, the DBERR (or BERR, formerly known as DTi) on backing down from a new series of coal-fired power station sign-throughs ?
Oh yes, Climate Camp got through the Kingsnorth fences, and then got arrested. Court orders. Silenced. Media bubble over.
Platform London want to challenge the financing of coal, with a boycott and petitioning :-
http://www.platformlondon.org/carbonweb/showitem.asp?article=153
This will be perhaps more lasting, penetrating (encapsulating).
I don't think we have a gap in perspectives. I think, rather, we may have a difference in approaches. Maybe what you do is more effective. Maybe I should climb over and join you.
3. Nuremberg
The people ARE nice. And they're doing their jobs ("just following orders"). They are not, in my view "colluding". That is a loaded term. From their point of view they are "cooperating". How do we "cooperate" right back at them ?
How do we make sure we are getting through to the right people ? We can say that "just following orders" is no longer a justifiable excuse, we can try to pin it to people, in a meaningful, non-violent way, but how do we implement that ?
If people are outside our narrative, they won't necessarily understand.
I went to Nuremberg when I was young, and I stood in the stadium and thought about the rallies that happened there, and as I was pondering, the biggest, fattest, dark and heavy Bavarian storm rolled in. Very potent memory.
4. "Killed Today"
The way the News is reported, you would think that it is normal that people blow themselves up in Baghdad, in Kabul, in Lahore.
Their true message never reaches across the synaptic gap of political meaning.
I found it easier to understand why the pilots flew into the Twin Towers, where the target was so, so obvious : the Western Economy (let them waste all their resources on warfare).
5. "The Agendas Will Merge"
I don't want Climate Change to become militarised, politicised, weaponised, conflictualised. I want it to be the opportunity to do things differently : "Social Change, not Climate Change".
The window we have : the final chance to get things right. To be human, deal personally with people that make important decisions, set the record straight by peaceful means...this goes right back to meeting people, knowing people, engaging people.
I want to hold some interviews. I want to listen. I want to understand. I want to hear from people who really do have personal influence on national decisions. I have a digital filming camera and I know how to publish digital films on the Internet.
Can the interviewees answer five simple questions, such as :-
a. What do you think about Arctic meltdown ?
b. What other Climate Change impacts are we already experiencing ?
c. How do you propose that we achieve our targets in Renewable Energy ?
d. Can you make a strong prediction about the global Economy ?
e. What measures do you take to de-Carbonise your workplace ?
By the way, I can't call you "old school", unless you call me "new kid on the block",
jo.
+44 77 17 22 13 96
http://www.changecollege.org.uk
________________________________
Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2008 14:32:15 +0100
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Social Responsibility
To: [log in to unmask]
Dear Jo,
Thanks for your thoughtful response. Call me old school if you must but panoramic is for me political. The game we are involved in has shifting rules but it is essentially about calling individuals and organisations to account. It is about social responsibility for outcomes and identifying the ethical processes involved or the lack of them.
Of course everyone is nice and Hitler was a vegetarian but that shouldn't blind us to the outcomes of systems which he and his colleagues initiated. Demonisation is an elastic word but we do need to identify who is colluding with those processes and who is not. After all that was the achievement at Nuremberg. No one can subsequently take the line of were nice people and we were only following orders. It is one of the most thrilling aspects of activists like Mark Thomas who have the genius to identify a corporate wrong then take it to the doors of the individuals involved, and ask people to help identify those responsible, what are their names, what streets do they live on, can we call them up and ask why?
If I was a betting man, my bet would be that far more people are going to be killed tomorrow by the military industrial complex than by climate change, and the day after, and the day after... At some stage the agendas will merge but calling for social responsibility is where this journey begins. Let us compare notes in five years time and see wither the gap between our perspectives has narrowed as the international crisis deepens.....
Steve
________________________________
From: jo abbess
Sent: Mon 18/08/2008 01:21
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Kyoto2 : Systems Analysis
Hi Steve and CRISIS FORUM,
Unsettling though it may be, I believe it is time we stepped out of the political narrative we are so accustomed to and take a new, panoramic view.
You say : "There are many forces in the military and associated military, police media ,entertainment complex which have no investment in dealing with climate change."
There are, at the root of it, only a very small number of people who are agitants, stick-in-the-muds for the old power struggles : the "forces" you mention are mostly shells and shells of unknowning, unquestioning going-with-the-flow people, circling round a few, nuclei, characters that refuse to budge.
Climate Change gets to touch and harm everyone. Nobody can assume they will retain their wealth, position, assets, role. There is not much that we can do to protect ourselves, none of us, not even the people who feel they are the hub of the authority/wealth universe.
There are people in the militaries, the security services, the police, the government, the justice, health, industry, energy and finance systems who know and feel the weight of Climate Change. We have to be confident, that, with time for reflection and solidification, the fuzzy can get to grips with what it is necessary to do to protect peace, order and food supplies.
We need not fear violent repression if we can engage in pan-authority dialogue. For myself, I talk to anyone, from I hope a platform of peace. It can be unnerving sometimes, as I know I might be meeting with emissaries from the "forces", who are not declaring themselves openly to me just yet, and who may have an agenda that is dangerous. I just have to keep nerves of steel and take basic precautions.
The ice is thin, granted. Any one person's safety, physically, professionally, politically can only come with cooperation over a network of increasing size, with messages that have clarity and sincerity and are based on true understanding.
When I was quite young, I was offered the "opportunity" to get "promoted" on a work project. I declined on the basis that I did not want to be a part of something that made technology to kill people.
We have to make decisions that accord with our consciences and knowledge. Now that we know about Climate Change and the dangers it poses, I believe we are obliged to step outside the comfort zone.
The people inside the "military industrial complex" are human beings and they return home from work to their spouses/partners, children, rising energy bills, rubbish TV and last night's washing up. At the heart of it all, there is no shining edifice of dark power, just a collection of people, with their weaknesses, their lack of awareness, and their desperate wish to keep their jobs.
jo.
+44 77 17 22 13 96
http://www.changecollege.org.uk
________________________________
Date: Sun, 17 Aug 2008 18:49:41 +0100
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Kyoto2 : Systems Analysis
To: [log in to unmask]
Dear Jo,
What is the old Hopi saying - "we are the ones we have been waiting for...".But that should not persuade us to think that politics has disappeared or to confuse the truth that is with the truth that should be.
There are many forces in the military and associated military, police media ,entertainment complex which have no investment in dealing with climate change. Why should they? The existing rule book pays very well and if it shifts then politicians will be bought off to ensure the new rule book favours the impunity of the old players. See for example the shameful British Aerospace saga and the political calling off of the Special Fraud squad.
All Chris is really saying is that to be unaware of these agendas is to present responses which have no hope of success since they are embedded in business as usual. Military terminology does need to be deconstructed too but it has a utility for those who may end up dealing with the consequences of climate change in the most reductionist and cruel ways - essentially murdering migrants on a genocidal scale if we believe the estimated billion people on the move scenarios.
These old elements are not necessarily stuck, some think they have more chance of defining the future agenda than you or I. So what are we to do? Politely say by your leave? We don't need to demonize this enemy, just understand the collossal destructive potential which it is building up for future space wars, taking out cities of more than ten million, full spectrum dominance. And that might is beginning to create new potentials because of the unprecedented investment in the ongoing revolution in military affairs... This is an appartus that has the power in single instruments to unleash more explosive power than every device ever exploded since gunpowder was invented.....that's professional belligerence... And what is worse, if you scratch the surface of peace theory, people like Lewis fry Richardson - who basically did the maths of our current weather forecasting computers but using log tables...then turned to the statistics of deadly quarrels...Under certain conditions these arms races can go autistic. Within this perspective, world war one, world war two and world war three are part of the same process...
The basic challenge is to learn how to deconstruct and disempower such systems and thinking but non-violently. That is a big ask. Look around at the NGO's and academics trying to understand such dynamics and the funding is on allotment scale - then look around at the glossy high rise towers of the major military companies pumping out systems which are designed to mangle our fates and ask yourself, where do the probablilities lie? I think all Chris and I are asking for is a better unndertsanding of the contexts within which the climate change agenda is likely to be fought out - coupled with a health warning that the losing sides of the intellectual debates may not play fair, or favour human over state security.....So we can't challenge one dimension of the idocy - as you have so eloquently done without being aqare that somebody somewhere has to be just as eloquent and logical in deconstructing current military agendas. At some point these debates unify, why not now?
Steve
________________________________
From: jo abbess
Sent: Sun 17/08/2008 18:02
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Kyoto2 : Systems Analysis
Hi Chris and CRISIS FORUM,
When I read Chris Keene's reply, my first thought was "he's in fighting mode".
Let's look at the language : "challenge", "run the world", "defeating", "they care nothing", "we go to war", "turn the public".
From my vantage point, there are no "Them", only "Us". I think we are all in this mess together.
To humour this poor, old peacemaker, can I ask you to drop the (call for) propaganda and military terminology, and try again ?
Yes, there are parts of the system that are stuck, to use the old vinyl term in a rut rather than in a groove.
I don't know whether the "complex" "care nothing". That smacks of demonisation of the "enemy".
Did "we" go to war in Iraq ? Or was this opposed by many ? And was it a war ? Looked rather like an invasion.
We all believe in free markets, apparently, so "profiteering" is justifiable, just "profit-making".
Protecting your "vested interests" is protecting the evolution of your "profit-making".
Yes, we need to describe (or "expose") the hidden influence. Yes we need to lay out for people the way things have gone wrong.
But I'm not in favour of belligerence.
jo.
+44 77 17 22 13 96
http://www.changecollege.org.uk
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