Russell Brand on the need for revolution

Russell Brand, who are you to edit a political magazine? – Jeremy Paxman

From what we now see, nothing of reform in the political world ought to be held improbable. It is an age of revolutions, in which everything may be looked for. — Thomas Paine

It is possible to govern and to govern ourselves without the parasite that calls itself government. — Zapatista communiqué

I have to admit I was no great fan of Russell Brand, not after the incident with that pathetic idiot Jonathan Ross, but, with this encounter with Jeremy Paxman, I have to admit, he has gone up in my estimation.

The opening question by Jeremy Paxman, has a very condescending sneer on the ‘who are you’, and as to you do not vote, the implication being you are lower than someone who writes for the Sun.

Jeremy Paxman just does not get it. Politics is a lot more than corrupt politicians with their snouts in the trough in the Palace of Westminster. There is a real world out there. The electorate are more than election fodder, to put a cross in a box for Tweedledum or Tweedledee, to then be ignored until the next election.

The problems is we have a political elite, who talk amongst themselves. This includes the BBC journalists. They all went to the same schools, same university.

Why should people vote for a person who does not represent them, who never has any intention of representing them? Who then tries to claim they represent the people. If few people vote, it makes it increasingly difficult to maintain the lie, they are representing the people, when we all know, they are out for themselves, and beyond that, Big Business.

That is not to say all politicians should be tarred with the same brush. Caroline Lucas works tirelessly, not only on behalf of the people of Brighton, but on issues beyond Brighton, on climate change, on poverty, on the environment, on human rights. Greg Mulholland has campaigned tirelessly on a better deal for local pubs and pub landlords and had been prepared to take on and expose the malpractices of the pubcos.

At the other end we have politicians like Gerald Howarth, who acts for arms dealers, pay-day loan companies, McDonald’s, even going behind the backs of the local community, to stitch up a dirty little back room behind closed doors deal with the Fat Clown to demolish c1720s Tumbledown Dick for a Drive-Thru McDonald’s. Or minister Brandon Lewis, whose portfolio ironically includes High Streets, who wishes to see our High Streets full of tacky junk food outlets, and to be concerned about health, is to be a Nanny State. But to be fair to Brandon Lewis, he has been prepared to listen and engage, therefore maybe if done with an open mind, he will be pushing for diversity on the High Street (the opposite is failing High Streets).

If the scum on offer are not worth voting for, then do not vote. We know they are a bunch of liars, so why believe their lies and give them a second chance?

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) put forward in his Rights of Man, the revolutionary idea that people should be free to govern themselves. So revolutionary were his ideas, he was forced to flee England. He was instrumental in both the America and French Revolution.

Thomas Paine, thought, that if we draw from all walks of life, all parts of the country, we would have a Parliament representative of the country. But this is not what we have, we have an elite, already in power, or wanting their turn, who choose who to vote for. And those who are elected vote on issues how they are told by the Party Machine.

The political system has failed. We know it has failed when we see vast accumulations of wealth, concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. We know it has failed when we see our planet raped and pillaged. We know it has failed when we see millions in dire poverty. We know it has failed when we see the rich and global corporations dodging tax, meanwhile welfare benefits and public services are cut due to declining government revenue. We know it has failed when we see government filing legal action to protect bonuses for greedy bankers. We know it has failed when we see political parties accepting money from the very same companies that are dodging taxes, profiteering, pillaging the planet, and basically screwing the rest of us.

Who is best placed to decide if Farnborough should agree to the demolition of c 1720s Tumbledown Dick, local people who know what is best for Farnborough or clueless thick as two short planks whose only reason they are councillors is because they stood on a party ticket or corrupt planners who for years have been in the pockets of developers?

The present political and economic system is broke beyond repair. It has to be replaced by a new system.

If we look at one aspect, Climate Chaos, to avoid any chance of thermal runway, we have to reduce global temperature rise to no more than  2°C , and even then it is not guaranteed. This translates to a reduction in CO2 carbon emissions equivalent into the atmosphere. The carbon levels is accumulative. Had we started at the Rio earth Summit in 1992, we could have had a reasonable reduction year on year. But no, instead we continued to belch carbon into the atmosphere. Now, to stand a chance of meeting the  2°C rise, we need a crash 10% year-on-year into the foreseeable future. This is unprecedented in modern times, and would cause a collapse of the present economic, greed driven system. It did not happen when the Soviet Union collapsed, we have to go right back to the Great Crash of the 1920s.

Naomi Klein:

Even after the Soviet Union collapsed, reductions of this duration and depth did not happen (the former Soviet countries experienced average annual reductions of roughly 5 per cent over a period of ten years). They did not happen after Wall Street crashed in 2008 (wealthy countries experienced about a 7 per cent drop between 2008 and 2009, but their CO2 emissions rebounded with gusto in 2010 and emissions in China and India had continued to rise). Only in the immediate aftermath of the great market crash of 1929 did the United States, for instance, see emissions drop for several consecutive years by more than 10 per cent annually, according to historical data from the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Centre. But that was the worst economic crisis of modern times.

Brad Werner, using complex models of geophysical processes, in paper presented at  Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union, held annually in San Francisco (December 2012), entitled Is Earth F**ked? Or to give it its full title, Is Earth F**ked? Dynamical Futility of Global Environmental Management and Possibilities for Sustainability via Direct Action Activism, has shown, the only hope we have, is through mass direct action, as that introduces friction into the system. The problem we face is huge corporate greed, raping and pillaging the planet.

Look at tax dodging. It is not politicians who raised it. It has risen to the top of the G8 Agenda, through UK Uncut occupying tax-dodgers.

In the US, the one percent v ninety-nine percent, has come from Occupy, raising the awareness that one percent has the wealth of the other ninety-nine percent, that 300 wealthiest Americans have as much wealth as the 85 million poorest.

To be fair to Jeremy Paxman, year in, year out, he interviews the same bunch of liars, Tweedledee or Tweedledum, they all merge into one. Towards the end of the interview, the scales do appear to drop from his eyes

This video has gone viral. When I looked Sunday night, 6.9 million, when I looked Tuesday night, 8.2 million.

I was alerted to this video by my friends Pandora and Bianca Jagger, saw it mentioned by New Economics Foundation, but what really told me I had to watch it, was when I saw it mentioned by John Seed, a deep ecologist and philosopher, who is located the other side of the world in Australia.

• Russell Brand on revolution: “We no longer have the luxury of tradition”
• A Revolution Led By Russell Brand?
• A sense of the masses – a manifesto for the new revolution
• Naomi Klein: How science is telling us all to revolt