Taking responsibility for yourself

Whether or not we are happy with this government and our local representative Karen Lumley, I believe we should think more seriously about our responsibility for what we do and what we can do with respect to government. What I mean is, tax payers are paying for what this government does and for what Karen Lumley decides on our behalf. Well, Karen is a human being and she will read your letters and emails and politely respond by letter as she has done with me (despite some previous rudeness from me, sorry Karen, my bad). If we don't tell Karen what we think about various issues then she is going to have to go by what she believes to be correct. In the absence of your voice to Karen, Karen is hearing the voices of the businesses and corporations that sustain her PR campaign with funding to her campaign and to the general cash box of the Conservative Party.

So bearing these details in mind, what is the most important issue right now, and what is our philosophy on the matter? We each have to decide for ourselves what is the most important issue and how our own philosophy relates to it. For example, the most important issue for me right now is our policy (yes, yours and mine) of supporting economic sanctions against Iran over allegations that they might have a nuclear weapon. Iran has a population of approximately 74 million people, which by some 'beer matt' math and assuming say 4 people per family, means there are approximately 19 million families being starved to death for refusing to stop developing their nuclear energy program, even though it is in complete accord with their right to develop nuclear energy for peaceful means under the NPT (Non-Proliferation Treaty) which they have signed and agreed to and are living up to their obligations. Interestingly Israel has not signed the NPT though it has many nuclear weapons, they regularly threaten their neighbours and are in the midst of the slow extermination of the Palestinians, yet we are not starving Israel to death. Then there is the fact that we have around 900 nuclear weapons, and as signers of the NPT we are contractually committed to eradicating our nuclear arsenal, but we haven’t. In fact we are planning to overhaul or replace this arsenal.

So, I'm really struggling with the philosophy of our actions and the message that we are sending to the world. We are participating in, what under any reasonable definition of the term is genocide, because we think Iran is scary? Iran hasn't attacked another nation for 200 years unless you count the period under the Shah who we installed as ruler to do our bidding. Iran has no nuclear weapons that we know of (despite what the US controlled IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) says) and we think that they are scary? How scary are we to others? I mean after killing a approximately 1 million people and making homeless a further 2 million in Iraq with our sanctions and invasion because Iraq supposedly had WMDs (actually we know they did at some point even if they were gone when we invaded, because we sold them the technology to do it), how scary must we look to other countries? Are we saying to the world 'if you seem scary to me then I'm going to kill you'? It certainly seems that way to me. But far more worrying is if that is the kind of behaviour we are telling other countries is valid, how should we expect to be treated by them?

Karen Lumley is a proud Christian and sits on a board of governors for a local faith school. The thing is I can't fathom how this fits into her Christian philosophy. I'm pretty sure Jesus didn't say "do unto others if they seem scary". It also seems to me to clash with Christian doctrine of "let he who hath no sins cast the first stone", which in my simplistic interpretation is the same as 'clean up your own yard instead of complaining about your neighbours', and would seem to me to map onto this issue as 'shouldn't we get rid of our own nukes before point our fingers at Iran?'. If what we are doing is meant to be what we would have others do unto us then I want no part of it. I have sent this very question to Karen and politely warned her that she may find herself in a war crimes tribunal at some point in the future if she doesn't publically conscientiously object to this genocidal behaviour.

Karen is currently sitting with our responsibility on her shoulders and if we do not tell her what we think then we cannot blame her for any of these actions. They are our responsibility. I have mailed Karen with my objection and would like to publically state that I do not consent to murdering millions of Iranian families because we think they are scary. Whether you agree with me or not, it is your responsibility to tell Karen (tellkaren.com) whether you consent to this behaviour. It's the only way Karen is going to know what you think.

If you want to take responsibility for yourself then to contact your MP all you need is your post code and this : http://findyourmp.parliament.uk