Until now I have remained in semi-detached mode vis-à-vis the Radical Consultation with my role limited to attending half a dozen planning meetings, throwing out a few ideas, putting my foot down on occasions and giving generalised moral support to John Papworth who has been organising the work. However I have taken on the tasks of making sure the radcon III websites are ready for the brochure launch in The Ecologist and for having a Local Charter ready by mid-June so the Conference Steering Group can put their names to it.
Much of today was spent with the Conference Websites. Here is a short version of the e-memo that went off before I rushed off to catch the 1750 train to West St Leonard’s: ‘I have integrated the various radcon III websites and web addresses. This is our Web Project holding position for the next few weeks to give us a breathing space to develop the two main sites which are www.radcon3.net for older more books, print publishing and academic papers oriented people…and www.myspace.com/rad3con ...for young people more into music, media, festivals etc.
The Pentagon has started to express alarm over ‘the rapid pace of China’s military expansion’ by giving dire warnings that ‘Beijing is intent on projecting its missile, naval and aircraft power far beyond its shores’. It’s been 50 years since the Military-Industrial Complex dished up The Yellow Peril for breakfast. Perhaps budgets are under threat from the rising power of the Political-Legal-Media Complex (PLM). Perhaps it is concern about their street-cred in the wake of recent Mesopotamian Adventures. Anyway according to the Pentagon China is spending two or three times more on defence than they are telling us. For decades the Pentagon and the CIA told us the same about the Soviet Union during the Cold War but none of it turned out to be true. So a heavy dose of scepticism is in order. But for what it’s worth the figure being put around for Chinese defence spending is $100 billion next year.
This recent dodgy dossier on China’s military spending is an annual event which gives America’s Generals a chance to frighten the politicians with their latest news of nuclear arsenal upgrades and China’s latest purchases of killingry from Russia. The message the Pentagon wants to get across to the Hawks in Congress to pass on for PLM Massaging is that ‘the lack of transparency and the scope of the Chinese arms build-up is evidence of Beijing’s desire to interdict at long ranges aircraft carrier and expeditionary strike groups that might deploy in the western Pacific.’
Once the reality on the ground has been defined it is just a few short procedural steps to bills for the US Congress …and the US tax-payer. ‘An immediate American pre-emptive response is vital to our national security!’ ‘America must have a deployment capability between Mainland China and Taiwan…though not before our marketing boys have done their stuff and sold killingry to both sides. The last place any sane American should want to place an expensive US Pacific fleet is between warring Chinese factions in No-Man’s Sea.
One of my many unpublished articles is entitled The Royal Prerogative which begins with a short history of the English Commonwealth which goes like this. ‘In England the royal prerogative is the way centralised Government bypasses Parliament. These princely prerogatives are what Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army left in the royal domain after grabbing the things that mattered for their Short, Long and Barebone Parliaments.
Oliver Cromwell was born in 1599 and was elected to represent Cambridge City in the Short Parliament of April 1640. He continued to serve in the Long Parliament convened in August 1640 and took a leading role in that parliament's refusal to bail out the bankrupt King Charles I, eventually stripping him of his power, taking control of fiscal policy and placing the army and navy under parliamentary control. Within two years a Civil War was waging throughout the land with families divided and royalist Cavaliers and parliamentarian Roundheads at daggers drawn.
Out of the skirmishing the Puritans emerged victorious, cut off the king's head and after an interlude with the Barebones Parliament appointed Cromwell as Lord Protector of England ruling with the help of a single-chamber parliament. It was not long before the expense of a standing army and the cost of the trade war with the Dutch brought Cromwell to his knees too. Nations need finance as well as firepower if they are to undertake glorious action. Cromwell died in 1658 and two years later the monarchy was restored.
The immediate legacy of the English Civil War was a constitution in which the King in Parliament was the glue that bound together the monarchy and the three branches of government: the legislature, the administration and the judiciary. Before the English Civil War the princes did not rule unfettered. There was a written constitution imposed by provincial barons on King John at Runnymede called Magna Carta. But mostly the princes were constrained by the unwritten Common Law and the rights derived from it upheld by a semi-independent judiciary’.
There will be more about Magna Carta…and the sequel Magna Carta II which Charles III, King of England, will be signing into English Law at Runnymede at the Summer Solstice of 2015…800 years on…in my weblog on 15th June. I am proposing that radcon III draws up a draft of Magna Carta II and a Declaration of Intent.
