Jane and Zoé 🇪🇺 🇧🇪🇮🇪🇵🇹🇫🇷🇮🇹🇿🇦

Ramp up the pressure on Andy Burnham: weownit.org.uk/StopTheBailou…

🚨 PLEASE READ THIS. I genuinely think we've sleepwalked into something that could change the world as we know it, and I'm increasingly worried about where we'll be in just a few years if we don't change course. Look at what's happening with Ukraine, and the reports of Elon Musk's Starlink restricting Ukraine's military capabilities, alongside Trump's willingness to ease sanctions on Russia while its invasion continues. These might seem like issues specific to the Russia and Ukraine War, but they expose two enormous problems: The growing power of unelected billionaires, and the failure of international institutions to hold those in power accountable. We're entering an age of technopolarity, where a handful of billionaires and their corporations, from Starlink to Palantir and AI, are gaining extraordinary power over national security and critical infrastructure, with little to no democratic oversight. What happens when their political interests or personal ambitions conflict with those of the countries depending on them? And then there's international law. Ukraine, Gaza, Iran, and beyond have shown us what happens when powerful states and their allies can disregard international law without facing meaningful consequences. International courts undermined. Arrest warrants challenged or ignored. UN resolutions disregarded. Leaving civilians killed and displaced on an unimaginable scale. What use is international law if enforcing it ultimately depends on the goodwill of those powerful enough to break it? Then look at how this has played out with climate change. For decades, Big Oil has used its wealth to influence governments, shape public debate and delay meaningful action. We know what's happening to our planet. We know what needs to be done. Yet political action remains nowhere near what the science demands. All of this comes back to the same fundamental problem. We've allowed wealth and corporate interests to accumulate vastly more influence over political decisions than ordinary people and the planet. Meanwhile, we're encouraged to turn on each other. Immigrants, refugees, disabled people, welfare recipients and minorities are repeatedly blamed for problems they didn't create. Populists exploit that anger, offering us someone to blame while the people and interests benefiting from the existing system escape scrutiny. We're fighting each other instead of questioning who actually holds the power. And the more divided we become, the easier we are to manipulate. It's a downward spiral, and I genuinely fear how much worse it could get. Everything I've described comes back to the same fundamental imbalance of power. 💰🏭 → 🏛️ → 🔥 > 👥🌍 → 🏛️ → 🌱✨ Right now, wealth and industry have far more influence over politics than people and planet. And as long as that remains the case, every effort to tackle climate change, uphold international law, protect democracy, build a fairer economy or deliver meaningful progress is swimming against an increasingly powerful tide. Simply... WE NEED TO FLIP THE FUCKING TIDE. Imagine what becomes possible when people and planet have more power over political decisions than concentrated wealth and corporate interests. Climate action driven by science rather than fossil fuel profits. Technology serving humanity rather than billionaires. An economy built around wellbeing instead of extraction. International law that applies to everyone, regardless of power. And politics that genuinely represents the people it's supposed to serve. This is the problem we need to solve. We can keep campaigning against individual injustices, but unless we address the imbalance of power behind so many of them, we'll be fighting the same battles for generations. Politics has to follow the people, not the money. And that won't happen unless we build the power to make it happen. They are so few. We are billions. It's about time we started acting like it.