**Manifesto
Humanist Association of Hong Kong**

June 2012

Contents

Introduction
The Greening

MANIFESTO: Preamble
Greening the city – citifying the countryside
Green Economy for a Quality Human Life:
Beyond the Welfare State:
Social Welfare:
Food security:
Government Institutions and Social Change:
Armed Forces:
Police Force:
Role of Chief Executive:
Political forces and decentralisation of power:
Government and the Administration of Justice:
Finance & Banking – Economic Co-operativism:
Workers and Work:
Women:
Youth:
Families:
Health:
Industry:
Culture:
Mass Media:
Education:
At universities and collages:
Housing and Land:
Transport & Public utilities:
Government and the Environment:
Green Act:
Regional Co-operation and the International Economy:
Nuclear energy:
Energy:
Alternative Energy:
Water:
Pollution:
Waste:
Food waste:
Waste management and treatment:
Farming and gardening, land, rivers and sea:
Country Parks:
Bio-diversity:

GREEN ECONOMY
Green Economy locally:

WASTE TREATMENT:
Hong Kong as a city holding to international standards:

HUMANISE HONG KONG
Humanise Hong Kong Campaign

A CONCLUSION

KEY VALUES

THE CHANGE NEEDED IS AN INTERNAL ONE

Annex list

Annex 1, Personal introduction to Tony Henderson
Annex 2, Land and Ownership
Annex 3, China and WEEE
Annex 4, Ecological Ruminations
Annex 5, Sources of Pollution – Treatment of Waste, including Gas Plasma Technology
Annex 6, Experiences of Brazil and the Amazon
Annex 7, letter: Secretary for the Environment – Mr. Edward Yau Tang-wah
Annex 8, Climate Change
Annex 9, Green Economy
Annex 10, A New Global Peace and Justice Movement is Rising)
Annex 11, On the smaller scale
Annex 12, Dam Dams
Annex 13, Organic Waste Treatment Facilities – OWTF
Annex 14, ASV System
Annex 15, Amory Lovins on Energy – on the non-economics of nuclear power and more…
Annex 16, Steady State Economy & Rice Shortages
Annex 17, Wish list is no manifesto
Annex 18, Sharing the fruits of the Mekong
Annex 19, No to Nuclear Energy

(extract)

**Greening the city – citifying the countryside**

How to bring the countryside into the town, there’s a wholesome task. Also, its counterpart, how to best trickle those urbanites into the countryside without completely citifying the parochial scene. The cities have to be dispersed and the countryside salvaged. Big cities, while their structures of humanity en-mass living cheek’n jowl and piled up on each other in residential blocks may go toward solving housing needs in small spaces, do not solve the need for a quality home environment.

While the concept of ‘home’ is largely human in that it is the people who make a home, a couple, with or without child, a family, the physical conditions of walls, windows, views, air, breeze, ease of outside access, contact with neighbours, all of these effect the neighbourly homeliness of the places we live. We at times flee our neighbours because of a need for privacy in a world of no-life-of-their-own busybodies and life-compensating officials in authoritative positions who seem to delight the greater the extent bureaucracy is deposited in our laps. But, all of that is imposed, as people have no choice in their work and leisure. Today it is the common thought that, you are lucky to have a job – which is mandatory to enjoy the ‘good life’ and leisure is taken by escapism and escapist pursuits.
Prospecting in the vast array of possibilities brought to the surface by turning to a Green Economy and a humanized life we have to decide, are we offering solutions, or patches? Here, we dig deep because solutions lie at the root. How can we ignore the discontent in people today, the nihilism, the general social crisis, the personal seeking in either hiding or ever more stimulation and sensory excitement – as the only future. The future, it would seem from the point-of-view of the deeply frustrated human being called modern Man, lies in a virtual reality.

Has anyone been to Bangladesh or other so-called undeveloped country? It always makes people wonder at the source of that ‘poor man’s’ smile. What is the origin of their strength of character, their personal depth. Not to idealise but in a general yet very meaningful way there is a pointer in this for the people of the developed countries who only laugh at comedians jokes or at concocted situations.

Though, among those who were once called working class there was this disposition to the easy smile, the good nature. They were sufficiency unspoilt – by money – to have recourse in themselves as human beings for their own personal delight, evidenced in happy relations with pals, family and the local community. These people have a sense of self.

Our cities – and our rural life which cannot be viewed separate from our cities – would do well to help cultivate that sense of self, so important for the human being. What is opposed to the violently irrational human as the response of an emotional animal is the mechanized response of the Man-machine – Rational Man. It is seldom realised that the non-violent irrational human has an important role in maintaining the non-conditioned human response, the spontaneity of the alive. If we lose our humanity, what is the point of living at-all? Are we building a Lego World, a dog’s home, or a habitat for the human being?

**Green Economy for a Quality Human Life:**
Most essential services for life and living are under attack from privatisation and are gradually turning into profit-making enterprises. This produces an in-human system that gives more importance to material gain than to human needs. The HA wants to reverse that trend. As part of the remedy today we are taking strong interest in the Green Economy.

The ideals of a Green Economy are born out of a look that optimises the traditional economic model, one that is integrated into the civil ways of human life and supported by advanced technologies. In that way it facilitates harmony between human being and Greater Nature and is sustainable.

Green Economy is an organic collaboration of the market with ecology, and it fully realises the values of natural resources and ecology. It is a benign development model resulting from the organic combination of recycling within both the economy and nature. It is an inevitable tool in the sustainable development of a human society. The wide range that is entailed in a Green Economy covers ecologically correct industries, ecological tourism, the environmental protection agencies, green serviced industries, ecologically balancing farming, and more. (see Annex 9, Green Economy)

Also, foreseeing that unemployment is to be a factor in the future, as it is now in developed economies as automation is brought into play, it is timely to re-assess the role of a ‘work-for-money’ dependant society. This is why the potential of a comprehensively planned Green Economy is here mooted.
We were born to live and yes we have to work, though not only for money. There has to be a means of contributing to the general welfare and this means engaging in productive work as any society comes about and continues by stint of human energy applied to the precise cause of manifesting the way of life chosen. Necessarily, that way of life is lived among others, among other people, and among other creatures and the organic forms that constitute the complexity of the total environment wherein the human being has life – the evolving fauna and flora that surrounds us. This means people need an avenue of work but not necessarily an assured paid job. There are other ways of paying for work done without insisting on a money exchange. Given an assured livelihood from government, people will be released to work at worth-while tasks that benefit the community even when that community has no funds from which to pay a wage. We want to take another look at the function of work.

**Beyond the Welfare State:**
Understanding and implementing the difference between socialism and a committed government acting for a Green Economy means curbing the multinationals monopolistic intent, saying no to state owned companies – they need to be people owned. How? Key sectors to belong to the people by co-operative ownership and management, with all strata of the working groups playing a role in the decision making of companies. Profits ploughed back into companies and related infrastructure. Private sector not to encroach on areas of concern of key sectors, such as public utilities, being: the energy sector; essential transport; shipping and ports; security – prisons; resources of sea and land as agriculture and fisheries; and country parks management.

**Social Welfare:**
Need government scheme for retirement, for the elderly, the homeless – and for refugees, both economic and political – need law dealing with refugees and a speeded up process so valid refugees can work here and earn their keep, accomplished by giving due right to asylum and refugee status.
Respect and support elders – with a pension plan.
Support for those who stay home to raise their children.
Seek to redress indigenous villager needs and historical rights when environmental concerns by lobby groups override human needs like access roads and rights, land use, allocation and transfers.

**Food security:**
While it is almost impossible to imagine Hong Kong having problems of food security, it is worthwhile that people have an understanding of the implications of institutions engaging in commodities trading and of the ramifications of speculation and its effects on the world’s food supplies. (see Annex 16, Steady State Economy & Rice Shortages)

…..

(Manifesto continues)

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http://tonyhen-humanisthongkong.blogspot.hk/

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