Health Through Peace Lecture – John Ashton and Andrew Feinstein

To close the first day of the Health Through Peace forum, Medact is honoured to present an evening with Andrew Feinstein, former South African MP and author of ‘The Shadow World’, and John Ashton CBE (independent activist and ex-UK climate envoy). Together, they will be discussing the state of global security with a particular focus on how the health community can respond to war, militarisation and ecological collapse. Buy your tickets for the Health Through Peace lecture here. Those with Friday or Two-Day tickets to Health Through Peace do not need to buy an extra ticket for this lecture. Buy your full-access tickets for the Health Through Peace forum here. – Andrew Feinstein is a South African writer and campaigner and Executive Director of Corruption Watch. He was a facilitator in the constitutional negotiations process that led to the first democratic elections in South Africa in 1994, when he was elected an ANC Member of Parliament. He served as an MP for over seven years before resigning in protest when the Public Accounts Committee was prohibited from investigating a massive arms deal tainted by allegations of high-level corruption. Andrew will be showing exclusive clips from ‘The Shadow World’, directed by Johan Grimonprez, which will be released early next year. The Shadow World is a feature documentary that exposes the secretive and corrupt world of the international arms trade; examining how it determines foreign and economic policies, and undermines democracy. The film follows Feinstein’s book The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade which has gained international acclaim. Andrew’s Biography: http://www.cw-uk.org/the-team-2/ ‘The Shadow World’: http://www.theshadowworldbook.com/ John Ashton is an independent speaker and activist. His interventions range widely over politics, economics, diplomacy, and culture but a particular focus is climate change. He is an outspoken critic of the effort currently under way to open up the UK for fracking and unconventional gas. From 2006-12 he served as Special Representative for Climate Change for three successive UK Foreign Secretaries. He is a member of the Advisory Board of Post Crash Economics, the growing movement among economics students to challenge the dominance of neoclassical economic teaching in universities. John will call on those who work in medicine and health to be more assertive and effective as a political force, drawing on their professional values of compassion and commitment to the public interest. We are becoming locked into a condition that treats people as if they live in economies not societies; pretends that resource-intensive economic “efficiency” is the only true virtue; and attaches no inherent value to peace and justice. We will only escape from this condition if communities currently outside mainstream politics find their voices. Only in that way can we build a solid basis for peaceful cooperation and avoid a descent, driven by increasingly unmanageable events, into a world of conflict. John’s Biography: http://www.e3g.org/people/john-ashton