Help Needed in Norwich North By-Election

From now until the general election, our focus switches from the European Parliament elections (where we received over 1.2 million votes, from people like you) to the general election.

Our three “target constituencies” are Brighton Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), Norwich South (Adrian Ramsay) and Lewisham Deptford (Darren Johnson).

Before then, the Norwich North by-election will be the first by-election where the national media take the prospects of a Green win seriously. We have a great deal of work to do, and we are asking you to swing behind this effort in a big way, as other parties (most notably the Liberal Democrats) do in similar circumstances.

We could gain general election credibility nationwide from a good result in the seat.

Here is just one of the large number of bullish press stories that have appeared about the byelection –

http://www.edp24.co.uk/content/edp24/news/story.aspx?brand=EDPOnline&category=News&tBrand=EDPOnline&tCategory=xDefault&itemid=NOED10%20Jun%202009%2008%3A40%3A22%3A797

The Greens' chances of doing well in Norwich North have already been mentioned in the Times, Guardian, Telegraph, and on the BBC.

Can you help us to compete strongly in Norwich North?

Please consider offering us some of your time, or money, or both:

We need lots of help on numerous tasks in our office and on the streets. Please come and stay with us: we can put volunteers up, it will be fun, and you can learn on the job from the expert Norwich team! Please call us on 01603 611909 if you can offer us help.

We need donations to cover our campaign costs. We need to raise £10,000 in the next month, if we are to have any chance of even beginning to compete on a level playing field with the old three Westminster parties in this vital election. We need to get the Green message heard now, and we need to build now toward getting a strong Green voice into Westminster.

Please give what you can. £20 buys 2000 leaflets for us to deliver to target voters. £250 buys an ad for us in the Norwich Evening News. £1000 buys a prime billboard location for the entire duration of the campaign.

Send a cheque now (payable to ‘Norwich Green Party’) to:

The Treasurer, Norwich Green Party, 27 Clarendon Road, Norwich, NR2 2PN

Let’s make history, startle the old parties, and give ourselves a real shot at electing the first ever Green Party MP in Norwich North …

Thank you for your help in this crucial project!


--
Scott Redding
Press Officer
Green Party of England and Wales

==

From Green Party press office, 020 7561 0282.
Published and promoted by Tracy Dighton-Brown for the Green Party of England & Wales, both at 1a Waterlow Road, London N19 5NJ.

More news from Peru

more great coverage from the Morning Star on Peru, thanks amigos, excellent stuff.

The indigenous are very well organised and politically astute, good for them...not that I am advocating violence.

RESISTANCE PAYS: Amazonian Indians make their message heard in Lima

Peru’s government has promised indigenous communities that it will ask Congress to revoke decrees that would make it easier for multinationals to exploit their lands.

The Amazonian peoples' anger over the decrees sparked two months of road and river blockades that turned violent on June 5 when police opened fire on activists.

According to the government, at least 24 police officers and nine civilians were killed.

But indigenous leaders said that at least 30 members of their community had been killed and accused police of hiding bodies.

Cabinet chief Yehude Simon signed a conciliatory pact after a four-hour meeting with leaders of 390 indigenous communities on Monday in the central jungle town of San Ramon.

The 12-point agreement specified that the government would present Congress with a proposal to revoke the decrees by tomorrow.

Environment Minister Antonio Brack, a member of the government delegation, said that it had also offered to end a state of emergency and curfew in Amazonas state, where the June 5 violence took place.

He said that indigenous leaders had promised to end a blockade that has cut a key road into the central Amazon in return.

At a news conference, Mr Simon argued that President Alan Garcia's attempt to encourage what he called environmentally friendly development had been misinterpreted by the indigenous people.

He said that dialogue is now important to build the "confidence that has been lost," vowing that the government "will defend the Amazon from indiscriminate logging and will defend it against environmental contamination."

Although Peru's main Amazon indigenous federation AIDESEP did not participate in Monday's talks, it will join talks with the government that are to begin immediately in Lima.

The government had previously snubbed indigenous attempts to be consulted about development in the region.

Ruben Binari, a leader of the Machiguenga people in the Urubamba region, said: "We don't reject dialogue. On the contrary, dialogue and peace in the Amazon are what we want."

Congress indefinitely suspended the controversial decrees last Wednesday, a day before a nationwide wave of mostly peaceful anti-government protests.

The decrees, including a forestry law widely interpreted as promoting biofuel crops and logging, were among several promulgated by Mr Garcia to comply with a free-trade agreement with the United States that took effect in January.

Protest leader and AIDESEP President Alberto Pizango remained in the Nicaragua embassy on Monday.

He sought refuge there after sedition and rebellion charges were filed against him.

Nicaragua granted him political asylum but he has yet to receive safe passage out of Peru.

SOAS occupation news from green left and spiked on line

I don't usually reference spiked on line positively, when I want a bit of right side thinking I always reach for my Economist...nonetheless I am glad Joseph let me know about this.

An account of the protest and occupation. Like Pete, I was very moved by
the speeches yesterday and the woman in her cell in Yarls Wood being
encouraged by the cheering crowd. "It is only your support that is keeping
me going" she said via the mobile. I suppose I am just an old fashioned
idealist. After all, Rosa Luxembourg was moved to tears by the beating of
a horse and the grinding down of poor migrants who have the temerity to
challenge their exploiters is a cause for tears.

Joseph




http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/7032/

The students have today been served with a court injunction giving them
two hours to vacate the director’s offices. Yet Richard Reynolds, a
student from the University of East Anglia who rushed down from Norwich to
lend his support to the occupation, reports that – despite a sleepless
night and the power having been cut to the directorate rooms – the
occupying students are upbeat and determined. In solidarity with the
remaining cleaners, they even tidied the offices this morning and provided
the cleaners with cups of tea. They are currently devising a set of
demands, including the recognition that ‘people are people wherever they
are’ and ‘there’s no such thing as an “illegal”’.

As Reynolds puts it, ‘It sets a dangerous precedent for universities to
give up their independence and compromise their staff in such a cowardly
way as soon as the border police come knocking. The problem with Refugee
Week as it currently stands is that it is too narrow. Let’s make it “No
Borders Week”, and champion the freedom for everyone to go wherever they
like in order to make a better life for themselves and their families.’

Sean Thompson reports back from Compass conference

I went to the Compass event yesterday – I would have reported back before except that not having access to email for two days meant I had hundreds of the bloody things to wade through this morning.

It was an interesting event for a number of reasons. First it was big – getting on for 1000 attendees (incidentally, it was reported that Compass has 4,000 members and 25,000 on its mailing list).

Secondly, the atmosphere was remarkably open and non sectarian. When Neill Lawson read out a ludicrous blog by Luke Akenhurst, a Hackney Blairite councillor, attacking Compass for inviting Caroline and Jean (“In my borough and in Oxford, Norwich and Brighton, the Labour Party is engaged in a strategic electoral battle with the Greens. We don't need a dialogue with these single-issue clowns and their anti-working class policies, we need to attack and destroy them.”) the audience responded with a great roar of laughter. Caroline, Jean and Salma were all very warmly received.

Jean spoke at a workshop on electoral reform and was very good. There was clearly a consensus for the desirability of a campaign for a referendum on PR. Jean, Caroline, Salma and Cruddas all welcomed the idea of a joint campaign.

Caroline said a number of interesting things. First, in her keynote speech she said that what unites us is that we “put people first, not big business”. She said that though greens want to work with others “Ireland shows what happens to Greens when they get it [coalition] wrong.” She said that “we, as part of the progressive left” should agree three things; 1, “we all have the right to exist” (this went with an allusion about the fragility of Blair’s ‘Big Tent” and the desirability of a gathering of tents and people sitting round camp fires instead) 2, We should continue to meet and talk about how to cooperate more. 3, That we should have a broad based campaign on PR.
She said that the greatest failure of NuLab is the increase in inequality and that Labour has become the party of war, privatisation and attacks on civil liberties. A new politics is urgently needed and she wants to continue to talk to Compass on how to develop it [perhaps we could make a few suggestions?]. Her speech was met with enthusiastic applause.

In the session on ‘A new socialism’ she said that “socialism is good as far as it goes but we need to go further – to develop a new wide progressive politics.” During her speech she twice called for a maximum wage and said it was green party policy! As I was under the impression that the right had defeated our resolution calling for a maximum wage last spring I was rather surprised, but delighted that Caroline seems to have come round to our position. Quite a few people were clearly impressed by Caroline and surprised how left her speeches were.

Other points: Harriet Harman spoke for a quarter of a hour but said absolutely nothing. However, its was nice to watch her squirm as the Director of War on Want very politely shred NuLab and demonstrate how reactionary it has been. Salma spoke very well and very directly as ever. She said that she had been proud to call for a green vote in the North West and was the only speaker not to dodge the issue of electoral alliances and tactical voting, saying “we must all put our weight behind each other”. She said that she regretted that it had not been possible to come to an agreement with greens up to now but she hoped that it would be for the general election. She pledged to support any progressive candidate in the next election and specifically mentioned Caroline and the Plaid). She got good applause for that. One of the top table speakers in the new socialism session was Adam Price, a Plaid Welsh Assembly Member. I had never heard of him before, but he was really really good.

It seemed to me that there were two great limitations apparent at the conference. First was the almost total lack of involvement by the trade unions, apart from UCU and PCS. The second was the very narrow electoral perspective of virtually everyone on the day, as though political activity is restricted solely to political parties (plus NGOs for some) during and in preparation for elections.

Only Adam Price ( who actually talked about workers control and said that inherited wealth is morally unacceptable!) and to an extent, Salma, said much about political activity as part of the daily life of working people, although Caroline did make reference to the need for a new politics in both her speeches.

Sean

New Book: The Global Fight for Climate Justice

New Book: The Global Fight for Climate Justice
June 11, 2009

Resistance Books announces a new book from the editor of Climate and Capitalism. Please post and distribute this announcement widely.

New Book Announcement

THE GLOBAL FIGHT FOR
CLIMATE JUSTICE

Editor: Ian Angus
Publisher: Resistance Books (London)
ISBN: 978-0-902869-87-5
Publication Date: July 2009
Trade paperback: 6” x 9” (15cm x 23cm)
284 pages

“Essential reading for everyone who is serious about confronting the climate emergency.”-Emma Murphy, co-editor, Green Left Weekly

As capitalism continues with business as usual, climate change is fast expanding the gap between rich and poor between and within nations, and imposing unparalleled suffering on those least able to protect themselves.

In THE GLOBAL FIGHT FOR CLIMATE JUSTICE, anticapitalist activists from five continents offer radical answers to the most important questions of our time:

* Why is capitalism destroying the conditions that make life on Earth possible?
* How can we stop the destruction before it is too late?

In 46 essays on topics ranging from the food crisis to carbon trading to perspectives from indigenous peoples, they make a compelling case that saving the world from climate catastrophe will require much more than tinkering with technology or taxes. Only radical social change can prevent irreversible damage to the earth and civilization.

EDITED BY IAN ANGUS

Ian Angus, who wrote several of the articles in this book and selected the others from a wide range of authors and movements, is one of the world’s best-known ecosocialist activists. He is editor of the online journal Climate and Capitalism, which has been described as “the most reliable single source of information and strategic insights for climate justice.” Ian is also Associate Editor of Socialist Voice, an Advisory Editor of Socialist Resistance, and a founding member of the Ecosocialist International Network. He lives in Ontario, Canada.




Advance Praise

“The most reliable single source of information and strategic insights for climate justice is Climate and Capitalism, the website Ian Angus edits, and it is a tribute to the movement’s development that demand has arisen for this book.”—Patrick Bond, director of Centre for Civil Society, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

“Essential reading for everyone who is serious about confronting the climate emergency.” —Emma Murphy, co-editor, Green Left Weekly

"We need to move beyond capitalism to an ecosocialist system. Creating such a future will demand intense political struggle. This book is an essential tool for that struggle, and I commend it to all who are serious about creating a liveable future for humanity." —Derek Wall, former Principal Male speaker, Green Party of England and Wales

“At last, an absolutely indispensable guide to the debate on climate change, a sourcebook that makes the case for anti-capitalist action as the only effective way to stop global warming. Of course the powers-that-be don’t agree — after all, who else is responsible for the current crisis? But we all need The Global Fight for Climate Justice if we are to fight for a liveable world.” —Joel Kovel, author of The Enemy of Nature and founding member of the Ecosocialist International Network

“A wonderful collection of articles from across the word by climate change activists. From governmental leaders such as Evo Morales to trade unionists like Tony Kearns this book will inform, excite and energise those who see the need to fight both the impact of climate change and the political systems that have produced it.” —Jane Kelly, editor (with Sheila Malone) Ecosocialism or Barbarism

“‘Socialism or Barbarism’ is no longer (if it ever was) an abstract theoretical proposition. This comprehensive collection of essays focused upon the climate and food crises, the responses of capital and socialist alternatives, draws upon both global social movements and leading advocates of an alternative to barbarism to demonstrate that the choice before us is an immediate one, not one to be put off to the future.” —Michael A. Lebowitz, author of Build it Now: Socialism for the 21st Century and Beyond CAPITAL: Marx's Political Economy of the Working Class.

About the Authors

Ian Angus, one of the world’s best-known ecosocialist activists, is editor of the online journal Climate and Capitalism.

Hugo Blanco has been a leader of the indigenous peasant movement in Peru since the Land or Death uprising in the 1960s. He publishes the newspaper La Lucha Indígena.

Patrick Bond is director of the Centre for Civil Society at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. His most recent book is Looting Africa: The Economics of Exploitation.

Simon Butler writes for Green Left Weekly and maintains Climate Change Social Change, an ecosocialist blog.

Fidel Castro led the Cuban revolution and was the Cuba’s head of state from 1960 until he retired in 2007.

Nicole Colson writes for Socialist Worker, the newspaper of the US-based International Socialist Organization.

Kamala Emanuel is a climate activist and a member of the Socialist Alliance in Perth, Australia.

John Bellamy Foster is editor of Monthly Review and the author of many books, including Marx’s Ecology (2000) and The Ecological Revolution (2009).

Robb Johnson is a UK-based singer-songwriter.

Tony Kearns is Senior Deputy General Secretary of the Communication Workers Union in the U.K.

Joel Kovel is the author of The Enemy of Nature: The End of Capitalism or the End of the World? and a founding member of the Ecosocialist International Network.

Juan Esteban Lazo Hernandez is Vice-President of Cuba’s Council of State and a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba.

Larry Lohmann is the author of Carbon Trading: A Critical Conversation on Climate Change, Privatization and Power.

Michael Löwy, who co-wrote the first Ecosocialist Manifesto in 2001, is a supporter of the Fourth International in France.

José Ramón Machado Ventura, who fought with Fidel Castro in the guerrilla war in the 1950s, is first vice president of Cuba’s Councils of State and Ministers .

Liam Mac Uaid is an editor of Socialist Resistance magazine.

Evo Morales, the president of Bolivia, is the first indigenous head of state in Latin America.

Anne Petermann and Orin Langelle are Executive Director and Co-Director/Strategist of Global Justice Ecology Project.

Andrew Simms is the author of Ecological Debt: Global Warming and the Wealth of Nations, and policy director of the UK-based New Economics Foundation.

Kevin Smith is the author of The Carbon Neutral Myth: Offset Indulgences for your Climate Sins.

Sean Thompson is a supporter of Green Left, the anti-capitalist current in the Green Party of England and Wales.

Terry Townsend is a member of Socialist Alliance and Managing Editor of Links: International Journal of Socialist Renewal.

David Travis works with sustainable agriculture, community economics and alternative land tenure systems. He is currently developing a perennial agriculture project in North Carolina, USA.

Daniel Tanuro, a certified agriculturalist and ecosocialist environmentalist, is a supporter of the Fourth International in Belgium.

Derek Wall is a founder of the Ecosocialist International Network and a former principal speaker for the Green Party of England and Wales.

Chris Williams is a physics and chemistry teacher in New York City. He writes for International Socialist Review.

Table of Contents

*

Red and Green (Robb Johnson)
*

Foreword (Derek Wall)
*

Introduction (Ian Angus)

1: Climate Emergency

*

Introduction
*

Tomorrow Will Be Too Late (Fidel Castro)
*

Some Impacts of Global Warming (Climate & Capitalism)
*

It’s Happening Now (Climate & Capitalism)
*

Climate Wrongs and Human Rights (Oxfam)
*

If Socialism Fails: The Spectre of 21st Century Barbarism (Ian Angus)

2: Starving The Poor

*

Introduction
*

World Hunger, Agribusiness. Food Sovereignty (Ian Angus)
*

A New International Order is Needed (Esteban Lazo Hernandez)
*

The Food Crisis is Systemic and Structural (José Ramón Machado)
*

Peasants and Small Farmers Can Feed the World (La Vía Campesina)
*

Our Heritage as Food Producers is Critical to the Future of Humanity (Nyeleni Forum)
*

The Rich Do Not Know Hunger (Fidel Castro)

3: False Explanations, False Solutions

*

Introduction
*

Too Many People? (Simon Butler)
*

The Myth of the Tragedy of the Commons (Ian Angus)
*

Magic Bullet #1: The Ethanol Scam (Nicole Colson)
*

Magic Bullet #2: Carbon Capture and Storage (Ian Angus)
*

A New War on the Planet? (John Bellamy Foster)

4: The Green Capitalism Fantasy

*

Introduction
*

The Failures of Green Economics (Joel Kovel)
*

Sustainable Capitalism? (David Travis)
*

The Limits of Green Keynesianism (Sean Thompson)
*

Capitalism’s Anti-ecology Treadmill (Terry Townsend)

5: Privatizing The Atmosphere

*

Introduction
*

Durban Declaration on Carbon Trading (Durban Group)
*

Cap and Trade Schemes (Chris Williams)
*

The Obscenity of Carbon Trading (Kevin Smith)
*

Why Carbon Markets Can’t Save the World (Andrew Simms)
*

Six Arguments Against Carbon Trading (Larry Lohmann)

6: Voices From the Global South

*

Introduction
*

Respect Mother Earth! (Evo Morales)
*

A New Era is Beginning (Cochabamba Statement)
*

We Demand Full and Effective Participation (Bali Statement)
*

Mother Earth is in Crisis (Anchorage Statement)
*

Two Statements by Climate Justice Now!
*

Statement at the 2009 Americas Summit (ALBA)
*

Rich Nations Must Pay Their Ecological Debt (Bolivia)
*

To Save Humanity We Must Return to Our Roots (Hugo Blanco)

7: Building a Climate Emergency Movement

*

Introduction
*

Only Political Activism and Class Struggle Can Save the Planet (Patrick Bond)
*

Crisis, Challenge and Mass Action (Anne Petermann and Orin Langelle )
*

How Can We Build an Effective Movement? (Kamala Emanuel)
*

Workers and Climate Change (Green Left Weekly)
*

The Three Decisive Social Forces that Can Stop Climate Change (Socialist Resistance)
*

Climate Change is a Trade Union Issue (Tony Kearns)
*

Class Struggle and Ecology (Liam Mac Uaid)

8: Ecosocialist Responses to Capitalist Ecocide

*

Introduction
*

Making the Greens Redder and the Reds Greener (Ian Angus)
*

For a Society of Good Ancestors (Ian Angus)
*

Climate Change Charter (Socialist Alliance)
*

The Belem Ecosocialist Declaration (Ecosocialist International Network)
*

Climate Crisis: 21st Century Socialists Must Be Ecosocialists (Daniel Tanuro/Fourth International)

Wizard of the Crow

This forest was not threatened by charcoal, paper, and timber merchants who cut down trees hundreds of years old. when it came to forest, indeed to any natural resource the Aburirian State and big American, European, and Japanese companies, in alliance with the local African, Indian, and European rich, were all united by one slogan: A loot-a continua. They knew how to take but not how to give back to the soil. The unregulated clearing of forests affected the rhythm of the rains, and a semidesert was beginning to creep from the prairie to the hills'

p.201 (2006) Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o Wizard of the Crow. Harvill Secker.

A licence to kill and drill

A licence to kill and drill
Sunday 14 June 2009
Greg Palast

From the Morning Star.

There's an easy way to find oil. Go to some remote and gorgeous natural sanctuary, say Alaska or the Amazon, find some Indians, then drill under them.

If the indigenous folk complain, well, just shoo them away. Shooing methods include bulldozers, bullets, crooked politicians and fake land sales.

But be aware. Lately the natives are shooing back. Two weeks ago, indigenous Peruvians seized an oil pumping station, grabbed the nine policemen guarding it and, say reports, executed them. This followed the government's murder of more than a dozen rainforest residents who had protested against the seizure of their property for oil drilling.

Again and again I see it in my line of work of investigating fraud. Here are a few pit-stops on the oily trail of tears.

In the 1980s, Charles Koch was found to have pilfered about $3 (£1.80) worth of crude from Stanlee Ann Mattingly's oil tank in Oklahoma. Here's the weird part. Koch was - and remains - the 14th richest man on the planet, worth about $14 billion (£7.9bn). Mattingly was a dirt-poor Osage Indian.

She wasn't Koch's only victim. According to secret tape recordings of a former top executive of his company Koch Industries, the billionaire demanded that oil tanker drivers secretly siphon a few bucks worth of oil from every tank attached to a stripper well on the Osage Reservation where Koch had a contract to extract crude.

Koch, according to the tape, would "giggle" with joy over the records of the theft. Koch's own younger brother Bill ratted him out, complaining that, in effect, brothers Charles and David cheated him out of his fair share of the looting which totalled over three-quarters of a billion dollars from the Native American lands.

The FBI filmed the siphoning with hidden cameras, but criminal charges were quashed after quiet objections from Republican senators.

Then there are the Chugach Natives of Alaska. The Port of Valdez, Alaska, is arguably one of the most valuable pieces of real estate on Earth - the only earthquake-safe ice-free port in Alaska that could load oil from the giant North Slope field. In 1969, Exxon and British Petroleum companies took the land from the Chugach and paid them one dollar. I kid you not.

Ex-governor of Alaska Wally Hickel dismissed my suggestion that the Chugach deserved a bit more respect - and cash - for their property.

"Land ownership comes in two ways, Mr Palast," explained the governor and pipeline magnate. "Purchase or conquest. The fact that your granddaddy chased a caribou across the land doesn't make it yours." The Chugach had lived there for 3,000 years.

No oil company would dream of digging on the Bush family properties in Midland, Texas, without paying a royalty. Or drilling near Malibu without the latest in environmental protections.

But when Natives are on top of Exxon's or BP's glory hole, the great defenders of private property rights suddenly turn quite Bolshevik - lands can be seized for the public's need for oil.

Some Natives are "relocated" through legal flim-flam, some at gunpoint. The less lucky are left to wallow, literally, in the gunk left by the drilling process.

During an investigation I conducted for BBC, we captured footage in the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador showing a stinking, black glop of crude oil residue pulled from an abandoned Chevron-Texaco waste pit. A pipe runs from the toxic pit right into the water supply of Cofan Indians.

Chief Emergildo Criollo told me how oil company executives had been helicoptered into his remote village and, speaking in Spanish - which the Cofan didn't understand - "purchased" drilling rights with trinkets and cheese. The Natives had never seen cheese. "The cheese smelled funny, so we threw it in the jungle," recalled Criollo.

After drilling began, Criollo's son went swimming in his usual watering hole, came up vomiting blood and died.

I asked Chevron about the wave of poisonings and deaths. According to an independent report, 1,401 deaths, mostly children, mostly from cancers, can be traced to Chevron's toxic dumping.

Chevron's lawyer told me: "And it's the only case of cancer in the world? How many cases of children with cancer do you have in the States? They have to prove that it is our crude," which, he noted with glee, "is absolutely impossible."

Big Oil treats indigenous blood like a cheap petrol additive. That's why the Peruvians are up in arms. The Cofan of Ecuador, unlike their brothers in Peru, have taken no hostages. Rather, they have heavily armed themselves with lawyers.

But Chevron and its Big Oil brethren remain dismissive of the law. Last week, Shell Oil paid $15 million to the Ogoni people and the family of Ken Saro-Wiwa to get rid of a nasty PR problem involving the oil giant's alleged role in the killing of Wiwa and his associates - activists who had defended these Nigeria Delta people against drilling contamination.

Shell pocketed $31 billion last year in profits and hopes that the pay-off will clear the way for a drilling partnership with Nigeria's government.

Congratulations, Shell. Fifteen million dollars for a licence to kill and drill. That's a quite a bargain.

Greg Palast is a journalist and writer. His latest book is Armed Madhouse, published by Penguin. You can see footage of his report on Big Oil in the Amazon in the DVD Palast Investigates, available from his website