This saturday ULU 'Feed the world without destroying the planet: A seminar on food sovereignty'

November 12, 11-5.30

Registration 10.30.



University of London Union,

Malet Street, London WC1



Organised by Socialist Resistance and Green Left

http://socialistresistance.org/ http://greenleftblog.blogspot.com/



Agenda

11- 1.30 Introductory plenary

1.30-2.30 Lunch

2.30-4.00 Workshops

Women and Food Sovereignty

Agribusiness and the supermarkets

Land rights not Land grabs

Food Sovereignty and Climate change

4.15-5.30 Closing Plenary



With Maria Neri Pampilo

Maria has worked for CONZARRD since the mid 1990’s.CONZARRD is a grouping of popular and non-governmental organisations working on agrarian reform and rural development in Mindanao, in the Philippines. For CONZARRD organic farming is not a luxury – but essential to the survival of the famers.Organic rice for example is more resilient against both disease and flooding as well as cheaper. Organic fertiliser, produced locally enriches the soil rather than depleting it in the way chemical fertiliser does.



Other principal speakers include:

Graciela Romero War on Want International Programme Director and author of their report on Food Sovereignty

Rehad Desai: South African climate change activist and documentary film maker, visiting Britain to build support for the climate justice protests in Durban to coincide with the COP 17 summit in December

Derek Wall, Green Left – former principal speaker of the Green Party, author of the No Nonsense Guide to Green politics

Pierre Rousset : Noveau Parti Anticapalist (NPA), France, and Europe-Asia social forums – Editor of www.europesolidaire.com, has written extensively on Asia particularly the Philippines, Vietnam and Japan

Terry Conway: Socialist Resistance Editorial Board



Food sovereignty not `food security’ is answer to world hunger



One and a half billion people are at risk from rising food prices. This is the dramatic conclusion of the report by UN food agencies; The state of food insecurity in the World today. The report talks of a triple crisis of food, climate change and depleted natural resources, which could affect 1.5 billion people across 10 countries. It says: “having 600 million people suffering from hunger on a daily basis is never acceptable”



But the way the UN agencies focus on the concept of “food security” is fundamentally flawed. They promote private investment and increased agricultural productivity – both of which are part of the problem. They have contributed to the development of widespread hunger, rising food prices and small producers being forced off the land by increasing power of agribusiness and the supermarkets. Socialist Resistance and Green Left say that the answer is food sovereignty; that is the right of the people who produce food to determine their own agricultural policies, free from interference from either multinationals or from international institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF. The promotion of neo-liberal deregulation by these institutions has been one of the key factors leading to today’s food crisis. We say no to the power of the supermarkets. Food producers are at the mercy of the supermarkets who dictate what is grown and what price they will pay. Tesco makes two thirds of its sales and profits in Britain. In the second quarter of this financial year like for like sales in British stores fell by 0.7% while profits increased by 12% in the first half of the year! These are not issues that the left in Britain often addresses – we hope you will join us to hear Maria and other speakers discuss why they are vital to us all



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Protest and we will maim you?

Rubber Bullets agreed for use by police at Student Demonstrations 

Responding to the Met Police's statement on the potential use of ‘baton rounds' (similar to rubber bullets) at this week's student protests over tuition fees, Green Party Mayoral Candidate Jenny Jones said: "Any officer that shoots a student with a baton round will have to answer to the whole of London.

"How did we come to this? An unpopular government pushing ahead with policies that are all pain and no gain, relying on police armed with plastic bullets to deal with young people who complain about it all.

"The police should never be put in the position where they are seen as the last defence of an unpopular government. The police have a duty to facilitate peaceful demonstrations, which is why all this talk of baton rounds is very unhelpful as it will stop ordinary people from exercising their right to protest.

"The Mayor of London should be telling the Met police to calm things down, rather than talking tough and using tactics which escalate any tensions. We have seen how worried the Church became at being associated with any police action to clear the peaceful protesters away from St Pauls.

"The prospect of the police shooting at unarmed demonstrators with any kind of bullet is frankly appalling, un-British and reminiscent of scenes currently being used by murderous dictatorships in the Middle East."

So if capitalism doesn't work what do you suggest instead!

Great to speak at Occupy London on capitalism and alternatives, I argued capitalism is innately flawed but the commons provides a democratic and ecological alternatives.

 Lets not be dogmatic but lets look at how collective and ecological property rights might work.

Marx is excellent on the 'macro' how commons were destroyed and the possibility of their restoration.

Elinor Ostrom is very good on 'micro' case studies on actual commons showing where they work and where they don't.

We can have an economy the suffers human need without wrecking the environment.

SOME LINKS (incomplete but to get you started no claim to be exhaustive or any other claims in fact)

John Bellamy Foster http://climateandcapitalism.com/?p=5273

David Harvey http://davidharvey.org/

Reclaiming the commons http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/resource/reclaiming-commons

Prosperity without Growth, Economics after capitalism http://www.sd-commission.org.uk/publications.php?id=771

Marxist Internet Archive http://www.marxists.org/

Digital Library of the Commons http://dlc.dlib.indiana.edu/dlc/

Indigenous economics http://aianattackthesystem.wordpress.com/2011/11/02/the-future-of-native-lands-and-economy-lets-make-life-easier-for-ourselves-and-be-our-own-boss/

Karl Marx and the Iroquois - Franklin Rosemont  http://libcom.org/library/karl-marx-iroquois-franklin-rosemont

Elinor Ostrom interview http://rs.resalliance.org/2010/04/18/an-interview-with-elinor-ostrom/

Video of Caroline Lucas MP speaking at Occupylsx

Great speech.


'We will fight it every step of the way' 'biggest lie of all is there is no alternative'


oh and catch me tomorrow.


'What is capitalism and what are the alterantives' 2pm, Occupy London at St Pauls.


See you there!

Green Left backs Mark Campbell as UCU secretary

“"Green Left puts full support behind Mark Campbell as a candidate in the up coming UCU General Secretary Election. The group recognises the need for trade unions to have active, rank and file leadership, responsive to grass roots activists and that as a General Secretary candidate, Mark embodies this within UCU.

We welcome Mark’s decision, if elected, to only draw his lecturer’s salary, and only to accept increases which have been won for union members. We feel that this is an important connection between the union’s apparatus and the members. We are disappointed that Mark has been portrayed by other candidates as an “SWP candidate” and want to make it clear that he commands support from a significantly wider constituency."

'Greens continue to prosper where Labour fears to tread'

Caption Ed Milband speech bubble 'I wish I had Caroline's vision and radicalism'?

This is worth reading from the Brighton Politics Blogger, glad to see my party growing and standing for justice and change:

Bravely, four weeks after the event, when he knew which way the tide was running, and taking his lead from the Archbishop of Canterbury, Ed Miliband has come our, unequivocally in favour of the protest campers outside St. Paul’s Cathedral. Well, almost.

Writing in today’s Observer he carefully distances himself from the “long list of diverse and often impractical proposals” of the protesters.

At least he recognises that the Occupy London protest and similar protests around the country and the world as “danger signals” that only “the most reckless will ignore”.

Miliband writes: “the challenges that they reflect a crisis of concern for millions of people about the biggest issue of our time: the gap between their values and the way our country is run ….. I am determined that mainstream politics, and the Labour Party in particular, speaks to that crisis and rises to the challenge”.

Perhaps the first challenge Ed can rise to is to reframe “the way our country is run” to “capitalism”. He should name what we all know. What we are experiencing is the greatest crisis of capitalism EVER. The 99% believe one thing, the 1% – bankers and their supporters in the media and political elite – another. Instead Ed trots out cliche after cliche, carefully choosing his words so not to offend the 1%.

His second challenge is to support the day of action on November 30th. This will be the nearest thing the UK will have to a general strike, pathetic and limited though it is. Imagine if Miliband provided what is known as LEADERSHIP and called for an actual general strike on that day.

But Miliband won’t support this or any other industrial action. No Labour leader ever has. Nationally Miliband’s fence-sitting won’t matter. The unions will have to support Labour. TINA – there is no alternative.

But in Brighton and Hove there is. Green Party leader, Caroline Lucas, was one of the first to visit the Occupy London camp, Ben Duncan emerged from his sick bed to visit the Brighton camp (a sad little gathering, it must be said). Mike Weatherley has been quick to condemn the Brighton camp.

Labour locally has remained quiet. Like their ‘leader’, they are waiting to see where the people are going so that they can lead them. (Can anyone source the quote from the French leader who said “There go my people. I must find out where they are going so I can lead them”).

People in Brighton and Hove have a genuine choice. They can support the People’s Mike (Mike Weatherley who would wish to personally evict the campers at St Paul’s), or they can wait and see what ‘decisive’ action Labour takes, or they can support Caroline Lucas and the Greens who are demonstrating which side they are on.

Rumour has it that the trade unions in Brighton are becoming disenchanted with Labour and are privately looking to work more closely with the Greens. It might be expediency given the forthcoming budget. But it might just be that the Greens continue to prosper where Labour fears to tread.

Caroline Lucas at Occupy London today

And I am running a little workshop on 'capitalism' tuesday 2pm.

Lots happening tomorrow, just cut and pasted this to tempt you'all.

Sunday 6th November

• 11am Tent City University at St Paul’s – ‘Reflections: a media perspective’ - Three weeks into the occupation, deputy comment editor of the Guardian, Libby Brooks and special correspondent Audrey Gillan review mainstream media coverage of the occupation, reflecting on the challenges the movement faces in terms of courting positive media attention as well as the challenges the media face in reporting about a networked global movement that operates in an unorthodox way and cannot be defined in simple soundbites. There will also be other invited journalists

• 1pm – General assembly - This is the forum through which members of the camp update the rest of the camp, make decisions through consensus voting. Members of the public are welcome to get involved

• 2pm – 5pm – Cut cut copy shop for a new wor(l)d order at TCU - Delaina Haslam and Vyvian Raoul encourage word fans to come down and take part in this conceptual writing experiment. Conceptual writing is the art of taking that which has been written before – whether a paragraph, a sentence or a word – and creating something new out of it. Bring: a text of your choice connected in some way to OccupyLSX or the larger occupy movement

• 2.30 – 4pm – Brian Leslie – financial reform (TCU)

• 4pm – 6pm – The Corporate Governance of the Square Mile. John Christensen, Anthea Lawson and Rev. Taylor at TCU – John Christensen (Director of the Tax Justice Network), Anthea Lawson (Senior Investigator for Global Witness) and Rev. Taylor (formerly seated on the council for the Square Mile) will be talking about the governance of the Square Mile in terms of its corporate ties.

• 5pm – 7pm Spanish political parties with the 15M Spanish movement at Finsbury Square

• 7pm – General Assembly focusing on political discussion

• 9-11.30pm – Cinema InTents: Z (1069) plus Death Of The Revolution (TCU)