21 Dec 2012

Get down to Combe Haven, trees being cut down need defending (friday 21st december)


Defend the trees at Adams Farm! (Fri 21 Dec)

December 21, 2012 by combehavendefenders
HELP NEEDED NOW TO DEFEND THE TREES! Early morning reports on the ground suggest contractors are going to attempt to fell trees at Adams Farm (TN33 9AY). This is one of the last remaining areas with significant number of large trees on the route of the road.
Security and police reported at the top of the access track, and we believe the footpath from Crowhurst playing field car park has been closed. Other more imaginative routes in to Adams Farm exist: cross-country, from the Upper Wilting Farm direction, even across the partially flooded valley from the Bexhill end.
Note also a significant pocket of trees at risk located near Decoy Pond, half way between Adams Farm and Upper Wilting Farm. To receive info and action reports throughout the day text 07926 423033.

http://combehavendefenders.wordpress.com/2012/12/21/defend-the-trees-at-adams-farm-fri-21-dec/

20 Dec 2012

The Commons in Mongolia


In the early medieval period nomadic herders travelled across huge territories freely however access to land over time, while remaining communal became more formalized and restricted.  Genghis Khan (1162?-1227) granted land to his allies to cement his political and military power.  This allowed a Mongolian nobility to control communal pastureland and they were able to tax herders.  Thus as in England, an essentially feudal system was introduced, with a monarch, granting land to an elite who were rewarded for their loyalty and extracted wealth from the wider population.  The reintroduction of Buddhism in 1586 was another important development.  As in England the church was a major owner of land and an important political and economic power.  The formalization of land rights under the Buddhist authority and the system of patronage established by Genghis Khan accelerated with the Manchu Qing dynasty occupation of Mongolia in 1691.  The occupiers drew up a legal code and rigidly divided up the land, eventually creating a hundred military territories known as khoshuun.  Herders who had previously moved from one territory to another had to stick to the territory within which they were born, showing allegiance to the ruler of such territory  (Fernandez-Gimenez 2006: 31).

After Manchu rule ended their system of formal property rights continued however transhumance with herders moving their animals seasonally was maintained.  Yet herders had to remain in the same khoshuun rather than ranging where they liked throughout Mongolian territory.  Gradually some privately control campsites emerged but communal and nomadic ways of life continued.  The creation of a 20th century Mongolian Republic, at least briefly, led to a return to more flexible and locally controlled property ownership as in 1925 feudal and religious structures were abolished.  The 20th century saw the introduction of soviet style collectivism that peaked in 1959 with 99% of herders cemented into this system of state central control of agriculture.  Once again the freedom of herders was restricted by a governing power.  With the collapse of the Soviet Union, a market orientated Mongolian Republic emerged which saw attempts to privatize land holdings.  In the 21st century a greater understanding of the benefits of communal herding may be re-emerging.  Yet with economic and political change in Mongolia communing has diminished.  While commons still exist and nomadic herding continues the territory used by herders has shrank, their control over their animals has been reduced, while informal regulation has been increasingly replaced by formal legal control (Fernandez-Gimenez 2006: 33). 

            Mongolia shows also that commons while difficult to eliminate totally or control centrally are affected by external political events.  Genghis Khan, Tibetan Buddhism, Chinese invasion, the Soviet experience and market based policies encouraged by bodies such as the World Bank have all shaped the commons, nonetheless despite formalization and erosion the Mongolian pastoral commons remains.  The anthropologist David Sneath (2007) has stressed the libertarian nature of Mongolian society, arguing that central control has remained relatively weak with herders enjoying a large measure of independence throughout many centuries.  It is interesting to note that intercommoning by nomadic people is still a feature of life in Mongolia but was eliminated in England perhaps as early as the medieval period.

            David Sneath (2000) has also suggested that religious values that predate Buddhism influenced attitudes to land in Mongolia during much of its history.  Herders believed that spirits known as gazariinezed were the owners of the land rather than humans.  These spirits were treated as high dignitaries and were given offerings in ceremonies known as oboo.  Typically, the tsagaanluu or white dragon had to be presented with white food such as dairy products and rice.  Such ceremonies were followed by sporting festivals that included wrestling contests.  Today communal use remains a hot political topic with the land issue differentiating new liberal parties in Mongolia who seek land privatization and more traditional and left opponents who oppose this.  In Chinese controlled Inner Mongolia, mining is displacing herders and indigenous people causing conflict.  The conflict between communal agricultural use of land or hunting and the needs of high growth economies to extract metals, minerals and fossil fuels is played out in many parts of the world.

11 Dec 2012

Understanding the property game


Direct action by UK Uncut has been brilliantly effective at putting the spotlight on tax-evading corporations.

The group's recent occupation of Starbucks branches up and down Britain has embarrassed the company into admitting that it pays virtually no tax and even volunteering a token sum.
Of course, the Con-Dems love corporations. Chancellor George Osborne's Autumn Statement included a promise to cut corporation tax even further.
So drawing attention to rampant tax avoidance exposes the coalition's disastrous austerity agenda - it's increasingly clear that if large companies paid their tax bills we could halt the cuts and find new ways of meeting our country's needs, such as expanding the NHS, raising pensions and building new homes.
Raising taxes from fat-cat firms is important, but there hasn't been much discussion of the deeper cause of economic pain and widening inequality.
Politicians, think tanks and the media tend to ignore the issue of property ownership.
Yet without questioning how we own property we will tend only to look at the symptoms of inequality, not its fundamental causes.
Property ownership means owning the sources of wealth in any society. From home ownership to the ownership of land and shares, it largely determines who is rich and who is poor.
If you own access to economically productive resources, the means of creating wealth, you won't have a problem getting by.
And the ownership of property is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a smaller and smaller minority - this is key to the growth of inequality both in Britain and worldwide.
Our country has had some of the most unequal patterns of land ownership in the world since 1066.
Adescendant of a Viking raider - William of Normandy - invaded via Sussex and took all the land in England, then parcelled it out to his trusted allies.
The existing population was dispossessed and, if we're honest, still is - from the Duke of Westminster's properties in central London to the huge royal estates, land ownership is dominated by a powerful minority.
Land is still a big issue in much of the world, as land grabs in Africa and elsewhere show - local people find their resources stolen by a greedy few almost every day.
But it's no longer the key source of wealth in Britain.
Wealth is derived from our collective labour and economic resources are increasingly owned by shareholders.
Shares too tend to concentrate in a few hands, with a handful of big shareholders controlling most corporations.
Con-Dem ideology and conventional economics stress that hard work is the source of wealth.
In a real sense it is, but that doesn't mean the wealth ends up where the hard work was done. Share ownership provides dividends without the need to get one's hands dirty with production.
The rich rarely sweat and while their ancestors on occasion may have done so, the motto originally from the French novelist Honore de Balzac that introduces the great US novel The Godfather still generally holds: Behind every great fortune, there is a great crime.
Neoliberalism is driving further the concentration of property ownership.
The austerity agenda involves countries across the world taking resources - whether those are library buildings, roads, land or radio spectrums - that are publicly owned and selling them off.
The cheap sale of assets transforms public ownership into ownership by shareholders, and the resources controlled by shareholders have to be used not to benefit communities but to provide the most short-term profit.
Thus control of the economy passes more and more into the hands of a minority. Short-term cash considerations lead to environmental damage. And politics becomes more and more distorted by the whims of an elite.
For democracy to function a diverse media is necessary - access to information shapes our ability as voters to make meaningful choices. As media ownership, like everything else, becomes dominated by a minority, groups like Rupert Murdoch's News International gain more and more power over events.
It's a never-ending cycle - control of property gives the ability to raise more cash from financial institutions which can then be used to control yet more property.
Centralisation of property ownership leads to falling incomes for the majority of us and is accelerated by processes of liberalisation.
Ultimately property ownership is a bit like society's DNA. Different forms of property rights give rise to different futures.
That's why we need to think creatively about property. It's interesting that the often far from forward-looking Romans didn't simply have "private" and "state" property but more than six different kinds of property, including community ownership and even ownership by the gods.
We might not wish to give the likes of Zeus a controlling stake in resources, but is it any less rational to sell control of our NHS or our roads to corporations based in Texas or Bavaria?
There are all sorts of alternative options on the table. Radical US economist John R Commons developed the concept of a "bundle" of property rights - instead of having an exclusive right to own and sell property on an individual basis, different users might have different rights to property in terms of access for productive use.
It would build on structures such as common land, of which incidentally there is over 400,000 acres in England and Wales. This land is provately owned but gives "commoners" a range of rights from grazing cattle to flying kites.
We need to put democratic ownership back on the agenda. Whether it's establishing a real democratic input into how existing public property is used, so it isn't controlled by distant bureaucrats, or it's giving workers control of companies, property needs to be owned and enjoyed by more of us.
The aspiration for democratic politics was dismissed as "mob rule" and rejected as utopian extremism before the 1789 French revolution.
Today the aspiration for democratic ownership is seen as so extreme that it is rarely even articulated.
But from Wikipedia to the co-operative movement to communal councils in Venezuela, the idea that we can extend ownership from the few to the many is slowly emerging.
  • Derek Wall is international co-ordinator for the Green Party of England and Wales.

9 Dec 2012

The Wealth of Commons

Derek Wall
International Coordinator of the Green Party of England and Wales, author
The Wealth of Commons
Edited by David Bollier and Silke Helfrich
Levellers Press
http://bit.ly/UTst79

The popularity of collective, ecologically-responsible ownership is growing . From Venezuela's creation of 21st century socialism based on communal councils to the late great Professor Elinor Ostrom's Nobel Prize in economics, commons are becoming better known.
This is a superb collection of 73 short essays on the commons, covering very diverse and exciting perspectives. The essay on the connection between the indigenous idea of buen vivar (good living) is especially good. Massimo de Angelis warns how the commons can be co-opted by capitalism and Peter Linebaugh links commons to the work of Marxist historians like the great English ecosocialist E.P. Thompson.
David Bollier had the book printed at his local left and community printers in Amherst, Massachutes and you can order a copy via http://www.wealthofthecommons.org/.
However, being about the value of free, as in free beer, he and Silke will be putting the whole book on the web for free in the future. This is my favourite green left themed book of 2012. Commons is about property and, for me, whether it is indigenous land or fighting the enclosure of the web from corporations, property is about class struggle.

From Green Left Weekly here

8 Dec 2012

A song for Doha. Climate Song.



Summer Tumblers - Climate Song

"Imagine a world where the leaders of nations should some respect for future generations and couldn't be bought by big corporations, imagine the thinks they would do.

So lift up your voices and never be silenced....:

7 Dec 2012

Save Heatherwood Hospital, march 11.30, saturday 8th December



Save Heatherwood Hospital | Public March | December 8th

The Save Heatherwood Hospital campaign is planning a march up Ascot High Street to Heatherwood Hopsital, on Saturday December 8th.  Assemble 11.30am in Car Park 6, at the bottom of Ascot High St, next to the Jaguar showroom. A presentation of a  23,000  signature petitions to senior
Primary Care  Trust  representative, calling for retention of hospital and full services :an historic occasion is planned!

spike.humphrey@lineone.net

Imperialism Is the Arsonist: Marxism’s Contribution to Ecological Literatures and Struggles

Derek Wall ’s article entitled  Imperialism Is the Arsonist: Marxism’s Contribution to Ecological Literatures and Struggles , argues that Ma...