Sian Berry joins the mutiny!

Sian Berry former London Green Party Mayoral Candidate is going to be a star attraction at the Mutiny on 4th July.

Love the mutiny, always a good night.

“Work is the curse of the drinking classes”, joked Oscar Wilde. And today there are few lives which are not blighted by work. Hours seem to ever increase, wages have stagnated and fallen in real terms, bosses continue to be vindictive.

Mutiny presents Work on Trial will be hosted by Brendan Montague, journalist and author of A Year on The Sauce. Among our special guests are Sian Berry, the Green party’s London Mayoral candidate for 2008, and Anne-Marie O-Reilly from Boycott Workfare and London Coalition Against Poverty. We are currently booking trade unionists, activists, performers and artists.

Work on Trial is a carnivalesque evening of live entertainment and discussion providing a whistle-stop tour of contemporary political issues at work. The night begins with speed debating, followed by three interactive debating sessions interspersed with performance poetry, theatre, readings, and live music.

More details here.

Peruvians say Earth First! Profit Last!

well the slogan is "Mina no, agro si" but saw this on the Earth First! UK site while I was finding out more about the mining protests.

24th May 2011
For more than two weeks, thousands of people have blocked an international border in Peru — and almost no one in the English-speaking world seems to have noticed.

The story has fallen through the cracks, but here's what's happening:

A proposed mining project on the shores of Lake Titicaca has provoked outrage among Peruvians. Protests are growing in the southeastern part of the country.

About 10,000 people gathered in the city of Puno this week, shouting "Mina no, agro si" (roughly "Mines no, farms yes"). Shops, schools and public transit all shut down.

The protests were sparked by the announcement that a subsidiary of the Canadian mining company Bear Creek would be allowed to build a silver mine near Lake Titicaca.

Titicaca is the highest navigable lake in the world and the largest lake in South America. The lake was considered sacred by the Incas and is a major tourist draw today.

The protesters say mining would pollute Lake Titicaca, the Desaguadero River and its tributaries. They are demanding the cancellation of all mining and oil concessions and the repeal of the decree that allows mining in the border area.

Bear Creek says the proposed project offers a "low-cost 'pure silver' mine" in a "mineral-rich nation with a favorable investment climate."

The Peruvian government said it would dispatch the military to control the protest and clear the road linking the two countries.

Bolivian businessmen estimate they have lost between $7 million and $16 million because of the blockade. The president of the Chamber of Exporters of Bolivia, Goran Vranicic, told Efe that daily losses total $1 million.

The protest began on May 9 with the closing of the Desaguadero border crossing. The route is still blocked with large rocks, logs and barbed wire.

About 600 trucks are stuck on the Bolivian side of the border, and in the last couple of hours, many of the trapped truckers have begun returning to the Bolivian capital of La Paz. The closure largely affects Bolivian cargo headed to Peru or to third countries through Peruvian ports (Bolivia doesn't have access to the sea).

In April, after a protest left three dead in the nearby region of Arequipa, the Peruvian government canceled the Tia Maria mining project.

Vandana Shiva on the great India land grab

Land is life. It is the basis of livelihoods for peasants and indigenous people across the Third World and is also becoming the most vital asset in the global economy. As the resource demands of globalisation increase, land has emerged as a key source of conflict. In India, 65 per cent of people are dependent on land. At the same time a global economy, driven by speculative finance and limitless consumerism, wants the land for mining and for industry, for towns, highways, and biofuel plantations. The speculative economy of global finance is hundreds of times larger than the value of real goods and services produced in the world.

Financial capital is hungry for investments and returns on investments. It must commodify everything on the planet - land and water, plants and genes, microbes and mammals. The commodification of land is fuelling the corporate land grab in India, both through the creation of Special Economic Zones and through foreign direct investment in real estate.

Land, for most people in the world, is Terra Madre, Mother Earth, Bhoomi, Dharti Ma. The land is people's identity; it is the ground of culture and economy. The bond with the land is a bond with Bhoomi, our Earth; 75 per cent of the people in the Third World live on the land and are supported by the land. The Earth is the biggest employer on the planet: 75 per cent of the wealth of the people of the global south is in land.

Colonisation was based on the violent takeover of land. And now, globalisation as recolonisation is leading to a massive land grab in India, in Africa, in Latin America. Land is being grabbed for speculative investment, for speculative urban sprawl, for mines and factories, for highways and expressways. Land is being grabbed from farmers after trapping them in debt and pushing them to suicide.

India's land issues

In India, the land grab is facilitated by the toxic mixture of the colonial Land Acquisition Act of 1894, the deregulation of investments and commerce through neo-liberal policies - and with it the emergence of the rule of uncontrolled greed and exploitation. It is facilitated by the creation of a police state and the use of colonial sedition laws which define defence of the public interest and national interest as anti-national.

The World Bank has worked for many years to commodify land. The 1991 World Bank structural adjustment programme reversed land reform, deregulated mining, roads and ports. While the laws of independent India to keep land in the hands of the tiller were reversed, the 1894 Land Acquisition Act was untouched.

Thus the state could forcibly acquire the land from the peasants and tribal peoples and hand it over to private speculators, real estate corporations, mining companies and industry.

Across the length and breadth of India, from Bhatta in Uttar Pradesh (UP) to Jagatsinghpur in Orissa to Jaitapur in Maharashtra, the government has declared war on our farmers, our annadatas, in order to grab their fertile farmland.

Their instrument is the colonial Land Acquisition Act - used by foreign rulers against Indian citizens. The government is behaving as the foreign rulers did when the Act was first enforced in 1894, appropriating land through violence for the profit of corporations - JayPee Infratech in Uttar Pradesh for the Yamuna expressway, POSCO in Orissa and AREVA in Jaitapur - grabbing land for private profit and not, by any stretch of the imagination, for any public purpose. This is rampant in the country today.

These land wars have serious consequences for our nation's democracy, our peace and our ecology, our food security and rural livelihoods. The land wars must stop if India is to survive ecologically and democratically.

While the Orissa government prepares to take the land of people in Jagatsinghpur, people who have been involved in a democratic struggle against land acquisition since 2005, Rahul Gandhi makes it known that he stands against forceful land acquisition in a similar case in Bhatta in Uttar Pradesh. The Minister for the Environment, Mr Jairam Ramesh, admitted that he gave the green signal to pass the POSCO project - reportedly under great pressure. One may ask: "Pressure from whom?" This visible double standard when it comes to the question of land in the country must stop.


MORE HERE

Massimo De Angelis on commons

Massimo De Angelis: My interest in the commons is grounded in a desire for the conditions necessary to promote social justice, sustainability, and happy lives for all. As simple as that.


MORE HERE

BNP MEPs fallout big time video here

Brons and Griffin clash on screen, BNP in meltdown

Caroline Lucas MP argues conservation limited if no real action on carbon

GOVERNMENT'S MIXED MESSAGES ON NATURAL ENVIRONMENT COULD HAMPER CONSERVATION EFFORTS, SAYS GREEN MP

Green MP Caroline Lucas today warned that the Coalition Government's inconsistency on policies to protect our natural world and encourage a greener, more sustainable economy could ultimately hamper conservation efforts.

While she welcomed the Natural Environment White Paper published by the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs today (1), the Brighton Pavilion MP and Green Party leader said that many of the proposals lacked the legislative weight needed to make a sufficient impact - and called for more joined up thinking across Whitehall to promote genuine sustainability.

Caroline Lucas MP said:

"While I welcome this report's recognition of the need to address biodiversity loss and protect our natural environment, its proposals lack detail - and the test will really be in the implementation. Setting up a mere 12 Nature Improvement Areas (NIAs), for example, surely underestimates the scale of work needed to restore and safeguard important natural sites across the country.

"Furthermore, although local communities and volunteers will play an important role in engaging with and helping to protect the environment in their areas, this should not be a substitute for good governance, sufficient Government resources and over arching targets and legislation. Initiatives such as Local Nature Partnerships will need more than hollow 'Big Society' rhetoric if they are to be successful.

"And while the economic evaluation of the natural world might be a well intentioned effort to convince economists and the business community of its importance, putting a price on the environment only serves to further commodify it - perpetuating the idea that natural resources are simply there to be exploited.

"Ultimately, it's also crucial to recognise that the protection of our natural environment is not just a matter for Defra - we need strong and consistent policies to mainstream sustainability across all Government departments, as well as tough emissions reduction targets to tackle climate change and a proper commitment to a low carbon economy."

Changes the rules, subvert the system, save the planet

The recent figures on CO2 emissions are sobering. Despite the fact that the world has suffered a terrible recession, emissions are still rising.

In essence all the efforts to tackle climate change have simply slowed the rise a little rather than reversing it.

The problem is that the solutions to climate change put forward at international conferences like Copenhagen and Cancun dare not deal with the real root cause of climate change – our current economic system.

Simply put, our economic system is based on the accumulation of money. There is a constant race to throw money into the system and to get more money out at the other end.

That’s what modern life is about.

From Fifa to the current conflict in Libya, the desire to accumulate cash sets the objectives for society. If something makes cash it is holy in the eyes of the economists, the media and virtually all political parties.

So climate change is tackled internationally by “market-based” methods. These fail time and time again, but more effective action would require a change in our priorities.

Our economic system is based on resource extraction. Minerals, metals and fossil fuels are taken out of the ground, made into goods and then thrown away.

The faster the cycle the more profit is made.

If you think about it for more than a minute or two, there is something rather mad about this methodology. The cost to the natural environment is immense. Right across the planet fragile ecosystems are under enormous threat.

The human cost is also huge. The value of good is based ultimately on the labour power involved, so globally neoliberal governments are competing to come up with new ways of making human beings work long and harder to produce more.

MORE HERE