Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Salute to Sindicato de Obreros del Campo - Sindicato Andaluz de Trabajadores




The SOC-SAT (Sindicato de Obreros del Campo –Sindicato Andaluz de Trabajadores) has undertaken many different actions in recent months to achieve fairer production, consumption and sales’ regulations for agricultural produce in the context of food sovereignty.

The political courage shown by SOC-SAT and particularly by their leaders is unprecedented. By undertaking actions of resistance, and proposing alternatives, SOC-SAT is challenging the current neo-liberal system and its disastrous impacts on people.

Recent actions include that of 24th July by SOC-SAT agricultural workers in Andalusia who occupied the La Turquilla farm.

SOC-SAT demands that the farm laborer’s cooperatives be allowed to work the land of the 2,000 hectares of fertile land that is owned by the army, in order to feed their families, instead of using it to grow export crops and rear horses.

Given the current serious economic and social crisis affecting Spain as well as the rest of Europe, SOC-SAT’s actions provide credible solidarity alternatives for defending social justice and human rights in a way that reaches beyond capitalist dogma.

Farmland should first and foremost be used for small-scale family farming and meet the social, environmental and economic challenges of our society.

We also call for an initiative for European agrarian reform of land use, to serve food security and sustainable development.

Contact : Javier Sanchez, Member of the Coordinating Committee of ECVC
For further information : SAT http://www.sindicatoandaluz.org

Monday, August 27, 2012

Real Green Solutions to Climate Change - No to the Agro Industrial Complex by Nickglais





In an recent exchange on Radical Wales a contributor was told he had to choose between Corporate Industrial scale Windmilling or Corporate Fossil Fuel Mining in Wales.


The reply was that these were the false dicotomies posed by Corporate Capitalism and were not the real choices offering fundamental and long lasting solutions to our ecological problems.

The real ecological choices are between the real solution from the ground up and community based or the top down fake "green" corporatism posing as a solution.

The Green market economy is in disarray if anybody cares to take a closer look, with carbon trading on verge of collapse and a well deserved prison sentence looming for one of the founders of this carbon trading scam.

Utimately the ecological prolem is a social problem and not a technical one of windmills or coalmines.
The clear advocates of a ground up community ecological solution are the International Peasant Movement of Via Campesina who have developed an alternative based on the science of agroecology as opposed to agro industrial agriculture.

Henry George and Land Value Tax : Wolf in Sheep's Clothing by Nickglais


Picture Henry George


Henry George (September 2, 1839 – October 29, 1897) was an American writer, politician and political economist ,who was the most influential proponent of the Land Value Tax.
Henry George in his book Progress and Poverty tries to marry the interests of the working class with that of the capitalist class against landowners.

Henry George was an advocate of the free market and free trade against any form of protectionism. He believed in removing taxes from Labour and Capital and placing the burden of tax on landowners.

However whilst most Georgists are self confessed right wingers some on the Left like the Green Party in the UK have also adopted Georgist ideas.

The object of Land Value Taxation is to ensure that the rent attributable to the natural value of the land , and to the value created by its fortunate location, is paid to society as a whole and not to individual landowners.

Whilst the Land Value Taxation ostensible target is the absentee landowner or speculators, LVT would also fall on every landowner however small and they would be under pressure to extract as much profit from their land as possible to pay the tax.