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Food sovereignty without animal liberation?
By Dinesh Wadiwel
October 25, 2018 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Animal Liberation Currents — Food is a powerful frame for progressive politics. This is because so much contemporary injustice appears connected with issues relating to food: its production, its circulation and its availability. Globally, different forms of food deprivation shape the everyday lives of the poor.[1]
Agricultural expropriation: Making money from farmers
By Alan Broughton
September 7, 2016 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Soil Alliance — There is money to be made in farming, but not by the farmers. This paper examines the reasons why farmers around the world are poor and there are a billion hungry people. The terms of trade for farmers continually declines and farmers are forced off the land. Governments and international bodies advocate further deregulation and trade liberalisation and greater use of technology, yet these policies have undoubtedly failed in their stated aims of increasing food security and rural prosperity. The beneficiaries have only been the agribusiness corporations which have been instrumental in the design of the new order of agricultural production.
Hunger in Venezuela? A look beyond the spin
By Christina Schiavoni and William Camacaro
July 15, 2016 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Food First! with permission — You may have seen the headlines about Venezuela – headlines that allude to food scarcity, rioting, people eating stray animals to survive, and a country on the brink of starvation. These stories are not only alarming, but perplexing, too. Is this the same country that was recognized by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) as recently as 2015 for having nearly eradicated hunger?[1] Is this the same country that has been the focus of international delegations and extensive alternative media coverage for its ‘food sovereignty experiment’ involving agrarian reform, food distributions programs, and direct citizen participation in the food system?[2] What’s going on?
Greening the Revolution: a documentary about food justice
June 16, 2016 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- This high-definition documentary explores the far-reaching effects of international food injustice, from world hunger to the consumption of industrial food. Focusing on issues such as GMOs, farmer suicides, diabetes, migrant farm workers and hunger, the film turns to look at the resistance to harmful economic policies, amazing sustainable alternatives and organic agriculture practiced by brilliant small farmers, and the overall courage and hope found in the hearts of people refusing to accept a food system based on profits over human dignity.
Filmed in India, Kenya, Zambia, Brazil, Mexico, Cuba, Haiti and the United States, in "Greening the Revolution" features interviews with small farmers and revolutionaries from the Landless Workers Movement (Brazil), Zambia Womens Alliance, Coalition of Immokalee Workers (US), Zapatista communities in Chiapas Mexico and political intellectuals such as Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, and Vandana Shiva.
For more information or to support the film, visit http://www.greeningtherevolution.org
'Our stomachs will make themselves heard': What Sankara can teach us about food justice today
By Amber Murrey
May 19, 2016 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Pambazuka News -- In recent weeks, news of food crises in countries across Africa has been intensifying. From the Democratic Republic of Congo all the way down to South Africa – via Malawi, Zimbabwe, Angola and many others – low rainfall has contributed to millions more being left vulnerable.
La Via Campesina declaration on migration and rural workers
By La Via Campesina, World Social Forum, Tunis 2015
March 25-28, 2015 -- La Via Campesina, posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- The migration of peoples across arbitrary barriers is an integral part of human history. Rooted in the search for better living conditions, this movement of peoples from one place to another was later transformed into a social, economic and political process that has largely served to benefit ruling elites -- the slave traders of the past and the multinationals of the present. Today, as capital demands exceptional freedoms for itself -- combined with greater restrictions on the poor -- wars, social exclusion, economic injustice and the global climate crisis are forcing millions of human beings to seek refuge across internationally imposed boundaries.
GMOs, pesticides, climate, nuclear energy: How capitalism controls science
By Don Fitz
December 11, 2014 – Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal, submitted by the author; a version of this article first appeared at Truthout.org -- Did you ever think that investigation of the potential dangers of putting genetically modified organisms (GMOs) into food would be based on objective research? Or that unbiased reviews of research by academic journals would chart a steady march toward scientific truth? If so, you would be very wrong. Through all of its phases, scientific research is subject to repression, manipulation and more insidious forms of control that push it toward a profit-based consensus.
Three well-known GMO studies form a pattern of authors' being harassed, intimidated and even having their findings "retracted" or withdrawn by a scientific journal after being published.
Suppression of GMO research
Raj Patel on nutrition, gender and food security in Africa
More from Raj Patel.
November 27, 2014 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- Raj Patel, the author of Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System and The Value of Nothing, speaks on “Nutrition, Gender and Food Security in Africa". Patel is a research professor in the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, a visiting professor at the Unit for the Humanities at Rhodes University in South Africa and a fellow at the Institute for Food and Development Policy. His current writing and film project is “Generation Food”. The event is sponsored by UT’s Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice.
Produced/edited by Jeffry Zavala, videography by Grace Alfar, Jeff Zavala and Ellie Main.
An Austin Indymedia Production, http://Austin.Indymedia.org.
Challenging the globalisation of indifference: Pope Francis meets with popular movements
The author, Judith Marshall, meets Pope Francis.
By Judith Marshall
November 21, 2014 – Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- I have recently returned from three fascinating days in Rome where I participated in a World Meeting of Popular Movements. This event brought to the Vatican a throng of articulate delegates from among the poor and excluded of the 21st Century, people fighting for land, for housing, for work and for dignity. Pope Francis was a central force in creating this gathering in Rome. Our meeting with him in the Old Synod Hall of the Basilica was a high point.
The meeting brought together 150 delegates. Thirty of them were Bishops from various parts of the world whose ministries include strong accompaniment and support for movements of the poor. The other 120 came from various popular movements working on the thematic issues of the meeting – Terra, Labor, Domus. Men and women fighting for land, work and housing were present from every continent. In a statement from the organisers, the logic was clear.
Ebola epidemic exposes the sickness of the global economic and political system
An awareness campaign against Ebola in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, September 25, 2014.
By the Peoples Health Movement
November 2014 -- PHM Global News, posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- On August 8, 2014, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the Ebola outbreak a "public health emergency of international concern". The declaration came four months after the WHO reported a major Ebola outbreak in Guinea in West African. The epidemic broke in Guinea and spread to three of its neighbours – Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria. The cumulative number of cases and deaths as at November 12 stood at more than 13,000 cases and 5160 deaths. Most public health experts agree that the official figures are a major underestimation of the extent and spread of the disease.
'Democratise the land!': Brazil’s Landless Rural Workers' Movement's letter to presidential and state governor candidates
For more on Brazil, click HERE.
By the National Direction of the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, São Paulo
United States: ‘Right to farm’ scam -- third wave corporatocracy
August 21, 2014 – Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- When Monsanto’s home state of Missouri passed the “Right to Farm” on August 5, 2014, the third noose of corporate control tightened around the neck of the United States. Unlike the first two steps of corporate domination of public life, this was a constitutional amendment that would block the state legislature or voters from passing future laws for environmental protection, animal welfare or labeling of contaminated food. This third wave corporatocracy could well spread across US and globally as it becomes a new form of mass disenfranchisement.
Evo Morales: ‘Our liberation is for the whole of humanity’
Group of 77 Summit — Plurinational State of Bolivia, 14 and 15 June 2014. “For a New World Order for Living Well.”
"Only we can save the source of life and society: Mother Earth. Our planet is under a death threat from predatory and insane capitalism. Another world is not only possible, it is indispensable, because otherwise, no world will be possible." -- Evo Morales
Evo Morales, President of Bolivia, gave this remarkable opening talk at the summit of the Group of 77 plus China, meeting in Santa Clara, Bolivia, on June 14, 2014.
* * *
Introduction by Richard Fidler
June 24, 2014 -- Life on the Left, posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal with permission -- The Summit of the Group of 77 plus China, marking the alliance’s 50th anniversary, closed in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, on June 15 with the adoption of a declaration containing 242 articles, entitled “For a New World Order for Living Well.”
Martin Empson's 'Land and Labour': A Marxist view of ecology and human history
Land & Labour: Marxism, Ecology and Human History
By Martin Empson
London: Bookmarks Publications, 2014
Review by Simon Butler
April 4, 2014 -- Climate & Capitalism, posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal with permission -- With several serious global environmental crises bearing down on us, the question of our age must be “what can we do?” Martin Empson urges us to look into the past and into the future for answers in his new book, Land and Labour. His message is that human destruction of its environment is not inevitable, although it is very likely if we don’t draw upon the best and worst examples from humanity’s diverse experience.
He writes:
Venezuela: Pace of land expropriations to continue for 'agrarian socialism'
The latest land occupation facilitated by the National Land Institute is underway in the south-western state of Apure. Photo by Victor Hugo Majano/Aporrea.org.
By Ewan Robertson, Merida
January 13, 2014 -- Venezuelanalysis -- This year the Venezuelan government plans to continue its pace of land expropriations in order to move towards what it terms “agrarian socialism”.
According to the 2014 national budget, the government’s National Land Institute (INTI) aims to expropriate 350,000 hectares of land this year.
This compares with the goals of 350,000 and 397,000 hectares of land to be expropriated in 2012 and 2013 respectively, after the government began to increase the pace of land expropriations in 2011.
It is estimated that in the decade between 2001, when former president Hugo Chavez passed a law promoting land redistribution, and 2011, the INTI expropriated 3.6 million hectares of agricultural land.
Green Party USA: Economic/ecological crises of the 21st century -- A deep green alternative
Document of the Greens/Green Party USA, submitted to Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal by Don Fitz, national committee member of the Greens/Green Party USA. It is posted in the interests of discussion.
July 22, 2013 -- Why should we work longer hours in order to …
- put our neighbours out of work,
- produce fall-apart products that poison our children and grandchildren, and
- have less time to enjoy life?
People are losing their jobs and homes. Many throughout the world are without food, medical care and transportation. Instead of addressing real needs, governments and international financial institutions are designing “austerity programs” that cut back on basic services and privatise everything from education and mail delivery to pension plans and public health.
Simultaneously, climate change intensifies before our eyes as summers warm, droughts expand, polar ice caps melt, and those who live in coastal areas are threatened by rising waters. This occurs amid heightened use of radioactive and other toxic chemicals, the destruction of biodiversity and a drive to pull the last resources out of the Earth so that nothing will be left to future generations.
Ration consumption or ration production?
Review by Don Fitz
Any Way You Slice It: The Past, Present and Future of Rationing
By Stan Cox
The New Press, 2013
June 3, 2013 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal/Climate & Capitalism -- Stan Cox got quite a few folks a bit hot and bothered when his book Losing Our Cool critiqued air-conditioning during the middle of the 2010 heat wave. Now, in the middle of massive joblessness and economic downturn, his new book, Any Way You Slice It: The Past, Present and Future of Rationing, is based on the assumption that humanity needs to massively reduce consumption if it is to have any chance of surviving.
Is the guy nuts? Does he hate the working class and poor? Or does he have very keen vision into a topic that few progressives and socialists have even thought about? Peeking beneath the surface, Slice It has the potential to spark serious discussion about the role of social wages in challenging climate change as well as control over production during the transition to a post-capitalist society.
Away with confusion
Declaration of the Social Movements Assembly of the World Social Forum, Tunisia 2013
By the Social Movements Assembly of the World Social Forum, Tunisia, 2013
March 29, 2013 -- We are gathered here to affirm the fundamental contribution of peoples of Maghreb-Mashrek (from North Africa to the Middle East), in the construction of human civilisation. We affirm that decolonisation for oppressed peoples remains for us, the social movements of the world, a challenge of the greatest importance.
Through the WSF process, the Social Movements Assembly is the place where we come together through our diversity, in order to forge common struggles and a collective agenda to fight against capitalism, patriarchy, racism and all forms of discrimination and oppression. We have built a common history of work which led to some progress, particularly in Latin America, where we have been able to intervene in neoliberal alliances and to create several alternatives for just development that truly honors nature.
Anti-fracking movement goes global, climate-change mafia warns
More than 2000 people protest against coal seam gas in the Illawarra, NSW, Australia, October 2011.
By Farida Iqbal
February 10, 2013 -- Green Left Weekly -- The shale gas industry-commissioned white paper, The Global Anti-Fracking Movement: What it Wants, How it Operates and What’s Next, makes for some very interesting reading. It was produced late last year by Control Risks, an “independent, global risk consultancy specialising in helping organisations manage political, integrity and security risks in complex and hostile environments”.
The white paper focuses on shale gas, but it also discusses coal seam gas. Shale gas is what features in the film Gasland by Josh Fox, which details the destructive effects of “fracking” on communities in the US.
A global movement has emerged to combat the risks to water and air quality, health and farmland that shale gas mining poses. Australia has both shale and coal seam gas reserves.
Evo Morales: Ten commandments against capitalism, for life and humanity -- 'Manifesto of Isla del Sol'
[For more on Evo Morales and Bolivia, click HERE.]
January 15, 2013 -- Climate and Capitalism/Life on the Left, posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal with permission -- On December 21, 2012, at a solstice celebration in Lake Titicaca, high in the Andes, Bolivia's president Evo Morales introduced the Manifesto of Isla del Sol. His talk, translated below, includes the full text of the manifesto.
