Alan Thornett Onpopulation Arms To
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Green Socialist AGS Alliance for Green Socialism plus Alan Thornett on Population Arms to Renewables Issue No. 68 Summer 2014 Food for Thought ISSN 1741-5497 £1.00 Journal of the Alliance for Green Socialism Roads to Nowhere www.greensocialist.org.uk Pride Green Socialist is published by the Alliance for Green Socialism Editor John Sillett Editorial correspondence to: The Editor, Green Socialist, NEA 5794, Leeds LS7 3YY email: [email protected] www.greensocialist.org.uk/ . The AGS is a political alliance seeking to build a future based on the twin principles of socialism and environmental sustainability - we see these two things as being inextricably linked, each being impossible without the other. If you share our concerns and our principles, if you care about the survival of our civilization on this planet and about social justice for all who live on it, then why not join us? Membership details are on page 11. Issue No. 69 - Autumn 2014 Next Issue in this issue: Green Socialist 70 will focus on our oceans, air and soil. Human society has allowed these to be polluted by thinking they are so large that Editorial 3 they can absorb infinite amounts of waste and pollutants. Some of us can remember the Election Appeal 3 Torrey Canyon oil tanker shipwreck off the coast of Britain in 1967 which brought home, Corrections 4 perhaps for the first time, how marine ecosys- Arms to Anne-Marie 4 tems were being harmed. Whilst Britain does not have the smog it once did, as we have Renewables O’Riley exported this to China, air pollution is a big TTIP Janet Silver 6 killer as the rise of diseases related to asthma shows. TISA Janet Silver 7 Food for Thought John Sillett 8 Population Alan Thornett 10 Join Us 11 Climate Pointers Bryn Glover 12 Ecosocialism2014 Mike Davies 13 Roads to Nowher e Sian Berry 13 Film: Pride review: Janet Silver 15 Books: The world review: Mike Davies 15 before yesterday Articles in this journal do not necessarily reflect the policy of the Alliance for Green Socialism unless specifically stated. Green Socialist no 69 Autumn 2014 page 2 Editorial John Sillett education and social security - despite the terrible, As the war machine despotic nature of ruling elites in those countries. keeps turning In the void that followed the collapse of Russia, monstrous and brutal so-caslled religious groups The British Parliament has voted for another war. and regimes, harking back to the middle ages Were you asked? Here we have one of the most have filled the vacuum. They act as a conduit for important of all decisions to be made by govern- the anger of many against western imperialist ment and the public are not given a say. Instead, aggression which seeks to acquire strategic a mere handful of “representatives”, numbering geographical positions as well as raw materials six hundred and fifty, mostly elected four and a and access to markets. half years ago, make this most monumental of November 5th 2014 marks the one hundredth all decisions. anniversary of Britain declaring war on the A year ago, American pressure was to bomb the Ottoman Empire. Licking their lips with anticipation Assad regime in Syria in favour of the Free of carving up this empire’s lands in the middle Syrian Army. Now they are bombing the enemies east, Britain and France used a minor incident as of Assad! a pretext for this new theatre of war. Within days, talks were underway to get backing for this cam- As with the Taliban in Afghanistan, ISIS (so-called paign from wealthy Zionist business people and Islamic State) in Syria and Iraq has obtained bankers. These talks eventually led to the Balfour relatively sophisticated weaponry from western Declaration of support for a Jewish homeland in sources. The more that is sent to the anti Assad Palestine. Previously it had been mooted for forces of the Free Syrian Army, the more ISIS can somewhere in Africa. However as the war get hold of. progressed, it was found necessary to get the The rise of Islamic fundamentalism and jihadism local Arab population on board which led to Britain has it's roots in the fall of the Berlin Wall. Up to promising Palestine to the Arabs as well. The that event, communism or socialism was seen divide and rule strategy worked up to a point, but by oppressed peoples as a way forward in their has led to instability, uncertain oil flows to the struggle against national and social oppression. western powers and a wider threat of regional The support of the Soviet Union or China meant military conflict. financial and military backing towards a planned Only democratic Socialism will be able to offer economy and with it advances in health, housing, a programme of rights for minorities alongside economic emancipation and freedom from want. General Election Appeal The AGS is hoping to promote our message by running up to five candidates in the 2015 General Election. As I explained to AGS Conference on 18 th October, how many seats we contest and the effectiveness of our campaigns will depend on the money we can raise for that purpose. We have not already saved up a war chest for the General Election as we have given priority over the last two years to investing in equipment (a printer and a franking machine) to support our regular communications. A welcome development has been that Socialist Alliance (which is an affiliate of the AGS and to which the AGS is affiliated) is in a position, following a legacy, to offer some support to a number of candidates from like-minded organisations. We have applied to Socialist Alliance for help in this way and we are in correspondence with them about it. The undertaking we give is that any funds we raise, from our readers and hopefully also from Socialist Alliance, for the purpose of the General Election campaign, will be used solely in that way. Please send your election donations to me at 22 Montagu Crescent, Leeds LS8 2RF Corrections and Apologies Green Socialist Journal is using new software which, like all things new, has had teething problems. We apologize pro- fusely to Toby Abse for some text order issues and are reprinting the sections concerned as they should have read in the last issue. Turning his attention to Italy and Portugal Toby writes:- “Unfortunately, the other two countries of the Southern shift away from the notion of joining the ‘Party of Euro- European periphery badly affected by the crisis of the Eu- pean Socialism’ - remains part of the new alignment; for- rozone in 2011 have not yielded such an electoral harvest tunately none of the 3 MEPS elected is from SEL which for parties of the radical left. The decline of the once lessens the scope for betrayal. The main contest in Italy mighty Italian Partito della Rifondazione Comunista since was between the Centre-Left Partito Democratico which its loss of national parliamentary representation in 2008 got 40.8% and comedian Beppe Grillo’s right populist and the breakaway by its right wing in 2009, which led to Movimento Cinque Stelle ( Five Star Movement –M5S) the creation of Nichi Vendola’s left social which got about 21% and whose 17 MEPs democratic Sinistra Ecologia e Liberta are UKIP’s closest allies in Strasbourg. In ( Left Ecology and Freedom – SEL), means Portugal the Socialist Party as the official there is no longer a radical force with the opposition to the current conservative coa- strength of the Spanish IU, let alone the lition government benefitted from popular Greek Syriza . Nonetheless, the direct in- anger, despite its own abject neo-liberalism volvement of Syriza’s Alexis Tsipras in Ital- and the Bloco de Esquerda ( BE- Left Bloc ian politics meant that a radical left electoral - made up of former Maoists, Trotskyists cartel – L’Altra Europa con Tsipras man- and a group that split from the official aged to scrape through the 4% electoral communist party), whilst performing re- threshold by a whisker and got 3 MEPs. The spectably did not do as well as on some Lista Tsipras involved both Rifondazione previous occasions. The Portuguese situa- and SEL as well as a number of non-aligned intellectuals tion is further complicated by the presence of the Portu- and activists but it remains to be seen if the crisis ridden guese Communist Party , which despite its antediluvian SEL – a dozen of whose parliamentarians have defected and sectarian stance, can gain votes by projecting an im- in the last few weeks, largely in reaction to the leftward age of class based radicalism.” We also apologise to Daniel Ahern for stating in the introduction to his article on the assassination of Kennedy that the shooting took place in 1964. It was of course 1963. Arms to renewables: work for the future by Anne-Marie O’Riley, Events and Training Co-ordinator, Campaign Against Arms Trade In the Spring Issue of Green Socialist, Liz Peck posed the question “What can we do about the arms trade?”. Campaign Against Arms Trade's Anne-Marie O'Reilly suggests that a shift in government support from arms trade to renewable energy would mean better jobs and help meet our real security needs. What sort of future do we want to invest in? Last on aircraft carriers for “power projection” or £2.5 billion month's NATO summit promised one of further austerity on fighter aircraft to fight unnamed “future threats” be and conflict as leaders agreed to “reverse the trend of justified while 1 in 4 children grows up in poverty? declining defence budgets and raise them over the com- Why else would the Government proceed with Trident ing decade”.