Derek Wall and Muckaty women to participate in CCSC conference

Leading British ecosocialist Derek Wall (pictured left) has confirmed that he will prepare a video presentation especially for the World At A Crossroads: Climate Change Social Change conference in Melbourne September 30-October 3. It will be on the topic "Organising for ecosocialism" and we will probably show it in the plenary session on the evening of Sunday October 2. He will do a Skype audio connect to that session so he can join in the discussion as well.

We also have confirmation that two women traditional landowners from Muckaty (the site of the planned nuclear waste dump opposed by the local Aboriginal community and many others), Dianne Stokes (pictured below left) and Kylie Sambo(who is also a hip hop artist-- pictured below right), will be travelling all the way from Central Australia to the conference. 

Wall is running for chair of the Green Party in Britain and will know if he wins on September 8.
In the current issue of GLW, there are interviews with keynote guest speakers John Bellamy Foster and Ian Angus and also a profile article about the three young Cambodian women activists who are coming to the conference.

The longstanding and globally respected Monthly Review magazine, which Foster edits, has become the latest co-sponsor of the conference, joining Melbourne University Office for Environmental Programs, Friends of the Earth (Melbourne), climateandcapitalism.com, Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal, Labour Party Pakistan (LPP), Sydney University Political Economy Society, Socialist Party of Malaysia (PSM), Partido Lakas ng Masa (PLM – Philippines), Australia-Asia Worker Links, Left Unity Adelaide, Adelaide Climate Emergency Action Network (CLEAN), Community Radio 3CR, Transform Asia and Action Aid International.

Individual sessions are being sponsored by the Victorian Trades Hall Council, Earthworker and the Society on Social Implications of Technology (Australia).

The Riot Gene

Everyone knows -- or I hope they know -- that a penchant to  riot is  suggestive of an underlying pathology.

Rioting -- by which I mean full-on vigorous  civil disorder  by disorganized rabble lashing out in a sudden and intense rash of violence against authority, property and other persons -- is not an every day occurrence.

Leastways it isn't in my family.

I can safely say that within my pedigree we have gone several  generations without some family black sheep (and I grant you that we have had our share of those) taking up rock throwing  as a lifestyle.

We write letters. We vote in elections. We take home our pay and make the best of it. 

We grin and bear what life throws at us.

We do not riot.

Maybe we get a little testy now and then -- and think we've been hard done by. Who doesn't? But in my family, one and all share an ingrained respect for authority and the goods and chattels of others.

The seeming ready ease with which those of darker skin complexion or shallower income  become obstreperous,  suggests to me that they must have something volatile within them, something that may cause  hot blood and  obstropolousness (as the Greeks say).

All I can say is that we do not carry that gene.

We're accepting of our lot.

...unfortunately.

Climate Change, Social Change: Reading List

Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal has collected  together articles by the main featured international speakers who will be attending the World at a Crossroads/ Climate Change, Social Change Conference in Melbourne in September-October. There are also a range of links that gather together articles that deal with particular enviromental topics.

These resources provide excellent background reading for the issues that will be discussed at the conference.

• For articles by John Bellamy Foster (including book excerpts)
• For articles by Ian Angus
• For articles on Marxism and ecology
• For all articles on population
• For all articles on climate change
• For articles on Green parties
• For articles on food
• For articles on water
• For articles on the impact of automobiles/public transport
• For articles on Cochabamba and Bolivia
• For articles on the 2009 Copenhagen climate talks
• For articles on the coming Durban climate talks in December

To find material on other issues, please use the search engine on the Links site .

VIDEO SATIRE Capitalist bail outs -- what's in it for Jobless Jack?

This satiric animation video by Mark Fiore from the USA is called Goldman Sachs to Jobless Jack.

Nifty title, eh? there must be a song in it somewhere.

Tip Dear kitty

VIDEO Low wage capitalism

Fred Goldstein talks of his new book Low-Wage Capitalism with a compelling analysis of global corporate capitalism, a system demonstrably unfair, irrational, and painfully unstable.

Read Introduction and selected chapters

Low-Wage Capitalism describes in sweeping detail the drastic effect on the working class in the United States of new technology and the restructuring of global capitalism in the post-Soviet era. It uses Karl Marx's law of wages and other findings to show that these developments are not only continuing to drive down wages but are creating the material basis for future social upheaval.

The analysis rests on three basic developments in the last three decades:

• The world's workforce available to exploitation by transnational capitalist corporations doubled in the wake of the collapse of the USSR and Eastern Europe.
• The technological revolutions of the digital age, in both production and communications, have allowed transnational corporations to destroy high-wage jobs and simultaneously expand the global workforce to generate a worldwide wage competition.
• The decline in the economic condition of the workers, driven by the laws of capitalism and the capitalist class, is leading to the end of working-class compromise and retreat and must end up in a profound revival of the struggle against capitalism.

While the book concentrates on changes in the U.S., restructuring is a world phenomenon. Goldstein's general analysis also applies to the imperialist countries of Western Europe and Japan. The book discusses how:

• Advanced processes of production promoted by the corporate giants in low-wage countries have changed the international division of labor within world capitalism.
• The "national wage" is being supplanted by an international determination of wages as worldwide wage competition lowers the floor.
• Since the late 1970s, the vast majority of U.S. workers have seen a decline in wages and living conditions as permanent, high-paying jobs with benefits disappear.
• The rise of the multi-earner family represents a hidden, class-wide wage cut for U.S. workers.
• Restructuring and technology have especially impacted on African-American workers.
• Women have flooded into the workforce, most at low-wage jobs, in order to survive.
• Increased exploitation of Latin@s and other immigrants is an integral part of globalization.
• Highlights from past struggles provide a guide to future action and organization.
• It takes a broad workers' movement to fight for the economic and social needs of all.
• Breaking out of the traditional capital-labor relationship is essential to the defense of the multinational working class in the era of low-wage capitalism.

Presented in May 2008 at the international conference in Cuba on "The work of Karl Marx and the Challenges for the 21st Century." Now expanded into a full book, Fred Goldstein lays a basis for workers to understand and respond to the deep crisis rocking the world economy.

VIDEO SATIRE Cheat Neutral takes carbon offsetting to its logical conclusion

"What we understand at CheatNeutral.com is that cheating and jealousy are just a natural part of most modern relationships. What we needed was a market-based solution to dealing with that."

VIDEO: David Harvey -- The Crisis Now

The ever-engrossing David Harvey, speaking at the UK SWP's 2009 Marxism conference in July, addressing the current status of the global economic crisis.



David Harvey also teaches a course on Marx's Capital, the video and audio of which are online at his website.

Tip: Red Wombat.

AUDIO: Economic tsunami is still haunting the world's economies

In case you were thinking that the economic crisis was passe here's a tit bit from an insider who tells it a lot differently than our own Wayne Swann.It was recorded by ABC Radio's The World Today on September 15th.

Author and former investment banker, John Talbott, joins The World Today to explain why he believes the President's proposed reforms won't prevent another economic collapse. Mr Talbott's books warned about economic instability, and predicted the US housing market collapse.

Original audio source (20090915-twt-04-john-talbott.mp3)

SLIDESHOW: From Poor America To Financial Crisis

Presentation by Raphie de Santos (Scottish Socialist Party) on Economic Crisis
More reports and multimedia listed here.

From Poor America To Financial Crisis

View more documents from Ratbag Media.

SATIRE & VIDEO:A People's History of American Empire by Howard Zinn

Narrated by Viggo Mortensen
Art by Mike Konopacki
Video editing by Eric Wold

VIDEO:Marxist Geographer David Harvey on the G20, the Financial Crisis and Neoliberalism

For some analysis on the G20 summit and the financial crisis, Democracy Now speaks to a leading thinker on the global economy. David Harvey is a Marxist geographer and distinguished professor of anthropology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is the author of several books, including The Limits to Capital and A Brief History of Neoliberalism.

• Watch more videos on the LeftClick Video channel

Solutions to the Housing Crisis III

Can we afford a roof over our heads?

That the suburban sprawl is driven by a desire to keep our residential existence separate from our neighbours has more to do with the frontier habit and the aspiration for the very English garden or manor -- a marker of upward mobility. After the Second World War with full employment such homesteading became a mindset and a promise for any working class couple who had the impulse to breed.

But then home ownership was a guarantee of many things, especially, or supposedly, security.It was the best the Lucky Country had to offer -- local and migrant alike. And since it has to some degree been delivered, it's a theme that feeds on itself across generations.

But the sprawl is too big and the price for a share of it too steep to be sustainable -- let alone the environmental consequences as the suburbs spread like treacle.

Town plans adapt just as individual buyers do so that the trend to inner city urban renewal and concentration has slowed the advance on the periphery-- the suburban fringe -- the whole exercise is total madness. While "urban planning" supposedly exists it's not 'planning' at all. At best it's catch up behind a real estate monster that takes up so much of our consumption -- and thus our proletarian earnings -- that the housing industry is always the true mark of where the Australian economy is heading at any one time. The real estate market is Australian capitalism's stalking horse.

Fix the economy.

The tragedy is that unless you can fix the economy -- fix the mercurial nature of peoples' working life and income existence -- there won't be an easy way to create a new suburbia with a much more sustainable town plan. Without that fix, housing is always going to be a casino where some get lucky and some don't -- but the net effect has been the the percentage of Australians who own their own home has been largely unchanged for 40 years.

• Around 70 per cent of Australian households own or are purchasing their home. The rate of home ownership has remained remarkably stable at this level for over four decades according to data collected by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in its Census of Population and Housing and its Survey of Income and Housing (SIH).
• The proportion of Australian households who own their home outright (that is, without a mortgage) has been far from stable. Based on data from the Census, the rate of outright home ownership fell from 45 per cent in 1947 to 32 per cent in 1976, rising to 43 per cent in 1996 before falling again to 35 per cent in 2006. Data from the SIH for the period 1995 96 to 2005 06 show a similar marked fall in the rate of outright home ownership, falling from 43 to 34 per cent. Home ownership in Australia - data and trends Parliamentary Library , Feb 11, 2009.

Aspiring to home ownership is, in fact, the most Sisyphean task you could tackle.

But the aspiration isn't simply a question of affordability. There is a heavy carbon load on how and where we choose or are forced to live. When you combine residence with issues of infrastructure -- especially energy supply and transport -- a big proportion of national C02 emissions per capita are tied up in our domicile habits or sentences.In fact housing is the axis of the personal carbon utilisation -- in what the homes emit while being constructed, as we live in them in the form of energy used and what we produce traveling to and from them.

While this consumption is the main focus for green washed consumables, climate change spin and personal environmental angst in regard to climate, the real gains in the reduction of C02 emissions are to be had elsewhere; standalone energy, agriculture, and all forms of transport.

Nonetheless, the eco friendly green home is practicable and any number of formulations exist to create it(eg: solar hot water,tank water supplementation,insulation, etc) . All that is required initially is to retro fit what may be accomodating the estimated 7.4 million households in Australia.

But even when you ponder that massive task, the Housing Industry Association estimates that despite the fact that mortgage repayments now account for 29.1 per cent of an average first home buyer’s income – the highest percentage on record. (ref) -- a million new homes need to be built over the next five years to keep pace with the expected population growth.(ref)

Where and how are these houses to be built?

The story so far:

• Solutions for the Housing Crisis I: tips from the Brisbane experience
  
• Solutions for the Housing Crisis II:mobility and living together
  
• Solutions to the Housing Crisis III: affordability
  
• Solutions to the Housing Crisis IV: materials
  
• Solutions to the Housing Crisis IV: public housing
  

VIDEO:London G20 Protests

While the differences between the big G20 players were quietly discussed behind closed doors, out on the streets of London there was real anger.

• Range of reports on Socialist Unity blog
• LeftClick TV Channel

Love your recession:The new vogue for Downshifting

I fear that I have become extremely trendy without knowing it. I’ve never been one to partake of fashion’s brief moments of in-ness. Instead I always assumed that I moved to the beat of my own drum.

But this new vogue for Downshifting has caught me unawares -- with my de rigueur pants down so to speak. Apparently it’s now all the rage and up to 20% of the Australian population have downshifted, that is, they have decided to change their lives in ways that mean they earn and consume less.

And here I was thinking that the attributes of my lifestyle were engineered by poverty! In ignorance I had assumed that I was being sentenced to an inconvenient surfeit of financial distress when I was in fact actually enjoying the fruits of downshifting.
Despite all those years of full employment, victimised by the fruits of my own determined go-getter-ness, maybe I was a latent downshifter all along?

You can imagine how miffed I now feel after putting myself through sheer hell these last so many years. My problem, if I’d only recognised it, wasn’t what I didn’t have, but what I didn’t recognise: the rich promise I woke up to every day. Less really is more and I could not see it! What I needed wasn’t a few extra bucks to my name but the balls to embrace simplicity. I was downwardly mobile, earning and consuming less, and I didn’t know how fortunate I was.

This option, of course, puts a brand new spin on industrial matters. If a company decides to downsize its workforce then we should be celebrating the fact. Another fortunate bunch of Australians are freely given the chance to earn & consume less. The lucky bastards! Downsizing and Downshifting can be two sides of the same coin if we want.

Poverty (such as my own), when you think about it, really is in the mind of the beholder.

• More Life of Riley columns

VIDEO The Daily Show: Financial Advice

A devastating commentary on the law that the market rules (and the rest of you saps can go jump!)

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
CNBC Financial Advice
comedycentral.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Important Things w/ Demetri Martin Political Humor

Population control:myth and reality

This is a very thorough review of the "population debate'" and Connelly destroys the assumptions and fears that the population controlists utilize to relegate "population" as a workshop for many technological fixes in regard to resources.

Source: Background Briefing.

Are you worried about the future of the environment, or war, or hordes of refugees? The solution is not to manipulate population growth. Past results have been tragic, and ineffectual. Historian Professor Matthew Connelly of Columbia University proposes some alternatives.

Popout

Original audio source

• New York Times Review of Fatal Misconceptions by Matthew Connelly
• Matthew Connelly's home page

Video:The Capitalist Economic Crisis

Click To Play

This is an exploration of the background and causes of the Capitalist Economic Crisis and what should be the response from workers and pensioners. I had composed it initially in powerpoint and then followed that up with reviews and re- editing.

So for the experience, I transposed the presentation into video format. It scrubbed up rather nicely I think and I'm sure to be doing more of the same(Although -- make note of please David -- I should have created a larger file for better image quality)

• Watch video on YouTube
  

The RatbagMedia Channel

The Enigma of Capital

Source:The Enigma of Capital

City University of New York Graduate Center

Presentation by David Harvey
November 14, 2008
1 hour 2 minutes

Popout

Original audio source

I.O.U.S.A. – the 30-Minute Version

I.O.U.S.A. – the 30-Minute Version from IOUSA the Movie on Vimeo.
I.O.U.S.A. – the 30-Minute Version from IOUSA the Movie on Vimeo.

I.O.U.S.A. is a film that examines the rapidly growing US national debt and its consequences for the United States and its population. It comes from a conservative perspective but it reviews the financial context very well. The key question is: who is gonna pay? Them or us?

...And they say socialism can't work!

LeftClick apologises for Vodpod

By Dave Riley

I bet you thought that I was being a touch sadistic to impose upon your bandwidth the writings of Walter Benjamin (here and here). Dense are they not?

So we'll put Benjamin aside for the moment (I'll say three Hail Marys) and come to the main problem. Unfortunately the excellent video aggregator I've been using here as well as every else where , Vodpod, has done what all web start ups aspire to do, and is now trying turn a profit.

The massive economic downturn has impacted on the corporate web big time so what now can be had for free in the Web 2.0 universe -- is likely to be more and more cost you in some (devious) way.

Thus Vodpod is now seeding its platform with adware.So if you click on a video in the panel above you get a screen equal in size to the vid dedicated to a flash generated advertisement. Not only is this obtrusive and the advertisements often sexist in nature, but Vodpod is piggy backing its advertising gnerated income grab on the productive output of those others, who created these vidoes, without their sanction. That makes me as video aggregator an agency pimp for Vodpod and I object to being forced into such a role.

So I'm going to drop the Vodpod video panel at the top of this page ASAP and find another means to share video content. Off site the LeftClickTV Channel on Vodspot is not so smothered in advertising and the page is bearable and may not get the chop.

On the web we're used to advertising -- on gmail, Yahoo groups, or whatever -- but Vodpod has gone about it with such crassness that they deserve to be cut loose. I think I won't be alone as what they've gone and done is destroyed the utility of what was a good Firefox add on.

So I'm exploring my options....

Here's a couple of experiments