After Brexit: The Corporate Countryside

It is emblematic that on the day after the EU referendum, Donald Trump (perhaps the next president of the United States) was in Scotland, inaugurating his controversial new golf resort.  Oblivious to the country around him which had just voted overwhelmingly to remain in the EU, Trump congratulated his audience on their new independence.

Yet, he was not speaking to the common people of Britain (much less to Scotland, trapped, along with Wales, in the Brexit scenario), but those in his audience, the new placeholders of aristocracy – wealthy investors, media moguls, business leaders and others set free from EU barriers to land ownership, property development, tourism and speculation.

The EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has been the greatest barrier to a collapse in the UK property market.  The CAP is concerned with market stability, tariff-free trade in the EU and farmer livelihoods.  It consists primarily in a subsidisation of farmer incomes through direct payments.  It is well-known that most farmers make a loss on their operations and would not otherwise be able to continue without the subsidy.  As the tendency toward losses is primarily due to the downward pressure on prices from supermarket competition and its monopoly on distribution, the farmer’s subsidy is in many ways a backdoor subsidy for the retail and food processing industries.

With the elimination of the CAP, these subsidies will disappear and it is possible that they will either not be replaced or will be phased out in the near term.  The CAP has tended to maintain the status quo, not only protecting member states within the single market and in international trade deals, but also preserving the operations of loss-making farms.  The IMF, which Angela Merkel brought in to manage the Eurozone, has been pushing its 188 international members to quickly reduce or eliminate farming subsidies, a policy shift at odds with the pace of EU policy. The UK could decide to weather the storm of a radical re-adjustment in the structure of land ownership, especially in agriculture where it would become a corporate affair.

To read the rest of the essay, please visit The Corporate Countryside.

#LetGreeceBreathe MASS DEMO FEB 15, 2015 Trafalgar Square, London

Go to: The Ends of the British State in Planet Magazine: The Welsh Internationalist

Go to: “They Destroy, We Create: The Anti-Austerity UK Alliance” in Planet Magazine: The Welsh Internationalist

Go to: Athens Without Slavery: The Battle For Europe – Syriza and the New European Left

#LetGreeceBreathe #SupportSyriza MASS DEMO Sun Feb 15, 2015 Trafalgar Square, London

Go to: “They Destroy, We Create: The Anti-Austerity UK Alliance” in Planet Magazine: The Welsh Internationalist

Go to: Athens Without Slavery: The Battle For Europe – Syriza and the New European Left

Click For More Images From #LetGreeceBreathe

Athens Without Slavery: The Battle For Europe – Daily Wales: News for a Sovereign Nation

Athens Without Slavery: The Battle For Europe

Daily Wales: News for a Sovereign Nation 10 Feb 2015

Go to: “They Destroy, We Create: The Anti-Austerity UK Alliance” in Planet Magazine: The Welsh Internationalist

Go to: Athens Without Slavery: The Battle For Europe – Syriza and the New European Left

Athens Without Slavery: The Battle for Europe – Syriza the the New European Left

Go to: “They Destroy, We Create: The Anti-Austerity UK Alliance” in Planet Magazine: The Welsh Internationalist

Athens Without Slavery:

The Battle for Europe

Syriza the the New European Left

James Luchte

‘First We Take Manhattan, Then We Take Berlin’ – Leonard Cohen

‘First We Take Athens, Then We Take Madrid’ – Syriza with Podemos

‘First We Take Athens, Then We Take London’ – Anti-Austerity UK

‘A Spectre is Haunting Europe…’ – Karl Marx

European Democracy and the Limits of American Hegemony

A spectre is haunting Europe, the spectre of Greek democracy.

We have been here before in Greece, of course… at least four times.

First, there is the celebrated original emergence of democracy millennia ago; second, the Greek War of Liberation from the Turks (1821-1832), immortalised by the poet Bryron; third, the attempt by Leftist partisan organisations (EAM, KKE, ELAS) to form a Provisional Government in 1946 (in the stead of the Right-Monarchist government, returned from exile, and elected in 1946 in elections which the Left had boycotted), but defeated by the intervention of the United States and the United Kingdom, thus beginning the Greek Civil War (1946-1949), which ended with thousands of deaths and Greek membership of NATO; and fourth, the re-emergence of democracy in 1974 after the fall of the US backed military junta installed in the 1967 pre-elections coup d’etat, the so-called ‘General’s Coup’, eventually replaced by the government of exiled Constantine Karamanlis, which put the monarchy up for a referendum, and with its rejection by the people, negotiated a new presidential constitution, and inaugurated the Greek Republic in 1975.

And, now, fifth, with the people’s mandate, Syriza, the Coalition of the Radical Left, has taken power in Athens – not ironically with the help or participation of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), who were re-legalised in 1974 – promising the people of Greece not only the ‘end of austerity’, privatisation, unfair strike laws, among other transformations, but also, and more fundamentally, the end to the system of oligarchy, propped up by seventy years of external intervention and centrist-conservative governance (New Democracy or PASOK).

Indeed, as we have repeatedly seen in recent modern and contemporary histories, democracy, the vote, the pebble (psḗphos) of the people does not often seem sufficient to challenge the hegemonic narrative of the victor of the war of Europe, the United States.

To read the rest of the essay, please visit Athen Without Slavery: The Battle for Europe

Go to: MASS EMERGENCY DEMOS IN SUPPORT OF SYRIZA AND THE PEOPLE OF GREECE, FEB 11th Big Ben 6:30PM & 15TH TRAFALGAR SQUARE 1 PM

Write to Ofcom, Demanding Inclusion, Diversity and Equality in the Leaders Debates and Make A FOI Request on the Equality Act of 2010

Go to: “They Destroy, We Create: The Anti-Austerity UK Alliance” in Planet Magazine: The Welsh Internationalist

Go to: Athens Without Slavery: The Battle For Europe – Syriza and the New European Left

UPDATE: ON 22 January 2015, the BBC & ITV invited the member Parties of Anti-Austerity UK alliance, The Green Party, Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru – The Party of Wales to participate in the UK Leaders Debates. Keep Writing so they don’t change their minds.

Open Letter to Tony Hall, Director General of the BBC on Inclusion and Equality in the Leader’s Debates 2015

Go to: Open Letter To Tony Hall, General-Director of the BBC on Inclusion and Equality in the Leaders Debates, re-published in Daily Wales: News of a Sovereign Nation on January 5, 2015.

Write to Ofcom Demanding Inclusion, Diversity and Equality In the Leaders Debates

Make a FOI Request of Ofcom’s Compliance with the 2010 Equality Act and its 2011 Supplements for Broadcasters

I have written a FOI request and I have been notified by Ofcom that my request will be answered by 19 February 2015.

Write to Ofcom on Inclusion & Equality

Write to or call Ofcom, demanding that they include the Green Party, The Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru – The Party of Wales in the Leader’s Debates for the 2015 UK General Election:

Ofcom Riverside House
2a Southwark Bridge Road
London SE1 9HA

Demand Inclusiveness, Diversity and Equality in the Election Debates from Ofcom on 0300 123 3333 or 020 7981 3040, Monday to Friday from 9.00am to 5.00pm.

And/Or

Make a FOI (Freedom of Information) Request of Ofcom’s compliance with 2010/2011 Equality Act

Make a Freedom of Information Request FOI from Ofcom requesting information of their compliance and the steps they made to comply with the Equality Act 2010 and the 2011 Supplements for Broadcasters: 2011 Statutory Instruments (No. 2260), Special Duties, and Regulations of the Act with regard to the Election Guidelines and the Election Debates.

How to Make a Freedom of Information Request

Information Requests
The Office of Communications
Riverside House
2a Southwark Bridge Road
London
SE1 9HA
Fax: information requests on 0300 123 0811
Email: information.requests@ofcom.org.uk

Open Letter to Tony Hall, Director General of the BBC on Inclusion and Equality in the Leader’s Debates 2015

Go to: Open Letter To Tony Hall, General-Director of the BBC on Inclusion and Equality in the Leaders Debates, re-published in Daily Wales: News of a Sovereign Nation on January 5, 2015.

Introduction: Whispers of a Forgotten Nation – The Writings of Dr D. Ceri Evans

As I have not worried to be born, I do not worry to die.

Federico Garcia Lorca (1898-1936)

Ceri Evans (1965-2002) died in the same month, in August, as the Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca, who was murdered by the Fascist regime in 1936. In one of the tributes to Ceri Evans after his death, Terry Conway tells of a gift of a book of Lorca’s poetry which she had received from Dr Evans. Terry Conway makes this comparison of Lorca and Evans:

Here too was someone who had a passionate relationship with the place he was from, but was also a confirmed internationalist. Here too was someone for whom political ideas were not just found in theory, but in song, in dream, in all the small things of everyday life. (Whispers of a Forgotten Nation, p. 7)

In her elegant brevity, Conway captures both the spirit of Ceri Evans and his dialectical method in relation to the national and international movements for social justice and freedom. Evans lived the slogan ‘Think globally, Act locally.’ He fought simultaneously for historical justice in his native Wales, and, in the context of his perspective as an international socialist, for the eventual realisation of a global democratic socialist community, in which nations would enjoy equality, mutual aid and peaceful cooperation. Indeed, for Evans, the national question was inseparable from the struggle for international socialism.

Ceri Evans was a unique and creative thinker, at once a philosopher and activist (and with the mind of an engineer). He was a revolutionary socialist who wished to learn from the revolutionaries of the past, such as Lenin and Trotsky, but never merely to turn these ‘Great Men’ into dogmatic idols. He repeats this mantra over and over again in his theoretical and practical writings – that there is much to learn from these revolutionaries of the past and present, who have more experience and knowledge with respect to the building and enactment of revolutionary transformation. Yet, Ceri Evans had a mind of his own and assertively set forth his criticisms of these ‘Great Men’. In this way, he has enduring relevance as an original thinker and practical example for the understanding and practise of Welsh politics, and revolutionary politics as such.

This collection contains nearly thirty essays, discussion documents, presentations and other pieces from between 1990-2002, arguably one of the most important periods in the history of Welsh politics. These writings range from purely philosophical pieces, such as ‘Dialectics’, explorations of political philosophy, as in ‘Ten Draft Points on the National Question,’ to extremely concrete analyses and discussion documents of current political struggles in which he was continuously immersed, as with his writings on the Welsh language, the Welsh Assembly, Europe, Ireland, Israel, and the national struggles in Eastern Europe. In an uncanny manner, reading these essays resembles the experience of opening up a ‘time capsule’, one left as a legacy for those of us who would continue the struggle in the future. The ‘time capsule’ is open, and the documents it contains are a gift from the past.

To read the rest of this Introduction and to go to the writings of Dr D. Ceri Evans themselves, please visit Introduction – Whispers of a Forgotten Nation: The Writings of Dr D. Ceri Evans.

Whispers of a Forgotten Nation – The Writings of Dr D. Ceri Evans

Whispers of a Forgotten Nation – The Writings of Dr D. Ceri Evans is a collection of the writings of Welsh political thinker and activist who took his own life in 2002 at the age of 36.  The book contains 29 essays, pieces and presentations from between 1990 and 2002.  It serves as a time capsule for one of the most important periods of Welsh political, social and cultural history.

Whispers of a Forgotten Nation – The Writings of Dr D. Ceri Evans was edited with an Introduction by Dr James Luchte, author, writer and Visiting Professor at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, School of Humanities.

To read the entire book, please visit Whispers of a Forgotten Nation – The Writings of Dr D. Ceri Evans

OASIS and PATHWAY: A Grove in Shanghai

The Tragic Community

Friedrich Nietzsche and Mao Tse Tung

OASIS and PATHWAY: A Grove in Shanghai

Divided We Fall – Plaid Cymru and the Green Agenda

Divided We Fall

Plaid Cymru and the Green Agenda

Why Greens should Vote for Plaid Cymru in the General Elections of 2015

Divided We Fall – Plaid Cymru and the Green Agenda

From ‘Agoriad’ (‘Opening’)

Mewn glesni, tesni’n lasgu,
cwmysg â’r glas sy’n llathru,
Croeso rhwng dwy ynys- hen gynghanedd
ger y moroedd garw- llaw tangnefedd.

In the blue calm, sunburst of radiance
– the green light that shines with charity
the welcome of two isles – old harmony
by the rough seas – a hand of tranquility.

Menna Elfyn – Professor of Poetry, UWTSD

Opening

There is a considerable array of serious decisions that will have to be made by the people in the upcoming UK General Elections of 2015.

By people, I mean the vast multitude of individual working citizens for whose interests and representation the Parliament in Westminster was originally established.

By decision, I do not mean some arbitrary choice, or some choosing of a product in a shop, but one that involves thought and deliberation – and only then a choice.

In the context of decision-making, it is never sufficient to simply remain within a boxed mentality or echo chamber, captivated by the habit of custom which merely accepts the status quo and its erratic, though familiar, surface narrative.

One must look beyond the surface of the headlines and investigate the root causes and truths which stand behind the powers that be. It is toward the facilitation of such an investigation that the following essay is written.

To read the rest of the essay, please visit Divided We Fall – Plaid Cymru and the Green Agenda