Mega-mergers threaten our right to healthy and accessible foods!

Mega-mergers of the likes of the £16BN Bayer – Monsanto merger, have left a disturbing mark in the agribusiness industry, as they continue to threaten people’s rights to food sovereignty. This has led to consequences such as fears of high costs for farmers and high food prices for consumers. This in turn has threatened the peoples’ right to food sovereignty. Here, food sovereignty refers to the view that food is not a commodity like any other as it is fundamentally essential for life, thus the main objective of the food system is to provide food to people in a way that is just and sustainable (Foodsovereignty.org, 2019).In this blog post, I will look more closely at the relationship between mega-mergers and food sovereignty.

Photo by Global Justice Now

Brexit and the Failure of Neo-Liberal Economics

Photo by Christoph Scholz

One of the key themes which serves as the source of most of the undercurrent of discontent for leave voters is neo-liberal economics. The adoption of neo-liberal principles by the UK from Thatcher in the 1980s has divided the UK as much as it has progressed the country. The outcome of this is that the frustrations of those negatively affected has been built up over decades and been released in the form of Brexit, primarily on the grounds of immigration. In this blog, I will argue that a combination of the ignored factor of neo-liberal economics as well as opinions on immigration culminated in creating Brexit.

ETHICS VS PROFITS… A German case study.

Photo by Greenpeace Hamburg

In this blog post, I will discuss the ongoing case between the Swedish power company Vattenfall, and the German government’s decision to end nuclear energy, reflecting the growing tensions between ethics and profits. In this particular case, the ethical prerogative of the German government is being boycotted by Vattenfall due to interference with their profits.

Globalisation – An Imperial Initiative? The fight of the Ogoni people.

The impact of globalisation on the global south is specifically important when discussing imperial globalisation. In this blog post, I will focus on Nigeria and here specifically on the Ogoni based social resistance movement The Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP). This social movement developed during the 1990s following Shell’s move into Ogoni territory. Shell engaged in large-scale oil extraction and exploration in Ogoni, forcing the indigenous people to give up land without their consent.

Photo by Friends of the Earth International

Yellow Vests, a modern Anti – austerity crusade: What does the future hold?

Photo by Pascal Maga

The Yellow Vest anti – austerity campaign has been a recurring issue in the news and social media.  It is an important issue that largely marked the 21^st century, a century of contestation and resistance, with a variety of social movements emerging as a result of crises of the neoliberal status quo.  These crises have actually empowered populist movements like the Yellow vests to spread all around the world, pressuring for more and more change at a regional and international level.  Essentially, it has been a contemporary crusade fought by tools like demonstration and non – compliance and resistance to the repressive nature of the system.  In this blog post, I will analyse this modern form of crusade, which has a banner and a symbol which makes it a full - grown resistance to the elites and the globalized structure they created.

How crony capitalism resulted in the 2011 Tunisian Revolution

Photo by AK Rockefeller

The cause of the 2011 Tunisian Revolution can be largely attributed to the crony capitalism led by the dictatorship in Tunisia. Capitalism creates opportunities for honest gains, but also opportunities for the abuse of power, as occurred in Tunisia. We have seen the consequences of this since in protests and civil unrest in the country. The revolution was part of a wider uprising, the Arab Spring. In this blog post I will discuss why the Tunisian Revolution was the first country to revolt against its dictator.

ISIS - a resistance to neoliberal hegemony

Photo by Thierry Ehrmann

The West runs the world - and has since the 1970s. Neoliberal policies coming out of America and the UK have become mainstream and have influenced many other societies around the world. These dominant players in the global arena have intruded into Middle Eastern societies - to much of the locals’ disliking - in order to ‘democratise’ them; in other words, pulling them into a web of capitalism and democracy. Globalisation has created a new world order with the West at the forefront of expansion while leaving less developed countries uprooted and isolated. While some accepted this fact, others did not and planned to revolt against these money-driven westerners and their corrupt neoliberal values. Specifically after the US’ 2003 invasion of Iraq, a blossoming Islamic State (ISIS) would team up with Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda in the Iraq Insurgency against corrupt Muslim leaders and Western Ideals. This blog post links globalisation to the rise of ISIS by first examining neoliberalism and its effects on different classes and their association with another, outlines the beginnings of the organisation and discusses how it rivals the neoliberal global order.

Fruck Off - Nottinghamshire people say no to shell gas

The general agreement among the citizens of Nottinghamshire is that hydraulic fracturing/fracking is harmful to their community. Not only does fracking cause substantial harm to the environment and contaminates local water springs, but the so-called benefits of fracking are backed up by the shale gas companies IGas and Ineos’ deceptive rhetoric. I argue that the expansion of fracking links to the ongoing investments in the UK energy market as a means of competing with international energy markets. Moreover, I argue that as long as the investors have powerful political allies on their side, they will ignore all opposition despite the controversies surrounding fracking because they have the resources to do so. This blog post aims to capture and discuss some of the essential developments of the issue by addressing recent events happening in Nottinghamshire and beyond. 

Photo by Sheila