Imagine a policy that could reverse the decline of Labour's fortunes, a policy that is not only politically brave but also politically achievable. A policy that is symbolic of what a Labour government should stand for, which is both long and short term, and would help people who are struggling under tumultuous economic conditions.

Imagine a policy that wouldn't bankrupt the Treasury and that, amazingly, two-thirds of the public would support. While this sounds impossible, we think we've found one.

Compass are currently leading a campaign calling for a one-off windfall tax on the unearned profits of the energy and oil companies. Internationally, this is a hugely significant issue. In the US Barack Obama has called for a five-year windfall tax on oil companies and Norway has also taken a much stronger line with energy companies and built up a £100bn fund, ear-marked for future generations, by taxing their North Sea oil and gas operations.

The arguments for a windfall tax are obvious; from individuals and households to small businesses, the prices charged by the energy companies have hit everyone hard. Since 2000 we have faced gas price rises now in excess of 100% and electricity price rises in excess of 61%, both of which are set to increase. At the same time the six big energy providers - British Gas, npower, Scottish and Southern Energy, EDF, E.ON UK, and Scottish Power - have seen their profits rise from £557 million in 2003 to in excess of £3bn. While wholesale gas and electricity prices have increased for the energy companies, this has been more than compensated for by the exponential growth in the cost to the consumer. This boom in profits is unearned and is costing society heavily, pushing thousands more into fuel poverty. We believe that this cannot be allowed to continue, and we are not the only ones. A raft of social and environmental campaigners, political figures and 80 Labour MPs back the campaign - but perhaps more importantly, a Compass/Observer/YouGov poll - has shown overwhelming public support across the classes and the country.

Of the people asked whether they agreed with a windfall tax, two thirds either strongly agreed or agreed. When you dissect this further you see it is popular across the classes. Some 68% of the top-earning ABC1 group either strongly agree or agree and 67% of the lower-earning C2DE group support it. Here is a policy which not only appeals to the so called core Labour vote - currently leaving Labour in floods as the Glasgow East byelection demonstrates - but also appeals to the ever illusive middle classes. For Labour to win again it can't just appeal to either the middle class or the working class, it has to show that it can meet the needs of everyone in tough economic times. This cross-class coalition of interests is essential and is clearly possible with a sensible centre-left policy such as this.

While that takes care of class, regions also play a major part in the election game. In the past there have always been safe or marginal seats for all the parties, yet Labour can no longer count on its safe seats. It now, more than ever, needs policies which appeal across the country. But again here a windfall tax on unearned profits ticks all of the boxes. This policy is popular throughout the UK, from Scotland to London and the South. Everyone has been dramatically affected by rising prices of electricity and gas.

No doubt the government will come under pressure from the usual suspects at the CBI, with threats that this will affect investment, but as the precedent of the 1997 windfall tax and the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies report (pdf) of it show this is unlikely. There can no longer be any question that this is would be a popular measure and socially just. It is the symbolic and practical policy which could revive Labour's fortunes; it could show the public whose side the government is on and really make a difference in people's lives.

This article appeared on Compass.

In his book Late Victorian Holocausts, Mike Davis tells the story of the famines that sucked the guts out of India in the 1870s. The hunger began when a drought, caused by El Nino, killed the crops on the Deccan plateau. As starvation bit, the viceroy, Lord Lytton, oversaw the export to England of a record 6.4 million hundredweight of wheat. While Lytton lived in imperial splendour and commissioned, among other extravangances, “the most colossal and expensive meal in world history”, between 12 and 29 million people died. Only Stalin manufactured a comparable hunger.

Now a new Lord Lytton is seeking to engineer another brutal food grab. As Tony Blair’s favoured courtier, Peter Mandelson often created the impression that he would do anything to please his master. Today he is the European trade commissioner. From his sumptuous offices in Brussels and Strasbourg, he hopes to impose a treaty which will permit Europe to snatch food from the mouths of some of the world’s poorest people.

Seventy per cent of the protein eaten by the people of Senegal comes from fish. Traditionally cheaper than other animal products, it sustains a population which ranks close to the bottom of the human development index. One in six of the working population is employed in the fishing industry; some two-thirds of these workers are women. Over the past three decades, their means of subsistence has started to collapse as other nations have plundered Senegal’s stocks.

The European Union has two big fish problems. One is that, partly as a result of its failure to manage them properly, its own fisheries can no longer meet European demand. The other is that its governments won’t confront their fishing lobbies and decommission all the surplus boats. The EU has tried to solve both problems by sending its fishermen to West Africa. Since 1979 it has struck agreements with the government of Senegal, granting our fleets access to its waters. As a result, Senegal’s marine ecosystem has started to go the same way as ours. Between 1994 and 2005, the weight of fish taken from the country’s waters fell from 95,000 tons to 45,000 tons. Muscled out by European trawlers, the indigenous fishery is crumpling: the number of boats run by local people has fallen by 48% since 1997.

In a recent report on this pillage, ActionAid shows that fishing families which once ate three times a day are now eating only once or twice. As the price of fish rises, their customers also go hungry. The same thing has happened in all the west African countries with which the EU has maintained fisheries agreements. In return for wretched amounts of foreign exchange, their primary source of protein has been looted.

The government of Senegal knows this, and in 2006 it refused to renew its fishing agreement with the EU. But European fishermen - mostly from Spain and France - have found ways round the ban. They have been registering their boats as Senegalese, buying up quotas from local fishermen and transferring catches at sea from local boats. These practices mean that they can continue to take the country’s fish, and have no obligation to land them in Senegal. Their profits are kept on ice until the catch arrives in Europe.

Mandelson’s office is trying to negotiate economic partnership agreements with African countries. They were supposed to have been concluded by the end of last year, but many countries, including Senegal, have refused to sign. The agreements insist that European companies have the right both to establish themselves freely on African soil, and to receive national treatment. This means that the host country is not allowed to discriminate between its own businesses and European companies. Senegal would be forbidden to ensure that its fish are used to sustain its own industry and to feed its own people. The dodges used by European trawlers would be legalised.

The UN’s Economic Commission for Africa has described the EU’s negotiations as “not sufficiently inclusive”. They suffer from a “lack of transparency” and from the African countries’ lack of capacity to handle the legal complexities. ActionAid shows that Mandelson’s office has ignored these problems, raised the pressure on reluctant countries and “moved ahead in the negotiations at a pace much faster than the [African nations] could handle.” If these agreements are forced on West Africa, Lord Mandelson will be responsible for another imperial famine.

This is one instance of the food colonialism which is again coming to govern the relations between rich counties and poor. As global food supplies tighten, rich consumers are pushed into competition with the hungry. Last week the environmental group WWF published a report on the UK’s indirect consumption of water, purchased in the form of food. We buy much of our rice and cotton, for example, from the Indus Valley, which contains most of Pakistan’s best farmland. To meet the demand for exports, the valley’s aquifers are being pumped out faster than they can be recharged. At the same time, rain and snow in the Himalayan headwaters have decreased, probably as a result of climate change. In some places, salt and other crop poisons are being drawn through the diminishing water table, knocking out farmland for good. The crops we buy are, for the most part, freely traded, but the unaccounted costs all accrue to Pakistan.

Now we learn that Middle Eastern countries, led by Saudi Arabia, are securing their future food supplies by trying to buy land in poorer nations. The Financial Times reports that Saudi Arabia wants to set up a series of farms abroad, each of which could exceed 100,000 hectares. Their produce would not be traded: it would be shipped directly to the owners. The FT, which usually agitates for the sale of everything, frets over “the nightmare scenario of crops being transported out of fortified farms as hungry locals look on.” Through “secretive bilateral agreements,” the paper reports, “the investors hope to be able to bypass any potential trade restriction that the host country might impose during a crisis.”

Both Ethiopia and Sudan have offered the oil states hundreds of thousands of hectares. This is easy for the corrupt governments of these countries: in Ethiopia the state claims to own most of the land; in Sudan an envelope passed across the right desk magically transforms other people’s property into foreign exchange. But 5.6 million Sudanese and 10 million Ethiopians are currently in need of food aid. The deals their governments propose can only exacerbate such famines.

None of this is to suggest that the poor nations should not sell food to the rich. To escape from famine, countries must enhance their purchasing power. This often means selling farm products, and increasing their value by processing them locally. But there is nothing fair about the deals I have described. Where once they used gunboats and sepoys, the rich nations now use chequebooks and lawyers to seize food from the hungry. The scramble for resources has begun, but - in the short term at any rate - we will hardly notice. The rich world’s governments will protect themselves from the political cost of shortages, even if it means that other people must starve.

This article first appeared in the Guardian newspaper on 26th August 2008. The article with full footnotes also appears on [Monbiot.com]

The assassination this weekend of trade union leader Jose Omar Galeano in the Colombian city of Buga, brings to 38 the number of trade unionists affiliated to the CUT union federation who have been murdered in the country so far this year. Mr Galeano, the national leader of the lottery workers union FECOLOC, was shot dead at approximately 10pm on Saturday 23rd August. He was also a regional activist in the 'Polo Democratico' opposition party.

According to an August 25th communiqué from the CUT trade union federation 38 members of unions affiliated to the federation have now been killed – a 40% increase over the number of trade unionists murdered during the same period last year.

The CUT has also expressed grave concern over the attitude of the Colombian authorities to the killings and says that they are "attempting to divert attention and concern away from the violence against the Colombian trade union movement". They also point out that in the vast majority of cases in which a trade unionist is murdered, nobody is ever brought to justice.

Justice for Colombia has so far documented 35 of the 38 assassinations that have occurred during 2008:

1. Mario Zuluaga, activist in the health workers union ASMEDAS, killed January 2nd in the city of Medellin.

2. Israel Alfonso Perez Montes, activist in the mine workers union SINTRAMIENERGETICA, killed January 11th in the city of Valledupar, Cesar department.

3. Ramiro de Jesus Zapata, leader of the teachers' union ADIDA, killed January 12th in the town of San Jeronimo, Antioquia department.

4. Israel Gonzalez, regional leader of the agricultural workers union FENSUAGRO, killed January 24th in the town of San Antonio, Tolima department.

5. Jose Suarez Leal, leader of the prison officers union ASEINPEC, killed January 28th in the town of Bello, Antioquia department.

6. Jose Martin Duarte, leader of the environmental workers union SINTRAMBIENTE, killed February 2nd in the town of Macarena, Meta department.

7. Maria del Carmen Mesa Pasochoa, activist in the teachers union ASEDAR, killed February 8th in the town of Tame, Arauca department.

8. Samboni Arley Benavides, activist in the health workers union ANTHOC, killed February 9th in the town of Balboa, Cauca department.

9. Maria Teresa Trujillo, activist in the teachers union ASOINCA, killed February 9th in the town of Santander de Quilichao, Cauca department.

10. Jose Giraldo Mamian, activist in the teachers union ASOINCA, killed February 9th in the town of La Vega, Cauca department.

11. Carmen Cecilia Ramirez, leader of the teachers union ASINORT, killed March 4th in the town of Ocana, Norte de Santander department.

12. Gildardo Antonio Gomez, activist in the teachers union ADIDA, killed March 7th in the city of Medellin.

13. Leonidas Gomez Rozo, activist in the bank workers' union UNEB and regional leader of the CUT trade union federation, killed March 8th in the city of Bogota.

14. Carlos Burbano, regional leader of the health workers union ANTHOC, killed March 12th in the town of San Vicente del Caguan, Caqueta department.

15. Julio Cesar Trochez, activist in the teachers union SUTEV, killed March 12th in the town of Sevilla, Vale del Cauca department.

16. Victor Manual Munoz, activist in the teachers union ADUCESAR, killed March 12th in the town of Codazzi, Cesar department.

17. Manuel Antonio Jimenez, activist in the agricultural workers union FENSUAGRO, killed March 15th in the town of Puerto Asis, Putumayo department.

18. Jose Fernando Quiroz, activist in the agricultural workers union FENSUAGRO, killed March 15th in the town of Puerto Asis, Putumayo department.

19. Jose Gregorio Astros, member of the prison officers union ASEINPEC, killed March 18th in the city of Cartago, Valle del Cauca department.

20. Adolfo Gonzalez Montes, regional leader of the mine workers union SINTRACARBON, killed March 22nd in the city of Riohacha, la Guajira department.

21. Luz Mariela Diaz Lopez, activist in the teachers union ASEP, killed April 1st in Valle del Guamuez, Putumayo department.

22. Emerson Ivan Herrera, activist in the teachers union ASEP, killed April 1st in Valle del Guamuez, Putumayo department.

23. Rafael Antonio Leal Medina, activist in the teachers union AICA, killed April 4th in the town of Guayabal, Tolima department.

24. Omar Ariza, activist in the teachers union SUTEV, killed April 7th in the town of Sevilla, Valle del Cauca department.

25. Luis Enrique Gutierrez, activist in the adult education workers union SINDESENA, killed April 15th in the town of Tausa, Cundinamarca department.

26. Jesus Heberto Caballero Ariz, leader of the adult education workers union SINDESENA, killed April 16th in the city of Barranquilla.

27. Guillermo Rivera, leader of the public sector workers union SINSERPUB, killed on April 23rd in the city of Bogota.

28. Tomas Alberto Chiquillo Pascual, leader of the agricultural workers union SINTRAPALMA, killed May 10th in the town of San Angel, Magdalena department.

29. Luis Orlando Gelves, activist in the agricultural workers union FENSUAGRO, killed May 11th in the town of Nuevo Oriente, Arauca department.

30. Marcelo Vergara Sanchez, activist in the teachers union SUTEV, killed June 5th in the town of Buga, Valle del Cauca department.

31. Favier Dario Pelaez Castano, activist in the prison officers union ASEINPEC, killed June 12th in the town of Caicedonia, Valle del Cauca department.

32. Walter Anibal Recalde Ordonez, activist in the prison officers union ASEINPEC, killed June 19th in the town of Buga, Valle del Cauca department.

33. Jose Humberto Munoz Guarin, activist in the teacher union SUTEV, killed June 22nd in the town of Restrepo, Valle del Cauca department.

34. Luis Mayusa Prada, activist in the agricultural workers union FENSUAGRO, killed on August 8th in the town of Saravena, Arauca department.

35. Jose Omar Galeano, leader of the lottery workers union FECOLOC, killed August 23rd in the town of Buga, Valle del Cauca department.

The regional elections campaign of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) officially began on Saturday.

The party raised a little over US$ 1 million in campaign funds over the weekend. All of this money was raised through ‘bonds' or donations ranging from $2.5- $50 per member.

The party's leadership also issued a call for a national ‘One day of wage' day on September 13, where activists of the party donate one day's worth of their wage.

Party branches also have various ideas for fundraising, including raffles, festivals, and additional bond sales.

Party spokespeople reiterated that the PSUV would not be using public funds in its campaign.

"The finances of the PSUV are public and transparent... the campaign will be exclusively sustained with money raised by the sale of the bonds and donations of party members," said Vanessa Davies, party commissioner for communication and propaganda.

Party spokespersons urged that the opposition should similarly show its accounts and reveal where its campaign funds come from.

Party branches will also be busy in organising "patrols" that will ensure the mobilisation of citizens on election day.

On President Chavez's weekly television program Alo Presidente on Sunday, Jesse Chacon, the mayoral candidate for the Municipality of Sucre, explained his proposal and campaign for the inhabitants of his municipality.

The plan involves four lines of work: water, security, garbage removal, and transportation.

Chacon declared that the most important thing for the electoral period that has started is construction of a new Sucre, based on participation.

"Since the internal campaign of the PSUV started we have constructed all the programs based on meetings with the Communal Councils, land and health committees, Mission Mothers of the Barrio, and the rest of the organizations of popular power, and in this way we can offer improvements to the quality of life of the population," he said.

He argued, "It is necessary to bring to life the reality that is socialism on the small scale, where every citizen feels that their proposals are discussed, that they are listened to and that in some way they are contributing to the construction of the country that we want."

He also announced that the Municipality of Sucre is consolidating the School for the Communal Councils, in which participants would be given the formation necessary to "construct socialism from the local level."

On Friday, in the arena known as the Poliedro of Caracas, Chavez swore in thousands of spokespeople and promoters of the Youth of the PSUV.

Chavez made a call for struggle and organization. "You all must work together from the youth in the drive of the social movements and give a national character to the youth movement of the PSUV, so that it doesn't remain in the municipalities."

He also invited the "socialist youth to set (them)selves up as the most powerful voice of self criticism of the party".

"The youth are synonymous with rebellion against the establishment, against what is bad, rebellion against the diversions, rebellion against the old vices." He said.

Voter Registration Closes

Voter registration closed Monday night. According to law, registration must close 90 days before an election. More than 2,000 registration points had been set up around the country, with an emphasis on remote and difficult to access areas.

Yesterday, plazas and main registration points had long lines as people enrolled at the last minute. 30,000 people registered yesterday. The total electoral population is now 17 million (out of a total Venezuelan population of 26 million).

After the closing of voter registration there were celebrations in the street throughout the country and the Youth of the PSUV held a concert in the Plaza Venezuela in Caracas, as well in other states.

Tamara Pearson writes for Venezuela Analysis.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez pledged decisive support Sunday for the Yukpa indigenous people who have occupied 14 large estates in the northwestern state of Zulia to demand legal title to their ancestral lands, a right granted to them in the 1999 constitution and in the Indigenous Peoples Law.

However, the declarations came just days after the Venezuelan National Guard beat and detained alternative media workers and leaders of a humanitarian delegation en route to assist the Yukpa in the occupied lands, causing many to suspect regional and local authorities willingly contradict central government policies in the conflict-ridden, coal-rich zone known as the Sierra de Perijá.

Declarations

“Nobody should have any doubts: Between the large estate owners and the indians, this government is with the indians,” said Chávez on his weekly talk show, Aló Presidente, on Sunday.

Chávez announced that he “gave instructions” to Vice President Ramón Carrizalez, Interior and Justice Minister Rodríguez Chacín, Environment Minister Yubirí Ortega, and the military commander in Zulia, General Izquierdo Torres, to “demarcate the indigenous lands with the participation of the indigenous councils,” compensate the landowners, and offer the communities the protection, credits, and equipment they need to launch sustainable agricultural projects, all of which the Law clearly obligates the government to do.

“We must demarcate [the lands] because it is in the constitution and in the law,” Chávez declared. Consistent with Article 24 of the Law, he added that the government has a “pending debt” to repay to the indigenous communities who were violently displaced in the past.

Conflict

Several Yukpa communities began occupying large estates last year when the federal land demarcation commission stalled and the agreements that had been negotiated in several meetings between the indigenous groups and the landowners of European descent faded into obscurity.

In response, mercenaries hired to defend landowner interests repeatedly attacked the Yukpa, killing the elderly father of Chief Sabino Romero in July.

Meeting with Indigenous Minister

When Indigenous Affairs Minister Nicia Maldonado, who has opposed the occupations, met with the Yukpa in an occupied cattle pasture last week, Romero demanded that those who have attacked his people be brought to justice.

“There is a man, Alejandro Vargas, who is walking free, he is not in jail...if that man returns, I will put a spear in him,” Chief Romero sternly stated, referring to the landowner who witnesses say led the July raid that killed his father.

“We the Yukpa are free. Whether or not we the Yukpa have an identification card, that is not important, the zone of the Sierra de Perijá is free,” said Romero in the presence of the independent media.

In response, Minister Maldonado encouraged the radicalized Yukpa to follow the peaceful, legal path. “There is a law. I cannot just pick up a spear and kill somebody. Because if I do, the law will come looking for me,” she told them.

“[The hacienda owners] do not know what the demarcation is, so we need to tell them, this is the demarcation,” she added.

Several Yukpa interjected that the rich landowners have acted with impunity for decades, and the issue of land demarcation has been explained thoroughly to them in person since the process began in 2005.

The minister said testimonies and denunciations of the attacks should be brought to the local courthouse to be investigated. “We have to co-live out here... we are going to commence round-table dialogues about demarcation here in this zone,” said Maldonado, assuring that “the indigenous people are guaranteed territory here... here we are going to build a school, we are going to develop tourism out here!”

Echoing the minister, National Guard officials encouraged the Yukpa to consider them “friends” and “allies,” and emphasized that any cases of abuse by military officers should be rushed to the local authorities.

Media Workers Detained

Meanwhile, the General Torres ordered the zone, which lies along the civil war-trodden Colombian border, to be locked down by a heavily armed security ring that proved impenetrable even by a 40-person delegation bearing emergency medical and food supplies donated from the city and equipment for independent media coverage of the Yukpa struggle.

Four leaders of the 40-person humanitarian delegation, despite possessing official documents showing that the federal student grant program Fundayacucho was sponsoring their activity were detained and one of them was beaten.

“I was brutally detained Friday night. Five National Guardsmen beat me with their rifles and helmets for a period of 15 minutes. They detained us without any charges. Saturday we were taken to the courthouse and judged for disturbing the public order…We were not threatening the National Guard officials in any way, we were simply recording what was happening,” Tomás Becerra of Amazonas state testified after being released Sunday.

According to detained journalist Kelys Amundaray, the Yukpa were also impeded when they attempted to approach the security checkpoint to obtain the medical and food supplies. “We all realized there was a systematic plan by the state and the National Guard,” Amundaray explained. “They intended to criminalize the activity that was being carried out by the Yukpa and their allies,” he added.

The detainees were pressured to sign official statements which omitted the beating and other forms of physical intimidation by the National Guard. When local courthouse officials learned they were allies of Chief Romero, he ordered them put in jail. The reporters were released Saturday because of a lack of charges against them.

A Yukpa woman later testified to independent journalists that the National Guard officers accuse the Yukpa and their allies of being infiltrated by Colombian paramilitary troops seeking to destabilize the Venezuelan revolution.

“How can a fully-armed and equipped military official actually call us paramilitaries?" said the exasperated woman. “What is happening in the Sierra de Perijá is that all the military officials are against us…This is why we are calling on the national government to buy these lands for us.”

Chávez: End Bureaucratization

President Chávez said Sunday that he had seen reports prepared by his ministers who had visited the zone, and he issued a strong critique of government foot-dragging.

“At times, we are feeble-spirited, we name a commission and a year goes by and they travel, and they travel again, and they have a meeting here and there, and two years go by, but there is never a solution to the problem,” Chávez assessed, “These are the old vices of the past, that is called bureaucratization, and this has to come to an end!”

The Yukpa and their allies—despite being uplifted by the president’s support—remain wary of whether Chávez’s orders will be heeded in this region where elite landowners, international coal companies and their government allies retain tremendous power.

Indeed, local officials have contradicted the president in the past. When Chávez began making anti-coal declarations in 2006, regional authorities in team with National Guard troops stepped up their intimidation tactics against the indigenous population.

Chief Romero plans to travel to Caracas shortly to discuss solutions to the conflict with members of the National Assembly and the president’s ministers, according to Romero’s statements over the weekend.

James Suggett writes for Venezuela Analysis.