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The Generator news service publishes articles on sustainable development, agriculture and energy as well as observations on current affairs. The news service is used on the weekly radio show, The Generator, as well as by a number of monthly and quarterly magazines. A podcast of the Generator news is also available.
As well as Giovanni’s articles it picks up the most pertinent articles from a range of other news services. You can publish the news feed on your website using RSS, free of charge.
 

We’re not celebrating Israel’s anniversary

admin /4 May, 2008

From the letters to The Guardian

In May, Jewish organisations will be celebrating the 60th anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel. This is understandable in the context of centuries of persecution culminating in the Holocaust. Nevertheless, we are Jews who will not be celebrating. Surely it is now time to acknowledge the narrative of the other, the price paid by another people for European anti-semitism and Hitler’s genocidal policies. As Edward Said emphasised, what the Holocaust is to the Jews, the Naqba is to the Palestinians.

Secret Bush “Finding” Widens War on Iran

admin /4 May, 2008

By ANDREW COCKBURN in Counter Punch

Six weeks ago, President Bush signed a secret finding authorizing a covert offensive against the Iranian regime that, according to those familiar with its contents, “unprecedented in its scope.”

Bush’s secret directive covers actions across a huge geographic area – from Lebanon to Afghanistan – but is also far more sweeping in the type of actions permitted under its guidelines – up to and including the assassination of targeted officials.  This widened scope clears the way, for example, for full support for the military arm of Mujahedin-e Khalq, the cultish Iranian opposition group, despite its enduring position on the State Department’s list of terrorist groups.

China moves on from low price manufacturing

admin /4 May, 2008

Rising inflation and wage costs are transforming the Asian giant’s industries and its role as the world’s low-cost factory. John Garnaut reports from Shanghai.

The world’s second largest sportswear company, adidas, is confronting a new and unexpected problem. The costs of labour, materials and red tape are spiralling upwards in its great production heartland in southern China.

It used to be that money made the rules and multinationals such as adidas could always extract a better deal by threatening to move offshore. The company runs more than 250 factories here, after all. And each clothing factory employs 3000 people, on average, while every shoe factory has seven times that number.

But the Chinese Government is no longer interested. It has recently abolished export rebates, introduced tougher environmental and labour laws and increased the minimum wage – squeezing production margins even tighter.

Irrigators at odds over water buyback

admin /1 May, 2008

The Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) has called on the federal government to speed up the Murray Darling Basin water buyback by spending half of the allocated $3.1 billion in the next three years.

Water industry organisation Irrigation Australia Limited (IAL), however, says the plan puts too much emphasis on purchasing water rights and not enough money into improving irrigation efficiency.

ACF foundation executive director Don Henry says, “The crisis in the Murray-Darling Basin is so severe that the internationally significant Coorong wetlands at the mouth of the Murray River will be dead and Adelaide’s drinking water threatened if more water is not urgently returned to the river.”

Pestilence lays waste to global wheat crop

admin /1 May, 2008

On top of record-breaking rice prices and corn through the roof on ethanol demand, wheat is now rusting in the fields across Africa.

Officials fear near total crop losses, and the fungus, known as Ug99, is spreading.

Wheat prices have been soaring this week on top of already high prices, and futures contracts spiked, too, on panic buying.

Experts fear the cost of bread could soon follow the path of rice, the price of which has triggered riots in some countries and prompted countries to cut off exports.

Investors play with global poor

admin /1 May, 2008

Investment newsletters are now featuring headlines like “How You Can Profit from the Global Food Crisis.” The recommended investments include agribusiness stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that speculate in agricultural commodities. These investments will no doubt do very well in the global food crisis; but before you put your money down, you may want to explore whether you will be helping to alleviate the problem or contributing to it.

Do you really want to “invest” in starvation? In an April 23 article in the German news source Spiegel Online called “Deadly Greed: The Role of Speculators in the Global Food Crisis,” Balzli and Horning note, “Many investors . . . are simply oblivious to the fact that by investing in the global casino, they could be gambling away the daily food supply of the world’s poorest people.”1

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