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.
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Duterte at the Philippines-China Trade Investment Forum in Beijing
Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte announced in Beijing this week a new strategic relationship with China and an end to the close military ties with the USA.
“America has lost now. There are three of us against the world, China, Philippines and Russia. It is the only way”, he told an international trade conference.
Meanwhile in the Philippines police have killed over 3,000 drug users and dealers in the 100 days since he came to power, publicly displaying the bodies with signs warning people not to deal in drugs. He criticises the USA for hypocricy in the war on drugs.
During the presidential election campaign Duterte promised to fill the Bay of Manila with the corpses of 100,000 criminals should he come to power.
Rodrigo Duterte interview: Death, drugs and diplomacy
“We have three million drug addicts, and it’s growing. So if we do not interdict this problem, the next generation will be having a serious problem. If you destroy our young children, I will kill you. That is a very correct statement. There is nothing wrong in trying to preserve the interest of the next generation.”
MANILA — President Rodrigo Duterte’s shock “separation” from the United States has thrown Philippine foreign policy into confusion, with the Americans saying they are baffled and some of his top aides contradicting him.
America has lost now. I have realigned myself in your ideological flow, and maybe I will also go to Russia to talk to Putin and tell him that there are three of us against the world, China, Philippines and Russia. It is the only way.”
The hitless of the Empire reads like a catalogue of illustrious world leaders: from Patrice Lumumba (Zaire), Mohammad Mosaddegh (Iran), Hugo Chavez (Venezuela), Sukarno (Indonesia), Juvénal Habyarimana (Rwanda), Salvador Allende (Chile) to Muammar Gaddafi (Libya), Al-Basheer (Sudan) and Fidel Castro (Cuba), to name just a few. Some were directly assassinated; others were ‘only’ toppled, while only a handful of ‘marked’ leaders actually managed to survive and to stay in power. There were several grave crimes committed by almost all of them include: defending the vital interests of their nations and people, refusing to allow the unbridled plunder of natural resources by multinational corporations, and standing against the principles of imperialism. Simple criticism of the Empire has also been often punishable by death.
Michael Smith is walking 600km to propose that parliament must approve Australian involvement in wars.
As news stories predicting an imminent global conflict proliferate, Michael Smith is walking from Central Victoria to Canberra carrying a proposed Act of Parliament intended to stop Australia entering a war without parliamentary approval.
Mr Smith’s legislation requires any resolution to deploy forces overseas to be approved by both houses of parliament.
As Mr Smith approaches Parliament with the draft Bill evidence continues to mount that the US is prepared to launch a major war with Russia rather than cede control of oil reserves in Syria.
THIRTEEN STORIES ABOUT THE IMMINENCE OF WAR
The first war crime committed in any war of aggression is against the truth
Michael Parenti
HOW CLOSE IS WAR? Each item indicates escalating and deliberate provocation by the US.
Pics of US jets painted in Russian colours
Photos showing US jets being painted Russian colours suggest plans to conduct false flag attacks in Syria and blame them on Moscow.
Obama to discuss bombing Syrian military positions
Direct US military action in Syria, including airstrikes on Syrian military, radar and anti-aircraft bases, as well as arms depots, striking Syrian government forces could result in a direct confrontation between the US and Russia. Is Obama totally out of control?
RAF Pilots Ordered To Shoot Down “Hostile” Russian Jets Over Syria
As the US officially enters the Yemen military campaign, the UK appears willing to precipiate a catalytic event from which there is no going back. With relations between Russia and the West at post-Cold War lows and deteriorating fast, RAF pilots have been given the go-ahead to shoot Russian military jets when flying over Syria and Iraq, if they are endangered by them. The development comes with warnings that the UK and Russia are now “one step closer” to being at war. The Syrian government invited the Russians, but not the British – well!!!
As US politicians and pundits have fun talking tough about Russia and demonizing President Putin, they are missing signs that Moscow isn’t amused and is preparing for actual conflict,
Putin Throws Out the Old Nuclear Rules, Rattling Washington
Washington and Moscow used to keep arms control separate from other crises around the world. But that era is over and the next president will have to decide how to deal with it.
War between US and Russia Could Be Sooner than Later
Barely noticed in a virtual media blackout are at least a half dozen significant developments that all indicate a nuclear war at any time. In response Russia has been preparing its citizens for potential nuclear war. 40 million Russian citizens, that’s near one-third of the nation’s total population, just completed an unprecedented nuclear war defence drill. Moscow ordered all Russian citizens, diplomats and students traveling, working or studying abroad to immediately return home. Members of Russia’s diplomatic corps were threatened with career demotions should they refuse to comply.
As tensions between Russia and the US have spiked over Syria, relations between Moscow and Washington – already at their lowest since the Cold War over the Ukraine conflict – have soured further in recent days as the US pulled the plug on Syria talks and accused Russia of hacking attacks. The Kremlin meanwhile has suspended a series of nuclear pacts, including a symbolic cooperation deal to cut stocks of weapons-grade plutonium.
Washington has escalated its global economic war against major economic rivals and no longer confines itself to peripheral economic countries, but has declared trade wars against world powers that include Russia, China, Germany, Iran and Saudi Arabia, as well as Syria, Yemen, Venezuela, Cuba and the Donbas region of Ukraine. There is an increasingly thinner distinction between military and economic warfare.
NSA whistleblower says DNC hack was not done by Russia, but by US intelligence
The motivation of the hacker was concern over Hillary Clinton’s disregard of national security secrets when she used a personal email and consistently lied about it. NSA has all of Clinton’s deleted emails, and the FBI could gain access to them. No need for Trump to ask the Russians for those emails, he can just call on the FBI or NSA to hand them over.
This campaign is driven by a deep and bitter divide: whether to risk war with Russia, or not. Not since 1860 has a presidential election been affected by a basic divide between a War Party that is tremendously strong (Its candidate is Hillary Clinton, with Wall Street and Big Oil among its constituents) while Donald Trump speaks for a faction that sees the risk of war as just too dangerous.
If Australia went to war, would you want the government to gain parliamentary approval?
Michael Smith, from Chewton in central Victoria, certainly does, and he thinks the majority of Australians do too, after commissioning a national online poll in 2013.
Mr Smith will walk from Chewton to Canberra carrying legislation drafted by a team of international lawyers in the hope of changing Australian legislation
US Army video warns that war in the megacity will be very messy
The Pentagon is preparing US police and armed forces for a brutal and anarchic future in which the apparatus of the state is in locked in constant battle with the people.
This is the premise of a 2014 video made by the US Army called Megacities: Urban Future, the Emerging Complexity currently being shown at the Pentagon Joint Special Operations University.
The five minute movie encourages various armed forces to prepare sophisticated military responses against hundreds of thousands of disposessed citizens.
Author Mike Davis describes the movie is a military fantasy. “It’s absurd to think that special ops can be used to control a mega-city,” he told web publisher, The Intercept.
Pentagon Video Warns of “Unavoidable” Dystopian Future for World’s Biggest Cities
According to a startling Pentagon video the future of global cities will be brutal and anarchic supercities filled with gangs of youth-gone-wild, a restive underclass, criminal syndicates, and bands of malicious hackers. That’s the scenario outlined in “Megacities: Urban Future, the Emerging Complexity,” a five-minute video that has been used at the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations University.
The first war crime committed in any war of aggression is against the truth Michael Parenti
In 2015 the US imposed penalties on Volkswagen for emission violations of more than $13b. In revenge the EU imposed a $14.5b fine on Apple for unpaid taxes. The US now seeks penalties of $14b against Deutsche Bank for its part in the 2008 bubble. Shuttlecock? David Hungerford
As the Philippines braces for its second major typhoon in five days, a Canadian glacier spawns a giant iceberg and eastern Australia mops up from a record wet spell, climate scientists can pick from a world of weird weather for the evidence that global warming is under way. Peter Hannam
HOW CLOSE IS WAR? Each item indicates escalating and deliberate provocation by the US.
Pics of US jets painted in Russian colours
Photos showing US jets being painted Russian colours suggest plans to conduct false flag attacks in Syria and blame them on Moscow.
Obama to discuss bombing Syrian military positions
Direct US military action in Syria, including airstrikes on Syrian military, radar and anti-aircraft bases, as well as arms depots, striking Syrian government forces could result in a direct confrontation between the US and Russia. Is Obama totally out of control?
RAF Pilots Ordered To Shoot Down “Hostile” Russian Jets Over Syria
As the US officially enters the Yemen military campaign, the UK appears willing to precipiate a catalytic event from which there is no going back. With relations between Russia and the West at post-Cold War lows and deteriorating fast, RAF pilots have been given the go-ahead to shoot Russian military jets when flying over Syria and Iraq, if they are endangered by them. The development comes with warnings that the UK and Russia are now “one step closer” to being at war. The Syrian government invited the Russians, but not the British – well!!!
As US politicians and pundits have fun talking tough about Russia and demonizing President Putin, they are missing signs that Moscow isn’t amused and is preparing for actual conflict,
Putin Throws Out the Old Nuclear Rules, Rattling Washington
Washington and Moscow used to keep arms control separate from other crises around the world. But that era is over and the next president will have to decide how to deal with it.
War between US and Russia Could Be Sooner than Later
Barely noticed in a virtual media blackout are at least a half dozen significant developments that all indicate a nuclear war at any time. In response Russia has been preparing its citizens for potential nuclear war. 40 million Russian citizens, that’s near one-third of the nation’s total population, just completed an unprecedented nuclear war defence drill. Moscow ordered all Russian citizens, diplomats and students traveling, working or studying abroad to immediately return home. Members of Russia’s diplomatic corps were threatened with career demotions should they refuse to comply.
As tensions between Russia and the US have spiked over Syria, relations between Moscow and Washington – already at their lowest since the Cold War over the Ukraine conflict – have soured further in recent days as the US pulled the plug on Syria talks and accused Russia of hacking attacks. The Kremlin meanwhile has suspended a series of nuclear pacts, including a symbolic cooperation deal to cut stocks of weapons-grade plutonium.
Washington has escalated its global economic war against major economic rivals and no longer confines itself to peripheral economic countries, but has declared trade wars against world powers that include Russia, China, Germany, Iran and Saudi Arabia, as well as Syria, Yemen, Venezuela, Cuba and the Donbas region of Ukraine. There is an increasingly thinner distinction between military and economic warfare.
NSA whistleblower says DNC hack was not done by Russia, but by US intelligence
The motivation of the hacker was concern over Hillary Clinton’s disregard of national security secrets when she used a personal email and consistently lied about it. NSA has all of Clinton’s deleted emails, and the FBI could gain access to them. No need for Trump to ask the Russians for those emails, he can just call on the FBI or NSA to hand them over.
This campaign is driven by a deep and bitter divide: whether to risk war with Russia, or not. Not since 1860 has a presidential election been affected by a basic divide between a War Party that is tremendously strong (Its candidate is Hillary Clinton, with Wall Street and Big Oil among its constituents) while Donald Trump speaks for a faction that sees the risk of war as just too dangerous.
Rodrigo Duterte interview: Death, drugs and diplomacy
“We have three million drug addicts, and it’s growing. So if we do not interdict this problem, the next generation will be having a serious problem. If you destroy our young children, I will kill you. That is a very correct statement. There is nothing wrong in trying to preserve the interest of the next generation.”
Osama bin Laden surely died happy. He devoted the last third of his life to creating animosity between the West and Islam and to driving a wedge between Saudi Arabia and the US. Today, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey are all estranged. And, as an unexpected bonus, so is Israel. The US is making enemies all over the Muslim world. And every day millions pay homage to the memory of Osama as they remove their shoes to pass through metal detectors and are stripped of their dignity by body-imaging devices at airports. Americans are less secure, less prosperous, and less free than as this century began. In life, Osama was transformative. In death, he continues to shape the world he left behind.
US Military Operations Are Biggest Motivation for Homegrown Terrorists
A secret FBI study found that anger over US military operations abroad was the most commonly cited motivation for individuals involved in cases of “homegrown” terrorism, and identified no coherent pattern to “radicalization,” concluding that it remained near impossible to predict future violent acts.
Hurricane Sandy-level flooding is rising so sharply that it could become normal
The US is already in the grip of significant environmental changes driven by warming temperatures. An analysis of past storms and models of future events as the planet warms has shown that Sandy-like floods have become three times more common in the New York area
Millions Face Hunger by 2030 Without ‘Deep Transformation’ of Agriculture:
Over 120 million people could be forced into extreme poverty by 2030 as a result of climate change on small-scale food producers. Abrupt changes would make adequate adaptation almost impossible with major declines in crop yields and increasingly high and volatile food prices. “In the longer run, unless measures are put in place to halt and reverse climate change, food production could become impossible in large areas of the world.” The report cites diversifying crop production, better integration of farming with the natural habitat, agroecology, and “sustainable intensification” as strategies to help small-scale farmers adapt to a warming world. The report notes that subsidies for fertilizers and pesticides hinder the progress of more sustainable, organic farming.
Spiders can ‘tune’ their webs to sound out plucky potential mates
“They’re able to very closely change the tension of their webs … This means they have a mechanism for directly controlling both the tension and the stiffness of their silk fibres. [These mechanisms] allow them effectively to tune their web’s properties so that they can control how sensory information is getting to them in the middle of the web.”
The hitless of the Empire reads like a catalogue of illustrious world leaders: from Patrice Lumumba (Zaire), Mohammad Mosaddegh (Iran), Hugo Chavez (Venezuela), Sukarno (Indonesia), Juvénal Habyarimana (Rwanda), Salvador Allende (Chile) to Muammar Gaddafi (Libya), Al-Basheer (Sudan) and Fidel Castro (Cuba), to name just a few. Some were directly assassinated; others were ‘only’ toppled, while only a handful of ‘marked’ leaders actually managed to survive and to stay in power. There were several grave crimes committed by almost all of them include: defending the vital interests of their nations and people, refusing to allow the unbridled plunder of natural resources by multinational corporations, and standing against the principles of imperialism. Simple criticism of the Empire has also been often punishable by death.
Rodrigo Duterte interview: Death, drugs and diplomacy
“We have three million drug addicts, and it’s growing. So if we do not interdict this problem, the next generation will be having a serious problem. If you destroy our young children, I will kill you. That is a very correct statement. There is nothing wrong in trying to preserve the interest of the next generation.”
One month before the presidential election of 2008, the giant Wall Street bank Citigroup submitted to the Obama campaign a list of its preferred candidates for cabinet positions in an Obama administration. This list corresponds almost exactly to the eventual composition of Barack Obama’s cabinet.
Coral biologist Charlie Veron: the rise and fall of the Great Barrier Reef
Threats caused by humans, accelerated climate change and ocean acidification, have put the reef on the brink of complete collapse. He said, “it is unstoppable. If we wipe out coral we wipe out the life of the oceans”. This is symptomatic of everything we do. Its time to plan for the unthinkable.
‘Island of despair’: Australia intentionally torturing refugees on Nauru
The cache of evidence details allegations of recurrent self-harm and attempted suicide, children being hit by teachers and threatened with machetes by peers, deficient medical care and persecution akin to that which refugees had fled in their homelands. The offshore processing regime was “explicitly designed to inflict incalculable damage on hundreds of women, men and children” as an act of deterrence, by isolating them “on a remote place from which they cannot leave, with the specific intention that these people should suffer harm”. Amnesty International said it had interviewed 62 refugees and asylum seekers on Nauru, and more than a dozen current or former contract workers who delivered services on behalf of the Australian government,
The Real Purpose Behind the “Liberation” of Mosul?
When Mosul falls, Isis will flee to the safety of Syria. But what then? The entire Isis caliphate army could be directed against the Assad government and its allies – a scenario which might cause some satisfaction in Washington
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The Menz Guassa Community Conservation Area nourishes local agriculture
2016 marks 500 years since the arrival of Portugese colonists in Ethiopia. Due to its continued resistance of colonisation the Ethiopian Commons remains intact providing communal use and preservation of valuable grazing lands and ecosystem services.
The country has never been colonized despite ongoing invasions by Turkey, Portugal, Britain and Italy, an experience that has thrown the country into a harsh struggle for survival.
The 11,000 hectare Community Conservation Area in Menz-Guassa provides a model for restoring Ethiopia’s agricultural basis and protecting the area from famine and drought largely caused by the disruptions of war.
The Resilience Of An Indigenous Ethiopian Commons
Ethiopia is home to one of the oldest, most effective conservation management systems in sub-Saharan Africa, the Menz-Guassa Community Conservation Area, an 11,100-hectare region. The history of the indigenous land tenure system reveals a great deal about how people in Menz have been able to regularly use, but also preserve, valuable grazing lands and ecosystem services for more than 400 years.
US-occupied Afghanistan provide six sevenths of the world’s heroin
Seven thousand deaths from heroin in the USA during 2014 can be directly traced to opium sourced from US-occupied Afghanistan claims a report by NY Congressional Candidate Will Edstrom published last week.
Six sevenths or Eighty Five percent of the world’s heroin, 6,400 tonnes, now comes from US-held Afghanistan. Ten thousand of the 4.5million US heroin users die every year.
The Taliban banned opium production outright in 2000. Since 2001, the area under opium cultivation has increased from less than ten thousand hectares to over 200,000.
Congress’s Take On The Heroin Epidemic
Members of Congress and candidates comment on the Heroin epidemic in the US.
A heroin epidemic is on fire all across America. Heroin deaths shot up from 1,779 in 2001 to 10,574 in 2014 as Afghan opium poppy fields metastasized from 7,600 hectares in 2001 (when the War in Afghanistan began) to 224,000 hectares currently. The Taliban outlawed opium in Afghanistan in 2000 and within a year it was all but gone, demonstrating that Afghan opium can be eradicated quickly for any administration that chooses to do so. Afghanistan is, by far, the number one source globally of both opium and heroin. In 2014, 7,554 tons of raw opium were produced worldwide, including 6,400 tons in US-occupied Afghanistan and 173 tons from Mexico and Colombia. US-occupied Afghanistan produces 85% of the world’s heroin. Mexico and Colombia produce only 2%.
