News and articles of interest

Here are some articles and news reports we think are worth looking at

Oxfam: Soaring food prices threaten millions by Matt Williams
Millions of people in East Africa are being pushed into starvation and destitution due to rocketing food prices, a UK charity warned today. Oxfam said spiralling costs have combined with successive droughts, violent conflict and endemic poverty to leave up to 13 million in the region in urgent need of aid. In the face of a potential catastrophe, the poverty campaign group called for immediate action and increased donor support to avert the coming crisis.

Our Current Crisis Demands a "Green New Deal" by New Economics Foundation
UK needs 'Green New Deal' to tackle 'triple crunch' of credit, oil price and climate crises

Save wartime code centre, urge scientists by Tom Morgan
The codebreaking centre which helped the Allies to win the Second World War is in danger of irreparable decay unless the Government steps in to help, leading scientists said today. Bletchley Park, the historic site which also helped launch the modern computer, is in a "terrible state of disrepair" because of a lack of investment, experts claim. The 97 signatories of a letter calling for action said the site, in Milton Keynes, should be made the home of a national museum of computing.

Why is Gordon Brown repeating a mistranslation ? - World Press Network
The Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's never called for Israel "to be wiped off the map". This has been confirmed by many Iranian language experts. That the mainstream media have repeated and echoed the original mistranslation from 2005 attests to their bias and hidden agenda.

Karadzic's Arrest and Western Complicity by Daniel Simpson
I never met Radovan Karadzic, though like many in the Balkans, I did once pretend to try and find him. His trademark bouffant vanished long before I first set foot in Bosnia, a decade too late to see Serbs douse Sarajevo with anti-aircraft cannon, if not the "armed trees" of Dr Karadzic's warped poetic prophecy.

Spectres of Sarajevo by Janine di Giovanni
News of the arrest conjures memories of those dreadful days of death. Next, for Mladic

SATS - New Labour's education failure in microcosm by Francis Beckett
If you are looking for the reason why New Labour has spent more on education yet failed to improve it, look no further that the present entirely predictable crisis over SATS – Standard Assessment Tests. All the three notions that are wrong, and foolish, and muddled about government education policy are there.

Distortions, Falsehoods, Fabrications by George Monbiot
So here we go again. For the second time, Channel 4 has been fiercely criticised by the broadcasting regulator for a programme attacking environmental science. For the second time the director was Martin Durkin. Ten years ago, his series Against Nature was found to have misled his interviewees about "the content and purpose of the programmes" and distorted their views "through selective editing"(1). Now Ofcom has ruled that the programme he made last year – The Great Global Warming Swindle – treated two scientists and an organisation (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) unfairly(2). For the second time, Channel 4 will have to make an embarrassing primetime apology.

Revealing a Massacre, or Stating the Obvious by Ramzy Baroud
Recent findings in my own personal history have been interesting indeed. The present task of tracing my family roots was inspired by a book project with Pluto Press, narrating the story of my father, as once a fighter from Gaza who died recently under tragic circumstances in the same refugee camp to which he was expelled, along with his family sixty years ago.

Breaking Iraq and Blaming Iran by Andrew G. Marshall
British Black Ops and the Terror Campaign in Basra

New limbs for the left by Hilary Wainwright
New Labour is now reaping what it has itself sown: a cumulative weakening of the values of social solidarity, public service and altruism, which provide the invisible bedrock on which the electoral fortunes of the Labour Party ultimately depend.

When the bucks stop by Jim Stanford
The current financial crisis highlights fundamental failings in a global economy run for private profit rather than broader social opportunity. Jim Stanford explains how risky financial speculation created a bubble that has now burst, and argues that we need to refocus attention on a real economy founded on the production of actual goods and services

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