Category: Archive

West scared of Middle East nuclear domino effect

admin /15 January, 2007

North Korea is dangerous, but isolated. An Iran with nuclear weapons, says one senior Bush administration official, would be a "game-changer", according to The Economist (21/10/2006, p.64).

Iran role as Middle East player crucial: The virulence of the regime’s revolutionary ardour, its role as "central banker of terrorism" to organisations like Hamas and Hizbullah that preach and practise violence against Israel, and its ambition for dominance in the region and the Islamic world, all make it imperative, from the West’s viewpoint, to stop Iran before it gets a bomb.

Nuke domino effect potential among regional powers: The sight of nuclear-armed Shia Iran would probably encourage Sunni regimes in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and elsewhere to want their own finger on a nuclear trigger.

Major powers press Iran: Reason enough for the Europeans, Americans, Russians and Chinese to press Iran to come clean sooner rather than later about its nuclear past and halt its dubious uranium and plutonium activities?

Alternative energy plan on offer: Indeed, all have backed a package of incentives that include helping Iran to benefit from peaceful nuclear energy-a big policy shift for the Bush administration, which has also said it would join negotiations with Iran.

Iran shrugs off limp sanctions: But Iran’s answer is a raspberry. Despite that, the first sanctions to emerge from the discussion now getting under way at the Security Council will be feeble.

Russian interests in Iran: Russia wants to exclude its Bushehr nuclear reactor project in Iran (though it has repeatedly delayed providing the start-up fuel); it also sells Iran lots of weapons. The country is an important neighbour, and offers Russia one of few ways back into Middle East diplomacy.

Sanctions may increase: In any case, Russia points out, Europeans and others trade with Iran too. Sanctions are supposed to become steadily tougher if Iran carries on enriching. By moving slowly, the Europeans, Americans, Russians and Chinese have managed to stay in step.

Iran intent on long haul: But Iran, perched on a cushion of high oil revenues, is betting on staring them out, all the while perfecting its enriching skills.

Rules changing? It helps Iran that, just as the world gears up to enforce the anti-nuclear rules, the rules may be changing. Iranian officials point to India, a country that built nuclear weapons outside the NPT, and yet is now accepted by America, which recognises it as a "de facto" nuclear power (and is attempting to rewrite the rules accordingly), in hopes of making it a "strategic partner" in Asia.

Double standards? If India can have any technology it wants, Iran asks, why not us?

Australian technology improves solar panels

admin /14 January, 2007

Suntech Power Holdings Co., Ltd. announced that the commercial adoption of its latest 18% "semiconductor finger" conversion-efficiency technology developed in Sydney Australia, is on schedule and that the performance of this technology has exceeded the company’s expectations with respect to lower-grade and poor quality silicon wafers.

Heavily doped semiconductor strips are built into the PV cell surface that more efficiently collects the generated electrical charge without requiring the surface dead layer found in conventional screen printed cells.

Hobart Water protests over meter plan

admin /12 January, 2007

Hobart City Council Alderman Dr John Freeman, Chairman of Hobart Water, argues in The Mercury (9/1/2007, p.37) that introducing water meters would do little to reduce water bills and add substantially to the provider’s costs. However, he warns that reforms are needed to upgrade rural water supply.

Meters lack cost incentive: "Over 75 per cent of Hobart Water’s costs are fixed expenses on interest payments, maintenance, supply contracts with Aurora, wages and other overheads and these must be paid regardless of whether any water is used or not. Only 20 per cent of the costs are variable… so a 5 per cent reduction in water use, which is considerable, will produce a saving of only 1 per cent in a water bill," Freeman said.

Installation and maintenance burden: "This is vastly outweighed by the cost of installing meters, for when the HCC last had this costed it was $600 per residence and then in excess of $100 more annually to read meters and process the accounts and the meters needed to be replaced at regular intervals."

 

Farmers and scientists working at odds

admin /12 January, 2007

A great deal of research and trialling has been devoted to improved methods of land management and conservation. So it is sometimes disappointing to researchers, and policy makers and regional bodies, when sound new practices are not widely taken up by farmers.

CRC’s review of adoption of rural innovations: CRC Salinity researchers Professor David Pannell (The University of WA) and colleagues have recently undertaken a multi-disciplinary review of literature on the adoption of rural innovations. Their findings will be of interest to scientists and their funding sources, extension agents, policy makers, managers in government agencies, NRM bodies (such as catchment management authorities), and non-government conservation and farmer organisations.

Solar still creates drinking water

admin /12 January, 2007

Inventor Jeroen van der Sluijs hopes to find an Australian collaborator in the water treatment or supply industry to help build a prototype for performance testing of his solar-powered water treatment unit in 2007.

Desalinates or purifies effluent: The HAFO Solar Still produces distilled water and salt, and can treat seawater or groundwater, and purify any effluent that is free of volatile liquids, according to van der Sluijs.

Solar energy with wind back-up: “The system is driven by solar energy but performance can be enhanced by pre-heating water by means of a wind rotor," the Dutch inventor and architect said. "Energy efficiency modeling predicts an average daily capacity for the 20m2 unit as 500–800 litres, which can be boosted to 900–1400 L with a wind rotor."

Surging toward the holy oil grail

admin /12 January, 2007

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IA12Ak05.html

By Pepe Escobar sia Times Online

"I see the imminent death of 20,000 men,
That, for a fantasy and trick of fame,
Go to their graves like beds …
O, from this time forth,
My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth."
Hamlet, Act IV; according to White House spin part of reading-adverse President George W Bush’s book list during the summer of 2006.

And so, after a tsunami surge of spin, US President George W Bush is heading toward escalation, summoning his 21,500 men, supported by barely 11% of Americans. Escalation in Iraq is the name of the president’s game, and that also applies to Somalia – the new Afghanistan.

In far from accidental timing, the good old "war on terror" is back from the grave (nobody really related to the "long war" newspeak). After all, the galleries had to be reminded that there’s a Pentagon-concocted "arc of instability" running from the Horn of Africa to the Middle East and then to the Caucasus, Central Asia and the Himalayas. The "war on terror" has expanded to the business of killing Africans, now afforded membership of the ever-expanding "axis of evil".