Category: Archive

Recycling guidelines get push along: "Water Ministers will ask the Environment Protection and Heritage Council to accelerate work on national water recycling guidelines as soon as possible," Chairman, Ken Matthews said.

Uniform national standards: "With proposals for recycling water for communities like Toowoomba and Goulburn currently being considered, moving national water recycling guidelines forward will mean that consistent, national standards are in place as more communities consider water recycling options."

Water data exchange left for summit: Meeting in Canberra this week, the National Water Commissioners noted that Water Ministers had discussed the importance of free and open water data exchange between jurisdictions. To advance the issue commissioners agreed to convene a National Water Data Summit in August.

Boost ability to monitor climate change: "Improved access to data will improve capability to plan and manage water resources, improve water productivity and to predict the impacts of climate change and land use change on water resources and entitlements at local, regional and national levels. It is also consistent with the Commission’s work on the Australian Water Resources 2005 and development of the Australian Water Resources Information System," Mr Matthews said.

Water trade met with ‘good discussion’: Commissioners also had very positive discussions with senior state officials on the progress on water trading and current state and territory water trading issues this week. The Commission has consistently identified water trading as one of the most vital elements of the NWI. The discussions this week also form part of the Commission’s work in assessing states’ progress in order to regain their suspended competition payments.

Urban water reform meeting held: Urban water reform was another major focus for the Commission, with the first meeting of the Urban Water Advisory Group. The Group comprises urban water experts and industry practitioners and has been established by the Commission to improve its understanding of the important urban water issues facing our cities.

Restrictions brought under scrutiny: The Group considered a range of current urban reform issues including NWI commitments in relation to institutional and regulatory barriers to integrated urban water cycle management, water sensitive urban developments and a national review of water restrictions.

Supply issues: The Commissioners considered a number of urban reform priorities to progress the NWI, including approaches to assist Parties to the NWI better coordinate water resource and urban planning at a whole-of-government level and to assist water agencies to undertake urban water supply and demand planning.

Business access: The Commissioners also supported a comprehensive review of the issues to provide greater certainty and innovation in the access arrangements to water infrastructure by the private sector. They also reiterated their support for policy development to clarify entitlements to alternate sources of water, including recycled water and stormwater, and also to review the issues and requirements to support water trading between regional and urban areas.

Raising National Water Standards: Commissioners also encouraged relevant organisations to get behind the recent call for proposals under the Raising National Water Standards Programme launched on 16 June 2006 by the Prime Minister’s Parliamentary Secretary with responsibility for water, the Hon Malcolm Turnbull.

Water Smart Australia: Commissioners noted the closure of the current Water Smart Australia call for proposals on 16 June, which included a separate call for proposals from the irrigation sector, and were encouraged by the number and diversity of projects put forward.

Unprecedented move: "This was the first time the Commission had conducted a special round for a specific sector under the Water Smart Australia Programme and we will be reviewing the success of the special call and identifying other sectors where special attention may be required," Matthews said.

Reference: Media contact: Kim Ulrick, Manager NWC Communications, Tel: 02 6102 6023, Mob: 0412 786 945. Website: http://www.nwc.gov.au

Erisk Net, 14/7/2006

Energy laws "obstructive": Fumiaki Watari, chairman of the country’s biggest integrated oil company, Nippon Oil Corporation, warned that unless the Alternative Energy Law and the New Energy Law were replaced they would "obstruct and crush all of the energy technology developments we could see in the foreseeable future".

Premise "wrong": He said the two laws, adopted after the 1970s oil shocks, were based on the premise that Japan should avoid and restrict, wherever possible, the use of fossil fuels. That encouraged petroleum refiners to develop innovative ways to use heavy and waste oils. Watari cites innovative projects undertaken by his company to use waste oils.

Total oil use efficiency not encouraged: One process, integrated gasification combined cycle, produces electricity by gasifying and burning industrial asphalt. "The Government’s plan shows that in 2030, Japan will still be more than 40 per cent oil dependent and, if that is the case, these current laws are obstacles to our efforts to develop new technologies to make the most efficient use of all oil," he said.

Imports still at 4.3m bpd: Japan, which has almost no indigenous fossil fuel resources, is a world leader in energy-efficient petroleum use and since 1973 has reduced the proportion of oil in its primary energy supply mix from almost 80 per cent to 48 per cent. Japan now imports about 4.3 million barrels daily.

New strategy: A new long-tem energy supply strategy adopted in March aims to reduce oil’s role to 42 per cent by 2030 and coal from 21 per cent now to 17 per cent. The strategy also calls for Japanese oil companies to build the share of imported supplies they control from less than 15 per cent now to 40 per cent in the next 24 years.

Push to buy into offshore fields: This is a demanding objective, requiring the companies to buy heavily into oil developments, particularly in Iran, Libya and the Caspian Basin. Iran’s planned 260,000 barrels per day southern Azadegan project, in which Japan’s Inpex Corp is earning a 75 per cent interest, is the most important project in this program.

The Australian, 6/9/2006, p.34

More than sixty percent of Americans believe that there is evidence that the White House was involved in some way in the 9/11 attacks according to an MSNBC survey running at the moment.

Event Date:	Sep. 11, 2006
Event Name:	Breaking the 9/11 Myth
Event Type:	Meeting
Time:	9:30 AM
Sponsored by:	McClendon Group
Event Location:	Murrow Room
Details:	On the Fifth Anniversary of the Attacks and just three hours before the Kean-Hamilton luncheon address, the former top Air Force officer who won Florida’s 15th District Democratic primary with 54% of the vote on an explicit platform to expose the fraud of the Kean Commission Report, and top 9/11 researchers, authors and activists will present hard proof that the official narrative of the Kean-Hamilton Commission and Bush-Cheney Administration is a fraud of world historic proportions. Proposed legislation for a new and genuinely independent expert investigation, the first reality-based 9/11 feature film, and the International Grand Jury on the Crimes of 9/11 will be announced. Speakers will make brief presentations and take questions from the press: Dr. Robert Bowman, Lt. Col. USAF (Ret.), one of the nation’s foremost authorities on national security, directed all ‘Star Wars’ programs under Presidents Ford and Carter, flew 101 combat missions in Vietnam, has a Ph.D. in Aeronautics and Nuclear Engineering from Caltech, and has chaired eight international conferences. Dr. Bowman is the recipient of the Eisenhower Medal, the George F. Kennan Peace Prize, and the Air Medal with five oak leaf clusters, among many others. Jim Marrs, award-winning Texas journalist and author of the 9/11 expose Inside Job and just-released sequel The Terror Conspiracy, which includes “The Pentagon Attack Papers”, is a former U.S. Army Intelligence officer. He is the author of the New York Times Best Seller Crossfire, which was a basis for Oliver Stone’s film “JFK”, on which he served as a chief consultant. He is working on a movie script whose final scene will awaken audiences to the fact that 9/11 attacks were a mass assassination. Barbara Honegger, former White House Policy Analyst to President Reagan and Senior military affairs journalist is the author of The Pentagon Attack Papers that has transformed the understanding of what happened inside the Pentagon on 9/11. Ms. Honegger’s seminal contributions on the central importance of plane-into-tower and hijack-scenario counter-terror exercises and wargames being run by the military and intelligence communities that morning explain core ‘mysteries’ the 9/11 Commission acknowledged it hadn’t solved: How the date for the attacks was chosen, and why Mohammed Atta traveled to Portland, Maine. Lynn Pentz, producer/creative director, breakthrough consultant, and grass-roots organizer, has been centrally involved in some of the largest transformation entertainment events of recent times, including Live Aid, Hands Across America, and the Bicentennial Celebration of the U.S. Constitution. Ms. Pentz is co-founder of 9/11 Truth Los Angeles, director of the film documentary “Connecting the Dots: Awakening to the Crimes of 9/11”, and convener of the Citizens Grand Jury on 9/11. A national speaker in the 9/11 Truth movement, Ms. Pentz will announce the upcoming International People’s Grand Jury on the Crimes of 9/11: The Case to Indict.” Contact – Barbara Honegger (831)-659-3058 bhonegger@nps.edu

Alinta merger pushes AGL to Melbourne: At the end of the process, the majority of employees of the NSW-formed utility will be based in Melbourne. The gas and electricity supplier is pushing ahead with plans for a $6.8 billion merger with national energy provider Alinta.

200 jobs cut in Adelaide: The news that the wholesale axing of jobs would come from AGL’s head office in Sydney followed the announcement on 7 September that 200 of 1000 planned cuts would come from Adelaide.

Union battles AGL flight from NSW: The Australian Workers’ Union has vowed to fight the plan, saying that the company was blindly relying on a new and untested computer system to replace workers. "We are obviously concerned," said AWU sub-branch secretary James Day. "Most of its 130-year life has been in NSW and they will no longer have a presence here apart from a logo."

NSW Premier caught out on job cuts: The job cuts took the Premier’s office by surprise. It is protocol that when a company is planning large-scale redundancies, it notifies the Premier’s office in advance.

Premier promises "support" for workers: Iemma on 7 September said: "Any support I can lend to workers [to help them retain] their jobs, I will." Iemma stopped short of saying he would intervene to influence the company to change its mind.

Merger no risk to NSW economy: However, he said the impact of the merger and job cuts would not have any impact on the NSW economy, as unemployment rates were at a 20-year low.

AGL says merger necessary: The company argued that a merger was necessary if AGL wanted to remain competitive.

The Daily Telegraph, 8/9/2006, p.11

A whole society is being destroyed. There are 1.5 million Palestinians imprisoned in the most heavily populated area in the world. Israel has stopped all trade. It has even forbidden fishermen to go far from the shore so they wade into the surf to try vainly to catch fish with hand-thrown nets.

Many people are being killed by Israeli incursions that occur every day by land and air. A total of 262 people have been killed and 1,200 wounded, of whom 60 had arms or legs amputated, since 25 June, says Dr Juma al-Saqa, the director of the al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City which is fast running out of medicine. Of these, 64 were children and 26 women. This bloody conflict in Gaza has so far received only a fraction of the attention given by the international media to the war in Lebanon.

It was on 25 June that the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was taken captive and two other soldiers were killed by Palestinian militants who used a tunnel to get out of the Gaza Strip. In the aftermath of this, writes Gideon Levy in the daily Haaretz, the Israeli army "has been rampaging through Gaza – there’s no other word to describe it – killing and demolishing, bombing and shelling, indiscriminately". Gaza has essentially been reoccupied since Israeli troops and tanks come and go at will. In the northern district of Shajhayeh they took over several houses last week and stayed five days. By the time they withdrew, 22 Palestinians had been killed, three houses were destroyed and groves of olive, citrus and almond trees had been bulldozed.

Fuad al-Tuba, the 61-year-old farmer who owned a farm here, said: "They even destroyed 22 of my bee-hives and killed four sheep." He pointed sadly to a field, its brown sandy earth churned up by tracks of bulldozers, where the stumps of trees and broken branches with wilting leaves lay in heaps. Near by a yellow car was standing on its nose in the middle of a heap of concrete blocks that had once been a small house.

His son Baher al-Tuba described how for five days Israeli soldiers confined him and his relatives to one room in his house where they survived by drinking water from a fish pond. "Snipers took up positions in the windows and shot at anybody who came near," he said. "They killed one of my neighbours called Fathi Abu Gumbuz who was 56 years old and just went out to get water."

Sometimes the Israeli army gives a warning before a house is destroyed. The sound that Palestinians most dread is an unknown voice on their cell phone saying they have half an hour to leave their home before it is hit by bombs or missiles. There is no appeal.

But it is not the Israeli incursions alone that are destroying Gaza and its people. In the understated prose of a World Bank report published last month, the West Bank and Gaza face "a year of unprecedented economic recession. Real incomes may contract by at least a third in 2006 and poverty to affect close to two thirds of the population." Poverty in this case means a per capita income of under $2 (£1.06) a day.

There are signs of desperation everywhere. Crime is increasing. People do anything to feed their families. Israeli troops entered the Gaza industrial zone to search for tunnels and kicked out the Palestinian police. When the Israelis withdrew they were replaced not by the police but by looters. On one day this week there were three donkey carts removing twisted scrap metal from the remains of factories that once employed thousands.

"It is the worst year for us since 1948 [when Palestinian refugees first poured into Gaza]," says Dr Maged Abu-Ramadan, a former ophthalmologist who is mayor of Gaza City. "Gaza is a jail. Neither people nor goods are allowed to leave it. People are already starving. They try to live on bread and falafel and a few tomatoes and cucumbers they grow themselves."

The few ways that Gazans had of making money have disappeared. Dr Abu-Ramadan says the Israelis "have destroyed 70 per cent of our orange groves in order to create security zones." Carnations and strawberries, two of Gaza’s main exports, were thrown away or left to rot. An Israeli air strike destroyed the electric power station so 55 per cent of power was lost. Electricity supply is now becoming almost as intermittent as in Baghdad.

The Israeli assault over the past two months struck a society already hit by the withdrawal of EU subsidies after the election of Hamas as the Palestinian government in March. Israel is withholding taxes owed on goods entering Gaza. Under US pressure, Arab banks abroad will not transfer funds to the government.

Two thirds of people are unemployed and the remaining third who mostly work for the state are not being paid. Gaza is now by far the poorest region on the Mediterranean. Per capita annual income is $700, compared with $20,000 in Israel. Conditions are much worse than in Lebanon where Hizbollah liberally compensates war victims for loss of their houses. If Gaza did not have enough troubles this week there were protest strikes and marches by unpaid soldiers, police and security men. These were organised by Fatah, the movement of the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, which lost the election to Hamas in January. His supporters marched through the streets waving their Kalashnikovs in the air. "Abu Mazen you are brave," they shouted. "Save us from this disaster." Sour-looking Hamas gunmen kept a low profile during the demonstration but the two sides are not far from fighting it out in the streets.

The Israeli siege and the European boycott are a collective punishment of everybody in Gaza. The gunmen are unlikely to be deterred. In a bed in Shifa Hospital was a sturdy young man called Ala Hejairi with wounds to his neck, legs, chest and stomach. "I was laying an anti-tank mine last week in Shajhayeh when I was hit by fire from an Israeli drone," he said. "I will return to the resistance when I am better. Why should I worry? If I die I will die a martyr and go to paradise."

His father, Adel, said he was proud of what his son had done adding that three of his nephews were already martyrs. He supported the Hamas government: "Arab and Western countries want to destroy this government because it is the government of the resistance."

As the economy collapses there will be many more young men in Gaza willing to take Ala Hejairi’s place. Untrained and ill-armed most will be killed. But the destruction of Gaza, now under way, will ensure that no peace is possible in the Middle East for generations to come.

The deadly toll

* After the kidnap of Cpl Gilad Shalit by Palestinians on 25 June, Israel launched a massive offensive and blockade of Gaza under the operation name Summer Rains.

* The Gaza Strip’s 1.3 million inhabitants, 33 per cent of whom live in refugee camps, have been under attack for 74 days.

* More than 260 Palestinians, including 64 children and 26 women, have been killed since 25 June. One in five is a child. One Israeli soldier has been killed and 26 have been wounded.

* 1,200 Palestinians have been injured, including up to 60 amputations. A third of victims brought to hospital are children.

* Israeli warplanes have launched more than 250 raids on Gaza, hitting the two power stations and the foreign and Information ministries.

* At least 120 Palestinian structures including houses, workshops and greenhouses have been destroyed and 160 damaged by the Israelis.

* The UN has criticised Israel’s bombing, which has caused an estimated $1.8bn in damage to the electricity grid and leaving more than a million people without regular access to drinking water.

* The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem says 76 Palestinians, including 19 children, were killed by Israeli forces in August alone. Evidence shows at least 53 per cent were not participating in hostilities.

* In the latest outbreak of violence, three Palestinians were killed yesterday when Israeli troops raided a West Bank town in search of a wanted militant. Two of those killed were unarmed, according to witnesses.

© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited