Archived material from historical editions of The Generator
The debate on the merits or otherwise of nuclear power needs to be a rational, objective assessment based on hard science, economics and fact, according to Guy Webber, a consultant analyst writing for The Australian (7/6/2006, p.14). Unbiased review needed: "It must be open and public so that the issues, supported by reference material that Continue Reading →
Despite local protests surrounding the Crows Nest Wind Farm, Crows Nest Shire CEO David McEvoy is confident the $250 million project would proceed, reported Queensland Country Life (8/6/2006, p.23).
95pc chance of success: "There is a 95 percent chance it will go ahead, and if not straight away it will happen in the next few years," McEvoy said.
Reliable income, merely one benefit: A reliable supplementary income for 18 graziers in the Crows Nest Shire is only one of the major benefits of the proposed Crows Nest wind farm according to McEvoy.
345,000MW production: The 345,000MW produced each year by the wind farm would be used by Toowoomba which incorporates the Crows Nest Shire energy grid.
Wind farm affects land values: McEvoy said some local residents were concerned that the value of land surrounding the wind farms could decline in value. But research conducted in the US showed the opposite.
Powers 45,000 homes: When the 75 turbines, which will stand 85 metres high and be scattered across 18 grazing properties in the district, are installed they would supply enough power for 45,000 homes.
Queensland Country Life, 8/6/2006, p. 23
Source: Erisk Net
http://www.mosnews.com/money/2006/06/09/dollarshift.shtml
On Thursday, June 8, Russia became the latest in the list of countries that shifted a part of its Central Bank reserves from the dollar. Sergei Ignatyev, chairman of the Central Bank, said that only 50 percent of its reserves are now held in dollars, with 40 percent in euros and the rest in pounds sterling. Earlier it was believed that just 25-30 percent of Russia’s reserves were held in euros, with virtually all the rest held in dollars.
Russia’s gold and foreign currency reserves have grown rapidly over the last few years in tandem with high oil and gas prices. As MosNews has reported earlier, Russia currently has the world’s fourth-largest reserves, after China, Japan and Taiwan, and it looks to overcome Taiwan by the end of the year, with reserves growing by $5-6 billion monthly.
http://www.rense.com/general71/unrep.htm
By Greg Palast
They got him — the big, bad, beheading berserker in Iraq. But, something’s gone unreported in all the glee over getting Zarqawi who invited him into Iraq in the first place?
If you prefer your fairy tales unsoiled by facts, read no further. If you want the uncomfortable truth, begin with this: A phone call to Baghdad to Saddam’s Palace on the night of April 21, 2003. It was Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on a secure line from Washington to General Jay Garner.
The General had arrives in Baghdad just hours before to take charge of the newly occupied nation. The message from Rumsfeld was not a heartwarming welcome. Rummy told Garner, Don’t unpack, Jack — you’re fired.
What had Garner done? The many-starred general had been sent by the President himself to take charge of a deeply dangerous mission. Iraq was tense but relatively peaceful. Garner’s job was to keep the peace and bring democracy.
Unfortunately for the general, he took the President at his word. But the general was wrong. "Peace" and "Democracy" were the slogans.
"My preference," Garner told me in his understated manner, "was to put the Iraqis in charge as soon as we can and do it in some form of elections."
But elections were not in The Plan.
Dr Reza Hashemi-Nezhad, School of Physics, University of Sydney is anuclear physicist and Australia’s only expert in the field ofAccelerator Driven Nuclear Reactors which uses thorium as fuel. He hasbeen working in this field for 10 years in international collaborations,with some of his research funding from Germany."Many of the concerns that people have expressed about Continue Reading →
By Kathleen and Bill Christison
John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, the University of Chicago and Harvard political scientists who published in March of this year a lengthy, well documented study on the pro-Israel lobby and its influence on U.S. Middle East policy, have already accomplished what they intended. They have successfully called attention to the often pernicious influence of the lobby on policymaking. But, unfortunately, the study has aroused more criticism than debate not only the kind of criticism one would anticipate from the usual suspects among the very lobby groups Mearsheimer and Walt described, but also from a group on the left that might have been expected to support the study’s conclusions.
The criticism has been partly silly, often malicious, and almost entirely off-point. The silly, insubstantial criticisms such as former presidential adviser David Gergen’s earnest comment that through four administrations he never observed an Oval Office decision that tilted policy in favor of Israel at the expense of U.S. interests can easily be dismissed as nonsensical . Most of the extensive malicious criticism, coming largely from the hard core of Israeli supporters who make up the very lobby under discussion and led by a hysterical Alan Dershowitz, has been so specious and sophomoric, that it too could be dismissed were it not for precisely the pervasive atmosphere of reflexive support for Israel and silenced debate that Mearsheimer and Walt describe.
Most disturbing and harder to dismiss is the criticism of the study from the left, coming chiefly from Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein, and abetted less cogently by Stephen Zunes of Foreign Policy in Focus and Joseph Massad of Columbia University. These critics on the left argue from a assumption that U.S. foreign policy has been monolithic since World War II, a coherent progression of decision-making directed unerringly at the advancement of U.S. imperial interests. All U.S. actions, these critics contend, are part of a clearly laid-out strategy that has rarely deviated no matter what the party in power. They believe that Israel has served throughout as a loyal agent of the U.S., carrying out the U.S. design faithfully and serving as a base from which the U.S. projects its power around the Middle East. Zunes says it most clearly, affirming that Israel “still is very much the junior partner in the relationship.” These critics do not dispute the existence of a lobby, but they minimize its importance, claiming that rather than leading the U.S. into policies and foreign adventures that stand against true U.S. national interests, as Mearsheimer and Walt assert, the U.S. is actually the controlling power in the relationship with Israel and carries out a consistent policy, using Israel as its agent where possible.