Category: Archive

China drills in Carribean

admin /11 June, 2006

http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/china_starts_oil_drilling.html

By Mike Blair

While Washington dithers over exploiting oil and gas reserves off the coast of Florida, China has seized the opportunity to gobble up these deposits, which run throughout Latin America, the Caribbean and along the U.S. Gulf coast.

The Chinese have forged a deal with Cuban leader Fidel Castro to explore and tap into massive oil reserves almost within sight of Key West, Florida. At the same time, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who controls the largest oil reserves in the Western Hemisphere, is making deals to sell his country’s oil to China, oil that is currently coming to the United States.

Meanwhile, a new left-wing populist regime in Bolivia has nationalized the natural gas industry, threatening to cut off supplies to the United States.

Who was Abu Musab al Zarqawi?

admin /11 June, 2006

By Michel Chossudovsky

June 8, 2006
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=CHO20060608&articleId=2604

Mythical figure and terror mastermind Abu Musab Al Zarqawi was killed in an air raid, according to a statement of the Iraqi government.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki announced at a press conference . "We have eliminated Zarqawi." The head of US-led forces in Iraq, General George Casey, said the strike against an "isolated safe house" took place at 1815 (1415 GMT) on Wednesday. (BBC, 7 June 2006)

"Jordanian-born Zarqawi was said to have been in a meeting with associates at the time. Several other people were reported to have been killed in the raid. General Casey said Zarqawi’s body was identified through fingerprints, facial recognition and known scars."  (Ibid)

Zarqawi has been upheld both in official statements and the media as head of  "the Sunni insurgency",  leader of "al-Qaeda in Iraq", allegedly responsible for the the killings of thousands of civilians. 

The Timely Death of al-Zarqawi

admin /11 June, 2006

By CHRIS FLOYD

http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd06082006.html
A bu Musab Saddam Osama al-Zarqawi, the extremely elusive if not entirely mythical terrorist mastermind responsible for every single insurgent action in Iraq except for the ones caused by the red-tailed devils in Iran or the stripey-tailed devils in Syria, has reportedly been killed in an airstrike in Hibhib, an area north of Baghdad, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki announced today.

Zarqawi, the notorious shape-shifter who, according to grainy video evidence, was able to regenerate lost limbs, speak in completely different accents, alter the contours of his bone structure and also suffered an unfortunate binge-and-purge weight problem which caused him to change sizes with almost every appearance, was head of an organization that quite fortuitously dubbed itself "Al Qaeda in Iraq" just around the time that the Bush Administration began changing its pretext for the conquest from "eliminating Iraq’s [non-existent] weapons of mass destruction" to "fighting terrorists over there so we don’t have to fight them over here."

House Rejects Net Neutrality

admin /11 June, 2006

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?pid=90090

John Nichols

The First Amendment of the Internet – the governing principle of net neutrality, which prevents telecommunications corporations from rigging the web so it is easier to visit sites that pay for preferential treatment – took a blow from the House of Representatives Thursday.

Bowing to an intense lobbying campaign that spent tens of millions of dollars – and held out the promise of hefty campaign contributions for those members who did the bidding of interested firms – the House voted 321 to 101 for the disingenuously-named Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act (COPE). That bill, which does not include meaningful network-neutrality protections creates an opening that powerful telephone and cable companies hope to exploit by expanding their reach while doing away with requirements that they maintain a level playing field for access to Internet sites.

One Page Green Building Guide

admin /8 June, 2006

How to make green building grow

Posted by Grist at 11:31 AM on 08 Jun 2006

Today we bring you Auden Schendler’s thoughts on the state of green building — and, below, his suggestions for making things a whole lot better.

Ultimately, we need to find a way to make green building more accessible. I once had a construction manager ask me, "What’s the process we go through to make a green building?" I should have been able to hand him a one-pager, but I didn’t have one. Each project manager needs to be able to articulate the process clearly and quickly.

Here’s how it should work, from an owner’s perspective:

1. Hire a talented architect, engineer, and contractor who are all committed to the cause. They don’t have to be green. But they do have to understand that they work for you, and you are paying them to build a green building within budget.
2. Provide a road map that describes the process and goals for building green.
3. Make sure there is a project champion, preferably a bulldog, to hound people. Stay vigilant throughout the whole process.
4. When the project is finished, share your successes, but also share the inevitable pitfalls with others — at conferences and through other outlets.
5. Make your next building even better.

But how do you get to that point?

Dams don’t work in droughts

admin /7 June, 2006

Standing at the bottom of Goulburn’s bone-dry Pejar Dam in NSW, it is obvious that the weakness of such large water storages is their susceptibility to drought, observed an article in Queensland Country Life (1 June 2006 p10). Object lesson for Qld govt: Because of this, Federal Parliamentary Secretary for Water Malcolm Turnbull believes the Continue Reading →