Category: Archive

US Senator, Ted Kennedy is one of many high profile figures who has
reversed their normally environmental stance to oppose plans for the
world’s largest wind farm in Nantucket sound, opposite the Kennedy
compound in Hyannis.

 The Boston Globe reports that Congress
is likely to pass legislation allowing the Governor of Massachusetts,
or the Coast Guard to stop the project unilaterally. The legislation
only applies to the Nantucket sound, and is widely seen to be a high
level example of powerful figures playing the game known as “Not In My
Back Yard” (NIMBY.)

… more

First warnings: This was the position on the failure to link
national registries with a EU registry involving Cyprus, Greece,
Luxembourg, Malta and Poland; failure to send information needed to
prepare for international emissions trading involving Germany, Italy,
Luxembourg and Spain and the failure to submit information on
greenhouse gas emissions involving Cyprus, Italy, Malta and Spain.

Final warnings: The second and final warning called on the
member state to comply with its obligations within a specified period,
usually two months. This was the case with the failure to submit
information on greenhouse gas emissions involving Austria, Cyprus,
Luxembourg, Malta and Poland.

Case can go to Court of Justice: If the member state failed to
comply within the stipulated time, the EC could bring the case before
the Court of Justice. Where the Court of Justice found an infringement,
the offending member state was required to take the measures necessary
to conform.

Court can impose financial penalty: The EC had the power to act
against a member state that did not comply with a previous judgement of
the European Court of Justice. The EC could ask the Court to impose a
financial penalty on the member state.

Reference: Digest of latest news reported on website of Climate
Change Secretariat of United Nations Framework on Climate Change
Control (UNFCCC). 6 April 2006. Address: PO Box 260 124, D-53153 Bonn.
Germany. Phone: : (49-228) 815-1005, Fax: (49-228) 815-1999. Email: press@unfccc.int
http://www.unfccc.int

Erisk Net, 8/4/2006

In the end, the family accepted the money, he says, but he plans a lawsuit and is demanding royalties.

Such defiance is symptomatic of the growing troubles in Papua, where four people have been killed in recent weeks in protests against Freeport.

And it shows that times are changing for multinational companies and governments long used to working out concessions in remote areas with a handshake, over the heads of local people.

In the present ugly mood, the people around the mine give short shrift to the more than $ 150 million that the company says it has spent on community development. Instead, they complain that they have lost their most precious assets: their land their river system, which is used as a waste chute, and their sago plants, which have disappeared under more than 23,000 hectares of mine waste, accumulating at a rate of some 700,000 tonnes a day.

Resentment is compounded by the presence of the Indonesian military, an almost entirely non-Papuan force often most intent on extracting its own cut of the provinces resources.

"Freeport is being held hostage for its relationship with the armed forces and the police," says Agus Sumule, a professor of agriculture at the University of Cenderawasih, the province’s main campus. "There is no way they can do their operations without the armed forces, and that’s because of their bad relationship with the local people." The tight grip of the military fuels calls for independence that send shudders through the Indonesian authorities, he says.

This contrasts sharply with how the company appeased Natkime’s father, Tuarek, in 1967. Balfour Darnell, a self-described roughneck who built Freeport’s first base camps, soothed Tuarek Natkime’s suspicion of the outsiders with a simple tool that was half hatchet and half hammer. With the promise of a few sacks of salt, the tribal leader said he would clear a landing area for the company helicopter. "So we blasted off and that was the end of that meeting," Darnell marvelled. "We were safe." Now, in the age of Tuarek Natkime’s more educated, more worldly son, it is not clear any more how safe.

The Australian Financial Review, 6/4/2006, p. 61

Source: Erisk Net

Search goes on: Despite weaker scrap metal prices, Smorgon said
in February it would continue to scout for opportunities in the scrap
market. “We still think it is the right strategy to be long in scrap in
our business,” chief executive Ray Horsburgh said at the time. “So we
will continue to look for bolt-on opportunities or any significant
scrap business that makes sense to us.”

The Australian Financial Review, 5/4/2006, p. 49

Source: Erisk Net  

Repeated the coup in Qld: He would later sell out to CSR, making
his first fortune, before doing a similar deal in Queensland, where in
1986 he floated Pozzolanic Industries. Only a little more than a year
later, Pozzolanic was taken over by Queensland Cement and Lime, after
Peabody sold his remaining 50 per cent for $20 million – before paying
$4.62 million to buy back the non-Queensland fly ash businesses,
including the group’s then small liquid waste disposal business and its
US ash operations.

Trucking interests led to NZ wine: Peabody also retained the
Australasian distributorship for Western Star trucks, which had become
the core of the Pozzolanic transport fleet. The relationship with
Western Star was to make him another fortune and indirectly lead the
family into a somewhat posher business than waste management –
up-market wine making in New Zealand.

The Courier Mail, 5/4/2006, p. 42

Source: Erisk Net 

Tamiflu, the patented vaccine against influenza H5N1, otherwise known as bird flu, is owned by Gilead. US secretary of defence, Donald Rumsfeld was a major shareholder of Gilean until recently.

Doctor Pushkar Kulkarni, a toxicoligist at the Bombay Veterinary College points out that Tamiflu is actually an extract of Star Aniseed, a major component of the spice Garam Masala, and that any food cooked at over 70 degrees Celsius is safe regardless of the presence of the H5N1 virus.

Independent reports indicate that  the virus is primarily originating in large industrial scale poultry farms and spreading along the transport routes of the global poultry industry. Doctor Kulkarni’s claim joins a growing clamour calling for the focus of health authorities to shift to large scale poultry farming and halt the mass slaughter of birds belonging to the world’s independent poultry farmers.