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Posted in Uncategorized By Neville On June 1, 2014
Posted in Energy Matters By admin On February 16, 2012
Gale Encyclopedia of US History:
Cold Nuclear Fusion |
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Cold Nuclear Fusion, an intensely disputed and largely discredited method for generating thermo-nuclear fusion at room temperature conditions. In nuclear fusion hydrogen atoms merge to form one helium atom, releasing energy. In its conventional form, such as that occurring within stars and hydrogen bombs, nuclear fusion requires high pressure and temperature, which force the atoms together. Proponents of cold nuclear fusion maintain that certain catalysts can coax hydrogen atoms to fuse without extreme pressure or heat. One form of cold nuclear fusion, known as muon-catalyzed cold fusion and first suggested in the 1940s, is undisputed. The process, in which a subatomic particle known as a muon captures two hydrogen atoms and forces them to fuse, has been demonstrated in the laboratory but appears not to be feasible as an energy source. The controversial form of cold nuclear fusion was first heard of in March 1989, when two University of Utah chemists, Martin Fleisch-mann and B. Stanley Pons, reported that they had produced fusion in a test tube at room temperature by running an electrical current through heavy water, a type of water in which the hydrogen atoms are of the isotope deuterium. They claimed that the current drove the deuterium atoms into a palladium rod in the water, forcing the atoms to pack closely enough to fuse. This announcement raised a furor in the scientific community. After other researchers failed to obtain similar results with the technique, a consensus emerged that the Utah scientists had used a flawed apparatus and misinterpreted the data from the experiment. A small but vocal minority of researchers continued to pursue variations on the approach.
By Willy Bach
In case some of us have not been watching, gambling casinos are not a sustainable industry. They are a relic of our profligate past. They are the dream that has turned into a nightmare. In the USA, five casinos have gone bankrupt recently and even Donald Trump’s empire is not immune from this unraveling process. http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-trump-bankruptcy-20140909-story.html
The demise of gambling in Atlantic City, NJ is a chilling lesson in how governments addicted to gambling revenue are on the road to ruination. What can be done with huge examples of junk architecture that are thirsty for water and power services and perform no productive function? Casinos rate poorly in building community resilience and a more equitable society in which to face an uncertain future of resource depletion and climate change. http://www.abc.net.au/correspondents/content/2014/s4082378.htm
It is an industry that depends on the corrupting of politics and public administration. Casino entrepreneurs like to have protection from competition and open slather conditions in which to operate, as shown by the secret deal that protects the Crown Casino profits from the Victorian government’s timid efforts to mitigate the social harm of gambling addiction. Secret deals are an insult to accountability and good governance. They also have the effect of distorting the market for more productive and socially useful industries. Inevitably, we must assume that secret deals are at the heart of NSW and Queensland casino proposals, as these states compete with Victoria in order to attract new casino industry entrants.
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/tim-costello/5729454 The business model inevitably depends on encouraging addiction and predates on people with a propensity for harmful habits, as pointed out by Tim Costello. This is clearly the case with the proposed Aquis Resort near Cairns Cairns, in spite of the blue sky exaggerated claims made by the Hong Kong investors. http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/backgroundbriefing/2014-09-07/5716736
Casinos often require special dispensation, special planning permission and/or relaxations of environmental, economic and social constraints. In other words they receive special advantages not available to other businesses. The only way to get this kind of privilege is via political campaign donations and promises of other benefits and/or directorships. State governments that agree to casinos and grant these advantages are then hooked on their share of profits gained at the expense of their constituents.
In order to ensure we elect people who have the public interest at the core of their being we have to discourage those who are in politics for personal gain and sectional interests. In the case of NSW, a government led by someone who exercises poor judgment over a bottle of Grange Hermitage cannot be entrusted with the negotiations for dealing with Australia’s richest man. Thanks to Independent Senator, Nick Xenophon for standing up and speaking out. http://www.nickxenophon.com.au/blog/nick-slams-vic-government-fixing-deal-with-jamie-packers-casino-/
It is also well documented that casinos send their profits off-shore or find other means to minimise he tax they pay, encourage prostitution, various forms of exploitation and money laundering. Secret banks, secret tax deals, where does it end? http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/crown-casino-exploits-loophole-to-create-secret-bank-for-high-rollers-20140823-107jss.html It results in thoroughly compromised and corrupted officials and public figures. It results in the demise of democracy. One has only to look at the political activities of Sheldon Adelson in the USA and Hong Kong to see the excesses this can lead to. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/03/25/sheldon-adelson-spent-93-million-on-the-2012-election-heres-how/
by Dr_Tad · September 8, 2014
Left Flank’s ELIZABETH HUMPHRYS has launched a new website for her own work, An Integral State: Notes on Marx & Gramsci.
The latest post is her paper from the roundtable on Leo Panitch & Sam Gindin’s Deutscher Prize winning book The Making of Global Capitalism, at the Historical Materialism Australasia conference last weekend in Sydney. Elizabeth spoke alongside Panitch, Mike Rafferty, Martijn Konings and Mike Beggs. She argues:
More concretely, based on their analysis of the state as related to the balance of class forces, the authors conclude that the state needs to be transformed politically if it is to function to reflect a different balance of class forces. So, for example, Leo argued in his Wheelwright address on Wednesday that we need to rebuild the institutions — unions and labour parties — or create new ones, and to nationalise and ‘decommodify’ that which should be a collective right: public transit; water; the banks. He agued we need to reclaim the concept of state planning and argue for higher taxation in return for collective goods. Similarly, in the conclusion to the book Leon and Sam argue that ‘today’s revived demands for social justice and genuine democracy [can] only be realised through…a fundamental shift of political power, entailing fundamental changes in state as well as class structures’.
Yet such a perspective — of a series of dramatic transitions in the existing policies, functions and responsibilities of states needing to occur prior to genuine socialism being possible — seems to bear little connection to the wider structures of social class forces where capital remains dominant over labour. Consequently, the ability of collective agency to transform societies from below seems to rest on somehow converting states that have remained impervious to democratic transformation. It is not clear to me how the authors intend to resolve this paradox.
CLICK HERE TO READ THE REST
Elizabeth has also written on “Arbitration & the ALP: Union strength or impasse?”:
Arbitration was a process where the state bought labour and capital together, in an institutionalised form, in order to settle matters in the national (and therefore the dominant class’s) interest. In reflecting on Gramsci’s words that open this post (penned in consideration of the different political currents in the Risorgimento in Italy), it is necessary for us to ask how the dominant class came to lead and dominate the labour movement in this way. The emergence of arbitration in the period of federation – celebrated by many unionists and Marxists as a symbol of the strength of labour in the colonies – should be seen as a key mechanism by which the hegemonic class led allied classes and dominated opposing ones. In this way, it is also a moment of failure – the failure of an independent working class project to emerge and the subsumption of labour’s interests into the dominant class’s project. This took place not simply because the strikes were defeated in the midst of economic crisis, but because of the development of arbitration as a mechanism of class hegemony to manage class conflict over the longer term. Arbitration, from this perspective, was an integral part of constructing class rule in Australia and the ability of the dominant class to lead all others in that historic moment.
CLICK HERE TO READ THE REST
Finally, she has also written a piece called “Where in the World Does Neoliberalism Come From?” on the new Progress in Political Economy website run by the University of Sydney’s Department of Political Economy:
[Raewyn] Connell and [Nour] Dados argue that mainstream theoretical work on the emergence and transmission of neoliberalism is dominated by two narratives: 1) that neoliberalism is about the spread of certain ideas amongst a network of right-wing intellectuals (based in Europe and the United States); or 2) that it is a mutation of capitalism resulting from a crisis of profitability. As a result, the story of neoliberalism in mainstream theory is of a phenomenon arising in the global North (and the US & UK in particular) and later exported to the global South. Such an interpretation places the global North at the centre of the account of the development of neoliberalism and, they argue, eschews the experience of the global South. Moreover, and as Raewyn [has] emphasised … it fails to emphasise that neoliberalism was a global process from the start.CLICK HERE TO READ THE REST
– See more at: http://left-flank.org/2014/09/08/capitalist-state-neoliberalism-industrial-arbitration/#sthash.y3iTwKVC.dpuf
Last night’s G20 Summit hosted by Souths Leagues Club and Westender brought to the fore that our rights as citizens to go about our daily business without interference from police have been suspended in the Southbank area during the G20.
While the police repeatedly declared their intent to cooperate with citizens exercising their freedom to express their views and protest peacefully, the law allows them considerable scope to stop and search anyone within the declared zone, demand name and address and a declaration of intent with sweeping powers of arrest should a citizen refuse to cooperate with those requests.
An outline of the implications of these changes to the law has been prepared by Caxton Legal Service and is available here.
At a G20 Community Forum organized by this newspaper, local residents spoke out about their concerns for personal safety during the forthcoming G20 Summit in Brisbane.
Sensationalist media reporting (not in the Westender, of course) seems to focus solely on images of heavily armed riot police battling with bomb-throwing anarchists in the streets of South Brisbane and West End, and cavalcades of dark tinted, armoured limousines disrupting traffic. References have frequently been made to the ugly street violence that marred Toronto’s G20 Summit.
Concerns were also expressed about the impact that the security arrangements surrounding the summit would have on West End’s large population of homeless people and street dwellers, many of whom may not be aware of the dramatic changes to their local environment.
Jacke Trad MP, who took leave from a sitting of State Parliament to pay a flying visit to the Forum, reported that many of her constituents had expressed similar concerns. Local Councillor Helen Abrahams told the same story, and informed the meeting that Brisbane City Council has that day passed a new By-Law giving designated Council Officers expanded “Move On” powers.
Robin Taubenfeld of the Community Action Network said that many protest groups who would normally be expected to exercise their democratic right to peaceful protest had decided against taking part in any action, for fear of a heavy handed police response. Ms Taubenfeld also told the forum that her group’s efforts to secure a local venue for an alternative Peoples Convergence during the G20 Summit had so far been unsuccessful, with venue operators raising their own safety concerns.
Scott McDougall of Caxton Legal Centre spoke of their Independent Legal Observer initiative, which would see volunteer lawyers in the thick of any protests, observing and recording the behaviour of police and protestors.
The Queensland Police representatives at the Forum, Deputy Commissioner Ross Barnett and Assistant Commissioner Katarina Carroll, went to great lengths to allay the concerns raised, stressing that lessons had been learnt from previous G20 Summits around the world and that the Queensland Police were whole-heartedly committed to allowing and facilitating peaceful protests.
In answer to questions regarding the “Restricted” and “Secure” areas declared for the Summit, Deputy Commissioner Barnett said that while the final arrangements would not be known until four to six weeks out from the Summit, the public would be kept fully informed of any decisions made.
Assistant Commissioner Katarina Carroll, the Operational Commander for the G20 Summit, spoke of the extensive community engagement exercise which the Queensland Police have been conducting, and urged members of the public with concerns – especially people planning a protest action – to make contact with Queensland Police or their local political representatives to discuss their concerns.
Assistant Commissioner Carroll said that the police presence at the Summit – more than six thousand officers from all over Queensland, Australia and New Zealand – would be under her direct command and would all be given extensive training and briefing prior to the Summit to ensure a peaceful outcome.
Editor’s Note: With 4,000 dignitaries and delegates, a 3,000 strong international media contingent and over 6,000 police from all over Australia descending on Brisbane for the G20 Summit, the eyes of the world will, for a couple of days, certainly be on Brisbane.
The Westender sincerely hopes that event will act as a showcase for Brisbane, and show the world a vibrant, diverse and politically engaged community not afraid to speak its mind or to raise issues of global concern.
