THE DARK CLOUD OF INDIA’S ENCONOMIC BOOM

Will Burn Footnotes: (1) International Monetary Fund report 2007 (2) Naxalites lay siege to Jehanabad, The Hindu (3) Time, June 2008 (4) Voice of America, May 2006 (5) Time, June 2008 India is an emerging economic superpower. With a population in excess of one billion people and GDP growth at 9 and 10% (1) respectively for the past two years, India is on track to be a global force economically and socially. History though has a habit of repeating itself and if India does not take necessary more...

Wowsers are stealing your freedom

This is a call to the people of Australia, and the world, to stand up for our personal liberties against the rampaging wowsers on their crusade against anything fun in this world. The right regal wowser reverand Rudd (Kevin Rudd) and his band of marionette politicians who dance to the tune of the Anti-smoking, anti-drinking, anti-gambling, anti-freedom of choice lobby groups, must be called into represent all the people in this country. Most of all they must let us choose for ourselves what we do with our bodies, our time and our space. It started with no smoking at work, then extended to shopping malls. This I could tolerate. Just. But now it has extended to pubs, for christ sake pubs more...

What’s the True Value of Gold?

The global financial markets have currently been in turmoil for the past six months largely due to the effects of the increase of oil prices but also the disastrous sub-prime mortgage meltdown that was heavily felt in the United States. We’re all aware if the United States financial markets catch a cold the rest of the world will start blowing their noses too. I, like every budding entrepreneur with limited capital know that with every crisis there opens a new opportunity. From disasters ashes success can often follow. Capturing a market and identifying an opportunity can be elusive and evasive but consider a growing market that could be the second oldest profession in the world, gold more...

ANZAC day - a peace day

Anzac day is the only war related holiday in Australia, ANZAC stands for the Australian and New Zealand Army Corp, its a public holiday in Australia and has become more and more popular, especially with young people. I heard last year on television while watching the ANZAC day broadcast something I didn't know. The holiday started quite by accident, or organically if your more business minded, when two women were standing next to a war memorial in Sydney or a counrty town I can't remember. Just standing next to the war memorial they were not saying a word. Two men quite young, walked up to them, they had both been in the first world war and asked the women what they were doing there more...

The Real China and the Olympics

“Chinese people know best about China's human rights situation” –– Foreign Ministry spokesperson Jiang Yu, February 1st, 2008 Editors note: This open letter has been copied from Human Rights WatchHRW, and since letter was written Hu, 34, has been sentenced to three and half years in prison and one additional year of deprivation of political rights for “incitement to subvert state power,” The Real China and the Olympics September 10, 2007 On July 13th 2001, when Beijing won the right to host the 2008 Olympic more...

CIA Indemnity for Human Rights Abuses

The Central Intelligence Agency or CIA is the United States of America’s external intelligence organisation which is used to influence those outside the USA to comply what they and the governing bodies believe to be America’s values and interests. It has no official legal power but worldwide exerts its influence by, guile, bribery, force and corruption of both individuals and government bodies. Some of the most despicable and disastrous events in recent times have the sticky fingerprints of the CIA over them. A CIA lead invasion of Cuba that was highly unsuccessful and later became known as the infamous “The bay of Pigs Invasion”. This vaulted Fidel Castro's popularity onto a world more...

Australia in financial crisis

Reading today’s AGE (The Age.com.au 8/03/2008) was a harrowing experience, doom and gloom on all sides, food prices are on the rise, and are expected to go up further in the future, partly due to world demand, but mainly due to the costs of productions increasing. The flow of finance, money to borrow has dried up, the banks are worried and sre raising interest rates quicker that the reserve bank demands. The y will start declining loans to certain sectors, and the cost of more...

Kenya: Justice Key to Securing Lasting Peace

Positive Steps in Agreement on Election Review, Constitutional Reform (Nairobi, February 17, 2008) – The political agreement in Kenya mediated by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan is a step forward, but Kenyan politicians must take immediate steps to ensure accountability for human rights violations if further negotiations are to build lasting stability, Human Rights Watch said today. Kenya’s record of impunity for past episodes of political violence, particularly during the 1992 and 1997 elections, has directly contributed to the current crisis. By failing to hold those most responsible for past abuses accountable, previous Kenyan governments sent the message that organizing more...

Bolto's War

We hopped the parapet just at 7p.m. It was a splendid charge & the Tommies on our left said that they had never seen a finer one & we drove Fritz out of 3 lines of trenches & started to consolidate the captured position which we held until day break when we found out that we were cut off in the rear by the enemy getting in behind us. How he did so we cannot say. My belief is that he had big dugouts & when we went over they hid inThis is an extract from the diary of Roy Louis Coppin Bolto from Adelaide, Australia who fought on the Western front more...

TNT blamed for Chinese karaoke bar explosion

More than a ton of TNT stored illegally in the basement of a karaoke bar caused the recent explosion that killed 25 people and injured 41 more in the north-eastern Chinese town of Tianshifu, news reports say. Qu Yujie or Yijie (known locally as Qu Hua), owner of the two-storey Tianying Karaoke Hall and Bath House which was levelled by the blast was amongst those killed. He was described as "a successful businessman" who owned a local colliery. Many residents of Tianshifu, where the blast occurred stated that he regularly used the basement of the building as a storage site for his explosives. His elder brother and his elder brother's wife were also among the deceased according to Benxi more...

End Efforts to Strip Iraqis of Refugee status

German Policy Fails to Account for Continuing Violence, Persecution in Iraq (Washington, DC, July 10, 2007) – Germany should immediately stop revoking the refugee status of Iraqi refugees and should reconsider the cases of more than 18,000 Iraqis who have been stripped of their refugee status, Human Rights Watch said today in a letter to German authorities. Since November 2003, the German Federal Office for Refugees and Migration has sent letters to about 20,000 Iraqi refugees informing them that Germany intends to revoke their status. The letters say that the political situation in Iraq has fundamentally changed since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime, and that there is no more...

A Week In Politics; Democracy Going For a Song

Over the last few weeks we have lived through three major political events in Europe; the French Presidential Election, the resignation of the British Prime Minister and the Eurovision Song Contest. In these three highly political events we have seen varying levels of democracy, some of which give cause for concern. The French Presidential Election is a long drawn out race due to the use of the proportional representation system of voting which, unlike the British “first past the post” system, actually reflects how the people voted overall. With a turnout of over 80%, the result is about as close to democracy as you are going to get. By contrast, here in the UK, we look forward to more...

Australian budget - fix it yourself

Modern governments don't pool money for the good of all they just run the business of politics. Imagine this: You live in Australia, and you have $100 to spare, you say to your government; which is a democratically elected representative of you, who's purpose is to lead, maintain and increase the communities wellbeing. "Take my $100 dollars and pool it with other peoples money and please use it to try and fix some of the problems I and my friends, family and fellow citizens have. Here's a list of the things that are important to me, some of them are very important as they threaten my survival, and that of my kin. We don't have any water, the dams are at 30%, the farmers say more...

Earth-Sized Planet Discovered in Habitable Zone

Great big Jupiter-like planets are one thing, but the Holy Grail of extrasolar planetary discover is going to be another Earth - complete with life. We’re not there yet, but astronomers announced the next best thing yesterday: a roughly Earth-mass planet orbiting within the habitable zone of its parent star. In other words, liquid water could exist on this rocky planet. The host star is called Gliese 581, and it’s one of the 100 closest star to us, located only 20.5 light years away in the constellation Libra. Unlike our Sun, it’s a red dwarf star, emitting much less light and energy. This brings its habitable zone in close and tight to the star. For a planet to be orbiting its parent more...

Some Galaxies Are Just Dark Matter

An international team of researchers has developed a simulation to explain how galaxies like this could form. They used supercomputers to calculate how galaxies interact. When a smaller galaxy collides with a much larger galaxy, friction causes the gas to slow down and be stripped out a galaxy, while the stars and dark matter continue on. Without this gas, the galaxy can’t continue making stars. It’s only got the stars that had formed before the collision. A massive galaxy can also strip away stars and material more...

Are we creating a permanent underclass

Recent discoveries in the fields of genetics and neuroscience have opened the door to the idea that the way we live may effect our biology, and more importantly our brains and the brains of our children, and grandchildren. For example the food you eat may shorten your children's lifespan or living in and un-interesting boring enviroment may actually make your brain smaller. These two discoveries may change the way we look at social policy and at some of the fundamental assumptions we make about our lives and the lives of others. We may not be born equal, we may not have equal opportunities, and being brought up in a lower class doing a repetative boring job may sentence you and your more...

Fires in Victoria

Bushfires have been burning in Victoria (Autralia) for the past few weeks, particularly bad in Victoria's east in the Gippsland and mountain regions that make up the snowfields in winter. Smoke from the fires has even drifted all the way to Melbourne blocking out the sun for days. These photographs were taken two days ago in the middle of the fires in Bairnsdale in Victoria's East more...

The Global Nation

The internet is the catalyst for true globalisation People in western democracies seem to be becoming more and more disillusioned with their leaders and democratic governance, I refer you to a previous article on Jesaurai www.jesaurai.net ‘Can democracy be compulsory’ which said younger people’s attitudes to voting in a recent Australian federal election was indifferent. A lot of people simply don’t care to vote for their political leaders because they don’t see that they do anything for them. Modern leaders in Europe, Australia and North America have actually encouraged this blaise attitude to democratic governance by selling national assets and thus putting the control collective more...

The Good Life: Consumerism is so '90s

In the first book I wrote with David Suzuki, back in 1999, we had a chapter called “Complex Pleasures” that tried to analyze what it is that we humans really want. Today there are even more studies, polls and surveys that attempt to answer this most compelling of questions. And what they’ve uncovered has been a little surprising, in thaIn growing numbers, Americans are rediscovering that the real meaning of the good life doesn't come from things they can buy but from things they can feel. Living the good life is a subject that has been more...

Yale University: Taliban Yes; US Military No

While most American parents can only dream of sending their kids to a first-tier university such as Harvard and Yale, a former ambassador for the oppressive and brutal Afghan Taliban is enrolled at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, even though he possesses none of the qualifications to attend such an institution for higher education. "Yale University enrolls the Taliban's former spokesman as a student, but continues to prohibit other students from organizing a Reserve Officer Training Corps chapter on campus and also seeks to deny students the right to hear from military recruiters about employment opportunities," say members of the student group Young America's Foundation. Under more...

Why I am conservative

I recently had the opportunity to read "On Being Conservative", in which Michael Oakeshott lays out his ideas on the proper role of government. Oakeshott was a relatively obscure political theorist, who remains almost unknown outside of academic circles. Nevertheless, he is often cited as the most important British political philosopher of at least the past hundred years or so. Reading him gives me that warm, fuzzy feeling that you get when you see your own beliefs expressed with so much more eloquence and power than you could hope to emulate. I've done the next best thing, and written a précis of Oakeshott's essay. It gets to the heart of a lot what I believe about politics. A theory of more...

Betfair - Is Fair

There has been a lot of talk recently in the sporting media about bet matching agencies such as Betfair, and that they may encourage race fixing, also that they take money away from the horse racing industries where the agencies are not located in the same country as the punter. Firstly what is betfair, their website describes it as such "What is Betfair? All bets on Betfair have been placed there by users who either want to have a bet in the normal way (back), or offer odds to other punters (lay). Bets are matched between people with opposing views. "Why Use Betfair? You can bet that an outcome will happen (back) or that it won't happen (lay). You can choose the odds you want to more...

Population

What was the total number of dead people in the past compared to the number of people alive now? Estimating the number of people that have lived since the world began is extremely difficult. Even today, estimates of the total world population are just that, estimates. Not until the middle of the seventeenth century is there any record of an estimate of the world's population. At this time, Isaac Vossius, a Dutchman, suggested the world's population to be 545 million. Until the contemporary period, the total population of the world generally experienced a slow increase in numbers. Factors such as wars, epidemics and famines played an important role in occasionally more...

Mysteries of the Ancients

The earliest use of copper seems to date back to around 8000BC when it was worked like a soft stone, not cast. The first definite use of cast copper was in about 6400BC in Turkey. The first use of copper in Egypt was for weapons and utensils in about 5000BC. It is in Egypt that we find the first use of bronze, which is an alloy of copper and tin, in a rod in the pyramid at Meidum in about 3700BC. However, the normal start of the Bronze Age is normally set at 3000BC when metallurgists in the Near East (around Syria and Eastern Turkey) started producing bronze in relatively large quantities. Bronze is harder than copper and easier to melt and cast. It is also harder than pure iron and much more...

Post-Scarcity Economics

There is an economic fault line running throughout the world which today’s economic gurus seem unable to explain or remedy: the widening wealth and income gap between a tiny rich elite and multitudes of poor in every country between and within developed and developing nations. With global communications, the global economy, and our global environment, we cannot help but feel the tremors inside and outside national borders. These growing economic imbalances have promoted bloody conflicts, widespread starvation, international crime and corruption, depletion of the planet’s non-replenishable resources, unconscionable destruction of the environment and systematic suppression of human more...

Free-ish trade, and at a price…..

During his visit last week, United States President George W. Bush, is said to have raised the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) as a potential stumbling block in the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) negotiations with Australia. The PBS provides Australians with prescription medicines at a low cost, through government subsidy and collective purchasing. Australians are regularly treated to medications that without subsidy and the government bulk purchasing, would cost well over one hundred dollars for less than twenty. But the powerful US pharmaceutical lobby has identified this as a key area for trade negotiation, claiming that the Australian government artificially deflates prices by more...

Suburbia - An odd thing to choose

I've moved back to the place I was brought up, its a suburb has been for forty years or more, located about 25km from the city centre of Adelaide, and it has been changing. Originally, back 100 or so years ago it was a town, a village I guess in European terms, it had a river (thats what we call them here but its really a creek that now completely dries up in summer), it had sheep farms around it, a main street with churches and pubs, and I assume everything else that went“The cities will be part of the country; I shall live 30 miles from my more...

Quinine and Malaria

Malaria is one of the most dangerous diseases on the planet, killing over a million people every year. This is the story behind the natural drug that cures malaria. The indigenous tribes of the Andes have known for a long time that a certain tree can be used to cure malaria sufferers. The bark of the “quinquina” (pronounced keen-keena) tree has a disagreeably bitter taste, but when eaten it eases the fever within days. The tree’s name in fact means “bark of barks”. The modern scientific name for the tree, Cinchona, was given in 1742 by the great botanist more...

Why the speed of light is a constant

Why is the speed of light a constant? The idea that the speed of light (in a vacuum) is a constant and the same for all observers independently of their relative speeds is one of the two fundamental postulates of Einstein's theory of relativity. The other is that the laws of physics are the same for all inertial observers. If they are accelerating with respect to each other the laws are not the same. The theory of relativity was developed to explain various experimental observations that could not be explained by classical mechanics. For example under classical mechanics the concept of cause and effect breaks down at high speeds. At low speeds classical mechanics is a good more...

Life and Death : the story of Gunpowder

The English philosopher and alchemist Roger Bacon is thought by modern historians to be the first European to have come across gunpowder. In 1248 a missionary brought him a Chinese device known as a “firecracker” that was used in celebrations. Intrigued, Bacon took it apart and analysed the contents to discover why it exploded rather than merely burned. He soon worked out that the black substance, which was to become known as gunpowder, was a mixture of saltpetre and other chemicals. Bacon also apparently realised the huge danger that this innocuous-looking powder presented, and in his report he enciphered the formula - an attempt to keep it a secret for as long as possible. To find the more...