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Politics : Idea Of The Day -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: IQBAL LATIF who wrote (48399)	4/27/2005 7:46:59 PM
From: IQBAL LATIF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50167

On- War on terror- Few countries suffered as much from terrorism in 2004 as Pakistan, and few did as much to combat it, a State Department’s annual report on terrorism said on Wednesday. Pakistan also continued to pursue Al Qaeda and its allies aggressively throughout the country and initiated large-scale military operations in the FATA, the report said, adding “Pakistani Army and Frontier Corps destroyed key Qaeda havens in South Waziristan, killing over 100 foreign terrorists and dispersing several hundred more.” These operations significantly degraded Qaeda’s capabilities in the region, but at the cost of approximately 200 Pakistani servicemen killed in action, the report said. It said, “Pakistani security services are cooperating closely with the US and other nations in a successful campaign to eliminate terrorism both within Pakistan and abroad.” daily times monitor. Americans have been training Pakistanis in night flying and airborne assault tactics to combat foreign and local fighters in the tribal areas of Pakistan near the Afghan border, the United States commander here, Lt Gen David W Barno, told the New York Times in an interview in Kabul. The report said it is the first time the American military has acknowledged the training. Gen Barno admitted that the presence of American troops in Pakistan is regarded as extremely delicate, adding that he had visited the Special Services Group headquarters at Cherat, near Peshawar, on Saturday and watched a display by the units trained by the Americans in their new Bell 4 helicopters. The report quoted ISPR chief Maj Gen Shaukat Sultan as saying that there were no American military trainers at Cherat and that General Barno had probably been referring to joint military exercises between the two countries. He told the newspaper in a phone interview, “The Pakistan Army has been training with many countries of the world. We have also been conducting joint military training with the US army many a time earlier. They benefit from each other’s experience. They learn from each other. That’s what has been happening, and nothing else.” The report said that the Pakistani army is gearing up to go into what is considered one of the last redoubts of Al Qaeda and foreign fighters, the tribal area of North Waziristan near the border with Afghanistan. Last year the Pakistani military moved against foreign militants in South Waziristan, killing some 300 fighters and losing about the same number of their own soldiers. The remnants of the foreign and local militants made their way into North Waziristan. According to some reports, the Qaeda leader, Osama Bin Laden, and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri may also be in the region. Gen Barno said of the Pakistani military, “They are working this hard. It’s too early to say that there is a new offensive, and I don’t know what direction this is going to take, but there is no question, from the vice chief of the Army staff down, that they very much intend to determine how to best get at the enemy.” He added that Pakistan had successfully disrupted militants financed by Al Qaeda in South Waziristan. He predicted that the Taliban would suffer a major schism in coming months and expected many, including some senior commanders, to join a government reconciliation programme and give up their insurgency, leaving only a small hard core still fighting. Part of that core, a network loyal to the former Taliban commander Jalaluddin Haqqani, is in North Waziristan and continues to attack American troops across the border in Afghanistan, the general said. The American general said, “They are still working to some degree at the behest of Al Qaeda and are financed by Al Qaeda to run operations here to disrupt activities here in Afghanistan, and they operate on both sides of the border.” Foreign fighters were among them, he added, and some Arabs who were largely in the background providing money. “If you were to look back five years ago, you would see large training camps and a large footprint,” he said. “And now it’s more very, very small groups - of three or four or five. They spend a short time getting some training here and then maybe move to get some training somewhere else. It’s very difficult to be able to pinpoint this activity even going on, much less to get and find it, disrupt it and capture or kill these guys.”

To: IQBAL LATIF who wrote (48399)	4/29/2005 2:11:06 AM
From: JD	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50167

..."It's time for America to start building Nuclear power plants again," Bush said. - The price of green policies are destroying America, they want ‘green’ but they want their SUV’s and maintain one of the their highest per capita consumption of energy in the world, they want their cake and eat it too- America has not ordered a new nuclear power plant since the 1970s. France has built 58 plants in the same period and today France gets more than 78 percent of its electricity from nuclear power... ..."we need to move along our trajectory of technological breakthrough and invent control and management of risk, that is how we have beaten so far the ‘Malthusian predictions.’" ---------------------------------------------- Sounds like the inevitable march of technology is still on course. This latest gizmo is not good for producing energy, but the knowledge gained will help in future efforts. A small step in right direction: Fusion seen in table-top experiment Thursday 28 April 2005 Physicists in the US have generated nuclear fusion in a simple, table-top device operating at room temperature. The device, built by Brian Naranjo, Jim Gimzewski and Seth Putterman at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), causes two deuterium nuclei to collide with each other and generate alpha particles, neutrons and energy (Nature 434 1115). The device could have applications as a portable neutron generator or in the propulsion systems for miniature spacecraft, but will not be useful as an energy source because it consumes more energy than it produces... ...Putterman and co-workers at UCLA are also involved in efforts to generate fusion reactions in "sonoluminescence" experiments in which bubbles in a liquid are forced to expand and contract by sound waves. In 2002 Rusi Taleyarkhan of Oak Ridge and colleagues reported that they had observed "bubble fusion" in experiments with deuterated acetone. The report was greeted with skepticism by other researchers in the field, including the UCLA group, who were unable to reproduce the results. However, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in the US has recently funded Taleyarkhan, who is now at Purdue University, and Putterman to collaborate and exchange information on bubble fusion." iop.org ---------------------------------------------- I was amused reading all the speculation about "OIL production could peak next year, reports John Vidal. Just kiss your lifestyle goodbye...". Nowhere was mentioned that there are substitutes for petrol/nat gas products like solar, nuke, and conservation. 'Pebble bed reactor' nuclear holds great promise, and conservation is becoming more efficient every year (hybrid cars, battery technology). And many of the very same technological developments that have been propelling 'Moore's law' for these many years in semiconductors have also been at work in the area of solar power. With the Japanese leading the way (Sharp electronics) solar power is just now crossing the threshold of 'profitablity' (BEP for 15 year life + maintenance) for most of the 'sun belt' here in the US. I think that in 3 to 5 years the vast majority of new homes built in the sun belt will come complete with solar panels. During the day, power will flow from the housing areas toward the area of daytime peak demand - the industrial developments. At night, the industrial develpments require very little electricity. This system will enable far less reliance on traditional electrical generating stations by reducing peak daytime demand. I am of the opinion that we will see the all time high oil price this year (+/- 12 months or so). If there are no major 'fireworks' in the ME oil fields in the coming months, we may have already seen the high: "Necessity, who is the mother of invention." Plato, The Republic Greek author & philosopher in Athens (427 BC - 347 BC) ----------------------- PS...the above is not investment advice. I am a raving lunatic with a chronic case of optimismatosis so bad I am prone to think a glass 3/4's empty is really over half full...