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The distribution system that would allow external power connection was destroyed by the tsunami. Discussed where citation 8 is used here https://carnegieendowment.org/...

http://carnegieendowment.org/files/fukushima.pdf on page 11-12 should give some background on heights and the site ie they knew and still built the site lower down.

The meltdowns at TMI, Chernobyl, and Fukashima have made nuclear power release more radioactive material than coal over this period.

Oh, horse shit.

TMI released essentially no radioactive material at all. No deaths have been attributed to it.

Chernobyl was possibly the worst stereotypical example of batshit-crazy Soviet-era negligence I've ever heard of. Someone who attempts to hold the modern nuclear power industry to the standards of Chernobyl is not doing so in an effort to enlighten, educate, or warn, but rather, to deceive. Lay off the vodka, and you won't have a Chernobyl. It's as simple as that.

The Fukushima disaster resulted from similar incompetence. A 40-year-old nuclear plant was allowed to operate long past its scheduled 25-year design life, in a seismically active zone that was known to be prone to tsunamis, under the control of a corrupt power company with demonstrably inadequate oversight. Despite all that, it almost managed to survive an 8.9 earthquake. No one could possibly have been surprised when it didn't. The lesson of Fukushima is that events like Fukushima are 100% avoidable if existing laws and practices are followed.

Meanwhile, people are dying right now from coal-fired plant emissions, all over the industrialized world. It just doesn't look scary enough on CNN for people like you to notice.

Nuclear weapons, by their very nature are NOT defensive.

Regardless of whether mutual assured destruction is a sound military doctrine or not, the fact of the matter is that nuclear weapons have resulted in the deterrence of conventional aggression between states belonging to the developed world.

Throughout history, the great powers of Europe have regularly gone to war with each other; that is, up until 1945. Since then, there have been no major conflicts at all between the major states. These are the same states that suffered unbelievable devastation and losses due to World War I, and still that wasn't enough to prevent a second World War from occurring a short time after.

To say that the nature of government underwent a fundamental change in the year 1945 would be a ridiculous claim. A more reasonable claim is that, for the first time in history, the costs of committing acts of conventional aggression (between major powers) have become so great and terrible as to dissuade their execution.

Individuals supporting nuclear abolition have good intentions. After all, nuclear weapons are horrible weapons of destruction easily capable of causing our complete eradication. While that's true, I assume that, based on our own long history, that complete nuclear abolition would usher in the return of conventional aggression between major powers, leading to major conflicts or even a new world war.

Here's a very short paper on the subject from a foreign-policy think tank in DC: http://www.carnegieendowment.org/files/Miller1.pdf.

It's not about VC and it's not about suburbia.

Russia, unfortunately, doesn't have strong enforcement of the rule of law, and it doesn't acknowledge intellectual property rights.

As much as I think long term software patents are B.S., a much shorter term protection for software and an period of protection aligned with that of other W.T.O. members would go a long way towards opening up Russia to business, and a long way to stopping the "brain drain" their politicians are complaining about. The normalization and bilateral agreements on intellectual property are missing, and that's the major reason Russia remains an observer at the W.T.O. rather than being a member. There an excellent paper which makes this point right here:

        http://www.carnegieendowment.org/files/cp73_katz_final.pdf

Without the ability to feel safe in their homes, they are not going to attract the talent or the entrepreneurs.

Reading the article, it looks like the capitalists are asking for a free-for-all zone, while the government is interested in putting together another cold war era style "science city", where the inhabitants are just as insulated. To quote from the article:

"In California, the climate is beautiful and they don't have the ridiculous problems of Russia," Mr. Shtorkh said. To compete, he said, Russia will form a place apart for scientists. "They should be isolated from our reality," he added.

...which does absolutely nothing to fix that "reality" so that their new "science city" becomes anything more than a walled microcosm of a Silicon Valley suburb surrounding a Silicon Valley tech park.

This seems as wrong to me as the U.S. Government "fixing the economy" by giving tons of taxpayer money to the very people who broke it in the first place. I do not expect this venture to be successful unless they very quickly change their ground rules on intent and plan of action.

-- Terry

Its not the 'smoking gun' that would finally exonerate Mr Bush, but it sure does point in the right direction.

No, this is the 'smoking gun' that only confirms Wilson was telling the truth. Wilson was already saying that the new purchase of Yellow-cake from Niger made absolutely no sense because Iraq had plenty of it already.

[On July 22 2002, Deputy National Security Advisor Steven] Hadley said that this second memo [this one made by Wilson] detailed some weakness in the evidence, the fact that the effort was not particularly significant to Iraq's nuclear ambitions because the Iraqis already had a large stock of uranium oxide in their inventory.
http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=1595

I couldn't find the direct quote from Joe Wilson, but if anyone is willing to do a search through youtube/NPR -- I remember Wilson also repeating this fact several times during his NPR interviews.

• Treating nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons as a single "WMD threat."
• The conflation of three distinct threats, very different in the danger they pose, distorted the cost/benefit analysis of the war. (p. 52)
• Insisting without evidence--yet treating as a given truth--that Saddam Hussein would give whatever WMD he possessed to terrorists. (p. 52)
• Routinely dropping caveats, probabilities, and expressions of uncertainty present in intelligence assessments from public statements. (p. 53)
• Misrepresenting inspectors' findings in ways that turned threats from minor to dire. (p. 53)

Bullshit. Someone else apparently wants to rewrite history.

Iraq: U.N. Inspections for Weapons of Mass Destruction (Updated October 7, 2003) (pdf format) Note particularly that while the inspections were taking place, and cooperation was good, the ONLY areas of contention were some ambiguities in Iraqi documents as far what was listed and what was shown.

Further, here is what ELBaradei is quoted as saying:

Director General ElBaradei reported that inspections since November 2002 have identified no prohibited nuclear activities but urged states to continue to provide intelligence information. ElBaradei specifically suggested that the inspection process "should be allowed to run its natural course" and that credible assurances could be provided within the next few months.

Inspector's Call U.S. Tips 'Garbage'

Iraq was wasn't justified, U.N. weapons experts say (note the lies that Dick Cheney perpetuated)

UN Inspection in Iraq Was No Sham

Shall I continue or would you like to keep repeating lies?

The question, for you, is not "where are they". Instead, you should be thinking about "they were there before, obviously. Where did they end up?

Here Dumbass.

I sure hope you are not old enough to vote. Stupidity like yours should have as little impact on society as possible.

This comming from someone who probably voted for Bush.

Don't worry, I'm not even a citizen of your fucked up country.

Nevertheless it's a difference whether politicians fly in (like Rumsfeld) to make the deals

Don't forget Chirac! (Yes, I know he's not German. But he lives next door. And he likes to bad-mouth America...)

or whether (like in Germany) companies export technology illegally. In Germany, this caused a scandal and the prosecution of officials of the companies.

Or whether, like in the US, Loral pays off (President) Clinton in order to be able to sell sensitive missile know-how to the CHICOMs.

http://www.carnegieendowment.org/about/

He may have a valid point, however, about the government playing a large and not necessarily fair role. Capitalism to a large degree depends on even-handed enforcement of certain rules, such as prohibitions on outright fraud and sanctions for breaches of contract. In addition, the greater the government is directly involved as a buyer or seller and the more unified it is, the less you might trust its ability to objectively investigate possible malfeasances when you consider conflicts of interest and assorted entanglements.

Beijing tacitly acknowledges this through the occasional high-profile crackdown, and the occasional extreme severity such as sentencing a former governor to death.

http://www.transparency.org/cpi/2004/cpi2004.en.ht ml#cpi2004
http://www.abc.net.au/ra/news/stories/s1471412.htm
http://english.people.com.cn/200509/09/eng20050909 _207609.html
http://www.carnegieendowment.org/events/index.cfm? fa=eventDetail&id=284

It's a reasonable concern if you're thinking about a large capital investment that you can't simply take with you if local officials decide to squeeze you after you're committed -- perhaps demanding direct bribes, or using governmental powers against you if you don't throw business to somebody, or so forth. Granted, it's probably not nearly as foolhardy as trying to run a high-profile independent media network in Putin's Russia...

Read this