The battle for the flood plains
By John Busby
2008-05-06

Gordon Brown wants to build 3 million houses, but there is nowhere to put some of them other than on flood plains. . . .The widespread floods in 2006 and in 2007 brought misery to thousands mainly located in the Severn valley and Hull, resulting in huge claims on the insurance industry estimated at £3 billion. . . It is evident that if the sheer intensity of the rainfall is of an increasing frequency, then the current methods of erecting barriers, either temporary or permanent is inadequate and the pumping of excess water from tributaries is worthy of further study.

Encore entente cordiale?
By John Busby
2008-03-27

The state visit of France's President Sarkozy will culminate in an agreement with Prime Minister Brown to jointly develop a new generation of nuclear power plants and to export the technology to the rest of the world. See Entente Cordiale Sanders Research, August 7th 2006.

Looting Kosovo
By Carlton Meyer
2008-03-05

Most Americans are quick to blame President George Bush for America's imperial ambitions in the post-Cold War world.  They assume that electing a Democrat President will return the USA to its traditional role as leader of the world, not ruler of the world.  However, Americans should recall that a Democrat administration under President Clinton had already begun expanding the empire.  They organized an unprovoked attack on Serbia until it ceded control of its southern province of Kosovo.  As soon as U.S. troops arrived, they began to build large, permanent military bases while Serbian government property was looted.  This was an effective demonstration of American power, yet it may soon devolve into a disaster.

Orwell’s vision, Lockheed’s dream
By Chris Sanders
2008-02-29

Paul Krugman, the New York Times’ economic pundit, blogger, and candidate in waiting to be US Treasury Secretary in the next Democratic administration, has blogged on peak oil. This suggests that it must finally be safe to talk about it seriously in public and amongst adults. He usefully points out the fact, illuminated some years ago by Hall, Cleveland and Kaufman in Energy and Resource Quality (1986), that the production costs of alternative fuels, such as shale oil in his example, rise along with the price of oil. Thus the idea, much loved in the popular press and amongst quite a few people in the financial markets who ought to know better, that higher oil prices make investment in alternative energy sources feasible once oil reaches such and such a price, is a fallacy.

War and Peace in the Balkans Part 3
By Rui Namorado Rosa
2008-03-04

In this third and final installment, Rui Rosa shows how EU and NATO policies have focused on securing and protecting their military, energy and, ah, even drug interests at the expense of serious future conflict in the heart of the Balkans.