Quote:Monday, July 18, 2011

Massive Uranium Find in Andhra Pradesh

One of the world's largest uranium deposits may have been found in Andhra Pradesh, according to an announcement by the Indian govt.

Posted by san at 7/18/2011 10:17:00 PM Labels: economy, energy, nuclear

Quote:Friday, September 16, 2011

Thorium and India's energy independence: forbes. So far India has managed to screw up royally on fast-breeders, of course

sep 16th, 2011 CE



my suspicion is that there isn't enough money to be made (yet) in thorium reactors. as far as the politicians are concerned, it's a lot easier to make the big bucks via corruption in a) nuclear fission, b ) oil. therefore, being rational economic beings, they are not interested in thorium



---------- Forwarded message ----------

From: Harish

Rajeev,







Thorium as the next energy source.. interesting article..



India has as you know, pretty much 2/3 of the world' deposits.. India's energy independence based on our resources

http://www.forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2011/09/11/is-thorium-the-biggest-energy-breakthrough-since-fire-possibly





-harish



Posted by nizhal yoddha at 9/16/2011 07:22:00 AM 1 comments Links to this post

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Quote:A line of rebel trucks wait at the western entrance to Ajdabiya, Libya, on April 11, 2011. (Photo: Bryan Denton / The New York Times)



Several writers have noted the odd fact that the Libyan rebels took time out from their rebellion in March to create their own central bank - this before they even had a government. Robert Wenzel wrote in the Economic Policy Journal:



[color="#000080"] I have never before heard of a central bank being created in just a matter of weeks out of a popular uprising. This suggests we have a bit more than a rag tag bunch of rebels running around and that there are some pretty sophisticated influences.[/color]



Alex Newman wrote in the New American:



[color="#000080"] In a statement released last week, the rebels reported on the results of a meeting held on March 19. Among other things, the supposed rag-tag revolutionaries announced the "[d]esignation of the Central Bank of Benghazi as a monetary authority competent in monetary policies in Libya and appointment of a Governor to the Central Bank of Libya, with a temporary headquarters in Benghazi."[/color]



Newman quoted CNBC Senior Editor John Carney, who asked, "Is this the first time a revolutionary group has created a central bank while it is still in the midst of fighting the entrenched political power? It certainly seems to indicate how extraordinarily powerful central bankers have become in our era."



Another anomaly involves the official justification for taking up arms against Libya. Supposedly it's about human rights violations, but the evidence is contradictory. According to an article on the Fox News web site on February 28:



[color="#000080"]As the United Nations works feverishly to condemn Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi for cracking down on protesters, the body's Human Rights Council is poised to adopt a report chock-full of praise for Libya's human rights record.



The review commends Libya for improving educational opportunities, for making human rights a "priority" and for bettering its "constitutional" framework. Several countries, including Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia but also Canada, give Libya positive marks for the legal protections afforded to its citizens - who are now revolting against the regime and facing bloody reprisal.

[/color]

Whatever might be said of Qaddafi's personal crimes, the Libyan people seem to be thriving. A delegation of medical professionals from Russia, Ukraine and Belarus wrote in an appeal to Russian President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin that after becoming acquainted with Libyan life, it was their view that in few nations did people live in such comfort:



[color="#000080"] [Libyans] are entitled to free treatment and their hospitals provide the best in the world of medical equipment. Education in Libya is free, capable young people have the opportunity to study abroad at government expense. When marrying, young couples receive 60,000 Libyan dinars (about 50,000 US dollars) of financial assistance. Non-interest state loans and as practice shows, undated. Due to government subsidies the price of cars is much lower than in Europe and they are affordable for every family. Gasoline and bread cost a penny, no taxes for those who are engaged in agriculture. The Libyan people are quiet and peaceful, are not inclined to drink and are very religious.[/color]



They maintained that the international community had been misinformed about the struggle against the regime. "Tell us," they said, "who would not like such a regime?"



Even if that is just propaganda, there is no denying at least one very popular achievement of the Libyan government: it brought water to the desert by building the largest and most expensive irrigation project in history, the $33 billion GMMR (Great Man-Made River) project. Even more than oil, water is crucial to life in Libya. The GMMR provides 70 percent of the population with water for drinking and irrigation, pumping it from Libya's vast underground Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System in the south to populated coastal areas 4,000 kilometers to the north. The Libyan government has done at least some things right.



Another explanation for the assault on Libya is that it is "all about oil," but that theory, too, is problematic. As noted in the National Journal, the country produces only about 2 percent of the world's oil. Saudi Arabia alone has enough spare capacity to make up for any lost production if Libyan oil were to disappear from the market. And if it's all about oil, why the rush to set up a new central bank?



Another provocative bit of data circulating on the net is a 2007 Democracy Now! interview of US Gen. Wesley Clark (Ret.). In it he says that about ten days after September 11, 2001, he was told by a general that the decision had been made to go to war with Iraq. Clark was surprised and asked why. "I don't know!" was the response. "I guess they don't know what else to do!" Later, the same general said they planned to take out seven countries in five years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.



What do these seven countries have in common? In the context of banking, one that sticks out is that none of them is listed among the 56 member banks of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). That evidently puts them outside the long regulatory arm of the central bankers' central bank in Switzerland.



The most renegade of the lot could be Libya and Iraq, the two that have actually been attacked. Kenneth Schortgen Jr., writing on Examiner.com, noted, "[s]ix months before the US moved into Iraq to take down Saddam Hussein, the oil nation had made the move to accept Euros instead of dollars for oil and this became a threat to the global dominance of the dollar as the reserve currency and its dominion as the petrodollar."



According to a Russian article titled "Bombing of Lybia - Punishment for Ghaddafi for His Attempt to Refuse US Dollar," Qaddaffi made a similarly bold move: he initiated a movement to refuse the dollar and the euro and called on Arab and African nations to use a new currency instead, the gold dinar. Qaddafi suggested establishing a united African continent, with its 200 million people using this single currency. During the past year, the idea was approved by many Arab countries and most African countries. The only opponents were the Republic of South Africa and the head of the League of Arab States. The initiative was viewed negatively by the USA and the European Union, with French President Nicolas Sarkozy calling Libya a threat to the financial security of mankind; but Qaddafi was not swayed and continued his push for the creation of a united Africa.



As right-wing attacks on our basic rights and services are growing louder than ever, it's essential to keep independent journalism strong. Support Truthout by clicking here.



And that brings us back to the puzzle of the Libyan central bank. In an article posted on the Market Oracle, Eric Encina observed:



[color="#000080"] One seldom mentioned fact by western politicians and media pundits: the Central Bank of Libya is 100% State Owned.... Currently, the Libyan government creates its own money, the Libyan Dinar, through the facilities of its own central bank. Few can argue that Libya is a sovereign nation with its own great resources, able to sustain its own economic destiny. One major problem for globalist banking cartels is that in order to do business with Libya, they must go through the Libyan Central Bank and its national currency, a place where they have absolutely zero dominion or power-broking ability. Hence, taking down the Central Bank of Libya (CBL) may not appear in the speeches of Obama, Cameron and Sarkozy but this is certainly at the top of the globalist agenda for absorbing Libya into its hive of compliant nations.[/color]



Libya not only has oil. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), its central bank has nearly 144 tons of gold, in its vaults. With that sort of asset base, who needs the BIS, the IMF and their rules?



All of which prompts a closer look at the BIS rules and their effect on local economies. An article on the BIS web site states that central banks in the Central Bank Governance Network are supposed to have as their single or primary objective "to preserve price stability." They are to be kept independent from government to make sure that political considerations don't interfere with this mandate. "Price stability" means maintaining a stable money supply, even if that means burdening the people with heavy foreign debts. Central banks are discouraged from increasing the money supply by printing money and using it for the benefit of the state, either directly or as loans.



In a 2002 article in Asia Times titled "The BIS vs National Banks," Henry Liu maintained:



[color="#000080"]BIS regulations serve only the single purpose of strengthening the international private banking system, even at the peril of national economies. The BIS does to national banking systems what the IMF has done to national monetary regimes. National economies under financial globalization no longer serve national interests.



... FDI [foreign direct investment] denominated in foreign currencies, mostly dollars, has condemned many national economies into unbalanced development toward export, merely to make dollar-denominated interest payments to FDI, with little net benefit to the domestic economies.[/color]



He added, "Applying the State Theory of Money, any government can fund with its own currency all its domestic developmental needs to maintain full employment without inflation." The "state theory of money" refers to money created by governments rather than private banks.



The presumption of the rule against borrowing from the government's own central bank is that this will be inflationary, while borrowing existing money from foreign banks or the IMF will not. But all banks actually create the money they lend on their books, whether publicly owned or privately owned. Most new money today comes from bank loans. Borrowing it from the government's own central bank has the advantage that the loan is effectively interest free. Eliminating interest has been shown to reduce the cost of public projects by an average of 50 percent.



And that appears to be how the Libyan system works. According to Wikipedia, the functions of the Central Bank of Libya include "issuing and regulating banknotes and coins in Libya" and "managing and issuing all state loans." Libya's wholly state-owned bank can and does issue the national currency and lend it for state purposes.



That would explain where Libya gets the money to provide free education and medical care and to issue each young couple $50,000 in interest-free state loans. It would also explain where the country found the $33 billion to build the GMMR project. Libyans are worried that NATO-led airstrikes are coming perilously close to this pipeline, threatening another humanitarian disaster.



So, is this new war all about oil or all about banking? Maybe both - and water as well. With energy, water and ample credit to develop the infrastructure to access them, a nation can be free of the grip of foreign creditors. And that may be the real threat of Libya: it could show the world what is possible. Most countries don't have oil, but new technologies are being developed that could make non-oil-producing nations energy independent, particularly if infrastructure costs are halved by borrowing from the nation's own publicly-owned bank. Energy independence would free governments from the web of the international bankers and of the need to shift production from domestic to foreign markets to service the loans.



If the Qaddafi government goes down, it will be interesting to watch whether the new central bank joins the BIS, whether the nationalized oil industry gets sold off to investors and whether education and health care continue to be free.

Creative Commons License



Ellen is an attorney and the author of eleven books, including Web of Debt: The Shocking Truth About Our Money System and How We Can Break Free. Her websites are webofdebt.com and ellenbrown.com.

[size="3"]Excellent question! But do I have an answer, I don't know. But I can speculate.



IMO, the Internet in the past few years has led to an explosion of alternative viewpoints, which took off after reaching a certain critical mass. Here is an excerpt from a thought-provoking article [url="http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/07/28/minority-rules-why-10-percent-is-all-you-need/"]Minority Rules: Why 10 Percent is All You Need[/url]:



[/size]

[size="3"] [/size]

[size="3"], for they effectively are in charge of geopolitics.



Meanwhile, the rise in global consciousness on the presence of the hidden hand of the global banking-military-industrial-pharma complex is exponentially increasing. Mainstream media is rapidly losing its credibility.[/size]

Quote:January 03, 2012 08:57 IST [size="2"] The greatest challenge to India [url="http://search.rediff.com/imgsrch/default.php?MT=india"][/url]is that its political class seems oblivious to the challenges of the big picture and national security does not receive the attention it warrants in Parliament, points out Commodore C Uday Bhaskar (retd).



[size="5"]F[/size]or India, the year that has dawned will have to address a complex set of security and related strategic challenges. Appropriate lessons will have to be astutely gleaned from the tainted year that has ended which has been one of great contrast for India.



A series of scandals involving high-profile public figures had rocked the country over the last six months and December witnessed the Indian political establishment in great tumult, even as Parliament remained locked in a bitter, arid, struggle over the issue of corruption and the most appropriate way of dealing with it, as symbolised by the ruckus over the Lokpal Bill.



The last sitting in the Rajya Sabha reveled in cynical legislative obfuscation and at year-end, Indian democracy was diminished.



Yet 2011 began with India being hailed as an island of political and economic stability even while other nations and regions were in ferment -- from the Arab Spring to fiscal convulsions in Europe, turbulence in the Af-Pak region and Iran and the growing social unrest in China.



However, notwithstanding the current domestic political contestation between the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party [ [url="http://search.rediff.com/imgsrch/default.php?MT=bharatiya+janata+party"]Images[/url] ], it may be reasonable to suggest that India's political stability is not in dire danger -- this government is unlikely to be toppled in a hurry -- though the ignominy of poor and corruption-tainted governance will be a cross that the United Progressive Alliance [ [url="http://search.rediff.com/imgsrch/default.php?MT=united+progressive+alliance"]Images[/url] ] II will have to bear till the next general election in 2014.



Paradoxically the big picture about India remains positive and a CEBR report released in London [ [url="http://search.rediff.com/imgsrch/default.php?MT=london"]Images[/url] ] on December 26 indicates that the upward economic trajectory of the country will continue and that by 2020, India will be the world's fifth largest global economy. The four nations ahead of India are projected to be the USA, China, Japan [ [url="http://search.rediff.com/imgsrch/default.php?MT=japan"]Images[/url] ] and Russia [ [url="http://search.rediff.com/imgsrch/default.php?MT=russia"]Images[/url] ] in that order.



In 2011, India's GDP is estimated to be $1.843 trillion and by 2020, this will move up to $4.5 trillion -- in other words India will be two-and-a-half times more prosperous.



The challenge will be to ensure that this growth is equitable and inclusive -- an objective that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh [ [url="http://search.rediff.com/imgsrch/default.php?MT=manmohan+singh"]Images[/url] ] has always identified -- but whose realisation remains elusive.



In the intervening period, India will have to deal with complex security and strategic challenges and these may be classified at three levels. The most visible is the domestic context wherein one strand -- referred to as the Maoist or left-wing-extremism, is to my mind the most serious challenge to internal security.



This is directly linked to the poor and inadequate development effort and as India grows richer -- the gap between the haves and have-nots is bound to increase. This in turn will lead to a growing underclass of millions who remain unemployed and impoverished, thereby generating a tsunami of deprivation driven anger with the potential for pockets of intense sectarian and class violence.



The related threat to internal security is the variation of the Mumbai [ [url="http://search.rediff.com/imgsrch/default.php?MT=mumbai"]Images[/url] ] 26/11 kind of terror attack and this is linked to the external regional dimension. Since 1990 Pakistan has been stoking and spreading the fervour of distorted Islamic ideology through groups like the Lashkar-e-Tayiba [ [url="http://search.rediff.com/imgsrch/default.php?MT=lashkar-e-tayiba"]Images[/url] ] and the Jaish-e-Mohammed to wage a proxy war against India and inciting disgruntled elements within India to join this effort.



The scope of this challenge remains dormant, but will be shaped by events within Pakistan and Afghanistan even as the US withdrawal date in 2014 draws closer.



Current developments in this region are bleak and the projection for 2012 pessimistic, given the ongoing tussle between the military and the civilian leadership in Pakistan on one hand, and the Hamid Karzai [ [url="http://search.rediff.com/imgsrch/default.php?MT=hamid+karzai"]Images[/url] ] government's inability to deal with the multiple challenges in Afghanistan.



The right-wing Islamic constituency that supports the ideology of the Taliban [ [url="http://search.rediff.com/imgsrch/default.php?MT=taliban"]Images[/url] ] and Wahabbi Islam is spread in pockets throughout the South Asian region and apart from Pakistan and Bangladesh, the most recent example of this occurrence is in distant Maldives [ [url="http://search.rediff.com/imgsrch/default.php?MT=maldives"]Images[/url] ].



This challenge will remain abiding for India for a decade -- if not longer -- and has to be addressed with the right combination of political and socio-economic initiatives complemented by security and intelligence effort. The post Mumbai 26/11 security preparedness audit would indicate that India has not learnt the right lessons from its long drawn terror experience.



At the strategic level the principal challenge for India will be the 'rise' of China. Over the next decade, both Asian giants are poised to grow in prosperity -- though China is growing more rapidly. By 2020, China's GDP is estimated to be $17.88 trillion -- and will be almost four times more prosperous with a slightly lower population base that will be ageing.



History tells us that when a nation becomes richer, it is able to spend more on its defence and military profile -- and China is no different.



While India's defence expenditure is currently in the range of $40 billion -- that of China is almost three to four times larger and the military gap is increasing in China's favour. It is instructive that the Sino-Indian bilateral relationship is characterised by what may be described as strategic restraint, but tactical provocation. The unresolved territorial and border dispute which triggered the October 1962 war will soon be 50 years old and a contradictory pattern is emerging.



China will soon be India's largest trading partner and the inter-dependency on the economic front will become more robust -- unless Beijing [ [url="http://search.rediff.com/imgsrch/default.php?MT=beijing"]Images[/url] ] decides to embark upon a very rash and impulsive anti-India initiative. While the top political leadership in Beijing has been cautious till now -- the transition in the Chinese leadership in 2012 will have to be managed prudently by both sides.



The related strategic link is the manner in which Delhi [ [url="http://search.rediff.com/imgsrch/default.php?MT=delhi"]Images[/url] ] defines and manages its relations with Washington and Moscow [ [url="http://search.rediff.com/imgsrch/default.php?MT=moscow"]Images[/url] ] as far as its holistic military profile is concerned. It is a matter of shame and vulnerability that India is the world's leading importer of military inventory and has a negligible domestic design and production capability.



Perhaps the greatest challenge to India is that its political class seems oblivious to the contours and challenges of the big picture and national security does not receive the objective and constructive attention it warrants in Parliament.



[/size][size="2"]Is there slender hope that this will be redressed in 2012?[/size]



C Uday Bhaskar