The year: 2000. The place: Earth, a desolate planet slowly dying of its own accumulating follies. Half the forests are gone; sand dunes spread where fertile lands once lay. Nearly two million species of plants, birds, insects, and animals have vanished. Yet man is propagating so fast that his cities have grown as large as…
In a move eerily reminiscent of the last days of the ill-fated Whitlam administration, President of the Republic of China on Taiwan, Chen Shui-bian has united the opposition against him by his unilateral decision to cancel Taiwan’s fourth nuclear power plant. The decision to cancel the plant was taken in the face of public opposition. A clear majority of voters wants the project to continue, even according even to polling by President Chen’s own Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Polls in Taiwan are notorious for producing the outcome desired by the party commissioning the poll, but in this case, even the…
* 60 per cent of the Australian Defence Industries (ADI) workforce – about 1600 people – are employed outside the eastern capital city sites, generating $315 million in revenue in 1999-2000. Using multiplier factors, an additional 4500 to 6000 jobs are estimated to have been generated, boosting local economies.Newcastle has 325 employees generating $44 million…
Small events in politics have an uncanny habit of reverberating like ever-widening ripples in a pond. Such was the case when a former Labor candidate found herself pleading guilty in a Townsville District Court in August to 24 counts of forging and 23 counts of “‘uttering” Commonwealth electoral enrolment forms. The woman, Karen Ehrmann, was…