Here’s a couple links to a good movie on fresh water scarcity.
Irena Salina’s award-winning documentary investigation into what experts label the most important political and environmental issue of the 21st Century - The World Water Crisis. Salina builds a case against the growing privatization of the world!s dwindling fresh water supply with an unflinching focus on politics, pollution, human rights, and the emergence of a domineering world water cartel. Interviews with scientists and activists intelligently reveal the rapidly building crisis, at both the global and human scale, and the film introduces many of the governmental and corporate culprits behind the water grab, while begging the question “CAN ANYONE REALLY OWN WATER?! Beyond identifying the problem, FLOW also gives viewers a look at the people and institutions providing practical solutions to the water crisis and those developing new technologies, which are fast becoming blueprints for a successful global and economic turnaround.
http://www.apple.com/trailers/independent/flow/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGd9D4J0lag
An AFP article below on the floods in eastern India. This comes on the heels of a recent report I read that stated India has a third of the world’s poorest people - sure, there is a growing mega-rich, and there is certainly the poorest of the poor and I doubt that they can suppress those people as China can. I see major problems in India’s not-too distant future, trouble that will take more than new water pumps and GM foods to overcome this time. The country and its major farming areas is still very much in desperate drought, there are security flash-points in all the usual areas of trouble, and good leadership and change is needed now, not later. Recently Shekhar Kapur said on his site “Water is the new global weapon of social control and exploitation.” He’s right and sadly wrong: it IS a global weapon of social control and exploitation but it is not new. The word “rival” comes from Latin “rivalis” - one using the same stream as another.
India floods a ‘calamity’, says premier
August 28, 2008 - 9:54PM
Massive flooding in eastern India has caused a “national calamity”, the prime minister said after touring the devastated region where more than a million remain trapped.
Manmohan Singh announced a relief package of $US228 million ($A265.8 million) and 125,000 tonnes of grain for those affected when a monsoon-swollen river changed course, flooding huge swathes of the country’s impoverished Bihar state.
“If there is a need for more, we will give more,” he told reporters. “We would like to assure the people of Bihar that all India will support them through this difficulty.”
The Kosi river breached its banks ten days ago on the border with Nepal, flowing through a channel it had previously abandoned.
“About 90,000 victims have been evacuated from villages in the flood affected area by government rescue agencies,” disaster management official Prataya Amrit told AFP.
More than 400 boats had been pressed into service and hundreds more would be used to shift people to relief shelters and higher land, official Amrit said.
At least 46 people are reported to have died in the floods, as army troops and air force helicopters rushed to help police in the rescue operation.
Thousands of residents abandoned their homes as the floodwater spread and have taken shelter in crowded relief camps or in buildings on higher ground.
Nepalese disaster management officials told AFP the river had washed away a series of dams and spurs, which control the water, sending huge torrents downstream that washed away further flood defences.
Authorities on both sides of the border have been in dispute over maintenance of flood control structures and uncleared silt, officials said.
The Kosi, which flows into the Ganges, is known as the “River of Sorrow” due to its record of disastrous floods during the monsoon season.
More than 800 people have been killed in monsoon-related accidents following the heavy June-to-September rains across India.
Bihar officials said the death toll could climb further as many areas were inaccessible.
© 2008 AFP
Since the paper-back release of PATRIOT ACT I’ve had a few emails asking if Fort Gaucher in Mont Blanc is a real installation. No. At least not to my knowledge. I made it up as it was an exotic and plausible place for such a military/intelligence site. There were many such bunker-type bases around the world built during WW2 and the cold war (including some fascinating ones in Sydney). The name Gaucher came from two sources, Jules Gaucher and Roland Gaucher – two very different men, and I deliberately left the explanation oblique in the book, so the reader could make their own mind up on who it may have been named after. For the finer details of the base, I had in mind the old ADOC near Ramstein Air Base as a model. Here’s a bit on that, from wikipedia (complete with US spelling):
The Combat Operations Center at ADOC Kindsbach.
Close to Ramstein was the site of Air Defense Operations Center (ADOC) - Kindsbach, AKA ‘Kindsbach Cave’ - the site of Europe’s underground combat operations center.
The facility was located in a former German western front command headquarters. The French took control of the underground bunker after World War II, and USAFE assumed control in 1953. After major renovations, USAFE opened the center on 15 August 1954.
The center was a state-of-the-art 67-room, 37,000-square-foot (3,400 m²) facility where USAFE could have led an air war against the Soviet Union. The center had a digital “computer” to work out bombing problems, cryptographic equipment for coded message traffic and its own photo lab to develop reconnaissance photos. Responsible for an air space extending deep behind the Iron Curtain, the center interacted directly with The Pentagon, NATO, Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe and all USAFE bases. With its massive telephone switchboard and 80 teletype machines, the cave was plugged into everything in the outside world. The center was receiving more than 1,000 calls a day.
As a further measure of protection, the cave was fully self-contained with its own water supply, electric backup-generators, climate controls, dining facilities and sleeping accommodations for its 125-man crew. Visitor passes were rarely issued to this secret facility.
Throughout the years, leadership changed but USAFE led the operations through numbered Air Forces. The center’s commander was the USAFE Advanced Echelon. The glassed-in office was on the top floor of the three-story underground command center. Directly under the office was the management for offensive air operations. And the bottom floor office was the management for defensive air operations – to include support for U.S. Army forces and German Civil Defense. All three offices had a full view of the massive Air Operations Center map on the opposing wall.
The AOC was the largest room in the complex. Its three-story map was used to plot minute-by-minute movements of friendly and unidentified aircraft. But the center was much more than just a tracking station, because it could also react to threats. They always knew the current operational status of air weapons in theater including missiles, and could dispatch armed response “at a moment’s notice”.
By the early 1960s, the manual plotting system used to track aircraft at the cave and elsewhere throughout Germany was too slow and inaccurate for the quick responses necessary. Beginning in 1962, airmen trained in the new 412L air weapons control system began to arrive in Germany and at the cave. Over the next year, the new GE semi-automatic system was installed. When complete at the cave, the current air picture over East and West Germany, as well as parts of the eastern soviet block countries, was displayed on a 40′ X 40′ (12 x 12 m) screen. Senior US staff monitored the dynamic display 24/7. Over the next several years, additional 412L sites throughout Germany joined the network until the manual system had been totally replaced.
By 1984, the Kindsbach Cave had become too small and its cost for renovation too high, and USAFE vacated the facility. On 31 October 1993, control was returned to the German government. Today the Kindsbach Cave remains sealed – a relic of the Cold War in Europe.
This week I’ve given two talks at very different schools, one in Melbourne, and one in country Victoria. Both audiences where great, and eager to know about BLOOD OIL. Well, we’re two weeks from publication and the first review is in. Also, I’ve done my first press interview, for Sydney’s Sun Herald. Both the review (pasted below) and the interviewer from SH liked the book, so I now feel somewhat vindicated in thinking that this novel is my best by far - you know, third time lucky and all that. Having finished BLOOD OIL this past February, then having a couple months of edits, it’s always a nice feeling when objective feedback starts trickling in from the media and my readers. Meanwhile, I’ve been tapping away at FOX 4… better get back to it.
The first review for BLOOD OIL, from Bookseller & Publisher Magazine, August 2008.
BLOOD OIL – Four Stars/an excellent book.
Melbourne-based author James Phelan continues to redefine the often stale and cliché-ridden political thriller genre. The setting of this third novel is present day Nigeria. Australian journalist Lachlan Fox is assigned to cover a devastating terrorist attack on an oil refinery, and the resulting turmoil on oil markets. The trail leads to a plot to overthrow the Nigerian government, take over the oil reserves, and eventually destabilise America. Although BLOOD OIL relies on conventional ingredients – Arab terrorists, corrupt politicians, ruthless Russian businessmen, a maverick ex-CIA agent, a gutsy hero, and an action climax – the author refreshingly re-invigorates them without resorting to the predictable political agenda of writers such as Tom Clancy and Vince Flynn. Because Phelan’s hero is an investigative journalist rather than a gung-ho Rambo type, the author seamlessly integrates factual background without interrupting the narrative flow, and injects a serious moral component usually missing in most thrillers. The genre is in safe hands – Phelan proves again that “intelligent thriller” is not an oxymoron.
