Tag Archives: worry

Current Issues, India, International, Pakistan

Nuclear CAN means catastrophe, especially in corruption prone countries like India and Pakistan

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Nuclear power as the “shark attacks” of energy

I was at a coffee shop recently and a SWPL couple (woman had dreads to boot!) a number of tables away were reading a newspaper, and the husband expressed worry about the Fukushima disaster. The wife responded that “now other people will understand how dangerous nuclear power is,” with a sage nod. They then launched into twenty minutes of loud righteous gibberish about chemicals (I had a hard time making sense of it, despite the fact that I learned a lot about chemicals in the past due to my biochemistry background). Because they’d irritated me I was curious and I tailed them as they left. Naturally they had driven to get coffee in a S.U.V. of some sort (albeit, a modestly sized one which looked like it was more outfitted for the outdoors’ activities common in the Pacific Northwest; they’d probably done their cost vs. benefit about those chemicals!).

In terms of radiation fears, I suspect that if more people just automatically knew …

Read more : Discorver Magazine

Economy, Pakistan

Pakistan – No sign of a rainbow

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Banyan

No sign of a rainbow

Badly governed and short of the foreign help it needs, Pakistan’s people deserve a new covenant

….. Even the optimistic case for Pakistan’s survival is downbeat. It has long been “the most dangerous place on earth”, on the brink of some apocalypse. Yet it is more resilient than it looks. “This is Pakistan’s fifth last chance,” quips a government minister. Or, in the words of Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s ambassador to America: “We’ll muddle through again.” Even if he is right, as Banyan hopes and believes, it is not just a question of limping through the next few weeks until the monsoon ends. The floods have washed away food and cash crops in the country’s agricultural heartland of southern Punjab. Livestock in the tens of thousands has been lost. Irrigation canals, roads, bridges and electricity networks have been damaged. The economic hardship will help provide recruits for terrorist outfits. Even if it survives without a political or social upheaval, Pakistan is going to worry its neighbours and the outside world for another generation.

To read full article >> The Economist