Iraq bans visiting Saddam Hussein’s grave

Iraq bans visiting Saddam Hussein’s grave

Mohan Ramraj

January 23, 2012 The Iraqi government has banned individuals’ visit to the grave of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in Salahudin province, who was executed in 2006 after a local court sentenced him to death for crime against humanity. Saddam Hussein was ousted as the president following a US-led invasion in 2003. The Iraqi government prevented visits to the tombs either from the individuals or governmental establishments for two years. "The Iraqi cabinet directed authorities of Salahudin province to take all necessary measures to prevent any visit to Saddam Hussein’s grave," Xinhua quoted a source from the provincial operations. Sheikh Falah al-Nada, Head of one of ex-president Saddam Hussein’s tribe confirmed that the graveyard that contains Hussein’s body, sons and some of his assistants was closed before ten days by police force. He added that this move was done after news that Hussein’s daughter, Raghad, has the intention to visit the graveyard, in addition to news that a Jordanian engineering company will renovate the tomb and expand the graveyard. "This news is unbelievable", he confirmed. Police sources in the province reported that the closure was made upon orders from the central government in Baghdad. Since Hussein supporters and schoolchildren used to make visits there on the late dictator’s birthday and hanging date, the Iraqi government in mid-2009 had banned organised group visits to Saddam’s grave. However, visits by individuals from different provinces, including Shiite ones, had continued after the first ban. The graveyard in Saddam’s hometown of al-Ouja, 5 km south of Tikrit, contains the bodies of Saddam Hussein, his two sons, his grandson, his brother Barzan, his cousin Ali Hassan al-Majeed, Baath Party member Taha yassin Ramadhan and ex-Revolution Court Chairman Awad al-Bandar. The provincial authorities sent a police force early in the morning to seal off the building that contains the grave and prevented anyone from visiting it.

Official: Israel to demolish school, homes near Hebron

Official: Israel to demolish school, homes near Hebron

Ma'an news

January 24, 2012 HEBRON (Ma'an) -- Israeli forces on Tuesday issued demolition orders to a school and homes near Hebron in the southern West Bank, local officials said. Bani Naim spokesman Imad Amer said forces handed notices to Shuhada al-Haram school and three homes east of the village. The municipality condemned Israel's continuous demolitions in the area which aimed to force residents to leave, Amer said in a statement. Israel frequently demolishes homes, wells, schools and recently a mosque in Area C, the 62 percent of the West Bank under full Israeli military control since 1993. Israeli authorities usually say the structures are built without permits, but Palestinians, rights groups, the UN and international organizations say such permits are almost impossible to obtain. Under international law, it is illegal for Israel to carry out demolitions in land it occupies unless the structures are used solely for military purposes. Often the demolitions target areas close to Jewish-only settlements, which are illegal under international law.

Israel demolishes Palestinian bedouin homes, again

Israel demolishes Palestinian bedouin homes, again

Al-Akhbar

January 24, 2012 Israeli forces overnight demolished the home of a Bedouin family near Jerusalem for the fifth time, an Israeli NGO said, as Israel's uprooting of Palestinians from their native lands intensify. Israel's Civil Administration, the military body that oversees the West Bank, confirmed the demolitions. "During the night, there were five demolitions of illegal structures that were occupied by Bedouin populations. We're talking about illegal structures that were built without the permission needed," Civil Administration spokesman Guy Inbar said. The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) said Israeli forces had demolished Beit Arabiya, a family home and "peace center" that has now been demolished five times since 1994. "Beit Arabiya was issued a demolition order by Israeli authorities back in 1994, following their failure to grant a building permit. It has since been demolished four times, to be rebuilt by ICAHD activists," the group said. Other structures demolished included three homes, along with structures for housing animals. "Twenty people, including young children, were displaced, left exposed to the harsh desert environment," ICAHD said. The group said its co-director Itay Epshtain was "beaten and sustained minor injuries" during the demolitions. The demolitions took place in the Anata Hills, near Jerusalem, in an area of the West Bank that is under full Israeli civil and military control, where residents must obtain Israeli construction permits before building homes. Israel says it demolishes structures that have been built without the required permission, but Palestinians say they are rarely granted permits, despite being the native inhabitants of the land. Chris Gunness, spokesman for UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, condemned the demolitions in a statement. "These demolitions happened in the dead of night, it was freezing cold, in a community without electricity," he said. "Israel, as the occupying power, has an obligation to deliver services, not as in this case, to demolish them," he added. Last year, a coalition of international rights groups and aid organizations said Israel's demolition of homes in the West Bank and east Jerusalem had displaced more than 1,000 people in 2011, twice that of the previous year and the highest number since 2005. Israel has sped up its construction of illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem in defiance of international law, while continuing to demolish Palestinian homes. Activists and some Palestinian politicians say Israel is attempting to Judaize Arab neighborhoods, and cleanse areas of indigenous Palestinians to highlight Jewish 'facts on the ground', thus impeding meaningful attempts to establish a Palestinian state. (AFP, Al-Akhbar)

Eyewitness to Israel's ethnic cleansing

Eyewitness to Israel's ethnic cleansing

Bill Mullen

In Hebron, graffiti artists have renamed Shuhana Street "Apartheid Street" (Bill Mullen | SW) January 24, 2012 Purdue University professor Bill Mullen traveled to Palestine with a delegation of academics to find out about the obstacles facing Palestinian students and educators. AT 4:45 a.m. on the morning of August 2, 2009, the family of Miraym Al-Ghawi was awakened by pounding on the door of their home in Sheikh Jarrah, East Jerusalem. A small bomb was detonated, throwing open the door. Through it walked masked and armed Israeli commandoes, who dragged the Al-Ghawis, including the six Al-Ghawi children, into the night. They collected the family's belongings in trucks and dumped them outside the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, where they were ransacked. The Al-Ghawi's youngest child, age 4, stood and watched as commandoes set fire to her bed and her playthings. The daughter still cannot sleep without her mother. Medical experts have diagnosed her ailment as "settler trauma." Miraym Al-Ghawi told us this story as we visited Palestine as part of a delegation sponsored by the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI). Five U.S. professors from the delegation, myself included, talked with the Al-Ghawis in Sheikh Jarrah, once one of the liveliest Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem. Since 1967, however, nearly 9,000 Palestinians have lost their residency rights in East Jerusalem, 15 Israeli settlements have been built, and Palestinians now have access to less than 15 percent of the available land. The Al-Ghawi family is one of four families in East Jerusalem evicted since 2008 as part of Israel's annexation, settlement and "de-Arabization" plan for Palestine. The plan has been effective: unemployment among Palestinians in East Jerusalem is now nearly 35 percent, while the poverty rate is nearly 50 percent. Palestinians in East Jerusalem make up about 35 percent of the population and pay 33 percent of all municipal taxes, while the Israeli municipality spends less than 5 percent on services for East Jerusalem. A 163-kilometer "separation wall" in Jerusalem denies more than 22,000 residents easy access to their work and markets. There are currently more than 270 Palestinian prisoners from East Jerusalem and 197 detainees. Eight of the prisoners are children. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ISRAEL'S COLONIZATION of Palestine is a de facto totalitarianism meant to strangle decades of resistance by an entire people. But it has not succeeded. After her eviction, for example, Miraym Al-Ghawi set up a tent near a fig tree outside their former residence and in defiance stayed there for six months. On 17 occasions, the municipality forced her to tear down the tent; 17 times, she rebuilt. She has repeatedly paid out fines levied against her private "occupation" of her own former home. Today, she rents an apartment in a neighborhood near Sheikh Jarrah, but comes every day to sit near her old residence in order to demonstrate her refusal to be displaced. She remains engaged in a court battle for her house even as parking lots and playgrounds are built in Sheikh Jarrah for newly arrived settlers on confiscated Palestinian land. And this is just one story of the terror and violence of the Israeli police state that saturates daily life under occupation. On a Sunday morning in Hebron, for example, we walked through a Palestinian open market along Shuhada Street. The street sits beside the Ibrahim Mosque, where in 1994 American-born Zionist settler Baruch Goldstein massacred 29 Arab worshippers and wounded 125 others. The massacre set off Palestinian riots and protests in which Israeli soldiers murdered 19 more Palestinians. The street, known as Apartheid Street by locals, has now been closed off at numerous access points by Israeli security forces in order to stop or monitor Palestinian movement, protect newly arrived settlers and restrict commerce. Checkpoints, concrete blocks and impromptu walls appear at nearly every turn. The market itself is under constant siege by settlers who live above street level and throw trash, feces and even acid onto merchants and shoppers below. Numerous storefronts along the street are closed. Israeli police sealed one of them shut because a demonstration was held at the site. As we walked through the marketplace, Israeli soldiers perched overhead on street corners and at one point marched two abreast in three rows straight through the market center. No detail escapes the attention of Israeli authorities--even a 100-meter stretch of sidewalk is divided by a three-foot wall, Palestinians on one side, settlers on the other. Children as young as 2 peddled "Palestine" bracelets on the streets as they tried to help their families scratch out an existence in a strangulated economy. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - THE USACBI campaign began in 2009 in response to the call by Palestinian civil society to join the boycott, divestment and sanction (BDS) movement against Israel. It supports and models the mission statement created in 2004 by PACBI, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. The original PACBI statement read in part: Inspired by the struggle of South Africans against apartheid and in the spirit of international solidarity, moral consistency and resistance to injustice and oppression, we, representatives of Palestinian civil society, call upon international civil society organizations and people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era. We appeal to you to pressure your respective states to impose embargoes and sanctions against Israel. We also invite conscientious Israelis to support this call, for the sake of justice and genuine peace. These nonviolent punitive measures should be maintained until Israel meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people's inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with the precepts of international law by: 1. Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall; 2. Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and 3. Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN Resolution 194. USACBI supports each of the above principles and calls for a number of measures to demonstrate support for them. For example, the campaign asks signatories to: 1. Refrain from participation in any form of academic and cultural cooperation, collaboration or joint projects with Israeli institutions; 2. Advocate a comprehensive boycott of Israeli institutions at the national and international levels, including suspension of all forms of funding and subsidies to these institutions; 3. Promote divestment and disinvestment from Israel by academic institutions, and place pressure on your own institution to suspend all ties with Israeli universities, including collaborative projects, study abroad, funding and exchanges. The USACBI call has thus far been signed by nearly 600 U.S. professors, 200 cultural workers, 200 international supporters and 44 organizations. It seeks to point out that the Israeli occupation has damaged or destroyed academic or intellectual freedom, especially for Palestinians living under occupation. For example, Israel routinely restricts the movement of Palestinian students, forcing them to attend apartheid schools, making them pass through walls and checkpoints on a daily basis, and severely limiting their ability to choose a university within Israel/Palestine or to study abroad. Israel has severely restricted the number of students from Gaza who may attend Birzeit University, the most prestigious research university in the West Bank. Palestinian students who do travel abroad to study or seek re-entry to Palestine are often labeled "security risks" or denied entry. Palestinian universities like Birzeit in Ramallah consistently face a "crisis of funding," according to university president Khalil Hindi, with whom we met on our delegation visit. Though the universities operate under Israeli occupation, the Palestinian Authority is the sole source of funds for the university, and Israel provides nothing. Israeli academics, meanwhile, often produce research that colludes with the occupation regime, while the state heavily monitors what Palestinian scholars can produce. We met with a group of scholars at the Mada al-Carmel Arab Center for Applied Social Research in Haifa. The center's advisory board chair Dr. Nadim Rouhana told us that the activities of the Mada Center are heavily monitored by Israel, while Palestinian scholars attached to Mada often work or study in Israeli universities that reproduce intellectual and social apartheid. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - IN ADDITION to attacking the absence of academic freedom in Palestine, USACBI seeks to illuminate the structural relationship between Israeli apartheid and higher education as it impacts Palestinians. As Palestinian scholar George Bisharat has written: Many Israeli academic institutions either benefit from, or participate in, Israeli government actions that violate Palestinian rights. For example, Tel Aviv University sits in part on land belonging to Sheikh Muwannis, a Palestinian village whose residents were expelled by Jewish militias or fled in fear in March 1948. Hebrew University in Jerusalem uses over 800 acres of land illegally expropriated from Palestinian private owners in the West Bank after the 1967 war. Bar Ilan University has established a branch in an illegal Israeli settlement in the West Bank... Finally, discrimination against students who are Palestinian citizens of Israel in admission policies is widespread as revealed by the decision of the heads of Israeli universities in 2003 to reverse experimental admission policies that had increased the number of Arab students. On our delegation visit, we met with Anan Quzmar from the Right to Education Campaign at Birzeit University in the West Bank. The campaign supports the BDS and USACBI campaigns as part of a larger international strategy to destroy apartheid/colonial education in Palestine. According to the campaign: -- Eight of the 11 universities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have been shelled or broken into by the Israeli Army since September 2000. -- Hebron University and the Palestine Polytechnic University in Hebron were closed down by Israeli military order for much of 2003, and students had to physically break down the gates to their universities, in defiance of the Israeli Army, to reconvene classes and demand their right to an education. -- Birzeit University has been closed down by Israeli military order 15 times in its history and all Palestinian universities and the majority of Palestinian schools, including kindergartens, were closed down by military order between 1987-1992, denying a whole generation their right to education. -- More than 700 children, 200 university students and 39 teachers have been killed by the Israeli military since September 2000. -- More than 3,000 Palestinian children have been arrested by the Israeli military since September 2000, and some 300 children are currently held in Israeli prisons and detention centers. -- Two presidents of Birzeit University student council were imprisoned in 2004, and four of the 11 members of the student council were imprisoned in the same year. Currently, some 80 students from Birzeit University are held in Israeli prisons and detention centers, 10 of whom are being held without charge or trial, including human rights worker and sociology student, Ziyad Hmeidan. The Right to Education mission statement calls for "trade unions, education institutions, social and political movements and concerned individuals around the world to support the right to education in Palestine." The campaign is founded on principles established in UN resolutions that declare education a human right. It calls for scholars, students and activists to "establish connections with Palestinian universities, students and faculty, through solidarity or academic exchange." This strategy is meant to counteract the deadly and ongoing collaboration between American and Israeli universities, such as the new partnership between Cornell University and Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. Technion is Israel's leader in "applied science" research and the development of killing machines like the unmanned armored tanks used in Israel's 2008-2009 Operation Cast Lead that massacred more than 1,400 Gazans. In December, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced plans for a $2 billion research campus in New York in partnership with Cornell and Technion. USACBI's mission seeks to shut down forever such deadly collaborations. Perhaps the most fitting symbol of the need for educators to play a role in the liberation of Palestine was graffiti on the wall of a Palestinian school in Hebron: "To learn or not to learn--that is the question." The words beckon not just to the education of future generations of Palestinians, but to the education of people everywhere about the urgency of ending Israel's colonial regime. >What you can do For more information about the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, or to pledge your support, go to the USACBI website. Find more information about the Right to Education Campaign at Birzeit University at its website. Contact the Civic Coalition for Defending Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem to learn more about organizing efforts to defend Palestinians in East Jerusalem.

Anger in Iraq After Plea Bargain Over 2005 Massacre

Anger in Iraq After Plea Bargain Over 2005 Massacre

By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT

January 24, 2012 BAGHDAD — Iraqis were outraged Tuesday to learn that the Marine considered the ringleader of a 2005 massacre that left 24 of their countrymen dead in 2005 had pleaded guilty Monday to a reduced charge and faced a maximum of three months in jail and a reduction in rank. "That soldier would be sent to prison for more than three months if he had thrown trash on the streets in America," said Khalid Salman, 45, whose cousin was killed by the Marines in the massacre, which occurred in the town of Haditha in November 2005. "This is not new and it’s not new for the American courts that already did little about Abu Ghraib and other crimes in Iraq." For the past nine years, Iraqis have found themselves looking to the American legal system to provide justice for what they believe were war crimes committed by Americans, and most of the time, many say, they have been disappointed. This time was no exception. The Marine, Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, 31, pleaded guilty in a military court in California to dereliction of duty, telling the judge that he regretted ordering his men to "shoot first, ask questions later," according to news agency reports. He had faced up to 152 years in prison if convicted on the charges of manslaughter and assault on which he stood accused. Mr. Salman vowed not to let the matter rest. "We won’t be silent," he said. "We will resume the case through all international courts, and we will appeal the American resolution. Injustice has won this round, but there are many more rounds left." Assim Omar al-Hadithi, 40, a relative of another victim, said that such a light sentence "shows the lies of the Americans, whether they are judges or members of the military." He continued: "All the world knew that the American soldiers committed crimes in Iraq. We were extensively surprised when we heard the news, and it has made our minds even worse. It is no consolation for the victims’ families." The shadows cast by the Haditha massacre, the abuse of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison and the killing of civilians by contractors for Blackwater at a square in Baghdad helped turn Iraqi public opinion against the American presence. An agreement to keep American troops here past 2011 collapsed when Iraqi officials would not agree to extend their immunity from Iraqi prosecution. Since the American troops left last month, Iraq has been engulfed in a political crisis, and the Iraqi military has struggled to maintain security as insurgents have conducted a string of devastating attacks. A number of Americans in high-profile cases have received what many Iraqis regarded as token sentences. In August, the supposed ringleader in the Abu Ghraib abuses, Pvt. Charles A. Graner Jr., was released early from prison because of good behavior. He had been sentenced to 10 years but served just 6 1/2. In 2009 charges were dropped against four American military contractors in the killings of the 17 civilians at the square in Baghdad. While a federal court ruling in Washington reopened manslaughter charges against the four, many Iraqis continue to believe that the contractors will never be punished. Iraqis received Tuesday’s plea deal with the same cynicism and anger. "I am not satisfied with the court decision against those killers — they need to be tortured and executed because they killed innocent people," said Tariq Abas al-Najar, 43, a taxi driver in Basra. "If Marines killed a sheep in Europe, the judge would punish them much harsher than for the killing of those innocent Iraqis." Omar al-Jawoshy contributed reporting from Baghdad, and Iraqi employees of The New York Times from Baghdad and Anbar Province.

Marine Involved In Haditha Massacre To Serve No Time

Marine Involved In Haditha Massacre To Serve No Time ‎

Associated Press

January 24, 2012 CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. (AP) — A Marine sergeant who led a squad that killed 24 unarmed Iraqis will spend no time in confinement, despite a military judge's recommendation Tuesday that he spend three months in the brig. Military judge Lt. Col. David Jones said his hands were tied by a plea agreement that prevents any jail time for Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich. Wuterich pleaded guilty to negligent dereliction of duty as part of a deal with prosecutors. The minor charge carried a maximum sentence of 90 days, which is what Jones recommended. But because of the way the military system works, the terms of the deal with prosecutors weren't known to the judge until after he made his sentencing recommendation in court on Tuesday. Prosecutors asked Jones to give Wuterich the maximum sentence of three months confinement, a reduction in rank and forfeiture of two-thirds of his pay. They said his knee-jerk reaction of sending the squad to assault nearby homes without positively identifying the threat went against his training and led to the deaths of the 10 women and children. "That is a horrific result from that derelict order of shooting first, ask questions later," Lt. Col. Sean Sullivan told the court. The judge said he would recommend that Wuterich's rank be reduced to private. He said he decided not to dock his pay because he is the divorced father of three young daughters with sole custody. Wuterich has acknowledged ordering his squad to "shoot first, ask questions later" after a roadside bomb took the life of a fellow Marine, but he said he did not shoot any of the 10 women and children killed in nearby homes that he stormed with his men. "The truth is: I never fired my weapon at any women or children that day," Wuterich told military judge Lt. Col. David Jones, who recommended the sentence that must be approved by the commander of Marine Corps Forces Central Command. The surprise contention by Wuterich contradicts prosecutors who implicated him in 19 of the 24 deaths. It also counters testimony from a former squad mate who said he joined Wuterich in firing in a dark back bedroom where a woman and children were killed. Defense attorney Neal Puckett said Wuterich has lived under the cloud of being labeled a killer who carried out a massacre in Iraq. Lawyers also said he has been exonerated of directly causing the deaths of civilians in the two homes and insisted his only intent was to protect his Marines, calling it "honorable and noble." "The appropriate punishment in this case, your honor, is no punishment," Puckett said. Wuterich, 31, told the court that his guilty plea should not suggest that he believes his men behaved badly or that they acted in any way that was dishonorable to their country. He said he ordered his men to "shoot first, ask questions later" so they would not hesitate in attacking the enemy, but he never intended to harm any civilians. The plea deal that halted Wuterich's manslaughter trial has sparked outrage in Iraq, where many said it proves the United States does not hold its military accountable for its actions. In Iraq, residents of the Euphrates river town of Haditha were angered by the fact that not one of the eight Marines initially charged will be convicted of manslaughter. A survivor of the killings, Awis Fahmi Hussein, showed his scars from being hit by a bullet in the back. "I was expecting that the American judiciary would sentence this person to life in prison and that he would appear and confess in front of the whole world that he committed this crime, so that America could show itself as democratic and fair," he said. In his statement, Wuterich also addressed family members of the Iraqi victims, saying there were no words to ease their pain. "I wish to assure you that on that day, it was never my intention to harm you or your families. I know that you are the real victims of Nov. 19, 2005," he said. Associated Press writers Barbara Surk and Mazin Yahya in Baghdad, Elliot Spagat in San Diego and Raquel Dillon in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

Can solar power help shipping go green?

24 January 2012 Last updated at 00:31 GMT  

 BBC

Can solar power help shipping go green?

 

"I think in 50 to 100 years, all ships will have solar sails”

Robert Dane Solar Sailor

 

By Katie Hunt Business reporter, BBC News, Hong Kong

 

Solar Birdie, which ferries passengers to a golf course on one of Hong Kong's outlying islands, comes into dock

From a distance, the yellow-and-blue ferry docking at the pier resembles the scores of other vessels that hop between Hong Kong's outlying islands and the peninsula every day.

But a closer look as passengers disembark, reveals a grid of gleaming solar panels on the ferry's roof and, instead of the usual throbbing engine noise, there is a barely audible buzz.

The Solar Eagle and three similar vessels shuttle golfers to tee off on an 18-hole island course. Together they form the world's first hybrid powered ferry fleet and a commercial proving ground for technology that could transform the future of marine travel.
The technology, similar to that used in hybrid cars, has been developed by an Australian company called Solar Sailor.
Electricity created by the solar panels and stored in a battery powers the engine while the vessel comes in and out of the harbour. Once out in the open ocean and a faster clip is required, the diesel kicks in.

One of the fleet, the Solar Albatross, sports two sails covered in solar panels that can be raised to harness both the sun and the wind to further reduce reliance on fossil fuel.

Robert Dane, Solar Sailor's founder, says that the technology offers ship owners huge fuel savings and has the potential to be used on all types of vessels from humble ferries and luxury super-yachts to bulk carriers shipping iron ore and navy patrol ships.
"I think in 50 to 100 years, all ships will have solar sails," he says.
"It just makes so much sense. You're out there on the water and there's so much light bouncing around and there's a lot more energy in the wind than in the sun."
Teething problems Three of the ferries began operation in 2010 and the Solar Albatross began carrying passengers last year. The solar-sail technology is also in use in two ferries in Shanghai and Sydney.

 

Solar panels help power the world's first fleet of hybrid ferries in Hong Kong

The Hong Kong Jockey Club, which runs the golf course on Kau Sai Chau island, says its has seen "significant fuel savings" but was still monitoring the overall performance of the ferries.
Mr Dane says that on the golf course-run, the hybrid technology saves 8% or 17% on the fuel bill, depending on the route taken. However, repair and maintenance costs have been more than anticipated.
"The Jockey Club is a new operator so there's a learning curve for them and the new technology," he says.
Despite the teething problems, Mr Dane is confident of future sales.
He says he is in the "early stages" of discussions with the operators of Hong Kong's iconic star ferry, which has been shuttling across Victoria Harbour since 1880, about fitting solar panels on one of their vessels.

 

Solar Albatross in Hong Kong with solar sails raised

 

And in Australia, he hopes to clinch deals this year with the operator of a river ferry and install the technology on two ocean research vessels.
There are other solar-powered ships in operation such as the catamaran Turanor PlanetSolar, which is circumnavigating the globe exclusively by harnessing the power of the sun. However, Mr Dane says the technology developed by his company is the most commercially tested.
More ambitiously, Mr Dane says the company will soon announce a trial with an Australian mining company to attach a 40m (130ft) tall solar sail to a newly built bulk carrier that will ship iron ore and other raw materials to China.

 

Solar Sailor is in talks with an Australian mining company about installing a solar sail on a bulk carrier that transports iron ore and other raw materials

He likens the sail to a "giant windmill blade" that would be covered in solar panels and fold down into the vessel when it is docking and transferring cargo.
By harnessing the wind, the company estimates that the giant sail could shave 20% to 40%, or around A$3m (£2m; $3.1m), off a ship's annual fuel bill when travelling at 16 knots (18mph), with the solar panels contributing an extra 3% to 6% saving.
"The systems were are installing are worth around A$6 million and therefore the return of investment would be a couple of years at the current oil price," he says.
"It's not a matter of if we're going to do it, it's a matter of how - right now we are working out the details."
Green oceans If, as Mr Dane hopes, the technology is adopted more widely, it also has the potential to clean up the shipping industry, which environmental campaigners claim emits more greenhouse gases than commercial aviation.
Roughly 50,000 ships carry 90% of the world's trade cargo, and these ships tend to burn a heavily polluting oil known as bunker fuel.

 

The Solar Albatross ferry, in part powered by two solar sails, comes into dock with sails lowered

 

"It's like tar, you have to heat it up to make it liquid so it will flow," says Mr Dane.
"These incredibly powerful engines run on incredibly cheap but dirty fuel so what we can do in the short-term is to ensure they use less fuel."
The industry has proved hard for governments to regulate as it does not fall into one jurisdiction, however the United Nations International Maritime Organization has recently introduced new regulations on fuel efficiency and sulphur emissions that could drive demand for Solar Sailor's technology.
Mr Dane is optimistic about the company's future even though after more than a decade of doing business it has yet to turn a profit.
He says the company will in future focus on areas less affected the global economic downturn such as defence, with plans afoot to use the technology in unmanned ocean vehicles that could replace navy patrol boats.
"We know (our technology) works. We know the return on investment but there's been factors outside our control like the economic environment that have inhibited what we are doing," Mr Dane says.
"We think we're at a very exciting point with regards to profitability and one of the projects (we're working on) will make us incredibly profitable in 2012."

All About PIPA and SOPA, the Bills That Want to Censor Your Internet

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) are two bills that sound like they have a mildly positive aim but, in reality, have serious potential to negatively change the internet as we know it. While the Obama administration has come out against SOPA, effectively shelving it indefinitely, the very similar PIPA bill is still alive and well. Both SOPA and PIPA put power in the hands of the entertainment industry to censor sites that allegedly "engage in, enable or facilitate" copyright infringement. This language is vague enough to target sites you use every day, like Facebook and Google, making these bills a serious problem. Here's what you need to know about the bills and what you can do about them.

What Are SOPA and PIPA All ABout, and Why Should I Care?

The idea behind these bills sounds reasonable. They came about in order to try and snuff out piracy online, as the entertainment industry is obviously not excited that many people are downloading their products without payment or permission. The issue is, however, that it doesn't really matter whether you're in support of piracy, against it, or just don't care. The methods are ineffective. Here's what they are and why they're problematic.
SOPA and PIPA were initially designed to do two things. The first was to make it possible for companies to block the domain names of web sites that are simply capable of, or seem to encourage copyright infringement. This would have been bad for everyone because such a measure doesn't actually prevent piracy. The reason that blocking a domain name isn't effective is because any blocked site can still be accessed via its numeric IP address. For example, if lifehacker.com were blocked, you could still find it by visiting a number-based address. In fact, before the bills were even supposed to come to a vote, tools were created to automatically route domain names to their IP addresses to completely render this measure of SOPA and PIPA useless. As a result, the IP-blocking provisions have been removed from both bills.
The other, still-active measure present in the SOPA and PIPA bills would allow rights holders to cut of the source of funding of any potentially infringing web site. This means any other companies doing business with this site would have to stop. Whether that means advertising, links in search engines, or any other listings would have to be removed.
There is, however, an important difference between SOPA and PIPA. SOPA targeted any site that contributed to copyright infringement, even if it was simply facilitating the act by providing a tool that could be used for illegal purposes (regardless of intention). PIPA, on the other hand, requires the targeted site to have no significant use beyond copyright infringement. Basically, PIPA can only be used to censor a site if it's more likely to be a source of illegal content than not. This is still problematic because a tool designed to accept user-generated content is, to some extent, at the whims of its users. If infringing content is found, rights holders already have the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) to help them request the legal removal of that content. They also have the ability to sue infringers for damages, as we've previously seen with the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) when they, for example, sued a 12-year-old for downloading music. SOPA and PIPA provide a means to censor the tool that provided a means for the infringing content to exist on the internet rather than the content itself. This puts a lot of power in the hands of rights holders and has significant potential for abuse.
This is, of course, our interpretation of these bills. Because we love the internet and oppose censorship, we have an obvious bias. While we believe the right thing to do is to oppose these bills, you should make an informed decision on your own. For more information, please read the exact content of both the SOPA and PIPA bills.

What Can I Do About SOPA and PIPA?

Currently Twitter, Google, Reddit, Kickstarter, Tumblr, Mozilla, Yahoo, AOL, eBay, Zynga, Facebook, and several other sites have spoken out in opposition of SOPA and PIPA. In fact, many sites are censoring their logos (e.g. Google) or completely taking down their sites (e.g. Wikipedia) in protest on January 18th, 2012. There is incredible opposition to these bills because they don't just affect users like you, or small startups, but even very large companies with a large stake in the great things the internet and modern technology have to offer. If you'd like to join in your protest, there are a few things you can do. First, call your congressperson on the phone. This is especially important if you live in a state with SOPA and/or PIPA supports or sponsors. Nonetheless, if your congresspeople do not support these bills you should still contact them to voice your support for their position.
Second, get the word out. Post this article, the American Censorship Day web site, or any other information about SOPA/PIPA on your social media accounts. Send emails to friends and family. If you oppose the bill, help others to understand why you believe they should oppose and encourage them to read more so they can make an informed choice.

Let's End the Fight and Start a Discussion

Finally, if you know a supporter or person in favor of SOPA and/or PIPA, have an open discussion. Myself and many others believe that the root of this problem stems from a lack of communication on both sides. Despite what my articles may suggest, I'm not a supporter of piracy. I do believe there is a compromise that both sides can reach with enough discussion, education, and understanding. It's important to remember that both the supporters and opposers of SOPA and PIPA have legitimate concerns. This should not be a fight but rather a cooperative discussion to find a solution. Whichever side you're on, please encourage a conversation that will move us towards change that is good for everyone rather than extreme measures that won't help anyone.

Is the design of big cruise ships flawed?

 BBC NEWS

Is the design of big cruise ships flawed?

The capsizing of the Costa Concordia has raised many questions about the safety of modern cruise ships. 

They have doubled in weight over the past decade, they sit higher in the water and are flatter underneath to enable them to enter more harbours. To the untrained eye they look top heavy, and with up to 6,000 people on board, they look difficult to evacuate quickly. But is that the case?

One maritime union, Nautilus International, thinks the regulations need looking at. It has been warning for some time that something like this might happen.

Look at this quote, which raises the spectre of the Titanic.

"The grounding of a cruise ship carrying more than 4,000 passengers and crew two weeks into the Titanic centenary year should serve as a wake-up call to the shipping industry and those who regulate it. Attention needs to be paid to existing evacuation systems and more innovative systems for abandonment."

The evacuation of the Costa Concordia didn't go well. The fact that the ship listed so quickly and so far meant they couldn't launch all the lifeboats. Passengers have complained of chaos, confused staff - some of whom didn't speak their language - and the fact they hadn't been taken through a drill.

The International Maritime Organization, which regulates ship safety across the world, sets the rules on evacuating ships and providing drills for new passengers.

Here is what they sent me:

Regulation 19: Emergency training and drills.

• 1 This regulation applies to all ships.
• 2 Familiarity with safety installations and practice musters.
• 2.1 Every crew member with assigned emergency duties shall be familiar with these duties before the voyage begins.
• 2.2 On a ship engaged on a voyage where passengers are scheduled to be on board for more than 24h, musters of the passengers shall take place within 24h after their embarkation. Passengers shall be instructed in the use of the life jackets and the action to take in an emergency.

Effectively, the company has 24 hours to take you through a drill once you are on board. The Costa Concordia was only a few hours into its voyage. Some people arriving back at Heathrow started flashing their drill cards around. They had been scheduled for a rehearsal on Saturday afternoon, by which time the ship was lying on its side.

I suspect, in the light of this accident, all cruise companies will now make sure they drill passengers before they set sail.

But what about the time it took to get everyone off?

Regulation III/21.1.3: All survival craft required to provide for abandonment by the total number of persons on board shall be capable of being launched with their full complement of persons and equipment within a period of 30 min from the time the abandon ship signal is given after all persons have been assembled, with life jackets donned.

In practice, this means all passengers and crew are ordered to lifeboat stations first and then, when everyone is mustered, the captain orders abandon ship. So Coast Guards test to see if ships can load the boats and place them in the water within 30 minutes. 

Regulations also state that a ship's systems should last for at least three hours because that is how long it is expected to take to completely abandon a large ship.

It took a good five hours to get most passengers off the ship. One former sea captain I spoke to had some sympathy with the crew in this situation. Once the ship was listing heavily, he told me, and the lifeboats were sitting on what had become the top of the boat, everyone just had to leave the ship any way they could.

The regulations work to the principle that the ship itself is the best lifeboat, and is designed to be able to limp back to port in most situations.

Prof Philip Wilson at the University of Southampton specialises in ship dynamics and we spoke alongside his 29ft (9m) testing tank. 

"Modern ships are safe as they can possibly be," he told me.

"The centre of buoyancy is in the right place... instinctively it doesn't look right but it is in fact very, very stable, the beam of the boat being very large."

We have also heard a lot about watertight compartments since the Costa Concordia went down. The theory is that if one side of the hull is breached, the other side can be flooded to keep the ship upright. The big question is then, why didn't it work in this case? The truth is we won't know until the investigation is finished.

But Prof Wilson wasn't too surprised, saying: "Every ship will sink if you make the hole big enough."

Latest underwater images reveal previously unseen damage to the hull of the ship

He added, however, that something was "puzzling" him.

The hole in the hull is sticking out of the water. It should be under the sea, because that is where the water came rushing in. In other words, the ship seems to be lying on the wrong side.

"We're working on information that's incomplete so we don't know really what's happened. Potentially of course, the crew could have been pumping water to bring the ship upright, and maybe took too much water on board."

What many people are keen to stress is that cruise ships are still among the safest ways to travel. Companies emphasise that training and regulations are rigorous and that this kind of accident is very rare. But no-one argues that there isn't room for improvement.

The International Maritime Organization has not had a lot to say on this accident so far, but it has released a statement, and once again, it revives memories of the Titanic.

"IMO must not take this accident lightly," it says.

"We should seriously consider the lessons to be learnt and, if necessary, re-examine the regulations on the safety of large passenger ships in the light of the findings of the casualty investigation. In the centenary year of the Titanic, we have once again been reminded of the risks involved in maritime activities."

"human rights shouldn’t be a recipe for national suicide."

Israeli High Court okays Citizenship Law, legalizing racial discrimination of Arabs

Noam Sheizaf

January 12, 2012 According to the 2003 law, Arab citizens of Israel who marry Palestinians will have to emigrate in order to live with their spouses. Israeli Arab MK Ahmed Tibi famously said that "Israel is indeed a Jewish-democratic state: it is democratic for Jews and Jewish for all the rest." This rings truer than ever after Israel’s High Court of Justice rejected yesterday (again) the petitions against the Citizenship Law, one of the first measures to make racial discrimination against the Arab minority not just common practice, but part of Israel’s legal codex. The High Court rejected the petitions against the Citizenship Law in a split, 6-5 decision. The incoming head of the High Court, Justice Asher Grunis, wrote in the decision that "human rights shouldn’t be a recipe for national suicide." You can read the full verdict here [Hebrew, PDF]. Justice Edmond Levy, a religious and somewhat conservative judge, harshly criticized Grunis for his language, claiming he misled the public as to the nature of the citizenship law. The Citizenship Law, which technically is a temporary order, came into effect in 2003. It determines that Palestinian non-citizens who marry Israeli citizens will not be eligible for Israeli residency or citizenship. The couple will only be able to unite outside the borders of Israel. The practical meaning of the law is that Arab citizens of Israel who marry Palestinian non-citizens – something that happens quite often, since these are members of the same nation, and sometimes of the same communities – won’t be able to live with their wives or husbands. If they want to unite, they will have to leave the country. By doing so, the law achieves two (racist) objectives against members of the Arab minority: (a) it prevents non-Jews from entering the country and applying for permanent residency or citizenship and (b) it makes it harder for Israeli Arab citizens to build families in their own community or in their own country, thus encouraging them to leave Israel. Arab Palestinians comprise roughly 20 percent of Israel’s population. It is important to note that it is not the right of the non-citizen wife or husband that is being violated (since the state has no legal obligation towards them), but that of the citizen, who should enjoy the possibility to form a family and live with his loved one in his own community. When the citizenship law came into effect, during the second Intifada, a security pretext was used to justify it, claiming that Palestinian terrorists could use marriage to become Israeli citizens. Yet this argument doesn’t hold: even without the law, the security establishment can veto any demand for citizenship or residency. It’s clear – and the public debate around the law doesn’t even try to conceal this fact – that "demographic" issues were the real motive for the legislation, and more specifically, the desire to limit, and ultimately even reduce, the number of non-Jewish citizens in the state. Until the citizenship order, the only major piece of Israeli legislation that made a clear distinction between Arabs and Jews was the Law of Return, which makes it possible for Jews to immigrate to Israel and become citizens instantly, while non-Jews aren’t allowed to do so, even if their families originally hailed from this land. The 2003 law marks perhaps a new era, in which discrimination against the Arab minority is not only a common practice – for example, in the prevention of Palestinians from buying or building on state land, through the use of state agencies such as the JNF – but an explicit part of the body of laws that apply to the citizens of the state. The new Nakba Law, which allows the state to penalize institutions that commemorate the Palestinian national disaster of 1948, is further evidence of this fact. The High Court also rejected petitions against the Nakab bill, just last week.