Would Kerry support a military coup like that in Egypt in the US, against Obama, where millions of birthers, racists and Tea Party-ers would support it?

US Secretary of State John Kerry claims the military coup against elected President Mohammed Morsi was “restoring democracy” because it was supported by millions of people (‘Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood 'disappointed' by John Kerry's remarks’ Guardian 1st August)  (1).

While there were many naïve liberals and socialists who backed the coup, there were also large numbers of former members and even MPs from Mubarak’s NDP party (2) – (4).

The Tamarod movement which ran the petition against Morsi didn’t even realise it’s main funders were businessmen who supported Mubarak’s regime (5).

Some of Tamarod’s members left the movement shortly before Morsi’s overthrow, saying it had been infiltrated by Mubarak supporters and secret police (6).

Morsi was accused of “mismanaging the economy” resulting in petrol shortages and electricity black outs. Yet these crises miraculously disappeared as soon as Morsi was overthrown – because they too were organised by pro-Mubarak businessmen and probably the military, which owns much of the Egyptian economy, including many petrol stations (7) – (8).

There are millions of birthers, tea-party-ers and racists in the US who would support a military coup against President Obama, who they also continually claim is acting unconstitutionally and undemocratically. Would that make it legitimate?

Kerry also claims “the military did not take over”.

General Sissi has made himself Commander in Chief of the military, Defence Minister and Deputy Prime Minister (9).

Sissi appointed the interim President, Adly Mansour, originally made a judge by Mubarak, who lifted the ban on members of Mubarak’s dictatorship standing in elections (10).

The Chief Prosecutor sacked by Morsi for acquitting Mubarak’s security officials of ordering protesters killed is back (11) – (13).

Secret police units disbanded after Mubarak was overthrown are back too (14).

So the military and officials from the old dictatorship are back in power.

Some of the supposedly liberal and democratic opposition also seem more personally ambitious than concerned with democracy. For instance the head of the Tamarod movement told General Sisi that holding a referendum on whether Morsi could stay on as elected President was unacceptable – he had to be “recalled” or overthrown. This leader has also said he has an ambition to be President of Egypt himself (15).

Having some civilians, some of them dupes from among the secular protesters, who naively believe they are in charge, the rest former dictatorship members, as a fig leaf for military rule is something any impartial observer should be able to see through.

The coup government has killed more protesters in a month than died in a year under Morsi – and unlike under Morsi, when each side’s protesters were killing the other, with as many pro as anti Morsi protesters killed, this time almost all the dead are anti-coup protesters and Morsi supporters.

As long as the Obama administration continue supporting the military coup and bloody counter-revolution by the military and old regime any claims Obama makes of supporting democracy or human rights are empty.

 

(1) = Guardian 03 Aug 2013 ‘Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood 'disappointed' by John Kerry's remarks’,
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/02/egypt-muslim-brother-john-kerry-remarks

(2) = Wall Street Journal 05 Jul 2013 ‘Egyptians Open Door to Mubarak's Allies’,
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324260204578587872719316196.html ; see 4^th, 17^th, 19^th , 20^th paragraphs ‘Mohammed Abul Ghar, the head of Egypt's secular-leaning Social Democratic Party and a leader in the National Salvation Front, the leading opposition group to Mr. Morsi…After Mr. Morsi claimed authority over Egypt's judiciary in November, many of the young secular activists behind the revolution against Mr. Mubarak made common cause with Mr. Shafiq's supporters and other NDP loyalists… The party decided to accept former NDP members who weren't close to Mr. Mubarak and whose records were clean of corruption allegations… Gamal al Zini, a former NDP parliamentarian from the Nile Delta city of Damiet, said he has had regular meetings with local youth activists, Tamarod leaders and members of Mr. ElBaradei's Constitution Party since May..’

(3) = Egypt Independent 20 Feb 2013 ‘Former NDP members to form new party’,
http://www.egyptindependent.com/news/former-ndp-members-form-new-party

(4) = Ahram Online 11 Feb 2011 ‘NDP Offshoots’,
http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/33/104/26897/Elections-/Political-Parties/NDP-Offshoots.aspx

(5) = NYT 10 Jul 2013 ‘Sudden Improvements in Egypt Suggest a Campaign to Undermine Morsi’, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/11/world/middleeast/improvements-in-egypt-suggest-a-campaign-that-undermined-morsi.html?_r=2&

(6) = Reuters 08 Jul 2013 ‘The Egyptian rebel who "owns" Tahrir Square’, http://in.reuters.com/article/2013/07/08/egypt-protests-tamarud-idINDEE96702M20130708 ; ‘One Tamarud activist who spoke to Reuters said she resigned three days before the giant protest because she was concerned that the secret police and former Mubarak supporters were infiltrating the movement. …"Many of the people I'd worked with left, and some of the new faces I knew were felul (remnants), nostalgic for Mubarak, or justifying the work of state security."’

(7) = (5) above

(8) = Al Jazeera 15 Feb 2012 ‘Egypt military's economic empire’,
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/02/2012215195912519142.html

(9) = Independent 24 Jul 2013 ‘Showdown in Cairo: Egyptian general demands permission to take on the ‘terrorists’’, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/showdown-in-cairo-egyptian-general-demands-permission-to-take-on-the-terrorists-8729903.html

(10) = BBC News 04 Jul 2013 ‘Profile: Interim Egyptian President Adly Mansour’,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-23176293

(11) = Al Ahram Online 04 Jul 2013 ‘Prosecutor-general sacked by Morsi reinstated’,
http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/75698/Egypt/Politics-/Prosecutorgeneral-sacked-by-Morsi-reinstated.aspx

(12) = Amnesty International 02 Jun 2013 ‘Egypt: Mubarak verdict fails to deliver full justice’,  http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/egypt-mubarak-2012-06-02 ; ‘However, the acquittal of all the other defendants, including senior security officials, leaves many still waiting for full justice…Six senior security officials, including former head of the now-disbanded State Security Investigations service (SSI), were acquitted…Corruption charges against two of Mubarak’s sons, Gamal and Alaa, and his business associate Hussein Salem, who was tried in absentia, were dropped.’

(13) = VOA News 08 Jun 2013 ‘Anger Erupts in Egypt Over Mubarak Retrial’, http://www.voanews.com/content/anger-erupts-in-egypt-over-mubarak-trial/1677958.html ‘Anger erupted Saturday in the Egyptian court retrying ousted president Hosni Mubarak for complicity in the killings of hundreds of protesters, after a judge barred the participation of lawyers representing families of those killed.’

(14) = Guardian 29 Jul 2013 ‘Egypt restores feared secret police units’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/29/egypt-restores-secret-police-units

(15) = Reuters 08 Jul 2013 ‘The Egyptian rebel who "owns" Tahrir Square’,
http://in.reuters.com/article/2013/07/08/egypt-protests-tamarud-idINDEE96702M20130708

Salmond and Grampian police should be ashamed for aiding Trump’s illegal campaign against the people of the Menie Estate ; but it doesn’t show Scotland is too small to be independent – the same happens in the US and UK regularly

Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond, The Telegraph and Grampian police should be ashamed for allowing and aiding Trump’s use of illegal methods to try to force people out of their homes and farms on the Menie Estate in Scotland but the main cause of the problem isn’t Scotland being too small to stand up to big money, similar things happen in the UK and US all the time. The cause of the problem is allowing big banks, firms and billionaires to make political donations and allowing revolving doors between jobs with them and with government departments giving contracts to them and regulating them. (If you just want to know what you can do rather than read the rest, scroll down to the ‘what you can do’ bolded sub-heading)

I'd thought Donald Trump was the obvious contender for balloon self-inflated by his own arrogance. Maybe Neil Midgely, deputy editor of the Telegraph newspaper is a contender too. He has a review of the documentary ‘You’ve been Trumped,’ which is Anthony Baxter’s film showing Trump’s SNP government and Grampian police backed campaign to try to force out people out of homes and farms they’ve lived on all their lives, by illegal methods including letting Trump’s employees cut off their water and electricity supplies, build earth berms round their houses and many other intrusions on to and damages to their property (1).

Midgely writes " But the …documentary…was so biased in favour of the protesters that it was hard not to end up rooting for Trump and his monolithic capitalist plans. There were endless sympathetic chats with the locals who wouldn’t sell their eyesore properties to Trump….When Trump’s men infuriated the locals – by apparently cutting off their water supply, or building mounds of earth outside their windows – the film’s implicit suggestion was that it was all done out of spite. And if spite was the motive, it was spite so bracing as to be a rare and precious thing. It was also cheering to see the busybody film-maker, Anthony Baxter, at one point carted off by the local constabulary. " (2).

First off Neil, they’re not “protesters”. The word you’re looking for is “residents” – people who’ve lived (and in some cases farmed) there for all their lives. They had considerable sympathy and support from many people and there were a few protests in favour of them, which get brief coverage in the documentary – but most of it is interviews with the residents, with police, with Trumps’ spokespeople (who unsurprisingly didn’t have much to say other than threats of getting the documentary makers arrested and charged), clips of Trump making his own case and film of what Trump’s employees and the police were doing, along with interviews with legal experts and experts on the likely impact on jobs from the development (which found, in opposition to Trump’s claims that local people would get a lot of jobs on it, most of the jobs would be likely to go to Polish and other EU migrant workers).

I thought that Conservatives were all for property rights, Neil ;  Seems not in your case. Seems you're quite happy for billionaires who've bought political influence to come in and take peoples' property and try to force them out of their homes to make way for another frigging golf course (because of course there's a massive shortage of them in Scotland - e.g St Andrews for instance has none, obviously), so long as they're oiks and not your golfing buddies.

I thought Conservatives were for upholding the law. Seems not in Neil’s case. He’s fine with money trumping the law; fine with Trump's money, or the promise of some jobs, getting police to let him illegally cut off peoples’ water and electricity supplies and steal parts of their land from them and even build earth berms round their houses.

I thought Conservatives were meant to be for civil liberties. In Mr Midgely’s case, seems not. He enjoys seeing people arrested on trumped up charges of 'breach of the peace' and handcuffed for merely interviewing the people involved.

I very much hope that you are a victim of similar injustices in future Neil – that your property is stolen by developers, that your electricity and water are cut off to try to force you out of your home – and that the police and government similarly either aid the developers or look the other way as your property  and rights and civil liberties are ridden roughshod over by big money. Then you might understand what you got wrong here.

On top of that Trump was determined he should get to build not just on 90% of the site he wanted, but that it had to include destroying an SSSI (Site of Special Scientific Interest) containing rare species too. We don’t exactly have a shortage of golf courses in Scotland. St Andrews alone has more than you could count and there are huge numbers of others all over the country. If we lost a golf course we could replace it. If we lose rare species to extinction there is no getting them back though. They are gone forever.

The smartest political calculations can go wrong when they leave out right and wrong

SNP First Minister Alec Salmond decided to over-rule the elected local council’s planning committee – and it’s SNP chairman in 2009 – to give Trump exactly the planning permission he wanted. His government must have either looked the other way or else seen to it that the then SNP headed Aberdeenshire local council got the police to do a mixture of looking the other way as Trump’s employees broke the law on other peoples’ property, guarding the law breakers as they did so; and harassing and arresting the documentary makers (including by arresting them and putting them in a cell for four hours by mis-using the catch-all ‘breach of the peace’ charge).

Salmond calculated that he would gain more votes by the jobs created and sports coverage of the new golf course than he would lose by allowing an arrogant billionaire to over-rule the local council, destroy habitat for rare species and force people out of their homes. Even the most charismatic and intelligent politician can get his sums wrong where he doesn't factor in right and wrong though. In a case of poetic justice he’s suffered negative media coverage (largely due to Anthony Baxter’s work) combined with a feud with Trump over plans for offshore wind turbines off the coast of his golf course development. The recession created by the financial crisis has also reduced investment and demand for Trump’s development, which might fail yet.

Next time Salmond is engaging his brain purely as a vote calculating machine he should remember this and take right and wrong into account too.

Why it’s not caused by Scotland being a small country – and not an argument against independence

However those arguing that this shameful episode is due to Scotland being too small to resist big money’s influence and using it as an argument against independence have it wrong too.

The British and US governments cave in to big firms, banks and billionaires constantly. Just look at the NHS contracts going to Circle Healthcare whose shareholders lobbied for privatisation and donate to the Conservative party ; or US military aid of over $1bn a year to Egypt, openly given to subsidise US arms firms that make political donations to Presidential and congressional campaigns, particularly Lockheed Martin (3) – (9).

That’s not to mention all the white-washing of the pollution of water and air by fracking and on land oil drilling in the US due to the big oil and gas companies buying up political influence and even funding biased scientific studies (thankfully countered by neutral ones).

So the problem isn’t the size of the country, but big money buying influence through private donations to election campaigns and political parties; revolving door syndrome allowing people to go between jobs in those firms and the government departments giving contracts to and regulating them ; and governments’  choosing jobs from multinationals, which may go overseas as quickly as they arrived, over backing smaller businesses based in their own country. (the last problem being the relevant one with Trump and the SNP – though it’s possible Salmond also hoped to get donations for his party, though I’ve found no evidence he got any) (10) – (11).

The solution is to make it a criminal offence to give or receive private political donations,   or to go from a job in a government department to a company given contracts or regulated by it, or vice-versa, for 5 or 10 years; and provide limited, equal, public funding to all candidates in elections.

What you can do

Sign the petition against Trump’s illegal campaign to drive people out of their homes .

Join and/or donate to the Tripping Up Trump campaign group against forced compulsory purchase orders being issued purely for the benefit of big developers.

 

 

Sources

(1) = Independent blogs 18 Oct 2012 ‘You’ve Been Trumped! Director Anthony Baxter speaks about his new documentary’, http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2012/10/18/you%E2%80%99ve-been-trumped-director-anthony-baxter-speaks-about-his-new-documentary/

(2) = Telegraph 21 Oct 2012 ‘You've Been Trumped, BBC Two, review’,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/9621334/Youve-Been-Trumped-BBC-Two-review.html

(3) = Herald letters 23 Oct 2012 ‘Trump documentary highlights the vulnerability of smaller economies’ http://www.heraldscotland.com/comment/letters/trump-documentary-highlights-the-vulnerability-of-smaller-economies.19214235

(4) = Conservative Home website ‘Big cash donors to the Conservative party, by ‘donor group’ January 2001 to June 2010’, https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?authkey=CM2egqgB&key=0AtAQVk3Qj4FYdEJKVTg3aTZteV9pcnFZbXBvN3lRcUE&hl=en&authkey=CM2egqgB#gid=0

(5) = Observer 05 Jun 2011 ‘Questions grow over private care firm Circle Health ahead of flotation’, http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/jun/05/questions-grow-over-circle-health

(6) = guardian.co.uk 05 Nov 2011 ‘Private firm to run NHS hospital’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/nov/10/private-firm-run-nhs-hospital

(7) = NYT 23 Mar 2012 ‘Once Imperiled, U.S. Aid to Egypt Is Restored’,
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/24/world/middleeast/once-imperiled-united-states-aid-to-egypt-is-restored.html?_r=0 ; ‘An intense debate within the Obama administration over resuming military assistance to Egypt, which in the end was approved Friday by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, turned in part on a question that had nothing to do with democratic progress in Egypt but rather with American jobs at home…. The companies involved include Lockheed Martin, which is scheduled to ship the first of a batch of 20 new F-16 fighter jets next month’

(8) = Center for Responsive Politics – Organisation Profiles – Lockheed Martin,
http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=D000000104 (shows Lockheed Martin executives and PAC committees donated over $2 million to candidates in the 2012 election cycle including Obama and Romney and members of congressional committees on defense spending)

(9) Center for Responsive Politics - Lockheed Martin: All Recipients ; Among Federal Candidates, 2008 Cycle, http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/recips.php?id=D000000104&type=P&state=&sort=A&cycle=2008 (shows similar donations including to Obama and McCain’s campaigns in 2008)

(10) = Guardian 15 Oct 2012 ‘MoD staff and thousands of military officers join arms firms’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/oct/15/mod-military-arms-firms

(11) = Guardian 22 Oct 2012 ‘Blurred boundaries between public service and private interest’,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/healthcare-network/2012/oct/22/public-service-private-blurred-boundaries ; ‘the resignation from the NHS Commissioning Board of Jim Easton to become managing director of the private provider Care UK…Previous senior officials in the Department of Health transferring their wallets to the private sector include Matthew Swindells, chief information officer at the DH who joined KPMG, along with Mark Britnell and Gary Belfield, who had run the DH commissioning programme; Simon Stevens, Tony Blair's senior health advisor from 1997-2004 became a vice-president for United Health; and Penny Dash, formerly DH director of strategy, left for McKinsey.

Incinerators recycle nothing, cause cancers and birth defects, lose more energy than they produce and waste valuable resources

The Scotgen company claim their planned incinerator at Dovesdale farm in South Lanarkshire will create “green energy” by “recycling” waste (1) – (2). This is part of a UK and worldwide attempt at rebranding incinerators. In fact incinerators recycle nothing, produce less energy than will be required to replace the products they incinerate instead of recycling – and emit many toxins which cause cancers (especially in children) and birth defects in babies.

They incinerate plastics in household waste. Plastics are petroleum products – i.e made from oil  - a finite resource which while run out (and become hugely expensive long before then). So it’s madness to burn them rather than recycle what we won’t be able to replace in the long run. Any energy generated is much less than that required to produce new plastic containers to replace those incinerated – a net energy loss  (3) – (4).

Incinerating plastics also releases carcinogenic toxins such as dioxins, heavy metal particulates and nitrogen oxide for at least 14 miles on the wind. These can be inhaled, causing cancers , especially in children - and birth defects in babies; and can contaminate farmland and water, going into the food chain. Scotgen also incinerate industrial toxic waste, which is even more hazardous. While some of the emissions are caught by filters in incinerator chimney stacks or flues, significant amounts are not – and these are the biggest hazard (5) – (12).

One of many babies born with birth defects in Fallujah, Iraq, thought to be linked to depleted uranium shells, white phosphorus and other chemical weapons employed by Coalition Forces there in the assaults on the city in 2004. Toxins emitted by incinerators can cause similar deformities in babies

Scotgen made the same claims it’s making for Dovesdale for their existing plant at Dumfries which has never generated a single watt of electricity over a year after it opened;  and exceeded it’s emissions limits (including on dioxins and nitrogen oxide) at least 52 times in it’s first 7 months (13) – (15).

The ‘waste to energy’ claims are just a rebranding of incinerators to make them sound green. In fact they are a dangerous, expensive, short-sighted, quick fix for the landfill problem; which may lead to many deaths. Any short term savings compared to recycling are massively offset by the long term costs in overall energy loss to the country, destruction of plastics which won’t be able to be replaced when oil runs out – and will become increasingly expensive long before it runs out entirely – and in illnesses and deaths caused.

Experts on incineration and waste management like Dr Dick Van Steenis, Dr. Paul Connett, Greenpeace and the US Environmental Protection Agency say superior alternatives exist – recycling, legal limits on the amount and type of materials used in making products and packaging; and making producers of products pay for recycling them and their packaging; plus anaerobic digestion of organic waste (16) – (23).

Dr. Dick Van Steenis - an expert on air pollution's effects on health, one of many to condemn incinerators as unsafe and unnecessary

Recycling would also reduce CO2 emissions massively compared to incineration, reducing the climate change problem posed by incinerators (24) – (25). Existing incinerator projects also show taxpayers’ money spent on incinerators is taken out of councils’ recycling budget.

Any politician or company telling you incineration is a better solution for the landfill (or waste managagement) problem than recycling is selling you a short-term quick fix, on the calculation that they’ll have retired by the time all the longer term costs have to be paid; and that they can attribute cancers, birth defects and other illnesses to other or unknown causes.

South Lanarkshire Council’s planning committee ignored around 20,000 objections against Scotgen’s planned Dovesdale Incinerator to approve it by 14 votes to 9. Every Labour councillor on the committee voted for the incinerator. Every SNP councillor on it voted against. (See below for list of councillors voting for and against, their party affiliations and links to contact details for them).

SEPA (the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency) still has to grant Scotgen a licence to run the plant before Scotgen can begin operations. If you want to find out more about the Incinerator and the campaign against it see the Action Group against Dovesdale Incinerator’s website here. There’s a facebook group against the incinerator here

Councillors voting for the incinerator

Jackie Burns (Labour);Pam Clearie (Labour); James Docherty (Labour) ; Edward Mcavoy (Labour) ;Alex Mcinnes (Labour)  Dennis Mckenna (Labour) ;  Mary Mcneil (Labour) ; Graham Scott (Labour) ; Hamish Stewart (Conservative) ; Chris Thompson (Labour) ; Jim Handibode (Labour) ; Hugh Dunsmuir (Labour) ;  Eileen Baxendale (Liberal Democrat) ;  Alex Allison (Conservative)

Councillors voting against the incinerator

Archie Buchanan (SNP) against. Tommy Gilligan (Independent – no party) against.   Ian Gray (SNP) against. Bill Holman (SNP) against. Jim Wardhaugh (SNP) ; Archie Manson (SNP) ; Claire Mcoll (SNP) ; Lesley Mcdonald (SNP)

Councillors on the planning committee but not present on the day of the vote

Patrick Ross-Taylor (Conservative)   Gerry Convery (Labour)

Source notes

 (1) = Carluke Gazette 10 Feb 2011 ‘No peace at Dovesdale’

(2) = Hamilton Advertiser 29 Jul 2010 ‘Scotgen state case for ‘green energy’ waste plant at Dovesdale Farm’,http://www.hamiltonadvertiser.co.uk/news/local-news/lanark-and-carluke-news/2010/07/29/scotgen-state-case-for-green-energy-waste-plant-at-dovesdale-farm-51525-26948218/

(3) = Friends of the Earth September 2007 ‘ Up in Smoke – Why FoE opposes Incineration’,http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/media_briefing/up_in_smoke.pdf (see pages 6 - 7 under sub-heading ‘Recycling saves energy’)

(4) = Friends of the Earth October 2009 ‘Gone to waste – the valuable resources that European Countries bury and burn’, http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/reports/gone_to_waste.pdf

(5) = Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology Post Note 149 December 2000 ‘Incineration of Household Waste’, http://www.parliament.uk/documents/post/pn149.pdf (see especially ‘Pollutants from incineration’ pages 1 – 2 )

(6) =  Allsop et al (2001) ‘Incineration and Human Health’, Greenpeace Research Laboratories & University of Essex, 2001, http://www.cank.org.uk/GreenpeaceHealthReport401.pdf

(7) = Greenpeace background on incineration 30 Nov 2004, http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/campaigns/toxics/incineration/the-problem/

(8) = Michela et al (2004) ‘Health effects of exposure to-waste incinerator emissions: a review of epidemiological studies’, http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=16117736

(9) = British Medical Journal 22 Jun 2009 ‘Long term exposure to air pollution decreases life expectancy, UK report finds’, http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/extract/338/jun22_2/b2532

(10) = World Health Organisation 2006 ‘Principles for evaluating health risks in children associated with exposure to chemicals’ http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2006/924157237X_eng.pdf (says in summary (pages 1 -4)  that children are at increased risk from chemicals produced by “unsafe waste disposal”(page 3) at certain stages in their development – and on page 18 that it has been shown that “air pollutants”, “heavy metals” and “POPs” (persistant organic pollutants – which include dioxins) have been shown to lead to an increased incidence of diseases in children.)

(11) = Health Protection Scotland (2009) ‘Incineration of Waste and Reported Human Health Effects’,http://www.documents.hps.scot.nhs.uk/environmental/incineration-and-health/incineration-of-waste-and-reported-human-health-effects.pdf

(12) = Evening Times 28 Jul 2010 ‘Waste incinerator company in emission safety breaches’,http://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/news/waste-incinerator-company-in-emission-safety-breaches-1.1044212 ; ‘The firm wants to spend £50 million on an incinerator that would burn household and industrial waste …It would also handle “hazardous” materials’

(13) = http://www.scotgenltd.co.uk/

(14) =  Hamilton Advertiser 14 Oct 2010 ‘Scotgen facility at Dumfries still to produce electricity – more than a year after opening’ http://www.hamiltonadvertiser.co.uk/news/local-news/hamilton-news/2010/10/14/scotgen-facility-at-dumfries-still-to-produce-electricity-more-than-a-year-after-opening-51525-27465423/

(15) = Evening Times 28 Jul 2010 ‘Waste incinerator company in emission safety breaches’,http://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/news/waste-incinerator-company-in-emission-safety-breaches-1.1044212 ; article says emission breaches included above acceptable levels of nitrogen oxide

(16) = ‘Zero Waste : A Key Move towards an industrial society’ by Paul Connett PhD,http://www.americanhealthstudies.org/zerowaste.pdf

(17) = Yorkshire Post 13 Oct 2010 ‘Incinerator rapped as 19th century’,http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/around-yorkshire/local-stories/incinerator_rapped_as_19th_century_1_2596265

(18) = This is Gloucestershire 19 May 2010 ‘Professor Paul Connett wades into the Gloucestershire incinerator debate’, http://www.thisisgloucestershire.co.uk/news/Big-Issue-Professor-Paul-Connett-incineration/article-2173050-detail/article.html

(19) = Greenpeace (2001) ‘How to comply with the landfill directive without incineration’,http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/files/pdfs/migrated/MultimediaFiles/Live/FullReport/4478.pdf

(20) = Greenpeace ‘Getting to Zero Waste’, http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/files/pdfs/migrated/MultimediaFiles/Live/FullReport/4383.pdf

(21) = US Environmental Protection Agency 2009 ‘Opportunities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through materials and land management practices’, http://www.epa.gov/oswer/docs/ghg_land_and_materials_management.pdf

(22) = Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives ‘Solutions’, http://www.no-burn.org/article.php?list=type&type=68

(23) = ' Incinerator Deaths ' by Dr. Dick Van Steenis, http://www.countrydoctor.co.uk/precis/precis%20-%20Incinerator%20deaths%20and%20morbidity.htm

(24) = See (3) above

(25) = See (4) above