From Reuters

MARACAIBO, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuelan soldiers on Thursday took control of boatyards and other assets belonging to oil service companies in the latest step by socialist President Hugo Chavez to tighten his grip on the industry.

Earlier in the day, Venezuela's legislature approved a law allowing the nationalization of a group of oil service companies. Chavez said the takeovers would quickly start in the Lake Maracaibo oil heartland in the western state of Zulia.

"Tomorrow, we will start to recuperate assets and goods that will now belong to the state, as social property, as they should always have been," Chavez said, adding that thousands of workers would be taken on by state oil company PDVSA.

But members of a Zulia business group that represents local oil firms told Reuters soldiers seized the installations of 20 companies on the eastern side of the lake late on Thursday.

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Nuclear Myth-Busting Series: Coalition for Clean Green Saskatchewan

Why Nuclear Power Is Not a Way to Create a Sustainable Society

By Jim Harding, Ph. D.

"Presented at “Planting the Seed: Development and Sustainability of Natural Resources in Saskatchewan,” 6th Annual nrt Conference, siast Woodland Campus, Prince Albert, March 12, 2009 What Does Sustainability Mean? The use of the term “sustainability” grows rapidly and is becoming a catchphrase for everything from “green products” that “sustain” profitable markets, to changing technologies to better “sustain” eco-systems. Some confusion comes from the term “sustainable development,” created in 1987 by the United Nations’ World Commission on Environment and Development. Many government and corporate bodies have defined sustainable development as sustaining perpetual economic growth. But this isn’t the fundamental meaning. In its Overview the un report says that “sustainable development” means humanity meeting “the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”1 In a nutshell, sustainable development is about inter-generational justice – learning to think about “seven generations,” as some Indigenous cultures would put it. There are several aspects to this, the most challenging being reconciling human development with ecological carrying capacity and the limits to growth; also tackling glaring and growing global inequalities, and, as part of this, getting better at meeting basic human needs. Protecting watersheds and biodiversity is paramount."


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