Archives: 2007 October

The poor people of Mosul, Iraq. An Iraq dam near the city of Mosul risks the lives of at least 500,000 of the Iraqis residing in the city of 1,700,000. After suffering through the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein and then more than five years of war and instability under the American occupation their very infrastructure threatens to wipe another 500,000 of them out.

In September 2006, the US Army Corps of Engineers determined that the dam, 45 miles upstream of Mosul on the River Tigris, presented an unacceptable risk and could fail at any time. The dam is the largest in Iraq. The US has warned that the dam is at risk of an imminent collapse that could unleash a 20m (65ft) wave of water on Mosul.

“In terms of internal erosion potential of the foundation, Mosul Dam is the most dangerous dam in the world,” the corps warned, according to the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) report released today. “If a small problem [at] Mosul Dam occurs, failure is likely.

A $27m reconstruction project to help shore up the dam has made little or no progress. It seems that as important as the dam is to the safety of the people of Mosul the dam has not escaped the corruption and poor workmanship that has plagued nearly all construction projects in Iraq. In many instances contractors have been paid in full for work that is of poor quality or that hasn’t even been completed.

Once a contractor has been paid in full good luck on getting him back to complete the work. There have even been some instances where lucky contractors were paid two and three times for the same sorry work. Now that would be an extremely profitable contract for the contractor and show incredible incompetence on the part of the projects management.

Crude oil settled above $93 a barrel today as Mexico’s national oil company, Pemex, decided to suspend a fifth of its crude oil production due to an approaching tropical storm. As the balance between supply and demand is now so close any disruption to supply has an immediate effect on price.

Our privileged lives of enjoying the benefits of cheap energy resources and supplies seem to be about over. While it doesn’t seem that way to most Americans $3.00 a gallon for gasoline is actually a cheap price in most first world economies. For example, in Europe you would have a hard time finding gasoline for less than $4.50 a gallon. 

If you want really cheap gasoline you must travel to countries where gasoline prices are heavily subsidized by the government, like Venezuela, where gasoline is priced at a rock bottom $0.14 a gallon. No wonder Hugo Chavez was reelected.

It’s not just gasoline prices that are posed to soar. Natural gas and heating oil prices are going to be much more expensive this Winter than we are used to paying. And jet fuel. Look at these depressing statistics. You will quickly see that on average jet fuel prices are over 40% higher now than a year ago. And that was before the latest surge in crude oil prices.  

Here is the International Air Transport Association’s take on the prospects for this year. Note that the crude oil market is much higher now than when the comments were made only a month ago. Since jet fuel is such an important part of an Airline’s expense structure we can expect further increases in airline ticket prices.

A treasure trove of information about American Presidents life portraits is yours for the surfing. The site was developed originally to complement C-SPAN’s 20th Anniversary Television Series, American Presidents: Life Portraits that aired during March-December 1999.

Your political affiliation or views really don’t matter. At the American Presidents site you will find just about everything there is to know about the lives of all of the American Presidents, the good, the bad, and occasionally the ugly.

You can watch video presentations of the facts and highlights of each President’s life and terms of office on RealPlayer.  The basic RealPlayer is free. To get it go to the American Presidents web site and click on “watch”. If RealPlayer is not already installed on your computer you will be taken to the RealPlayer site for a free download. It only takes a few minutes for the installation.

For anyone with an interest in American politics and history American Presidents is a fascinating web site. You will learn some amazing things about American Presidents.

The prophet of climate change, James Lovelock, is not at all optimistic about how human contribution to climate change has caused stresses to Gaia’s ( the living earth’s) ecosystems of checks and balances to get hopelessly out of whack. James Lovelock thinks it already too late to reverse the damage to Gaia’s ecosystems.

James Lovelock is not a nutty scientist working in a secret lab somewhere or the other who is trying to gain notice by putting forth a controversial theory for personal gain. Lovelock is one of the most eminent scientists of our time. He says that global warming is irreversible — and that more than 6 billion people will perish by the end of the century. That’s a pretty drastic assessment considering that there are now about 6,600,000 humans living on earth.

Should we listen to this man, this prophet of doom? Sir Richard Branson, the British “Virgin Airlines” entrepreneur, credits Lovelock with inspiring him to pledge billions of dollars to fight global warming. “Jim is a brilliant scientist who has been right about many things in the past,” Branson says. “If he’s feeling gloomy about the future, it’s important for mankind to pay attention.”

Lovelock believes that the magnitude of the catastrophe that awaits us will soon become obvious. By 2020, droughts and extreme weather, like powerful hurricanes will be commonplace. By 2040, the Sahara will be moving into Europe, and Berlin, Germany will be as hot as Baghdad.

Atlanta will become a kudzu jungle. Phoenix will become totally uninhabitable, as will parts of Beijing (desert), Miami (rising seas) and London (floods). Severe food shortages will drive millions of people north, raising political tensions. “The Chinese have nowhere to go but up into Siberia,” Lovelock says. “How will the Russians feel about that? I fear that war between Russia and China is probably inevitable.”

On Thursday the US sanctions Iran’s military Revolutionary Guard as Washington accuses the Revolutionary Guard, its elite Quds Force and several Iranian banks and companies of supporting nuclear proliferation and terror-related activities.

The sanctions measures, announced Thursday by U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, are the first time the U.S. has attempted to punish another country’s military through sanctions. As far as I know proclaiming a sovereign nation’s military as a terrorist organization has never been done before by any nation.

Russia and China were not pleased by the US action. “Dialogue and negotiations are the best approach to resolving the Iranian nuclear issue,” China’s foreign ministry said in a brief statement to The Associated Press. “To impose new sanctions on Iran at a time when international society and the Iranian authorities are working hard to find a solution to the Iranian nuclear issue can only complicate the issue.”

Russian’s President Vladimir Putin was more blunt in his comments. Putin said Thursday that the Kremlin would not back new international sanctions, AP reported. “Why worsen the situation and bring it to a dead end by threatening sanctions or military action?” Putin went on to say say in comments apparently directed directly at the U.S. “Running around like a madman with a razor blade, waving it around, is not the best way to resolve the situation.”

The US sanctions without a doubt ratchet up tensions between Iran and the US, as well as widen the growing differences between the US and China and Russia. The Bush administration doesn’t seem to care very much what other nations think. Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency, has criticized U.S. rhetoric on Iran and said last month that Iran’s declared nuclear material has not been diverted from peaceful use.