James Glanz, NYT: “Iraqi Contracts With Iran and China Concern U.S.”

BAGHDAD, Oct. 17 — Iraq has agreed to award $1.1 billion in contracts to Iranian and Chinese companies to build a pair of enormous power plants, the Iraqi electricity minister said Tuesday. Word of the project prompted serious concerns among American military officials, who fear that Iranian commercial investments can mask military activities at a time of heightened tension with Iran.

– snip –

The Iraqi Electricity Ministry, which Mr. Wahid heads, is one of the few in the central government that has received praise for successfully spending much of the money allocated to it in the Iraqi budget for reconstruction projects. Because of security problems, a shortage of officials who are skilled at writing and executing contracts, and endemic corruption, many of the ministries have either left their rebuilding money unspent or poured it into projects that have had a marginal impact on the quality of life for Iraqi citizens.

One point here seems to be that the Iraqis are ungrateful and unreliable, and are encouraging our our competitors (China) and enemies (Iran), and and giving them footholds in Iraq. This may be so, and it may come at the expense of American contractors like Bechtel. My observations:

  • If Iran and China build or rebuild the power grid, isn’t likely that hey’ll start being blamed for its failures, now worse than it was under Saddam.
  • The essential strategic error of a centralized power brig remains. The only way to guarantee a relatively steady supplyy power is a heavily decentralized network, such as that proposed by the Naval Postgraduate School with its “Solar Eagle” proposal- essentially a solar array on each building in the country, connected to the grid. If what you need to keep going is some battery charging for flashlights, a referigator and fans. To attack the grid you need to attack every building. Which means that effectively attacking the power grid becomes much more difficult – maybe not worth doing.

Here’s our earlier post on “Solar Eagle:” One thing Texas has in common with Iraq – “Solar Eagle” – the Navy Plan to beat the insurgents and help Iraq go solar.    (The Times doesn’t appear to have noticed the “Solar Eagle” proposal – not surprising, in an environment with  to few people and not enought time – the proposal was to learn about except by accident).

Now back to our excerpt from James Glanz’s October 18th piece:

Asked how he had managed to make progress within the bureaucratic morass of much of the Iraqi government, Mr. Wahid said he had simply learned to go it alone. Aside from financing, his main need from the central government was guarantees that Iraqi security forces would protect his workers and the electricity infrastructure.

“Do not annoy me,” Mr. Wahid said was his main message to the government. “Let me do my work.” Continue reading →

Andrée de Jongh, 90, heroine of Belgian Resistance

My hometown paper, The New York Times, routinely publishes obituaries of people one has likely never heard of – but upon reading the obituary are glad the Times has written about them.  (I’ve heard bits and pieces about the editorial process by which the Times  identifies people, during their lifetimes, and keeps a “morgue” file – but I don’t know enough to explain it).  From their obituary of   Andrée de Jongh, of the Belgian resistance, who ran the “Comet” escape line for downed Allied fighters – so named because it was so fast.

Andrée de Jongh, whose youth and even younger appearance belied her courage and ingenuity when she became a World War II legend ushering many downed Allied airmen on a treacherous, 1,000-mile path from occupied Belgium to safety, died Saturday in Brussels. She was 90.

Her death was announced by a Web site for former resistance fighters, verzet.org. There was no information about survivors.

Derek Shuff, in his book ”Evader” (2007), told of three British crewmen whose bomber made a forced landing in 1941. They found their way to the Underground and were ensconced in a safe house when a slip of a young woman appeared.

”My name is Andrée,” the 24-year-old woman said, ”but I would like you to call me by my code name, which is Dédée, which means little mother. From here on I will be your little mother, and you will be my little children. It will be my job to get my children to Spain and freedom.”

She left and the three sat in stunned silence. One finally spoke. ”Our lives are going to depend on a schoolgirl,” he said.

Two of the men survived the grueling trek along what became known as the Comet escape line, because of the speed with which soldiers were hustled along it.

Ms. de Jongh eventually led 24 to 33 expeditions across occupied France, over the Pyrenees to Gibraltar. She herself escorted 118 servicemen to safety. At least 300 more escaped along the Comet line.

When the Germans captured her in 1943, it was her youth that saved her. When she truthfully confessed responsibility for the entire scheme, they refused to believe her.

The citation of her Medal of Freedom With Golden Palm, the highest award the United States presented to foreigners who helped the American effort in World War II, said Ms. de Jongh ”chose one of the most perilous assignments of the war.” Continue reading →

Majikthise : Hurricane Katrina

Journalist and photographer Lindsay Beyerstein has an excellent blog called MajikThise

. Here’s her account of encountering Blackwater personnnel while covering Katrina (internal links omitted):

The scariest people I’ve ever met were the Blackwater guys I found clustered around a van behind a New Orleans hotel shortly after Hurricane Katrina.I saw a lot of disconcerting things during those two weeks, but the one experience that haunts me two years later was a five-minute conversation that crew.

We’d already encountered a few other Blackwater guys during our trip. One juiced up freak in mirrored sunglasses and a Blackwater bearclaw t-shirt actually lunged at our car when my colleague tried to take a picture of the hotel he was guarding. He didn’t point his weapon or yell, or do anything a rational person in a defensive posture might have done. He just grunted really loudly and tried to stick his head in our window.

Mind you, he wasn’t holding a position in an emergency. We were driving in broad daylight through downtown New Orleans with a bunch of other traffic (military and civilian).

The Blackwater dude was acting as a glorified rent-a-cop on the sidewalk, about two blocks from the main media staging area for New Orleans, which was already amply secured by US military and law enforcement.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that these Blackwater guys thought of themselves as frontline soldiers in a literal war zone, ready to use deadly force at the slightest provocation. That was an unfounded estimate, in the middle of the day in downtown New Orleans several days after the city had been secured by the legitimate authorities. Continue reading →

Powerful Geospatial Suite of Free GIS

Mapz: a gis librarian  – a mysterious and anonymous GIS librarian, to boot – has a post which may well answer the question – what do underfunded and non-funded community-based groups do about their GIS needs.

In this post,  My Powerful Geospatial Suite of Free GIS , Mr. Mapz has a pretty impressive list of applications, about which he says:

These are the freely available applications and services that make up my own personal free GIS. Individually, many freely available applications do not of themselves constitute a full geographic information system, but when these are all pulled together within one suite of tools…Well, it is remarkable what someone can do without spending a cent. (And without needing to spend an enormous amount of time developing your own applications out of open source components or needing to learn, or install, complex applications, such as GRASS GIS.)

– snip –

For a more comprehensive freeware software list, see FreeGIS.org.

Mapz also points to a more exhaustive list of resources of desktop GIS applications, including not-free software, at this link on Very Spatial.

The GIS/map piece of the planning function is, without question, critical. There are two barriers, I think – cost and learning curve – that prevent community-based groups from doing more. This is especially true in communities where local government isn’t supporting community planning and response: it’s hard to get to thinking about a steep learning curve when you’re worried that your municipality is slacking on basic safety issues and you’re trying to persuade your neighbors to buy flashlights.

Jonathan Crowe: how the USGS really does it – or, why the USGS is a little like the O.E.D.

The Supreme Being in Time Bandits had Randall, Fidgit, Strutter, Og, Wally and Vermin. ((See alsoWikipedia entry about Time Bandits

for, among other things, theory that Terry Gilliam meant the Bandits to represent the Pythons.)) Jonathan Crowe of Map Room now brings us the new that the

The United States Geological Survey’s National Map makes use of a corps of volunteers, who are assigned a given area (a USGS quad) and report the names and coordinates of various map features, such as schools, town halls and other facilities, and any changes thereto. The sorts of things that aerial surveys might reveal, but not necessarily identify. Sounds interesting — something a dedicated individual with spare time and a GPS might have a lot of fun doing, akin to what OpenStreetMap volunteers are doing in the UK. (U.S. geographic data is in the public domain, so this may well be the next best thing.) Via Very Spatial

and Catholicgauze.

Maproom post here .

Another example of the amazing thing that can be done by volunteers – and by distributed and coordinated teams of people.
The United States Geological Survey’s National Map makes use of a corps of volunteers, who are assigned a given area (a USGS quad) and report the names and coordinates of various map features, such as schools, town halls and other facilities, and any changes thereto. The sorts of things that aerial surveys might reveal, but not necessarily identify. Sounds interesting — something a dedicated individual with spare time and a GPS might have a lot of fun doing, akin to what OpenStreetMap volunteers are doing in the UK. (U.S. geographic data is in the public domain, so this may well be the next best thing.) Via Very Spatial and Catholicgauze.

Suicide Bomber on Bike Kills 29 Iraqi Policemen; highest-ranking American to be injured in Iraq evacuated to hospital in Germany

From Alissa J. Rubin’s piece in this morning’s Times,Suicide Bomber on Bike Kills 29 Iraqi Policemen

Police training in the provincial capital of Baquba turned into a blood bath on Monday when a suicide bomber on a bicycle set off his explosive vest in the midst of policemen, killing 29, the local police said.

A suicide bomber killed seven people just north of Baghdad, and the United States military said a brigadier general had been wounded by a roadside bomb in northern Baghdad, according to The Associated Press. Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Dorko, the highest-ranking American officer to be hurt since the invasion in March 2003, was evacuated to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany. His wounds were not life-threatening, The A.P. said.

That a brigadier general was hurt may be worth noting for the fact that it took so long to happen in a war without a “front.”

The combination of bicycle and suicide vest, however – I don’t think it’s entirely unprecedented. Butit may well make life in Baghdad even more dangerous for bicyclists, as those in the field become more cautious about bicycles. This in a country where – among all the other dangerous things – people are in harm’s way filling vehicle fuel tanks.

Is America a Third World Country?

Once we inspired the world with hope. The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution, The Bill of Rights, these defined the rights of man, all men, and women, and denied the privilege of the self-proclaimed nobility.

Today:

We export food and raw materials.

We import most of our manufactured goods.
We have created a huge private army.

We are in debt up to our eyeballs.
Unlike every other Western country, we don’t provide health care for our citizens.
We teach to the tests, but our education systems are failing. Most, if not all, the Republican Presidential Candidates, and the President, deny scientific theory.
We manufacture less and less.
We don’t do basic research. American companies that still do basic research do it in Asia.
We, who flew to the moon and back, are giving up the space program.
We design less and less.

We are even selling our infrastructure: our roads, highways, and bridges, to the highest bidder.

Once we inspired the world with hope. The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution, The Bill of Rights, these defined the rights of man, all men, and women, and denied the privilege of the self-proclaimed nobility.

Now we allow the government to read our mail and listen to our telephone conversations – for our own protection.

Write your Rep in Congress: in the Senate, and the House.

Exploding manhole covers

Got a question about this the other day; here’s what I know – we’ll add some more information later:

1. An exploding manhole cover is  a predictor of nearby manhole cover explosions. But not necessarily adjacent holes. So if there’s a problem with one – great caution about all area manholes is indicated. 

2. They’re very heavy – and they’ve been measured going as high as 400 feet vertical. After that, they descend (32fps squared, less  drag). Do the math.

Here’s one resource

“How Exploding Manholes Work ,”  by Kevin Bonsor, on HowStuffWorks.com

Sustainable Housing

If each of the 28 panels in the Sean Godsell’s Future Shack, click here for Jon’s post, was a 160 to 200 watt Photo Voltaic solar module, of the type manufactured or used by Akeena Solar

, Evergreen Solar

, First Solar , SunPower, World Water & Solar

, etc

. etc., the structure would be rated at 4.480 to 5.6 kW. In other words, it would be sufficient to power a small house – say your typical 1800 sq ft 3 bedroom single family home anywhere in the US (except the Pacific North-West).

Instant Housing and Designing for Disaster

Jenna Wortham has a piece on Wired.com – “Slideshow: Instant Housing and Designing for Disaster

.”  futureshack.jpg

Above is an image of “FutureShack,” designed by Sean Godsell.  There are eleven others, some familiar to us, others not.  We’ll try to get  more of these up – but if you have time, look at Jenna Wortham’s piece on Wired. (Wortham hs been doing excellent pieces like this, on other appropriate technology, great pieces on RFID issues – and she’s also, apparenly, Wired’s

editor in charge of evaluating haggis and other things that at least some people have trouble thinking about eating. Are we missing a connection here?

"Dirty Water = Dead Iraqis"

AcademyWingman, points out in this post the folly of interrupting or slowing chlorine shipments because insurgents have used the trucks as weapons or targets (and as targets then immediately incorporated into the weapon, so to speak), creating deadly chlorine gas.

I urge you to read WingManX’s perceptive post – and assuming you have – I’d add the following points;

–  WingmanX contends that fear itself is a force multiplier for the insurgents; well put!  ;

– in a parallel manner, the chlorine becoms a force multiplier for an IED or truck bomb;

– But – the chlorine isn’t just chlorine  it’s like a big water truck – because the entire water supply’s cleanliness – the health of the entire Iraqi people depends  on potable water. If there were water deliveries – wouldn’t we devote great tactical and strategic forces – and intellectual resources- to making sure the population gets water? This is like letting people die of thirst – but slower  – because they’re dying not from dehydration (no water at all), but water-borne diseases, like dysentery;

In other words, if the enemy can bait us into depriving the Iraqi population of water – and our role there is to protect the Iraqis, and help them to rebuild, who’s winning if the chlorine can’t get through? The bad guys win big. They’re essentially dictating our strategy.
– See also last week’s coverage of Iraq’s power grid plans. They’re doing deals with the Chinese and the Iranians – for multi-megawatt systems. Entirely susceptible to attack. Apparently no one at the energy ministry has read the NPS “Solar Eagle” proposal – or anything abotu network theory.

– Robert Baer – in See No Evil 

described that sttae of sewer and water systems in one or two large Saudi cities – where subpar binLaden family construction has left the water system at risk for leaking from the sewage

system. (I’ll get a copy of the book and a page citation tomorrow).

We owe these people an infrastructure at least as good as what we found when we got there.

Prius V Hummer – the Battle for the Streets

NYC LimosNYC DOT

This battle is being fought, and will be won, on the streets. And in New York City the hybrids are winning. New York’s Dept. of Transportation and other agencies are replacing their Ford Taurus and Contours with Prius and Civic Hybrids, not Hummers.

As of May of this year, 375 of approx. 13,000 yellow cabs had hybrid engines. The City has mandated that by 2012, 100% of the yellow taxi fleet must be hybrids. Link to NYC press release here. The new Ford Escape Hybrids get 30 MPG. The vehicle they will replace, the Ford Crown Victoria, gets 14 mpg. Taxi drivers in NYC absorb all the operating costs, including gas. So if they can spend less money on gas – they pocket the difference, and they make more money. $9,000, assuming 80,000 miles and $3.00 per gallon.

The next step will be the 38,540 livery vehicles licensed by the Taxi and Limousine Commission, often referred to as “black cars,” the predominant model being black Lincoln Town Cars, which also get about 12 miles per gallon.

There is no government mandate to switch, however, a combination of market forces and one government incentive seems to have sparked the beginning of a change in the right direction. Outside Goldman Sachs‘ offices on Pearl and Broad, across the street from Fraunces Tavern, at any given time, you can see two or three Prius “limos” among the Town Cars. The Priuses get 40 mpg. The Lincolns get 12. The fuel costs for a Lincoln are about $20,000 per year, three and a half times higher than $6,000 for a Prius. Which translates to $14,000 more for the drivers.

The drivers love them – they pocket the cash. The passengers love them – they are a much quieter ride, they are better for the environment, and as an added bonus, they are permitted to use the High Ooccupancy Vechicle / Low Emissions Vehicle aka (Clean Pass) lanes. In New York rush-hour traffic, this could cut some trips in half – and cut from half an hour to an hour off of a rush-hour trip to Newark or La Guardia.

They’re also good enough for the United States Army’s Special Operations Command, which includes the Special Forces, and would include the Delta Force, if it officially existed.

For other large groups of vehicles – the Postal Service, the New York City Police Department, our ambulances – using hybrid engnes isn’t even part of the public discussion, yet. But it will be. Write your Rep in Congress. Senate – Click Here , House, Click Here.