Sunday Blog Patrol in Brief
Shorter Swopa: The Iraqi government ban on using photographs of non-candidates (including revered ayatollahs) in campaign literature is not a move to separate religion and state but is rather compliance with direction from Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who had already complained about the photos.
Surprise! Friends of George do well with oil contracts in Iraq.
Shorter Susie Madrak: Monsanto connived with Bremer to get Iraqi farmers hooked on their genetically engineered seeds that would have to be bought again every year instead of letting Iraqi farmers harvest gratis seeds for the next year as they had been doing for the 6,000 years since they invented agriculture. A similar program in India has been implicated in a rash of suicides by Indian farmers caught in a cycle of debt. And, genetic contamination?
Speaking of poor farmers demanding access to their own resources, a Palestinian demonstration by farmers wanting access to their own land resulted in a mob of Israeli (probably actually American) colonists beating a school teacher bloody. The Palestinian village of Ni`ilin is being blockaded to stop its inhabitants from protesting. A newly leaked secret memo from the legal adviser to the Israeli Foreign Ministry demonstrates that the Israeli government knew all along that its colonization of the Palestinian West Bank was illegal under the 4th Geneva Convention. British Baroness "Jenny Tonge lashed out at the Israelis for their relentless expansion of settlements on Palestinian land in defiance of Geneva Conventions" .
Updates on Iran hysteria at War and Piece.
Cenk urges netroots to pressure Obama on FISA.
Speaking of which, blogger and anti-FISA activist Brian Beutler has been shot in DC and Steve Clemons is suggesting we help him out.
Shorter Oliver Willis: McCain hates the bloggers, loves to invite wire service reporters over for a barbecue. Crooks and Liars has the video.
Shorter Nevada Today: Few states would be better placed to move to solar energy than Nevada: instead it wants more coal-fired plants..
Washblog has a plan for taking our automobile fleet electric & based on wind power. It wouldn't cost more annually than the Iraq War has, and would leave us more energy independent and far less polluting, maybe even saving some of those Florida and California beaches down the road.
Wampum on Viacom as Big Brother. Never mind, ISPs are volunteering to track us for them. Only Legislation is going to stop this monitoring of us, folks. Organize.
Time Line of Loss of Civil Liberties since 9/11
posted by Juan Cole @ 7/06/2008 12:23:00 PM
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8 Comments:
Imagine my shock when I went on the "Friends of World Food Programme" and saw that Monsanto had donated a million dollars to this organization! And even more surprised that the organization had accepted it!
The brutality of the settlers to the Palestinians is too frequently overlooked - in our news roundup on June 12th, we had the following item:
We want to remind you that senseless ethnic violence in the Israeli-Palestinian struggle is a two way street The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem has handed out 100 video cameras to Palestinians as part of their "Shoot Back" campaign. The cameras are intended to document attacks by Israeli settlers in the occupied territories. Now, they have given video to the BBC that shows four young male settlers with their faces obscured wielding baseball bats and beating an elderly shepherd, his wife and their nephew for allowing their animals to graze too close to the settlement community of Susia on Sunday. Video is at the link - and it is not for the faint of heart or weak of stomach.
Video of the attack at the BBC link. Not for the squeamish.
The world will have to switch to renewables sooner or later. Oil and gas will run out.
Sadly, the renewables enthusiast tend to use figures without sufficient understanding and end up with the wrong answers. Here are some common pitfalls:
Equating solar power output with fuel-power. In reality, one should divide solar by 3, if we are lucky. 100MW solar turns into zero MW in the dark, and we also pay for equipment (that needs a lot of energy to build) that sit idle most of the time. Wind and wave are even worse: we can't even predict just how much we can get from them.
The other wrong comparison is in electric power vs gasoline mpg. An electric car can do 7 miles per kWh, multiply by 34 kWh/gal and get 238 mpg! Now the reality check:
The 34 kWh is the thermal energy. A very good power station gets up to 35% efficiency with 25% for older ones, so we are down to 60 to 82 mpg. Distribution can eat up half the output. For 25% total losses we end up with 45 to 62 mpg. Lead-acid batteries suck 1.7kWh for every 1kWh they store: the 238mpg is now 26 to 36 mpg. Electric vehicles also run at lower speeds than normal cars. Running a car at similar speeds to electric vehicles would lead to lower power consumption than electric!
The other common pitfall is the lack of understanding of how collosal the energy the world uses, and therefore how big the job of conversion is. The US-DoE and EIA are good sources for global use and estimates for the future.
Be Informed.
I know this post is out of context, but there was data being requested by commenter "BF" in this blog post:
http://www.juancole.com/2008/07/iran-wars-and-rumors-of-war.html#comments/
I provided the requested information. Unfortunately, the comment section there is not being updated. Could someone please review the message queue for that blog post and publish my comments there?
Please remove this comment.
Thanks
yale
Censoring Iraq
Anbar Province Suicide Bombing
Graphic Images
The us must not signal that it would be acceptable for isreal to bomb Iranian targets
No proxy war with Iran
What can be the thinking behind such apparent madness?
Thank you Professor Cole for the lovely LinkFests over the Independence Day Holiday Weekend!! Much Appreciated! Good Stuff!
"At least 25,000 families left," said the provincial council chairman, Ibrahim Bachilan, a Kurd. "Some are beginning to come back. But whole villages are empty."
Families are generally counted as six people, so that means at least 150,000 people left Diyala. But foreign diplomats in the province say the number is probably two to three times that.
The litany of ruin is hard to fathom: 73 schools and many government buildings have been destroyed, and Baquba’s health center was bombed. About 65 villages have been completely emptied, Mr. Bachilan said.
Not many people come to Baquba from Baghdad these days unless they have to
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