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Posted by b on April 12, 2005 at 02:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (103)
Billmon: 04/11
On 'Dobson and his fellow ayatollahs'
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Well, it's only the House upside down, but a very nice lecture in contemporary history.
Posted by b on April 11, 2005 at 01:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)
Consumer Experience
The vacuum cleaner nozzle has some problems and I drew the task to care for a spare part. I hate to fight with customer services. The machine is several years old and I expected trouble.
I wrote down the model number and got on the web. After four clicks through the Miele site I reached the repair part order page. But damn, how archaic, there was nothing I could do online, just a phone number. Well, at least it was toll free.
Expecting a long callcenter hassle I first grabbed a fresh cup of tea.
First surprise - I did get connected within ten seconds and rerouted to the right desk in another ten.
Second
surprise - a friendly female voice asking understandable questions.
Within one minute she had looked up the part number and had it entered together with my
address into her system.
Third suprise - she said the part would leave their
warehouse this afternoon and be delivered by regular post service
within two days max. Costs are €48.34, payment is cash on delivery. She
also recommended some herb pills for my sore voice.
Time to drink that tea now. Mhh, what are the other products this company sells....
Posted by b on April 11, 2005 at 08:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (18)
Billmon: 04/10(2)
Not really Ex yet, but soon to be: The Ex-TerminatorPosted by b on April 11, 2005 at 02:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (31)
The Nuclear Option
I have been requested to write about France's nuclear energy programme. It's a huge subject, and I have already spent too many hourse researching it, so what I will do now is provide a brief summary and a number of links that I have found for those of you that are interested in finding out more.
For the surrender-monkey-lovers amongst you, you can also go read my third installment on the French campaign for the referendum for or against the EU Consititution: EU Constitution - France Votes (III) What if it's no?
So here we go.
Nuclear energy in France is big:
France is the second largest producer of nuclear energy after the US, with 58 reactors (104 in the USA) on 19 sites.
Map of French nuclear plants (click on the "Nuclear" icon on the right)
More detailed map with the technical parameters of each nuclear plant (1 page pdf))
As this document (Nuclear Power in France - why does it work?) describes, nuclear energy was first developed at a leisurely pace in the 60s and given a massive boost when the oil crisis struck. A massive programme was launched by the public authorities in 1975, which led to the wholesale replacement of fuel and coal-fired power plants by nuclear ones.
(Source)
This was a fully centralised programme. EDF, the national electricity operator (then a monopoly) borrowed money with the sovereign guarantee of France to pay for it. It was built for the most part by French companies, but interestingly, it used a US technology (pressurised water) under license (developed by Westinghouse) because it was cheaper than the technology (using graphite) which had been developed so far in France. All 58 plants use the same technology, although the more recent reactors are more powerful than the earlier ones. All the companies involved in that effort were eventually consolidated into Areva, which is now the main industrial player in the sector and involved in the whole nuclear chain, from uranium mining to plant construction, and fuel processing and treatment:
EDF is the operator of all plants, but safety is regulated by an independent watchdog, the Autorité de Sûreté Nucléaire (website in French only, as far as I can tell). Environmentalists say (in French, again) that the watchdog cannot be considered to be independent as it is a government department and the State is the owner of EDF and strongly pro-nuclear... I am going into this debate here but provide various links below if you want to investigate further...
Thanks to the fact the all plants are identical, have been bought under a very long term plan (over 25 years) and are operated by a single entity, operating costs are quite low. The final cost of electricity per kWh also benefits from the fact that funds for the programme were borrowed using the very low rates that highly rated sovereign countries can obtain, and amortised over very long periods (initially 30 years, but the life of the older plants has been officially extended to 40 and it is likely that they will be further expansions). 5% interest rate over 40 years vs 8% over 20 years makes a huge difference, and the overall cost of electricity in France is very low. France exports electricity to all its neighbors, including the UK and Germany, and is competitive in all markets.
European Electricity prices in 2002 (click on picture for a bigger version, or on the link for the original)
Please note that, despite pretty much everything that you read in the financial press, EDF has NOT RECEIVED a centime from the French government in the past 25 years. Quite the opposite: it has regularly been "raided" by the government when there were budgetary crises (through special taxes or "dividends"), and it has also been used to fight inflation (by being forced to lower its prices regularly). It is a highly competitive electricity producer, and that's the main reason why there are few competitors in France - it makes no sense to build new plants when you already have a massive supply of very cheap electricity.
I put out the following table in my previous diary on wind power:
(my calculations from various sources which I'll be happy to provide upon demand. I have modified some numbers somewhat to avoid giving out any confidential information when necessary)
The nuclear numbers come from this study made by the French Ministry of Industry (see a summary in English (pdf, 4 pages))
That table shows the importance of the interest rate hypothesis and thus the value in this industry of having a national player able to capture value on the financial markets by borrowing a lot cheaper than private operators.
On the emissions side, with nuclear making 80% of production and hydro another 10%, France's carbon emissions are logically amongst the lowest in the industrialised world:
The other big advantage of nuclear is to avoid dependency on foreign supplies for electricity production. A good fraction of the uranium is imported, but it comes from friendly countries like Canada or Australia, as well as from some African countries with a "friendly" French presence like Niger. France thus produces 50% of its energy needs overall from domestic sources, versus 26% in 1973.
The last big topics are that of plant decommissioning and nuclear waste.
Two big reports on these topics have been published by independent bodies in recent weeks, so there is a lot of information available, unfortunately most of it is in French. The debate is quite lively here, but I have not found many references in the English speaking press. Here are the reports:
Parliament evaluation of nuclear waste management options (March 2005, in French)
Cour des Comptes report on decommissioning and nuclear waste (in French; the Cour des Comptes is the financial watchdog for all public entities, it is fiercely independent).
The summary (15 page pdf, in French) of the document of the Cour des Comptes is as follows:
- risks linked to operations are well identified
- risks linked to waste management are well identified and managed. Decisions on long term storage are pending (they are due in 2006, see next report)
- decommissioning and waste storage are well estimated and amount to about 10% of production costs. However, the absolute numbers are quite high.
- current provisions by the 3 main actors of the sector (EDF, Areva and CEA, the Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique, which runs R&D and manages some of the older reactors) amount to 71 billion euros
- full transparency is required in the accounting of these provisions and their plans of use (these should be set in stone and not be subject to short term contingencies). Only Areva fulfills this requirement at this point.
As regards the long term management of nuclear waste, a specific agency, ANDRA was created by a 1991 law, with a 15 year mission to find a long term solution for nuclear waste. 3 axis or research were examined: (i) separation and transmutation (transforming nuclear elements into other, less noxious, elements by chemical processes and isolating the more radioactive ones from the rest) (ii) long term permanent storage of waste in deep geological layers and (iii) temporary storage of certain elements in the expectation that they can be processed at a later stage.
All 3 are expected to be pursued, and the choice of the site for long term geological storage, that of La Bure, in Eastern France, is close to being made.
The report proposes to pursue all 3 and sets a detailed plan over the next 35 years to organise it. It provides detailed estimates of the expected cost of the whole process and proposes to create a specific fund, to be funded by the nuclear industry, to pay for it over the corresponding period.
Other reports (such as this one, Lifetime of Nuclear Power Plants and New Designs of Reactors (in English, for once)) address the question of how and when to replace the existing power plants in the long term. France has now taken the decision to build a demonstration version of the "EPR" (European Pressurised Water Reactor), a new generation of reactor built on the same technology as the existing ones, with incremental improvements. It would be built by Areva and Siemens, and has also been ordered by Finland.
France is happy with nuclear energy and intends to continue using it on a large scale. It has workes so far because it has been run in a highly centralised way, with one operator with the full backing of the State under a very long term plan. Both the operator and the public supervisory body have a strong engineering culture with an emphasis on technical excellence and safety, and they are generally trusted, despite occasional lapses in transparency which are increasingly corrected nowadays.
The full costs of the programme appear to be mostly accounted for, and nuclear plants have provided cheap electricity to France over the past 20 years at no cost to the public purse.
If this appears too good to be true, well, maybe it is! I don't claim full neutrality on this topic, being French, and an alumni of the same engineering school as many of the top people at EDF and Areva, but, as you may be remember, I am a big supporter of wind power and I still see a need for nuclear energy as the "base load". Let's be clear: it's going to be nuclear or coal, and I will let Plan9 (from dKos) argue how much worse coal is!
That's it for now.
To keep you busy, here are a few more links on the topic that I have found interesting, coming from both nuclear proponents and opponents (you know, fair and balanced and all that):
Nuclear energy today (OECD, 2005)
World Nuclear Association's "Nuclear Energy made simple
LockerGnome encyclopedia on Nuclear Power
Office for Nuclear Affairs of the French Embassy in the US
EDF's page in English on nuclear energy
Areva's description of its industrial activities in the "nuclear cycle"
2004 Report on Nuclear Safety (114p, pdf, in French)
Breakdown of electricity production and CO2 emissions (click on the respective links for separate pop up windows.)
'Learn more about Plutonium' page (6 page pdf)
Sortir du nucléaire (getting away from nuclear energy) the French umbrella group of most anti-nuclear associations (in French only)
Greenpeace's "End the nuclear threat"
Eole vs Pluton, a Greenpeace campaign comparing the costs of investing in nuclear energy or wind energy in the future.
Posted by Jérôme à Paris on April 10, 2005 at 06:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (41)
Heritage Foundation Doubts Bush MBA
The Heritage Foundation says Bush's MBA may not be the real thing.
This Reuters report on Ben Bernanke as a possible successor for Alan Greenspan cites William Beach from the conservative Heritage Foundation:
[He] said Bernanke possesses one credential crucial for any Greenspan replacement: The ability to translate econo-speak into plain language.
"Bush is going to want to appoint someone who can sit down with him and speak in a language he understands," Beach said.
According to his official bio
President Bush received a Master of Business Administration from Harvard Business School in 1975.
The second-term Required Courses in the Harvard MBA program includes
Business, Government, and the International Economy (BGIE)
This course introduces tools for studying the economic environment of business to help managers understand the implications for their companies.
Students will learn the impact of:
- National income and balance of payment accounting
- Exchange rate theory
- Political regimes
An examination of both the gains and problems arising from regional global integration covers:
- International trade
- Foreign direct investment
- Portfolio capital
- Global environmental issues
That sounds like an awful lot of econo-speak to me. Heritage's Beach thinks that's not "a language he understands". Thereby Beach doubts the value of Bush's MBA degree?
Do you? Leave your comment and/or ask him.
Posted by b on April 10, 2005 at 04:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)
Copywrong
The Internationale is still under capitalist copyright control, as is 'Happy Birthday to You'.
Meanwhile Sony has patented `The Matrix´ idea:
According to the patent, which was granted in the U.S. in 2003, the method of brain stimulation centers on low-frequency pulses that stimulate the neural cortex without requiring any kind of implant.
(the sex industry would love that technology, but)
Sony reportedly described the patented technology as speculative work, and conceded there have been no experiments with it yet -- and no prototype device exists.
So one obviously may patent pure speculation that something may work in future, without an idea how it may work and without any experiments and prototypes?
Two points on why this is wrong are obvious to me:
1. Unreasonable copyright stifles new art (in The Internationale case a movie) and patents like the above will stop anyone working in that field to develop something that might turn out to work like the idea Sony patented.
2. If laws like those covering copyright and patents become unreasonable they are not accepted by the public and will be circumvented or ignored. This creates a general aversion against the "rule of law" and undermines the society.
Posted by b on April 10, 2005 at 12:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)
Billmon: 04/10
About the "rule of law" nonsense: A Measure of Justice
Rarely has a conviction given me such pure physical pleasure:
Convicted in the nation's first felony case against illegal spamming, Jeremy Jaynes, 30, on Friday was sentenced to nine years in prison for bombarding Internet users with the junk e-mails.
My only regret is that the jury didn't see fit to sentence young Jeremy to the full medieval rehabilitation routine (including a nice, long counseling session on the rack), followed by drawing and quartering.
Posted by b on April 10, 2005 at 05:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Sujet Libre
Pour toutes discussions, commentaires, articles, émotions, enthousiasmes à partager.
Le précédent: Open Thread 05-35
Posted by Jérôme à Paris on April 9, 2005 at 06:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (68)
Billmon: 04/09
Posted by b on April 9, 2005 at 02:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)
Some Sleep, Others Dream
by anna missed,pigment incised into douglas fir (detail, compressed);
full (130 KByte)
.. the unit transported an embedded reporter to a site "where school supplies were to be handed out to needy students," according to the Dec. 21 restricted "Official Use Only" report for the Center for Army Lessons Learned.
An excellent idea, but when they arrived at the school, the unit was "surprised to find that no schoolchildren were present and that an Iraqi family was homesteading in the building," the report said. What's more, "the Iraqi police were unwilling to remove the family and no school supplies" could be issued because the children were nowhere to be found.
...
"Fortunately," the Army folks said in their report, "the reporter elected not to cover the event, which could have made us look bad, since we didn't know what was going on with the school after we funded its construction." The reporter, who was not named, "understood what had happened and had other good coverage to use . . . rather than airing any of this event."
No News Is Good News
Posted by b on April 9, 2005 at 01:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)
Billmon: 04/08
on why you should not throw pies at "people for exercising their free speech rights, even if they are the vile scumsucking lackeys of crazed right-wing multimillionaires -- or even worse, David Horowitz."
Posted by Jérôme à Paris on April 8, 2005 at 02:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (53)
Condoleezza's Evidence
"We all know that the Iraq case was a difficult case because Saddam Hussein went out of his way to hide what he was doing, to deceive. There were obviously efforts to deceive on the short side as well as on the -- in the sense that he was perhaps giving the impression that he had things that he did not have, as well as efforts to hide that which he did have."
Secretary Rice in an Associated Press interview
---
`There's more evidence to come yet, please your Majesty,' said the White Rabbit, jumping up in a great hurry; `this paper has just been picked up.'
`What's in it?' said the Queen.
`I haven't opened it yet, said the White Rabbit, `but it seems to be a letter, written by the prisoner to--to somebody.'
`It must have been that,' said the King, `unless it was written to nobody, which isn't usual, you know.'
`Who is it directed to?' said one of the jurymen.
`It isn't directed at all,' said the White Rabbit; `in fact, there's nothing written on the outside.' He unfolded the paper as he spoke, and added `It isn't a letter, after all: it's a set of verses.'
`Are they in the prisoner's handwriting?' asked another of they jurymen.
`No, they're not,' said the White Rabbit, `and that's the queerest thing about it.' (The jury all looked puzzled.)
`He must have imitated somebody else's hand,' said the King. (The jury all brightened up again.)
`Please your Majesty,' said the Knave, `I didn't write it, and they can't prove I did: there's no name signed at the end.'
`If you didn't sign it,' said the King, `that only makes the matter worse. You MUST have meant some mischief, or else you'd have signed your name like an honest man.'
There was a general clapping of hands at this: it was the first really clever thing the King had said that day.
`That PROVES his guilt,' said the Queen.
Alice's Evidence
via WaPo's In the Loop column
Posted by b on April 8, 2005 at 12:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (14)
Billmon: 04/07
UPDATE:
Yeah, let's dance! From Russia With Cash Russian Dressing
---
Schiavo memo, Heilrocket, Powerline, Power Lie
---
Healing the sick, sheltering the homeless, caring for the poor, comforting the dying, consoling the grief-stricken, providing emergency relief to the disaster-stricken, educating the children (in places where they otherwise woudn't be) -- these are hardly small things, and the church does them all over the world every day. They don't usually make the papers or become discussion topics in the political blogosphere, but they make an enormous difference in the reduction of human misery on the planet.
But that's precisely why, on further reflection, John Paul II's failings seem so grievous to me, and why I should have confronted them more directly in my earlier post. By endangering the church's going-concern value, he may have done great harm to the world, creating costs which future shareholders will be paying for generations to come.
Posted by b on April 7, 2005 at 01:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (75)
Good (Personal) News
This is simply an update (with GOOD news) about my 4-year-old son and his/our fight against a brain tumor.
For those of you here who are not familiar with the story, you can go to the diary I posted a few weeks ago on dKos: The kindness of strangers - an internet odyssey. and to the earlier posts at the Annex, copied here.
Today, we went to do a new MRI scan of his brain, and I am incredibly happy to report that what was left of the tumor is now no longer visible. It is by no means certain that every single malign cell is gone, but it is certainly going in the right direction. The ongoing treatment (chemiotherapy) will continue as decided earlier, i.e. until the end of this year, but it will certainly be less stressful for us. Tonight, we drank champagne and actually enjoyed it.
He is still partly paralysed on the right side (basically, he has lost the control of his knee, ankle and hand), so it's not like this will ever be totally over as it is highly unlikely that he will recover in full. He goes to physical therapy almost everyday to get back as much as he can of his motricity, and he is now able to walk on his own and hold light objects in his hand. We are hoping for more progress in the coming months, but he cannot get dressed on his own yet, he cannot play with a Gameboy or the like, and he cannot hold a ball (thankfully, he is left-handed).
One of the reasons I am writing here and on dKos and telling about this in particular is that I am really scared of what would happen if our civilisation failed and we ended up back into survival mode, à la Terminator, where the ability to hold his own would be a vital competence. I have little doubt that he can have a fine life in our current world, but not in any "end of the world" scenario, and I see that the probability of these has increased significantly in recent years (since November 2000, to be precise...), with the energy crisis, economic unbalances and geopolitical challenges that I see ahead of us, not to mention the rise of fundamentalism throughout the world, including the dark "reddening" of significant part of the USA.
I see dKos as one ofthe best places where the good fight is being waged, where smart and fine people meet and discuss and exchange information and prepare action to bring back some sanity to the place where it matters the most today in our world: in Washington, and in each local community. This site now has a amazing (and well deserved) reach, and I want to bring my small contribution to that fight, in the form of information and awareness on the issues which I know about, and which will matter increasingly in coming months and years, in the energy and financial sectors and in developing contacts and sorely needed understanding between America and Europe.
Moon of Alabama is different, in that it is a much smaller community, but it is a place of amazing quality, and I am still stunned every day by the depth, variety and humanity of the comments posted here. I leanr every day, and it is you guys that motivated to write on a regular basis and that set the standards to meet...
I am very grateful for all the attention which has been given to my posts and diaries, and I will try to continue to deserve this and contribute here, for my son, for my daughters and wife, and for all of us, whether in the US or elsewhere in the world.
Never hesitate to send me requests for posts or topics, I will just do it...
And as this is a political blog, just one political "exploitation" of my story, by reminding you all that not only is my son fully covered by our national health care system, but my wife actually gets a decent monthly stipend so that she can stop working to take care of him full time. (and our younger 2-year-old daughter is full time in a government funded kindergarden for which we pay 350 euros per months. The older one is going to pre-school for free). It is totally incomprehensible to all Europeans that such care is not available to everybody in the US, and that the lifes of entire families can be wrecked completely by an accident of fate like ours, in having to pay for it in addition to dealing with the pain of it. How can this not be a massively popular campaign issue??
Anyway, the Americans amongst you think the same already, and are doing what you can to change that, and I don't want to sound like an arrogant French (I am one of course, but that's another topic ;-) ). So, as a last word, I'd like to say thanks again to the whole community for its support, for all the kind words of encouragement and compassion that have come my way, and again, for showing the better face of the world and providing sorely needed hope.
PS - as for the other little girl I mentioned in my previous diary, she is hanging in there. She is about to start a very risky radiotherapy, with unpredictable side effects (because of her age), but the last surgery she went through was successful, so there still is hope for her.
Posted by Jérôme à Paris on April 6, 2005 at 05:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (39)
Billmon: 04/06
It's all about "taking back" the country. And, as with most radicalized movements, it's not at all clear where they would draw the line.
Which is why when I hear Sen. Cornyn ranting about "foreign influence" in the U.S. legal system, it makes me very nervous. Cornyn may be just another pompous hack, but that kind of talk reminds me too much of another right-wing politician who also promised a "purging of the nation, and particularly of the intellectual classes, of influences of foreign origin."
Posted by b on April 6, 2005 at 03:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)
Open Thread 05-35
Your news, views, opinions ...Posted by b on April 6, 2005 at 01:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (75)
Free Baluchistan
Via Soj comes a news report about China's Prime Minister Wen Jiabao visit to Pakistan. A treaty of friendship and cooperation was signed and someone dropped a geopolitical bomb:
Briefing newsmen about official talks, Pakistan Ambassador to China Salman Bashir said the 'most important' aspect of the talks were the "clear and unambiguous, categorical assurance by China to defend Pakistan's sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity".
Clear, unambiguous, categorical assurance is exactly what one likes to have when there is some geopolitical game going on - and it is extremely strong diplomatic language.
Why is Pakistan turning its back to the United States and falling into China's arms?
The area of interest is Baluchistan in the south west corner of Pakistan. A huge mountainous underdeveloped plateau with only some 7.5 million tribal inhabitants, the Baluch.
There has always been trouble between Pakistan and the proud Baluch, a small people also living in southern Afghanistan and eastern Iran. But now issues are heating up again.
There are several parties who have strategic interests in Baluchistan.
The United States is still dreaming of a gas pipeline from the Turkmenistan south through Afghanistan and Baluchistan to the Arabian see. Long term troop stationing in landlocked Afghanistan will also demand a safe line of communication to a seaport.
India wants a gas pipeline from Iran eastward through Baluchistan to Delhi.
But the biggest interest in Baluchistan is Chinese. All sea traffic from the Middle Easter resource fields and East Africa to China now has to go through the Malacca Strait and also pass India and the Philippines. Strategically it is a nightmare to keep this route open in case of a hot or cold global conflict.
China has therefore invested $420 million into developing a deep sea harbor at Gawadar in Baluchistan. A second investment phase of $600 million is planed. From Gawadar land transport routes lead up in north eastern direction to the Chinese-Pakistan boarder. To protect the new harbor Pakistan will even get four modern Chinese frigates.
For Pakistan these plans are all positive. Being the transport hub for neighbor countries pays off financially and adverts conflicts as it creates common interests.
But the strategic interest of the U.S. does differ from Pakistan's. A completely U.S. controlled Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Baluchistan pipeline would be nice. To advert an Iran-Baluchistan-India pipeline would help U.S. interests against Iran and to deny China access to the Arabian sea checks the upcoming competitor. (As does keeping a hand on Unacol)
For about a year now Baluchistan is heating up again. There have been protests, bombs exploding and pipeline attacks. A low level guerrilla war has started even while the Pakistan government is pushing money into the region and develops the water infrastructure.
One wonders who or what might feed this guerrilla war. Who could have an interest in an independent, small, sparse inhabited Baluchistan?
Pakistan was just allowed to buy 24 F16 fighters and the media displayed this as an example of Pakistan-American partnership. But this decision was probably made more in the interest of 5,000 Lockheed voters in Ft. Worth, Texas, who would have been fired without this deal.
A small tribal guerrilla war, supported by a few secret special forces and some Dollars could easily escalate and lead into an independence movement in Baluchistan which would be hard to overcome by military means. Pakistan's President Musharraf will have recognized the possibilities and has decided to go with China.
I now expect a "Free Baluchistan Act" to be on next years congressional agenda.
Posted by b on April 6, 2005 at 12:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (39)
Do Emperors Need Passports?
U.S. Will Tighten Passport Rules writes The Washington Post. Passport rules for United States citizens are meant, not just for foreigners. In future, when traveling to Canada, Mexico or the Caribbean, U.S. citizens will only be allow a return to the States, when they have a valid passport. A driver license will no longer be sufficient.
Other parts of the world are opening their borders and make it easier to travel. In Europe the Schengen agreement allows the people to travel between fifteen countries, and more in future, without any border controls or passports.
This type of Homeland Security makes me wonder what the administration really anticipates to be a security risk.
In fact I think the singularity of 9/11 is not the reason for this, it is rather the excuse. It is another step in a new isolationist wave in the U.S. that will develop far further than we now imagine. The real reason behind this is the fear and uncertainty of a falling empire. Emperors do not need passports.
Posted by b on April 6, 2005 at 09:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)
President Orders Flags Half Staff
The White House via RBN - April 5, 2005
A Proclamation by the President of the United States of America
As a mark of respect for His Holiness Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Husayni Sistani, I hereby order, by the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States of America, that the flag of the United States shall be flown at half staff at the White House and on all public buildings and grounds, at all military posts and naval stations, and on all naval vessels of the Federal Government in the District of Columbia and throughout the United States and its Territories and possessions until sunset on the day of his interment. I also direct that the flag shall be flown at half staff for the same period at all United States embassies, legations, consular offices, and other facilities abroad, including all military facilities and naval vessels and stations.
...
GEORGE W. BUSH
Link 1, 2
Posted by b on April 5, 2005 at 06:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (14)
Billmon: 04/05
...and more...
Posted by Jérôme à Paris on April 5, 2005 at 02:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (18)
Spell-Bound
by anna missed,pigment incised into douglas fir (detail),
full, (130 KByte)
"I’ve been enchanted with the shows these last few weeks. The thing that strikes me most is the fact that the news is so… clean. It’s like hospital food. It’s all organized and disinfected. Everything is partitioned and you can feel how it has been doled out carefully with extreme attention to the portions- 2 minutes on women’s rights in Afghanistan, 1 minute on training troops in Iraq and 20 minutes on Terri Schiavo! All the reportages are upbeat and somewhat cheerful, and the anchor person manages to look properly concerned and completely uncaring all at once."
Riverbend, April 03, 2005: American Media...
Posted by b on April 5, 2005 at 11:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)
Billmon: 04/04
Coffee anybody? Matched Set
Horowitz organizes "Workers for Economic Freedom": Intellectual Consistency
Emperor Hirohito on Social Security legislation: Masters of Understatement
Posted by b on April 4, 2005 at 03:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Billmon: 04/03
You will love this one: Technical Difficulties
How to Make a Conservative's Head Explode
Posted by Jérôme à Paris on April 4, 2005 at 05:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)
Future Oil Production. Some Scenarios
As I posted this, I just saw that Billmon had put up a new post on a related topic, so I suggest to discuss both in the same thread:
---------------------------------------------
To start with, the rosy one...
Despite their recent warning that oil production was very tight and that it might make sense to engage in measures to reduce energy demand, the International Energy Agency still has a surprisingly optimistic view of future oil production, as shown by this graph (copied from the paper version of Le Monde, sorry if the quality is not great, I could not find a direct link, the source is an IEA publication that you need to buy):
The left graph represents oil production, in million barrels per day. The various layers are the following, starting from the bottom:
- fields in exploitation;
- known reserves to be put in production;
- optimisation of the extraction of existing fields;
- "unconventional" oil (deep offshore, tar sands, ...);
- exploitation of fields yet to be discovered.
The right graph indicates the proportion of transport in world demand for oil.
Pleasantly enough, oil production keeps on growing regularly, and ends up providing pretty much for what the demand is expected to be in 2030 (around 120 mb/d, as opposed to 80-85 mb/d today).
That's the official position of the international body which was specifically created by Western countries, led by the USA, to manage the 70s oil crisis, coordinate strategic oil reserves and generally encourage better practices to reduce energy demand. They are the people paid by our governments to worry about oil - and they don't.
So, end of story?
Well, as you can guess, probably not.
The problem can be seen in the various following graphs:
(From The Struggle for Oil, by Bernard Cloutier)
This shows that for every single of the last 20 years, we have found less oil reserves than we have consumed worlwide. (technically, the graph does not show the last 5 years, but this held true then as well, even in 2001 when the discovery of the Kashagan field in the Northern Caspian, one of the five largest ever, was confirmed)
So we are going through the reserves of the past, at an increasingly fast pace.
And guess what, these reserves are not in the best places form our perspective:
(From Peak Oil: a lecture at the Technical University of Clausthal by C.J. Campbell, a Britsh geologist, in December 2000)
North America has pretty much used up all its oil reserves, and will depend not just increasingly, but exclusively, on imports from the Persian Gulf. Africa, Latin America and Russia (Eurasia) are already past their peak and will not contribute that much in the long run.
This gets us to a third item, taken from the same Campbell presentation:
The reserves of many of the OPEC countries are highly suspicious, in that they were arbitrarily reevaluated in the mid 80s, with no objective reasons behind these changes (no new discoveries or methodology to appraise fields). In fact, Venezuela started off that "reserve" war as this was one of the criteria to distribute production quotas. It happened as oil prices had just crashed from 25 to 10$/bbl after Saudi Arabia decided to fllod the market to show its real power. Other countries followed suit to neutralise the early movers, and as you can see, reserve estimates has not changed since them (they have not even been ajusted for actual production in that period). There have been no outside evaluations of the reserves of most of these countries, and we are thus stuck today with 20-year-old politically motivated numbers...
Saudi Arabia's oil production has been stagnant over the past 15 years, and has yet to reach its level of 1980:
There are serious doubts that they can increase their production beyond the current levels: they have basically used up all their spare capacity in 2003 and 2004 to compensate the temporary loss of Iraq's production due to the war and the spur in demand of last year. The recent announcements by OPEC that quotas would be raised did not help to bring oil prices down as the market does not believe anymore that OPEC has the capacity to increase production in the short term).
Campbell suggests that the Persian Gulf producers will be able to increase production levels from current levels:
but that this time, in the face of depletion in other regions, this will be barely enough to maintain total production over the coming years. In the face of strong demand growth, the only way to balance the market will be, like in the 70S, but on a larger scale, high enough prices to reduce demand (with the corresponding economic dislocation):
And that's not yet the bad news...
The first piece of bad news is that peak oil is going to be followed soon afterwards by peak gas - which means that electricity generation will become an issue not long after transportation has come to the fore front (considering that gas-fired plants have been the technology of choice in the past 10 years all over the world, especially in the US and Western Europe, and that investment lead times are significant):
(from Campbell)
The second piece of bad news is that we are coming very near the point (or may even have passed it) when the discrepancy between real reserves ("technical reserves") and declared reserves ("political reserves") cannot be hidden anymore, as this graph suggests:
(from Modelling future liquids production from extrapolation of the past and from ultimates (pdf) by Jean Lahererre, presentation on May 23, 2002 in Uppsala - his introduction is interesting if you want to know what "reserves" actually mean, and what liquids are counted)
The third piece of bad news is that, despite the current situation, neither the oil majors nor the national oil companies of the big producing countries are investing much to develop production, despite their record profits or revenues. This is clearly a sign that there is nowhere to invest more than what they are doing, and that it is thus highly unlikely that the production growth scenario of the AEI will come to pass.
Posted by Jérôme à Paris on April 3, 2005 at 06:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (36)
Another Open One
Your news, views, opinions, ...
Posted by b on April 3, 2005 at 06:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (62)
Billmon: Beyond Our Means
The World and Easter Islands: Beyond Our Means
Posted by b on April 3, 2005 at 06:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Billmon: Bring It On
Right now I'm picturing Shrub and the Bug Man up on the wall at the Alamo, looking out at Santa Anna's army as line after line of soldiers move into position for the attack.
"Bring 'em on," Shrub screams as the bugles blare out the deguello -- the traditional call that signifies no prisoners will be taken.
"Damn straight, George. You tell 'em," croaks the Bug Man. "Ain't no raggedy ass greaser army gonna git inside this here fort. Nosirreebob."
Link
Posted by b on April 3, 2005 at 01:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (15)
What if ..
... your teen already had sex?
If you find out your son or daughter has already had sex, it's important for you to take them to a health care professional to be screened for pregnancy and/or sexually transmitted diseases. Be sure to tell your teen that having multiple partners in their lifetime can be one of the biggest threats to their physical and emotional health.
U.S. federal taxes spend on 4parents.gov,
part of a new national public education campaign to provide parents with the information, tools and skills they need to help their teens make the healthiest choices.
You will love the Conversation Starters. Try this one today:
I was at the store yesterday and ran into Kendrick, Mrs. Jakes' son. He joined the military after high school. What do you think you want to do when you graduate from high school?
"to help their teens make the healthiest choices" - join the military?
Posted by b on April 2, 2005 at 12:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)
European Votes
As you may have seen, a couple of stories on European elections have been started over at dKos, and I thought I'd share these with you guys over here, as these are a harbinger of things to come (hint, hint). The new installments have been posted over at BooMan Tribune, which is an offshoot of dKos with a wider international focus, and a potential model for an "European Kos" type of site.So, please go read Welshman's
UK Elections 05 - Diary 1
UK Election 05 - Diary 2
as well as Febble's
A short guide to the British constitution and electoral system
As well as my own:
France Votes on EU Constitution (I)
European Constitution - France votes soon. Diary II. (this last one is also to be found below the fold here)
An introduction to the French electoral system (check that diary for other countries as well)
First of all, I would actually like to have your feedback on what actually would be of interest to you guys:
- a description of the political campaign? It includes a lot of intra-party fighting this time, which makes it interesting to political junkies in France but may not have that many attractions for outsiders
- a presentation of the main issues of the day? (again, if I go into details, if will be a lot of domestic stuff which may or may not interest you)
- a more abstract discussion of the big issues? (I was going to include a bit on Turkey below, but the post is already long enough)
Thanks for your feedback ; here we go!
The campaign is now in full swing
The past week has seen the real start of the campaign. It started with a number of polls confirming that the "no" vote held a slight edge in voting intentions, and saw the start of the "real", organised, campaign by the proponents of the Yes.
Like the campaign for the Maastricht Treaty in 1991 (which saw the yes vote win by a very small 51% majority), the debate is not between left and right, but mostly between the centrists/mainstream blocs on each side and the more radical or extreme groups of the same side. The big parties (UMP and UDF on the right, and the PS and the Greens on the left) are all in favor of the yes, and the fringe parties (the National Front and the Sovereignist MPF on the right, the communists and trotskysts LO/LCR on the left) but there are also significant minorities/mavericks within the big parties that are in favor of the "no".
Like the Maastricht vote, the campaign is also "polluted" by domestic issues, in particular strong dissatisfaction with Chirac and his increasingly unpopular Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin. There is a deep social malaise caused by the persistently high levels of unemployment, stagnant incomes, a perceived decline of France and a general sense that reforms are necessary but not done (of course, they are not done because the French - or a least a noisy subset thereof - complain about them whenever any attempt is made...).
The Lefty "No"
On the left, in particular, a number of issues which have little to do with Europe are helping the "no" vote gain legitimacy:
- a strong desire not to hand Chirac another electoral victory, after having been forced to vote for him in 2002 against Le Pen (and also after he chose to ignore the result of local elections last year, which the left won decisively, and which should have triggered a change of Prime Minister to at least cknowledge the result);
- the tactical decision by Laurent Fabius, a former Prime Minister in the 80s and one of the heavyweights of the party, to support the "no". Everybody knows that he did this to distinguish himself from the other potential candidates for the 2007 presidential election (he was seen as a member of the rightist wing of the party, but was in the shadow of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a former economics minister), but it has given legitimacy to the "no" position.
- the Socialists held a internal vote to decide on their position, and registered members voted 60-40 in favor of the "yes", but this has not silenced the "no" camp, which has been even more strident since that vote, in blatant disregard of its result (after having called for it, as an exercise in "internal democracy"), whereas the "yes" camp, which thought it had done the hardest part, was caught flat-footed by the persistence of the "no" campaigners, and has been unwilling or unable to use party discipline to silence them.
- this is all happening is a context of stagnant wages (INSEE, the statistical institute, recently came out with a study showing that purchasing power had actually declined in 2004, for the first time since 1996) and chronic demonstrations by workers to fight for salary increases and other social causes;
- it has also been results season for companies, and the largest companies have come out with record profit levels, inevitably deemed "undecent" by unions. (and it would be even worse if we still had Francs instead of euros. Total made a 9 billion euro profit (close to 60 billion francs. I still remember the time when a 10 billion franc profit in the early 90s was a national scandal). The issue of fairness is coming up a lot as well with respect to the highest pay packages of the bosses which are increasing a lot faster than average wages.
There is finally a deep-seated belief on the left that the European Constitution is too much in favor of an "Europe libérale", which in French means, of course, laisser-faire, free-market, pro-business... (Strangely enough, the British Euroskeptics are persuaded of the exact opposite, i.e. that European Constitution is too social-minded).
The righty "No"
On the right, it is only slightly simpler:
- all the hard right groups are against the Treaty. They are "sovereignists" and resent any transfers of power to Brussels. They have been consistently opposed to further European integration or enlargement, and this is typically the kind of vote where the can get the most visibility for their parties, and they make very active campaigns
- the mainstream right is mostly behind the Constitution. There are a number of doubters, but they are mostly kept in check by their loyalty to Chirac and to the government now in power.
- the biggest source of tension on that side in between Nicolas Sarkozy, the -very- ambitious head of the UMP party and expected rival to Chirac for the Presidential election in 2007. Like the left, he is not keen to hand a victory to Chirac, but as the head of the majority party, he cannot not support it either, so he is likely to do a tepid campaign. Chirac loyalists within the party will be more active, but it is likely that there will be a lot of bickering there as well.
The "No" has dominated the campaign so far
So, until the middle of this week, the campaign has been dominated by the antics of the "no"partisans, which have avoided no histrionics (does my own bias shine through this sentence...?):
- Emmanuelli, a leftist socialist, equalled voting "yes" to the vote by the French Parliament in 1940 that gave full powers to Petain (and gave birth to the Vichy regime). He apologised for this particular remark, but it was only because this was obviously unacceptable, not because it was the most aggressive comment;
- the fact that the leader of the Socialist Party, François Hollande, was photographed together with Nicolas Sarkozy, the head of the UMP, on the cover of Paris Match, a French political/people weekly, in a show of unity in favor of the Constitution, has been held as an argument that he is "sold" to "Grand Capital"
- all the current social discontent and unhappiness with Chirac and Raffarin is happily mixed and used as an argument against the Constitution, however tenuous the link between the two; the fact that the government panicks and is now trying to buy off discontents by showering them with budgetary largesse (salary increases for civil servants, new help for farmers, etc...) only reinforces the link between domestic social issues and "Europe" and shows that demonstrations pay off.
The righty "No" has been much less visible, but as always, feeds on the general restlessness.
The launch of the official "Yes" campaign
But this week also saw the launch of the official campaign by the big political machines, with official campaign meetings by the Socialists and the pro-governmental UMP, and both Raffarin and Chirac have stepped up to the plate (although some have suggested that Raffarin is such " damaged goods" that it is counterproductive) to defend the Constitution.
It remains to be seen if the more rational arguments will have any effect, but at least they are finally been made:
- the European Constitution has nothing to do with current European directives, which are decided under the existing treaties;
- the European Constitution actually formalises some new social rights; it protects "public services", a very important notion in France;
- the European Constitution will not determine what kind of directives are voted when it is in force - it sets out how they are decided upon. Their actual content will depend on political forces at that time. Currently, the right dominates in Europe, and you cannot expect them to bring about leftist policies. The Constitution is not the place to enshrine specific policies, it just sets the rules on how the political game is played;
- the European Constitution was a hard-to-reach compromise between 25 countries and many opinions within each country; it is not perfect, and if it does not come in force, the much-worse Nice Treaty will remain in force. If the French vote "No", no one will come forward with new concessions to "improve" the Constitution from the French's perspective (especially as the lefty "no" and the rightist "no" are for pretty much the very opposite reasons).
In any case, barring the odd dying pope, this referendum debate is clearly the central item in the news every day (together with the various social movements that, as we have seen, are enmeshed in the debate)
Voilà!
Posted by Jérôme à Paris on April 2, 2005 at 06:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)
Billmon: Shoes of the Fisherman
...
But the church is more than just a political institution, and a pope can't be evaluated in political terms alone -- left on economic issues, right on abortion, as if he were a candidate in a U.S. Senate race. A pope's moral impact on the world, like the impact of the church itself, has a lot of moving parts, including the complexity of the religious experience, the material or psychological benefits each believer derives from that experience, and -- last but hardly least -- the impact of religious doctines or practices on nonbelievers.
...
As the church moves through the ancient rituals of succession, I'll be watching closely -- to see whether the old graybacks in the College of Cardinals can transcend their own limitations and produce a pope like John XXIII, or whether the reactionaries will, as usual, have the upper hand and the kind of papacy that goes with it.The answer may not determine the fate of the church -- for a 2,000-year-old institution, what's another CEO, more or less? But it will go a long way towards telling me whether I should, on balance, regard that ancient institution as an ally or an enemy of the moral values I believe in.
Shoes of the Fisherman
Posted by b on April 2, 2005 at 06:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (148)
Wow
I hardly can believe this.
Iraqi Soldier Convicted of Killing U.S. Contractor Walks Free
Bagdhad (RBN) - An Iraqi army company commander convicted of shooting dead a wounded U.S. contractor walked free from court on Friday, although he was dismissed from the Iraqi army for what he called a "mercy killing."
Iraqi Army Captain Roel Abu Maynulet had faced up to 10 years in jail after a court martial at a Iraqi army base in WisBaden, Iraq, found him guilty of assault with intent to commit voluntary manslaughter.
The U.S. contractors name was disclosed as Mike Slave working as security counsel for a subcontractor of Halliburton in an oil exploration related contract.
"He was sentenced with dismissal from the Iraqi Army ... there will be no confinement time," an Iraqi military spokesman said.
Prosecutors had pressed for conviction on a more serious charge of assault with intent to commit murder, which carries a maximum 20-year jail sentence.
The shooting occurred last May when Iraqi troops were pursuing suspected militiamen supporting Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr near the Iraqi city of Najaf, the court was told.
Iraqi soldiers fired on a car, wounding the driver and a passenger. Abu Maynulet said he then shot dead the driver to put him out of his misery.
"He was in a state I didn't think was dignified. I had to put him out of his misery," Abu Maynulet said in his defense according to the Iraqi Defense Department.
The jury was shown footage of the shooting filmed by a U.S. surveillance drone.
Posted by b on April 1, 2005 at 02:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (13)
Billmon: 04/01
Ted Koppel's Nightline live from Waco, Texas: Hostage Crisis
On Academic FreedomPosted by b on April 1, 2005 at 01:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)
OT Open Thread
Rather than post too many energy threads, I'll just put here the links to my most recent diaries on that topic (posted elsewhere):
West wins a big one against China in Caspian oil
'Emergency oil plan' required in view of coming shortages
Libya and Mexico opening up for US Big Oil
Feel free to discuss other stuff.
(Previous OT)
Posted by Jérôme à Paris on April 1, 2005 at 10:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (41)
President's Statement
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
April 1, 2005
President's Statement on Catholic Church and Justin Rigali
President George W. Bush today announced that he has directed the head of the Catholic Church's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger to recommend that the Sacred College of Cardinals elect his Eminence Cardinal Justin Rigali as the next Pope.
President Bush, left, meets with his Eminence Justin Cardinal Rigali, right, Archbishop of Philadelphia, during their meeting at St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church Rectory on October 21, 2004 in Downingtown, Penn.
"Justin Rigali is a proven leader and experienced diplomat, who will guide the Catholic Church effectively and honorably during a critical time in history - both for the Church and the developing nations it supports. He has devoted his career to advancing the cause of freedom. He is a person of compassion who believes deeply that lifting people out of poverty is critical to achieving that goal. With his significant experience in government, including as a former Secretary of State of the Vatican, and as an academic, Justin has a deep understanding of developmental issues and ethic and political reform. He has the skills and the track record to build successfully on the leadership and substantial contributions of outgoing Pope Karol Wojtyla," stated President Bush.
Cardinal Rigali is currently the 8th Archbishop of Philadelphia, managing one of the largest U.S. diocese with over 1.5 million voters. Prior to that function Archbishop Rigali was installed as 7th Archbishop of St. Louis. He served as Secretary of the College of Cardinals and was likewise a member of the Permanent Interdicasterial Commission of the Holy See and served as a consultant to the Pontifical Commission for Latin America and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. He attained the Doctorate in Canon Law from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.
His Eminence has been widely lauded for his October 2004 statement "The Gravest of All Issues" about the Catholic participation in the political process. His statement broke new ground by showing the extend of the common ethic denominators of the Catholic Church and President Bush's agenda. The Cardinal is a member of the Vatican Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, as well as the Vox Clara Committee of the same Congregation. He is also a member of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Holy See.
Links:
The Gravest of All Issues
Cardinal Rigali and the Election
Archdiocese of Philadelphia
Press Release
Posted by b on April 1, 2005 at 10:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (14)
Billmon: 03/31 cont'd
Posted by Jérôme à Paris on April 1, 2005 at 12:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)