Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Mineral-Rich Afghanistan


The Economist's Democracy in America blog comments:
Such extraordinary mineral wealth could drive a renaissance of the country's real economy, generating tens of thousands of high-wage jobs for locals, turning the trade balance strongly positive, enabling investment in infrastructure and education, funding water conservation to increase productivity in agriculture, and stabilising democratic rule while incentivising transparency and good governance—if Afghanistan were Australia. Unfortunately, rather than a highly educated, secular, demographically homogenous monolingual society, Afghanistan is a mostly illiterate, fanatically religious society composed of rival ethnicities speaking different languages, riven by bloody clan feuds and a 30-year-long ideological civil war. Oh, plus, it's ruled by a government, or a collection of governing cliques, that already may be the most corrupt on Earth—and that was before they found out there's a trillion dollars waiting for whoever gets the keys to the Ministry of Mines.
From the NYTimes:
The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.

The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.

An internal Pentagon memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and BlackBerrys.

The vast scale of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth was discovered by a small team of Pentagon officials and American geologists. The Afghan government and President Hamid Karzai were recently briefed, American officials said.

While it could take many years to develop a mining industry, the potential is so great that officials and executives in the industry believe it could attract heavy investment even before mines are profitable, providing the possibility of jobs that could distract from generations of war.
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The value of the newly discovered mineral deposits dwarfs the size of Afghanistan’s existing war-bedraggled economy, which is based largely on opium production and narcotics trafficking as well as aid from the United States and other industrialized countries. Afghanistan’s gross domestic product is only about $12 billion.

“This will become the backbone of the Afghan economy,” said Jalil Jumriany, an adviser to the Afghan minister of mines.
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Instead of bringing peace, the newfound mineral wealth could lead the Taliban to battle even more fiercely to regain control of the country.

The corruption that is already rampant in the Karzai government could also be amplified by the new wealth, particularly if a handful of well-connected oligarchs, some with personal ties to the president, gain control of the resources. Just last year, Afghanistan’s minister of mines was accused by American officials of accepting a $30 million bribe to award China the rights to develop its copper mine. The minister has since been replaced.

Endless fights could erupt between the central government in Kabul and provincial and tribal leaders in mineral-rich districts. Afghanistan has a national mining law, written with the help of advisers from the World Bank, but it has never faced a serious challenge.
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At the same time, American officials fear resource-hungry China will try to dominate the development of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth, which could upset the United States, given its heavy investment in the region. After winning the bid for its Aynak copper mine in Logar Province, China clearly wants more, American officials said.
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The mineral deposits are scattered throughout the country, including in the southern and eastern regions along the border with Pakistan that have had some of the most intense combat in the American-led war against the Taliban insurgency.

The Pentagon task force has already started trying to help the Afghans set up a system to deal with mineral development. International accounting firms that have expertise in mining contracts have been hired to consult with the Afghan Ministry of Mines, and technical data is being prepared to turn over to multinational mining companies and other potential foreign investors. The Pentagon is helping Afghan officials arrange to start seeking bids on mineral rights by next fall, officials said.

“The Ministry of Mines is not ready to handle this,” Mr. Brinkley said. “We are trying to help them get ready.”
...
In 2004, American geologists, sent to Afghanistan as part of a broader reconstruction effort, stumbled across an intriguing series of old charts and data at the library of the Afghan Geological Survey in Kabul that hinted at major mineral deposits in the country. They soon learned that the data had been collected by Soviet mining experts during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, but cast aside when the Soviets withdrew in 1989.

During the chaos of the 1990s, when Afghanistan was mired in civil war and later ruled by the Taliban, a small group of Afghan geologists protected the charts by taking them home, and returned them to the Geological Survey’s library only after the American invasion and the ouster of the Taliban in 2001.
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Armed with the old Russian charts, the United States Geological Survey began a series of aerial surveys of Afghanistan’s mineral resources in 2006, using advanced gravity and magnetic measuring equipment attached to an old Navy Orion P-3 aircraft that flew over about 70 percent of the country.

The data from those flights was so promising that in 2007, the geologists returned for an even more sophisticated study, using an old British bomber equipped with instruments that offered a three-dimensional profile of mineral deposits below the earth’s surface. It was the most comprehensive geologic survey of Afghanistan ever conducted.

The handful of American geologists who pored over the new data said the results were astonishing.

But the results gathered dust for two more years, ignored by officials in both the American and Afghan governments. In 2009, a Pentagon task force that had created business development programs in Iraq was transferred to Afghanistan, and came upon the geological data. Until then, no one besides the geologists had bothered to look at the information — and no one had sought to translate the technical data to measure the potential economic value of the mineral deposits.

Soon, the Pentagon business development task force brought in teams of American mining experts to validate the survey’s findings, and then briefed Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Mr. Karzai.

So far, the biggest mineral deposits discovered are of iron and copper, and the quantities are large enough to make Afghanistan a major world producer of both, United States officials said. Other finds include large deposits of niobium, a soft metal used in producing superconducting steel, rare earth elements and large gold deposits in Pashtun areas of southern Afghanistan.

Just this month, American geologists working with the Pentagon team have been conducting ground surveys on dry salt lakes in western Afghanistan where they believe there are large deposits of lithium. Pentagon officials said that their initial analysis at one location in Ghazni Province showed the potential for lithium deposits as large of those of Bolivia, which now has the world’s largest known lithium reserves.

For the geologists who are now scouring some of the most remote stretches of Afghanistan to complete the technical studies necessary before the international bidding process is begun, there is a growing sense that they are in the midst of one of the great discoveries of their careers.
...

Monday, June 14, 2010

World's Furthest Leaning Tower

A view of the 160-meter Capital Gate tower, developed by the Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Company, leans at 18 degrees -- over four times the angle of Italy's famous Leaning Tower of Pisa, has been recognized as the 'furthest-leaning man-made tower' in the world by Guinness World Records, local newspapers reported on June 6, 2010. (Getty Images via Daylife)

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Abu Dhabi's High Tech Falcon Hospital

From CNN
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The Abu Dhabi Falcon Hospital claims to be the largest of its kind in the world, employing 52 people and treating around 5,000 birds each year.
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"In the Middle East falconry has a different background. Even 70 years ago in the UAE most of the population were Bedouin living in the desert.

"It was hard to survive, so they used wild falcons to hunt meat. It wasn't a sport, it was a necessity for survival.
...
Muller said the hospital now treats all bird species and cares for falcons from all over the region, including Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. She said the owners are ordinary people who want the best for their birds.

The hospital has an array of high-tech equipment for treating sick birds, including an endoscopy unit that transmits live digital images to the waiting room, so the bird's owner can monitor the procedure.
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"We can hospitalize more than 200 falcons at the same time, housed in individual rooms that have air conditioning. You can compare it to a hospital for humans, from the way it works to the equipment we have."

Hamad Al Ghanem regularly takes his falcons to the hospital for vaccinations and worming.

As a breeder of traditional saluki hunting dogs, and director of Abu Dhabi's Arabian Saluki Center, he is dedicated to keeping the country's cultural traditions alive. He is also a lifelong falconry enthusiast and owns about 35 falcons of his own.
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He told CNN that one of the historic reasons why falconry is so popular in the UAE is that several species of falcon migrate across the area in the late summer and autumn.

In the past, falconers would trap the wild falcons, train them, hunt with them, and release them. These days, falcons are captive bred and owned for many years.
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Ghanem says most Emirati families still keep falcons, although according to official figures there are about 5,000 falconers in the UAE. Falcons can cost between $5,000 and $80,000, depending on the bird's breed, sex, color and pedigree, he added.

Ghanem trains his falcons to hunt using live pigeons or ducks. Hunting is not permitted in the UAE, so falconers take their birds on hunting trips to countries such as Pakistan, Morocco and Sudan, where prey can include rabbit, Houbara bustard (a large bird), and even gazelle, he said.
...

Saturday, June 12, 2010

Lebanese Army on Patrol: Sidon - May 2010

Lebanese special forces army, stand on their armored personal carriers as they patrol during the municipal elections in the southern port city of Sidon, Lebanon, on Sunday, May 23, 2010. Tens of thousands of Lebanese headed to ballot stations Sunday to vote in the third of four-stage municipal elections in south Lebanon. Thousands of Lebanese troops have been sent to the south to try to prevent municipal elections from triggering violence between political rivals.(AP Photo via DayLife)

Friday, June 11, 2010

Leb Web Digest 11.06.10

Lebanon Loves Basketball

Supporters Lebanon's Riyadi club hold a big Lebanese flag during their basketball semi-final match against Iran's Mahram club at the 21st FIBA Asia Champions Cup tournament at Al-Gharafa Indoor Stadium in Doha on May 29, 2010. (Getty Images via DayLife)

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Strange Goings On in Turkey


Since the deadly Israeli maritime raid pirate attack on the Gaza flotilla, and the resultant Turkish backlash (characterized by harsh rhetoric, a recall of the Turkish ambassador from Tel Aviv and a complete re-evaluation by Turkey of ties with Israel), Turkey has been rocked by a series of bizarre events.  These include the murder of an Armenian lawyer (who was representing the estate of a murdered Armenian journalist), the brutal slaying of the Roman Catholic church's top clergyman in the country (on the eve of his departure to Cyprus where the Pope is visiting) and a rocket attack on a naval base by Kurdish elements.

All of the above occurred within a week of the deadly flotilla attack and speculation (and conspiracy theories) is rampant over the nature of these attacks and the possibility that they could be linked to efforts to destabilize the country given its recent regional initiatives. Turkey has been aggressively building its credentials as a regional interlocutor and center of influence.  In addition to its heavy involvement in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla (much of the flotilla departed for Gaza from Turkish-occupied Cyprus, with crew and passengers being largely Turkish and with all deaths being Turkish), Turkey - along with Brazil - spearheaded a last-ditch effort at UNSC sanctions against Iran by brokering an 11th hour agreement to host an exchange of nuclear material for that country on its soil.  The country has also been active on Syrian-Israeli peace talks, as well as other fronts (Afghanistan-Pakistan, the Balkans, etc...).

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Has Kuwait Liberalised its Economy?

The FT reports on a set of new laws (including a privatization law) aimed at encouraging a vibrant private sector and slightly more diversified economy:
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... In February, the Kuwaiti parliament approved a $104bn four-year development plan, and in May a more contentious privatisation law – first mooted 18 years ago.
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The privatisation law, which will come into effect after six months, opens the door for transferring public-sector assets to local and foreign private ownership, and the establishment of new, private-sector companies in which the government has a minority stake.

The bill expressly excludes the production of oil and gas, oil refineries, and health and education services, but just the fact that the law was passed – after a heated, eight-hour session in the national assembly – is a clear sign of progress, argues Sheikh Ahmad al Fahad al Sabah, the deputy prime minister for economic affairs.
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The law stipulates that public shareholding companies must be established to run entities slated for privatisation and that at least 40 per cent of the shares must be sold to Kuwaitis in an initial public offering.

A maximum of 20 per cent of the shares will be held by government institutions and 5 per cent by a company’s Kuwaiti employees, leaving at least 35 per cent to be sold at auction to private or foreign investors. The law also includes a series of restrictions on firing or cutting the pay of Kuwaiti employees.
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Each individual state privatisation will also still have to pass through parliament, where opposition is likely to be fierce.

Nevertheless, few disagree that Kuwait needs to overhaul its government-dominated, bureaucratic, oil-centric economy. The great majority of Kuwaitis work in the government, and the country’s development has lagged behind other Gulf states.

There are some signs that the bill is an instigator of real change. Soon after passing the privatisation law, the national assembly approved by 37 to three votes a bill to set up new, privately held power and water desalination plants for the first time.

The long-delayed privatisation of Kuwait Airways is also gaining some traction. “It’s essentially completely a state entity where some entire families have worked there for several generations, so it’s going to be a touchy deal,” says Mr Pfeiffer, whose firm is bidding for the work on the proposed privatisation.

Moreover, the number of Kuwaitis eschewing the safety of government jobs has risen steadily in recent years. Last year, 20 per cent of all Kuwaitis worked in the private sector, up from 18 per cent in 2008 and 16 per cent in 2007, according to economists at National Bank of Kuwait.

This is partially because of a law passed in 2000 that provides Kuwaitis working in the private sector with public sector benefits, including a monthly stipend, NBK notes.
...

Sound Familiar?

Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK) rebels stop a car at a security checkpoint in the Qandil mountains in 2009. Iranian troops have crossed into Iraq twice in three days amid clashes with Kurdish rebels in the Qandil mountains near the border, a security spokesman said Saturday (AFP via Yahoo!News)


From YaLibnan:
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Iranian troops have been shelling the region for at least 12 days in pursuit of Kurdish rebels, according to Lt. Saleh Ahmed of the Kurdish security forces. He said Iranian artillery killed a 14-year-old girl and wounded three villagers on May 30. Iranian troops with artillery and tanks crossed the Iraqi border last Thursday and began building an outpost and a road leading back into the Iranian side of the border, he said.
...
Impunity for international borders, the use of disproportionate force in the pursuit of "terrorists", lack of respect for human life. Sounds like Iran is behaving exactly like those against whom it aims the entirety of its rhetoric.

Monday, June 7, 2010

Excellent Documentary on Turkey

Brazil-Iran Accord Spells Sweet Revenge?

Brazilian aircraft maker Embraer and General Electric are working with renewable fuel company Amyris to develop sugar cane-based jet fuel for airliners. They say a test flight by Brazilian airline Azul Linhas Aereas could come in early 2012. (Original post and image via WIRED)

Gal Luft has an interesting (although, perhaps, a little too ambitious in its projections) write-up  in FP magazine on the potential for Brazil to find an Iranian market, always in desperate need of refined fuels, for its ethanol bio-fuels.  Summary below:
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Brazil is the world's largest sugar grower. This year it experienced a bumper crop, with output growing 16 percent from a year earlier. But due to a global glut, sugar prices have plunged 57 percent since February. Because sugar cane is a perishable crop that cannot be stored, the best way for Brazil to generate value from its undervalued surplus is by converting it into ethanol, of which Brazil is already the second-largest producer (after the United States) and a major consumer (for years Brazilians have driven mostly flex-fuel cars, which can run on any combination of gasoline and ethanol). The country's ethanol production is expected to rise 19 percent to 8 billion gallons this year.

For Tehran, Brazil's surplus ethanol could be a strategic savior. Iran is a major exporter of crude oil, but lacks the refinery capacity to process most of it; as a result, the second-largest oil producer in OPEC depends on other countries' exports of refined gasoline. A conference committee in the U.S. Congress is hammering out legislation that aims to exploit this weakness by imposing sanctions on foreign companies that supply refined petroleum products to Iran. Tehran has been bracing for these sanctions for a while, taking measures to address its Achilles' heel: building seven new refineries, expanding existing ones, converting cars to run on natural gas (of which Iran has the world's second-largest reserves), and securing alternative gasoline supplies from China and Venezuela.

But none of these efforts would give Iran the immediate injection of motor fuel it needs as swiftly as Brazil's ethanol. Brazil could replace most of the 5.8 million gallons of gasoline that Iran imports daily (a conventional internal-combustion car engine can handle up to 20 percent ethanol in its fuel blend without damage to the engine; in the United States most cars already run on 10 percent). Doing so would pull the teeth out of the gasoline sanctions legislation, rendering it useless before it even reaches President Barack Obama's desk.

... For years, Brazil has been clamoring to export its surplus ethanol to the United States, only to be blocked by lawmakers beholden to powerful American agricultural lobbies. If not for a prohibitive 54-cent-per-gallon import tariff on Brazilian ethanol -- not to mention a sugar quota and tariff system that restricts imports and keeps sugar prices in the United States much higher than the world price -- the fuel could have ended up in American gas tanks rather than reducing the country's leverage with Tehran.
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The tariff on Brazilian ethanol has been a lingering source of tension between Brazil and the United States for years. Both Presidents George W. Bush and Obama, in their meetings with Lula, rejected his request to eliminate the tariff. Now Lula is taking his revenge, and it's surely a sweet one.

Sunday, June 6, 2010

Severe Drought + Famine Warning in Eastern Syria

Image Source: USDA Commodity Intelligence Report

The National reports on what appear to be serious conditions in eastern Syrian:
Already struggling to recover from one of the country’s worst droughts on record, Syria’s agricultural sector has been dealt another blow, with up to one-third of its wheat crop damaged by a virulent disease.

Yellow Rust infections have been “significant” in Syria’s breadbasket eastern region, according to farmers and officials. With harvests now being collected, they warned that production of soft wheat could be cut by half compared with last year.
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“It has come at a difficult time,” he said. “There have also been cuts in subsidies on fuel and fertilizer. Many farmers have gone out of business.”
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In Syria, wheat is broadly classified as either hard or soft, the former used for production of pasta while soft wheat is used for bread. ...

With the Syrian economy heavily dependent on agriculture, the government has set up a committee to evaluate the problem and to troubleshoot the situation. ...

Virulent new forms of Yellow Rust have hit wheat crops across the globe, with devastating effects in some African countries, where up to 90 per cent of harvests have been wiped out. ...
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It represents another setback for farmers in Syria’s Jazeera region and comes at a time when emergency aid donated by the international community is still being sent out to drought-ravaged areas.

The United Nations this week began distributing food packages to 200,000 people in Raqqa, Hasika and Deir Ezzor in an effort to prevent serious malnutrition.
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The [UN's World Food Program] WFP has identified 300,000 people as being in need of a two-month supply of emergency food aid, but it has only received funding sufficient for only 190,000.
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One farm worker in Raqqa, who asked not to be named, complained that he and his family were in a dire situation and literally had nothing to left to eat.

“We’re starving out here; we’re poor, there’s no money, no food and we’ve had no help,” he said.

Water shortages in 2008 and 2009 hit the region hard. Studies have shown that 70 per cent of livestock was wiped out by the drought because it was impossible to grow animal fodder. Wheat production in 2008 dropped to 1.3 million tonnes from 2.4m tonnes the previous year.

The crisis has forced hundreds of thousands of people off the land, with many living as refugees around Damascus, Aleppo and Dera in southern Syria. Many have fled the country entirely, looking for work in neighboring Lebanon.

... Last month, Kuwait agreed to fund a project to improve irrigation in some of the worst-hit regions, while the Syrian authorities are pushing through long-term reforms to improve agricultural efficiency.

Damascus has firmly put the blame for the drought on global warming, but some Syrian agricultural experts have said poor government management of water resources and inappropriate farming are the real underlying reasons.

As part of a national food security policy, wheat in Syria was heavily subsidized for decades despite being water-intensive, encouraging farmers to dig illegal wells that have dried up ground-water supplies. Those subsidies have been stopped but the environmental damage caused by excessive water extraction is likely to take decades to repair, even if rainfall is consistent.
Readers can also refer to the FAO Syria Drought Emergency site for more details.

Saturday, June 5, 2010

Lebanon: Culinary Hub

Beirut dining experiences usually begin with mezze, an array of appetizers. Abd el Wahab is a top destination for mezze (Tamara Abdul Hadi for The New York Times).

A mediocre article in the NYTimes about Lebanon's food industry, traditions, and haute cuisine.  While the authors perhaps correctly outline a broadly conservative approach by the restaurant industry to the traditional mezza lineup, they seem to feel the need to travel all the way to New York (or perhaps its simply a matter of making a conveniently short subway trip) to find a Lebanese restaurant that innovates.  Surely the reported could have asked his colleage at the Times about Locanda (in Jbeil, or Byblos) which featured prominently in a NYTimes travel piece written earlier this year. You can read a summary of the most recent article below:
... Among more than 400 projects are a new waterfront area, parks, world-class hotels, high-end shops and restored monuments, churches, mosques and even the synagogue.

And to help the city reclaim its title as the Paris of the Middle East are more than 100 restaurants, some involving notable chefs and restaurateurs.
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Joël Robuchon, Yannick Alléno, Antoine Westermann, the Parisian baker Eric Kayser and perhaps even Jean-Georges Vongerichten are among the marquee names poised to draw tourists and cosmopolitan locals to the once devastated quarter.

But while some Lebanese might dare to try Mr. Robuchon’s eel with foie gras, when it comes to their own cuisine, tradition rules. You’ll find croissants seasoned with the spice blend zataar in bakeries, but that’s about as far as most chefs dare to innovate. ...
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The dozens of cold and hot plates that come under the heading of meze — like hummus, tabbouleh, fattoush, eggplant purées, little grilled sausages, savory filled pastries, assorted kibbees and the like — are appreciated according to the finesse of the preparation.

“Nouvelle Lebanese does not exist,” said Kamal Mouzawak, a writer who became a food activist and now supports small farmers and regional cooking traditions with a farmers’ market and a restaurant in Beirut. “Food like you get at Ilili in New York would be shocking to the Lebanese — duck shawarma and things like that,” he said, referring to the popular sandwich made in Lebanon with shavings of spit-roasted beef or chicken. “Right now we are discovering our traditions. During the war and its aftermath we were too busy with other things.”

Restaurants serving Lebanese food are now starting to feature ragouts, often vegetable-based, that typically were served only at home. Comfort food, yet something new.
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Lebanon’s larder is extremely rich. Almost anything, including American beef, can be imported, and even pork is sold, a rarity in an Arab country. In the countryside, farmers set up impromptu stands along the roads with gorgeous fresh favas, green beans, strawberries and artichokes. The produce at Souk el Tayeb, the farmers’ market that Mr. Mouzawak has organized on Saturday mornings in downtown Beirut, is nothing short of mouthwatering.
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Unlike the restaurants, Lebanon’s wineries are trying some new approaches to build on a tradition that is said to go back 5,000 years.
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BP Oil Disaster Over Lebanon


If It Was My Home (IIWMH) is a website with a relatively simple concept, it allows the user to visualize the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico over their own homes.

Of course in Lebanon, we're no strangers to the oil along our coasts:

A layer of crude oil covers the Ramlet el-Beida public beach in Beirut, Lebanon. Much of Lebanon's coastline is now awash with crude oil after an Israeli air strike on a power plant sent 15,000 tons (13,600 metric tons) of oil leaking into the Mediterranean. (via National Geographic News)

Then again, a site like IIWMH, and a visual graphic such as that above, really help put things in perspective:

Thursday, June 3, 2010

Lebanese Send Positive Vibes to Gaza

Women perform 108 Yoga Sun salutations for peace at Beirut's Ramlet el-Bayda public beach. A group of yogis gathered on the Beirut coast at dawn to send "positive vibes" to Gaza in the wake of a deadly Israeli raid on a relief flotilla bound for the Palestinian territory. (Joseph Eid for AFP via Yahoo!News)

Iran Can Produce Two Nuclear Warheads

This according to the IAEA's latest report.  More here from the NYTimes:
In their last report before the United Nations Security Council votes on sanctions against Iran, international nuclear inspectors declared Monday that Iran has now produced a stockpile of nuclear fuel that experts say would be enough, with further enrichment, to make two nuclear weapons.
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When Iran tentatively agreed eight months ago to ship some of its nuclear material out of the country, the White House said the deal would temporarily deprive Iran of enough fuel to make even a single weapon.

But Iran delayed for months, and the figures contained in the inspectors’ report on Monday indicated that even if Iran now shipped the agreed-upon amount of nuclear material out of the country, it would retain enough for a single weapon, undercutting the American rationale for the deal.

The toughly worded report says that Iran has expanded work at one of its nuclear sites. It also describes, step by step, how inspectors have been denied access to a series of facilities, and how Iran has refused to answer inspectors’ questions on a variety of activities, including what the agency called the “possible existence” of “activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile.”
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The inspectors reported Monday that Iran has now produced over 5,300 pounds of low-enriched uranium, all of which would have to undergo further enrichment before it could be converted to bomb fuel.

The inspectors reported that Iran had expanded work at its sprawling Natanz site in the desert, where it is raising the level of uranium enrichment up to 20 percent — the level needed for the Tehran Research Reactor, which produces medical isotopes for cancer patients. But it is unclear why Iran is making that investment if it plans to obtain the fuel for the reactor from abroad, as it would under its new agreement with Turkey and Brazil.

Until recently, all of Iran’s uranium had been enriched to only 4 percent, the level needed to run nuclear power reactors. While increasing that to 20 percent purity does not allow Iran to build a weapon, it gets the country closer to that goal. The inspectors reported that Iran had installed a second group of centrifuges — machines that spin incredibly fast to enrich, or purify, uranium for use in bombs or reactors — which could improve its production of the 20 percent fuel.

The inspectors also noted that the agency had finally succeeded in setting up a good monitoring system for the 20 percent work after a rocky start in February, when Iran began raising the enrichment levels. “A new safeguards approach is now being implemented,” the report said.
...
Last fall, President Obama, along with the leaders of Britain and France, denounced Iran for secretly building a second enrichment plant near the city of Qum, without alerting inspectors until just before the three leaders’ countries announced they had discovered the facility. But curiously, the report suggested that now, with its existence revealed, Iran might be losing interest in it. The report said that Iran had installed no centrifuges in the half-built enrichment facility, which is located inside a mountain near a military base.

Iran has sought to locate many of its nuclear facilities in underground sites so as to lessen their vulnerability to aerial attacks. In the new report, the inspectors said that the Iranians disclosed that a new analytical laboratory planned for construction amid a warren of tunnels at Isfahan “would have the same functions as the existing” unprotected laboratory there.
Related Posts:

Flotilla Survivors Talk + Knesset Video

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Israeli Knesset Members Attack Arab MK

Israeli Knesset Member Hanin Zoabi (L), who was on board the Marmara ship when it was raided by Israeli Navy fighters, hold a press conference in Nazareth on June 01,2010, in which she accused Israel of committing crimes during its take over of the Gaza-bound aid ship. She called for an international inquiry into the incident. (Getty Images via Daylife)

Reuters reports:
Guards had to protect an Arab-Israeli lawmaker in Israel's parliament on Wednesday as Jewish members jeered and tried to wrest a microphone from her when she criticized the deadly raid on a Gaza aid flotilla.

In one of the stormiest parliament sessions in years, lawmakers reacted with rage when Hanin Zoabi called Monday's raid, in which Israeli commandos killed nine pro-Palestinian activists, "a criminal act of piracy".
...
Zoabi, 41, one of about a dozen Arab citizens who are parliament members in a house of 120, was herself aboard one of the aid ships, but unharmed in the incident which she also insisted should be investigated.

"Why is this woman even being allowed to speak?" lawmaker Anastasia Michaeli of the ultra-right Yisrael Beitenu party shouted after running to the podium where several Israeli guards pulled her away as she lunged at Zoabi.

Michaeli said later she had been trying to grab the microphone to stop the speech by Zoabi, whose remarks were also cut short by catcalls from rightist and centrist lawmakers. Several were expelled from the hall.

Angry outbursts punctuated the entire debate. Miri Regev, of the right-wing Likud party and a former military spokeswoman, shouted in Arabic, followed by Hebrew, once she was given the floor:

"Go to Gaza, we don't need any traitors in Israel's parliament!"

Some lawmakers said they planned to introduce a measure to enable possible charges to be filed against Zoabi for her role in the flotilla that sought to puncture Israel's blockade of coastal Gaza, where some 1.5 million Palestinians live.

Other Israeli Arab citizens who were aboard the flotilla were arrested but Parliament members enjoy automatic immunity from prosecution.

Arabs make up about a fifth of Israel's predominantly Jewish population. Many complain of suffering discrimination in terms of funding for their towns and job opportunities in Israel but otherwise enjoy full citizenship, unlike the Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza.

Ain el Helweh Waves the Turkish Flag


A Palestinian fighter from the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) waves a Turkish flag in front of burning tires at Ain el-Hilweh refugee camp, southern Lebanon June 1, 2010, during an anti-Israel protest after the storming of a Turkish aid ship bound for Gaza by Israeli marines on Monday. (Reuters Pictures via Daylife)

Related Posts: