This week’s essay of the week is The End by Michael Lewis.
Essay of the Week: 1/18/09-1/24/09
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Monthly Archives: January 2009
Is it over for now?
Unlike in 2006, when the post-war talk all centered around Hizballah’s performance and the IDF’s poor showing, the talk this time around is about the ethics of Israel’s assault and the way in which the operation was conducted. The good news from Israel’s perspective is that even the most hardened Hamas supporter would have a very tough time declaring victory. It appears as if even the best units from Hamas were rolled up with little difficulty, and though I am not in favor of using body counts to gauge operational excellence, it has to be said that Israel inflicted a lot of pain on Hamas with very few casualties of their own.
I don’t know if this is really over yet. I wonder if Israel’s unilateral ceasefire had something to do with an upcoming change in administration in America. They may have felt like they had a deadline to meet. Now if Hamas starts firing again, they can tell Obama they would have liked to have stopped but Hamas would not let them.
The General At Fort Drum Has A Blog
The Major General at Fort Drum recently started his own blog. This is an extraordinary rare thing for a General to have (I think he is the only General with a blog in the army, but a I could be wrong). In fact, the military has taken to discouraging its officers from having blogs. In this case Mike Oates (the general in question) seems to have decided to go against the trend.
His blog is not about expressing his opinion, but about getting feedback from his subordinates. Each blog post is a question for people to sound off on. At first it does not seem that many people took him up on the opportunity. But more and more people seem to feel comfortable spouting off. For example, take a look at this post regarding why many people do/do not want to be stationed in the Fort Drum area. Or this one about allowing civilian air traffic to take off from Fort Drum.
It is interesting to read about the issues that get the people in uniform worked up.
Why not let children join too?
The ban on disabled people joining the army should be scrapped, according to Britain’s human rights watchdog.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) has told the Ministry of Defence that the current ban is descriminatory and that all three armed forces should allow disabled people to serve.
But defence chiefs and government ministers are opposing any moves to relax the rules, saying recruiting disabled people would impact on morale, operational effectiveness and would create a two-tier military organisation.
The EHRC has written to the MoD to demand that it meet the requirements of the UN Convention on the Rights of a Person with Disabilities, which Britain has signed.
Coming soon to a country near you
The German auction of 10-year bonds failed to receive the 6 billion euros the government wanted to raise. Countries across Europe including the UK, Italy, Spain, Austria, Belgium, and the Netherlands, had either to struggle to sell their bonds or cancel their debt offerings because of lack of demand. This is particularly foreboding because this year governments around the world are looking to raise $3,000 billion, three times more than in 2008.
California to stop paying many of its bills
And Los Angeles County officials said they would cover welfare payments to more than 500,000 local recipients — for now.
But California is projected to be $346 million short of the funds it needs to pay all its bills in February. By March, the state would be so far in the red that even continuing to suspend payments would not cover the shortfall. California would be insolvent, making the issuance of IOUs likely.
From later on in the article….
The state has also halted payments of bond money for more than 5,300 public-works projects.
On Friday, the state Department of Finance temporarily exempted 276 of the projects from the freeze, reasoning that because they are nearly complete, it could cost the state more to shut them down than to finish them.
Unsold Oil Piling Up
Traders unable to get rid of crude are selling at a huge discount as storage facilities fill up with unwanted oil and gas, said analyst Stephen Schork.
Those lucky enough to find unused storage facilities are holding their oil in hopes of cashing in on the higher March prices. But those prices could evaporate quickly, Schork said.
“Who the heck wants to buy right now?” Schork said. “If you’ve got barrels, you’re going to sit and wait and wait and wait.”
The uptick in February oil prices suggests there are still buyers out there who can either move crude or have found a rare storage facility. Still, Schork doesn’t expect industrial demand to perk up before the fourth quarter of 2009, and crude prices in March could suffer a worse fate than February, dropping below $30 a barrel, he said.
All those speculators who bought oil on the idea that it was going to go up forever are now getting wiped out. At first they were storing the oil hoping that it would go back up. But now they are running out of places to store the oil and and prices are still low.
Misery Loves Company
Alabama was colder than Alaska, water fountains froze into ice sculptures in South Carolina and Florida shivered through a brush of Arctic air blast that deadened car batteries in the Northeast and prompted scattered Midwest power outages.
As Southerners awaited an expected weekend thaw, the Northeast persisted under the bitterly cold air from Canada that sent temperatures plunging in some places below minus 30 degrees and left even longtime residents reluctant to venture outdoors.
Good thing heating oil prices have dropped so much or people would really be hurting.
Recycling industry in crisis
Wu is one of 160,000 collectors in Beijing who make a living from the detritus of urban life – plastic sheeting, office printouts, bottles, radiators and scraps of cardboard. Recycling has become a global industry and China is the largest importer of the world’s waste materials, taking in as much as a third of Britain’s recyclables for example. Then came the slump, decimating the Chinese recycling industry and leaving Britain, the US and others grappling with growing volumes of recycled waste and nowhere to send it.
“It’s a canary in the coalmine: it’s the front and back end of industry,” said Adam Minter, who runs the Shanghai Scrap blog and specialises in the metal trade. “Until about eight weeks ago, for example, the entire [US] west coast paper market was sent to China and most of it was sent south. It was processed and made into packaging for products that then shipped back to the US … But when US consumer demand dropped off, that broke the cycle.”
Never realized before that the US sent so much of its recyclables overseas to be processed.
Russia's Plan To Destroy Ukraine
This came via RussiaToday, which is a propaganda arm of the Russian Government (sort of like voice of America except more effective)
The claim about the proposed American backed pipeline having no gas to ship is wrong. Certainly those countries are currently selling their gas to Russia and China, but that is because they have no other way of getting it to market. There is nothing in their contracts that would make those countries keep on selling the gas to Russia and China once they had alternatives. Moreover, if that pipeline were to be built, lots of western companies would come in and find new sources of gas.
The real issue for the proposed American backed pipeline is who has the will and capability to defend should it be built. Furthermore, it is questionable if any of the proposed pipelines can be built in the current economic climate. Who is going to fund them when everybody is worried about keeping their banking systems intact? That is Ukraine’s only prayer in this contest.
In the long term, this is all a non-issue. The real issue is the continuing implosion of all Slavic societies. Spats such as this one will only accelerate that implosion.