Month: January 2005

Every other day or so, a news story describes life in North Korea. It is invariably a story about the totally asinine pronouncements of the government there. It almost makes me want to have a section on the page entitled “Those Wacky North Koreans,” under which we would place headlines such as:

Get a Socialist Haircut, North Korea Tells Men, on how the NK govt says that long hair saps the brain of its energy.

North Korea Orders Preparation for War With US, where one of the preparations include food, water, weapons, and portrais of Kim Jong Il.

North Korea: Train Blast Victims Died Saving Portraits of Kim, noting the official (and to me, highly offensive) reasons for the death of a few NK “heroes.”

Communism doesn’t just make you short; it makes you a total retard, as well. Hopefully, this is all coming to an end very soon…

John Robb made this interesting point a few days ago:

Over the last year, Iraq’s global guerrillas have used attacks against gas and oil pipelines to disrupt electricity production. They have been very effective. Electricity production is substantially less than demand and extremely erratic. There are signs that they are getting more effective (see the brief Cascading System Failure for more). Recent attacks show that it is possible to control Iraqi oil exports through power disruptions. Over the last month, interdiction of electrical power has stopped oil exports from its southern oil terminals twice. Due to an electricity failure last month, the facility suffered a 24 hour shutdown, at a cost of ~$100 million to the struggling country. Yesterday’s attacks on a gas and oil pipeline that feed Baiji refinery were sufficient to cause a power failure that shut down exports again. This is a critical line of vulnerability that will be exploited in the destabilization of Saudi Arabia.

In light of this theory, consider this story from yesterday:

DUBAI, Jan 11 (Reuters) Iraq will cut its Basra Light crude oil supply contracts by 10 per cent from Feb 1 through to June due to technical problems, a senior Iraqi oil official said on Tuesday.

The 160,000 barrels per day (bpd) reduction comes as exports from Iraq’s northern oilfields remain halted by sabotage, dashing the U.S.-backed government’s hopes of raising revenue to fund rebuilding and a costly security apparatus.
[…]
Power cuts that has worsened throughout the country has disrupted sales on Saturday, but loadings had since resumed.

Shipping data showed southern exports running at 1.5 million bpd on Tuesday. The tanker Gosglory Lake was loading at 44,000 barrel per hour from berth one at the Basra terminal. The tanker Margaux was loading at 20,000 barrel per hour.

The Basra terminal, offshore in the Gulf, is crucial to sustain flows with sabotage attacks keeping exports of Kirkuk crude from Iraq’s northern fields at a standstill for the past three weeks.

The attacks have virtually stopped oil production in the north, which has a diminished postwar capacity of 700,000 bpd.

A bomb ripped off a section of a pipeline feeding 350,000 bpd Baiji refinery on Tuesday and another attack targeted a pipeline feeding a power station in the same area, southwest of the oil centre of Kirkuk.

”Kirkuk is finished for now,” the official said.

Here’s an interesting twist in the Iraqi election mess:

As the clock ticked down to polling day on January 30, sectarian tensions entered the campaign, as the premier’s Iraqi National Accord party cried foul over the alleged use of religion by Shiite politicians.

The INA lodged a formal complaint against the joint Shiite list, the Unified Iraqi Alliance (UIA), for violating state law by allegedly using religion in its advertising. It also accused Shiite militias of intimidating voters ahead of the poll.

It’s just a bit in the middle of a long AFP article, but I’ve not seen anything about this before.

INA is Allawi’s party and the UIA is Sistani’s party which includes Chalabi.

“Don’t cheerleaders all over America make pyramids every day? It’s not torture.” – Defense lawyer Guy Womack

Yuschenko: How’s that attempted murder investigation going? Just asking.

UPDATE: David Beito reminds me that Yuschenko is doing something creditworthy that should be mentioned. From Juan Cole:

The Ukraine announced that it would withdraw its 1600 troops, the fourth-largest national contingent in Iraq, by summer of 2005. Seven Ukrainian troops were killed in an explosion recently, which now appears to have been an attack rather than an accident.

It is noteworthy that the democratically elected president Viktor Yushchenko vowed to withdraw the troops from Iraq, which had been sent there by the authoritarian previous government against the will of the Ukrainian people, presumably in search of patronage from Washington. Sending troops to support the US occupation of Iraq has been almost universally unpopular with actual publics, and it is unlikely that any of the foreign contingents in Bush’s “coalition of the willing” could stay there if it depended on a popular referendum.

That is indeed excellent news.

UPDATE: For all of you emailing me to point out that Kuchma ordered the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from Iraq, I will grant that you are technically correct with these caveats:

• The Ukrainian public has consistently opposed Ukrainian troops in Iraq and the Ukrainian parliament has passed resolutions calling for their withdrawal in the past, which were ignored by Kuchma.
• Troop withdrawal has been considered by Kuchma only since 8 Ukrainian soldiers were killed Sunday in what now appears to be an attack.
• Yuschenko and Yanukovich have both supported troop withdrawal throughout their campaigns.

Will that make everyone happy?

From Atrios, this post from The Poorman goes nicely with Justin’s post below:

Depressing Answers To Questions That, In A Sane Universe, Would Never Need To Be Asked

More stuff from Eschaton:

Time to Deploy the 101st Fighting Keyboarders

Who’s the only guy who can tell a story with a page of quotes?

The Salvadoran Option