No Dough!

I recently took a job with an agricultural development project in the country of Georgia and it seems pretty interesting, certainly in my line of work (Agriculture) but at the same time it seems to suffer from lack of interest from all sides (except the donor and my organization of course). In my years of working in Agriculture I have come to learn that my line of work is about as unsexy in the development realm as work could be. The problem is that from the beneficiary side they are quite often looking for hand outs and the idea of having to do more than write an agreement saying "I promise I will use these things you gave me for free to better my life" is just not worth the time. On the other side you have government which has little interest in anything that they can't say they helped with, and if you aren't making something then they don't care (unless there are big revenues involved, ie casinos, there are a ton of them around here). In the end, in talking with my predecessor, it looks like it will be worlds easier than Azerbaijan but at the same time not so easy in that they (gov/people) just aren't investing in anything agriculture (I do have to give the gov props for the roads and the un-corrupt police, nice change from Azer).

Meglomania

The president of Azerbaijan, the "benevolent-dictator" İlham Əliyev had originally expressed no interest in being "elected" to take the place of his father. A friend of mine pointed out an article that I was not entirely sure wasn't a photoshop job so I went to google earth myself and found it, pretty easy. So for a guy who didn't want to be president, it looks like he is filling out the shoes of his dead megalomaniacal father (whose face is everywhere) pretty well; and having buildings built in your initials is testament to that. sigh.

Nixon dug deep for dirt on Ted Kennedy - Yahoo! News

I just came across this article today "Nixon dug deep for dirt on Ted Kennedy". I guess it is not a surprise to some but the dispicable levels that Nixon sank to, levels that you thought "na, even Nixon wouldn't do that" are amazing. These phone conversations are quite an eye opener, I just hope that the same information has been collected about Cheney and that they are published before he dies.

Nadof is corrupt its America's fault but...

So many people countries are blaming the "corrupt USA", but how many people would invest in Russia or China etc? Only a very *brave* few, why? because those places are risky

The latest scandal with Nadof is a great example of carelessness, everyone assumed those "greedy Americans" would not be corrupt so businesses/people/countries invested ****blindly***** you can find many examples of professional investors that didn't fall for the Nadof hype and looked at the numbers and said "something is off". The same for the sub-prime market, packaged debt where no one knew what was in the package... but invested anyway... wildly... and now everyone is crying that there is corrupt business in the US (duh, care to compare the US to some other countries?).

*Of*Course* I am not even attempting to justify any of the corruption here, one of the reasons i might have considered voting for McCain is his semi-tough (shall we say tougher than the average politician which is perhaps not saying much) stance on corruption, but this reminds me of the saying "lotteries are taxes on people that are bad at math" well perhaps this whole financial debacle is a tax on irrational investors (though of course the repercussions are much further reaching than just the jobs of those irrational investors).

Under Attack!!

How's that for an alarmist title? Well it's misleading to say the least but it still seemed appropriate. Last night (3am) I kept hearing all these noises, sometimes it sounded (in my groggy state) like very brief thunder other times straight up gunfire. I found out this morning that it was actually a shootout between some terrorist and the Afghan Police/Army. It took place less than a mile from where I am which I guess should be unsettling but for some reason its not. I guess some of the reasons it is not particularly unsettling is that I have heard about violence in Kabul for awhile (though I haven't actually heard the violence itself), rumor has it these guys are linked to the attack on Karzi and the police found them and cornered them, they weren't after me, and there was almost no chance I would be caught up in it. Still its kind of surreal. For me the most difficult part of working in Kabul is having to take security into consideration all the time which means I (as I keep saying) don't get out much. Ironically the projects I manage are in a very safe area of Afghanistan (Central, called Hazarajat) where one can, and I have, walk anywhere one wants without fear.

I was walking in Bamyan, a province smack in the middle of Hazarajat, a few months ago and as often happens an Afghan (student) who wanted to practice their English came along and started talking to me. We came to a creek that we had to cross so I hopped across and he just left his bicycle in the grass along the edge of the creek (plenty of people around). I asked him if "that wouldn't be a problem?" and he said "what wouldn't be a problem?" apparently he was not worried in the least about someone stealing the bicycle even thought it probably cost 2-3 weeks salary for many people in the area. Yeah,
I'm hoping to get a job there next (assuming my next job is in Afghanistan).


If you want to see via satellite the approximate area where the fire fight took place (in Kabul) go here (Google maps). The fairly barren area to the right with a faint line going across it is a very well known mountain and the line is a very old wall built by a king way back when (not sure how way back though). I live about a mile west of this point. The houses at the base of the mountain are where Kabul's poor (not poorest) live. I have been around here and can attest that this particular area is not the nicest of mountain "settlements".

Backup Power and Chinese/Indian Products

I was recently trying to find Freeplay Energy’s “FreeCharge Weza” (foot cranked generator) and came across the Xantrex XPower Powerpack 1500. Sad as it may be, I was drooling over both of these things as Kabul is the land of intermittent (and quite often no) power. But then it occurred to me that whatever is available in the states for a kings ransom (which is then doubled by shipping costs) can quite often be found in India and China for a 1/4th of the cost (and admittedly 3/4th to 1/20th of the quality).

My organization has a few solar panels setup on the roof of one of our buildings and I found out that they were made in India and our engineer informed me that they were about 1/3rd the cost of the European equivalent. I have noticed at least one shop in Kabul (and I am sure there are more) that deals mainly with alternative energy generation such as windmills, solar panels and I am sure a few other things. It would probably be worth checking the place out to see if they have slightly cheaper power packs (would be nice if I could keep my computer and our satellite modem going a bit longer when the power craps out [and for all you electronics engineers out there, yes, I have a UPS and two US made [for 240v systems] surge protectors so even if I got an Indian battery gizmo and it decided to melt down I don’t foresee my baby [aka laptop] having any problems)

To further illustrate pricing in India and the US I was looking for the medicine “Immetrex” which is *insanely* expensive in the US (proof that the US pharmaceutical industry is legalized robbery) because I had run out and life with a migraine is pretty miserable. I found out from an expat that a reasonably priced Indian equivalent could be found in Afghanistan and my staff did in fact find some of these tablets for about $2.50/tablet. Two bucks for a pill may sound like robbery but in reviewing my options with my folks we quickly came to the conclusion that (if they work, which they seem to) the Indian pills at $2 a pop was worlds better than the $4/pill it would cost in the US and that is $4 *with* insurance, its like $200 for a pack of 9 tablets w/o insurance). I can understand companies wanting to make some of their money lost through R&D back but sometimes the prices are just insane.

How can you tell if a Politician is lying?

If their mouth moves, or so the joke goes.

At first it seemed like Obama might have a chance in the election but lately it seems that Hillary has a strong lead again (she has always had a lead but not always a strong one). Hillary would not necessarily be my first choice just because I don’t feel she is entirely trustable, or more actually she is a dyed in the wool politician.

My point of writing this though is my wish of an vote aggregation/statistic site that can list a bunch of topics and then show statistics on how the person voted in each of those areas. Example, during her tenure Hillary voted for 10 measures providing more environmental protections out of 13 so I would know that despite what she says (remember the moving mouth) she tends towards environmental issues. Showing something like this in a bunch of graphs etc would be great, and their might be such a site but I have yet to find it.

Since you can’t really trust what a politician says, you should be able to see what a politician does, or in the ideal world you should.

Another error of Iraq

I was catching up on my podcasts (not easy in a world of seriously limited bandwidth [an average of 1kbps]) and was listening to NPR’s “Ted Koppel Report” and “On The Media”. I consider Koppel’s commentary to be relatively fair (obviously leftist but in his case not unfair) and he made the mention of what Iran’s place was before 911/Iraq and what it is now, at least in terms of rhetoric and influence they are stronger now than before, why? Well there are no doubt a myriad of reasons but one of the reasons that Koppel points out is that Iran (Shite) was pretty much a balance to Iraq (Sunni) but now that Sadam has been toppled Iran is now somewhat unchecked. The balance held by these two countries was imperfect at best but would it not have been better to let them keep each other in check (neither has been found to ever have supported Al-Qaeda) than sacrifice our troops, reputation, and money to take out Iraq?

 

Another point that I seem to remember now but had forgotten is that the Bush administration (more like Cheney) originally said that Sadam was harboring Al-Qaeda, well it turns out Sadam wasn’t harboring Bin Laden’s cohorts but the irony is that now Iraq is crawling with Al-Qaeda “franchises”, the irony is painful at best.

 

NPR : Pew Survey: Discontent with Global Leaders Grows

Well, at least Bush isn't the only President that the world doesn't trust (though I suspect he rates pretty high on the "distrust meter")

How much is an immigrant's life worth, exactly? - By Steven E. Landsburg - Slate Magazine

I was recently catching up on my podcasts (not easy when you barely have any bandwidth) and I heard this segment from Slate Magazine's podcast "How much is an immigrant's life worth, exactly?" By Steven E. Landsburg.

I thought he did a damn good job of breaking the issue down using cold hard numbers and not all this emotionally charged (and oft misguided) rhetoric. Being in Agriculture I can tell you that there are many aggies torn on this issue, their conservative sides may say "don't want em'" (the Hispanics) but the business side of them says "we need em'". Being an Aggie in international development I can say that I have no problem with law abiding (excluding the "illegal" nature of how they got to the US, law abiding to me means no stealing or violent crime and hopefully in the future a sort of tax system that can incorporate these people) migrant workers.

Gore's gotta chance...

I will never forgive (or totally trust) the american voting process after the 2000 presidential election and the monkey (aka our esteemed king president) that it allowed into office but a new election is commig and people are talking. There are rumors about Hilary not running for president in the next election and it is thought that McCain might run again (not my first choice but my how past events have lowered the bar). All this makes me think that now is Gore's time to shine, the US is now leaning towards voting democrat (not because the dems have done a great job, more like its because they are the only alternative), many are finally starting to think alittle greener, and the war is not popular, Gore seems to have improved on his showmanship, all of which is in Gore's favor. The problem is Gore seems to have lost interest in running again, and who could blame him? Still, its a shame, I think he would stand a good chance, but he would be inheriting quite a mess. I don't think he would be able to do much for Iraq and would probably be severely critisised no matter what he did in/for Iraq but he could do so much in other areas like patching the runined relations with a countless number of countries, and improving the US's environmental policies, etc.