Tag Archives: iraqi

No, University Students Should Not Be Forced to Have Facebook Accounts

by Chana6228ztgwm Posted on March 10, 2014

Mother Jones

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Thoreau attended a teaching conference this weekend. The keynote speaker had some things to say about communicating with the kids these days:

One small observation: The guy was insisting that we need to move all of our digital communication with students away from email and course management systems (Blackboard, Moodle, etc.) and instead communicate with students entirely via Facebook, posting assignment links there. I shall refrain from speculating on what sorts of stocks are in his retirement portfolio. Instead, I will note that while he was standing up there saying “Look, I’m old, you’re old, we’re all old, so we need to get with the times or become obsolete, now move your class to Facebook already!”, the Kids These Days are actually becoming less interested in Facebook. You could say that he proved his own point about faculty being old and out of touch, except he’s an administrator in his day job. So he actually proved that administrators are out of touch.

I am completely out of touch with both kids and universities, plus I’m an old fogey. And if you really want to know the truth, I’m not sure why university professors need to communicate with their students digitally at all. Don’t they still meet a couple of times a week in meatspace, like we used to when I was a lad? Can’t assignments and office hours and so forth be sufficiently communicated during class time?

But fine. I get it. We all communicate digitally these days, so university professors need to do it too. But you know what? University students actually do know how to use email. Sure, they might consider it something that’s mainly used for sending messages to grandma and grandpa, but they all know how to use it. And it has the virtue of being universal, extremely flexible, and supporting embedded links to any old thing you want. Students who plan to find jobs after graduation should probably know how to use it.

But my real point is this: If I were a student, I’d be pissed if I were actually forced to get a Facebook account in order to communicate with a professor. Maybe I don’t like or trust Facebook. And what if my other professors all have different favored ways of communicating? Am I forced to get a Tumblr account and a Pinterest account and a Google+ account and a Twitter account? That would be annoying as hell. Why should any of those things be required merely to be a student? Email is free, easy to use, and isn’t a vehicle for creating more Silicon Valley zillionaires. Any student who can’t be bothered to use it has way bigger problems than having to endure a slightly fogeyish professor.

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No, University Students Should Not Be Forced to Have Facebook Accounts

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Europeans Unhappy Over High American Capital Standards

by Chadwick15O Posted on March 10, 2014

Mother Jones

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The Fed has adopted rules that require foreign banks operating in the US to maintain the same capital standards as US banks. German bankers are unhappy about this:

In comments prepared for a speech in Berlin Monday, Andreas Dombret said that recent U.S. regulatory initiatives, “such as the enhanced standards for bank holding companies and foreign banking organizations, worry me. They seem to contradict the need for international cooperation.”

….The Fed recently approved new rules that force the largest international banks operating in America to establish U.S.-based “intermediate holding companies,” which will be subject to the same capital and liquidity requirements as domestic banks….European bankers have sharply criticized the move. “This is a considerable competitive handicap for European banks, as their U.S. competitors aren’t subject to any equivalent requirements in the EU,” said Michael Kemmer, head of the Association of German Banks last month.

Well, in that case, I recommend that the EU raise its capital standards and then subject American banks to it. Instead, last month they decided to ease leverage standards. I guess they’ve already forgotten what things looked like back in 2010. In case you have too, the chart on the right tells the story.

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Europeans Unhappy Over High American Capital Standards

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Thanks for the oil, Iraq, here’s some cancer

by Felixct7yh Posted on March 20, 2013

Thanks for the oil, Iraq, here’s some cancer

By Susie Cagle

Turns out depleted uranium (DU) munitions are a great thing to use when you’re going to war, so long as you plan on terrorizing people for generations to come. Military-related pollution is suspected of causing a huge spike in birth defects and all kinds of cancer in Iraq since the start of the Gulf War more than 20 years ago.

The last 10 years of the Iraq War, especially, cost a lot of money that we could’ve done way better things with and also killed 190,000 people directly, but that doesn’t cover the full extent of the damage.

expertinfantry

An American soldier in front of an oil-field fire near Kirkuk in 2006.

“Official Iraqi government statistics show that, prior to the outbreak of the First Gulf War in 1991, the rate of cancer cases in Iraq was 40 out of 100,000 people,” Al Jazeera reports. “By 1995, it had increased to 800 out of 100,000 people, and, by 2005, it had doubled to at least 1,600 out of 100,000 people. Current estimates show the increasing trend continuing.” That’s potentially a more than 4,000 percent increase in the cancer rate, making it more than 500 percent higher than the cancer rate in the U.S.

More from Al Jazeera:

As shocking as these statistics are, due to a lack of adequate documentation, research, and reporting of cases, the actual rate of cancer and other diseases is likely to be much higher than even these figures suggest.

“Cancer statistics are hard to come by, since only 50 per cent of the healthcare in Iraq is public,” Dr Salah Haddad of the Iraqi Society for Health Administration and Promotion told Al Jazeera. “The other half of our healthcare is provided by the private sector, and that sector is deficient in their reporting of statistics. Hence, all of our statistics in Iraq must be multiplied by two. Any official numbers are likely only half of the real number.”

Dr Haddad believes there is a direct correlation between increasing cancer rates and the amount of bombings carried out by US forces in particular areas.

“My colleagues and I have all noticed an increase in Fallujah of congenital malformations, sterility, and infertility,” he said. “In Fallujah, we have the problem of toxics introduced by American bombardments and the weapons they used, like DU.”

One researcher said Fallujah had been found to have “the highest rate of genetic damage in any population ever studied.” Another is calling for “large scale environmental testing to find out the extent of environmental contamination by metals and DU.”

A 1977 amendment to the Geneva Conventions prohibits weapons and methods of warfare that cause unnecessary suffering. But who cares about the Geneva Convention anyway? Certainly no one with uranium.

And lest we forget why we dropped all that depleted uranium in the first place, oil industry analyst Antonia Juhasz reminds us at CNN:

Oil was not the only goal of the Iraq War, but it was certainly the central one, as top U.S. military and political figures have attested to in the years following the invasion.

“Of course it’s about oil; we can’t really deny that,” said Gen. John Abizaid, former head of U.S. Central Command and Military Operations in Iraq, in 2007. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan agreed, writing in his memoir, “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.” Then-Sen. and now Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said the same in 2007: “People say we’re not fighting for oil. Of course we are.”

And it only took CNN 10 years to figure it out!

Susie Cagle writes and draws news for Grist. She also writes and draws tweets for

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Thanks for the oil, Iraq, here’s some cancer

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Exxon makes up with Iraq just in time for the discovery of a billion barrels of oil

by oks23po Posted on January 22, 2013

Exxon makes up with Iraq just in time for the discovery of a billion barrels of oil

By Philip Bump

expertinfantry

An American soldier stands near a 2006 oil field fire near Kirkuk.

Tensions between the semiautonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq and that country’s government are high — in large part thanks to oil. ExxonMobil’s recent agreement to explore drilling within Kurdish territory sparked a ferocious response from Iraq. One military officer suggested that exploration would be “a declaration of war.”

It’s no secret what prompts such fury. There’s an enormous amount of money in the Iraqi oil fields; some of those disinclined to be generous to our former president suggest that opening Iraq’s oilfields to American companies was a motive for Bush’s initial invasion of the country. Both Kurdish and Iraqi leaders would like to maintain control over those inky streams of money, reinforcing ExxonMobil’s tricky position.

Last week, ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson sat down with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in an effort to repair relationships between the two. It’s an important consideration. When Chevron announced an extraction deal in Kurdistan, Iraq banned the company from exploration elsewhere. From the Associated Press:

Iraq announced the meeting between Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and Exxon Chairman and CEO Rex Tillerson in a brief statement following the talks in Baghdad. It offered few specifics, saying that the men discussed the company’s activities and working conditions in Iraq.

Tillerson said Exxon was eager to continue and expand its work in Iraq and “will take important decisions in this regard,” according to the statement. …

A spokesman for the Kurdish regional government, Safeen Dizayee, downplayed the significance of Monday’s meeting.

“What is important is the results of this meeting, not the meeting itself,” he said. “We have not seen any change in Exxon Mobil’s policies regarding its work in Kurdistan.”

Another recent announcement provides additional incentive for ExxonMobil to mend fences. From Agence France-Presse:

Iraq said on Sunday it has discovered deposits of crude equivalent to one billion barrels of oil after the first exploration work by state-owned firms in almost 30 years.

The deposits were found after exploration in Maysan province, in southern Iraq near the border with Iran, and could potentially make a significant addition to Baghdad’s already substantial reserves.

There’s no indication that ExxonMobil knew about the new discovery prior to Tillerson’s meeting. But it reinforces the value to the company in staying on the Iraqi government’s good side. ExxonMobil’s politics are the same in the Middle East as they are here: work with and support anyone that makes it easier to suck oil out of the ground. Civil wars are bad for business.

Update Patrick Osgood, correspondent for Iraq Oil Report, clarifies (and takes issue with) the report above.

We’re working to verify Osgood’s assertion that the billion-barrel find has been misreported.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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Exxon makes up with Iraq just in time for the discovery of a billion barrels of oil

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How ExxonMobil may cause a civil war in Iraq

by Myrna Posted on December 18, 2012

How ExxonMobil may cause a civil war in Iraq

By Philip Bump

When George W. Bush decided that the United States (and its “allies”) were going to invade Iraq, there was some small amount of outcry. Opposition focused on three areas: speculation that Bush only wanted to open the country’s oil markets, concern that an invasion would spark civil conflict, and some displeasure that the administration lied about Iraq’s arsenal of weapons. (In retrospect, these critiques were pretty fair.)

Atef Hassan / ReutersA policeman stands guard near a pool of oil that leaked from a damaged pipeline in Basra province.

So it’s with some anguish and a sense that the cosmos has again rearranged itself that we report another hiccup in Iraq’s already turbulent passage to stability. At the center of it: one of the oil companies for whom several hundred thousand American troops kicked open the door.

From the Washington Post:

With their opposing armies massed on either side of the contested border dividing southern and northern Iraq, leaders in Baghdad and the semiautonomous Kurdistan region are warning they are close to civil war — one that could be triggered by Exxon Mobil.

Although leaders on both sides are negotiating a walk back from the brink, they also say their armies could easily be provoked into battle. …

“The prime minister has been clear: If Exxon lays a finger on this territory, they will face the Iraqi army,” said Sami Alaskary, a member of parliament and close confidant of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. “We don’t want war, but we will go to war, for oil and for Iraqi sovereignty.”

ExxonMobil is not the first company to attempt to walk the line between Kurdistan and Iraq proper. Earlier this year, Chevron announced a deal with the Kurds and was black-listed by Iraq. Exxon’s leases are closer to the informal border with Iraq, raising the government’s ire.

Tensions rose last month when Iraqi forces tried to arrest a Kurdish fuel seller, who appealed to Kurdish troops, the pesh murga, to protect him. Gunfire erupted.

The Baghdad military officer said the Iraqi army would open fire under three scenarios: if the pesh merga fire first, if the pesh merga advance beyond their current positions, or if oil companies begin working in disputed areas.

“If they do this, it’s a declaration of war,” the officer said. “They will have started it.”

Exxon hopes to begin drilling (with the U.S. government’s tacit blessing) next summer. Assuming that, in the interim, it doesn’t spark an armed conflict centered on the land where it hopes to drill.

We shouldn’t be surprised that it’s come to this. The last time a Texas-based fossil fuel interest wanted to get more oil out of Iraq, the results were about the same. At least we’re not pretending it’s about WMDs anymore.

Source

In Iraq, Exxon oil deal foments talk of civil war, Washington Post

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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