china's rare earths

china's cutting back on exports for rare earths. http://blogs.wsj.com/source/2010/10/28/chinese-rare-earths-less-muscle-more-growth/

the western response has been that china is playing with them politically, to exert dominance. but maybe china wants the rare earths for themselves too! haha. so if the west perceives that it's good to export to them, then consumerism in the west is acceptable but not consumerism in china? also, a lot of the old mines for rare earths in the west closed when the prices dropped, so that was really short sighted for the long term because now china exports 97% of the rare earths. this has huge impacts because we are increasingly becoming dependent on electronics.

i say recycle and reuse old electronics more, instead of re-opening and starting new mines. and start designing electronics to last longer, that you get the bang for your buck, and break the culture of having to buy the newest gadget, or even the newest version of the gadget. what do people do with their iphones when the next version is released? a piechart of the breakdown would be interesting.

oil spill photos

i kind of want to collect photos of the oil spill in the gulf of the mexico. scientists, engineers, environmentalists, activists, politicians will need to assemble lots of stuff to help us move away from our dependency on oil (oil is sooo useful, not just in terms of burning it for energy usage but also synthesis of so many different materials). photos are a really powerful and moving medium.

pictures of wildlife being coated with crude oil:http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/06/caught_in_the_oil.html

if the oil spill was in my backyard visualization: http://www.ifitwasmyhome.com/

i think i read in the NYT today that maybe if the US government really wanted to make a statement in the power struggle between corporations (especially BP in this case) and itself, it should yank out the contracts for oil that fuel military operations. which kind of leads to all sorts of interesting questions of what areas make the biggest impact in terms of reducing oil consumption.

transportation is a big one. on a personal level for instance, i regularly take the mbta buses from my house to travel around the boston area and as i was waiting, i noticed that the majority of cars driven on the road are only occupied by 1 person, even when the capacity is like 4. we should drive less by using public transportation, walking, biking more often if possible for running errands or going to appointments, rent cars when we need them instead of buying if that's appropriate for our lifestyle as students or people who live near their jobs, or if we need to commute, buy smaller cars like smart cars.

we have not yet overcome

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/06/how_would_i_feel_if.html

roger ebert on white racism now and then. read itttt!!

No end in sight

I just watched the documentary No End in Sight about the US invasion and post reconstruction attempts of Iraq. It was made in 2007 and now I get to see this movie 3 years later and have to say it lives up to it's name. The Senate just approved $60 billion for continued funding of Iraq and more deployment troops to Afghanistan, as well as rejected a measure to create a time table for Afghanistan.

The movie gives a good overview of what led to the invasion and what happened during occupation. The war was disasterous in many respects including: the top executives had no basis of realism and refused to acknowledge outside input or dissent, there was a few months of planning before the invasion, the people sent to Baghdad in ORHA got replaced quickly by CPA in three months, very few officials involved spoke Arabic or had any prior experience in the Middle East, government officials who dissented got fired or found it hard to speak up persistently, there were not enough troops sent, US officials in Iraq secluded themselves in the Green Zone, military contractors were very overpriced and took the roles of reconstruction when the Iraqis stakeholders should have.

According to the documentary, Head of CPA, L. Paul Bremer made three huge mistakes: 1) martial law was not enforced, so there was no security at all from anywhere because there was no police enforcement 2) deBa'athification -- anybody (including officials or schoolteachers who could have helped to tell US officials what they wanted for a new Iraq) affiliated with the Ba'ath party was rendered employed forever, 3) Iraqi military forces were disbanded and also made unemployed. Anarchy prevailed, and these unemployed people, estimates as high as half of the population, often in the goal of being able to support their families and wanting incompetent and destructive US forces in their country gone, became insurgent.

Newspapers don't report as much on the Iraqi war now. The country seems in complete shambles, with little to no infrastructure. The problem hasn't been resolved at all. The death toll and injury rate is too high for the outcome: destruction of a country. And this isn't just limited to Iraq either. Palestine , Pakistan, Afghanistan are just a few other examples.

donde hay guerra no hay paz ni seguridad ni vida sustainable. demasiada violencia y quimica. la gente esta sin las cosas mas basicas, como agua y comida y casa, y en muchos casos, sin sus amados porque se murieron. y si la guerra termina, la cualidad de vida esta tan peor, porque no hay recursos o tierra para construir y usar para vivir. para obtener la recuperacion de una sociedad es muy dificil cuando ya esta destruido el pais.

El derrame de petroleo de BP

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/05/oil_reaches_louisiana_shores.html

It's been over a month since the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico...it happened actually pretty soon after Obama announced an expansion of offshore drilling. Looks like that is officially on the backburner, although the MMS still has been granting permits to go forward and drill in new places in light of this disaster. The oil spill has reached Louisiana and looks like it's headed for Florida now, because scientists have discovered another plume in the ocean.

BP is in charge of cleaning up the mess and stopping the oil from continuing to flow. The government hasn't been really active in this process, saying that BP has the technology and expertise. But really, after multiple failed attempts, like releasing bioaccumulative disperants that are banned in Europe and trying top kill (trying to stop the leakage with mud and concrete and pretty much garbage), not to mention the security failures in the first place, I don't think the corporation knows what's it doing either. BP has also been trying to cover up the extent of the damage like underreporting the average gallons spilt a day and how much shoreline of Louisiana has been damaged. It's really bad timing especially because of the whole marine breeding season. I won't be suprised if dead zones have already ended up forming.

This whole scenairo is just plain eerie as I read Jared Diamond's Collapse. It's an ecological nightmare, brought about human forces to extract resources. The government needs to step in and regulate and appoint a taskforce of the top scientists from universities to solve this problem and deploy the armed forces to clean up and build infrastructure. It's incredibly frustrating when the EPA cannot even regulate or stop BP's actions as these weeks go by. The government has the power to make the case for regulation and safety, but it is difficult to accomplish when this "cozy relationship" is just a very uneven balance of who has the power.

Democracy and violence

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/opinion/30patterson.html?ref=opinion

NYT Op-ed on the relationship between violence and democracy, in light of the recent drug and political violence in Jamaica. Harvard Sociology Prof. Orlando Patterson gives three reasons why democratic societies tend to be more violent than authoritarian societies (which is personally interesting because I have heard that after Deng Xiaoping took power, crime in China got much worse than compared to the hardcore Communist years):

1. Electoral process
2. Exploitation of ethnic identity & organized crime
3. Transition period

In particular: old authoritarian norms and new incoming democratic ideas clash, and if there is no economic stability as nations progress to development, there is more violence over resource control.

Last thought: Maybe it's harder to establish a democracy in a multicultural society because there are competing and conflicting needs and wants and values.

van jones resigns

damn, van jones stepped down his position as the green jobs advisor to the white house, not because of incompetence but just politics. this whole bipartisanship just isn't working out ahaha. he has some really great ideas and i'm still reading his book, so hopefully i'll get the chance to write it about it some time.

http://slatest.slate.com/id/2227516/entry/1