‘Best Regards, Phil’
February 2, 2011
Oil
February 2, 2011
This image has been posted with express written permission. This cartoon was originally published at Town Hall.
Iran Cracks Down While Egypt Cracks Up
February 2, 2011
Foreign Policy:
While the world’s attention has been riveted by Arab uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt this month, Iran’s government has taken the opportunity to execute a record number of prisoners in an apparent bid to head off the return of the dramatic street protests that pushed President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government to the brink in June 2009.
Meanwhile, Iranian officials have been spinning the turmoil in the Arab world as a victory for Iran and a replay of Iran’s 1979 revolution against the U.S.-backed shah. But the mass protests that are ricocheting around the region — spread in part by Facebook, Twitter, text messaging, and satellite television — cut more than one way for Tehran. They remind Iranians of their own recent failed attempt to dislodge an increasingly authoritarian government.
“This is a reaction to the developments in Egypt and Tunisia,” says Hadi Ghaemi, director of International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. “The Iranian intelligence forces want to show their power by executing so many people including even someone of European nationality.”
The crackdown could be in part an effort to pre-empt more demonstrations as Iran on Jan. 31 begins the commemoration of the 32nd anniversary of the Islamic Revolution. The climax of the so-called “10 days of dawn” that began with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s return from exile in 1979 is Feb. 11, the day the shah’s last government fell. Last year, Iran also made a point of executing several political prisoners before that date.
This January, Ghaemi said, the Iranian government executed 83 people, including on Jan. 29 the first dual national deliberately killed in years: an Iranian-Dutch woman, Zahra Bahrami.
Bahrami, 45, was arrested in December 2009 when Iran’s opposition Green Movement took to the streets during the Shiite Muslim holiday of Ashura. She was later accused of trafficking cocaine, a charge that her family asserts was fabricated. In response to her hanging, the Dutch government suspended diplomatic relations with Iran.
According to Ghaemi, Iran executed almost as many people in January 2011 as it did in all of 2005. Since Ahmadinejad replaced Mohammad Khatami in August 2005, the number of executions has risen steadily and now is the highest in the world per capita and second only to China in absolute terms. At least 250 people were executed last year, Ghaemi said, with perhaps another 100 put to death more quietly. In the eastern city of Mashhad near the Afghan border, he said, about 600 people are currently on death row.
Iran also has the dubious distinction of holding the world’s oldest known political prisoner: Ebrahim Yazdi, 80, a former foreign minister who has suffered from high blood pressure and prostate cancer and underwent open-heart surgery shortly before his arrest in October. He is due to go on trial on unspecified charges in March. According to Ghaemi, another 500 political detainees are awaiting action on their cases while about 500 have been convicted and are serving sentences.
Iranian opposition figures point out the regime’s hypocrisy in criticizing Arab governments for firing on peaceful protesters while crushing freedom of expression in Iran. Meanwhile, the official media waxes triumphant about the developments in the Arab Middle East.
Comments last week by Hossein Shariatmadari, editor of the conservative Kayhan newspaper, were typical: “Look at the region. Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Algeria, Bahrain. … roaring in populous slogans and demands against their absolutist rulers; pay attention. All the demands and slogans are in complete congruence with the teachings of the Islamic revolution. Death to America; death to Israel; hail Islam; death to the seculars; Islam is my religion”….
Read it all.
Hot Wheels: The race is on to create a car that can reach 1,000mph
February 2, 2011
Push the accelerator and the car starts moving—slowly, it seems, at first. But it’s deceptive because the desert ahead is flat and featureless, devoid of visual clues apart from a straight line marked on the ground. I’m soon at 100mph with the jet engine just behind my head winding up to full power. Careful, because the car is drifting away from the line. At just over 200mph, I pull the left trigger on the aircraft-like steering wheel to ignite the rocket; at 350mph I use the right trigger to fire it at full blast. Concentrate, steer straight. As the speedo passes 750mph, the car goes through the sound barrier. At just over 1,000mph, the marker posts for the start of a measured mile flash past. Don’t blink. In 3.6 seconds the posts at the end of the mile are in the dust behind me.
Then it’s all action. Foot off the accelerator, release the rocket triggers and, as the speed falls away, deploy the airbrakes and launch the parachutes from the rear. When the car slows towards 200mph it is safe to step on the brakes. But I seem to have overdone it, and dropping to a crawl won’t be able to coast up to the stopping point. Mark Chapman leans over with a word of advice: “You’re still doing 150mph.” I brake harder.
Setting a 1,000mph (1,609kph) land-speed record on a simplified computer simulator is difficult enough, but once Chapman and his team have finished building Bloodhound SSC (super-sonic car) it will be a thousand times more difficult. The person driving the car for real will be Andy Green. Besides the noise, vibration and stifling heat, his body will be pummelled by sickening G-forces.
Driving the car will have to be done subconsciously because his brain will be too busy computing information, especially from the cockpit instruments. But Green is relaxed: “I’ve had the best training in the world for this.” He is an RAF wing commander, used to having to stay cool and methodical while flying jet fighters fast and low. You learn how to prioritise, because there will not be time to think about everything. But one display will always get his attention, the one that shows the pressure the wheels are exerting on the ground. Green has to keep those wheels on the ground, not just to stay alive by preventing the car pitching violently upwards, but also because a land-speed record requires it.
No one really knows what a car will do at 1,000mph. But Green has some experience as the first person to drive through the sound barrier, in Thrust SSC at Black Rock Desert, Nevada, in October 1997. His record of 763mph still stands. Chapman watched him on television while working as an aerospace engineer and signed up as chief engineer after meeting Richard Noble, the Bloodhound project’s irrepressible leader. Many of the 30-strong team (not to mention numerous others helping out) came together through a common passion for motorsport. Mostly they are like Noble: not content with a normal job…
Anubis
February 2, 2011
This image has been posted with express written permission. This cartoon was originally published at Town Hall.
Which One?
February 2, 2011
This image has been posted with express written permission. This cartoon was originally published at Town Hall.
Britain and France Get Poor Marks in Democracy Ranking
February 2, 2011
Germany is more democratic than France, Britain and even Switzerland, according to a study released last week by the University of Zurich and the Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB), a research institute funded by the German government.
The ‘democracy barometer’ measures how well 30 established democracies implement the principles of freedom and equality. Denmark gets top marks, while Britain and France are found wanting, ranking 26th and 27th respectively. Costa Rica came last, just ahead of South Africa and Poland.
The study spans the years 1995 – 2005. Project leader Wolfgang Merkel of the WZB told SPIEGEL ONLINE that the survey “is designed to go deeper than whether a country holds free and fair elections, but not to go deep into individual governmental policies.”
Data has also been collected from a further 40 countries, including South American democracies, and the additional ratings will be released later this year. A major criterion is the extent of control citizens have over their government. Nine other criteria are examined, including the rule of law, transparency of government and participation in the political process…
