Thoughts on ‘$20 Per Gallon’ by Christopher Steiner
Posted by: nzanjani on: August 29, 2009
I bought this book shortly after arriving home from Cyprus and finally got around to reading it this week. While much of it was interesting, a whole heck of a lot of it was merely filler to up the page count. If you happen to be interested in reading it, I would advise you to skip the first six chapters and start on page 170. From there until the end it’s actually a good read.
The book suffers from a number of problems. Most notably, it is poorly organized. The author clearly has a fair number of topics he wants to write about, but he tosses them into chapters in ways that simply don’t make sense. For example, the $18 chapter, ‘Renaissance of the Rails,’ would lead one to believe that it is about the future of railroad technology. While this is indeed true, the chapter tapers off with a discussion of the US military – a topic that the author doesn’t even attempt to relate to railroads. It is a kind of poor organization that detracts from the main points he is trying to make in each chapter. But at least the railroad chapter focuses the vast majority of its text on railroads; the $6 chapter, ‘Society Change and the Dead SUV,’ covers such a multitude of topics that it makes no point whatsoever – unless, that is, you consider ’society is going to change in the near future’ to be a point. I suppose you could…
The second problem with Steiner’s book is the glaring gaps in his narrative. Chief among these is his total lack of discussion on biofuels. He literally doesn’t mention them once – somewhat odd considering this is a book about energy. There is literally no excuse for Steiner not to tackle the subject – especially since there are exciting prospects in the way of algae fuel. Continental recently performed a test flight using algae fuel that went perfectly. Hence, it is a bit confusing why Steiner would assert that the only chance for airlines to save money and stay in business is to buy a new Boeing 787. Biofuels will clearly play a major role in the future of US energy policies; indeed, they already do!
Another problem with the book is the presence of Captain Obvious. Do you really need to dedicate 20 pages to explaining that the SUV and other gas guzzling vehicles are going to disappear? Conversely, do you need to write another 20 pages on how energy efficient vehicles will soon be the norm? I mean, duh!
Other problems exist as well. He writes an entire chapter on how everyone will crowd into cities and then immediately follows that chapter with another chapter on how small town America will be reborn. Huh? Then there is his complete lack of discussion on where the lithium for the electric car renaissance will come from. Nor does he talk about alternative battery technologies that will be needed if we are ever going to come close to one day retiring the combustion engine. Many of Steiner’s arguments, including the very premise that gasoline will one day reach $20, are questionable at best. And I found myself really ticked off by the fact that he would wait to discuss certain issues that will rise to the fore when gasoline hits $6 until his $20 chapter – another consequence of poor organization.
That said, he does present some very interesting information that I have to give him credit for. The discussion of generating and using ammonia was fascinating, as was the bit about harvesting heat exhaust from industrial manufacturing to make energy. I also found his epilogue to be realistic and compelling. On balance, however, I wouldn’t recommend this book to everyone. If you have to read it, get it from a library. It doesn’t quite deserve to be bought.
Israel Seeks Its Own Demise
Posted by: nzanjani on: August 26, 2009
All the talk right now is focused on Israeli PM Netanyahu’s diplomatic visits to Western Europe and the prospect of renewed Middle East peace talks. The West might think that it is on the brink of a major breakthrough, but the reality of the situation is that change is impossible. The reason is simple: two-thirds of Israelis reject a settlement freeze – even if it were to bring about a normalization of ties with the entire Arab world! Those are numbers that Netanyahu simply cannot ignore, for to do so would mean political suicide.
Israelis want their settlements, come hell or high water. They feel entitled to all of historic Palestine and strongly support Israel’s military occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. We who are active and interested in the push for peace have to digest this fact and plan accordingly. Simply put, we must accept that there will NEVER be a Palestinian state. Ever. Israel won’t allow it.
That doesn’t mean, however, that the Palestinians are doomed or that peace is impossible. Israel wants the Palestinian people and the international community to consent to apartheid, but this is completely unacceptable. We must begin to immediately set the foundation for a unified bi-national state based on full equality for both Israelis and Palestinians.
By not allowing the creation of a Palestinian state, Israel will make a one-state solution an inevitability. By doing so, however, it will also bring about an end to itself. Israelis and Palestinians will remain, but the state that governs them will no longer be called Israel and will function in a far different manner.
So let’s stop debating whether a two-state solution or a one-state solution is more realistic. We already know the answer, even if it is going to take the leaders of the Western nations a few more years to figure it out. Let’s start getting technical as to how we can make a unified bi-national state function justly and effectively. To do otherwise would only waste time. And there is no time to waste.
What Will Happen Tomorrow?
Posted by: nzanjani on: July 8, 2009
Tomorrow (July 9th) marks the 10th anniversary of the 18 Tir Massacre. Coincidentally, it also corresponds with the last day of the Itikaf religious holiday in Iran. To make things even more interesting, the whole of Tehran has been shut down due to a massive sandstorm. There have been some murmurings of very large demonstrations tomorrow. Simply put, things could get out of control within the next 24 hours.
The truth, of course, is that nobody really knows what is going to happen in Iran in the near future. Nevertheless, it’s still worth speculating, right? I personally believe that Rafsanjani, who is once again skipping this week’s Friday prayers (for the fourth week in a row!) has courted enough support from the Assembly of Experts to remove Khamenei from power and replace him with a new Supreme Leader. I think he is waiting for a major provocation (tomorrow?) in order to summon the Assembly clerics from Qom and officially remove Khamenei from power. The fact that Khamenei has just appointed his own son to control the anti-protest Basij militia may be the last straw for both the clerical higher-ups and military commanders.
We shall wait and see how events unfold…
Iran: Imagining the Future
Posted by: nzanjani on: July 4, 2009
A lot of folks, including myself, have been openly wondering what the end game might look like for the Green Wave movement in Iran. Very few people, however, have been openly wondering what the end game might look like for the ruling powers. Simply put, the situation in Iran as it stands today is both unacceptable and unsustainable. Let me explain…
The regime has managed to suppress the Green Wave movement by hiring mindless thugs from rural areas to come in to urban centers and render violent beat-downs to any and all protesters. This seems to have succeeded in preventing large gatherings, but it has utterly failed to dampen the spirits of the protesters. The ruling powers could only really claim victory against the protesters if they could be certain that they could withdraw their extra security forces safely and not see any further protests. This is simply not the case. As people have been saying in Iran, there is still fire beneath the coals.
For as long as people take to their rooftops every night and yell ‘Allah-o Akbar’ and ‘Death to the Dictator,’ the ruling powers will feel the need to keep their reinforcements on the streets. This is important for two reasons. First, it costs an extraordinary amount of money. According to one interview conducted by Rooz Online, each extra trooper is costing the regime 200 dollars a day. The fact that every major Iranian city is coping with protesters means that a whole hell of a lot of extra troopers are being employed, thus sucking up precious financial resources. If these additional security forces have to stay around for months, the budget is going to take a massive cut, thereby necessitating spending cuts. Since Ahmadinejad has prioritized hand-outs to the poor in all of his budgets, these hand-outs will decrease dramatically. Once the cash flow stops, the prior recipients of Ahmadinejad’s hand-outs, who cast their votes for him with the expectation that the cash would flow indefinitely, will rightly ask why he deserves their loyalty and turn on him. This, in turn, will swell the ranks of the Green Wave movement, thereby creating further impetus for reform.
The second threat of the heightened security presence is that it will scare off foreign investment, particularly European foreign investment. Foreign firms will feel uncomfortable entering into contracts with a government that can not guarantee the security of those contracts. The presence of security forces reinforces the fact that the situation inside Iran remains very unstable and therefore bad for business. Less business means even less money to feed the regime.
The ruling powers therefore have two options. Either they begin a campaign of severe repression whereby they methodically break into all apartments where people are yelling from the roof at night and kill those people or they start making concessions to the reformists. Since severe repression would probably make senior clerics in Qom turn strongly against the ruling powers, the concessions route would be far more advisable.
Let’s hope they choose wisely…
Promised Post on Iran
Posted by: nzanjani on: June 30, 2009
Some more thoughts on how we got to where we are today in Iran:
Iran was in a state of active revolution and post-revolution political consolidation until the presidential election of 1997. The period of 1979 to 1989 was a time of revolution and war. Given the complete change of societal organization and political structure, plus a brutal war imposed on the nation by Saddam Hussein, Iranians had to worry more about bread, butter, and security than political freedoms. The predictable result was pointless elections in which the pre-ordained candidate won landslide victories.
From 1989 to 1997, Iran was figuring out how to piece together the wreckage of the country after the death of Ayatollah Khomeini and the conclusion of the war with Iraq. The foundations of the Islamic Republic started to harden and stabilize, but the voting population was the same bunch of individuals who lived through the war.
1997 was totally different. The youth, who knew little of war, had blossomed and were aware of what was going on internationally in regards to freedom of expression. Much to the surprise of just about everyone, the heavily favored candidate, Nategh-Nouri, was utterly demolished by a previously unknown cleric, Khatami. Khatami’s reformist message ushered in a period of massive transformation which in 2000 resulted in reformists capturing 65% of parliament’s seats. This, rightly so, scared the shit out of the ruling clerical elite. The reason? If reformists could capture 70% of seats in parliament, they could alter the constitution to make Iran a real democracy rather than a theocracy. Khatami was allowed to freely win re-election in 2001, but in 2004 Iran changed forever.
Using the powers bestowed upon them by the constitution, members of the Guardian Council disqualified a massive number of reformist candidates for office, including 80 incumbent parliamentarians. What was sure to be a reformist victory of 70%+ of seats was turned into a conservative trouncing. The Guardian Council had saved the Islamic Republic from democracy.
The shenanigans of 2004 outraged just about every person with a moral conscience. President Khatami should have immediately resigned his post and demanded the reinstatement of rejected candidates, but, being the huge coward that he is, he actually encouraged people to go vote and legitimize the Guardian Council’s actions.
2004 set the scene for 2005. The nation, feeling betrayed by what happened in 2004, largely stayed home for the presidential election. The first round of voting was won by former president Rafsanjani, with Karroubi in second place. However, a few magic vote tally switches replaced Karroubi with Ahmadinejad. Ahmadinejad was not the political insider that Rafsanjani was, and his victory in the second round needed no vote rigging.
The only problem was that Ahmadinejad turned out to be batshit crazy. With his Holocaust rhetoric, strong anti-Western speeches, and horrendous economic mismanagement, he became a huge embarrassment to the country. Mousavi managed to capitalize on antipathy toward Ahmadinejad in the closing weeks of the 2009 campaign and, on election day, beat him handedly. But wait! More fraud. Ahmadinejad was declared the winner by a massive margin. People demonstrated. The state gave people a nasty beatdown.
So here we are now. What can be done? The process of reform will be slow, but it should be possible with patience and determination. We first have to recognize how the constitution of Iran effectively squashes democracy. The main problem is that the Guardian Council is allowed to nix candidates for office. The Council is, however, not allowed to intentionally redistribute votes. As such, the tampering of the vote in Ahmadinejad’s favor in both 2005 and 2009 is contrary to the constitution. The first step toward reform is to demand absolute transparency in future elections, both presidential and parliamentary. A list of every polling place in the country should be put online in map format, with specially numbered ballot boxes corresponding to the different locations. Each voting booth in the country should be legally mandated to be staffed and supervised by volunteers from opposing campaigns. This would prevent the tampering of votes. When polls close, the vote count for each ballot box can be counted and the paper ballots can then be securely transferred to a safe location. Is that too much to ask? Certainly with the current pressure on the regime, it can be forced to provide way more transparency in elections.
That’s the easy part. The hard part is constitutional change. More specifically, the Guardian Council has to change so as to allow any reasonable person to run for office. For so long as the Guardian Council is able to reject candidates, true democracy will be impossible. Sadly, reforming the Guardian Council means having to reform the supreme leadership. This is because half of the Guardian Council is appointed directly by the supreme leadership and the other half is selected by the head of the judiciary with the approval of the parliament. Since the head of the judiciary is appointed by the supreme leader, effectively all 12 of the Guardian Council members are appointed by the supreme leader.
The only way to reform the supreme leadership is to change the Assembly of Experts, which supervises the supreme leadership. The Assembly of Experts is a council made up entirely of clerics. They are elected by the public after being screened by the Guardian Council. They also run for office in off-years in elections that generally fall under the radar of a lot of voters. The public must demand that Assembly of Experts elections be held at the same time as parliamentary of presidential elections so as to boost participation in them. The public must further demand that objective standards of fitness for serving on the Assembly be put in place. It should be specified that any individual who has reached the level of ayatollah (or grand ayatollah) should be qualified sufficiently in fiqh so as to serve on the council. There are plenty of non-regime reformist ayatollahs, so this reasonable proposal could usher in big changes.
The game would then be to wait for Khameini to die and be replaced by a new supreme leadership. This would preferably be a supreme leadership council of 6 grand ayatollahs rather than one single leader. The 6 council members would be voted in by the Assembly, with the top 6 vote-getters assuming the 6 seats. Each ayatollah would be able to appoint a single member to the Guardian Council.
Under such an arrangement, the likelihood of reformists making their way into the supreme leadership and the Guardian Council would be greatly increased. A softer screening process for parliamentary and presidential candidates could then result in a huge increase in reformist candidates winning office. With time, the supreme leadership and Guardian Council could be abolished altogether and be replaced with a true democracy. It would take around 20 years, but the Iranian people are patient, right?
Right?!
Options for Iran
Posted by: nzanjani on: June 26, 2009
My motto has always been to hope for the best but expect the worst. Applied to Iran, hoping for the best means that we can wait for Rafsanjani to depose Khameini, for Mousavi to face Ahmadinejad in a run-off, or both. The worst case scenario would be for Khameini to keep his position, Ahmadinejad to be sworn in as president for a second term, and Mousavi to be somehow silenced for good. The latter option is much more likely than the former.
We have no means of knowing what will become of Iran. The people continue to chant in the night and there are rumors that protests have begun to blossom outside of Tehran (students have returned home from school). The chants signify that while there is indeed fear, there is also hope; the spread of protests to other large Iranian cities means the spirit of resistance is still alive and well. For so long as the people remain defiant, the regime will have to take notice and adjust accordingly. Violent suppression seems to have gone as far as it can possibly go, and the movement is still uncowed.
Now is a time for waiting and reflection. As we reflect, we must keep in mind that even in the event of the worst case scenario unfolding, the people have awoken forever. The authorities might manage to preserve the status quo, but Iran will never be the same again. We must summon all of our courage and intelligence to devise ways to apply pressure on the regime in strategic ways that can help usher in democratic change.
This process must begin with electoral reform and be followed by changes to the supreme leadership and the Assembly of Experts that keeps the leadership in check. Our minds must turn immediately to how we can prevent any kind of widespread electoral fraud from ever happening again.
I will write more on this and other possible means of reform on Sunday.
End Game in Iran: My Thoughts
Posted by: nzanjani on: June 22, 2009
After an orgy of blood on Saturday, many now wonder what will become of the protest movement that has spread across Iran since the flawed “election” on June 12th of this month. On Sunday, Grand Ayatollah Montazeri answered the question that was on everyone’s mind by declaring three days of mourning starting June 24th.
So what now? Unless something surprising happens in the days to come, Iran will proceed with mourning processions that will invite additional killings by the government and a continuing internal crisis. Time Magazine has a good piece up on how just such a cycle of mourning helped bring down the Shah in 1979. If we accept that continuing protests of ever-greater size are a likelihood, then we must now ask how this chaos will ever end.
Another full-blown revolution would not be an ideal outcome. This is not the Shah’s regime we’re talking about; 95% of the country hated the Shah in 1979, but one-third of Iranians are strongly supportive of the Islamic Republican system of today. A new revolution would be an invitation to a terrible civil war. It is my personal belief that the system must somehow change from the inside out so as to prevent a tragic outcome.
This is not my personal preference. I tweeted on June 15th that “the tragedy of iran is that mousavi supporters are trying to save the islamic republic. it is not worth saving.” In the days that have followed, I have changed my mind. There are two reasons for this. The first is practical. The people who feel the way I do about Iranian theocracy are a small minority inside Iran, certainly not over 20%. Mousavi’s positions are appealing to this 20%, but he can also draw an additional 30% to 40% of support from those who still believe in the theoretical underpinnings of the Iranian political system. This ability to draw support from half or more of the Iranian populace is crucial to implementing any sort of domestic reform; nobody espousing the radical change that people such as myself desire would have any reasonable chance of getting his or her way in Iran.
The second reason for my change of mind has to do with the Islamic nature of the regime. It dawned on me this afternoon that it is actually quite critical for practicing Muslims with solid revolutionary credentials to implement the necessary changes to the current political system. A victory for a band of secularist political outsiders would do little to change the sentiments of Islamists. But if Islamists were to make the necessary reforms themselves, it would fundamentally alter the course of Islamic reformation in the 21st century. Simply put, Muslims need to help moderate Islam rather than have secularists portray Islam as extremist and try to repress it politically.
It is for these two reasons that I endorse a path of incremental reform that will, God willing, one day lead to a truly secular democracy inside Iran. So what is the first step toward this process of reform? I see only one option: Hashemi Rafsanjani, the most powerful man in Iran, needs to convince a majority of clerics in the Assembly of Experts to remove Supreme Leader Khameini from office. Rafsanjani made Khameini and he can break him. It has been reported by various semi-credible news sources that Rafsanjani has been meeting with clerics in the Assembly over the course of the last week. He may not have the votes he needs now, but if momentum for protests continues indefinitely, senior clerics may see now chance for political survival other than by removing Khameini from office. This scenario, I believe, is plausible.
From then on it would be a fairly complicated process toward implementing a specific set of key reforms. The first item of order would be to select a new supreme leader who would be sympathetic to reformists. A reformist-minded supreme leader could then replace the heads of the Guardian Council, judiciary, and state media, as would be his right under Article 110 of the Iranian constitution. The next step would be to organize a new presidential election under strict supervision and international observation. The supreme leader could either disqualify Ahmadinejad on the grounds that his government falsified the “election” results, or he could let him stand and, God willing, lose to Mousavi.
The constitution does not grant the supreme leader the right to dissolve parliament, so the hardline conservatives who currently form a majority there would remain in power for another three years. Nevertheless, it is entirely plausible that some reforms could be implemented in the interim, including restrictions on the supreme leader’s power. Most importantly, however, the parliament can help get the economy back on track by creating more jobs, distributing oil wealth more intelligently, and getting inflation under control.
The most important step would be to curtail the supreme leader’s power, which are currently completely contrary to representative democracy. Making the post of supreme leader a temporary assignment and returning to the original intent for the post to be filled only by a grand ayatollah/marja would effectively put an end to illimitable velayat-e faqih and put Iran on a path to real democratic reform. It would take a while for the organs of the state to resemble what we see in modern European states, but it would at least leave the door open to just such a possibility.
We can at least hope…
Profound Sadness
Posted by: nzanjani on: May 23, 2009
That’s what I feel when I read something like this: http://lawrenceofcyberia.blogs.com/news/2009/05/quote-of-the-week-aharon-shabtai.html
Profound sadness for the Palestinians who suffer brutal treatment at the hands of their Israeli overlords. But even more profound sadness for the Israelis. Here in the Western World, we are taught about the Holocaust and told “Never Again.” Never again should genocide and/or ethnic cleansing be allowed; never again should a group of people be humiliated and repressed as if they were mere animals fit only for the slaughter; never again. At least, that was the lesson that I was taught as a child.
Israeli students are taught a very different lesson in their schools, and “Never Again” takes on a completely different meaning. To Israelis, never again will Jews be allowed to be mistreated; never again will Jews be too weak to defend themselves; never again.
The difference is both striking and tragic. The lesson I learned was generalized to all human beings. I was taught that all life was precious and that the Holocaust was a reminder of what the very worst of humanity was capable of. I was taught that something ugly lurked inside me and that I must do everything in my power to suppress that ugliness and instead express the beauty that also resides within me. This is a lesson that has stuck with me.
The Israeli lesson, in contrast, is one of disgusting ethnocentrism, a lesson only for Jews. The struggles of other downtrodden and oppressed groups is of no consequence; only Jews matter. This explains why an Israeli could be so shameless as to call for the gassing of Arabs; this explains why Israel can so brutally repress the Palestinian people for decades; this explains why Israel could so enthusiastically support the former apartheid regime in South Africa; this explains why a hypocritical moral coward like Elie Wiesel can denounce human rights crimes across the globe while completely ignoring Israeli atrocities. Indeed, this explains much.
Profound sadness is the only way I can describe this ache.
Funny Cracked Comment
Posted by: nzanjani on: April 29, 2009
Cracked occasionally does a great article. Their latest offer (http://www.cracked.com/article_17296_10-retarded-money-saving-tips-people-are-actually-trying.html) is pretty good, but tip number 5 is classic. I’ll repost it in full:
“You may have noticed after a particularly robust load of pajamas, boxer shorts and bath robes that your dryer’s lint trap is full to bursting with off color fuzz and a veritable forest of errant pubes. How many times have you peeled off that layer of fluffy nastiness and simply hucked it away without ever stopping to ponder just how many thousands of dollars you just tossed into the trash?
After all, why pay for things like expensive stuffed animal stuffing when you can stuff your own with lint and present little Johnny with his very own 45 percent pubic hair by volume Teddy Bear?
But wait, we’re not just talking about slashing the 25 percent or more of the household income most families blow on bear stuffing. Maybe you live in an old, drafty house that has been improperly sealed against the elements, causing your heating and cooling bills to skyrocket.
A little dryer lint in the cracks and suddenly your wayward pubes and the stray pet hairs that had been clinging to your sweater are keeping you toasty all winter long!
Mattress sagging in the middle? Cram some lint in there! Need to stuff your crotch to impress the neighbors? Lint! Need fuel for your lint-powered time machine? Lint, motherfucker!”
No clue if this copy-and-paste job breaks fair use policy, but Cracked can sue me if it wants 
Karroubi: Ignorant Cleric
Posted by: nzanjani on: April 28, 2009
Did you hear the news? Iranian presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi has adopted ‘Change’ as his campaign slogan. This ‘Change,’ however, has nothing to do with the ‘Change’ associated with President Obama. No, Karroubi’s ‘Change’ comes directly from the Qur’an! According to Karroubi, there is a verse in the Qur’an that says “Verily God will not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves.” There is just one problem: he is blatantly misinterpreting scripture.
The Qur’an has two verses similar to the one cited by Karroubi: 8:53 and 13:11. Here are the translations, courtesy of M. A. S. Abdel Haleem:
8:53 = [He did] this because God would never change a favour He had conferred on a people unless they changed what was within themselves. God is all hearing, all knowing.”
13:11 = “each person has guardian angels before him and behind, watching over him by God’s command. God does not change the condition of a people [for the worse] unless they change what is in themselves, but if He wills harm on a people, no one can ward it off – apart from Him, they have no protector.”
In the case of verse 8:53, “change a favour He had conferred on a people” clearly means “punish a people.” The language used in verse 13:11 makes abundantly clear that the ‘change’ God is bringing is a negative one. The negative ramifications of this change are perhaps best articulated in verse 16:112: “God presents the example of a town that was secure and at ease, with provisions coming to it abundantly from all places. Then it became ungrateful for God’s blessings, so God afflicted it with the garment of famine and fear, for what its people had done.”
Yet Karroubi believes that the Qur’anic concept of ‘change’ in this context is somehow a good thing: “Verily God will not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves.” In other words, Iranians must summon the courage to improve themselves as a nation, and once this courage has been summoned, God will assist the Iranian nation by putting it on a path to prosperity. It is a compelling message, but is completely unrelated to the Qur’anic verse that Karroubi cites. Either Karroubi wants Iranians to be punished by God or he is ignorant of the Qur’an. Clearly, it is the latter.
