Iraq

Iraq Looking to the Sun to Power its Future

- Adam Clare

Solar panels on grass

Iraqi oil fields have a lot of fossil fuels ready to be exported, and that’s a problem. The Iraqi population, like many oil states, don’t benefit from the cheap oil that corporations extract and export. As a result Iraqis have now turned to solar power for their local energy needs. The current installation of solar panels is relatively small, but they are gaining in popularity and being a nation that gets a lot of sun we can only hope that more people see the light. Let’s keep oil in the ground and put up solar panels.

In nearby Sulaymaniyah, the second-largest city in northern Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region, only 500 out of the 600,000 households are equipped with solar panels, said Sirwan Mahmud, a spokesman for the province’s electricity department.

Solar power had seen “rapid progression”, he said, after the region’s parliament adopted incentives in 2021 to compensate households for any excess electricity that they generate.

The region aims to build three commercial solar power plants with a total capacity of 75 megawatts (MW), he added.

Read more.

Canada One of the Most Peaceful Nations

- Adam Clare 1 Comment

Despite the fact that Canada’s current Prime Minister Stephen Harper wanted to go to war in Iraq and his commitment to keep Canadian troops fighting and dying in Afghanistan, Canada has been named the most peaceful nation in North and Central America and Caribbean region.

For a list of the most peaceful nation in each region of the world you can click here.

The list was compiled by the Global Symposium of Peaceful Nations.

Via the Canadian Press

3 Trillion Dollar Spending Spree

- Adam Clare

Here, have $3,000,000,000,000 and spend it!

What appears to be an art project (or is it marketing?) is critiquing the cost of the USA invading and occupying Iraq. That’s right, it will cost $3 trillion to fight for oil, er, freedom. The website linked above is a challenge to see how well you can spend the same amount of money for the world that you want. It’s obviously aimed at Americans. Take a look at my shopping cart here.

$3 TRILLION isn’t just how much the Iraq War will cost our government, it’s how much it will cost our sputtering economy. When the Bush administration launched this war, they claimed Americans would not have to make sacrifices. They even cut taxes with the help of a Republican-led Congress, rather than raising them as had been done historically in times of war. According to Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard professor Linda Bilmes in their book The Three Trillion Dollar War, we’re fighting an unnecessary war on borrowed money. The war has caused our skyrocketing national debt. And more than anything else, the war has caused our recession.
Here’s how $3 trillion breaks down:

$526 billion — borrowed money poured into Iraq so far
$615 billion — total interest costs for taxpayers
$280 billion — to rebuild our military
$590 billion — disability benefits and health care for Iraq veterans
$1.5 trillion — estimated costs through 2017

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