I snapped this particular photo in April 2005, while Crystal and I were on our “three countries in one day” Balkans extravaganza. We had taken a bus from Dubrovnik, Croatia to Trebinje, a small town located in the Republika Srpska of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Although Trebinje was mostly spared the overwhelming destruction that was inflicted upon other Bosnian cities such as Mostar, the scars of war were still very much apparent when we visited ten years later. It was in Trebinje that Serbian and Montenegrin units of the JNA launched an artillery attack on the beautiful city of Dubrovnik during the Croatian War of Independence. Later, during the Bosnian War, Trebinje’s Muslim residents were forced to flee the town during a campaign of ethnic cleansing, while their mosques were burned to the ground by Serb militants. At present, NGOs are still clearing landmines from the area, ethnic tensions occasionally flare up, and Radovan Karadžić, a former poet/psychiatrist/politician turned war criminal, often takes refuge in Trebinje, where, to this day, he remains very popular with the Bosnian Serbs that populate the city. As such, despite the thousands of leaflets distributed by NATO peacekeepers (now EUFOR), don’t expect one of the residents to collect on the $5 million bounty the U.S. Government has placed on Karadžić.

Via the LATimes:

A Vatican keen to show its green side has added pollution to the realm of “new sins” that today’s Catholics must confront and avoid.

[...]

Girotti’s discussion of “new sins” (though many were not exactly new) was also an attempt to appeal to the modern Catholic and show the relevance of church teachings and guidance in the globalized world.

“The Vatican’s intent seemed to be less about adding to the traditional ‘deadly’ sins [lust, anger, sloth, pride, avarice, gluttony, envy] than reminding the world that sin has a social dimension and that participation in institutions that themselves sin is an important point upon which believers needed to reflect,” Father James Martin, acting publisher of the Jesuit magazine America, said in a blog he operates.

“In other words, if you work for a company that pollutes the environment, you have something more important to consider for Lent than whether or not to give up chocolate.”

So, let’s just say, for instance, that since I work in the energy industry, which many people like to blame for destroying the environment (conveniently forgetting, of course, that their personal demand for energy is what drives the industry), does this now mean I can give up work for Lent? As you know, I am a baptized Catholic, and suffered through eight years of Catholic school (which sadly, probably molded me into the person I am today more than any other life experience) before becoming a “lapsed Catholic”, but I would certainly be willing to turn into a “Cafeteria Catholic” for the remaining portion of Lent.

Deposit several scoops of ice cream into a tall glass, garnish with an entire orchard’s worth of fruit and one ice cream cone. Serve with a dash of disinterested Eastern European customer service.

Late one evening in Yerevan, after finishing dinner at a decent Chinese restaurant, everyone hopped in their respective SUVs (American diplomats, natch) for a morozhenoe run. We ended up at some outdoor pseudo Middle Eastern cafe that looked as if it had been jacked from a Hollywood movie set and deposited in downtown Yerevan. All that mattered, though, was that they served ice cream and coffee. I opted for a traditional vanilla/chocolate combination, but Andrew decided to be the brave man in the group and order the descriptionless “Sharm-El” sundae. The above photo shows what he ended up with. I’m glad I stuck with my highly unoriginal ice cream order, as a smörgåsbord of fruit only serves to defile the ice cream. Too damn healthy.

In order to relieve pressure on existing SoCal outlets, which are increasingly crowded at all hours of the day:

Their beef isn’t with the burger.

Merchants near some Southern California In-N-Out Burger restaurants say their gripe is with growing traffic jams at drive-through lanes that are keeping customers from getting in and out of their stores.

Long lines of idling cars whose occupants are waiting for made-to-order double-doubles, fries and chocolate shakes sometimes spill into streets and block driveways and alleys, according to owners of adjacent businesses.

The traffic crunch has sent executives of the Irvine-based chain on a crash program to open new outlets to relieve pressure on existing In-N-Outs.

If only they could expand to the (l)east coast and show these (l)east coasters what a real burger tastes like, then I’d be in heaven (well, not quite, but it would make this swamp a bit more bearable).

You don’t hear much about the BTC pipeline these days (which, on second thought, is probably a good thing considering most pipeline news from the former Soviet republics often involves explosions, gas shutoffs, and various other negative incidents), so I was surprised to find this rather positive article in today’s Christian Science Monitor regarding BP’s investment in Azeri villages located along the pipeline’s route. Reaction to BP’s projects, from both village residents and international NGO workers, has been overwhelmingly positive.

Six days a week, Seymur Alizadeh and his chestnut-brown mare patrol the Azerbaijani countryside. Buried a few feet below is the prized Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline, which delivers nearly 1 million barrels of Caspian Sea crude to Western markets each day.

Mr. Alizadeh, one of many local villagers guarding the oil route, says, “I feel like a very important part in protecting this pipeline.” Hiring local horsemen is part of a larger effort by pipeline builder BP to create a massive neighborhood watch.

BP and other energy companies are under scrutiny for their relations with local communities worldwide for the cost, disruption, and even bloodshed their lucrative pipelines are responsible for. So in recent years they’ve honed a new formula: invest heavily in the affected communities and try to foster goodwill, neutralize controversy, and hopefully safeguard their multibillion-dollar investments.

[...]

By the end of 2008, BP says it will have spent close to $100 million in Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey to build water-purification systems, medical clinics, primary schools, parks, and roads in the 450 communities identified as directly affected by the pipeline.

This expense, however, may be a drop in the barrel compared with the billions of dollars of revenue from Caspian crude. (Although BP won’t reveal its profits in Azerbaijan, the government’s share of its revenue last year was $4.7 billion.)

Still, some of the 125 Azeri communities, mostly impoverished and often neglected by their own governments, say that BP’s efforts are the best they’ve seen. The company and several smaller oil partners work with nongovernmental organizations on community-development efforts that the government has yet to begin.

“I don’t think I have ever worked so closely with the private sector,” says Pamela Flowers, the country director for the International Rescue Committee, which partnered with BP on community projects along the
BTC. “They put a lot of effort into it.”

This strategy, which some view as “enlightened self-interest,” may seem like common sense. But compared with a decade ago, it represents a shift for companies that today face ever more scrutiny. “It’s fundamental, good security practice, in terms of protecting our asset, to make sure that we are good neighbors to the communities we impact,” says BP spokeswoman Clare Bebbington.

Energy companies as good corporate citizens? Yes, believe it or not, it happens quite often.

Wired has a great article (The Nukes of October: Richard Nixon’s Secret Plan to Bring Peace to Vietnam) on recently released documents outlining Kissinger’s application of game theory in an effort to end the war in Vietnam. In particular, this involved 18 B-52s loaded with nuclear weapons and en route to the USSR, with Nixon doing his best to convince the Kremlin that he was an absolute madman:

During his campaign for the presidency the year before, Richard Nixon had vowed to end that conflict. But more than 4,500 Americans had died there in the first six months of 1969, including 84 soldiers at the debacle of Hamburger Hill. Meanwhile, the peace negotiations in Paris, which many people hoped would end the conflict, had broken down. The Vietnamese had declared that they would just sit there, conceding nothing, “until the chairs rot.” Frustrated, Nixon decided to try something new: threaten the Soviet Union with a massive nuclear strike and make its leaders think he was crazy enough to go through with it. His hope was that the Soviets would be so frightened of events spinning out of control that they would strong-arm Hanoi, telling the North Vietnamese to start making concessions at the negotiating table or risk losing Soviet military support.

Codenamed Giant Lance, Nixon’s plan was the culmination of a strategy of premeditated madness he had developed with national security adviser Henry Kissinger. The details of this episode remained secret for 35 years and have never been fully told. Now, thanks to documents released through the Freedom of Information Act, it’s clear that Giant Lance was the leading example of what historians came to call the “madman theory”: Nixon’s notion that faked, finger-on-the-button rage could bring the Soviets to heel.

[...]

The nuclear-armed B-52 flights near Soviet territory appeared to be a direct application of this kind of game theory. H. R. Haldeman, Nixon’s chief of staff, wrote in his diary that Kissinger believed evidence of US irrationality would “jar the Soviets and North Vietnam.” Nixon encouraged Kissinger to expand this approach. “If the Vietnam thing is raised” in conversations with Moscow, Nixon advised, Kissinger should “shake his head and say, ‘I am sorry, Mr. Ambassador, but [the president] is out of control.” Nixon told Haldeman: “I want the North Vietnamese to believe that I’ve reached the point that I might do anything to stop the war. We’ll just slip the word to them that for God’s sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about Communism. We can’t restrain him when he is angry — and he has his hand on the nuclear button’ — and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace.”

(Insert obligatory Kissinger/Dr. Strangelove reference here)

If you were under the impression that sidewalks existed solely for the use of pedestrians, you would be wrong. At least if you were in Kiev, where it is quite common for drivers to park on sidewalks. With Kiev’s horrendous traffic, you’re also likely to see cars driving down the sidewalk, as we did while on our bus coming back from Chernobyl. Our bus driver felt it was appropriate to drive on the sidewalk rather than wait at a busy intersection. Amazingly, no pedestrians were harmed in the process.

Poor Baku just can’t get a break. It’s like the Houston of the Caucasus. Forbes magazine recently listed it as the dirtiest city in the world, which is quite a blow to their long shot aspirations of hosting the 2016 summer Olympics:

Unless you’re in the oil business, there’s little reason to brave the choking pollution of Baku, Azerbaijan. Fetid water, oil ponds and life-threatening levels of air pollution emitted from drilling and shipping land the former Soviet manufacturing center at the bottom of this year’s list as the world’s dirtiest city.

On the contrary, I found Baku an interesting city to visit. It’s not all leaking pipelines and fetid pools of oil (but yes, there is plenty of that to see).

If this doesn’t quite win you over, you could always visit the gigantic Dubai like “Death Star” hotel they are building on the shores of the Caspian Sea. The beach, as shown in the artistic rendering of the hotel (complete with tiki torches and beachside dining), sure does look tempting.

From the LATimes:

Like many of the Californians he represents, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger now spends more than three hours commuting because he lives so far from the office.

But his ride is a private jet.

After flirting briefly with buying a Sacramento abode for his family, then living alone for a while in a 2,000-square-foot hotel penthouse across from the Capitol, the governor has decided to stay nearly every night at his Brentwood mansion.

The commute costs hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, which aides say the governor pays for himself. Some environmentalists say the trips expand his carbon footprint enough to undermine his image as a crusader against global warming, despite the pollution credits he buys to offset the damage.

Solution? Move the state capital to SoCal. Who wants to visit Sacramento anyways?

In many cities throughout the former USSR, the utility lines (gas, water, etc.) were run above ground rather than buried below. This particular water line was right in front of Liz’s apartment, and surrounded by a large, and constantly growing, pool of water. Check out the awesome “repair” job performed by the local utility workers (or, most likely, a frustrated local). At the very least, the pipe was no longer hemorrhaging water.