Yay, The Economist, Boo, Kleptocracy
Yay, The Economist
Tom from The Economist has been slumming around our humble corner of the blogosphere and he’s asked me to ask you to take a look at a new project they’re sponsoring: Project Red Stripe. Basically, the greedy capitalists want to steal your great ideas so that they can make money off them or get credit. In return, you get their everlasting gratefulness (possibly) and fame. Nonetheless, if you are like me and know that without such capitalists your ideas are never going to get past the stage where your mother tells you that you should go for it, this is very tempting.
So go to Project Red Stripe and help make the Internet a better place. Or more profitable. Or both.
Boo, Kleptocracy
Bref: Instead of selling electricity at reasonable prices to its citizens, which would merely enable it to pay government salaries etc., the Tajik government is selling electricity to Iran, The United States (in Afghanistan), the Afghan government, Uzbekistan, and possibly others in return for cold hard cash, which will presumably be used to buy more trips to Switzerland and other exotic presents for everybody’s favorite Kulobi, Emomali
Rahmanov.
Because of this, electricity has been rationed in the capital everywhere except in the center. They started by turning it off a few nights a week after eleven p.m. but it has since gone downhill and now we never get it after ten.
And One that Didn’t Make It into the Title
Coming Anarchy has a good link on. Too true, my friends, too true.
E,
The Tajik supply to Afghanistan is quite interesting (for too many reasons to enumerate…maybe one day I’ll feel comfortable discussing, in fact, that day may be coming in just over a week.) Though, I didn’t know it was to US installations. But the way things are going, you may get even less power in the capital in a year or two. And if you don’t mind me asking, can you tell me how much you all pay for power (i.e. USD/kwh), though I’m asking mainly out of curiosity.
Comment by q — 12.03.2007 @ 04.0.30
Q- We pay about 30 somoni per month. We are average electricity users- less frugal but also less people. Our neighbours, with a household of four, also pay 30 somoni per month. That’s for two Iranian heaters, an electric oven, two lights on most of the time, one on at night, and a computer with speakers (TV is not usually on). That’s around 30 cents per day… I don’t know how many kilowatts, I’d have to check our meter.
People here can’t sell opium so they can’t pay more. At most, they can act as mules to Russia but the profits are spread much less evenly for that work.
Tajikistan has been having better and better winters and precipitation and worse and worse electricity supplies since I arrived. So yeah, we know it will be worse. Much worse.
Comment by Administrator — 12.03.2007 @ 07.0.20
Dear Elisabeth,
Given your interest in Afghanistan, we thought you might be interested in our latest report, Breaking Point: Measuring Progress in Afghanistan. (http://pcrproject.com/blog/2007/02/23/download-new-report-breaking-point-measuring-progress-in-afghanistan/) The PCR Project is a part of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think-tank located in Washington, DC. Much more on Afghanistan and Pakistan can be found at www.pcrproject.com.
Best,
PCR Project
Comment by Anonymous — 12.03.2007 @ 19.0.15
Thanks for the mention Elisabeth and please don’t go to hard on us. We really do have a large remit, so if you can think of that great idea to make poverty history, that might work with The Economist behind it, then please let us know.
Tom from Project Red Stripe
Comment by Tom — 13.03.2007 @ 11.0.17
I guess Q can’t talk about it at length but I thought that the U.S. has frozen all $$ for electricity for Afg b/c the Ministry of Electricty and Water is so corrupt.
SO NO ELECTRICITY FOR ANYONE!!! wooohoooo.
Comment by homeinkabul — 26.03.2007 @ 17.1.22
Well that might be true, HIK, but even if they wanted to buy electricity from Tajikistan, they couldn’t.
Comment by Administrator — 27.03.2007 @ 10.1.03
That is a shame, but most locals can’t buy it here either. I think the profit sharing from opium sales still only benefit the few
Just from what I saw before I left, the locals in Afg also lost alot of the cable connections to get gov’t electricity. (excuse the incorrect engineering terminology) - so even if they could bribe the MoEW officials, it wouldn’t matter b/c the basic infrastructure was gone.
It seems like a lose lose situation.
Comment by homeinkabul — 28.03.2007 @ 16.1.25
Thanks for this. The normal news media rarely tell us about such. Given that Marxism totally failed; is there a better alternative to capitalism?
Comment by Barsawad — 01.04.2007 @ 05.1.34
Ciao
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Elisa
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Elisa
Comment by Elisa (Italia) — 16.04.2007 @ 12.1.11
WOW. That’s a pretty damning appraisal of the Red Stripe Project. But pretty accurate, too!
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Comment by Té la mà Maria — 27.04.2007 @ 07.1.57