I'm imagining Ty/Chad/Chet/whomever from Trading Spaces/Extreme Home Makeover shouting through a megaphone.
"Come on, everyone, the family's going to be home in ninety minutes! Let's get these insurgents out of here! Who's in charge of electricity? I wanna see some lights!"
Or run a business, really; it's not clear whether it's 8 hours of relatively stable power or 8 hours broken up over a day, but I can't imagine it's easy to buy or sell anything with the lights out.
it would be really interesting to know what people are doing to adapt. i'm sure some have electricity generators, but most must not. so: candles, cellars, wood or kerosene, latrines in cities, what?
i get al Jazeera on my tv, which seems a more likely source for people's day to day life in iraq than any western media outlet, but of course i don't understand any of it.
One of the details from George Packer's book that kinda puzzles me is about how the lack of air conditioning puts the entire country into a bad-tempered torpor. Is he projecting his own bad-tempered torpor onto everybody, or are all of the buildings now designed to be livable only with air conditioning?
I know this is a naive question and probably racist in all kinds of unintended ways, but how long has Iraq really had a functioning electricity grid capable of supplying power consistently to big household appliances like refridgerators and air conditioners? (And of course how many people really depend on such expensive items?)
Is he projecting his own bad-tempered torpor onto everybody
Why should he be in a bad temper? First he wrote a book hyping the whole thing, and when it went bad, he wrote a book about how a bunch of stupid people hyped an invasion. Win win, baby!
I know this is a naive question and probably racist in all kinds of unintended ways
? --> !!
how long has Iraq really had a functioning electricity grid capable of supplying power consistently to big household appliances like refridgerators and air conditioners?
A/C eats a lot more power than a fridge. Anyways, it depends on the part of the country you're talking about. They had reasonably decent power distribution in the 80's.
(And of course how many people really depend on such expensive items?)
Not that many.
The real problem is the intermittant and unpredicatable nature of power distribution. People can cope with small amounts of power delivered consistantly, or large amounts delivered consistantly, but mix and match does not work well.
That's a good question. I don't know a damned thing about electricity, and while we know that the power output is less than it was before, I have no clue what that means. Does it mean there were 9 intermittent hours of electricity before, and now there are 8? Does it mean full power to cities before? Did most people have electricity before?
It's obvious that things aren't better, but it's hard to judge how bad they are. Relative to my nice powered apartment in the U.S.? I would be screwed without power. Relative to people who haven't had regular access to power? Not good, but someone used to dealing with it is probably in better shape to handle it than I.
So I guess I don't think it's a racist question, but a pretty good one to determine what our reasonable expectations should be. This doesn't touch the larger question, really, of how badly we've messed up, but it might help us make a better timetable.
in a hot country, a lot of people depend on fridges to keep perishable items from going bad. especially in cities. (think: meat, dairy). so it is more of a health & survival issue than a luxury.
air-conditioning is not the real issue.
yeah, whatever else it was going on, iraq had a perfectly fine electricity system for decades under saddam hussein. the grid was destroyed by warfare.
Baghdad University was built by Walter Gropius and Frank Lloyd Wright was planning to build an opera house in Baghdad but died first. if Iraq hadn't been involved in so much warfare, starting in the 80s, it would be a pretty well-developed place.
in third world countries, there's a big difference in living standards between cities and rural areas.
there are also big differences between third world countries. (am i really the only person who has lived in a couple?)
rural areas might not have been fully electrified, but iraqi cities had 24/7 electricity. the middle class in urban areas in iraq were used to full electricity and, according to all the Times and Monde articles i've read, are extremely angry about the current living conditions.
i also hate to think about the state of iraqi hospitals without electricity.
When? If the grid wasn't working because Iraq beat up Iran, that's a problem, but not the fault of the insurgents.
I'm not trying to be a pain in the ass, honestly, but the article bothers me. The average schmoe reading the paper is either going to assume that a) Iraq was just like the U.S. in terms of dependence on and access to electricity before we invaded, so we've done a horrible, horrible thing or b) that they just use camels anyway, so it's just media bias. We painted schools!
Huh. Unfogged ate my comment. I had said, I think, that refrigerators have been pretty ubiquitous since at least the 70s, in my experience of your run-of-the-mill Middle Easter third-world country. Air conditioners, not so much, although much more common in places of business. Even if you are used to power outages, I don't think it ever stops being hard. Growing up, I think we had probably 2-ish (usually very short) outages a week, and it never stopped being a giant pain in the ass. Think anyone's going to come to your place of business when the power's out? Think again. Even if what you do doesn't need power, it's still like the dead zone.
I would imagine that the electricity in at least Baghdad and other urban-ish areas was pretty consistent before the war, albeit more spotty than ours, but still having power *most* of the time.
the grid was destroyed during the US invasion [or incursion or whatever]. Not the 1980s. The insurgents prevent repair of the damage from the US invasion and Saddam-ousting period.
yeah, it's too bad the average schmoe probably has no background picture for Iraq. in actuality, the answer again is that cities had continuous access to electricity, and rural areas were more variable. People probably had different things hooked up, used different quantities of electricity, but it was reliably there.
have you watched alJazeera and understood it, then? tell more?
i am curious because it looks so much more professional than the Algerian tv stations I get, and I hear they do a certain amount of investigative reporting as well as inflammatory stuff. but i have no idea what anyone is saying. so I just watch Canal 5 or the BBC.
I actually haven't watched that much Al-Jazeera except for for entertainment value when I'm home, and I only half-understand because my Arabic is shoddy, but from what I do understand it's a lot of propaganda, more professional-looking than your average Arab TV station, yes, but as for actual content it's a lot of the same stuff and opinions over and over. That's one of the things that really frustrates me; there's absolutely nowhere you can go, I discovered, to find out what's really going on in Iraq.
Living in Samoa (whose climate, of course, wasn't as extreme as Iraq's is), I'd say that intermittent access to air conditioning is infinitely more irritating than no access to air conditioning, and that buildings built in the expectation of air conditioning can be uninhabitable where buildings designed to be used without air conditioning can be pleasant.
So if Baghdad was built up over the last few decades with buildings designed for air conditioning, it's probably awful. There's a good chance that more rural areas that maybe didn't get as much development since electricity became more common are doing better in that regard, if they've got more traditionally designed buildings.
I'm imagining Ty/Chad/Chet/whomever from Trading Spaces/Extreme Home Makeover shouting through a megaphone.
"Come on, everyone, the family's going to be home in ninety minutes! Let's get these insurgents out of here! Who's in charge of electricity? I wanna see some lights!"
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 01- 2-06 10:09 AM
you can't use a fridge to preserve food when electricity is that inconsistent.
Posted by mmf! | Link to this comment | 01- 2-06 10:20 AM
Or run a business, really; it's not clear whether it's 8 hours of relatively stable power or 8 hours broken up over a day, but I can't imagine it's easy to buy or sell anything with the lights out.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 01- 2-06 10:23 AM
it would be really interesting to know what people are doing to adapt. i'm sure some have electricity generators, but most must not. so: candles, cellars, wood or kerosene, latrines in cities, what?
i get al Jazeera on my tv, which seems a more likely source for people's day to day life in iraq than any western media outlet, but of course i don't understand any of it.
Posted by mmf! | Link to this comment | 01- 2-06 10:33 AM
One of the details from George Packer's book that kinda puzzles me is about how the lack of air conditioning puts the entire country into a bad-tempered torpor. Is he projecting his own bad-tempered torpor onto everybody, or are all of the buildings now designed to be livable only with air conditioning?
I know this is a naive question and probably racist in all kinds of unintended ways, but how long has Iraq really had a functioning electricity grid capable of supplying power consistently to big household appliances like refridgerators and air conditioners? (And of course how many people really depend on such expensive items?)
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 01- 2-06 10:37 AM
Is he projecting his own bad-tempered torpor onto everybody
Why should he be in a bad temper? First he wrote a book hyping the whole thing, and when it went bad, he wrote a book about how a bunch of stupid people hyped an invasion. Win win, baby!
I know this is a naive question and probably racist in all kinds of unintended ways
? --> !!
how long has Iraq really had a functioning electricity grid capable of supplying power consistently to big household appliances like refridgerators and air conditioners?
A/C eats a lot more power than a fridge. Anyways, it depends on the part of the country you're talking about. They had reasonably decent power distribution in the 80's.
(And of course how many people really depend on such expensive items?)
Not that many.
The real problem is the intermittant and unpredicatable nature of power distribution. People can cope with small amounts of power delivered consistantly, or large amounts delivered consistantly, but mix and match does not work well.
ash
['Do we have power or not?']
Posted by ash | Link to this comment | 01- 2-06 10:45 AM
That's a good question. I don't know a damned thing about electricity, and while we know that the power output is less than it was before, I have no clue what that means. Does it mean there were 9 intermittent hours of electricity before, and now there are 8? Does it mean full power to cities before? Did most people have electricity before?
It's obvious that things aren't better, but it's hard to judge how bad they are. Relative to my nice powered apartment in the U.S.? I would be screwed without power. Relative to people who haven't had regular access to power? Not good, but someone used to dealing with it is probably in better shape to handle it than I.
So I guess I don't think it's a racist question, but a pretty good one to determine what our reasonable expectations should be. This doesn't touch the larger question, really, of how badly we've messed up, but it might help us make a better timetable.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 01- 2-06 10:46 AM
in a hot country, a lot of people depend on fridges to keep perishable items from going bad. especially in cities. (think: meat, dairy). so it is more of a health & survival issue than a luxury.
air-conditioning is not the real issue.
yeah, whatever else it was going on, iraq had a perfectly fine electricity system for decades under saddam hussein. the grid was destroyed by warfare.
Baghdad University was built by Walter Gropius and Frank Lloyd Wright was planning to build an opera house in Baghdad but died first. if Iraq hadn't been involved in so much warfare, starting in the 80s, it would be a pretty well-developed place.
Posted by mmf! | Link to this comment | 01- 2-06 10:56 AM
in third world countries, there's a big difference in living standards between cities and rural areas.
there are also big differences between third world countries. (am i really the only person who has lived in a couple?)
rural areas might not have been fully electrified, but iraqi cities had 24/7 electricity. the middle class in urban areas in iraq were used to full electricity and, according to all the Times and Monde articles i've read, are extremely angry about the current living conditions.
i also hate to think about the state of iraqi hospitals without electricity.
Posted by mmf! | Link to this comment | 01- 2-06 11:07 AM
"the only person *here* who has lived in a couple"
Posted by mmf! | Link to this comment | 01- 2-06 11:08 AM
the grid was destroyed by warfare.
When? If the grid wasn't working because Iraq beat up Iran, that's a problem, but not the fault of the insurgents.
I'm not trying to be a pain in the ass, honestly, but the article bothers me. The average schmoe reading the paper is either going to assume that a) Iraq was just like the U.S. in terms of dependence on and access to electricity before we invaded, so we've done a horrible, horrible thing or b) that they just use camels anyway, so it's just media bias. We painted schools!
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 01- 2-06 11:09 AM
11 before 9 and 10.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 01- 2-06 11:13 AM
Huh. Unfogged ate my comment. I had said, I think, that refrigerators have been pretty ubiquitous since at least the 70s, in my experience of your run-of-the-mill Middle Easter third-world country. Air conditioners, not so much, although much more common in places of business. Even if you are used to power outages, I don't think it ever stops being hard. Growing up, I think we had probably 2-ish (usually very short) outages a week, and it never stopped being a giant pain in the ass. Think anyone's going to come to your place of business when the power's out? Think again. Even if what you do doesn't need power, it's still like the dead zone.
I would imagine that the electricity in at least Baghdad and other urban-ish areas was pretty consistent before the war, albeit more spotty than ours, but still having power *most* of the time.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 01- 2-06 11:14 AM
Oh, and also, mmf!, you're not missing any great information from Al Jazeera, believe me.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 01- 2-06 11:20 AM
hi again, cala.
the grid was destroyed during the US invasion [or incursion or whatever]. Not the 1980s. The insurgents prevent repair of the damage from the US invasion and Saddam-ousting period.
yeah, it's too bad the average schmoe probably has no background picture for Iraq. in actuality, the answer again is that cities had continuous access to electricity, and rural areas were more variable. People probably had different things hooked up, used different quantities of electricity, but it was reliably there.
Posted by mmf! | Link to this comment | 01- 2-06 11:30 AM
silvana,
have you watched alJazeera and understood it, then? tell more?
i am curious because it looks so much more professional than the Algerian tv stations I get, and I hear they do a certain amount of investigative reporting as well as inflammatory stuff. but i have no idea what anyone is saying. so I just watch Canal 5 or the BBC.
have seen the film Control Room of course.
Posted by mmf! | Link to this comment | 01- 2-06 11:35 AM
[...distracted by image of camel-powered generators...]
Thanks for the answers, people.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 01- 2-06 11:36 AM
I actually haven't watched that much Al-Jazeera except for for entertainment value when I'm home, and I only half-understand because my Arabic is shoddy, but from what I do understand it's a lot of propaganda, more professional-looking than your average Arab TV station, yes, but as for actual content it's a lot of the same stuff and opinions over and over. That's one of the things that really frustrates me; there's absolutely nowhere you can go, I discovered, to find out what's really going on in Iraq.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 01- 2-06 11:39 AM
Living in Samoa (whose climate, of course, wasn't as extreme as Iraq's is), I'd say that intermittent access to air conditioning is infinitely more irritating than no access to air conditioning, and that buildings built in the expectation of air conditioning can be uninhabitable where buildings designed to be used without air conditioning can be pleasant.
So if Baghdad was built up over the last few decades with buildings designed for air conditioning, it's probably awful. There's a good chance that more rural areas that maybe didn't get as much development since electricity became more common are doing better in that regard, if they've got more traditionally designed buildings.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 01- 2-06 7:59 PM