When is a free market a bad thing? Well, I’m not sure. But this might mark one of those occasions:
The International Herald Tribune newspaper has defended its acceptance of an advertisement seeking bids for two large scale nuclear reactors in Iran. The ad appeared on April 20, including in the edition of the IHT distributed with the English version of the Haaretz daily.
Inviting bidders to help in the construction of two pressurized light water reactors in the Bushehr province, the ad also ran in the Financial Times on April 25.
This despite growing concern over Iran’s nuclear proliferation program, particularly in the light of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s repeated threats of destruction against Israel.
What this says about markets, pragmatism, opportunism, anti-semitism, etc., I’ll leave for you all to suss out.
For my part, I’ll just point out that it says nothing kind about journalists (the IHT is owned and operated by the NYT company)—who seem only to find their inner libertarians when the target is either Israel of the US.
But remember: not printing the Danish Mohammed cartoons? Shows that journalists are embracing the Enlightenment’s ultimate value: “tolerance”.
(h/t CJ Burch)
Since when have the media ever held themselves to the standards they demand of others?
What I really want to see is a full-page ad from Halliburton thanking the papers for helping them land such a lucrative project. Can you imagine the opinion page the next day?
You know, this sounds like the business opportunity of a lifetime for a certain “Company”.
They do have a history of handling large civil engineering projects, such as a certain Soviet-era pipeline.
Perhaps they could be induced to put in a bid for the project and build it right to ‘code’.
Marx and Lenin both promised that capitalists would aid their own destruction.
As it turns out, that is not quite true. A capitalist society first must be dominated by useful idiots and maybe a few fifth-columnists who aren’t as stupid as they seem.
Dammit, we do it for the children.
Maybe Ford could bid on it. They could used the guys who designed the transmission for the Taurus.
You know you’ve got problems when they ask you if it’s metric. At the junkyard.
The Iranian’s will probably get 60,000 out of those reactors. They come with a 36,000 mile warranty.
Mikey, I agree. I’d think that they would probably hire a few speCIAl workers to take care of the wiring. After all we have great electriCIAns in this country.
You don’t need the CIA to kill that project. Just hire some IBEW workers from the McCormick center in Chicago. They charge about $50 just to change a lightbulb. With enough cost overruns, that project will be DOA.
Do things the Italian way… hire the lowest-bidding company, that will sub-contract the work to another company or two set up to laundry Mafia money. In 20 years from now, the reactors won’t have been built yet; cost will be one order of magnitude higher than projected and the little work done will be sub-standard anyway.
And I will have a basement full of Brunello di Montalcino bottles. And fine Grappa.
Now that really takes some sand to do that.
I am with mishu on this one. See if the “McPier” management bunch could run the whole thing too.
I like the idea of burning up twenty times as much money as the project was bid at; but I also like the idea of the proud owners walking in, hitting the ‘on’ switch, and seeing that project of special national significance perform like a Ford Pinto stuck in reverse.
Perhaps we could just slip them the plans of Consumers Energy’s Midland Nuclear Power Plant?
“A Friendly Reminder to Contractors Bidding for Iran’s Nuclear Reactor from the United States: Make sure you get that in cash up front.
“I’m not saying, I’m just saying.”
— Suggested copy for another ad to run in IHT
Most requests for bids include the location of the project site, so this might be useful in the future. Perhaps we should put out a request for bids on a contract to bomb said plants.
Didn’t the New York Times have a hissy fit when Nuc directions were up on the Iraqi Doc. Collection website and get quotes from that joke IAEA? And wasn’t the NYT’s point that it was careless and irresponsible – the site should be pulled down?
NYT co it seems is always a little behind the curve – much like our CIA, I guess.
If I wasn’t clear…
Kill the projct, mishu? Oh no, I want them to go ahead with the project, with as many as possible ‘unintended’ structural issues as possible. Such as those the US gave a Soviet natural gas pipeline in the 1980’s.
And to quote, “Boom! It goes off!”
move77. Yes, many things nearby should move when it goes online.