The indomitable human spirit.

Wherever and under whatever suffering it refuses to allow that suffering to be the definition of its existence.

And trust me, there is plenty of it in this country to consentrate on.

Instead of comparative journalism, try objective local relevance.

The relevance from this story with its divorced location, is the consequences of political corruption. So do you believe the corruption in this country is irrelevant to the point we flee to Tunisia to escape the boredom?

Dan

The Pentagon has a number of scenarios to deal with this sort of eventuality, one of which is to nuke the entire middle east, destroying friend (Ben Ali And family) and foe alike with neutron bombs that produce huge volumes of rads from altitude without damaging infrastructure, but take out every living thing in the considerable kill zone!? Including those in metres deep anti-nuclear, hardened bunkers!

Then after around six months, the area would be cool enough radiologically speaking, to go in and start pumping the oil!?

This may well be true inasmuch it could be one of the hundreds of contingency plans they would probably never ever use or be expected to use! But keep on the books in case, God forbid they ever have to use it?

And only there because they like a blind Samson are chained to a fossil-fuelled economy and haven't the wit or the will to see how precarious and dehumanizing a position this puts them in!

It's not as if there weren't alternatives besides, price-gouged Middle Eastern and Russian oil! TBC.
Alan B.

It's only Suadi's huge reserves of oil that makes Ben Ali and his alleged rotten rule etc, possible. Only Iranian oil that makes Iranian funded terrorism etc possible. Without oil, all these folk would still be sheep, goat and camel herders eking out a bare existence in arid wasteland!

We have other alternatives, some of which I'll list for you AGAIN!

Every family produces enough biological organic material as biological waste which if put through Aussie innovation, as invented here, two-tank digestor system!?

This closed-cycle smell free system produces maximised methane as biogas.

Biogas can be stored in a bladder, scrubbed to remove a minor CO2 content, then used directly in ceramic fuel cells to both, power the home 24/7 and recharge the fully electric family jalopy.

The exhaust product of the ceramic fuel cells is mostly pristine water vapour! After powring the house and car, produce a saleable surplus?!

Methane, as described, can also be compressed to run any conventional diesel or petrol-engined vehicle!

Then there is the conversion of inexhaustible seawater to petrol and diesel alternatives and many other useful hydrocarbons in endlessly sustainable production. And requires the power of nuclear power as MSR to make is cost-effective!

The water is degassed in vacuum towers to remove the CO2 content then the gas compressed and recompressed through a number of stages which makes it a liquid and in this liquid state able to be combined with also liquified hydrogen as the plasma.

It's highly energy-dependent and only makes an economic business case if MSR thorium and power prices as low as 2.98 cents PKWH as possible with MSR thorium or MSR recycle and reprocessed nuclear waste.

Interestingly, as the volumetric CO2 is removed from seawater its symbiotic relationship to CO2 makes it replace that vacuumed out with similar quantities drawn directly fro the atmosphere.

Meaning we could/can kill two birds with one stone, replace all imported fuel with a locally manufactured variant, and drawdown atmospheric CO2 by a similar amount. Thus quite massively addressing manmade climate change! And over time, ocean acidification
Alan B.

Footnote.
There area couple of byproducts of the digestors as described above. The fist being nutrient-loaded reusable irrigation water suitable for underground taped distribution and would some of our all but bankrupt or financially crippled dairy family love a regular quota of that applied directly to their subsoil!?

The second is carbon-rich soil improver, that one, aids moisture retention, and two, geo-sequestrates carbon in the soil! And without the application of massive energy requirement!

This is win-win all round for the environment, climate change, massively sustained steel production for the two tank digestor systems, the economy and on-farm production How to pay for it all?

Well, just use the brains you were born with and dope out a deal to become the world's safest repository for mountainous nuclear waste. And once all the contracts signed and sealed discover it is not waste but unspent fuel

I mean, one ton of this material, will power a 350 MW MSR for upwards of 25 years! Just one 350 MW light water reactor will produce as much as 2550 tons of the stuff over a thirty-year operational lifetime.

Do the sums. That's 2550x25 years worth of free fuel that we would be paid annual billions to import and store. And that's just from 30 years worth from a single 350 MW reactor!

There are hundreds of nuclear reactors and hundreds more planned. The huge upside is, as this material is reprocessed through power generating MSR, the halflife is reduced to just 300 years!
Alan B.