Chiapas

A waterfall.

  

 

 

The ruins.

The flying cow (Really Mexico City). 

Los Cabos Mexico

Small island.

The end of the peninsula.

Sea lions perched.
 

 

The Arc.

The Arc.

Baghdad, Iraq - Industry

Some pictures from Baghdad of the local industry. 

Dora refinery flaring.  As seen from the Joint Security Station formerly known as Babil, on the Karada peninsula.

Obeidy industrial park.  The trash covered center.

The power plant of a local wheat grinding facility.  These guys all ground wheat for the Ministry of Trade's Public Distribution System.  Because a lot of food was handled by the PDS, there was little room for competition or private industry in the staples, except for private industry working under MOT supervision.

  

Another wheat mill.  

A cinderblock operation.  With the right mix of rock, sand, and water, they would set up on the side of the road and just let block harden in the sun.  They were always strategically located near squatters camps and growing pockets of Baghdad.  Some of the most entrepreneurial operations I saw in Baghdad.

A brick factory.  Not block, but brick.

A smelting operation.  These guys were abundant too, and definitely makeshift.  Iraq overfloweth with scrap metal, and the need for steel.  These guys get heavy fuel oil, setup a forced air operation, and melt the steel right there.  It's pretty dramatic and stepping into one of their operations is like stepping pretty close to hell.  Their factories belch fire and heavy smoke. 

With the mosque in the background, flying the Shi'ia flag. 

At this particular smetling plant, they produced sewer covers for private houses.  You can see the molds they would lay in the sand, fill, and then cover in sand to cool.

More smelting and melting.  With piles of feedstock steel in the background.

The finished product, a small drainage cover.

The scrapyard, for feedstock.  

 

A tar production facility in Shawra Um Jidda, northeast Baghdad.  Main inputs here are the tar rock, heavy fuel oil as a feedstock, and heavy fuel oil to melt and mix.

 

The piles of tar rock ready to be melted down.

 
The tar, getting bucketed and ready for roofing jobs.

The tar bathes.  Below you can see where the fuel is pumped under for burning.  Above is where the feedstocks go in.

Feedstocks that have gone in and waiting to melt.

More of the operation.  Multiple kilns going at it.

The absolute worst job in Iraq.  It's already 140 F outside, and you've got to stand on a little island in the middle of a tar pit and shovel the tar from the tar lake into a wheelbarrow to be bottled.  With no shoes.  God bless this young man.

Baghdad, Iraq

Along the Tigris in Zafaraneeya.  This is the intake for a large water system in Baghdad.  The river is particularly low, from a combination of Turkish dams and drought. 

National Police in pickup trucks.  The marriage of an American truck and Soviet guns. 

National Police in 9-Nissan.

Some pictures of Baghdad from above.

Baghdad is a lot greener than I thought it would be.

This is probably because of the Tigris.  I'm told it was a lot greener decades ago, when the electricity and thus irrigation worked.

 

 

The water reservoir along the Tigris.

The International Zone (Green Zone) from above.

Iraq's Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

Date palms along the Tigris.

 

Back in the City of Baghdad.

Goats at a construction site in 9-Nissan.  There are herds of goats running all around the city.  They mostly feed on trash.

Speaking of trash, this is squatter housing right on the edge of the landfill in North East Baghdad.  Known as Shawra Um Jidda (SUJ), it is a political no man's land, largely unrecognized by the the 9-Nissan District Council, avoided by the police, and left to stew in the city's trash, right between Iran and Sadr City.

Traffic in Zafaraneeya neighborhood, in Karada.

Flooding in Karada, right outside the International Zone.  In the winter, flash floods are common.  With drainage systems overwhelmed with trash, dust, and lack of attention, the streets fill with water quickly. 

 

 

Karada Traffic. From 2008-2009 there was a near explosion in economic activity.  Once empty streets were overflowing with goods.  Foods, toys, appliances . . . the place very suddenly filled full of goods for sale with the increased security.

And traffic.  People going to work, people visiting families, days of religious marches.  Traffic became a huge worry for anyone trying to get across town.  For years, before 2003, imports had been tightly controlled.  When the walls came down, the cars came crashing in.  Thousands and thousands.

A young date tree bears fruit in the desert.  Despite a seeming lack of water, the trees produce these fruits every year.  Lately though, date production has been ravaged by bad government management (any management at all!), and a lack of pest spraying.