ΔΙΑΦΟΡΑ ΑΡΘΡΑ

Βόρειο Ιράκ σημαίνει πετρέλαιο

Η ΝΑΥΤΕΜΠΟΡΙΚΗ ON LINE
Πέμπτη, 8 Νοεμβρίου 2007 21:07


Στοπ καρέ. Οι Αρχές της αυτόνομης περιφέρειας του ιρακινού Κουρδιστάν ενέκριναν την υπογραφή επτά νέων πετρελαϊκών συμβολαίων στο βόρειο Ιράκ.

"Με την υπογραφή των νέων αυτών συμβολαίων, σχεδόν 20 διεθνείς πετρελαϊκές εταιρείες θα λειτουργούν στο εξής στο ιρακινό Κουρδιστάν", δήλωσε ο Κούρδος υπουργός Φυσικών Πόρων, Αστι Χαουράμι. Οι εταιρείες θα λαμβάνουν το 15% των εσόδων της πετρελαϊκής εκμετάλλευσης και το «85% θα λαμβάνει το Ιράκ».

Από τα έσοδα που αντιστοιχούν στο ποσοστό αυτό, το Κουρδιστάν θα λαμβάνει το 17% και το υπόλοιπο 83% θα διαχειρίζεται η κυβέρνηση της Βαγδάτης.

Στοπ καρέ. Ο Τούρκος πρωθυπουργός Ταγίπ Ερντογάν, σε ομιλίες του στην Ενωση Αμερικανικού Τύπου και στο Κέντρο Στρατηγικών Σπουδών των ΗΠΑ, αφού αναφέρθηκε εκτενώς στο θέμα του ΡΚΚ, ξεδίπλωσε τα χαρτιά του για τα πετρέλαια στο Ιρακινό Κουρδιστάν.

Ζήτησε να υπάρξει αναβολή του δημοψηφίσματος για το καθεστώς του Κιρκούκ. Ο προφανής λόγος είναι ο φόβος δημιουργίας κουρδικού κράτους στα σύνορά της και οι αποσχιστικές τάσεις. Οι κάτοικοί του θα αποφασίσουν κατά πόσον θέλουν η πόλη να παραμείνει υπό μικτή τουρκμενική, κουρδική και αραβική διοίκηση ή να γίνει μέρος της Κουρδικής Αυτόνομης Περιοχής. Στη δεύτερη περίπτωση οι Κούρδοι του Ιράκ ελπίζουν να μπορέσουν να χρησιμοποιήσουν τον πετρελαϊκό πλούτο της περιοχής για να συγκροτήσουν ένα ανεξάρτητο κράτος.

Αλλοι πάλι, λιγότεροι είναι αλήθεια, θεωρούν ότι η Τουρκία βλέψεις στην πλούσια σε «μαύρο χρυσό» περιοχή. Κάποιοι στην Αγκυρα ονειρεύονται επανενεργοποίηση των συμφωνιών του 1926 ανάμεσα στην Τουρκία και την Αγγλία, που προέβλεπαν την παραχώρηση στην Τουρκία επί 25 χρόνια του 10% των δικαιωμάτων από την εξαγωγή του πετρελαίου του Κιρκούκ και της Μοσούλης.

Acropolis now

It was the biggest prize in architecture - and its creator took on earthquakes, hostile locals and 104 court cases. Jonathan Glancey reports from Athens on a momentous achievement
Jonathan Glancey
Monday December 3, 2007

Guardian
It was a day unlike any other. Bernard Tschumi arrived at his office in New York's Chelsea Village to receive a phone call. This was the big one. The Swiss-American architect had won the greatest prize in architecture: the international competition to design the New Acropolis Museum in Athens. This was a job, surely, coveted by every A-list architect in the world.

No sooner had Tschumi put down the phone than he was told that a plane had just crashed into the World Trade Centre. "We all watched from our roof as the second aircraft smashed into the other tower," he says. "No one felt like celebrating after that. It wasn't a particularly good start."

Tschumi's new museum - a geometrical marvel dedicated to the celebration of antiquity - was funded by Greece's ministry of culture and the EU. The building is complete, though its display of magnificent Athenian art, some 4,000 ancient artefacts in all, won't be finalised until next summer. But this is not just a splendid gallery. From the very beginning, the new building had to engage in an architectural dialogue with the nearby Parthenon, the 5th-century BC temple dedicated to the wise if warlike goddess Athena, the virgin (or "parthenos").

The Parthenon - centrepiece of the Acropolis, the "sacred rock" at the heart of Athens - was commissioned by Pericles, at the height of Greek power, from the architects Ictinus and Callicrates and the sculptor Phidias. The result was a meticulously self-contained and perfectly proportioned marble temple enclosed by 46 fluted Doric columns; it has no wings, no projections, nothing to take away from its perfect form. This creation has long been judged the single most important building in the canon of western civilisation, partly because of the classical values it so perfectly embodies, and partly because its beauty really is hard to match. Classicists have bowed before it, but so did Le Corbusier, the most iconoclastic of modern architects. How can any architect ever match its rhythm and harmony?

Oddly, the building had been all but abandoned when the seventh Earl of Elgin came here to ship many of its famous sculptures to London in 1801, triggering a controversy that has rumbled on for two centuries. It has been a church, a mosque and even a gunpowder store, depending on who held Athens at the time. Partly destroyed by a Venetian mortar in 1687, the Parthenon only really began to matter again politically after the Greeks won their war of independence from Turkey in 1821. Ever since, the Parthenon has been a sacred symbol to Greece.

Naturally, Tschumi wanted to do his best in the shadow of this architectural colossus. Creating something to complement the aesthetic heights of the Acropolis was not, however, his only challenge; the Greek government needed a building grand enough to finally persuade the British government to return the Elgin Marbles from their current home in the British Museum, to a gallery in the new museum.

Things started badly. "There were those who said the building should be in a traditional classical style," says Tschumi. "Then the government changed, and everyone thought the project would be cancelled. Some said the job shouldn't have gone to a foreigner. During construction, there were 104 court cases against the scheme."

No wonder it wasn't ready for the 2004 Athens Olympics. As for the site, it was problematic, too. Not only was it just 300 yards from the hallowed Acropolis, it was also riddled with the archaeological remains of an antique Athenian suburb in mid-excavation. Plus an underground train line ran nearby, threatening noise and vibration. Then there was the 19th-century neo-Greek police academy that occupied a big chunk of the site; a protected building, it had to stay. To create enough room for the new museum, some apartment buildings had to go - by order. Finally, on top of all this, there was the threat of earthquakes.

Something of a poisoned chalice? "No," smiles Tschumi. "I think architects are often at their best when faced with restraints." The biggest restraint was that, given the strictures of the site, it was going to be very hard to design a building that would be both big enough for its purpose and offer great views of the Acropolis. Given the dazzling sun that blasts Athens for much of the year, the ideal view would face north, to avoid glare. Yet the building had to lie east-west.

The solution? Going with the east-west flow for the main part of the building, Tschumi then twisted the rooftop gallery - which is intended for the Elgin Marbles - north. This glorious touch creates a purposefully, rather than gratuitously, dynamic building. It also offers a tremendous view of the entire Acropolis.

This twist aside, the museum's design is calm, even strait-laced. Entirely free of decoration ("The ancient sculpture on display inside will be enough," says Tschumi), the concrete, glass and marble building nevertheless plays a number of clever structural games. The glass-floored entrance lobby, for example, straddles the excavation site so that, as you amble into the museum, you see below you the outlines of shops, alleys, houses, baths and workshops dating back to 600AD. It is like a stroll into antiquity: beneath your feet is street life; high up above is the civic glory of the Acropolis.

From this vantage point, you can also make out the irregular forest of concrete columns the new museum stands on, the antithesis of the beautifully rhythmic spacing of the Parthenon's columns. Each is placed to avoid touching the fabric of the ancient city below. Some are close together, others far apart, and all appear to perform an unlikely engineering waltz. In fact, these columns are doubly clever. They have joints, like giant knees. In times of tremor, the columns will dip and sway - enough, hopefully, to save the building from collapse. "The Greek authorities kept saying our columns didn't comply with local building codes," says Tschumi. "We said, 'But this is what the world's best structural engineers, Arup, recommend.' We studied the building codes. They had last been revised in 1916."

Once over the excavated ancient streets, you reach a generous hall, aglow with slanting sunbeams. The feeling of having arrived somewhere special is inescapable. In front of you, a great ramp slants up to the main galleries, the entrance of which is crowned with the marble pediment of an ancient temple.

There is no sign here of a museum shop, nor the smell of cappuccinos. There is no clutter and few signs, just generous, beautifully lit architectural space, clad in cool marble. Despite so much marble, there is surprisingly little clomp and clatter from visitors' shoes: all the many, mathematically spaced circular holes you see in the walls are there to absorb sound. An entrance lobby designed for at least 3 million visitors a year is never going to be as quiet as a temple, but this is a remarkably calming space.

The first floor holds more surprises. A vast, sunlit and many-columned chamber, it is a pleasure to walk through in its own right; but by next summer, it will be adorned with Greek and Roman-era Athenian sculpture. "I hope the main galleries will be as uninterrupted as possible," says Tschumi. "No ropes to keep visitors away from the sculptures. Minimal captions. No architectural distraction." Eventually, there will be a cafe on the rooftop terrace complete with sunshade, offering splendid views over the rooftops.

Crowning the museum is that skewed top floor, a great glazed box facing north to the Acropolis. The views are picture-perfect, except for those missing marbles, of course. Some of those superb sculptures - of steeds and soldiers, gods and giants - will soon inhabit this gallery, though the majority will remain, as yet, in the British Museum. Intriguingly, this gallery is the same size as the core of the Parthenon, so visitors will get a sense of the scale of the sculptures in relation to the mother temple. In a brazen move, copies of the missing sculptures will be installed, fronted with gauze masks so they look like the ghosts of the plundered objects. As Tschumi says, "A visit to the top floor will be a journey into the world of cultural politics and propaganda, as well as great art."

And a journey into impressive design, too. A glass gallery in the scorching Athenian sun? It sounds like madness. Yet it should all work, coolly and calmly - not just because that north view is glare-free, but also because a double-glazing system channels cool air between the glass panes.

Whether the marbles will ever all return to Athens is a question for curators and politicians. The New Acropolis Museum is certainly ready to receive them. "Orchestrated simplicity" is how Tschumi described his goal. Unpretentious, well-built and wearing its ingenuity lightly, his building is a relaxed walk through layers of ancient Greek art, architecture and city-making. It makes the Parthenon even more important than it has been over the past two centuries, even if some of its marbles, the very reason for the museum's construction, are still missing. But how much does it matter? The Parthenon is 2,500 years old. Perhaps there's no great hurry to put the final touches to Tschumi's handsome building.

Astronauts test sex in space - but did the earth move?

US and Russian astronauts have had sex in space for separate research
programmes on how human beings might survive years in orbit, according
to a book published yesterday.

Pierre Kohler, a respected French scientific writer, says in The Final
Mission: Mir, The Human Adventure that the subject is taboo both at
Nasa and at mission control in Moscow, but that cosmic couplings have
taken place.

"The issue of sex in space is a serious one," he says. "The
experiments carried out so far relate to missions planned for married
couples on the future International Space Station, the successor to
Mir. Scientists need to know how far sexual relations are possible
without gravity."

He cites a confidential Nasa report on a space shuttle mission in
1996. A project codenamed STS-XX was to explore sexual positions
possible in a weightless atmosphere.

Twenty positions were tested by computer simulation to obtain the best
10, he says. "Two guinea pigs then tested them in real zero-gravity
conditions. The results were videotaped but are considered so
sensitive that even Nasa was only given a censored version."

Only four positions were found possible without "mechanical
assistance". The other six needed a special elastic belt and
inflatable tunnel, like an open-ended sleeping bag.

Mr Kohler says: "One of the principal findings was that the classic
so-called missionary position, which is so easy on earth when gravity
pushes one downwards, is simply not
possible."!

Greek parrot in parking fine row

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7135185.stm

By Malcolm Brabant
BBC News, Patras

A legal battle is under way in the western Greek city of Patras over a parrot that is facing a $650 (£320; 444 euros) parking ticket.
The local council says his perch is illegally parked and is obstructing drivers because it partially blocks a metered parking space.
Coco the parrot's owner, Lambros Michalopoulos, says the bird will die if it has to move back inside.
Neither side is backing down so now the dispute is going to the courts.

'Sociable creature'

With his multi-coloured Amazonian plumage and extrovert personality, Coco has, for 18 years, been something of a mascot in this busy port city, with narrow streets and precious few parking places.
His small perch occupies part of a metered zone and under the zero tolerance rules, the local police have ordered Mr Michalopoulos to pay a heavy fine.
The pet shop owner says he has ignored the authorities because if Coco goes back inside the store permanently the macaw will die because he is a sociable creature who enjoys being with people.

Patras's Deputy Mayor Spiros Demartinos is embarrassed that Coco's plight is attracting international attention.
He would prefer to talk about the city's ambitious plans to use parking revenue for funding bicycle lanes and pedestrian zones.

"Is it bureaucratic to be concerned about the parrot's safety?" he asks.

"The parrot's security is of paramount concern to the council."

Both sides are refusing to back down and so the dispute is heading to the palace of justice.
Coco's owner is hoping that the case will be laughed out of court.