Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Port of Jeddah gets new cranes

Good for them! The city of Jeddah has come a long way since being opened as a port by Uthman Ibn Affan in 647 A.D.

Giant cranes lift Jeddah port stature
Roger Harrison | Arab News

JEDDAH: Jeddah’s port skyline changed drastically on Monday with the arrival, 19 months after the beginning of the construction of the Red Sea Gate Terminal (RSGT), of four giant quayside cranes. The huge machines, the biggest type of ship-to-shore crane in the world, berthed at the new Red Sea Gate terminal quay at precisely 10 a.m. after arriving in Jeddah late on Sunday to wait for pilotage.

Mazen Matar, the project director of the RSGT who was on the quayside to see the arrival, looked at the massive machines and commented that high efficiency of the cranes and the huge load capabilities were necessary to deal with the new generation of container super-carriers and would have a tremendous economic impact on the Kingdom. “We have the tools; now we can finish the job,” he observed.

The journey from Shanghai was not without some challenges as the specially designed carrier had to wait out rough seas caused by typhoons for several days. The size and configuration of the cranes carried, already assembled, on deck required that the ship, the Zhen Hua 25, be sailed with great skill and with a constant eye on sea and weather conditions.

The first hint of the arrival was two and a half hours before docking when they were still 15 or so kilometers off shore. Their massive superstructures eased over the horizon, followed a full half hour later by the hull of the ship.

Each crane will require two days to unload from the ship. Each will be rolled on train-type steel wheels onto the quayside where it will be jacked up, the wheel bogeys turned through 90 degrees and the crane lowered onto the rails embedded in the quay.

“It is a very tricky operation,” Peter Reynolds, RSGT project manager commented. “These are massive pieces of equipment and it requires considerable skill to offload them.”

When all 10 of the new cranes have been delivered they will put RSGT in the front rank of the world’s container terminals. The cranes manufactured by ZPMC, China, are specially designed to serve next generation container-ships that can carry over 12,000 full size containers. They are capable of handling two 40-foot or four 20-foot containers in one lift. Their ability to lift 85 tons under their spreader beams and move the load over a distance of up to 24 rows and at 65m above the water level is unique in Jeddah. Only a handful of container terminals around the world have equipment with similar specifications.

An additional two ship-to-shore cranes of the same type will be delivered next month.

Obamacare, another industury give-away

This effort will do nothing for those in need, it's a disgrace.

Obama's $80 Billion Deal with Pharma Is a Very Bad Deal for Us

By William Greider, The Nation. Posted August 8, 2009.

So now we know why the president wants everyone to make nice in the healthcare debate. His White House has cut a deal with Big Pharma that smells like the same old rotten politics that candidate Obama regularly denounced and promised to end. The drug industry agrees to deliver $80 billion in future savings and the president promises the government will not use its awesome purchasing power to negotiate lower drug prices.

Wow. This is roughly the same deal that George W. Bush cut with the drug makers when he was legislating Medicare's new coverage of drug purchases. It is the same bargain that Democrats in Congress universally condemned as wasteful and corrupt. The deal does not smell any better now that a Democratic president is embracing it.

In effect, Obama wants to give away one of the principal objectives of strong reform. The details were spelled out in today's New York Times and revealed by Big Pharma's top-dog lobbyist, Billy Tauzin, a former Republican congressman who leads the industry association. Tauzin called it a "rock-solid deal," and the White House did not dispute as much. But that is not the last word.

People who believe in real healthcare reform should not be nice about this. They must rise up and rebel against our popular new president's outrageous concession. They must demand that Congress declare the private deal-making null and void. If Congress lacks the nerve to do this, then this exercise in reform begins to look more and more like previous attempts that were eviscerated by the clout of the corporate interests.

The fate of healthcare reform may depend not on the Senate or the White House but on Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives. What prompted Billy Tauzin to spill the beans on his deal-making with White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel was the House measure that specifies government's right to bargain for lower prices. No, no, no! Tauzin said. We've got a deal with the president, who says that won't be allowed.

But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi simply responds that the House is not bound by any deals made with the Senate or the White House. Her caucus must back up her words. They should pass the House bill, which will allow the government to do what any major customer would do in the same circumstances -- use its leverage to demand lower prices.

If House Democrats stand their ground, then they will force a debate they can win with the American public. President Obama will have to choose between standing with the drug manufacturers or defending the original purpose of healthcare reform.