Arab States not ready for Y2Kgreenspun.com : LUSENET : TimeBomb 2000 (Y2000) : One Thread |
The Middle East supplies much of the oil the U.S. uses. How are their Y2K efforts coming along?Friday February 26, 1999
INTERVIEW-Arab states not ready for Y2K bug--U.N. 09:54 a.m. Feb 26, 1999 Eastern By Miral Fahmy
BEIRUT, Feb 26 (Reuters) - Most of the Middle East's Arab states are ill-prepared for the millennium bug, which could hit the region's oil industry and cut off fresh water supplies, a U.N. official said on Friday.
Mohammed Mrayati, science and technology adviser for the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), told Reuters in an interview few countries in the region had thought about the problem, let along drawn up plans to avoid it.
``The Middle East is particularly at risk because normally, our governments do not come up with contingency plans,'' he said after chairing a two-day ESCWA conference on the millennium bug.
``If things break down, then the action taken is usually spur-of-the moment, unorganised and takes time. But if this happens in certain fields, the results could be catastrophic.''
The Beirut-based ESCWA covers 13 countries from Egypt to the Gulf, excluding Israel.
[snip]
U.N. officials said airports, Egypt's Suez Canal and electricity networks could be hit and the highly-computerised oil refining and water desalination plants of the arid, oil-rich Gulf states were particularly at risk.
``If they should stop, then millions of people would have no power and no water to drink. This is the biggest challenge facing our region,'' he said.
With January 1, 2000 less than 10 months away, countries were just starting to set up committees to discuss the problem. Mrayati attributed the delay to ignorance on the part of governments and said that, with some effort, it could be solved by the deadline.
``I am not very pessimistic that the problem can be handled because the systems in the Arab world are not as huge as they are in Europe or the United States.
``All we need is stimulation and more government involvement because without the interference of the prime minister's office, not much gets done.''
A statement issued after the two-day meeting urged ESCWA members to draft and test contingency plans. U.N. officials said countries with high millennium awareness, such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, should share their experiences.
``It is not obvious where the problem will impact or when or what the resulting system's behaviour will be. It involves many interdependent systems where faults in one may have a domino effect upon others. It therefore needs national, regional and international efforts to resolve it,'' it said.
Copyright 1999 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
-- Kevin (mixesmusic@worldnet.att.net), February 26, 1999
One thing I am finding interesting (and hope PNG will comment on) is that recent reports by Senate, CIA and the like claim that less-developed countries are going to get hit very, very badly by Y2K.Yet, we have had threads here where strong arguments have been made (some, quite intelligently as always by PNG himself) that 3rd world (and even 2nd world) is much more insulated than we are from Y2K effects.
As I recall, Bennett has said in the past that one effect of Y2K is the possibility of entire countries "dropping off the map" for quite a period of time.
I have considered it near certain for six months (and believe I had said so from time to time on this NG) that the international aspects of Y2K are far and away the most dangerous FOR US, not just for THEM. The Middle East is going to be totally perilous. Westergaard himself was quoted in the Vanity Fair article as saying he expects Hussein to attack Kuwait and Saudi Arabia on 1/1/2000 or shortly thereafter.
Yeah, we'll be ready.
IF we can project power internationally post-Y2K, there will be x000,000s of U.S. troops in the Middle East by late 2000, IMO. If we can't, frankly, so much the worse for us and the world.
Even if the U.S. does relatively better (as is often true in an unfair world) many innocent people around the world are going to suffer and, probably, die because this problem was punted, denied, and spun ... and not least by so-called technical people, some of who are still playing their own version of the denial game on this NG:
"Gee, we really don't know and our company is doing fine and let's not cause panic and all you guys want is for everything to collapse and ...."
I see no reason to disagree with your assessment elsewhere, Kevin, that Y2K is likely to be an "8" here and a "10" many other places around the world.
-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), February 26, 1999.
From Paul Milne on csy2k:"The rest of the world, in large part, is asleep at the switch. The economic consequences will be catastrophic.
Goons, like dechert, sit back and smile about how 'well things seem to be going'. This only makes you laugh at how far up their asses their heads are jammed.
Even the countries that are 'alleged' to be furthest ahead are wallowing in a failed remediation. Australia is touted as one of the MOST ADVANCED countries in the world, yet more than half of all their businesses have not taken the first step in remediation. And now, more word on the Middle East. They are toast. And sub-moronic imbeciles, like dechert, maintain that all is well, flying in the face of the evidence.
If people would not be harmed by the lunacy of people like dechert, it would not be a problem. But, the result is that due to dechert's efforts, many people, including some of my own family, will not substantially prepare, and they will die because of it.
So, when it all comes down, I certainly do hope that dechert receives the lion's share of the...."ahem"... 'discomfort' that will be rightly his.
http://www.computerweekly.co.uk/cwarchive/Xtra/19990225/cwcontainer.as p?name=W2.html
Paul Milne
If you live within five miles of a 7-11, you're toast. "
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-- Leska (allaha@earthlink.net), February 26, 1999.
Prediction:Westergaard himself was quoted in the Vanity Fair article as saying he expects Hussein to attack Kuwait and Saudi Arabia on 1/1/2000 or shortly thereafter.
Prediction: MASSIVE air strike on Iraq just prior to the New Year.
-- a (a@a.a), February 26, 1999.
So besides the "highly-computerised" oil refining and water desalination plants being at "particular risk", they also have a fix-on-failure approach and no contingency plans, and with what, about 310 calendar days to go the countries are just starting to set up committees to discuss the problem. And then there is also the Suez canal.And what do we have to 'balance' these facts? The following statement: "...the systems in the Arab world are not as huge as they are in Europe or the United States."
This is total nonsense. A small system with a bug can and will seriously ruin your day. I know. I have worked on 'small systems'. They can break, and do break. A bug doesn't care what size the system is. When is comes time to break it does so.
-- Rob Michaels (sonofdust@net.com), February 26, 1999.
Calling Flint! Calling Flint! Flint, this type of story goes a long way toward explaining why that Cobol remediator shortage never developed. The prognosticators mistakenly assumed that organizations would want to solve their problems BEFORE 1-1-2000.
-- Puddintame (dit@dot.com), February 26, 1999.
a --- You know, in retrospect that is very obvious, but it never occurred to me. I think you're going to prove 100% accurate there.Rob -- Agree 100%. That statement about "smaller" systems is one of those ever-recurring archtypal spin moves that pock mark Y2K like smallpox. We can't say *for sure* the *right* effort couldn't fix this in time. But, you know, the chilling possibility (probability?) is that it is ALREADY too late even if they WANTED to and KNEW HOW to do it. It is February 26, 1999. The idea that there is always enough time to fix just this one last, next Y2K problem is about to go extinct.
In fact, the folly that really underlies this article can be found just here ---- if they really grokked what was going on, instead of saying like asses, "All we need is stimulation ....", etc., they would say, "We believe there is still time to design and implement a contingency plan, with the help of our allies, to ameliorate the humanitarian problems that will occur and to fix the systems themselves sometime after 2000 once we have stablized and evaluated the damage that takes place."
-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), February 26, 1999.
Prediction A massive air strike With DoD systems that may fail to work ! It will give Sadam the last excuse he needs to enter Sadia Arabia to destroy our airfields and the few troops no assigned here to "support the infrastructure" (read stop the riots in the cities by week two of January ). That will put transportation in deep trouble by late February, power plants in early March and farmers just in time for spring planting. Got non hybdib seeds ? Got tools ? Eagle
-- Harold Walker (e999eagle@freewwweb.com), February 26, 1999.
The point: whether or not a's prediction comes true precisely, picture the increased level of international tension between October and January as adversaries push, poke and provoke:China ----> Taiwan, Japan
North Korea ----> South Korea
Russia ----> Balkans, republics
India <----> Pakistan
Iraq ----> Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Israel
The one certainty is that, even now, the U.S. cannot project serious power in two places at once, though we can harass with our technology.
Post-Y2K? I am increasingly coming to believe that the last thing our military wants to do is fight a war in our OWN streets: their planning MUST be showing an imperative need to keep morale high here to provide manpower/sacrifice for possible scenarios elsewhere. If there is martial law in U.S., I predict it will be localized and as brief as possible. Among other factors that are influencing our military leaders, consider the temptation to foreign powers in 2000/2001 if the U.S. is wracked by internal strife. Hardliner? Greybear? Diane? What do you guys think?
-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), February 26, 1999.