Middle East
gregladen | March 9, 2017Just got my copy of Birds of Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East: A Photographic Guide by Frédéric Jiguet and Aurélien Audevard.
This is the first and only field-ready photographic bird guide that covers every species in Europe. There are 2,200 photos covering 860 species. The West Asian and North African coverage is of all of the species there that have occurred in Europe, so think of this primarily as a European guide.
The entry for the Mute Swan.
I hasten to add and emphasize. These are not your grandaddy's photographs. Many photographic guides have pretty nice looking…
pgleick | February 17, 2016Since its founding in 1987, the Pacific Institute has worked to understand the links between water resources, environmental issues, and international security and conflict. This has included early analytical assessments (such as a 1987 Ambio paper and this one from the journal Climatic Change) of the risks between climate change and security through changes in access to Arctic resources, food production, and water resources, as well as the ongoing Water Conflict Chronology – an on-line database, mapping system, and timeline of all known water-related conflicts. In 2014, an analysis of the…
sastyk | May 6, 2013In 2008, before the revolution, the Egyptian Government set a portion of its Army to baking bread for hungry citizens, precisely to forestall revolution. Now, after revolution, it isn't clear who will provide the bread for its hungry and angry populace:
Around a quarter of the population lives below the poverty line, with another 20 percent hovering just above it. And while there are no statistics for the period 2012/2013, indications are that malnutrition rates of around 30 percent are also on the increase, he said.
Poverty and malnutrition has visible and long-term effects, he added.
“…
gregladen | September 17, 2012Yeah, I'm bringing back the term "Sea Change" which was briefly popular a few years ago, in reference to the perception of party difference, the difference between Democrats and Republicans, in handling foreign policy. Let me say first that it has never been true that the Republicans were better at handling foreign policy than the Democrats. Individual presidents and individual congresses (if that term is appropriate) have varied a lot, and it could be that one party is not better than another. Having said that, I think Democrats have been better over recent decades, more or less. Imagine,…
illconsidered | May 11, 2012The following article is mirrored from TomDispatch.com. I thought that while we are watching the weather heat up, we should not forget that geo-politics heats up with it.
Six Recent Clashes and Conflicts on a Planet Heading Into Energy Overdrive By Michael T. Klare
Conflict and intrigue over valuable energy supplies have been features of the international landscape for a long time. Major wars over oil have been fought every decade or so since World War I, and smaller engagements have erupted every few years; a flare-up or two in 2012, then, would be part of the normal scheme of things…
sastyk | March 2, 2011If you want to see it in color, all you have to do is google image up a history of the price of oil and superimpose it on the price of various staple crops. Take a look at oil and then rice, soybeans, wheat and corn. Look closely at 2008, and at the present. I will put up a visual presentation of this material myself later this week, but if you'd like to see it sooner, it is right there to look at, no great challenge.
What we see is fairly simple - and incredibly complicated. The intertwining of markets, of energy and food, tied by biofuel production and national policies, and the fact…
sastyk | February 25, 2011The phrase "oil shock" is being thrown around a lot in the national news, and events in Tripoli at the moment seem to be reinforcing the idea that we're facing an extended period of instability, and possibly a new cycle of oil price increases and the stress on personal and public economies that accompany rising prices.
Is this a given? No, but there are similarities here to prior experience. The most important point is that while everyone notes that Libyan oil is less than 2% of world consumption, that supply constraints don't have to be significant, or even present in order to cause a…
sastyk | February 24, 2011Two good recent articles on the implications for oil prices and production of the situation in Libya. First, Tom Whipple's always cogent overall analysis:
While the 1.6 million barrels a day (b/d) that the Libyans pumped in January may not appear significant in a world that produces some 88 million barrels each day, we should remember that those barrels are being consumed somewhere in a world where they are consumed just as fast as they are produced. If there is anything that we have learned in the last 40 years, it is that relatively small disruptions in oil production can lead to…
sastyk | January 31, 2011Stuart Staniford has a terrific piece that offers a little visual clarity about food, energy, unemployment and the Riots in the Middle East and North Africa:
Tunisia is a minnow in the global oil market, Egypt slightly more important. Algeria, however, matters a lot as its oil production is probably close to total demonstrated OPEC spare capacity. Thus serious social instability in Algeria would have major effects on global oil prices. If instability spread to bigger oil producers than that (eg Kuwait or UAE), the effects could be very dramatic.
Presumably, the regimes in those countries…
mikethemadbiologist | February 1, 2009http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_UwGgLdmdI&eurl=http://www.salon.com/op…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8KwUSQL9zc&eurl=http://www.salon.com/op…
No doubt, I'll be accused of being an anti-Semitic Jew or something, but the two videos of a 60 Minutes segment (posted below) are worth watching:
Part 2:
And before the Likudniks blow a gasket, the founders of this country rose up against the British, and several of the grievances were:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the…
mikethemadbiologist | January 14, 2009A few days ago, I noted that, if history is any guide, a post-Hamas Gaza could wind up under the sway of even more radical factions. Sadly, I'm not the only one who thinks this (italics mine):
Bringing Hamas to power is one of the most horrific legacies of the Bush administration. In retrospect, the decision to oust Arafat (who had demonstrated the ability to thwart terrorism, and had reduced it to almost zero between 1997 and 2000) was a blunder. The administration's subsequent stingy support for Mahmoud Abbas was incomprehensible and its decision to force the Palestinian elections that…
mikethemadbiologist | January 12, 2009Gideon Lichfield has an excellent op-ed which gets at the core of why Israel doesn't seem to be winning the PR war--Israel hasbara* is answering the wrong question (italics mine):
But the deeper reason is this: Israeli hasbara is perpetually trying to answer the wrong question: "Why is this justified?" Of course, it's natural for either side in a conflict to try to explain why it, and not the other side, has the moral high ground. But, especially in a conflict where both sides have been claiming the moral high ground for decades, nobody in the outside world is all that interested. From a…
mikethemadbiologist | January 4, 2009In the midst of all of the talk about hitting Hamas hard (or even eliminating them as a political entity), no one is asking what will happen if they are so weak that they have to relinquish power.
The assumption is that a moderate Palestinian faction will arise. But, after so much violence, there's a good chance a more extremist group will gain power. And who might that be?
Why, your local neighborhood Salafists:
...a more tangible threat for the rulers of Gaza is from other groups loosely linked to the sect, which are known collectively as A-salafiyeh al-Jihadiyeh. These extreme groups…
mikethemadbiologist | January 2, 2009If you thought this post was about is more wrong, the Israelis or the Palestinians, you've come to the wrong place. What I want to talk about is something that, in the early 1980s, I called Reaganite Judaism.
If the term is unclear, it is a backhanded reference to the nascent neoconservative movement (Troll-be-gone: that term was used by neocons themselves in Commentary magazine) as another denomination of Judaism (e.g., Conservative, Orthodox, Reconstructionist, and Reform).
Reaganite Judaism's tenets--a trinity if you will--were:
Buy Israel bonds.
Make the Holocaust the essence of Judaism…
mikethemadbiologist | July 10, 2008Jonathan Eisen has a paper in PLoS One describing software that he's developed for analyzing 16S rRNA sequence data. Rather than walk through everything, I've decided this post will be different: I'm going to treat this as a manuscript that I'm reviewing (there will be some differences, and it won't be as formally written as a 'real' review). But I wanted to phrase some 'real' questions, as opposed to extensively distilling it for the 'lay' reader so non-scientists could see what we really criticize each other about (hint: it's not whether evolution is real). Onto the review.
Eisen has a…
mikethemadbiologist | July 5, 2008...stop rapists over here. Because fighting them over there isn't working out so well. If DHS, which was supposed to protect us from terrorism, can go after intellectual property theft, certainly rape falls under its purview.
mikethemadbiologist | June 12, 2008Wolfrum at Shakesville alerts us to The New Right's attempt to lay our failed energy policies every but at the feet of Republicans:
Take the post "How did the GOP get stuck "Defending Big Oil" again?"
Now, this post could have been just five words long: "Because that's what they do." But the post is more about how to change the oil debate to make the GOP look better rather than on how to do anything about oil prices:
First, I don't see any reason at all we need to keep getting stuck with the "defending tax breaks for big oil" charge over and over again. Subsidies are not a free market…
mikethemadbiologist | May 25, 2008...or more accurately, Israel's 'self-appointed leadership of the American Jewish community' problem. From Jeffrey Goldberg (italics mine):
I am not wishing that the next president be hostile to Israel, God forbid. But what Israel needs is an American president who not only helps defend it against the existential threat posed by Iran and Islamic fundamentalism, but helps it to come to grips with the existential threat from within. A pro-Israel president today would be one who prods the Jewish state--publicly, continuously and vociferously--to create conditions on the West Bank that would…
mikethemadbiologist | May 18, 2008Last week, Daniel Kurtzer, former U.S. Ambassador to Israel from 2001-2005, came out in support of Sen. Obama. In light of the Republican propaganda about how Obama would be 'anti-Israel' or some other hooey, it's worth noting why Kurtzer supports Obama (italics mine):
We have one candidate who is prepared to do diplomacy. Only one candidate.
We have two candidates who have told us all the countries they don't want to talk to. They don't want to talk to Iran because Iran has a really awful government. And Iran does have a really awful government. And Iran is pursuing policies that are not on…
mikethemadbiologist | February 11, 2008One of the problems I have with the U.S.'s self-appointed Jewish leadership is that too many of them appear to believe that Israel will be annihilated at any moment. In today's NY Times, Daniel Gavron puts that fear in context:
While it is true that the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, talks about wiping Israel off the map, and he might be developing the technical means to do so, he has also said that he will agree to whatever agreement the Palestinians accept. The Lebanese Islamic group Hezbollah is utterly hostile, but it is now focused on events in its own country.
The Palestinian…