Arab Spring 1
see other node
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/06/what-the-hell-is-happening-with-qatar.html
q encouraged b/c rich and no danger there.
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CFTC act
Food prices[
Institutions such as hedge funds, pension funds and investment banks[93] have been instrumental in pushing up world food prices in the last five years, with investment in food solely as a commodity rising from $65bn to $126bn (£41bn to £79bn) between 2007 and 2012, contributing to 30-year highs. Financial institutions now make up 61% of all investment in wheat futures.
According to Olivier De Schutter, the UN special rapporteur on food, there was a rush by institutions to enter the food market following the Commodity Futures Modernization Act.[93] De Schutter told the Independent in March 2012: "What we are seeing now is that these financial markets have developed massively with the arrival of these new financial investors, who are purely interested in the short-term monetary gain and are not really interested in the physical thing – they never actually buy the ton of wheat or maize; they only buy a promise to buy or to sell.
The result of this financialisation of the commodities market is that the prices of the products respond increasingly to a purely speculative logic. This explains why in very short periods of time we see prices spiking or bubbles exploding, because prices are less and less determined by the real match between supply and demand."[93]In 2011, 450 economists from around the world called on the G20 to regulate the commodities market more.[93] Rising food prices over recent years have been linked with social unrest around the world, including rioting in Bangladesh and Mexico,[93] and theArab Spring.
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https://kpfa.org/episode/talkies-january-2-2020/
[talkies 1/2/20 2010 drought russia lost 1/3 wht crop --> arab spring?! food scarce africa and ME, food #1 expense in poor ppl budget --> anger at elites, libya, syria WAR, threat multiplier] desertification push nomadic into sub-s different ethnic and religion, jihadis exploit; nigeria boko; mali niger
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Saudi Arabia May Execute Teenager for His Protests — Including When He Was 10
IN 2011, as Arab Spring protests swept across the Middle East, demonstrations also kicked off in Saudi Arabia’s oil-rich Eastern Province. Members of the kingdom’s repressed Shiite minority took to the streets, calling for equal rights and a fairer distribution of oil revenues. The protesters included a group of around 30 kids on bicycles. As a videoreleased last week by CNN shows, those children were led by a smiling 10-year-old in flip-flops named Murtaja Qureiris.
“The people demand human rights!” the young boy can be seen shouting through a megaphone.
Here’s the problem: Demanding human rights in Saudi Arabia lands you in prison. Even if you’re a kid.
Three years later, in September 2014, 13-year-old Murtaja was arrested while on his way to neighboring Bahrain with his family.
“At the time,” reports CNN, “he was considered by lawyers and activists to be the youngest known political prisoner in Saudi Arabia.
Over the past four years, say human rights groups, this teenager has been subjected to torture and intimidation, as well as a spell in solitary confinement. He has been denied access to a lawyer while interrogators try to get him to confess to the trumped-up charges against him. These include “participating in anti-government protests, attending the funeral of his brother Ali Qureiris who was killed in a protest in 2011, joining a ‘terrorist organization,’ throwing Molotov cocktails at a police station, and firing at security forces,” according to Amnesty International.
Last week, we learned that Saudi prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for 18-year-old Murtaja, who is being tried in an anti-terror court. CNN reports that the prosecutors want to “impose the harshest form of the death penalty, which may include crucifixion or dismemberment after execution.”
Got that? The unelected government of a close ally of the United States is planning on brutally executing an 18-year-old member of a minority group, for crimes allegedly committed when he was 10 years old.
Let me repeat: Ten. Years. Old.
We shouldn’t forget the person who is primarily responsible for this outrage: Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, or MBS. Since his father installed him in power, the violent crushing of political dissent has escalated. According to the CIA, MBS ordered the horrific murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. He is also behind the targeting of three Arab activists in Norway, Canada, and the United States.
Much has (rightly) been made of the crown prince’s shocking record on extrajudicial killings. But what of the growing number of judicially sanctioned killings inside of Saudi Arabia on his watch? The planned execution of Murtaja Qureiris may be the most horrendous act yet.
“There should be no doubt that the Saudi Arabian authorities are ready to go to any length to crack down on dissent against their own citizens, including by resorting to the death penalty for men who were merely boys at the time of their arrest,” says Lynn Maalouf, Middle East research director at Amnesty International.
The Gulf kingdom is one of the world’s top executioners and, according to Maalouf, Saudi authorities have “a chilling track record of using the death penalty as a weapon to crush political dissent and punish anti-government protesters — including children — from the country’s persecuted Shi’a minority.”
The majority of the country, and the ruling family, are from a strict school of Sunni Islam called Salafism. In April, 37 people were executed in a single day — the biggest mass execution in the kingdom since 2016 — and the vast majority of them were believed to be Shiites. Three of them, according to human rights group Reprieve, were “minors at the time of their alleged offences.” Such executions, as both Reprieve and Amnesty International have noted, are a brazen violation of international human rights law.
Another three Saudi Shiites — Ali al-Nimr, Dawood al-Marhoon, and Abdullah al-Zaher — who were also below the age of 18 at the time of their alleged crimes, are still on death row and could be executed at anytime.
It isn’t just Shiites, either. MBS has also targeted Sunni clerics who have failed to fall into line. There have been reports that the belligerent and thin-skinned crown prince plans on executing three high-profile Saudi religious scholars — Salman al-Odah, Awad al-Qarni, and Ali al-Omari — all of whom have been held on multiple charges of “terrorism.” 62-year-old Odah is famous in the Arab world for his relatively progressive views on Islam and homosexuality and his 2007 denunciation of Osama bin Laden. His actual “crime”? Tweeting a prayer for reconciliation between Saudi Arabia and its Gulf rival, the Emirate of Qatar. (Full disclosure: I host two TV shows for Qatar-funded Al Jazeera English.)
Supporters of MBS often try and argue that these executions are the product of decisions made in court, not in the royal palace. This is a laughable defense. The kingdom of Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy. There is no independent judiciary. As CNN reports, “The death penalty can only be enforced by order of King Salman or his authorized representative. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is frequently characterized as the King’s deputy.”
Forget MBS the reformer; meet MBS the executioner. The fact that he has been embraced closely by everyone from Donald Trump to Emmanuel Macron to Theresa May should be a source of shame for those of us living in the West. To quote former Obama-era National Security Council spokesperson Tommy Vietor, MBS is “Kim Jong Un with oil money.”
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http://religioner.no/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/religioner.no_wcas-d-13-00059.pdf
Water, Drought, Climate Change, and Conflict in Syria
PETER H. GLEICK Pacific Institute, Oakland, California
abstract: The devastating civil war that began in Syria in March 2011 is the result of complex interrelated factors. The focus of the conflict is regime change, but the triggers include a broad set of religious and sociopolitical factors, the erosion of the economic health of the country, a wave of political reform sweeping over the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and Levant region, and challenges associated with climate variability and change and the availability and use of freshwater.
As described here, water and climatic conditions have played a direct role in the deterioration of Syria’s economic conditions. There is a long history of conflicts over water in these regions because of the natural water scarcity, the early development of irrigated agriculture, and complex religious and ethnic diversity. In recent years, there has been an increase in incidences of water-related violence around the world at the subnational level attributable to the role that water plays in development disputes and economic activities. Because conflicts are rarely, if ever, attributable to single causes, conflict analysis and concomitant efforts at reducing the risks of conflict must consider a multitude of complex relationships and contributing factors. This paper assesses the complicated connections between water and conflict in Syria, looks more broadly at future climate-related risks for water systems, and offers some water management strategies for reducing those risks.
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- Recent drought, agriculture, water management stresses, and links to conflict In addition to having relatively little overall freshwater in proportion to demands, Syria, like the region as a whole, experiences high natural hydrologic variability. Over the past century (from 1900 to 2005), there were six significant droughts in Syria, where the average monthly level of winter precipitation—the major rainfall season—dropped to around one-third of normal. Five of these droughts lasted only one season; the sixth lasted two (Mohtadi 2013). Starting in 2006, however, and lasting into 2011, Syria experienced a multiseason, multiyear period of extreme drought that contributed to agricultural failures, economic dislocations, and population displacement (Worth 2010). This dry period has continued and is now being described as the ‘‘worst long-term drought and most severe set of crop failures since agricultural civilizations began in the Fertile Crescent many millennia ago’’ [Gary Nabhan, as cited by Femia and Werrell (2012)].
In the current civil war, some analysts have argued that factors related to drought, including agricultural
failure, water shortages, and water mismanagement, have played an important role in contributing to the deterioration of social structures and spurring violence (Femia and Werrell 2013; FAO 2012; Mhanna 2013). In particular, the combination of very severe drought, persistent multiyear crop failures, and the related economic deterioration led to very significant dislocation and migration of rural communities to the cities. These factors further contributed to urban unemployment and economic dislocations and social unrest. As early as 2008, a diplomatic cable from the U.S. embassy in Damascus, Syria, to the State Department...
Washington, D.C., warned of the implications of the drought, with a summary of local opinions and concerns as well as insights from the FAO (these observations were cited in the diplomatic cable, published at http:// wikileaks.org/cable/2008/11/08DAMASCUS847.html;
the accuracy of this cable’s contents has not been verified but these statements are in the public record). That cable describes a briefing by FAO Syrian Representative Abdullah bin Yehia on drought impacts, which he described as a ‘‘perfect storm’’ when combined with other economic and social pressure. Concerns expressed at that time also noted that the population displacements ‘‘could act as a multiplier on social and economic pressures already at play and undermine stability in Syria.’’ In July 2008 the Syrian Minister of Agriculture stated publicly to United Nations (UN) officials that the economic and social fallout from the drought was ‘‘beyond our capacity as a country to deal with.’’ (This quote comes from the diplomatic cable: http://wikileaks.org/cable/ 2008/11/08DAMASCUS847.html).
Between 2006 and 2009, around 1.3 million inhabitants of eastern Syria were affected by agricultural failures. An estimated 800 000 people lost their livelihoods and basic food supports (Solh 2010). During this period, yields of wheat and barley dropped 47% and 67%, respectively
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yemen
UAE gold mines haddi temp pres 2011 arab spring, integrated into globaliz IMF, got rid of subsidies, austerity
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mark shapiro forthcoming book seeds of resistance: seed bank taken by rebel who happend to be agronomist, but lost to___, seeds smuggled out to Lebannon?
https://kpfa.org/episode/voices-of-the-middle-east-and-north-africa-december-20-2017/
https://www.amazon.com/Seeds-Resistance-Fight-Save-Supply/dp/1510705767
Seeds of Resistance: The Fight to Save Our Food Supply
Sun. Soil. Water. Seed. These are the primordial ingredients for the most essential activity of all on earth: growing food. All of these elements are being changed dramatically under the pressures of corporate consolidation of the food chain, which has been accelerating just as climate change is profoundly altering the conditions for growing food. In the midst of this global crisis, the fate of our food has slipped into a handful of the world’s largest companies. Food Chained will bring home what this corporate stranglehold is doing to our daily diet, from the explosion of genetically modified foods to the rapid disappearance of plant varieties to the elimination of independent farmers who have long been the bedrock of our food supply.
Seeds of Resistance will touch many nerves for readers, including concerns about climate change, chronic drought in essential farm states like California, the persistence of the junk food culture, the proliferation of GMOs, and the alarming domination of the seed market and our very life cycle by global giants like Monsanto.
But not all is bleak when it comes to the future of our food supply. Seeds of Resistance will also present hopeful stories about farmers, consumer groups, and government agencies around the world that are resisting the tightening corporate squeeze on our food chain.
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How a Seed Bank, Almost Lost in Syria's War, Could Help Feed a ...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/13/climate/syria-seed-bank.html
Oct 13, 2017 - TERBOL, Lebanon — Ali Shehadeh, a seed hunter, opened the folders with the greatest of care. Inside each was a carefully dried and pressed seed pod: a sweet clover from Egypt, a wild wheat found only in northern Syria, an ancient variety of bread wheat. He had thousands of these folders stacked ...
Svalbard global seed vault has its seeds returned by Syria | WIRED UK
www.wired.co.uk/article/svalbard-seed-bank-syria
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Syria Just Made a Major Seed Bank Deposit | Smart News | Smithsonian
www.smithsonianmag.com/.../why-scientists-just-made-major-seed-bank-deposit-180...
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In the midst of war, this Syrian seed bank is still going | Grist
grist.org/article/in-the-midst-of-war-this-syrian-seed-bank-is-still-going/
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Syrian Civil War Prompts First Withdrawal From Doomsday Seed Vault ...
https://www.npr.org/.../syrian-civil-war-prompts-first-withdrawal-from-doomsday-seed-...
Sep 23, 2015 - Researchers in the Middle East have requested the first-ever withdrawal from the "final backup" seed bank because of destruction caused by the Syrian civil war.
Syrian seed bank gets new home away from war : Nature News ...
https://www.nature.com/news/syrian-seed-bank-gets-new-home-away-from-war-1.20725
Oct 5, 2016 - A major seed bank in Aleppo, Syria, holds genes that might help researchers breed crops to survive climate change. But the conflict tearing the country apart has rendered the bank largely inaccessible for the past four years. Now an effort to duplicate its seed collection at more-accessible locations is ...
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