[Aljazeera] The UN estimates 80 percent of the Sahel’s rain-fed farmland is affected by degradation due to erratic rainfall.
More than 1.3 million people have been plunged into extreme poverty in the Sahel, as the Belt of Africa experiences its deepest recession since independence due to COVID-19.
Long before the pandemic, the Western Sahel was being reshaped by climate change. Farmers and herders have been clashing over fertile land and, lacking opportunities, many young people have been recruited to violent groups. Ornella Moderan, the head of the Sahel programme at the Institute for Security Studies, explains why.
And Fairtrade Foundation CEO Michael Gidney talks to Al Jazeera about the effect climate change is having on the 1.8 million farmers his non-profit organisation works with.
#2
My guess is that the usual Malthusian forces are at work. Populations grow beyond what the soil and water resources will support. Famine and war ensue.
Rohin adds his bit of snark on the film:
[ColonelCassad] And more about the Yemeni war. It turns out that the Emirates made a full-length feature film about the war in Yemen.
Well, as the emirates - they wrote out from France the director Pierre Morel (known for the film "Hostage", where the elderly Liam Neeson piled on his daughter's kidnappers), who in the Emirates quickly blinded a teary tale about fagots about how the patrol of the Emirates got into an ambush, and the rest of the Emirate heroically rescued them, overcoming the sinister Houthis, who tried to prevent the rescue of Private Al-Ryan from Abu Dhabi, who somehow got into Yemen, where no one invited him.
Of course, all this is political agitation (what is actually happening with the MRAPs in Yemen, you can easily look at the numerous videos of real hostilities), designed to somehow justify the participation of the UAE in the intervention against Yemen and attempts to seize part of its territory from Yemen. including Socotra Island and Abyan and Hadhramaut provinces. But in the film, of course, they will not tell about it. It is quite understandable that the film will not have much success.
The very polished trailer makes a lot of promises about the ethos of the Emirati military. Were it not for the language, one would think they were American soldiers.
[NY Post] Well.....duh
In its conflict with Hamas in May, Israel endured a barrage of rockets — as well as war-crime accusations. Iron Dome intercepted most of the former. The latter are more dangerous, for Israel and even the United States.
After reviewing the Israeli Defense Forces’ operations during the Gaza conflict as retired senior US military officers, we find these accusations spurious — fed by Hamas’ disinformation and a widespread misunderstanding of the Law of Armed Conflict, or LOAC. These dynamics could soon feature in conflicts involving the US military.
Delegitimizing Israeli operations — not military victory — was one of Hamas’ main objectives in this conflict. "The real crimes," Hamas’ spokesperson told the media, "were committed by [Israel] targeting civilians ... killing more than 100 children and women and demolishing buildings."
With such false claims, Hamas casts any civilian casualty as illegal. Unfortunately, many in the media and public embraced this false narrative.
"Destroying a civilian residence sure seems like a war crime," comedian John Oliver opined on his show. Seeming like a war crime and being one are quite different.
LOAC requires militaries to distinguish between — and only attack — military, not civilian, targets. Commanders are obliged to make a good-faith effort to take all feasible precautions to mitigate civilian risk.
These rules do not preclude unavoidable civilian casualties. It is a sad but undeniable reality of war that international law tolerates harm to civilians if it’s not deliberately inflicted, caused by indiscriminate attacks and avoidable with feasible precautions.
In our professional opinion, Israeli actions in Gaza reflected a consistent and good-faith commitment to respect and implement these LOAC principles.
IDF military legal advisers vetted all proposed targets. Its commanders took all feasible precautionary measures, at times implementing more than the law required as a matter of policy. The IDF dropped leaflets, placed phone calls and sent text messages warning Gazan civilians in advance of airstrikes.
Small "knock on the roof" munitions delivered further warning. We saw footage of the IDF waiting for civilians to clear a building — and of commanders calling off strikes when they did not.
These precautions came at a cost. They often allowed enemy fighters to escape. They also tied up Israeli aircraft, reducing the number of targets that could be monitored or struck. The IDF accepted these costs because of its commitment to protecting civilians.
[Auto Blog] Sometimes smaller is better. Sometimes smaller is cheaper, and sometimes smaller is smarter. That’s the 2022 Ford Maverick, a compact pickup truck sharing the same unibody platform as the Ford Escape and Bronco Sport. Yeah, it’s small, but that’s great if you want something with a bed, but don’t have the need or the extra cash for a mid- or full-size truck. Instead, the Maverick is an easy-to-drive, efficient pickup that won’t break the bank and has to make intelligent use of the space it’s got.
The Maverick is peerless, with its small stature and a standard hybrid powertrain. The closest competitor is the also-new Hyundai Santa Cruz. That Hyundai shies away from the pickup vibe, maintaining its crossover aesthetics. The Maverick leans into the fact that it’s a pickup, and built by a company that’s been selling countless pickups for many, many decades. And the Maverick totally succeeds at being just enough truck for a lot of people. We have no doubt it will be popular — and for good reason. We just wonder if Ford can keep up with demand.
#1
My boss is leasing one and likes it. Not a lot of cabin height though. I'm 6'-2" and it felt a bit claustrophobic compared to the blessed F-150.
Drink up!
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/13/2021 7:08 Comments ||
Top||
#2
Sat in one at the local dealer (didn't drive it) and it does feel somewhat cramped. Not quite as tall as you Frank, but still felt like sitting in a RAV4 (cramped seating) without the headroom.
I'll stick to my old Expedition for now.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
11/13/2021 11:39 Comments ||
Top||
#3
Sorry but everytime my wife talks about getting a truck there's only one on the table. F150. Drove one up the rockies for over a year and I almost cried when Halliburton took it away and made me drive the company Chevy Silverado. You just can't beat that roomier interior with seats that don't slowly murder you.
[Market Watch] Well, it turns out our toxic modern diet of saturated fats, refined carbs, salt and chemicals may be speeding up our cognitive decline in our senior years, and could even bring on dementia. I've read this article like, four times, and still don't get it...
The good news? It will only affect those it hasn’t already killed through things like obesity, heart disease and diabetes.
The cheering news on processed foods and the brain has been confirmed by one of those heartless tests on a bunch of blameless rats in a lab in Ohio. Some aging rats were fed a healthy diet, some a diet of processed foods. After a month — things happen quickly in rat biology — they were put through some memory tests involving ringing bells and electric shocks through the feet. Then they were, er, euthanized and their brains dissected.
It’s not much fun being a lab rat.
"Consumption of a PD [ie processed foods diet], enriched with refined carbohydrate sources, for 28 days impaired hippocampal- and amygdalar-dependent memory function," the researchers found. "These memory deficits were accompanied by increased expression of inflammatory genes... in the hippocampus and amygdala of aged rats."
#7
Just watch as grocery and food prices increase and Big Box Food automates and packages itself as the only way to feed your family regularly, affordably.
No social interaction of dining out, no process stimulation of cooking in, just people sitting on their butts waiting for the next serving of 30 Day Fiancee level nutrition and enjoyment.
"Family not getting enough to eat....come to Taco Bell where you can get full at half the price of just a pack of taco shells."
#1
Neptune's Inferno. The description of those two fights reads like a thriller even if you know how they turn out.
Posted by: Matt ||
11/13/2021 12:25 Comments ||
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#2
Ah, the 'Good Old Days' when you had time and men to waste to weed out the incompetent or just plain individuals promoted well above their Peter Principle skills through peacetime bureaucratic career ladders.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Aljazeera] The UN estimates 80 percent of the Sahel’s rain-fed farmland is affected by degradation due to erratic rainfall.
[NY Post] 
[Auto Blog] Sometimes smaller is better. Sometimes smaller is cheaper, and sometimes smaller is smarter. That’s the 2022 Ford Maverick, a compact pickup truck sharing the same unibody platform as the Ford Escape and Bronco Sport. Yeah, it’s small, but that’s great if you want something with a bed, but don’t have the need or the extra cash for a mid- or full-size truck. Instead, the Maverick is an easy-to-drive, efficient pickup that won’t break the bank and has to make intelligent use of the space it’s got.
[Market Watch] Well, it turns out our toxic modern diet of saturated fats, refined carbs, salt and chemicals may be speeding up our cognitive decline in our senior years, and could even bring on dementia.
