[Israel Times] A parched Syria turned to war, scholar says, and Egypt may be next: Prof. Arnon Sofer sets out the link between drought, Assad's civil war, and the wider strains in the Middle East; Jordan and Gazoo are also in deep trouble, he warns
Some look at the upheaval in Syria through a religious lens. The Sunni and Shia factions, battling for supremacy in the Middle East, have locked horns in the heart of the Levant, where the Shia-affiliated Alawite sect has ruled a majority Sunni nation for decades.
Some see it through a social prism. As they did in Tunis with Muhammad Bouazizi -- an honest man who couldn't make an honest living in this corruption-ridden part of the world -- the social protests that sparked the war in Syria started in the poor and disenfranchised parts of the country.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: trailing wife ||
05/12/2013 00:00 ||
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#1
texas has had a 3 yr drought and increasing population also
Northern Israel had a 5 year drought from 2006 to 2011.
Somehow they escaped having a genocidal conflict.
Posted by: lord garth ||
05/12/2013 0:28 Comments ||
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#2
What an idiot. No place in the world duplicated population in 60 years??! India for example more than tripled...350 millions to 1200 millions
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/12/2013 10:10 Comments ||
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#7
Israel no longer suffers from drought.Desalination, conservation and sewage treatment have alleviated much of the natural scarcity.
Ah - those clever Juices. Using modern science and technology.Maybe if the other countries came out of the 7th century they would have a chance.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
05/12/2013 10:23 Comments ||
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[Bangla Daily Star] Ignoring its own manifesto, the BNP has extended its support to the Hefajat-e Islam's movement that seeks a realisation of its 13-point demand. The demands, if implemented, will severely hinder women's empowerment as well as lead to some other consequences.
The main opposition party in its manifesto declares that it will take multi-pronged measures to ensure women's empowerment. It speaks of the overall emancipation and progress of the women.
It promises to keep making various efforts for the empowerment of women through ensuring their employment in various sectors, particularly in social welfare, rural development, local government and small and medium industries.
The BNP also promises to provide youths, both male and female, with scientific, technical and vocational education so that they can rid themselves of the curse of unemployment and contribute to nation-building.
Its manifesto mentions neither any discrimination against nor imposes any restrictions on what the Hefajat has termed "free mingling of men and women".
The Hefajat's demands are contrary to what the BNP promises in its manifesto. The Hefajat demands the imposition of a ban on "free-mingling of men and women". If such restrictions are imposed, hundreds of thousands of female workers will be pushed into unemployment; and co-education in schools, colleges and universities will have to be discarded.
That will hamper women's empowerment and will go against the very spirit of the constitution.
The Hefajat has also demanded the scrapping of the women development policy, which contradicts the policy mentioned in the BNP manifesto regarding various steps to be taken for the overall development of women.
The Hefajat's demand for a stop to the building of sculptures at intersections, colleges and universities also runs contrary to what the BNP promises in its manifesto -- to identify various incidents and places related to the War of Liberation and take measures to preserve them.
Besides, at least six of the Hefajat's demands run counter to the country's constitution.
Earlier, at a meeting last month, BNP policymakers discussed the Hefajat demands and resolved that the party did not agree with most of those.
Yet the BNP extended support to the Hefajat's movement. It provided food and drink to Hefajat men who joined the long march to Dhaka on April 6 and a party delegation joined the Hefajat's rally on the day and expressed solidarity with the movement.
The BNP went further on May 5 when party chief Khaleda Zia Three-term PM of Bangla, widow of deceased dictator Ziaur Rahman, head of the Bangla Nationalist Party, an apparent magnet for corruption ... urged party leaders and workers to stand beside the Hefajat men who had suddenly begun a sit-in at Shapla Chattar in the capital, vowing not to leave until their demands were met.
She also urged her party men and the city dwellers to provide the Hefajat men with food and drink.
The BNP-led 18-party alliance even enforced a two-day countrywide dawn-to-dusk hartal ... a peculiarly Bangla combination of a general strike and a riot, used by both major political groups in lieu of actual governance ... on May 8 and 9 in protest against the law enforcers' action in driving away Hefajat men from Shapla Chattar in the early hours of May 6, in the process "killing more than two thousand people".
The main opposition, in order to gain political mileage out of a volatile situation, clearly did not go back to its manifesto before extending support to the Hefajat movement. Its organizational weakness has prompted some of its policymakers to rely on the Hefajat men to intensify its one-point movement to oust the government.
But on both occasions, the BNP was upset. That left some lessons for the party to learn.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/12/2013 00:00 ||
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Think the best paid public servant in your state is some tax-collecting bureaucrat with a commission-based comp structure, or some administrative apparatchik? Think again. As the following infographic from Deadspin shows, in 41 US states, the highest-paid public employee is either the football, basketball or hockey coach at the local state school. Which takes cares of the "Circuses" part. For now, at least, public sector bakers did not make the list...
#3
At this time the Boise State football program is a moneymaker for the University. If Coach Pete (Peterson) ever leaves then who knows. He took a decent program & put it in the top 20 nationally. The TV & Bowl payback is shocking to this blue collar worker.
#4
Will the database include genetic tracking back to parents? Will it include genetic markers for disease? Maybe those will be amendments added later.
#1
On the morning of April 27, 2013 Thomas L. Friedman must have bumped his head and accidentally wrote an article that was not agenda-driven and somewhat enlightening
More like the work of a temporary staffer, who was promptly released.
#2
Well, what part of Radical Islam's "jihad" ultimately being a "Global Jihad", to includ
"Global Mohammeddan/Muslim Conquest" + related, did we not understand???
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.
[Israel Times] A parched Syria turned to war, scholar says, and Egypt may be next: Prof. Arnon Sofer sets out the link between drought, Assad's civil war, and the wider strains in the Middle East; Jordan and 
Khaleda Zia
