Public input sought on regional effort along corridor in Capitol Area
City of Austin Transportation Director Rob Spillar calls Interstate 35 “the transportation backbone†of Austin, the region, the state and the nation. More “endearing†terms for the always-congested roadway are used by motorists bogged down in traffic on the busy Capitol Area corridor at rush hour!
Spillar and other city and state officials are out to change that. This week they held a trio of open house meetings in Travis County to review plans and hear public input on proposed mobility solutions for the busy interstate in Hays, Travis and Williamson counties.
These three meetings focused on the part of the interstate in Travis County. Five previous open house sessions have resulted in more than 300 ideas aimed at improving I-35. That information has been used by the city of Austin and the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) to identify preliminary concepts that could be put in place in three to 10 years to address congestion and connectivity in the Capitol Area corridor. The project addresses not only the motoring public, but also pedestrian, bicycle, transit, truck and emergency vehicle traffic.
Among the goals of the project are improving transit and high-occupancy vehicle opportunities, identifying cost-effective projects, reducing air pollution, improving economic development opportunities, providing better travel information and improving the safety, efficiency and access to the corridor and through it for all users.
This is not the first time for a study of I-35. But, the current process differs because projects being considered will not require significant additional right-of-way acquisition or incur substantial costs.
The bad news is that the proposals will be implemented when funds are available. However, there is speculation that some low-cost proposals could possibly be implemented this year, with others reaching out up to 10 years and likely including a combination of federal, state and local funds.
For those who were unable to attend the local meetings, a virtual open house has been set up http://www.mobility35.org/, where plans can be reviewed and comments can be submitted online.
Soumaya Khalifa, Humera Khan awarded Community Leadership Award
Throughout the year, dedicated and selfless individuals and organizations make extraordinary contributions to their communities across the United States. And every year, the FBI honors the very best among them with its Director’s Community Leadership Award. Among its latest award recipients are Soumaya Khalifa and Humera Khan.
In Atlanta, Soumaya Khalifa founded the Islamic Speakers Bureau to educate those unfamiliar with the Islamic faith and provide insight into how Muslim Americans live their daily lives. She often presents training to students, business executives, and military and law enforcement personnel.
In Washington, D.C., Humera Khan, a dedicated advocate for American Muslims, is the founder of Mueflehun, a research organization that promotes service-minded communities and justice. Khan’s organization offers recommendations to multiple government agencies about countering homegrown terrorism and violent extremism.
Pakistani-American poet honored in Jeddah
A veteran Pakistani-American Urdu poet and scholar Mamoon Aiman was honored by Alami Urdu Markaz-Jeddah last month.
Aiman was praised for his mastery of Urdu Rubaiyat. His poetry was well-received by attendees.
Aiman, a naturalized American citizen, is an English teacher. He is famous in North America’s Urdu circles and a familiar literary figure on Pakistan Radio, BBC and Voice of America. He is in the Kingdom to perform Umrah.
Aiman was born in Allahabad, India, in 1941 and migrated to Lahore, Pakistan, following the partition in 1947. He has been living in the United States for the last four decades and is engaged in writing Urdu poetry and prose.
Lecture on the Prophet (s) starts Islamic Awareness Month
A lecture on the life of Prophet Muhammad (s) started off the Islamic Awareness Month activities at Harvard University. It was delivered by Lesley Hazleton, author of The First Muslim: The Story of Muhammad and veteran TED speaker. Hazleton spoke about the Prophet`s radical advocacy of social justice and the factors that led to his role as a prophet, the student newspaper of the university reported.
“We want to present this sense that Islamic values are very much a part of American life,†said Hassaan Shahawy ’16, who is HIS’s Director of Islamic Learning. “We have events that show that it’s not as dual as we think. It’s not Islam versus the West, Islam versus science. The misperception is that the two are at odds with each other.â€
Philadelphia area mosque to increase in size
Officials say a mosque in suburban Philadelphia will more than double in size as a result of a long-awaited expansion.
The Bucks County Courier Times says members of the Zubaida Foundation gathered with local dignitaries for a groundbreaking ceremony Friday in Lower Makefield Township.
The existing house of worship founded in 2005 in an old church can accommodate 150 to 200 worshippers.
But administrator Mohammed Husain says it will increase in size from 4,000 square feet to 10,000 square feet.
Member Naveed Malik says the community is growing and “we need to think about five years from now.â€
About 50 people gathered at the Huda School Saturday evening to attend a lively lecture by Khalid Haj-Saleh, the spokesman and head of the Media Committee for the Syrian National Council.
Khalid Haj-Saleh of the SNC speaks at the Islamic Culture Association
Mr. Haj-Saleh spoke in Arabic to a mostly Syrian gathering. The theme of his speech was the unreported events that are transpiring in relation to the Syrian National Council.
One good sign of the Syrian National Council was the presence of Haj-Saleh himself. This was a man who was at ease in Arabic and English, who spoke at length in an organized and intelligent way without notes, showing a lively engagement with his subject.
He spoke about the pressures placed on the SNC by the world’s powers, how early on and for years they had pressured the SNC to unite political and military opposition groups into one group with a unified leadership. When this leadership began to coalesce the Western powers backpedalled. The Russians, he said, had wanted to include Assad himself in the counsel on Syria’s future after the Assad regime.
Some people had expressed concerns that Ikhwan was overly powerful in the coalition, therefore it was expanded to include other groups.
He spoke of the SNC’s hope that military aid would follow the uniting of the opposition and its choosing of leadership, and their disappointment when even united, no military support was forthcoming from the West.
Haj-Saleh spoke frankly about the fact that in some places the opposition has a thin and sometimes divided layer of control over the areas under its military control in Syria, and in others it displays more unity and better leadership.
He pointed out that the Russians in negotiations are even more hard-line in private than they are in press conferences, and that their negotiating position has not shifted at all in years despite the Free Syrian Army’s many military gains and momentum.
Haj-Saleh explained the election process that had resulted in the election of the once-American Hitto as prime minister, where Haj-Saleh explained that Hitto had been one of four very strong and capable candidates for the position.
A disturbing trend which Haj-Saleh pointed out is that there have been several assassination attempts against opposition leaders which have gone unreported in the mainstream media.
On the last weekend of March, Tawheed Center in Farmington Hills, MI in conjunction with ICNA, hosted its 4th Annual Youth Conference. The conference was well attended, attracting more than 600 people. Each year, the conference attendance continues to grow. Youth from all over Detroit Metro were present for the activities and lectures.
This year’s theme, “Are we There Yet. The Ideal Life of a Muslim†was geared towards engaging Muslim youth and the difficulties they face being an American Muslim. Each day of the three day event had a separate sub-theme, “It all starts at homeâ€, “Beyond the Masjidâ€, and “Our Role Modelsâ€. Focus was made throughout the weekend on learning from the time of the Prophet (SAW) and how to live in a modern society, how to learn to create a balance in our lives, how to handle responsibilities, and a special emphasis on being yourself-a Muslim.
The Tawheed Center Planning committee focused on inviting speakers who have been known to engage youth in the past. They felt that the Detroit Metro area itself harbors many scholarly speakers. Many of the speakers were Directors of Local Islamic Youth groups and actively engage with youth on a regular basis.
Brother Naeem Baig, president of ICNA, was also present and spoke about “How to tackle the challenges of Islamophobiaâ€. He described that Islamophobia has been present even before the 9-11 era but has become more rampant since that time. However, the amount of masajid in America has also grown considerably since 9-11. He commented that that there is research which shows, that once people get to know Muslims their opinion changes from a negative to a favorable one. He urged the youth to maintain a strong faith and follow Islam. By setting such an example, Islamophobia will eventually disappear.
Other talks were focused on the Legacy of Islam and the contribution of Muslim scientists, scholars, doctors, and engineer’s to the world since the beginning of time. Some of the other sessions focused on Peer Pressure, Rights of Parents, and Managing your Muslim Identity. There were also two separate, Men and Ladies Q & A sessions with Sheikh Kareem Abdul Yahya and Mufti Abdurrahman Waheed.
In addition to just lectures, an entertainment session took place Saturday night after dinner. This included a Talent show, Nasheed recitation, and Qiyam for the youth. The Planning committee wanted to give the youth a break from the day-long lectures to let them relax and enjoy.
Tawheed Center of Farmington Hills, MI plans to continue this retreat on a yearly basis and hopes to bring more programs for the Youth of greater Detroit area. Helping Hand of Michigan also contributed to the event.
The popular Youth of Ummah (YOU) youth program had its second annual youth conference on Saturday March 9th, 2013 at IONA center in Warren MI. The YOU conference was a way of displaying the brotherhood and sense of belonging YOU program provides for the youth who are struggling to understand their Muslim identity in the society and feel a disconnect from the mosques around their communities. YOU provides a fresh new concept of helping youth (high school and up) feel comfortable sharing their problems, build bonds with their community members and start to love Islam as opposed to being born into it. YOU program also produces leaders continuously and it’s a wonderful feeling to see youth who were far away from Islam, become leaders and lead other youth to come closer to Allah SWT.
Youth of Ummah project uses sports as big part of their da’wa to the youth, and runs multiple sports leagues and all the while keeps youth learning about Islam and contribute towards their community. By the end of the sports leagues all the youth know each other very well, they trust their youth leaders, they are not hesitant to come to the mosques and best of all their skillsets are used to further improve the YOU program and give da’wa to more youth. The process is based on quality and doesn’t focus on trying to pull hundreds of youth, give them speeches but not having a weekly system to develop their character and personalities. YOU program has increased in popularity through word of mouth and many new youth have joined as a result of the quality of the program. The YOU conference is simply a way to recognize the youth for their contribution and they are awarded for their hard work during the sports leagues. The YOU conference also showed what the YOU program accomplished and the youth leaders it produced throughout the year.
The conference was full of amazing lectures pertinent to the issues youth want to hear about, team building activities, live skits, prize distribution for the sports leagues, and registration for next sports leagues and weekly programs. Imam Masmari from Unity center, Ameer Abdul Malik from California, Imam Shamsuddin from Michigan, Br. Majed from Windsor and Br. Omar (YOU director) were the main speakers at the conference. The speakers were happy to notice the great sense of brotherhood that could be felt among the crowd because most of the attendees were the youth that attend the YOU program on a weekly basis. The outer community audience were able to see the fruits of the YOU program during the conference.
YOU program has already been presented to many mosques to show its unique strength and leadership model. YOU program produces leaders and doesn’t rely on few volunteers for its growth. YOU program also has popular youtube channel which all youth should subscribe to at www.youtube.com/youthofummah. YOU program also has weekly fun learning programs like Fast and Learn program on Thursday, for both brothers and sisters. Saturdays are usually sports nights. Much of the testimonials, information about weekly programs and future events can be found on YOU website at www.youthofummah.com. YOU team can be reached via email at ummahyouth@gmail.com ( Br. Omar Malik)
Visitors look at a necklace during a Jewellery exhibition at Al Faisaliah hotel in Riyadh, April 9, 2013. REUTERS/Faisal Al Nasser
DUBAI, April 4 (Reuters) – After years in which the growth of Saudi Arabia’s bond market lagged its economy, the market is taking off as local companies rush to issue debt – though low returns are keeping foreign investors on the sidelines.
Traditionally, Saudi companies and other entities have relied on bank loans and retained earnings to finance their expansion. For debt market traders, that has made the Arab world’s biggest economy a case of unfulfilled potential.
In recent months, that pattern has started to change as companies become more familiar with bonds, a wide range of investors demand them, and banks bump up against the limits of how much they can lend to individual companies.
This has caused a burst of riyal-denominated debt issuance. In Saudi Arabia, such issuance is entirely in the form of Islamic bonds, or sukuk, which are structured to obey Islam’s ban on interest and instead pay returns on assets.
“Saudi Arabia had traditionally been considered the sleeping giant of regional debt capital markets, but this has certainly changed in the past 18 months as we have seen an upsurge in riyal sukuk issuance,†said Stuart Ure, partner at law firm Clifford Chance in Dubai.
LIMITS
Bank loans are still growing rapidly in Saudi Arabia because of strong economic growth; lending to the private sector climbed 15.6 percent from a year earlier in February to 1.02 trillion riyals ($272 billion).
But sukuk issuance is now expanding much faster. Last year about 27.2 billion riyals worth of riyal-denominated sukuk were issued, according to HSBC, up from 11.3 billion in 2011. In the first quarter of this year, 10.3 billion riyals were issued.
Three sukuk deals have closed in the past week alone: a 1.3 billion riyal deal from construction giant Saudi Binladin Group, 1.3 billion riyals from dairy firm Almarai Co, and 7.5 billion riyals from Sadara Chemical Co, a venture between Saudi Aramco and Dow Chemical.
Some Saudi banks have run up against their internal lending limits for companies, an issue which is particularly acute for firms such as Saudi Binladin, which require large amounts of finance to undertake construction projects. This is pushing some companies towards sukuk.
At the same time, sukuk have advantages for companies; they often carry longer tenors than the short maturities commonly offered on Saudi bank loans, and they allow the borrower to diversify its funding sources.
“Of the various advantages of going for a sukuk, some of the key ones are a massive pool of liquidity to tap into and the diversity of funding sources,†said Fahad al-Saif, head of capital markets and corporate finance at HSBC Saudi Arabia.
As Saudi regulators press firms to become more transparent, companies have gradually become more willing to disclose the data necessary to conduct sukuk issues. Growing familiarity with the instruments has made issuers more comfortable.
Ure dated the sukuk boom back to the successful issue in January last year of a mammoth 15 billion riyal sukuk by the government’s General Authority of Civil Aviation (GACA).
New entrants to the market may include National Shipping Co of Saudi Arabia (Bahri), according to market sources, and Marafiq, a utility services provider to two industrial cities in Saudi Arabia, which has confirmed it is considering an issue.
Meanwhile, Saudi investment funds and insurers, some of them cash-rich in a booming economy, are keen to put sukuk in their portfolios and willing to accept low returns to obtain them – making them financially attractive for issuers.
Saif believes the market would be helped if Saudi Arabia could develop a local credit rating agency which understood the country’s domestic dynamics. It is not clear when this might happen, however.
INNOVATION
Beyond its growth in size, the Saudi sukuk market is becoming more sophisticated, moving beyond plain vanilla transactions to more innovative deals.
“A number of innovations were seen in the riyal debt market, including an increase in non-rated issuers coming to market, the sukuk by GACA that was guaranteed by the Ministry of Finance, bank capital-raising transactions and project sukuk,†said Saif.
“Going forward, we could see seven- or 10-year issues, with even longer tenors for project finance-related deals.†In the past, sukuk maturities have tended to be shorter-term, of five years or less.
Some analysts think a future change in the market could be a shift from asset-based to asset-backed sukuk.
Traditionally, sukuk in the Gulf have been asset-based, meaning the assets generate returns for investors but the investors do not have direct recourse to the assets in case of non-payment. Asset-backed sukuk offer direct recourse, and are therefore seen by some religious scholars as closer to the spirit of Islamic finance, which emphasises investment in the real economy and spurns monetary speculation.
The recent Binladin Group sukuk, tied to a piece of land in Jeddah, broke new ground, Ure said.
“The sukuk doesn’t follow a classic structure, but instead is quasi-asset-backed, with sukuk holders having recourse to both the credit of the obligor and a prime land bank, essentially using dual-recourse (covered bond) technology.â€
HSBC’s Saif said he expected in the medium term to see more hybrid perpetual structures, which mimic some of the characteristics of equity because they lack a maturity date.
LOW RETURNS
An irony of Saudi Arabia’s sukuk boom is that foreign investors are largely sitting it out.
They are barred from buying directly in the primary market, and secondary market trade is too thin for them to get their hands on any paper – sukuk sales are placed with only around 20-30 local investors on average, most of whom hold onto their allocation until maturity, according to Saif.
The main problem, however, is the returns on riyal sukuk are low compared to what foreign investors can obtain in the international markets. Domestic sukuk supply is still much smaller than demand, so risk-averse Saudi funds – reluctant to invest abroad because of volatility in global markets – are desperate to buy the paper and are bidding down profit rates.
“Although profit rates are determined by prevailing money market rates, the scarcity of riyal issuances means a further 30-40 bps contraction,†said one regional sukuk investor.
The recent Sadara sukuk, which has a lifespan of 16 years, was priced at 95 basis points over the six-month Saudi interbank offered rate, making its profit rate just under 2 percent.
By comparison, Saudi Electricity Co, the Gulf’s largest utility, priced a $1 billion, 10-year dollar-denominated sukuk tranche in the international market last month at 3.473 percent – a much more attractive return.
U.S. President Barack Obama (4th R) tours the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (C), Secretary of State John Kerry (3rd L) and Bethlehem Mayor Vera Baboun (2nd L), March 22, 2013. REUTERS/Jason Reed
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama flew out of Israel in a duststorm on Friday, leaving behind a trail of symbolic gestures and fine oratory that should help preserve the status quo at a time of regional upheaval.
In an unexpected diplomatic flourish, he also facilitated a surprise telephone call between the prime ministers of Israel and Turkey, putting two U.S. allies firmly on track to revive a once close relationship that had become badly frayed.
Obama set such low expectations for the three-day trip that he can easily proclaim it is mission accomplished, having wooed skeptical Israelis, eased their fears over Iran and shown Palestinians that he had not forgotten their aspirations.
True, many Palestinians remained disillusioned, feeling that Obama had buckled to Israeli pressure and backtracked from his previous demands for a halt to Jewish settlement building in the occupied West Bank on land they want for a future state.
But after a bruising first term of failed Middle East diplomacy, Obama’s prime concern seems to be that the situation does not get any worse, while keeping alive slender hopes that a comprehensive Israeli-Palestinian peace deal is still possible.
“This visit marks a resumption of American attention to the conflict, which is very important after two years of utter absence from the scene,†said Ghassan al-Khatib, an academic and a former Palestinian government spokesman.
“It probably won’t lead to any new negotiations, which in any case would be meaningless given the huge gulf between the two sides. But it might bring some accountability to the Israelis.â€
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared highly satisfied by the public show of joviality displayed by Obama during their meetings, dispelling the frosty scowls and sniping that marked encounters over the previous four years.
“The atmosphere was much better than in all their meetings before,†said a senior Israeli official. “He gave the impression that he really wanted to start afresh,†he said of Obama.
IRAN CONNECTIONS
Obama has already spent more time talking to Netanyahu than to any other world leader, according to the White House, and the pair put several more hours on the clock through this week.
Iran topped their initial agenda, aides said, with Obama seeking to build mutual trust and convince Israel that he was serious when he said he would not let Iran get nuclear weapons.
As a joint news conference on Wednesday, Netanyahu repeated that Israel had a right to defend its own national interests, but added that he was “absolutely convinced†Obama meant what he said – a strong statement seen as significant by some analysts.
“Now I think there is almost complete understanding between Israel and the United States on the Iranian issue,†said Amotz Asa-El, fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem.
“Specifically, they are waiting to see if the June election in Iran ignites some kind of social upheaval, a prospect that both Washington and Jerusalem obviously prefer,†he added, referring to a mid-year presidential poll.
Israel and Western powers believe Iran is looking to prepare a nuclear arsenal – something Tehran denies, while defending its right to enrich uranium for civil uses. Netanyahu has set a “red line†across Iran’s progress on enrichment, which he has said could be crossed in the spring or summer – hinting at unilateral military action unless the Islamic republic backs down.
Giora Eiland, a retired general and former Israeli national security adviser, said the prospect of such an attack was receding: “I think that the option still exists,†he said, “But that every day that passes lowers its chances of success.â€
Reflecting Israel’s isolation in a largely hostile region, Obama engineered a call between Netanyahu and his Turkish counterpart on Friday, enabling the two U.S. allies to overcome a diplomatic crisis sparked by the deaths of nine Turks in 2010 during an Israeli commando raid off the Gaza Strip.
The move to normalize relations with a NATO member state that was one of its few Muslim friends in the region could help coordination to contain spillover from the Syrian civil war.
“Given what we see in the Middle East, we see a situation in which our relations with Turkey can be very, very important for the future, regarding what happens with Syria, but not just what happens with Syria,†said a source in Netanyahu’s office.
PALESTINIAN STALEMATE
Yet if the tensions with Turkey unexpectedly eased, Obama’s visit did little to raise hopes that the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was any nearer resolution.
Going over the heads of Israeli leaders, who have questioned whether they have a viable negotiating partner on the other side of the separation barrier that twists through the West Bank, Obama appealed directly to ordinary citizens to push for change.
In a powerful speech to appreciative students, the U.S. president warned on Thursday that the Jewish state risked growing international isolation without a peace accord.
However, he did not bring any proposals on how to resume negotiations, which broke down in 2010, and he backed away from a previous demand for Israel to end settlement building, simply calling the construction an impediment to peace.
He promised that his new secretary of state, John Kerry, would dedicate much time and energy to the problem, but many Israelis saw his comments as a sign Washington would distance itself from a diplomatic quagmire familiar to his predecessors.
“The era when the USA pushed Israel and the Palestinians into a political process is gone,†said Gidi Grinstein, president of the Reut Institute, a Tel Aviv-based think tank.
“In the absence of American vision and strategy, considering Obama’s priorities and with the present positions of Israel and the Palestinians, the USA is basically saying: ‘You call us. We won’t call you’,†he added.
Although Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas welcomed Obama’s speech, some of his political allies were more damning.
“Obama’s visit provides no clear way forward for a serious solution to the conflict,†said Wasel Abu Yousef of the Palestine Liberation Organisation. “It seems the U.S. is not interested in solving the conflict, but rather managing it.â€
(Additional reporting by Dan Williams and Noah Browning; Editing by Alastair Macdonald)
Jockeys race to the finish line during the 20km camel race at the opening of the Janadriya festival near Riyadh, April 3, 2013. REUTERS/Faisal Al Nasser
DUBAI/KHOBAR, April 3 (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia is unlikely to produce much shale gas this decade, hampered by scarce water and prices fixed far below production costs, but it has the reserves, the desire and the potential to become a shale giant one day.
The world’s biggest oil exporter already has sizeable reserves of conventional gas, but more than half is trapped in oil fields whose production is driven by OPEC oil policy. Increases in output are not expected to keep pace with the economy’s voracious appetite for gas to fuel power, petrochemical and desalination plants.
Inspired by a shale gas surge in the United States, which has transformed it from the world’s largest gas importer to a budding exporter, the kingdom has begun investigating its large unconventional deposits and their potential for fuelling long-term growth for its booming population.
“This is a region that needs to create jobs and opportunities for its people – it is our number one priority – so the prospects presented by gas are good news,†Saudi Oil Minister Ali Al-Naimi said this week.
Saudi Aramco has more than doubled its proven reserves of conventional gas since 1987, and the start-up of the Karan gas field in 2011 provided a supply boost from a field whose output is not driven by global demand for Saudi crude.
Two more non-associated offshore conventional gas projects should improve gas supplies until around 2017.
But with a decade-long search in the Empty Quarter having unearthed no commercially viable conventional gas, Aramco has been mapping unconventional reserves in the hope they will help meet an expected doubling of demand by 2030 in a country that bans gas imports.
In mid-March Naimi gave an estimate of over 600 trillion cubic feet of unconventional gas reserves, more than double its proven conventional reserves. That estimate would put Saudi Arabia fifth in a 32-country shale gas reserves ranking compiled for the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Shale is only a long-term prospect, however. Saudi Aramco, which Naimi has said will drill only around seven shale gas test wells in 2013, is still focused on tapping conventional gas.
“The nature of exploration is to target long-term requirements, typically 10 or 15 years into the future … The shale gas exploration programme is just starting, and it’s an important part of the effort to assess the kingdom’s resources for the future,†Sadad al-Husseini, a former top Aramco executive, said.
“This is not a major effort by industry standards … It will take intense exploration studies and numerous evaluation wells before any assessments can be made in regards to their economics and their ultimate production potential.â€
Even in the Gulf, Saudi Arabia will not be the first to tap unconventional deposits.
Neighbouring Oman is likely to lead the way if it can reach agreement on price with BP for development of a block that the tight-gas specialist says could start commercial production by 2017 and yield up to 30 trillion cubic feet.
Yet Aramco is keen to increase gas output, because at it can make $100 a barrel by exporting crude oil, which it sells to Saudi power plants for around $4 a barrel due to a lack of gas.
The company that exports more than $800 million a day of crude oil can afford the costs of developing a shale capability. Unlike prospectors in densely populated Europe, it has vast expanses of empty desert in which to drill and faces none of the environmental protests seen in the United States and Europe.
PRICE, PERSONNEL
Many of the factors that drove the U.S. shale gas production boom – entrepreneurial innovators with access to capital, ample volumes of water and an easily accessible transport grid – are sorely lacking in Saudi Arabia, however.
Low fixed prices for gas across the Gulf, a remnant of decades past when gas was seen as a byproduct of oil fields, have discouraged investment in new production.
Even after rapid innovation in the United States drove down shale production costs from over $13/mmbtu in mid-2008 to around $4 now, are still far in excess of the $0.75/mmbtu fixed gas price in Saudi Arabia.
“You don’t have market forces in the way of price signals, and private actors for these forces to be unleashed in the way that they were in North America,†said Alex Munton, a Middle East energy analyst at Wood Mackenzie in Edinburgh.
“You have state-controlled industry, essentially one operating company and gas prices that make it sub-economic to develop this resource,†he said, adding that it would probably take a decade to see any significant production in the kingdom.
Aramco is currently hiring unconventional specialists for further appraisal work, but expertise may prove hard to come by in the future.
Analysts say the established best practice is to enlist the help of big service companies that have played a role in the U.S. boom. They are hungry for work in other countries, and some have set up development offices in Saudi Arabia.
But China, holder of the world’s largest unconventional gas reserves, has already signed production-sharing deals and awarded exploration blocks as it targets production of 6.5 billion cubic metres of shale gas a year by 2015.
Its decision to award most blocks in a recent tender to companies with little experience means those firms could soak up the limited pool of expertise from service companies such as Schlumberger and Baker Hughes, potentially hampering Saudi shale drilling prospects.
TECHNOLOGY BREAKTHROUGH NEEDED
The biggest obstacle for Saudi Arabia is probably the lack of water, because fracking entails pumping huge amounts of fresh water to pressure gas out of rock, shale or compacted sands.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has estimated the annual water requirement of U.S. frackers at 70-140 billion gallons (265-530 billion litres), equivalent to the amount of water used in a U.S. city of 2.5-5 million people.
Ambitious Saudi plans to build desalination plants, and the nuclear and solar plants to power them, still are unlikely to produce the volumes of water required at a low-enough cost.
Saudi Arabia’s prospects will depend on development of a technology that allows Aramco to frack effectively with seawater or with liquefied petroleum gas, and the latter technique is being developed by North American companies.
The creation of Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures (SAEV) in mid-2012 to invest in start-ups and high-growth companies with “technologies of strategic importance†suggests Aramco is preparing to pounce on such developments.
“The importance of the U.S. venture community cannot be overstated,†SAEV head Ibrahim Buainain said at the opening of its office in Houston on Jan. 30.
“We see great potential for SAEV to work with start-ups throughout North America to support the development of new technologies,†he added. (editing by Jane Baird and Richard Mably)
DUBAI (Reuters) – Iraq’s al Qaeda wing has united with a kindred Syrian group in the frontline of a struggle to oust President Bashar al-Assad, sharpening a dilemma for nations that back the revolt, but fear rising Islamist militancy.
The leader of the Islamic State of Iraq, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, said his group had trained and funded fighters from Syria’s al-Nusra Front – which is blacklisted by the United States – since the early days of the two-year-old uprising.
He said in a statement posted on Islamist websites and seen by Reuters on Tuesday that the two groups would operate under the joint title of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
“It’s now time to declare in front of the people of the Levant and the world that al-Nusra Front is but an extension of the Islamic State of Iraq and part of it,†Baghdadi said.
“We thus declare … the cancellation of the name of the Islamic State of Iraq and the name of al-Nusra Front and grouping them together under one name, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant,†he added.
The militant Islamist element of the Syrian conflict poses a quandary for Western powers and their Arab allies, which favor Assad’s overthrow but are alarmed at the growing power of Sunni Muslim jihadi fighters whose fiercely anti-Shi’ite ideology has fuelled sectarian tensions in the Middle East.
A U.S. analyst said the announcement was no game-changer, but reflected al Qaeda’s confidence in its position in Syria.
“I don’t think it necessarily changes anybody’s calculus since … the United States already knew about this connection last year and there hasn’t been any change in policy per se by the United State or its allies inSyria in the last six months,†said Aaron Zelin, of the Washington Institute for Near East policy.
Baghdadi’s statement, first reported by the U.S.-based SITE monitoring service, could not immediately be authenticated, and there was no immediate comment from al-Nusra on the merger.
Baghdadi said his group had deployed battle-hardened fighters and sent funds to local al-Nusra cells set up in Syria to lay the groundwork for the armed uprising – which grew out of anti-Assad protests that erupted in March 2011 – but that it had refrained from announcing the link for security reasons.
The Front burst into prominence early last year, when it claimed responsibility for several powerful bombings in the Syrian capital Damascus and the northern city of Aleppo.
Since then it has expanded operations nationwide, winning recruits among rebels who see it as the most effective fighting force against Assad’s troops, and taking a leading role in capturing territory in the north, south and east of Syria.
In one day in November, SITE said al-Nusra had claimed responsibility for 45 attacks in Damascus, Deraa, Hama and Homs provinces that reportedly killed dozens of people, including 60 in a single suicide bombing.
NUSRA SUPPORT
At least 70,000 people have been killed since protests led by Syria’s Sunni majority broke out against Assad, whose minority Alawite sect is an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam.
Al-Nusra has gained support as the violence and misery in Syria radicalizes a population used to living under Assad’s secular rule. Experts have long said al-Nusra was receiving support from al Qaeda-linked insurgents in neighboring Iraq.
In Iraq’s remote western desert region next to Syria, where cross-border Sunni tribal ties are strong, Iraqi security officials have said since last year that Islamic State of Iraq was regrouping and recruiting.
Al Qaeda’s Iraqi wing and Syria’s Islamist insurgents share a hatred for Assad’s Alawite-based power and for Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s Shi’ite-led government, which they see as oppressors of Sunnis in both countries.
Baghdadi rejected demands by secular groups for a democratic Syria, saying the goal was an Islamic state. “By God, it is a bad price and a bad possession to have,†he said of democracy.
Insurgent recruitment has been spurred by growing protests against Maliki among Sunnis who feel sidelined since the fall of Saddam Hussein and the rise of the Shi’ite majority.
Al Qaeda in Iraq, which suffered serious setbacks before U.S. troops left at the end of 2011, has bounced back with suicide bombings and well-coordinated attacks across Iraq this year, including an ambush which killed 48 Syrian soldiers who had fled across the border.
Security officials say Anbar province, once the heartland of al Qaeda’s war on American troops, is again becoming a haven for the group as Iraqi forces struggle to cover a vast territory without the air support that U.S. forces troops once supplied.
A porous border where the Euphrates river snakes though both countries, and the remote caves and hills of the desert make ideal territory for insurgents to evade Iraqi security forces and smuggle arms and fighters between Iraq and Syria.
Zelin said
In December, the U.S. State Department designated al-Nusra Front as a foreign terrorist organization, essentially classifying it as an affiliate of al Qaeda in Iraq.
Last week, al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri called in an Internet statement for the establishment of an Islamic state in Syria after Assad’s ouster, as a step towards the Islamist goal of re-establishing an Islamic caliphate over Muslim lands.
That prospect alarms many in Syria, from minority Druze, Christians, Alawites and Shi’ites to conservative but tolerant Sunnis who fear al-Nusra would try to impose Taliban-style rule.
“Do all you can to ensure that the fruit of your struggle, God willing, is an Islamic state … a state that would be a building stone in the return of the rightly-guided caliphate,†he said.
(Additional reporting by Ahmed Tolba in Cairo and Patrick Markey in Baghdad; Editing by Dominic Evans and Alistair Lyon)
AMMAN (Reuters) – Syrian rebels said they overran an army garrison that defends the main southern border crossing with Jordan on Friday and vowed to press on to take control of the major transit route.
Fighters from the Free Syrian Army said they captured the Um al-Mayathen post on the main Damascus-Jordan highway in heavy fighting overnight that ended a siege that lasted more than a week. Dozens died in the clashes they said.
“It (the garrison) is a major defense and now we will lay siege to the border crossing and cut their (theDamascus government’s) supply lines,†Abu Omar, commander of the Lions of the Sunna Brigade, told Reuters by phone.
The army post is several kilometers (miles) from Syria’s’ Nassib border crossing which, before Syria’s two-year-old civil war broke out, funneled billions of dollars of trade between Gulf countries, Turkey and Europe.
Syria’s southern provinces bordering Jordan and Israel have become an increasingly significant battleground as the capital comes under pressure, with President al-Assad’s forces and his loyalist militias hitting back hard.
The intensified fighting has also led to an unprecedented influx of refugees through Jordan’s 370 km (230 mile) border with Syria this year.
Rebels have stepped up fighting for control of the border area and the nearby town of Deraa in the last two months, gaining territory and capturing several bases.
They have also overrun several towns near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, fuelling tensions in the sensitive military zone.
Only two weeks ago they seized an air defense base near the strategic southern international highway, bolstering access to supply routes to the capital Damascus.
Rebels say their capture of large amounts of weapons, ammunition and vehicles has helped them to maintain an offensive after a long period in which the southern border area was quiet compared to northern and eastern parts of Syria.
“The latest gains have given us more weapons, helping the free army to mount even more attacks on keyarmy positions,†said Abu Salim, from Liwa Tawheed al Janoob brigade.
Jordan has stepped up security and deployed more troops to the border, a Jordanian army source said.
Diplomatic and regional intelligence sources also said Amman was allowing limited supplies of light arms to moderate rebel groups opposed to the Nusra front, an Islamist militant group suspected of links to al Qaeda and blacklisted by the UN as a “terrorist groupâ€.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry shakes hands before a news conference with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Barack Obama begins in Jerusalem, March 20, 2013. Making his first official visit to Israel, Obama pledged on Wednesday unwavering commitment to the security of the Jewish State where concern over a nuclear-armed Iran has clouded bilateral relations.
REUTERS/Larry Downing
Santa Clara–It was exactly a year ago when I first talked to Anna Baltzer of the American Campaign to End the Occupation, a non-sectarian US-based opposition and educational group to inform the American public of that the Jewish-Arab struggle to be against Washington’s self-interest within that region.
Curiously, although faith-based groups on both sides of the struggle dominate the “narrative†within the Metropole; e.g., America, it is often inter- or non-sectarian groups – like the Campaign — that successfully achieves much of the ground work. Succinctly, they are Civil Society operating at its best! As an attempt to make an analysis of what the President accomplished in his pilgrimage to the Abrahamic Holy Land last month, the literary/journalistic motifs with which your correspondent will be a playing (a laila in the South Asian context) intertwined with a reportage of what actually was said a year ago to this day by Ms. Baltzer in the South (San Francisco) Bay Area.
Your commentator’s comments will be separated from Anna Baltzer’s remarks by interjections demarked through parenthesis as above.
Anna’s workshop of the 23rd of last month (March) of last year revolved over BDS (Boycott-Divestments-Sanctions) against the racist Zionist State).
(It is a misnomer that the BDS Movement started in the American-European academic community. In actuality, it began, and grew out of the North American Labor Movement. [In fact, the [U.S] West Coast Longshoreman’s Labor Union refused to unload an Israeli tanker at the Port of Oakland fifty miles to the north of here some time back.] At the beginning of his tenure at the Observer, yours truly filed a story on a delegation of students and workers working on this form of resistance visiting from Wisconsin.
(What your reporter is advocating today is for a larger segment of U.S. Civil Society – especially American Muslims — to apply the principles of BDS against the Zionist Moloch as an addendum to President Obama’s journey to our mutual beloved Land.)
Anna states that the desire to enforce a blockade against the Jewish State is in tandem with International law established though the august U.N. (United Nations’) body! The argument that it may hurt some individual Palestinians is countered by the fact that the whole rights of the entire nation of the Palestinians are re-enforced by insuring Palestinian territory and natural resources are not usurped for the economic profit of the invader!
(Besides, polls of resident Palestinians show an overwhelming number of citizens of the Territories support B-D-S.)
(Although your writer is a great admirer of the South African anti-Apartheid heroic campaigner, the Anglican (Christian) Archbishop Desmond Tutu, [your essayist even has had the honor to shake the great man’s hand], your narrator does not feel that the South African experience matches easily into the Palestinian environment, for the oppression is deeply more insidious in the Levant: Also, Tel Aviv’ suppression is more sectarian than racist even though there is a strong cultural element within the principle of Settler Colonialism.
If the Jewish State has any long-term prospect of maintaining an existence in the Middle East, it must dismantle the Settlements immediately, and integrate itself within the civilization about them and away from the trans-Atlantic civilization from which it has evolved.)
Although your commentator disagrees with the total relevance of Baltzer reliance on the Palestinian to the Southern African milieu of the second half of the Twentieth Century (Bantuization, etc. – it is not one to one). What is now referred to as BDS was, finally, an important factor to pressure the end of South African Apartheid, and most assuredly can help now in West Asia. It is already exerting pressure on Civil Society in Israel itself and in the States and the European Union (E.U.)! She feels it is about making the nation a Pariah State, and is “not [essentially] economic. “ The goal is to build a coalition of “natural allies.†This movement is planned with a timeline of escalation. The “targets†are thoroughly researched and thought out. First, the policy of the pressure group is to “ask nicely†before acceleration, and, incidentally, online activism is a most important and effective tactic of the Movement.
Your journalist was surprised to learn that the key pioneering American technology giant H-P (Hewlett-Packard) is one of the targets for BDS in that they are providing technology that makes the infamous Israeli checkpoints effectual within the Occupied Territories for the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces).
The French multi-national bus company, Veolia that runs the Jewish-only transportation through the Occupied Territories, has been the first big casualty of BDS within the Europe business environ. It is safe to say that a good percentage of mainline American Christians stand firm with Palestinian Muslims, for the Methodists and Presbyterians voted to divest their endowment funds from U.S. companies that do business with Israel.
(The academic and cultural boycott of Israel is a ‘can of worms’ for your composer because there are leading members of Israeli civil society who could and are exerting pressure on their government [whatever any of our readers may think of the of legal right of that nation to exist] to change its policy on opposing the establishment of a Palestinian country. The point is, that dialogue can still be accomplished between our opposite ideologies at this time,) but Anna believes that Israeli academia and cultural expression normalize oppression.
(To clarify, BDS is most effective if it is applied in increments; [i.e., “turning on the screwsâ€]. Definitely, exchanges of nuclear scientists or anything else that would improve the effectiveness or efficiency of the Occupation should not be permitted now. Rather than out and out opposing non-lethal cultural and academic exchanges currently, it would be more effective for using them as opportunities to educate the American public by passing out informational literature and picketing outside relevant events emphasizing Israeli aggression against a defenseless people.)
Anna Baltzer concluded that BDS exposes aspects in the Occupation of Palestinian (now, largely Islamic) lands of which we in the West are unaware, and that Tel Aviv’ justification for the Occupation is a lie!
(In summation, your author’s President presence in our Land should not only be a new beginning for the American administration, but it is a call for each of us to act. BDS is a structure for individual and organizational action!)
Pakistan’s former President Pervez Musharraf speaks during a news conference in Dubai March 23, 2013. REUTERS/Mohammad Abu Omar
Despite much vicissitudes, the current government finally completes its term. It’s by far unique in the sense that it is the first government so far that has come to power following the true essence of democracy and not under the influence of uniform. It’s a good omen in a way that for the first time parliament remained in session for the term. Despite immense pressure and irregularities, still, it served the full term thus making a history in Pakistan which means there are chances that future governments will also be given opportunities to complete their tenure notwithstanding how they function!
The governments prior to current, have also completed the five year term but those elections were largely conducted under the auspices of a dictatorship, therefore, many suspects that power corridors during that time were of course influenced and handpicked or were under some sort of arrangements.
Incongruously, the circumstances support the mere fact that Pakistan never uplifted during the democratic setup but under the military administration. One may wonder why so? If there is a survey ever conducted on form of government Pakistan should have, people may vote for democracy and if a similar survey is conducted about why the democratic governments fail, the answer would be corruption and if the question of another survey is why military administration comes to power then the answer would be to control the situation in the country. Shouldn’t this mean if army is considered the ultimate source to bail-out the nation when the democratic governments is actually failed to fulfill their promises and are unable to manage the administrative affairs peacefully!
So far the nation has seen only two major parties in power, Pakistan Muslim League (N) and Pakistan Peoples’ Party and both governments were dissolved twice, while the third chance to PPP brought at least one positive result and that was the completion of the term other that, it is proven to be a big hit on the progress but so are the other previously elected governments.
The political parties make big hue and cry for democracy but when they are able to secure the representation in the parliament, the entire focus somehow changes to personal gains. Every wonder why?
Nonetheless, it is impossible to believe that everyone in the government including the opposition is tainted, it is simply not possible, so where is the problem? There must be some hiccup in the system that’s why no sign of progress is seen in either direction. Gone are the days when governments’ foremost goals was to build a landmark so that future generations can learn a lesson but unfortunately none of our leaders, be it elected or selected ever thought of thinking of along on those lines. Somehow, they all remained surrounded by strange circumstances and yet couldn’t find a real solution to the prevailing outlandish problems.
According to the format of this article, I have invited the two distinguished individuals to comment on the subject, let’s see what they have to say:
Khalid Khan, a reputable businessman, former president of PAGH & a Trustee of Pakistan Center in Houston, while commenting on Pakistan never uplifted during the democratic setup but under the military administration, says: “Luckily, for the first time democracy prevailed in Pakistan. In the short history of being independent, the country has seen it all, three major wars, crisis due to Afghan wars such as influx of Afghanis etc. For sure, we inherited immense amount of unnecessary problems as it. So the answer is not that simple. We have always been in the pool of mess. Democracy is a blessing but it has its own protocol to follow unlike in dictatorship where one man takes all decision, while in democracy, to get a bill pass is not easy. It has to go through the parliament, get approval and address all challenging questions pertaining to it to evaluate the strength of the proposed bill so it’s called democracy that requires certain procedure to follow.â€
Mr Khan further says: “Five years is a long time but cleaning the 67 years’ mess in just little five years is not enough. However, I must say that current democratic setup was a mess by itself and everyone in it including the opposition and independents had their own agenda to follow and that was the biggest hindrance in any developmental works during this tenure. But again, the direction is right, talking about our neighbor India, they don’t have any fear of dictatorship why because their system is working. Rulers should be able to work free of pressure, be it army, judiciary, internal or external, but this can happen only if there is no coup in between. But democracy will prevail and will do better than dictatorship.â€
Commenting on why the focus changes to personal gains of the parliamentarians, Khalid Khan says: “The focus is malformed because of chronic feudal system and power and politics confine to one family, which means, one family has members in all the parties, so no matter who comes to power, the power and politics remain in the same family. So it’s really hard for an average person to get into the power league. The opportunities in politics remain with those who already are in the power corridors. Therefore, their mindset is not to serve the community but enjoy the power so they come with specific agenda. So we need education and educated representatives in the parliament and only this will change the stance.â€
Talat Rashid, a business owner; Planning and Zoning Commissioner for Village of Bolingbrook; elected Committeeman for the Republican party in Will County and Advisor to Illinois Senator Mark Kirkan from Chicago, while commenting on the subject, says: “Damn if you have and damn if you didn’t. This is what the issue we are facing. We strive especially politicians who raise hell to have a democratic set up in Pakistan but when we see corruption and inefficiency of our politician we want to go back to military rule where at least general public’s basic needs are fulfilled. If you go back to the entire history of Pakistan we can see that during military rule, from General Ayub Khan to General Zia and Gen Musharraf. It seemed like citizens of Pakistan were happy in those days then the era of Bhutto, Nawaz Sharif and now President Zardari.â€
He further said: “Pakistan made a remarkable progress during army rule, for instance the entire infrastructure was shaped during Ayub era, and Pakistan’s GDP was around 7%. There were severe punishments for retailers if they were selling substandard products, dams were initiated and almost productive work was done to satisfy the citizen of Pakistan. During military rule the ruler has less peers, friends to please, therefore he can get work done. Same thing during Gen Zia’s era Pakistan made it’s for superior progress in economic growth as well. Not just that we had the economic edge but brave and respectable foreign and security policies which made us proud.â€
“The reason why military appears to be better because under no obligation he has to please anyone, he picks and appoints the Cabinet without seeking any ones approval or blessing. The other reason is that a dictator is less experienced to run the day to day operations of the country therefore he picks the well-educated and experienced people to work with him. On the contrary an elected ruler spends his entire era try to please his party and the members who helped him elected as a leader so he is obligated to return favors and forgets the people who brought him in the office. Therefore he plays fewer roles in progress of the country but more try to benefit him and the other members. I think now people do not care about democracy or military. They are tired of both systems. They want security and progress in the country,†Mr Rashid added.
Talat states the reason why political parties make big hue and cry, “because they are not in the driver seat. This is the only way they will come to power and try to reap maximum benefits if they make the military ruler look bad. These ego-centric democratic party officials have nothing to do with the public. We can see the past five years. Peoples party did not do any remarkable thing for Pakistan and its citizens. Since the party controls the majority they can get any bill passed thru assembly which benefits them. This is a shame that parties ignore the peoples who put them in the office but try to find ways to benefit themselves. We have perfect examples how the current government has milked millions of dollars and then its members transferred the funds in to their own accounts.â€
“The political parties have obligations to their members therefore they do everything to please them some times at the cost of public interest. We the citizen comes later. The other big reason is that these parties have no clue how long they will survive therefore they try to get as much benefit as they can. At the same time anyone who pays millions to get a party ticket, what do you think he will do to collect his money back, Talat Rashid concluded.
Concisely speaking that importance of education is inevitable if the nation is conscientious and aware that how power and politics remains at the helm of affair in the vadera system than this curse can only be eradicated and will bear fruits for generations to enjoy only if education is made a preference At the same time, it also looks like that the country has made progress during military government instead of much loved democratic setup. Indeed Pakistan would have been in better shape if we had devoted leaders who look for the interest of Pakistan and not their own. However, blame game should also be eliminated and everyone must become part of the society building, be it a leader or a nation, until we get to this path, we will continue to decline as a nation and suffer as a country.
– To participate in this column or for comments and suggestions, you may reach the scribe via email at theamericannotebook@gmail.com & follow him on Twitter @AsifJamalNY
Last night, I participated in a solidarity visit to the home of Suhad Abu Zmiro, a wonderful young Israeli Arab woman, who was attacked by Jewish youngsters in early March in a hate crime attack in a Jewish neighborhood of Jerusalem. This incident, which was widely publicized, led to much outrage among much of the mainstream Jewish population of Israel.
The visit was organized by a group of Jews from kibbutzim in the north of Israel in cooperation with Tag Meir (Hebrew for “Light Tag†or perhaps better translated as “Value of Lightâ€), a broad coalition of 35 organizations, including my organization, the Interreligious Coordinating Council in Israel.
Since Hanukkah, the holiday of light, a year and a half ago, Tag Meir has been reacting immediately and with wide media exposure to all incidents of hate crimes in Israel, especially those committed under the slogan, Tag Mechir (Hebrew for “Price Tag,†which refers to the supposed “price†paid by those who oppose the settler Jewish nationalist right-wing ideology). These hate crimes have been perpetrated by Jewish people (none of whom have been arrested!), who have committed many incidents which demonstrate insidious anti-Arab hatred and anti-leftwing hatred. I have personally attended many of these Tag Meir/Value of Light demonstrations and was a speaker at one of them last year.
Last night, we gathered in the beautiful home of Ibrahim and Suhad Abu Zmiro, in the village of Kalansaweh, situated in the center of Israel, just north of Tel Aviv. We were warmly welcomed by Ibrahim and Suhad and their family and friends from the village. They expressed great appreciation for our solidarity visit.
I was able to speak with Suhad personally about her story. She is a very personable, friendly and eloquent 26-year-old Israeli Arab religious woman, who wears a hijab and is not shy about her Arab Muslim identity, nor her Israeli citizenship, and her desire to be integrated into Israeli society. Married, with one child, her husband Ibrahim works as a nurse in Hadassah hospital in Jerusalem. Both of them speak perfect Hebrew.
Suhad teaches Arabic language to Jewish students in a Jewish middle school in the town of Ramat HaSharon, just north of Tel Aviv. This is her first year as a teacher and she is very proud to be the first Arab teacher in this Jewish school. She sees herself as a representative of her community; through the force of her charming personality, she seeks to break down stereotypes that all Arabs are terrorists — and she loves teaching at this Jewish school (and they apparently love having her there).
When Suhad introduced us to her father last night in her home, she said, with tears, that her father brought her up to believe that all people are to be treated with respect and equality, and she was taught not to hate Jews. She also told us that the fact that we were there to visit her and her family gave her strength and hope.
She also related that the young boys in Jerusalem who spit on her and her friend, Revital (her Jewish co-teacher at the school in Ramat HaSharon) also called them names — because she wore a hijab and was therefore Muslim and her friend because she was a Jewish woman who had befriended an Arab woman, obviously a taboo in the minds of these young Orthodox Jewish boys. “It was a shocking and humiliating incident,†she recalled.
The media reported that the principal of the school nearby, where the young perpetrators study, said that he could understand the attack by his pupils but did not justify it. Suhad, and many other Israeli Arabs in the room, were surprised that a religious Jew would have such hateful attitudes toward Muslims, and were particularly shocked that the principal of the school did not condemn this terrible act in no uncertain terms! I too was in a state of schock.
And then, a Jewish woman, who was part of our solidarity delegation, who actually lives in the Jerusalem neighborhood and knows the principal of the school, said that this act was a “desecration of the name of God†(a hilul hashem) and she was ashamed of it as a religious Orthodox Jew. She actually stood up and told Suhad that she was planning to go speak to the head of the school to discuss this with him!
Tag Meir/Value of Light is a grass-roots organization founded in December 2011 to work against prejudice and discrimination in Israel. Wherever there is hatred, especially religiously motivated hatred, in Israel, Tag Meir seeks to expose and counteract it by bringing light and hope to combat darkness and despair. Tag Meirtranscends religious divides, enlisting support from across the Israeli cultural and religious spectrum, including Secular, Reform and Conservative, and Orthodox Jewish groups.
Military vehicles of a joint security force in charge of clearing Tripoli of armed militias are seen April 8, 2013. REUTERS/Ismail Zitouny
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Weapons are spreading from Libya at an “alarming rate,†fueling conflicts in Mali, Syria and elsewhere and boosting the arsenals of extremists and criminals in the region, according to a U.N. report published on Tuesday.
The report by the U.N. Security Council’s Group of Experts – who monitor an arms embargo imposed on Libya at the start of an uprising in 2011 which ousted leader Muammar Gaddafi – said the North African state had become a key source of weapons in the region as its nascent government struggles to exert authority.
Libyan government security forces remain weak and militias, made up of former rebel fighters, hold power on the ground.
“Cases, both proven and under investigation, of illicit transfers from Libya in violation of the embargo cover more than 12 countries and include heavy and light weapons, including man-portable air defense systems, small arms and related ammunition and explosives and mines,†the experts wrote in the report.
“Illicit flows from the country are fuelling existing conflicts in Africa and the Levant and enriching the arsenals of a range of non-State actors, including terrorist groups,†according to the 94-page report, which was dated February 15 but published on Tuesday.
“The proliferation of weapons from Libya continues at an alarming rate,†the report said.
The experts said transfers of arms to Syria – where a two-year-old civil war has killed more than 70,000 people – had been organized from various locations in Libya, including Misrata and Benghazi, via Turkey or northern Lebanon.
“The significant size of some shipments and the logistics involved suggest that representatives of the Libyan local authorities might have at least been aware of the transfers, if not actually directly involved,†the experts said.
The report also found that in the past year flows of Libyan weapons to Egypt appeared to have increased significantly.
“While trafficking from Libya to Egypt represents a challenge primarily for Egypt’s internal security, in particular in relation to armed groups in the Sinai, some of the materiel appears to have crossed Egypt to further destinations, including the Gaza Strip,†the experts wrote.
Security in the Sinai desert region, which borders Israel and is home to a number of tourist resorts, has deteriorated since the ousting of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in a popular uprising two years ago.
ACCESS TO NEW WEAPONS
The report said that the trafficking of arms from Libya through Egypt to the Gaza Strip had allowed armed groups there to purchase new weapons including more modern assault rifles and anti-tank weapons systems.
Weapons from Libya were also being transported through southern Tunisia, southern Algeria and northern Niger to destinations such as Mali, but some arms were remaining in those corridor countries for use by local groups.
“These zones also serve as bases and transit points for non-state armed groups, including terrorist groups and criminal and drug trafficking networks with links to the wider Sahel region,†according to the report.
The experts said they had found that Qatar and the United Arab Emirates had breached the arms embargo on Libya during the 2011 uprising by providing weapons and ammunition to the rebels fighting Gaddafi forces. The experts said Qatar had denied the accusation, while the United Arab Emirates had not responded.
“Some 18 months after the end of the conflict, some of this materiel remains under the control of non-state actors within Libya and has been found in seizures of military materiel being trafficked out of Libya,†according to the report.
“Civilians and brigades remain in control of most of the weapons in the country, while the lack of an effective security system remains one of the primary obstacles to securing military materiel and controlling the borders,†it said.
Last month the U.N. Security Council made it easier for Libya to obtain non-lethal equipment such as bulletproof vests and armored cars but expressed concern at the spread of weapons from the country to nearby states.
The council urged the Libyan government to improve its monitoring of arms and related material that is supplied, sold or transferred to the government – with approval of the U.N. sanctions committee that oversees the arms embargo.
Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zeidan told the Security Council last month that the government had control of its borders with Algeria, Niger, Chad, Sudan and Egypt. Zeidan said in February he wanted the council to lift the arms embargo on Libya, but council members said they never received an official request.
A man reacts as he attends a gathering of people celebrating the death of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, in George Square in Glasgow, Scotland April 8, 2013. She was 87.
REUTERS/David Moir
Every controversial divisive deadly thing that Thatcher did is being placed in soft focus, bathed in a rose-coloured light – a first draft of history that is simply wrong.
The old saw that one shouldn’t speak ill of the recently dead cannot possibly apply to controversial figures in public life. It certainly didn’t apply to President Hugo Chavez who predeceased Margaret Thatcher amidst a blizzard of abuse.
The main reason it must not preclude entering the lists amidst a wave of hagiographic sycophantic tosh of the kind that has engulfed Britain these last hours is that otherwise the hagiographers will have the field to themselves.
Every controversial divisive deadly thing that Thatcher did will be placed in soft focus, bathed in a rose-coloured light, and provide a first draft of history that will be, simply, wrong.
As is now well-known, I refused to do that today on the demise of a wicked woman who tore apart what remained good about my country, and set an agenda which has been followed, more or less, by all of her successors. I certainly wasn’t prepared to leave the obituaries to those who profited from her rule or those who have aped her ever since.
So here is my own memory of Thatcher and what she did in her time on this earth.
On one of my first political demonstrations – against the Conservative government of Edward Heath (1970-74) the slogan of the day was “Margaret Thatcher- Milk snatcherâ€. It was the first but not the last time I spat out her name in distaste.
Before Thatcher, every primary school pupil received 1/3 of a pint of milk every morning. For some it was the difference between breakfast and no breakfast. I was sometimes one of those. I grew up in a brief period of social democracy in Britain, being dosed by the state with free cod-liver oil, orange juice and malt to build up my strength. Having been born in a slum tenement into a one-room attic in an Irish immigrant area, I needed all of that and more. And like millions I got it, until Thatcher took it away.
She became the Conservative leader after Heath’s two electoral defeats in 1974 and his subsequent resignation.
She was a new type of Tory leader, entirely lacking in anything resembling “noblesse obligeâ€. She was nasty, brutish and short of the class previously thought obligatory in Britain amongst leaders of the ruling elite. She was vulgar, money-worshipping, and blasphemous. She believed the important part of the Biblical story of the “Good Samaritan†was not that he refused to pass by the suffering on the other side of the road but that he had “loadsamoneyâ€.
In the infamous sermon on the Mound in Edinburgh addressing the Church of Scotland she opined that there was “no such thing as societyâ€â€¦â€only individualsâ€
As the Labour leader Neil Kinnock, in one of his better efforts, retorted: “No such thing as society? Only individuals? No such thing as honouring other people’s parents? No such thing as cherishing other people’s children? No such thing as us and always? Just ME and NOW? ME and NOW?â€
She was the living embodiment of Marx’s prediction that under capitalism “all that is solid will melt into air… all that is sacred will be profanedâ€
Upon her election as prime minister (with just 40% of the vote, her position ensured by the treacherous defection from the Labour cause of the rats now squirming on the Liberal-Democrat ship) she set about “transforming†Britain allright. She privatised Britain’s key industries, enriching her friends, and robbing the public of their birthright. When she took over “Financial Services†represented 3% of the British economy; when she left office it was 40%.
She destroyed the coal industry, the steel, car, bus and motor-cycle manufacturing, truck and bus-making, ship-building and print-industry, the railway workshops… she destroyed more than a third of Britain’s manufacturing capacity, significantly more than Hitler’s Luftwaffe ever achieved.
She did this not just because she prefered the spivs and gamblers in the city -they were her kind of people. But because above all, she hated trades unionism, and was determined to destroy it.
I was a leading member of the Scottish Labour Party at the time she came into office, and a full-time Labour organiser. Scotland was to become an industrial wasteland in the first years of her rule.
I was also, from 1973, a member of the then Transport and General Workers Union, one of her key targets – especially our Docks section.
Importantly, for me, I was an honorary member of the National Union of Mineworkers too.
In all of these capacities I was a front-line short-sword fighter in the rearguard action against Thatcherism.
I fought her at Bathgate, at Linwood, when she was sacking the automotive industry. I fought her at Wapping – every Saturday night when she destroyed the Print workers on behalf of her friend, the organised crime firm owner, Rupert Murdoch. I fought every day of the Miners strike when she destroyed the Miners Union and the communities they represented. I fought her at Timex in Dundee at Massey Ferguson in Kilmarnock, and at the aluminium smelter in Invergordon.
I fought against her poll tax – imposed first in Scotland – as a refusenik of the most iniquitous tax in Britain since mediaeval times, the tax which ended in flames – literally – whilst I was on the platform at Trafalgar Square. And which finally produced her political demise.
And I toured – as a political activist – the desolation in Britain’s post-industrial distressed areas which she left behind. The City of London – deregulated by her – boomed whilst the coalfields and steel areas sank into penury. I saw the rusted factories the flooded mines the idle shipyards and the devilish results of millions of newly and enforced idle hands.
I faced her in parliament from 1987 as well, on these and other issues.
You see it wasn’t just Britain that Thatcher made bleed.
Her withdrawal of political status from Irish republican prisoners and her brutal, securocratic, militarisation of the situation in the north led to much additional suffering in Ireland.
State collusion in the murder of Catholics became endemic during her rule. And ten young men were starved to death for the restoration of political status, before our eyes in her dungeons. She finally died on the anniversary of their leader, Bobby Sands, being elected to parliament as he lay on his death-bed.
During the Falklands War, she sent hundreds of young Argentinian conscripts to a watery grave when she shot the Argentine warship the Belgrano in the back – as it was speeding away from the conflict. She mercilessly exploited the sacrifice of them, and our own soldiers sailors and airmen, to save her own political skin. A lot of brave men had to leave their guts on Goose Green to keep Thatcher in power.
She pushed her alter ego – the semi-imbecilic US president Ronald Reagan – into Cold War fanaticism and burgeoning expenditure on more and more terrifying weapons – many of them stationed on our soil.
She pushed his successor George Bush Sen into the first Iraq War.
I was there, I saw her lips move, when she described Nelson Mandela as a “common terroristâ€.
She continued to recognise the genocidal and deposed Pol Pot regime in Cambodia – insisting that Pol Pot was the real and recognised leader of the Cambodians, even as they counted his victims in millions.
And she was the author of the policy of military, political, diplomatic and media support of the Afghan obscurantists who became the Taliban and Al Qaeda. She even produced them on the platform of the Tory Party conference, hailing them as “freedom-fightersâ€.
I was one of the last men standing in parliament opposing this immoral policy of “my enemy’s enemy is my friendâ€.
On the eve of the triumph of these “freedom Fighters†I told Thatcher to her face; “You have opened the gates for the barbarians….and a long dark night will now descend upon the people of Afghanistanâ€. I never said a truer word.
I hated Margaret Thatcher for what seems like all my life. I hated her more than I hated anyone – until the mass murderer Tony Blair came along.
It would have been utter hypocrisy for me to have remained silent about her crimes today whilst the political class – including New Labour – poured honeyed words, lies actually, over her blood-spattered record.
I could not do it. I believe I spoke for millions. The wicked witch is dead. Tramp the dirt down.
A leading synagogue in New Jersey’s Teaneck town has honored the city’s Muslim mayor in recognition of his contributions to the community to dispel stereotypes and encourage harmony between different religious and ethnic groups, the NewJersey.com portal reported.
“He [Mayor Mohammed Hameeduddin] is a very dedicated public servant [and] he’s been a great advocate on behalf of his own community, the Muslim community,†Rabbi Nati Helfgot told NorthJersey.com.
“Professionally, he’s done so many things besides the political sphere…He’s a man of faith [and] a great friend to the Jewish community.â€
Holding its 11th annual dinner, Netivot Shalom, a modern Orthodox synagogue in Teaneck honored Hameeduddin for his contributions to the community.
As part of the tribute, Hameeduddin received a rendering done by a Teaneck artist.
“This is a very humbling experience,†the mayor said in his speech.
“Teaneck as I know is a very special place.
“It’s very easy to be an observant Jew, [a] Muslim [or] in a minority community in this town because we’re an incubator for understanding,†he added.
Hameeduddin praised the synagogue’s understanding congregation.
“Netivot Shalom will always hold a special place in my heart,†he said.
“The symbolism of this shul, this community, and breaking down stereotypes really matters.
“I’m so grateful to this town and [its] Jewish community for all that it’s done to make it a better place for understanding.â€
Last week, TMO reported that former CMU (Communication Management Unit) prisoner Dan McGowan was released to a halfway house in Brooklyn and had succeeded in obtaining information through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), that explained why he had been moved from the general prison population to the high security prison unit often referred to as “Little Guantanamo.â€
Karin Friedemann
Will Potter, author of “Green is the New Red: An Insider’s Account of a Social Movement Under Siege,†wrote in 2010 that “the government is arguing two competing claims simultaneously: (1) That Communications Management Units are needed because the inmates are heightened security risks, and (2) That traditional oversight is too cumbersome because these inmates are not dangerous enough. The aim is, admittedly, to place more unchecked power in the hands of lower-ranking government officials… and to keep political prisoners with “inspirational significance†from communicating with the communities and social movements of which they are part.â€
McGowan, an environmental activist profiled in the Oscar-nominated documentary “If a Tree Falls,†wrote in his Huffington Post blog on April 1, 2013 that he had been sent to the CMU in retaliation for publishing political commentaries, which included articles exposing CMU prison conditions.
Two days after McGowan’s article appeared in the newspaper, he was arrested by federal marshals and re-incarcerated without explanation.
Jenny Synan, McGowan’s wife asked a BOP (Bureau of Prisons) official why her husband had suddenly been re-imprisoned four months after his release. She was told that his article violated a term of his release that restricted him from interacting with the media.
The Center for Constitutional Rights stated on Thursday:
“We have received information that this was triggered by an opinion piece he published on the Huffington Post Monday, ‘Court Documents Prove I Was Sent to Communication Management Units (CMU) for My Political Speech.’ If this is indeed a case of retaliation for writing an article about the BOP retaliating against his free speech while he was in prison, it is more than ironic, it is an outrage.†“They already have a lawsuit against them for things like this,†McGowan’s wife said. “He just posted his thing a few days ago about all this stuff — about his political beliefs and speech — and they do something to him because of his post about this. It’s crazy.â€
BOP national spokesman Chris Burke said that under a general media policy, “inmates cannot do interviews without permission. So if there’s some sort of a phone interview or a sit-in interview, those have to be pre-approved.â€
Tracy Rivers, a residential reentry manager for the BOP in New York, said that in general, prisoners can be punished for violating a BOP rule that prohibits giving interviews to the news media without official approval.
But that rule says nothing about prisoners writing blog posts.
On Friday, April 5, McGowan was re-released after his lawyers confirmed that McGowan had been re-imprisoned on the basis of an unconstitutional prison regulation:
“Daniel McGowan has been released from the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn where he was taken into custody yesterday and is back at the halfway house where he has been residing since his release from prison in December. Yesterday, Daniel was given an ‘incident report’ indicating that his Huffington Post blog post violated a BOP regulation prohibiting inmates from ‘publishing under a byline.’ The BOP regulation in question was declared unconstitutional by a federal court in 2007, and eliminated by the BOP in 2010. After we brought this to the BOP’s attention, the incident report was expunged.â€
The jailing of environmental activist Daniel McGowan is under review, a Federal BOP official said Friday morning.
According to reports, McGowan has adjusted well to life at the halfway house. He has found a job with a New York law firm, and hopes that there will be no more obstacles to reporting to work. CORRECTION:
Last week, TMO reported incorrectly that former CMU prisoner and McGowan’s co-plaintiff in lawsuits against Attorney General Holder and the BOP, Imam Yassin Aref was relocated to a high security prison unit under “SIM†classification. Aref is actually residing in a low security prison under the classification “CIM.â€
Attorney Kathy Manley clarified by email, quoted with permission, that Aref “is at his second low security prison, FCI Loretto, in PA. Before that, he was at another low security one – FCI Allenwood, also in PA, but closer to his family and us. They told him they moved him because he requires CIM, or Central Inmate Monitoring. That makes no sense, for at least a couple different reasons – for one, they can monitor someone more easily if they stay in the same place. Two, they are basing this on a claim that he ‘threatened government officials,’ which, like their other claim that he communicated with JEM (Jaish-e-Mohammed) is provably false – even based on information from the prosecution. (They’ve been saying this all along and it’s based on the sting operation, where all he did was witness a loan he thought was perfectly legal.) We think they are giving him what the prisoners call ‘diesel therapy,’ where they move someone around a lot if they become very popular, which he has been, everywhere they have sent him.â€
Manley clarifies, “He’s been under CIM the whole time – they just hadn’t said it to him before (although it was listed in a printout they gave him years ago). Since they moved him out of the CMU, I think the CIM hasn’t affected him too much – he was transferred to a low security prison, and seems to have been treated pretty much the same as the others there. The only difference I’ve noticed seems to be that they transferred him again, and may keep doing so. (But I don’t think it’s really because of the CIM.)
“In fact, we suspect that they moved him out of the CMU for a couple reasons. One, he was the lead plaintiff in the CCR lawsuit challenging the CMUs (Aref v. Holder) and they were trying to moot the lawsuit (luckily it’s still going forward and he’s still the lead plaintiff. Another plaintiff is Daniel McGowan who is now in a halfway house and just had an article on the CMUs in HuffPo which led to his briefly being locked up again).
“Also, he learned in 2011 via a FOIA request from the FBI that at some point they thought he was someone in Al Qaeda named Mohammed Yassin. And we think that was the main reason they went after him with the sting in the first place. At some later point they must have realized he was not that guy, especially since a man in Al Qaeda named Mohammed Yassin was killed in 2010 in a missile strike in Palestine. And… it was soon after that that they moved him out of the CMU.â€
Asma Hanif is an advanced practice nurse who has devoted her life to operating Al-Nissa Holistic Health Center, a free clinic for women who are homeless, uninsured, or victims of domestic abuse, and Muslimat Al-Nisaa, a shelter for Muslim women. Asma became interested in medicine after watching her grandmother pass away from a treatable condition because she lacked access to health care. She later went on to become a nurse and establish a center where all women could have access to quality care, regardless of means.
In the teaching hospitals where she trained, Asma noticed that many of the Muslim women who came as patients were treated without respect or cultural sensitivity. She also heard stories from Muslim women who had been in shelters where volunteers encouraged them to undertake a religious conversion. Those experiences helped her identify the need for services that catered specifically to Muslim women.
Asma lives in the shelter with the women, allowing her to dedicate more of her resources to her work and be available for counseling and support. Her vision for her work is clear: “It started with my grandmother, but every time I find another person, maybe another category of individuals whom I can do something to help, then I add them. They become part of the project as well.â€
We had the opportunity to interview Asma this week to learn more about the work she does and the critical role it plays.
What is your space called? Is it a center? Is it a shelter?
Asma Hanif: The organization is called Muslimat Al-Nisaa, which means Muslim Women’s Organization. The center is called Al-Nissa Holistic Health Center, and Al-Nissa means The Women. I found a house that was in Baltimore, a multi-family dwelling, a house – and I went ahead and rented that particular house and made it a shelter for the women that were in need of it. But because I couldn’t afford to have my own place – I could have kept the money from the clinic, I was making enough that I was eventually able to move out. I decided to live in the shelter because I could not afford to rent out the shelter and to rent out a place for me. I’m just like the women who come there. I deal with women who weren’t vagrants or who made homelessness a way of life.
The system is designed to help the ones who may look like they’ve never accomplished anything in their life. But homelessness is homelessness. It’s the same. Being a victim of domestic violence, it’s the same. It’s not particular to one socioeconomic group.
What kind of services do you provide at that house?
H.O.M.E. is an acronym for Housing, Occupational, Medical, and Educational. We provide housing. We provide [the women] the help they need to be able to find a job. In order for people to come, they have to have become homeless through no fault of their own, and they have to want to work towards self-sufficiency. However, in order to become self-sufficient, you have to have an address. You can’t go looking for a job, you can’t get into school; you can’t do anything unless you have an address. So we provide that.
The medical part of the acronym is because of the clinic, so if they need to they can come in for medical service. And then educational, whoever is willing to come in and volunteer and provide any of these services, they do it not at the home; they do it at the clinic. They do classes, whether its resumes, self-esteem, conflict resolution, whatever it is they may need. There are individuals, who come and say they are willing to do that, but then they don’t; I tell them they’re not a good fit for the program, because it is a program.
I feel that it is wrong and it is stealing, if I am going around the community and asking people to please help, and you’re going out and working to be able to make that donation while the women sit at home doing nothing. That’s not permitted.
Both your clinic and the home are sensitive to the needs of Muslim women and children; they aren’t exclusive to Muslim women and children, correct?
The shelter is [exclusive to Muslim women]. The clinic is not. When a person is a victim of domestic violence, sometimes the only thing that they have to hold onto is their belief in God. And so we try to make sure that they have that, and that they’re with other individuals that are feeling the same thing. I did this because when Muslim women would go through shelters, one of their main complaints is the people at the shelters would try to convert them away from Islam. So my shelter isn’t about trying to be exclusive, as in we think we’re better than you; it’s catering to a specific need that Muslim women have.
How many women live in the house?
Technically the home could house 50 women plus children. What happens is that if my numbers are lower, it’s because I don’t have enough money to have a full capacity, because that means more food, more electricity, more water… Even if we may have some money set aside in the bank, I don’t know what tomorrow will bring.
I want to tell you one more thing. I usually don’t do interviews. Even though I might do this stuff, for the world to know that I’m in a shelter… I feel like for the other women, it’s humiliating. Based on how people spin stuff, it’s humiliating and embarrassing. But for the world to know, it’s like you’re naked before the world. People ask me why I continually do this. And I say that I’m afraid that on the Day of Judgment, God will say to me, “One of my servants came to you and you turned them away.†That was my motivation for doing this. Because you don’t know who it is that God has sent on your path to help. So if I had the ability to help someone, I will try to help them. That’s the legacy of my grandmother. She turned no one away.
Lakes and reservoirs are often referred to as standing waters and encompass a wide range of types and sizes.
These range from ponds, gravel pits and slow moving canals to very large natural lakes.
Man-made reservoirs, or dams, are purpose built principally to provide water supply to homes, industry or agriculture or, in some cases, for electrical power generation.
Lakes and reservoirs play an important role in amenity use and nature conservation. Lakes and reservoirs are often referred to as standing waters and encompass a wide range of types and sizes. These range from ponds, gravel pits and slow moving canals to very large natural lakes.
Lakes are large bodies of standing water, either formed naturally or man-made for amenity purposes. Water levels tend not to fluctuate to any great extent and gently shelving margins support a wide variety of flora and associated fauna.
Reservoirs, or dams, are man-made bodies of open water serving as public water supply sources, as winter storage for crop irrigation or as flood storage facilities in association with river corridors. Upland reservoirs are commonly known as impounding reservoirs since they are built across river valleys.
A common form of lowland reservoir is known as a pumped storage reservoir since water is pumped from a nearby river source rather than filling naturally as in the case of an impounding reservoir. Water supply reservoirs have developed into important nature conservation assets. The major difference between these water bodies and lakes or other areas of standing water, is the phenomenon of ‘draw-down’. This occurs when abstraction from the reservoir exceeds recharge from feeder streams and rivers, typically in summer, causing lowering of the water level.
Clywedog reservoir. Dam of the Clywedog reservoir.
Other Freshwater Surface Waters
Gravel Pits
Gravel pits are man made and are sometimes used for water supply. In some cases, disused gravel pits have been restored to form important nature conservation habitats. Gravel pits can be deep, steep-sided excavations up to several thousand square metres in surface area. The steep sides provide narrow margins and limit the growth of marginal vegetation, although surrounding land can support scrub and rough grassland habitats.
Canals
Although water flows through canals via locks and sluices, the movement is so small in comparison with the total volume of the system that they can be construed as standing water.
Today, a few remain as commercial navigation channels, although an extensive network is maintained for recreational navigation. The rest have fallen redundant but have developed as important wildlife habitats.
Ponds
Ponds are defined as small water bodies between 1m2 and 2ha (a water body having a surface area larger than 2ha is termed a lake) that hold water for more than four months in a year. Ponds can be formed naturally in depressions created by glacial activity, natural subsidence or river activity.
They can also be man made, in gardens and village greens, or be created by landowners for fishing, shooting, livestock watering, aesthetic or amenity purposes.
Drinking Water Supply
We use water in our homes and gardens, in commerce and industry, and in agriculture. Much of the water supply infrastructure in the UK was developed at the end of the 19th century when impounding reservoirs were constructed in upland locations to provide a direct supply of water to conurbations, which were often many miles away.
Reservoirs were located in positions where the catchment received little or no disturbance, thus the quality of water supplied was often wholly acceptable without the need for either filtration or disinfection. As public hygiene standards evolved, many of these supplies were improved with the provision of chlorination systems. The regulation of water quality ensures that all supplies are now provided with full treatment, including coagulation and filtration.
In England and Wales, two-thirds of drinking water comes from surface water, including reservoirs, lakes and rivers, and the rest from groundwaters. There are also areas that receive water from a mixture of sources.
Water is treated at water treatment works before flowing through water mains, sometimes over considerable distances, to arrive at the tap. Samples are taken at each stage of treatment and distribution along the way and tested by the water company to make sure that the customer receives high-quality water.
(See the accompanying Information Note on Water Treatment and Supply and visit the link below for more information).
Lakes and reservoirs support rich and diverse flora and fauna, with some species relying on these habitats for their entire lifecycle.
Classification of surface waters is based upon their nutrient status. Eutrophic standing waters are highly productive because plant nutrients are plentiful, either naturally or as a result of artificial enrichment. These water bodies are characterised by having dense, long-term populations of algae in mid-summer, often making the water green. Their beds are covered by dark anaerobic mud, rich in organic matter.
The water column typically contains at least 0.035 mg/l total phosphorus (which includes phosphorus bound up in plankton and 0.5 mg/l or more total inorganic nitrogen – mainly in the form of dissolved nitrate).
Many lowland water bodies in the UK are enriched with nutrient concentrations far in excess of these levels, although there is some geographical variation in the extent of the enrichment.
Some waters, such as Lough Neagh in Northern Ireland, have been enriched as a result of human activity and so have moved in trophic status from a mesotrophic to a eutrophic state. Eutrophic waters are most typical of hard water areas of the lowlands of southern and eastern England but they also occur in the north and west, especially near the coast.
There are no accurate estimates of the amount of eutrophic standing water in the UK. The total area of standing inland water is estimated as 675 km2 in England, 125 km2 in Wales and 1604 km2 in Scotland. Current work suggests that over 80% of this resource in England, some 40% in Wales and approximately 15% in Scotland is eutrophic. On this assumption, the area of eutrophic standing water in Great Britain would be about 845 km2.
Measurements made by the Environment and Heritage Service put the area of eutrophic standing water in Northern Ireland at approximately 940 km2. The total UK area for eutrophic standing waters is therefore likely to be around 1785 km2.
ISTANBUL, April 3 (Reuters) – Sitting in a private clinic in an upscale neighbourhood of Istanbul, Saleh, a human resources executive from Qatar, is preparing to leave Turkey with a smile on his face and more hair on his head.
Having previously brought his wife and children to Istanbul for sightseeing and shopping, Saleh has returned as the new kind of high-spending visitor Turkey is increasingly seeking to attract: a medical tourist.
“There’s a social pressure to look good,†the casually suited executive, declining to give his family name, told Reuters as he sat waiting for a check-up a day after having hair follicles implanted in his balding scalp.
“Two of my brothers and half of my friends had hair implants in Turkey. It was an easy choice after that.â€
As it tries to boost tourism revenues and narrow its current account deficit, its main economic weakness, Turkey is on a mission to diversify away from the all-inclusive package tours to its sun-drenched Mediterranean shores which, local businesses complain, often do too little for the local economy.
Of 37 million tourists visiting Turkey last year, about 270,000 came for surgical procedures, from moustache implants and liposuction to operations for serious ailments, generating $1 billion in revenues and representing a small but growing fraction of tourism receipts.
“They usually come for three days. We offer them shopping or skiing tours, they get well and have a short vacation,†said Kazim Devranoglu, the medical head of Dunyagoz Group, which has 14 eye care clinics in Turkey and branches in western Europe.
Around 10 percent of the group’s patients – some 35,000 people a year – are now coming from abroad, he said.
“They are mostly from western European countries like Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, as well as from Algeria and Azerbaijan.â€
There are various factors behind Turkey’s appeal.
People from countries with heavily congested health systems welcome the opportunity to choose the time of their surgeries, while those from less-developed nations are attracted by Western-trained medics and new facilities sprouting up as Turkey’s private healthcare industry flourishes.
The moustachioed stars of Turkish soap operas, popular across the Middle East and North Africa, have also prompted an influx of men seeking a virile addition to their upper lip.
Health professionals and patients say plastic and corrective eye surgery costs, including travel and accommodation, can be up to 60 percent below comparable programmes in western Europe.
The government aims to double medical tourist numbers to half a million a year over the next two years and raise revenues to $7 billion by attracting them to higher-margin healthcare.
“We see Turkey as a prime destination for medical tourism,†said Dursun Aydin, head of the international patients department at the Health Ministry. “We have experienced doctors. Hospitals are new…Turkey is relatively inexpensive and the temperate climate helps too.â€
The phenomenon is a boon not only for Turkey’s tourism industry, which risks locking itself into a price war with rival destinations such as Greece and Spain, but also for its booming private healthcare industry.
Parliament passed new regulations in February to make private investment in the healthcare sector easier, a move it hopes could unlock billions of dollars of investment over the next few years. Private equity investors favour Turkey’s fast-growing services industries, including healthcare and education, because of a near tripling of nominal, per capita gross domestic product over the past decade and a young population of 75 million.
Foreign institutions including Malaysia’s state investment arm Khazanah Nasional, U.S. private equity firm Carlyle, emerging markets investor ADM Capital, Qatar’s First Investment Bank and the World Bank’s International Finance Corp (IFC) have put money into the Turkish healthcare sector.
Turkey’s status as a medical tourism destination could add to the allure. Though the idea is still on the drawing board, the government is considering airport-accessible, tax-free health zones which would aim to attract up to 85 percent of their patients from abroad, while offering tax incentives for investors.
Under the new law passed in February, which facilitates public-private partnerships, the state will rent city hospitals built and run by the private sector for 25 years.
“The aim is to revitalise ageing hospitals. While built primarily for Turkish citizens, they’ll be luxuriously equipped and will aim to draw at least some of their customers from abroad,†said the Health Ministry’s Aydin.
Growth has already been phenomenal, said Tolga Umar, chief executive of Visit and Care, a patient and doctor matching service which helps visitors from the Middle East and Europe.
“We’ve been matching patients and doctors for six years now. Back then there were few other players, but now hospitals have international patient management departments doing direct marketing,†he said. “Even tour operators ask prior to a visit whether you want to have a dental exam or corrective eye surgery.†Boosting tourism revenues is key to keeping a lid on Turkey’s current account deficit, which narrowed to around 6 percent of GDP in 2012 from roughly 10 percent in 2011. Net tourism receipts reached $21.6 billion last year, while the current account deficit stood at $47 billion. Turkey is the world’s sixth top destination by tourist arrivals, according to the World Tourism Organization, but it may require strategies such as the medical tourism drive to maintain that status. “Decreasing prices in Greece and Spain since the debt crisis mean that the competition for tourists is more intense,†said tourism consultant Fehmi Kofteoglu. Timur Bayndr, head of Turkey’s TUROB tourism industry association, said: “What the industry needs is alternative tourism channels like medical and shopping tourism.†That could mean men with red dots on their heads – a tell-tale sign of freshly implanted follicles – becoming a more common sight as they stroll through Istanbul’s designer malls, snapping up a last few purchases at the end of their medical tours.
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