Before promoting sustainability progress, companies must ensure their initiatives are genuine and measurable. Today’s audiences are increasingly skeptical of vague environmental claims, particularly as awareness of “greenwashing” has grown.
Sydney is best known for the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. If you’re looking to enjoy dinner with views of these landmarks, here are some great options.
It's sea turtles which may in the end save islands in the Seychelles. They may also better help us understand climate change. Like rings on a tree, scientists have found a way to read sea turtle shells and how they are impacted by climate change tells a story.
For centuries, the Sámi shaman drum was one of the most powerful sacred objects in northern Europe, and one of the most feared by church and state. If ISIS looks bad to us today for its religious fundamentalism, Christians were just as fervent.
Before promoting sustainability progress, companies must ensure their initiatives are genuine and measurable. Today’s audiences are increasingly skeptical of vague environmental claims, particularly as awareness of “greenwashing” has grown.
Sydney is best known for the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. If you’re looking to enjoy dinner with views of these landmarks, here are some great options.
It's sea turtles which may in the end save islands in the Seychelles. They may also better help us understand climate change. Like rings on a tree, scientists have found a way to read sea turtle shells and how they are impacted by climate change tells a story.
For centuries, the Sámi shaman drum was one of the most powerful sacred objects in northern Europe, and one of the most feared by church and state. If ISIS looks bad to us today for its religious fundamentalism, Christians were just as fervent.
Before promoting sustainability progress, companies must ensure their initiatives are genuine and measurable. Today’s audiences are increasingly skeptical of vague environmental claims, particularly as awareness of “greenwashing” has grown.
Sydney is best known for the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. If you’re looking to enjoy dinner with views of these landmarks, here are some great options.
It's sea turtles which may in the end save islands in the Seychelles. They may also better help us understand climate change. Like rings on a tree, scientists have found a way to read sea turtle shells and how they are impacted by climate change tells a story.
For centuries, the Sámi shaman drum was one of the most powerful sacred objects in northern Europe, and one of the most feared by church and state. If ISIS looks bad to us today for its religious fundamentalism, Christians were just as fervent.
Before promoting sustainability progress, companies must ensure their initiatives are genuine and measurable. Today’s audiences are increasingly skeptical of vague environmental claims, particularly as awareness of “greenwashing” has grown.
Sydney is best known for the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. If you’re looking to enjoy dinner with views of these landmarks, here are some great options.
It's sea turtles which may in the end save islands in the Seychelles. They may also better help us understand climate change. Like rings on a tree, scientists have found a way to read sea turtle shells and how they are impacted by climate change tells a story.
For centuries, the Sámi shaman drum was one of the most powerful sacred objects in northern Europe, and one of the most feared by church and state. If ISIS looks bad to us today for its religious fundamentalism, Christians were just as fervent.
Before promoting sustainability progress, companies must ensure their initiatives are genuine and measurable. Today’s audiences are increasingly skeptical of vague environmental claims, particularly as awareness of “greenwashing” has grown.
Sydney is best known for the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. If you’re looking to enjoy dinner with views of these landmarks, here are some great options.
It's sea turtles which may in the end save islands in the Seychelles. They may also better help us understand climate change. Like rings on a tree, scientists have found a way to read sea turtle shells and how they are impacted by climate change tells a story.
For centuries, the Sámi shaman drum was one of the most powerful sacred objects in northern Europe, and one of the most feared by church and state. If ISIS looks bad to us today for its religious fundamentalism, Christians were just as fervent.
Before promoting sustainability progress, companies must ensure their initiatives are genuine and measurable. Today’s audiences are increasingly skeptical of vague environmental claims, particularly as awareness of “greenwashing” has grown.
Sydney is best known for the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. If you’re looking to enjoy dinner with views of these landmarks, here are some great options.
It's sea turtles which may in the end save islands in the Seychelles. They may also better help us understand climate change. Like rings on a tree, scientists have found a way to read sea turtle shells and how they are impacted by climate change tells a story.
For centuries, the Sámi shaman drum was one of the most powerful sacred objects in northern Europe, and one of the most feared by church and state. If ISIS looks bad to us today for its religious fundamentalism, Christians were just as fervent.
Before promoting sustainability progress, companies must ensure their initiatives are genuine and measurable. Today’s audiences are increasingly skeptical of vague environmental claims, particularly as awareness of “greenwashing” has grown.
Sydney is best known for the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. If you’re looking to enjoy dinner with views of these landmarks, here are some great options.
It's sea turtles which may in the end save islands in the Seychelles. They may also better help us understand climate change. Like rings on a tree, scientists have found a way to read sea turtle shells and how they are impacted by climate change tells a story.
For centuries, the Sámi shaman drum was one of the most powerful sacred objects in northern Europe, and one of the most feared by church and state. If ISIS looks bad to us today for its religious fundamentalism, Christians were just as fervent.
Before promoting sustainability progress, companies must ensure their initiatives are genuine and measurable. Today’s audiences are increasingly skeptical of vague environmental claims, particularly as awareness of “greenwashing” has grown.
Sydney is best known for the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. If you’re looking to enjoy dinner with views of these landmarks, here are some great options.
It's sea turtles which may in the end save islands in the Seychelles. They may also better help us understand climate change. Like rings on a tree, scientists have found a way to read sea turtle shells and how they are impacted by climate change tells a story.
For centuries, the Sámi shaman drum was one of the most powerful sacred objects in northern Europe, and one of the most feared by church and state. If ISIS looks bad to us today for its religious fundamentalism, Christians were just as fervent.
The world watched with bated breath as André Borschberg and Bertrand Piccard respectively made their way from Switzerland to Spain and finally to Morocco in the sun-powered Solar Impulse. The first solar-powered transcontinental flight has come to a close but the journey towards a more sustainable method of global travel is only just beginning.
As Piccard, who founded the Solar Impulse project, reached the highest point of his flight over Morocco, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) announced that he is this year’s recipient of the Champions of the Earth Laureate Award. Hit the jump to view a few images that chronicle the journey that began on May 24th, 2012 in Payerne Switzerland and ended last night at 23h30 in Rabat, Morocco, and watch a video of the plane’s first African landing.
Venus crossed the sun this morning in the Middle East, giving heaven-gazers a once in a lifetime opportunity to see the hot planet. Venus’ next transit accross the sun will be in the year 2117. Earth’s twin made an appearance as a black dot traversing the sun this morning in the Middle East and Egyptians were there watching. According to Ahram Online, Cairo’s early-risers got to see this transit this morning at 6:37 am, and the experience was visible for a total of 18 minutes. People all over the world prepared for the spectacle, some in Canada as picnic sunsets. We didn’t get up early enough to see the Venus event, and be sure that whenever you are keen to “see” sun events that you take the necessary precautions as Brian points out in his Venus crossing story.
The Kuwaiti-Spanish Architecture firm AGi scooped two coveted awards at the International Property Award held in Burj Al-Arab, Dubai. In addition to being recognized for its Wafra Living Complex, the firm’s experimental Wafra Wind Tower project has received the Best Architecture Multiple Residence Award.
A Google and Bloomberg TV channel collaborative, the International Property Award is well-regarded among residential and commercial property developers. So it’s particularly exciting that this new urban tower concept, which aims to achieve low energy consumption and source its construction materials regionally, should receive such international attention.
Paris art exhibit tackles Islamic taboos in a show aimed at broadening Western views of Mid East culture.
Oooh la la…The Body Uncovered, at Paris’ Arab World Institute (AWI), presents two hundred controversial paintings, photographs, sculptures and videos that tackle variations of a provocative theme: the naked body. A mix of art forms created by over 70 Arab artists spotlight subtexts rarely exposed in Arab culture: sensuality, violence against women, and homosexuality.
Renaud Muselier, AWI chairman, says the exhibition strives to “challenge stereotypes usually associated with the Arab world that reduce it to the single image of religious fanaticism. It is intended instead to echo the reality of an Arab art scene that exists despite the conservative climate, dares to overcome taboos and manages to find a place in the global contemporary art scene.”
Given the spicy subject, the number of participants is remarkable. Their artwork is broadly themed and richly rendered. The modern and contemporary pieces bow to forerunners in the Arab art world dating back to the late 19th century. Turn-of-that-century painters from Lebanon, Syria and Egypt frequently studied in Europe where they experimented in nude painting and drawing that was forbidden back home. As with their literary compatriots in the Arab Renaissance, the artists were open to Western ideas which they melded with their Eastern heritage.
The exhibition, on view through July 15, was curated by Hoda Makram-Ebeid and Philippe Cardinal. “We hope to show the Middle Eastern public that there are Arabs who dare to explore this subject that has been hidden by a certain hypocrisy in the Arab world. And to show the Western public that there are artists who show, think, and act in ways other than according to the stereotypes of Arab society,” Makram-Ebeid told ARTINFO France.
Contemporary artists includes photographer Youssef Nabil with his Orientalist-inspired photograph “Natacha Sleeping”, and painter Ghada Amer, whose works depict female figures with their legs wildly akimbo.
Humor abounds, as in Mehdi-Georges Lahlou‘s photograph “Mouvement décomposé,” which shows the artist performing a belly dance in women’s clothing . Zoulikha Bouabdellah also riffs on bellydancing, with a video of the dance performed to the Marseillaise.
Co-curator Philippe Cardinal said “When there are social taboos, the role of artists is to unravel them at the seams: they are the first to rebel against censorship.”
But it’s not all about titillation. The body is also shown in a social and political context. Iraqi artist Adel Abidin‘s video “Ping-Pong” shows men playing ping-pong with a naked woman in place of a net. Her skin is marked with red circles left by missed shots, her body shudders each time she’s hit. The woman represents “the Iraqi people caught in the midst of war,” said Makram-Ebeid. It’s also a metaphor for the oppression of women.
Homosexuality, forbidden in Arab countries, is represented in Lebanese-American George Awde’s photographs of young men in Beirut, shirtless, embracing. An his 2009 video “Comradeship”, Egyptian artist Mahmoud Khaled features a bodybuilder flexing his muscles, clad in a form-fitting bathing suit.
There’s also a man rubbing oil onto another bodybuilder’s muscles. The accompanying text says in both Arabic and English: “I have taken courage to challenge myself and you have taken time to allow this to affect you. The payoff is well worth it.”
Tarik Essalhi‘s sculpture “Abu Ghraib” depicts a prisoner as a modern day Saint Sebastian. Palestinian artist Hani Zurob opts for a less direct interpretation of captivity in a blue painted portrait representing his own incarceration in an Israeli prison.
Zena el-Khalil‘s mixed media “Beefsteak” shows three bearded men, one of them holding a machine gun, all wearing girls’ dresses. It refers to “all the television images she saw as a child. Images of war, Michael Jackson videos, and Barbie dolls; kitsch remained and got mixed together in her mind,” according to Makram-Ebeid. “The world is made of contradictions; everything happens so fast — in hybrid fashion, she shows war and the levity of childhood in a kind of blur.”
Huguette Caland, a Lebanese painter now resident in California, looms large as the show’s powerhouse. The daughter of the first president of Lebanon, she splashed onto the 1960′ s art scene with her oversized monochromatic body part paintings. “Now she’s 83, and she was a pioneer at the beginning of women’s liberation,” Makram-Ebeid said. “She dared to work on the body, nudity, and women’s sexuality.”
While most of these artists were born in Arab countries, they now live and work mainly in Europe and the United States. It’s unlikely the exhibition would ever travel to Arab countries, and improbable that such art would be openly produced in Islamic states. To date, there has been no critical backlash.
For those not able to step into the Paris gallery, a virtual visit to the artists’ websites will allow a fuller view of these remarkable and provocative works.
Images of a still from Adel Abidin’s video “Ping-Pong; Youssef Nabil’s “Natacha Sleeping”; Mehdi-Georges Lahlou’s photograph “Mouvement décomposé; and George Awde’s “Quiet Crossing” all courtesy of Arab World Institute
In 2009, Lebanon pledged to produce 12% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020- is this target optimistic today?
Renewables are becoming an important source of discussion in the Middle East, as it should. Vestas estimates renewables accounts for only 0.2 % of power production in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), an embarrassing figure considering the EU’s average is 17% (the highest being Norway with an incredible 103%) and the global average is of around 3%. But Lebanon is looking to aim high.
Guy Lougashi makes incredible sculptures entirely out of either colored or transparent tape. Eschewing the hardening or drying phase of many sculptural materials such as clay or paper pulp, the artist claims that tape is an incredibly versatile material that forms an excellent foundation for other design projects. And now it’s possible to glean some of his hard-earned wisdom in an upcoming four-day workshop that will be held in Haifa.
This olive oil and lemon-based potato salad brings bright flavors to your mezze.
Traditional mezze appetizers tend to based on vegetables. In our hot, dry climate, it makes sense to put many small dishes of piquant salads on the table at the start of a meal. You can count on them to waken a languishing appetite, especially if you take a shot of ice-cold arak, or to satisfy the first hunger pangs while waiting for the main dish.
Olive oil and lemon juice are the basic dressing ingredients for almost all mezze, like our cold okrah salad. And what would choumous be without them to give depth and zest? In the same way, a Middle-Eastern potato salad is treated to a bath of herbs and spices in olive oil and lemon juice, making a light, tangy appetizer that won’t spoil your appetite. With red potatoes as lovely as they are at this season, it’s a good time to make one.
And if you choose to serve this salad in larger portions, as a side dish, you’ll find that it combines well with hot-weather foods like fish stew, eggs, or the Israeli favorite, shnitzel.
We would give anything to be in Rabat as the world’s first solar-powered transcontinental flight comes to an end at roughly 11pm local time. Despite the relatively late hour (chosen to avoid dense air traffic), delegates from the Moroccan Agency for Solar Energy (MASEN) and others will be at the airport to congratulate pilot Bertrand Piccard on completing this historic milestone.
André Borschberg flew for the first half of the Solar Impulse’s 2,500 km journey, from Switzerland to Spain, which proved that it is possible to fly a plane night and day without a drop of fuel, but Piccard will cross the Mediterranean Sea – the first time a solar-powered airplane has completed such a feat.
Saudi Arabia could be running one third of the planet’s CSP plants by 2030.
With the recent announcement of the most ambitious solar plan in the world, solar developers are now headed to the oil-rich Kingdom to help make it happen.The first of a planned 25 GW of CSP (Concentrated Solar Power: mirrors to heat liquids to drive turbines) and 16 GW of PV (PhotoVoltaic: direct electrical conversion, like on rooftops) to supply Saudi Arabia with a $109 billion plan to solar-power a third of the Kingdom have been put out to bid now. Some of the fine print details have now emerged from CSP Today. Once it is complete, 25 GW would be a third of the expected global CSP in 20 years, according to current plans. Bids will be initially for about 1,000 MW each for the first year.
More clean tech innovation from Israel? Researchers Prof. Moti Herskowitz and Prof. Miron Landau from Ben Gurion University in Israel were recently awarded a highly competitive Israel Strategic Alternative Energy Foundation (I-SAEF) grant to further their groundbreaking research in liquid fuels. Herskowitz heads the BGU Energy Initiative, which is developing multiple alternative fuels from solar energy to biomass to replace the world’s dependence on oil. He was also recently appointed to head the National Committee on Energy research and development. Their focus will be on jet fuel.
Middle Eastern olive oil producers are baring the brunt of falling oil prices
Olive oil prices have hit a 10 year low, severely impacting producers in Spain, Italy , Greece and Protugal- which produce more than 60 percent of the world’s olive oil. However, Middle Eastern Farmers in Tunisia, Morocco, Syria, Libya, Israel and Palestine will also be severely affected. Part of the recent olive oil price crises is as a result of surplus production due to heavy olive oil subsidizing in the EU and the subsequent unsuccessful attempt by the EU commission to maintain prices relatively high and stable by paying farmers to stockpile olives.
Monitoring stations all over the arctic are reading greenhouse gas concentrations of 400 parts per million – a grim new milestone that dims hope of reversing runaway climate change. Millions of pounds of methane lay dormant in arctic ice, threatening to accelerate climate change when it melts, violent weather, drought, flooding and other disasters are on the rise, and yet the fossil fuel industry continues to function virtually unabated.
Ayala Moriel has captured and bottled natural Middle East smells and made them into natural perfumes.
With captivating names, perfumer Ayala Mor from Canada has distilled the best scents of the Middle East and has turned them into bottles of perfume. From Israel, her scents are reminiscent of her roots: the Old City in Jerusalem, Israel in spring, Arab coffee in winter, and a walk through the Yemen Spice Market in the Carmel Market anytime.
I’ve bought samples of her perfumes and they transport me to the Middle East and my favorite places every time I wear them.
Having travelled throughout the Middle East her scents do capture the time and place, as one smells their way through markets.
For a moment Moriel has bottled those old world smells travellers and spice route traders probably met along the way. Find the smells of etrog, finjan-brewed coffee, cardamon. Wearing these smells keeps you travelling even when far from the East.
Here is a citron or etrog from the Hebrew holiday of Succoth
I wish I could add a scratch and sniff window to this blog to share with you the eight tester bottles that Moriel sent in the mail. Normally I am not a perfume wearer, and dislike the smells of people who wear commercial scents. But these are different.
Natural in their origin and true to their name, Moriel’s scents are gentle, leaving just a trace an hour after application.
While some people might want their perfume to last a day, I like the idea of leaving the house with a scent, having it drift away with me as I go on with my day. You can carry a little bottle in your bag for a top off later. This could be handy for people who do not wear deodorant and who find themselves in sticky situations.
Perfumer, Time Traveller, Olfactory Story-Teller, Anthophile, Incensor, Teaist, Alchemist. Lead by the nose since 2001. That is how she describes herself.
High performance and gold plated to boot: a Porsche 997 GT2 on sale in Dubai. Photo: GT Spirit.com
We’ve written lots about super luxury cars in the Gulf region on Green Prophet. While one of them, a white gold Mercedes sports coup was touted to be able to run on bio-fuel; others like a gold trimmed armored plated Rolls Royce is strictly designed to enable its owner to ride in protected style. For those who are bored with such cars and wish for super luxury versions of high performance sports cars will now be happy to hear that also in that part of the Middle East is none other than a gold version of a gold Porsche 997 GT2 twin turbo that was advertised for sale in the glitzy city of Dubai.
Israeli Opera Festival 2012 will feature five performances of the classic opera, Carmen, June 7 to 11 at Masada. According to the Israeli Opera’s Artistic Director, Michael Ajzenstadt, 50,000 people from across Israel and all over the world are coming to experience opera at the lowest point on earth, beneath the mountain of Masada and across from the Dead Sea.
Choosing the location for this momentous performance was a delicate balance between aesthetic appeal and the imperative to not effect the historic site in any way. “We wanted to perform opera in the desert, not just to have an opera performance at a desert location,” said Ajzenstadt. “There is no stage. There is sand and rock beneath the mountain. The set is an extension of the surrounding habitat. In three weeks we will deconstruct the set and leave no trace.”
The world watched with bated breath as André Borschberg and Bertrand Piccard respectively made their way from Switzerland to Spain and finally to Morocco in the sun-powered Solar Impulse. The first solar-powered transcontinental flight has come to a close but the journey towards a more sustainable method of global travel is only just beginning.
Ayala Moriel has captured and bottled natural Middle East smells and made them into natural perfumes.
