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The Arab Feminist Who Laid the Groundwork for Today’s Green Activists

Faisal O'Keefe
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The Arab Feminist Who Laid the Groundwork for Today’s Green Activists

A “green” Arab renaissance cannot be accomplished without the rise of women in Arab countries. Recently in Jordan, the Google image was of Middle Eastern intellectual, feminist and writer, the late May Ziyade. 

Don’t you love peeling the evolutionary onion, seeing who came before to take us where we are today? A century ago, in a pre-digital world, ideas were exchanged as they’d been for millennia: via dialogue and debate, and for educated elite, through writing.  Literary circles were de rigueur in North America and Europe.  Artists and thinkers gathered in these original “chat rooms”, investigating modern ideas emerging from clashing ideological tectonic plates:  culture, politics and rapid industrialism.

“We should free the woman, so that her children won’t grow up to become slaves. And we should remove the veil of illusions from her eyes, so that by looking into them, her husband, brother and son will discover that there is a greater meaning to life.”  So wrote May Ziyade, a leading figure in literary circles during the al-nahda, or Arab Renaissance. A hundred years befor the Arab Spring, she demonstrated words can change the world.

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SlutWalk Israel in Tel Aviv, Haifa, Jerusalem – a First for the Middle East

Karin Kloosterman
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15

slut sign slutwalk manchester, Slutwalk israel, tel aviv, jerusalem, haifa
Karin draws a line between women’s rights and green issues in light of upcoming SlutWalks in Israel.

Last April Green Prophet asked: Should the Middle East Have More Sluts? Of course we wanted to attract our reader’s attention, and we did with thousands of readers, hundreds of “Likes” and dozens of comments. Although I am not a feminist, I do recognize a critical link between women’s rights and environmental values. Look at the women from Barefoot College in Jordan: Women are often the first ones to transmit these values to their societies and children, and women without basic rights are not empowered to do anything. I know that linking sluts and the Middle East is a tough pill to swallow in the ultra-conservative Middle East but we wrote this article to grab your attention. To make you think.

Readers and activists were listening. According to DIY Tel Aviv the Israeli cities of Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem will be organizing their own slut walks, starting next week.

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Low Carbon Economics Aligns With the Sharia Law of Islam

Faisal O'Keefe
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0
Low Carbon Economics Aligns With the Sharia Law of Islam

green sukuk sharia law islam The people promoting bond sales to fund climate change turn to Islamic investors.

Gulf nations may prove to be a prime market for Climate Bonds as they diversify beyond fossil fuels into long-term green energy projects. To spur investment, financial vehicles that support a low-carbon economy are being developed to align with Islamic Sharia law. It’s a simple concept: expand Middle East renewables for home use, and maximize oil surplus for foreign trade. It begins with raising funds.

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Time to Drink Water From Air Con Units

Maurice Picow
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15
Time to Drink Water From Air Con Units

water from airWater from air! AC water conversion and treatment unit illustration. Photo: Watergen Ltd

A while ago I wrote about the possibility of creating drinking or agricultural usage water from the cooling coil condensation from air conditioners.   This idea has been around for years, and has in the past been met with more than its share of skepticism, even though inexpensive methods exist to purify polluted water from bacteria other biological impurities that may be present in such water.

A recent program on the CNN Earth Matters environmental show dealt with special water cleansing units that were originally developed for US and other troops stationed in hot desert areas such as Iraq and Afghanistan that collects and purifies the run-off water from military vehicle AC units and turns this water into pure, tasty  drinking water in the field.  The water is sent through a series of filters to clean and remove harmful bacteria and other organic substances. And the technology is here. 

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Celebrate Purim with Friendly Purim Baskets

Miriam Kresh
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Celebrate Purim with Friendly Purim Baskets

image-purim-basketThe Jewish holiday of Purim begins this coming Wednesday night, the 7th of March. Fulfill the mitzvah of sending treats to your neighbors the green way.

Purim celebrates the victory of the Jews over Haman’s “final solution,” in 356 BCE. It’s a deceptively childlike holiday. Families gather in the synagogue to hear the colorful Purim story as written by its heroes, Queen Esther and her adoptive father, Mordechai.  There’s a happy feeling in the streets as children running around in costumes deliver baskets full of goodies all over the neighborhood. Here are some eco-friendly costume ideas for your little ones. Grownups at the festive lunch indulge freely in wine. Once Purim’s over, here are some ways to reuse your wine bottles.

Yet all this good cheer is the bright side of a grim episode in Jewish history. Babylonian King Ahasuerus’s vizier, Haman, persuaded the king to approve a decree purging all his lands of the Jews. If the king had not revoked the decree, the entire Jewish nation would have been annihilated then and there, for he ruled over all of the civilized world. Today’s masks and costumes commemorate Queen Esther’s concealment of her Jewishness till the night when she dramatically revealed her true self to the besotted King and exposed Haman’s plot to kill her people.

Ahasuerus ordered Haman executed. Mordechai, had served the king faithfully as court adviser and indeed had saved his life previously; he took Haman’s place in authority. From from despair to salvation and from concealment to joyful revelation – these are some of the themes that run through the Purim holiday.

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Recycled Wood Pallets Stack up for Fashion Designers in Beirut

Tafline Laylin
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Recycled Wood Pallets Stack up for Fashion Designers in Beirut

green design, recycled materials, wooden pallets, urban design, fashion, beirut, lebanon, minimalist, industrial-chicAvatar Architettura decks out a working space for fashion designers with chic recycled wooden pallets. 

Avatar Architettura has decked out a working space for fashion designers in Beirut with recycled wooden pallets otherwise destined for one of the city’s notorious landfills. Known for strategies that “privilege ecology, flexible systems, biodiversity, and recycled materials in an urban context,” the Italian designers used the pallets to transform a 220 square meter space into a striking but highly flexible office and workshop.

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Jordan Announces Oil Shale Plans Without Opposition

Tafline Laylin
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Jordan Announces Oil Shale Plans Without Opposition

 

climate change, global warming, oil shale, King Abdullah II, Jordan, Amman, greenhouse gases, energy intensive, pollutionWhile Israeli activists fight oil shale exploration, Jordan announces plans to explore oil shale next door. 

While activists continue to fight against oil shale testing in Israel because of its potentially harmful environmental and social impacts, on the other side of the Dead Sea, Jordan has just announced its intention to explore oil-shale without any opposition from within its borders.

The Hashemite Kingdom sits on the third largest reserve of oil shale deposits, but the technology necessary to extract this fossil fuel safely is still undergoing rigorous testing in the United States and remains deeply controversial among environmentalists. Perhaps spurred on by chronic energy shortages, Jordan intends to go where no one else has been.

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A Ruby Red Mystery Flows from Lebanon’s River

Linda Pappagallo
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1

red river lebanon
Recently the Beirut River in Lebanon, mysteriously turned ruby red spilling unknown substances into the Mediterranean Sea. The Environmental minister Nazem el-Khoury and his team of experts hastily launched an investigation involving scientists, police force and lawyers but  the source and cause of the redness still remains uncertain, some sources talk about dye being dumped by upstream factories. The Daily Star reports:

“Eyewitnesses working in the area … [said] this was not the first time the river had turned a different color. Several business owners around the Chevrolet crossing said that colored water pours into the river roughly every two months but no one pays attention to it. It was the quantity and brightness of the red liquid that grabbed the attention of many passersby and commuters.”

This event exemplifies three very sad stories.

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Water Eco Park a Peace Bridge Between Palestinians and Israelis

Karin Kloosterman
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palestinian women kishon river
A proposed cross-border ecological park on the banks of the troubled Kishon River shared by Palestinians and Israelis could repair more than the polluted water.

If you are paddling a canoe down one of rivers that flows through Israel to the Mediterranean Sea, you might want to hold onto your oars. Some of these rivers are full of sewage effluent, agriculture runoff, wastewater from animal farms and industrial byproducts.

The Kishon River, which flows from the Palestinian city of Jenin through the Haifa Bay, is one of the most polluted of them all. Oil refinery waste dumped into the Kishon is thought responsible for giving Israeli divers cancer. Recent conservation efforts on Israel’s part have greatly improved the river’s condition. But upstream it’s a different story.

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5 Technologies to Make Desalination More Efficient

Brian Nitz
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10
5 Technologies to Make Desalination More Efficient

albatross Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner People who live in Mideastern coastal cities might understand the despair expressed in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner: “Water, water every where, and nor any drop to drink.”

The poem details the effects of saltwater and thirst on marooned sailors. The ancient mariner hangs an albatross around his neck as an act of atonement for killing this bird, which his shipmates considered to be a good omen. He would not have known that the albatross has desalination glands behind its eyes. These glands concentrate salt and channel it away onto the beak. Some seabirds then sneeze the salt away.

Undrinkable saltwater stretches beyond the horizon from Alexandria, Beirut, Tel Aviv, Abu Dhabi and elsewhere in the Mideast. Fortunately, humans are now able to remove salt from seawater. Israel will soon use desalination for 75 precent of its water supply. But all existing methods are energy intensive and can have significant environmental side effects. The energy cost of desalination is so high that it can be cheaper to transport fresh water hundreds of miles even when there is a great sea on your doorstep. Libya, for example, has plans to purchase fresh water which will be shipped from the Manavgat river in Turkey. Here are some technologies which might reduce the energy and ecological cost of desalinization:

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A Real Live Solar City Shines in Israel

Shifra Mincer
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0
A Real Live Solar City Shines in Israel

aleo solar
A town in the Jezreel Valley, Israel prefers its weather sunny, and not only for clear blue skies and golden sunshine.

Over 70 percent of the rooftops in Ram-On, a small picturesque town in Israel’s north, are covered in Germany-based Aleo Solar photovoltaic panels for a total capacity of 1,250 kW that both powers the town and, when produced in excess, is fed back into the local grid.

While Israel has slowly gained recognition as a world innovator in solar technology, and recently approved installation of several medium-scale projects in the country’s southern Negev desert, Israel still lags behind in small-scale residential installations.

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Egging Me On to Start a Food Fight

Karin Kloosterman
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5
Egging Me On to Start a Food Fight

egg advertisingIs no egg sacred? An Israeli company buys rights to print advertising on eggs. Stand up for your rights to crack a clean egg.

Despite the sad job of having to sell three of my young roosters back to the farm today, god am I happy that I farm my own eggs in the city. An Israeli company which manufacturers frozen herbs has imported a new printing technology from the US to advertise its products on millions of eggs. As if that fluorescent dyed date stamp wasn’t enough, the company Dorot plans on printing a whole range of advertising on eggs to get you to buy their frozen herbs. Do you see something wrong with this picture?

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Seimens and Volkswagen Drive the Middle East Green

Maurice Picow
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0
Seimens and Volkswagen Drive the Middle East Green

VW Touareg HybridVW Touareg energy saving  Hybrids, like this one, will soon be seen on Arab Gulf roads

Luxury cars like white  gold Mercedes Benz coupes and American high line cars like Cadillacs  have been driven by affluent people living in the Arab Gulf for years. Due to the availability of oil there, not that much attention has been given to making these high priced cars more environmentally friendly; even though one gold Mercedes model is reported to run on biofuel.  This situation may soon be changing, however, due to two of Germany’s largest manufacturing companies, Seimens and Volkswagen are reportedly teaming up to make drivers that work for Seimens in the United Arab Emirates more environmentally conscious.

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Eilat Energy Conference Aims to Green A Desert And A Country

Shifra Mincer
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0
Eilat Energy Conference Aims to Green A Desert And A Country

tanks camels israel negev desert

Israel’s vast and dry southern Negev desert may actually help the country go green and just in time for the country’s 2020 10% renewables goal.

At the Eilat-Eilot Forum for Renewable Energy Policy last week, energy experts discussed a recent report, still in draft form, of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, called Cleantech in the Negev as an Engine for Regional Development. The report, composed of several local case studies, was carried out by request of the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labour (MOITAL) and is part of the OECD review series on Boosting Local Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Creation.

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World’s Largest Solar Yacht PlanetSolar Tours Mideast on Final Leg of Around the World Voyage

Brian Nitz
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0
World’s Largest Solar Yacht PlanetSolar Tours Mideast on Final Leg of Around the World Voyage

Tûranor PlanetSolar abu dhabi yacht

PlanetSolar’s solar yacht in Abu Dhabi.

After spending some time in Qatar, Tûranor PlanetSolar crossed the Persian Gulf into the United Arab Emirates. It overcame some bad weather and a severe technical problem with the pitch controller for one of its steering propellers to arrive in time for the World Future Energy Summit at the ANDEC convention center in Abu Dhabi.  After arriving back in Monaco it will have become the world’s first photovoltaic yacht to circumnavigate the globe.

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Health insurance is a regulated financial product. Insurers operate under binding contracts, overseen by state insurance commissioners, that legally obligate them to pay claims meeting policy terms. Policyholders who believe a covered claim was wrongfully denied have legal recourse through state regulatory channels.

Zentera drops “ethical wool” claim after peta exposé into zq-certified farms

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The New Zealand Merino Company, now rebranded as Zentera, has quietly removed the phrase “world’s leading ethical wool brand” from its website, a notable change that comes after a disturbing investigation by PETA Asia-Pacific into the company’s ZQ-certified wool supply chain, PETA reports to Green Prophet.

Fresh Fava Bean Soup, A Vegan Springtime Recipe

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Somehow vegetables with short seasons excite the imagination and appetite more sharply than produce that’s available all year around. Good Middle Eastern cooks have many recipes for delicate fava beans, and this turmeric-fragrant soup is one.

The future of trucking and freight is electric and hydrogen

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For years the freight industry tried to force a...

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