Yalla Parkour, directed by Areeb Zuaiter, captures this culture from within. The film follows Zuaiter’s long relationship with Ahmed Matar, a parkour athlete in Gaza, as she reflects on loss, memory, and belonging after the death of her mother. What begins as a personal search gradually opens into a portrait of how movement shapes young lives under constraint.
Al-Rumaydh describes the Sidr less as a single organism and more as a working ecological unit. Its deep roots reach down toward groundwater, while lateral roots spread wide to catch surface moisture. Its dense canopy slows wind instead of blocking it abruptly, reducing erosion.
The supply chain includes chemical and materials heavyweights such as Mitsubishi Corporation, Neste Corporation, Toray Industries, Mitsui Chemicals, Idemitsu Kosan, ENEOS, Hanwha Impact, Formosa Chemicals & Fibre, and SK Geo Centric, among others.
Yalla Parkour, directed by Areeb Zuaiter, captures this culture from within. The film follows Zuaiter’s long relationship with Ahmed Matar, a parkour athlete in Gaza, as she reflects on loss, memory, and belonging after the death of her mother. What begins as a personal search gradually opens into a portrait of how movement shapes young lives under constraint.
Al-Rumaydh describes the Sidr less as a single organism and more as a working ecological unit. Its deep roots reach down toward groundwater, while lateral roots spread wide to catch surface moisture. Its dense canopy slows wind instead of blocking it abruptly, reducing erosion.
The supply chain includes chemical and materials heavyweights such as Mitsubishi Corporation, Neste Corporation, Toray Industries, Mitsui Chemicals, Idemitsu Kosan, ENEOS, Hanwha Impact, Formosa Chemicals & Fibre, and SK Geo Centric, among others.
Yalla Parkour, directed by Areeb Zuaiter, captures this culture from within. The film follows Zuaiter’s long relationship with Ahmed Matar, a parkour athlete in Gaza, as she reflects on loss, memory, and belonging after the death of her mother. What begins as a personal search gradually opens into a portrait of how movement shapes young lives under constraint.
Al-Rumaydh describes the Sidr less as a single organism and more as a working ecological unit. Its deep roots reach down toward groundwater, while lateral roots spread wide to catch surface moisture. Its dense canopy slows wind instead of blocking it abruptly, reducing erosion.
The supply chain includes chemical and materials heavyweights such as Mitsubishi Corporation, Neste Corporation, Toray Industries, Mitsui Chemicals, Idemitsu Kosan, ENEOS, Hanwha Impact, Formosa Chemicals & Fibre, and SK Geo Centric, among others.
Yalla Parkour, directed by Areeb Zuaiter, captures this culture from within. The film follows Zuaiter’s long relationship with Ahmed Matar, a parkour athlete in Gaza, as she reflects on loss, memory, and belonging after the death of her mother. What begins as a personal search gradually opens into a portrait of how movement shapes young lives under constraint.
Al-Rumaydh describes the Sidr less as a single organism and more as a working ecological unit. Its deep roots reach down toward groundwater, while lateral roots spread wide to catch surface moisture. Its dense canopy slows wind instead of blocking it abruptly, reducing erosion.
The supply chain includes chemical and materials heavyweights such as Mitsubishi Corporation, Neste Corporation, Toray Industries, Mitsui Chemicals, Idemitsu Kosan, ENEOS, Hanwha Impact, Formosa Chemicals & Fibre, and SK Geo Centric, among others.
Yalla Parkour, directed by Areeb Zuaiter, captures this culture from within. The film follows Zuaiter’s long relationship with Ahmed Matar, a parkour athlete in Gaza, as she reflects on loss, memory, and belonging after the death of her mother. What begins as a personal search gradually opens into a portrait of how movement shapes young lives under constraint.
Al-Rumaydh describes the Sidr less as a single organism and more as a working ecological unit. Its deep roots reach down toward groundwater, while lateral roots spread wide to catch surface moisture. Its dense canopy slows wind instead of blocking it abruptly, reducing erosion.
The supply chain includes chemical and materials heavyweights such as Mitsubishi Corporation, Neste Corporation, Toray Industries, Mitsui Chemicals, Idemitsu Kosan, ENEOS, Hanwha Impact, Formosa Chemicals & Fibre, and SK Geo Centric, among others.
Yalla Parkour, directed by Areeb Zuaiter, captures this culture from within. The film follows Zuaiter’s long relationship with Ahmed Matar, a parkour athlete in Gaza, as she reflects on loss, memory, and belonging after the death of her mother. What begins as a personal search gradually opens into a portrait of how movement shapes young lives under constraint.
Al-Rumaydh describes the Sidr less as a single organism and more as a working ecological unit. Its deep roots reach down toward groundwater, while lateral roots spread wide to catch surface moisture. Its dense canopy slows wind instead of blocking it abruptly, reducing erosion.
The supply chain includes chemical and materials heavyweights such as Mitsubishi Corporation, Neste Corporation, Toray Industries, Mitsui Chemicals, Idemitsu Kosan, ENEOS, Hanwha Impact, Formosa Chemicals & Fibre, and SK Geo Centric, among others.
Yalla Parkour, directed by Areeb Zuaiter, captures this culture from within. The film follows Zuaiter’s long relationship with Ahmed Matar, a parkour athlete in Gaza, as she reflects on loss, memory, and belonging after the death of her mother. What begins as a personal search gradually opens into a portrait of how movement shapes young lives under constraint.
Al-Rumaydh describes the Sidr less as a single organism and more as a working ecological unit. Its deep roots reach down toward groundwater, while lateral roots spread wide to catch surface moisture. Its dense canopy slows wind instead of blocking it abruptly, reducing erosion.
The supply chain includes chemical and materials heavyweights such as Mitsubishi Corporation, Neste Corporation, Toray Industries, Mitsui Chemicals, Idemitsu Kosan, ENEOS, Hanwha Impact, Formosa Chemicals & Fibre, and SK Geo Centric, among others.
Yalla Parkour, directed by Areeb Zuaiter, captures this culture from within. The film follows Zuaiter’s long relationship with Ahmed Matar, a parkour athlete in Gaza, as she reflects on loss, memory, and belonging after the death of her mother. What begins as a personal search gradually opens into a portrait of how movement shapes young lives under constraint.
Al-Rumaydh describes the Sidr less as a single organism and more as a working ecological unit. Its deep roots reach down toward groundwater, while lateral roots spread wide to catch surface moisture. Its dense canopy slows wind instead of blocking it abruptly, reducing erosion.
The supply chain includes chemical and materials heavyweights such as Mitsubishi Corporation, Neste Corporation, Toray Industries, Mitsui Chemicals, Idemitsu Kosan, ENEOS, Hanwha Impact, Formosa Chemicals & Fibre, and SK Geo Centric, among others.
Slow Food people and chefs like Moshe Basson know that eating slow can reduce stress. New study shows how stress affects health, diet and fat reserves. Image via macbeck
Few people would say that they lead stress-free lives. It starts with the pressure to fit in at school, then you need to wear the right clothes, pass your exams, get into a good university, pay off your student loans, meet your mortgage payments – and before you know it, you’re worrying about college funds for the kids.
Some of us already have an inkling that stress is a factor in many of the metabolic and emotional disorders we see today. Stress wears us down and hangs heavy on the shoulders of our immune system. It’s no wonder that the rates of diabetes, anxiety disorders, depression and heart disease are at an all time high. And now for the first time, an Israeli team has located a gene in the brain that appears to be triggered by high levels of stress, and causes a series of negative physiological reactions.
The impressions of Alexandria I shared in a recent post were largely negative, so here I’ll present a happier picture: a green oasis in Cairo built upon a former garbage dump. The photos are mine; the background information comes mainly from touregypt.net.
Jordanian teens work to learn more about Jordan River conservation efforts and practices.
Friends of the Earth Middle East (known as foy-me for its acronym FoEME) have accomplished to develop an unprecedented study of the quality of water in the Jordan River, which they hope will lead to its rehabilitation. Highly polluted from a variety of sources including sewage, and high levels of salinity, FoEME as the only Jordanian, Israel and Palestinian trilateral organization working in partnership for a common goal in the region (theirs is water), plans on taking their study to policy makers to catalyze peace and change.
Presenting their scientific study (links to study) study on what can be done to rehabilitate the lower Jordan River, after a media tour along the Jordan River yesterday with foreign journalists (which I promise to post later), I headed to Jordan to take part in their conference to present the study, which brought out about 200 Jordanian, Israel and Palestinian water experts and government officials from around the world. The atmosphere was positive, the reception very friendly. These are people willing to look forward to the future instead of back to the untold number of Middle East conflicts from the past.
I was hoping to get to meet Princess Sumaya, the daughter of Jordan’s Prince Hassan who was to be a keynote speaker (she cancelled due to illness), but I ended up meeting two princesses and three princes instead. These five teens from the King’s Academy boarding school outside of Amman (pictured above), are working with Friends of the Earth Middle East to study and understand more about the state of the Jordan River.
Tractors carving up the face of a hill in preparation for the new town. (Photo credit: Green Prophet)
About a half hour’s drive north of Ramallah, construction has begun on the first planned Palestinian city. Surrounded by sleepy hilltop villages and terraced olive orchards, Rawabi, which means “hills” Arabic, is being marketed as a green and affordable alternative for the Palestinian middle class.
“Unlike any other in Palestine, Rawabi will be characterized as a modern, high-tech city with gleaming high-rise buildings, green parks and shopping areas,” boasts a fancy brochure published by the Bayti, the Qatari-Palestinian company developing the project. With features like underground parking garages and American-style mortgages, Rawabi would appear to have more in common with Israeli suburban towns like Modi’in than with nearby Palestinian cities like Ramallah.
The new town will have extensive green space and infrastructure (including schools, mosques, a church and office buildings), which the developers hope will also serve the inhabitants of 9 surrounding villages. Initially housing 25,000 residents, Rawabi is eventually set to grow to 40,000.
A rendering of Rawabi’s city center. (courtesy of Bayti)
Special attention has been paid to the project’s environmental aspects. The town will feature elements like wastewater reclamation, alternative energy and extensive tree planting. According to the developers, pedestrian paths and mixed-use streets will discourage the use of cars, and the town will be served by public transportation.
In a show of corporate responsibility, Bayti also conducted an assessment of the social and environmental effects of the project, both during and after construction. The company also has plans to set up a center for urban planning at nearby An Najah University in Nablus.
The red roofs of Ateret, a nearby settlement housing 70 families. (photo by the author)
Meanwhile, Israeli settler organizations have reportedly launched a campaign against the new town, claiming (with no sense of irony) that it will cause pollution, traffic jams and security issues, while benefiting only the Palestinian elite. Questions also linger about an access road that requires the approval of Israeli authorities.
However, if everything goes according to plan, Rawabi could become the prototype for a new, more sustainable Palestinian urbanism. The first residents are set to move in around 2013.
Green Prophet looks to ancient Iran for some current alternative ideas to electricity-powered air con. Catch the wind with the bagdir wind tower!
The concept of “green building” has taken off in the Middle East over the last few years. The need for ecologically efficient housing and offices is becoming more urgent as the cost of heating and cooling skyrockets and water becomes ever more scarce.
But environmentally-conscious buildings have been around much longer than the modern environmental crisis. Outdating gas-guzzling air con units by generations, bagdirs – or windcatchers – have been cooling down the people of Yazd, Iran, since before the 19th century. These towers spike the skyline of the Iranian desert city like antiquated skyscrapers.
The stone structures channel wind down into a shaft which in turn cools or heats the rooms below, allowing them to remain comfortable all year with zero carbon impact.
As well as using smart technology, the windcatchers of Yazd’s success depends on effort from the building’s inhabitants too. People can reduce their energy use by occupant behaviour strategies, for instance, moving to warmer or cooler rooms throughout the day.
This contrasts to the approach of modern Western design where “the individual chooses the climate for a room:
While nomads in Iran migrate from summer climates, for those who remain in Yazd replace the long migration by a short intra mural migration, within the walls of a single house.
In the summer, when temperatures soar to over 40 degrees C, this means using the ground floor in morning and evening, while escaping to the roof at night – a popular pastime in cities like Tel Aviv. Other strategies include watering floors, wearing lighter or warmer clothes, or – my favourite – taking an afternoon nap in the heat of the day. In Morocco, men are known to sleep on the roofs of the apartments at night to catch the breeze.
How the wind catchers work
Iran is an extreme hot/cold and arid climate. It can get very hot in the daytime sun and then cool down completely at night. Before we had electric sockets and Iran was called Persia, people engineered windcatchers.
Windcatchers are very much a traditional Persian architectural design that creates natural or passive ventilation in buildings. The basic design illustrated below consists of a tower that emerges from the building below, with openings at the top.
Yazd, one of the largest cities in Iran, and which is home to hundreds of these windcatchers is also known as the City of Windcatchers. Yazd is located between the largest deserts of Iran: Dasht-e-Kavir and Dasht-e-Lut.
Today the tower of Dolat Abad is the tallest existing windcatcher in Iran.
But windcatchers weren’t built by themselves: the city of Yazd has a long network of qanats, or underground channels that bring well water to the surface. When you have a cool breeze running over water you can amplify the cooling effect. My friends in Beersheva, Israel, cool their home with a desert air conditioner which is borrowed from this idea: hot desert air that flows over water to cool the home, not refrigerate it. The modern air conditioners and the stark difference between inside and outside is sometimes unbearable.
How wind catchers work
Windcatchers work in a few ways: The first and most common is to cool the inside of a building. The tower has openings that are facing the wind and trap it inside creating a nice breeze inside the building, much like the way you feel in a wind tunnel between skyscrapers. When used with the qanat, air is pulled down, reaches the water and is drawn up the windcatcher to be dispersed in the building.
When there is no wind, the windcatchers are like a chimney, letting the hot air rise and escape. Ever spend some time in a camper fun in the heat of the summer sun? When the hot air can rise, flow is created and it escapes out of the chimney. Not so much in a camper van.
When built into adobe structures, low level spaces can remain very chill in the hottest parts of the day. And you can still find windcatchers in use in Iran, the Middle East and Persian Gulf.
One of the world’s greatest adobe cities: Yazd.
But the bagdirs of Yazd do have their dark side. Though partly funded by the silk trade, most of the windcatchers owe their existence to local merchants who made their fortunes from the British opium trade to China during the Opium Wars.
Israel’s Air Force, Shari Arison, Asia and more made headlines related to Israeli cleantech this past week. Image by Jesse Fox
During the week of April 25, 2010, ten reasons were given for Israel’s leadership in cleantech. Shari Arison was named one of the world’s greenest billionaires by Forbes and, in a somewhat similar move to the IDF, it was revealed that Israel’s Air Force is planning solar installations at all its bases. For these stories and more, check out this week’s 8 Israel-related cleantech headlines below.
Despite its claim to promote sustainable urban development practices, the world’s largest, disposable Expo invites irony and criticism.
The first ever world fair took place in 1851 at Prince Albert’s behest. That fair was initiated to display participating nations’ industrial prowess. The tradition continues with ever-increasing largesse, culminating in this year’s World Expo that officially opened yesterday, May 1st. Countries and corporations will display elaborate pavilions that best represent their cultural and industrial brand until the expo’s closure at the end of October, 2010, which is expected to draw 70 million spectators. Israel’s half stone, half glass pavilion is one of several Middle Eastern pavilions on display, which in part highlights the region’s interest in cultural and business exchange with China.
Despite its impressive shoreline, Alexandria – the self-proclaimed “Capital of Arab Tourism” – seems to be a city in decline. (Hint: watch out pedestrians).
When the Green Prophet’s editor heard I’d be stopping in Alexandria en route to the MENASOL solar energy conference in Cairo next week, she asked (implored) me to write a post from there. So, after my first day in Egypt’s second largest city, here are a few first impressions. (I’ll let some pictures do the talking too.) Any Alexandrians or others familiar with the city are invited to comment and tell me what I missed and where these first impressions are mistaken.
This Gulf of Mexico oil spill may make Exxon Valdez seem like child’s play. Image via MNN
The massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, is already being referred to by many as “President Obama’s Katrina.” The ongoing spill, a direct result of an explosion on an offshore oil drilling platform has resulted in millions of gallons of crude oil moving toward the American Gulf Coast in an ever widening oil slick that is “threatening to surpass the 1989 Alaskan Exxon Valdez oil spill disaster that occurred 20 years ago,” according to CNN.
Builder of Jerusalem and Israeli solar energy company Brightsource. Meet Arnold Goldman. Image via NYTimes.
Serious philosophers rarely make good businessmen. But solar energy innovator Arnold J. Goldman is no navel-gazer. Goldman heads Jerusalem-based BrightSource Industries and its California-based parent, BrightSource Energy, which is contracted to deliver more than 2,600 megawatts of solar electricity in California using new technology demonstrated at Goldman’s Solar Energy Development Center in the Negev, the largest solar energy facility in the Middle East.
People go to Mecca for spiritual alignment, not to be exposed to drugs.
Some drugs like pot, gat and hash are natural. But antidepressant drug abuse in Mecca, Saudi Arabia is causing social problems.
Mecca province, home to the holiest site in Islam, has the highest rate of drug-related crime in Saudi Arabia, a university study has found. The national study, carried out by Dr. Ashraf Shilbi of the National Center for Youth Research at King Saud University in the capital Riyadh, calculated that the number of drug-related legal cases in Mecca province has steadily risen by around 1,000 each year. In 2009 it peaked at 9,000 cases.
Most countries in the world are facing issues of teenage drug addiction and other forms of substance abuse.
“Drugs is certainly a problem in Saudi Arabia and every day you hear about the government killing someone for smuggling drugs,” Wajiha Al-Huwaidar, a former teacher, told The Media Line. “I would think that the problem is more pronounced in Mecca because it’s very crowded and very easy to get a visa to come to Saudi Arabia for Hajj or Umrah, so many people can come as drug dealers under the guise of a pilgrim.”
The study, first reported by the Al-Madinah daily, found the Saudi capital Riyadh to be second in the number of drug-related cases, followed by the provinces of Jazan, the Eastern Province, Asir, Madinah, Tabuk, Al-Qassim and Al-Jouf.
While drug abuse made up the majority of cases, drug trafficking was also found to be on the rise. Despite a Saudi stigma that drug smuggling is led by foreigners, the study found the vast majority of drug smuggling cases to be Saudi citizens, with foreigners making up only 22 percent of drug trafficking cases.
The study also found that over the last decade Saudi hospitals in the country’s capital and commercial center have recorded a tripling of the number of drug addicts receiving treatment. The number of drug addicts seeking treatment in the Saudi capital Riyadh, for example, were found to have tripled, from 13,520 in 200 to 40,515 in 2009. The number of addicts treated in Jeddah more than tripled, from 10,876 in 2000 to 35,857 in 2009.
Ahmed Al-Omran (links to his blog Saudi Jeans), an influential Saudi critic and blogger, said it was unclear why Riyadh and Jeddah had witnessed such a notable rise in drug use. “There are likely many factors – unemployment, more people travelling inside and outside of the country, etc,” he said. “But it’s hard for me to speculate and the study should have looked more into the reasons for the rise in drug use.”
Al-Omran downplayed the importance of the study. “Drugs are everywhere in the world, the Mecca region is big and is not just the holy city of Mecca,” he told The Media Line. “So it doesn’t seem very weird that there would be a high rate of drugs in Mecca province.”
“Whenever the government publishes the news that they have seized a large amount of drugs coming into the country it indicates that there is a problem of drugs in the country,” Al-Omran said. “But the government only manages to seize a small percentage of what’s in the market, so they also need to work on awareness and make sure families know the dangers of drug use.”
Shilbi’s research found the most popular illegal drug in Saudi Arabia to be the antidepressant Catptagon, followed by hashish, Qat (or gat), heroin, amphetamine, opium and cocaine.
Hashish, dried cannabis also known as ‘hash’, made up the largest proportion of the drugs confiscated by Saudi authorities. The volume of Hashish seized has steadily increased by 18 percent each year. Qat, a plant with an amphetamine-like stimulant, made up the majority of drug seizures in the southern province of Jazan, with more than 10,000 recorded seizures of the plant last year alone. Seizures of cocaine and opium were very rare and recorded only in the capital Riyadh and Saudi Arabia’s commercial center Jeddah.
The study found that drug dealers in Saudi tend to be students or workers, and those most vulnerable to drug abuse tend to be young men aged 20 to 30. Bachelors and the unemployed were also found to be demographic groups more at risk for drug abuse.
The Saudi Interior Ministry announced last week that drug enforcement officials had completed one of the largest drug busts in its history, arresting 195 individuals over four months on charges of drugs smuggling. Authorities also seized eight million tablets of Captagon, two tons of hashish, and more than 20 kilograms of pure heroin.
Drug trafficking is punishable by death in Saudi Arabia, regardless of the quantity being trafficked. The knock-on effect is that if drug traffickers take the risk of doing business in the Saudi kingdom, to make it worthwhile they will usually traffic huge volumes of drugs with large profit margins.
While Qatar is not an oil-rich company, it’s rich in natural gas and is a member of OPEC, which means it can greatly influence environmental policies put in place in the oil and gas industry. The country hopes to bill itself as an environmentally-friendly one, getting a boost with the Qatar Petroleum Environment Fair that opened last week at the Doha Exhibition Centre, according to the Gulf Times. “Environment” and “Petroleum” are not normally words associated together in a fair in a positive way. While natural gas is not as polluting as oil or coal, it’s a limited resource which still pollutes, but less.
With a palace for nature, Qatar looks to corporations to help educate about recycling
On Qatar Environment Day in February, the UK mobile phone company Vodaphone launched its program to give back 10% on new phone purchases if their Qatari customers recycle their old phones. In some countries like Canada, new device buyers actually have to pay a fee to offset recycling costs.
Around this time they also launched wind and solar powered base stations to cellular networks that need to be powered off-grid as par of international efforts to go green.
This week, members from the company’s Green Ambassadors program started recycling old company posters and flyers, setting a precedent in a country and industry that has a lot to learn about environmental awareness. The launch was at the company’s store in Mushereib and the material is to be sent to a recycling facility in Doha.
“It was amazing seeing the large white truck from the only paper recycling company in Qatar, coming to pick up our old paper, posters and flyers that will be recycled into blank paper rolls and used in a thousand new ways. The Green Ambassadors are thrilled to know that each small initiative we take plays an important role in protecting Qatar’s environment,” said Ahmed al-Manwari, the Green Ambassadors’ leader in a Gulf Times interview.
The link has since been taken down to the Gulf Times. But it is a great way to get daily news on the Gulf region.
I like seeing how mega multi-national companies take on environmental challenges that rub off in countries in need of more environmental awareness. Vodafone Group plc (LSE: VOD, NASDAQ: VOD) is a British multinational mobile network operator headquartered in Newbury, England.
Let’s hope that companies like Apple will create similar projects to recycle the iPhone and iPod.
Traditional organic agriculture and gorgeous historic architecture come together at Tel Aviv’s restored Turkish train station.
The historic Turkish train station between Neve Tsedek and Jaffa in Tel Aviv, which in its former glory operated trains from Jaffa to Jerusalem, has laid in ruins for decades. Over the past few years, though, the Tel Aviv Municipality has been restoring the complex and its beautiful historic buildings. Someone must have thought it would be appropriate to restore traditional agricultural methods on the site as well, since this Friday “Hatachana” (or, “the station”) will be starting the city’s first all-organic farmer’s market.
Slow Food people and chefs like Moshe Basson know that eating slow can reduce stress. New study shows how stress affects health, diet and fat reserves. Image via macbeck
Qatar’s petroleum industry is making efforts to “go green.” Is it speeding ahead in the right, or wrong direction?
