Group items tagged

Geof Riley explains the term "spare capacity" at a macro-economic level. This brief article explores the pros and cons of producing a product "below the maximum sustainable level of production," and helps to explain why the term is so prevalent in the petroleum market.

A New York Times article talking about the differences as far as legal terms between a truce, a cease-fire, and an armistice. I think that it's an excellent article to include because there's a lot of mixing and matching of these three terms by media sources when in actuality they are very different.

What does the term "human shield" mean? The term is used by critics of Hamas to imply that Hamas militants hide behind unwilling hostages, or especially that they cower behind women and children. If it's a fact that Hamas uses "human shields," who they are, what they're protecting, and why seem to be more salient points for analysis.

This is such a controversial topic. I saw a reference to it recently (was it possibly something that was brought up in the Bill Maher/Ben Affleck dust-up?) that pointed out that the practice is almost unheard of outside of central and northeastern Africa, with a few small pockets in Iraq and the Gulf.

This article talks about how women's economic and social empower remains low in 2016. According to the Egyptian Centre for Women's Rights, gender equality status remains low in terms of economic and social empowerment and violence against women. Though some progress has happened with equality, about a 14% increase in female representatives in the parliamentary elections.

Compiled by faculty members at the German University in Cairo, this working paper series addresses the effect that watsa has on competence and morality in Middle Eastern economics and society. The authors define watsa as, "the intervention of a patron in favor of a client to obtain benefits and/or resources from a third party." In simpler terms it is a system of social networking in Arab culture in which family and social ties play a significant role in the attainment of economic advantages and resources, largely in the hiring process in businesses and organizations. A person applying for a job seeks out watsa to increase their chances of getting hired. Comparable to nepotism and cronyism, but is not restricted to friends and associates, watsa can also involve strangers linked through some social web of people. Watsa runs somewhat parallel to a Chinese concept of guanxi, based on Confucian ethics and focusing on strong collective ties. While guanxi is a part of Chinese ethics it actually defies Muslim ethical values, which advocates hiring the person most capable. In a Jordanian survey, 87% of respondents want watsa eradicated. While we know that unemployment in the Arab region is widespread, we can assume that this motivates people to do anything they can to improve their chances of obtaining a job. However, the practice of watsa as a whole is actually degrading the economic systems in the Arab sates even further. The article explains the linkage between watsa and poor job performance, economic decline, and the festering of injustice and frustration among the masses in Arab countries.

This looks super interesting, but I can't get the link to open. Thanks for writing a thorough summary of it!

The Council on Foreign Relations published an article about democratization in the middle east and the major obstacles that are present in the process. While most assume Islamists and Islamic embedded institutions are the root of the delayed democratic transition, the problems are much bigger than that. While Islamist regimes do indeed stunt the growth of democratic progress in terms of creating a stable government, Arab countries struggle with economic and social factors as well. The Arab Spring Revolutions have caused economic and social degradation across the region, resulting in a road block of political leadership. Without a reliable and capable government structure, the states are unable to progress economically. However, in order to have a stable government, social and economic institutions must be in place to create this capitalist economy that they strive for. Because most wealth resides in oil, the revenue that the states bring in isn't distributed properly throughout society and is concentrated within few business elites. The article stresses that instead of foreign aid going into the hands of an unstable leader or regime, it should be invested in institutions in order to spur economic growth and eliminate corruption. Rather than focusing on the Islamist-secularist divide, the world should be working towards the strengthening of institutions to create a stable foundation for governance. 

Eni SpA, an Italian energy company, has been operating in Libya for fifty years. They are the only international oil company operating in the increasingly hostile and destabilized country. The article suggests that the company's long-term presence has allowed it to make alliances with some of the militant groups responsible for overthrowing Qadafi.

A tendency to frame revolutions abroad in terms of our own "knowable" symbols of revolution? Think "Facebook revolutions" and the Guy Fawkes mask.

This article basically lays out the faults in US intervention in Libya during the fall of Gaddafi and condemns the US officials for their lack of hindsight in their agenda. The US claimed that they could not "turn a blind eye" to atrocities and human right violations in other countries and to intervene in Libya was a matter of upholding "universal values." After the successful ousting of Gaddafi, the US hypocritically turned their back on the country as a whole, leaving them to pick up the pieces and re-build themselves in the midst of socio-political and economic chaos. The US claims that military intervention is sometimes necessary to address human right violations, but in the case of Libya more violations have occurred as a result of a fallen regime rather than because of its reign. The author basically says that the US should have predicted that short-term intervention strategies achieves nothing without years of sustained support for rebuilding the civil institutions. 

In this link the Center for Disease Control and Prevention or CDC, offers information on chlorine gas poisoning including: what chlorine is, where it is found and how it is used, exposure, how it works, signs and symptoms, and long term health effects. This is beneficial for understanding one of the main chemical weapons in Syria, chlorine gas.

The head of Tunisia's Ennahda movement, Rachid Ghannouchi, was undecided if he would run for a new term at the top of the movement during its 10th congress in the second half of this year. "Ennahda is about to formulate its main conceptions," Ghannouchi said. "We cannot start talking about the relation between religion and politics before formulating these conceptions," he added.

An unnamed diplomatic source... Probably not true.

This article basically highlights the significance of Libyan oil fields in terms of the international community. Chaos in Libya not only affects the eastern region, but all OPEC members and importers of crude oil across the globe. After the recent attacks on Sharara, the biggest field in Libya, production has significantly slowed down. Libya's elected parliament assures the global community that they will resume normal outputs soon, but as the country deepens further into civil war, international actors remain skeptical.

Author Heba Elsayed gives a preview of the study she conducted to observe the lower middle class in Cairo. Elsayed describes Cairo as a microcosm of globalization in urban centers. She describes the unique role of Cosmopolitanism in analyzing trends of globalization. She focuses on the lower middle class who, she says, plays the biggest role in incorporating multiple viewpoints in daily life rather than practicing exclusivity like the upper middle class. In addition, she describes cosmopolitanism in terms of internal heterogeneity, describing an 'onion model' of the world, in which the local and national form the core and inner layers and the international and global form the outer layers. She also mentions that nation-states can no longer be regarded as the primary reference point for global citizenry.

This article discusses the way in which the media frames the revolutions in Egypt. Its discusses the framing of the secularist vs. the Islamist, and what these terms actually mean through the lens of the media. According to this article, television channels in the Middle East have the power to define terms and names however they please.

This article actually talks about the professional terms associated with social media and the Egyptian Revolution. "Resource mobilization theory " It also gives real examples of tweets from Egyptian youth who kept the world updated with minute to minute statuses.  "@mfatta7 Tear gas  @mfatta7 I'm suffocating  @mfatta7 We r trapped inside a building  @mfatta7 Armored vehicles outside  @mfatta7 Help we r suffocating  @mfatta7 I will be arrested  @mfatta7 Help !!!  @mfatta7 Arrested  @mfatta7 Ikve [I've] been beaten a lot "

With a new economic agenda being created and putting into place the people of Tunisia are worried. With the term "reforms" people of Tunisia are worried that the wrong issues are going to be handled. Like for instance creating jobs instead of increasing prices. Authorities tried to raise money by imposing a tax of $20 on foreign travellers, that angered residents but also hurt trade with Libya. This caused protests, caused officers to react with physical abuse.