A powerful earthquake that hit close to the medieval city of Marrakech in Morocco on Sept. 8, 2023, has killed thousands and injured many more. It has also put at risk buildings and monuments of major historic importance, among them the minaret of the Kutubiyya mosque, a 12th-century structure that is an icon of the city.

The Medina, the medieval walled portion of the city, is now littered with rubble. The cultural significance of the Medina extends far beyond the antiques and trinkets sold to tourists.

It is the location of numerous artisan workshops that make the ceramic tiles, carved plaster and intricate woodwork that decorate the city. Many of these workshops have maintained traditional methods for centuries, transmitting skill sets down through the generations.

Part of Morocco’s bid for Marrakech’s UNESCO status was based on these craft traditions being “intangible cultural heritage,” which the U.N. describes as knowledge or skills that are passed down orally rather than in written form.

I’ve been working in Marrakech since 2014, living there on and off as I completed research on a book about the development of Marrakech as a medieval metropolis. Although my work focused on the 12th century, the more I learned about the city, the more I realized that most of the urban fabric and architectural sites I was looking at were thanks to the conservation efforts of local workshops.

The UNESCO designation was a historical acknowledgment of the traditions of poor and rural communities that can often get left out of larger conversations about art history. It is precisely these communities that have maintained Marrakech’s architectural heritage for generations, but the earthquake has destroyed the workshops and residences of many in the Medina.

These poor and rural communities are at their most vulnerable just when their skills will be needed the most to help rebuild the city after this disaster.

Oral origins

Marrakech was founded in 1070 by the Almoravid dynasty, which derived from a tribe that was part of a larger non-Arab confederation of peoples now referred to as Berbers.

It was one of the first major cities in the wider Islamic west, known as the Maghrib – now comprising Morocco, Algeria and parts of Tunisia – to be founded by a group indigenous to the region.

The majority of the community spoke a dialect of Tamazight, an Afro-Asiatic language distinct from Arabic. It was primarily an oral language, meaning that knowledge was more commonly handed down via poetic stories rather than written texts.

Some Arabic sources described the Almoravids as “unsophisticated” and “illiterate,” yet the evidence of their architectural and artistic heritage suggests otherwise. In Marrakech, they built an elegantly proportioned dome known as the Qubba al-Barudiyyin and commissioned the elaborate wooden minbar (pulpit) that now sits in the Badiʿ Palace Museum.

They were followed by the Almohad dynasty, another largely indigenous group, that faced similar accusations in historical accounts despite building the Kutubiyya minaret, Marrakech’s signature monument.

Site of independence movements

The city’s origins as a Berber capital contributed to making Marrakech the epicenter of contemporary Moroccan national identity, rooted in a pride and independence centuries old. Whereas other North African cities had roots in Arab or Roman tradition, Marrakech could claim to be distinctly Moroccan.

In the face of Ottoman expansion in the 16th century, the kingdom of Morocco, based out of Marrakech, was the sole region of the Arabic-speaking world to maintain their autonomy from Turkish control.

Although the French and the Spanish would compete for colonial rule of the country, the Moroccan independence movements of the 20th century were largely based out of Marrakech. The city was so prone to revolt that the French administration moved the colonial capital further north to Rabat.

Even the word “Morocco” is derived from an etymological transmutation of “Marrakech.”

A hidden history

And yet, recovering the city’s significant past is an exercise in reading between the lines.

The oral traditions of the city’s founders were rarely faithfully transcribed. Written sources are often scattered and unpublished, and those that do exist are often written by outsiders or visitors to the city.

The Ottomans were excellent record-keepers, enabling scholars to explore extensive centralized archives on every part of the Arabic world – except Morocco, whose archives remain dispersed and underfunded. Historians have had to work obliquely to uncover concrete details, relying on archaeological and anthropological research to supplement oral traditions.

Integral to these efforts was the role of craft traditions in and around Marrakech. Craft was a key point of France’s colonial efforts in Marrakech, where they established “artisan schools” in the Medina to ostensibly document and preserve their methods. In doing so, the French Protectorate – which ruled the country from 1912 to 1956 – created a kind of living nostalgia within the Medina, conflating the people who actually lived there with the city’s medieval past.

This effectively created a form of economic and social segregation in which craftsmen and their families were siloed into the old town, while the wealthier expatriates and tourists occupied the Ville Nouvelle outside the medieval walls.

Preserving the past through craft

At the same time, these craft traditions are also what made it possible to preserve and restore many of the sites in and around Marrakech that now draw thousands of tourists each year.

The Qasba Mosque, the city’s “second” major mosque after the Kutubiyya and originally built between 1185 and 1189, underwent successive restorations in both the 17th and 21st centuries after political instability led to their decline. In both cases, local artisans were employed to renovate the mosque’s stucco walls and the mosaic tile work known as zellij.

The 11th-century Almoravid pulpit required a team of Moroccan craftsmen to successfully restore the minbar’s intricate marquetry.

Artisans have also been important ambassadors for Morocco’s place in the larger canon of Islamic art, building a courtyard as part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s 2011 renovation of their Islamic galleries using 14th-century techniques and materials.

With the Marrakech Medina partially destroyed, many of these artisans and workshops will face tough choices regarding their future. Gentrification over the last decade has priced many residents out of their ancestral homes, and many of these workshops operate on thin margins – too thin to both pay for damages and retain control over their property.

Rebuilding intangible heritage

Parts of the city walls cracked in the earthquake, and an 18th-century mosque in the main square lost its minaret. The historic 12th-century site of Tinmal, not far from Marrakech and nestled in the Atlas Mountains, has also collapsed.

The human toll of the earthquake is still being tallied, and the material damage is likely to be extensive. Nothing can replace the loss of life. Yet the history and resilience of a place are instrumental in any recovery.

It will be the role of Marrakech’s intangible heritage – its artists and artisans – to rebuild after this disaster. In the midst of narratives about caliphs and sultans, philosophers and poets, it can be easy to forget that the people who built these places often went unnamed in the historical texts.

But these artists will need support to maintain Marrakech’s history, to preserve the past for future historians to discover.

Abbey Stockstill, Assistant Professor of Art History, Southern Methodist University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Shelling has recently intensified at the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, raising international safety concerns. Ukrainian staff continue to operate the massive plant under strict control and stressful conditions.

Both Russia and Ukraine are blaming one another for the continued attacks, and damage. Disinformation and fake news have played a major role in this conflict, and so the exact nature of the situation is unclear.

It seems unlikely that either side would want to seriously damage Europe’s biggest nuclear plant, in the near-frontline city of Enerhodar, and cause a release of radiation. Ukrainian plant workers claim that Russia is deliberately targeting non-critical equipment. A deliberate attack against a nuclear facility would break international norms, and concerns over the potentially dangerous consequences are well justified.

This plant is not like Chernobyl, the site of the world’s biggest nuclear disaster. Chernobyl was an older reactor type, with several questionable design choices. Like Zaporizhzhia, it was cooled by water, but it also contained large quantities of graphite to perform a function known as neutron moderation, which is necessary for the reactor to operate. When the Chernobyl reactor overheated, the water boiled away and became less effective at cooling. However, the graphite continued to moderate the neutrons, allowing the reactor power and thus temperature to build uncontrollably. The shutdown system at Chernobyl was also poorly designed and contributed to the accident.

At Zaporizhzhia, as with the majority of reactors globally, if the reactor overheats, both cooling and moderation are reduced, and so the reactor power also reduces. Nuclear engineers see this as fundamental to safe reactor design.

But a breach of a fuelled and operating reactor could still be disastrous if attacks damage nuclear materials or safety-critical equipment. This could release large quantities of hazardous nuclear material into the air, potentially contaminating vast areas of land and water supplies.

The reactors are surrounded by high strength containment buildings. These are designed to both contain explosions from within, and to withstand a certain amount of force from outside. However, while modern plants are designed to withstand aircraft strikes, it is debatable whether they could withstand deliberate bombardment. They are made of many metres of concrete, with steel liners, but a concerted effort with appropriate weapons would eventually be able to penetrate them.

Of perhaps greater concern are the outdoor spent fuel cooling pools, where highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel is stored underwater. A direct attack on any of these could lead to a major release of radioactive material into the atmosphere, as the fuel is relatively unprotected against strikes from the air.

Safety-critical equipment, such as pumps and pipes, remains important even after the nuclear power plant has been shut down. Three of Zaporizhzhia’s six reactor units are currently in a shutdown state. Fuel within the reactor, as well as used fuel, remains very hot for several years after shutdown and removal from the reactor. At plants such as Zaporizhzhia, unless the fuel is constantly cooled, it can overheat, generating explosive gases, melting, or catching fire. This would also lead to a radiation release.

The fuel at Zaporizhzhia requires a constant flow of cooling water over it to take away excess heat. Should this water be lost through damage to piping, pools or reactors, or should pumps become inoperative, there would only be a limited time to intervene before dangerous consequences might be felt. Claimed attacks thus far have largely hit power lines, radiation monitoring equipment, and non-nuclear buildings such as training facilities. The attacks on power lines are particularly worrying, as reliable access to offsite power is required for cooling water pumping. The plant can generate its own power during operation, and has a range of back-up diesel generators in case access to offsite power fails, but the loss of any safety system is a concern.

Should there be a release of radioactive material, authorities will need to act quickly to assess the danger and respond appropriately. The risk will depend on factors such as how much material is released and how it is spread by wind and weather. The level of radiation would be highest close to the plant and reduce as it spreads, with those exposed potentially experiencing health impacts.

For those exposed to very high levels of radiation, there is a risk of acute radiation syndrome, which can be fatal in the worst cases. Lower levels of exposure can increase cancer risks later in life. The best course of action is to take shelter in buildings, close all doors, windows and vents, and follow advice from trusted authorities.

Russia’s strategy

Russia’s president Vladimir Putin might wish to control the plant for several reasons. Russia could cut power supplies from the plant to Ukraine, but it was operating in a low power mode at the time of the invasion and so this may be of limited impact. Alternatively, Russia might use it as a political bargaining chip or propaganda tool, in order to legitimise claims over occupied territory. Various sources also suggest that Russia has stationed troops and equipment at the plant. This allows it to be used as both a fortress and missile launch site, against which Ukraine dare not retaliate.

Military conflict around nuclear sites was outlawed by the 1977 Amendment to the Geneva Conventions. However, attempts by the international community to address the Russian occupation of Zaporizhzhia have been largely unsuccessful. The International Atomic Energy Agency has repeatedly requested access to examine conditions and check that nuclear materials remain in place but has yet to gain entry.

The UN has recently called for demilitarisation of the site, but Russia claims that this would place the plant at greater risk due to alleged threats of nuclear terrorism. Placing the plant under the care of a neutral third party for security purposes might be a potential solution. However, there is a risk that even a neutrally held plant could be attacked by disguised military forces, in order to support Russian narratives of Ukrainian terrorist groups.

Above all, the violence around the plant must stop, and verification access must be granted to the international community. Military action around the plant must cease as soon as possible to protect people, the environment and infrastructure.

Ross Peel, Research and Knowledge Transfer Manager, King’s College London

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

“The earth is shaking in Oklahoma, and it’s far from normal—a recent study by Cornell University and the U.S. Geological Survey has linked the state’s exponential spike in earthquakes with a surge in hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Imran Garda talks to worried Oklahomans and gets a behind-the-scenes look at how the chemical-laced water required to frack is disposed of.”

Oklahoma Is Shaking: How Fracking Creates Earthquakes | AJ+ Docs

            Harvey’s destructive force on Texas and Louisiana has generated many compelling pictures and disturbing stories. Irma’s violent impact has already started in the Caribbean. Meanwhile, Jose and Katia are whirling into possible threats. Other natural disasters in the world involve even more casualties, such as the flooding in Mumbai.

            Political disasters also pose a menace to our well-being, especially the malicious decision to end the DACA program in six months. The Dreamers deserve so much better than our blundering immigration policy. I get heartsick when I think about those young people who signed up for DACA (and paid a heavy fee) but are now facing betrayal. Although I will certainly call my Congresspersons to advocate for the DREAM Act, it all seems so futile.

            Feeling helpless in the face of others’ suffering can cause compassion fatigue. As the song lyric says, “I’m all out of love.”    Dr. Charles Figley coined the term “compassion fatigue” after he became distressed from listening to soldiers’ stories in the Vietnam War. Compassion fatigue is related to secondary trauma, which I define as the shock waves that emanate from an emotional bomb blast. Social workers and other helping professionals are usually familiar with these concepts. However, concern over Trump’s presidency and other recent events may also be causing compassion fatigue among the supporters of social justice.

            For instance, the city of Dayton, Ohio is considered to be the epicenter of the opioid epidemic. Morgues became so full that the local governments had to use refrigerated vans. In this setting, I was teaching the basic facts about addiction to my social work students. Many had already experienced the effects of this epidemic: one student lost his nephew over the weekend, another had to drop out of school to raise her deceased cousin’s children, and one mother was with her young children when they saw a woman overdose in a department store restroom. Although many students expressed their motivation to help the addicts, others said that they were already burnt out by the situation. Compassion fatigue, then, can impede us from the goal of helping others. If we are suffering ourselves, how can we truly alleviate the suffering of others?

            One key aspect to fighting compassion fatigue in the helping professions is the separation between one’s personal and professional lives. This strategy can apply to a socially conscious person, since they may not realize how much news coverage has permeated their personal lives.   When I became a news junkie in the 1980s, my exposure to the TV national news consisted of one half hour a night. Cable news and news websites, of course, have increased this coverage to a constant stream of information that may or may not be important to know. Now I even get news updates on my smart phone—and yes, I do get distracted by the latest tidbit. Just because I can compulsively follow the news does not mean that it is wise. History may provide a few examples of news arriving too late, such as a battle fought weeks after a peace treaty was signed. In most cases, though, I do not need to know about every event right after it happened.

           Besides limiting one’s exposure to the news, we can also develop resilience through the avoidance of psychic numbing. We need to retain our sanity by claiming our feelings instead of retreating into apathy. Claiming our feelings, of course, may entail being called a “snowflake” by those mocking anyone’s sensitivity to the suffering of others. Snowflake or not, those who take on the burden of caring can sometimes feel vulnerable and anxious. Researchers have written studies on the impact of compassion fatigue on nurses, EMTs, chaplains, child welfare workers, and several other fields. One common finding is that self-reflection, whether through mindfulness or writing, can reduce the impact of compassion fatigue and make worker burn-out less likely.

          &nbsp The good news is that “compassion satisfaction” also exists in the helping professions. This feeling that a worker is effective in helping others is connected to the experience of connectedness with their colleagues. For those who might be feeling some despair, then, the concept of compassion satisfaction offers the hope of endurance and even possibly joy.

           Rough days are ahead for this country, rough days with no end in sight. Some of us might be directly affected by the hurricanes and other calamities, while others will be bombarded with even more images of people going through hell. It is possible to avoid compassion fatigue, though. Thousands of caring persons are going to wade through floodwaters, set up shelters, and do their best to reduce the suffering. By joining with them in spirit, we can work toward achieving our own sense of compassion satisfaction.

Gail Ukockis, PhD, MSW, MA, is an educator and social worker with an eclectic background that includes graduate studies in history. For eleven years, Dr. Ukockis taught a women’s issues course at Ohio Dominican University, which served as the foundation for this textbook. Her research interests also include HIV/AIDS, cultural competence, and human trafficking. She is author of Women’s Issues for a New Generation: A Social Work Perspective (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).

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Related video added by Juan Cole:

Caribbean Island Devastated By Hurricane Irma | NBC News

“Live footage of Hurricane Irma destroying the MahoBeachCam.com camera located at AAA Rent-A-Car in St Maarten. We will rebuild!”

Live footage as Hurricane Irma destroys Maho Beach Cam in St Maarten 9/6/2017

NB. I was in Sint Maarten in June, and here are two pictures of Maho Beach, shown in the above video, in happier days:

See more photos at my Instagram page

And here is the article I wrote out of my research there on climate change and green energy issues, for The Nation:

Can the Caribbean’s Tourism Economy Survive Climate Change?

Rising sea levels, ocean acidification, catastrophic storm surges—the threat is dire, and requires a rapid transition to renewable energy.

“Hurricanes don’t care if you’re rich, poor, white, or black—but that doesn’t mean that every person is equally vulnerable to a storm.”

People wait to be rescued from their flooded homes after the area was inundated with flooding from Hurricane Harvey on August 28, 2017 in Houston, Texas. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

People wait to be rescued from their flooded homes after the area was inundated with flooding from Hurricane Harvey on August 28, 2017 in Houston, Texas. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Texas’s minority and low-income communities have been disproportionately harmed by Hurricane Harvey, but you wouldn’t know it from following the coverage of America’s mainstream media outlets.

“Low-income families are more likely to live in flood-prone areas with deficient infrastructure.”
—Jeremy Deaton, ThinkProgress

As Neil deMause notes in an analysis for Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), “nearly 600,000 Harris County residents live below the poverty line,” yet “one had to read carefully between the lines” to find their stories told in any detail.

“Coverage of the poor during Harvey [has been] a bit better than in Katrina, but that’s not saying much,” deMause wrote on Twitter.

From the Associated Press to the New York Times, the national media has consistently shown its “blindspot for low-income victims,” deMause concludes.

But, as many have pointed out, it is low-income and minority communities that always bear the brunt of natural disasters like Hurricane Harvey.

“Hurricanes don’t care if you’re rich, poor, white, or black—but that doesn’t mean that every person is equally vulnerable to a storm,” observes Jeremy Deaton of ThinkProgress. “Low-income families are more likely to live in flood-prone areas with deficient infrastructure.”

Robert Bullard, professor of urban planning and environmental policy at Texas Southern University in Houston and “the father of environmental justice,” told Deaton that “low-income communities and communities of color don’t get the necessary protection when it comes to flood control. Generally, the way that the city has grown and the way that the housing and residential patterns have emerged have often been along race and class lines.”

Often these housing “patterns” didn’t merely emerge, but were the result of policies designed to “perpetuate segregation.”

Bullard goes on to note that Houston—which was hit particularly hard by Hurricane Harvey—”spends more on infrastructure in wealthier neighborhoods. That means bicycle lanes and jogging trails but also embankments that keep floodwaters at bay. Low-income communities tend to lack these features.”

“Rebuilding will be a long and painful process for people with so few resources.”
—Neena Satija and Kiah Collier, The Texas Tribune

Not only do these communities lack the some of the protective components of their rich counterparts. As Neena Satija and Kiah Collier of The Texas Tribune have noted, they also lack a social safety net to help them cope with the aftermath of the storm.

“Hundreds of families have been displaced from city-owned public housing complexes that flooded in the wake of Harvey,” Satija and Collier write, citing an adviser for the Houston Housing Authority. “Rebuilding will be a long and painful process for people with so few resources.”

Adding to these concerns is the fact that low-income communities in Houston are often also the site of major oil refineries and chemical facilities.

“For decades, Houston has been home to an immense concentration of chemical and plastics plants, oil and gas refineries, Superfund sites, fossil fuel plants, and wastewater discharge treatment plants,” Sierra Club has observed. “The overwhelming majority of these facilities were constructed in communities of color, only adding to the burden felt from this disaster. Now, in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, the threat posed by these facilities has been magnified.”

In an interview on Democracy Now! earlier this week, Dr. Bullard concluded that “when we talk about the impact of sea level rise and we talk about the impacts of climate change, you’re talking about a disproportionate impact on communities of color, on poor people, on people who don’t have health insurance, communities that don’t have access to food and grocery stores.”

Watch the full interview:

Democracy Now! “Dr. Robert Bullard: Houston’s “Unrestrained Capitalism” Made Harvey “Catastrophe Waiting to Happen”

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

Via Commondreams.org)

Each year, 2 to 16 percent of hydraulically fractured oil and gas wells spill hydrocarbons, chemical-laden water, hydraulic fracturing fluids and other substances, according to a study published yesterday in Environmental Science & Technology.

The analysis, which appeared February 21 in Environmental Science & Technology, identified 6 648 spills reported across Colorado, New Mexico, North Dakota and Pennsylvania during a 10-year period.

“This study provides important insights into the frequency, volume, and cause of spills,” said Lauren Patterson, policy associate at Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions and the study’s lead author.

Researchers examined state-level spill data to characterize spills associated with unconventional oil and gas development at 31 481 wells hydraulically fractured or “fracked” in the four states between 2005 and 2014.

“State spill data holds great promise for risk identification and mitigation,” Patterson said. “However, reporting requirements differ across states, requiring considerable effort to make the data usable for analysis.”

North Dakota reported the highest spill rate, with 4 453 incidents, followed by Pennsylvania at 1 293, Colorado at 476 and New Mexico at 426. The number of spills reported is partly a reflection of the reporting requirements set by each state. For example, North Dakota required reporting smaller spills (42 gallons or more) than Colorado and New Mexico (210 gallons or more).

“As this form of energy production increases, state efforts to reduce spill risk could benefit from making data more uniform and accessible to better provide stakeholders with important information on where to target efforts for locating and preventing future spills,” Patterson added.

The results of the study exceed the 457 spills calculated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for eight states between 2006 and 2012 because the EPA’s analysis only considered the hydraulic fracturing stage, rather than the full life cycle of unconventional oil and gas production.

“Understanding spills at all stages of well development is important because preparing for hydraulic fracturing requires the transport of more materials to and from well sites and storage of these materials on site,” Patterson said. “Investigating all stages helps to shed further light on the spills that can occur at all types of wells – not just unconventional ones.”

Fifty percent of spills identified in the Environmental Science & Technology article were related to storage and moving fluids via pipelines, although it was not always possible to determine the cause of the spill because some states explicitly required this data to be reported while others relied on narrative descriptions.

Across all states, the first three years of a well’s life, when drilling and hydraulic fracturing occurred and production volumes were highest, had the greatest risk of a spill. The study found that a significant portion of spills (from 26% in Colorado to 53% in North Dakota) occur at wells that experienced more than one spill, which suggests that wells where spills have already occurred merit closer attention.

“Analyses like this one are so important, to define and mitigate risk to water supplies and human health,” said Kate Konschnik, director of the Harvard Law School’s Environmental Policy Initiative. “Writing state reporting rules with these factors in mind is critical, to ensure that the right data are available – and in an accessible format — for industry, states and the research community.”

A data visualization tool of spill data contained in this study is available at http://snappartnership.net/groups/hydraulic-fracturing/webapp/spills.html

DATA: The data, as reported by the states, is all publicly available and accessible. It’s included in the supplemental information in the journal article and accessible at this link: https://knb.ecoinformatics.org/#view/doi:10.5063/F1TB14VK. Materials related to how the data was extracted for each state (http://pubs.acs.org/doi/suppl/10.1021/acs.est.6b05749/suppl_file/es6b05749_si_001.pdf) and a spreadsheet with calculations (http://pubs.acs.org/doi/suppl/10.1021/acs.est.6b05749/suppl_file/es6b05749_si_002.xlsx) is also available online at the same location. 

Source: Duke University / Nicholas Institute

Reference:

• "Unconventional Oil and Gas Spills: Risks, Mitigation Priorities and States Reporting Requirements" – L. Patterson, K. Konschnik, H. Wiseman, et. al. – Environmental Science & Technology (2017) – DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.05749.

Featured image: Visualizing spills data from unconventional oil and gas activity. Credit: Nicholas Institute/Duke University, SNAPP

Via The Watchers

At least seven Sikh temples opened their doors to evacuees.

"DO NOT TRAVEL NORTH TOWARD OROVILLE," was the message the Yuba County Office of Emergency Services blasted on its Twitter account Sunday.

It was the warning issued to the nearly 200,000 people in Northern California who were told to evacuate that day due to erosion of the emergency spillway in the nation’s tallest dam, the Lake Oroville Dam. In the wake of the evacuation order, several Sikh temples, or gurdwaras, in the area opened their doors to residents, providing blankets, shelter and meals.

Thousands of people from the counties of Yuba, Butte and Sutter scrambled from their homes Sunday night. Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg tweeted that people in the Yuba county area could seek shelter in at least seven local Sikh houses of worship in the area.

“We’re well-prepared,” Dr. Gurtej S. Cheema of Sacramento’s Capital Sikh Center told The Huffington Post. “We have meals, shelter. We can accommodate at least 50 people here.”

Amid the wake of the evacuations, Cheema’s gurdwara delivered enough bedding for 50 people to sleep at the temple and prepared hot tea and meals for them when they arrived.

Early Monday, authorities reported the risk from the dam was not as severe as initially warned, but residents remained evacuated, as a more thorough evaluation of the situation is underway.

The dam started to overflow after winter storms brought heavy waters to the area parched by drought for four years. But another major cause is the dam’s aging infrastructure.

“A 50-year-old person isn’t as robust as a 16-year,” Bob Bea, a professor emeritus of civil engineering at the University of California Berkeley told Mercury News. “And neither is a 50-year-old dam.

"Most of our infrastructure dates back to this time period. It’s now in its old age — the geriatrics phase — and we are still using a reactive approach to manage these systems," he continued. "We wait until we have a big problem. It is much more cost-effective and safe to be proactive than waiting to fix something after an infrastructure disaster.”

While environmental activists had pushed the federal government to cover the dam’s emergency spillway with concrete in 2005, the agency responsible for it, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, had refused to do so after the state Department of Water Resources and the State Water Contractors, a group of 27 water agencies, cited high costs.

“It’s a damn good idea to have an emergency spillway,” said Ron Stork, policy director with Friends of the River, a Sacramento environmental group. “But it’s cheaper to not pour concrete there.”

“It would be like if a few of the cables on the Golden Gate Bridge broke,” David Freyberg, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, added. “The bridge is designed for that, but you don’t want it sitting there broken, and it is going to take a while to fix it. I don’t think it is catastrophic. But they are going to have to watch it very closely.”

Via TeleSur

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Related video added by Juan Cole:

USA: “Oroville is a ghost town”

FEZ – The escalation of radicalism, violence, and civil wars in the Middle East since the so-called Arab Spring revolts began in 2010 has exacted a massive toll in human lives and welfare. The need to build effective states that support peace, provide greater opportunity and prosperity, and protect human rights could not be more urgent.

Already, the violence that has surged in the last few years has left more than 180,000 Iraqis and 470,000 Syrians dead. Moreover, 6.5 million Syrians have been internally displaced, and another 4.8 million driven from the country altogether. They have often been tortured in prisons and humiliated in refugee camps. An estimated 70-80% of the victims are civilians, most of them women and children.

As the US president-elect fills his administration, the direction of American policy is coming into focus. Project Syndicate contributors interpret what’s on the horizon.

In fact, according to the Syrian Center for Policy Research, half of the refugees and internally displaced people are under the age of 18. This has a major impact on their future prospects. UNICEF reports that 2.1 million children in Syria and 700,000 Syrian refugee children are out of school. A total of 80,000 child refugees in Jordan lack access to an education.

But all of these human costs are symptoms of a deeper problem – and, contrary to popular belief, that problem is not Islam. The fact that radical Islamists or jihadists are Muslim does not mean that their religion, not to mention their ethnicity or culture, is inherently violent.

Watching Western news, it is easy to see why so many blame Islam. From the brutality of the Islamic State (ISIS) in Syria and Iraq to the terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda to the stoning of adulterous women under Sharia law in Afghanistan, Middle East violence is almost always attributed to the religion. As a result, Islam is often viewed primarily as a threat.

But, as the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor explains, the real threat is not Islam itself, but “block thinking.” Islamic extremists comprise less than 0.5% of the global Muslim population, yet their worldview dominates media coverage not just of Islam, but also of political developments in the Middle East. By erasing the huge differences among Muslims, such coverage reinforces a single, simplistic perception of Islam. That is block thinking. And, as Michael Griffin documents in his book Islamic State: Rewriting History, such thinking is gaining ground in the United States and Europe.

As a result, many have embraced Samuel Huntington’s theory of a “clash of civilizations,” which assumes that Islam is at odds with modernity. But that assumption ignores the ideas and impact of Islam’s early reformers – figures like Muhammad Abduh and Jamaleddin al-Afghani – who continue to influence Muslims everywhere.

The most lasting impact of the first reformist wave was the establishment of a salafi (conservative traditionalist) movement, which came to regard the modern state as a means to improve the lot of Muslims. Today, Muslim thinkers – such as Iran’s Abdolkarim Soroush, Tunisia’s Tahar Haddad, Pakistan’s Fazlur Rahman, Morocco’s Fatema Mernissi, Egypt’s Qasim Amin, and Sudan’s Mahmud Muhammad Taha – continue to explore the connections between Islamic thought and modern values. While radical Islamists strongly oppose their work, these thinkers have had a huge influence on generations of Muslim intellectuals worldwide.

None of this is to say that religion does not play a role in Middle East violence. On the contrary, such violence – including sexual assault and arbitrary deprivation of individual and public freedoms – is widespread and multifaceted, owing to the combination of religious beliefs, cultural tradition, race and ethnicity, war, and politics that influences it. Even the recruitment of jihadist fighters can be viewed as a form of religion-based violence, much like child marriage and honor killings.

But none of that means that Islam is inherently violent. Resorting to fuzzy – and often bigoted – cultural, religious, or ethnic explanations is a recipe for ill-advised action, or no action at all.

What the Middle East needs are effective social and economic strategies and policies that tackle the complex non-religious reasons behind the violence – and its decidedly non-religious effects. While cultural, ethnic, and religious factors may need to be considered, they are not the main causes of unemployment and marginalization.

Middle Eastern governments must commit to pursuing bold and creative policies that address the inadequate education, high unemployment, and pervasive corruption that are helping to fuel violence and unrest in the region. Such efforts should aim to advance democratization, economic development, and the emergence of a strong civil society and progressive media. The key is not to “Islamize” every issue, but rather to develop real policy solutions that meet people’s needs.

Moha Ennaji is President of the South North Center for Intercultural Dialogue and Migration Studies in Morocco and Professor of Cultural Studies at Fez University. His most recent books include New Horizons of Muslim Diaspora in North America and Europe and Muslim Moroccan Migrants in Europe.

Licensed from Project Syndicate