I love the podcast “Everything Everywhere Daily” Podcast. As the title implies it’s an omnivorous exploration of fascinating topics, often focusing on interesting places or pivotal moments in history. Most are approximately 10-minute summaries and for exploring more about the middle East, these podcasts would be a great place to explore further. The links are to Apple Podcasts, but you can listen/search for it on any podcast platform. As you explore topics in the Middle East, the list below is an excellent place to start. Choose one! See where it takes you.
NY Times image: A building destroyed by Israeli strikes in Gaza City on Saturday (Oct. 7)
I’m still piecing sources together, but this weekend (Oct 7, 2023) has opened the always simmering geopolitical tensions of the Middle East into full-blown war. 50 years after the Yom Kippur War of 1973, Gaza launched a series of coordinated, sustained attacks. Over 250 Israelis were killed with approximately the same number of Palestinians killed with thousands injured; civilians were targeted and some even taken hostage (mostly young women). The scene was especially brutal; the world watched Palestinians parade corpses in the streets to cheering crowds jarred the international community. There are so many angles, actors, victims, and perspectives. A shocking reaction was Iran’s Supreme Leader calling Israel a “cancerous tumor” to be destroyed on social media. The Abraham Accords were a seemingly bright prospect for peace in the Middle East, but always one that side-stepped Palestine as Israel sought to normalize diplomatic relations with their Arab neighbors. Hamas might have attacked to keep some from straddling the fence of doing business with Israel with publicly stating they are for Palestine. There are times I wish not to know the news, but this is too monumental and seismic a change in the status quo to look away.
The region of Nagorno-Karabakh has had ethnic, political, and cultural strife ever since the fall of the Soviet Union. In October 2023, Azerbaijan militarily took over the region prompting many ethnic Armenians to flee to Armenia. Since 1994, this was the event that Armenia was trying to prevent, but couldn’t.
“Omar Bongo became president in 1967, remaining at the helm until his death in 2009. His son, Ali Bongo, succeeded him, until Gen Ngeuma toppled him last month. In Gabon’s capital Libreville, [some] sees coup leader General Brice Oligui Ngeuma as a Moses-like figure who has unshackled the nation from the chains of his former boss – President Ali Bongo.” SOURCE: BBC
This is a bit of current affairs looking at the recent coup in Gabon and the personalities of the power players. However, this BBC article also gives a broad perspective at the same time, looking at topics such as French colonialism, Chinese influence in Africa, “big man politics,” resource extraction, and the importance of a diversified economy. In other words, this can be a nice case-study to explore a variety of important Sub-Saharan issues.
“The historic Hope Mill in Scituate will soon be torn down after it was deemed unsafe. The long-vacant mill, which officially shut down in 2006, and has been slowly decaying ever since. The former textile mill sits along the Pawtuxet River in the Hope Village Historic District, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.” SOURCE: WPRI
This story about this old mill being demolished (which is less than 2 miles from my residence) definitely hits close to home.
Growth and development are signs in the cultural landscape that show change in the economic landscape. So too are decline and decay. Mills used to dot the large, navigable rivers of southern New England, helping to shape a distinctive feature of Rhode Island landscapes. As energy technology and local economics shifted, these mills no longer are used to serve their original purpose to manufacture light textiles. Today many have been retrofitted to be condominiums, apartments, warehouses, retails space and all kinds of other land uses. Even with this creative use of existing infrastructure, many mills are underutilized or even become abandoned. After years of neglect, these types of building have a negative impact on the community as visible signs of disuse create a depressing ambience that signals communal decline.
When the Dutch wanted to expand their territories, they turned to the North Sea to create more arable land for Dutch farmers. Likewise, Singapore has reclaimed land to expand their territories. Over 95% of Egypt’s population live along the Nile River and its fertile delta, and the population (over 110 million people) continues to grow and is seeking new options. While this isn’t expanding into the sea, it is a type of land reclamation project as they environment is modified to make the desert bloom. Both of these embedded videos are helpful introductions to the political, economic, demographic, and environmental aspects of these projects in the Middle East.
FIGURE 1: The Central Valley is a highly modified agricultural landscape. SOURCE: Big Think
A few years ago, I was delighted to see an geographer’s rendition of what a satellite image of California would have looked if such a thing existed in the 1800s (figure 1). Back then the southern San Joaquin Valley was swampy wetland surrounding Lake Tulare, the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi River. In the late 1800s, canals and dams were created to divert water from the rivers that fed into the lake to go supporting agriculture and the metropolitan areas of California. As the very shallow lake dried up, the lakebed was converted into was converted to agricultural land, mainly under cotton cultivation.
Figure 2: The Tulare Watershed with dry lake beds that are refilling. Source: KVPR
California and much of the wast have had far more precipitation than expected on the heels of years of drought. The existing canals and reservoirs in the watershed are overflowing and the dry lake bed with fields is getting flooded again; water doesn’t care about what is there now, it just flows downhill. Enter the 2023 version of Tulare Lake flooding farmland, roads, railways, towns, and other expensive infrastructure.
While it won’t return to its historic levels with one year’s snowpack, it’s likely that 100,000 acres (150 sq. miles) of farmland will be under water for two years, possibly more. This is a relatively lightly populated region, but some cities like Corcoran, CA (22,000 people) are on the edge of the old lake bed and might need to be partially evacuated as levees have failed to stem the tide.
Agricultural companies and local towns are both trying to protect their lands from flooding to protect their infrastructure, equipment, homes, and people. At times, these goals are at odds with one another, and armed guards are protecting levees and hydrologic projects. Below are two videos that are good introductions to the topic of the reemergence of Lake Tulare.
Questions to Ponder: How has agriculture and urbanization modified your state’s geography? What are the positive impacts of these modifications? What are potential negative consequences of these modifications?
“If you look at maps of the Americas ranging from the 16th to the 20th centuries many of them have an island within the Gulf of Mexico called Bermeja…but on modern maps, it’s not there.” SOURCE: Geography Geek
Don’t be fooled by the click-bait nature of the embedded video title (of course the CIA didn’t make the island disappear), because this obscure topic is a nice entry into several geographic topics. In the Gulf of Mexico, the tiny island of Bermeja (Vermeia) was listed on maps from 1539 to 1922 as Mexican territory but simply on the strength of these old maps and 16th century maritime record. As oil exploration in the Gulf intensified, and with the passage of UNCLOS, Mexico wanted to claim as large an Exclusive Economic Zone as possible and even searched for this apocryphal island, but to no avail. This has led to two donut-hole gaps in the Gulf of Mexico between the US and Mexican EEZs, one that has be negotiated, and one that still remains to be determined. The island, or lack there of is insignificant, but there are 3 good geographic topics this highlights:
Cartographic errors that get repeated over centuries.
“Chinese individuals now see Singapore as the vessel that can navigate them through a series of expected storms. At the same time, they add, it is becoming an increasingly vital place for outposts of Wall Street and the global financial industry to interact with them. For many years, Singapore has liked to sell itself as the Switzerland of Asia. The new cold war, says one former top official, is finally turning that pitch into a reality. The big question, though, is how far Singapore will tolerate being Switzerland with Chinese characteristics.” SOURCE: Financial Times
Singapore is small, but it is strategically located and tightly linked to all the important players in the region. Singapore (about 75% ethnically Chinese) has played a role in Chinese migration and wealth and more Chinese companies are choosing Singapore as a base of operations. With many companies and countries leery about the Communist party, having a company operating out of Singapore is a safe bet for investors, so investors and Western partners are also choosing Singapore as a politically neutral safe haven for investors. This article nicely outlined the economic and geographic appeal of Singapore that has made it an economic powerhouse.
GEOGRAPHY EDUCATION 