Brazilian President Michel Temer has removed the protected status of a vast tract of the Amazon in order to open it up to mining. The national reserve – known as Renca – in the states of Amapá and Pará, covers 46,000 sq km (about the size of Denmark) and is rich in deposits of copper and gold. With Brazil emerging from a deep recession, the government insists that opening up the Amazon is necessary to attract foreign investment and boost exports – an argument that has cut no ice with environmentalists. “The abolition of Renca will wreak havoc on the forest and indigenous communities in the interests of the small group of economically powerful groups who are keeping Temer in power,” said Christian Poirier of Amazon Watch. (The Week, 1 Sept 2017).

This will also do absolutely nothing for the teeming crowds of poor people, jobless and living in the slums of the big cities, desperate people who, if they are lucky and have the money to do so, are leaving their homeland and trying to find jobs in the US or Europe.  One of the world’s most corrupt political crowd are doing this for the presumed personal and party backhanders.  It was this sort of thing that Epicurus warned us never to get involved with, but he never told us not to protest it.  Not even the last corrupt Brasilian government (as far as I know, although it wouldn’t surprise me) thought of destroying this huge area of the Amazon, and on this specious excuse. What is becoming of the world with so many disagreeable political regimes in power?

Apologies for posting this late, I’ve been very busy all day. This will be the last of the Best of the Week series for the time being. It has been really enjoyable and interesting responding to various news articles, whether briefly to a selection of articles, or analysing one or two in more detail. But I really want to be more creative on this blog, so I’ll be doing more original posts on Sundays. Also, I’ll be posting more about Iran and the Middle East over the coming months, largely because I’m taking a module on Iranian history at university. 

We’re very critical of Saudi Arabia here on the Epicurus Blog. Only yesterday, Robert wrote an excellent piece on how the Saudis are increasing water shortages in Arizona by driving up food production there, instead of growing food locally. We strongly disapprove of the Saudi interpretation of Islam, Wahhabism, which roots out individual freedom and is often the ideological backbone of many terrorist organisations. Nor do we find favour with the Saudi bombing of Yemen, which has resulted in extraordinarily high civilian casualties. Saudi Arabia is one of the most authoritarian and oppressive societies on earth- it’s demise is all but inevitable in our view.

So it makes little sense for the governments of the West to give the Saudis such strong support. They don’t share our values or promote Western interests. They’re a declining power. And their hostility to Iran is driven by the Sunni-Shia divide and a rivalry for influence in the Middle East, not a benign opposition to Iranian-sponsered terror, and certainly not for a love of Israel.

The common defence of the NATO-Saudi alliance is as follows. Saudi Arabia provides us with key intelligence we need to defeat terrorists. We need their oil, or at the very least, we need global oil prices to stay low. And we need the Saudis to oppose Iran and the Iranian desire to spread Islamism across the Middle East.

Personally I don’t buy any of that. Saudi intelligence may be somewhat useful, but far more intelligence comes from Israel and Jordan. We don’t actually buy much oil directly from the Saudis, so even if global oil prices were to spike in the event of our alliance ending, our supply of oil would remain intact. With the rise of renewables, the days of oil are numbered. And I don’t believe that Islamist governments are all that much worse than secular dictatorships. The regimes of Saddam Hussein, Gadaffi and Assad have been just as cruel as the Iranian government. In fact, Islamist governments tend to have more popular support and sympathy than secular dictatorships because at least in theory they base their policies on the Qu’ran- which resonates with any Muslim-majority nation.

So if Saudi Arabia isn’t worthy of Western backing, what should our Middle East policy be? For John Bradley, the obvious answer is to ally ourselves with Iran. https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/09/forget-our-misguided-friendship-with-saudi-arabia-iran-is-our-natural-ally/pugpig_index.html Although Iran is an authoritarian regime, it it fundamentally different to Saudi Arabia insofar as it does not try to export its ideology. Shia militias like Hezbollah, while aggressive and unstabilising, do not pose an existential threat to the West the way Sunni extremists like ISIS and Al-Qaeda do. Rather, Iran has done far more to fight groups like ISIS than Saudi Arabia, largely because it is willing to commit boots on the ground and not just funding.

To an extent, the West’s alienation of Iran has been driven by Israel’s disproportionate influence on our foreign policy. Israel sees Iran as mortal enemy. For the most part, this is justified- Iran has repeatedly promise to annihilate Israel. But frightening as that sounds, Iran will not be able to destroy Israel, even if it acquires nuclear weapons. Israel is already a nuclear power, Iran is rational enough not to risk MAD. What the pro-Iran scholars overlook is Iran’s support for Hamas and Hezbollah, both of which want to destroy Israel and have actively engaged war with the country, mostly because of an ideological opposition to Israel’s existence. So if we want to ally ourselves with Iran, we must be prepared for significantly worsened relations with Israel, even if the rabidly anti-Iran Netanyahu administration were to be replaced by a Zionist Union-led government.

Overall, I agree entirely with Bradley’s critique of Saudi Arabia. I also sympathise with his opprobrium of Western foreign policy more broadly. But I wouldn’t go as far as to endorse a formal alliance with Iran. I certainly approve of the Iran deal, which is a far more effective way of preventing a nuclear Iran than any other means. Israel and Saudi Arabia need to realise that due to its economy and population size, Iran will inevitably be a regional power. What the West and Israel need is a policy of containment- both towards Saudi Arabia and Iran. We should have good diplomatic relations with both countries, while preventing either one from dominating the Middle East. This approach would be much like Britain’s policy towards Europe in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In a region where no major power shares our values, a moderate, pragmatic approach is best.

It was water scarcity that destabilized Syria, sparked a war, and sent more than 1 million refugees fleeing into Europe. Analysts have attributed the Arab Spring revolutions in several countries to shortages of water, and thus grain and rapidly rising food prices, pushing about 150 million people into poverty, according to the World Bank.   Now, water shortages are spreading to the United States.

n 2008 King Abdullah, in order to maintain the  political stability of Saudi Arabia, stopped the production of wheat and other water-intensive crops such as hay, and directed Saudi food companies to search overseas for farmland with access to freshwater.  He  promised to subsidize their operations.

Almarai, which is Saudi Arabia’s largest dairy company,  bought land in Arizona in 2015, and  began pumping up billions of gallons of water in the Arizona desert to grow hay and wheat, which it exports back to the Middle East. Analysts refer to this as exporting “virtual water.” It is more cost effective to use the Arizona water to irrigate land in America and ship the hay to Saudi Arabia rather than filling a fleet of oil tankers with the water.   Arizonans living near Almarai’s hay operation say their groundwater is dropping fast as the Saudis and other foreign companies increase production. They are now worried their domestic wells might suffer the same fate as those in Syria and Yemen.

In January, more than 300 people attended a meeting in rural La Paz County, Ariz., to listen to the head of the state’s water department discuss how long their desert aquifer would last. Five sheriff’s deputies stood guard at the event to ensure the meeting remained civil.   Thomas Buschatzke, Arizona’s water director, defended the Saudi farm, saying it provides jobs and increases tax revenue. He added that “Arizona is part of the global economy; our agricultural industry generates billions of dollars annually to our state’s economy.”

But state officials admit they don’t know how long the area’s water will last, given the increased water pumping, and announced plans to study it.  (A precis of an article by Nathan Halverson, April 11, 2016)

What is at the root of all this, aside from global climate change?   Population growth, the one subject that no one will talk about,  religious denominations in particular.   There is massive, unrestrained growth in population, particularly in hot, waterless moslem countries. It isn’t just bad governance they suffer from, but lack of family planning and freedom of women to choose how many children they have.  For those who think that too many people have no affect on water resources and food, don’t complain about massive migrations and an increasing number of wars,