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In Running Dry, historian Toby Jones explores the various ways that modern society's unquenchable thirst for carbon-based energy is endangering water, particularly in the Western United States where there has been a rapid push to extract newfound energy resources alongside the accelerating loss or pollution of critical water resources

The world's water is under siege. A combination of corporate greed, the elite pursuit of political power, and our unrelenting reliance on carbon-based energy is accelerating a broad range of environmental and political crises. Potentially catastrophic climate change, driven primarily by the consumption of oil and gas, threatens the environment in a variety of ways, including producing unprecedented patterns of heavy weather and superstorms in some places and droughts in others. Alongside intensifying environmental dangers posed by our reliance on carbon energy, the conditions of modern life, from happiness to the possibility of democratic politics, are also being undermined. In Running Dry, historian Toby Craig Jones explores how modern society's unquenchable thirst for carbon-based energy is endangering the environment broadly, as well as the historical roots of this threat. This accessible book examines the history of the "energy-water nexus," the ways in which oil and gas extraction poison and dry up water resources, the role of corporate "science" in deflecting attention away from the emerging crises, and the ways in which the rush to capture more energy is also challenging America's democratic order

"Oil And Water, and the science and technology used to harness them, have long been at the heart of political authority in Saudi Arabia. Oil's abundance, and the fantastic wealth it generated, has been a keystone in the political primacy of the kingdom's ruling family. The other bedrock element was water, whose importance was measured by its dearth. Over much of the twentieth century, it teas through efforts to control and manage oil and water that the modern state of Saudi Arabia emerged." "The central government's power over water, space, and people expanded steadily over time, enabled by increasing oil revenues. The operations of the Arabian American Oil Company proved critical to expansion and to achieving power over the environment. Political authority in Saudi Arabia took shape through global networks of oil, science, and expertise. And, where oil and water were central to the forging of Saudi authoritarianism, they were also instrumental in shaping politics on the ground. Nowhere was the impact more profound than in the oil-rich Eastern Province, where the politics of oil and water led to a yearning for national belonging and to calls for revolution." "Saudi Arabia is traditionally viewed through the lenses of Islam, tribe, and the economics of oil. Desert Kingdom now provides an alternative history of environmental power and the making of the modern Saudi stare. It demonstrates how vital the exploitation of nature and the roles of science and global experts were to the consolidation of political authority in the desert."--BOOK JACKET

"Oil And Water, and the science and technology used to harness them, have long been at the heart of political authority in Saudi Arabia. Oil's abundance, and the fantastic wealth it generated, has been a keystone in the political primacy of the kingdom's ruling family. The other bedrock element was water, whose importance was measured by its dearth. Over much of the twentieth century, it teas through efforts to control and manage oil and water that the modern state of Saudi Arabia emerged." "The central government's power over water, space, and people expanded steadily over time, enabled by increasing oil revenues. The operations of the Arabian American Oil Company proved critical to expansion and to achieving power over the environment. Political authority in Saudi Arabia took shape through global networks of oil, science, and expertise. And, where oil and water were central to the forging of Saudi authoritarianism, they were also instrumental in shaping politics on the ground. Nowhere was the impact more profound than in the oil-rich Eastern Province, where the politics of oil and water led to a yearning for national belonging and to calls for revolution." "Saudi Arabia is traditionally viewed through the lenses of Islam, tribe, and the economics of oil. Desert Kingdom now provides an alternative history of environmental power and the making of the modern Saudi stare. It demonstrates how vital the exploitation of nature and the roles of science and global experts were to the consolidation of political authority in the desert."--Jacket

Intro -- Contents -- 1. The Nature of the State -- 2. Imperial Geology -- 3. The Dogma of Development -- 4. Engineering the Garden -- 5. The Black Gold Coast -- 6. The Wages of Oil -- 7. Nature's Retreat -- Epilogue: House of Wisdom -- Notes -- Acknowledgments -- Index.

For seven dramatic days in late November 1979, bloody street violence between state security forces and thousands of frustrated Shiites rocked the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. Sparked by the Saudi regime's brutal repression of those peacefully celebrating

Ashura—the annual mourning of the martyrdom of Imam Hussein—the fury resulted in an unknown number of dead and wounded. Among the destruction, demonstrators burned the British bank in Qatif as well as the offices of the Saudia National Airline. They destroyed state-owned vehicles, attacked police, raided the coast guard office in the village of al-

Awamiyya, seized weapons from soldiers, and even occupied the old city in downtown Qatif, from which they held off the Saudi military for days. One report relates that a group even burned a toy store owned by a government official. Women as well as men marched in anger. The security forces, which included 20,000 Saudi National Guard, cordoned off the major roadways, particularly those in Qatif, Sayhat, and Safwa to localize the protest, control the flow of information, as well as to prevent nearby oil facilities from being destroyed. Reports swirled that soldiers fired on virtually any public gathering of people, including at least one funeral procession in Safwa, forcing the mourners to flee and abandon the corpse in the street. State and hospital officials refused to release other bodies from the morgue for burial until the uproar quieted, leveraging the dead as blackmail. The National Guard relied on the heavy firepower of helicopter gun ships for crowd control, turning the area into a deadly conflict zone characterized by terror, hostility, and fear.

Kashavarzian, A.: The muslim world is not flat. - S. 5 Valbjorn, M. ; Bank, A.: Signs of a new Arab cold war : the 2006 Lebanon war and the Sunni-Shi'i divide. - S. 6-11 Harb, M.: Deconstucting Hizballah and its suburb. - S. 12-17 Deeb, L.: Louder than bombs. - S. 18-19 The Lebanese impasse : a roundtable disussion with Fawwaz Trabulsi and Elias Khoury. - S. 20-22 Visser, R.: Basra, the reluctant seat of "Shiastan". - S. 23-28 Jones, T.: Saudi Arabia's not so new anti-Shi'ism. - S. 29-32 Russell Jones, S.: The battle over family law in Bahrain. - S. 33-39

Langohr, Vickie: Experiments in multi-ethnic and multi-religious democracy. - S. 4-7 Zubaida, Sami: Communalism and thwarted aspirations of Iraqi citizenship. - S. 8-11 Meijer, Roel: The association of muslim scholars in Iraq. - S. 12-19 Jones, Toby: The Iraq effect in Saudi Arabia. - S. 20-25 Silverstein, Paul: States of fragmentation in North Asia. - S. 26-33 Alagha, Joseph: Hizballah after the Syrian withdrawal. - S. 34-39 Shaery-Eisenlohr, Roschanack: 'Ajamis in Lebanon: the non-Arab Arabs?. - S. 40-41 Bayat, Kaveh: The ethnic question in Iran. - S. 42-45

Enthält Rezensionen u.a. von: Alshamsi, Mansoor Jassem: Islam and political reform in Saudi Arabia, Alshamsi. - Abingdon : Routledge, 2011

Moghadam, Assaf: Introduction. - S. 1-21 Part I: Historical, doctrinal and religious context 1. Rahimi, Babak: The rise of Shia ideology in pre-revolutionary Iran. - S. 25-48 2. Menashri, David: Ayatollah Khomeini and the Velayat-e Faqih. - S. 49-69 Part II: Trends and patterns in the Shii heartland and beyond 3. Vakil, Sanam: Iran. - S. 73-94 4. Visser, Reidar: Iraq. - S. 95-111 5. Berti, Benedetta: Lebanon. - S. 112-134 6. Jones, Toby: Saudi Arabia. - S. 135-154 7. Abbas, Hassan: Pakistan. - S. 155-180 8. Williams, Brian Glyn: Afghanistan.- S. 181-200 9. Rabi, Uzi: Kuwait and Bahrain. - S. 201-216 Moghadam, Assaf: Conclusion: trends, types and drivers of militancy among Shiis. - S. 217-236