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jreyesc

Pakistani Taliban pledges support to ISIL - Central & South Asia - Al Jazeera English - 0 views

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    The Taliban states that they fully support ISIL and their attempt to set up a "caliphate" in the Middle East. They set up a statement saying how much they supported them.
diamond03

This film will battle a global epidemic prevalent in Egypt: sexual harassment | Egyptia... - 0 views

  • Egypt:
  • sexual harassment
  • ‘Creepers on the Bridge’,
  • ...46 more annotations...
  • feeling of intimidation
  • Cairo
  • experience whe
  • n walking down Egyptian streets,
  • , The People’s Girls
  • issue of sexual harassment
  • perfect time to create a documentary that will analyze the causes, provide alternatives to traditional thought and document women fighting back in creative ways,” explained 22-year-old Colette Ghu
  • “Because we’re both frequently in the street alone, we both experience high levels of stares daily, as well as verbal harassment,
  • sexual harassment is still taboo in Cairo
  • to walk outside or take public transportation,
  • don’t want to deal with the intimidation and anxiety.
  • the United States, Latin America, Europe, South Asia- we’ve experienced various levels of sexual harassment.
  • three people with different views of sexual harassment and their daily lives surrounding the issue,
  • three Egyptians to reveal the extent of sexual harassment in Egypt and to get a better understanding of the issue,
  • Esraa is a 25-year-old Egyptian woman
  • challenges social norms by performing in storytelling theater pieces about sexual harassment
  • deters us
  • 8 out of 10 women experience sexual harassment in public transportation,
  • participating in anti-sexual harassment protests and events.”
  • members of society open up about their own experiences and perspectives.”
  • 99 percent of women in Egypt have faced sexual harassment.
  • degrees in higher education,
  • positive and negative ways
  • unfortunately become more widespread,
  • lack of police
  • gives harassers a sense of immunity
  • more commonplace and accepted.
  • President Sisi
  • police presence in the streets has increased, and more harassers have been brought to justice
  • Egyptian women have reached their boiling point in recent years, and inspired by the revolution, they have become a lot more outspoken
  • critics of Islam often end up blaming misogyny on religion.
  • sexual harassment is not specific to one religion.
  • here remains a common misbelief in the West that Egyptian, as well as all Arab women, are oppressed.
  • women in Egypt have been able to do basically anything a man can do
  • work and have a career
  • 2011 revolution had a big impact on the issue of sexual harassment,
  • high leadership roles
  • product of the news cycle following the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan
  • societal pressures for women to focus on getting married and starting a family.
  • very similar to the ones women in the West
  • no way means that all Egyptian men are harassers,
  • Arab or Muslim-specific issue.
  • a worldwide problem.”
  • two meanings that it has in Arabic
  • well-mannered, cultured, respectable girl,
  • “When people blame victims of sexual harassment, they often argue that if only the girl was a ‘people’s girl’ then she wouldn’t get harassed. The name is also an ode to all the girls and women of Egypt.”
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    Filmmakers are filming a film that talks about the sexual harassment issue that occurring in Egypt. Ninety-nine percent of women in Egypt have faced sexual harassment. It also shares the common misbeliefs that people believe due to American news. 
wmulnea

Islamic State gains Libya foothold - BBC News - 0 views

  • "It is a failed state. Unlike other countries in the region, it does not have a semblance of government. This makes it the most vulnerable,"
  • Moreover, Libya is rich in oil and, earlier this month, gunmen claiming to represent IS raided a French-run oil facility in al-Mabruk, south of Sirte city,
  • many IS-aligned fighters collect salaries from the Libyan state," Jason Pack, a researcher in Libyan history at the UK's Cambridge University, told the BBC.
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  • Mr Pack points out that the country has three main power blocks: Libya Dawn (a mixture of Islamist and non-Islamist militias allied with the Tripoli-based government), Operation Dignity (led by forces loyal to General Khalifa Haftar and allied with the internationally recognised government based in the eastern city of Tobruk) and Jihadist groups (which include IS, al-Qaeda and Ansar al-Sharia - the most powerful of them). "There is a civil war between the two main groups [Libya Dawn and Operation Dignity]. The jihadists act as spoilers," Mr Pack says.
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    BBC discusses the effect of IS and the current political state of Libya.
zackellogg

Can Social Media Save Egypt's Heritage Sites? - 1 views

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    The ancient heritage of the Middle East is being seriously damaged by the uprisings, revolutions and foreign occupations (i.e. US in Iraq and its aftermath). I was interviewed about this as it affects Egypt a year ago by a South Korean radio station, on the occasion of the thefts last summer of artifacts from the Malawi Museum...
cramos8

The Secret Life of an ISIS Warlord - 0 views

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    PANKISI GORGE, Georgia -The mother of martyrs, a woman in her fifties, is delicately beautiful and visibly in pain. She covers her hazel eyes and sobs over a photo album as the call to prayer echoes throughout the Georgian village of Jokolo, just south of the Chechen border.
sgriffi2

Interactive Chart - 0 views

This chart is useful because it is interactive and allows one to see in several different categories how women's rights compare in the Middle East, Europe, Asia and the Pacific, Sub-Sahara Africa, ...

#women #womensrights #egypt #global #world #humanrights #civilrights #feminism

started by sgriffi2 on 03 Mar 15 no follow-up yet
sgriffi2

Interactive Chart - 0 views

This interactive chart is useful because it is interactive and allows one to see in several different categories how women's rights compare in the Middle East, Europe, Asia and the Pacific, Sub-Sah...

#women #womensrights #egypt #global #world #humanrights #civilrights #feminism

started by sgriffi2 on 03 Mar 15 no follow-up yet
wmulnea

Oil and Terror: ISIS and Middle East Economies - 0 views

  • ISIS's economic cost is significant not just for Iraq but also other Middle Eastern countries.
  • Iraq has the fifth largest oil reserves in the world and third highest in the Middle East after Saudi Arabia and Iran.
  • Part of ISIS's rise in Iraq can be attributed to sectarian politics.
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • part of their dissatisfaction came from the distribution of oil revenues. 
  • The mismanagement of oil revenues is also manifest in Iraq's poor infrastructure
  • Though currently the Iraqi government has reserves and surplus funds, mounting expenditures and falling oil prices has economists to project that Iraq will run a deficit next year.
  • it is running a self-sustaining economy, making it the world's richest terror group.
  • Thankfully, 6 of 8 Iraq’s major oil fields lie in the Shia South, which is unlikely to come under ISIS control.
  • It sells crude at a steep discount, at a rate of USD $30 per barrel
  • Turkey runs a huge trade surplus with Iraq, which is likely to slow down dramatically due to lower demand from Iraq.
  • Jordan and Lebanon, which have both absorbed a large number of refugees.
  • Iran’s position seems to be the trickiest of all in that its interests align with those of the US in its fight against ISIS
  • Falling oil prices have definitely curtailed Iran’s ability to intervene without serious consequences for its economy. Iran needs oil prices well above USD $100 for it to balance its budget,
  • Any cooperation between Iran and the US over ISIS could lead to a gradual withdrawal of sanctions, which would allow Iran to sell its oil on the open market and generate revenue. The flip side is that Iran’s oil would surely depress oil prices further.
  • Saudi's allegiances have become muddled.
  • it finds its interests are aligned with those of Iran, a traditional foe, both of which are against ISIS.
  • Russia needs oil prices near USD $100 to balance its budget and Iran needs high oil prices to support its nuclear program.
  • Regionally, ISIS will disrupt and degrade the economy of several states, and that in turn may lead to further political chaos -- which is precisely ISIS's goal.
sgriffi2

US Department of State - 0 views

http://www.state.gov/s/gwi/rls/rem/2011/176643.htmThis source is testimony given by Melanne Verveer, Ambassador-at-large for Global Women's Issues, she gave a statement to the Subcommittees on Inte...

started by sgriffi2 on 14 Feb 15 no follow-up yet
sgriffi2

US Department of State - 0 views

http://www.state.gov/s/gwi/rls/rem/2011/176643.htmThis source is testimony given by Melanne Verveer, Ambassador-at-large for Global Women's Issues, she gave a statement to the Subcommittees on Inte...

started by sgriffi2 on 14 Feb 15 no follow-up yet
fcastro2

Turkish Military Evacuates Soldiers Guarding Tomb in Syria - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • The Turkish Army sent armored troops deep into Syria late Saturday on a rescue mission, to recover the remains of a major historical figure and to evacuate the guards at his besieged tomb
  • The tomb of Suleyman Shah, grandfather of the founder of the Ottoman Empire, is 20 miles south of the Turkish border, but it has been considered Turkish territory under a 1921 treaty with France
  • there were no clashes during the mission and only one casualty, a soldier who was killed in an accident
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • He said Turkey notified the Syrian government, rebel leaders and the coalition forces fighting the Islamic State about the operation.
  • 572 troops, 39 tanks, 57 armored vehicles and 100 other vehicles were involved
  • Turkish flag was lowered, and the tomb and security station were destroyed to prevent any possible use by extremists.
  • operation was prompted by the chaos and instability in Syria
  • clashes were likely to erupt nearby between forces of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, and Kurdish troops known as pesh merga, and that the tomb could become a target.
  • “The Suleyman Shah tomb has been a point of vulnerability for Turkey for a long time, and with this operation, such weakness has been eliminated
  • crisis discouraged Turkey from joining the United States-led military coalition conducting strikes against the Islamic State, though Turkey has cooperated with the United States in other ways,
  • in accordance with the 1921 treaty, a new tomb for Suleyman Shah was being established in a part of Syria that is under Kurdish control
  • when conditions in Syria permitted, the tomb would be moved back again to the site that was evacuated, near the village of Karakozak
  • Tensions have mounted around the tomb since March, when the Islamic State took control of the surrounding area and began threatening to destroy the tomb unless guards there lowered the Turkish flag.
  • The militant group raided Turkey’s consulate in Mosul, Iraq, last June and seized 46 Turks and 3 Iraqis as hostages; they were released three months later on terms that were not disclosed
  • “The Islamic State could have used the presence of the tomb as leverage in case of any confrontation with Turkey
  • Turkey has lobbied intensively for international military action in Syria, including no-fly zones and a presence on the ground to strengthen the more moderate Syrian rebel groups who are fighting both the extremists and the Syrian government.
  • Syrian government issued a statement on Sunday calling the military operation a “flagrant aggression” because Turkey did not wait for permission from Damascus to mount i
  • The Kurds were aided by airstrikes and other support from the American-led coalition
  • Mr. Ulgen, the analyst, said the choice of route was a sign of some improvement in relations between the Turkish government in Ankara and the Syrian Kurds, whom the Turks have regarded with deep suspicion.
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    The Turkish government recently went into an extremist-controlled territory in order to evacuate a tomb of a major historical figure, and the soldiers who guarded it. The safe passage of this mission has shown that the relations between Turkey and Syria have gotten a bit better. 
fcastro2

Syrian aircraft bomb area near captured Jordan crossing | Reuters - 0 views

  • Syrian military aircraft bombed areas close to its main crossing into Jordan on Thursday, witnesses and a group monitoring the conflict said, hours after insurgents had captured the border post
  • Insurgents fighting the government of President Bashar al-Assad said they had seized the Nasib crossing in southern Syria late on Wednesday, putting most of 370-km (230-mile) border area stretching up to Israel in the hands of the rebels
  • weaken the regime's hold in the south and to increase the areas under our control
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • he al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front also said it had captured the crossing but rival rebels denied this and accused them of looting after the crossing fell into rebel hands.
  • Jordan closed its side of the crossing on Wednesday. A Jordanian source said on Thursday the kingdom had stepped up security and redeployed some troops to the border
  • The Syrian army, which accuses the staunch U.S. ally of harboring rebels on its soil, said the kingdom had deployed its troops inside the crossing after the rebels took control. Amman denies providing training and arms for the insurgents
  • ordan has pressured rebels in the past not to overrun the Nasib crossing so the highway could stay open to trade and traffic with Damascus
  • Nasib, one of Syria's last official border crossings, is now crucial for importing goods into a country hit hard by Western sanctions
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    Tensions are rising even higher as the Syrian government take actions to regain the crossing to Jordan. This crossing was lost to the rebels not long ago and has closed an important crossing. 
mharcour

Apartheid in Israel - 0 views

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    In response to remarks made by Secretary of State, John Kerry, this LA Times article examines the claims of apartheid in Israel and offers evidence in support of it.
wmulnea

Libya's civil war: That it should come to this | The Economist - 3 views

  • It is split between a government in Beida, in the east of the country, which is aligned with the military; and another in Tripoli, in the west, which is dominated by Islamists and militias from western coastal cities
  • Benghazi is again a battlefield.
  • The black plumes of burning oil terminals stretch out over the Mediterranean.
  • ...69 more annotations...
  • Libya looked like the latest fragile blossoming of the Arab spring
  • Army commanders, mostly of Arab Bedouin origin, refused orders to shoot the protesters
  • the revolutionaries cobbled together a National Transitional Council (NTC) claiming to represent all of Libya
  • Volunteers from students to bank managers took up arms, joining popular militias and only sometimes obeying the orders of defecting army commanders trying to take control
  • In August Western bombing of government bases surrounding Tripoli cleared an avenue for the revolutionaries to take the capital.
  • Recognised abroad, popular at home and enjoying the benefits of healthy oil revenues—97% of the government’s income—the NTC was well placed to lay the foundations for a new Libya
  • he judges, academics and lawyers who filled its ranks worried about their own legitimacy and feared confrontation with the militias which, in toppling Qaddafi, had taken his arsenals for their own.
  • militia leaders were already ensconced in the capital’s prime properties
  • The NTC presided over Libya’s first democratic elections in July 2012, and the smooth subsequent handover of power to the General National Congress (GNC) revived popular support for the revolution.
  • Islamist parties won only 19 of 80 seats assigned to parties in the new legislature, and the process left the militias on the outside
  • The Homeland party, founded by Abdel Hakim Belhad
  • tried to advertise its moderation by putting an unveiled woman at the head of its party list in Benghazi
  • The incumbent prime minister, Abdurrahim al-Keib, a university professor who had spent decades in exile, fretted and dithered
  • He bowed to militia demands for their leaders to be appointed to senior ministries, and failed to revive public-works programmes
  • which might have given militiamen jobs
  • Many received handouts without being required to hand in weapons or disband, an incentive which served to swell their ranks
  • the number of revolutionaries registered with the Warriors Affairs Commission set up by the NTC was about 60,000; a year later there were over 200,000. Of some 500 registered militias, almost half came from one city, Misrata.
  • In May 2013 the militias forced parliament to pass a law barring from office anyone who had held a senior position in Qaddafi’s regime after laying siege to government ministries.
  • In the spring of 2014, Khalifa Haftar, a retired general who had earlier returned from two decades of exile in America, forcibly tried to dissolve the GNC and re-establish himself as the armed forces’ commander-in-chief in an operation he called Dignity
  • The elections which followed were a far cry from the happy experience of 2012. In some parts of the country it was too dangerous to go out and vote
  • Such retrenchment has been particularly noticeable among women. In 2011 they created a flurry of new civil associations; now many are back indoors.
  • Turnout in the June 2014 elections was 18%, down from 60% in 2012, and the Islamists fared even worse than before
  • Dismissing the results, an alliance of Islamist, Misratan and Berber militias called Libya Dawn launched a six-week assault on Tripoli. The newly elected parliament decamped to Tobruk, some 1,300km east
  • Grasping for a figleaf of legitimacy, Libya Dawn reconstituted the pre-election GNC and appointed a new government
  • So today Libya is split between two parliaments—both boycotted by their own oppositions and inquorate—two governments, and two central-bank governors.
  • The army—which has two chiefs of staff—is largely split along ethnic lines, with Arab soldiers in Arab tribes rallying around Dignity and the far fewer Misratan and Berber ones around Libya Dawn.
  • Libya Dawn controls the bulk of the territory and probably has more fighters at its disposal.
  • General Haftar’s Dignity, which has based its government in Beida, has air power and, probably, better weaponry
  • the Dignity movement proclaims itself America’s natural ally in the war on terror and the scourge of jihadist Islam
  • Libya Dawn’s commanders present themselves as standard-bearers of the revolution against Qaddafi now continuing the struggle against his former officers
  • Ministers in the east vow to liberate Tripoli from its “occupation” by Islamists, all of whom they denounce as terrorists
  • threatens to take the war to Egypt if Mr Sisi continues to arm the east. Sleeping cells could strike, he warns, drawn from the 2m tribesmen of Libyan origin in Egypt.
  • Yusuf Dawar
  • The struggle over the Gulf of Sirte area, which holds Libya’s main oil terminals and most of its oil reserves, threatens to devastate the country’s primary asset
  • And in the Sahara, where the largest oilfields are, both sides have enlisted ethnic minorities as proxies
  • ibya Dawn has drafted in the brown-skinned Tuareg, southern cousins of the Berbers; Dignity has recruited the black-skinned Toubou. As a result a fresh brawl is brewing in the Saharan oasis of Ubari, which sits at the gates of the al-Sharara oilfield, largest of them all.
  • Oil production has fallen and become much more volatile
  • oil is worth half as much as it was a year ago
  • The Central Bank is now spending at three times the rate that it is taking in oil money
  • The bank is committed to neutrality, but is based in Tripoli
  • Tripoli may have a little more access to cash, but is in bad shape in other ways
  • Fuel supplies and electricity are petering out
  • Crime is rising; carjacking street gangs post their ransom demands on Twitter
  • In Fashloum
  • residents briefly erected barricades to keep out a brigade of Islamists, the Nuwassi
  • “No to Islamists and the al-Qaeda gang” reads the roadside graffiti
  • Libya’s ungoverned spaces are growing,
  • Each month 10,000 migrants set sail for Europe
  • On January 3rd, IS claimed to have extended its reach to Libya’s Sahara too, killing a dozen soldiers at a checkpoint
  • The conflict is as likely to spread as to burn itself out.
  • the Western powers
  • have since been conspicuous by their absence. Chastened by failure in Afghanistan and Iraq, they have watched from the sidelines
  • Obama washed his hands of Libya after Islamists killed his ambassador
  • Italy, the former colonial power, is the last country to have a functioning embassy in Tripoli.
  • Even under Qaddafi the country did not feel so cut off
  • Dignity is supported not just by Mr Sisi but also by the United Arab Emirates, which has sent its own fighter jets into the fray as well as providing arms
  • The UAE’s Gulf rival, Qatar, and Turkey have backed the Islamists and Misratans in the west
  • If oil revenues were to be put into an escrow account, overseas assets frozen and the arms embargo honoured he thinks it might be possible to deprive fighters of the finance that keeps them fighting and force them to the table
  • Until 1963 Libya was governed as three federal provinces—Cyrenaica in the east, Fezzan in the south and Tripolitania in the west
  • The old divisions still matter
  • the marginalised Cyrenaicans harked back to the time when their king split his time between the courts of Tobruk and Beida and when Arabs from the Bedouin tribes of the Green Mountains ran his army
  • Tensions between those tribes and Islamist militias ran high from the start.
  • July 2011 jihadists keen to settle scores with officers who had crushed their revolt in the late 1990s killed the NTC’s commander-in-chief, Abdel Fattah Younis, who came from a powerful Arab tribe in the Green Mountains. In June 2013 the Transitional Council of Barqa (the Arab name for Cyrenaica), a body primarily comprised of Arab tribes, declared the east a separate federal region, and soon after allied tribal militias around the Gulf of Sirte took control of the oilfields.
  • In the west, indigenous Berbers, who make up about a tenth of the population, formed a council of their own and called on larger Berber communities in the Maghreb and Europe for support
  • Port cities started to claim self-government and set up their own border controls.
  • Derna—a small port in the east famed for having sent more jihadists per person to fight in Iraq than anywhere else in the world
  • opposed NATO intervention and insisted that the NTC was a pagan (wadani) not national (watani) council
  • Some in Derna have now declared their allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the caliph of the so-called Islamic State (IS) in Syria and Iraq.
  • In December the head of America’s Africa command told reporters that IS was training some 200 fighters in the town.
aavenda2

Saudis begin strikes, crude oil spikes - South Bend Tribune: Business - 0 views

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    This article provides a closer look at the actual conflicts that are taken place in Yemen & Saudi, but more importantly, their effects on the recent price spike of oil prices.
ccfuentez

23 nations blacklisted for human trafficking - 0 views

  • The U.S. State Department has blacklisted 23 countries for failing to even try to meet minimum standards in fighting human trafficking
  • Blacklisted by the State Department are Algeria, Belarus, Belize, Burundi, the Central African Republic, Comoros, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Iran, North Korea, Kuwait, Libya, the Marshall Islands, Mauritania, Russia, South Sudan, Syria, Thailand, Yemen, Venezuela and Zimbabwe.
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    Of the 23 nations that were blacklisted in August of 2015, Algeria makes the list. Of the nations who were blacklisted as failing to meet minimum standards in fighting human trafficking, they are ranked from an economic perspective in the form of "tiers."
blantonjack

Syrian army gains in north and south; two rebel-held towns agree to cease-fire - 0 views

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    As the Syrian army pushes toward the Turkish border in the north, the government is also achieving major gains in strategic southern Syria near the Jordanian frontier. Aided by Russian airstrikes. Syrian officials have vowed to close off the Turkish and Jordanian borders, long crucial conduits
jherna2a

Yemen: A Land with a Rich Past and a Poor Present - 0 views

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    This article goes briefly over the history of the Yemen and gives information on the present conflict. The future of this country looks grim as the war between the Shiites in the north and Sunnis in the south will divide the country.
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