The Syrian civil war has created one of the largest and most intense episodes of human suffering of the early twenty-first century.
Anger After Director Distances Israeli-Funded Film From Israel at Venice Film Festival ... - 0 views
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CIA director: The Middle East is the worst it's been in 50 years with 'unprecedented' b... - 0 views
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Turkey's Clumsy Politics and the Kurdish Question - 0 views
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This is an opinion piece written by Cegniz Aktar, Senior Scholar at the Istanbul Policy Center, a director at the UN, and one of the leading advocates of Turkey's integration into the EU. In this piece, Aktar argues that Turkish politician "fearing the birth of a Kurdish nation-state more than anything but eager on the other hand to assert their regional supremacy, are ending up by alienating all three Kurdish communities" in Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. He is referring specifically to President Ankara making a speech comparing the PKK to ISIL, a few days after stating that the PKK should be fighting ISIL rather than Turkey. Even though the Turkish government has been an economic partner of the Iraqi Kurds, they have offered them no military support, and have also preventing Turkish Kurds from joining the fight against ISIL. The Turkish government's fear of a sovereign Kurdish state is leading to extremely poor diplomatic outcomes.
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BBC News - #BBCtrending: Why George Orwell is trending in Egypt - 0 views
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George Orwell, the author of the famous novel 1984, is trending on Twitter after a student was arrested while carrying a copy of the book. Egyptian on social media seized on the perceived irony of the situation and a well known journalist remarked, "that the book is now more popular than ever in Egypt." The reports however may be false and the Giza Security Directorate, General Mahmoud Farouk says the novel had nothing to do with the arrest. Instead it is reported that the student was carrying materials supportive of the IS. The charges against the student remained unclear.
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CIA Knew Al Qaeda Involved in Benghazi from 'Get-go' - 1 views
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Schooling in a crisis: the case of Syrian refugees in Turkey - ODI HPN - 0 views
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Turkeys efforts to meet the needs of refugees have been spearheaded by the Afet ve Acil Durum Yonetimi Baskanligi
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majority of refugees are women and, especially, children; of the 200,000 refugees in Turkish camps, about 60% are children.
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t was left to him to find tents, wooden flooring, carpets and paving bricks, desks, chairs, drawing boards, teaching aids and, of course, textbooks
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he pre-school director in Islahiye Camp used empty office and storage space in the warehouse to house five rooms full of loud young children
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curricula are not recognised or sanctioned by the Turkish education authorities, and so licenced Turkish teachers cannot be assigned to them.
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Indeed, one source of tension between Syrian parents and the Turkish authorities has been the Syrian demand for special classes for advanced students whose preparations for university entrance exams were interrupted by the war.
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Syrian parents also tend to insist that their daughters wear headscarves (hijab) in public and in schools, while it is illegal for Turkish teenage girls to cover their hair at school.
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Tensions over the separation of the sexes, curriculum and language of instruction are compounded by the politics of Syrians refugee status
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y contrast, the Turkish government chose not to officially recognise the Syrians as refugees as defined by UNHCR, and did not ask UNHCR to register the newcomers as refugees.
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Even guests can outstay their welcome, and with no end in sight to the civil war and no prospect of a return of Syrians to Syria, Turks are beginning to question how long they can sustain their assistance. I
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une 2013 AFAD began accepting offers of financial and other aid from outside agencies, including UNHCR and the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).
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The schools developed in Syrian refugee camps in Turkey provide valuable models for establishing schools for rapidly growing refugee populations.
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The next critical challenge for Syrian education in Turkey is what to do with the growing number of Syrian teenagers who need to finish their high-school studies at accredited schools in order to compete for places at universities in Turkey or elsewhere.
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This was probably the most interesting article I have read about education in the MIddle East. It is from the "Humanitarian practice Network". This article is about Turkey and the Syrian refugees, who are not documented as refugees, and the growing desire for improvements to education. Right now, the education which is in place for Syrians is adequate for a temporary stay of preserving knowledge. It is not designed to be used long term, to advance students, or to prep them for universities. This article looks at those issues and tensions which are happening currently in Turkey
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Gender equality? It doesn't exist anywhere in the world - LA Times - 1 views
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t's been more than 100 years since the world began observing International Women's Day, and yet no country has achieved full gender equality.
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About two-thirds of countries in the developing world have achieved gender equality in primary education according to U.N. data, but the progress is less substantial at the secondary school level.
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In Africa and South Asia for example, boys remain 1.55 times more likely to complete secondary education than girls, according to World Bank data.
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Even when girls make it into the classroom they still “continue to face particular risk in chaotic conflict settings,”
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n Pakistan, for example, the Taliban has declared war on girls' education, and frequently attacks educational institutions
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“They don’t translate into greater equality in the labor market,” said Sarah Gammage, director of gender, economic empowerment and livelihoods at the International Center for Research on Women. “Around the world women have disproportionately been part of the informal economy.”
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hey are typically responsible for providing care services for family members, Gammage said. Other duties include child rearing, cooking, and other household chores. It is work for which they are not paid. Women perform three times more unpaid work than men, according to the U.N.’s 2015 Human Development Report.
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eing able to make decisions, such as voting, owning land, and deciding whom to marry “is where we see the most significant difference between the least developed and developed countries,” said Varia.
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In Saudi Arabia, women are not permitted to drive and cannot open bank accounts without their husbands' permissio
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Honor killings, the traditional practice that allows the slaying of a family member who is believed to have brought dishonor on a family, claims thousands of women’s lives every year in South and Central Asia.
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This article is a response to International Women's Day, saying that gender equality doesn't exist in the world. In the middle of the article, they show a chart of the gender gap between men and women. Egypt is last in the chart.
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This article goes into depth about the inequality in the Middle East which extends to today. This looks at the ideas of democratization which would promote higher education. Greater rights for women. and improve infant morality rates
Director-General condemns killing of Libyan journalist and activist Tawfiq Faraj Ben Sa... - 0 views
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Yemeni victims of U.S. military drone strike get more than $1 million in comp... - 1 views
www.washingtonpost.com/...4-8593-da634b334390_story.html
victims u s military strike compensation Yemen
shared by micklethwait on 19 Aug 14
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Kat Craig, a legal director for the group, said the records undermine U.S. claims “that the victims of this drone attack were anything other than civilians” and said the size of the payouts suggest that the Yemeni government — among the poorest in the Middle East — is being reimbursed by the United States.
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Video of woman giving birth at hospital doorstep triggers outcry in Egypt | Pakistan Today - 0 views
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appears to go into labour outside Kafr al-Dawar Public Hospital. Two nurses later run outside, duck under the sheet and emerge with a bab
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“When hospitals let women give birth in the street, it raises questions of government negligence, no matter how much the government flaunts its commitment to women’s rights,
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Egyptian healthcare system were high out-of-pocket expenses required from patients and low government spending,
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insisted that the hospital provide an ambulance, security officers removed the pregnant woman from the building and she went into labour while waiting for a taxi.
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“Look at the human rights here, where a woman has to give birth in the street when there’s a hospital right there
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“Those who were with the patient chose to have the baby outside in order to videotape it and defame the hospital.”
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Efua Dorkenoo fought against female genital cutting - The Globe and Mail - 0 views
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Dorkenoo started organizations to battle genital cutting and co-ordinated the effort more broadly as acting director of women’s health at the World Health Organization in the late 1990s.
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“She inspired a generation of feminists across the world to take up the cause of banning the procedure,
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Last year, the UN General Assembly voted unanimously to recognize female genital cutting as a human-rights violation.
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African-led organization she helped found, The Girl Generation: Together to End FGM, began work this month.
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teenage girls were less likely to have been cut than older women in half of the 29 countries in Africa and the Middle East where the practice is concentrated.
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In Egypt, where more women have been cut than in any other country, surveys showed that 81 per cent of 15- to 19-year-olds had undergone the practice, compared with 96 per cent of women in their late 40s.
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Female genital cutting involves pricking, piercing or amputating some or all of the external genitalia
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The World Health Organization says female genital cutting has no health benefits and can cause severe bleeding, problems urinating and, later in life, cysts, infections and infertility.
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125 million women living today in the countries where it is concentrated have experienced such cutting.
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The mother was so badly scarred, she said, that she could not deliver her baby through natural childbirth.
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Foundation for Women’s Health and Development to promote the health of African women and girls, with a focus on abolishing female genital cutting
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co-ordinated national action plans against female genital cutting in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Cameroon, Kenya, Somalia and Sudan.
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In 1994, Queen Elizabeth II named Ms. Dorkenoo an honorary officer in the Order of the British Empire.
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Everything you need to know about the drone debate, in one FAQ - The Washington Post - 0 views
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"drone" has come to refer to unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs), which are UAVs equipped with combat capabilities, most commonly the ability to launch missiles.
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Predators were deployed to Afghanistan almost immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and on Oct. 7, 2001 they conducted their first armed mission there.
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The current program is jointly administered by the CIA and the Joint Special Operation Command (JSOC).
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Predator drones can carry up to two Hellfire missiles. Those have warheads of about 20 pounds, which are designed to pierce tank armor;
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Reapers are another story. They feature a maximum payload of 3,000 pounds, or 1.5 tons. That means they can carry a combination of Hellfires and larger 500 pound bombs like the GBU-12 Paveway II and GBD-38 JDAM. Those have an "effective casualty radius" of about 200 feet.
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From 2008 through October 2012, there were 1,015 strikes in Afghanistan, 48 in Iraq, and at least 105 in Libya
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Primarily al-Qaeda and its affiliates. That includes al-Shaabab in Somalia, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (which works in Yemen), and the Haqqani Network in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
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Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born al-Qaeda operative in Yemen, was killed in a drone strike in 2011, as was his American-born 17-year-old son
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The National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) will prepare lists of potential targets, which will be reviewed every three months by a panel of intelligence analysts and military officials. They are then passed along to a panel at the National Security Council, currently helmed by CIA director nominee Brennan, and then to Obama for final approval.
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There is, however, substantial evidence that the percentage of casualties borne by civilians is much lower with drone strikes than with just about any other kind of military intervention
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It derives the authority for the strikes from the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) passed in the wake of 9/11, which grants the government broad powers against al-Qaeda.
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Critics, like UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, summary or arbitrary executions Christof Heyns, say that this defense is a stretch, and the killings plainly run afoul of the laws of war and international human rights treaties.
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Only the United States and the United Kingdom (which assists in the Pakistan drone effort) currently use drones in combat
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there are deeper doubts as to whether the strategy is recruiting more militants than it kills, by turning local populations against the United States.
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The question of succession in Saudi Arabia - 1 views
www.aljazeera.com/...arabia-201514122353911207.html
politics succession Saudi Arabia reform democrazation
shared by mjumaia on 25 Mar 15
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This Article explain how Saudi Arabia is moving toward Political succession and also talks about that Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al-Saud has passed away after nearly 10 years as the country's top leader. "King Abdullah isn't a reformer but a modernist. There's a difference," Ali Alyami, director of the Centre for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia, told Al Jazeera. He has empower saudi's women in so many ways. which is illustrated in toward the end of the article .
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Intelligence official: ISIS to attempt US attacks in 2016 - CNNPolitics.com - 0 views
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James Clapper, the director of National Intelligence, has warned that the US will face an attack by ISIL in 2016. This claim comes with the information that there are terrorist groups active in over 40 countries, and that last year "approximately five dozen" ISIL-related people were arrested in the US last year.
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US$70 Million to Support Higher Education Reforms and Improved Job Prospects for Gradua... - 0 views
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The World Bank Group’s Board of Executive Directors approved today a US$70 million project to address the high levels of unemployment among university graduates in Tunisia.
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he Tertiary Education for Employability Project will build on progress achieved in previous Bank projects in establishing quality assurance mechanisms and linking higher education institutions to the private sector
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Tunisia has an impressive record in promoting access to education. University enrollment jumped from 8 percent in 1990 to 35 percent in 2011.
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Security forces arrested 'fugitive terrorist affiliated to Muslim Brotherhood' - 0 views
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A security official declared Tuesday the criminal apparatus in Giza directorate arrested a fugitive terrorist, Mohamed Abdel Razek, affiliated to the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood group, according to the Ministry of Interior's statement. Many have been charged, sentences and killed from the Muslim Brotherhood, and this will be even more so enforced as many countries including the United States are calling them a terrorist organization.
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Palestinian PM urges ban on Israeli settlement products - 0 views
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Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah on Monday urged the European Union to ban Israeli settlement products from entering Europe. At a meeting with Christian Berger, director for Middle East at the European External Action Service, Hamdallah said the Israeli settlements are illegitimate under international law. UNHRC adopted a resolution to "blacklist" companies that operate in Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
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How long can Saudi Arabia afford Yemen war? - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East - 14 views
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long history of political animosity; this is a history that continues until our present day.
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Yemen's treasury was burdened by the costs of unification such as paying for southern civil servants to move to the new capital, Sanaa, and paying interest on its massive debt. On top of its other economic challenges, Yemen was to absorb the shock of 800,000 returnees and their pressure on the already weak job market. With their return, the estimated $350 million a month in remittances
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Civil war broke out in the summer of 1994 in what could be interpreted as a symptom of economic failure.
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By 1995 the Yemeni government implemented a program of macroeconomic adjustment and structural reforms with support from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund and reduced spending on defense and civil service and cut subsidies. The Yemeni economy started showing signs of recovery and stability.
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Masood Ahmed, director of the IMF’s Middle East and Central Asia Department, wrote in 2012 that “fiscal sustainability will be an issue” for Gulf Cooperation Council countries. In its 2012 regional economic outlook, the IMF recommended to “curtail current expenditures while protecting the poor” as a response to the risk of declining oil prices.
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Policies to cut spending were unlikely to be introduced in a monarchy like Saudi Arabia, especially after the Arab Spring, where tax-paying citizens along with non-tax-paying Bahrainis and next-door Yemenis went out on the streets to claim their rights in shaping the policies that govern their daily lives. The risk of people demanding more political rights was growing and cutting spending was not the optimal strategy for the kingdom.
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As the kingdom continued its generous fiscal policy by providing more benefits to its citizens in response to the people’s dissatisfaction with the economic and political situation, it ran a deficit of 3.4% of GDP in 2014 due to a fall in oil revenues.
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The kingdom's economic reforms of raising gas and diesel prices, cutting fuel subsidies in half and supporting the introduction of a GCC-wide value-added tax might ease the pressure of sustaining a war for nine months and perhaps longer. These structural reforms were long overdue and their introduction at this time is revealing.
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CIG pg. 120 -> "We live in a world with many layers of linkages between countries. Nations will exchange goods and services through trade and will engage in cross-border investments from bank loans to setting up businesses. Each of these linkages can serve as a transmission mechanism in a time of crisis."
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the political inclusion of the taxpaying citizen. It's a price the kingdom is now willing to pay, as we have seen Saudi women not only
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and suffered an uprising fueled by anger at economic failure. The Saudi economy is trying to absorb
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As they introduce revenue-collecting mechanisms, they should also reform mechanisms of capital transfer to the public to minimize the gap between the rich and the poor, as it is known that the poor are the most affected by tighter revenue-collecting policies. Otherwise, the Saudi war on Yemen will mark the beginning of an economic downturn that will surely spill over onto its political system in the long run.
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"So the young revolutionaries fight on, until all their demands are met and they are free to build their State: a state founded on social justice and equality between all citizens where Saleh's reign is just a page in the history books." pg 129
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CIG pg. 116 -> "Globalization, in the shape of freer trade and multinational investments, has been generally a force for good and economic prosperity. But it has also advanced, rather than harmed, social agendas"
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But it became apparent that Saleh was not going to leave me to my own devices. He declared war in mid-1994, occupying the South and defeating the Socialist Party. Everything was finished, or so I believed. Its property stolen by the regime, the paper shut down, and once more I found myself broken, defeated and without hope. Worse, I was a known employee of the Socialist Party through my work at the paper. In the region where I lived agents for the regime had been hunting down and detaining anyone who had belonged to the Socialist Party or getting them fired from their jobs. Although I had not been a party member myself, just worked at a party newspaper, the regime made no distinction. My mother intervened, however, and hid me. She wouldn't let me out of the house. My mother always protects me. (2013-12-31). Diaries of an Unfinished Revolution: Voices from Tunis to Damascus (p. 115). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
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Civil War: in 1994 Jamal currently in high school, describes the times as a world, when the color of his skin would define him. The Civil War, "interpreted as a symptom of economic failure", was evident in the reading when Jamal described the lack of jobs as a college graduate, members of the socialist party were completely shut out when Saleh took the presidency, depriving hard workers the ability to integrate into the economy.
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This paragraph, while not highlighted, is important to the idea of globalization and why the war is not stopping. There is a flow of revenue from these oil prices that Yemen is reliant on, but they are also competing with countries that produce higher amounts of oil. This would have happened during the time Sanaa was in College writing scathing articles
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