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katelynklug

Egypt's youth 'have had enough' - 0 views

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    Though many of the youth leaders who participated in the 2011 revolution are in prison, youth-driven political campaigns will continue under President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. A new movement that has risen, called the "We have had enough" campaign has several demands from the Egyptian youth. These include holding accountable anyone who was involved in killing any Egyptian, a debate about implementing separation of powers, setting minimum and maximum wages, and amending the protest law. These demands have led the state to release some of the prisoners of conscience, in an attempt to prevent any chaos before parliamentary elections. A similar movement, called the Dhank movement, arose in protest of the living conditions for the poorest Egyptians. The leaders of this movement encourage protests like refusing to pay electric bills because of a lack of service. The activists describe the need for the Dhank movement coming from Sisi's poor treatment of the lower class that included removal of subsidies and raising prices of commodities. The "We have had enough" campaign spokesman says they insist on the implementation of 14 human rights amendments. He ends by reiterating the consistent suspicion the youth groups have of the state and a lack of confidence that their demands will be met. This shows that there is no clear strategy or realistic possibility to ending the tension between youth groups and the state.
mwrightc

ISIS' Astounding Views of Jesus and the End Times - Charisma News - 0 views

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    ISIS has huge motivations about the end times that are pushing them forward in their fight for a pure Muslim culture around the world. They believe that two towns in Syria that they now hold as there own are the location for the looming final battle of the apocalypse.
fcastro2

Russia to host Syria talks in April | News , Middle East | THE DAILY STAR - 0 views

  • MOSCOW: Moscow said Thursday it would host talks between representatives of Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime and opposition figures in April, three months after a meeting between the parties which ended without any concrete results.
  • Moscow - one of Assad's few remaining allies - is trying to kickstart dialogue between the warring parties in a bid to end nearly four years of civil war that has claimed more than 200,000 lives since 2011
  • Two rounds of talks in Geneva ended without success, the last of which took place in February 2014.
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  • The document stipulates that a solution to the conflict should be found "politically and peacefully," rejects foreign interference and calls for sanctions to be lifted.
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    Moscow continues to push for peace talks between all the oppositions groups and the Syrian government. Russia believes that the best way to have peace is to avoid foreign interference and they call for sanctions to be lifted. 
fcastro2

A daring plan to rebuild Syria - no matter who wins the war - Ideas - The Boston Globe - 0 views

  • The first year of Syria’s uprising, 2011, largely spared Aleppo, the country’s economic engine, largest city, and home of its most prized heritage sites. Fighting engulfed Aleppo in 2012 and has never let up since, making the city a symbol of the civil war’s grinding destruction
  • Rebels captured the eastern side of the city while the government held the wes
  • , residents say the city is virtually uninhabitable; most who remain have nowhere else to go
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  • In terms of sheer devastation, Syria today is worse off than Germany at the end of World War II
  • ven as the fighting continues, a movement is brewing among planners, activists and bureaucrats—some still in Aleppo, others in Damascus, Turkey, and Lebanon—to prepare, right now, for the reconstruction effort that will come whenever peace finally arrives.
  • In a glass tower belonging to the United Nations’ Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, a project called the National Agenda for the Future of Syria has brought together teams of engineers, architects, water experts, conservationists, and development experts to grapple with seemingly impossible technical problems
  • It is good to do the planning now, because on day one we will be ready,”
  • The team planning the country’s future is a diverse one. Some are employed by the government of Syria, others by the rebels’ rival provisional government. Still others work for the UN, private construction companies, or nongovernmental organizations involved in conservation, like the World Monuments Fund
  • As the group’s members outline a path toward renewal, they’re considering everything from corruption and constitutional reform to power grids, antiquities, and health care systems.
  • Aleppo is split between a regime side with vestiges of basic services, and a mostly depopulated rebel-controlled zone, into which the Islamic State and the Al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front have made inroads over the last year
  • The population exodus has claimed most of the city’s craftsmen, medical personnel, academics, and industrialists
  • It took decades to clear the moonscapes of rubble and to rebuild, in famous targets like Dresden and Hiroshima but in countless other places as well, from Coventry to Nanking. Some places never recovered their vitality.
  • Of course, Syrian planners cannot help but pay attention to the model closest to home: Beirut, a city almost synonymous with civil war and flawed reconstructio
  • We don’t want to end up like Beirut,” one of the Syrian planners says, referring to the physical problems but also to a postwar process in which militia leaders turned to corrupt reconstruction ventures as a new source of funds and power
  • Syria’s national recovery will depend in large part on whether its industrial powerhouse Aleppo can bounce back
  • Across Syria, more than one-third of the population is displaced.
  • Today, however, the city’s water and power supply are under the control of the Islamic State
  • The city’s workshops, famed above all for their fine textiles, export millions of dollars’ worth of goods every week even now, and the economy has expanded to include modern industry as well.
  • A river of rubble marks the no-man’s land separating the two sides. The only way to cross is to leave the city, follow a wide arc, and reenter from the far side.
  • Parts of the old city won’t be inhabitable for years, he told me by Skype, because the ground has literally shifted as a result of bombing and shelling
  • The first and more obvious is creating realistic options to fix the country after the war—in some cases literal plans for building infrastructure systems and positioning construction equipment, in other cases guidelines for shaping governanc
  • They’re familiar with global “best practices,” but also with how things work in Syria, so they’re not going to propose pie-in-the-sky idea
  • If some version of the current regime remains in charge, it will probably direct massive contracts toward patrons in Russia, China, or Iran. The opposition, by contrast, would lean toward firms from the West, Turkey, and the Gulf.
  • At the current level of destruction, the project planners estimate the reconstruction will cost at least $100 billion
  • Recently a panel of architects and heritage experts from Sweden, Bosnia, Syria, and Lebanon convened in Beirut to discuss lessons for Syria’s reconstruction—one of the many distinct initiatives parallel to the Future of Syria project.
  • “You should never rebuild the way it was,” said Arna Mackic, an architect from Mostar. That Bosnian city was divided during the 1990s civil war into Muslim and Catholic sides, destroying the city center and the famous Stari Most bridge over the Neretva River. “The war changes us. You should show that in rebuilding.”
  • Instead, Mackik says, the sectarian communities keep to their own enclaves. Bereft of any common symbols, the city took a poll to figure out what kind of statue to erect in the city center. All the local figures were too polarizing. In the end they settled on a gold-colored statue of the martial arts star Bruce Lee
  • “It belongs to no one,” Mackic says. “What does Bruce Lee mean to me?
  • is that it could offer the city’s people a form of participatory democracy that has so far eluded the Syrian regime and sadly, the opposition as well.
  • “You are being democratic without the consequences of all the hullabaloo of formal democratization
  • A great deal of money has been invested in Syria’s destruction— by the regime, the local parties to the conflict, and many foreign powers. A great deal of money will be made in the aftermath, in a reconstruction project that stands to dwarf anything seen since after World War II.
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    While it is still unclear as to who will win the Syrian conflict, there are people who are already looking towards the future and a better Syria. Plans are being made but, of course, these plans will entirely depend on who wins the war. 
hwilson3

Scenes from Tahrir Square: Tear Gas and Tears at a Revolution, Two Years On - The Wire - 0 views

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    This article is a reflection of the events at Cairo's Tahrir Square. By showing videos and photos of the revolution it really solidifies the image of what the conditions were like at this time, even after the protests have ended.
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    This article is a reflection of the events at Cairo's Tahrir Square. By showing videos and photos of the revolution it really solidifies the image of what the conditions were like at this time, even after the protests have ended.
mcooka

Lebanon - Educational System-overview - Schools, Private, Students, and Lebanese - Stat... - 0 views

  • The Lebanese educational system is divided in two sectors: private schools and universities, for which there is a charge for admission, and public (government) schools and universities that are practically free of charge.
  • Education was once almost exclusively the responsibility of religious communities or foreign groups, but because the number of students in public schools has risen to more than two-fifths of the total school enrollment, the government was pressured to open more public schools to meet the demands of the general public.
  • While public schools have not paid much attention to the preschool phase and have required students to be five-years-old to be accepted in kindergarten until the 1990s, private schools have always had a preschool phase and have accepted students as young as three-years-old
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  • The total duration in school remains intact, 12 years. The primary cycle of general education has been increased by one year, and is divided into two modules of three years each, while the intermediary cycle was reduced to three years instead of four. The first year of general education's secondary cycle must be considered common for all four different series of instruction, and the second year is common to only two out of four series. Lebanese students are not allowed to enter formal technical education before age 12, which is the age limit of obligatory education. The scholastic year was changed to 36 weeks, and 4 supplementary hours per week were added at the intermediary and secondary cycles.
  • The new school curricula was launched in September 1998, and the Educational Center for Research and Development had trained 16,000 teachers in public schools and 6,000 teachers in private schools on the new uses and principles of the new program. The new system took into account economic, social, and national perspectives. The principle characteristics of this new system consist of the following:
  • The Lebanese educational system has usually relied heavily on private schooling to accommodate the evergrowing demand for learning in the country
  • In short, the new formal educational system of Lebanon, like in many other countries, divides the years of instruction as follows: 6-3-3 (six years for the primary cycle, three years for the intermediate cycle, and three years for the secondary cycle), followed by the higher education cycle. Primary school education is followed either by a six-year intermediary and secondary program, leading to the official Lebanese baccalaureate certificate, which was originally based on the equivalent French school diploma, or by a three- to six-year technical or vocational training program.
  • There are 1508 public and private intermediary and secondary schools for the general instruction program in Lebanon, while there are only 262 schools for the technical and professional instruction program divided between the public sector (29 schools) and the private sector (233 schools).
  • Education is compulsory until the end of the intermediate cycle, is available to all Lebanese students, and is attended by nearly 95 percent of school-age children
  • The school year starts in early October and ends in late June. The school day consists of six hours starting at 8:00 a.m. with two hour lunch break and ends at 4:00 p.m. The length of class periods ranges from 50 to 55 minutes. Both public and private schools are supposed to observe official holidays, which are decided by the government; however, Christian-administered, religious private schools take Saturday and Sunday off every week, while Moslem-run religious private schools take Friday and Sunday, and Jewish-run private schools take off all of Saturday and Sunday afternoon only.
  • As to special education concerning handicapped students, there were about 10,000 handicapped people in 1975 (prior to the Lebanese civil war). During the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, this number reached 13,000; it is more than 15,000 in 2001. About 2,500 handicapped people were being educated and made ready to enter the work market.
  • In addition, females appeared to have a slightly higher percentage than males with regard to attending schools and universities. After age 25 male attendance becomes almost double that of female attendance.
  • the literacy rate was 88.4 percent in 1997
  • ue to the Lebanese people's negative attitude toward manual work, especially in industry and agriculture, students of lower socioeconomic status enroll mostly in vocational and technical schools. Therefore, there is a big difference between the two major types of instruction, as well as the relative numbers of schools and students enrolled in each of these types
  • The brevet certificate is only required by public schools, vocational schools, and teacher training institutes. The baccalaureate part I exam has two main tracks: literary and scientific. The baccalaureate part II has four main tracks: literature and humanities, which includes language, literature, history, philosophy, education, arts, and religion; sociology and economy, which includes economic sciences, politics, business and management, law, and sociology; general sciences, which includes mathematics, physics, chemistry, and their applications at the level of engineering; and life sciences, which includes biology and life sciences, chemistry and their applications in the area of medicine, health, agriculture, and other related subjects.
  • Most institutions of higher education require entrance examinations besides the baccalaureate part II, which is required by law.
  • The grading system is generally based on scales of 0 to 20 or 0 to 100, with 10 or 60, respectively, as passing grades
  • he curriculum in Lebanese schools is somewhat rigid, for all students must pursue the same programs in all three cycles
  • rivate schools can choose textbooks that meet their syllabi, except in the civics area where the Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sport requires them to use the center's textbooks.
  • rabic and either French or English are the languages of instruction in the Lebanese schools.
  • The United Nations Reliefs and Works Agency (UNRWA) provides funds supporting a private nonsectarian school system for Palestinian Refugees in the Middle East. This type of private schooling has been very effective in offering education and social services for children of Palestinian Refugees residing in Lebanon
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    This article gave a great general overview to the education in Lebanon. One of the major components of Lebanon's education system is when they changed it 1999 to reflect the style of French education systems. Additionally, Lebanon has a high rate of 95% attendance for its students and it also has a high rate of literacy at 89%
ysenia

Iran nuclear deal puts US in bind amid criticism - 0 views

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    Claims that the Iran nuclear deal is really bad for the United States and future presidents guarantee to end the deal after the Obama Administration. Israel and other countries around Iran say it is more dangerous than ever.
micklethwait

Libya's Investment With Goldman Ends in Losses, Acrimony - WSJ - 0 views

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    This article explains some of the facts around the dramatic waste of Libya's Sovereign Investment Fund in 2008.
diamond03

Prevalence of female genital cutting among Egyptian girls - 0 views

    • diamond03
       
      This is so strange and taboo. 
  • fundamental violation of women’s and girls’ rights
  • 50% or highe
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  • female circumcisio
  • harmful physical, psychological and human rights consequences has led to the use of the term “female genital mutilation
  • women who have undergone FGC do not consider themselves to be mutilated and have become offended by the term “FGM”
  • no definitive evidence documenting when or why this ritual began
  • practised in ancient Egypt as a sign of distinction, while others hypothesize its origin in ancient Greece, Rome, Pre-Islamic Arabia and the Tsarist Russian Federation.
  • 97% of married women surveyed experienced FGC.3
  • 94.6% of married women had been exposed to FGC and 69.1% of those women agreed to carry out FGC on their daughters
  • 41% of female students in primary, preparatory and secondary schools had been exposed to FGC.
  • females interviewed was 38 816. The prevalence of FGC among schoolgirls was 50.3%. The prevalence of FGC was 46.2% in government urban schools, 9.2% in private urban schools and 61.7% in rural schools.
  • FGC has remained a common practice in the countries where it has traditionally been performed.4
  • Egypt are type I (commonly referred to as clitoridectomy) and type II (commonly referred to as excision).5 In Africa, the most common type of FGC is type II (excision of the clitoris and the labia minor) which accounts for up to 80% of all cases.6 I
  • In 1995, a ministerial decree forbade the practice and made it punishable by fine and imprisonment
  • The difference in the prevalence rates of FGC is mainly due to educational status in both rural and urban areas
  • There is an obvious negative correlation between the female’s parents’ education and the practice of FGC
  • Parents with low or no education are the most likely to have circumcised their daughters with prevalence rates ranging between 59.5% and 65.1%
  • higher degrees of education are the least likely to have their daughters circumcised and the prevalence rate ranged between 19.5% and 22.2%.
  • age at which FGC is performed on girls varies
  • 4 and 12 years old
  • the procedure may be carried out shortly after birth to some time before the age of marriage.6
  • some girls mentioned that they were circumcised soon after birth, during the neonatal period.
  • . In Egypt, in the past, the majority of FGC procedures were performed by traditional midwives, called dayas. However, according to the Demographic and Health Survey (1995),16 the number of
  • An immediate effect of the procedure is pain because FGC is often carried out without anaesthesia.
  • Short-term complications, such as severe bleeding which can lead to shock or death
  • include infection because of unsanitary operating conditions, and significant psychological and psychosexual consequences of FGC
  • complications (early and late) such as severe pain, bleeding, incontinence, infections, mental health problems, sexual problems, primary infertility and difficult labour with high episiotomy rate. In addition, the repetitive use of the same instruments on several girls without sterilization can cause the spread of HIV and Hepatitis B and C.
  • Fathers played minor roles as decision-makers for the procedure (9.4%
  • mothers are the main decision-makers for the procedure of FGC (65.2%)
  • circumcision is an important religious tradition (33.4%)
  • religious tradition is still the most important reason for performing FGC in Egypt,
  • In these surveys, 72% of ever-married women reported that circumcision is an important part of religious tradition and about two-thirds of the women had the impression that the husband prefers his wife to be circumcised
  • one-third of ever-married women cited cleanliness as a reason while a small number saw it as a way to prevent promiscuity before marriage.
  • milies refuse to accept women who have not undergone FGC as marriage partners
  • Around 12% of girls believed that there is no religious support for circumcision.
  • . It is an issue that demands a collaborative approach involving health professionals, religious leaders, educationalists and nongovernmental organizations.
  • partial or total cutting away of the female external genitalia
  • Female genital cutting (FGC
  • Past issues Information for contributors Editorial members How to order About the Bulletin Disclaimer Prevalence of female genital cutting among Egyptian girls
  • 100 and 130
  • cultural or other non-therapeutic reason
  • 28 African countries and the Middle East have been subjected to FGC.2
  • million girls and women
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    This is such a controversial topic. I saw a reference to it recently (was it possibly something that was brought up in the Bill Maher/Ben Affleck dust-up?) that pointed out that the practice is almost unheard of outside of central and northeastern Africa, with a few small pockets in Iraq and the Gulf.
cbrock5654

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.
mjumaia

Yemen conflict: Saudi Arabia ends air campaign - 0 views

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    A Saudi Arabia-led coalition has ended its bombing campaign against rebels in Yemen.
alarsso

To end Syria civil war, West must guarantee minorities' safety with peacekeeping force ... - 0 views

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    If Western powers gaurantee support for minorites, they will no longer feel the necessity to support the Assad regime. Furthermore, if opposition agrees to allow exception to minorities supporting Assad and simply attack Assad, this could also have significant effects on the war development
aavenda2

Iran's Supreme Leader Lashes Out at Saudi Arabia's Intervention in Yemen - 0 views

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    Iran's supreme leader warned Saudi Arabia that its military intervention in Yemen would end in military defeat
cbrock5654

Turkey-PKK Peace Process at Turning Point - 0 views

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    In this news article on the BBC, a PKK commander claims that while the both sides leadership desires to move forward with the peace process, the peace talks with Turkey are in danger of turning into conflict. Cemil Bayik, a PKK commander in the Qandil mountains, says that the Turkish government's treatment of Kobane shows that it still views the PKK and the Kurdish people as a bigger threat than ISIS. Meanwhile, a Turkish government official, Yasin Aktay, vice-chairman of the ruling AK Party, gave a statement saying that the PKK and the Kurds are using current time of instability to try to "upset the status quo", and try to set up a system of self-governance like Iraqi Kurdish groups. This article ends with dire warnings by both sides. Aktay warns that in the coming weeks and months, Turkey will actively try to prevent a "power grab" by the PKK in Kurdish towns. Meanwhile, Cemil Bayik says that unless the Turkish government changes its policies, the conflict between the Kurds and Turkey will continue, asserting that "if necessary the Kurds will fight against the Islamic State and the Turkish army."
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    A PKK commander tells the BBC that the peace process with Turkey is in danger of turning into conflict.
kkerby223

Saudi women: Pampered or oppressed - 0 views

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    This article also discusses the two sides of the issue, those for equality and those against it. At the end of the article, there is an interesting perspective I have not seen yet. The perspective of a man. He claims that men are slaves to women every day. When it is worded like that it seems to some men the issue of inequality is not just an issue for women but also for men.
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