Group items tagged

Earlier this month, the residents of Ben Gardane declared a strike that led to the closure of the border crossing to demand lifting a 30 dinar tax imposed on foreigners crossing into Tunisia from Libya. Saturday Libyan vehicles crossed into Tunisia's border for the first time after the three week protest. According to the Tunisian security officials the protest was ended "swiftly" and "peacefully".

In this Electronic Intifada article, the blatant racism against all Arabs during the Israeli elections is highlighted and examined. Beginning with the motion to amend voting rules, and ending with Netanyahu's highly charged statement, this article points out the rampant hatred exhibited to a group of people making up 20% of Israel's population.

This is an interesting read from a United States woman point of view on the social stigma of being divorced. It is a great article to compare to the social stigma on divorce in Egypt, which is much more harsh.

In this Slate article, the author dives in deeper to comments made by Netanyahu in the lead up to the final day of elections. Touching on the issue of no Palestinian state, the author spends most of the article pointing out Netanyahu's blatant bigotry against the Arab people who make up 20% of Israel.

The expect increase in demand for oil by Saudi Arabia is not pointing to the expected lower prices

What if Hamas could do anything? Israel would be done for.

In this Atlantic article, a question is posed: what would happen if the military might of Israel and Hamas were reversed? As the authors point out, quoting from the organization's charter and looking back to previous suicide bombings, Hamas would destroy Israel.

After fighting increased in Syria, Turkey decided to close dow two border crossings that lead to Syria as a precaution. Until this point, Turkey has kept its borders open to Syrian refugees and even so it still has been criticized for doing too little to stop foreign fighters from entering Syria. 

This is a complicated war. This site explains in more detail than others and with more emotions put into it as well. It offers first hand accounts of men and women involved in the civil war. Also it discusses the refugee camps that are not mentioned in other sites. The site states that this is a messy, cruel war where neither side has much regard for civilian casualties.

Saudi Arabia's state-owned oil company, Saudi Aramco, aims to increase supplies to China. It sees big opportunities in Beijing's efforts to restructure the country's economic growth model and believes supplies could double at some point.

Gunmen entered the Tunis museum to take ancient treasures and its tourists hostage. It was a beautiful day filled with tourists from everywhere. Many tourists and locals were killed and injured. Many were just stuck in shock with what was happening and when it was all over. Just when the people thought Tunisia was on the right track some tragic event like this happens and takes the people two steps back on what the government is really doing to protect them. The museum is in a top security place so for these gunmen to get in there with guns and take order scares the people. The prime minister said they may of had help at the security check points they are not for sure but are looking into it. This hurts Tunisia because majority of its economy is based off of beach resorts and foreign visitors.

Jordan is asking for more help with the millions of refugees flowing into the country. The UN is fundrasing for more than $7 billion in funds to support Jordan in the relocation of Syrian refugees.

This article analyze's the term 'proxy war' and whether or not the conflict in Yemen can be classified as such. The author states that Saudi's bombing of the country is "straightforward external military aggression."

This article by the BBC news talks about the recent banning of social media in Turkey. The interesting thing that this article points out is that social media was banned when it was near an election. The fact that they control the flow of information to the citizens around election time is extremely significant, because not being able to communicate about the elections can greatly impact the results.

It is a relief to see that water is finally making it back to Aleppo. The city has been under siege and civilians have been deprived of water. This article makes a valid point, showing that water has been used as a weapon of war.

Reports show that technically, Iran is not breaking an part of the deal by testing missiles. The point of the deal was to weaken their ability to create missiles but still, the international countries involved in the deal not not happy with the actions taking place.

This report discusses the conditions of the media in Saudi Arabia. It claims that in 2012 Saudi Arabia media environment "remained among the most repressive the the world." It also talked about the fact that their government justified this repression by saying that it violated the Islamic Sharia law. This brought up and interesting point, because I had never thought about freedom of speech and religious freedom being linked in this regard.

This post is written from an author's point of view. She did years work of research for her film "The Price of Sex." She mentions how human trafficking is typically occurred because the people who are sold are living in poverty and are falsely promised a good job that will allow them to provide for their families.

This dissertation written by United Nations Commissioner for Refugees Laura Waas, provides some more academic insight into what exactly constitutes as stateless peoples in the Middle East and North African regions as well as the underlying conditions and legislation these stateless persons have developed. Waas points to the lack of nationality as the primary concern.

This article discusses women and media in the Middle East, and how women can "gain power through self expression." I thought that this was a very important message, and found points that the article raised about women in film and journalism were very relevant.

The article from June of 2013 addresses the issues women face in Egypt and the causes of those issues. The article reflects on the need for women to identify the roots of their injustices and seek opportunities to prevent further restrictions on their rights. The article concludes by recognizing the means that will work best for encouraging women to pursue their rights, such as sing audiovisual media campaigning as well as well as developing "their sense of empowerment to make choices."

This article mentions setbacks in the progress to women rights. These include setbacks by the government and societal norms within the culture.

Re-examining a revolution that is needed in order to create a better environment for women. The Muslim Brotherhood coming into power damaged women's rights.