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
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BBC News - Mosul Dam: Why the battle for water matters in Iraq - 0 views
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The Mosul Dam is an incredibly important strategic location in the war between IS and Iraqi and Kurdish forces. This is because the dam controls water flow and generates electricity for most of Iraq. After it was captured by IS on 09/11/14, President Obama authorized air support for Iraqi and Kurdish forces, in response to the treat posed by the flooding of the Tigris river. The dam was recaptured, but the third largest dam in Iraq, the Fallujah dam, is still under IS control.
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The Mosul Dam is an incredibly important strategic location in the war between IS and Iraqi and Kurdish forces. This is because the dam controls water flow and generates electricity for most of Iraq. After it was captured by IS on 09/11/14, President Obama authorized air support for Iraqi and Kurdish forces, in response to the treat posed by the flooding of the Tigris river. The dam was recaptured, but the third largest dam in Iraq, the Fallujah dam, is still under IS control.
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The Mosul Dam is an incredibly important strategic location in the war between IS and Iraqi and Kurdish forces. This is because the dam controls water flow and generates electricity for most of Iraq. After it was captured by IS on 09/11/14, President Obama authorized air support for Iraqi and Kurdish forces, in response to the treat posed by the flooding of the Tigris river. The dam was recaptured, but the third largest dam in Iraq, the Fallujah dam, is still under IS control.
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What Led Those American Ships Into Iranian Waters? - 0 views
Water Management in Jordan in Response to the Syrian Crisis: Between Neoliberal Pressur... - 0 views
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Saudi Arabia: Filipino Maid Disfigured with Boiling Water - 0 views
www.ibtimes.co.uk/t-bringing-coffee-time-1449319
saudi arabia filipino maid water coffee time abuse worker
shared by kkerby223 on 03 Apr 15
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When we think of domestic abuse or abuse in general we often think at home situations involving a man and woman. In Saudi Arabia, and surely other parts of the world, maids are frequently subjected to abuse. This article is one example of a maid that was severely abused for the simple act of bringing coffee too late. Foreign workers in Saudi Arabia are often abused by their employers.
U.S. Radically Changes Its Story of the Boats in Iranian Waters: to an Even More Suspic... - 0 views
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A daring plan to rebuild Syria - no matter who wins the war - Ideas - The Boston Globe - 0 views
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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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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The population exodus has claimed most of the city’s craftsmen, medical personnel, academics, and industrialists
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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.
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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
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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
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Syria’s national recovery will depend in large part on whether its industrial powerhouse Aleppo can bounce back
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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.
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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At the current level of destruction, the project planners estimate the reconstruction will cost at least $100 billion
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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.
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“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.”
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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
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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.
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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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Egypt Orders Evacuation Along Gaza Border to Thwart Militants - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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The Egyptian government has ordered the forced evacuation of homes along the 9 mile border with the Gaza strip. The homes will be demolished to make room for a 500 yard wide buffer zone between Egypt and Gaza that includes water-filled trenches to stop tunnel diggers. This buffer zone is designed to stop the flow of arms and militants from Gaza into Egypt which authorities believe are responsible for the rise in terrorism in the Sinai peninsula. This is primarily a response to the October 24th terrorist attack that killed 31 soldiers in eastern Sinai.
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Slavery and Forced Labor in Brazil - Foreign Policy Blogs | Foreign Policy Blogs - 0 views
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Of all of the countries in the Americas, Brazil imported the most slaves from Africa and was the last to officially abolish slavery.
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In 2002, the ILO and the Brazilian government initiated a technical cooperation project called “Combating Forced Labour”. Since then, around 50,000 workers have been freed from slave-like conditions in Brazil.
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Although slavery has been abolished for years, forced labor has since taken its place. In a recent report, 240 Brazilian companies were caught employing people in slave-like conditions between May 2013 and May 2015. The companies were associated with clothing sweatshops, farming and cattle ranching, timber and charcoal production, and construction. These people work seven days a week without pay and had no running water or toilets
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Five Algerian, Tunisian, Libyan 'Smugglers' Arrested as Survivors Say They Trapped Hund... - 0 views
migrantreport.org/hundreds-in-sinking-boats-hold
human smuggling France Algerian Tunisian Libyan shipwreck
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Gallows Humor: Political Satire in Sisi's Egypt by Jonathan Guyer - Guernica / A Magazi... - 0 views
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“I would have had to very intensely water down my language, be way more patient and pragmatic to deliver my message.”
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Egypt's post-Morsi constitution gets almost total voters' approval - RT News - 0 views
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Now that God has supported us in legalizing our constitution, we ask for his aid in achieving the remaining two stages of the road map: the presidential and parliamentary elections," Salib
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Egyptian Christians and liberals on the constitutional committee attempted to remove all mentions of Sharia law from the constitutio
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eliminates various articles that gave legal and political authority to Egypt’s highest Islamic Institution, the Al-Azhar University.
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allows a presidential election to be held before parliamentary vote in a change to the transition plan announced by the army in July.
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55 percent, was still higher than in the 2012 referendum on the constitution, which was drafted while Mohamed Morsi was in powe
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uslim Brotherhood boycotted the poll, saying it was illegitimate, as did several revolutionary groups and there were reports of low youth turnout in general.
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ISIS seizes Camp in Yarmouk - 0 views
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Some 18,000 civilians have been trapped with limited food and water in the Yarmouk camp near Syria's capital, caught between government forces and dueling rebel groups. Their already-tenuous situation deteriorated sharply last week when ISIS launched a push to seize control of the camp from rival armed groups like the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front, setting off street battles and mounting alarm for those trapped in the crossfire.
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Syria keen on Russian expansion in Middle East - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East - 0 views
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Syria has called on its Russian ally to expand in the Middle East, by expanding its small pier in the city of Tartus and turning it into a base
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This has coincided with Saudi Arabia leading a coalition against Ansar Allah in Yemen, with a cover by the United States
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meeting with a group of Russian journalists March 27, and in response to a question on Damascus’ desire to see a wider Russian activity in the Middle East, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said he certainly welcomes “any expansion of Russian presence in the Eastern Mediterranean, precisely on the Syrian shores and ports.
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Assad said: “The Russian presence in different parts of the world, including the Eastern Mediterranean and the Syrian port of Tartus, is very necessary, in order to create a sort of balance, which the world has lost after the dissolution of the Soviet Union more than 20 years ago.
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Syrian president welcomed the Russian presence in his country and the region. “For us, the stronger this presence is in our region, the better it is for stability [in the region], because Russia is assuming an important role in world stability,”
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Syrian nod is only a repetition of a former call made under the rule of late Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, who saw that the presence of a Russian military representation in Syria in the Mediterranean region contributes to the promotion of the idea of “the balance of terror” against Israel and the United States
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The talk was, however, halted, until the last two years, when an actual need to promote Russian presence in the Mediterranean emerged in light of the reignition of the Cold War.
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deployment of missile systems on the Mediterranean coast, as a sort of “symbolic deterrence.” The rumors were repeated as the NATO missile defense project was announced, which was supposed to be deployed in different countries, including Turkey and other countries bordering Russia
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e US invasion of Iraq, as the US desire to change the face of the Middle East seemed free of any rational considerations. Assad made several visits to Moscow, and although this has not been publicly mentioned, Syrian diplomats and officials stressed to As-Safir that Syria expressed its desire to expand the Russian presence in the Eastern Mediterranean, particularly through Tartus, so that it turns into a military presence with limited standards
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, Russia and Syria signed the biggest deal of its kind to explore oil in the Syrian waters, which covers a 2,190 square-kilometer surface area, and to achieve economic ambitions, namely extracting 2.5 billion barrels of oil and 8.5 trillion cubic feet of proven gas reserves, the oil and gas magazine said back then
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“any decision to modernize the infrastructure of the Russian Material-Technical Support Point in Tartus can only be made after a political decision is taken in this regard, in coordination with the Syrian side.” He explained that any modernization should “take into account the political and military situation in the Mediterranean region,” and therefore “it will include the promotion of all sorts of protection in the facility, including surface-to-air missiles and anti-riots weapons, and will be in coordination with the Syrian side.”
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Can Libya Rebuild Itself After 40 Years of Gaddafi? - 0 views
www.newsweek.com/f-after-40-years-gaddafi-68601
Gaddafi libya Arab Nationalism recontruction political tabula rasa Revolution politics middle east
shared by allieggg on 12 Nov 14
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the man has hollowed out the Libyan state, eviscerated all opposition in Libyan society, and, in effect, created a political tabula rasa on which a newly free people will now have to scratch out a future.
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Jamahiriya, a political system that is run directly by tribesmen without the intermediation of state institutions
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the problem is, of course, that much like in the former Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe, virtually everyone at one point or another had to deal with the regime to survive.
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the disastrous Italian legacy in Libya, has been a constant element in Gaddafi’s speeches since he took power
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inspired by Gamal Abdel Nasser, neighboring Egypt’s president, whose ideas of Arab nationalism and of the possibility of restoring glory to the Arab world, would fuel the first decade of Gaddafi’s revolution.
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In a brilliant move that co-opted tribal elders, many of whom were also military commanders, he created the Social Leadership People’s Committee, through which he could simultaneously control the tribes and segments of the country’s military.
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When it turned out that Libya, which was still a decentralized society in 1969, had little appetite for his centralizing political vision and remained largely indifferent to his proposals, the young idealist quickly turned activist.
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Green Book, a set of slim volumes published in the mid-1970s that contain Gaddafi’s political philosophy, a blueprint is offered for a dramatic restructuring of Libya’s economy, politics, and society. In principle, Libya would become an experiment in democracy. In reality, it became a police state where every move of its citizens was carefully watched by a growing number of security apparatuses and revolutionary committees that owed loyalty directly to Gaddafi.
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Having crushed all opposition by the mid-1970s, the regime systematically snuffed out any group that could potentially oppose it—any activity that could be construed as political opposition was punishable by death, which is one reason why a post-Gaddafi Libya, unlike a post-Mubarak Egypt, can have no ready-made opposition in a position to fill the vacuum.
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The tribes—the Warfalla, the Awlad Busayf, the Magharha, the Zuwaya, the Barasa, and the smallest of them all, the Gadafa, to which he belonged—offered a natural form of political affiliation, a tribal ethos that could be tapped into for support. And perhaps, in the aftermath of Gaddafi, they could serve as a nucleus around which to build a new political system.
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Gaddafi feared they might coalesce into groups opposing his rule. So, during the first two decades after the 1969 coup, he tried to erase their influence, arguing that they were an archaic element in a modern society.
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comprehensive reconstruction of everything civic, political, legal, and moral that makes up a society and its government.
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After systematically destroying local society, after using the tribes to cancel each other out, after aborting methodically the emergence of a younger generation that could take over Libya’s political life—all compounded by the general incoherence of the country’s administrative and bureaucratic institutions—Gaddafi will have left a new Libya with severe and longstanding challenges.
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while the regime still had the coercive power to put down any uprisings that took place in the 1990s, it became clear to Gaddafi’s closest advisers that the potential for unrest had reached unprecedented levels.
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way out was to come to an agreement with the West that would end the sanctions, allow Libya to refurbish an aging oil infrastructure, and provide a safety valve by permitting Libyans to travel abroad once more.
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intent to renounce weapons of mass destruction in December 2003—after a long process of behind-the-scenes diplomacy initially spearheaded by Britain
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“The Revolution Everlasting” was one of the enduring slogans of his Libya, inscribed everywhere from bridges to water bottles.
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country was split in half, with eastern Cyrenaica and its main city Benghazi effectively independent—a demonstration of the kind of people’s power Gaddafi had always advocated. Reality, in effect, outgrew the caricature.
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used a set of divide-and-rule policies that not only kept his opponents sundered from each other, but had also completely enfeebled any social or political institution in the country.
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Beyond Gaddafi, there exists only a great political emptiness, a void that Libya somehow will need to fill.
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the creation of a modern state where Libyans become true citizens, with all the rights and duties this entails.
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Regimes can use oil revenues strategically to provide patronage that effectively keeps them in power.
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This article from News Week basically paints a picture of Libyan history and how Gaddafi's reign devastated the state economically, socially, and politically. Author Dirk Vandewalle uses the phrase "a political tabula rasa" which in Latin means a blank slate, to describe the fate of Libya after Gaddafi's rule and convey the extent to which the country has to literally reconstruct every component that makes up a society and its government. He highlights major events that led to the downfall of both the Gaddafi regime and the Libyan state as a whole such as Arab nationalism, Jamahiriya, the Green Book, security apparatuses snuffing all opposition, terrorist incidents, isolation and international sanctions, the Lockerbie bombing, weapons of mass destruction, human right violations, divide and rule policies, and his use of oil revenue to fuel his insurgency. Vandewalle concludes the article with uncertain ideas thoughts towards Libya's future and the way the state is going to literally rebuild themselves from this "blank slate" that Gaddafi left behind.
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Understanding Syria: From Pre-Civil War to Post-Assad - The Atlantic - 0 views
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So it is important to understand how their “social contract”—their view of their relationship with one another and with the government—evolved and then shattered.
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Nationalists took this diversity as a primary cause of weakness and adopted as their primary task integrating the population into a single political and social structure.
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or Hafez al-Assad, the secular, nationalist Baath Party was a natural choice: it offered, or seemed to offer, the means to overcome his origins in a minority community and to point toward a solution to the disunity of Syrian politics
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small group gathered in the southwestern town of Daraa to protest against government failure to help them
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All observers agree that the foreign-controlled and foreign-constituted insurgent groups are the most coherent, organized, and effective
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a whole generation of Syrians have been subjected to either or both the loss of their homes and their trust in fellow human beings.
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Aid for Yemen Dwindles as Need Rises Amid Chaos - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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Residents said that water had been cut off for days and that electricity was out for hours at a time.
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raising fears of a lengthy war that is expanding the destabilizing regional conflict between the Persian Gulf monarchies and Iran.
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aid agencies intensified their warnings on Tuesday about the toll on civilians and hospitals, which are running critically low on medical supplies.
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The Houthis, acknowledging their alliance with Iran but denying acting on its orders, have been able to extend their offensive despite intensifying airstrikes by Saudi warplanes across Yemen.
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physicians had treated more than 500 people in the last two weeks in Aden, including burn victims from explosions at an ammunition depot and passengers on a bus that had apparently come under shelling.
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Iran Rapidly Building Cyber Warfare Capabilities - 0 views
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This growing cyber force posses a threat on global critical infrastructures. "Critical infrastructures include computer networks that control such sectors as finance, transportation, water, public health, security, telecommunications, and electrical."
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Iran is building cyber warfare capabilities to conduct and handle cyber attacks. Iran hackers were blamed for several serious cyber attacks.
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Iran is building cyber warfare capabilities to conduct and handle cyber attacks. Iran hackers were blamed for several serious cyber attacks.
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The Iran nuclear framework deal: A definitive, research-based guide from Harv... - 0 views
journalistsresource.org/...de-from-harvards-belfer-center
iran program nuclear guide framework facts
shared by ysenia on 08 Feb 16
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However, in order to utilize the plutonium for a weapon, Iran would still have to build a reprocessing plant to be able to separate plutonium from spent fuel.
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[I]t will reduce the risk of Iran getting a bomb better than any of the realistic alternatives. Iran has agreed to physical limits on its ability to produce weapons-grade materials that will assure a break-out timeline of roughly a year for the next 10 years, as well as additional restraints and verification measures to monitor compliance and detect cheating. If the U.S. rejects the deal and returns to sanctions, Iran is certain to return to what it was doing before the interim agreement: installing additional centrifuges, enriching uranium, increasing its stockpile of enriched material, developing more advanced centrifuges, and completing the Arak heavy water reactor. The agreement does not solve the problem, but it reduces the risk for now and buys substantial time to resolve the threat in the future.
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Will Tunisia's border barrier keep chaos confined to Libya? - 0 views
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Tunisia has recently completed simple border improvements that they believe will stop or dramatically reduce the amount of militants from spreading into Tunisia from Libya. It consists of sand banks and water filled trenches. Perhaps they should look to the US border as an example to see how that actually works.