Skip to main content

Home/ CULF 3331: "Middle Eastern Revolutions"/ Group items matching "first" in title, tags, annotations or url

Group items matching
in title, tags, annotations or url

Sort By: Relevance | Date Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
alarsso

BBC News - Arab uprising: Country by country - Syria - 0 views

www.bbc.com/world-12482309

syria uprising post-assad revolution

shared by alarsso on 16 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • Protests demanding greater freedom and an end to corruption
  • Deraa
  • March 2011.
  • ...19 more annotations...
  • demanding President Bashar al-Assad's resignation.
  • Opposition supporters began to take up arms, first to defend themselves and then to oust loyalist forces from their areas.
  • February 2012,
  • a new constitution
  • dropped an article giving the ruling Baath Party unique status as the "leader of the state and society"
  • denounced it
  • rebels seized control of large parts of the north and east of the country
  • National Coalition
  • Syrian people's "legitimate representative".
  • 2013,
  • shifting in Mr Assad's favour,
  • government
  • recover territory
  • August 2013
  • chemical weapons attack on the outskirts of Damascus
  • destroy Syria's chemical weapons.
  • peace conference in Geneva in January 2014.
  • more than 100,000 people dead
  • millions from their homes.
  • alarsso on 16 Feb 15
     
    Overview of revolts in Syria and where it stands as of December 2013
fcastro2

Syria talks in Moscow to focus on humanitarian issues | Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...ia-talks-idUSKBN0MW08W20150405

syria talks moscow humanitarian ISIS

shared by fcastro2 on 06 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • (Reuters) - The Syrian government and some opposition figures will start a second round of talks in Moscow on Monday focusing on humanitarian issues, although a broader agreement is unlikely as Syria's main opposition group continues to boycott the talks.
  • do not expect any big breakthrough towards ending a conflict
  • January's unproductive first round of consultations in Moscow was shunned by the main political opposition group, the Western-backed Syrian National Coalition
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • take part only if the talks were to lead to the departure of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, an ally of Russia
  • Russia says fighting terrorism in Syria should be the top priority now and has called on the opposition to work with Assad to that end
  • Randa Kassis, a former SNC member who now favors talking to Damascus because of the rise of radical Islamists in Syri
  • focus on confidence-building measures including ensuring access for humanitarian aid
  • Moscow has not said which opposition figures will attend. But the line-up is likely to be similar to January, when more than 30 representatives of various groups attended, most from groups tolerated by Assad or who agree that working with Damascus is necessary to combat the rise of Islamic Stat
  • released 650 prisoners from at least three prisons in Damascus on March 25-27, including women, children, political prisoners and fighter
  • release of these people to the talks would be "just an ac
  • fcastro2 on 06 Apr 15
     
    A second round of talks will be held in Moscow. These talks are said to focus on humanitarian issues in Syria. 
wmulnea

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

www.economist.com/...factional-chaos-it-should-come

shared by wmulnea on 11 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • 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.
ajonesn

How Egypt is keeping its women trapped in zombie society - Your Middle East - 0 views

www.yourmiddleeast.com/...rapped-in-zombie-society_26800

Egypt womens rights zombies

shared by ajonesn on 29 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • he majority of families would rather have their daughters in an unfulfilling, even miserable marriage, convinced that she will somehow find a magical way to adapt, than see her alone
    • diamond03
      diamond03 on 29 Sep 14
       
      This is so sad and disturbing!
  • Female independence is looked down on,
  • true religious scholars are the first to reject any form of overt or clandestine female oppression
  • ...47 more annotations...
  • there is hope
  • intellectual women today stand in solidarity
  • woman's marital status is mutually exclusive from her value and right to lead a healthy, fulfilling life of her own.
  • suffering economy
  • women
  • society
  • spinsterhood
  • marriage in Egypt really means.
  • trapped
  • declining marriage rate in Egypt,
  • “transforming her into a commodity for the highest bidder.”
  • family to be the pillar of one's success
  • pros and cons,
  • codependence is highly favorable in the Middle Eas
  • typical Egyptian female's life, is to pursue an auspicious college degree
  • regarded as a supporter or sidekick,
  • “...an archaic notion that defines a woman's value by her husband's status”
  • improve her chances of finding a proper suitor
  • lifelong purpose of securing a husband.
  • he standard sequence of events for a typical Egyptian female's life, is to pursue an auspicious college degree (to improve her chances of finding a proper suitor, and assist her future children with their studies), possibly add to her assets by acquiring a mediocre job for a year or two (under the pretext of killing time and elevating her practical wisdom), and eventually fulfill her lifelong purpose of securing a
  • ones who suffer are those who can't find a “star.”
  • pressure from three distinctive sources
  • their rights and full potential, desperately seeking approval before they reach their “expiration date.
  • “Stepford wife model”,
  • incompatible matc
  • transforming her identity, s
  • driven towards more extreme measures.
  • parents employing psychological abuse
  • subject to such scrutiny
  • generation of women
  • oblivious t
  • conforming comes naturally to a lot of women,
  • On one hand
  • (parents-peers-society
  • quoting religious commandments promoting marriage,
  • coerce their daughters
  • into submission
  • threat of eternal damnation
  • (should she fail to perform this role and still wishes to enjoy her life then she will have indeed committed sacrilege and is a covertly regarded as a disgrace regardless of any other achievement)
  • peer-pressure;
  • still under the impression that exceptions do not exist .
  • 25-40
  • “business marriages”
  • Egyptians have a problem with evolution
  • persecute anomalies
  • educated middle class that crowns the highest rate of unmarried wome
  • women can hardly take care of themselves and that is the norm.
  • ajonesn on 13 Apr 15
     
    I enjoyed this article because it uses terminology that is not typically associated with this topic. The author compares Egyptian women to zombies, stating that they must "play-dead" or be "obliterated and shunned."
jordanbrown16

Iran Agrees to Detailed Nuclear Outline, First Step Toward a Wider Deal - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...iran-nuclear-talks.html

nuclear talks Iran deal Obama

shared by jordanbrown16 on 15 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • jordanbrown16 on 15 Apr 15
     
    Iran and the US, along with five other world powers, come to an agreement for Tehran's nuclear power to be limited for the next 15 years with further negotiation in June 2015.
wmulnea

Strife in Libya Could Presage Long Civil War - NYTimes.com - 1 views

www.nytimes.com/...libyan-unrest.html

shared by wmulnea on 21 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • Salah Badi, an ultraconservative Islamist and former lawmaker from the coastal city of Misurata.
  • Mr. Badi’s assault on Libya’s main international airport has now drawn the country’s fractious militias, tribes and towns into a single national conflagration that threatens to become a prolonged civil war. Both sides see the fight as part of a larger regional struggle, fraught with the risks of a return to repressive authoritarianism or a slide toward Islamist extremism.
  • the violence threatens to turn Libya into a pocket of chaos destabilizing North Africa for years to come.
  • ...37 more annotations...
  • Ansar al-Shariah, the hard-line Islamist group involved in the assault on the American diplomatic Mission in Benghazi in 2012
  • Their opponents, including the militias stocked with former Qaddafi soldiers
  • The ideological differences are blurry at best: both sides publicly profess a similar conservative but democratic vision.
  • an escalating war among its patchwork of rival cities and tribes.
  • Motorists wait in lines stretching more than three miles at shuttered gas stations, waiting for them to open. Food prices are soaring, uncollected garbage is piling up in the streets and bicycles, once unheard-of, are increasingly common.
  • Tripoli, the capital and the main prize, has become a battleground
  • The fighting has destroyed the airport
  • Constant shelling between rival militias has leveled blocks
  • Storage tanks holding about 25 million gallons of fuel have burned unchecked for a month
  • with daily blackouts sometimes lasting more than 12 hours.
  • many Libyans despaired of any resolution
  • In Benghazi, Libya’s second-largest city, the fighting has closed both its airport and seaport, strangling the city.
  • the rush toward war is also lifting the fortunes of the Islamist extremists of Ansar al-Shariah, the Benghazi militant group.
  • The United Nations, the United States and the other Western powers have withdrawn their diplomats and closed their missions
  • “We cannot care more than you do,” the British ambassador, Michael Aron, wrote
  • Until now, a rough balance of power among local brigades had preserved a kind of equilibrium, if not stability
  • the transitional government scarcely existed outside of the luxury hotels where its officials gathered, no other force was strong enough to dominate. No single interest divided the competing cities and factions.
  • But that semblance of unity is now in tatters, and with it the hope that nonviolent negotiations might settle the competition for power and, implicitly, Libya’s oil.
  • In May, a renegade former general, Khalifa Hifter, declared that he would seize power by force to purge Libya of Islamists, beginning in Benghazi. He vowed to eradicate the hard-line Islamists of Ansar al-Shariah, blamed for a long series of bombings and assassinations.
  • General Hifter also pledged to close the Parliament and arrest moderate Islamist members
  • he has mustered a small fleet of helicopters and warplanes that have bombed rival bases around Benghazi, a steep escalation of the violence.
  • moderate Islamists and other brigades who had distanced themselves from Ansar al-Shariah began closing ranks, welcoming the group into a newly formed council of “revolutionary” militias
  • a broad alliance of Benghazi militias that now includes Ansar al-Shariah issued a defiant statement denouncing relative moderates like the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood. “We will not accept the project of democracy, secular parties, nor the parties that falsely claim the Islamic cause,”
  • the general’s blitz has now stalled, it polarized the country, drawing alarms from some cities and tribes but applause from others.
  • the loudest applause came from the western mountain town of Zintan, where local militia leaders had recruited hundreds of former Qaddafi soldiers into special brigades
  • the rival coastal city of Misurata, where militias have allied with the Islamists in political battles and jostled with the Zintanis for influence in the capital
  • the Misurata and Islamist militias developed a reputation for besieging government buildings and kidnapping high officials to try to pressure the Parliament. But in recent months the Zintanis and their anti-Islamist allies have stormed the Parliament and kidnapped senior lawmakers as well.
  • the newly elected Parliament, led at first, on a seniority basis, by a member supportive of Mr. Hifter, announced plans to convene in Tobruk, an eastern city under the general’s control.
  • About 30 members, most of them Islamists or Misuratans, refused to attend,
  • Tripoli’s backup airport, under the control of an Islamist militia, has cut off flights to Tobruk, even blocking a trip by the prime minister.
  • a spokesman for the old disbanded Parliament, favored by the Islamists and Misuratans, declared that it would reconvene in Tripoli
  • In Tobruk, a spokesman for the new Parliament declared that the Islamist- and Misuratan-allied militias were terrorists, suggesting that Libya might soon have two legislatures with competing armies
  • Each side has the support of competing satellite television networks financed and, often, broadcast from abroad, typically from Qatar for the Islamists and from the United Arab Emirates for their foes.
  • Hassan Tatanaki, a Libyan-born business mogul who owns one of the anti-Islamist satellite networks, speaking in an interview from an office in the Emirates. “We are in a state of war and this is no time for compromise.”
  • Fighters and tribes who fought one another during the uprising against Colonel Qaddafi are now coming together on the same side of the new fight, especially with the Zintanis against the Islamists. Some former Qaddafi officers who had fled Libya are even coming back to take up arms again.
  • “It is not pro- or anti-Qaddafi any more — it is about Libya,” said a former Qaddafi officer in a military uniform
  • Beneath the battle against “extremists,” he said, was an even deeper, ethnic struggle: the tribes of Arab descent, like the Zintanis, against those of Berber, Circassian or Turkish ancestry, like the Misuratis. “The victory will be for the Arab tribes,”
  • andrea_hoertz on 21 Sep 14
     
    Article explains the civil war that is erupting in Libya. Islamist extremists are trying to take over the country and towns and tribes of Libya are choosing sides. Tripoli has been the biggest battle ground and its airport was destroyed.
  • wmulnea on 11 Apr 15
     
    This NYT article gives an excellent outline of the prominent factions fighting in Libya, and the purpose and goals of those factions as of Aug, 2014.
  • wmulnea on 11 Apr 15
     
    This NYT article gives an excellent outline of the prominent factions fighting in Libya, and the purpose and goals of those factions as of Aug, 2014.
jherna2a

Syria's refugee exodus - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...world-middle-east-24900116

syria refugees war

shared by jherna2a on 27 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • jherna2a on 27 Jan 16
     
    Syria's civil war has forced more than two million people to seek refuge. The timeline shows significant dates in the war, beginning with the first protests in March 2011, that prompted people to leave their country.
mportie

Rampage on Ramadan: Syrian troops advance through bloodbath city of Hama on first day of holy festival - 0 views

www.dailymail.co.uk/...ty-Hama-day-holy-festival.html

revolution war Syria conflict violence

shared by mportie on 21 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • mportie on 21 Jan 16
     
    Heavy government gun fire hits city Fears that Muslim festival could spark violence 1,7000 civilians dead since protests began Syrian troops advanced through the central city of Hama in a fresh crackdown a day after government forces killed 24 people.
ccfuentez

Modern-day slavery ensnares millions worldwide - World - CBC News - 0 views

www.cbc.ca/...s-millions-worldwide-1.1204720

human-trafficking Syria abused International Labour Organization

shared by ccfuentez on 03 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • Millions of men, women and children around the world were victims of modern slavery last year, according to a new U.S. report of human trafficking.
  • he dark underbelly of human trafficking, an umbrella term that includes sexual exploitation, child prostitution, forced labour and debt bondage
  • First-hand accounts from victims highlighted the physical and psychological toll of modern slavery.
  • ccfuentez on 03 Feb 16
     
    Millions of women, children, and men fall victim to modern day slavery especially in the Middle East. Syria was listed as the worst offender in 2012. Victims of human trafficking suffer physical, mental, and emotional abuse while they are taken prisoner. 
joepouttu

UN suspends Syrian peace talks - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...world-middle-east-35488073

Syria Peace Politics

shared by joepouttu on 03 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • joepouttu on 03 Feb 16
     
    Syrian peace talks suspended by UN until 25 February after lack of progress in first week. Both sides are blaming their opposition for the collapse of the peace talks.
aacosta8

"Egyptian Cyber Army" Claims To Be Behind Attack On Popular Satirical Show - 0 views

www.buzzfeed.com/...be-behind-attack-on-popular-sa

Cairo Egypt hacktivist Cyber Army

shared by aacosta8 on 09 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • aacosta8 on 09 Feb 16
     
    It was the cry heard across Egypt's Twitter feeds. Minutes after comedian Bassem Youssef's show began airing Friday, the signal was deliberately jammed and the first half of the show was almost impossible to watch across the Arab world. The hashtag #تشويش ("jamming") began trending in Egypt.
ralph0

Syrian conflict: UN first air drop delivers aid to Deir al-Zour - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...world-middle-east-35654483

Syria war aid UN deir al zor

shared by ralph0 on 24 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • ralph0 on 24 Feb 16
     
    Finally, aid has made it to Deir al-Zor. This eastern city has been besieged by ISIS militants for some time now. I will be keeping an eye out to see how the aid is used. This is also interesting because the city is in a part of the country that is less accessible to government forces, with ISIS being in control of the surrounding area.
mcooka

A New System for K-12 Education in Qatar | RAND - 0 views

www.rand.org/...index1.html

qatar education system revolution

shared by mcooka on 24 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • The leadership of the Arabian Gulf nation of Qatar, like that of many other countries, views education as the key to future economic, political, and social progress.
  • In summer 2001, the State of Qatar’s leadership asked the RAND Corporation to examine the K–12 (kindergarten through grade 12) school system in Qatar
  • Qatari K–12 edu-cation system served about 100,000 students, two-thirds of whom attended schools that were financed and operated by the government. The highly centralized Ministry of Education oversaw all aspects of public education and many aspects of private education.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Finally, although Qatar has a high per capita income, the national investment in education was small. Teachers received low pay and little professional development, many school buildings were in poor condition, and classrooms were overcrowded.
  • he most fundamental need was for clear curriculum standards oriented toward the desired outcomes of schooling. The new system’s curriculum, assessments, and professional development would all need to be aligned with these clear standards
  • AND presented three governance options to the Qatari leadership for discussion: (1) a Modified Centralized Model, which upgraded the existing, centrally controlled system by allowing for some school-level flexibility with or without parental choice of schools; (2) a Charter School Model, which encouraged variety through a set of schools independent of the Ministry and which allowed parents to choose whether to send their children to these schools; and (3) a Voucher Model, which offered parents school vouchers so that they could send their children to private schools and which sought to expand high-quality private schooling in Qatar.
  • Qatar now possesses curriculum standards in Arabic, mathematics, science, and English for all 12 grades — and these standards are comparable to the highest in the world.
  • These tests and surveys were then upgraded and repeated in 2005 and 2006 as part of the ongoing accountability system. The tests are the first standardized measures of student learning available in the Arabic language.
  • otential school operators responded enthusiastically to the call to open the new schools.
  • from a pool of 160 initial applicants; all 12 opened under three-year renewable contracts. In 2005, 21 additional Independent schools opened, and in 2006, 13 more opened.
  • Increased expertise is needed in Qatar’s teaching workforce and among the Institutes’ staff. Non-Qatari specialists are likely to be required in the future, but it is important that they find the means to transfer knowledge to Qataris to build local human resources.
  • The four principles of the reform — autonomy, accountability, variety, and choice
  • The emirate of Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates recently adopted a strategy of public financing for private providers of education that is similar to that of Qatar. Also, the Secretary General of the Gulf Cooperation Council praised Qatar’s initiative, especially its curriculum standards. Since these standards are the foundation for teaching, learning, and accountability, the Secretary General’s praise, motivated by concern throughout the region about preparing students for later life, represents a major endorsement of the approach taken in Qatar.
  • mcooka on 24 Feb 16
     
    This piece is about the education reform K-12 in Qatar. The program has started to use local education supplies to create a better community attitude toward education. Their have been efforts to create a universal curriculum and higher evaluation and testing. 
blantonjack

How serious is the ISIL threat in Libya? - 1 views

www.aljazeera.com/...eat-libya-160222081244640.html

ISIS Libya war Al Qaeda

shared by blantonjack on 24 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • blantonjack on 24 Feb 16
     
    The recent US air strike on a building in the western Libyan city of Sabrata, which killed more than 40 suspected Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) fighters, highlights the growing expansion and danger of the group in Libya. Both ISIL and Gaddafi loyalists share the belief that the new political leaders in Libya are "agents of the West" brought to power by NATO. Sirte has become the first stronghold that ISIL totally controls outside of Iraq and Syria, and it is reportedly home to the group's strongest presence within Libya. For the Western powers to combat this, means many military airstrikes as well as working with Libyan forces to provide intelligence of the whereabouts of the ISIL powers
petergrossmanseu

Syria conflict: US-Russia brokered truce to start at weekend - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...world-middle-east-35634695

syria conflict truce weekend bbc news

shared by petergrossmanseu on 23 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • joepouttu on 23 Feb 16
     
    The US and Russia have announced that a cease fire will take place on February 27 at midnight, excluding IS and other terrorist organizations. Because the first cease fire was a failure, there is a lot of skepticism surrounding this second effort. 
  • petergrossmanseu on 24 Feb 16
     
    A BBC article talking about the US and Russia brokered truce that is supposed to start this weekend. The article also includes a fantastic map created by the BBC to show the zones of control and where various airstrikes have been taking place. While this doesn't have anything to do with the arms involved in Syrian conflict I think this is too significant to ignore this week and therefore I have dedicated my tags to it.
mcooka

Hillary Clinton Gives Israeli Education Program Spotlight on Campaign Trail - Israel - Forward.com - 0 views

forward.com/...am-spotlight-on-campaign-trail

hillary clinton israeli education program

shared by mcooka on 10 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • ch week in Israel, young parents open their homes to local instructors who teach them how to prepare their toddlers for school.
  • In her bid for the Democratic nomination, Clinton rarely misses an opportunity to tout her record on early childhood education, from her first job out of law school at the Children’s Defense Fund to her Too Small To Fail program at The Clinton Foundation.
  • The story of how Clinton brought the Israeli education program to America starts with a coincidence.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • In 1969, an Israeli educator named Avima Lombard conceived the program as a way to help the children of North African immigrants get a head start in the Israeli school system
  • Clinton’s associates in Arkansas apparently had a similar reaction when she told them they would have to travel to the Holy Land for HIPPY training: “‘Israel! Where is Israel?’”
  • HIPPY has been studied widely in academic and research settings.
  • But the two strong personalities also clashed occasionally. For several years, Lombard demanded that certain HIPPY USA staff members receive training in Israel. As the program grew, this practice became expensive and unsustainable, leading HIPPY USA to start training staff in Arkansas.
  • In 1998, Hillary Clinton visited a HIPPY event in Jerusalem while accompanying her husband when he was president. It was around holiday time, and Clinton was photographed with HIPPY children and their mothers.
  • mcooka on 10 Feb 16
     
    HIlary Clinton is using the Israeli Education program to highlight her campaign. She wants to promote Israeli education and how she supports early education. Hilary Clinton adds she wants to support overseas education as well
amarsha5

Syria crisis: Aid arrives in besieged towns - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...world-middle-east-35597909

Syria Aid war

shared by amarsha5 on 17 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • joepouttu on 17 Feb 16
     
    The first aid convoys have reached the besieged city of Muadhamiya. The convoys will hopefully defuse the hostility and resume the peace talks.
  • csherro2 on 17 Feb 16
     
    Cities in Syria that have been taken over by rebels are in desperate need of resources. This article explains and details what is being brought in.
  • amarsha5 on 18 Feb 16
     
    Aid trucks have arrived in beseiged towns throughout Syria, in a hope by the world powers and the UN that will lead to a "cessation of hostilities". Almost 500,000 people live in beseiged areas, according to the UN.
mcooka

Schooling in a crisis: the case of Syrian refugees in Turkey - ODI HPN - 0 views

odihpn.org/...e-of-syrian-refugees-in-turkey

refugee schooling crisis turkey Syria camps education

shared by mcooka on 17 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • The Syrian civil war has created one of the largest and most intense episodes of human suffering of the early twenty-first century.
  • 387,883, with 200,039 living in government camps and 164,143 living in rented apartments
  • Turkey’s efforts to meet the needs of refugees have been spearheaded by the Afet ve Acil Durum Yonetimi Baskanligi
  • ...36 more annotations...
  • majority of refugees are women and, especially, children; of the 200,000 refugees in Turkish camps, about 60% are children.
  • t was left to him to find tents, wooden flooring, carpets and paving bricks, desks, chairs, drawing boards, teaching aids and, of course, textbooks
  • urkish Red Crescent
  • acquired through AFAD channels a
  • egging
  • he result
  • ten large tents with floors
  • drawing boards
  • electricity
  • computer projectors.
  • limate control consisted of large fans
  • 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
  • preschools enjoyed the largest proportion of age-group participation.
  • camp schools are administered by Turks
  • curricula are not recognised or sanctioned by the Turkish education authorities, and so licenced Turkish teachers cannot be assigned to them.
  • amp education directors rely heavily on volunteers from among the refugees themselves
  • time and instruction with the children is often inconsistent
  • not be able to teach in Arabic
  • There is little incentive for parents to commit their children to learning a new language
  • Closely related to the issue of language is the curriculum
  • eenage students in the camps generally do not have access to the secondary schooling
  • 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.
  • Syrian schools have opened outside of the camps with funding from the local government,
  • using the Syrian curriculum and books salvaged from Syrian schools and reproduced
  • Gaziantep
  • namely Syrian demands for the separation of the sexes in classrooms
  • 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.
  • Tensions over the separation of the sexes, curriculum and language of instruction are compounded by the politics of Syrians’ refugee status
  • 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.
  • officially designate Syrians as refugees would limit Turkey’s involvement in the Syrian civil war,
  • Turkey has allowed arms and non-lethal aid through its territory to supply the Free Syrian Army
  • here are also concerns that Syrians, desperate for income, take jobs at lower wages than Turks
  • 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
  • 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).
  • The schools developed in Syrian refugee camps in Turkey provide valuable models for establishing schools for rapidly growing refugee populations.
  • 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.
  • mcooka on 17 Feb 16
     
    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
aromo0

Women's rights in post-revolution Egypt - Asfar - 0 views

www.asfar.org.uk/ights-in-post-revolution-egypt

rights egypt women revolution

shared by aromo0 on 17 Feb 16 - No Cached
  • Unprecedented state violence against women between the time of the revolution (2011) and the election of a new government (2012) contravened international law, and violated the spirit of the revolution.
  • Egypt’s first democratically-elected, post-revolution government overwhelmingly failed to recognise crucial women’s issues such as marital rape and human trafficking and contributed to the culture of sexual harassment; one of the most pressing problems for Egyptian women today.
  • aromo0 on 17 Feb 16
     
    This article talks about the details of the women's rights movement since 1952. After the revolution in 2011, women's rights has yet to become a topic of importance. 
« First ‹ Previous 101 - 120 of 133 Next ›
Showing 20▼ items per page