One has to do with economics; the other with ideology.
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shared by alarsso on 21 Apr 15
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To end Syria civil war, West must guarantee minorities' safety with peacekeeping force ... - 0 views
www.csmonitor.com/...safety-with-peacekeeping-force
civil war Syria religion minorities middle east revolution
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Syria allies: Why Russia, Iran and China are standing by the regime - CNN.com - 1 views
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It believes humanitarian concerns are often used an excuse for pursuing America's own political and economic interests.
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Putin's existential fear for his own survival and the survival of the repressive system that he and al-Assad represent
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not only driven by the need to preserve its naval presence in the Mediterranean, secure its energy contracts, or counter the West on 'regime change
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The West handles the Islamic world the way a monkey handles a grenade," Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin tweeted
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Russia is a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council. It has the power to veto Security Council resolutions against the Syrian regime and has done so repeatedly over the past two years
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Islamic Republic has provided technical help such as intelligence, communications and advice on crowd control and weapons as protests in Syria morphed into resistance
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The last thing Iran wants now is a Sunni-dominated Syria -- especially as the rebels' main supporters are Iran's Persian Gulf rivals: Qatar and Saudi Arabi
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Iran counted on Syria as its only Arab ally during its eight-year war with Iraq. Iraq was Sunni-dominate
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Many believe Iran is Washington's greatest threat in the region, especially with its nuclear potential
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Rather than siding with either Assad or the opposition and standing aside to 'wait and see,' Beijing is actively betting on both
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China said it is firmly opposed to the use of chemical weapons and supports the U.N.'s chemical weapons inspectors.
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China is a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council. And like Russia, China has repeatedly blocked sanctions attempts against the Syrian regime
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Syria's allies, Russia, Iran, and China, all stand by them despite western powers opposing the Syrian government. There are different reasons to why these powers seem to stay with Syria such as Russia's ideologies, Iran's strategy, or China's trading. Either way, these government will stand by them until there is nothing left to lose.
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Are China and Russia Moving toward a Formal Alliance? | The Diplomat - 0 views
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In the joint statement issued by China and Russia, the main message is that China-Russia relations have reached a new stage of comprehensive strategic partnership and this will help increase both countries’ international status and influence, thus contributing to a more just international order
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China secures a long-term (30 years) provision of natural gas from Russia and Russia can reduce its dependence on the European markets as well as strengthen Russia’s position against Western sanctions
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Russia is now moving closer to China’s side with regard to the territorial disputes between China and Japan
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China and Russia last week vetoed a draft UN resolution to send Syria to the International Criminal Court for war crimes. China and Russia had vetoed three previous UNSC resolutions condemning Syria
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China and Russia will deepen cooperation under the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building in Asia (CICA), a new security framework in Asia-Pacific that conveniently excludes the U.S. and Japan.
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mutual strategic needs as both China and Russia want to create a multipolar world that is not dominated by the U.S., particularly as China faces threats from the US-led alliance in Asia
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China’s chance of winning maritime disputes with Japan partly depends on maintaining a good relationship with Russia
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the NATO expansion is a serious threat to Russia’s national security and as such Russia has to fight back
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new China-Russia alliance is now emerging and this will eventually lead to a multi-polar world order.
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problems in China-Russia relations such as historical mistrust, the lack of a common threat, and conflicting interests in Central Asia
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he most important factor determining whether China and Russia should form an alliance is whether the two countries have shared strategic interests and how long such shared strategic interests can last
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China nor Russia could become a member of the Western bloc led by the U.S. because other allies of the U.S. would feel threatened by China and Russia
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, China’s number two position in the world means that China will not be supported by the U.S. with regard to most international affairs issues
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Yan also refutes the argument that a China-Russia alliance against the U.S. would lead to another cold war.
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ould be potentially high costs of such an alliance due to common problems such as fears of abandonment and entrapment
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Russia wants to maintain good relations with all Asian states and thus will not side with China when it comes to territorial disputes between China and Japan
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China-Russia alliance is unrealistic and a strategic partnership is more flexible and better for China.
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seems that in the near future a formal alliance between China and Russia will not happen due to a variety of reasons.
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shared by allieggg on 13 Nov 14
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US weighs sanctions on Libyan factions to try to halt proxy war - 1 views
www.todayszaman.com/-to-halt-proxy-war_363768.html
UN libya militias armed groups war middle east proxy power vacuum sanctions US
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US sanctions would be separate from potential United Nations sanctions that aim to pressure Libyan factions and militias to take part in UN-backed political negotiations to be led by UN envoy Bernardino Leon.
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US officials declined to say who they might target with sanctions or why they felt it necessary to look at US. penalties separate from the United Nations. Nor would they detail what sanctions they would propose.
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If applied, the United Nations sanctions would target individuals or groups involved in the fighting, rather than their foreign backers, and would freeze their assets as well as impose travel bans.
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United Nations moves slowly or not at all, US penalties could be imposed whenever Washington wished.
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US sanctions could be especially worrisome to Khalifa Haftar, a former Libyan army general who fled to the United States after breaking ranks with Gaddafi and returned to launch a campaign against the Islamists in Benghazi.
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Western officials believe the involvement of outside powers such as Egypt and the UAE is exacerbating the conflict and that the two countries are arming and funding the more secular forces.
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UAE sees Egypt's leadership as a firewall against militants and has given Cairo financial and military support
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Saudi Arabia, a supporter of Sisi, is sympathetic to the Egyptian and Emirati involvement in Libya but is not believed to have played any direct role,
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Qatar and Turkey. Qatar, officials said, has given arms and money to Islamist militias while Turkey has offered moral support.
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The UN is pushing for sanctions to put pressure on Libyan factions and militias to take part in political negotiations. These sanctions would target individual groups rather than the foreign backers involved in the proxy war and would freeze their assets and impose travel bans. US officials have introduced the possibility of using their own sanctions separate from the UN for a few reasons: UN sanctions move slowly if not at all, Washington could impose them whenever they wish. The US places more emphasis on the importance on external actors in the conflict than domestic groups, explaining that these countries are actually intensifying the conflict.
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Ignorant jihadis 'have bought into fantasy fuelled by social media' | World news | The ... - 0 views
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“They all had impoverished backgrounds, they were illiterate, their families had been approached by the Taliban and were coerced into abandoning their children, they were lambs to the slaughter,” she said.
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Those from the west are naive and lack imagination, they are chasing a fictional dream, and they often have barely any knowledge of what Islam is.”
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The book aspiring Isis militants most commonly ordered online before taking off to Syria was Islam for Dummies, she said.
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“What Isis has done, and they have exceed al-Qaida in this, is take really spectacular control of the narrative of their organisation while sharing that story through masterful use of all mechanisms of the media,” she said
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Ten years ago, it was difficult to access and acquire videos like the beheadings we have seen unless you were part of an inner circle, but now this material is mainstream, you can access it just by opening Twitter,”
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“If you are a young person with limited imagination, a limited sense of self, and you are uninclined to engage with your neighbours, friends and a pluralistic society, you are very easily seduced. You’re like a blank canvas.”
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Islamism promotes explicit totalitarianism and the belief that Islam historically had incredible global and geopolitical glory that should be restored through violence, jihadism and barbarity
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Move to UAE has increased knowledge of Islam, say expats | The National - 0 views
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ABU DHABI // Expatriates have embraced the UAE's culture and traditions, and increased their understanding of Islam since they moved here. Most western expatriates (94 per cent) say they have embraced the culture, followed by Arab expatriates (93 per cent) and Asian expatriates (89 per cent). Wow, so according to this source people moving into the UAE from western culture have apparently started embracing that culture. This article sounds really good on the surface, but recalling that UAE is like one of the countries that actually still enforces possibility of death penalty for homosexual activity and prison sentences or beatings for adultery...
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Inside The Chilling Online World Of The Women Of ISIS - 1 views
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In this article we get to see why many Western women decide to join ISIS. Up to this point we have only seen the point of view of the ISIS men and not the women, so this article gives us a bit of an insight into the women's world According to this article we see that the ISIS women use social media in order to help other women that want to join and/or also trying to express their views about the world around them.
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أسباب زيارة السيسي للمنطقة الغربية العسكرية | الموجز - 0 views
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shared by nicolet1189 on 27 Oct 14
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Al-Qaida and ISIS Use Twitter Differently. Here's How and Why. - NationalJournal.com - 1 views
www.nationaljournal.com/...ly-here-s-how-and-why-20141009
Al-Qaida ISIS social media Twitter facebook communication
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their separate techniques not only reveal key divisions between the two terrorist groups, but also illustrate the depths of extremism that ISIS will plumb—and that al-Qaida won't.
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Social media's public and instantaneous nature is ideal for reaching ISIS's target audience—young, disillusioned Westerners who are ripe for radicalization—and it gives them a sense of community.
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while ISIS focuses on fighting a nearby enemy to defend the Islamic State, al-Qaida focuses on fighting an external enemy, i.e. the United States.,
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ecause al-Qaida is more focused on fighting Western influence, it is much more concerned with currying favor with the wider Muslim community.
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ISIS's propaganda documentary Flames of War is produced in a Hollywood-esque fashion, complete with pyrotechnics and voice
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al-Qaida leader Anwar al-Awlaki, which numbered over a thousand at one point before Google took them down. Al-Awlaki preaching directly into the camera for close to an hour is in stark contrast to ISIS's sophisticated and sensational production.
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This article contrasts communication techniques of Al-Qaida and ISIS. It outlines how ISIS communication strategy uses more dominant forms of social media such as facebook, youtube, and twitter while Al-Qaida still uses web pages, forums, and their own magazine they publish to speak to their audience.
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Strife in Libya Could Presage Long Civil War - NYTimes.com - 1 views
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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.
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the violence threatens to turn Libya into a pocket of chaos destabilizing North Africa for years to come.
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Ansar al-Shariah, the hard-line Islamist group involved in the assault on the American diplomatic Mission in Benghazi in 2012
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The ideological differences are blurry at best: both sides publicly profess a similar conservative but democratic vision.
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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.
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In Benghazi, Libya’s second-largest city, the fighting has closed both its airport and seaport, strangling the city.
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the rush toward war is also lifting the fortunes of the Islamist extremists of Ansar al-Shariah, the Benghazi militant group.
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The United Nations, the United States and the other Western powers have withdrawn their diplomats and closed their missions
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Until now, a rough balance of power among local brigades had preserved a kind of equilibrium, if not stability
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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.
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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.
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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.
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he has mustered a small fleet of helicopters and warplanes that have bombed rival bases around Benghazi, a steep escalation of the violence.
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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
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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,”
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the general’s blitz has now stalled, it polarized the country, drawing alarms from some cities and tribes but applause from others.
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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
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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a spokesman for the old disbanded Parliament, favored by the Islamists and Misuratans, declared that it would reconvene in Tripoli
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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
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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.
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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.”
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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.
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“It is not pro- or anti-Qaddafi any more — it is about Libya,” said a former Qaddafi officer in a military uniform
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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,”
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Syria's Assad says West wants to weaken Russia | Reuters - 0 views
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Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has accused the West of trying to weaken Russia by turning Ukraine into a puppet state, a tactic he said had also been used against his own country.
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keep coming back to the fact that there is a connection between the Syrian crisis and what is happening in Ukraine
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"Firstly because both countries are important for Russia, and secondly because the goal in both cases is to weaken Russia
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The United States and the European Union have imposed economic sanctions on Russia over its role in the crisis in Ukraine.
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Russia, a long-standing ally of Assad, denies sending troops and weapons to support separatists fighting government forces in east Ukraine
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Assad will not attend, the president said those taking part should not lose sight of the main goal, clearly meaning restoring peace
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Many Syrian opposition figures shunned the January talks, saying they would appear only at meetings that led to Assad's removal from power.
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Walsall to Syria: Fighters, travellers and victims? - BBC News - 0 views
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This article is definitely an interesting read. It talks about a network of travelers from Walsall that are now part of ISIS. I think that we really need to better understand why people in Western countries feel the urge to leave everything they have and go live under Islamic rule in Syria. There has to be some sort of brainwashing involved because this article shows one of the men having claimed not to be murderous, and that he just wants to "live under Islamic law and help the oppressed amongst us."
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How serious is the ISIL threat in Libya? - 1 views
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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
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Libya's North African neighbors brace for any Western strikes - 0 views
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With increased chatter about Western powers potentially leading an air campaign to rid Libya of ISIS, Libya's neighbors are beginning to brace for a potential influx in Libyan refugees. They are tightening border crossings, sending diplomats out of Libya and warning it's citizens to essentially brace for impact.
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Iran's hard-liners want a better nuclear deal, too - The Washington Post - 0 views
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Time to Hold the Media to Account for Islamophobia | Dr. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed - 0 views
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This article takes a look at how the media- particularly in Western countries- has affected what is commonly known as islamophobia. Many people in America has strong prejudices against people who identify with the Islamic faith, and much of this is because they only hear negative attitudes about them from news media outlets. One interesting thing that I found about this article was the fact that it related these trends in media coverage to 9/11
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Future generations will despise our 'realism' on Syria | Nick Cohen | Opinion | The Gua... - 0 views
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