allies like Egypt, Jordan and Turkey all finding ways on Thursday to avoid specific commitments to President Obama’s expanded military campaign against Sunni extremists.
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Arabs Give Tepid Support to U.S. Fight Against ISIS - NYTimes.com - 1 views
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first American strikes inside Syria crackled through the region, the mixed reactions underscored the challenges of a new military intervention in the Middle East, where 13 years of chaos, from Sept. 11 through the Arab Spring revolts, have deepened political and sectarian divisions and increased mistrust of the United States on all sides.
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The tepid support could further complicate the already complex task Mr. Obama has laid out for himself in fighting the extremist Islamic State in Iraq and Syria:
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He must try to confront the group without aiding Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, or appearing to side with Mr. Assad’s Shiite allies, Iran and the militant group Hezbollah, against discontented Sunnis across the Arab world.
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While Arab nations allied with the United States vowed on Thursday to “do their share” to fight ISIS and issued a joint communiqué supporting a broad strategy, the underlying tone was one of reluctance.
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Syria and the United States were “fighting the same enemy,” terrorism, and that his government had “no reservations” about airstrikes as long as the United States coordinated with it
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Egypt’s hands were full with its own fight against “terrorism,” referring to the Islamist opposition.
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Turkey, which Mr. Kerry will visit on Friday, is concerned about attacks across its long border with ISIS-controlled Syria, and also about 49 Turkish government employees captured by the group in Iraq
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at least 10 Arab states signed a communiqué pledging to join “in the many aspects of a coordinated military campaign,” but with the qualification “as appropriate” and without any specifics.
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But many Sunni Muslims were cynical about battling an organization that evolved from jihadist groups fighting American occupation.
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For Shiites, whom ISIS views as apostates deserving death, the group poses an existential threat, yet Shiite-led Iran, a longtime foe of the United States, is excluded from the coalition.
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Egypt and Syria, revolts that Sunni Islamists saw as their chance at power have been rolled back or brutally thwarted.
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But that, he said, would require fancy footwork from Mr. Obama to “make it clear this is about American security, not about favoring any side in the Syrian civil conflict.”
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Members of a range of Syrian insurgent groups that consider ISIS an enemy said they, too, opposed American strikes unless they also targeted the government.
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And even those most supportive of the strikes — members of the American-vetted groups that stand to gain new aid to fight ISIS — complained that the United States had abetted the extremists’ rise by failing to help other insurgents earlier. They said the United States was attacking ISIS now only because the group threatened it as well as the broader world.
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Syrian Leaders See Opportunities and Risks in U.S. Striking ISIS on Their Soil - NYTime... - 0 views
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Now, though, he and his inner circle believe they have been granted a reprieve — at least politically
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by President Obama’s declaration that he may strike in Syria against the extremist group the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria,
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unsure who would benefit militarily — government forces, or Syrian insurgents and separatist Kurds, who have also clashed with the foreign-led ISIS militants.
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“So unless the U.S. successfully kills key ISIS commanders in Syria,” Mr. Sayigh said, “its military impact will be limited there in the short and possibly medium term.”
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Many in the government believe the campaign was designed for political reasons to show that the United States is acting against ISIS
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the first step in any serious effort would be forcing Turkey, an American ally and NATO member, to stop the flow of ISIS fighters across its borders
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Mr. Assad’s inner circle who believe that he faces less and less pressure to compromise, and that the West will eventually ally with him against ISIS
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Video of an attack on the Tabaqa air base shows soldiers fleeing, apparently unarmed, into the desert, and being gunned down by ISIS fighters.
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Still, the Tartus woman and many other government supporters say they see no alternative to Mr. Assad to protect them from ISIS.
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there is a sense of dejection and a belief that the new focus on ISIS has derailed what was left of Western political will to oust Mr. Assad or foster a political compromise any time soon.
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BEIRUT, Lebanon — The fortunes of President Bashar al-Assad have suffered over the past two months, with battlefield setbacks and new signs of doubt emerging within his political base, as the civil war in Syria drags on with no end in sight.
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In Weddings, Pope Francis Looks Past Tradition - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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While the Roman Catholic Church considers sex out of marriage a sin, some of the couples married by the pope had already lived together and one had a grown child. Some couples had been previously married. But in Francis’s new, more forgiving church, these otherwise familiar domestic arrangements were not considered an impediment.
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In Weddings, Pope Francis Looks Past Tradition - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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“not a television show” but a symbol of “real life” with “joys and difficulties,”
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But in Francis’s new, more forgiving church,
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have been declining even as separations and divorces are rising.
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about 122,000 of the country’s 207,000 weddings were religious ceremonies,
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Vatican watchers said the public marriages, the first by a pope since 2000, were meant to send a message, something Francis has done previously to soften the church’s image on social issues.
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for example, the pope said he would not condemn — or judge — priests because of their sexual orientation.
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he’s a realist.
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‘who am I to judge?
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pope, who doesn’t want to turn people away and instead wants to find a way to bring people in,
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“The path is not always a smooth one, free of disagreements, otherwise it would not be human. It is a demanding journey, at times difficult, and at times turbulent, but such is life,”
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issues like allowing divorced members who remarry to receive Communion.
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Release of iPhone 6 Delayed in China - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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iPhone could represent a threat to China’s national security. The accusations were promptly rejected by Apple.
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website carried a statement saying only that the date of the iPhone 6’s availability would “be updated soon.”
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$5.9 billion in greater China from April to June, a 28 percent increase from the same period a year earlier
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Apple has never worked with any government agency from any country to create a back door in any of our products or services,
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We have also never allowed access to our servers. And we never will. It’s something we feel very strongly about.
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Family Room for Relatives of 9/11 Victims Is Recreated in Albany - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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The Family Room opened in April 2002 in space donated by Brookfield Office Properties, the owners of 1 Liberty Plaza, a 54-story skyscraper across Church Street from the trade center site.
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replaced this summer by a new private gathering space in the National September 11 Memorial Museum pavilion
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I feel it’s time for people to see our pain, our anguish, our love and our strength; to experience all that we felt and feel about our loved ones, in its purest and most uninhibited form.
Paths to War, Then and Now, Haunt Obama - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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ISIS Video Shows Execution of David Cawthorne Haines, British Aid Worker - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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a vital ally of the United States
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Alan Henning, another British citizen
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We will do everything in our power to hunt down these murderers and ensure they face justice, however long it takes.
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The group is currently holding Mr. Henning and another British citizen, as well as two other American aid workers.
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ISIS warned that the hostages would die if relatives made their identities public.
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“We don’t pay ransoms to terrorists when they kidnap our citizens.”
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tortured
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The BBC reported that imams across Scotland, where Mr. Haines’s parents live, called for the release of Mr. Haines and other hostages during Friday Prayer last week.
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Arab Nations Offer to Fight ISIS From Air - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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The Obama administration said Sunday that “several” Arab nations had offered to join in airstrikes against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria
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American officials have made it clear they do not want the airstrikes to get ahead of the ground action against ISIS, which they said would take time to mass.
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Specifically, senior Iraqi and Kurdish officials asked the United States as recently as this weekend to take action along the Iraqi-Syrian border to deprive ISIS of the safe havens it enjoys in that area.
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“success looks like an ISIL that no longer threatens our friends in the region, no longer threatens the United States, an ISIL that can’t accumulate followers or threaten Muslims in Syria, Iraq or otherwise.”
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The United States has identified ISIS targets in Iraq over the past several weeks. But officials said they were waiting, in part, to match the allied commitments with actual contributions: warplanes, support aircraft that can refuel or provide intelligence, more basing agreements to carry out strikes, and the insertion of trainers from other Western countries.
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Arab nations could participate in an air campaign against ISIS in other ways without dropping bombs, such as by flying arms to Iraqi or Kurdish forces, conducting reconnaissance flights or providing logistical support and refueling.
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Mr. Kerry characterized the strategy in an effort to make it easier for Sunni states to explain to their own populations why they would be contributing forces against Sunni extremists.
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From Turkey, ISIS Draws Steady Stream of Recruits - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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, Can did not think he had much to lose when he was smuggled into Syria with 10 of his childhood friends to join the world’s most extreme jihadist group.
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He said he shot two men and participated in a public execution. It was only after he buried a man alive that he was told he had become a full ISIS fighter.
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‘God is the greatest,’ which gives you divine strength to kill the enemy without being fazed by blood or splattered guts,”
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But one of the biggest source of recruits is neighboring Turkey, a NATO member with an undercurrent of Islamist discontent.
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Recruits cite the group’s ideological appeal to disaffected youths as well as the money it pays fighters from its flush coffers.
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Turkey declined to sign a communiqué last Thursday that committed a number of regional states to take “appropriate” new measures to counter ISIS, frustrating American officials.
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Hacibayram, a ramshackle neighborhood in the heart of Ankara’s tourist district, has morphed into an ISIS recruitment hub over the past year. Locals say up to 100 residents have gone to fight for the group in Syria.
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Children have started to spend more time online since the municipality knocked down the only school in the area last year as part of an aggressive urban renewal project.
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When a young Syrian girl walked past them, they pounced on her, knocking her to the floor and pushing their toy rifles against her head. “I’m going to kill you, whore,” one of the boys shouted before launching into sound effects that imitated a machine gun.The other boy quickly lost interest and walked away. “Toys are so boring,” he said. “I have real guns upstairs.”
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The boy’s father, who owns a nearby market, said he fully supported ISIS’s vision for Islamic governance and hoped to send the boy and his other sons to Raqqa when they are older.
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“ISIS is brutal,” he said. “They interpret the Quran for their own gains. God never ordered Muslims to kill Muslims.”
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Still, he said many were drawn to the group for financial reasons, as it appealed to disadvantaged youth in less prosperous parts of Turkey. “When you fight, they offer $150 a day. Then everything else is free,” he said. “Even the shopkeepers give you free products out of fear.”
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At the same time, a 10-year-old boy lingered in his family’s shop, laughing at the crowd rushing to get a glimpse of the two leaders. He had just listened to a long lecture from his father celebrating ISIS’ recent beheading of James Foley, an American journalist. “He was an agent and deserved to die,” the man told his son, half-smirking through his thick beard.To which the boy replied, “Journalists, infidels of this country; we’ll kill them all.”
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U.S. General Is Open to Ground Force to Fight ISIS in Iraq - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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ground operations against Islamic extremists in Iraq if airstrikes prove insufficient, opening the door to a riskier, more expansive American combat role than the president has publicly outlined.
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something Mr. Obama has ruled out.
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Mr. Obama, seeking to allay fears of another Iraq war, has promised that American ground troops will not be involved in fighting the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. In a sign of the administration’s mixed message, the president pointedly did not call it a war, while his advisers later did.
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hances of civilian casualties are much higher.
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The White House insisted on Tuesday that Mr. Obama was not shifting his policy and that General Dempsey was not out of sync with his commander in chief.
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the White House press secretary, Josh Earnest, said to reporters. “It’s also the responsibility of the commander in chief to set out a clear policy.”
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The challenge will come, General Dempsey said, when Iraqi and Kurdish forces try to drive the militants out of densely-populated urban areas like Mosul.
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“To many of us that seems like an inadequate response,” he said.
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Nations Trying to Stop Their Citizens From Going to Middle East to Fight for ISIS - NYT... - 1 views
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Arab Nations Offer to Fight ISIS From Air - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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Several Arab countries have offered to carry out airstrikes against militants from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, senior State Department officials said Sunday.
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Mr. Kerry, who is in Paris to attend an international conference the French are hosting on Monday on providing aid to the new Iraqi government, has already visited Baghdad; Amman, Jordan; Jidda, Saudi Arabia; Ankara, Turkey; and Cairo.
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10 Arab countries joined the United States in issuing a communiqué that endorsed efforts to confront and ultimately “destroy” ISIS, including military action to which nations would contribute “as appropriate.”
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The United States has a broad definition of what it would mean to contribute to the military campaign.
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“Providing arms could be contributing to the military campaign,” said a second State Department official. “Any sort of training activity would be contributing to the military campaign.”
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President François Hollande of France told Iraqi officials that his country would be willing to carry out airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq,
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Prime Minister Tony Abbott of Australia has also said that his country will join the air campaign and is sending as many as eight FA-18 attack planes, as well as an early warning aircraft and a refueling plane.
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such as flying arms to Erbil in the Kurdistan region or Baghdad, conducting reconnaissance flights or providing logistical support and refueling. The officials said the Arab offers were under discussion.
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“The Iraqis have asked for assistance in the border regions, and that’s something we’re looking at,” the first State Department official said.
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“They have a very new air force,” a third State Department official said, referring to the Iraqi military. “Their targeting is not nearly as precise as ours and they have made some real mistakes.”
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“I disagree completely with ISIS in thought and means, but I do not accept that America fights them,” said the scholar, Sheikh Yusef Qaradawi, leader of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, in a Twitter message reported around the region. The United States, he said, “is not moved by Islamic values but by its own interests, even if it spills blood.”
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his scholars’ union declared ISIS’s self-proclaimed caliphate “null and void,” arguing that its extremism stigmatized more mainstream Islamists and undermined broader Sunni opposition movements in Syria and Iraq.
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Now his criticism of the American role may increase the fears of a backlash against Arab governments that publicly join the campaign.
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groups of Iraqi forces, Kurds and Syrian rebels stepped up to provide the fighting forces on the ground.
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choke off ISIS’s ability to reap $1 million or more a day from oil sales,
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trainers from other Western countries.
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Net Neutrality - The New York Times - 0 views
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munication companies and firms like Netflix and Amazon that would allow for faster delivery of video and other data to customers; agrees with Obama's assertion that such deals could stifle business and free communication; suggests FCC reclassify broadband Internet service as a telecommunications service, whi
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Federal Communications Commission receives about 780,000 comments on its rules to secure open Internet; sampling of comments posted on commission's website is heavily weighted toward urging it to take strong action to preserve net neutrality. MORE
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The Freedom of the Hijab - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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I realized that working for these causes while wearing the hijab can only contribute to breaking the misconception that Muslim women lack the strength, passion and power to strive for their own rights.
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Maker of Hepatitis C Drug Strikes Deal on Generics for Poor Countries - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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said it will begin selling its own version of the drug in India and other developing countries at a fraction of the price it charges in the United States.
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Some 350,000 people die every year of Hepatitis C infections, most of them in middle- and low-income nations.
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Its high price has led to intense criticism even in the United States, where officials say it could wreck Medicaid budgets and insurers say it could cause increases in private insurance premiums.
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In the United States, Sovaldi costs $1,000 a pill or $84,000 for a typical 12-week course of treatment. It is likely to be sold for less than $1,800 for a 24-week course of treatment in India, where people are generally infected with a different form of the virus and treatment regimens can take twice as long.
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“Really what we’re trying to do here through the partnerships we’ve established is expand availability of chronic Hepatitis C therapy, particularly in the developing world,”
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The Indian companies were selected for the partnerships because much of the world’s finished drugs are made in India, particularly for developing countries.
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Hepatitis C infections are caused by a virus that is generally transmitted through medical procedures, intravenous drug use or sex. Infections can go undetected and unnoticed for years but can eventually cause liver scarring and failure
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Gilead’s deals were instantly criticized by some patient advocacy groups as inadequate, because under terms of the deals the companies would not be allowed to sell their drugs in some middle-income countries where patients and governments would struggle to afford the drug.
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But he said the company would provide many such countries discounted prices on its own version of the pill.
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Violence Erupts in Yemen Capital After Weeks of Rallies - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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The Freedom of the Hijab - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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It’s been over two months since I decided to become a hijabi — one who wears a head scarf and adheres to modest clothing — and before you race to label me the poster girl for oppressed womanhood everywhere, let me tell you as a woman (with a master’s degree in human rights, and a graduate degree in psychology) why I see this as the most liberating experience ever.