By a Special Correspondent via Niqash.org NIQASH’s correspondent takes a walk around Mosul to see how the city has changed since extremists took it over last week. Despite masked men at checkpoints and burned out military facilities, things are strangely calm. Two hundred meters from the eastern entrance to Mosul, the Iraqi Kurdish taxi driver […]
Archives for June 2014
Fiji to Rich Carbon-Spewing Nations: History will Judge you for Sinking Us!
By Jon Queally The interim prime minister of Fiji on Thursday condemned the international community for its continued failure to address the crisis of climate change, saying Pacific island nations like his have been left "to sink beneath the waves" as the planet warms and the oceans rise. Fiji’s interim Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama told […]
Global Warming is about to Decimate the Building Blocks of Life in the Ocean
By Alex Kirby Researchers warn that marine life could be dramatically affected as climate change threatens to cause severe reduction of plankton – the key source of nutrients − in some ocean regions by the end of the century LONDON, 12 May − There are plenty more fish in the sea − but not for […]
Afghanistan Elections: Abdullah refuses to Concede, Protests Erupt charging Fraud
By Frud Bezhan via RFE/RL KABUL — As allegations of fraud in Afghanistan’s runoff election pile up, protest movements have mobilized against what they see as systematic vote-rigging. Two groups have taken the lead in protesting the June 14 presidential vote, holding separate demonstrations and sit-ins in several locations around Kabul. In various events that […]
Palestinians 66 Yrs Later: An Unsustainable Refugee Crisis
By Pierre Krähenbühl via EurActiv Commissioner General of the United United Nations Relief and Works Agency Pierre Krähenbühl writes on the unsustainability of the Palestine refugee crisis on World Refugee Day (20 June). 120 children were recently allowed out of Yarmouk, the Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus, to sit public exams. The 14-year-olds emerged from […]
Iraq: Ayatollah Sistani hints that Parliament should dump al-Maliki as Muqtada mobilizes “Peace Brigades”
The chorus for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki of Iraq to step down grew louder on Friday, as Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani of Najaf had his representative in Karbala read a Friday prayers sermon in which he called for Parliament to meet and choose a prime minister who can lead a government of national unity. Shaikh […]
Flashback: All the Ways the Neocons were Wrong about Iraq
via Bernie Sanders US Senator Dick Cheney “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.” (Source) “I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq, from the standpoint of […]
How US Hawks Created an Arc of Instability in the Middle East
By Tom Engelhardt via Tomdispatch As Iraq was unraveling last week and the possible outlines of the first jihadist state in modern history were coming into view, I remembered this nugget from the summer of 2002. At the time, journalist Ron Suskind had a meeting with “a senior advisor” to President George W. Bush (later […]
Is Iraq Actually Falling Apart? What Social Science Surveys Show
By Mansoor Moaddel Several nationally representative surveys carried out in Iraq between 2004 and 2013 provide important facts about Iraqi orientations toward secular politics, basis of identity, Americans, and Iranians. These facts have serious implications for the territorial integrity of Iraq, support for an Islamic government, and the U.S. policy toward the country. These surveys […]