By Karlos Zurutuza | (Inter Press Service) | – – KIRKUK, Iraq (IPS) – Reminders of the last occupants of camp K1 in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk are only visible on the murals at the main gate leading into the compound: Iraqi soldiers saluting the flag, pointing their weapons or being cheered on […]
Nearly all of Gaza’s Water ‘Undrinkable’
By Celine Hagbard – (IMEMC) | – – Reporters from RT (Russia Today) traveled to Gaza to look into last year’s report that 90% of Gaza’s water is undrinkable. As they sampled water from different parts of the coastal Strip, they found that the report is accurate – the water throughout Gaza is dirty, salty […]
The lost fortunes of Palestine’s dynamic Ottoman-era merchants
By Charlie Hoyle | (Ma’an News Agency) | – – The pink stone mansions hidden among the modern urban geography of Bethlehem —surrounded by an eight-meter high concrete wall and penned in by Israeli settlements — contain a rich untold history of phenomenal global success:The city’s pioneering 19th century merchants. An interior view of the […]
How Persian Literature shaped the culture of Iran and India
Sunil Sharma interviewed by Maryam Kamali | ( Iranian Medieval History) Sunil Sharma is the Associate Professor of Persianate and Comparative Literature at Boston University’s Department of Modern Languages and Comparative Literature Dear Prof. Sharma, it is my great pleasure to have an interview with you regarding medieval Persian literature. One of the controversial issues […]
How the Sept. 11 Attacks Changed American Lives Forever
By Tom Engelhardt | ( Tomdispatch.org) | – – Fourteen years later and do you even believe it? Did we actually live it? Are we still living it? And how improbable is that? Fourteen years of wars, interventions, assassinations, torture, kidnappings, black sites, the growth of the American national security state to monumental proportions, and […]
Why Dick Cheney is just as wrong about Iran as he was about Iraq
By William Beeman | (Informed Comment) | – – There are so many lies in Dick Cheney’s address to the AEI that one hardly knows where to begin in refuting them. He claims that the “international community” has called for the complete cessation of uranium enrichment by Iran. The “international community” apparently consists of Israel […]
The 3000: Why have some Tunisians joined ISIL/Daesh in Syria?
by Youssef Cherif | (Middle East Center Blog, LSE Political Science) | – – Tunisia, regarded as the Arab ‘beacon of hope’ and the cliché of Arab secularism and liberalism, raises a lot of expectations. Hence the most pressing point when Tunisia is discussed rotates around the 3000 Tunisian fighters who joined the ranks of […]
Multiple views of Meteor Explosion over Bangkok
Attila Nagy | (Video compilation) | – – “Several dashcams captured meteor entering Earth’s atmosphere and exploding over Bangkok, on the 7th of September, 2015.” Meteor over Bangkok, Thailand, 7 September 2015
As Germans welcome 1000s of Refugees, EU, Turkey Wrangle over Crisis
Euractiv.com | – – Thousands of exhausted refugees and asylum seekers received a hero’s welcome Sunday (6 September) as they streamed into Western Europe. But Austria warned the emergency measures are only “temporary” as the EU struggles to establish a united response to the crisis. As they stepped off trains in Munich, many clutching young […]