#IslamicSocietiesReview: rights NGO says "Syrian refugees beaten, shot by Turkish border guards"

#IslamicSocietiesReview: rights NGO says "Syrian refugees beaten, shot by Turkish border guards"

    Tuesday, May 10, 2016   No comments

Turkish border guards have beaten and shot Syrians trying to reach Turkey, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Tuesday, as fighting in the border province of Aleppo intensifies threatening to force more people to flee.

HRW said in a report based on interviews with victims, witnesses and Syrian locals that in March and April 2016, five people, including a child were killed and 14 were seriously injured as a result of border guards' shootings and beatings.

In response to the report, a senior Turkish presidency official said the authenticity of the video could not be verified. Reuters was not able to verify the report.

A video released by HRW purporting to show the victims of the beatings and shootings depicted a bloodied body with bandages around his exposed torso. Another male corpse is shown with red and purple marks all over his back and arms.

A recent surge in fighting in Aleppo, Syria's largest city before the war, wrecked a 10-week-old partial truce sponsored by Washington and Moscow that had allowed U.N.-brokered peace talks to convene in Geneva.

#IslamicSocietiesReview : Flying while brown in the age of trump

#IslamicSocietiesReview : Flying while brown in the age of trump

    Saturday, May 07, 2016   No comments

On Thursday evening, a 40-year-old man — with dark, curly hair, olive skin and an exotic foreign accent — boarded a plane. It was a regional jet making a short, uneventful hop from Philadelphia to nearby Syracuse.

Or so dozens of unsuspecting passengers thought.

The curly-haired man tried to keep to himself, intently if inscrutably scribbling on a notepad he’d brought aboard. His seatmate, a blond-haired, 30-something woman sporting flip-flops and a red tote bag, looked him over. He was wearing navy Diesel jeans and a red Lacoste sweater – a look he would later describe as “simple elegance” – but something about him didn’t seem right to her.

She decided to try out some small talk.

Is Syracuse home? She asked.

No, he replied curtly.

#IslamicSocietiesReview: Lavrov says U.S. tried to include Nusra controlled areas in "cease fire" deal

#IslamicSocietiesReview: Lavrov says U.S. tried to include Nusra controlled areas in "cease fire" deal

    Wednesday, May 04, 2016   No comments

According to Reuters, the United States tried to include areas captured by al-Nusra Front terrorist group in northern Syria’s Aleppo in a recently established "silent" period during Washington’s talks with Moscow on the issue, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told Sputnik in an exlusive interview.

 Lavrov pointed to evidence that linked the Turkish government with al-Nusra Front and Daesh terrorists, which have been excluded from all previous ceasefire deals brokered by Moscow and Washington for Syria.

"During the negotiations, our US partners actually tried to draw the borders of this ‘zone of silence’ to include a significant number of positions occupied by al-Nusra [Front]. We managed to exclude this as it is absolutely unacceptable," Lavrov said.

Lavrov suggested that some party wanted to manipulate the United States into shielding al-Nusra Front militants from government fire.

Biden: How can Israel be democratic and Jewish at the same time

Biden: How can Israel be democratic and Jewish at the same time

    Tuesday, April 19, 2016   No comments

BBC: How can Israel be democratic and Jewish at the same time

Joe Biden voiced his 'overwhelming frustration' with Israel's government which he said is leading the country in the wrong direction, in an unusually sharp rebuke of America's closest ally in the Middle East.

The Vice President, in a speech yesterday to the pro-Israel, pro-peace advocacy group J Street, offered a grim outlook for peace efforts between Israel and Palestine, reflecting dim hopes for progress during the remainder of the Obama administration.

Although he said Israelis and Palestinians shared blame for undermining trust and shirking responsibility, he criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government, suggesting his approach raised 'profound questions' about how Israel could remain both Jewish and democratic.

'I firmly believe that the actions that Israel's government has taken over the past several years - the steady and systematic expansion of settlements, the legalization of outposts, land seizures - they're moving us and more importantly they're moving Israel in the wrong direction,' Biden said.

He said those policies were moving Israel toward a 'one-state reality' - meaning a single state for Palestinians and Israelis in which eventually, Israeli Jews will no longer be the majority.

'That reality is dangerous,' Biden added.

Saudi Arabia threatens U.S. over 9/11 legislation: will sell $750 billion worth of assets held inside U.S.

Saudi Arabia threatens U.S. over 9/11 legislation: will sell $750 billion worth of assets held inside U.S.

    Saturday, April 16, 2016   No comments

Saudi Arabia threatens to sell off US assets if Congress passes 9/11 bill
Officials in Saudi Arabia have reportedly told the Obama administration they will sell off hundreds of billions of dollars of American assets if Congress passes a bill that would allow the Saudi government to be held responsible for any role in the September 11 attacks.

On the eve of President Barack Obama’s visit to Saudi Arabia, the New York Times said the White House had been lobbying Congress to block the bill’s passage and that the threat from Saudi Arabia had been the subject of intense talks.

Hiroshima survivors look to Obama visit for disarmament, not apology

Hiroshima survivors look to Obama visit for disarmament, not apology

    Thursday, April 14, 2016   No comments

Progress on ridding the world of nuclear weapons, not an apology, is what Hiroshima would want from a visit by U.S. President Barack Obama to the Japanese city hit by an American nuclear attack 71 years ago, survivors and other residents said.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said during a visit to the city on Monday that Obama wanted to travel there, though he did not know if the president's schedule would allow him to when he visits Japan for a Group of Seven summit in May.

No incumbent U.S. president has ever visited Hiroshima.

A presidential apology would be controversial in the United States, where a majority view the bombing of Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, and of the city of Nagasaki three days later, as justified to end the war and save U.S lives.

The vast majority of Japanese think the bombings were unjustified.

"If the president is coming to see what really happened here and if that constitutes a step toward the abolition of nuclear arms in future, I don't think we should demand an apology," said Takeshi Masuda,

One of the authors of U.S. Senate Report on 9/11: Saudi government supported the hijackers who carried out the September 11th attacks

One of the authors of U.S. Senate Report on 9/11: Saudi government supported the hijackers who carried out the September 11th attacks

    Wednesday, April 13, 2016   No comments

Current and former members of Congress, U.S. officials, 9/11 Commissioners and the families of the attack's victims want 28 top-secret pages of a congressional report released. Bob Graham, the former Florida governor, Democratic U.S. Senator and onetime chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, says the key section of a top secret report he helped author should be declassified to shed light on possible Saudi support for some of the 9/11 hijackers. Graham was co-chair of Congress' bipartisan "Joint Inquiry" into intelligence failures surrounding the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, that issued the report in 2003.

Graham and his Joint Inquiry co-chair in the House, former Representative Porter Goss (R-FL) -- who went on to be director of the CIA -- say the 28 pages