Paul Rodgers reports on the intensification of war planning in Washington after the failed P5+1 talks in Moscow. Open Democracy
Bahman Baktiari
Saturday, June 30, 2012
Friday, June 29, 2012
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Anthropologist Marcy Brink-Danan writes about Jews in Turkey in new book
Marcy Brink-Danan, Jewish Life in 21st-Century Turkey: The Other Side of Tolerance ( Indiana University Press, 2012).
Bahman Baktiari
Bahman Baktiari
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
The Growing Iran-Turkey Rivalry
The Front Page has a good article on Turkish-Iranian rivalry. According to the article, the crisis in Syria has helped to expose the growing rivalry between these two nations and it is becoming apparent that whatever “honeymoon” that existed between the two nations in recent years is over."
Bahman Baktiari
Bahman Baktiari
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Monday, June 25, 2012
Who are the Egyptian military men ?
A must piece read in the New York Times about 23 senior officers who make up the ruling military council.
Bahman Baktiari
Sunday, June 24, 2012
The United Nations and Human Rights: Fit for purpose?
Rachael McCallum
"To ensure that all human beings are granted their human rights, there is the need for international oversight bodies to set up laws, administer justice and ensure that governments and people are always observing human rights in all nations around the globe. One such global entity used to ensure human rights is the United Nations. The basic aim of the United Nations is to honour its Charter, which is built on the fundamental principles of human rights.
But how efficient and effective is it in discharging its function as a primary human rights body around the globe? "
Saturday, June 23, 2012
Ashraf Khalil on the depressing state of Egyptian politics:
Friday, June 22, 2012
Recommended Publication: Abraham's Children: Liberty and Tolerance in an Age of Religious Conflict,
New Book by Yale University Press addresses the roots of intolerance in societies and how it is conditioned by historical factors.
Abraham’s Children: Liberty and Tolerance in an Age of Religious Conflict
Departing President Defends Her 'Incremental' Approach to Change at U. of Virginia
In her first extensive public statement since she was forced out of the University of Virginia presidency, Teresa A. Sullivan cast herself Monday as an "incrementalist" resistant to "corporate-style, top-down leadership." See the Article.
Bahman Baktiari
Bahman Baktiari
Thursday, June 21, 2012
NIAC slams Apple for racial profiling: The National Iranian American Council (NIAC) has slammed Apple
The National Iranian American Council (NIAC) has slammed Apple for racial profiling of Farsi-speaking customers and discriminatory policies adopted against them.
Bahman Baktiari
Bahman Baktiari
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Climate change is degrading marine habitats & threatening fish supplies worldwide - Report
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) released a new publication today on the risks from climate change on Large Marine Ecosystems (LMEs). The volume entitled, “Frontline Observations on Climate Change and the Sustainability of Large Marine Ecosystems” finds that climate change is threatening the livelihoods of billions of people, who are dependent on the $12 trillion generated annually from the LMEs.
See the Report Here.
Bahman Baktiari
See the Report Here.
Bahman Baktiari
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
Turkish feminists fight bill to curb abortion right
"Thousands of feminists and activists sent a petition to several Turkish government ministries on Tuesday to protest a bill that would ban abortions beyond the first six weeks of pregnancy.
"To prohibit abortion or introduce limits making it de facto impossible violates women's right to health and life," read the petition, signed by 55,000 people and 900 organizations.
The bill is "a new display of conservative policies that do not regard women as equal" to men, it said.
Monday, June 18, 2012
Sunday, June 17, 2012
Why should Israel dictate the terms of a nuclear deal with Iran ?
Israel, not signatory to Nonproliferation Treaty ( NPT) & has 200+ nukes, believes it can dictate terms to Iran that is a member of NPT and does not any nuclear warheads or bombs.
Israel: Make military threats against Iran more real
Iran nuclear weapons talks enter a critical third round
After low benchmarks in Istanbul and Baghdad, the heat is turned up in Moscow to avert a potential diplomatic crisis. Article by Julian Borger in the Guardian.
Saturday, June 16, 2012
Syria: Prospects for Transition from Minority to Majority Rule
By Mark N. Katz on June 16, 2012
E -International Relations
E -International Relations
The Assad regime in Syria is not simply a dictatorship. Largely drawn from Syria’s Alawite minority community (13% of the country’s population), the Assad regime is also the instrument through which this minority rules over the rest of the country—including the majority Sunni community (74% of the population). This fact complicates the prospects for a democratic transition in Syria.
Friday, June 15, 2012
Is technology good for religion?
David Sloane The Immanent Frame
At The Washington Post, Lisa Miller argues that, contrary to the beliefs of religious figures and political pundits, technology is good for religion. Citing the popularity and utility of religiously-themed iPhone and Android applications, like FlyRight,Miller contends that technology has the power to enhance religious experience and can supplement religious practice. Read the full article here.
Bahman Baktiari
Thursday, June 14, 2012
A Catholic Backlash Against Sharia Hysteria?
June 14th, 2012
Daniel Luban
Lobelog
National Review Online, the flagship right-wing site, has seen less and less in the way of heated debate in recent years, as writers not fully on board with conservative movement orthodoxy have been pushed out or left of their own accord. So NRO readers may have been startled to witness a rare bout of public discord these last few days, prompted by Matthew Schmitz’s article denouncing Kansas’s new anti-sharia legislation and casting a skeptical eye at the broader anti-sharia movement in general. Schmitz, an editor at the conservative religious journal First Things, suggested that those peddling alarmism about “creeping sharia”
…embarrass the very name of “religious liberty” and endanger our national security. Anti-Muslim bigots and their public apologists must be vigorously opposed by Americans who recognize the value of a religious voice in the public square and the imperative that all Americans be treated equally under the law, whether they are religious or irreligious, Christian, Muslim, or Jew.
What made Schmitz’s article rather awkward was the fact that many of these sharia alarmists — Mark Steyn, Andy McCarthy, and Daniel Pipes, to name only three — are among the most prominent writers for National Review.
Predictably, anti-Islam activist Andrew Bostom took to the NRO’s blog to denounce Schmitz as “willfully uninformed,” although his intervention consisted of a set of standard-issue talking points giving no indication that Bostom had even read the original piece. (As Schmitz noted in his reply, Bostom didn’t seem to notice that some of his talking points had already been rebutted in the piece.) This led Bostom to issue a second, more ill-tempered response in which he accused Schmitz of trafficking in “shallow, non-sequitur argumentation” and being “well marinated in cultural relativism.”
In the meantime, other NRO writers had gotten in on the fracas, with David French–a hawkish Christian Zionist lawyer and leader of the group Evangelicals for Mitt–providing a rambling defense of Bostom, while Ramesh Ponnuru–among the smartest and most prominent conservative pundits–attacked French and defended Schmitz’s original piece.
Why is any of this important? Simply because the controversy provides a hopeful (albeit highly tentative) indication that some on the religious right–and particularly the Catholic right–may be starting to stand up to the Islamophobic hysteria that has taken over much of the conservative movement. Perhaps uncoincidentally, both Schmitz and Ponnuru are Catholic, as is Robert George, the right-wing academic and movement power broker who has similarly called on Christians to “defend religious liberty for Muslims”. Prior to Schmitz’s article, his magazine First Things, which has no formal religious affiliation but has always been primarily Catholic in orientation, recently published another attack on anti-sharia laws by Robert Vischer.
Of course, it is nothing new to see religious Catholics, or the Church itself, take positions far to the left of the American conservative movement on foreign policy or economic issues. But the First Things crowd is notable in that it has always skewed to the right of most American Catholics and cultivated close ties with the conservative movement. Richard John Neuhaus, the magazine’s late founder, went from a left-wing opponent of the Vietnam War and campaigner for civil rights early in his career to a right-wing supporter of the Iraq War and proponent of a “clash of civilizations” between Christendom and Islam by the end of his life. Similarly, Robert George has all but urged fellow Catholics to abandon their (often-left-leaning) views on war or social justice and focus exclusively on issues related to abortion and sexual mores. (Rick Santorum is perhaps the classic example of this combination of conservative Catholic social mores and ultra-hawkish neoconservative foreign policy.)
In recent months, this group has raised an enormous outcry over the alleged violation of religious liberty inherent in the Obama administration’s contraception mandate. I confess that I have always been skeptical about whether their primary concern was really for “religious liberty” in general as opposed to Christian values in particular, and whether they would support the same sweeping conscience exemptions for Muslims that they were espousing for Christians. The current pushback against sharia hysteria on the right doesn’t provide a full answer to these questions, but it is at the very least a hopeful sign that the Catholic right might be willing to put its money where its mouth is when it comes to defending believers of other faiths.
Bahman Baktiari
VIEWPOINT: Three Years In, Is Iran’s Green Revolution Still Going?
HOLLY DAGRES
MIDDLE EAST VOICES
JUNE 12, 2012
Bahman Baktiari
MIDDLE EAST VOICES
JUNE 12, 2012
Before there was an Arab awakening, there was an Iranian one. It started three years ago, on June 13, 2009. Some have since called it a revolution; others have been more guarded, referring to it instead as a movement, connoting a sense of continuity.
On June 13, 2009, then incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed an election victory over his main opponent, Mir Hussein Mousavi, and other candidates in what the opposition claimed was pure and unadulterated fraud. Then, 30 years of suppression suddenly boiled over into a green wave of anger with Iranians taking to the streets in the most massive anti-regime demonstrations since the country’s 1979 revolution.
Read the full article here.Bahman Baktiari
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
New Book- THE DICTATOR’S LEARNING CURVE Inside the Global Battle for Democracy
By William J. Dobson
( Doubleday Press, 2012)
"The neo-authoritarians, from Vladimir Putin in Russia to Hugo Chávez in Venezuela to China’s more faceless technocrats, are still brutal, but they have learned to adapt. These types of leaders, the author says, “are far more sophisticated, savvy and nimble than they once were.”
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Israeli civics exam: explain why Jewish girls shouldn’t hang around with Arabs
A brave teacher in Israel has circulated on Facebook the text of a racist civics preparatory exam approved by Israel’s Ministry of Education. In it, pupils are asked to use concepts from civics to express their opinion about a letter calling on “daughters of Israel” (i.e. Jewish girls) not to hang around with Arabs. Racism and misogyny disguised as civics.
Documenting Death Sentences in Iran
Slide show that presents a graphic documentation of public hangings in Iran. The Islamic Republic has one of the worst records of imposing capital punishment.
New Publication by UNDP
How can the world's most dynamic region prepare itself for a sustainable future? See the UNDP publication from the Asia-Pacific Human Development Network.
ONE PLANET TO SHARE
Monday, June 11, 2012
Putin's Secret War The bloody Islamic insurgency in Russia's backyard
BY ANNA NEMTSOVA | JUNE 8, 2012 Foreign Policy
MAKHACHKALA, Russia – The officers nervously cocked their rifles as the crowd began to swell. The Kirovsky police station in the capital city of Russia's Dagestan region was now under siege. But the angry cohort outside the station walls on May 27 wasn't composed of the bearded, gun-toting militants one might expect in this insurgency-racked region, but a crowd of enraged women in hijabs and ankle-length dresses. It wasn't the first angry mob the officers had faced down, but a crowd of only women was unprecedented. Their dry faces wrinkled by sleepless nights, the women stormed the courtyard looking for their husbands and sons, locked in the basement cells, where they were thought to be beaten or, worse, tortured with electricity.
Read the full article here.
Bahman Baktiari
Saturday, June 9, 2012
Is Libya Cracking Up? Nicolas Pelham reports
Eight months after Muammar Qaddafi’s overthrow, journalists seeking wars in Libya have to journey deep into the Sahara and beyond the horizons of most Libyans to find them. A senior official of Libya’s temporary ruling body, the National Transitional Council (NTC), flippantly waved away an invitation to leave his residence at the Rixos, Qaddafi’s palatial Tripoli hotel, to join a fact-finding delegation to Kufra, a trading post 1,300 kilometers to the southeast, near Sudan and Chad. “Isn’t it Africa?” he asks.
Read the full article here.
Bahman Baktiari
Read the full article here.
Bahman Baktiari
Thursday, June 7, 2012
Syrian woman blogger gets human rights award
Syrian woman blogger Razan Ghazzawi has been honoured with this year's Human Rights Defenders at Risk award by the Dublin-based Front Line Defenders foundation, the group announced on Friday.
The World Today: A Survey of International Relations Scholars
The College of William and Mary recently completed its Teaching, Research, and International Policy survey of almost 3,500 international relations (IR) faculty around the world. the section on policy issues gives a good sense of how professors see the world.
Bahman Baktiari
Bahman Baktiari
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
Hallmark of Mubarak's Police State, Egypt's 31-Year Emergency Law Ends
Sarah El Deeb LAW.COM Journal June 4, 2012
Egypt's notorious emergency law has expired, ending 31 years of broad powers to detain and arrest for a police force accused of severely abusing its far-reaching authority.
Since former President Anwar Sadat's 1981 assassination, the security forces were empowered to detain and arrest people without charge, keep them locked up despite court releases and extract confessions under torture. Abuses almost always went unpunished. And at one point under the ousted regime of Hosni Mubarak, human rights groups said there were more than 10,000 people in detention -- many of them disappearing in Egyptian prisons.
"This is huge," said Hossam Bahgat, a human rights activist who had campaigned for years to lift the hated law. "What is really crucial is the message. The security forces operated under a culture that told them they were constantly above the law. Now they need to abide by the existing legislation and they won't enjoy any extralegal powers."
Last year's popular uprising that drove Mubarak from power was partially fueled by anger over police abuses of power and protesters vented against the symbols of the security agencies. The lifting of the law was a key demand by the pro-democracy youth groups that engineered the uprising 15 months ago.
The military rulers who took charge after Mubarak indicated they have no intention to renew the law. They said they will continue to be in charge of the country's security until an elected civilian authority takes over. The military has said it will hand over power to a democratically elected president by the end of June. A runoff between the two top presidential candidates slated for June 16-17 is the final phase of the transition to democratic rule.
U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner welcomed Thursday's expiration of the emergency law, saying it was a step "in the right direction."
"It is something that we have repeatedly encouraged them to do and it is certainly in keeping with the timeline that the (military) has set out for this democratic transition so it will be another step in that direction," he told reporters in Washington.
The emergency law was a defining and much-resented feature of Mubarak's authoritarian, 29-year regime. It was almost automatically renewed every few years, the last time in May 2010. The law had also been used by Mubarak's predecessors, and was first enacted in 1958. It remained in effect since 1967 and was briefly lifted for 18 months before Sadat's assassination.
It instituted a culture of abuse by the police force, giving it widespread powers to arrest criminals and political opponents. It was basically the main tool for successive Egyptian regimes to perpetuate a police state, spreading a culture of fear of authorities and rendering any political opposition almost immediately a threat to national security.
Mubarak's regime justified the continued use of the law to crack down on terrorism, drug trafficking and to impose speedy justice on activities deemed threats to national security. But human rights groups and activists said it gave security agencies extensive powers to detain, try without defendant rights, and crack down on opponents or menace citizens to entrench a culture of fear.
Under military rule of the past 15 months, a constitutional declaration sponsored by the military and drafted by legal experts put restrictions on renewing the emergency law, requiring that parliament would have to approve any renewal and a public referendum would also be needed.
"No one would dare demand the extension of the law," said Mahmoud Ghozlan, spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood who had spent years in jail following arrests under the provisions of the emergency law. "I think we are at the outset of a new era."
Days into the uprising, the police force all but disappeared from the streets, leaving a massive security vacuum that sent crime soaring. Since, there have been repeated and persistent calls to reform the police force but they have not really gotten off the ground.
Since Mubarak's ouster, human rights groups have blamed the military for its own set of human rights violations through its use of military tribunals for civilians and detention of activists. More than 11,000 civilians have been referred to military tribunals since February last year and there have been various allegations of torture in detention by security as well as military troops.
Under the emergency law, the government could imprison anyone for any period of time for no specific reason. The detainees would stay in prison without trials for extended period, and even court orders releasing them could be ignored by security agencies who would take them back in again.
Mubarak's security agencies targeted opponents, particularly Brotherhood members, cracking down on their meetings, finances and often in times of elections with recourse to emergency law provisions.
In two recent incidents, police arrested two men for drinking beer, although there is nothing in the law criminalizing that. After local prosecutors released them, the police detained them again under the provisions of the emergency law, apparently because they considered the two men a menace.
The incidents were recorded in a joint report issued Wednesday by New York-based Human Rights Watch and Geneva-based AlKarama, a regional rights center.
"This is an end of exceptional measures that provided cover to human rights abuses such as torture and enforced disappearances," said Heba Morayef, a researcher with Human Rights Watch. "It is the symbolism attached to it" as one of the main tools of oppression under Mubarak's rule, she said.
There are currently nearly 200 people detained under the emergency law. The two rights groups called for their release or referral to a regular prosecutor for charges.
The legacy of the emergency law still lingers. According to the law, defendants can be referred to special courts -- State Security emergency courts -- where they have no right to appeal. Human Rights Watch and AlKarama appealed to the parliament to end the use of these courts, which have been deemed unconstitutional by lawyers with the expiration of the law.
Six new cases have been referred to these courts under military rule since last year, while eight others are still in courts from before.
Human Rights Watch deputy Middle East director Joe Stork urged the parliament to investigate human rights violations that flourished because of the law.
"The Egyptian parliament should make sure that this state of emergency, a hallmark of Hosni Mubarak's abusive police state, has no future," Stork said.
Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
New Publication- The Iranian Nuclear Crisis: A Memoir by Seyed Hossein Mousavian ( 2012).
The author was a senior Iranian diplomat based in Germany, and a member of the Iranian nuclear delegation until 2006. His observations and insight provide a unique window into the mindset of Iranian negotiators.
The Iranian Nuclear Crisis: A Memoir
Bahman Baktiari
Monday, June 4, 2012
Article: America, Oil, and War in the Middle East
An excellent article by Toby Jones in the latest issue of Journal of American History, Volume 99, Issue 1.
Bahman Baktiari
Bahman Baktiari
Meet French Candidate Marion Maréchal-Le Pen: Third-Generation Extreme-Right Militant
by
June 4, 2012
Though the surprising success of extreme-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen may have made her the most attention-grabbing contestant in France’s recent elections, the 43 year-old National Front (FN) leader may soon find herself eclipsed by her own niece. Indeed, despite her aunt winning nearly one-fifth of all votes casts in first-round presidential polling in April, 22-year-old Marion Maréchal-Le Pen is now positioned to shine as the FN’s brightest star in next month’s parliamentary elections. And that’s not likely to spark jealousy or tension in the Le Pen clan. The scenario was created by FN founder (and Marine’s father) Jean-Marie Le Pen, who sacrificed his own legislative aspirations so his granddaughter could run in his place—and advance Marine’s efforts to recast the very face of the French extreme-right.
Her disarming charm and angelic looks aside, there’s a genetic and political logic to Maréchal-Le Pen’s current role assisting her grandfather and aunt in advancing a political agenda reviled by most in France as xenophobic, darkly nationalistic and even racist. The child of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s youngest daughter, Yann, Maréchal-Le Pen is the third generation of her family to enter the political fray. Intelligent, articulate and exceptionally easy to gaze upon, Maréchal-Le Pen was picked to run for a seat representing the Vaucluse department in southern France—an area that has been anchored emphatically to the right for decades and is receptive to FN positions and candidates. As such, the precinct is considered potentially hospitable turf for the newly transplanted Maréchal-Le Pen’s candidacy.
The road for this parliamentary drive was opened April 25, when Jean-Marie Le Pen announced his surprise decision to withdraw his own bid for the seat and defer to his granddaughter. Given Le Pen’s long record of election defeats, his move to bow out of such a promising district—and as the FN seeks to build on the momentum of Marine’s nearly 18% tally in presidential voting—surprised some observers as remarkable selfless with victory apparently so close. However, the act probably reflects Le Pen’s wider calculation that his sacrifice promises to pay bigger future political dividends for his party and family.
Indeed, the area in which Maréchal-Le Pen is seeking election is not just FN-friendly, it gave Marine Le Pen her highest score nationally in the presidential election—a 31.5% chunk of first-round balloting that easily outdistanced incumbent President Nicolas Sarkozy’s 27.6% take. That result appeared to convince the elder Le Pen that conditions in both France and Vaucluse were ideal for Maréchal-Le Pen to assume a central role in her aunt’s drive to give the FN a younger, modern and seemingly moderate face—and perhaps provide it a rare taste of electoral victory in a plumb district.
Given the representational rules of the French legislature that have locked the FN out of parliament for nearly three decades, it will take far more victories than Maréchal-Le Pen’s for her party to sit in the Assemblée Nationale again. Still, her win would be vital to the party—and is considered entirely possible. With multiple leftist candidates battling one another for what little support progressives receive in the area, Maréchal-Le Pen’s main task has been wooing Vaucluse voters away from the incumbent representing Sarkozy’s Union for a Popular Majority (UMP) party. That effort has been made easier by the taint many UMP politicians still suffer from association with the scorned and beaten Sarkozy.
Meantime, Maréchal-Le Pen brings her own strengths to the campaign. Unlike Marine Le Pen—who uses a brawling debate style, piercing intellect and a razor-sharp tongue for maximum political effect—Maréchal-Le Pen opts for more modulated tones, moderate language and the occasional smile as she champions the same anti-foreigner, anti-immigrant, Europe-bashing policies her aunt does.
Her kinder, softer sell is evident elsewhere, too. Maréchal-Le Pen has refused to rise to baiting that her age and thin political experience—limited to an unremarkable and ultimately failed run in 2010 regional elections in the Paris area—leave her unqualified for a seat in parliament. Maréchal-Le Pen has similarly remained sanguine in being nicknamed “Marion-ette” by detractors claiming she’s acting as a proxy in the race for her political and family elders. “I’m not my grandfather’s marionette, contrary to what (some) say,” Maréchal-Le Pen told France Soir last month. “I’ve been a National Front member since I was 17, and active supporter for a long time. I have a certain legitimacy to be a candidate (even if) it’s true that seeking a legislative seat is new, and a huge responsibility.”
Perhaps even more in this case than she’s willing to admit. Jean-Marie Le Pen himself has stressed the invaluable symbolism he attaches to his young, blonde, bright-eyed granddaughter avenging the FN in Vaucluse. In 1990, all of France exploded in outrage when the Jewish cemetery in the Vaucluse city of Carpentras was desecrated—an act long blamed on FN members. Though neo-Nazi skinheads with no links to Le Pen’s party ultimately confessed to the crime, the country continued to associate the FN with the horror of the attack. Now, the elder Le Pen believes his progeny can wipe away the stain of that injustice at long last with electoral victory. ”It’s here that the National Front was insulted and falsely accused by a left-wing political conspiracy,” Le Pen said in announcing he’d cede his spot in the Vaucluse legislative race to Maréchal-Le Pen. “The National Front wants to avenge what happened in Carpentras through this young girl who is a symbol of her generation.”
Despite the advantages she enjoys in the race, Maréchal-Le Pen remains an underdog in voting on June 10 and 17. Her main objective now is simply to qualify for the second round of balloting—and in doing so, become one of the 345 FN candidates analysts estimate may make the run-off stage in France’s 577 legislative races. Even if she only manages to be one of the most visible faces in such a swollen crowd of FN candidates, Maréchal-Le Pen may well become symbolic of something even bigger than her grandfather had dared hope for.
Bahman BaktiariSunday, June 3, 2012
New Publication-Democracy after Democratization: The Korean Experience
"Half a century since the adoption of democracy in South Korea, the Korean people's high hopes for popular governance have not been met. There is widespread skepticism about what Korea's implementation of democracy has brought to the nation and whether it will be able to respond effectively in the future to the demands of an evolving society and world. What accounts for the conservative complacency of Korea's democratic system? Why do democratic administrations in Korea seem so incompetent? Do political parties in Korea legitimately represent the voice of civil society in legislating and policymaking on issues with a direct impact on the freedom and welfare of the people?"
For more information see BROOKINGS INSTITUTION PRESS
Bahman Baktiari
For more information see BROOKINGS INSTITUTION PRESS
Bahman Baktiari
Saturday, June 2, 2012
Hosni Mubarak, Egypt's Ousted President, Goes From War Hero To Convict
HUFFINGTON POST
CAIRO -- War hero. Savior of the nation. An anchor of stability in a turbulent region. And in the twilight of his life, a criminal convicted for his role in the deaths of those fighting to oust him.
Hosni Mubarak was sentenced Saturday to life in prison after a court convicted him on charges of complicity in the killing of protesters during the 2011 uprising that forced him from power. His two sons – Gamal and Alaa – were acquitted on corruption charges. Read the full article here.
Friday, June 1, 2012
How Accurate is Democratic Peace Theory?
By James Bingham
e-International Relations (e-IR)
"Democratic peace theory originates from the 1795 essay by Immanuel Kant, ‘On Perpetual Peace’[1]. The premise of Kant’s work is that peace is not a natural condition in world politics and that, through the application of republicanism and liberty, politics should exist to maintain a peaceful order of republican states established through civil constitutions and abiding by international laws. The continuation of Kant’s strain of thought, that the form of government controlling a state influences the tendency of that state to go to war, was continued into the twentieth century." Read the full article here.
Bahman Baktiari
e-International Relations (e-IR)
"Democratic peace theory originates from the 1795 essay by Immanuel Kant, ‘On Perpetual Peace’[1]. The premise of Kant’s work is that peace is not a natural condition in world politics and that, through the application of republicanism and liberty, politics should exist to maintain a peaceful order of republican states established through civil constitutions and abiding by international laws. The continuation of Kant’s strain of thought, that the form of government controlling a state influences the tendency of that state to go to war, was continued into the twentieth century." Read the full article here.
Bahman Baktiari
A piece about abortion
Killing women little by little." Elif Safak writes about how Turkey's poorest women would suffer most if abortion is banned.
A piece about abortion
A piece about abortion
Famous Turkish author Elif Şafak writes on the recent abortion debate in Turkey for her column in daily Habertürk.
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By ROBERT H. REID June 2, 2012