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| 1 |
ID:
125291
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| Publication |
2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
ATMEH, Syria - A sprawling tent city has sprouted up here amid the sand-flecked hills and ancient olive groves. Giant tarps twist up into the branches as rivulets of contaminated water run below. A tank watches from down the road, which leads to the nearby Turkish border.
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| 2 |
ID:
125300
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| Publication |
2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
On May 28th, around the same time Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan addressed the Justice and Development Party (AKP) delegation in Parliament, as he does most Tuesdays, police were ejecting protesters from Istanbul's Gezi Park. The previous day, environmentalists had begun gathering there to protest the cutting down of trees to make room for the reconstruction of the Halil Pasha Artillery Barracks, which stood on the same plot of land from the early 1800s until 1940. By the end of the week, the protests had grown in intensity, with over a hundred thousand demonstrators and police using tear gas and water cannons to control them. Clashes with police spread from the adjacent Taksim Square to other parts of the city, and later to eighty of Turkey's eighty-one provinces, with more than two million people participating in a movement that by the end of June left five dead and thousands injured. Istanbul alone suffered tens of millions of dollars worth of property damage.
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| 3 |
ID:
125298
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| Publication |
2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
In September, senior clerics from a dozen different Christian denominations all over the Middle East met in Amman, Jordan, for a conference organized by King Abdullah II. The subject was the crisis facing Christianity in the region, and what to do about it. Missing from the meeting were two prominent Arab prelates from Aleppo: Mar Gregorios Yohanna Ibrahim, the city's Syriac Orthodox bishop, and Metropolitan Boulos Yazigi, his Greek Orthodox counterpart. Both had been abducted by unidentified gunmen somewhere between Aleppo and Antioch in April, and their whereabouts were still unknown.
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| 4 |
ID:
125301
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| Publication |
2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Ongoing turmoil in North Africa and the Middle East has disappointed many in the West who had expected the 2011 revolutions to usher in a new era of social justice and democratic transformation across the region. There is now no lack of dour meteorological puns on "Arab Spring" to indicate the unfortunate change of season since the uprisings. But the people who rushed to use this term in the first place set themselves up for disappointment. It was rash and ahistorical to presume automatically that after December 2010, the Arab world would go through democratic transitions akin to those which East European countries went through after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Despite certain vague and beguiling similarities, transition processes in the Arab countries have really had little in common with those in post-Communist Europe.
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| 5 |
ID:
125289
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| Publication |
2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
America is in a bad mood.
In the midst of the worst economy since the 1970s, we're on the verge of losing the war in Afghanistan, the longest we've ever fought, against stupefyingly primitive foes.
We sort of won the war in Iraq, but it cost billions of dollars, thousands of lives, and Baghdad is still a violent, dysfunctional mess.
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| 6 |
ID:
125299
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| Publication |
2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Since Vladimir Putin returned to the presidency he never really left, Russia's descent into neo-Soviet authoritarianism has become daily more brazen. Dissidents are once again being put on show trials that call up the ghosts of Joseph Brodsky, Andrei Sinyavsky, and Yuli Daniel. Laws are being jammed through the Duma with the express purpose of making Western-minded Russians fear that they will be arrested for spying for foreign powers. Putin has adroitly dusted off a Cold War narrative in which the United States is trying to foment a "color revolution" in Russia using agents and hirelings, both foreign and domestic, and the people learn once again to fear enemies of the motherland in the employ of the "imperialist" United States.
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| 7 |
ID:
125295
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| Publication |
2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
The early-summer protests in Turkey were not televised. Instead, Turkey's news networks aired penguin documentaries and cooking shows while all hell broke loose at the heart of Istanbul in Gezi Park, as what started out as an environmentalist movement quickly evolved into a major uprising against the Turkish government. But the networks remained mostly mute, intimidated by the prospect of reprisals from the country's hotheaded prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
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| 8 |
ID:
125293
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| Publication |
2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
For a devoutly Buddhist country, Burma has lots of people who hedge their bets. Animism is still a force in the country, especially in the villages, and animist beliefs have been incorporated into Burma's brand of Theravada Buddhism for centuries (thirty-seven Great Nats, or spirits, are recognized as guardians of Buddhist temples). Fortune telling and astrology are widely practiced, and many Burmese employ astrological charts in naming their children. Numerology has also long figured into decisionmaking in the country, sometimes in ways that to outsiders seem downright bizarre.
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| 9 |
ID:
125294
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| Publication |
2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
"Unfortunately?.?.?.?Israel [has] suffered from bias-and sometimes even discrimination" at the United Nations, said none other than the UN's highest official, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, speaking in Jerusalem in August. Back at headquarters a week later, Ban withdrew the substance of the comment without denying he had made it. The retraction was less surprising than the original assertion, which was remarkable because of the identity of the speaker, not for what was said, the reality of which is about as well concealed as the sun on a cloudless noon.
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| 10 |
ID:
125296
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| Publication |
2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
"Freedom must be won anew by every generation." I was reminded of the truth behind these words of my old boss, Jack Kemp, in considering the current debate over Edward Snowden and the collection programs of the National Security Agency.
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