Posts tagged : "Middle East"

Kourosh Ziabari: The terrorist group ISIL is moving ahead with its cruel campaign of killing the innocent civilians en masse, while its atrocities are being depicted by the corporate media as the actions of an Islamic organization. The criminal modus operandi of the ISIL is playing into the hands of those who desire to portray Islam as the source of all the evil emerging across the world and a cause of instability and conflict in the Middle East. A prominent human rights activist and Muslim author who has researched the global Islamophobic propaganda says that “tens of millions of dollars” are being poured into the “anti-Islamic and anti-Muslim industry.” “There’s ample research demonstrating the tens of millions of...

Kourosh Ziabari - Iran Review: On the sunny spring afternoon of Monday, April 13, I got to the Istanbul Bilgi University’s central campus with a tram which took me from the Aksaray neighborhood in the Fatih District to the Kabatas quarter where the shuttles for the Santral Campus, available every 30 minutes, would pick up the students and drop them at the entry gate of the university. Istanbul Bilgi University, founded in 1996, is ranked among the top 10 institutions of higher education in Turkey. Although I arrived at my appointment with some 45-minutes delay, Prof. Ilter Turan, one of Turkey’s leading political scientists and the former rector of the Istanbul Bilgi University, received me warmly, and after a few minutes of...

Kourosh Ziabari - Iran Review: The horrific actions being committed under the banner of religion, as manifested in the atrocities of the terrorist group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), have made people across the world, especially youths, doubtful about the peaceful nature of divine religions and raised many questions on the relationship between Islam and terror, and the growth of what some have come to call Islamic fundamentalism. There are hardline commentators and pundits who capitalize on the mass killings and executions of civilians by the ISIS to propagate this belief that Islam is a religion of violence that preaches the killing of innocent people, and that Islam and peace are irreconcilable. They ignore the calls by...

Kourosh Ziabari - Fair Observer: We usually don’t find it making the headlines, but Iceland is a nation that has struggled with the question of whether to join the European Union (EU) or not. It has historically played a significant role in regional developments and made important contributions to security and democracy in Europe. Along with Haiti, Mauritius, Monaco, Panama and Vanuatu, Iceland is one of few countries that have no standing army but a limited military. It has been Iceland’s policy to not maintain an army since 1869, however, it is an active and founding member of NATO and joined the Atlantic coalition in 1949. Iceland is an official candidate to join the EU, even though its former foreign minister, Jon Baldvin...

Kourosh Ziabari - Iran Review: The proposal made by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to the UN General Assembly to form a global coalition against violence and violent extremism has received widespread commendation across the world and was adopted as a resolution by the General Assembly on December 18, 2013 with the unanimous vote of the member states. Iran is now seen as the forerunner of fighting terrorism and extremism, even though it’s located in a geographic region that is replete with ethnic and religious tensions, frequent uprisings and social unrest, shattered with incessant foreign military intervention. The Conference on World Against Violence and Extremism was held in Tehran on December 9-10, 2014. It brought hundreds of...

Kourosh Ziabari: A leading American intellectual an anti-war activist believes that the United States is the most serious threat to the world peace and that the US government is a major terrorist entity. Bill Ayers says, according to the most standard and reliable definitions of terrorism, "US is indeed a terrorist nation." He adds, "It’s also the greatest purveyor of violence on earth over the past half century, and the foremost threat to world peace today." Bill Ayers, a retired professor in the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, believes that despite its destructive and dreadful impacts on the livings of American people and other nations across the world, the US imperialism is "in a decisive...

Fair Observer - Kourosh Ziabari: The Slovak Foreign Minister Miroslav Lajčák was the 13th European foreign minister to visit Iran since the moderate cleric Hassan Rouhani became President of Iran in June 2013. Lajčák came to Iran less than a week after the Danish Foreign Minister Martin Lidegaard concluded his trip to the country, and took part in an exclusive interview with Fair Observer. Aside from his role as the foreign minister, Miroslav Lajčák is also serving as the Deputy Prime Minister of the Republic of Slovakia in the cabinet of Robert Fico. Lajčák is a veteran diplomat who has held several high-ranking political offices prior to beginning his tenure as the Slovak Foreign Minister in April 2012. From 1994 to...

Kourosh Ziabari - International Policy Digest: The rise of the terrorist group which has declared itself an Islamic State and intends to establish a caliphate over significant parts of Syria, Iraq, Jordan and Turkey is now the most pressing and urgent matter for the international community, bringing together countries from different parts of the world together to form a coalition against it. An offshoot of Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State (IS), also known as ISIS or ISIL, has carried out several terrorist attacks in Iraq and Syria in the recent years, especially following the fomentation of unrest in Syria in 2011. The Islamic State considers itself an Islamic authority whose ultimate mission is to govern the whole Muslim world. It...

Kourosh Ziabari - Tehran Times: As Israel continues its massive military aggression against the Gaza Strip, which has already cost the lives of more than 2,000 Palestinians, the international condemnation of the atrocities committed by the Tel Aviv regime and its cruel massacre of the unarmed citizens of the besieged Gaza grows steadily. Just recently, a group of Jewish scholars, most of whom were born in the Occupied Territories and teaching at the Israeli universities, have signed a petition, calling on the government of Benjamin Netanyahu to stop its deadly incursion into the coastal territory. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 2,030 Palestinian have been killed so far, including...

Kourosh Ziabari: Dr. Erik Fosse, a prominent Norwegian medical doctor, who has been in the Gaza Strip during the recent Israeli incursion has detailed his experiences with the deadly Israeli aggression and its impacts on the Palestinian civilians. According to Dr. Erik Fosse, more than 400 children were killed during the Israeli regime's military operation in Gaza since early July and about 30% of the injured are children 18 years old or below (the international bodies have put the number at over 475). "I've worked in the Middle East and with the Palestinians for more than 30 years, and what often surprises me is not the fact that so many people get traumatized by these wars, but that all the young people that experience tragedies like...

Kourosh Ziabari - Tehran Times: The growing worldwide condemnation of the atrocities of the Israeli regime in the occupied Gaza Strip by the young students, activists, media personalities, public intellectuals, independent politicians and former UN officials underlines the fact that Israel cannot always get away with its criminal, discriminatory treatment of the Palestinian people and enjoy impunity from being held accountable. Despite the deafening silence of the Western leaders regarding the mass killing of Palestinians in what the Tel Aviv regime termed "Operation Protective Edge" and claimed more than 2,000 lives including 541 children, there are courageous public figures who have spoken out frankly against the illegal conduct...

Kourosh Ziabari: A world-renowned Canadian philosopher argues that the United States holds the world record of illegal killings of unarmed civilians and extrajudicial detention and torturing of prisoners who are detained without trial. Prof. John McMurtry says that the U.S. government is a gigantic mass-murdering machine which earns profit through waging wars, and is never held accountable over its unspeakable war crimes and crimes against humanity. He also believes that the U.S. has become a police state, which treats its citizens in the most derogatory manner. “I have travelled alone with only backpack possession through the world, and have found no state in which police forces are more habituated to violent bullying, more likely...