Posts tagged : "United States"

Kourosh Ziabari - Fair Observer: After Iran shot down a $220-million US unmanned aerial vehicle over the Strait of Hormuz on June 20, President Donald Trump said the United States was “cocked and loaded” to retaliate. He apparently rescinded his decision only 10 minutes before the attack was to be carried out, after his military advisers told him 150 people may die in such a strike. President Trump is being censured by critics for not having a clear and robust Middle East strategy. He is said to only increase the likelihood of an unwanted, new military confrontation in an already volatile region, resulting from miscalculations that appear to be inevitable when tensions run high. In a recent op-ed, the former German Foreign...

Kourosh Ziabari - ODVV: More than a year after the US pullout from the Iran nuclear deal, the ripple effects of President Donald Trump’s controversial decision continue to be felt across Iran and the Middle East. The Iran-US relations are cranked up to a point of unprecedented hostility and officials in both countries have been ramping up aggressive rhetoric towards the other side while a new military face-off in the region appears to be just around the corner. The Trump administration has been waging a campaign of “maximum pressure” against Iran in a bid to convince the Islamic Republic authorities to come to a new agreement with the United States addressing a broader range of issues than just Tehran’s nuclear activities....

Kourosh Ziabari - ODVV: Data and figures on anti-Muslim bigotry across the world, especially in North America, paint a disturbing picture of the status of Islamic communities. Council on American-Islamic Relations recorded over 500 anti-Muslim hate crimes across the United States from January to May this year. The actual number, however, appears to be way bigger. On April 29, a mosque was assaulted and several Qurans were destroyed in Queens, New York by a 37-year-old man, who is now being indicted and can spend the next three to 15 years behind the bars if convicted. Earlier this year, on May 15, a fire tore through the Diyanet Mosque in New Haven, Connecticut, which left significant damage to the property. The New Haven police...

Kourosh Ziabari - Fair Observer: The United States thrives on being a multicultural and diverse society that guarantees individual freedoms and rights to all its citizens. However, even though the brutal institution of slavery and the era of racial segregation are a thing of the past, there are indications that systemic racism hasn’t gone away and still haunts American society. In 1967, the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, known as the Kerner Commission, which was tasked by President Lyndon B. Johnson to probe the causes of the 1967 race riots and come up with recommendations for the future, concluded that the United States was “moving toward two societies, one black, one white — separate and unequal.” Almost...

Kourosh Ziabari - Fair Observer: Tensions between Tehran and Washington have been escalating for some time now. In the most recent episode, two commercial tankers were damaged by mysterious explosions in the Gulf of Oman on June 13, sparking a surge in oil prices and triggering speculations about the possible perpetrator. The US government was quick in pointing the finger of blame at Iran. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the blasts were caused by the Iranian military “based on intelligence, the weapons used the level of expertise needed to execute the operation.” Iran denies the allegations. After withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the United States imposed crushing...

Kourosh Ziabari - Fair Observer: A member of the Association of American Universities, the University at Buffalo (UB) is the largest and most comprehensive public research university in the State University of New York (SUNY) system. A world-renowned center for research and academic excellence,  Buffalo was established in 1846 and enrolls more than 30,000 students. The university is 89th in the 2019 Best College Rankings, according to the US News and World Report. Researchers and scholars at the University at Buffalo are credited with many important scientific discoveries, achievements and breakthroughs. For example, the university’s medical researchers have developed a vaccine that can block mosquitoes from transmitting malaria....

Kourosh Ziabari - Fair Observer: New Mexico is the fifth largest state in the US. It borders Mexico to the south, its capital is Santa Fe and its largest city is Albuquerque. The state is known for many reasons, including the detonation of the world’s first atomic bomb in the town of Alamogordo in 1945, as well as its large Hispanic population who make up 46.7% of the state’s population. An ethnically diverse community, Spanish is widely spoken in New Mexico. It became the 47th state in 1912 and has two official songs, one in English and the other in Spanish. It was inhabited by Native Americans for thousands of years, and its yellow and red flag was first brought to New Mexico by Spanish explorers in 1540. The state is home to...

Kourosh Ziabari - Fair Observer: Since coming to office, President Donald Trump has tightened US immigration policies, both legal and illegal. His policies follow economic nationalism and are part of his “America First” slogan, aimed at protecting American workers and industries. In 2017, Trump banned immigration from several Muslim-majority countries and ordered the building of a separation wall along the US border with Mexico, from which a large number of illegal immigrants flock to the United States. The Trump administration also enacted a policy that permitted the government to take thousands of illegal migrant children from their parents at US ports of entry and place them in cage-like detention centers. On several...

Kourosh Ziabari - Fair Observer: Anti-black racism in the United States continues to be a problem over half a century since the abolition of Jim Crow laws. These laws enforced segregation between black and white Americans in public places. Although the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed discrimination in employment and banned race-based segregation, as well as sporadic efforts by successive US governments to tackle racial inequalities, racism still looms large in 21st-century America. Even if it is not a national trend, minorities in the US continue to receive discriminatory treatment from law enforcement officials and face major obstacles in securing housing, health care and quality education, as well as experiencing...

Kourosh Ziabari - Fair Observer: On October 27, a gunman entered the Tree of Life synagogue in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and opened fire on worshippers attending the Shabbat morning services. Although police were called to the scene and SWAT forces intervened, the shooter killed 11 people and injured seven others. It is believed that Robert Bowers, the alleged gunman, is behind the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in the history of the United States. The 46-year-old expressed a hatred for Jews on social media and told the police while in custody that he wanted “all Jews to die.” He has since appeared in a courtroom and prosecutors have demanded the death penalty. The shooting in...

Kourosh Ziabari - Fair Observer: History has been made in America. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar will be the first Muslim women to serve in the US Congress. The 2018 midterm elections saw a decisive victory for Tlaib in Michigan’s 13th congressional district, while Omar won in Minnesota’s fifth congressional district to replace the first Muslim ever elected to Congress, Keith Ellison. Tlaib, 42, was born in Detroit, Michigan, to working-class Palestinian immigrants. Omar, 37, is a Somali-American who was elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives in 2016. Omar and her family immigrated to the United States when she was 14 to flee the civil war in Somalia. The landmark achievement for Tlaib and Omar — both Democrats...