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A BBC headline: " Who is to blame for violenec in the name of Islam?" (Episode 1: The Battle for Al-Azhar) Who is to blame for violence in the name of "democracy" and "freedom"?
England The main argument of those opposing the scrapping of tuition fees in England is where to find the money to fund free higher education. Looking at a list of European countries where there are no tuition fees or a little charge, one can see that these countries have gone bankrupt and their education system has collapsed because they provide "free" higher education. " Once you factor in the people who will not end up paying back their loans, in the long-term the policy is expected cost the government £8bn a year." (Source: the BBC Fact Check) That is less than a tenth of the billions lost beause of tax evasion. The real reason of keeping the tuition fees in England of £9,250+ is that consecutive goverments have adopted the most aggressive "neo-liberal" social-economic system in Europe, where the fundamentalist "free-market" ideology reigns supreme.  The structure of the socio-political system has made many oppose free education
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In Tartous, Syria, women wear black, youth in hiding and bitterness grows If you are one of those who got confused about who, how, and why in the Syrian war and have given up taking a clear judgment and position, or you are like the majority who have taken the mainstream Shi'a-Sunni war(or conflict) as a given, you should think again.  Here is a background to start with: Syria: from authoritarianism to upheaval   (pdf fomat)
UK Economists are warning that this decade is set to be the worst in more than 200 years for British pay packets . (FT)
" Ferocious oppression by the Egyptian and Israeli authorities has produced a new generation of fighters, motivated more by a thirst for revenge than by ideology." Egypt: Sinai's undeclared war
"For forty years the Israelites wandered in the Sinai wilderness before reaching the Canaanite border, where Moses died, but his lieutenant, Joshua, led the Israelites to victory in the Promised Land, destroying all the Canaanite cities and killing their inhabitants.
  The archaeological record, however, does not confirm this story. There is no evidence of the mass destruction described in the book of Joshua and no indication of a powerful foreign invasion. But this  narrative was not written to satisfy a modern historian; it is a national epic that helped Israel create a cultural identity distinct from her neighbors."  — Karen Armstrong, Fields of Blood - Religion and the History of Violence , 2014, pp. 104-5 The role of "myth" in nation creation?
A review of Ilan Pappe's new book and from the archive my interview with Ilan Pappe about his book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (audio format) Part 1 , Part 2