The only council member to vote in favor said, “This is 100 percent, bar none, a First Amendment issue. They have the right to assemble. I don’t understand their religion, but they have the right to do this.†Only months ago the council unanimously approved a similar request from Christians:
- Georgia Town Bars Muslims From Renting Worship Space (Think Progress)
“The sentence comes days after another court dropped charges against Hosni Mubarak over the killing of protesters…. The attack on the … police station took place on … the day that Egyptian security forces … [killed] hundreds of people in one of the bloodiest episodes in Egypt’s modern history” …
“The squashing of the last legal case against former Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak over the weekend – on a technicality no less – is a measure of the growing confidence of Egypt’s resurgent military leaders” …
- Mubarak’s Release: Proof of Egypt’s Newly Confident Military Order (Christian Science Monitor)
… and “Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi has said his office is drafting a law to criminalize insulting the uprisings that toppled President Hosni Mubarak in 2011 and his Islamist successor Mohammed Morsi last year” …
- Egypt to Criminalize ‘Insulting Revolutions’ (AP / abc News)
… ““Our hope is only in God. Justice here is lost, justice is broken,” says a survivor who “lost the use of his legs when an armored police vehicle crushed them during the 2011 uprising that ended Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year rule and ignited hopes for a new era of freedom and accountability“:
“Tehran has denied carrying out raids” and both sides deny coordination:
“The probe is separate from newly extended talks between Iran and six world powers meant to reduce Iran’s technical capacity to make nuclear weapons by reconfiguring what it says are purely civilian projects. But its failure would throw hopes of a deal at the talks into doubt “:
- Iran Dismisses UN Probe of Alleged Work on Nukes (AP / abc News)
The Iraqi foreign ministry says the “woman detained by Lebanese authorities was not the wife of the Islamic State leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, but the sister of a man convicted of bombings in southern Iraq” and one of the “female detainees freed in exchange for the release of a group of nuns captured by” Syrian rebels:
Netanyahu fires two ministers and Israel’s government will be dissolved amid a new level of chutzbah in which ultranationalists favoring a law to make explicit the racism implicit in the Israeli notion of a “Jewish state” depict “moderate” (read “hypocritical”) Zionists opposed to the law as Nazis:
- Pssst! Is Israel Going Crazy? (Mondoweiss)
- Israel Has Always Been Crazy (Mondoweiss)
“The non-binding vote in France’s National Assembly … to urge the … government to recognize Palestine as a state is … significant and … fraught [because] France is home to both the largest Jewish and the largest Muslim communities in Europe, and balancing the interests and tensions between them is … sensitive”:
- French Vote on Palestinian Statehood Takes Bumpier Route to ‘Oui’ (Christian Science Monitor)
“The withdrawal of most Nato troops has triggered soul-searching about the achievements of a 13-year military mission that cost billions of dollars and thousands of lives, including those of 2,210 American and 453 British soldiers”:
“Finance Minister Hoshyar Zebari said 550,000 barrels per day of oil would be sent to the Iraqi oil ministry. In return, the Kurds will receive their 17% share of the national budget”:
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