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Kanan Makiya
Kanan Makiya (born 1949) is an Iraqi-American academic and professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at Brandeis University. He gained international attention with ''Republic of Fear'' (1989), which became a best-selling book after Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, and with ''Cruelty and Silence'' (1991), a critique of the Arab intelligentsia. In 2003, Makiya lobbied the U.S. government to invade Iraq and oust Hussein. Makiya was born in Baghdad and left Iraq to study architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, later working for his father's architectural firm, Makiya & Associates which had branch offices in London and across the Middle East. As a former exile, he was a prominent member of the Iraqi opposition, a "close friend" of Ahmed Chalabi, and an influential proponent of the Iraq War (2003–2011) effort.Dexter Filkins"Regrets Only"''The New York Times Magazine'', October 7, 2007. Accessed October 12, 2007. He subsequently admitted that effort "wen ...
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Baghdad
Baghdad ( or ; , ) is the capital and List of largest cities of Iraq, largest city of Iraq, located along the Tigris in the central part of the country. With a population exceeding 7 million, it ranks among the List of largest cities in the Arab world, most populous cities in the Middle East and Arab world and forms 22% of the Demographics of Iraq, country's population. Spanning an area of approximately , Baghdad is the capital of its Baghdad Governorate, governorate and serves as Iraq's political, economic, and cultural hub. Founded in 762 AD by Al-Mansur, Baghdad was the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate and became its most notable development project. The city evolved into a cultural and intellectual center of the Muslim world. This, in addition to housing several key academic institutions, including the House of Wisdom, as well as a multi-ethnic and multi-religious environment, garnered it a worldwide reputation as the "Center of Learning". For much of the Abbasid era, duri ...
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Totalitarian
Totalitarianism is a political system and a form of government that prohibits opposition from political parties, disregards and outlaws the political claims of individual and group opposition to the state, and completely controls the public sphere and the private sphere of society. In the field of political science, totalitarianism is the extreme form of authoritarianism, wherein all socio-political power is held by a dictator. This figure controls the national politics and peoples of the nation with continual propaganda campaigns that are broadcast by state-controlled and state-aligned private mass communications media. The totalitarian government uses ideology to control most aspects of human life, such as the political economy of the country, the system of education, the arts, sciences, and private morality of its citizens. In the exercise of socio-political power, the difference between a totalitarian regime of government and an authoritarian regime of government is one o ...
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Public Broadcasting Service
The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia Arlington County, or simply Arlington, is a County (United States), county in the U.S. state of Virginia. The county is located in Northern Virginia on the southwestern bank of the Potomac River directly across from Washington, D.C., the nati .... PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of educational television, educational programs to public television stations in the United States, distributing shows such as ''Nature (TV program), Nature'', ''Nova (American TV program), Nova'', ''Frontline (American TV program), Frontline'', ''PBS News Hour'', ''Masterpiece (TV series), Masterpiece'', ''Mister Rogers' Neighborhood'', ''Sesame Street'', ''Barney & Friends'', ''Arthur (TV series), ''Arthur'''' and ''American Experience''. Certain stations also provide spillover service to Canada. ...
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Al-Anfal Campaign
The Anfal campaign was a counterinsurgency operation which was carried out by Ba'athist Iraq from February to September 1988 during the Iraqi–Kurdish conflict at the end of the Iran–Iraq War. The campaign targeted rural Kurds because its purpose was to eliminate Kurdish rebel groups and Arabization, Arabize strategic parts of the Kirkuk Governorate. The Ba'athist Iraq, Ba'athist regime committed atrocities on the local Kurdish population, mostly civilians. Although primarily targeting Kurds, other non-Arabs also fell victim to the Anfal campaign. The Iraqi forces were led by Ali Hassan al-Majid, on the orders of President Saddam Hussein. The campaign's name was taken from the title of Al-Anfal, the eighth chapter of the Qur'an (''al-ʾanfāl''). In 1993, Human Rights Watch released a report on the Anfal campaign based on documents captured by Kurdish rebels during the 1991 uprisings in Iraq; HRW described it as a genocide and estimated between 50,000 and 100,000 deaths. Thi ...
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The Independent
''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was published on Saturday 26 March 2016, leaving only the online edition. The daily edition was named National Newspaper of the Year at the 2004 British Press Awards. ''The Independent'' won the Brand of the Year Award in The Drum Awards for Online Media 2023. History 1980s Launched in 1986, the first issue of ''The Independent'' was published on 7 October in broadsheet format.Dennis Griffiths (ed.) ''The Encyclopedia of the British Press, 1422–1992'', London & Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992, p. 330. It was produced by Newspaper Publishing plc and created by Andreas Whittam Smith, Stephen Glover and Matthew Symonds. All three partners were former journalists at ''The Daily Telegraph'' who had left the paper towards the end of Lord Hartwell' ...
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Dome Of The Rock
The Dome of the Rock () is an Islamic shrine at the center of the Al-Aqsa mosque compound on the Temple Mount in the Old City (Jerusalem), Old City of Jerusalem. It is the world's oldest surviving work of Islamic architecture, the List_of_the_oldest_mosques, earliest archaeologically attested religious structure to be built by a Muslim ruler and its inscriptions contain the earliest Epigraphy, epigraphic proclamations of Islam and of the Prophets and messengers in Islam, Islamic prophet Muhammad. Its initial construction was undertaken by the Umayyad Caliphate on the orders of Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan, Abd al-Malik during the Second Fitna in 691–692 CE, and it has since been situated on top of the site of the Second Temple, Second Jewish Temple (built in to replace the destroyed Solomon's Temple and rebuilt by Herod the Great), which was Siege of Jerusalem (70 CE), destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE. The original dome collapsed in 1015 and was rebuilt in 1022–23. Its architect ...
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Islam And Judaism
Islam is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the Quran, and the teachings of Muhammad. Adherents of Islam are called Muslims, who are estimated to number Islam by country, 2 billion worldwide and are the world's Major religious groups, second-largest religious population after Christians. Muslims believe that Islam is the complete and universal version of a Fitra, primordial faith that was revealed many times through earlier Prophets and messengers in Islam, prophets and messengers, including Adam in Islam, Adam, Noah in Islam, Noah, Abraham in Islam, Abraham, Moses in Islam, Moses, and Jesus in Islam, Jesus. Muslims consider the Quran to be the verbatim word of God in Islam, God and the unaltered, final revelation. Alongside the Quran, Muslims also believe in previous Islamic holy books, revelations, such as the Torah in Islam, Tawrat (the Torah), the Zabur (Psalms), and the Gospel in Islam, Injil (Gospel). They believe that Muhammad in Islam ...
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Jerusalem
Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and is considered Holy city, holy to the three major Abrahamic religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Both Israel and Palestine claim Jerusalem as their capital city; Israel maintains its primary governmental institutions there, while Palestine ultimately foresees it as its seat of power. Neither claim is widely Status of Jerusalem, recognized internationally. Throughout History of Jerusalem, its long history, Jerusalem has been destroyed at least twice, Siege of Jerusalem (other), besieged 23 times, captured and recaptured 44 times, and attacked 52 times. According to Eric H. Cline's tally in Jerusalem Besieged. The part of Jerusalem called the City of David (historic), City of David shows first signs of settlement in the 4th ...
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Anti-Americanism
Anti-Americanism (also called anti-American sentiment and Americanophobia) is a term that can describe several sentiments and positions including opposition to, fear of, distrust of, prejudice against or hatred toward the United States, its Federal government of the United States, government, its Foreign policy of the United States, foreign policy, or Americans in general. Anti-Americanism can be contrasted with pro-Americanism, which refers to support, love, or admiration for the United States. Political scientist Brendon O'Connor at the United States Studies Centre in Australia suggests that "anti-Americanism" cannot be isolated as a consistent phenomenon, since the term originated as a rough composite of stereotypes, prejudices, and criticisms which evolved into more politically-based criticisms. French scholar Marie-France Toinet says that use of the term "anti ...
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Toaster
A toaster is a small electric appliance that uses radiant heat to brown sliced bread into toast, the color caused by the Maillard reaction. It typically consists of one or more slots into which bread is inserted, and heating elements, often made of nichrome wire, to generate heat and toast the bread to the desired level of crispiness. Types Pop-up toaster In a pop-up or automatic toaster, a single vertical piece of bread is dropped into a slot on the top of the toaster. A lever on the side of the toaster is pressed down, lowering the bread into the toaster and activating the heating elements. The length of the toasting cycle (and therefore the degree of toasting) is adjustable via a lever, knob, or series of pushbuttons, and when an internal device determines that the toasting cycle is complete, the toaster turns off and the toast pops up out of the slots. The completion of toasting may be determined by a timer (sometimes manually set) or by a thermal sensor, s ...
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Lionel Gelber Prize
The Lionel Gelber Prize is a literary award for English non-fiction books on foreign policy. Founded in 1989 by Canadian diplomat Lionel Gelber, the prize honors "the world's best non-fiction book in English on foreign affairs that seeks to deepen public debate on significant international issues." A prize of , is awarded to the winner. The award is presented annually by the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. Recipients are judged by an international jury of experts. In 1999, ''The Economist'' called the award "the world's most important award for non-fiction". Past winners have included, Lawrence Wright, Jonathan Spence, David McCullough, Kanan Makiya, Michael Ignatieff, Eric Hobsbawm, Robert Kinloch Massie, Adam Hochschild (a two-time winner), Robert Skidelsky, Baron Skidelsky, Walter Russell Mead, Chrystia Freeland, and Steve Coll. Lionel Gelber Lionel Gelber was a Canadian author, scholar, historian, and diplomat. During his car ...
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Kitsch
''Kitsch'' ( ; loanword from German) is a term applied to art and design that is perceived as Naivety, naïve imitation, overly eccentric, gratuitous or of banal Taste (sociology), taste. The modern avant-garde traditionally opposed kitsch for its melodrama, melodramatic tendencies, its superficial relationship with the human condition and its naturalistic standards of beauty. In the first half of the 20th century, kitsch was used in reference to mass-produced, popular culture, pop-cultural products that lacked the conceptual depth of fine art. However, since the emergence of Pop art, Pop Art in the 1950s, kitsch has taken on newfound highbrow appeal, often wielded in knowingly Irony, ironic, humorous or Sincerity, earnest manners. To brand visual art as "kitsch" is often still pejorative, though not exclusively. Art deemed kitsch may be enjoyed in an entirely positive and sincerity, sincere manner. For example, it carries the ability to be quaint or "quirky" without being ...
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