Al Jazeera: In Canada, Syrian refugee children head back to school

In November, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pledged to take in 20,000 refugees. That number, though, has grown to nearly 30,000 so far. About half of those are sponsored by the government, including the Muhammed family. [...]

"There are so many people willing to help in Canada. I'm probably the only minister of immigration in the world who can't produce refugees quickly enough for the demand of private sponsors."

Canadian citizens and permanent residents can sponsor refugees and help them resettle in Canada under the Private Sponsorship of Refugees Programme. [...]

Seventy-five percent of Syrian refugees to Canada are under the age of 18. Zeina Adra, a school settlement worker for the Peel District School Board, works directly with Syrian refugee students, many of whom have come from rural areas and refugee camps in Jordan and Turkey.

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Politico: How ‘Little House on the Prairie’ Built Modern Conservatism

In modern America they also seem like escapism—a welcome relief from the welter and conflict of today’s politics. Actually they’re anything but. The Little House books, conceived during the Great Depression as a family project to honor the nation’s tough old pioneers, blossomed during the writing into something else. Woven into the story of Laura’s life were then-new ideas about the value of individual freedom, unfettered markets, and limited government. During the writing of each new book, as the series expanded in answer to the fans’ clamors for more, the Little House books became anti-New Deal political parables. They helped lay the groundwork for the modern libertarian strain of modern conservatism—and to an extent few people realize, they helped fund its rise. [...]

Amidst the images of stoic optimism displayed by the Ingalls and Wilder families as they ride through storms and survive locust plagues, the authors deliver little lessons in vignettes and dialogue, extolling free-market economics (“You work hard, but you work as you please. ... You’ll be free and independent, son, on a farm”) and raising skepticism about government overreach (“Why do they make a law that he’s got to stay on a claim, when he can’t?”). For a country in the throes of the Depression, the Little House books delivered a clear and consistent message about the virtues of rugged individualism and not taking handouts from Washington. [...]

In her mythologizing of America, her institution-building, and her long and constant argument for the value of individual liberty over regulation, Lane was helping to reboot conservatism itself at a pivotal moment in its history. Republicans from the 1930s through the early 1960s were confronting the fact that their image was that of plutocrats trying to keep their own pockets lined, and to broaden their appeal they had to define themselves in a new way. “The party in fact did continue to represent the interests of elites,” says Phillips-Fein of the time, “but it tried to find a new and more politically and philosophically palatable way of doing this.”

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Salon: Homosexuality, a Western vice: In much of the Middle East, it’s getting more dangerous to be gay

“Egypt stands next to the American people in these difficult times, offering sincere condolences to the families of the victims and wishing the injured a speedy recovery,”the ministry said.

Yet the statement didn’t acknowledge that Pulse was a gay club or that many of the victims were members of the LGBTQ community.

Three days later, a court in Cairo sentenced two 18-year-olds to three years in prison on charges of “debauchery”: The young men were apprehended through government surveillance of social media dating apps for gay men, according to court records. [...]

“Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Bahrain and Kuwait have all rushed to condemn the crime in Orlando labeling it terrorism while insisting Islam has nothing to do with it,” said a spokesman for Mesahat, an LGBT service organization operating in Egypt and Sudan.

“These same governments keep arresting and torturing gay people and are putting them in jail. Meanwhile they are sponsoring a religious discourse that feeds homophobia.” [...]

But gay people in the region say widespread condemnation of homosexuality came about only in the 1980s, when the rise of the global LGBT rights movement coincided with the expansion of ultraconservative Wahhabism sponsored by Saudi Arabia.

Activities and relationships that were considered normal 30 years ago are now described as haram, an Islamic term to describe religiously prohibited behavior like eating pork or consuming alcohol. Homosexuality is now frequently condemned as a “Western” vice and a threat to Arab and Islamic culture.

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AP: Reviving old traditions, Arab beer brewers make their mark

Jordanian beer pioneer Yazan Karadsheh is now taking his next risky step, sending a first shipment of his Carakale to the U.S., where it will compete with thousands of brands in a $22 billion-a-year craft beer market.

The 32-year-old Karadsheh is part of a small but growing brotherhood of Arab brewers in the Levant who want to nurture local beer-drinking cultures and compete against the brews of large companies, some of them multi-nationals that dominate the region's beer market.

Carakale is the first craft beer in Jordan. The West Bank already has three independent breweries — well-established veteran Taybeh, newcomer Shepherds and tiny Wise Men's Choice, made in a basement near biblical Bethlehem. Lebanese brands include Colonel, made at a large brew pub in the coastal town of Batroun, and 961, named after the country's international dialing code. Small breweries also sprang up in Israel over the past decade.

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Salon: The enduring damage of 9/11: How the War on Terror gave rise to a bigger threat in the form of ISIS

“Never forget” is the oft-repeated refrain used when talking about the 9/11 attacks. Yet, it often seems an empty phrase brought out yearly for memorial services and invoked by politicians seeking to justify the latest round of new counter-terrorism efforts. Despite the phrase perhaps being overused, the attacks themselves should never be forgotten as they marked a key turning point in modern history and would, arguably, lead to the birth of a much more dangerous enemy in the form of ISIS. [...]

ISIS has since gone on to inspire nearly half a dozen attacks, beyond the borders of Iraq and Syria, in both Europe and the Middle East. It is arguable that had 9/11 never happened, then the specific circumstances which led to the formation of AQI would never have occurred, and ISIS would now not exist. Thus, we should never forget 9/11, partly to remember and honour the victims but also as a reminder that responding to terrorism with force can have far-reaching effects which are hard to predict. Fortunately, we are unlikely to see a spectacular attack like 9/11 carried out again, as ISIS appears to be focused on retaining the land it controls in Iraq and Syria. However, ISIS is more dangerous because of its ability to inspire those with little or no history of extremist violence to carry out low-level attacks, such as Charlie Hebdo, Bataclan and Nice. The legacy of 9/11 is not just memorials to those who died but is an on-going struggle to detect, disrupt and neutralise plots inspired by ISIS.

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