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thevividgreenmoss · 4 years

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The basic facts are these: the famine struck the people of south-central Somalia, chiefly farming communities who had long been unable to reap the fruits of their labours because their lands were targeted by better-armed political-military factions. On top of this came onerous taxation policies enforced by the militant group al-Shabaab, war between al-Shabaab and the Ethiopian and Kenyan troops stationed as part of the African Union Mission in Somalia, and corruption in the internationally recognized Transitional Federal Government. The twin triggers for the crisis were a severe drought and a sharp rise in the market price of food – the second wave of the so-called “global food crisis” when Wall Street commodity speculators briefly but calamitously pushed up the international price of staple foods to twice their previous levels.

Over years of working in the most difficult conditions, relief workers in Somalia and neighbouring countries developed a system for predicting food crises: the dourly named Integrated Food Security Phase Classification system (IPC scale). In 2010, the IPC did its job. Maxwell and Majid write: “this crisis was well predicted. [But] a crisis that might have prompted a major food aid response under other circumstances instead simply failed to elicit any proportionate response for a period of nearly ten months”. This was the final factor: emergency aid wasn’t automatic and was obstructed by other priorities.

Humanitarian action is funded case by case, cash in hand. As argued by Daniel Clark and Stefan Dercon in their book Dull Disasters (2016), “This ad-hoc, post-disaster model for financing disasters is hardly worthy of the twenty-first century. In fact it feels distinctly medieval”. Clark and Dercon liken it to benefactors tossing coins to beggars lined up outside a cathedral or mosque, their generosity depending on the coins in their hand and pity in their hearts.

Our disaster relief system isn’t just rudimentary, but dependent on all kinds of other political bargaining. So it was in Somalia: after the IPC warnings, food aid actually dropped by about 80 per cent. The reason was what Maxwell and Majid call a “competing imperative”: the War on Terror. Al-Shabaab had just been designated a terrorist organization and the Obama administration shut down the aid pipeline under the US Patriot Act which prohibits any “material support” to terrorists. This includes assistance inadvertently given, for example if a lorryload of food aid is stolen, or militants manning a checkpoint are paid off to let the life-saving assistance pass. It is a fact of life that food aid pipelines are leaky: some relief finds its way to the pockets of trucking companies, government officials and the armed groups active among stricken communities. But the maxim attributed to Ronald Reagan, “a starving child knows no politics”, doesn’t apply in the War on Terror. For ten months, relief officials in the UN and the US Agency for International Development argued with the US Department of the Treasury and Department of Justice, before the latter agreed a “workaround”. Counter-terror legislation still casts a chill over humanitarian work in Somalia – as well as in Syria, Yemen and previously in Sri Lanka. President Bill Clinton famously apologized for America’s failure to stop the Rwanda genocide. President Barack Obama has yet to acknowledge any commensurate failing in Somalia.

https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/humanitarian-effectiveness-starvation-famines-somalia-syria/

“The suffering played out like a drama without witnesses,” said Philippe Lazzarini, UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia, reacting to the findings in a new report funded and commissioned by the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO).

Some 133,000 of the Somalis who perished – about half – were children under five, according to FAO’s Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit for Somalia (FSNAU), which carried out the study along with the USAID-funded Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET).

Calling the magnitude of the mortality figures “unsettling”, Mr. Lazzarini said the report confirms “that we could have done more before famine was declared on 20 July 2011” and that it will help ensure “that Somalia never goes through another famine again.”

He added that “warnings that began as far back as the drought in 2010 did not trigger sufficient early action. In the worst affected areas, access to people in need was tremendously difficult.

At the peak of the crises, between May and August 2011, about 30,000 excess people died per month, according to the study.

“An estimated 4.6 per cent of the total population and 10 per cent of children under 5 died in Southern and Central Somalia,” FAO reported. “Lower Shabelle, Mogadishu, and Bay were hardest hit.”

https://news.un.org/en/story/2013/05/438682-somalia-famine-killed-nearly-260000-people-half-them-children-reports-un

#and a few years later obama's executive - again under the auspices of the patriot act - blocked #money transfers to somalia cutting off remittances sent by expats to their families which comprised an enormous percentage of the country's #economic funds :))))))#first piece above is by a dyed in the wool lib and second is from the UN so of course neither even begin to touch on #the american government's role in fucking ip the country in the first place from HW Bush through Obama and now Trump with cia-led covert op #support for a rotating cast of warlords and the creation of the incompetent and.corrupt TFG in the first place and drone warfare and #organizing invasions of forced from neighboring countries and torture cells and on and on

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ceoofbeep · 3 years

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Things iman has said that have pushed me to sewerslide: a never ending post

‘love the sinner hate the sin’ ‘we’re not christian’ ‘???’ ‘ITS FROM THE BIBLE?’ ‘I THOUGHT IT WAS FROM HAMILTON??.’

‘did slaves have paracetamol’ ‘i mean painkillers in general’ "I mean clearly they did because you have them"

‘...because i ship waluigi and me’

'The Queen kind of a milf tho' AFTER HER DEATH: "she would be a gilf if anything"

is a simp for Frank from subway surfers

'i have a crush on danger mouse' 'what'

'can i whip him' (about mahamed)

'ass to the highest bidder' 'its lucky danger mouse is rich'

'george is my little snookums'

*acting like sherlock* 'so everyone whoss suspected yedam is dead!' 'they voted him out...'

ponkimon

compares luigis mustache to hitlers

"mario is packing" “he is packing”

"im earth chan"

about morphing PRINCE PHILLIP AND LEVI ACKERMAN “he would be kinda fine tho

calls a colonel sanders cosplay hot

“i only read wilbur fan fics for alyn, i mean thats how i came up with alyn” “so you read wilbur fics before”

“im hungry i need to eat marios peepee”

about the a/o/b muzzies “no wonder they want to kill us all”

about george gaslighting ‘i wouldnt mind’

‘i know ponk, he would never do this’

‘HE HEE’ possessed

to seunghun ‘i wanna be your slave’

‘nigeria is next to somalia right?’

‘i am submissive and breedable for:

-kim seunghun

-matthew baynton

-danger mouse

‘everyone who has a crush on matthew banyton gives me a headache’ ‘i want to give matthew baynton head’

turns everything into her and rae or her and byeol

step dad, youre wrong, oh sorry step parent

i kin thomas jefferson

*about my maths teacher running* im putting my ohone in my right hand

loyalists didnt yall lose the kings head… thats royalists

gets “can we pretend” and “written in the stars”ed

talking about how its an insult, “are you calling me old, are you calling me black?”

making it worse, “im not racist its the blacks,”

“im not racist i just hate black ppl

kidnapping goats is uneathical.. and kidnapping children isnt

giving diluc the gluck gluck 3000 I MEAN

written in the stars a million miles away baby i can see ur halo

in a way youre breeding art

i would let willne say the n word "in a way we've both been been discriminated against, we're black and he's got a square head"

tries to excuse dreams RACISM with “but ponk..”

gets a attachment to a random tory and says that its pc material

i want to see yoonbin in a commie hat and nothing else

“BE WHO YOU AREEE” thats a pride song…

‘hes talking about me’ about oergeuene

whos thomas pet, me, no ayato

‘matpat is a dilf’

about epraise points 'you have 43 primogems'

i would let hajime hit

"she's fine" about Theresa may

‘whats stalin’s last name’ /srs

Who Would Want To Have A Child With Haruto Watanabe

*gundham voice* boobs

im joining the karl marx hentai reddit

if a man isnt toothpaste

mistakes bojack horseman for BOJO

them things outside of garages "SCARECROWS?"

‘Hé has a perfectly good set of bollocks’

gs leaving is the biggest tragedy of 2022…

about Hunter ‘whys he kinda…’

About Haruto ‘whys he kinda…’

makes a self insert romeo and Juliet ff where they lips mercutio AND benvolio

i have love for byakuya when his shirt is off

(WHEN HIS TITS OUT!!!!!)

Says my history teacher “gives back shots in the ks cafe”

Throwing a tantrum because her teacher crush may be dating someone else

said Ben wil had a massive cock "he could still have it"

THINKS ENEMY OF STATE (hw worst of t12) IS ACCEPTSBLE AND LENG!!!!!!

he (bw) has a slutty waist

he (bw) has a ten inch

"I'm in pain, literally I have pins and needles, SCREAMS"

calls olivier giroud a slut 9/4 daily occurence

listened to dimentio's theme a hundred times

arsenal are siblings, Chelsea are like step siblings

you gagged me I fear

agreed with:

"what makes nct's Johnny so appealing" NOTHINGGGGGG

thought gift was spelt with a j and pronounced jift

'healthy ship dynamic' booooooring

Looked at him and said 'tits'

Just shouts "WOOF"

He (Jule) would call you blackbeard from one piece

#iman is the problem

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mattkennard · 6 years

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In the Valley of Death: Somaliland’s Forgotten Genocide

Published: The Nation (22 October 2018) w/ Ismail Einashe

On a hot and humid June afternoon, a group of boys wearing FC Barcelona jerseys kicked around a soccer ball in the Malko-Durduro, a dry seasonal river on the outskirts of Hargeisa, the capital of the breakaway territory of Somaliland. At first glance, the flat, red earth of the riverbed made for a typical improvised pitch in this arid region. But recent heavy rains had exposed what had earned the area its moniker, the Valley of Death. Around them, human bones protruded from the ground. But these kids had grown up playing soccer surrounded by skeletal remains; they hardly noticed them.

Between 1987 and 1989, the regime of Somali dictator Siad Barre massacred an estimated 200,000 members of the Isaaq tribe, the largest clan group in the northwest part of Somalia. At the time, some Isaaqs were fighting for independence, and to eliminate the threat, Barre tried to exterminate all of them. Experts now say there are more than 200 mass graves in Somaliland, most of them in the Valley of Death.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of what is often called the “Hargeisa Holocaust,” when about 90 percent of the city was destroyed and tens of thousands of Isaaqs were killed. Yet there are no major plans to mark the horrors in Somaliland, or anywhere else for that matter. In the past, a few international organizations have recognized the bloodletting. A 2001 UN report investigating the attacks against the Isaaqs concluded, “the crime of genocide was conceived, planned and perpetrated by the Somalia Government against the Isaaq people of northern Somalia.” But the events have been mostly forgotten; the boys playing soccer did not know the story behind the bones.

Even in Hargeisa, many people don’t realize the extent of US support during the genocide. No American has ever apologized for what happened in Somaliland; there has been no internationally backed Truth and Reconciliation Commission; and no one has been criminally punished. There is little funding to investigate—let alone prosecute—the perpetrators. And some of the Somali genocidaires now have close ties to the US-backed government in Mogadishu of President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, known as Farmajo.

COLD WAR PROXY

The country of Somalia was formed in 1960, when British Somaliland gained its independence from Britain and joined with its much larger neighbor to east and south, Italian Somaliland. Nine years later, General Siad Barre took over in a bloodless coup and steered the young country toward the Soviet Union. Somalia was strategically placed along Africa’s longest coastline, and the Soviets welcomed a new proxy in the Horn of Africa.

This all changed in 1977 when Barre invaded the Somali-majority Ogaden region of southeastern Ethiopia. Previously Ethiopia had been aligned with the US, but after the Derg military junta seized power in 1974, the Soviets had begun supporting Somalia’s communist neighbor. Forced to choose between allies, the Soviets sided with the Derg junta, and sent arms and military advisers . Cuba’s Fidel Castro provided an additional 13,000 troops, and Ethiopia repelled the Somali army in 1978.

Livid at the Soviet support for Ethiopia, Barre switched sides, allying himself with the US. In January 1981, former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger visited the presidential palace in Mogadishu, hoping to further strengthen US-Somalia ties. Barre had criticized President Jimmy Carter for not backing his country against the Soviets. But now Kissinger was convincing President Ronald Reagan to view Somalia as a crucial theater for US-Soviet confrontation. A year later, Barre made the trip to Washington, DC, to meet with Reagan in the Oval Office. Grainy footage of the encounter shows Barre asking Reagan for help. “Somalia is not afraid of any other country in the region, but it cannot cope with a superpower like the Soviet Union,” he told Reagan.

Barre said the United States agreed to help Somalia, because it “is also in its own interest.” In the 1983 budget, Reagan requested $91 million in military and economic assistance for Somalia, plus another $18 million in food aid for refugees. That year Somalia’s entire GDP was less than $750 million.

Around this time, Paul Manafort, a lobbyist who would become the chairman of Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, took on the Barre government as a client. In 1980 Manafort founded the lobbying company, Black, Manafort and Stone, which had close ties to the Reagan White House and later the George HW Bush administration. Riva Levinson, who worked with Manafort in the 1980s, has said she asked at the time, “Are we sure we want this guy as a client?” Manafort sounded agitated: “We all know Barre is a bad guy, Riva. We just have to make sure he’s our bad guy.”

Manafort did PR for Barre even as he was massacring the Isaaqs. Levinson said Manafort sent her to Somalia to have Barre sign a contract for $1 million. “Our assignment would then be to clean up Siad Barre’s international reputation, which needed plenty of soap,” she wrote in The Washington Post in 2017.

With Manafort’s PR work and the country’s anti-Soviet Union alignment, the US was happy to turn a blind eye to Barre’s abuses. By 1988, the US had given his government hundreds of millions dollars of military and economic aid, and Barre had become entirely dependent on US support.

THE GENOCIDE AND THE US

Barre had long targeted and discriminated against the Isaaq tribe, and so in 1981 in London, Isaaq dissidents formed the Somali National Movement (SNM) to overthrow Barre’s rule in the north of the country. Barre responded to this insurgency with a ruthless military campaign. In 1988, Amnesty International reported the Barre regime used ”widespread arbitrary arrests, ill treatment and summary executions” and torture of those suspected of collaborating with the SNM. They found that those who opposed the Barre regime were gathered, bound, and taken to places like the Valley of Death where they were shot and buried in unmarked graves.

One of the most brutal parts of the genocidal campaign was the destruction of Hargeisa, the largest city in northern Somalia. In May of 1988, Barre’s regime sent in fighter jets to level the city. The destruction of Hargeisa was so total that it earned the nickname “the Dresden of Africa.” Bombing missions and ground troops attacks killed more than 40,000 people. Burao, the third largest city in Somalia at the time and the second principal city in northern Somalia, was razed. The relentless violence against Isaaq civilians in 1988 resulted in the world’s largest refugee crisis. More than 300,000 refugees fled to Ethiopia, most of them arriving in the small border town of Harta Sheikh in Ethiopia, which became the largest refugee camp from 1988 until it closed in 2004.

Saad Ali Shire, Somaliland’s current foreign minister, told us, “In 1988, when the government started bombarding Hargeisa and other towns in Somaliland, the Americans were of course friends of the Siad Barre regime … for strategic reasons. … And they gave Siad Barre arms—arms were unloaded in Berbera port—and it was reported by Amnesty International and other human-rights organizations at the time.”

He paused and then said, “The US was not directly involved in the inhuman treatment of the people of Somaliland, but, like many other allies of the regime then, of course their hand was there.” The US mission to Somalia did not return a request for comment.

The US knew what was going on and maintained its support. A cable released by Wikleaks from that period and sent by the US embassy in Mogadishu noted: “Many displaced persons (i.e. Isaaqs) would have returned home long ago had they not been deterred from doing so by … government forces.” The cable continued: “Isaaqs, suffering from thirst, hunger, disease, and abominable camp conditions, were demanding to go home.” There was no discussion of cutting support for Barre as the genocide unfolded.

But as the US ramped up its bombing campaigns in Iraq and the Cold War ended, the US eventually decided to redirect its resources from Barre’s government to the Middle East. Without US support, the government of Somalia collapsed.

Around that time, on May 18, 1991, the SNM declared the northwest bit of Somalia independent and established the Somaliland Republic. The international community still does not recognize Somaliland as a sovereign country, but it has all the trappings of a nation-state—a Constitution, a president, a currency, and even biometric passports.

THE HUMAN CONSEQUENCES

Three tumultuous decades later, the genocide still haunts survivors. Somaliland has one main tribute to the victims: In the middle of a traffic island in Hargeisa, the rusting shell of a MiG fighter jet shot down by the SMN sits perched on top of a wall with murals of mass slaughter. The central figure in one painting is a man with blood spurting out of his limbs after his arms and legs have been chopped off.

For survivors like Yusuf Mire the trauma depicted on the murals is still fresh. During a crackdown in 1988 by Barre’s forces in the city of Burao, Somali troops hacked off his left arm, and abducted and killed his family.

Mire has dedicated his life to uncovering the truth of what happened in the Valley of Death. He works with survivors and families of the disappeared, helping those who, like him, had loved ones that never returned from Barre’s killing fields. Mire told us that the US is simply not interested in digging up the past or funding forensic investigations in Somaliland. Given the US role, he said they’d prefer to prop up the government in Mogadishu and for the truth to remain buried.

Ismail Abdi is another survivor who works with vulnerable children in Somaliland for a British humanitarian NGO based in Hargeisa. As a young teen, Abdi ended up at the Hargeisa Orphanage. Then, in May 1988, from the orphanage window, he watched Barre’s military personnel execute a family; he still remembers the screams of dying children. Abdi sent us a photo taken by a Dutch woman who had worked at the Hargeisa Orphanage in 1988. The photo, which Abdi asked us not publish, showed the bodies of a woman and her children covered in blood.

We met him in the garden of a swanky hotel in the center of Hargeisa; men sat nearby on plastic chairs eating goat curry and drinking mango juice. Abdi lamented that young people now do not know what happened, and said he wants “justice for our people.” Abdi said he wants the evidence he has collected about this one family to be used to bring those responsible to justice. But like most Somalilanders, he does not have the money to pursue those responsible in the courts either internationally or in Somaliland, a country that does not officially exist.

But there is an organization Abdi is hoping can help bring those responsible to justice. In the mid-1990s, Somaliland’s first president, Mohamed Haji Ibrahim Egal, established the Somaliland War Crimes Investigations Commission to find and unearth the mass graves, offer proper burials to victims, and bring judicial action against those responsible for the killings. The US government has offered no help.

Without international support, the Commission is woefully underfunded, according to the Khadar Ahmed, the Commission’s chairman. It lacks the necessary resources to properly investigate or collect the evidence needed to bring about prosecutions.

The Commission usually gets tip offs from locals about the mass-grave locations after rains expose new bones. Then staff members place piles of stones with red marks on them adjacent to the graves to alert the community. The Commission is tasked with investigating these graves, but with such tight budgets, graves are identified but few are ever dug up. Since it was founded, the Commission has exhumed 11 mass graves and reburied 318 skeletons, including a recent ones in Hargeisa and another in Berbera.

Ahmed said he’s upset that the US and other western powers have taken so little interest in the genocide: “As Somaliland Republic we are expecting to hear from the UN to establish a tribunal like Rwanda.” But their requests have been met with silence. Ahmed said that many of the killers are now hiding in plain sight in the US, Kenya, Canada, and elsewhere. Because it’s not a recognized state, Somaliland does not have the power to push for a UN-backed war-crimes tribunal, like in Yugoslavia or Sierra Leone.

As time passes, evidence gets lost. In the Valley of Death, rainfall reveals new skeletons, but it also erodes and washes away the bones. Thankfully, while the US government has not provided any support, the San Francisco-based Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA) has stepped in, and introduced the Commission to the Peruvian forensic anthropology team Equipo Peruano de Antropología Forense (EPAF), led by Franco Mora. Since 2012, EPAF has been excavating the mass graves in the Valley of Death and other parts of Somaliland, identifying and recovering as many bodies as possible. They are also helping the Commission provide proper burials. “Our work is only humanitarian; we try to recover and identify the disappeared and to bury them with dignity,” Mora told us.

Ahmed said that the Commission has to pay the EPAF to dig up the graves, but complained that the Somaliland government can only afford to do this, at most, twice a year. With an estimated 200 sites, “we don’t have the capacity to carry out the work ourselves,” he said.

The Commission hopes the remains unearthed by the EPAF team can be used not only to get a better idea of what happened, but also as evidence to convict or hold genocidaires accountable. But this will be tough. Mora said his team is only, “recording the injuries and establishing the most probable cause of death.” He said to establish a legal case you would need not only information retrieved from the bodies and graves, but also historical information and documentation, which is nearly nonexistent because so many government records were destroyed during the war. The only reliable documents about the Barre regime’s genocidal campaign are held by countries like the US or international human-rights groups.

There have been a few successes holding perpetrators accountable, but to expand beyond the handful of cases requires funding and for the US to release more of its records. In 2012, the CJA helped a group of Somalis living in Virginia secure a $21 million judgment in a US federal court against Mohamed Ali Samantar, who served as prime minister under Barre. The court ruled that he was responsible for planning the torture and killings of Isaaq clansmen.

In 2016, a CNN investigation publicized another Somali who arrived in the US after allegedly participating in the genocide. Yusuf Abdi Ali stands accused of war crimes while a colonel in Barre’s regime during in the 1980s. He was head of the Somali army’s Fifth Brigade, which is said to have tortured clan members and burned down villages. For 20 years, he had lived near Washington, DC, and worked as a security guard at Dulles Airport (he was suspended after his identity was revealed).

The CJA brought a lawsuit against him in 2004. The CJA is representing Farhan Warfaa, who was nearly killed by Ali during an interrogation in 1987. In a 2016 ruling, the Fourth Circuit dismissed Warfaa’s claims of war crimes and crimes against humanity, but upheld claims of torture and attempted extrajudicial killing. In June 2017, the Supreme Court allowed for the CJA to continue pursuing Warfaa’s claims under the US Torture Victim Protection Act.

But the US government has not been as keen as the CJA to help. Ali’s background had been revealed as far back as 1992 when Canadian broadcaster CBC News uncovered that he had worked as a security guard in Toronto after fleeing Somalia in 1991. Despite this, US authorities did not prevent him from settling in the US. The US authorities knew his record, but allowed him to settle in the US, get a job at Dulles airport, and live a suburban American life.

Of course not all the Somali perpetrators headed to the US. Last year, General Mohammed Said Hersi Morgan was filmed watching Farmajo’s presidential inauguration in Mogadishu, apparently as a guest. Morgan, known as the “butcher of Hargeisa,” has lived freely in Kenya since the collapse of the Barre government in 1991. Many Somalilanders hold him responsible for carrying out the Isaaq genocide; in 1988, he’s reported to have ordered his troops “to kill all but the crows.” Yet he still gets invited to political events in Mogadishu.

One thing Somalilanders are adamant about is that no one involved with the Somali government in 1988 can claim they didn’t know. “I think everybody was aware of what was happening,” Saad, the foreign minister, told us. “Perhaps they didn’t have the full picture of what was happening, but the fact that the Siad Barre regime was undemocratic and brutal and murdering many civilians was well-known. … But sometimes superpowers look the other way.”

Somaliland is now asking for the US to pay attention to these crimes that they funded. The people of Somaliland say they need help to reckon with the bloody history that remains buried underneath their feet.

#somalia #somaliland #us foreign policy #genocide #isaaqs

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expatimes · 4 years

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Trump to limit 2021 US refugee admissions to 15,000, a record low

The US State Department has notified Congress the United States anticipates resettling 15,000 refugees in the United States during the fiscal 2021 year, a record low number.

The government estimate, required by US law, is a reduction from a ceiling of 18,000 in fiscal 2020 and comes as President Donald Trump has sought to turn refugees into a political issue to help his re-election bid.

The actual number of refugees admitted by the US tends to be lower than the annual ceiling and under Trump administration policies was fewer than 11,000 in 2020, also a record low, according to data from the Migration Policy Institute.

Speaking at a campaign rally on Wednesday night, Trump warned a large crowd of supporters that his Democratic rival Joe Biden would open US borders to refugees and asylum seekers.

“Biden will turn Minnesota into a refugee camp,” Trump said to boos from his supporters in Duluth, Minnesota.

Supporters of US President Donald Trump booed refugees and shouted 'Lock her up' about Representative Ilhan Omar on as Trump encouraged them during a campaign rally at Duluth International Airport in Minnesota on September 30, 2020.[Leah Millis/Reuters]

Minnesota, a key swing state in the presidential election, has the largest Somali population in the US and is home to Representative Ilhan Omar, a Somali-American who came to the US as a child under asylum and was elected to Congress in 2018.

Trump's supporters shouted chants of “lock her up, lock her up, lock her up” directed at Omar.

Facebook announced on September 30 it had removed 15-second Trump campaign advertisements that tied the admission of refugees to coronavirus infections without basis in fact.

The advertisements had featured video images of Biden talking about border security and warned he would increase refugee admissions from Syria, Somalia and Yemen.

“We rejected these ads because we don't allow claims that people's physical safety, health or survival is threatened by people on the basis of their national origin or immigration status,” a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement.

Sub-Saharan Africa holds more than a quarter of the world's refugees- Trump has moved to limit refugee admission to the United States, Biden says he will increase those allowed in [File: Ben Curtis/AP Photo]

The State Department notification cited the coronavirus pandemic as a primary reason for the reduction in refugee admissions.

“The president's proposal for refugee resettlement in Fiscal Year 2021 reflects the administration's continuing commitment to prioritize the safety and well-being of Americans, especially in light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic,” the State Department said in its notice to Congress.

The Trump administration has adopted a range of policies to prevent and discourage immigration to the US, driving a sharp reduction in the number of refugees admitted. The number of refugees resettled to the US in 2016, the last year of the Obama administration, was nearly 85,000.

Meanwhile, the number of refugees worldwide has increased dramatically in the last 10 years. Nearly 80 million people have been forced from their homes by conflicts and persecution, according to the United Nations and other agencies.

Trump administration policy has been to keep refugees in camps and work to secure their return home “to rebuild their lives, their communities and their countries”, the State Department said.

Gregory Maniatis, director of the Open Society's International Migration Initiative said in a tweet Trump has promoted “anti-refugee hysteria”.

BREAKING: In the dead of night, Trump told Congress the US will accept 15,000 refugees (max) in the fiscal year that starts today — fewest ever. Reagan welcomed as many as 159,252, George HW Bush, 132,531.

It's the last gasp of his anti-refugee hysteria.https: //t.co/WGB1InE8WB

- Gregory A. Maniatis (@gmaniatis) October 1, 2020

Representatives of Jerrold Nadler, a Democrat and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, faulted the administration for failing to consult with Congress on setting the refugee ceiling before the end of the fiscal year as required by law.

“The administration's violations will bring our refugee program to a halt, leaving thousands stranded abroad with their lives at risk,” Nadler said.

“This time, refugees - including many who served alongside our troops - will be the victims of the Trump administration's lawless approach,” Nadler said in a statement issued September 30.

Timing of the refugee announcement is tied by a 1980 refugee law to the budget, or fiscal year, which runs from October 1 to September 30 of the following calendar year.

#world Read full article: https://expatimes.com/?p=11286&feed_id=8365

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al-nava-sexy-revolutionary-mind · 7 years

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If you vote(d) for #Democrats or #Republicans, you support #WarMongers and their #evil people-#killing war-mongering. 🖕 #MakeAmericaGreenAgain (#MAGA): If you're #AntiWar, vote for the anti-war @greenpartyus and #JoinGreen/ #GreenEnter. 🌻 #DemExit + #GOPExit = Join the #GreenParty or be #Independent. ________________________________________ Repost @an0n_ch3f_ch3v0 ・・・ 🇺🇸🔥As George #Orwell said, #wars are not meant to be won, they're meant to be continuous. No matter who you #vote for and what you thought about them, they're all #corporate controlled puppets, including #Trump. #War never changes, and war is all about reaving! George HW #Bush attacked Panama, Iraq and Somalia. Bill #Clinton attacked Bosnia and Kosovo. #GeorgeWBush attacked Afghanistan and Iraq. Barack #Obama attacked Libya, Somalia and Yemen. And now Trump, despite heavily critizing Obama for removing Ghaddafi from power, is now on the verge of attacking Syria, Russia, China AND North Korea! Every empire in human history has fallen, and the #UnitedStates is no exception to this rule. Wake up people and stop #voting for #politicians who #bomb other countries to oblivion! 🔥🇺🇸

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robotsforcake · 7 years

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Yanked this off fark, it's not mine:

Author is on twitter as @suitedjustice

I’ve been working on a project to summarize Trump’s first 100 days, but there’s just so much of it that I’ll have to post it in 10-day blocks. I tried to be as crisp as possible here, as again, there’s a lot to work with. If I missed anything substantial, let me know. Also, if you like this, let me know and I’ll post days 11-20 when the time comes.

Day 1: Reads 16-minute inauguration speech he falsely claims to have written himself. In that speech, inadvertently quotes movie villain Bane from Batman. Announces the Alt-Right’s theme of America First as policy and philosophy. Cites American ‘carnage’, without going into detail as to what that might entail. Falsely claims it stopped raining when he began to speak. Passes over long-time inauguration parade announcer Charlie Brotman, replacing him with no one. Six journalists are arrested while covering the inauguration and charged with felony rioting. Trump signs emergency order increasing mortgage costs for first time home buyers.

Day 2: Climate change data on White House website scrubbed. Trump calls National Park Service Director Michael T. Reynolds and orders him to produce photos showing a more crowded inauguration. He lies to the press about the size of the crowds at his inauguration, then complains when the press calls him on that lie. Gives speech at CIA headquarters. Brings along a claque of staffers unrelated to the CIA to cheer and clap at his words. Later claims he received the “greatest standing ovation since Peyton Manning won the Super Bowl.” Protocol calls for government employees to remain standing until the president asks them to sit Outgoing CIA director, John Brennan, calls the CIA speech “a despicable display of self-aggrandizement.” Claims to hold the all-time record of Time magazine covers at “14 or 15.” He has been on 11 covers. Richard Nixon holds the actual record with 55 Time covers. Hillary Clinton has 22 covers.

Day 3: Spokesperson Conway announces Trump won’t be releasing his tax returns regardless of the state of his IRS Audit. She claims that the people don’t care about Trump’s taxes. Conway also introduces the concept of lies as “alternative facts.”

Day 4: Spanish language option on White House website scrubbed. Conway reverses herself and says that Trump will release his taxes once his IRS audit is complete. After lying about inauguration crowd sizes on Day 1, Press Secretary Spicer says “…our intention is never to lie to you.” Spicer claims hiring freeze will halt “dramatic increase” in government employment. Number of federal employees at the beginning of Obama’s terms, 2.77 million; towards the end, 2.66 million. Spicer declines to give the current unemployment rate when asked by a reporter. Trump bans aid to international health organizations, including the World Heath Organization, if they mention abortion. Claims he will cut all regulations on businesses by 75%, that the remaining 25% will be just as strong about protecting the people as before the cut. Claims to have “received many awards on the environment.” The only award that can be verified is a Trump golf course that received one in 2007. In 2011 the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection cited the same golf course for several environmental violations. At a meeting with lawmakers, Trump repeats the false claim that between 3 and 5 million illegal voters made him lose the popular vote. The initial evidence he cites is the anecdote of a 59-year-old golf pro and German citizen, Bernhard Langer, who Trump claims saw a lot of Latin faces in a polling line in Florida. Reporters reached the golf pro’s daughter on Langer’s cell phone. She said “He is not a friend of President Trump’s, and I don’t know why he would talk about him.” An attempt to sue Trump under the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause begins.

Day 5: Retroactively declares his inauguration day, January 20, 2017, the National Day of Patriotic Devotion. Revives the Keystone XL and Dakota Access crude oil pipelines. The Badlands National Park Twitter account goes rogue and begins to tweet global warming stats and other scientific facts. It is shut down. A few other National Park accounts begin to follow suit out of solidarity. White house imposes a freeze on grants and contracts from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, prohibits employees from speaking to the press or on social media. Slaps a similar gag order on US Department of Agriculture scientists. Press Secretary Spicer says Trump’s 306 electoral votes were the most won by a GOP president since Reagan. But after Reagan, George HW Bush won with 426 electoral votes. Spicer calls prospective Attorney General Sessions record on voting and civil rights “exemplary.” Says Sessions “has fought very hard for voting rights, civil rights and on areas of minority rights.” Sessions was considered to be too racist for a federal judgeship in the 1980’s. As a US Attorney, Sessions prosecuted 3 black activists for hand delivering, rather than mailing a small number of absentee ballots. Sessions also called a fellow US Attorney “Boy.” Spicer repeats Trump’s lie regarding 3-5 million illegal votes during the election, citing non-existent “studies and evidence.” A member of the House and a Senator introduce a bill that would prevent the president from launching a nuclear first strike without a congressional declaration of war. A short time after a Bill O'Reilly episode touching on Chicago gun violence airs on Fox, Trump threatens to send federal troops into Chicago. Chicago’s murder rate in 2016 failed to put it in the top 10 US cities.

Day 6: Expands media and social media gag orders to include US Departments of Commerce, the Interior, Transportation and Health and Human services. Trump issues Draft Order designed to reopen CIA.-run “black site” prisons. These secret overseas prisons detained and tortured terrorism suspects for years, before being shut down by President Obama. Trump claims that intelligence officials have told him that torture “absolutely” works. George Orwell’s classic book 1984 hits #6 on Amazon’s bestseller list. Trump tweets that he will be asking for a “major investigation into VOTER FRAUD.” When confronted on ABC with the fact that the Pew reporter he was citing regarding voter fraud said there was in fact no voter fraud, Trump claimed the Pew reporter was “groveling.” Claims that two people were shot in Chicago during Obama’s farewell speech. Police reported no shootings in Chicago on that day. In the same interview, says “We ended up winning by a massive amount, 306.” In terms of electoral votes, Trump’s win ranks 46th out of 58 elections. Says “They say I had the biggest crowd in the history of inaugural speeches.” Estimates for crowds at Trump’s speech are 80% below those of Barack Obama’s in 2009. Says “We have spent as of one month ago 6 trillion dollars in the Middle East.” From 2001 to 2014 the wars in Iraq and in Afghanistan–the latter country is in South Asia–cost an estimated $1.6 trillion. Says “You had millions of people that now aren’t insured anymore.” Some 20 million people have gained health care coverage because of the Affordable Care Act. He signs directive to build border wall with Mexico, reiterates that Mexico will pay for it. The deepest channel of the Rio Grande river serves as the US-Mexico border for 1255 miles, longer than the distance from New York City to Orlando, FL. The river is known to change its course rather frequently. Signs another directive increasing detention centers and Border Patrol staff. Signs another directive that threatens to cut off federal funds to cities that don’t actively and vigorously pursue illegal aliens. Another order cuts U.S. funding to the International Criminal Court by 40 percent. The U.S. currently gives zero funding to the International Criminal Court. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago country club doubles membership fees. His hotel business reveals plans for a major US expansion.

Day 7 14 minutes after Fox News calls Chelsea Manning an ungrateful traitor who called Obama a weak leader, Trump tweets that Chelsea Manning is an ungrateful traitor who called Obama a weak leader. Entire US State Department senior management team resigns. All were career foreign service officers who served under both Republican and Democratic administrations. Infowars, who reported that the murdered Sandy Hook 1st graders were paid actors hired by the anti-gun lobby, and that the Air Force is purposefully creating deadly tornadoes in the Midwest, is granted White House Press credentials. Trump tweets that Mexico should cancel the upcoming summit with the US if they don’t want to pay for the wall. Enrique Pena Nieto, president of Mexico, our close ally, cancels his planned trip to Washington. Trump proposes a 20% tax on goods coming from Mexico. Sellers will increase their prices by 20%, which will be paid for by the US consumer. In Philadelphia Trump says that “the murder rate has been steadily – I mean, just terribly increasing.” Data provided by the Philadelphia Police Department shows a record downturn in violent crimes, with fewer occurring in 2016 than in every other year since 1979. Trump orders his new administration to publish a weekly list of crimes committed by immigrants. The idea is not new. The German newspaper Der Stürmer had a feature known as the “Letter Box”, which encouraged the reporting of Jewish illegal acts in the 1930’s and 40’s. “The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for awhile,” -Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s closest adviser. In an interview with Sean Hannity, Trump says that he doesn’t consider waterboarding to be torture. In April of 2009, Hannity agreed to be waterboarded for charity, but has yet to follow through on the offer. Trump draft proposal will ban immigration and to the US from Muslim majority countries Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Sudan, Yemen and Somalia. Muslim majority countries Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan and the U.A.E. will not be on the banned list. These five countries are where Trump has business interests.

Day 8 Trump signs ban on Muslims from the 7 countries from traveling into the US. Announces that persecuted Christians will be given priority over Muslim refugees. A screenshot is revived of Mike Pence’s deleted December 2015 tweet stating “Calls to ban Muslims from entering the U.S. are offensive and unconstitutional.” Dick Cheney says Muslim ban “goes against everything we stand for and believe in.” By a margin of 42% to 39%, Trump voters believe that it would be okay for him to use his private email server for official business. George Orwell’s 1984 hits #1 on Amazon’s bestseller list. Trump tweets that he has another source for his oft-debunked claim of millions of illegal votes - Gregg Phillips, who has made claims that the Department of Homeland Security hacked the 2016 US election at Obama’s request, and that Israel was the culprit for the DNC hacks. Three paragraph White House statement on Holocaust Remembrance Day makes no mention of the 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust. White Supremacist publication the Daily Stormer praises Trump on this statement for daring to reject “Jewish science fiction” about the Holocaust.

Day 9 Donald Trump calls Vladimir Putin from the White House. Steve Bannon, former publisher of radical right wing website Breitbart, is granted a regular seat at National Security Council meetings. Sample Breitbart headlines include Data: Young Muslims in the West Are a Ticking Time Bomb, and Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy. In 2013, Bannon told a writer for the Daily Beast, “I’m a Leninist. Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal, too. I want to bring everything crashing down.” The Director of National Intelligence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff will no longer have regular seats on the NSC. Some legal permanent US residents are being stopped from reentering as they return from visits or studies abroad. The Muslim ban will also keep Oscar-nominated director Asghar Farhadi from attending the Oscars. Referencing an article on how the ban will include green card residents, former KKK Grand Wizard and current racist icon David Duke tweets, “Greatest. Year. Ever.” Protesters flood JFK International Terminal in New York, demanding that detainees there be allowed to go free. More protesters assemble at airports in Denver, Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco, Seattle, LA, and Washington DC. Dozens of lawyers show up at various airports to work pro bono to free detainees there. New York judge issues a temporary injunction halting deportations nationwide from Trump’s ban. Similar rulings follow in Virginia, Massachusetts and Washington State.

Day 10 The US Department of Homeland Security says it will comply with judicial orders not to deport detained travelers affected by Trump’s ban. The DHS reverses itself and announces it will defy the court orders, potentially provoking a constitutional crisis. According to White House sources, Top Trump policy director Stephen Miller tells government employees that the public is behind Trump’s ban, and to ignore the hysterical voices on TV. While at Duke, Stephen Miller worked closely with White Nationalist Richard Spencer–the man who was recently punched in the face on air while explaining the Alt-Right, provoking debate amongst the Left as to whether or not it’s okay to punch a Nazi. As chaos and protests continue at airports in the US and around the world, Trump tells reporters “It’s not a Muslim ban. We were totally prepared. It’s working out very nicely. You see it at the airports, you see it all over. It’s working out very nicely.” Trump issues a statement saying, “To be clear, this is not a Muslim ban, as the media is falsely reporting,” Earlier in the day, Rudy Giuliani, adviser to Trump, told a reporter, “I’ll tell you the whole history of it. When he first announced it, he said 'Muslim ban.’ He called me up, he said 'put a commission together, show me the right way to do it, legally.’ ” A petition calling for Trump to be prevented from making a state visit to the United Kingdom picks up over 600,000 signatures, Once a petition passes the 500,000 threshold, the matter must then be debated in the UK Parliament.

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circumswoop · 7 years

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Is the Interregnum a Grave?

Peaceful transfers of power are boring by definition. Unfortunately, we’ve never had another kind, until now. Inaugurals and counter-inaugurals always bypassed each other without incident, unless you consider the occasional riff of pepper spray incidental. As it’s usually one group of recidivists handing off to another, how could such a transfer ever be peaceless?

Presidents and their wives, always to the manner either born or raised, hang out with each other during inaugurals, incoming and outgoing. There will be four former presidents at the Trump ceremony, five if George HW Bush plans a surprise skydive. (He could drop in a wheelchair held softly aloft by baby blue balloons, and then be rolled jovially away by security.) This is the licensure of the always-in-power, the ability to feel camaraderie with your replacement, whether or not he (it is always he) humiliated you in public. It’s the most exclusive club in the world, with provided airspace both preferred and elite. There are no cucks in tuxes. Meanwhile, there are presidents-elect yet to be born, and it is not too late to abort them all.

Obviously, one of the five living ex-presidents, and one of the four to attend, will be Barack Obama, whose election eight years ago settled a lowkey war between MySpace and Facebook, or so we thought: look which one is still here, being awful. Obama’s ascent overlapping with the descent of Top 8 culture is probably just me, but I remember the two months between Election and Inauguration Days presenting as forever young, not instantly iconic but worse: instantly idyllic. I’m not gonna tell you how old I was then, but I had a Martine Rose haircut. I was always drunk on one of two things, cheap vodka or soft white power. Still in the running-around phase of my learned liberalism, I anticipated the Obama presidency with a kind of guileless nightvision, blowing out my spectral range. I knew he was already top five presidents, easy, let alone top 8.

Sooner than you can say “drone strike”, that presidency is over and I’m sitting here with a buzzcut that I fear is trendy, reading about the Xiang River Storm and the Red Army Faction, trying not to treat radicalization as merely a way to get through whatever this is, this diastema between waiting to die and waiting to be brought back to life. Maybe that one Netflix series that looks like either a deep FKA Twigs video or a vintage HBA show really did nail what’s going on in the country, this sense of loitering in an unmade bed while outside the air turns green with breathed disgust.

[Stent]

The word “interregnum”, in the aggregate, means pause, interval, suspension--or in one iteration, the distance between discovery and detailed understanding. In the original English version (always worth checking out!), that distance was 11 years between the execution of Charles I and the accession of his son Charles II. In U.S. presidential politics, it was about 70 days before this year, when a majority of everyone freaked out, flatlined, did some modern Movements to try to enter another dimension and then, failing, collapsed into circular contemplations of self-harm. 70 days? More like 70 times 7, which is either the number of times Jesus told his entourage to forgive up to, or the number of “counter-terrorism” strikes the Obama administration(s) authorized in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Libya. I forget which!

What even is a peaceful transfer of power when the best we probably ever had soothed us partially by making his murder softcore? (My friend made a joke once about Klaus Kinski sounding like a really good cotton candy flavor—it’s like that but in reverse.) Where is the virtue in a proportional scale of human rights? Is it a redundancy covered by the most perennial of all insurances? During downtime, where do our hearts beat? Where is the sound? Will we live? Is life even a quality worth having?

[Stent]

Sometimes, when I drink too much, I pass out but am aided back to consciousness, in little rivulets, by concussive symptoms of withdrawal. Half melodic/half thrash, I moan and writhe. It sounds pretty but it’s not, because all that’s happening is I’m waiting to throw up. I guess I feel like I’m about to throw up, only for four whole years. Don’t even talk to me about eight.

I believe Obama is not a good man but possesses goodness, and I guess I feel bad writing that out loud despite stanning for him the entire time in loyal opposition to his record. Now he’s being replaced by his absolute antithesis, in optics and in credentials, a man who may not be wholly evil but who possesses evil, who puts on its underthings late at night and capers ghoulishly in the mirror; who will sneak into your room and place his hand squarely in the middle of your pillow to see if it’s warm. I truly believe the evil Trump possesses is not despotic but the petty, flesh-crawling kind that smells of talc and sewer, the desperate grasp of the night sweat. For all his fame and millions legit or forged, he sure is resentful.

This principle of possession preoccupies me way more than any argument abt what he’ll do or won’t do. I don’t think even he knows, because his particular evil seeps and blocks alternately. The incredible contradictions of Obamawere his possessions, or weights if you will—he always seemed genuinely capable of empathy while slaughtering innocents all the livelong day. He neither delivered himself from the crypto-corporate Medici who made him nor ever once laid off the deport button, yet in his healthcare and LGBQT approvals he probably freed more slaves than anyone since FDR or Lincoln, the two socialist presidents. Obama always knew what he was doing, whether those acts were faithful or egregious. Trump’s maniacally nonlinear behavior cinches at least one truth about him: that he knows not what he does. His evil is tinnitus-like, and has too many mixed messages to adequately receive. All he hears, understands, and emits is noise.

[Stent]

So we are left with the vape trail of a president who was “good for a neoliberal”, an introspective, Marilynne Robinson-loving father figure, inspo for dreamers trying to turn into dream leaders, kids growing old with blogging histories and classroom allergies who consented to his sway and cadence as proof of love, even if it was denatured or abusive. Nobody ever sold the lie of liberalism better than Obama, bc the way being lied to feels spinily, spinnily good as long as everyone’s a little bit in on it never felt so good.

One of the great belletristic disputes of the 1990s, albeit a passive-aggressive one, was between Andrew Sullivan and Tony Kushner on purposes of politics: shd politics relieve anxiety (Sullivan) or misery and injustice (Kushner)? How you answer outs you as either a liberal or a leftist, but if your arrival at the right answer took eight years then maybe Obama is to blame. Maybe the center-left is an industry of death, of lullaby and stalling and overprescription.

[Stent]

Leo Bersani’s essay “Is the Rectum a Grave” is a model of sacred rage, as opposed to average anger. Published in October 1987 at the peak, or nadir, of the AIDS crisis, it quotes MacKinnon, Dworkin, and Foucault and documents a society “that at once celebrates and punishes pluralism”, one that has “no political need to save or protect any homosexuals at all” and that is given a finishing sadistic edge by the family in Arcadia, Florida who set fire to a house wherein three hemophiliac children were believed to be infected with HIV. Bersani argues that anti-loving and hatred are synchronous, but more often the latter hides its head in the former. He also begins the essay with the funniest lede ever, defiantly unburied: “There is a big secret about sex: most people don’t like it.”

I believe the Trump presidency is already the greatest moral crisis in America since AIDS. No reflection on the Cold War and spies slipping in and out of closets or consciousness would be complete without a contagion—one to which, in Bersani’s words, the only necessary response is rage (not anger). Wraiths of the Weimar working class would not provide a better remonstration for Trumpism than the bags of bones the Reagan administration(s) put out with the trash. Reagan and Trump are compared almost as often as Trump and Hitler, but not often enough—a new eighties is more likely than a new thirties simply because the eighties were the most American decade, and the thirties were conducted in a Europe that blew its own head off rather than look in the mirror ever again.

Trump tweeting a picture of his handshakes with Ronald and Nancy was way more of a message than his tweeting days later about Nazi Germany—the Trump family, for all their leopard-killing, vacuity-shilling horrors, are decadent directly from the Me Decade. Trump the paterfamilias has lived in the American imagination since at least Marla Maples went in the New York Post in 1990 and said sex with Trump was the best she ever had. Others reference the 1979 Wayne Barrett cover feature for the Voice as prequel to a decade.

Either way, by the time he gave Kevin McAllister directions to the lobby in his, Trump’s, own hotel in Home Alone 2 (1992) the deal was closed: Trump was the first name that came up when anyone talked about riches. America and its imagination will never get over the 1980s, and if there’s any shrewd or non-shriveled wisdom that can be gained from Trump’s senescent rise it should be that America has still never really gotten over AIDS. Fascism feared by anyone with a pulse, let alone one that’s only intelligible in their left wrist, is better detected in viral terms. It can only by stopped by a contagion mentality, by the kinds of education and mobilization the social agents of AIDS provided and to some extent pioneered. Bersani named, as its essential crisis of care, “the general tendency to think of AIDS as an epidemic of the future rather than a catastrophe of the present”. All you have to do to diagnose whatever age we’re in is find/replace AIDS with Fascism. There is a big secret abt power: everyone likes it.

#trump #aids #fascism #interregnum #inaguration

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peonycats · 1 year

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HORN OF AFRICA COMPILATION (+ BONUS SUDAN)

Despite being loaded with work I had the sudden urge to draw out my Horn of Africa OCs (+ bonus Sudan who snuck in there 🤷)

Anyways, I tested out Vegalia’s hair brushes while drawing these guys and I had tons of fun!! I would recommend it to anyone else who wants to try more diverse hair types, even if its just as a reference for you to draw over👍

#hetalia #hws sudan #HWS Ethiopia #hws somalia #hws djibouti #hws eritrea #historically inaccurate hair is historically inaccurate #hetalia ocs #aph africa #you can really see the resemblance between ethiopia and eritrea haha #aph ethiopia #aph sudan #aph somalia #aph djibouti #aph eritrea

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shaqohel · 4 years

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CMAM Officer - Doolow

CMAM Officer - Doolow #somalia #somalijobs #shaqohel

External website advert template The Opportunity ROLE PURPOSE:

The position holder is responsible for the four CMAM component implementation in the woreda and working closely with the woreda, Kebele, community, and religious leaders, HWs, HEWs, and CHVs for the effective implementation and linkage of CMAM program with the community and facility. In addition the position holder is also…

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trumpfeed · 5 years

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In the final days of his presidency, George H.W. Bush committed the U.S. military to a mission many would later regret, ordering more than 20,000 troops into Somalia to "save thousands of innocents from death."

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hellofastestnewsfan · 5 years

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Had George Herbert Walker Bush never become the 41st president of the United States, he’d still be remembered as one of the great Americans of the 20th century.

Bush, who died Friday at the age of 94, according to his spokesman, began his public service more than six decades ago at age 18 as a naval aviator during World War II. Over the ensuing decades, he founded a successful oil company, served in Congress, was the chair of the Republican National Committee, ambassador to the United Nations, envoy to China, director of the C.I.A., the U.S. vice president, and, in his later years, raised money for the victims of Hurricane Katrina and the Indian Ocean tsunami. His wife, Barbara Bush, died at age 92 in April.

[Read more: Barbara Bush changed with her country.]

But it was his one-term presidency, from 1989 to 1993, that had a monumental impact on the world. Ronald Reagan, his predecessor, uttered the famous words, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,” yet it was Bush who presided over its orderly dismantling.

Bush oversaw the collapse of the Soviet Union, the end of the Cold War, the birth of the post-Soviet republics, and the West’s outreach to former members of the Warsaw Pact. And Bush—along with Gorbachev—signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in July 1991, which significantly reduced U.S. and Soviet nuclear stockpiles.

There were other foreign-policy successes: Bush ordered the U.S. invasion of Panama, and the eventual removal of Manuel Noriega, its formerly U.S.-backed leader; and approved the U.S.-led U.N. intervention in Somalia’s civil war.

Two of his greatest achievements had consequences for two of his sons: The First Gulf War, the conflict for which Bush is perhaps best known, paved the way for a second conflict, launched by President George W. Bush, that kept the United States in Iraq for more than a decade and hurt the younger Bush’s presidency; the formerly heralded North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) became the shibboleth of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016, in which Trump defeated former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, a proponent of free trade, in the Republican primary.

Neither Bush nor his sons attended the Republican Convention at which Trump was nominated, and the Bush refused to endorse the billionaire real estate developer in his race against Hillary Clinton. But the elder Bush was unable to translate his foreign-policy successes to his domestic record. His “Thousand Points of Light” speech, which encouraged volunteerism, was widely mocked and satirized, and even made its way to a Neil Young song.

Liberals still criticize Bush’s nomination of Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court, and his subsequent defense of Thomas amid allegations of sexual harassment. And Bush’s now-infamous pledge, “Read my lips: No new taxes,” had to be broken with taxes increases on the wealthy as part of a budget deal in 1990 that addressed mounting deficits and stabilized government finances. But the tax increases angered conservatives, and Bush would later say that the decision destroyed him politically.

In the early 1990s, the U.S. entered a recession, and Bush faced a young, charismatic Democratic governor named Bill Clinton who made the economy the centerpiece of his presidential campaign. A third-party bid by the billionaire Ross Perot did not help Bush, nor did the president’s apparent ignorance about how modern supermarkets worked. Ultimately, Clinton triumphed in the 1992 presidential election, relegating Bush to the list of one-term presidents. “I worked my heart out and it was terrible to adjust, but then you figure life goes on, just do what the next challenge is,” he told his granddaughter Jenna Bush Hager, then a contributor to NBC’s “Today” show, in 2012.

The letter Bush wrote to his successor the day he handed over the White House became a symbol of the grace for which the president was known.“There will be very tough times, made even more difficult by criticism you may not think is fair,” he wrote to Clinton. “I’m not a very good one to give advice; but just don’t let the critics discourage you or push you off course. You will be our President when you read this note. I wish you well. I wish your family well.

Bush’s stabilizing presidency and the relative calm of the 1990s now seems like a lifetime ago. As his biographer Jon Meacham wrote:

Americans unhappy with the reflexively polarized politics of the first decades of the 21st century will find the presidency of George H.W. Bush refreshing, even quaint. He embraced compromise as a necessary element of public life, engaged his political foes in the passage of important legislation, and was willing to break with the base of his own party in order to do what he thought was right, whatever the price. Quaint, yes. But it happened in America, only a quarter of a century ago.

In 2015, President Obama called Bush “one of the more underrated presidents we have ever had.”

“When you look at both how he managed foreign policy and when you think about how he handled domestic policy in each case he was thoughtful, restrained, and made good decisions,” Obama said.

On Tuesday night, appearing at Rice University with Bush’s trusted confidante James A. Baker, who served as Bush’s secretary of state, Obama said Bush’s handling of world affairs represented “as important and as deft and as effective a set of foreign-policy initiatives as we saw in recent years.” After the event, Obama visited Bush at home in Houston and delivered a pair of colorful socks, which had become a signature of the former president.

Bush was born in Massachusetts and raised in Greenwich, Connecticut, the son of Prescott S. Bush, a United States senator. At 18, he enlisted in the Navy and was shot down during a combat mission in the Pacific in September 1944. He was rescued at sea by a U.S. submarine.

After the war, he attended Yale University and soon moved his young family to Midland, Texas, where he started a successful career in the oil business before entering politics. He was elected to the U.S. House from a wealthy Houston district in 1966 and won reelection in 1968 before relinquishing the seat for an unsuccessful Senate run in 1970. He became Richard Nixon’s U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in 1971, the first of several appointed positions, including director of central intelligence, that led him to the vice presidency under Ronald Reagan and ultimately to the White House, where he served as the nation’s 41st president.

In an interview with CBS in 1984, Bush described his politics this way: “I am a conservative, but I’m not a nut about it.” Comments like those didn’t endear him to conservatives, who never trusted him—and not just because of his dismissal of supply-side economics as “voodoo economics” that’s “not going to work.”

The former president enjoyed a surge in popularity after he left office—perhaps because he embodied the kind of politics and politicians that are increasingly rare. He was active in fundraising for humanitarian causes—with Clinton, who became a friend; went skydiving on his 90th birthday, and regularly wore colorful socks that belied his perceived stiffness. Bush was awarded the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation’s Profile in Courage Award and the Presidential Medal of Freedom—the latter awarded by Obama in 2011.

In his later years, Bush suffered from ill health. He used a wheelchair to get around since 2012 because of a form of Parkinson’s disease, and was hospitalized several times with pneumonia. His death comes just seven months after his wife of more than seven decades died. He is survived by five children—George W. Bush, Jeb Bush, Neil Bush, Marvin Bush, and Dorothy Bush Koch (a sixth child, Robin, died of leukemia in 1959 at the age of 3); and several grandchildren.

When Hager asked him in the 2012 interview about his legacy, Bush replied: “I want somebody else to define the legacy. I’ve kind of banned use of the ‘L’ word. History will point out some of the things I did wrong and some of the things I did right.”

from The Atlantic https://ift.tt/2BJ3OQr

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