Tag: Humanitarian Crisis

Closing Thought–17Jul18

Last week we had the great news that all the kids and their coach had been rescued from the cave in Thailand…..the news was every where and the atta boys were constant…..

The out pouring to love and good wishes was amazing…..but with all that I was wonder after years of conflict why the news media seems to ignore the plight, the suffering the death of the children of Yemen…….

Thanks to a major international effort, a Thai youth soccer team has been successfully rescued from the cave where it has been trapped for nearly 15 days. The boys’ plight and the efforts to rescue them have captured the world’s attention for several days, dominating news headlines throughout much of the world. Ultimately, most of the boys were rescued thanks in large part to an international collaboration as divers from several countries united to save them. Indeed, the rescue team was composed of five foreign divers paired with five Thai Navy SEALs as well as a team of 70 support divers, 50 of whom were from other nations.

The successful rescue of the Thai youth team undoubtedly stands as a testament to how international collaboration stemming from international awareness – thanks in part to in-depth news coverage – can overcome impossible odds to save the lives of children and others in need. Yet, while the now-rescued Thai youth recover out of harm’s way, children elsewhere whose lives are also in danger cannot expect similar treatment.

http://theantimedia.com/thai-boys-yemen-children/

Do not misunderstand…I am thrilled that these kids were rescued from the rising water in that cave….I just do not understand why one group of kids is more important than another…..we can thank the media for this situation…..they alone decide who is important.

Why cannot the media with all its resources do something about all the suffering in Yemen?  Why is there NO stomach for an effort in Yemen?  Why are starving children Yemen less important than kids trapped in a cave?

The Moral High Ground Is Gone

For many years the US has been the champion of human rights…we have tried to help when there has been a refugee crisis…that is until about 25 years ago when we started pulling away from any responsibility for we were helping create the problem.

Misery has become a weapon of war these days……

From Syria to Yemen, from South Sudan to Venezuela, war and political crisis are causing human anguish on a scale unseen in a generation.

That conflict and crisis take a high human toll is hardly new, of course. Yet the scope of suffering today is striking. The number of people displaced globally by conflict and persecution stood at 65.6 million at the end of 2016, the greatest number since World War II. Figures released earlier this month show that there were 11.8 million new internal displacements in 2017, nearly double the 6.9 million in 2016. The number of people facing acute hunger globally due largely to conflict and instability reached almost 74 million across eighteen countries in 2017. The trend is clear: war and crisis are destroying more lives and livelihoods, pushing more people toward starvation and driving more people from their homes.

https://www.crisisgroup.org/global/misery-strategy-human-cost-conflict

In the last 10 years we, the US, has contributed to the Middle East refugee crisis…..and now that we have officially pulled out of the UN humanitarian efforts we can NO longer claim any moral high ground and need to keep our mouths shut.

The crisis in the Syrian desert is just such an example……there is lots of finger pointing and little effort to solve the problem…..

Looking at a map, nothing would seem easier than to drive a convoy of food and medical supplies to Rukban, a camp for refugees and displaced civilians on the Syrian–Jordanian border some 260 kilometers east of Damascus. Though the terrain is rough, the camp is located in an area of relative calm and stability, and it could be reached from Amman, Damascus, or both. But Syria’s seven-year civil war says otherwise.

All sides now blame each other for preventing aid deliveries to the tens of thousands of Syrians trapped in this desolate desert region, and Rukban has emerged as a cruel illustration of how civilians are snared in the tangled threads of sovereignty and proxy control that constitute current-day Syria.

https://tcf.org/content/report/blame-game-syrians-stranded-desert/

Many countries contributed to the creation of this problem, including the US, and few want to help solve the very problems they have created.

Personally, my thoughts are if you had a hand in creating the problem then it is on your shoulders to solve it…..but instead we are asking those countries least able to weather the refugee crisis to do the heavy lifting.

I say that every defense contract has a provision in it that “X” amount of the profits go to a fund to help refugees…administered by Switzerland through the UN.

It is time for Americans to re-claim the moral high ground in war…but that will not happen in this writers lifetime….sad but there is hope, a small glimmer but hope nonetheless.

Then There Is South Sudan

The newest country to enter the UN was the country if South Sudan……a little history of world’s newest independent nation…..

Egypt attempted to colonize the region of southern Sudan by establishing the province of Equatoria in the 1870s. Islamic Mahdist revolutionaries overran the region in 1885, but in 1898 a British force was able to overthrow the Mahdist regime. An Anglo-Egyptian Sudan was established the following year with Equatoria being the southernmost of its eight provinces. The isolated region was largely left to itself over the following decades, but Christian missionaries converted much of the population and facilitated the spread of English. When Sudan gained its independence in 1956, it was with the understanding that the southerners would be able to participate fully in the political system. When the Arab Khartoum government reneged on its promises, a mutiny began that led to two prolonged periods of conflict (1955-1972 and 1983-2005) in which perhaps 2.5 million people died – mostly civilians – due to starvation and drought. Ongoing peace talks finally resulted in a Comprehensive Peace Agreement, signed in January 2005. As part of this agreement, the south was granted a six-year period of autonomy to be followed by a referendum on final status. The result of this referendum, held in January 2011, was a vote of 98% in favor of secession.
Since independence on 9 July 2011, South Sudan has struggled with good governance and nation building and has attempted to control opposition forces operating in its territory. Economic conditions have deteriorated since January 2012 when the government decided to shut down oil production following bilateral disagreements with Sudan. In December 2013, conflict between government and opposition forces killed tens of thousands and led to a dire humanitarian crisis with millions of South Sudanese displaced and food insecure. The warring parties signed a peace agreement in August 2015 that created a transitional government of national unity in April 2016. However, in July 2016, fighting broke out in Juba between the two principal signatories, plunging the country back into conflict.
Now you have a grip on the situation in South Sudan….there is a war going on within the borders ans no one cares especially the West……they give it a bit of lip service but that is as far as it goes…..

The accounts are horrific. A young girl strangled and gang-raped. Children burned alive as government soldiers blocked the door of their hut and set it aflame. These are some of the atrocities revealed in 14 reports, seen by the AP, that have not yet been released by the independent body charged with monitoring a failed cease-fire imposed in December in South Sudan, where civil war is now well into its fifth year, has killed tens of thousands, and has created Africa’s largest refugee crisis since the Rwandan genocide in 1994. The reports should have been released last month at a meeting led by the Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission but South Sudan’s government did not attend, preventing the accounts of abuses from being made public because there was not a quorum.

The unpublished reports describe violations by both government and opposition forces but most of the accounts blame the former. One report describes a disabled woman who, unable to flee the fighting, was thrown into a burning house by government soldiers. The US, South Sudan’s largest aid donor, has increased pressure on the Juba government amid widespread allegations that its officials are profiting from the conflict instead of working to end it. Last week the UN Security Council adopted a US-sponsored resolution that warns of an arms embargo and sanctions against six high-ranking officials if the fighting doesn’t stop. The US and others, however, insist that the East African regional bloc, along with the African Union, should take the lead in finding peace and holding perpetrators of abuses accountable.

I have said on many occasions….”No one cares about Africa”……

Rwanda–24 Years Later

24 years ago the world turned its back on the African nation of Rwanda and the humanitarian crisis that ensued…..

Pres, Clinton was the typical coward and turned a blind eye to the events unfolding in Rwanda…..I wrote about this on the 20th anniversary of the crisis…..

https://lobotero.com/2014/06/06/did-we-really-care/

I relive this event because of something that has happened in Rwanda…..

Mass graves that authorities say could contain more than 2,000 bodies have been discovered in Rwanda nearly a quarter-century after the country’s genocide, and further graves are being sought nearby. The new discovery is being called the most significant in a long time in this East African nation that is still recovering from the 1994 killings of more than 800,000 ethnic Tutsi and moderate ethnic Hutus. Some Rwandans are shocked and dismayed that residents of the community outside the capital, Kigali, where the mass graves were found kept quiet about them for so many years. Between 2,000 and 3,000 people are thought to be buried in the graves based on the number of area residents who went missing during the genocide, Rashid Rwigamba, an official with the genocide survivors’ organization Ibuka, tells the AP.

The information leading to the discovery came from a local landlord who at first refused to answer questions about the suspected mass graves until threatened with arrest, Rwigamba says. The landlord was later arrested, suspected of taking part in the killings and accused of knowing where people had been buried all along, he adds. Houses and toilets that had been built on top of the graves have been destroyed to make way for the search. “The exercise is ongoing and we have identified another house we suspect was built on a piece of land where victims were buried,” Rwigamba says. Bodies found so far include those of babies, based on the clothing that has been found. During the genocide, a roadblock manned by Hutu militias was established meters away from the sites of the mass graves, survivors tell the AP.

This is a chapter of American foreign policy that we had rather forget but some of us do not want us to forget the death of thousands that we could have helped and possibly prevented.

America talks a good game about human suffering but we do as little as possible to alleviate it….this is typical American foreign policy and it is about to get worse.

To Stop Human Suffering

The latest round of airstrikes was in response to human suffering…..Syria’s use of CWs caused the suffering and the US had to act and act quickly.

The US has history of intervention to stop human suffering…..the Kurds in Iraq, the Yazidis in Iraq, gas attacks in Syria……

The problem is the attacks are used as an excuse to intervene in another country’s situation….

 Shortly after the missile attack on Syria, US Commander-in-Chief Donald Trump bragged in his usual pompous way that it was “mission accomplished”. In Britain, there was no such display of hubris. Prime Minister Theresa May was, instead, forced to explain to parliament why she ordered the attack without consulting MPs.

Two explanations were given during the parliamentary debate: that it was in Britain’s national interests to bomb Syria; and that it was done out of humanitarian concern for the suffering of the Syrian people.

This begs us to stop and ask where we go from here. Will the interventionists stop at Syria, or turn their attention to other areas where there is appalling human suffering?

http://theantimedia.com/military-intervention-middle-east-human-suffering/

Propaganda is a useful foreign policy tool…..sadly human suffering is just another tool for intervention…..the uninterested citizens jut shrug off the intervention if the excuse sounds plausible.

The attacks in retaliation have done nothing to stop human suffering……

The recent chlorine attack in Douma, Syria, which reportedly killed over 40 men, women and children, prompted a predictable reaction from the international community. Governments around the world issued statements condemning the attack. The UN Security Council held an emergency meeting in response. Russia dismissed reports of the attack as false and traded insults with the U.S. Doctors scrambled inside Syria to treat those afflicted, while aid workers searched homes to locate more victims.

As horrific as this attack was for the people of Syria, its global implications also require attention and action. This is no longer an aberration, it is the latest in a pattern of attacks by not only Syria, but North Korea, Russia, and ISIS. These actors have demonstrated they are willing to flout international conventions by using weapons that many have worked for decades to contain. And yet, there are no real actions underway to hold perpetrators of chemical weapons attacks accountable.

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2018/04/18/a_norm_in_crisis_implications_of_persistent_chemical_weapons_use_113336.html

The government has used human suffering as a preclude to a possible attack on North Korea….the people were starving and oppressed…..the same could be said for Iran (this is the situation to watch for future lies)……..

Yemen–America’s Shame

For two year the Saudis have been bombing Yemen back into the Stone Age…..the humanitarian crisis is getting worse by the bomb…..not not are the people in starvation mode they are also facing the worse cholera epidemic in a 100 years…..and all made possible by the US and its aid to our buddies the Saudis.

As the world focuses on isolated incidents of terrorism taking place in Western countries, the wholesale slaughter being committed by Western countries against others generally goes unnoticed unless being pinned on the victim nation. However, even with Americans and other Westerners paying scant attention to Iraq and Syria, the conflict in Yemen scarcely gets a mention except in communities of human rights activists and geopolitical commentators.

Even after Yemen has overtaken Syria as the world’s greatest humanitarian crisis, most of the world has remained deathly silent about the situation unfolding there.

While not overwhelmingly involved with troops, bombing campaigns, and the like in the way that it is in Syria or Iraq, the United States is nonetheless complicit in the destruction of an entire country by providing intelligence, weapons, and political support to Saudi Arabia and the GCC in their war against the Yemeni people. In addition to that support, however, the United States has, at times, also contributed limited direct military support to the Saudi effort.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-faces-of-yemen-where-is-american-outrage/5619219

One of America’s most respected news stows is “60 Minutes” and they recently did a feature on Yemen…..

Saudi Arabia’s year long blockade and bombing campaign in Yemen has gotten very little coverage in the United States, even as the extreme food and fuel shortages have developed into one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

Now, as the Saudi noose on Yemen tightens — leaving 7 million people facing starvation and another 1 million infected with cholera — the war is having its moment in the media spotlight.

On Sunday, “60 Minutes” aired a 13-minute segment on the war’s devastating humanitarian toll. The program featured imagery of starving children and interviews with displaced people, all obtained after Saudi Arabia blocked “60 Minutes” from entering the country.

https://theintercept.com/2017/11/20/60-minutes-yemen-war-us-involvement/

The Saudis have gone so far as to bomb the available airport to keep supplies from entering into the country…..I lost a lot of respect I had for “60 Minutes” after they failed to report the whole story did nothing but a fluff piece to silence some critics…..this is why we have some much call out of “fake news”….no one wants to report the truth anymore.

An estimated 130 children or more are dying every day in war-torn Yemen from extreme hunger and disease, according to ​Save the Children, an international aid group

The charity said a continuing blockade by the Saudi-led coalition fighting Yemen’s Houthi rebels aligned with the country’s former president was likely to further increase the death rate. It said more than 50,000 children are believed to have died in 2017.

The coalition closed all air, land and sea ports to stem the flow of arms from Iran on November 6, after Saudi Arabia intercepted a missile fired towards its capital Riyadh. It has since said that aid can go through “liberated ports” but not the key Houthi-controlled port of Hodeidah.

http://www.smh.com.au/world/yemen-children-are-dying-at-a-rate-of-130-a-day-while-saudiled-blockade-continues-20171118-gzo21m.html

Even the American Conversation has weighed in on the atrocity that is Yemen…..

Yemen has been upside down for three years. Hunger, epidemics, and a blockade are all getting tighter. But the misery has escalated following the ballistic missile which was fired from Yemen at the King Khalid International Airport in the Saudi capital on Nov. 4. Overnight, Yemen became completely isolated from the entire globe.

This development has ushered in a new wave of civilian suffering. It feels like the war has just opened a new chapter of violence in a country beset by crises since the eruption of the 2011 uprising.

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/dispatch-from-yemen-were-cut-off-and-starving/

Sad and to watch American news then NO one cares about the plight of children in Yemen or the rate of starvation…..truly sad.

Closing Thought–10Oct17

Nowhere To Run!

We all have seen the horrific refugee crisis that the many wars in the Middle East has created….millions upon millions trying to find a spot that they can live without worry about their livelihood or their family.

Even if every war in the Middle East was cease today the refugee crisis would not be abated……

Plagued by heat and dust: Desert dust storms such as here in Kuwait could occur more often in the Middle East and North Africa as a result of climate change. In addition, temperatures on very hot days could rise to 50 degrees Celsius on average in the region (approximately 122 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century. Credit: Molly John, Flickr, Creative Commons

The number of climate refugees could increase dramatically in future. Researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry and the Cyprus Institute in Nicosia have calculated that the Middle East and North Africa could become so hot that human habitability is compromised. The goal of limiting global warming to less than two degrees Celsius, agreed at the recent UN climate summit in Paris, will not be sufficient to prevent this scenario. The temperature during summer in the already very hot Middle East and North Africa will increase more than two times faster compared to the average global warming. This means that during hot days temperatures south of the Mediterranean will reach around 46 degrees Celsius (approximately 114 degrees Fahrenheit) by mid-century. Such extremely hot days will occur five times more often than was the case at the turn of the millennium. In combination with increasing air pollution by windblown desert dust, the environmental conditions could become intolerable and may force people to migrate.

More than 500 million people live in the Middle East and North Africa – a region which is very hot in summer and where is already evident. The number of extremely has doubled since 1970. “In future, the climate in large parts of the Middle East and North Africa could change in such a manner that the very existence of its inhabitants is in jeopardy,” says Jos Lelieveld, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry and Professor at the Cyprus Institute.

Source: Climate-exodus expected in the Middle East and North Africa

Soon climate change will show the world that it is a problem that should not have been ignored until it was too late.

Syriasly?

A clever title….wish I had thought of it……

Yes the US has attacked a Syrian airfield in retaliation for the alleged use of CWs by Assad in his own country against Syrian civilians.

Our president was outraged at the barbaric attack by a sitting government against his people.  Apparently he does not watch much international news for this, while despicable, was a minor use of CWs compared to some of the other stuff he has been accused of doing.

So why now?

One explanation is that he is a creature of television and learning about atrocities and injustice via the boob tube had a profound effect upon his thinking, and I use that term advisedly.

The scenes of human carnage should sicken us all, regardless of whether they are in Syria, Rwanda, Vietnam or Chicago. Man’s inhumanity to man is not acceptable under any condition and it is our collective responsibility to exhaust any and all remedies to alleviate human suffering. No one with a conscience, a soul, or even the hint of compassion and empathy is not reviled by the atrocity that occurred at the hands of the murderous Syrian dictator either this time or the last time or the times before that he unleashed chemical weapons upon his people.

Source: Syriasly? – LA Progressive

I mean this humanitarian gesture is NOTHING new….each president has had a moment of outrage to justify some sort of action.

But this action by Trump was more a message to the world than some noble cause to right a wrong…..plus it will help change the dialog in the news…..

When Is It a Humanitarian Crisis?

A new year and the plight of the Palestinian people has not changed much since 1967 with the exception of the loss of land, crops and lives.

The Plight of the Palestinians hits close to home for me….when I was working in the Middle East I worked with a Palestinian named Rafiq, he was my interpreter and friend….when we would go on vacation we would go to his family’s home in Hebron….so I am have been doing my part to help the world understand the plight of the Palestinians in their desire for the nation to return….

As of today the countries that recognize Palestine as a Nation are in green……

Image result for countries that recognize Palestine

Look at the map….notice anything about the countries that do not recognize Palestine?

Last year I was asked to write for a site, Legationes, and my first op-ed was about the state of Palestine…

Source: Let the Wall define Palestine – In Saner Thought

Israel is building an apartheid wall around the West Bank….

Image result for Palestine Wall images

Do you remember the Berlin Wall?

Image result for Palestine Wall images

Image result for Palestine Wall images

I know the wall is a wall of separation….but why not let it define Palestine from the rest of the region……please just read my Legationes op-ed for further clarification.

But with that intro out of the way I want to talk about the humanitarian crises that the US has gotten involved in recently….

The US has used a humanitarian crisis to start a war…Syria, Iraq and Libya come to mind……

Iraq it was a couple of thousand Yazidis trapped on a mountain top without food , water or shelter and the US used airstrikes to keep ISIS at bay so that aid could make its way to those that needed it….then there is Libya….Qaddafi was poised to use airstrikes against his people who were up in arms and demanding more freedoms….the US used airstrikes to stop the airstrikes and eventually ended the life of Qaddafi

I bring this up because there is a real humanitarian crisis in Gaza……

After the total destruction wrought by Israel in 2014…not much has been done to repair the damage done by massive airstrikes and tank attacks…..

Image result for Gaza images

Since 2014 there is no food, fishermen prevented from fishing, water supplies are contaminated or none existent, building material banned by Israel and aid is help up in Israel…..all in all this is a humanitarian crisis.

If the US truly wants to do the humanitarian thing then this would be the perfect spot to practice what they preach.

Image result for Gaza images

Here’s my plan……since Gaza borders on Egypt then the US should put together an aid convoy with water, food and building supplies then drive in from Egypt……have the convoy with tanks and armored vehicles accompany the trucks and air cover from Cobras and A-10s.  Supplies would be those from aid NGOs…the US would be providing security only.

Unlike most Westerners I do have plans…none of which my country will sign onto….but at least they are plans…..this one is an op-ed that I wrote for an Italian site……

Source: Let the Wall define Palestine – Legationes

It is 2017….time for the Palestinian people to go global with their pleas and concerns…….the US has deaf ears…..

Another op-ed of mine this one was for Ace News Room……

Source: Palestine–2017 | Ace News Room

The Palestinian people have suffered much in 60 years….time for a realistic plan to end the cycle of violence and bring peace to a troubled land.

Why Do We Fear Refugees?

My weekend begins and my granddaughter is visiting and we are arguing something we do often….but it is light hearted and informative….

Recently she had a class project about the refugees and the conflicts that have created the flood of people.  She does her own research and she found some stuff that sort of made her worry……it seems she had found in her research and in her classroom that people seem to fear refugees……she asked why.

She found this animated piece on youtube that explains it somewhat and she shared it with me……

Zygmunt Bauman, one of the most influential thinkers of our time, says many Europeans’ fear of refugees boils down to the idea of the “precariat” – people whose lives are marked by precariousness, anxiety and fear.

Bauman believes that in this era of global upheaval and movement, seeing people who have lost everything reminds us of our own vulnerabilities – how we could so easily lose our homes, our jobs and our loved ones.

I could have given her my take on it…..if the world does not want to help these people then stop making the crisis possible….but I wanted her to find her answers on her own…..

I gave her an “A” for her diligence in finding the answer to her question…..

And all I can say is….”That’s my girl”.