Strictures Lifted on Eduction for Children of Taliban Elite
"The Iqra system is very good for Taliban who are looking to educate their boys and girls."
"It's an Islamic educational system that teaches both modern school subjects and madrassah subjects."
"Most of our friends were looking for this kind of mixed system, and after this system was established in some cities like Karachi and Quetta, they were sending their boys and girls to these schools."
Taliban official located in Pakistan
"In the past, it was not common practice because very few women
were literate but now you can find well-educated women everywhere."
"Education allows them to live a good life. They know the rights
of a husband better and can better train your sons and daughters."
"This
is why a literate wife is a necessity nowadays."
Taliban Minister
"Taliban members and their families who live here [Qatar] have strong demands for modern education and no one opposes it for either boys or girls -- of any age."
Taliban official based in Qatar
The Taliban claim Afghan girls will be able to return fully to schools from March 21, although lessons will be segregated Credit: Kiana Hayeri
Like Soviet leaders preaching collectivism in the USSR, while living in their dachas and driving costly European-model vehicles and leaving the Russian-made rattletraps to the masses, the Taliban will permit girls in Afghanistan to be formally educated only until age twelve, but when it comes to the daughters and sons of the Taliban elite and officials, exposure to higher education is a must. The privileged leaderships of all ideological movements see themselves as elevated and entitled while the masses are given to struggle for existence.
An Afghan woman wearing a burka begs while taking care of her daughter in Kabul on Oct. 7. (Jorge Silva/Reuters)
The daughters of Taliban officials are sent to schools outside the country while within Afghanistan classrooms remain closed to female students. Children of high-ranking officials are sent overseas to state schools and universities, and see nothing wrong with depriving ordinary children in Afghanistan from formal education opportunities. Millions of Afghan girls are now languishing without an education as a reflection of the Taliban ideology.
Since being posted to Qatar members of the Taliban negotiating team resident on Doha began sending their daughters to school in Qatar: "Since everybody in the neighbourhood was going to school our children demanded they go to school too", explained one Taliban official. A current Taliban minister's daughter whose father was a member of the Taliban leadership council, now studies medicine at a Qatari university, according to a report by the Afghanistan Analysts Network (AAN).
Children have been left in Doha when their fathers, members of the Taliban's office in Qatar, returned to Kabul, for concerns of disrupting their education. The Taliban, fierce foes of educating girls, now see the advantages of female education as long as the females are their own. The affairs of Afghanistan are so mismanaged millions of Afghans face endemic poverty, with the threat of starvation hanging over people under duress.
It has become a matter of great importance to these Taliban of privilege to send their children to schools combining "Western" learning with religious teaching. The system known as the Iqra system in neighbouring Pakistan where many children of Taliban leaders who lived in exile for decades find it convenient to have educated daughters. Others enroll their children in private schools in Qatar operating on the Pakistani model curriculum while teaching in English.
Ravaged by poverty since the Taliban took control of the country and both Western NGOs and diplomats left along with international investment, the children of Afghanistan suffer malnutrition, according to the World Health Organization; the United Nations warning that 97 percent of Afghans live below the poverty line, and the Taliban banned girls from attending school in over two-thirds of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan.
Students in a primary school in Kandahar in September. The
Taliban have refused to permit girls to return to high school, a key
demand of the international community. (Bilal Guler/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
"Children are going to die. People are going to starve. Things are going to get a lot worse."
"I
don't know how you don't have millions of people, and especially
children, dying at the rate we are going, with the lack of funding and
the collapsing of the economy."
"What
we are predicting is coming true much faster than we anticipated. Kabul
fell faster than anybody anticipated and the economy is falling faster
than that."
"You've got to unfreeze these funds [repurposing development assistance to humanitarian aid] so people can survive."
David Beasley, executive director, World Food Program
Every day brings labourers looking for work - but there is little to go round
In
the most sorrowful of sinister warnings, it has begun; children are
dying and more will follow. Eight orphaned children, all under the age
of ten, whose parents had died and who were left to fend for themselves,
dependent on handouts from neighbours and strangers in a country where
food is scarce and people are facing starvation, did die of starvation.
Neglected, no one to be concerned for their welfare, they were simply
unable to cope with the challenge of finding enough food somewhere to
sustain their existence.
This
happened in the capital city of Afghanistan. An estimated fifty percent
of the population of poverty-wrenched Afghanistan now face food
shortages. A serious situation is becoming utterly dire. The country
looms on the brink of experiencing the worst humanitarian crisis in the
world. Similar warnings are issued by the United Nations from time to
time; starvation in Somalia, in Yemen, Democratic Republic of Congo,
Liberia, Haiti, Central African Republic, and the list goes on.
Tribal
and sectarian conflict, internal and external challenges leading to war
and persecution. Where there is war, farmers cannot cultivate their
fields. Where there is conflict, people flee their towns and villages,
becoming homeless and refugees, finding both shelter and food and
welcome hard to come by. A newly-impoverished Afghanistan, victimized by
corruption, by ethnic, clan and sectarian violence, now the Islamic
Emirate of Afghanistan, has seen international funding dry up,
humanitarian charity unwilling to fund the Taliban.
Going to bed hungry is the new reality in a country that has seen decades of war
Drought,
war and poverty have accompanied the rise to power of the Taliban;
endemic, now acute. The eight dead children left on their own to
survive, failed to and their bodies were found in West Kabul according
to local leaders. Suffering from a tumour their bedridden father had
died, and their mother, with heart disease soon followed their father in
death, explained local cleric Mohammad Ali Bamiani. Neighbours
occasionally brought them bread and water; it was their landlord who
found the bodies.
The
new Taliban administration in Afghanistan, nurtured by Pakistan,
accepted by its near neighbours has been blacklisted from accessing
overseas-located assets. Charitable funding meant to aid in
reconstruction and development would be better used, suggested the World
Food Program head, by transforming its purpose to feeding the hungry in
Afghanistan. Who now resort to the desperate measures of selling
anything they own to obtain food.
To
even hope to begin minimally feeding the 23 million food-vulnerable
population as winter approaches, the UN food agency requires $220
million each month. Aid groups urge wealthy nations to swallow their
distaste in dealing with a violently aggressive Islamist group by
diplomatic engagement in hopes of preventing a social/economic collapse
that could launch yet another catastrophic crisis of mass migration.
Most Afghans are now trying to feed themselves and their children after the economy collapsed
"Nobody will be left alone. We need to help those who are struggling the most." "The government won't look the other way." Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte
"If help from the government arrives in two weeks -- and another two weeks is needed to distribute it -- then we run a big risk." "The distress will turn into violence." Leoluca Orlando, Mayor of Palermo
The government has already approved a €25bn financial package to safeguard the economy.
Photograph: Antonio Parrinello/Reuters
Civil unrest appears to be alerting Italian politicians that citizens in the poorer regions of the country, reacting to lockdowns to be extended until Easter, at least, will result in rebellion by a population that has been stretched to the limits of their endurance while the novel coronavirus sickens tens of thousands and kills thousands in its wake. The overall death toll in Italy is now 11,500, giving the country the dubious distinction of having an 11 percent death rate, where many other countries experience such deathly blows at under one percent.
Another 812 victims died in a single day. Italy now accounts for over a third of the global total who have died of the novel coronavirus that China refuses to own. The daily increase of those struck just the day before stood at 4,050, bringing the country's total infections to 101,000. As the disease rampages through the country, those areas of the nation most affected have seen people resorting to lawlessness as though they have nothing to lose any longer.
People lined up at the supermarket along the street for grocery
shopping, wearing masks for fear of Coronavirus infection (COVID-19).
Reports emerged of people refusing to pay for their shopping in Sicily, claiming they have no funds after not working for three weeks. In Palermo and Catania standoffs between supermarket staff and shoppers occurred where armed police were sent along to the three largest supermarkets in Palermo in response to calls on social media encouraging a campaign of looting and attacks on responding police.
Two doctors, protected
by overalls, masks, gloves and glasses, walk through the streets of the
Spanish Quarters and collect the swabs made to some inhabitants of the
neighborhood, to check for any contagions from Coronavirus (COVID-19).
For the collection of the swabs they also use a mobile sanitary unit. KONTROLAB
That Italy and its population are under immense strain is indisputable since the government took steps to close all but essential shops, businesses and industry, desperate to dampen the infection rate in the population, amidst fears the virus could spread from the suffering north to the more underdeveloped south of the country. Dysfunctional in the sense that the various mafia-type clans have as much control there as the central government.
Struggling families were assured by the prime minister that a $625-million food voucher scheme has been launched to give them help and hope. While it is badly needed, any delay, according to regional politician, in rolling out the new scheme will ensure a backlash of lowered expectations and hope dissipating.
The mayor of Palermo warned of "exploding" social unrest across the south that might spread to the north, naming bed and breakfast owners, travel agents and gym instructors as "the new poor". Fears that the economic downturn spurred by the raging epidemic is ripe for exploitation by mafia groups such as the Camorra in Naples, the Cosa Nostra in Sicily and the 'Ndrangheta in Calabria come as no surprise.
Police carry out checks as part of the coronavirus lockdown
FABIO FRUSTACI (EFE)
"Sayyid [Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah leader] means a lot to me. There are thousands who admire him, but I'm like Number 100 on the list." "Please help us [video of apology for denouncing Nasrallah]. Really, we're starving ... We don't have jobs." Lebanese Shiite
"Hezbollah has never prioritized bread-and-butter issues, but suddenly they're faced with a community that's basically saying, bread and butter are a priority." "It's now part of a government that's corrupt, and they can't blame others for the corruption; they're part of the corruption equation." Randa Slim, Lebanon analyst, Middle East Institute
Anti-government demonstrators rally behind barbed wire in downtown Beirut on Jan. 25. Anwar Amro/AFP/Getty Images
"The [military security] officer was forcefully raising my arms above my head, and another came on a motorcycle and hit me in the
back. I felt a pop in my back.” “They would take us outside of the [prison] building; we felt air as if we’re in
an open space [blindfolded]." "Suddenly, someone comes over and tells us to
kneel, pushing us to the floor … reloads a Kalashnikov over our heads,
waits a bit, then takes us back inside.” Basal, Lebanese protester, among hundreds taken into custody
Since October 17 when the protests in Lebanon first began, hundreds of protesters have been injured in the melees between themselves and the military, and hundreds more have been imprisoned. Unlike protests taking place in Iraq, however, where hundreds of people are known to have been killed and thousands injured, there have been no such reports in Lebanon. They decry their corrupt government and their dire living conditions. They want a change in government hoping that things will change for them; employment, opportunities, affordability of the basic necessities of life.
Where four people have died in Lebanon during the protests and the clashes, over 600 were killed in Iraq and in Iran at least 1500 protesters lost their lives. Iranians are desperate for a change in government, to be able to live their lives more freely, with prosperity and hope for the future, denied them by a government that invests in terrorism in support of a murderous regime in Syria where a half-million have died in almost a decade of civil war. Iran's Shiite axis of Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen is in poor health.
Basically, Iraq and Lebanon want a lot less of the Islamic Republic of Iran ordering their lives and their governments. An echo from Iranians themselves. And for all of them, the protests are of little avail.
Lebanese Shiites, loyal to Hezbollah and its leader, have turned critical of both. Hezbollah loyalists caught on television denouncing its leader in the early days of the uprising in Lebanon are now contrite; they have been warned to cease and desist. And because of that they have reappeared on television to counter their initial criticism of the leader of the terrorist militia which has achieved power in government, of a corrupt and failing country.
In Lebanon, of the 18 recognized religious sects, the Shiites represent the largest, dependent on Hezbollah for protection, employment, social services and a group loyalty in a shared struggle against enemies, principally Israel. Now entering its fifth month, Lebanon's disruptive protests that have roiled government have brought in people from all backgrounds united in their detestation for leaders incapable of guaranteeing their basic needs; a functional economy, good governance, reliable electricity.
For Shiites who joined in the protests and bitterly blamed Hezbollah for failing them, it represented a total rethink; how to be loyal to Hezbollah and critical of the government at the same time when Hezbollah now is the government? "I support resistance against Israel", declared 51-year-old Ali Ismail in Kafr Rumman, south Lebanon long dominated by Hezbollah and Amal the other Shiite power. "But I also support resistance against corruption", he added. He lacks party connections, and so is shut out of favouritism by either Shiite party.
In the early stage of the protests, Nasrallah told his supporters to go home. His words carry weight, his supporters believe Nasrallah is heroically responsible for having run Israel out of the country, after its 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon. He is considered personally incorruptible; Hezbollah and its allies dominated the government which resigned in October, as it does the new cabinet formed to take the place of the old one, in January.
Both Hezbollah and Amal followers have beaten protesters with sticks and fists. Threatening calls, anonymous What'sApp warnings of a "negative impact on your life", or visits telling those known to take part in protests, to stop protesting, by party representatives have troubled protesters. The protests, insinuates Hezbollah, are in reality a foreign-led conspiracy against Shiites, amply belied by the fact that the protesters are friends, neighbours and relatives.
"People used to watch Nasrallah's speeches without asking questions. But now, even though they still support him, they've started asking questions", Ihab Hassane, 29, a Shiite protester from Tyre explained. He is among those who have lost hope in Lebanon, planning to leave and go abroad. If the protests have accomplished anything, he believes, it has been to question the value of Hezbollah and Nasrallah to the Shiite community that supports it.
Protesters in central Beirut were quick to reject the new government EPA
"The cultivation of poppy was so that your kids could go to school, so you could buy clothes, so you could get something extra." "Because of that, the poppy became a magic plant: It permitted you to breathe economically. The fact that it was an illegal crop didn't matter." Abel Barrera, director, Tlachinaollan, La Montana human rights group "I don't know what happened and suddenly the price fell." "We could no longer buy a lot of things: corn, all the necessities." Ricardo, 19, San Miguel Amoltepec Vicjo, Montana region, Guerrero state, Mexico
"We're taking care of this situation." "Many are being taken care of and they will all be taken care of." President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, Mexico
A Guerrero community police member stands guard at an illegal poppy
field in Heliodoro Castillo, Guerrero state, Mexico, on March 25, 2018. PEDRO PARDO/AFP/Getty Images
"We ask that they give us everything we need—the equipment, the seeds,
the temporary employment—to support us to produce the crop [fruit trees]." "Otherwise, we don’t even have enough here to eat." Community Commissioner, Ruperto Pacheco, La Sierra
Farmers in a poor region of southwest Mexico were able to earn money growing poppies, bleeding the milk latex from the pods that developed after the beautiful blossoms bloomed and profiting from the raw material for opium consumed mostly in the United States. The farmers were focused on poppy as a paying crop, not on poppy as a drug that was illegal, shattered lives and profited drug cartels, keeping police agencies busy trying to stop a trade that was unstoppable, as seemed the gang murders and targeting of police, lawyers, journalists who opposed the trade.
It was a living, however illicit, as the raw material for opium. And then suddenly it was no longer a means by which a family could depend on making a living. At the peak of the 2017 market, farmers were able to sell their opium resin for up to $1,300 per kilogram. Then there was the mysterious slide in its saleability when the same product in the same amount brought in a mere $110 per kilogram and suddenly that living evaporated. A 90 percent drop in earnings meant farms collapsing and families separating with young men seeking employment elsewhere, across the border into the U.S.
The bread and butter economy for about 50,000 people regionally coincided with the steady importation from China of the laboratory-produced opioid synthetic fentanyl, and opium use declined accordingly, for there was no need for opium gum when cheap and plentiful fentanyl was available. An already impoverished society became even more needy. And since the war on drugs continued as the U.S. pressured Mexico, Army helicopters continued to destroy a thousand hectares of poppy crops.
In La Sierra, community leaders representing nine areas petitioned the national Senate for funding in the planting of a thousand hectares of fruit trees regionally, to help kickstart the process of raising legal, sustainable produce so farmers could continue to till the land, grow crops, provide for their families. Nothing is ever simple, and abandoning poppy growing for other passably lucrative crops would take time, patience and funding the farmers didn't have. The soil had to be repaired, farm plots redesigned for trees to grow alongside beans and corn for family use. And then the wait for the trees to mature.
Farmers near the village of San Miguel Amoltepec Viejo clearing a field of dead poppy flowers so it can be planted with corn.Credit Brett Gundlock for The New York Times
Income from poppy resin allowed farm families to remain together, putting an end to migration so parents had the comfort of having their children grow up on the farm, making for a strong community. With the evaporating of income from opium poppy nothing was left to secure the family unit, leading to another, large-scale migration from the region, some of the migrants heading to more prosperous regions than the Montana area to find work in agricultural fields and factories in Mexico.
Others kept on moving, heading to the United States, to agricultural communities in California where previous migrants from Guerrero had put down roots in Mexican enclaves. Despite their president's acknowledgement of the crisis for Guerrero poppy farmers, none of the promised financial aid and crop substitution programs heralded by President Obrador has yet materialized.
Growing poppies was for many years a source of good and stable income in the La Montaña region. Credit Brett Gundlock for The New York Times
"[Dorothea Palmer, social worker, Parents' Information Bureau, 1930s] told the cops to go ahead and arrest her, because the minute she got out of jail she'd go back to doing what she'd been doing." "[Palmer, in a 1978 interview, speculated she had been 'set up' to do] the men's dirty work. She felt perhaps that Kaufman had put her in that situation knowing what would happen." "I don't think she had a eugenic bone in her body. She believed [contraception] was a woman's right." Elizabeth Koester, historian, Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science, University of Toronto
Dorothea Palmer, an Ottawa-area social worker, was arrested in 1936 and
charged with advertising birth control, which was then a criminal
obscenity. She did not testify at her own trial. Historian Elizabeth
Koester speculates that this was because Palmer's marital status was in
question. She ran a bookstore with a man she called her husband, Gordon
Ferguson, but it’s not clear if they were actually married. Palmer went
by her maiden name. Someone who was “living in sin” would have been seen
as an unreliable witness in a trial that was concerned with public
morals, Koester said.
Dorothea Palmer, a social worker working with the Parents' Information Bureau, an institution created by A.R. Kaufman of the Kaufman Rubber Company which made Sorel boots, was recruited to visit the homes of poor francophone women living near Depression-era Ottawa. He employed seasonal workers to be laid off after the winter rush for boots was over. He took note that the workers, young women, complained of being destitute. At the time there were crusades for birth-control, and he decided the problem for the women was they had too many children.
He hired dozens of women, most of whom were nurses, to make home visits and give contraceptive advice to his workers, and he arranged sterilization operations for them. He eventually extended the operation of the Parents' Information Bureau to the wider community, and then to other communities throughout the nation. Dorothea Palmer was one among many women whom he had hired.
And she ended up being accused of advertising contraceptives, considered at the time an obscenity under the Criminal Code of Canada, The women she visited did have too many babies and they were concerned over having more. And they were unable to care for them all, much less feed and clothe them. Some of the women attempted induced abortions at home. And they were all receptive to the visits from Ms. Palmer, who informed them of other options available to them, other than continued pregnancies.
The women of the impoverished town of Eastview (now part of greater Ottawa) were called to testify in the trial called the Eastview Birth Control Trial that took place in 1936-37. They testified in fact, for Ms. Palmer. In the end, a magistrate dismissed the charge against her in March of 1937. She had a brilliant lawyer, hired by A.R. Kaufman; Franklin Wellington Wegenast who mounted a successful defence arguing that Palmer had acted in the public good.
Through the six months of court proceedings with testimony from social service organizations and religious groups, deep questions about morality, social justice, the rights of women, church and state and war and peace were all aired. Wegenast "threw everything plus the kitchen sink at the issues", said Koester the historian who studied the case. He dispatched two men at one point in the trial to pharmacies to search out contraceptives and they returned, dumping armfuls of condoms and spermicidal jellies on the courtroom table.
Ably demonstrating that birth control was viewed as a public positive, its enabling tools widely available if one was informed. So to victimize one individual as the law was intent on doing with Dorothea Palmer made no moral sense whatever. Dozens of women were called as witnesses for their connection with Palmer, to testify that she had advertised contraceptives to them. When Wegenast cross-examined the women they testified what a good thing it turned out for them that they could prevent unwanted pregnancies to space their childrens' births.
As for Kaufman, though his actions appeared to stem from altruistic care for the plight of the poor and the unwanted children foisted upon long-suffering women, the man in fact felt that poor "feeble-minded" women were simply the wrong types of people to have children. He harboured "virulent" prejudice against Catholics in particular, according to Dr. Koester. And he was a founding member of the Eugenics Society of Canada.
The group that advocated for immigration restrictions, for the segregation of people considered mentally deficient and encouraged policies to encourage "fit parenthood", based on the notion of applying the science of selective breeding to humans. He did not, however advocate openly for sterilization lacking consent. And he has been honoured with a school and a YMCA in Kitchener, Ontario named after him.
As for Dorothea Palmer, the trial placed her under great stress. Her character was impugned and she fought furiously for what she believed in. As she attempted to enter the courtroom one day, two men were alleged to have grabbed and groped her, threatening she would be raped. "She kneed them in the groin. She was just fabulous", said Koester, the academic historian.
"We can't effectively mitigate the growing problem of antibiotic resistance without dealing with places like Kibera [Kenya]." "There are a billion people living in similar situations, and as long as they aren't getting clean water and basic sanitation, all of us are at risk." Dr. Guy Palmer, researcher, Washington State University
"We are quickly running out of treatment options." "If we don't get a handle on the problem, I fear for the future." "[Nearly 70 percent of salmonella infections in Kenya had stopped
responding to the most widely available antibiotics, up from 45 percent
in the early 2000s.] Salmonella kills roughly 45,000 Kenyan children
every year, or nearly one in three who fall severely ill with it. [In the United States, the mortality rate is close to zero]." Dr. Sam Kariuki, researcher, Kenya Medical Research Institute
"Who am I to deny them what they want?" "Even when I manage to sell the whole box [full course of antibiotics], my customers rarely take them all because they think it's just too many pills." Lena Ochomba, 40, pharmacy stall owner, Kibera
Kibera slum alley (photo via Flickr/Ninara)
We hear and read about the rise of antibiotic-resistant pathogens and microbes, the result of too-frequent and inappropriate use of antibiotics leading to the pathogens' resistance as a result of genetic alterations. Hospitals in the West are on their guard and take whatever steps they can to try to ensure that the resistant strains of deadly pathogens are kept in check, taking extraordinary measures to cleanse areas known to shelter the bugs.
Health professionals are being told to stop prescribing antibiotics needlessly. Public relations efforts to persuade people not to make common use of such household products as antibacterial soap have seen those products disappearing from supermarket shelves. People are being educated that viruses are not a cause for antibiotics to cure. Antibiotics are used for bacterial infections; careless use results in rapid replication and new antibiotic resistant bacterial strains.
In poor countries of the world, particularly in Africa, antibiotics, the one-time miracle cure, are now widely available, at low cost. India and China are churning out inferior-grade antibiotics sold cheaply, and many in poor slum areas believe in their miraculous curative powers. They commonly visit their village pharmacist who, in many instances has no pharmaceutical academic background, but who acts as a health professional, confidently making diagnoses and prescribing antibiotics.
Resistant pathogen claim 700,000 lives worldwide yearly, according to a British study. In Kenya resistance has resulted from lack of effective treatment and each year young children whose immune systems have not yet developed fully fall victim. Close to 70 percent of salmonella infections in Kenya no longer respond to the most widely available antibiotics; that number in 2000 was 45 percent.
One in three Kenyan children who become severely ill with salmonella will die of it. Antibiotic vendors tend to sell counterfeit antibiotics sometimes containing none of the active ingredient, or so diminished in content they end up accelerating resistance. And even when drugs are authentic poor Kenyans count on saving money by buying a few tablets rather than a full course; insufficient to fight an infection, yet enough to permit bacteria to mutate and gain resistance.
In a small slum village outside Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, human waste in Kibera courses through shallow latrines and roadways running between homes, sitting in pools. Plastic bags filled with feces are thrown from rooftops at night onto the street; these are termed 'flying toilets' by residents too frightened to venture out at night to dispose of them otherwise.
Children play in the streets, in the fecal muck: "They are kids, they will always go outside to play" said one young mother. "How can you stop them?" Public health officials and epidemiologists who study Kibera speak of the direct link between the community's absent hygiene and infections that break out in every house where harmful feces bacteria seep into the soil, surviving for months in the densely populated settlement's dirt paths.
The bacteria get into food and water; residents carry the pathogens into their homes on shoes or their unwashed hands. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in a 2012 study identified cases of typhoid fever among Kibera children; 15 times more prevalent than for those living in a rural area west of the capital. And of the typhoid strains found in Kibera, 75 percent were resistant to commonly available antibiotics.
"A lack of sanitation leads to more disease, which leads to higher antibiotic use, which leads to greater resistance. It's a vicious cycle", commented Marc Alain Widdowson, principal deputy director of the CDC's Division of Global Health Protection for Kenya. "It's in the soil. It's on the kale people eat, and also on the hands of adults and children. It's no wonder people here are constantly sick", stated Sylvia Adhiambo Omulo, researcher at Washington State University's global health program in her years studying antimicrobial resistance in Kibera, stunned by the ubiquity of resistant pathogens such as E.coli.
"Let's look lucidly at this subject of migration. The very poor do not
leave their country, they are the middle classes of emerging economies
that are passing through Libya today [Mediterranean routes from
Africa to Europe]. An overwhelming majority of those who go to sea after
months, years of wandering, suffering, where do they come from?
Nigeria, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Guinea." "Are these countries doing less
well than they were ten years ago? No. And so we have a youth who
believe there is no hope in their countries." "These people, given the magnitude of this wave, cannot be accepted, at
least, not all of them. We need more Africans to succeed
in Africa." French President Emmanuel Macron
President Macron speaks of the African birthrates: African countries "have seven or eight children per woman", he observes. And Europe? Well, the reality is the more educated and well-off people are, the fewer children women will bear. Africans are dissatisfied with the view of their future. Yet nothing keeps them from producing more children than they can cope with. There are regional conflicts, there is low employment, there is inequity between regions and within countries, and there is the pathology of cultural, ethnic, sectarian suspicion where tribal dissatisfaction becomes lethal.
Perhaps worse, there is the spectre of violent Islam jihad haunting African nations. And where there is conflict and fear there is also famine.
Sudanese migrants wait on the side of a road in Ouistreham, near Caen,
northwestern France | Charly Triballeau/AFP via Getty Images
African countries are overwhelmingly headed by dictators and tyrants whose regimes cannot be dislodged. Malfunction and dysfunction describes all too many African regimes, riven with corruption. Little wonder, then, with instant communication around the world, African youth see how other countries work, the quality of life, the opportunities of a future opening up to those living there, and they want that for themselves as well.
Why not remain where they are and work toward a revolutionary change in governance and opportunities to advance both their futures and that of their countries?
"I always say, present me the woman who decided, being perfectly educated, to have seven, eight or nine children", Macron has noted. The birth rate he quotes is decidedly not that of any country in Europe or North America. Modern Western reality is that with wealth and education birthrates decline and continue to go progressively lower.
Recommending that in less advanced, struggling-with-poverty countries there be fewer children is considered a racist intolerant intervention. Falling Western birthrates and steadily increasing African ones.
An inundation of haven seekers and economic migrants and refugees from Southeast Asia and the Middle East and North Africa has brought a huge multitude into Europe. A multitude with a variant culture and values, and a religion that gears its faithful to be unassimilable. Not only that but increasingly aggressive about substituting their own laws for those of the country they invade.
Creeping Sharia, Muslim contempt for Western culture, heritage and values, and a rise in violence wherever large groups of Muslim live and feel resentful make for uneasy populations.
The United Nations foretold in 2004 that the population of Africa would level off around two billion by 2100. That has been somewhat revised; the same source now projects that the population of Africa will reach 4.5 billion, a change resulting from slow economic growth which even so sees African women bearing an excess of offspring.
By the end of this century, it is posited, two in five human beings on this globe could be African. And by no means will they be all living in Africa.
Europe and Africa in the late 1990s both held roughly equal population numbers; a hundred years later, that might change to seven Africans for every European. European leaders have become only too painfully aware of the crises that arose and will continue to demand notice as Africans keep demanding they be absorbed in Europe, anywhere but where they see little hope for their economic futures.
Recent migrations have demonstrated how simply that will be accomplished, the marches, the violent infiltrations, the demands that fences come down; the implacable, demanding presence.
Migrants rescued off the coast of Libya wait
to disembark from the supply vessel OOC Panther in the Sicilian port of
Messina, Italy, in April 2017. (Sipa via AP)
Give Me Your Auspices to Advance Into a Future of Security and Opportunity...
"The Caravans are a disgrace to the Democrat party. Change the immigration laws NOW!" "Every time you see a Caravan, or people illegally coming, or attempting to come, into our Country illegally, think of and blame the Democrats for not giving us the votes to change our pathetic Immigration Laws!" "We will now begin cutting off, or substantially reducing, the massive foreign aid routinely given to them [Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador]." U.S. President Donald Trump "[The United States, Canada and Mexico should work out a joint plan to fund development in Central America and southern Mexico]." "In this way we confront the phenomenon of migration, because he who leaves his town does not leave for pleasure but out of necessity." Mexican president-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador
"We have had people who have ankle or shoulder injuries, from falls during the trip, and even though we have offered to take them somewhere where they can get better care, they have refused, because they fear they'll be detained and deported." "They want to continue on their way. They are going to continue walking, and their feet won't heal as long as they keep walking." Ulises Garcia, Red Cross official
"You have to help the next person. Today it's for them, tomorrow for us." "From them we learn to value what they do not have." Jesus Valdivia, Tuxtla Chico, Mexico
"There isn't a single terrorist here. We are all people from Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua." "And as far as I know there are no terrorists in these four countries, at least beyond the corrupt government." Denis Omar Contreras, Honduran-born caravan leader, Peubo Sin Fronteras
Honduran migrants take part in a caravan heading to the US, in the
outskirts of Tapachula, Mexico. Photograph: Johan Ordonez/AFP/Getty
Images
Those with authority within the caravan movement are themselves uncertain about the exact route they will direct the thousands of participants toward, much less where they want to arrive on the U.S. Border. Central American migrants on their own have in recent years taken a direct route to Reynosa, across the border from McAllen, Texas. A much smaller caravan in the spring organized by the Contreras' organization arrived in Tijuana, about 4,000 kilometres from Tapachula, where the current four-thousand-strong caravan is resting before resuming their journey.
There they are, in their numbers, remaining together for moral strength and some assurance of safety in numbers, but with nowhere to stay other than in public, on the streets, in squares, wherever they can shoehorn their bodies into sleeping positions overnight, coping with wet ground from recent heavy downpours. They huddle together wherever they can, in the southern Mexican city of Tapachula, tired and only mildly dispirited, determined to forge forward to their final destination; the U.S. somewhere.
The caravans include families, single parents with young children, and unaccompanied minors. (Adrees Latif/Reuters)
"We are going to sleep here in the street, because we have nothing else", 42-year-old Jose Mejia explained, having taken his wife and four children from San Pedro Sula, Honduras, to Mexico on a long, exhausting trip. "We have to sleep on the sidewalk, and tomorrow wake up and keep walking. We'll get a piece of plastic to cover ourselves if it rains again." And it will, repeatedly, on the route the caravan is taking.
When the caravan of migrants set out a week earlier there were fewer than 200 participants; since then more people have joined the caravan along their journey. It finally swelled to an estimated 5,000 on Sunday, with migrants crossing from Guatemala into southern Mexico even as police blocked official crossing points. Another group of roughly a thousand migrants entered Mexico from Honduras. Migrants speak of widespread violence, poverty and corruption in Honduras; they flee to find a better, safer world.
Sympathetic Mexicans along the way offer the weary migrants food, water, clothing, with locals driving pickups, vans and cargo trucks stopping to give migrants a lift. Offers to take the migrants by bus to shelters set up by Mexican immigration officials, seven kilometres outside of Tapachula by civil defence officials have been refused. The migrants convinced that boarding buses would make them vulnerable to deportation.
The world, from Africa to the Middle East, Central America and Latin America is on the move as people seek alternatives to their desperate situations at home, where corrupt, inefficient, and uncaring governments oppress them, and criminals associated with drug cartels and weapons-running create atmospheres of lurking danger particularly in efforts to recruit the young into the drug trade and all the violence attendant on it. Their plight is obvious; their governments unstable and disinterested.
They look toward opportunities they know exist in the United States where once those such as they were welcome. There are legitimate channels for emigration from their countries of birth, but the question of qualifying for visas and eventual transition as immigrants is time-consuming and uncertain. Countries seen as places of haven from the threats and disorder they leave already face the reality of unregistered and illegal residents in the millions.
The wholesale movement of people willing to undertake arduous and dangerous journeys to find a new reality for themselves of promise for the future belies the facts and the needs of countries they aim for to remain in control of their borders, to be able to select whom and the numbers of those they are willing to accept. The assumption that once reaching the border they can declare themselves refugees is utterly flawed with no base in reality.
Theirs, however, is a reality of desperation. The answer to which creates a moral quandary all of its own. Accepting those thousands will do nothing if not incite many others to do the same. And the numbers will grow and the overland marches become unstoppable. The way the world now turns is wholly dysfunctional. No one is advantaged by this turmoil.
The larger caravan currently making its way north numbers in the thousands. (Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters)
"We have to create better opportunities for people so they can stay home." "We also have to work on countering smugglers who have convinced people that their best opportunities to be successful lie in the [United] States." Victor Manuel Asturias Cordon, head, National Competitiveness Program, Guatemala
"No one will turn them in [report smugglers to the government, even for rewards], because within the community they are not seen as bad people." "But everyone knows who they are." Dora Alonzo, Quetzaltenango anti-migration group
Over the period of time, Immigrants have discovered many illegal routes of Immigrating to USAThe government of Guatemala is keenly aware it has a problem of smugglers persuading Guatemalans to leave their country to find work elsewhere; and that elsewhere is invariably the United States. It has set aside $1.3-million for a messaging campaign to attempt to persuade people not to listen to the smugglers, to remain in Guatemala with their children and to strive to achieve some measure of income security through business endeavours at home.
As for the United States, while it is doing its best to discourage migrants from illegally entering the United States for underground work, it is also planning to invest over $200-million on projects over the next few years in the western highlands of the country to ideally create jobs and reduce endemic poverty. Few people interviewed in Quetzaltenango, the largest city in the Guatemalan highlands claim to have seen or heard the warnings.
Even had they seen them, many of those interviewed stated baldly those efforts would be wasted in persuading them to remain in Guatemala, convinced that opportunity, good employment and prosperity awaits them on entry to the United States. Residents of the city do see advertisements by the smugglers, on the other hand, and at least one community radio station in the city helps promote the smugglers' offer to transport and aid in financing northbound travel.
In the past year alone, 42,737 Guatemalans chose to travel as family units only to be apprehended or stopped at the border between the U.S. and Mexico, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. That number represents close to fifty percent of all migrants seeking entry to the United States with their relatives for that period. In Concepcion Chiquirichapa, a town where about ten thousand people live, everyone has family or contacts in the United States.
And the residents explain that the extreme poverty they live with is their sole motivation where about 75 percent of the population lives an impoverished life and where 67 percent of children under five suffer chronic malnutrition, the U.S. Agency for International Development figures attest. In the country, over a million people in rural areas have no access to electricity and many earn scant profit from coffee, corn, beans and other produce they grow.
And nor are their lives immune from the deleterious effects of drug trafficking, widespread corruption through local government and gang extortion, all of which aggravations, dangers and fears associated with them, conspire to influence their decisions to leave. Once that decision is made, people face a 1,900-kilometer journey to reach the U.S. For some, failures leading to return, only makes them determined to make the same attempt time and again until they succeed.
Despite the experience of facing countless dangers such as unscrupulous smugglers, fraught desert crossings and the possibility of being kidnapped by members of the deadly Mexican drug cartels. What propels them are the feelings of hopelessness in remaining in Guatemala where opportunities for a decent living wage are scarce and safety and security never a guarantee.
The billboards, radio and television warnings by the U.S. and Guatemalan governments alerting people against the dangerous journey to reach the United States go unheeded, if they are seen at all. Thousands determined to seek work and the prospect of a better life continue to flee the western highlands of Guatemala, their remote, rural, impoverished homes.
And to complicate things even further, there are smuggling routes into Guatemala where guns and drugs are being run. In the opposite direction, into Guatemala. Not into the rural areas where people are fleeing from, but into the centre of the country, its largest cities where criminal gangs tend to operate. A scourge that has contaminated the quality of life in most Central American countries.
"[The rockets represent a] severe, dangerous, and orchestrated act of terror, aimed at
Israeli civilians and children."
"[Islamic
Jihad] follows the ideology of Iran, is funded by Iran, and in today's
attack, used munition made by Iran."
"[The IDF continues to hold Hamas accountable for everything that happens in the Gaza Strip.] Hamas has
the ability to escalate or de-escalate the situation." IDF statement
"[The] indiscriminate
firing [by Gaza militants [terrorists] toward communities in southern Israel is unconscionable.]
"Such
attacks are unacceptable and undermine the serious efforts by the
international community to improve the situation in Gaza. All parties
must exercise restraint, avoid escalation and prevent incidents that
jeopardize the lives of Palestinians and Israelis."
UN chief Middle East envoy Nickolay
Mladenov
"[The Al-Qassam Brigades and the Al-Quds
Brigades blamed Israel for starting the
latest round of aggression, claiming they had cooperated in launching the
attacks because Israel's] crimes could not be tolerated in any way."
"[If Israel continued to attack Gaza then] all resistance options remain open no matter what the cost."
Joint statement
Israeli
tanks take up positions along the border with the Gaza strip, on
Israel-Gaza Border, Tuesday, May 29, 2018. The Israeli military said
three soldiers were wounded by fire from the Gaza Strip on Tuesday.
Tensions have soared over the past two months as the Palestinians have
held mass protests... (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
Border communities as always, are in the direct line of rocket fire from
Gaza. Sderot, always the first to be targeted and hit was both this
time around, with one rocket that the defence system hadn't intercepted,
landing in a kindergarten playground just shortly before the arrival of
the children for their day's activity. Residents of Sderot have all of
15 seconds from the time they hear the attack alert, to find themselves
in a shelter and remain there for the duration, until the attacks
conclude.
The world's attention has been turned in the last month, to the border
between Israel and Gaza, where tens of thousands of Palestinians were
encouraged to congregate en masse to demand entry through the border
with the view of returning to their 'ancestral' villages and towns.
These would most certainly not be the original inhabitants of those
towns and villages but their succeeding generations, all of whom to a
total of approximately six million from the original approximately
700,000 who fled, are recognized by UNHCR as 'refugees'.
Understandably, their living situation in Gaza is sub-par by any
measure. But this is not the responsibility of Israel, since Israel long
since withdrew all its settlers and military from Gaza unilaterally,
leaving the Strip to Palestinians to govern for themselves. Hamas's
violent takeover of Gaza from Fatah and the Palestinian Authority led to
the border being closed to free entry and exit in reflection of the
Hamas charter outlining its intention to destroy Israel and slaughter
Jews.
What nation would allow itself to be readily infiltrated by those dedicated to its destruction?
Hamas has been so single-mindedly absorbed and dedicated to its promise
to eradicate Israel from the Middle East that it devised a plan to
manipulate the West's reactions to the plight of Palestinians living a
constricted life of isolation and privation all of which has been the
result of the terrorist group's deliberate actions in provoking Israel
by rocket bombardment of its citizens, and habitually using
international funding for the purpose of building underground tunnels
into Israel for terrorist purposes.
A complete underground city exists beneath Gaza City, where Hamas
operatives and leaders are able to shield themselves from the effects of
the IDF's return volleys when Hamas targets Israel from populated
areas. The greater the number of Palestinian casualties and deaths, the
better the public relations accusations against a heartless Israel
resonates with the West, swift to condemn the country that is attacked
and seeks to protect its people, preferring to sympathize with the
Palestinians who allow themselves to be manipulated into threatening
Israel's survival.
Smoke rises following an Israeli air strike in the Gaza
Strip, as seen from the Israeli side of the border between Israel and
Gaza, May 29, 2018.
(photo credit: AMIR COHEN/REUTERS)
Palestinians have been so indoctrinated into a pathology of hatred for
Israel and Jews it would take a miracle for them to profess they would
far prefer to reach a peace agreement and live alongside Israel in their
own sovereign state with no interest in attacking a neighbour state,
one that provides them, in fact, with potable water and energy, opening
the border crossings to transport trucks that daily bring in medicines,
food and fundamental necessities.
When there are shortages of electricity in Gaza, it is because the
Palestinian Authority whose relations with Hamas is toxic, seeks to
punish Gazans.
The critical shortage of infrastructure and housing in Gaza, is entirely
attributable to Hamas's use of building materials and cement in the
construction of its costly, invasive and threatening tunnels. The dire
necessity to build and operationally maintain sewage treatment plants is
ignored, leaving Gaza to dump 100 million liters of raw sewage directly
into the Mediterranean on a daily basis. The prevailing current ushers
most of the sewage in a northward flow to the beach town of Ashkelon.
Israel's second-largest desalination plant in Ashkelon produces fifteen
percent of the country's drinking water from that source which must
struggle to clean out the Gaza sewage from its filters in the
desalination plant. Gaza itself, drawing water from its underground
aquifer is heading for water shortages: "So
the aquifer has gotten drained and seawater has seeped into it, and
many people are now drinking water that is both salty and polluted with
sewage", pointed out Gidon Bromberg, Israeli director of EcoPeace Middle East.
The potential for typhoid and cholera erupting and spreading as a result
of the fetid water is yet another crisis situation waiting to happen. "Then
you could see two million [Gazans] coming to the border fence with
Israel with empty buckets, begging for clean water. We're heading in
that direction", promised Bromberg.
The irony here is that should those Gazans plead with the Palestinian
Authority to rescue them from their lack of potable water bind, the
response could be less than forthcoming, reflecting the disabling hatred
between it and Hamas.
Children and old people are most at risk of dangerous pathogens on Gaza beaches and water. (Picture: EPA/MOHAMMED SABER)
This represents a general opinion site for its author. It also offers a space for the author to record her experiences and perceptions,both personal and public. This is rendered obvious by the content contained in the blog, but the space is here inviting me to write. And so I do.
