Protesters in Haiti Demand That President Quit
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Volcy Assad, a Haitian political activist, stood before an enormous plume of black smoke emanating from a pile of burning tires and made it clear that the demands of protesters had changed. "Today we are demanding the departure Of Michel Martelly," Mr. Assad said on Saturday, referring to the Haitian president. Around him, groups of young men, faces covered with T-shirts and bandannas to shield from tear gas, had blocked the streets with rocks. One day earlier, officials had bowed to widespread civil unrest and postponed a single-candidate presidential
runoff vote that was to be held on Sunday. Now, feeling emboldened in their objections to the first round of voting that many saw as deeply fraudulent, protesters are demanding the ouster of President Martelly. With just two weeks left in Office, he has become the central figure in a growing political scandal here that threatens the stability of a nation with a long history of social unrest and turmoil.
Mr. Martelly's supporters took to the streets on Sunday in counter protests and vowed to keep him in office, a situation of competing rallies that experts feared would lead to violence. In Port-au-Prince this weekend, protesters burned cars and barricaded streets as the police responded with water cannons and tear gas.
Thousands of people marched in the streets of Port au-Prince, the capital Of Haiti, against the
government of President Michel Martelly, with some clashing with the police.
In a situation several experts described as "fluid," it was increasingly unclear whether Mr. Martelly would remain in office until Feb. 7, when his mandate is scheduled to end. "They intend to push the insurrection to force the president to leave before Feb. 7," said Annibal Coffy, a lawyer who has served as a consultant to the Haitian Senate. "I think there is no way the country will survive a week of violent manifestations." The October presidential race, in which 54 candidates competed, was mired in fraud, according to opposition leaders and human rights groups. Because no candidate won a majority, a runoff was scheduled for Friday, but protesters who expected a rigged outcome blocked streets and burned voting centers, leading to the postponement.
The United States State Department, which has been criticized for supporting the disputed election, issued a statement on Sunday condemning the protests.
"The United States is taking great interest in how elections in Haiti are unfolding," Mark Toner, a deputy spokesman, said in a statement, "and expects that persons responsible for organizing, financing or participating in electoral intimidation and violence will be held accountable in accordance with Haitian law." On Election Day in October, the elections board distributed special passes to 900,000 observers from all political parties, who were allowed to vote outside their home precincts. Human rights groups said party loyalists used the accreditations to cast multiple ballots.
Mr. Martelly's handpicked successor, a banana exporter named Jovenel Moise, came in first with 33 percent of the vote. Mr. Moise is a virtual unknown, and many members of the opposition believed that the vote had been rigged on his behalf. The government denied the accusations. The United States and international observer groups said quick counts showed that the results of the race were accurate, despite the irregularities. Jude Célestin, a former government construction official who came in second, boycotted the runoff and refused to campaign. Civic, business and religious leaders argued that a one-candidate runoff should not take place, but Mr. Martelly failed to recognize the growing discontent among the populace. As recently as Thursday, he gave a combative radio address insisting that the vote would go forward, which further infuriated opposition groups. The vote was canceled hours later, but the protests continued. Mr. Martelly's spokesman did not respond to requests for comment on Sunday. Mr. Martelly, a former Carnival singer known as Sweet Micky, is blamed for the electoral crisis because he failed to hold elections during his five years in office. The terms of every elected official in the country eventually expired, leaving Mr. Martelly to rule by decree for an entire year. He was also criticized for efforts to change municipal boundaries in an area where he owns property and for creating a police brigade accused of repressive tactics. "The Martelly regime hasn't brought anything for the population," said Yves Jean Joseph, 34, an unemployed protester. "He had four years to hold elections, and instead he destroyed the Parliament. What we had were not elections. It was ballot stuffing.' Politicians spent the weekend in back-room negotiations to determine who would lead a transitional government after Mr. Martelly's term ends. People close to the negotiations said the president wanted to extend his term until a new election was held.
Works Cited:
Robles, Frances. "Protesters in Haiti Demand That
President Quit." The New York Times.
The New York Times, 24 Jan. 2016. Web. 25 Jan. 2016.
Response:
Volcy Assad and the
opposition are turning the tide in Haitian history as Mr. Martelly, the current
Haitian President, is being accused of doing nothing. Basically people want him
out for being lazy. At the same time, the Haitian people don't seem to know
what they want. The fact that they keep putting out demands and keep rioting,
shows that they're indecisive and even potentially weak. They think that the only way they can make
progress is through violent behavior and unnecessary acts of demonstration that
really lead to nothing because the government seem to only be counterattacking
with their force. In the end, it seems to be a lose-lose situation and no-one
ends up happy. From a different perspective, the US also seems to have special
interest in Haiti and they have said that they have not interfered in any way
with the uprising in Haiti, and oppose the violence. Haiti claims to be a
democracy, but it seems to be right now a dictatorship.
Monday, January 25, 2016
Tuesday, January 12, 2016
Madaya Rescue Mission
Aid Convoy Reaches Starving Town of Madaya
MADAYA, Syria An aid convoy entered a besieged Syrian town on Monday where thousands have been trapped without supplies for months and people are reported to have died of starvation.
Trucks carrying food and medical supplies reached Madaya near the Lebanese border and began to distribute aid as part of an agreement between warring sides, the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross said.
"Offloading of aid expected to last throughout night," ICRC spokesman Pawel Krzysiek tweeted.
Dozens are said to have died in the town from starvation or a lack of medical care and activists say some inhabitants have been reduced to eating leaves. Images said to be of emaciated residents have appeared widely on social media.
At the same time, another convoy began entering two Shi'ite villages, al Foua and Kefraya in the northwestern province of Idlib 300 km (200 miles) away. Rebel fighters in military fatigues and with scarves covering their faces inspected the aid vehicles in the rain before they entered.
Madaya is besieged by pro-Syrian government forces, while the two villages in Idlib province are encircled by rebels fighting the Syrian government.
A Damascus-based U.N. official who entered Madaya and oversaw the entry of the convoy of 44 trucks gave an eyewitness account of the plight of people in the rebel-held town of around 40,000 people.
"We have seen with our own eyes severely malnourished children ... so there is starvation, and I am sure the same is true on the other side in Foua and Kefraya," Yacoub El Hillo, U.N. Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Syria, told Reuters by phone from Madaya.
Women cried out with relief as the first four trucks, carrying the banner of the Syrian Red Crescent crossed into Madaya after sunset, with civilians waiting on the outskirts of the town as the temperature dropped and it began to get dark.
The full aid operation was expected to last several days, the ICRC said.
Images said to be from Madaya and showing skeletal men with protruding ribcages were published by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a group that monitors the war, while an emaciated baby in a nappy with bulging eyes was shown in other posts.
Dr Mohammed Yousef, who heads a local medical team, said 67 people had died either of starvation or lack of medical aid in the last two months, mostly women, children and the elderly.
"Look at the grotesque starve-or-surrender tactics the Syrian regime is using right now against its own people. Look at the haunting pictures of civilians, including children - even babies - in Madaya, Syria," Samantha Power, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, said on Monday.
"There are hundreds of thousands of people being deliberately besieged, deliberately starved, right now. And these images, they remind us of World War Two; they shock the conscience. This is what this institution was designed to prevent."
The United Nations said last Thursday the Syrian government had agreed to allow access to the town. The world body is planning to convene peace talks on Jan. 25 in Geneva in an effort to end nearly five years of civil war that have killed more than a quarter of a million people.
But Syrian opposition coordinator Riad Hijab accused Russia of killing dozens of children in a bombing raid on Monday and said such action meant the opposition could not negotiate with President Bashar al-Assad's government.
There was no immediate comment from Russia, which denies any targeting of civilians in the conflict.
WATER AND SALT
Madaya residents on the outskirts of the town said they wanted to leave. There was widespread hunger and prices of basic foods such as rice had soared, with some people living off water and salt, they said.
One opposition activist has said people were eating leaves and plants.
The blockade of Madaya has become a focal issue for Syrian opposition leaders, who told a U.N. envoy last week they would not take part in the proposed talks with the government until it and other sieges were lifted.
The siege began six months ago when the Syrian army and its Lebanese ally, Hezbollah, started a campaign to reestablish Assad's control over areas along the Syrian-Lebanese border.
Hezbollah responded to accusations it was starving people in Madaya by denying there had been any deaths in the town, and accusing rebel leaders of preventing people from leaving.
SIEGE WARFARE
Blockades have been a common feature of the civil war. Government forces have besieged rebel-held areas near Damascus for several years and more recently rebel groups have blockaded loyalist areas including al Foua and Kefraya.
Aid agencies welcomed Monday's deliveries but called for regular access to besieged areas.
"Only a complete end to the six-month old siege and guarantees for sustained aid deliveries alongside humanitarian services will alleviate the crisis in these areas," a joint statement from several international agencies said.
The areas included in the latest agreement were all part of a local ceasefire deal agreed in September, but implementation has been difficult, with some fighting around Madaya despite the truce.
Each side is looking to exert pressure on the other by restricting entry of humanitarian aid, or evacuations, in their areas of control, the Observatory says.
The last aid delivery to Madaya, which took place in October, was synchronized with a similar delivery to the two other villages.
Aid agencies have warned of widespread starvation in Madaya, where 40,000 people are at risk.
Hezbollah has said rebels in the town had taken control of aid, which they were selling to those who could buy. The people of Madaya were being exploited in a propaganda campaign, it said.
Syria's National Reconciliation Minister Ali Haidar said on Sunday that rebels had "disrupted" the entry of food supplies.
"They wanted to escalate it as a humanitarian issue ahead of the Geneva talks," he told Al Manar TV.
A U.N. commission of inquiry has said siege warfare has been used "in a ruthlessly coordinated and planned manner" in Syria, with the aim of "forcing a population, collectively, to surrender or suffer starvation."
One siege is by the Islamic State group, on government-held areas of the city of Deir al-Zor.
A U.N. Security Council on Dec. 18 set out a road map for peace talks calls on the parties to allow aid agencies unhindered access throughout Syria, particularly in besieged and hard-to-reach areas.
A newly formed opposition council set up to oversee negotiations has told U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura that this must happen before the talks he plans to hold on Jan. 25.
They also told him that before negotiations, Assad's government, which has military support from Russia and Iran, must halt the bombardment of civilian areas and barrel bombing, and release detainees in line with the resolution.
(Reporting by John Davison and Lisa Barrington in Beirut, additional reporting by Kinda Makieh on the outskirts of Madaya and Suleiman Al-Khalidi in Amman; editing by Giles Elgood, G Crosse and Mark Trevelyan)
Works Cited:
Abdullah, Ammar. "Aid Convoy Reaches Syrian Town of Madaya." Reuters. N.p., 12 Jan. 2016. Web. 12 Jan. 2016.
Response:
After becoming an international disaster with ISIS, Syria continues to face the heat from the world, with the starving Madaya. The UN and the International Red Cross have started an effort in trying to aid these people by first sending off an air convoy full of aid and supplies to help the people. The starving people have been under harsh condition becoming scavengers and becoming desperate for food. However, Madaya is not the only town in dire need, there are whole areas where it is estimated that it could take several years before the people there are self-sustainable. The war in Syria has been the primary factor with rebels and the Government at odds. This is a pressing international issue and deserves more air time as people continue to starve in Syria.
MADAYA, Syria An aid convoy entered a besieged Syrian town on Monday where thousands have been trapped without supplies for months and people are reported to have died of starvation.
Trucks carrying food and medical supplies reached Madaya near the Lebanese border and began to distribute aid as part of an agreement between warring sides, the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross said.
"Offloading of aid expected to last throughout night," ICRC spokesman Pawel Krzysiek tweeted.
Dozens are said to have died in the town from starvation or a lack of medical care and activists say some inhabitants have been reduced to eating leaves. Images said to be of emaciated residents have appeared widely on social media.
At the same time, another convoy began entering two Shi'ite villages, al Foua and Kefraya in the northwestern province of Idlib 300 km (200 miles) away. Rebel fighters in military fatigues and with scarves covering their faces inspected the aid vehicles in the rain before they entered.
Madaya is besieged by pro-Syrian government forces, while the two villages in Idlib province are encircled by rebels fighting the Syrian government.
A Damascus-based U.N. official who entered Madaya and oversaw the entry of the convoy of 44 trucks gave an eyewitness account of the plight of people in the rebel-held town of around 40,000 people.
"We have seen with our own eyes severely malnourished children ... so there is starvation, and I am sure the same is true on the other side in Foua and Kefraya," Yacoub El Hillo, U.N. Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Syria, told Reuters by phone from Madaya.
Women cried out with relief as the first four trucks, carrying the banner of the Syrian Red Crescent crossed into Madaya after sunset, with civilians waiting on the outskirts of the town as the temperature dropped and it began to get dark.
The full aid operation was expected to last several days, the ICRC said.
Images said to be from Madaya and showing skeletal men with protruding ribcages were published by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a group that monitors the war, while an emaciated baby in a nappy with bulging eyes was shown in other posts.
Dr Mohammed Yousef, who heads a local medical team, said 67 people had died either of starvation or lack of medical aid in the last two months, mostly women, children and the elderly.
"Look at the grotesque starve-or-surrender tactics the Syrian regime is using right now against its own people. Look at the haunting pictures of civilians, including children - even babies - in Madaya, Syria," Samantha Power, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, said on Monday.
"There are hundreds of thousands of people being deliberately besieged, deliberately starved, right now. And these images, they remind us of World War Two; they shock the conscience. This is what this institution was designed to prevent."
The United Nations said last Thursday the Syrian government had agreed to allow access to the town. The world body is planning to convene peace talks on Jan. 25 in Geneva in an effort to end nearly five years of civil war that have killed more than a quarter of a million people.
But Syrian opposition coordinator Riad Hijab accused Russia of killing dozens of children in a bombing raid on Monday and said such action meant the opposition could not negotiate with President Bashar al-Assad's government.
There was no immediate comment from Russia, which denies any targeting of civilians in the conflict.
WATER AND SALT
Madaya residents on the outskirts of the town said they wanted to leave. There was widespread hunger and prices of basic foods such as rice had soared, with some people living off water and salt, they said.
One opposition activist has said people were eating leaves and plants.
The blockade of Madaya has become a focal issue for Syrian opposition leaders, who told a U.N. envoy last week they would not take part in the proposed talks with the government until it and other sieges were lifted.
The siege began six months ago when the Syrian army and its Lebanese ally, Hezbollah, started a campaign to reestablish Assad's control over areas along the Syrian-Lebanese border.
Hezbollah responded to accusations it was starving people in Madaya by denying there had been any deaths in the town, and accusing rebel leaders of preventing people from leaving.
SIEGE WARFARE
Blockades have been a common feature of the civil war. Government forces have besieged rebel-held areas near Damascus for several years and more recently rebel groups have blockaded loyalist areas including al Foua and Kefraya.
Aid agencies welcomed Monday's deliveries but called for regular access to besieged areas.
"Only a complete end to the six-month old siege and guarantees for sustained aid deliveries alongside humanitarian services will alleviate the crisis in these areas," a joint statement from several international agencies said.
The areas included in the latest agreement were all part of a local ceasefire deal agreed in September, but implementation has been difficult, with some fighting around Madaya despite the truce.
Each side is looking to exert pressure on the other by restricting entry of humanitarian aid, or evacuations, in their areas of control, the Observatory says.
The last aid delivery to Madaya, which took place in October, was synchronized with a similar delivery to the two other villages.
Aid agencies have warned of widespread starvation in Madaya, where 40,000 people are at risk.
Hezbollah has said rebels in the town had taken control of aid, which they were selling to those who could buy. The people of Madaya were being exploited in a propaganda campaign, it said.
Syria's National Reconciliation Minister Ali Haidar said on Sunday that rebels had "disrupted" the entry of food supplies.
"They wanted to escalate it as a humanitarian issue ahead of the Geneva talks," he told Al Manar TV.
A U.N. commission of inquiry has said siege warfare has been used "in a ruthlessly coordinated and planned manner" in Syria, with the aim of "forcing a population, collectively, to surrender or suffer starvation."
One siege is by the Islamic State group, on government-held areas of the city of Deir al-Zor.
A U.N. Security Council on Dec. 18 set out a road map for peace talks calls on the parties to allow aid agencies unhindered access throughout Syria, particularly in besieged and hard-to-reach areas.
A newly formed opposition council set up to oversee negotiations has told U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura that this must happen before the talks he plans to hold on Jan. 25.
They also told him that before negotiations, Assad's government, which has military support from Russia and Iran, must halt the bombardment of civilian areas and barrel bombing, and release detainees in line with the resolution.
(Reporting by John Davison and Lisa Barrington in Beirut, additional reporting by Kinda Makieh on the outskirts of Madaya and Suleiman Al-Khalidi in Amman; editing by Giles Elgood, G Crosse and Mark Trevelyan)
Works Cited:
Abdullah, Ammar. "Aid Convoy Reaches Syrian Town of Madaya." Reuters. N.p., 12 Jan. 2016. Web. 12 Jan. 2016.
Response:
After becoming an international disaster with ISIS, Syria continues to face the heat from the world, with the starving Madaya. The UN and the International Red Cross have started an effort in trying to aid these people by first sending off an air convoy full of aid and supplies to help the people. The starving people have been under harsh condition becoming scavengers and becoming desperate for food. However, Madaya is not the only town in dire need, there are whole areas where it is estimated that it could take several years before the people there are self-sustainable. The war in Syria has been the primary factor with rebels and the Government at odds. This is a pressing international issue and deserves more air time as people continue to starve in Syria.
Sunday, January 3, 2016
The Fight Against Gun Violence
Obama begins gun violence effort that could define his last year
WASHINGTON — President Obama meets with his attorney general Monday to discuss his options for regulating guns, signalling that gun violence will be a top priority of his administration in the new year.
Calling the issue of gun violence "one piece of unfinished business" as he enters the last full year of his presidency, Obama said he gets too many letters "to sit around and do nothing." But anything Obama does by executive action is likely to be undone if a Republican moves into the White House in 2017.
The gun issue may dominate the White House agenda in the run-up to Obama's last State of the Union Address next week. Obama will participate in a televised town hall-style event Thursday on CNN called Guns in America. And on Friday, he'll mark the fifth anniversary of the 2011 Tucson shooting that killed six and wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who has since left Congress to found a gun control lobbying group that met with Obama personally last month.
Obama delivers his State of the Union Address to Congress on Jan. 12, a venue traditionally used to prod legislation from Congress and announce actions from the executive branch.
"The president has made clear the most impactful way to address the crisis of gun violence in our country is for Congress to pass some common sense gun safety measures," White House Deputy Press Secretary Eric Schultz told reporters in Honolulu, where Obama spent Christmas vacation. "But the president has also said he's fully aware of the unfortunate political realities in this Congress. That is why he has asked his team to scrub existing legal authorities to see if there's any additional action we can take administratively."
Schultz said that work would be completed soon. "The president has made clear he's not satisfied with where we are," he said.
The White House hasn't said what options the president is considering, but some of the most-discussed possibilities are likely to raise legal issues. The president can't re-write gun control legislation, but he can direct Attorney General Loretta Lynch to interpret and enforce those laws more aggressively.
For example, Obama has long decried the so-called "gun show loophole" that allows gun buyers to circumvent federal background checks by purchasing weapons at flea markets and collector's events, and could change regulations redefining whether those sellers should be required to conduct background checks.
In his weekly radio address on Friday, Obama acknowledged that any executive action would not stop mass shootings. "We know that we can’t stop every act of violence. But what if we tried to stop even one? What if Congress did something — anything — to protect our kids from gun violence?" he said.
As Obama returned from a two-week vacation in his native Hawaii Sunday, Republican presidential hopefuls were condemning the as-yet-announced actions as illegal.
"To use executive powers he doesn’t have is a pattern that is quite dangerous," former Florida governor Jeb Bush said on Fox News Sunday. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said Obama was acting like a "dictator" and said he would undo any executive actions not already overturned by the courts.
And at a rally in Biloxi, Miss., on Saturday, real estate mogul Donald Trump promised that if Obama signs executive actions on guns, he would "unsign that so fast" once he becomes president.
Works Cited:
Korte, Gregory. "Obama Begins Gun Violence Effort That Could Define His Last Year." USA TODAY. N.p., 03 Jan. 2016. Web. 04 Jan. 2016.
Response:
Being in his last year in the President's Office, President Barack Obama is trying to create a final lasting impact by using his executive powers. It's a known fact that the White House and Congress are not working together and nothing is getting passed and so he is now trying, with his own powers to end the "gun loophole" that currently exists in the United States. Whatever happens, whether congress and the white house do work together or not, something needs to be done about the widespread gun violence, and I believe that President Barack Obama is taking initiative. This may seem like a trait of a dictator to use executive powers with no checks or balances, but nothing was getting accomplished and people are suffering because of it. The "homeland" needs protection, and in a final push, President Obama is trying to pave the way.
Regarding bias, this article may have some bias towards the white house, however, it does do an excellent job by bringing both sides of the argument at the end. Although I'm not a fan of Fox News, I also believe that it's to produce opinions from the far right.
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