#mayor bassil

[mayor-brandy]

I tidied up this corner of Bassil’s house. Now he has a bench where he can practice guitar. 🎸

[newstfionline]

Friday, June 4, 2021

America’s Biggest Companies (Fortune) Fortune magazine released its annual ranking of America’s largest companies, with Walmart topping the list for the ninth straight year. Boosted by the pandemic-driven consumer shift to online and bulk purchasing, the retail behemoth brought in nearly $560B in revenue. The company was followed by Amazon ($386B in revenue), Apple ($275B), CVS Health ($269B), and UnitedHealth Group ($257B). The combined list generated almost $14T in revenue last year—about two-thirds of the US economy.

Drought ravages California’s reservoirs ahead of hot summer (AP) Each year Lake Oroville helps water a quarter of the nation’s crops, sustain endangered salmon beneath its massive earthen dam and anchor the tourism economy of a Northern California county that must rebuild seemingly every year after unrelenting wildfires. But now the mighty lake—a linchpin in a system of aqueducts and reservoirs in the arid U.S. West that makes California possible—is shrinking with surprising speed amid a severe drought, with state officials predicting it will reach a record low later this summer. While droughts are common in California, this year’s is much hotter and drier than others, evaporating water more quickly from the reservoirs and the sparse Sierra Nevada snowpack that feeds them. The state’s more than 1,500 reservoirs are 50% lower than they should be this time of year, according to Jay Lund, co-director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at the University of California-Davis. If Lake Oroville falls below 640 feet (195 meters)—which it could do by late August—state officials would shut down a major power plant for just the second time ever because of low water levels, straining the electrical grid during the peak demand of the hottest part of the summer.

Miami Faces the Hard Choices of Climate Change (NYT) Three years ago, not long after Hurricane Irma left parts of Miami underwater, the federal government embarked on a study to find a way to protect the vulnerable South Florida coast from deadly and destructive storm surge. Already, no one likes the answer. Build a wall, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed in its first draft of the study, now under review. Six miles of it, in fact, mostly inland, running parallel to the coast through neighborhoods—except for a one-mile stretch right on Biscayne Bay, past the gleaming sky-rises of Brickell, the city’s financial district. The dramatic $6 billion proposal remains tentative and at least five years off. But the startling suggestion of a massive sea wall up to 20 feet high cutting across beautiful Biscayne Bay was enough to jolt some Miamians to attention: The hard choices that will be necessary to deal with the city’s many environmental challenges are here, and few people want to face them. The trouble is that the magnitude of the interconnected obstacles the region faces can feel overwhelming, and none of the possible solutions are cheap, easy or pretty.

A deadly vote (Washington Post) TAXCO, Mexico—Mario Figueroa sat in his armored SUV, surrounded by bodyguards clutching semiautomatic rifles. The bulletproof vest was stashed behind the back seat. These days, Figueroa rarely travels without his security team. As a candidate for mayor of this Spanish colonial city—once popular with American tourists, now lashed by drug violence—the 53-year-old businessman has already taken a bullet in the chest. Mexico is in the final days of one of its most violent electoral campaigns in modern times. Eighty-nine politicians have been killed since September, according to the security consulting firm Etellekt. Scores more have been wounded or threatened. The campaign has become a stark illustration of crime organizations’ quest to expand their control of Mexico’s territory. The violence has focused largely on races for mayor and other local government posts. “They want control of the police, control of public works projects, the budget, and illicit activities,” said Marcial Rodríguez Saldaña, the state leader of Morena, the party of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. “We’ve reached an extreme,” Figueroa said.

US troops storm sunflower oil factory in Bulgaria (Foreign Policy) The owner of a sunflower oil factory in Bulgaria has taken legal action after U.S. soldiers accidentally stormed his business during a NATO training exercise. The mix-up occurred while soldiers were simulating the clearing of an airfield in southern Bulgaria, and continued on to Marin Dimitrov’s factory, where workers watched on as gun-wielding soldiers stalked through the premises. The incident has led to a rebuke from the highest levels with Bulgarian President Rumen Radev calling it “absolutely unacceptable.�� “We always learn from these exercises and are fully investigating the cause of this mistake,” the U.S. embassy in Sofia said in a statement.

Beijing Introduces Three-Child Policy (Foreign Policy) On Monday, China announced that married couples would be allowed to have up to three children, raising the official two-child limit in a widely anticipated move. Despite government hopes, the introduction of the two-child policy in 2016 failed to produce a baby boom. It’s unlikely the latest policy change will affect China’s fertility rate, either. The public has responded with mocking contempt toward the idea that government restraints have held parents back from having more children, rather than the exorbitant costs of child rearing in China—from migrant families forced to pay fees for local public schools to upper-class parents who fear their children will fall behind without flute or calligraphy lessons. So why keep a limit on the number of children a couple can have at all? One reason is to provide cover for the ongoing forced sterilization of the Uyghur minority in Xinjiang, whose birthrate fell by nearly 50 percent between 2017 and 2020. Another is that China now has an enormous family planning bureaucracy that supports many jobs. Party leaders may also be concerned that the rich flaunting large families—such as late Macao casino tycoon Stanley Ho, known for his four wives and 17 children—would spark resentment.

Lebanese leaders exchange barbs as country sinks into crisis (AP) Lebanon’s president and prime minister-designate traded barbs Wednesday, accusing one another of obstruction, negligence and insolence in a war or words that has for months obstructed the formation of a new government as the country sinks deeper into economic and financial crisis. The power struggle between the premier-designate, Saad Hariri, on one side and President Michel Aoun and his son-in-law Gebran Bassil on the other, has worsened despite warnings from world leaders and economic experts of the dire economic conditions tiny Lebanon is facing. The World Bank on Tuesday said Lebanon’s crisis is one of the worst the world has seen in the past 150 years. In a late night burst of anger, protesters blocked main roads in Beirut and north of the capital. A young activist told a local TV station the protest was against the constant humiliation of Lebanese who line up to fill their cars with fuel, increasing power cuts, search for medicine and deal with confused banking decisions that are robbing thousands of their savings. The Lebanese pound, pegged to the dollar for 30 years at 1,507, has been in a free fall since late 2019. It is now trading at nearly 13,000 to the dollar at the black market.

Netanyahu opponents reach coalition deal to oust Israeli PM (AP) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s opponents announced Wednesday that they have reached a deal to form a new governing coalition, paving the way for the ouster of the longtime Israeli leader. The dramatic announcement by opposition leader Yair Lapid and his main coalition partner, Naftali Bennett, came shortly before a midnight deadline and prevented what could have been Israel’s fifth consecutive election in just over two years. The agreement still needs to be approved by the Knesset, or parliament, in a vote that is expected to take place early next week. If it goes through, Lapid and a diverse array of partners that span the Israeli political spectrum will end Netanyahu’s record-setting but divisive 12-year rule. Netanyahu, desperate to remain in office while he fights corruption charges, is expected to do everything possible in the coming days to prevent the new coalition from taking power. If he fails, he will be pushed into the opposition. (Foreign Policy) While a new government is not yet set in stone, normal business carries on: Benny Gantz arrives in Washington today to request $1 billion in emergency military aid in order to replenish Israel’s Iron Dome defenses and help restock its bomb supply following the bombardment of Gaza. “I would imagine that the administration would say yes to this request and it will sail through Congress,” Senator Lindsey Graham said on Tuesday.

In Syria camp, forgotten children are molded by IS ideology (AP) At the sprawling al-Hol camp in northeast Syria, children pass their days roaming the dirt roads, playing with mock swords and black banners in imitation of Islamic State group militants. Few can read or write. For some, the only education is from mothers giving them IS propaganda. It has been more than two years since the Islamic State group’s self-declared “caliphate” was brought down. And it has been more than two years that some 27,000 children have been left to languish in al-Hol camp, which houses families of IS members. Most of them not yet teenagers, they are spending their childhood in a limbo of miserable conditions with no schools, no place to play or develop, and seemingly no international interest in resolving their situation. Only one institution is left to mold them: remnants of the Islamic State group. Kurdish authorities and aid groups fear the camp will create a new generation of militants. They are pleading with home countries to take the women and children back. The problem is that home governments often see the children as posing a danger rather than as needing rescue.

‘Come On In, Boys’: A Wave of the Hand Sets Off Spain-Morocco Migrant Fight (NYT) Daouda Faye, a 25-year-old migrant from Senegal, was elated when he heard that Moroccan border guards had suddenly started waving in undocumented migrants across the border to Ceuta, a fenced-off Spanish enclave on the North African coast. “‘Come on in, boys,’” the guards told him and others as they reached the border on May 17, Mr. Faye said. Normally, Morocco tightly controls the fenced borders around Ceuta, a six-mile-long peninsula on Morocco’s northern coast that Spain has governed since the 1600s. But now its military was allowing migrants into this toehold of Europe. Over the next two days, as many as 12,000 people flowed over the border to Ceuta in hopes of reaching mainland Spain, engulfing the city of 80,000. The crisis has laid bare the unique pressure point Morocco has over Spain on migration. Spanish government officials and other experts say Morocco increasingly sees the migrants as a kind of currency and is leveraging its control over them to extract financial and political prizes from Spain. Hours after the migrants began pouring into Ceuta, Spain approved 30 million euros, about $37 million, in aid to Morocco for border policing.

A Military Drone With A Mind Of Its Own Was Used In Combat, U.N. Says (NPR) Military-grade autonomous drones can fly themselves to a specific location, pick their own targets and kill without the assistance of a remote human operator. Such weapons are known to be in development, but until recently there were no reported cases of autonomous drones killing fighters on the battlefield. Now, a United Nations report about a March 2020 skirmish in the military conflict in Libya says such a drone, known as a lethal autonomous weapons system—or LAWS—has made its wartime debut. But the report does not say explicitly that the LAWS killed anyone. The assault came during fighting between the U.N.-recognized Government of National Accord and forces aligned with Gen. Khalifa Haftar, according to the report by the U.N. Panel of Experts on Libya. “Logistics convoys and retreating [Haftar-affiliated forces] were subsequently hunted down and remotely engaged by the unmanned combat aerial vehicles or the lethal autonomous weapons systems such as the STM Kargu-2 ... and other loitering munitions,” the panel wrote. The Kargu-2 is an attack drone made by the Turkish company STM that can be operated both autonomously and manually and that purports to use “machine learning” and “real-time image processing” against its targets.

[rightsinexile]

News on Countries of Asylum

Global

Eric Kaufmann: A proposal of closed permanent refugee camps on Western soil

The creeping criminalisation of humanitarian aid

Africa

BOTSWANA: High court ruling decriminalising same sex practices is promising

KENYA:

For the children of Dadaab refugee camp education is still limited

LGBT+ refugees in Kenya slums face homophobic attacks and evictions

UGANDA:

Kabale parish faced with 120 Rwandan asylum seekers

DGF donors freeze funding for NGOs after audit uncovered widespread corruption

Americas

COLOMBIA: Awareness-raising campaign seeks to protect Venezuelan migrants from trafficking and smuggling networks

ECUADOR: Colombian refugees stage weeks-long protests in Quito against UNHCR

MEXICO: For Central American asylum seekers it is better to stay in Mexico than return home

USA:

USCIS director tells asylum officers to stop allowing people in at initial border screening

Increasing numbers of Cubans trying to enter US through Mexico

How migrant families separated at the border could make US government pay

Trump cuts off aid to Central American countries over migrants

Asia

BANGLADESH: The novel approach to reach refugees: Speak Rohinya

Europe

Growing sanctuary efforts to assist migrants by churches in Europe

EU Summit must give effective answers to migrant issues

Legal submission to ICC calls for prosecution of EU over migrant deaths

UNHCR warns of “sea of blood” unless rescue vessels are deployed to rescue migrant boats

MSF: EU policies continue to claim migrant lives on the Mediterranean Sea

BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA: Local authorities relocate refugees to areas where landmines remain

FRANCE:

Imam jailed for selling dinghies for migrants to cross the Channel

Record refugee convictions near Calais aiming to halt Channel crossings

GERMANY: German politicians stand up for refugees who receive death threats

GREECE:

At least seven people drowned after boat goes down on the Greek coast

Refugee integration in Greece against the backdrop of a weak economy.

Why the Greek reception system failed to provide sustainable solutions

HUNGARY: New police department takes over asylum and immigration related tasks

IRELAND: Ireland’s strange and cruel reception system for asylum seekers

ITALY:

Domenico Lucano, former mayor of pro-migrant Riace, stands trial

Italian government passes law to fine those who rescue refugees at sea

How the Italian mafia makes millions by exploiting migrant workers

SPAIN: Spanish rescue service saves 292 lives in the Strait of Gibraltar 

UNITED KINGDOM:

Campaigners call for the UK to accept 10,000 child refugees

Discredited language test used on two in five Syrian asylum seekers in the UK

Middle East

LEBANON:

More than half of refugee girls in Beirut risk sexual violence, says report

Lebanese authorities order Syrian refugees to demolish their makeshift homes

Lebanese government denies forcing Syrian refugees back home

Thousands of Syrian refugees could be sent back, says Lebanese minister Bassil

Syrian refugees forced to evacuate camp after tensions

[dragnews]

Lebanon foreign minister says will take

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Lebanese Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil said on Thursday Lebanon would take measures against the United Nations’ refugee agency UNHCR starting Friday, without specifying what those measures were.

Lebanon’s Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil speaks during a news conference in Beirut, Lebanon June 4, 2018. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir/File Photo

Bassil has accused the UNHCR – which has repeatedly said the situation inside Syria is too insecure for returns – of intimidating refugees who wish to voluntarily go back into not doing so.

As Syrian forces and their allies retake more territory, Lebanon’s president and other politicians are calling for refugees to go back to “secure areas” before a deal is reached to end the war. The international view is that it would not be safe for them to return.

Lebanon hosts around 1 million registered Syrian refugees according to the United Nations, or roughly a quarter of the population, who have fled the war since 2011. The government puts the number at 1.5 million and says their presence has strained public services and suppressed economic growth.

“Our procedures against UNHCR begin tomorrow, and they will escalate to the maximum extent that sovereign Lebanon can achieve toward an organization which acts against (Lebanon’s) policy of preventing naturalization and returning the displaced to their homeland,” Bassil said in a speech published on his Twitter page.

Last week, the head of Lebanon’s general security agency, Major General Abbas Ibrahim, said Lebanon was working with Damascus for the return of thousands of refugees who want to go back to Syria.

And on Thursday the mayor of a Lebanese border town hosting tens of thousands of refugees said around 3,000 are expected to go back to Syria in the coming week.

“Today we sent a mission which verified that UNHCR is intimidating the displaced people who wish to return voluntarily,” Bassil said.

“Our affection for (the displaced Syrians) says that the time has come for returns since conditions are safe,” he said, adding that only the international community is stopping this happening.

“We announce our determination to break the international desire to prevent the return of the displaced,” he said.

Bassil is now a caretaker minister because Prime Minister-designate Saad al-Hariri has not yet formed a government after parliamentary elections on May 6.

Reporting by Lisa Barrington, editing by Larry King

The post Lebanon foreign minister says will take appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2sGlmHT via Today News

[dani-qrt]

Lebanon foreign minister says will take

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Lebanese Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil said on Thursday Lebanon would take measures against the United Nations’ refugee agency UNHCR starting Friday, without specifying what those measures were.

Lebanon’s Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil speaks during a news conference in Beirut, Lebanon June 4, 2018. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir/File Photo

Bassil has accused the UNHCR – which has repeatedly said the situation inside Syria is too insecure for returns – of intimidating refugees who wish to voluntarily go back into not doing so.

As Syrian forces and their allies retake more territory, Lebanon’s president and other politicians are calling for refugees to go back to “secure areas” before a deal is reached to end the war. The international view is that it would not be safe for them to return.

Lebanon hosts around 1 million registered Syrian refugees according to the United Nations, or roughly a quarter of the population, who have fled the war since 2011. The government puts the number at 1.5 million and says their presence has strained public services and suppressed economic growth.

“Our procedures against UNHCR begin tomorrow, and they will escalate to the maximum extent that sovereign Lebanon can achieve toward an organization which acts against (Lebanon’s) policy of preventing naturalization and returning the displaced to their homeland,” Bassil said in a speech published on his Twitter page.

Last week, the head of Lebanon’s general security agency, Major General Abbas Ibrahim, said Lebanon was working with Damascus for the return of thousands of refugees who want to go back to Syria.

And on Thursday the mayor of a Lebanese border town hosting tens of thousands of refugees said around 3,000 are expected to go back to Syria in the coming week.

“Today we sent a mission which verified that UNHCR is intimidating the displaced people who wish to return voluntarily,” Bassil said.

“Our affection for (the displaced Syrians) says that the time has come for returns since conditions are safe,” he said, adding that only the international community is stopping this happening.

“We announce our determination to break the international desire to prevent the return of the displaced,” he said.

Bassil is now a caretaker minister because Prime Minister-designate Saad al-Hariri has not yet formed a government after parliamentary elections on May 6.

Reporting by Lisa Barrington, editing by Larry King

The post Lebanon foreign minister says will take appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2sGlmHT via Online News

[newestbalance]

Lebanon foreign minister says will take

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Lebanese Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil said on Thursday Lebanon would take measures against the United Nations’ refugee agency UNHCR starting Friday, without specifying what those measures were.

Lebanon’s Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil speaks during a news conference in Beirut, Lebanon June 4, 2018. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir/File Photo

Bassil has accused the UNHCR – which has repeatedly said the situation inside Syria is too insecure for returns – of intimidating refugees who wish to voluntarily go back into not doing so.

As Syrian forces and their allies retake more territory, Lebanon’s president and other politicians are calling for refugees to go back to “secure areas” before a deal is reached to end the war. The international view is that it would not be safe for them to return.

Lebanon hosts around 1 million registered Syrian refugees according to the United Nations, or roughly a quarter of the population, who have fled the war since 2011. The government puts the number at 1.5 million and says their presence has strained public services and suppressed economic growth.

“Our procedures against UNHCR begin tomorrow, and they will escalate to the maximum extent that sovereign Lebanon can achieve toward an organization which acts against (Lebanon’s) policy of preventing naturalization and returning the displaced to their homeland,” Bassil said in a speech published on his Twitter page.

Last week, the head of Lebanon’s general security agency, Major General Abbas Ibrahim, said Lebanon was working with Damascus for the return of thousands of refugees who want to go back to Syria.

And on Thursday the mayor of a Lebanese border town hosting tens of thousands of refugees said around 3,000 are expected to go back to Syria in the coming week.

“Today we sent a mission which verified that UNHCR is intimidating the displaced people who wish to return voluntarily,” Bassil said.

“Our affection for (the displaced Syrians) says that the time has come for returns since conditions are safe,” he said, adding that only the international community is stopping this happening.

“We announce our determination to break the international desire to prevent the return of the displaced,” he said.

Bassil is now a caretaker minister because Prime Minister-designate Saad al-Hariri has not yet formed a government after parliamentary elections on May 6.

Reporting by Lisa Barrington, editing by Larry King

The post Lebanon foreign minister says will take appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2sGlmHT via Everyday News

[mayor-brandy]

I decided to redo Bassil’s basement! (right after I had updated the dream, of course, haha. I will try to update it again soon, when Bassil is tanned + there’s good weather!)

[newstfionline]

Lebanese Town Flooded by Refugees Hopes for Return to Normal

By Vivian Yee, NY Times, Aug. 8, 2018

ARSAL, Lebanon--The mayor was tired. Asleep-at-three, awake-at-six tired. Tired the way you cannot help but be after years of the Islamic State squatting in your town, killing your citizens and forcing the army to quarantine you from the rest of the country.

Tired of Syrian refugees from just across the border growing so numerous that they eclipse your actual constituents--and of your constituents growing so sick of the refugees that they mutter about taking the town back by force.

All this fell to the mayor of Arsal, Lebanon: checkpoints to negotiate, refugees to manage, townspeople to appease. And now even his wife complained that he was neglecting her.

“At night, I go back home and I listen to people’s problems again,” said the mayor, Bassil Hujeiri. “It’s not like my shift ends and I get to close the door.”

And yet the mayor has recently had cause to believe that the arc of his town’s ordeal was at last bending toward a little less misery--if only for the Arsalis. The refugees, for their part, were still living a nightmare.

Seven years of war in Syria has displaced more than half the country’s population, leaving millions of refugees shipwrecked between the wasteland of home and the void of exile. Among the many Lebanese and Jordanian towns that received them was Arsal, where rented rooms and tent cities overflowed at one point with 120,000 Syrians--quadruple its Lebanese population.

But with the Syrian government closing in on victory, President Bashar al-Assad declaring the country safe for Syrians again and their reluctant Lebanese hosts pressing them to leave, the Syrian refugees are now beginning to set out on the fraught road home.

Over the past month, convoys carrying nearly 2,000 Syrians have crossed the border, returning families to the homes they had abandoned years ago--though few knew whether those homes had survived the bombs and shells.

But many may be stuck in Lebanon. Thousands of Syrians in Arsal have applied to return, only to be rejected by Mr. Assad’s government. Many more say they believe that if Mr. Assad remains in power, the outcome tacitly accepted by the global powers haggling over Syria’s future, they have only arrest, torture, death or forced conscription to return to.

“Here, I’m a refugee,” said a former Syrian soldier who asked to be identified by his nom de guerre, Abu Fares. “In Syria, I’m a traitor.”

Few of the refugees leaving Arsal knew for certain that they would be safe at home. All had decided that home was nevertheless preferable to a tent with no future.

“My life there would be better than it is now,” Mohsin Ishac, a former taxi driver from Fleita, a village just across the border, said before he left with the first convoy. “I have a tent here. I’ll put a tent there if I have to.”

Lebanon has taken in so many Syrians--more than a million--that they now make up a quarter of the country’s population. But the welcome has not always been gracious.

Lebanese authorities never gave full rights to the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees who have lived in Lebanon since the 1940s and ‘60s, even as the refugee camps have become permanent cities. Apparently learning from that experience, the government has prohibited the establishment of refugee camps and made the Syrians�� lives difficult, in ways large and small, in the hope that they would return as soon as possible.

Most Syrians in Lebanon cannot move freely around the country. They are banned from some public parks and certain jobs. The small minority of Syrian children who attend school are largely separated from Lebanese children.

Town cemeteries often refuse to bury Syrian bodies. Many landlords reject Syrian tenants. History--Syrian troops occupied Lebanon from 1976 to 2005--is not improving guest-host relations. Nor are Lebanese sensitivities about the country’s fragile sectarian balance, which Lebanese leaders fear would be upended by the settlement of the mainly Sunni refugees.

“We don’t have any safety guarantees from Assad, but it’s better there than here,” said Mohamed Abdul Aziz, a father of six from the same village as Mr. Ishac. “We have a choice between the bad and the worst.”

Much like populists across Europe and the United States fulminating against immigrants, Lebanese politicians blame Syrians for dragging down wages, dialing up crime and overtaxing infrastructure. Across the country, Syrian refugees have been evicted, deported, beaten and even killed by Lebanese.

Unsurprising, then, to hear Lebanese leaders pressing for their return.

Hezbollah, Lebanon’s powerful pro-Assad movement, recently opened several offices across the country for refugees to register for return. When the United Nations High Commission on Refugees warned this spring that refugees should not be pressed into returning, Lebanon’s foreign minister threatened to freeze the agency’s local residency permits unless it got out of the way.

The mayor could only watch this international game of hot potato from his small second-floor office while the town grumbled.

His cellphone rang once, twice, three and four times on the table in front of him. His eyes blinked heavily over dark pouches. Asked his age, he gave a wan smile. “One hundred and fifty,” he said. (He was 44.)

“I hope they’ll go back and everything will be like it was before,” he said, “and they can live like they used to.”

The mayor’s cellphone bellowed again. It was a Lebanese farmer who had woken him early that morning, complaining that he had been detained on the way to his fields.

Mr. Hujeiri clutched his cell to his left ear and clamped a landline to his right, soothing the farmer on one phone, pleading with the Army on the other.

As he stepped out of his office, a group of Lebanese business owners pounced. They wanted to know what he planned to do about the Syrian shopkeepers who they said were undercutting their prices and driving them out of business.

The Syrians, they fretted, pay no taxes or electricity bills: They got everything for free. (The poorest refugees receive about $27 per person in monthly food and rental assistance.)

“Me, I had 5 million Lebanese pounds in revenue last month. The Syrian guy made 15 million,” said one man.

“What if we took 50 guys and showed up at a Syrian store?” said a second, threatening a confrontation. “Then they’d have to close down.”

“We have a lot of plans in the works,” the mayor interjected. “It just takes time.” He was stalling, hoping to head off violence.

“They do have a point,” he said later, “but people in pain sometimes exaggerate. The Syrians are human beings, too. They want to live. They have kids. But I can’t defend the Syrians in front of them.”

[cifrasonlinecomve]

IRIS.

Es Varela la ex ministra para Asuntos Penitenciarios y actual constituyente. Iris lanza señalamientos temerarios contra cualquiera, según quiera afectarlo o involucrarlo. Una cosa es que una persona común haga un comentario en una panadería y, otra, que una constituyente diga pública y alegremente que el ex ministro y mayor general (Ej), Miguel Rodríguez Torres, hasta hace poco ficha de la revolución bolivariana, es un asesino. Y se atreva Varela a endosarle los crímenes del diputado Robert Serra y de Eliécer Otaiza. Es decir, Iris está afirmando que tenía conocimiento que en la revolución bolivariana, porque Rodríguez Torres era entonces pieza clave de la revolución, y no cualquiera, sino jefe del Sebin (la policía política del Estado y ministro del Interior y Justicia), se han ejecutado “crímenes selectivos” según ella para crear “conmoción”. Eso lo dijo Varela en el marco del primer debate abierto de la Asamblea Nacional Constituyente (ANC), que se realizó en el parque Ezequiel Zamora, en El Calvario, Caracas. “Yo creo hoy que Miguel Rodríguez Torres está detrás del asesinato de Otaiza y de Robert Serra, lo creo y de repente tiene que ver con lo que le pasó al comandante supremo” y hasta le endosó el asesinato de la ex miss y actriz Mónica Spear. En twitter dijo: “Rodríguez Torres para congraciarse con la derecha criminalizó a los colectivos y mató a Juancho Montoya y Odreman”. Lo señaló de ser responsable del asesinato del joven Bassil Dacosta. Iris, en su discurso contra el odio y por la paz, habló de “acá si acaso vendrán a encontrar las cenizas, pero aquí hasta el que venga por las cenizas será fusilado”. “Yo pido que se haga lo posible que se degrade de manera administrativa a esos traidores de la Patria a Hebert García Plaza, a Miguel Rodríguez Torres”. Iris habla de dirigentes de la derecha a quien nada los va a salvar, aunque sean usados como títeres. “No puede ser que nosotros no toquemos a los quinta columnas, a los traidores que seguramente están detrás de lo que le pasó al comandante Chávez porque eran  personas de su confianza y no creo en ellos”. Quizás Iris también sepa quién desapareció a Alcedo Mora.

FUNCIONARIOS.

Son 369 del Cuerpo Técnico de Tránsito. Fueron jubilados por el Instituto Nacional de Transporte Terrestre en el 2008, percibiendo la cesta ticket por el Min-Interior y Justicia como subvención socioeconómica hasta el 2014. Ingresados y homologados a la Policía Nacional Bolivariana, arbitrariamente se las quitaron. En lugar de Bs. 153 mil ahora les dan Bs. Dos mil 850. “Nos desmejoraron, nos despojaron de un derecho adquirido al no darle continuidad administrativa”. A los jubilados del INTT que salieron en la misma fecha, al pasar esa Institución al Min-Transporte, sí cobran su cesta ticket. “Nuestro reclamo es por tantos compañeros jubilados, muriendo de mengua, sin comida y falta de medicina, muchos en cama, sillas de ruedas, pudiendo ayudarse con este dinero que nos robaron ya que la pensión por jubilación es hasta inferior al salario mínimo”. Los reclamos están en la Defensoría Pública General, Defensoría del Pueblo y Min-Interior y Justicia. Nadie da respuesta.

SUDEBAN. 

Debe actuar a favor de clientes del Banco Bicentenario. Pedro Rafael es un anciano del Táchira, que le confió sus dólares, los que ganó con los bonos de Pdvsa, al Banco Bicentenario. En enero 2016 le dijo al Banco que le diera mil dólares depositados en su cuenta. Le dijeron que la única manera era una transferencia a otra cuenta en el exterior propia o de un tercero y llenar una planilla. Cumplió los requisitos. Pasaron seis meses y le dicen que no pueden hacerle la transferencia porque el Bicentenario no tiene banco responsable en el exterior. Prometen resolver el problema. Más recaudos, más planillas y por fin le dan una tarjeta de débito internacional, pero que no pasó ni en Cúcuta. Año y medio después Pedro Rafael no puede disponer de sus tres mil 17 dólares. Pedro Rafael no es el único con ese problema, Cientos de clientes están en la misma situación. Los funcionarios del Bicentenario no quieren recibirlos, tienen bloqueados los teléfonos y no responden los emails. Entonces Sudeban debe actuar.

DENUNCIADO.

Es el grupo que tomó por asalto, con ayuda de los Montilla en Falcón, el Ateneo de Punto Fijo. Usaron a Polifalcón, falsificaron firmas, usaron a una funcionaria de registros y hasta al BOD. Ahora están siendo denunciados por corrupción, por los mismos que participaron en ese acto. Acabaron con el Ateneo, lo convirtieron en un rancho y en centro de personas de dudosa moralidad. Hasta el taxista que usurpó el cargo de Presidente se lanzó para la Constituyente, empujado por los Montilla, y llegó detrás de la ambulancia.

PENSIONADA.

Ella vive en Paraguaná. Denuncia que mientras las personas de la tercera edad deben pasar malos ratos en las colas para cobrar sus pensiones. “Hay que sacarla por partes y durante varios días”. Contrario a eso, los jóvenes de la Chamba Juvenil sí cobran completo y en un solo día.

HIJO.

Es el del alcalde del municipio Campo Elías de Mérida, Omar Lares. El chico de 23 años se llama Juan Pedro Lares y es ciudadano colombiano. A él lo detiene un centenar de funcionarios policiales con armas largas; allanaron violentamente su casa. Ramona Rangel, madre del chico estaba ahí cuando los policías fueron en busca de su esposo y como no lo encontraron se llevaron a su hijo. Quienes hemos criticado el escrache contra hijos de líderes de la revolución, con más razón criticamos el uso de los organismos de seguridad del Estado para atacar al hijo de un alcalde opositor, que no sufrió escrache, sino que está en la cárcel del Sebin en El Helicoide. Ramona señala que en un mes apenas ha podido ver a su hijo durante 15 minutos. A Juan Pedro no lo han presentado ante ningún tribunal, porque el Sebin alega que está en calidad de testigo.

 BENEDETTI.

Es Mario, ese poeta uruguayo de versos tan hermosos como el amanecer. Fue él quien un día escribió: “A instancias de mis amigos cuerdos y cautelosos/ que ya no saben si diagnosticarme/ prematuro candor o simple chifladura/ abro el expediente de mi optimismo/ y uno por uno repaso los datos./ …/ cuando los diez tarados mesiánicos de turno/ tratan de congregar la obediente asamblea/ el pueblo no hace quórum/ por eso/ porque falta sin aviso/ a la convocatoria de los viejos blasfemos/ porque toma partido por la historia/ y no tiene vergüenza de sus odios/ por eso aprendo y dicto mi lección de optimismo/ y ocupo mi lugar en la esperanza”.

Última Hora 

-A Virginia Vivas no le permitieron inscribirse para las primarias a la Gobernación Táchira, porque no dio los 8 mil dólares a la MUD.

-Javier Tarazona denuncia que Conatel bloquea canales Caracol y RCN, pero deja abiertas emisoras del ELN (guerrilla) en la frontera.

-Registro Mercantil de Guasdualito (Apure) sin impresora. Piden a usuarios colaboraciones.

FRONTERA.

Fue de miércoles para jueves, al filo de la medianoche. Se enfrentó el Ejército, maleteros (contrabandistas) y habitantes del sector Tienditas, municipio Pedro María Ureña, Táchira. Fue en el nuevo puente internacional de Tienditas, que aun no se ha inaugurado pero que desde hace ratos se usa como trocha para el contrabando. Fueron sorprendidos por una comisión del Ejército que pasaba por el lugar. Les incautaron las decenas de pimpinas que tenían en las bicicletas listas para cruzar el puente. Hubo cruce de disparos y resultó herido el joven Maikol Ruiz, quien está en cuidados intensivos en Cúcuta. Los militares venezolanos trataron de guarnecerse en unas viviendas, pero la gente les lanzó piedras.

Sebastiana Sin Secretos: “Iris”, revienta las redes sociales IRIS. Es Varela la ex ministra para Asuntos Penitenciarios y actual constituyente. Iris lanza señalamientos temerarios contra cualquiera, según quiera afectarlo o involucrarlo.

[jovenescriticosgam]

Para Jairo, Bassil y todos los ángeles defensores de la democracia cuyas vidas fueron arrebatadas por la opresión... *Por Marianna Sevilla

A las 11:59 de la noche del domingo 27 de mayo de 2007, Radio Caracas Televisión, el canal de mayor antigüedad del país había caído a manos del régimen, finalizó sus transmisiones a orden del gobierno, luego de 54 años de programación dedicada a los venezolanos (y al resto del mundo).

Esta censura NO fue aprobada por el pueblo venezolano. Yo lo sé, yo estuve allí. Recuerdo perfectamente las tardes cuando iba con mi mamá a las calles de San Antonio de Los Altos (ciudad adyacente a Caracas) a protestar. Esa fue mi primera experiencia defendiendo la democracia y libertad de expresión, luchando por una Venezuela que, por haber nacido en dictadura, no conocí. Recuerdo perfectamente las lágrimas que corrían por el rostro de mi mamá al ver los últimos minutos de transmisión del canal que la había acompañado a ella (y a todos los venezolanos) durante su vida. Yo sólo tenía 6 años y no manejaba grandes conceptos, pero ya sabía lo mucho que había hecho sufrir el gobierno a mi gente, sabía que de a poco nos iban quitando nuestra libertad de expresión.

A partir de allí, la difusión de información a través de la televisión, radio y prensa se fue en picada. Cada vez censuraban y callaban más cosas. Los funcionarios del gobierno se encargaron de comprar diarios regionales como El Notitarde y a tomar control de la compra del papel. Es así como diarios nacionales de suma importancia como El Carabobeño cerraron, precisamente, por falta de papel. Los canales que seguían transmitiendo eran Venevisión, Televen, Globovisión (antes canal de la verdad, pero posteriormente comprado) y VTV; ajá, VTV, el canal del Estado que terminó siendo vasta publicidad del Gobierno narco corrupto, con noticias insignificantes hechas para distraer a la gente de los problemas reales (panem et circenses). Digamos que quedaron los canales internacionales, pero, de todos, sólo CNN daba las noticias reales y completas y fue sacado del aire por el Gobierno el 16 de febrero de 2017, luego de su programa Pasaportes En La Sombra.

Es aquí donde Twitter, Instagram y Facebook se convirtieron en los mejores medios informativos en compañía de 99.1 FM (Unión Radio), la única emisora en Venezuela que transmite la verdad. Claro que igual Maduro y su pandilla se han encargado de boicotear estos medios, cortando el internet del hogar y los datos móviles cuando se les plazca. Los venezolanos nos convertimos, entonces, en reporteros con una cámara telefónica para informar al país; quienes estamos en el exterior tomamos la responsabilidad de difundir toda la información que nos cuentan nuestros familiares por WhatsApp a través de las redes sociales. Los asesinatos, violaciones a los derechos humanos, injusticias, abusos de poder, uso excesivo de la fuerza, desabastecimiento, crisis en el sistema de salud y violación a la constitución nos son comunicados por alguna publicación en Instagram o Facebook de una tía, primo o hasta del mismo Edgar Ramírez, quien forma parte del grupo de artistas, comediantes y periodistas venezolanos que dedican sus cuentas en las redes a la difusión de información acerca de la crisis económica, política y social que atraviesa Venezuela.

La pregunta es, entonces, ¿qué pasó con el compromiso y la responsabilidad que los medios en Venezuela deben tener con los venezolanos en los momentos más duros de nuestra historia? ¿Qué pasó con la voz de los que no tienen voz?

“A veces, el silencio es violento” Car Radio, Twenty One Pilots

*Estudiante, 16 años, Quinta Normal

[mayor-brandy]

A new outfit for mayor Bassil!

[mayor-brandy]

Waiting for a sunny afternoon for my dream-town update like

[mayor-brandy]

My adorable new neighbor, Tybalt 💕

[mayor-brandy]

I was tagged by @mayor-mami and @mayor-tamako, thank you!!

Rules: Answer the questions and then tag some of your favourite ACNL blogs when you’re done!

1. How long have you had ACNL? Since June 10, 2014! A day after the US release I believe.

2. How many towns do you have? Two! LuBayne, my spring town, and Pimonte, my summer beach town.

3. Mayor Name(s): Brandy in LuBayne and Bassil in Pimonte

4. Town name(s): (LuBayne, Pimonte)

5. Dream Address(es): L: 4B00-0039-DA86, P: 4A00-003C-0A24.

6. Favourite villager: auugh so hard to choose... Marshal, Nana, Chevre, June, Tybalt, Keaton

7. Favourite non-villager character: Kicks!

8. Favourite flowers: Orange or pink lillies/tulips

9. Favourite time of day: 10/11 am, or 5/6pm.

10. Native fruit: L: Oranges, P: Peaches

11.  How would you describe your mayor’s style? Brandy:Her fashion is usually a denim skirt pairing, with her straw boater. She likes to be light and colorful. Bassil: He likes jackets? lol

12. How would you describe your home style? Brandy: A collection of all of her favorite things when it comes to home decor, usually the rooms in her homes are light and colorful and have a lot of white or beige furniture with the extra pieces giving it color. Bassil: A beach bungalow with lots of tropical plants and wooden and beachy furniture.

13. How would you describe your town style? L: Natural and colorful?? Its hard to describe, it’s also a jumble of things that I like. P: A colorful beach getaway~

14. Are there any items you are currently looking for? Nope! or at least none that I can think of.

I tag: I don’t know who has or hasn’t done this, so uh, feel free!

[newstfionline]

A rape-murder sours a country on its Syrian refugees

By Liz Sly, Washington Post, October 10, 2017

MIZIARA, Lebanon--When ­Syrians began streaming into Lebanon six years ago to escape their country’s war, around 1,000 of them found a welcome in the small Christian village of Miziara, in the pine-clad mountains of the north.

That was until the discovery in her home last month of the body of Raya Chidiac, 26, a daughter of one of the village’s wealthiest businessmen. She had been bound, raped and suffocated with a plastic bag. The Syrian caretaker at the family’s home confessed to the killing and was arrested and charged with murder.

The ensuing backlash against Syrians has rippled across Lebanon, exposing razor-sharp tensions between the country’s 1 million Syrian refugees and their hosts that increasingly threaten to open up Lebanon’s own fragile sectarian divisions.

As Europe and the United States are closing their doors to the world’s spiraling number of refugees, especially Syrians, the burden is intensifying in countries like Lebanon that border war zones and receive the vast majority of refugees.

Syria’s neighbors are hosting 5 million Syrian refugees, compared with about 18,000 admitted by the United States and 1 million who have sought asylum in Europe. As the war in Syria drags into an eighth year with no sign either of an end to the fighting or a peace settlement that will guarantee safe returns, concerns are growing that the refugees will not be going home.

Turkey hosts by far the biggest number, with 3.2 million Syrians registered as refugees with the United Nations. But it is tiny Lebanon that perhaps feels the strain most acutely. Including the 450,000 Palestinian refugees also living here, refugees now account for nearly a quarter of the population, the highest concentration in the world.

Chidiac’s killing touched a nerve among Lebanese who feel they are shouldering a disproportionate share of the refugee crisis. Calls are mounting for the refugees to be sent back regardless of conditions inside Syria.

The country’s most senior Christian prelate called their presence “unbearable.” Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil tweeted on Sunday that Lebanese are “racist” and want the refugees gone. “Every foreigner present in our land against our will is occupying our land,” he said.

The United Nations has appealed to the Lebanese to refrain from “collective reprisals as a result of one tragic incident,” said Mireille Girard, who heads the U.N. refugee agency in Lebanon.

But for the Syrians living in Miziara, it was already too late. All of them, refugees or not, were ordered to leave the town after Chidiac was killed, setting a precedent many Syrians fear may soon be replicated across Lebanon.

Tensions had been building between the Lebanese and the Syrian refugees for months before Chidiac’s death. Syrians have spilled into every corner of the country, taking up residence in unfinished buildings, parking garages, abandoned shopping malls, warehouses and in thousands of makeshift camps that have sprung up in rural areas.

All of them, including those in camps, pay rent to private landlords, and the Syrians have contributed to the economy as well as subsisted on it. The United Nations has injected $4.2 billion worth of aid over the past five years.

Some Syrians have found work, mostly the kind of menial, low-paid jobs that Lebanese do not like to do, such as picking fruit and laboring on construction sites--jobs that were routinely performed by migrant workers from Syria for decades before the Syrian war.

But aid contributions are dwindling as international interest in Syria wanes, increasing the hardship among the Syrians. Lebanon’s economy has been hit by the war. Resentment has steadily grown against refugees perceived to be stealing Lebanese jobs and driving down wages.

Miziara is one of the communities with a long history of employing Syrian workers. Some 2,000 of the village’s 5,000-strong population are themselves migrants, working in Nigeria’s booming oil economy. They have spent their money building lavish mansions in their home town, including one that is a replica of an Airbus A380 and another designed as a pyramid.

Syrians were hired to build the homes, including the man accused of murdering Chidiac. Identified in Lebanese police reports only by his initials, B.H., he was employed a year before the war began to work on one of the Chidiac family’s houses, an elaborate palace complete with columns, balustrades and a wall adorned with elephant tusks.

After the house was finished, he was kept on as a caretaker, family members said, and he was at the house when Chidiac was there, alone, in the early hours of Sept. 22. He told police that he held her at knifepoint, asked for money and when she said there wasn’t any, tied her up, raped her and suffocated her, according to the police report.

The shock of the alleged betrayal ricocheted across Miziara and beyond. “The family trusted him for years, and he did this,” said Father Yusuf Fadoul, after conducting a Mass for Chidiac’s soul at Miziara’s Maronite Christian church last week.

Although the accused was not officially a refugee but a migrant worker, the village turned its anger on all the Syrians living there. Miziara is wholly Christian, and most of the Syrian refugees are Sunni Muslims, a religious and cultural difference that had already caused friction.

“We’re not angry at the Syrian people, we’re angry at the number of people they have thrown onto us,” Fadoul said. “Those who have come here have not been living in a civilized society. They don’t have our social manners, our civilized behavior.”

“They have big families. They have four wives and 17 children, and we only have two children,” added George Karkar, the local mukhtar, a sort of honorary mayor, echoing a familiar complaint.

“They drive their motorcycles around the town at night disturbing people. They hold big gatherings and we don’t know what they are talking about,” he said.

After funeral services for Chidiac, residents marched through the village, some holding placards calling on the Syrians to leave.

Many of the Syrians fled overnight after realizing the mood had soured against them. Others left over the next two days after the municipality issued a deadline for them to get out, the mukhtar said.

“To be honest, if they didn’t leave we would have killed them,” said Boulos Dib, who runs a local grocery store. “The whole town is against them. All Lebanon is against them.”

As the Syrians scattered, fear spread among refugees across Lebanon. At least one other local municipality has ordered its Syrian residents to leave. Other towns in the vicinity of Miziara have imposed curfews, telling Syrians not to go out after dark.

“Of course everyone is afraid,” said Mohammed, a refugee from the province of Idlib who lives in the city of Tripoli in northern Lebanon and travels among Syrian refugee settlements selling vegetables. “We are afraid someone will come and kill a Syrian and it will cause a civil war.”

Fears that the Syrians’ presence will trigger civil strife in a country eternally hostage to sectarian rivalries underpin concerns among Lebanese that the recent arrivals are here to stay. No one has forgotten that it was another influx of refugees, the Palestinians who fled Israel in 1948, that helped fuel Lebanon’s 15-year civil war between Christians and Muslims over 30 years ago.

[mayor-brandy]

A reference sheet for Bassil (❁´▽`❁)