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Blair Peterson

The Ebola Outbreak in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone - 0 views

  • The Economic Community of West Africa (ECOWAS) created a ‘solidarity fund’ to contain and manage the outbreak, [17] and the World Health Organisation convened an emergency meeting of regional health ministers in Accra to strengthen surveillance operations and facilitate cross-border consultations. [18] The World Health Organisation also opened a Sub-Regional Outbreak Coordinating Center in Conakry. [19] Doctors Without Borders has deployed 300 personnel to assist in health care facilities, and both the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the European Union have provided scientific personnel and resources to assist with laboratory testing and government coordination. [20]
  • The World Health Organisation fulfilled its coordinating mission by organising a meeting of regional health officials in Accra in early July—but that was three-and-a-half months after the first report of the disease. WHO’s Sub-Regional Outbreak Coordination Center has the potential to be a useful resource, but it took nearly four months from the outbreak’s beginning until WHO began such operations. Given how quickly Ebola spreads and its virulence, such a delay helped the disease gain a foothold in the region. Arresting the spread of infectious diseases requires quicker action.
  • First, the current response needs to be ratcheted up. Opening sub-regional command centers, deploying personnel from governmental and nongovernmental sources, and providing financial resources are all important—but they need to be done in greater number and with greater urgency. The initial efforts are not necessarily failures; they are just too small and slow in response to the overwhelming nature of this unprecedented outbreak.
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  • Second, efforts to provide health care services and outreach to affected communities need to take concerted efforts to integrate local cultural contexts and health care measures into Ebola control.
  • Third, there need to be serious long-term efforts to improve the health care systems, disease surveillance capabilities, and laboratory resources in all three states.
Blair Peterson

9 questions about the Israel-Palestine conflict you were too embarrassed to ask - Vox - 1 views

  • On the surface at least, it's very simple: the conflict is over who gets what land and how it is controlled. In execution, though, that gets into a lot of really thorny issues, like: Where are the borders? Can Palestinian refugees return to their former homes in present-day Israel?
  • Israeli forces have occupied and controlled the West Bank ever since. It withdrew its occupying troops and settlers from Gaza in 2005, but maintains a full blockade of the territory, which has turned Gaza into what human rights organizations sometimes call an "open-air prison" and has pushed the unemployment rate up to 40 percent.
  • Settlers are Israelis who move into the West Bank.
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  • Others move deep into the West Bank to claim land for Jews, out of religious fervor and/or a desire to see more or all of the West Bank absorbed into Israel. While Israel officially forbids this and often evicts these settlers, many are still able to take root.
  • The simple version is that violence has become the status quo and that trying for peace is risky, so leaders on both ends seem to believe that managing the violence is preferable, while the Israeli and Palestinian publics show less and less interest in pressuring their leaders to take risks for peace.
  • That sense of Palestinian hopelessness and distrust in Israel and the peace process has been a major contributor to violence in recent years.
  • "We don't have a partner for peace."
  • 9 questions about the Israel-Palestine conflict you were too embarrassed to ask
Blair Peterson

Israel Kills 3 Top Hamas Leaders as Latest Fighting Turns Its Way - NYTimes.com - 7 views

  • But the latest round of fighting appears to have given Israel the upper hand in a conflict that has already outlasted all expectations and is increasingly becoming a war of attrition.
  • Israel’s advantage has never looked more lopsided. In contrast to the earlier phase of the war, Israel this week deployed its extensive intelligence capabilities and overwhelming firepower in targeted bombings with limited civilian casualties less likely to raise the world’s ire.
  • “There’s a longstanding conventional wisdom that Israel doesn’t do well in wars of attrition,” said Michael B. Oren, an Israeli historian and a former ambassador to the United States. “That overlooks a broader historical view that Israel’s entire existence has been a war of attrition, and we’ve won that war.”
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  • Even more significant would be the death of Mohammed Deif, the shadowy figure who has survived several previous Israeli assassination attempts with severe injuries and was the target of Tuesday night’s attack. Mr. Deif’s fate remained unknown Thursday, though the body of his 3-year-old daughter, Sara, was recovered from the rubble of the Gaza City home where five one-ton bombs also killed Mr. Deif’s wife, baby son and at least three others.
  • Amos Yadlin, a former Israeli chief of military intelligence, called the killing of Mr. Deif’s three deputies “a very important operational achievement” and said that if Mr. Deif also turns up dead, “this will badly hurt Hamas’s military wing.”
  • “We’re now going to a war of attrition that was a threat of Hamas. Israel basically turned it upside down and said, ‘You want attrition? You are welcome. You lost your strategic military tools against Israel. Our firepower and our intelligence and our capability to sustain more days is much bigger than yours.’ This is the strategy.
  • The Gaza Health Ministry said Israeli airstrikes had killed at least 60 people since the collapse on Tuesday of cease-fire negotiations in Cairo and the resumption of violence after nearly nine days of quiet, bringing the Palestinian death toll in the operation that began July 8 close to 2,100.
  • As the conflict grinds on, Israelis see time as on their side. Experts estimate that Hamas began the summer with a stockpile of about 10,000 rockets. It has fired nearly 4,000, according to the Israeli military, which says it has taken out at least 3,000 more. So it cannot keep launching at this pace for long.
  • With Israel and the Palestinians apparently still far apart on terms for a durable truce, analysts suggested settling in for days or even weeks more of cross-border air exchanges, after what is already the longest Israeli military operation in decades. Diplomatic pressure appeared to be easing, if only because the world’s attention seems focused on other crises including the rise of Islamic extremists in Iraq and Syria, the Ebola outbreak in Africa and civil unrest in Ferguson, Mo.
    • Blair Peterson
       
      Look at how other events around the world impact this major conflict.
  • Israel has much vaster resources, though its politicians and people are increasingly fractured over the prosecution of the campaign. There are growing calls for a more aggressive ground invasion, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has resisted, and intense opposition to the idea of making concessions in a cease-fire agreement that might seem to reward Hamas.
    • Blair Peterson
       
      The right wing position.
  • In Gaza, time is a liability. The number of displaced residents seeking shelter in United Nations schools swelled to nearly 300,000 as the violence resumed; officials have already given up any hope of classes starting Sunday as planned.
  • “Israel can play that game for a long time, certainly longer than Hamas can. That’s true on a purely military level, but the fact is, as the war drags on, it’s going to be harder and harder for Netanyahu not to do one of those two things.”
  • When Sergeant Shalit was exchanged for 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in October 2011 after Hamas held him in captivity for five years, it was Mr. Attar seen in a video ushering him from a pickup truck. Mr. Abu Shamalah, the Israeli military said, was also involved in a 2004 tunnel attack that killed six soldiers, and the 1994 murder of an Israeli officer in Rafah.
  • In the Rafah refugee camp, a friend of Mr. Abu Shamalah’s said he had last seen him at the onset of the war, with Mr. Attar, and that he had said then he hoped to be a martyr.
Blair Peterson

Night of the Living Wonks - 1 views

  • The specter of an uprising of reanimated corpses also poses a significant challenge to interpreters of international relations and the theories they use to understand the world. If the dead begin to rise from the grave and attack the living, what thinking would -- or should -- guide the human response?
  • For our purposes, a zombie is defined as a reanimated being occupying a human corpse, with a strong desire to eat human flesh
  • Because they can spread across borders and threaten states and civilizations, these zombies should command the attention of scholars and policymakers.
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  • If the dead begin to rise from the grave and attack the living, what thinking would -- or should -- guide the human response?
  • How would all those theories hold up under the pressure of a zombie assault? When should humans decide that hiding and hoarding is the right idea?
  • Zombie stories end in one of two ways -- the elimination/subjugation of all zombies, or the eradication of humanity from the face of the Earth.
  • If it is true that "popular culture makes world politics what it currently is," as a recent article in Politics argued, then the international relations community needs to think about armies of the undead in a more urgent manner.
  • There are many varieties of realism, but all realists start with a common assumption: that anarchy is the overarching constraint of world politics. Anarchy does not necessarily mean chaos or disorder, but rather the absence of a centralized, legitimate authority.
  • In a world of anarchy, the only currency that matters is power -- the material capability to ward off pressure or coercion, while being able to influence others.
  • How would the introduction of flesh-eating ghouls affect world politics? The realist answer is simple if surprising: International relations would be largely unaffected.
  • To paraphrase Thucydides, the realpolitik of zombies is that the strong will do what they can and the weak must suffer devouring by reanimated, ravenous corpses.
  • States could also exploit the threat from the living dead to acquire new territory, squelch irredentist movements, settle old scores, or subdue enduring rivals. The People's Republic of China could use the zombie threat to justify an occupation of Taiwan. Russia could use the same excuse to justify intervention in its near abroad. The United States would not be immune from the temptation to exploit the zombie threat as a strategic opportunity. How large would the army of the Cuban undead need to be to justify the deployment of the 82nd Airborne?
  • All liberals nevertheless share a belief that cooperation is still possible in a world of anarchy. Liberals look at world politics as a non-zero-sum game. Working together, whether on international trade, nuclear nonproliferation, or disease prevention, can yield global public goods on a massive scale.
  • The 2009 film Zombieland is about the articulation of and adherence to well-defined rules for surviving in a zombie-infested landscape.
  • 'The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation.' I think we can all appreciate the relevance of that now."
  • Provided that the initial spread of zombies did not completely wipe out governments, the liberal expectation would be that an international counterzombie regime could make significant inroads into the problem. Given the considerable public-good benefits of wiping the undead from the face of the Earth, significant policy coordination seems a likely response.
  • Quasi-permanent humanitarian counterzombie missions, perhaps under United Nations auspices, would likely be necessary in failed states. Liberals would acknowledge that the permanent eradication of flesh-eating ghouls is unlikely.
  • Instead, neocons would recommend an aggressive and militarized response to ensure human hegemony. Rather than wait for the ghouls to come to them, they would pursue offensive policy options that take the fight to the undead. A pre-emptive strike against zombies would, surely, be a war against evil itself.
  • "An outbreak of zombies infecting humans is likely to be disastrous, unless extremely aggressive tactics are employed against the undead.… [A] zombie outbreak is likely to lead to the collapse of civilization, unless it is dealt with quickly."
  • They would inevitably lump reanimated corpses with other human threats as part of a bigger World War III against authoritarian despots and zombies -- an "Axis of Evil Dead." This would sabotage any attempt at broad-based coalition warfare, hindering military effectiveness in a Global War on Zombies (GWOZ).
  • Powerful states would be more likely to withstand an army of flesh-eating ghouls. The plague of the undead would join the roster of threats that disproportionately affect the poorest and weakest countries.
  • Realism predicts an eventual live-and-let-live arrangement between the undead and everyone else.
  • Liberals predict an imperfect but nevertheless useful counterzombie regime.
  • Neoconservatives see the defeat of the zombie threat after a long, existential struggle.
Blair Peterson

One Powerful Illustration Shows Exactly What's Wrong With How the West Talks About Ebol... - 4 views

  • We can see this clearly on Fox News, where Andrea Tantaros parroted the idea that African countries "do not believe in traditional medical care" and that residents might "seek treatment from a witch doctor that practices santería." Congressman Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.) suggested that we should fear migrants because they might carry "deadly diseases such as swine flu, dengue fever, Ebola virus and tuberculosis," while CNN suggested Ebola is the "ISIS of biological agents." (It's no coincidence that both are "foreign" entities.)   
Blair Peterson

Seattle humanitarian heads to Syrian border despite danger - 0 views

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    This is an excellent example of how one individual has taken steps to help out those in a conflict.
Blair Peterson

Syria's refugees: fears of abuse grow as Turkish men snap up wives | World news | The G... - 0 views

  • Aminah is one of an increasing number of Syrian refugees who opt to marry Turkish men. Women's rights groups are worried: "A lot of women agree to these marriages out of sheer desperation. All they think about is how to feed their family, how to make ends meet. These arrangements might seem like the only way out, and men exploit this," says one activist from Gaziantep, who wished to remain anonymous. "At the same time, local women feel helpless and anxious about their own families breaking apart. Women on both sides of the border become victims this way."
    • Blair Peterson
       
      Down below is says that 4000 Syrian women have married Turkish men. Are they all being taken advantage of?
  • Turkish authorities put the number of Syrian refugees in the country at nearly 1 million, a figure projected to rise by the end of the year to 1.4 million.
  • women and children constitute 75% of refugees in Turkey, with under-18s accounting for 50%. I
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  • Human trafficking and all problems associated with it – abuse, rape and exploitation – have increased since 2012,"
  • Turkish human rights groups warn that polygamy, outlawed in Turkey almost a century ago but still practised in conservative rural areas in south-eastern Anatolia, is on the rise. Second, third, or even fourth wives – called kuma in Turkish – lack legal protection and are especially vulnerable to abuse.
Blair Peterson

Ukraine Starts Building Wall to Keep Russia Out | News | The Moscow Times - 0 views

  • Defense lines will include a 60-kilometer stretch of a "non-explosive barrier," thousands of kilometers worth of trenches for personnel, armored vehicles and communication lines, and 4,000 army dugouts, the statement said.
gabsandres

Obama on Russia: 'Large countries don't bully smaller countries' - CNN.com - 1 views

  • We have no interest in seeing Russia weakened or its economy in shambles. We have a profound interest, as I believe every country does, in promoting a core principle, which is: Large countries don't bully smaller countries,"
  • Pro-Russian separatists are blamed for the attack on residential areas in the port city, Donetsk regional police chief Vyacheslav Abroskin said on his Facebook page.
  • Another 102 people were injured, at least 75 of whom needed hospital treatment, and many suffered shrapnel injuries, Mariupol City Council sai
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  • "expressed grave conce
  • "The Secretary reiterated the need for an immediate resumption of the ceasefire, a withdrawal of heavy weapons, and closing the border.
  • "look at all the additional options that are available to us short of military confrontation."
Blair Peterson

Ebola Crisis: Africa Needs More Home-Trained Doctors - 0 views

  • One of the worst parts of the crisis is that the countries affected are being abandoned. Several airlines have cancelled flights, non-governmental agencies are calling their personnel home, and neighboring countries have closed their borders. Consequently, even those doctors and nurses recruited by foreign charities have difficulty accessing the countries.
  • The Ebola epidemic has overwhelmed its health professionals. With four million people, Liberia has only 200 doctors and 1,500 nurses, most of whom are in and around the capital of Monrovia.
  • As with most emergencies in developing countries, it is their health professionals that provide most of the care to their citizens. They are in a better position than the brave volunteers from foreign charities to manage a crisis, since they know the country’s customs, language, and are there for the long haul. However, one of the major problems faced by poor countries is the inadequate number of trained health workers.
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  • It is, however, impossible to have decent schools and health systems without having the teachers and health professionals to staff them, and these are educated in universities. And the universities should be located in the countries themselves. The practice has been to send most of the young people abroad to study for advanced degrees to countries like Canada. The problem is that most do not return, adding to the brain drain. There are more Ethiopian doctors in New York City than in Ethiopia.
  • A better approach is to assist developing countries improve their universities. There is a substantial demand from these countries for help to improve teaching, research and back office operations.
Blair Peterson

Fight to stop Ebola being lost, World Bank warns - Telegraph - 0 views

  • "We are losing the battle," World Bank chief Jim Yong Kim warned, blaming a lack of international solidarity in efforts to stem the epidemic.
  • "Certain countries are only worried about their own borders," he told reporters in Paris.
  • The East African Community bloc comprising Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania announced it was sending more than 600 health workers to Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
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