‘The threat from radical Islamic terrorism is very real, just look at what is happening in Europe and the Middle-East.
Courts must act fast!’
Drumpf, the ‘so-called president’
In a tweet coming shortly after Robart’s initial ruling, he called him a “so-called judge,” whose decision put national security in jeopardy.
The context of this bullish statement directed at the courts is that, on Tuesday, February 7, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals will take up the issue of the legality of Trump’s presently suspended Muslim ban. This hearing comes as just one stop in an already long and winding legal battle between those opposed to the ban and those in favor of it.
Seattle Federal Judge James Robart ruled against the ban late last Friday, February 3, and the Trump administration has been up in arms ever since then, trying to get it reinstated.
The Three Kings (Melchior, Caspar and Balthazar) represented Europe, Arabia and Africa respectively.
They came from afar, searching for Baby Jesus and brought them presents: Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh.
These valuable items were standard gifts to honor a king or deity in the ancient world: gold as a precious metal, frankincense as perfume or incense, and myrrh as anointing oil.
Story behind the song
There is so much mystery surrounding the story of the Three Kings. Who were they? Where did they come from? What relation did they have to each other? We only really know what (or Who) they were after.
Their only guides were ancient scripture and a bright star. They would not give up until they found the Savior of the world, no matter the cost.
Our arrangement of this traditional Christmas song “We Three Kings” is a tribute to them, their tenacity, and their Noble Purpose.
The three Kings (Melchior, Caspar and Balthazar) represented Europe, Arabia and Africa respectively.
Hundreds of years ago, roast lamb was traditionally served at Epiphany in honor of Christ and the three Kings’ visit.
Whoever finds the small statue of a baby Jesus hidden inside their slice of the Rosca de Reyes throws a party on Candlemas in February.
In some European countries, children leave their shoes out the night before to be filled with gifts, while others leave straw for the three Kings’ horses.
According to Greek Orthodox Church’s traditions, a priest will bless the waters by throwing a cross into it as worshipers try to retrieve it.
In Bulgaria too, Eastern Orthodox priests throw a cross in the sea and the men dive in – competing to get to it first.
In Venice a traditional regatta that started as a joke in the late 1970’s has been incorporated in the celebrations of Epiphany Day.
In Prague, there is a traditional Three Kings swim to commemorate Epiphany Day at the Vltava River.
In New York, El Museo del Barrio has celebrated and promoted the Three Kings’ Day tradition with an annual parade for more than three decades. Thousands take part in the procession featuring camels, colorful puppets and floats.
The day’s activities involve singing holiday carols called aguinaldos.
Banksy is an English-based graffiti artist, political activist and film director whose real identity is unknown.
His satirical street art and subversive epigrams combine dark humor with graffiti executed in a distinctive stenciling technique. His works of political and social commentary have been featured on streets, walls, and bridges of cities throughout the world. Banksy’s work grew out of the Bristol underground scene, which involved collaborations between artists and musicians.
Observers have noted that his style is similar to Blek le Rat, who began to work with stencils in 1981 in Paris. Banksy says that he was inspired by “3D”, a graffiti artist who later became a founding member of Massive Attack, an English musical group.
Banksy displays his art on publicly visible surfaces such as walls and self-built physical prop pieces.
A new interactive work by Banksy criticizing the alleged use of tear gas in a refugee camp in France appeared outside the French embassy in London, but it was then quickly boarded up.
The mural, the latest in a series of works by the anonymous artist drawing attention to the migrant crisis in Europe, depicts what’s believed to be a young Cosette from the original “Les Misérables” Broadway poster with tears streaming down her face above a canister of tear gas.
The artwork also features a QR code for mobile phones that guides viewers to a seven-minute video that appears to show French riot police using tear gas during a raid in early January in a migrant hot spot called “the Jungle” in the port town of Calais.
While authorities have been moving to clear an estimated 2,000 refugees out of the makeshift camp, a Calais police spokesman denied tear gas was ever used, telling the Guardian,
“It’s not in our interest to use tear gas unless it’s absolutely necessary to restore public order, and it is never used in the camp itself.”
The building’s owners began covering the mural with wooden planks shortly after it was discovered early Sunday to preserve it, BBC News reported.
~~GRAPHICS SOURCE~~
Google Images
I do not own the images.
No intention of taking credit.
If anyone knows the owner of any, please advise and it will be corrected immediately.
Known for provocative, politically charged guerrilla street art, Banksy has put the refugee crisis in Calais front and center recently with works including a mural of Steve Jobs painted on a wall of the camp.
Jobs is the son of a Syrian migrant.
Last year, Banksy said he would repurpose lumber and material from his Dismaland anti-theme park in the U.K. to build shelters in Calais.
Let’s go back in history and take a trip down “memory lane”.
The Vietnam War ended on April 30, 1975 with the Fall of Saigon to the North Vietnamese Army and the evacuation of more than 130,000 Vietnamese closely associated with the United States or the South Vietnamese regime.
Vietnamese boat people refers to refugees who fled Vietnam by boat and ship after the Vietnam War, especially during 1978 and 1979, but continuing until the early 1990’s. The term is also often used generically to refer to all the Vietnamese (about 2 million) who left their country by any means between 1975 and 1995. This article uses “boat people” to apply only to those who fled Vietnam by boat.
The number of boat people leaving Vietnam and arriving safely in another country totalled almost 800,000 between 1975 and 1995. Many of the refugees failed to survive the passage, facing danger and hardship from pirates, over-crowded boats, and storms. The boat people’s first destinations were the Southeast Asian countries of Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. The mass flight of hundreds of thousands of boat people from Vietnam in 1978 and 1979 caused an international humanitarian crisis with the Southeast Asian countries increasingly unwilling to accept more boat people on their shores. After negotiations and an international conference in 1979, Vietnam agreed to limit the flow of people leaving the country, the Southeast Asian countries agreed to admit the boat people temporarily, and the rest of the world, especially the developed countries, agreed to assume most of the costs of caring for the boat people and to resettle them in their countries.
From refugee camps in Southeast Asia, the great majority of boat people were resettled in developed countries, more than one-half in the United States and most of the remainder in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Several tens of thousands were repatriated to Vietnam, either voluntarily or involuntarily. Programs and facilities to carry out resettlement included the Orderly Departure Program, the Philippine Refugee Processing Center, and the Comprehensive Plan of Action.
These people were displaced as a direct consequence of the Vietnam war.
Ideologies, beliefs, convictions, policies, intervention in an unknown region were applied to this country.
“The invaders” lacked knowledge about the country that was invaded.
The role of the United States in the Vietnam War began after the Second World War and escalated into full commitment during what is termed the Vietnam War from 1959 to 1975.
This historical fact can be brought to our present times and applied to the massive exodus that is occurring in the Middle East as a consequence of the war in Syria.
The common factor: human beings fleeing areas of conflict, danger, oppression, violence and death.
Looking and hoping for a better future for their families.
It seems seems to me that history is repeating itself.
As humans, this race hasn’t learned any life lessons.
The powers that be continue to impose destruction,conflict and chaos in areas were they don’t belong.
Will we ever learn to live in peace?
Can we be compassionate with those that are leaving their homes behind?
A BRIEF, CONCISE DESCRIPTION OF THIS #MIGRANTCRISIS
The gruesome civil war in Syria started several years ago. Iraq and Afghanistan have been roiling ever since the U.S. invasions more than a decade ago. Ethnic strife and political repression have been common in parts of Africa for even longer. But the wave of migrants seeking sanctuary from these places in the European Union has only spiked this summer, with thousands of asylum seekers arriving every day.
Why are they coming now? It depends on whom you ask.
The migrants themselves, when they arrive in the E.U. by boat on the shores of Greece or walk across border into Hungary, will often say that their choice to migrate in the last few weeks was personal or coincidental.
One Syrian woman, whom TIME met as she walked through northern Serbia with four of her young children, said her husband was imprisoned by the Syrian regime a year ago, and she only fled when he told her how little hope he has of being freed.
A young man from Afghanistan, who came ashore in a packed motorboat on Friday morning on the Greek island of Lesbos, said he left home last week mostly because his parents finally finished the months-long process of scrounging up the money for his journey.
~~GRAPHICS SOURCE~~
Google Images
~~GALLERY~~
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But there are many other factors behind the sudden rush.
Perhaps the main draw for migrants fleeing Syria was the German government’s pledge last month to take all Syrian asylum applications, regardless of how they reach German territory.
Normally, under E.U. rules on migration, a refugee can only claim asylum in the E.U. country he enters first. That means migrants traveling overland from the Middle East can get stuck in the less prosperous nations of southern and eastern Europe. But in light of the chaos unfolding in Syria, German Chancellor Angela Merkel made a promise to all Syrian refugees: if you manage to physically reach Germany, you can apply for asylum in Germany.
The safest and easiest path for these migrants to reach Western Europe is known as the Balkan route, which takes them more than a thousand miles northwest, by land and sea, through Turkey, Greece, Macedonia, Serbia, Hungary and Austria. Authorities in Hungary, which is governed by a populist right-wing party called Fidesz, have taken the hardest line against migrants crossing their territory. And in July, their promise to seal off their southern border with Serbia spurred tens of thousands of migrants to take the Balkan route before Hungary severs it with a four-meter high fence.
Unprecedented numbers of refugees continue to land on Europe’s shores every day.
Thousands are willing to risk their lives to reach parts of Europe before winter arrives and EU countries continue to tighten their borders.
This is not their doing.
Through no fault of their own, millions of people had to leave what they knew, their country, their material belongings, their jobs. They are fleeing constant war, persistent shelling, corruption, violence, disruption, torture, death.
They are traveling through uncertain places, through dangerous routes.
Some don’t even know how to swim and they try to cross the Mediterranean Sea.
As we all know plenty have lost their lives.
The civil war in Syria started several years ago.
Iraq and Afghanistan have been very unstable ever since the U.S. invasions more than a decade ago.
There’s a moral responsibility here.
If only for the fact that they are members of the human race.
Some people of the “invaded countries” have shown some heart by even offering their homes to these scared humans who have nothing left now but themselves and their families.
Many have lost family members and/or their whole family.
REMEMBER HIM?
Syrian toddler Aylan Kurdi
They have no money, the borders are starting to close and they will be left in limbo.
More than 350,000 refugees have arrived in the 28 nation EU this year. There were 626,000 applications for asylum in 2014. This is in addition to the two million that Turkey has taken in.
Europe is “ground zero” for the refugee crisis.
Frontex, the agency in charge of guarding the EU border, estimates that about 340,000 migrants have tried to sneak into Europe in 2015 so far, almost three times as many as in 2014. Along with the surge in numbers, the demographics of the travelers have also changed.
These days, the bulk of them are Syrians fleeing violence at home, Afghans escaping their own ongoing civil war, Roma from Kosovo looking to avoid discrimination, and Eritreans fleeing a dictatorship comparable to the one in North Korea. Whereas in 2014, the bulk of refugees came to Europe through Italy from Libya and Tunisia, now more people arrive in Greece after crossing Turkey and the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Macedonia and Hungary have also seen a surge in traffic.
Although the reason for this shift remains uncertain, it seems likely that reports of frequent drownings on the long journey from northern Africa to Italy, and the increasingly volatile situation in Libya, have convinced many refugees to try their luck over land. (Kaelin)
Most of these are fleeing the civil war in Syria, but many others are also fleeing conflicts in Iraq, Nigeria, Somolia, and Sudan.
~~GALLERY~~
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Five issues have recently brought the issue to the forefront of media attention
ONE: a growing number of people have drowned attempt to cross the Mediterranean Sea with the support of smugglers in boats. The humanitarian plight was highlighted by photos of a fully-clothed three-year old boy who drowned and whose body washed ashore. Photos of the dead boy laying on a beach were widely distributed across the Internet.
TWO: many refuges who had made their way into Hungary (Hungary is the primary entry point in the EU for refugees) became stranded at the Keleti train station when Hungarian authorities were not letting trains pass to Austria because the refugees hadn’t registered.
THREE: the situation between police and the refugees has turned violent.
FOUR: 71 people were found dead in a smuggler’s truck Southeast of Vienna on August 27th.
FIFTH: there are daily complications from the flow of refugees.
I must say that I wasn’t totally informed about this situation until the picture of the three year old flashed through the internet.
I had heard rumblings about refugees crossing and drowning in the Mediterranean Sea but wasn’t really following the events in that corner of the world.
I’m looking into it now.
What I see is nothing short than massive human suffering caused by conflict, war and major disregard for human rights.
I’ve read that these refugees are victims of US-NATO led wars.
WARS!! INVASION!! GREED!! PROFIT!!
Where is humanity heading?
This senseless violence must stop.
This is the perfect example of “what touches one, touches all”.
As these refugees “move” from home, so many other countries are “affected” as they either ignore the issue or try their hand at compassion.
SabineMaier was born in 1965 in a village in the Black Forest, in Baden-Württemberg, in southwest Germany; and so was Joachim (“Yogi”) Mohr, just a year later. However, Yogi grew up in Hannover, in Lower Saxony, while Sabine remained in Baden-Württemberg, eventually moving to the university town of Freiburg im Breslau at age 18 to finish her education.
Then Sabine, who had begun to design and make clothing, went to Kassel, in Hesse, in the center of Germany (and south of Hannover), to study Art and Design. But she had also other artistic aspirations, and she went to train at Fooltime, in Bristol, England—an experimental circus and circus school where she learned a host of circus disciplines, including aerial arts. Meanwhile, Yogi moved to West Berlin (in 1985, when Germany was still divided between East- and West-Germany) and subsequently to Switzerland, where he worked at various jobs, none of them related to the circus.
When Yogi returned to Freiburg in the late 1980s, he began to juggle, and finally met Sabine. Recognizing their common interests and a shared sense of humor, they enrolled together in the École sans Filet, a well-known circus school in Brussels, Belgium, and eventually created their comedy trapeze act. In 1990, they settled in Berlin, from where they went on to work with great success all over Europe and in the United States, mostly in variety.
Sabine Maier still designs and makes costumes for the stage. She and Joachim have three children, Luca Eleonora (b. 1996), Branca Yolanda (b. 1999), and August Valentin (b. 2006).
It Is What It Is 