El Salvador children, priest launch initiatives to stave off hunger

Yahoo – AFP, Carlos Mario MARQUEZ, August 22, 2020

Priest Moises Rutilio Moran checks the water filters in a pond where he
breeds fish at his church in Santa Ana, El Salvador

Priest Moises Rutilio Moran didn't sit twiddling his thumbs when the coronavirus pandemic struck and his church emptied -- like many Salvadorans, he got creative helping combat the country's COVID-induced lack of food.

Determined that his church in the city of Santa Ana "shouldn't be a burden on the community," Moran and his staff dug a pond and started selling affordable fish to the local community.

Some 50 kilometers (30 miles) east in El Chaparral, a village of 107 families, children began rolling up their sleeves, cultivating a vegetable garden that is providing food for the community.

The pandemic and its economic woes have sent the price of fruit and vegetables soaring, and left Salvadorans scheming plans to feed themselves.

"I know how to preach, teach the catechism, manage groups, but launching a tilapias project, never," the 41-year-old priest told AFP..

After churches were closed to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, Moran started collecting groceries to help 1,700 families, "not just poor people with houses made of (metal) sheets" but also lawyers and engineers who lost their jobs.

However, he soon realized he no longer had the means to pay for the electricity, water, telephone and internet at his church, Our Lady of Rosario.

Church caretaker Roberto Rivas prepares fish bred in a pond to be sold to 

parishioners and visitors in Santa Ana, El Salvador

Thus his project was born: provide cheap fish to the community whose payments would keep the church running "in a reciprocal manner."

On a makeshift table next to the pond, 65-year-old church caretaker Roberto Rivas is in charge of gutting the fish.

While the work is rewarding, Rivas told AFP he hopes the church "opens soon because in these worrying times the faithful need us to accompany them."

After five months of closure, churches are tentatively hoping to reopen their doors on August 30.

While many parish priests laid off their employees due to a lack of resources, Moran's new enterprise means he's actually hired new staff.

William Hernandez, 42, was left unemployed after the pharmacy he worked in for 16 years closed due to the crisis.

Now he wields a net and catches fish "chosen by the customer" while Omar Blanco, 29, serves as one of two workers making deliveries by motorcycle.

A girl holds a bundle of radishes in the community vegetable garden in El Chaparral

"It's an excellent initiative discovering sources of work in the midst of a difficult situation in which we have to reinvent methods (of generating income) for the church," priest Oscar Lagos told AFP as he arrived with a cooler to buy some fish.

'Getting children involved'

In the village of El Chaparral radishes, peppers, cabbages, tomatoes, spinach, blackberries and watermelons grown by the children are a welcome boost.

"It's an initiative in our El Chaparral community aimed at getting children and young people involved," said Victorina Alvarenga, a 32-year-old mother who joins her nine-year-old daughter Sheyla in the garden.

The vegetable patch is divided into plots named after the child in charge. One part of the garden is dedicated to providing food for the elderly.

"We're teaching children the value of solidarity so that when they're adults, they'll be good people," said Alvarenga.

A month after planting seeds, the first harvest produced huge radishes that were enthusiastically "ripped up" by the children.

A boy collects radishes in the El Chaparral community garden

"I'm delighted because I'm bringing fresh food to my family," said Sheyla proudly.

"I don't have any money but I bring healthy food."

The idea has caught on and in the neighboring village of Dimas Rodrigues a score of children have started another community garden.

"We want to produce our own food so we're not dependent on the market," said the group's leader, Pedro Diaz, 22.

Felicia Mijango, in charge of a union of rural communes, says the idea has its roots in the confinement of 10,000 Salvadoran refugees who fled to Ocotepeque in Honduras as civil war raged a decade ago.

The refugees couldn't leave their UN camp that was surrounded by barbed wire so they started growing their own fruit and vegetables.

Mijango says her union actively supports around 100 family and community allotments with help from American and Canadian NGOs.

Vatican expresses 'concern' on Trump's wall, travel ban

Yahoo – AFP, February 1, 2017

Protesters gather at the Los Angeles International airport's to demonstrate
against President Trump's controversial travel ban (AFP Photo/Konrad Fiedler)

Rome (AFP) - The Vatican on Wednesday voiced "concern" over President Donald Trump's executive orders to build a wall on the US-Mexican border and impose a travel ban on nationals from seven Muslim-majority countries.

"Naturally, there is concern," the Holy See's number three, Monsignor Angelo Becciu, said on the Catholic TV channel TV2000, in response to a question.

"We are builders of bridges, far less of walls, and all Christians should emphatically reaffirm this message."

Becciu noted that Pope Francis had repeatedly stressed the need "to integrate those who arrive, who come into our society, into our culture."

Trump has run into a storm of criticism since signing orders to build an anti-migrant frontier wall with Mexico and temporarily ban nationals from seven countries -- Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen -- for 90 days.

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Russia vows to ensure Damascus observes ceasefire: Putin

Yahoo – AFP, 22 February 2016

Russia's President Vladimir Putin, pictured on February 20, 2016, said Russia will
do "whatever is necessary" to ensure that Damascus respects a Syrian ceasefire
agreement (AFP Photo/Mikhail Klimentyev)

Moscow (AFP) - Russia will do "whatever is necessary" to ensure that Damascus respects a Syrian ceasefire agreement that Moscow and Washington say will take effect on February 27, President Vladimir Putin said Monday.

"We will do whatever is necessary with Damascus, with the legitimate Syrian authorities," Putin said during a televised address after speaking by phone with US President Barack Obama.

"We are counting on the United States to do the same with its allies and the groups that it supports."

Putin said the United States and Russia were "ready to put in place an effective control mechanism" to ensure respect of the ceasefire, adding that a "direct line of communication will be created as well as, if necessary, a working group to exchange information".

"Finally a real chance to bring an end to the years of bloodshed and violence is emerging," Putin said.

The Russian president said the ceasefire agreement had come out of "intense work by teams of Russian and American experts", made easier by the "positive experience" of a US-Russian deal on the dismantling of Syria's chemical weapons arsenal, signed in September 2013.

"All fighting groups should confirm to us, or to the United States, their commitment to this truce," Putin said of the deal signed between Moscow and Washington on Monday.

"The Russian and American militaries, together, will define the territories on which these groups are operating. There will be no military operations against them."

But "with regard to the Al-Nusra Front, the Islamic State and other terrorist groups recognised as such by the UN, a ceasefire is totally excluded. The strikes against them will continue," he added.

Russia and the United States said in a joint statement that the partial truce would come into force at midnight Damascus time on Saturday (2200 GMT Friday).

#NEWSGRAPHIC: More than 270,000 people killed, 4.7 million refugees after nearly 5 years of civil war in Syria pic.twitter.com/ycMDv4U9bC

— AFP news agency (@AFP) February 26, 2016

The United Nations Security Council meeting on the situation in Syria on 

February 24, 2016 at the UN in New York (AFP Photo/Mark Garten)

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 Sergei Lavrov (L) during a news conference after the International Syria Support 

Group (ISSG) meeting in Munich on February 12, 2016 (AFP Photo/Christof Stache)

"The Dysfunction of Darkness" - Nov 14, 2015 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Carroll) - (Reference to Paris/ISIS/Dark-Old Energy/USA+Warning for Governments around the World !!!) - (Text version) New

“…  No More Fence-sitting

We gave you another prophecy years ago. No one is going to be able to sit on the fence in the new energy. There is no government that can sit and watch, because they will all be involved. They're going to have to make the decision to fight the darkness or not. And if they do not fight the darkness, they will then be vulnerable to the dark army. We told you this information years ago. All governments on this planet will eventually be involved in eliminating the dark army. So when the dark army beats on the beehive, those who have been sitting on the fence will be ripped off and will see light and dark and must make a decision. The dark army, by its very actions, is seeding its own destruction. It does not understand light. It only understands one thing: Fear. This represents a very old energy. It goes like this: "If you can make people afraid, you will win any battle." This is an old energy consciousness, and there is truth to it, if you're a victim. If you're a transmitter of light, it won't affect you. You'll know better.

Funding is the Grease of the Engine of Darkness

Everyone on the planet will have to get off the fence in order to eliminate the dark army. Now we have told you before how to do it. And politicians will roll their eyes. Those on the inside of government who know how things work will roll their eyes. You can eliminate the dark army without death. The very thing they're afraid of losing, you can take from them now. Money! How does a dark army work when they can't eat? How will they function when they have no weapons? I guarantee you, even the darkest member of a dark army will go home if they're not fed, or there's no one around to organize them because the leaders are hungry and left. It's impossible, some say. The money is coming from unknown sources, they say. Let me tell you something. No, it isn't. It is coming from very known sources. Much of it comes from the resources of conquered land, but not all. They will start losing their land soon, so they will need funds all the more. If the sources of their income were totally exposed - there are those listening who need to hear this - if the sources of their income were totally exposed, it would make a big difference to the public, who would be shocked.

Let me talk to politicians. You regularly sit across the table from those who are from other countries and who are allies. They smile at you as they fund the dark side. After all, there is money to be made with war! This has been the way of it for years. But this won't last long. Politician, when it's found out that you knew about it, you are the one who will be held responsible. You didn't do anything about it.

I want to talk to Americans, because my partner [Lee] is an American. I'm going to tell you something now, and you're not going to believe it. Many of your hard-earned tax funds are finding their way to the dark army! And there are those within your government who know it. I'll give you an answer as to what to do about it in just a few words: International transparent forensic accounting. International transparent forensic accounting! It is time to clean up the funding of the dark, and kill their ability to make war.***

I have a warning for any of those in leadership who know about where the money is coming from, and are not doing anything about it. Your leadership days are numbered. The light is going to expose it and you will lose. Why not get on the right side of the fence now?

Is this too high-minded? Is this too simple? To think that the world could come together and pull the rug from under the darkness where they sit and the cocoon of money that they're in - could this actually happen? Watch for a wild card! [Kryon chuckles again.]

If you did this, would it change the kind of attack you had in Paris? After all, that wasn't an army at all, but just a few. The answer is yes - for the few answer to the many and were trained by the many. They saw the many as an established core to work from. Without the core, there is no purpose. The few are then on their own, without anything backing them up.

It's up to you listening, not the ones in this room. The ones listening and reading later may not even be into Kryon or channeling, but they hear this and know I'm right. This is not a dark message. It's a light message! The beginning is here. Things are changing. You are witnessing the change as we speak.

There'll come a day when you will never see this happen again, these organized groups of evil. This is the joyful message I have for you today. History will remember these times when the world finally got together and realized where they were going. It is tough now. It changes the paradigm of existence. Lives, governments and business will all start to understand the battle is here and is theirs to win. What is your reaction?

I want you to congratulate, love, and understand those who were lost yesterday [in Paris]. I've said this before: They are on my side of the veil now. They're all right. They're now looking back at you and - we have used the phrase before - they're saying, “We did our part. Now you do yours.” They will return to this planet, all of them, and participate in the beauty of the light you are creating at this time of shift on your planet.

Believe me, the end has already happened. This is the beginning.

I am in love with humanity, because of what I have seen you do.

And so it is.

KRYON

Syrian refugee children to join Rio carnival parade

Yahoo – AFP, 8 February 2016

A Brazilian dancer performs during the first night of the carnival at the
Sambadrome in Rio de Janeiro, on February 8, 2016 (AFP Photo/Yasuyoshi Chiba)

Rio de Janeiro (AFP) - Refugee children from Syria and other conflict-torn countries will be treated to a place in Rio de Janeiro's exuberant carnival parade on Tuesday, UN officials said.

Forty children aged from six to 14 from Syria, Sudan, Libya and elsewhere will parade among thousands of Brazilian youngsters in a spectacle by the Mangueira samba school, the United Nations refugees body UNHCR said in a statement.

The Mangueira is one of Rio's traditional samba schools competing before 70,000 spectators in the city's Sambadrome stadium.

"Dancing in this world of fantasy, colors and rhythms will be a magical experience for them," said Vivianne Reis, head of I Know My Rights, a charity working with UNHCR.

Tuesday sees the climax of three nights of parades in a fiesta of semi-naked dancing and merriment estimated to attract five million people.

European Parliament backs Juncker's refugee plans

European lawmakers have backed European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker's proposals for coping with a massive influx of migrants. The vast majority of the people on the move have been heading for Germany.

Deutsche Welle, 10 Sep 2015

Members of the European Parliament meeting in Strasbourg on Thursday voted overwhelmingly to support Juncker's proposals, with 432 voting in favor of the non-binding resolution and just 142 against, with 57 abstentions.

A statement posted on the European Parliament's website said the lawmakers backed the Commission's proposal to relocate 120,000 asylum seekers from Italy, Greece and Hungary. This came a day after it backed an emergency proposal for relocating 40,000 asylum seekers.

It also said that a majority of lawmakers believed that the bloc's "Dublin rules," which determine in which member state any given migrant is required to register, should be amended through a "fair, compulsory allocation key" taking into account "the integration prospects and the specific cases and needs of asylum seekers themselves."

The MEPs also expressed support for the idea of drawing up a common EU list of safe countries of origin and a compulsory resettlement plan under which members states would be required to take in refugees from third countries.

As #refugeecrisis intensifies, #migrationEU becomes a common challenge. Learn more http://t.co/UE1bqUyRc6 pic.twitter.com/EdiaGYX3Vl

— European Parliament (@Europarl_EN) 10 september 2015

More important than the consensus in Strasbourg though, is how the bloc's 28 national governments react to Juncker's proposals.

EU interior ministers are to meet on Monday to discuss the proposals and several eastern members of the bloc have already expressed their opposition to a compulsory resettlement plan.

The MEPs also called on the EU's foreign policy coordinator, Federica Mogherini to convene an international conference on refugees "with the aim of establishing a common global humanitarian aid strategy." They said that in addition to EU officials, it should include representatives from all of its member states, United Nations agencies, non-governmental agencies, the United States and Arab countries.

The European Union is experiencing an influx of migrants from the south that is unprecedented in the history of the bloc. While Germany alone is expecting to receive around 800,000 migrants by the end of 2015, some European countries have said they are determined to take in as few as possible. While many of the migrants have come from war zones such as Syria, many have also come from the western Balkans, where no major conflict currently exists.

pfd/kms (AFP, AP)

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"Return of the Masters" - Apr 11-12, 2015 (Kryon Channelling by Lee Carroll)

Latin American nations offer to take in Syria refugees

Yahoo – AFP, 8 Sep 2015

Syrian refugees gather at Independence square in Montevideo on September 7,

2015 (AFP Photo/Miguel Rojo)

Brasília (AFP) - Brazil will welcome Syrian refugees with "open arms," President Dilma Rousseff said, as various Latin American nations sought to help with the human tidal wave fleeing the war-torn country.

In a video message marking Brazil's Independence Day, Rousseff said she wanted to "reiterate the government's willingness to welcome those who, driven from their homeland, want to come live, work and contribute to the prosperity and peace of Brazil."

"Especially in these difficult times, these times of crisis, we have to welcome refugees with open arms," she added.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro ordered his foreign ministry to take steps to receive 20,000 Syrians in the country.

Chile's President Michelle Bachelet, meanwhile, said her country also would be willing to accept refugees, without specifying a number or nationality.

"Throughout our history, we have always had our doors open to those, sometimes coming from far away places, bringing their history and cultural to the construction of our nation," Bachelet said.

Leaders of Chile's Arab community, which numbers around 300,000 people, approached the government recently with a plan to offer shelter and support to about 100 refugee families from Syria.

Brazil has taken in more than 2,000 Syrian refugees since the start of the Syrian conflict in 2011, more than any other country in Latin America.

Currently, Syrians are the largest refugee group in Brazil. In 2014 alone, 1,405 were given refuge.

Two years ago, Brazil streamlined the process of taking in such refugees under a program originally set to end this month.

Attorney General Beto Vasconcelos, quoted in local media, reportedly said the the government is considering extending the measure.

Rousseff also referenced the photo of a lifeless little Syrian boy washed up on a Turkish beach that went viral last week and has since become a symbol of the migrant crisis.

Syrian children walk amid a dust storm on September 7, 2015 at a refugee 

camp on the outskirts of the eastern Lebanese city of Baalbek (AFP Photo)

"The image of the child, Aylan Kurdi, barely three years old, touched us all, and presented the world with a great challenge," she said.

But not all settlement programmes have proved successful.

Syrian refugees who arrived in Uruguay last year under a resettlement program protested Monday outside the presidential offices, saying they are living in poverty and want to leave.

"We didn't flee the war to die here in poverty," 36-year-old Maher el Dis told AFP. "This is not a place suited for refugees."

The resettlement program, launched last year under Uruguay's then-president Jose Mujica, aims to take in families with small children, house them and provide them with a modest income.

But the protesting families, who arrived in October, said they are isolated and struggling in Uruguay, which has just a tiny Arab population and a relatively high cost of living.

European leaders are scrambling as bloody conflicts not only in Syria but also in Iraq and beyond send hundreds of thousands on dangerous treks through the Balkans and across the Mediterranean to the 28-nation EU.

On Monday, Britain and France joined Germany in pledging to take in tens of thousands.

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Cuba's Elian Gonzalez, now grown up, hopes to return to US

Yahoo - AFP, 18 May 2015

Elian Gonzalez (R), in a church in Havana, during the celebration of 10th

Anniversary of his return from Miami, on June 30, 2010 (AFP Photo/

Adalberto Roque)

Washington (AFP) - Elian Gonzalez, who as a child was at the center of a bitter international custody battle between his Cuban father and his Miami relatives, now dreams of returning to the United States, he said in an interview broadcast Monday.

Now 21, Gonzalez was just six years old when he was found floating off of Florida's coast in November, 1999.

A rickety boat carrying his mother and several other would-be refugees, capsized, and Elian -- found floating in a car inner tube -- was the only survivor.

Fifteen years later, asked where he would like to go if he could travel anywhere in the world, Gonzalez in an interview with ABC television replied without hesitating: "Los Estados Unidos" -- the United States.

"I want the time to give my love to American people," he added in halting English.

He recalled for ABC the trauma of his mother's death.

"I remember when the boat capsized, when we fell on the sea," he said.

"I remember when I was put on the raft and my mom was covering me and I was raising my head, looking around... and at some point I raised my head and I didn't see her again," Elian recounted.

"I was alone in the middle of the sea."

The six-year-old was sent to live with his relatives in Miami, but soon became the object of an international battle, after his father demanded he be returned to live with him in Cuba.

The dispute made international headlines after Elian's relatives -- and the larger Cuban-American community in Miami -- insisted they would not allow him to return to Cuba, fearing he faced a life of privation and political oppression there.

Eventually, US courts sided with Elian's father and then-US attorney general Janet Reno ordered that US federal agents seize the boy.

Iconic news photos of the April 2000 raid showing the terrified child being taken at gunpoint were beamed around the world.

Little more was heard from Elian, other than when his image was occasionally beamed on Cuban television as a model member of the communist party's youth wing.

Now an adult engaged to be married and pursuing engineering studies, Gonzalez said he has put the traumatic episode behind him.

"For my family it has always been, we always have the desire to say to the American people, to say to each household our gratitude, appreciation and love that we have," he said, repeating his wish to see America.

"I could personally thank those people who helped us, who were there by our side. Because we're so grateful for what they did."

Obama wants cooperation from Central America over immigrants

Tens of thousands of teenagers from Central America are illegally crossing the US border. President Obama has now pressed for cooperation during new talks with the region's presidents.

Deutsche Welle, 26 July 2014

"Parents need to know this is an incredibly dangerous situation," US President Barack Obama warned a few weeks ago, in light of the surge of minor migrants - more than 50,000 this year alone, attempting to cross the Mexican border. Now the presidents of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador their counterpart at the White House to discuss the problem, which has sparked an intense debate in the US.

The meeting had an important function, Dan Restrepo of explained: it was an urgently needed signal for some intensive crisis management. "It is not a problem you can switch on and off," he told DW. "And you can't solve it quickly either - you have to work permanently on the dynamic and complex circumstances."

Obama is under pressure due to the
increasing number of teenage refugees

Carl Meacham of the think tank thinks there is much lost ground to make up: "US policy in this area has been inconsistent - there hasn't been much engagement," he said. But it is doubtful if the summit, which had few tangible results, will relieve Obama in the domestic debate.

There has been a continuous barrage of criticism from the Republican Party, which makes Obama responsible for the humanitarian crisis at the border. How intense the debate is was demonstrated by the deployment of Texan Guards at the Mexican border and the assessment of the deployment of the National Guard by Obama himself.

Scaring people off

Charlie Dent, Republican representative from Pennsylvania, in whose constituency emergency shelters for children have been built, told DW what the Republican majority in the House of Representatives wanted from the meeting: "President Obama has to make it very clear that these children will be sent back," he said. In fact, Obama did threaten fast deportations, and he claimed that the latest decrease in migrant numbers was a sign of success.

But another demand is much more difficult for him to act on. Dent says Obama should "also tell the presidents of these countries that the US will change its laws" to be able to send back the children immediately. To do that Obama would have to change a law signed by George W. Bush that grants minor migrants a court hearing, and the Democrat Party will be unlikely to accept that.

US complicity

The Democrats triggered problems in Washington even before Obama met the presidents from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. Some argued that the US is complicit in the current exodus of unaccompanied minors smuggled across the border by criminal organizations.

"I think we have a shared responsibility," Meacham agreed. "It is true that the United States is a major customer of drugs. On the other hand it is the responsibility [of the Central American governments] to create the necessary security."

Congress is refusing to grant an emergency
program to ease the refugee crisis

At the moment these three countries are seen as strongholds for criminality that force the children to leave. "I talked to a five-year-old girl who came unaccompanied to the US from Central America," said Dent. "She didn't know how to swim, but she crossed dangerous rivers and travelled on the roof of a train to get from Mexico to the US."

No emergency program

So far Dent's Republican Party has refused to grant the $3.7-billion (2.75-billion-euro) emergency program that Obama wants to enable better emergency housing, more immigration judges, and increased border security. They also opposed another one of Obama's pilot projects: to grant refugee status to the children in their countries of origin and therefore spare them from the dangerous voyage to the US.

The Republicans' attitude of total opposition is one of the biggest challenges, says Meacham. "The malfunction of the political system is the other big hurdle beside the crisis at the border," he said. "If we can't act in consensus, not only will the situation at the border get worse, but so will the chaos in the Central American countries."

The White House summit is just the prelude to more talks at the highest diplomatic levels between the US and the three affected states - and Restrepo is expecting Vice President Joe Biden, who attended the meeting, to weigh in regularly.

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