The forgotten war: Yemen and human security

This research examines the significance of having all seven aspects of human security. A series of questions were directed toward a sample of Yemeni participants living inside and outside of Yemen in order to get an insight into the daily struggles they face as a result of conflict. The interviews reveal the impact war has on human security and the absence of all seven components of human security put forward by the United Nations. This research argues that security in every shape and form is extremely important as all seven components are interlinked. As the world's attention is on Ukraine and the impact of the Russia–Ukraine War on civilians, this article pushes the reader to question the deafening silence of the world when it comes to the situation in Yemen. Without acknowledgment, raising awareness, and holding those in charge of the war accountable for their wrongdoings, change will never prevail.

Preparing to See Hope: On the Utopic Potentiality of the Stories We Share

I framed my response to your presidential address as a letter in hopes that this intimate form will find you and others in the vein of the words you cite from Audre Lorde, "the personal as political.” Writing to you in this way allows me to aspire after the intimacy denied by the virtual 2021 ASA conference, to imagine what it would have been like to be in a shared space, feeling the urgency of your call for "Love and Resistance in a time of COVID.” This letter, then, might be read as a yearning for social and intellectual associations that have been made dangerous, not least by the COVID-19 pandemic, but also by the increased policing of our work as scholars and teachers in a nation and within institutions organized around the violences of settler colonialism and white supremacist politics hostile to the flourishing of minoritized life and knowledges. Let me begin by thanking you for the story of your experience growing up as a mixed-race Cambodian American adoptee in Valdosta, Georgia. Your evocative descriptions helped ground me in time and place, from the significance of Valdosta as a site of "refuge” during the American Civil War to its transformation over the course of Reconstruction and Jim Crow to the 1980s, when it became the scene of the "most formative” years of your childhood. The reflections you shared on the loneliness you experienced, and the painful "lesson of indifference” instructed by your father, who believed it best to keep the racist crimes committed against your family "to oneself simply because ‘no one cared' and doing otherwise would lead to undeniable trouble and unreconciled hurt,” were deeply affecting and illuminating. Your story finds resonance with the work of Leslie Bow, Lee Isaac Chung, and Monique Truong, who elucidate histories of Asian racial formation and sociality in the US South.1 As a recent transplant to Tallahassee, a north Floridian city that often feels like a part of south Georgia, these texts and your words have helped me negotiate the conflicting feelings and palimpsestic temporal geographies of a place I am still trying to make into home

Guest Editors' Preface

In moments of crisis that test the stability of US nationalism—the civil war, the expansion of American empire, World Wars I & II, the civil rights era, the post-industrial era, 9/11, COVID—a pattern of violence against Asian Americans seems to make an appearance. Nearly a third of the nurses who have died of coronavirus in the United States are Filipino, even though Filipino nurses make up just 4% of the nursing population nationwide.2 Over 1.2 million Asian Americans labor in food-related industries nationwide—at farms, food processing factories, grocery stores, and restaurants—and are placed at higher risk of infection and mortality.3 In the spring of 2021, in the span of two months, lone white gunmen murdered Asian Americans in Atlanta, Indianapolis, and San Jose (all of the victims were essential service workers). In presenting the data, Wong and Liu invite us to consider how anti-Black tropes and invocations of a persistent "Black-Asian conflict" diverted attention away from the role of white supremacy in fomenting an anti-Asian climate. The new White House immediately promised to "Build Back Better" with a sweeping plan to restore domestic stability and the nation's reputation abroad;implied was the beating back of Trumpian revanchism.

Refugees and Immigration Policies

This article looks at the challenges faced in handling the influx of migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees seeking protection, and for others a livelihood. However, at the rate that it had been going in the past, Global North countries found it difficult to handle the sudden influx. Bottlenecks occurred at the borders, and some were kept in detention facilities (US) and others in camps (European Union [EU]). There has been an abject failure in upholding international law, which according to the 1951 Geneva Conventions and 1967 Additional Protocol stipulate, countries are obligated to not conduct refoulement upon those seeking asylum if it is proven that they will not be safe, nor return to any other country where their safety is compromised. What complicates the matter is the current Covid-19 pandemic, as countries are exploiting the circumstances, violating international law in the name of protecting their citizens from the "spread” of Covid-19. A closer look at what America and EU have done to address both issues is done. The article concludes with suggestions on how to reform immigration policy based on the scholarly research found. © 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Displacement and return in the internet Era: Social media for monitoring migration decisions in Northern Syria

According to UNHCR reporting there are over 27 million refugees globally, many of whom are hosted in neighboring countries which struggle with bureaucracy and service provision to support them. With the onset of Covid-19 in early 2020, gathering data on the location and conditions of these refugees has become increasingly difficult. Using Syria as a case study, where since 2011 80% of the population has been displaced in the civil war, this paper shows how the widespread use of social media could be used to monitor migration of refugees. Using social media text and image data from three popular platforms (Twitter, Telegram, and Facebook), and leveraging survey data as a source of ground truth on the presence of IDPs and returnees, it uses topic modeling and image analysis to find that areas without return have a higher prevalence of violence-related discourse and images while areas with return feature content related to services and the economy. Building on these findings, the paper uses mixed effects models to show that these results hold pre- and post-return as well as when migration is quantified as monthly population flows. Monitoring refugee return in war prone areas is a complex task and social media may provide researchers, aid groups, and policymakers with tools for assessing return in areas where survey or other data is unavailable or difficult to obtain. © 2023 Elsevier Ltd

Alexander Rubtsov at the Russian Museum: A Long Journey Home

Traditionally friendly Russian-Tunisian relations have a long history. They are successfully developing in various fields, filled with new content but invariably maintaining positive dynamics. A trusting political dialogue is combined with fairly robust trade and economic cooperation, including in such science-intensive industries as nuclear energy and space exploration. Ties are being strengthened in education and health care, including in the fight against the novel coronavirus infection. Russian language and culture maintain strong positions in Tunisia. Against this backdrop, there is growing interest in common historical heritage. Many details of the formation of the first Russian diaspora in Tunisia, associated with the exodus from Crimea, the centennial of which was celebrated in 2020, are already well known. Back then, at the end of the Russian Civil War, 33 ships of the Black Sea squadron with our sailors and their families arrived in the Tunisian port of Bizerte from Crimea.

The neo‐nationalist ascendency: further thoughts on class, value and the return of the repressed

March 2020. On the borders of EU Europe, with the Covid pandemic threatening human lives, sociality and welfare everywhere, Syrian refugees on the ‘Balkan Route', bombed out of Idlib, are being beaten in the forests with wooden clubs by Romanian border guards before they are thrown back onto Serbian territory for further humiliations.1 Romanian return migrants, fleeing the Italian and Spanish Corona lockdowns en masse, are being told over the social networks that they should never have come back, contagious as they are imagined to be and a danger for a woefully underfunded public health system for which they have not paid taxes. Further South, the Mediterranean is once again a heavily policed cemetery for migrants and refugees from the civil wars in the Middle East and North Africa – collateral damage of Western imperial delirium and hubris – as Greece is being hailed by the European President for being the ‘shield' behind which Europe can feel safe from the supposedly associated criminality. Viktor Orbàn, meanwhile, has secured his corrupt autocracy in Hungary for another indefinite stretch of years after the parliament gave him powers to singlehandedly fight the Covid pandemic and its long-run economic after-effects in the name of the Magyars and in the face of never subsiding threats from the outside to the nation. Orbàn will also continue, even more powerfully so now, to fight immigrants, gypsies, gays, feminists, cultural Marxists, NGOs, George Soros, population decline, the EU, and everyone else who might be in his way. Critique from the EU is in Budapest rejected as being ‘motivated by politics'. Vladimir Putin, too, has just been asked by the Russian parliament to stay on indefinitely in his regal position, so as to safeguard Russia's uncertain national future. Erdogan of Turkey is sure to be inspired and will not renege from his ongoing and unprecedentedly brutal crackdown on domestic dissent and ‘traitors to the nation' while his armies are in Syria and Libya. Turkish prisons will continue to overflow.All these, and manifold other events not mentioned here, are part of processes in the European East that have been continuous (as in ‘continuous history versus discontinuous history') for at least a decade, all with a surprisingly steadfast direction. They appear to be diverse, occasioned by ethnographically deeply variegated and therefore apparently contingent events. Anthropologists, professionally spellbound by local fieldwork, are easily swayed to describe them in their singularities. But that singular appearance is misleading. These and similar events are systemically rooted, interlinked, produced by an uneven bundle of global, scaled, social and historical forces (as in ‘field of forces') that cascade into and become incorporated within a variegated and therefore differentiating terrain of national political theatres and human relationships that produce the paradox of singularly surprising outcomes with uncanny family resemblances. These forces can be summarily described as the gradual unfolding of the collapse of a global regime of embedded and multi-scalar solidarity arrangements anchored in national Fordism, developmentalism and the Cold War, into an uncertain interregnum of neoliberalised Darwinian competition and rivalry on all scales, with a powerfully rising China lurking in the background. Neo-nationalism appears from within this unfolding field of forces as a contradictory bind that seeks to enact and/or re-enact, domestically and abroad, hierarchy and deservingness, including its necessary flip side, humiliation. That is one aspect of the argument I have been trying to make since the end of the nineties (for example Kalb 2000, 2002, 2004), when such forces began to stir in the sites that I was working on and living in: The Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Hungary and Poland.That universalising argument is easily corroborated by events in the west of the continent, which paint a similarly cohesive though phenomenologically variegated picture.2 Marine Le Pen nd Matteo Salvini are still credibly threatening to democratically overthrow liberal globalist governments in France and Italy on behalf of the ‘people' and ‘the nation', and against the elites, the EU, immigrants, the left and finance capital. Dutch politicians, in the face of the global coronavirus calamity, still believe one cannot send money to Italy and the European South lest it will be spent on ‘alcohol and women'. Anonymous comments in the Dutch press on less brutal newspaper articles often echo the tone of the one that claimed that Southern countries were mere ‘dilapidated sheds … and even with our money they will never do the necessary repair work' (NRC 30 March 2020, comments on ‘Europese solidariteit is juist ook in het Nederlandse belang'). Until its impressive policy turn-around in April/May 2020 in the face of the Covid pandemic and the fast-escalating EU fragmentation amid a world of hostile and nationalist great powers, the German government did not disagree. It was Angela Merkel herself who set up the Dutch as the leaders of a newly conceived right-wing ‘frugal' flank in the EU under the historical banner of the Hanseatic League to face down the federalist and redistributionist South. That Hanseatic banner suggested that penny-counting, competitive mercantilism and austerity, and its practical corollary, an imposed hierarchy of ‘merit' and ‘successfulness', must hang eternally over Europe. Britain, meanwhile, has valiantly elected to leave the EU in order to ‘take back control' on behalf of what Boris Johnson imagines as the ‘brilliant British nation' (The Economist 30 January 2020). It would like to refuse any further labour migrants from the mainland, and seek a future in the global Anglosphere, beefed up by a revitalised British Commonwealth where hopefully, when it comes to ceremony, not juridical equality but imperial nostalgia and deference will rule (see Campanella and Dassu 2019).

Implications of the UN Common Agenda for Australia: Renewing Multilateralism

In flagrant violation of international law, Russia has invaded Ukraine. It invokes a right to intervene on humanitarian and security grounds despite the necessary pre-conditions, including UN Security Council endorsement, being absent. In Myanmar, the February Citation2021 military coup has ushered in a new era of serious repression of citizens, violent conflict and human rights violations. ASEAN's 2021 five-point consensus to end the violence and promote conciliation has been largely ignored. These are but two of a number of current global threats which defy unilateral resolution and demand multilateral responses. Others are the looming disasters provoked by climate change;the ongoing Covid pandemic;conflict and the threat of conflict from Syria and Yemen to the South China Sea;the return of repressive Taliban rule in Afghanistan;ferocious civil war in Ethiopia;historically high refugee displacement;and mass migratory movements.At a time when ‘the only certainty is more uncertainty', countries must unite to forge a new, more hopeful and equal path, UN Secretary-General António Guterres (SG) told the General Assembly on 21 January 2022. In laying out his priorities for 2022, he observed, "We face a five-alarm global fire that requires the full mobilisation of all countries”, – the raging COVID-19 pandemic, a morally bankrupt global financial system, the climate crisis, lawlessness in cyberspace, and diminished peace and security. He stressed that countries must go into emergency mode.

Benefits of nostalgia in vulnerable populations

The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered and exacerbated psychological distress, and exposed psychological vulnerabilities, in large swathes of the population. Under challenging circumstances, nostalgia may convey tangible psychological and physical health benefits. We review recent evidence for nostalgia's utility in vulnerable populations, including sojourners and immigrants, civil war refugees, people suffering bereavement, people facing a limited time horizon, and people living with dementia. Having raised the prospect of a positive role for nostalgia in responding to adversity, we next present findings from a series of randomised nostalgia interventions and their impact over time in the workplace, during the COVID-19 pandemic, and at university, respectively. We conclude by offering evidence-based recommendations for future interventions, highlighting the importance of optimal person-activity fit, diversity of content, and accessibility of delivery mechanisms.

Sri Lanka in 2021: From pandemic emergency to political and economic crisis

The political evolution in Sri Lanka in 2021 confirmed the negative predictions that had been made in the previous year, both for domestic and foreign policy. Internally, president Rajapaksa's tendency to centralize power in his own hands, and in those of his family and close supporters continued. The authoritarian trend already visible in 2020 worsened due to the pandemic crisis. The government put forward a project to amend the Constitution and to introduce further changes in the legal system. These initiatives aroused fears for a possible limitation of the civil rights of Tamil and Muslim minorities. The President maintained Sinhala Buddhist nationalism as his main ideological thrust. In terms of foreign relations, the year was marked by the country's growing international isolation due to its refusal to pursue the accountability program on civil war crimes. Moreover, the cooling of relations with India and the US continued, while Chinese influence clearly grew in both political and economic spheres. The economic crisis due to the COVID-19 pandemic caused a sharp slowdown in the national economy.

GOVERNMENT DISMISSAL AUTHORITY OF FALSE CLAIMS ACT QUI TAM CLAIMS: AN ANALYSIS OF THE CURRENT POLITICAL AND JUDICIAL DEBATE

Dating back to the Civil War, the False Claims Act (FCA) is a powerful weapon that the U.S. government (government) wields to combat fraud. In particular, the FCA contains "qui tam" provisions wherein a whistleblower, known as a "relator," may bring claims in the government's name and retain a portion of any resultant recoveries. While the FCA allows the government to dismiss a qui tam claim notwithstanding the objections of relator, there is a four-way circuit split on the appropriate standard of review for such motions to dismiss. From 2003 through 2020, the split was only between the Ninth Circuit's Sequoia standard, which requires the government to demonstrate the dismissal is rationally related to a valid governmental objective, and the D.C. Circuit's Swift standard, which confers nearly unfettered deference to the government. The year 2020 ushered in a new era of judicial debate with the Seventh Circuit creating a third standard based on the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and the First Circuit promulgating an entirely different standard-one that requires the government to provide reasons for dismissal. The First Circuit standard also requires dismissal to be granted unless there is a constitutional infirmity or evidence of fraud. This circuit split was thrust into the spotlight in 2018 when Michael Granston, Director of the Department of Justice (DoJ) Commercial Litigation Branch, Fraud Section, promulgated guidance instructing DoJ attorneys to consider dismissing qui tam cases to curb meritless qui tam cases, conserve government resources, and prevent unfavorable precedents. Senator Charles "Chuck" Grassley (R-Iowa), a life-long whistleblower champion, has publicly criticized these dismissals as pretextual and antithetical to the spirit of the FCA. In October 2021, Senator Grassley proposed an FCA amendment that essentially codifies the Sequoia standard. Shortly before this article was sent to the publisher, the Supreme Court granted certiorari to address this question. This article examines the historical context of the qui tam provisions that ultimately gave rise to the circuit split as well as the DOJ's recent use of its dismissal authority. It further evaluates Senator Grassley's proposed FCA amendment and argues that it does not substantively settle key nuanced issues that continue to drive judicial disagreement. In light of the evolution to a four-way circuit split and the recent increase in judicial divergence, this article argues that the government's dismissal authority is well-suited for Supreme Court intervention. Finally, this article examines why the dismissal authority particularly matters now. With a newly emerging circuit split on whether a denied government motion to dismiss can be appealed and the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act) introducing significant opportunities to commit fraud against the government, it is imperative that all FCA litigants have clarity on the contours of the government's dismissal authority.

NSAIDs in COVID-19, friend or foe?

At the beginning of COVID-19 pandemic the use of NSAIDS was avoided. This was because the previous studies suggesting that NSAIDs may be linked to an increased risk of lower respiratory tract infection consequences. Later on studies involved the patients who used NSAIDs for some chronic conditions and showed no additional harm among these patients. Then many studied assessed the benefit of using NSAIDs in COVID-19 patients for management of pain and fever and showed no additional risk among these patients.

Catch-22: War, Refugees, COVID-19, and the Scourge of Antimicrobial Resistance.

Wars have hidden repercussions beyond the immediate losses of life, well-being, and prosperity. Those that flee wars and seek refuge in safer locations are not immune to the tragic impacts. Of particular concern is the susceptibility of the refugee populations to infectious diseases and antimicrobial-resistant pathogens. This poses a detrimental risk to these disenfranchised populations, who often have limited access to medical care, sanitation, and nutritious and safe food. Furthermore, antimicrobial-resistant pathogens in refugees can be both transmitted to and acquired from their hosting communities. The latter is particularly problematic when the host countries suffer from serious challenges such as limited resources, pollution, and widespread antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Here, we discuss AMR in refugees of the ongoing Syrian war, a conflict that resulted in the largest population displacement in recent history. We argue that Syrian refugees and their hosting communities are at an elevated risk of complicated and life-threatening AMR infections. We also call on the international community to address this grievous problem that threatens the disenfranchised refugee populations and can spill over across geographic borders to affect multiple countries.

Editörden

Prof. Dr. Göktürk TÜYSÜZOĞLU evaluates Kosovo foreign policy in the framework of Small State Approach by applying to the neoclassical realism theory of International Relations. Prof. Dr. Gültekin K. BÍRLÍK discusses the foreign policy implemented by Turkey during the Spanish civil war as an example of the implementation of the Peace Principle in the foreign policy of Atatürk period. [...]Dr. Arda Özkan reviewed Michael E. Smith's book "International Security" for this issue of our Journal.

Introduction: PROD

Since the 1988 U.S. presidential campaign, I have had the privilege every four years of editing the special issues of the American Behavioral Scientist. The 2020 campaign for the U.S. presidency has been historic in so many ways: campaigning in a global epidemic, a truncated spectacle debate series, over $14 billion spent on political advertising, two presidential candidates with distinctly different approaches to Covid 19 and its importance as an issue which dictated/hardly impacted the style, strategy and tactics of their respective campaigns. All of this occurred within a Burkean scene as the most divisive time in the United States since the Civil war, and a failure of presidential leadership to find commonalities that unite us, opting instead to focus on division and rancor us. Within this complex political mosaic is the omnipresent debate on the role and responsibility of the press and social media in crafting dueling mediated realities - some based on fact, with others rooted in fear and rabbit hole conspiracy theories. This spurious spectacle culminated in an unprecedented, domestic terrorist attack by Trump supporters on the U.S. Capitol. In addition, a focus of debate and dialogue after election day in America is the state of polling, as many well-known entities were embarrassed with predictions that did not pan out with the voting public.

Psychological Impact of the Civil War and COVID-19 on Libyan Medical Students: A Cross-Sectional Study.

OBJECTIVE: We aim to determine the psychological status of medical students during the COVID-19 outbreak and civil war in Libya. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted among medical students from 15 medical schools between April 20 and May 1, 2020. The demographic characteristics, generalized anxiety disorder 7-item (GAD-7) scale, and patient health questionnaire (PHQ-9) results were collected. RESULTS: Of the 3,500 students, 2,430 completed the survey. The mean (± SD) score of anxiety symptoms determined by the GAD-7 was 7.2 (5.1). A total of 268 (11%) students had a GAD-7 score of ≥15, which is indicative of moderate to severe anxiety. A total of 1,568 (64.5%) students showed different degrees of anxiety: mild, 910 (37.5%); moderate, 390 (16%); and severe, 268 (11%). Anxiety was significantly associated with living status and internal displacement (P < 0.05). The mean (+ SD) score of depressive symptoms determined by the PHQ-9 was 9.7 (6.3). A total of 525 (21.6%) students had a PHQ-9 score of ≥15, which is indicative of moderate to severe depression. A total of 1,896 (88%) students were diagnosed with mild (PHQ ≥ 5) depression. Suicidal ideation was present in 552 patients (22.7%). Depression was only statistically associated with the year of study (P = 0.009). CONCLUSION: These data highlight that medical students in Libya are at risk for depression, especially under the current stressful environment of the civil war and the COVID-19 outbreak.

Food shopping, preparation and consumption practices in times of COVID-19: case of Lebanon

Purpose>Right after announcing the first cases, several governments worldwide have implemented stringent measures to stop the spread of COVID-19. This disruption in individuals' daily routines transformed food consumption habits. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on food consumption, diet and food shopping behaviors in Lebanon.Design/methodology/approach>The paper draws upon an online survey in Lebanon administered in Arabic and English through the Survey Monkey platform in the period of July 15—August 5, 2020, with 201 adults. The survey findings were analyzed using descriptive statistics, a paired sample t-test and a Phi correlation test.Findings>The research underlined numerous key consumer tendencies that are currently affecting diet and food behavior in Lebanon. Indeed, the study outcomes suggested (1) a move toward healthier diets;(2) a rise in the consumption of domestic products due to food safety concerns;(3) a change in the grocery shopping behaviors (with a rise in online shopping);(4) a surge of food stockpiling;and (5) a decrease in household food wastage. Surprisingly, COVID-19 seems to generate several positive changes toward more sustainable and healthier consumption patterns in Lebanon.Research limitations/implications>These findings contribute to the clarification and critical analysis of the impacts of COVID-19 on food behaviors in Lebanon, which would have several policy implications.Originality/value>The findings of this first study contribute to the clarification and critical analysis of the impacts of COVID-19 on food behaviors in Lebanon, which would have several policy implications.

Running the Joint: Air Force Efforts to Build a Joint Task Force Headquarters

In 2016, General David Goldfein, Chief of Staff of the Air Force, called on 9th Air Force (9 AF) at Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina to develop a Joint Task Force Headquarters (JTF HQ) capability, with the expectation that other numbered air forces would follow. After declaring initial operation capability in December 2018, 9 AF began to move toward full operating capacity. In the spring of 2020, 9 AF was called on to lead Task Force - Southeast, supporting the Federal Emergency Management Agency's response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S. Mid-Atlantic and Southeast. In August 2020, wings and direct reporting units from 9 AF and the 12th Air Force were integrated to form the 15th Air Force (15 AF), which continues the 9 AF mission to prepare to deploy as a service-retained JTF HQ or Air Expeditionary Task Force headquarters. Before 9 AF was integrated into 15 AF, 9 AF leadership and Headquarters Air Force (HAF) asked the RAND Corporation to examine how JTF HQs are formed and identify those factors that influence the selection of a unit to lead a Joint Task Force (JTF). RAND was also asked to explore how the U.S. Air Force (USAF) can prepare for the unique requirements of leading joint operations. This report outlines those issues associated with "getting ready" (how the USAF can prepare to lead joint operations) and "getting the call" (how the USAF can posture itself to increase and enhance its JTF leadership opportunities). RAND conducted this research through discussions with 9 AF staff, observation of ongoing unit training, engagement with individuals across the U.S. Department of Defense, quantitative analysis of trends in JTF formation from 1990 to 2017, and case studies of the recent joint operations Joint Task Force Odyssey Dawn, Joint Forces Command - United Assistance, and Combined Joint Task Force - Operation Inherent Resolve.