You may have heard recently that the US is planning a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics, set to be in Beijing, China, but what does it mean? At the most basic level, it means that the US will not be sending any public figures or government officials to act as representatives of the country, but they will be sending athletes to compete. Let’s dive a little deeper into this. You might be asking yourself what caused the diplomatic boycott in the first place. The answer is complicated and nuanced, as most topics in foreign affairs are. Essentially, the US is choosing not to send representatives because of a combination of egregious violations of human rights that are being...
This article informs the reader about a prevalent issue that exists in Nigeria: kidnapping. In Nigeria, over 200 school children remain abducted and schools have become a primary target for this crime. With an “absence of security and...a reluctance to meaningfully engage armed threats,” Nigeria has become an ideal place for these kidnapping gangs. Nigeria’s security crisis stems from government failure, particularly a suffering economy and poorly funded local security forces. Many also blame President Muhammadu Buhari for not addressing this issue. Additionally, Nigeria has a high poverty rate where 40% of the adult population lives off of less than $1 a day. This means that many Nigerians are unable to pay for ransom when their children are abducted or...
In a series of articles published by the Wall Street Journal called “The Facebook Files,” journalist Jeff Horwitz and others uncover internal reports from the company, detailing awareness of multiple harmful policies and practices within Facebook that have not stopped. New information on Facebook’s “XCheck” system –meant to regulate harmful content– reveals that the company kept certain politicians, celebrities, athletes and others on a so called “whitelist” and made them immune to regulations under the platform’s terms and conditions. The reports also features Facebook’s knowledge of the negative effects Instagram (owned by Facebook) has on people’s mental health, specifically the effects on teenage girls; the unregulated use of both Instagram and Facebook by drug cartels and human trafficing groups in...
After 20 years of unsuccessful US military involvement in Afghanistan, attempting to keep the Taliban out of power, the Biden administration was in the process of pulling the last 3,000 US troops from Afghanistan. Then, yesterday, the Taliban took control of the government, and the Afghan president fled the country. The New York Times wrote, “Though not a formal surrender, it might as well have been.” Not only is this an issue of international politics, but of human rights. Under Taliban rule, Afghanistan faces the possibility of reverting to strict interpretations of Islam that deny women the right to learn, drive a car, or do something as simple as go shopping on their own. Many people in Afghanistan...
Welcome back to the Love Nisa blog! It’s a big news day today, so this probably won’t be the last time you hear from me. Let’s get to the news! Breaking early this morning, an article by Ronan Farrow was published in The New Yorker. Titled, “Andrew Cuomo’s War Against a Federal Prosecutor,” the article steps away from the allegations of sexual misconduct and harassment that have been made public by Farrow, other reporters, and the New York Attorney General’s investigation that we wrote about last week. Instead, it focuses on a different kind of misconduct, corruption. The opening anecdote has Gov. Cuomo calling one of President Obama’s senior advisors, Valerie Jarrett, on the topic of the Moreland Commission, a...
