Trade sanctions. Withdrawal of military aid. The Trump administration used both to try to block a measure that was considered uncontroversial and embraced by countries around the world.
In addition to the trade threats, Todd C. Chapman, the United States ambassador to Ecuador, suggested in meetings with officials in Quito, the Ecuadorean capital, that the Trump administration might also retaliate by withdrawing the military assistance it has been providing in northern Ecuador.
“We were shocked because we didn’t understand how such a small matter like breast-feeding could provoke such a dramatic response,” said the Ecuadorean official.
The Trump administration tried to block a resolution by the World Health Organization saying “breastfeeding is good, we should support initiatives that promote it and that help women breastfeed.”
For those who don’t know, companies like Nestlé have a history of promoting infant formula in Latin America and Africa (and maybe elsewhere) by claiming it’s better for kids than breast milk. This is of course false, and even more so in places where water quality is dubious.
The Trump administration has started to screen the political views of American candidates to the United Nations and other International Organizations. Impactpool shares our deepest concern regarding this disturbing behavior.
Impactpool has received a lot of concerns from members regarding a questionnaire recently sent out by the White House Office of Presidential Personnel. It seems that US candidates to the United Nations are being screened on their political views. This news was also reported by Foreign Policy on July 13.
We have had a look at the “Research questionnaire” that has been emailed to staff members with the purpose “to expedite Presidential Personnel’s vetting process”, which, according to Foreign Policy, “focuses on the candidates’ public statements and writings that might reveal their political leanings.”
There are a lot of irregularities in the form that we would like to address. For example, candidates need to mark ethnic heritage, race, and political party. This is highly unusual and very disturbing.
The candidates are also requested to “provide hyperlinks to any social media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) account past/present” with a note ”that it is better not to go through your accounts and delete posts prior to the vetting process as the offending posts are often recoverable by the press in another form.” As most people would agree, being asked to share your private social channels with the authorities is not acceptable.
Also, the candidates are being asked if they have “given speeches on a controversial issue” or written an “opinion piece that has appeared in a traditional newspaper”.
What effect this will have on U.S. citizens working for the United Nations remains to be seen. But, clearly, it has raised a lot of tension among the staff. “There’s a pattern here of testing loyalty. It’s really unnerving people,” said one State Department official to Foreign Affairs.
When a similar loyalty test was conducted of employees at the US State Department’s International Organization Bureau it led to a number of career staff to leave, according to another article in Foreign Policy in June 2018.
Unfortunately, the United States isn’t the only country screening their U.N. candidates’ political views: Russia, Cuba and P.R. China are also doing similar tests of political loyalty.
I got this link through a jobs listserv for UN-affliated positions. So if I were to apply for a research position at the Food and Agriculture Organization studying food security in Mali (a made-up but plausible scenario), I would be asked to provide the Trump administration access to all my social media accounts (including this one, although I make at least a token effort to keep it disconnected from my realname identity), and to disclose that I am registered as a Democrat. Someone would go look up every Change.org petition I’ve signed, every GoFundMe I’ve donated to, would find the local news article where I’m quoted yelling at my congresswoman about the ACA, would find every protest I’ve been a part of...
...and they could use that information to prevent me from being hired for a job with essentially no political ramifications, on behalf of a president who I am sure could not find Mali on a map. Despite the fact that none of it has any bearing on my actual qualifications.
Milyonlarca kişinin severek oynadığı, kodlama ve tasarım aracı Minecraft’ın Eğitim sürümü ile öğrenciler tarafından tasarlanan ve Microsoft Türkiye tarafından gerçekleştirilen Minecraft ile Kendi Dünyanı Tasarla yarışmasında birincilik ödülü “AKA 2018” Projesi ile Aka Koleji’nın oldu. Türkiye’nin 7 bölgesinden, 57 ilden 500’ü aşkın projenin yer aldığı yarışma büyük ilgi gördü.
