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tv   NEWSHOUR  Al Jazeera  December 20, 2018 9:00pm-10:01pm +03

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work we're doing it with a greater sense of urgency and i hope that doesn't go away and since we are moving into twenty nine thousand i want to share one reflection from someone on the hopeful aspects of what to look forward to this is lawrence who was a guest on the stream in august and he says being on the string was one of his highs but also the impeachment march and the national march on the n.r.a. which students help lead after the parkland shootings he sent us a video comment and this is what he told the string. this your young people have won so much and i'm not talking about people very. twenty five i'm talking about. thirteen twelve and eleven pro to the white house exercising their constitutional rights and taking the process for government our congress is no more diverse and more younger than anything in our nation's history and we have done it because more young people have been out there and they have been voting in the ones who could not vote have been exercising their rights to tell people to go but twenty one is
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going to be bigger is going to be better for younger people and you think that we won this year two thousand and. twenty he left us with a smile here and on said the voice of a smiling they are just way to twenty one thousand more rethinking so on the old guy right and i love young people. and he did make me smile and the reason is is that it gives us another opportunity not to take over their movement but to stand with them to amplify their voices but let them have their voices i mean this is this is what we learned from parkland right and this is what we learn from all those young women who ran for congress and won it is literally changing the face of the congress so i think all of us who care about justice want to want to bring in those voices younger and younger what
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a wonderful thing for us as religious people to teach our children that justice is what religion is about it is what the divine is about however described however named and and to. welcome them with open arms generosity rabbi will not be in your prayers for twenty nine thousand what are you hopeful for. i know there are so many things besides that my messianic will come and. clean everything up and a good kind of that and i smoke. i do a little bit of that but i hope and pray and has faith in us i think we have begun to see our own collective power in a new way and force an energy we're seeing in the new incoming congress is is part of that and i think that new hopeful optimistic energy i pray
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that it's going to carry us forward to energize us and particularly around climate change which is. urgent if you'll so now or never. that we start to implement some some policies that can actually start to move the things in a new way that we can start to reverse course and take care of people at the border instead of imprisoning them and separating them from their families that we can pass meaningful gun control legislation and make this the kind of country that cares about saving and caring for human beings very comprehensive prayer rabbi thank him up what do we know prays for twenty nineteen well i'm going to prove. people of faith are able to. regain their their scope and their credibility see to serve dr martin luther king jr said as the conscience of the nation a lot of religious people have been applying on
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a certain element of our certain elements of morality. and many have been completely oblivious about other forms of morality what i'm praying is that as we come out of this complacency we're able to bring the nation back to a moral center and i don't think. that can but be done with faith leaders on praying that we're able to rise to that calling i think that the stage has been set for us to do so for us to finance reform some of the most vibrant coalitions that are out there but in the process of forming those vibrant coalitions not lose ourselves and not lose the vision that we have for this country and for our world i had little hope from i guess many there's hope on line but also appreciation to mean on you tube says i very much appreciate the faith leaders helping to remind us what really matters and what people of faith should be known for. so right now where at the end of today's program i have time though to say to the ship gene
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robinson rabbi. solomon thank you so much for being on the show today i thought i learned so much not just about the last year but also what you're going to be doing for twenty nine thousand strangers to us at the stream so we're at the end of today's program and i always online you can find us at a stream on twitter until the next time take everybody. and there's nowhere to hide is the easiest way to solve this time allow u.n. observers who you invited into the country earlier this year to finish their job i
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haven't said it's a right wing conspiracy or anybody's conspiracy. do you think we're going to see some kind of sea change in the u.s. relationship with saudi arabia we have an obligation there's a journalistic integrity and then in this case it was betrayed totally up from al-jazeera i thought this conviction that everyone has a deep reservoir of thomas realty and if you can give them the opportunity wonderful things start to happen sometimes the simplest solutions are the most impactful. the main things that sets out zero apart from other news organizations is that a lot of our reporting is about real people but about ideas or politicians and what they may want to do but how policy and how events affect real people it's ok it's ok it's ok. for a little more complicated opening up. if this is not an act of creation i'm going to mark the walk. down like my family's status and wealth has benefited from their
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choice to enslave. some of us so even scared to speak out as a surprise. this job isn't just about what's in the script or a piece of paper it's about what is happening right now. in the first episode of science in a golden age i'll be exploring the contributions made by scholars doing medieval islam in the period in the field of. professor jim. brings the brilliance of the past to light. last point credible always doesn't look real all we've done is block out the light from a room and then allow it to come through the small old sort of one of science in a golden age on al-jazeera.
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this is al jazeera and live from studio fourteen here at al-jazeera headquarters in doha santa maria welcome to the news we are waiting for news out of democratic republic of congo where an election two years in the making may now possibly be postponed that recommendation is coming from the electoral commission a big question though is how will the people react in an already tense atmosphere also on the grid the fallout from donald trump's decision to pull u.s. troops out of syria he says he always campaigned on bringing american forces so none of this should be a surprise but his claim that the war against isis was over that was facing a lot of opposition and breaking the travel ban again many motherhood's two year old child is sick and a california hospital has made it to the united states after a public campaign against donald trump's controversial travel restrictions and thousands of south. in taxi drivers are walked off they jumped. right cheri.
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and you can lie message me ravishing if you. can use grid lines on their own streaming online through facebook live in al-jazeera dot com and after a two year wait for their presidential election looks like people in democratic republic of congo will have to wait even longer the polls open in three days but just a few hours ago several of the presidential candidates were actually summoned by the electoral commission to discuss possibly postponing sunday's vote there is now serious doubt the election will take place we are waiting for a news conference from kinshasa for some sort of confirmation on what is going to happen in the meantime malcolm webb one of our team live in kinshasa forests just so close and yet possibly so far.
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it was just a short while ago that the president of the election commission was in that meeting with some of the candidates others sent a representative he said is not possible for the electoral commission to carry out its toll on sunday as federal i think check if you get these the electoral commission also says that some of the voting machines that were calling were destroyed in a fire that happened in a warehouse just last week i could see a poll outbreak in eastern congo in the risk of conflict among other reasons why it said it can't hold a poll opposed to those presidential candidates and their representatives a delay we understand that those representatives of the candidates a meeting right now and discussing whether they would agree to a seven or fourteen day delay and then very shortly after that we should get an official announcement from the electoral commission building just. then we should get confirmation that as expected it all is going to be delayed and should find out
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how long by do you think the people of d.l.c. will deal with that all right i mean if it was a complete cancellation i'm sure there would be absolute outrage but our apartment different have been waiting two years already do you think it will go down all right. being extremely contentious issue since before. you bring to the scene there are regular protests here in the capital organized by opposition and civil society groups demanding for an election because even at that stage people could see that the government wasn't. really electoral commission wasn't going to be able or wasn't willing to sometimes the opposition always said that this was planned by president joseph kabila over stay in power beyond the end of his second and final constitutional mandate that ended in december twenty sixth in the electoral commission said it wasn't capable said he didn't have to do or say. eventually. all them was shaky takes place on sunday but
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within the last even during the campaigns we've seen more violence. killed the further delayed how. can she very quick shift in the. politician. action there in the capital tens of. thousands or just coming out to the streets when you had demonstrations they often broken up violently by the police never giving. them money often used. to see what kind of reaction we're going to get from opposition supporters today she expected to lay ok malcolm we will talk to you again soon malcolm's outside the electoral commission in democratic republic of congo that's the scene inside the live shot of the podium as we wait for that news conference from the electoral commission waiting for some sort of confirmation on whether and it seems is not them saying it will happen that this vote will be delayed possibly seven to fourteen days live on al-jazeera when it happens but you
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know one of the show you the seven years ago al-jazeera produced a series called africa states of independence back then they were calling it as you say africa's sleeping giant where the resources in the wealth but they weren't shared among the people so it's actually kind of interesting to go back and have a look at this film all the potential all the promises from president kabila and comparing it with where we are now search for congress sleeping giant around a zero dot com. and you can get in touch with us as well of course contact details are coming on screen for you now everything is the hash tag a.j. news grid that can be on twitter at a.j. english where you can reply to a thread of tweets there were always looking for your responses there but to use the hashtag of course at facebook dot com slash al-jazeera the line stream is up and running you can comment amongst yourselves you usually do but you can also speak to us as well and that number plus nine seven four five zero one triple one four nine whatsapp and telegram to message just directly. now we should not be surprised at donald trump's decision to suddenly withdraw u.s.
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forces from syria so says the man himself after flagging the decision on twitter on wednesday the president used once again his favorite medium on thursday morning to lay out the reasons why getting out of syria was no surprise i've been campaigning on the years he says and then later russia iran syria and others of the local enemy of isis we were doing their work but it didn't stop there does the usa want to be the policemen of the middle east getting nothing but spending precious lives and trillions of dollars protecting others who do not appreciate what we were doing in the state one more to eat he went on to say russia iran and syria weren't happy about the us leaving because they'd have to fight isis without them quote i am building by far the most powerful military in the world isis hits us they are doomed she has her times in washington d.c. having a look at this story for us how she had another sort of early morning tweet storm from the president on that but is really holding his line on this one with a lot of opposition. right but for the last day also we've had various
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anonymous administration officials brief the media saying oh this is a complete surprise we were blindsided by this is just trump routing foreign policy by whim now we're saying other members of the administration and the military brief back saying no that's not true in fact a select group of administration officials and members of the military knew as early as saturday about this decision several sources now saying the decision was made as a result of a phone call on friday with the turkish the turkish president when this decision was finally made mark perry a frequent guest on al-jazeera who really has excellent contacts with the military with not speaking to us or that were not inclined to speak to us at al-jazeera he's talked to several officials who say everything we. own wednesday about this issue was hatched in that phone call we've seen that from another from another source two three three things three three reasons for this week three themes on this the
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first a decision and this is part of a ministration discussion has been going on for some time a decision has finally been made that in the end the turks are just way more strategically important than the kurds ever will be so that's one thing another source says actually that in that phone call on friday and we haven't confirmed this the president basically said we're going for the kurds you better get out of the way that's one source we that we have not confirmed that but mark perry has said look this is discussions and go over some time with different factions in the military in the administration about this so that's one thing secondly a sense amongst the realists of the administration that the longer that american troops remain in northeast syria and isis and the islamic state is vanquished this will give more of an impetus for the neo cons of the administration say look we're here already let's stop confronting iran more and more aggressively and that's something the realists and some members of the military simply do not want to do thirdly a conclusion reached by some in the administration that this is not a win for putin that in fact if thinks it's
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a win then fine as far as they're concerned syria is a broken country and russia wants to rebuild the place go for it those are the themes that perry says have come up in the conversations he's had with administration officials to support this move. she had there are those who will say the president trombone need does things really for his own benefit things which help him is this one of those things a president who brings troops home that sort of emotive argument but that's the reason why one of the reasons why he was voted in in the first place this was a key campaign promise it's very important among sections of his base particularly in those areas of supply the troops for what seemed to be america's and this was in the middle east he campaigned on this he was voted in it's often the case that as we saw with the president obama that when people when presidents campaign on issues like withdrawing troops from the middle east they're then turned around by the military by those for whom there's never a right time to remove troops from the middle east the question is not whether this
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is part of a great re-evaluation of a trump foreign policy doctrine whether there are real questions now about what the u.s. is actually achieving seventeen years of having thousands and thousands of troops in the middle east all the a force for stability or is it just a waste of money as strong as from people saying it should be up to other regional players to sort things out it's not quite clear whether that fundamental reevaluation is happening or this is just a one off based on all sorts of considerations for the for the moment and that the neocons and the and the others like bolton and pump air will reassert their authority in the coming weeks ok she had pretends he's in washington d.c. with that update for us thank you let's get some perspective now also from the turkish side of things she was talking about the turkish the kurdish issue days i heard it with more from cairo. the iranian and turkish presidents did not address the u.s. decision to pull out of syria even though it was likely on the top of the agenda of
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their discussions for both countries this is a diplomatic when iran considers the presence of u.s. troops an occupying force iran of course a supporter of the syrian government turkey considers this as a win even a u.s. concession to turkey because turkey has been angered by the alliance between the united states and the syrian kurdish armed group the white p.g. which controls this northeastern enclave in syria where the u.s. troops are stationed but the message from the iranian and turkish leaders as well as from russian president vladimir putin is that these three leaders these three countries are still working together on syria all of them mentioning the last enough process the russian led asked enough piece negotiating track talking about deeper cooperation between these three countries so we were thinking about what the social media reaction to all of this might be and sorry lot of the comparisons.
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between this and the last time that the united states decided to clear to declare victory in the middle east it's not quite the same situation but take a series not quite the same the similarities and i'm going to take you back to two thousand and three because at the time it was a different president of the united states and that was george w. bush now this is the moment you're just about to see now he landed on the u.s.s. abraham lincoln the aircraft carrier was just off a sunday ago case having returned from combat operations in the arabian gulf so in a televised address to his nation bush delivered what became known as the mission accomplished speech and name that became controversial a time went on as time went on but nevertheless in it he announced the end of major combat operations in the iraq war. my fellow americans. major combat operations in iraq have ended in the battle of iraq the united states and around my eyes have prevailed.
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because of you our nation is more secure. because of you the tyrant has fallen. and iraq is free. but pulling out of the war of his country was a lot easier said than done because in about a decade and a half since u.s. troops have been in and out of iraq and as recent in fact as orcas have just been just over five thousand of them base in iraq with the u.s. led international coalition spokesman saying that u.s. forces would stay as long as needed to help fight eisel. thank you for that sars so let's have a thing about this why is donald trump the current president so convinced that the fight against i still is actually over some visuals to take us through that will start with the who controls what map i'm not saying he's looked at this but if he
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did he would see that it is just this one area that territorially still belongs to i so in syria the rest of it is either red that is government the light green areas are still some of the rebel areas for example up in the north west and then the yellow areas which are coders controlled areas so that paints one picture but then i did also find this this is a u.n. security council report from the sixteenth of july twenty eighth and it's not that long ago and they were saying a much assume that in the little bit so we can read it some member states estimate the total current eisel membership in iraq and syria to be between twenty and thirty thousand individuals roughly distributed between the two countries so that's not the sign of a war that is over and also got one of the visual i want to show you it's actually from a website called air wars dot org it's a nonprofit project aimed at trying international military conflicts in places like syria and iraq so that's the area there and i'm going to roll a slider along up here so all those i saw areas you see start to shrink over the
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years as the battle goes on so again that does paint the picture of a battle that has been well if not one there is winning going on but then look at the numbers as well the u.s. led coalition estimating only a bit over a thousand civilian deaths whilst this website and its collation comes up with up to eleven thousand and that includes a big spike as you see during the battle of mosul there in late twenty sixteen about two weeks ago lots to talk about with henri barkey who is a professor of international relations at lehigh university author of turkey's kurdish question he's on skype from bethlehem pennsylvania nice to have you with us let's talk about seeing as the kurds are a specialty area of yours how much of a blow is this for them with the united states leaving. well this is a terrible blow because you have to put it in two different contexts this one is
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that this comes to them as a surprise this is after they spent a huge amount of blood to fight isis for the united states and they were not informed in advance they can indeed they buy themselves for such an eventuality but the other thing i would like to point out is that because in general have been there before with the united states back in one nine hundred seventy five's the us supported the iranian efforts with the kurds in iraq against the iraqi regime and when saddam hussein and the shah of iran signed the deal suddenly support for the iraqi kurds collapsed and the saddam's armies moved and massacred people in those numbers so we cycle history in a way is the beating stuff because now we have the turkish military poised on the border with and they have said they're going to go in and sort of gotten caught clean the kurds caught so there may be in kurdish an education vision in the
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kurdish areas of syria which will create another humanitarian nightmare was already seen a humanitarian nightmare created by the czechs enough screen earlier this year so put yourself in the shoes of the kurds for a moment and ask yourself what does an american commitment mean to you absolutely nothing absolutely nothing because united states will use you and dump you like a used handkerchief when that when the moment comes but the other bit of them with this with this decision is that two other parties with this one is if you're going to make a move like this of this consequence to get something we have to. get something from the czechs in exchange get something from the russians and it's and it seems to me that tom just decided to give this as a gift because he couldn't be bothered to think about this because he from the very beginning. yes from the very beginning he was intentionally ruling to. an owl and
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he wanted to do that i really because obama sent it troops and he was going on living and really there is a census i think so i just want to get another question in to you there is a consensus broadly i think that the war against eisel in fact is not over and a lot of what you said points to the fact that they could still be conflicts to come has eisel been degraded enough that it wouldn't flare up again and actually become a quote unquote conflict again or have they been degraded sufficiently. absolutely this is that the other point i was a make or let me i says has not been defeated and as the report you called it was that says the u.n. report says that twenty to thirty thousand isis supporters in iraq and in syria yes they lost territory they call the isis a created the caliphate the caliphate has been physically dismantled but they can come back their leader baghdadi is still out there he hasn't been caught so the if
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the statue of isis is underground far more difficult to to handle at this point in time and they will get the time and they will find the moment and they'll come back at that point you realize that you will not have the kurds to fight them because if i were the kurds i would pull back from from some of the territory leave it open and either the syrian army will move back in if it can in an adult or that it will be able to and isis will come back because of the kurds have to not mobilize essentially to fight the potential turkish intervention so given that isis will find open territory to restart what it is and i think donald trump is going to come to really get this and clearly isn't looms some other position within u.s. government to this the way it was done on monday a message in jeffrey's gave a talk at the atlantic council which attended where he basically said we had three
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u.s.s.s. three goals in syria one to defeat isis the other is to stop essentially iranian influence and he said we will be there until the iranian military leaves and third wanted to have a say in the future governance of syria so that they will be among the presented a government in syria so what happened to all these other goals that you know i says i think elated so this was on monday thirty six hours late. some sense of tweets and undermines the sole. goal of the most important personal syria so we have to watch then i just get a sense that it is carol such as well with henri barkey it's a pleasure talking to you thank you so much for joining us to appreciate is now a video posted by the u.s. mission to saudi arabia responding a bit of a conversation online especially among saudi citizens sorry has been looking into it for us yeah it's quite
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a process because over an educational video produced by the u.s. department about peaceful protests thing and it just got posted by the u.s. mission side arabia as well on its own official twitter account but if any english and in our because well now the video explains how peaceful protests and civil disobedience our power full tools to change over violent ones there's a little clip from you from that to give you an idea. can peaceful protest really make a difference research shows that between one thousand nine hundred and two thousand and six campaigns of nonviolent resistance were more than twice as effective as their violent counterparts. even in oppressive authoritarian conditions protestors can tailor their campaigns to succeed when large nonviolent groups of people organize concentrated methods like protests along with this burst methods like boycotts or strikes even the most brutal regimes have trouble stifling resistance and definitely. now that the data generated a few comments and some sad is all skew why the u.s. is interfering in other countries by posting a video with
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a protest message one of those is right for mubarak and i see and he calls an unjustified three he says he wants it to be withdrawn he also adds that it's inciting demonstrations as well as molten said he says the treaty must be directed to the american people and yellow vests protesters in europe pieces now another posts and is also tweeted that the kingdom of saudi arabia has why is leadership says the american ambassador should be aware of this we offer him not to interfere in our internal affairs as well and also someone has says there's no so-called peaceful demonstrations of saudis we reject even the principle of demonstrations because they bring nothing but destruction. now the tweet comes at a time when the kingdom has been cracking down on dissent i. want to show you because site i was at actually at the top of the list when it comes to censoring its citizens on and off line and human rights human rights watch of and give you that link. reports that saudi arabia syria has actually continued its arbitrary
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arrests trying and convicting peaceful dissidents now dozens of human rights defenders and activists are all serving long prison sentences amongst those of course of the female activists the been protesting for driving now reporters without borders ranks saudi arabia is one hundred sixty not worst country for journalists not out of the list although about one hundred and eighty nations around thanks are your very interesting sort of because the sort of lack of context of the whole video in the first place now moving on after struggling for months to see her dying son yemeni mother has arrived in the u.s. to say goodbye the boy was born with a degenerative brain disorder but his mother had been prevented from traveling to the united states because of the white house's travel ban on citizens from yemen and a number of other countries as well john hendren has more on what has become a pretty emotional story from san francisco. at san francisco international airport
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a long delay finally came to an end neither distance nor war nor the u.s. travel ban could keep this mother from a last farewell with her ailing son nearly two years after applying for a u.s. visa and twenty three months after the trumpet ministration band visas from yemen and six other countries seamus wheeler has arrived this is the vehicle time for our family but we are blessed to be together. the journey to san francisco began in war torn yemen and ends at this nearby hospital there her two year old son of dylan lies on life support with a degenerative brain disease and doctors say only days of life left but this is what a bill is father pleaded with the u.s. state department for twenty eight times i want his mother to be next to him while he was going through and because he was a lot like. bond with them with the mother although both only and abdullah haasan
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are american citizens the u.s. government granted shaimaa a waiver only on tuesday a day after her son appealed directly to the american people in a news conference the family's lawyers say it did not have to take this long cheema they say was clearly eligible for a waiver there you see the sham process and this basically shows that the issuance of our visa this week was not an act of kindness on their part that embassy and apartment of state had a legal obligation to adjudicate shamus waiver requests within a reasonable amount of time and they failed on the application but it is the most bittersweet of reunions the visit took so long that little ability is now one hundred years unable to bring a by himself and unlikely to know his mother is there she says i want to go to the house without take my child go home now when she got right she's not going to take your child home we're going to take his child to the grave because he's done when
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shaimaa received her visa on tuesday only said she wept for the first time in months for joy she was granted her happiness to come see her son and to is that the sense i'm biased here she is going to see her son. go away now after waiting two years they wait for the end together john hendren al jazeera san francisco. now just going through the answers iraq of today i found an episode of four lines that's called between war and the band a yemeni american story really another incarnation of what we've just been seeing there but rather than just point in the direction of it i want to show you a little clip it's about naji a yemeni american who is trying to get us visas for his family particularly one of his daughters who has cerebral palsy and needs medical assistance i look describe what happened in the embassy here and. in my yeah i had been so in a jeep and us so you know. because she was born after she became
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a citizen his youngest daughter could be issued a passport but his wife and two other daughters needed visas. and the difficult time went on best fear about him and how did you feel when you got there and can learn how to now put it into the helmet of the if you see now it's not. that you are not.

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