{"id":27748,"date":"2016-03-06T07:40:16","date_gmt":"2016-03-06T12:40:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=27748"},"modified":"2016-03-06T07:40:16","modified_gmt":"2016-03-06T12:40:16","slug":"we-need-a-new-state-department","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=27748","title":{"rendered":"We Need A New State Department"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anyone can make a mistake, but some people take it to a whole new level. On March 2nd, The Washington Examiner<\/a> reported that the State Department<\/a> had set up a hotline<\/a> to take calls about cease-fire violations in Syria<\/a>. That in itself is not a bad idea. However, they used volunteers with limited abilities in Arabic languages<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The article reports:<\/p>\n

“In order to help monitor the cessation of hostilities<\/a> in Syria, we did set up an information hotline that was staffed 24\/7, where violations could be reported I think via a number of different apps,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner said Wednesday.<\/strong><\/p>\n

“There were some language issues among some of the volunteers,” he added. “And granted, these again are State Department employees who are doing this in addition to their usual jobs.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

“We are aware that there were some language issues, as you note, and we’re working to correct those, obviously, because it’s important that we have Arabic speakers who are able to field incoming calls,” Toner said.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Toner was asked whether proficiency in Arabic was a requirement for volunteering to work the hotline.<\/strong><\/p>\n

“It was, just but, you know, given the time limits on setting this up, probably some of the language skills weren’t properly vetted,” he said.<\/strong><\/p>\n

“Agreed, we should have people … agree,” Toner said when pressed further. “So, we’re working to address that.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

Shouldn’t the State Department have a good idea which of its employees are fluent in Arabic? If the language issue was a concern, could they have borrowed people from other government agencies who were fluent in Arabic? This sounds like a total lack of common sense.<\/p>\n

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Anyone can make a mistake, but some people take it to a whole new level. On March 2nd, The Washington Examiner reported that the State Department had set up a hotline to take calls about cease-fire violations in Syria. That … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[553,9790,91,2720,1178],"class_list":["post-27748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-arabic-language","tag-ceasefire","tag-syria","tag-the-washington-examiner","tag-united-states-department-of-state"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27748"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27748\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27750,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27748\/revisions\/27750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}