OK,
folks, trying again with a little higher resolution and larger image of my early
Central American bath time photo that I posted last time. Let’s see what
happens this time. It now looks like some text will ne underlined, but when it wants to do that, It's hard to erase. I'll try.
Thanksgiving
greetings, Feliz Dia de Accion de
Gracias, Happy Hanukkah!
On
Monday, Dec. 2, at 6 pm EST, I’ll be on Dr. Jeanette Gallagher’s hour-long blog
radio program, a call-in program at (424) 258-9318, where
you may call in anytime during the whole hour. Here’s the link:
From
The Hill newspaper: A key official
in the repair effort for HealthCare.gov
said the site's error rate is now lower than 1 percent thanks to weeks' worth of special improvements were made. Former
White House budget director Jeff Zients, who was enlisted to triage the
website, touted the development as a sign of progress. He noted that there were
no unscheduled outages on the site in the past week, a positive sign.
Rep.
Grace Meng (D-NY), a freshman member of Congress, was robbed
and left unconscious a few blocks from my home, right next to the Capitol bldg.
Va.
State Senator Creigh Deeds (D), a previous gubernatorial
candidate, was stabbed and seriously wounded by his son who then shot himself
to death. Hours earlier, the son had been seen in a hospital emergency room in
an apparent mental health crisis, but apparently no psychiatric bed was
immediately available, so he was released. The details don’t seem to be known.
Many factors can impede a mental health hospitalization: lack of adequate
insurance, lack of mental health treatment facilities, and the patient’s
unwillingness to undergo treatment. However, those voters most bent on cutting
taxes and impeding Obamacare are those targeting the need for mental health
treatment while also promoting gun rights. If the electorate wants low taxes,
no gun restrictions, and no expansion of health care, then these sorts of
tragedies are going to continue to occur. It’s a matter of choices and odds. Not
everything can be fixed. Any course of action has benefits and risks.
We have just been through the 50th anniversary of JFK’s death.
I was living in Sacramento, California, with my husband at the time, hearing
the terrible news on the radio and shedding silent tears. President Kennedy’s
earlier announcement of the formation of the Peace Corps stayed with me
throughout the decades, prompting me to join the Peace Corps later in life. In
all my travels, especially to Africa and Latin America, it’s been common to see
a portrait of Kennedy right there next to family photos and the ubiquitous Last
Supper in a kind of household altar. There’ve been a few American presidents with
that iconic saint-like worldwide appeal: Lincoln, FDR, Kennedy, and, yes,
Obama.
Secretary of State John Kerry has declared that the Monroe Doctrine has outlived its
usefulness and that nations in the hemisphere now regard and treat each other
as equals. Known
as the Monroe Doctrine after it was adopted in 1823 by former US president
James Monroe, the policy had stated that any efforts by European countries to
colonize land in North or South America would be views as aggressive acts and
could require US intervention.
The European Union sent election
observers to the Nov. 24 elections in
Honduras. I haven’t heard about US observers going there. The Nationalist candidate, Juan Hernandez, seems to have won, with
vociferous objections and cries of fraud from Xiomara Castro, Zelaya’s wife, or rather from Zelaya himself in his
wife’s notable absence. I know nothing about the probable winning candidate
except that he has promised to get tough on crime, but I fear that the
objections of the Zelaya faction and their followers do not bode well for peace
and stability there. Also, with 8 candidates in presidential contest, the
winner will not have a majority of the votes. If Zelaya’s wife had won,
probably Maduro would have again turned on the Venezuelan oil spigots, turned
off abruptly when Zelaya was ousted.
Ximoara Castro was an opponent and Juan Hernandez, a supporter,
of a law to regulate new Employment and Economic Development Zones (ZEDE –
Zonas de Empleo y Desarrollo Económico) (the newest version of the
discarded “Model Cities” initiative), approved by the Honduran National
Congress after their last debate. This law is the complement to the amendments
to the Constitution, which paved the way for the creation of these special
ZEDEs where businesses can choose to invest in specific regions with different
rules than the rest of the country.
An article in the Washington Post is headlined, “At one of
the world’s scariest airports, there’s little ‘margin for error,’” referring to
Tegucigalpa airport, which has seen
10 crashes since 1989. It’s very scary to land there and passengers usually applaud
once safely on the ground. Fortunately, it’s not one of the world’s busiest
airports, but several flights a day do land there. Often before my annual trip
to Honduras, friends ask whether I’m not afraid of all the violent crime there.
Well, yes, but perhaps that initial landing is the riskiest part. The take-off
is not so scary. According to the article, regular US deportation flights now
land at the more ample San Pedro Sula airport, 150 miles away.
In an unauthorized referendum
conducted Oct. 31 in the contested Abyei
border region between the two Sudans, 99% of those voting favored going
with the south, which does not surprised me after having been there in 2006. Of
course, the north does not recognize this vote.
President
Obama awarded the Presidential Medal of
Freedom to a Cuban dissident, Dr. Oscar Biscet, one of those arrested in
the 2003 Black Spring crackdown and declared an Amnesty International POC. He
was denied an exit permit by the Cuban government, so his wife received the
medal on his behalf. I once met her in Cuba about 20 years ago. Dr. Biscet, along
with several others, has often been mentioned as a future leader of a
democratic Cuba.
December
10 is Human Rights Day, a time when my local Amnesty Int’l group holds an event to raise
awareness and urge people to write letters on behalf of individuals and issues.
In recent elections for the UN’s
47 member Human Rights Council (UNHRC), some of the winners of the coveted
seats are countries that are among the world’s major human rights
transgressors.
According to Hillel Neuer, Executive
Director of UN Watch “China, Cuba, Russia
and Saudi Arabia systematically violate the human rights of their own citizens
and they consistently vote the wrong way on the UN initiatives to protect the
human rights of others.”
“Regrettably, “added Neuer, “so far
neither the U.S. nor the EU have said a word about the hypocritical candidacies
that will undermine the credibility and effectiveness of the UN human rights
system.”
Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng
stated, “China wants to join the UNHRC not to promote human rights, but rather
to prevent democracies from questioning their human rights record.” Chen,
a blind former political prisoner, was spirited out of China last year and now
lives in New York.
Rosa Maria Paya, a daughter of the late Cuban dissident Oswaldo Paya, commented
that, “The presence of the Chinese, the Russians and the Cuban regimes, is
disappointing for the victims of repression, and it sends a message of
complicity from the international community,” adding that “democratic governments should not share
seats with criminals which behave with impunity since they are not suffering
any consequence.”
It certainly
seems that adding Cuba and some of the other nations to the UN HR Council is
inviting the foxes to guard the henhouse. If the idea is to coopt them and win
them over to the human rights agenda, it could well turn out in reverse. I
believe that the Saudis have declined to serve.
I was
invited along with Amnesty Int’l members to premier release at the Kennedy
Center of a new film, Nelson Mandela: The Long Road to Freedom.
Producer Harvey Weinstein spoke beforehand, along with Sen. John McCain and
former Secretaries of State Colin Powell and Hillary Clinton. There was no
obvious security but guests were pre-screened. Clinton, whose wardrobe has
often been commented on, was wearing an odd bright turquoise jacket with pinched
waist and a flared reaching to mid-thigh over black leggings. The film,
appearing appropriately now at the end of Mandela’s life, is an emotionally
moving, serious, non-genre effort, filmed entirely in So. Africa, with a cast
of thousands and lots of sudden eruptions of violence (as indeed actually
happened) but sometimes with shifts that are barely explained, such as when
Mandela publicly announces his separation from his wife Winnie, his champion
during his incarceration and who herself endured more than a year in solitary
confinement. In reality, his split from her, which ended in divorce, was
apparently triggered by her continuing advocacy of violence and involvement in
the murder of a 14-year-old boy while Nelson was advocating peace and
reconciliation. Also, she was thought to be carrying on an affair with one of
her body guards. These aspects are only hinted at in the film, such as a flash
of a tire necklace-ing of an apparent suspected informer and the Winnie
character reminding her husband that he was gone for so many years. In the
film, she listens to his presidential address over the radio (since, in fact,
she was not invited to his inauguration). The actress playing Winnie was also
present at the Kennedy Center event.
If South Africa has any lessons for other countries, they aren’t
very hopeful.
Blacks succeeded only after continuous acts of
violence, such a fire bombings, and suffered many casualties. Finally, the
apartheid regime gave in.
George Zimmerman is in trouble again. He apparently has a
persistent violent and impulsive streak.
But so many gun-rights advocates rallied around him and donated money to his
cause that perhaps the jury trying him for the Trayvon Martin killing felt duty
bound to acquit him—who knows what they were thinking? Now, they may realize
that he is someone who shouldn’t carry a weapon and that he probably should
have been found guilty of manslaughter after all.
With
the approach of the Sandy Hook anniversary, Columnist Ruth Marcus observes that
despite her son Adam’s odd behaviors: still Nancy Lanza encouraged his interest in guns. She went
target-shooting with Adam and his older brother. They took National Rifle
Association safety courses. I can understand a parent, desperate to find a way
to connect to an alienated child, seizing on a mutual passion. But no person
with Adam’s bizarre behaviors ought to be around guns, let alone have them
within easy access at home. Few parents have to deal with the likes of Adam
Lanza. Many parents, perhaps most, have to learn to find the balance between
devotion and denial, empathy and enabling. Nancy Lanza failed at that task.
Searching her house after the shootings, they found a check she had made out to
Adam. It was dated Christmas Day, and designated to buy a CZ 83 pistol.
Will
mention another book that I’ve just read, The Invisible Wall (2007) by Harry
Bernstein, about the author’s early life on the Jewish side of the street
in a small English town on the eve of WW I. Christians live on the other side
and there is little interaction. Then his older sister falls in love with and
marries a Christian boy. Her family considers her dead and sits shivah. Only
after the newly married couple has a baby does her family acknowledge her and
then the two sides of the street come together to celebrate their union. The
book, his first, was written when the author was 96, a feat in itself. That
story reminded me of a Jewish friend who was similarly mourned when she married
outside her faith, to an African American man, no less. She was not informed of
her father’s death, being only readmitted to the fold decades later when her
own husband passed away, though no one in her immediately family ever referred
to her marriage.
Last
but not least, GW Bush’s artistic skills
appear to be improving. Dubya, appearing on the Jay Leno show, awarded Leno
a portrait that looked pretty realistic with a little individual touch.
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