Easter Greetings, Twitter Feed, Chavez Post Mortem, Amnesty Meeting & International Conference

Happy Easter everybody, a very early Easter this year. I don’t have my Honduras trip report and photos ready for posting yet—next time, for sure! I’m still getting caught up from my trip. I not only got physically fatigued, but also experienced compassion fatigue and have needed to get some distance. Also, my Kenyan GAO course visitors have arrived and require a little TLC and orientation. They are finding DC weather much too cold—it is cooler than usual for early spring.


Being illiterate about Twitter and barely internet savvy, I was surprised recently to get this welcome notice:

Hello Barbara,

we just promoted your book "Triumph & Hope: Golden Years With the Peace ..." to our ~12,200 followers on Twitter.

You can find the tweet here: https://twitter.com/free_book_promo/status/314821220245856257

We promote this book on our site too. You can find it here: http://askdavid.com/reviews/book/peace-corps/1161

Please re-tweet.

Ask David

Well, OK readers, please re-tweet, however you do that. Thanks.
In the Daily Beast, March 23, 2013, Bernard-Henri Lévy has written a scathing piece “On the Idiotic Posthumous Cult of Hugo Chávez.”

A speaker invited to our local Amnesty International group, Carlos Salinas, told us about his ongoing work with the Kofan people, an indigenous group living in the forests of the Putumayo region of southern Colombia. Over the years, he has gained their trust and has helped them resist incursions from oil interests and the Colombia army. Their efforts have only had partial success, with oil drilling suspended in light of a challenge in the Colombian Supreme Court. Carlos would also like to take the matter to the Inter-American Human Rights Court. He said Senator Leahy and Colombian Jesuits have been strong allied. Will keep you posted if I learn of any other developments.

At Amnesty International USA’s annual conference held the weekend of March 22-24 in suburban Virginia, a recurrent theme was that there will be greater reliance than ever on members and volunteers, such as myself (coordinator for the Caribbean). This is in keeping with the organization’s grassroots structure and also is a necessity because of the widening scope of work and the shrinking staff and financial resources. I have been an Amnesty member since 1981 and have seen many changes in the organization over the years.