Correction: it was not General Mills’ Marjorie
Merriweather Post herself who was found stabbed to death in her luxury Honduras
spa, it was her heiress and descendant, Nedenia Post Dye. Sorry about that. An alert reader corrected me. Thanks very much.
Snow at last in downtown DC
(seen above through a screen door). Also, we experienced the “polar or artic vortex” with record low
temperatures, 7 F one night. If it’s gotten that low in my more than 40 years
in DC, I don’t remember it. Old Man Winter has suddenly arrived with a
vengeance. Where is global warming when we need it? But even at those
bone-chilling temperatures, sunlight coming through window glass still warms. Fortunately,
it only lasted a couple of days.
It’s official, I will be
participating in Feb. in Operation
Smile and International Health Service (IHS) (ihsmn.org)
medical brigades in Honduras, as
well as other Honduras projects. My plane tickets are ordered and I am working out the
itinerary. The murder of a General Mills
heiress in Roatan, one of the northern tourist islands last month did give me cause
to pause, but I was already pretty committed. I just play it year to year. Much of what appears in this blog posting is
derived from other sources, all of which have resonance and connections with me.
Above are 2 photos from another recent IHS medical brigade, but in a tropical part of Honduras, not in the misty mountains where I'll be serving. The interior shot of an IHS pharmacy and a clinic area beyond, in a temporarily evacuated school buildings, is pretty typical of where we work.
This
below from the Center for Economic Policy and Research. Jan. 3, 2014:
Colonel
German Alfaro, the commander of Operation Xatruch III in Honduras’ Aguan Valley,
personally denounced Annie Bird, co-director of the U.S. and Canada-based
human rights NGO Rights Action, on TV and radio, alleging among other things
that she is engaging in “destabilization work” in the Aguan. The accusations,
which were also covered in La Tribuna and Tiempo newspapers,
came just after Bird accompanied campesinos in the Aguan to the Attorney
General’s office to file human rights complaints, including some against
Honduran soldiers. Alfaro also said he was opening an investigation into Bird’s
activities.
In response, Human Rights
Watch (HRW) issued a statement condemning Alfaro's accusations. This
was followed by a statement today signed by representatives of 33
human rights, labor, faith-based and other organizations.
I'm heartsick personally
right now about the continuing conflict and power struggle in South Sudan, where I was in 2006 on
behalf of a US charity. That very impoverished and war-torn country finally
achieved independence from the north in 2011 and already there is infighting,
apparently based on tribal loyalties, and neither side wants to yield anything.
It's a country without roads, infrastructure, and sufficient water--also with
destruction from wars with the north and landmines all over and lots
of AK-47s everywhere. Guys who are armed and used to fighting don't seem ready
to convert to a more peaceful existence. And tribal loyalties and
rivalries trump those to the new nation. I hope there won’t be the type of
to-the-death ethnic conflict we saw in the Rwandan genocide.
Here’s an e-mail I just got from
Phanuel, a young Kenyan man with whom I worked in South Sudan in
2006, before it became a country. Until very recently, he has been on the front
lines there:
Hi
Barbara
I
am out of South Sudan due to the situation there and currently job searching as
things there are not stable and not sure if we may go back soon.
It’s
sad as conflict between presidential guards led to all the chaos currently
being witnessed now. The situation is bleak as the US embassy is evacuating all
consulate staff and that doesn't sound promising at all.
We
are currently trying to monitor events with hope that all improves.
Best
wishes for the new year.
Kisses
More below on
DR citizenship problem:
Last
week, we had another conference call with our headquarters in London and Amnesty
Int'l members around the world on what to do about a recent DR high court
decree that essentially revokes the citizenship of all arrivals since 1929 and
their descendants, leaving them stateless—I’ve mentioned this before, but
the problem continues and has become more serious, causing panic among Haitian
descendants born in the DR. Of course, defenders of the decree would say their
citizenship was not revoked--rather, they never had it to begin with.
Certainly, there is considerable and long-running animosity against people of
Haitian descent in the DR and, with all the calamities in Haiti, they
continuing coming across the border. Although the DR is much better off than
Haiti, it's hardly equipped to handle the influx, although Haitians
do take on the most onerous jobs in construction and agriculture.
Obviously, the DR president and/or parliament could soften the impact of the
court ruling or even overrule it, but with so much public support in favor of
it, would they do so? This has been a long-simmering problem in the DR, sort of
like many Americans' negative attitudes toward Hispanic "illegals."
We in Amnesty will try to add our efforts to the chorus of opposition outside
the DR. At least, Dominicans in this country have united in solidarity with the
Haitian diaspora against the decree and the Catholic church hierarchy has
spoken out against it.
Boston, Mass., Jan 3, 2014 / 01:04 am
(CNA/EWTN News).- Cardinal
Sean P. O’Malley of Boston is lamenting a court ruling in the Dominican
Republic that retroactively strips away citizenship from any person born after
1929 to parents without Dominican ancestry.
“It is the destiny of the Dominican
and Haitian peoples to share an island,” Cardinal O’Malley said in a letter
last month to the Dominican ambassador to the United States, Anibal de Castro.
“Events of history have left their scars, but I believe that Dominicans and
Haitians of goodwill long for a future of greater solidarity and friendship.”
“Please communicate to your government
the concerns and disappointment of a priest who considers himself a friend to
the people of the Dominican Republic,” the cardinal said.
His letter came in response to the
Dominican Republic’s Constitutional Court ruling that the children of
undocumented immigrants who were born in the country beginning in 1929 and who
are registered as Dominican citizens will lose their status because their
parents were “in transit” in the country. The court’s decision could
affect some 200,000 Dominicans of Haitian descent, including many who have had
no ties with Haiti for generations.
The last three
Uighurs have been released from Guantanamo to Slovakia after a decade.
Those guys should never have been there in the first place as, although they
opposed the ethnic targeting and eradication policies of the Chinese
government, they never posed any remote threat to the US as far as I know.
Slovakia may not have been their preferred destination, but it’s better than
being in prison and from there, maybe they can move elsewhere. They were among
22 Uighurs originally sent to G’tmo for reasons unknown, except for perhaps
being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Efforts to resettle them in the US
were met with resistance from some Republicans in Congress and some uninformed
members of the public, who lumped them in with “terrorists.” They may be
Muslim, but they have not been terrorists, even though in 2013, while they were
locked away, some other Uighurs apparently perpetrated a suicide attack in Tiananmen Square. A number of
Uighurs already live in the US, among them Uighur leader and former Amnesty
International prisoner of conscience, Rebiya Kadeer, a small woman in her 60s with a thick gray
braid, whom I once met a regional conference.
Below is part of an article about problems with the Hague treaty on inter-country adoptions
whose development I’ve followed as an inter-country adoptive parent, also a
board member of Holy Cross, an international adoption agency. Our agency opted
out of the Hague treaty because it was just much too complicated, the costs
were exorbitant, and we didn’t see how it was helping kids. A Hague rep had to
come and spend several days annually with all expenses paid at a costly hotel
plus a hefty per diem to review the files of our small agency. It was too much
work and too much money, for what? To give that person a self-important and
cushy job? The result, while it might have provided some additional safeguards
for adopted children, has ended up stymying adoptions, which was not its original
intent. I’m not prone to blame “big government” bureaucracies, but this is one
that hurts more than it helps. So, I
would support Senator Landrieu’s efforts, as long as they don’t make the
bureaucracy worse. She seems to be trying to get international adoptions to
become the focus of a special department within the State Dept.
Landrieu backs bill to boost foreign adoptions
Legislation
draws bipartisan support, AP, Dec. 27, 2013
|
Much of
the impetus for Landrieu's bill stems from shifting views about the Hague
Convention on Inter-Country Adoption. That treaty establishes ethical standards
for international adoptions, which it says are an acceptable option after
efforts have been made to have a child adopted in his or her home country. The
U.S. entered into the agreement in 2008 with strong support from Landrieu and
other adoption advocates who hoped it would curtail fraud and corruption, and
then lead to a boom in legitimate adoptions.
Instead,
the decrease in foreign adoption by Americans — which started in 2005 — has
continued. There were 8,668 such adoptions in 2012, down from 22,991 in 2004.
"When
I helped to pass this treaty, it was everyone's hope that the number would go
up — doubled, tripled, quadrupled," Landrieu said. "Instead it's down
by 60 percent. That's the best evidence I have that what State Department has
in place isn't working."
In a recent article appearing in the SF Chronicle (Jan. 5, 2014) entitled “How big data can help secure human rights,” Amnesty Int’l USA’s Samir Goswami, managing director of
the program for individuals and communities at risk, argues that: “big
data can draw from information about human sentiments and actions to predict
potential atrocities, reveal patterns of destructive human activities such as
trafficking and help weigh prescriptive policies.
“Recently, Amnesty International USA participated in a New
York City event called a ‘DataDive,’ where volunteer data scientists got
together to apply their knowledge and skills to human rights data.”
The article, written with a co-author, concludes: “The ability to generate human rights information
from various sources from all corners of the globe allows for an incredible
technological tool that can be built with major long-term impacts. With the
proper investments, understanding how data science helps human rights work can
greatly add to our ability to monitor and act upon human rights risks as they
emerge, and contribute to societies truly governed by the rule of law. Technology
can help get us there.”
Have
heard rumors of Edward Snowden hinting at making a sort of plea bargain offer
to the US government, promising not reveal any more information if he gets
leniency when returning to the US. I have no idea if that’s true, but would
imagine that the government would want to make a deal.
I wonder if former Republican Defense Secretary Robert Gates wrote his tell-all
book critical of the Obama administration not only to make money and get certain
gripes off his chest, but, perhaps, also, to make himself a Republican
presidential or VP contender—or otherwise a high official in a future Republican
administration?
Republican noises now in support
of some sort of immigration reform and for tackling growing income inequality seem to derive
in part from business pressure, also from an attempt to demonstrate the
bipartisanship that voters now seem to favor. Likewise, any concessions by
Democrats are designed to show that they too have a bipartisan spirit.
One reason for such a long time between postings is that
Amnesty International, where I have been a volunteer since 1981, decided to
save money by closing an Earthlink account where I’d been doing Amnesty
business for years. I had some files there transferred to gmail, part of the Google system, as is this blog.
Somehow, without my advice or consent, or even knowledge, Google linked that
account to the new gmail address and I could no longer post there. It took some
time to straighten all that out, as, of course, there is no one you can
communicate with directly at Google about such matters.
