Cuba Issues, Venezuela, Refugees, Other Items, Gun
Violence, Life Span
Good news, una
buena noticia. Amnesty International's Cuban prisoner of
conscience, Danilo Maldonado, El
Sexto, whose US visa was initially denied by the US Embassy in Havana, is now
in the US. El Sexto, as you will recall, was imprisoned for 10 months without
charge and on hunger strike after being arrested last December for performance
art inspired by Animal Farm (a banned book in Cuba); he had
painted the names “Raul” and “Fidel” on two piglets. After his release, his
request for a visa was denied by the US Embassy in Havana, a decision he posted
on Facebook. Due to many efforts, that decision was declared a mistake and was
reversed, so now he is in Miami. He had originally been invited to Art Basel,
an international art show in Miami starting on Thurs., but his name was not on
the program because of the visa delay, though someone paid his way to Miami and
he apparently showed up the show. He is scheduled to join us in Washington, DC,
at the Amnesty International office on Human Rights Day, December 10, for a group
lettering writing event.
Posted: 01 Dec 2015 06:30 AM PST
There have
been no positive changes. The U.S. has given away too much at the normalization
talks, and that has let Cuba continue its repression. The wave of Cuban
migration you're seeing in the crisis in Central America right now is the
strongest indication of that.
-- Danilo
Maldonado ("El Sexto"), young Cuban
artist and Amnesty International "prisoner of conscience," who
recently spent 10 months in prison for a critical performance, WLRN, 11/30/15
Article about El Sexto’s receipt of Vaclav Havel Award in
Miami and participation in Art Basel
GENEVA (November 24,
2015) — Yesterday, Human Rights Foundation (HRF) submitted a petition and legal report to the
United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary
executions (U.N. Special Rapporteur), requesting that he send an allegation
letter to the government of Cuba regarding the inconsistencies of the
government’s official investigation into the death of Oswaldo Payá in 2012. HRF documented numerous due process
violations, including damning witness accounts, a grossly inadequate autopsy
examination, and other key pieces of evidence that were overlooked by the Cuban
judicial system.
My readers probably know about the Cubans, now some 4,000, who have gathered at Costa Rica’s border with
Nicaragua, which recently decided not to permit passage, although it has
been going on all year. Now that Ecuador has stopped automatically allowing
Cubans to travel there without a visa, that outflow will end. The latest idea
is to airlift the Cubans over Nicaragua. Who will organize and pay for that?
The US has stayed out of public comment on the situation, seeming to prefer
having Central Americans find their own solution.
The question
that needs to be asked is: If [Cuban migrants] can obtain $15,000, why do they
prefer to invest it in a dangerous escape, rather than in creating a business
or prospering in their own country? The answer is painful and overwhelming:
because here there are no guarantees, nor hope and because their lifespan is
not long enough to wait for the fulfillment of promises of a better tomorrow,
which are like the horizon: moving farther away every time we are near touching
them.
The Culprit Has The Solution http://www.14ymedio.com/englishedition/The-Culprit-Solution_0_1894010597.html
Highlights
from the Atlantic Council's Heartland
poll include:
·
Republicans'
View: Despite
a negative view of Cuba, the majority of Republicans favor the restoration of
diplomatic relations and lifting the travel ban.
·
Trade
Embargo: 58 percent of Heartland voters support
ending the trade embargo -- Ohio was the largest majority with 70 percent. 60
percent of voters believe that ending the embargo would benefit US agriculture.
·
Travel
Restrictions: Nearly seven in ten Heartland voters (67
percent) want all travel restrictions to be lifted, including 66 percent of
Independents and a majority of Republicans.
·
Engagement
-- the Best Option: Over
six in ten voters in each state -- and 68 percent of overall Heartland poll
respondents -- agree that the United States did the right thing in
reestablishing relations in July.
Follow along on Twitter: #ACOpenCuba
However, critics of that poll say it was a very select and
tiny sample of mid-west agricultural producers wanting to increase exports to
Cuba, chosen to obtain the desired outcome. The poll only surveyed 150 people in
each state. Any poll with such a small sample size is universally considered
unreliable.
------------------------------------
I did not see Alan Gross on “60 Minutes” because I don’t
have TV. His release was the only tangible benefit to the US from the
Obama/Raul Castro accords so far.
http://news.yahoo.com/alleged-spy-gross-felt-abandoned-us-cuba-145610278.html;_ylt=AwrC1CrzclhWOB8AczXQtDMD;_ylu=X3oDMTBybGY3bmpvBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMyBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNzcg--------------------------------------------
I volunteered to translate some documents for a Venezuelan woman applying for asylum
here after she was fired, repeatedly threatened, and physically attacked more
than once after joining Partido Popular,
the political of imprisoned Venezuela opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez five
years before. Legislative elections in Venezuela are scheduled for Sunday.
---------------------------------
Commentators
not enamored of the leadership of Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Brazil
think Macri’s victory in Argentina
may signal a trend in the other direction, while those sympathetic to those
regimes take pains to characterize Macri as “rightwing” and his victory as just
a fluke. Of course, there is just so much he can do to reverse the previous
course.
Pope Francis visited
Kenya, where a national
holiday was declared.
At a
recent parent-teacher meeting at a local
school, where I was an interpreter, a son’s academic performance had
reportedly fallen precipitously after his father was deported, a sad, but not
surprising, result of an abrupt family separation.
A very skilled carpenter from Honduras working for me brought along as helpers his
teenage son and step-son, both from the Yoro province of Honduras. The boys are
now together in the same 11th-grade class. The son came first, presenting
himself at the border, saying he was looking for his father. He was held in
detention in Texas for a month, then the father went to pick him up. Next, the
step-son followed--my carpenter's wife is his mother--but he was detained 7
months before his release. The carpenter and his wife also have a younger
American-born daughter, a not atypical Hispanic family configuration. The boys
had not seen their parents for more than 10 years.
According to my friend
at the conservative-leaning Hudson Institute, Syrian and Iraqi Christians
are not even in the refugee resettlement stream because they don’t stay in
refugee camps, being subject to persecution and isolation by majority Muslim
refugees there. Instead, they may be
assisted by local churches or local humanitarian organizations, or simply
create their own informal settlements. So, the idea of accepting only Christian
refugees, put forward by some countries and US states, would be hard to
implement. But, she told me, a group of Christians is on its way to Slovakia,
which has expressed a willingness to accept only Christians.
While
we feel immense sympathy for Syrian children being rescued (or for those drowning)
in turbulent seas, those same youngsters ten years hence could become objects
of suspicion and subjects of radicalization efforts. Will some of today’s
appealing young refugee kids become tomorrow’s alienated teens and young
adults, vulnerable perhaps to jihadist appeals? Or, at least, feared to have possibly
become vulnerable? It’s a vicious circle—because they are suspect, they feel
stigmatized and may then actually become dangerously alienated. It has
happened, including to Somali kids growing up in Minneapolis. Few Muslims are
terrorists, but a disproportionate share of terrorists turn out to be Muslims all
around the world. There is a whole ideology and network supporting them and
they are willing to die for their beliefs. The Hungarian prime minister has
pointed out that 2 of the Paris attackers came to Europe just in October’s
Syrian refugee stream. Of course, they needed to have support from jihadist
sympathizers already in Paris to carry out their attacks. And it’s also true
that while 99% of Syrian refugees are not jihadists nor likely to become
radicalized, it takes only a handful to wreak havoc and death.
To
a much lesser degree and extent, a similar to vicious circle is happening in
low-income majority black and Latino communities here in the US—people living there
are suspect, so they have fewer opportunities, then they commit more crimes,
making them more suspect as a group.
South Korea’s per capita
economic output is reportedly 20 times that of North Korea. North Koreans are, on average
shorter than their southern compatriots and their average life expectancy is several
years shorter.
Perhaps now, the Russians
will become the West’s allies in the Middle East, as happened against the
Nazis in World War II?
The American woman killed
in the terrorist attack on a Mali hotel, Anita Data, was a former Peace Corps
volunteer. Another American was killed in
the Paris attack. There have also been attacks in Nigeria and Cameroon. It
seems jihadists are going all-out now to hurt and scare people all over the
world. Of course, Washington, DC, is on the target list.
Here at home, gun violence continues with the shooting near a Planned
Parenthood clinic, obviously by someone who should not have had firearms. If,
indeed, his rampage was motivated by anti-abortion sentiments, killing people
hardly makes sense. Now, his deed has been eclipsed by the San Bernardino
killings. There is a reason that the rate of gun deaths in the US is many times
greater than in any other developed nation—we must be doing something wrong. Having
a lot of people armed is not preventing gun deaths. In Georgia, a 6-year-old
girl finds a gun hidden under a couch cushion and kills herself. Enough said.
Guns, improperly handled and stored, obviously are lethal. A man in South
Carolina possesses over 12,000 guns, many stolen. What is to be done?
Hand-wringing and prayers are insufficient. I am just grateful that the handgun
that went off when preteen boys were playing with it (after finding it at a father’s
bedside) only injured my then-11-year-old son Jonathan in the foot, a painful
injury, but one from which he thankfully recovered.
If humankind keeps
extending the average lifespan (despite gun violence, wars, and terrorism),
using more medical and other resources to do it, then world population will
keep growing older and using up more resources. Does each of us have an
obligation to live a limited lifespan, to limit our time occupying this earth?
Population is growing now not only because of infant births and child survival,
but because of elder survival (myself included), often thanks to expensive
medical interventions, not only lifetime drugs, but joint replacements,
pacemakers, stents, dental implants, hearing aids, and cataract removal. What
about putting a consensus cap on a normal lifespan, say 100 years, after which
extraordinary measures will not be taken to prolong a life—no more surgery or
heroic measures, just palliative care, with pain and infection relief—could
that be supported? Of course, I can afford to contemplate a 100-year life span
now, being far from that age, but as each of us approaches it, we might change
our mind.
