Neither Donald Trump nor Raul Castro attended the Summit of the
Americas
OAS secretary general: 'We cannot allow the Cuban people to
continue to be oppressed'
The secretary general of the Organization of American States urged
participating governments at the VIII Summit of the Americas to put more
pressure on Cuba and “not allow a convenient indifference in the face of a
dictatorial situation.” “We cannot allow the Cuban people to continue to be
oppressed by an infamous dictatorship, a dictatorship that carries the weight
of decades of human rights violations … tortures and executions. We cannot
allow that,” Luis Almagro said Thursday during a gathering organized by two
organizations, Victims of Communism and CubaDecide. “We have to be faithful to
fundamental ethical values.” (Miami
Herald, April 13, 2018)
The passing of the Cuban presidency on to Miguel
Diaz-Canel represents an historic shift away from the Castros, but probably
won’t make much difference, especially as long as Raul Castro is still alive
and heading up the overarching Communist Party. Diaz-Canel, even if he wanted
to, would not dare stray very far from Communist orthodoxy.
I wrote my
Confessions book to make the case,
through the example of my own life, not only that unsung people like me and you
are integral to the social and political fabric, but that governments and
political leaders should be judged by what they do and its impact on others,
not by political or partisan labels. Fidel
Castro for decades tried to depict his regime as caring about the little
guy by ostensibly providing food, health care, and education to all citizens,
yet alleging relentless ideological attacks by the mighty USA/ Goliath.
Actually, Fidel was the greater ideologue. Barack
Obama, for all his many thoughtful policies, did go somewhat overboard in
accommodating Havana, as did members of the Democratic Party, who followed in
lockstep, posing for photo-ops shaking hands with Raul Castro and shunning Cuba’s genuine democracy and human rights
activists. The US Embassy in Havana, which had allowed democracy activists to
send secure e-mail via its computers, no longer allowed them access, instead
reserving the computers for students selected by the regime. Except for MLKing
associate Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.),
the Congressional Black Caucus has shunned
afro-Cuban rights’ activists out of a misplaced loyalty to Fidel.
Fully expecting
Hillary Clinton to assume the
presidency, I wrote my book, hoping to persuade “progressive” folks to hold Raul
Castro to the same standard as any other head-of-state. I also wrote a series
of Cuba-themed on-line articles in Huffington
Post and Democracia Participativa.
With a friend who had donated to Hillary’s running mate Tim Kaine’s campaign, I
was planning to make my pitch to one of his staff members, whose name my friend
had been given. I’d also scheduled a talk on my Cuba/Latin America book for the
day after the election at the Chappaqua public library in the very town where
Hillary lived. I had hoped to influence someone close to Clinton. Of course, only
8 people showed up to my talk and they were definitely downhearted and
understandably not very fired up about Cuba or Latin America. So that plan
backfired. We all know that Donald Trump took office instead and that Cuba has
subsequently largely faded from the world scene. Contrary to what Fidel so relentlessly
invoked and Trump’s own emphasis on personal loyalty only to himself, we should
never pledge loyalty to any political leader. A leader needs to earn our trust, not demand it before the
fact.
Speaking
of loyalty, Trump, the accidental president, is giving James Comey’s book a big boost by trying to trash it. He would have
been smarter to have just ignored it or dismissed it with few words. Now that
Trump is on the warpath against still another well researched and carefully
worded book criticizing him (so far, best sellers by Hillary, Wolff, and now
Comey), he is likely to take out his vengeance, as before, by hurting
vulnerable people who have a hard time fighting back: immigrants, American
Muslims, Medicaid and food stamp recipients, and federal employees. Since Trump
himself is illiterate, it would be hard for him to rebut his accusers with his
own memoir because the only folks willing to write it for him are discredited
political hacks and he would be likely to get himself into even more hot water
by lying on the printed page. I’ve been allowing one rightwing website into my
in-box, just to see how that thinking goes, but now they, like the Democratic
sites, are starting to metastasize, so it may be best to shut them all down. All
sides use emergency language and, of course, ask for money, money, money.
Before
they married, James Comey’s wife, Patrice,
was a Peace Corps volunteer in a remote village in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Comey, visited her there and became very
ill with malaria, so she took him to the hospital in the middle of the night,
which saved his life.
Facebook seems to have become extra careful
now, asking for a password before allowing access.
Unfortunately,
though not surprisingly, the State Dept. human rights report this year has many
omissions, among them no mention of the DR’s
anti-Haitian-descendants’ policy—that is, its policy of considering anyone
whose antecedents came to the DR after 1929 to be a non-citizen—something, in fact,
applied only to Haitian descendants. This year’s State Dept. Human Rights Report
has many critics, including those of us with Amnesty International.
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/04/20/state-department-human-rights-report-changes-540776
I graduated from high school in Bogotá, Colombia, many years
ago and also have an adopted son born in Colombia, so have strong connections
to Colombia. Colombia may have
celebrated the signing of peace accords between the government and FARC rebels and
paramilitary factions, but peace does not yet reign. Two defenders of the
post-war rights of civilians caught in the crossfire and still suffering the
effect of the civil war are now making a US tour and met with some of us at the
Amnesty Int’l USA DC office: Ofelia
Castillo of Tierra Patria in Cartagena and Sandra Bermúdez of Bogotá. Many rural
Colombians and ethnic minorities have not been afforded justice or allowed to
return to their ancestral lands.
Here’s a statement related to their efforts from
Amnesty International’s website: Amnesty International has denounced the lack of
comprehensive protection of rights defenders and their families and urged the Colombian authorities to introduce
measures to guarantee the protection of civilians and to dismantle paramilitary
groups. Our campaign Unprotected
Peace advocates for improved protection measures for communities at
risk but it will highlight the alarming situation of Human Rights Defenders
attacks in Colombia and the lack of effective protection mechanisms. In
the context of Colombian presidential election, the campaign will promote
dialogue about this issue in the electoral debate in Colombia and will help
showcase the dire situation HRDs in Colombia now face. For more information on
Amnesty International research and campaigns:
Nicaragua (again, a matter of my personal
interest as I’ve been many times and was an election observer there in 1990)—at
last count, 10 protesters were reported killed;
Amnesty International
press released on attacks against peaceful protesters: https://www.amnesty.org/es/latest/news/2018/04/nicaragua-authorities-must-protect-the-peoples-right-to-protest/
GONE!!
My two Bhutan (female) visitors had two (male) short-term visitors from their office whom felt I could not accommodate, having become less tolerant of confusion in my old age. I insisted they stay at a nearby Air B&B, though they did come over to eat at our house and gave me a jar of Bhutanese honey.
The population of the whole country of Bhutan (a small, isolated traditional Buddhist kingdom) is the same as that of Washington, DC, so here you see a fairly good portion of the Bhutanese population right with me in my living room.
Recently, had the good fortune to reunite with some old buddies from a travel story-telling group called Traveler’s Circle, including with our original organizer Mark, who drove all the way from Vermont. Here are a few Traveler’s Circle friends at our reunion just as the party was getting underway.
Traveler's Circle reunion, 2018
I did file for an extension and
paid my estimated taxes on time,
planning as usual to finally file in October, as I do every year. My taxes,
though not huge, are complicated, as
I'm self-employed.
My
daughter Stephanie is now doing
biology research on Midway Island,
of WWII fame, at the tail end of the Hawaiian chain. It has pretty much
reverted to its natural state, so is a gold mine for biology research. It’s so
far from Oahu that it took them 4 days to even get there (a thousand miles from
Oahu, I believe) and she is incommunicado now on that island until mid-May.
Son Jonathan is slowly getting used to
having lost his left index finger.
In
my prayers, I ask “Deliver us from evil,”
and you know what evil I’m referring to. Yet, despite the many challenges to
human life here on earth and even in our own small corner of Washington, DC, I’m
grateful that at my age (never mind how many years!) to still have such a full
and rich personal life, still able to remain engaged and productive and fairly
mobile while having no car and, more importantly, despite the many tragedies I
have endured and the numerous ongoing challenges I now face. It’s also
gratifying to have this forum as a sort of personal diary to document the
salient events of my life and to share them with a few self-selected readers,
including members of my own family. I learned a lesson from working for 16
years at the American Occupational Therapy Association, namely that everyone
seeks their own subjectively defined “purposeful activity.” I’ve taken that
lesson to heart.
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