Just back from Honduras, still in reverse culture shock mode. Will soon post my trip report and photos, though not immediately, as going to San Francisco for Amnesty International’s annual conference, this being the 50th anniversary of that organization, as well as of the Peace Corps. From there, will go on to briefly visit my kids Jonathan and Stephanie in Hawaii—it’s my birthday, Jonathan’s, and that of Steph’s husband Paul, all in the same week. Coming back, I plan to arrive the very same day as two visitors from Africa, a man from Kenya and a woman from Zimbabwe, both attending a four-month course in accounting and auditing offered annually by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). So, no rest for the weary. But this is an interim report. At least you know I am now back safely from a trip that, overall, was successful, though somewhat arduous, as usual.
While I was in Honduras, a government no-smoking policy for public places was announced. In the local Hispanic press here in DC, it says that people may not even smoke in their own homes, though I never heard that in Honduras.
On March 1, the official start of the Peace Corps 50th anniversary year, the Empire State Building in NYC was lit up in red, white, and blue lights.
My first post-trip interpretation assignment occurred at an ortho clinic. Sometimes unexpected events arise after the assignment is over. The 60+ patient had been driven there by a younger friend with a little daughter. But, after leaving the friend in the waiting room while the client was having x-rays and an exam, we emerged to find her gone. We looked for her in the parking lot in vain, then went back into the clinic to borrow a phone to call her. Reportedly, she said she had had to go to work and we were taking too long. My client claimed not to know how to get home, so we waited for the bus together and I waited with her again at the nearest metro station to catch the right bus to her home. Then I got on the metro to go home myself. Hope she made it. Not only did she have language and physical problems, but some cognitive challenges and appeared pretty helpless in deciding what to do after her friend had left. As she was waiting for her second bus, she told me, "Tomorrow, when that woman asks me to take care of her daughter before and after school, I will refuse--she left me stranded."
On the first anniversary of hunger striker Orlando Zapata’s death, government mobs interrupted a march of the Women in White shouting "¡Nada de zancadillas, le partimos la siquitrilla!", "¡pin pon fuera, abajo la gusanera!", [Never mind just tripping you up; we’ll split your backbone! Hey, ho, get out, down with the nest of worms!] Those who leave Cuba or who are considered disloyal are referred to as “worms,” reminding me of the Hutus branding the Tutsis as “cockroaches.” When I was last in Cuba in 1997, looking for my late foster son’s family to inform them of his death from AIDS, Cuban authorities refused to help me because he was a “gusano,” a worm. (I found the family anyway.)
German Catholic theologians recently called for an end to priestly celibacy and for allowing married and women priests. Bravo, I say.
Now, I’ve heard from Woman’s Day that the date of the article where I appear as a “late bloomer” has been bumped over to April 17 (not April 1). When the fact-checker called me beforehand, I learned that no mention of my book whatsoever appeared in my section, not even that I had ever written about my Peace Corps experience. Apparently that was because one of the other two “late bloomers” is an author and having two would be redundant! I’m very unhappy about that and protested about it, as you can imagine, though to no avail. We are not the masters of our fate! I was discovered through my book, they got a free copy of my book, but now the book cannot be mentioned because that’s the claim to fame of another subject? She apparently writes historical fiction set in Scotland, where she has never been, and she’ll get plenty of publicity for that. The magazine reportedly has two million readers. Not only did I frankly hope to sell more books via the article, why I participated and devoted so much time to begin with, but my book has several messages that I consider important and would like to put out to the reading public about grieving the loss of a child, being an older PC volunteer, and the little-known people of Honduras. I was lured into participating under false pretenses, bait and switch, as it was my book that first called me to their attention. I even gave up an interpretation assignment when their photographer was coming from NY to take my picture, since the ones I had submitted were unsuitable.
From the questions I was asked by the fact checker regarding the article, it sounded like too many editors had gone over it. I am reportedly identified in the article only as a “freelance interpreter.” Could they say “freelance interpreter and writer” or even just “freelance writer,” if they cannot afford another word—“writer” is actually a few letters shorter than interpreter? Then somebody might be moved to search for my book on Google or Amazon. The answer was “no.” And, as far as I can tell, there are no letters to the editor and they could scotch that also. But maybe there is an on-line feedback section that the public can see. If so, will mention my book there. Everything else in the article seemed to have gotten garbled, for example, that my son had died after surgery, not after an accident. That I slept in a hammock when my daughter visited, when it was she who did so. I was said to be very concerned about poverty in Latin America—well, yes, I am—but that is not the main lesson of my Peace Corps experience. It’s kind of cliché-ish to focus on poverty as a generalized, abstract concept (which I never do in my book or presentations) and on blowing out my birthday candles and making a wish to join the PC, which is apparently a big part of their story. That did happen, but, to me, is incidental, not key. And, if anything, the excesses of life in the USA impact me more than Honduran poverty and reverse culture shock, even now, on my annual trips, whenever I return is greater for me than the shock of going there. I cringe to think of what the eventual article will say and how far it may deviate from reality. They should have let me write my own damn story! As Jimmy Carter once said, “Life is unfair.” People now tell me you should sign an agreement before an interview. I was flattered at being asked and just assumed it would include my book. I thought this was finally my one lucky break, after confronting so many life challenges.
I do appreciate the New Yorker all the more now for the depth and, in most cases, accuracy and balance in its reporting. A Woman’s Day photographer can be flown from NY to DC to take my photo, but the same care was not taken with the text of the article. Isn’t the article supposed to be interesting and instructive for readers, as well as good for selling magazines? Of course, I find most articles in women’s magazines repetitious: dieting, cooking, child care, beauty, fashion, and pleasing your man, all of it tied in with advertising. At least in this article, an older demographic is targeted—a recognition of the aging population, something a little different and a reaching out to a new audience.
Of course, when I complained, the editors threatened to cut the article even more. They might even cut the whole damn thing! I realize editors are in full charge and they want to sell magazines and advertising most of all. I wrote for years for a small magazine, OT Week, at a professional association and even we were mindful of our advertisers and always tried to tie in with them, never to offend them, so I can only imagine what it’s like in a national women’s magazine with a two million circulation. Profitability is paramount and articles’ content incidental.
If misery loves company, another author commiserates: I'm so sorry about this. The one thing worse than not getting media attention is...getting media attention. What you are experiencing is TOTALLY TYPICAL and just goes with the territory. I had years with my first book of just this sort of thing. The only thing you can do to protect yourself is BEFORE the interview, get them to sign all sorts of agreements, which they will never do, but you can try.
I’ve been hearing and reading commentaries lately about the sudden drop in birth rates around the world, not everywhere, not yet in the Arab world, but even in developing countries, causing an overall aging of world population. European countries, Cuba, China, and Japan are examples, for better or worse, of birthrates well below replacement. Economics, education, urbanization are all cited as reasons, surely valid, but I haven’t heard any pundit mentioning the obvious, the increasing availability and acceptability of contraception. The pill, now 50 years old and used by an estimated 100 million women worldwide, surely is making a dent in the birthrate. UIDs, contraceptive injections, condoms, male and female voluntary sterilization, all have become more effective and accepted in my lifetime. Couples are opting to have only one or two children, or none, something rare among sexually active spouses in bygone eras. At the same time, more people are surviving and living to a ripe old age thanks to medical advances, so population aging has become a reality. Every medical advance, while welcome, comes with its own side effects. The only way that the US has kept replacement levels steady is through Hispanic births, something not appreciated by those wanting to rescind birthright citizenship and deport Latinos. Those Neanderthals should be glad young people are being born here who will support them as they age—not only financially, but by actually providing hands-on personal care in nursing homes and elsewhere.
WikiLeaks cables on Honduras reveal that Zelaya came into office being quite pro-US, just like his predecessors. But this changed when he decided that his alliance with ALBA (Hugo Chavez’s group) would help him extend his term in office. As a condition of accepting Venezuelan oil, he reportedly agreed to declare that the FARC guerrillas of Colombia were not terrorists. The cables paint him as an opportunist motivated not by principle, but by wanting to stay in power.
Some noteworthy developments regarding Cuba are that the government’s 10% tax on remittances has been lifted, leading to soaring remittances, which may help Cuba out of its economic doldrums. Another is the re-establishment of the cultural exchanges that took place during the Clinton years. Already, Cuba has more visitors from the US (Cuban-Americans) than from any other country except Canada. With exchanges once again permitted, the number of visiting Americans is likely to soar, since almost any endeavor can be considered a cultural exchange. My first visit to post-communist Cuba in 1993, totally on the up-an-up, was for a film festival, allowed then as a cultural exchange booked through a NYC travel agency, which, I suspect, is now back in the Cuba travel business. Most of Cuba’s POCs have now been released and have gone into exile in Spain, as per an agreement brokered by the Cuban Catholic church. And, at this writing, American Alan Gross, age 61, is on trial in Cuba, threatened with a 20-year sentence. AID contractor Gross, arrested in December 2009 for bringing electronic equipment into the country, has the same Cuban lawyer as the Cuban Five, five Cubans convicted of spying in the US in 1998. This hints that a prisoner swap may in the works.
Not only Cuba, but China, have been muting any reporting on the uprisings in the Middle East, not wanting to arouse memories of Tiananmen Square. And, internet reporting on what has been happened has been blocked. Can you imagine if hundreds of millions of Chinese rose up? That would be a far bigger challenge and harder to resolve than Egypt or Libya.
A blog reader had this to say about the last posting, on January 30: While retaining my basic “cold dead fingers” stance on gun control, I’ll have to say that the feds should firmly encourage municipalities, educational facilities, &c to promptly supply to gun dealers the names of people like Loughner who damn well shouldn’t be allowed near firearms. I believe, as well, there should be more information-filing requirements on gun shows.
I think you’re wrongly oversimplifying the Second Amendment business, though. We talked about its application to personal weapons stashes in my Con Law class in about 1960. There was no need to go beyond arming state militias at the Constitutional Convention because taking away people’s hunting and home protection equipment was unthinkable. It’s also true that in the days of black-powder-only firearms, the danger to public safety was way less. Unfortunately, from my POV, Scalia’s majority opinion in Heller was dangerously lame. It won’t take much to overturn it, especially if the forces of gun control choose their battle wisely. & then the pendulum will go in the other direction.
I think you spend too much emotional energy attacking the Republicans. Who bloody cares what Sarah Palin does or says or whines? Just ignore her. Also Boehner. You read the thing in the New Yorker – he’s a cutout; when it suits his masters to remove him from the scene, it’ll be done.
More on the gun issue from former Governor Howard Dean: We can both protect our second amendment rights and keep our communities safe from illegal gun sales.
I was given an "A rating" by the NRA eight times during my years as Lt. Governor and then Governor of Vermont. Guns and hunting are part of our way of life in Vermont. But I don't think any Vermonter or gun owners anywhere can argue against common sense changes to our background check system to make our communities safer and more secure.
And common sense changes are exactly what Mayors Against Illegal Guns is proposing that President Obama and Congress take action on right now. They have a two-part goal. First, we already have laws that make it illegal for guns to be sold to felons, drug abusers or the mentally ill. The problem is that states and federal agencies are not required to make sure these prohibited purchasers are included in the background check database. That must change.
Second, it's time to stop the sales of guns without a background check at all. Right now, anyone can go to a gun show and purchase as many guns as they want no questions asked, no background check, nothing.
It's common sense to fix these two loopholes and make America safer from illegal gun sales.--------------------------------------------------------------
The article below came in just after the last posting, but is still relevant, though who is focused on the DR or Haiti these days?
Dominican crackdown on Haitian migrants sows fearBy JACOB KUSHNER and DANICA COTO, Associated Press Feb 1, 2011
JIMANI, Dominican Republic – The Dominican Republic has deported thousands of illegal immigrants in recent weeks, sowing fear among Haitians living in the country and prompting accusations its government is using a cholera outbreak as a pretext for a crackdown. In the largest campaign in years to target Haitians living illegally in the Dominican Republic, soldiers and immigration agents have been setting up checkpoints and conducting neighborhood sweeps, detaining anyone without papers and booting them from the country.
Erickner Auguesten, a 36-year-old father of three who has been in the Dominican Republic illegally since 1991, said agents stopped him as he exited a hospital where his pregnant wife was getting a checkup. "When we left to get some food, the police pulled up and told me to get into the truck," he told The Associated Press in the border town of Jimani. He said a friend who works for the border patrol helped him sneak back in.
Hundreds of thousands of Haitians live at least part-time in the Dominican Republic, enduring frequent discrimination and the constant fear of being deported. A cholera epidemic in Haiti that has killed at least 4,000 people and sickened 200,000 has made matters worse.
Dominican officials eased border controls and halted deportations for humanitarian reasons after the Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake near Port-au-Prince that killed an estimated 316,000 people and devastated the already impoverished nation. But right at the one-year anniversary of the quake, the deportations resumed — with greater enforcement than has been seen since 2005. More than 3,000 people have been handcuffed and sent across the border in the past three weeks, including some legal residents who were simply caught without their documents, according to migrants and advocates.
"They grab them from the streets," said Gustavo Toribio of Border Solidarity, an organization that provides assistance to migrant workers. "They don't care if they have children, if they have property. They only ask them for their documents."
The government denies that any legal residents have been deported. Dominican immigration chief Sigfrido Pared defended the deportations, saying his country cannot be an escape valve for Haitians fleeing extreme poverty and political instability.
The United Nations estimated before the earthquake that some 600,000 Haitians were living illegally in the Dominican Republic, which has a total population of nearly 10 million. Dominican authorities say that number has since grown to 1 million, most of them there illegally. "It is very easy for some countries or some organizations to criticize the situation in the Dominican Republic," Pared said. "No (other) country in the world has a border with Haiti. No country in the world has a Haitian problem like the Dominican Republic has."
Dominican officials say the immigration crackdown is necessary to prevent the spread of cholera from Haiti, which shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic. So far there have only been about 300 known cholera cases in the Dominican Republic — with one fatality, a Haitian migrant believed to have contracted the disease back home. Even in Haiti, the disease has slowed in recent weeks amid a nationwide treatment and education campaign. However infectious disease specialists warn that cholera could still rebound in Haiti, and the Dominican Health Ministry says it can't afford to take any chances. "The ministry is in charge of maintaining epidemiological vigilance and health control along the border, as in the whole country," spokesman Luis Garcia said.
Many Dominicans support the deportations, saying they are fearful of contracting the disease. "It's a threat to our country," said Secondino Matos, a 50-year-old truck driver. "They (Haitians) are our brothers — but not the illegal ones. This country is drowning in them already."
Spread by waterborne bacteria, cholera causes rapid dehydration but is treatable if caught soon enough. The key to controlling it is early treatment and making sure people have access to clean water and sanitation.
Dr. Robert Tauxe, a cholera expert with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, praised the Dominican Republic for reporting its first cases so quickly and launching strong public education efforts. He declined to comment specifically on the deportations, but said there's little evidence that border controls, in general, can effectively contain the spread. "It's a little hard to point to success in that," Tauxe said.
Some activists allege that cholera is just an excuse, and the mass deportations are actually driven by racism and xenophobia. Dominican-Haitian Women Movement director Sonia Pierre noted that many road checkpoints are in areas that see only domestic traffic, and thus are unlikely to catch immigrants bringing the disease in from Haiti.
Many of the deportees have lived for many years in the Dominican Republic, and sending them back to Haiti increases their risk of exposure to the disease, she added. And when they inevitably try to return to lives and jobs, migrants could bring cholera back with them. "If they want to confront cholera, this isn't the way to do it," Pierre said.
Pared, the immigration chief, denied that officials are repatriating migrants who have been in the country for a long time. The Foreign Ministry and Migration Office said the operation is focused on Haitians who are coming into the country illegally, but there are tens of thousands in the country with no papers so it's often not possible to know who is a recent arrival and who has been there for years.
On a recent day in Jimani, dozens of trucks and people on foot lined up at the border crossing along a hot, dusty stretch of dirt road. Immigration agents briefly detained two vegetable sellers until a man in a passing SUV persuaded them to let the women go.
In addition to the deportations, Haitians say the crackdown is making their lives difficult in other ways: Bus and taxi drivers are now reluctant to transport them because authorities have been impounding vehicles carrying illegal migrants and handing out $270 fines. The increased border security not only makes it harder to cross but also has driven up the price of bribing Dominican border guards and migrant smugglers' fees.
Many Dominicans view their chaotic and impoverished neighbor with suspicion, even hostility. The country marks its independence not from Spain's departure in 1863 but from the end of a Haitian occupation two decades earlier. Darker-skinned Haitians are frequently discriminated against, and the Dominican Republic denies citizenship to people of Haitian ancestry born in the country by claiming they are "in transit" —even when many have been there for generations. Some even say the deportations don't go far enough.
Angelita Villaman, the leader of a neighborhood association in the city of Santiago, said she and others want all Haitians in their community gone by Independence Day in late February. If not, she says, she'll turn them in. "We regret their situation tremendously, but we can't handle them," Villaman said. "The entire world should take on Haiti's problems, not the Dominican Republic."
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Woman’s Day Photo Shoot, Goodbye Barney, Honduras trip, PC Budget, Baby Doc, So. Sudan Vote, Alan Gross, Etc.
OK, folks, don’t hold your breath, but I’m one of a trio of so-called “late bloomers” being featured in the magazine Woman’s Day, April 1 edition, as I mentioned once before. The photos I had submitted apparently were not acceptable, so a local groomer and a photographer from New York were sent to take some better ones. We took photos at my house, the nearby Eastern Market, the local Riverby bookstore that carries my book, and in front of Peace Corps headquarters but were not allowed to go inside. Of course, only one photo will be selected. I hope they sell a lot of magazines, because that one little photo involved a lot of expense. I wonder if they will show our faces looking out of bright flowers to illustrate the late bloomer theme?
On Feb. 23, I attended a memorial Mass for a member of my small Catholic congregation, Communitas. His name was Barney, he was 45 years old, and he had Down Syndrome. Barney died of early onset dementia and other complications typical of Down’s people. It seems unfair that those born with such a disability should also be afflicted with early decline and death, but, of course, life is not fair. Barney was an ardent fan of the Washington Redskins and a pretty good Elvis impersonator. He was friendly and funny. For 20 years, he worked in a restaurant near his home and once hosted us at a luncheon there. He had devoted parents, two brothers, many friends, and a girl friend. He had a rich life and he enriched ours. Only in the last year, did he start going downhill fast. We will miss him. And I do feel for his parents, having lost their son.
Late on a Sat. evening, a friend and I noticed a middle-aged ordinary-looking white woman wearing a clean wool coat start laying down newspapers to sleep out on the sidewalk in a sheltered corner under an overhang. My friend ran over to give her an old quilt that she carried in her car, but the woman refused it. However, she did accept a proffer of a little cash. That night, it definitely got below freezing. I shivered, thinking about sleeping out in Honduras where it only gets down to about 45F, cold enough. I know of some shelters, but not near where the woman was located and, by that hour, they would have been full and have already locked their doors.
Won’t comment on the substance of Obama’s state-of-the-union address, as enough pundits have already done that, only to say that it’s refreshing for a change to hear an articulate, intelligent leader who enunciates his words clearly (unlike some current Republicans who seem to have marbles in their mouth). But, of course, the guy is not a magician.
Coming up is my annual Feb. trip to Honduras for participation in medical brigades and various projects. I won’t be returning until early March, so watch this space sometime after that. Now, at age 72, I don’t know how long I’ll have the strength, finances, even life, to continue with these missions, but plan to keep on going as long as I can. Each year, I wonder if this will be my last trip? And since I’m leaving soon, a lot of different items are gathered together in this posting in a kind of potpourri. Hope I won’t wear out your eyes or your patience.
According to the local Spanish-language press, Honduran President Porfirio Lobo is proposing the creation of model cities with amenities and without crime. Where, how, and with what funding this would be achieved, is not specified, but it sounds like an admirable idea, especially the no crime part. I do remember something similar being done after Hurricane Mitch, when so-called model towns were built at some distance from Tegucigalpa. In my book, I mention one I saw, Ciudad Espana, rows of identical little cinderblock houses. Last Feb. when I was in Honduras, I met a blind woman who comes into Teguc every weekend to sing and play guitar at restaurants with other blind musicians. She lived in Cuidad Espana with her husband and three kids and told me that stores had sprung up there and also regular bus service into the capital. Indeed, crime, she said, was less than in the city, so maybe Lobo is on to something At the blind school, she shared the room that I was already sharing with Martha and Julissa. I believe I’ve already mentioned on this blog that Martha, who had always been in poor health, died several months ago and that Julissa was unceremoniously returned to her birth family for the Nov.-Feb school vacation. Now when school starts again, she will be staying with other girls. I must take her more of the gloves she inexplicably likes so much—small comfort after such a loss.
The Hispanic press also mentions that Honduras is hosting an “Afro-descendant” summit in the Caribbean port city La Ceiba next August, with representatives from Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Puerto Ricao, and the US invited.
I was sent an article from the Wall St. Journal (“New Prize in Cold War,” Jan. 15-16, 2011) on a Cuban doctor defector. He was serving in Gambia and is now in Miami, as are five other Cuban defectors from his medical mission. Of course, he is not working as a physician now, but as a “surgical assistant." Passing the highly sophisticated-English language medical exam is tough, expensive (several hundred dollars), and I think then applicants still have to find residencies in this country and many hospitals reject foreign grads, even if they've passed the test. Of course, Miami is full of Cuban doctors not working as such--though most try to get into some sort of medical work. And their families back in Cuba do suffer reprisals, as this defector’s family has.
A reader also shared a terrible story about a young Canadian woman singled out for an extensive and intrusive airport search in Newark, down to her underwear. You have to wonder if it was just random, whether she had some special attributes (like a name similar to one on a no-fly list), or whether it was, as suggested, maybe prurient interest? I hope she will complain to the proper authorities.
A Sunni Muslim center in Cairo that had been in dialogue with the Vatican has cut off ties because of the Pope’s call for Christians being targeted in majority Muslim countries to stand-up for their rights non-violently, even though they have been attacked violently. The center, named al-Azhar, reportedly dubbed the Pope’s remarks “insulting” to Islam and Muslim countries.
I would recommend an article in the New Yorker (Jan. 24, 2011), “The Hot Spotters,” about how a few outlier patients use up a disproportionate medical resources. A case is cited of a grossly obese man whose care totaled $3,500,000 in a single year. However, experiments focusing on such high-utilizing patients, providing them social and other supports plus monitoring and education, have resulted in greatly reduced costs. Of course, as medical costs get reduced, so do payments to medical providers. As the article observes, “one man’s cost is another man’s income.” That is indeed the resistance to reigning in health care expenditures. Each profession, each interest, is trying not only to protect, but to expand its piece of the economic pie. I was acutely aware of that when I worked for an association of health professionals. But the brakes have been put on at last, not only in the medical sphere, but in general. Living on credit and projections of future gains, as we in the US and in the world have been doing, has reached a logical and inevitable end.
That hard reality has also hit the Peace Corps. Here’s somone confirming my worst fears, mentioned earlier, after the federal budget was not approved in the lame duck Congress:
Because of the on-going Continuing Resolution and the subsequent budget worries, Peace Corps Headquarters is scaling back on growth plans. The Agency will level off at 9,500 Volunteers this year and depending upon whatever budget is eventually passed, the overall numbers may drop again. The Obama Administration has told all agencies to scale back their growth plans. And that means you, Peace Corps!
Sorry, Rajeev. You won the battle (s) but you lost the war. [A reference there to former volunteer Rajeev Goyal, profiled in the Dec. 20, 2010 issue of the New Yorker, who had worked tirelessly and creatively to increase Peace Corps funding.]
R. Sargant Shriver, founder and first director of Kennedy’s Peace Corps initiative, has died at age 95, after suffering from Alzheimer’s for the last seven years. We former Peace Corps volunteers owe him a big debt of gratitude.
With MLKing Day just passed, I was reminded that my late former husband and I were in the massive crowd on that summer day when King gave his “I Have a Dream” speech. He was just a tiny figure standing in the far distance and we could barely hear what he was saying. Little did we know then that he and his words would rise to such prominence.
In all the discussion, drama, and argument about the Arizona shooting rampage, I find myself feeling some empathy for the young shooter’s parents. Surely they were concerned about their son, but he was legally an adult and their influence over him was limited. Commentators allege that “the mental health system failed,” but there is no coherent and comprehensive “mental health system” (that requires public organization and money—both taxes and “big government,” if you will) and even if there were, each and every act of violence cannot be prevented nor every person who enters treatment be made well. We do need a better system to reduce the number of firearms circulating, or, failing that, to prevent unstable people and criminals from obtaining firearms to the extent possible, measures gun lobbyists decry. What about giving gun manufacturers subsidies not to produce guns, like we do to farmers for not planting crops?
The giant Las Vegas gun show opened with gun enthusiasts buying up everything, fearing that the Arizona shooting may result more gun controls. Of course, gun-rights spokespeople say guns have nothing to do with shooting injuries and deaths. "The recent tragedy in Tucson was not about firearms, ammunition or magazine capacity," said Ted Novin, spokesman for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, "It was about the action of a madman." Since we cannot always control or predict the actions of “madmen,” or apparent accidents like the wounding of two students in an LA school, one critically, some controls on gun availability would surely help. My younger son was shot in the foot at age 13 when kids were playing with a handgun that the father of one boy kept in his bedroom for protection. Fortunately, my son’s injury, though painful, was something he recovered from in a few weeks. It could have been otherwise.
You would think Sarah Palin is the person injured now, not Giffords. “I’m so misunderstood,” she reportedly complained on the Hannity show. She’s been uncharacteristically and mercifully quiet since. Congressman Alan Grayson cites examples of threats that he and at least six other Democrats besides Giffords had received recently, including telephoned and written death warnings, being burned in effigy, and having had a coffin left. I haven’t heard of any Republican lawmakers receiving such intimidations, so calls to tone down the rhetoric “on both sides” have rung a little hollow. Only one side, it seems, has been cranking up the rhetoric and getting dangerously close to the point where it crosses over into action—“reload,” “take him out.” Free speech is not protected to the point where someone is free to shout “fire” in a crowded movie theater. Interestingly enough, although Scalia, the great originalist on the Constitution, delivered the 2008 DC gun rights decision that defined it as an individual right for the first time, in fact, linking gun rights to the second amendment didn’t begin until the 1970s with a push by the NRA. In 1789, when the second amendment was being debated, it was only discussed in terms of arming state militias.
I hope voters will react against the merely symbolic and unproductive House vote to repeal the health care law. It is one thing to propose constructive changes, another to take up valuable time with a repeal destined to go nowhere. And why did House Speaker Boehner refuse Obama’s invitation to ride to Arizona in Air Force One and to attend the China state dinner? Not necessarily because he’s a human rights advocate. Because he didn’t want to appear to be too chummy with Obama by breaking bread with him? If he were sincere about wanting to work in a bipartisan fashion, he might have taken the opportunity to accept Obama’s hospitality, using it as a chance to express or advance positions he favors. But, no, it appears Republicans are not really interested in working with Democrats, rather, bent on undermining the government to give themselves an advantage in 2012, even if it may hurt the country and the economy. At least, that’s how I read it. But some from both parties have now sat together in the chamber, a good sign.
Baby Doc Duvalier has returned to Haiti after 25 years in exile, after the current president, Rene Preval apparently allowed return. I was in Haiti soon after Duvalier was ousted, was an election observer when Aristide was elected in 1990, and returned there once more since. After Duvalier had left, people celebrated and breathed a sigh of relief that he and his brutal Tonton Macoute enforcers would no longer intimidate them. A new era was anticipated in Haiti. However, since then, matters have gone downhill and now some old-timers look back nostalgically to the Duvalier days when there was little civil strife, Haitian factories regularly turned out goods, and tourists visited. Baby Doc’s recent return to cheering supporters brings the threat of even more disruption to this fragile nation. And if Aristide comes back, as he is apparently considering, more disruption. I’m broken-hearted about all the calamities this poor, but once vibrant country, has endured.
A Haitian-American close the politics in his native country opines that Baby Doc will be indicted and tried. However, as with Pinochet, he will never serve time. He said that Duvalier had suffered a mild stroke last year, so his health might be the excuse to keep him out of prison. Finally, under pressure and amid credible allegations of fraud, apparently Preval has agreed to take the name of his favorite, Jude Celestin, off the run-off ballot, leaving it a contest between former first lady Mirlande Manigat and popular singer Michel Martelly.
No doubt, authoritarian Arab regimes (which describes most, if not all, of them) have been viewing developments in Tunisia with great alarm, and now demonstrators in Yemen, Algeria, and Egypt have been following suit. Regarding Egypt, Obama seems to be walking a fine line. And the fact that the Tunisia uprising was triggered or at least amplified via the internet cannot have escaped the Cuban regime, which will redouble its efforts to keep its citizens away from the internet, even if that slows economic development. Without internet and cell phones for the most part, and with an aging population, unlike the youthful Arabs, Cubans are less likely to rise up and, indeed, most of them probably don’t even know what’s taking place in the Arab world. Members of the old regime in Tunisia did seem to be trying to save themselves by hitching onto the new bandwagon, but many citizens saw through that effort and may have stymied their efforts.
Cuba’s self-described “Generation Y” blogger Yoani Sanchez was named for another international press award that she was unable to receive. About the pending mass layoffs from state industries, she has commented on her recent blog entitled “Daddy State and His frightened Children” (Jan. 10. 2011). Since ordinary Cubans do not have internet access, Sanchez is thought to hand off flash-drives to visitors to Cuba to post for her after their departure. She says she is “blogging blind” because she never gets to see her postings online nor are Cubans on the island able to view them. However, among Cubans with computer equipment, flash-drives may also be passed around hand-to-hand within the country.
Nina Shea, a friend from the right-leaning Hudson Institute think-tank, has had a long-running concern with Sudan. She has written an article in National Review online called “Don’t Forget Sudan’s Slaves” (Jan. 17) with some troubling information about ongoing slavery in Sudan, usually southerners abducted by northerners. When I was in south Sudan in 2006, I met a woman whose son had disappeared on a trip north, whom she feared had been abducted into slavery.
Now Ronald Reagan’s son and namesake has come out with a new book saying what we had often suspected, that his father was already getting Alzheimer’s during his second presidential term. I seem to recall some odd remarks by President Reagan at the time and reports of him nodding off during meetings. Older brother Michael Reagan, however, disputes this claim.
I come from a family of architects, so I read with interest an article in the Atlantic, Oct. 2010, called "Design within Reach" by Douglas McGray, about architect Chris Downey of San Francisco who suddenly lost his sight, but is now able to read raised plans printed by a special Braille-type computer.What did I tell you? I had said that if less than 95% voted for secession, I would be surprised. Now that it’s closer to 99%, I am not surprised.
January 21, 2011 NYTimes
South Sudanese Vote Overwhelmingly for SecessionBy JOSH KRON and JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
JUBA, Sudan — Nearly 99 percent of southern Sudanese voters have chosen to split off from northern Sudan and form their own country, according to preliminary results of an independence referendum conducted this month. The commission that ran the referendum said Friday that 98.6 percent voted for secession, and 1.4 percent voted for unity, according to more than 3 million votes cast, which brings the largest country in Africa a step closer to splitting in two.
The commission said that the results were still incomplete, and that they were being continually updated, though all indications point to the vote being overwhelmingly for secession. Election officials have also said that the turnout soared past the 60 percent threshold necessary for the referendum to be valid. The official results are due to be released Feb. 14.
“The last counties are about to report in,” said Aleu Garang Aleu, a spokesperson for the referendum bureau in the southern capital Juba. Voters in nearly every state in the south chose independence by 99 percent; in Eastern Equatoria, only 229 people voted for unity with the north out of 455,466 votes, according to the preliminary results.
But southern Sudanese living in northern Sudan were more ambivalent — 42 percent opted for unity and 58 percent for secession. Many southerners work in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, and they may fear that secession will mean that they have to leave, though citizenship questions have yet to be resolved.
Now the wait begins. Southern Sudan will not achieve formal independence until July 9, when the United States-backed peace treaty that put the referendum in motion is set to expire. By then southern Sudan hopes to pick a national anthem and a name; leading contenders are Nile Republic and South Sudan.
But there are still a number of delicate and potentially combustible issues that need to be resolved before Sudan can peacefully break in two, namely how the two sides would share the south’s sizeable reserves of crude oil and what to do about the Abyei region, which straddles the north-south border and is claimed by both.
Fighting this month in Abyei claimed dozens of lives, and Western diplomats worry that the region could threaten what has been an otherwise remarkably peaceful and orderly referendum period.
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Envoy allowed to meet with jailed American in CubaBy PAUL HAVEN, Associated Press – Thu Jan 13, 2011
HAVANA – Cuba allowed a visiting U.S. State Department envoy to meet on Thursday with a jailed American contractor whose case has been a stumbling block to improved relations between the two Cold War enemies. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said Roberta Jacobsen, a deputy assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, met with Alan Gross, who has been jailed without charge since Dec. 3, 2009. Cuban officials including President Raul Castro have accused him of spying.
Crowley had no details on where or when the meeting took place. "We appreciate the fact that ... she had the opportunity to visit with him," he told reporters in Washington.
Meanwhile, a senior State Department official said Washington has heard encouraging signs from the Cuban government that Gross might be tried and allowed to return to the United States."I am cautiously optimistic because of things we hear that that would be the case," said the official. When asked if the optimism was based on direct conversations with the Cuban government over the fate of Gross, the official responded: "Yes."
The official spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the case.
Jacobsen was in Havana to lead a U.S. delegation in regularly scheduled talks with their Cuban counterparts on immigration matters. She also met Thursday with several prominent Cuban dissidents as well as Jewish officials and leaders of the Roman Catholic Church, Crowley said.
Cuba reacted strongly to Jacobsen's decision to meet with the dissidents, saying it "confirmed once again that there is no change in the U.S. policy of subversion and meddling in Cuba's internal affairs."
The Foreign Ministry said Jacobsen was warned not to use the official visit as an excuse to meet with the dissidents, who Cuba considers to be mercenaries paid by Washington to destabilize the government. It called the meeting an "open provocation," a "flagrant violation" of international norms and an "offense against our people." U.S. government officials counter that they maintain a dialogue with members of "civil society," including those in opposition, in countries around the world.
The scenario painted about Gross by the senior State Department official — along with the visit with the prisoner — were the most encouraging signs to date that the case might be nearing a resolution, possibly with Gross being tried, convicted and sentenced to time already served, or granted a pardon or commuted sentence of some sort.
U.S. officials have said repeatedly that Gross's imprisonment is an obstacle to improved relations with Cuba.
However, the official cautioned that the encouraging words from Havana won't mean anything unless the Cuban government follows up, presumably by finally bringing charges against Gross so a trial can proceed."Words are nice and they are important, but in the end we have to see actions," the official said. "We have to see things happen to believe it is going to take place."
Gross, 60, a native of Potomac, Maryland, was working for a firm contracted by the U.S. Agency for International Development when he was arrested and sent to Havana's high-security Villa Marista prison.
Cuban officials accuse him of spying. The U.S. government says Gross was distributing communications equipment to the island's 1,500-strong Jewish community, though leaders of Havana's two main Jewish groups have denied having anything to do with him.
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A final thought to ponder: Life is sexually transmitted.
On Feb. 23, I attended a memorial Mass for a member of my small Catholic congregation, Communitas. His name was Barney, he was 45 years old, and he had Down Syndrome. Barney died of early onset dementia and other complications typical of Down’s people. It seems unfair that those born with such a disability should also be afflicted with early decline and death, but, of course, life is not fair. Barney was an ardent fan of the Washington Redskins and a pretty good Elvis impersonator. He was friendly and funny. For 20 years, he worked in a restaurant near his home and once hosted us at a luncheon there. He had devoted parents, two brothers, many friends, and a girl friend. He had a rich life and he enriched ours. Only in the last year, did he start going downhill fast. We will miss him. And I do feel for his parents, having lost their son.
Late on a Sat. evening, a friend and I noticed a middle-aged ordinary-looking white woman wearing a clean wool coat start laying down newspapers to sleep out on the sidewalk in a sheltered corner under an overhang. My friend ran over to give her an old quilt that she carried in her car, but the woman refused it. However, she did accept a proffer of a little cash. That night, it definitely got below freezing. I shivered, thinking about sleeping out in Honduras where it only gets down to about 45F, cold enough. I know of some shelters, but not near where the woman was located and, by that hour, they would have been full and have already locked their doors.
Won’t comment on the substance of Obama’s state-of-the-union address, as enough pundits have already done that, only to say that it’s refreshing for a change to hear an articulate, intelligent leader who enunciates his words clearly (unlike some current Republicans who seem to have marbles in their mouth). But, of course, the guy is not a magician.
Coming up is my annual Feb. trip to Honduras for participation in medical brigades and various projects. I won’t be returning until early March, so watch this space sometime after that. Now, at age 72, I don’t know how long I’ll have the strength, finances, even life, to continue with these missions, but plan to keep on going as long as I can. Each year, I wonder if this will be my last trip? And since I’m leaving soon, a lot of different items are gathered together in this posting in a kind of potpourri. Hope I won’t wear out your eyes or your patience.
According to the local Spanish-language press, Honduran President Porfirio Lobo is proposing the creation of model cities with amenities and without crime. Where, how, and with what funding this would be achieved, is not specified, but it sounds like an admirable idea, especially the no crime part. I do remember something similar being done after Hurricane Mitch, when so-called model towns were built at some distance from Tegucigalpa. In my book, I mention one I saw, Ciudad Espana, rows of identical little cinderblock houses. Last Feb. when I was in Honduras, I met a blind woman who comes into Teguc every weekend to sing and play guitar at restaurants with other blind musicians. She lived in Cuidad Espana with her husband and three kids and told me that stores had sprung up there and also regular bus service into the capital. Indeed, crime, she said, was less than in the city, so maybe Lobo is on to something At the blind school, she shared the room that I was already sharing with Martha and Julissa. I believe I’ve already mentioned on this blog that Martha, who had always been in poor health, died several months ago and that Julissa was unceremoniously returned to her birth family for the Nov.-Feb school vacation. Now when school starts again, she will be staying with other girls. I must take her more of the gloves she inexplicably likes so much—small comfort after such a loss.
The Hispanic press also mentions that Honduras is hosting an “Afro-descendant” summit in the Caribbean port city La Ceiba next August, with representatives from Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Puerto Ricao, and the US invited.
I was sent an article from the Wall St. Journal (“New Prize in Cold War,” Jan. 15-16, 2011) on a Cuban doctor defector. He was serving in Gambia and is now in Miami, as are five other Cuban defectors from his medical mission. Of course, he is not working as a physician now, but as a “surgical assistant." Passing the highly sophisticated-English language medical exam is tough, expensive (several hundred dollars), and I think then applicants still have to find residencies in this country and many hospitals reject foreign grads, even if they've passed the test. Of course, Miami is full of Cuban doctors not working as such--though most try to get into some sort of medical work. And their families back in Cuba do suffer reprisals, as this defector’s family has.
A reader also shared a terrible story about a young Canadian woman singled out for an extensive and intrusive airport search in Newark, down to her underwear. You have to wonder if it was just random, whether she had some special attributes (like a name similar to one on a no-fly list), or whether it was, as suggested, maybe prurient interest? I hope she will complain to the proper authorities.
A Sunni Muslim center in Cairo that had been in dialogue with the Vatican has cut off ties because of the Pope’s call for Christians being targeted in majority Muslim countries to stand-up for their rights non-violently, even though they have been attacked violently. The center, named al-Azhar, reportedly dubbed the Pope’s remarks “insulting” to Islam and Muslim countries.
I would recommend an article in the New Yorker (Jan. 24, 2011), “The Hot Spotters,” about how a few outlier patients use up a disproportionate medical resources. A case is cited of a grossly obese man whose care totaled $3,500,000 in a single year. However, experiments focusing on such high-utilizing patients, providing them social and other supports plus monitoring and education, have resulted in greatly reduced costs. Of course, as medical costs get reduced, so do payments to medical providers. As the article observes, “one man’s cost is another man’s income.” That is indeed the resistance to reigning in health care expenditures. Each profession, each interest, is trying not only to protect, but to expand its piece of the economic pie. I was acutely aware of that when I worked for an association of health professionals. But the brakes have been put on at last, not only in the medical sphere, but in general. Living on credit and projections of future gains, as we in the US and in the world have been doing, has reached a logical and inevitable end.
That hard reality has also hit the Peace Corps. Here’s somone confirming my worst fears, mentioned earlier, after the federal budget was not approved in the lame duck Congress:
Because of the on-going Continuing Resolution and the subsequent budget worries, Peace Corps Headquarters is scaling back on growth plans. The Agency will level off at 9,500 Volunteers this year and depending upon whatever budget is eventually passed, the overall numbers may drop again. The Obama Administration has told all agencies to scale back their growth plans. And that means you, Peace Corps!
Sorry, Rajeev. You won the battle (s) but you lost the war. [A reference there to former volunteer Rajeev Goyal, profiled in the Dec. 20, 2010 issue of the New Yorker, who had worked tirelessly and creatively to increase Peace Corps funding.]
R. Sargant Shriver, founder and first director of Kennedy’s Peace Corps initiative, has died at age 95, after suffering from Alzheimer’s for the last seven years. We former Peace Corps volunteers owe him a big debt of gratitude.
With MLKing Day just passed, I was reminded that my late former husband and I were in the massive crowd on that summer day when King gave his “I Have a Dream” speech. He was just a tiny figure standing in the far distance and we could barely hear what he was saying. Little did we know then that he and his words would rise to such prominence.
In all the discussion, drama, and argument about the Arizona shooting rampage, I find myself feeling some empathy for the young shooter’s parents. Surely they were concerned about their son, but he was legally an adult and their influence over him was limited. Commentators allege that “the mental health system failed,” but there is no coherent and comprehensive “mental health system” (that requires public organization and money—both taxes and “big government,” if you will) and even if there were, each and every act of violence cannot be prevented nor every person who enters treatment be made well. We do need a better system to reduce the number of firearms circulating, or, failing that, to prevent unstable people and criminals from obtaining firearms to the extent possible, measures gun lobbyists decry. What about giving gun manufacturers subsidies not to produce guns, like we do to farmers for not planting crops?
The giant Las Vegas gun show opened with gun enthusiasts buying up everything, fearing that the Arizona shooting may result more gun controls. Of course, gun-rights spokespeople say guns have nothing to do with shooting injuries and deaths. "The recent tragedy in Tucson was not about firearms, ammunition or magazine capacity," said Ted Novin, spokesman for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, "It was about the action of a madman." Since we cannot always control or predict the actions of “madmen,” or apparent accidents like the wounding of two students in an LA school, one critically, some controls on gun availability would surely help. My younger son was shot in the foot at age 13 when kids were playing with a handgun that the father of one boy kept in his bedroom for protection. Fortunately, my son’s injury, though painful, was something he recovered from in a few weeks. It could have been otherwise.
You would think Sarah Palin is the person injured now, not Giffords. “I’m so misunderstood,” she reportedly complained on the Hannity show. She’s been uncharacteristically and mercifully quiet since. Congressman Alan Grayson cites examples of threats that he and at least six other Democrats besides Giffords had received recently, including telephoned and written death warnings, being burned in effigy, and having had a coffin left. I haven’t heard of any Republican lawmakers receiving such intimidations, so calls to tone down the rhetoric “on both sides” have rung a little hollow. Only one side, it seems, has been cranking up the rhetoric and getting dangerously close to the point where it crosses over into action—“reload,” “take him out.” Free speech is not protected to the point where someone is free to shout “fire” in a crowded movie theater. Interestingly enough, although Scalia, the great originalist on the Constitution, delivered the 2008 DC gun rights decision that defined it as an individual right for the first time, in fact, linking gun rights to the second amendment didn’t begin until the 1970s with a push by the NRA. In 1789, when the second amendment was being debated, it was only discussed in terms of arming state militias.
I hope voters will react against the merely symbolic and unproductive House vote to repeal the health care law. It is one thing to propose constructive changes, another to take up valuable time with a repeal destined to go nowhere. And why did House Speaker Boehner refuse Obama’s invitation to ride to Arizona in Air Force One and to attend the China state dinner? Not necessarily because he’s a human rights advocate. Because he didn’t want to appear to be too chummy with Obama by breaking bread with him? If he were sincere about wanting to work in a bipartisan fashion, he might have taken the opportunity to accept Obama’s hospitality, using it as a chance to express or advance positions he favors. But, no, it appears Republicans are not really interested in working with Democrats, rather, bent on undermining the government to give themselves an advantage in 2012, even if it may hurt the country and the economy. At least, that’s how I read it. But some from both parties have now sat together in the chamber, a good sign.
Baby Doc Duvalier has returned to Haiti after 25 years in exile, after the current president, Rene Preval apparently allowed return. I was in Haiti soon after Duvalier was ousted, was an election observer when Aristide was elected in 1990, and returned there once more since. After Duvalier had left, people celebrated and breathed a sigh of relief that he and his brutal Tonton Macoute enforcers would no longer intimidate them. A new era was anticipated in Haiti. However, since then, matters have gone downhill and now some old-timers look back nostalgically to the Duvalier days when there was little civil strife, Haitian factories regularly turned out goods, and tourists visited. Baby Doc’s recent return to cheering supporters brings the threat of even more disruption to this fragile nation. And if Aristide comes back, as he is apparently considering, more disruption. I’m broken-hearted about all the calamities this poor, but once vibrant country, has endured.
A Haitian-American close the politics in his native country opines that Baby Doc will be indicted and tried. However, as with Pinochet, he will never serve time. He said that Duvalier had suffered a mild stroke last year, so his health might be the excuse to keep him out of prison. Finally, under pressure and amid credible allegations of fraud, apparently Preval has agreed to take the name of his favorite, Jude Celestin, off the run-off ballot, leaving it a contest between former first lady Mirlande Manigat and popular singer Michel Martelly.
No doubt, authoritarian Arab regimes (which describes most, if not all, of them) have been viewing developments in Tunisia with great alarm, and now demonstrators in Yemen, Algeria, and Egypt have been following suit. Regarding Egypt, Obama seems to be walking a fine line. And the fact that the Tunisia uprising was triggered or at least amplified via the internet cannot have escaped the Cuban regime, which will redouble its efforts to keep its citizens away from the internet, even if that slows economic development. Without internet and cell phones for the most part, and with an aging population, unlike the youthful Arabs, Cubans are less likely to rise up and, indeed, most of them probably don’t even know what’s taking place in the Arab world. Members of the old regime in Tunisia did seem to be trying to save themselves by hitching onto the new bandwagon, but many citizens saw through that effort and may have stymied their efforts.
Cuba’s self-described “Generation Y” blogger Yoani Sanchez was named for another international press award that she was unable to receive. About the pending mass layoffs from state industries, she has commented on her recent blog entitled “Daddy State and His frightened Children” (Jan. 10. 2011). Since ordinary Cubans do not have internet access, Sanchez is thought to hand off flash-drives to visitors to Cuba to post for her after their departure. She says she is “blogging blind” because she never gets to see her postings online nor are Cubans on the island able to view them. However, among Cubans with computer equipment, flash-drives may also be passed around hand-to-hand within the country.
Nina Shea, a friend from the right-leaning Hudson Institute think-tank, has had a long-running concern with Sudan. She has written an article in National Review online called “Don’t Forget Sudan’s Slaves” (Jan. 17) with some troubling information about ongoing slavery in Sudan, usually southerners abducted by northerners. When I was in south Sudan in 2006, I met a woman whose son had disappeared on a trip north, whom she feared had been abducted into slavery.
Now Ronald Reagan’s son and namesake has come out with a new book saying what we had often suspected, that his father was already getting Alzheimer’s during his second presidential term. I seem to recall some odd remarks by President Reagan at the time and reports of him nodding off during meetings. Older brother Michael Reagan, however, disputes this claim.
I come from a family of architects, so I read with interest an article in the Atlantic, Oct. 2010, called "Design within Reach" by Douglas McGray, about architect Chris Downey of San Francisco who suddenly lost his sight, but is now able to read raised plans printed by a special Braille-type computer.What did I tell you? I had said that if less than 95% voted for secession, I would be surprised. Now that it’s closer to 99%, I am not surprised.
January 21, 2011 NYTimes
South Sudanese Vote Overwhelmingly for SecessionBy JOSH KRON and JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
JUBA, Sudan — Nearly 99 percent of southern Sudanese voters have chosen to split off from northern Sudan and form their own country, according to preliminary results of an independence referendum conducted this month. The commission that ran the referendum said Friday that 98.6 percent voted for secession, and 1.4 percent voted for unity, according to more than 3 million votes cast, which brings the largest country in Africa a step closer to splitting in two.
The commission said that the results were still incomplete, and that they were being continually updated, though all indications point to the vote being overwhelmingly for secession. Election officials have also said that the turnout soared past the 60 percent threshold necessary for the referendum to be valid. The official results are due to be released Feb. 14.
“The last counties are about to report in,” said Aleu Garang Aleu, a spokesperson for the referendum bureau in the southern capital Juba. Voters in nearly every state in the south chose independence by 99 percent; in Eastern Equatoria, only 229 people voted for unity with the north out of 455,466 votes, according to the preliminary results.
But southern Sudanese living in northern Sudan were more ambivalent — 42 percent opted for unity and 58 percent for secession. Many southerners work in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, and they may fear that secession will mean that they have to leave, though citizenship questions have yet to be resolved.
Now the wait begins. Southern Sudan will not achieve formal independence until July 9, when the United States-backed peace treaty that put the referendum in motion is set to expire. By then southern Sudan hopes to pick a national anthem and a name; leading contenders are Nile Republic and South Sudan.
But there are still a number of delicate and potentially combustible issues that need to be resolved before Sudan can peacefully break in two, namely how the two sides would share the south’s sizeable reserves of crude oil and what to do about the Abyei region, which straddles the north-south border and is claimed by both.
Fighting this month in Abyei claimed dozens of lives, and Western diplomats worry that the region could threaten what has been an otherwise remarkably peaceful and orderly referendum period.
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Envoy allowed to meet with jailed American in CubaBy PAUL HAVEN, Associated Press – Thu Jan 13, 2011
HAVANA – Cuba allowed a visiting U.S. State Department envoy to meet on Thursday with a jailed American contractor whose case has been a stumbling block to improved relations between the two Cold War enemies. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said Roberta Jacobsen, a deputy assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, met with Alan Gross, who has been jailed without charge since Dec. 3, 2009. Cuban officials including President Raul Castro have accused him of spying.
Crowley had no details on where or when the meeting took place. "We appreciate the fact that ... she had the opportunity to visit with him," he told reporters in Washington.
Meanwhile, a senior State Department official said Washington has heard encouraging signs from the Cuban government that Gross might be tried and allowed to return to the United States."I am cautiously optimistic because of things we hear that that would be the case," said the official. When asked if the optimism was based on direct conversations with the Cuban government over the fate of Gross, the official responded: "Yes."
The official spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the case.
Jacobsen was in Havana to lead a U.S. delegation in regularly scheduled talks with their Cuban counterparts on immigration matters. She also met Thursday with several prominent Cuban dissidents as well as Jewish officials and leaders of the Roman Catholic Church, Crowley said.
Cuba reacted strongly to Jacobsen's decision to meet with the dissidents, saying it "confirmed once again that there is no change in the U.S. policy of subversion and meddling in Cuba's internal affairs."
The Foreign Ministry said Jacobsen was warned not to use the official visit as an excuse to meet with the dissidents, who Cuba considers to be mercenaries paid by Washington to destabilize the government. It called the meeting an "open provocation," a "flagrant violation" of international norms and an "offense against our people." U.S. government officials counter that they maintain a dialogue with members of "civil society," including those in opposition, in countries around the world.
The scenario painted about Gross by the senior State Department official — along with the visit with the prisoner — were the most encouraging signs to date that the case might be nearing a resolution, possibly with Gross being tried, convicted and sentenced to time already served, or granted a pardon or commuted sentence of some sort.
U.S. officials have said repeatedly that Gross's imprisonment is an obstacle to improved relations with Cuba.
However, the official cautioned that the encouraging words from Havana won't mean anything unless the Cuban government follows up, presumably by finally bringing charges against Gross so a trial can proceed."Words are nice and they are important, but in the end we have to see actions," the official said. "We have to see things happen to believe it is going to take place."
Gross, 60, a native of Potomac, Maryland, was working for a firm contracted by the U.S. Agency for International Development when he was arrested and sent to Havana's high-security Villa Marista prison.
Cuban officials accuse him of spying. The U.S. government says Gross was distributing communications equipment to the island's 1,500-strong Jewish community, though leaders of Havana's two main Jewish groups have denied having anything to do with him.
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A final thought to ponder: Life is sexually transmitted.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Deaths Close to Home, Ariz. Shooting, Late Foster Son’s B'day, DC Voting Rights, Ariz. Medicaid, So. Sudan, Cuba, Honduras, Rape in Haiti
On last weekend, two days before I was due for an early morning interpretation assignment (6:30am) at Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, Md., we heard on the radio that the hospital was on lockdown, as an employee had been killed. By the time I showed up for work two days later, all appeared calm (though the killer had not been found and there were extra guards posted). Few details had been forthcoming and, quite naturally, the hospital did not want to call attention to the matter, carrying on with business as usual. Any disruption in normal routines might jeopardize patients and also result in loss of revenue. Eventually the killer was identified and captured, an employee who had gotten a bad annual review and decided to knife his boss when they were alone in the hospital boiler room.
If words could kill, then Republicans have certainly been throwing them around willy-nilly and exaggerated fashion: “Obamacare,” “Death Panels,” “Death tax,” “Anchor babies,” “blamestream media,” and the “Job-Killing Healthcare Bill.” So it’s little wonder that Arizona’s Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, which Sarah Palin had signaled online with a gun-target (she said later it was a surveyer’s mark, hardly credible, but took it down), was shot along with bystanders. Outlandish and fiery claims probably can incite vulnerable and unstable individuals, especially in a nation where “second amendment gun-rights” seem to supersede rights to life. Sharron Angle, Reid’s Tea party opponent, had said during the campaign that voters could pursue “Second Amendment remedies” if the political process did not work for them. No man is an island and if such remarks aren’t intended to influence listeners, why even say them?
Now Palin has added to the incendiary war of words by accusing her accusers of “blood libel,” aligning herself with falsely accused Jews. (Giffords is Jewish, is there supposed to be a connection there?) Palin and other right-wingers are perhaps protesting too much, defending themselves by arguing so vociferously that it’s not their overheated rhetoric or even guns who kill people and that the Arizona shooter is just a crazy lone-wolf guy, acting in a complete void, a random actor surging out of the blue. “Acts of monstrous criminality stand on their own” and “begin and end with the criminals who commit them,” Palin said in her prepared remarks. Let’s calm down, let’s pray, let’s not rush to judgment, she and other Republicans urge. Of course, she puts herself back in the limelight again.
Well, it’s true that it has not been proven that the shooter was incited by rhetoric and also true that Rep. Giffords was a gun-rights’ supporter, as an Arizona legislator would likely be. However, she did vote for healthcare reform and the Dream Act, which made her a target for Republicans, especially tea partiers. I hope that right-wing talk-show hosts, Fox News, the NRA, and the Republican Party in general and the Tea Party in particular all are taking a step back and reassessing their over-the-top tactics. They’ve gone too far and there is finally a backlash, so my advice to them is: tone it down, try to be more reasonable, and don’t make unfounded accusations because they can come back to bite you. As during the McCarthy era, the pendulum may have finally swung too far to the right for the majority of Americans. If so, serves Palin, Beck, Limbaugh, and their ilk right. Dick Cheney has been mercifully silent of late, perhaps because of his delicate heart condition—so much the better.
In another tragedy closer to home, on Jan. 10, just across the intersection from my house, a neighbor died when her car caught fire inside her home’s garage. She was 37-year-old Ashley Turton, a mother of three small children who worked for an energy company and was married to a White house staffer. A lot of unanswered questions. I did not actually know her, just saw her around the neighborhood with her children, but it has been a blow to us all. The burned garage has been boarded-up and I’ve seen furniture being moved out of the house, whether because of fire damage or moving, I don’t know.
My late foster son Alex’s birthday is this month. Of course, I only met Alex when he was 16, having come here via the Mariel boatlift at that age—never having planned to live in this country at all, but taken from jail on orders of Fidel Castro himself by guards who put him onto a waiting boat. For me, the shock of Alex’s impending death came in 1990, when he first told me he was HIV+. He died in Miami five years later, having gone there in his last year of life without telling me. The day he died, a young woman who had been caring for him called me at my office, saying he had asked her to call me only after his death to protect me. And here I’d been looking all over DC for him in vain. At that time, only a year after my son’s death, I was barely functioning anyway and news of Alex’s passing—not really unexpected—was just a further blow when I was already down about as far as I could go.
Not only does the District of Columbia not enjoy the same congressional representation as other jurisdictions with less or similar populations, but now the House Republican majority has stripped our non-voting delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton, and other delegates from Puerto Rico, Guam, and other territories of their right not vote in committee. All are Democrats, except for one Independent.
In December, while it’s hardly spectacular, Amazon sold 10 of my books, an improvement over previous months when sales were closer to 5 or 6. Every week, one or two books sell, for which I’m grateful, but it would be nice to rev that number up a few notches. I’ll be doing another interview Jan. 14—don’t recall details, but it’s a program from the west coast that, I think, is streamed on-line. I don’t prepare much for these gigs—best to be non-scripted. Will let you know when it becomes available.
Apparently at least two Arizona Medicaid patients have died after being taken off the transplants list. Obviously, it isn’t known whether appropriate transplants would have been available or a transplant would have been successful if it had taken place. As a Spanish interpreter, I have been involved in bone marrow, kidney, and liver transplants, mostly for children. These procedures are very delicate, difficult, and, of course, painful, with life-time monitoring and care stretching out afterward. I’ve often wondered how “my” transplant patients are doing now and whether they are still among the living.
Speaking of both books and transplants, Dick Cheney has begun writings his memoirs (why not?). He has a new heart pump and, at 69, is considering undergoing a heart transplant before reaching the cut-off age of 70. Maybe, because the stats on heart transplants are not so favorable, he’ll stick with his current highly sophisticated pump system. Of course, unlike Arizona Medicaid patients, he doesn’t have to worry about the cost and availability of the latest medical care, including a heart transplant if he wants one, since no doubt we taxpayers are covering all his medical costs.
South Sudan’s referendum has started and if the vote for secession from the north is less than 95%, I will be surprised. There could be some people waffling in the sensitive border areas or southerners living in the north who want to stay there who might vote “no”. But when I was in the south in 2006, I never met one person in favor of staying united with the north—not a scientific sample, mind you, but probably fairly representative. As readers know, the north is mostly Arabic and Muslim, the south black (really black) and Christian or animist. On the first day of the referendum, Jan. 9, I attended a celebration in DC where people who had been working for a time in Sudan all expressed cautious optimism. Someone said that he was surprised that vote was actually going forward, me too, because it looked last year that Bashir was trying to quash the whole thing, asking for a delay and changes. Surrounding nations and the US have supported the referendum.
Points made by speakers at the event included the following: democratic transformation has not occurred in either north or south; if violence breaks out (there have been a few clashes already), it could quickly escalate; south Sudan’s infrastructure and government are very undeveloped [amen to that, I say]; don’t forget the north, which has 30 million residents compared to only 10 million in the south; the north may now move closer to sharia law; the post-referendum honeymoon may be short-lived; and north and south must share oil revenues because, although the oil is in the south, refineries are in the north. For now, southerners are jubilant.
Big economic changes are in store for Cuba, with 500,000 government layoffs announced for the near future, with another 500,000 supposedly to come. This is in a country of 11 million, where almost everyone has worked for the state for generations and where private enterprise, for most of that time, was illegal, although it always occurred under-the-table. Many analysts believe this step is being taken because the Cuban government is broke and cannot afford to pay its workforce. It also cannot afford to keep losing so much from the constant pilferage from state industries. Allowing Cubans to start small licensed businesses will also increase the remittances the country needs to survive because relatives in the US and elsewhere won’t let their Cuban relatives starve. Already, with the elimination of the 10% tax on remittances, the amount being sent by relatives from abroad has soared. The government knows it will recoup that money anyway when it’s spent in government stores. The Cuban Communist Party will be holding a congress in April 2011, so more changes may be in store. There is reportedly tension between the old-line supporters of Fidel Castro and the reportedly more pragmatic faction of his brother Raul, who took over as head of state when Fidel fell ill four years ago. However, Raul has made it clear that while economic changes are going forward, there will be no changes in civic and political life and that the Communist Party will still reign supreme. He argues that economic changes are necessary to protect and safeguard “the revolution.” Cuba will still call its economic system “socialism,” but it’s a different type of socialism—more like state-controlled small business enterprises.
Cuba has taken another significant step by commuting the death sentence of its only prisoner on death row. While the death penalty has not been abolished, this is a favorable development, in my opinion, especially given Cuba’s bloody history of executions.
President Hugo Chavez’s family reportedly has deposited $137 million in US banks—not in Venezuelan banks, mind you—and where did they get all that money in a “socialist” country?
In Honduras, on Dec. 28, another journalist was ambushed and killed, Henry Suazo, of HRN radio. This is the 10th journalist killed in Honduras in 2011, with only two men having been arrested in connection with these crimes.
Honduran President Porfirio Lobo has invited Manuel Zelaya to come back, saying he will not be arrested. To Latin American presidents that don’t recognize his government, he advises them to get over their anger.
----------------------------------------------------------------
In Haiti, a recount of disputed presidential election ballots is underway to determine the two top vote-getters for the runoff.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Women in Haiti’s squalid refugee camps face rampant rape
By Jade Walker, Jan. 6, 2011, Yahoo News.
One year after a devastating earthquake hit Haiti, women and girls staying in the country's refugee camps live without adequate food, water, shelter and medical care. And when the darkness falls, the rapists come.
According to a report from Amnesty International, precarious living conditions and a lack of security in and around the camps have left thousands of women and girls as young as two vulnerable to sexual predators. Many of these women lost their family and community connections in the quake along with all of their worldly possessions.
One widow named Guerline was forced to watch her 13-year-old daughter being gang raped by four men. "They told me that if I talked about it, they would kill me," she told researchers. "They said that if I went to the police, they would shoot me dead." That same night, Guerline was raped as well.
The Commission of Women Victims for Victims, a women's group run by and for rape survivors from the poorest areas of Port-au-Prince, registered 230 cases of sexual assault in 15 camps during the five months after the Jan. 12 quake. There are over 500 camps in the Haitian capital.
The vast majority of the women living in the camps who were interviewed reported being raped by two or more individuals. Most of those assaults occurred at night and by men who were armed.
Rapes are rarely reported to authorities because of the shame, social stigma and fear of reprisals from attackers, USA Today reported. The few brave women who have come forward to file a report with authorities were told that nothing could be done for them. Some police officers even demanded bribes to investigate the assaults, but the victims had no money.
Rape victims are also emotionally, spiritually and physically scarred by their attackers. Some become pregnant, suffer internal injuries or contract sexually transmitted diseases. Haiti has the highest infection rate for HIV in the Western hemisphere, with one in 50 people infected, The Associated Press reported.
In an effort to stem the tide of sexual assaults in Haiti's refugee camps, human rights groups are urging the government and charitable organizations to improve lighting and security in the camps, increase the number of private bathing facilities and make a serious effort to prosecute rapists. Additional tents, a more visible police presence, self-defense courses and better information about medical treatment options are also suggested.
If words could kill, then Republicans have certainly been throwing them around willy-nilly and exaggerated fashion: “Obamacare,” “Death Panels,” “Death tax,” “Anchor babies,” “blamestream media,” and the “Job-Killing Healthcare Bill.” So it’s little wonder that Arizona’s Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, which Sarah Palin had signaled online with a gun-target (she said later it was a surveyer’s mark, hardly credible, but took it down), was shot along with bystanders. Outlandish and fiery claims probably can incite vulnerable and unstable individuals, especially in a nation where “second amendment gun-rights” seem to supersede rights to life. Sharron Angle, Reid’s Tea party opponent, had said during the campaign that voters could pursue “Second Amendment remedies” if the political process did not work for them. No man is an island and if such remarks aren’t intended to influence listeners, why even say them?
Now Palin has added to the incendiary war of words by accusing her accusers of “blood libel,” aligning herself with falsely accused Jews. (Giffords is Jewish, is there supposed to be a connection there?) Palin and other right-wingers are perhaps protesting too much, defending themselves by arguing so vociferously that it’s not their overheated rhetoric or even guns who kill people and that the Arizona shooter is just a crazy lone-wolf guy, acting in a complete void, a random actor surging out of the blue. “Acts of monstrous criminality stand on their own” and “begin and end with the criminals who commit them,” Palin said in her prepared remarks. Let’s calm down, let’s pray, let’s not rush to judgment, she and other Republicans urge. Of course, she puts herself back in the limelight again.
Well, it’s true that it has not been proven that the shooter was incited by rhetoric and also true that Rep. Giffords was a gun-rights’ supporter, as an Arizona legislator would likely be. However, she did vote for healthcare reform and the Dream Act, which made her a target for Republicans, especially tea partiers. I hope that right-wing talk-show hosts, Fox News, the NRA, and the Republican Party in general and the Tea Party in particular all are taking a step back and reassessing their over-the-top tactics. They’ve gone too far and there is finally a backlash, so my advice to them is: tone it down, try to be more reasonable, and don’t make unfounded accusations because they can come back to bite you. As during the McCarthy era, the pendulum may have finally swung too far to the right for the majority of Americans. If so, serves Palin, Beck, Limbaugh, and their ilk right. Dick Cheney has been mercifully silent of late, perhaps because of his delicate heart condition—so much the better.
In another tragedy closer to home, on Jan. 10, just across the intersection from my house, a neighbor died when her car caught fire inside her home’s garage. She was 37-year-old Ashley Turton, a mother of three small children who worked for an energy company and was married to a White house staffer. A lot of unanswered questions. I did not actually know her, just saw her around the neighborhood with her children, but it has been a blow to us all. The burned garage has been boarded-up and I’ve seen furniture being moved out of the house, whether because of fire damage or moving, I don’t know.
My late foster son Alex’s birthday is this month. Of course, I only met Alex when he was 16, having come here via the Mariel boatlift at that age—never having planned to live in this country at all, but taken from jail on orders of Fidel Castro himself by guards who put him onto a waiting boat. For me, the shock of Alex’s impending death came in 1990, when he first told me he was HIV+. He died in Miami five years later, having gone there in his last year of life without telling me. The day he died, a young woman who had been caring for him called me at my office, saying he had asked her to call me only after his death to protect me. And here I’d been looking all over DC for him in vain. At that time, only a year after my son’s death, I was barely functioning anyway and news of Alex’s passing—not really unexpected—was just a further blow when I was already down about as far as I could go.
Not only does the District of Columbia not enjoy the same congressional representation as other jurisdictions with less or similar populations, but now the House Republican majority has stripped our non-voting delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton, and other delegates from Puerto Rico, Guam, and other territories of their right not vote in committee. All are Democrats, except for one Independent.
In December, while it’s hardly spectacular, Amazon sold 10 of my books, an improvement over previous months when sales were closer to 5 or 6. Every week, one or two books sell, for which I’m grateful, but it would be nice to rev that number up a few notches. I’ll be doing another interview Jan. 14—don’t recall details, but it’s a program from the west coast that, I think, is streamed on-line. I don’t prepare much for these gigs—best to be non-scripted. Will let you know when it becomes available.
Apparently at least two Arizona Medicaid patients have died after being taken off the transplants list. Obviously, it isn’t known whether appropriate transplants would have been available or a transplant would have been successful if it had taken place. As a Spanish interpreter, I have been involved in bone marrow, kidney, and liver transplants, mostly for children. These procedures are very delicate, difficult, and, of course, painful, with life-time monitoring and care stretching out afterward. I’ve often wondered how “my” transplant patients are doing now and whether they are still among the living.
Speaking of both books and transplants, Dick Cheney has begun writings his memoirs (why not?). He has a new heart pump and, at 69, is considering undergoing a heart transplant before reaching the cut-off age of 70. Maybe, because the stats on heart transplants are not so favorable, he’ll stick with his current highly sophisticated pump system. Of course, unlike Arizona Medicaid patients, he doesn’t have to worry about the cost and availability of the latest medical care, including a heart transplant if he wants one, since no doubt we taxpayers are covering all his medical costs.
South Sudan’s referendum has started and if the vote for secession from the north is less than 95%, I will be surprised. There could be some people waffling in the sensitive border areas or southerners living in the north who want to stay there who might vote “no”. But when I was in the south in 2006, I never met one person in favor of staying united with the north—not a scientific sample, mind you, but probably fairly representative. As readers know, the north is mostly Arabic and Muslim, the south black (really black) and Christian or animist. On the first day of the referendum, Jan. 9, I attended a celebration in DC where people who had been working for a time in Sudan all expressed cautious optimism. Someone said that he was surprised that vote was actually going forward, me too, because it looked last year that Bashir was trying to quash the whole thing, asking for a delay and changes. Surrounding nations and the US have supported the referendum.
Points made by speakers at the event included the following: democratic transformation has not occurred in either north or south; if violence breaks out (there have been a few clashes already), it could quickly escalate; south Sudan’s infrastructure and government are very undeveloped [amen to that, I say]; don’t forget the north, which has 30 million residents compared to only 10 million in the south; the north may now move closer to sharia law; the post-referendum honeymoon may be short-lived; and north and south must share oil revenues because, although the oil is in the south, refineries are in the north. For now, southerners are jubilant.
Big economic changes are in store for Cuba, with 500,000 government layoffs announced for the near future, with another 500,000 supposedly to come. This is in a country of 11 million, where almost everyone has worked for the state for generations and where private enterprise, for most of that time, was illegal, although it always occurred under-the-table. Many analysts believe this step is being taken because the Cuban government is broke and cannot afford to pay its workforce. It also cannot afford to keep losing so much from the constant pilferage from state industries. Allowing Cubans to start small licensed businesses will also increase the remittances the country needs to survive because relatives in the US and elsewhere won’t let their Cuban relatives starve. Already, with the elimination of the 10% tax on remittances, the amount being sent by relatives from abroad has soared. The government knows it will recoup that money anyway when it’s spent in government stores. The Cuban Communist Party will be holding a congress in April 2011, so more changes may be in store. There is reportedly tension between the old-line supporters of Fidel Castro and the reportedly more pragmatic faction of his brother Raul, who took over as head of state when Fidel fell ill four years ago. However, Raul has made it clear that while economic changes are going forward, there will be no changes in civic and political life and that the Communist Party will still reign supreme. He argues that economic changes are necessary to protect and safeguard “the revolution.” Cuba will still call its economic system “socialism,” but it’s a different type of socialism—more like state-controlled small business enterprises.
Cuba has taken another significant step by commuting the death sentence of its only prisoner on death row. While the death penalty has not been abolished, this is a favorable development, in my opinion, especially given Cuba’s bloody history of executions.
President Hugo Chavez’s family reportedly has deposited $137 million in US banks—not in Venezuelan banks, mind you—and where did they get all that money in a “socialist” country?
In Honduras, on Dec. 28, another journalist was ambushed and killed, Henry Suazo, of HRN radio. This is the 10th journalist killed in Honduras in 2011, with only two men having been arrested in connection with these crimes.
Honduran President Porfirio Lobo has invited Manuel Zelaya to come back, saying he will not be arrested. To Latin American presidents that don’t recognize his government, he advises them to get over their anger.
----------------------------------------------------------------
In Haiti, a recount of disputed presidential election ballots is underway to determine the two top vote-getters for the runoff.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Women in Haiti’s squalid refugee camps face rampant rape
By Jade Walker, Jan. 6, 2011, Yahoo News.
One year after a devastating earthquake hit Haiti, women and girls staying in the country's refugee camps live without adequate food, water, shelter and medical care. And when the darkness falls, the rapists come.
According to a report from Amnesty International, precarious living conditions and a lack of security in and around the camps have left thousands of women and girls as young as two vulnerable to sexual predators. Many of these women lost their family and community connections in the quake along with all of their worldly possessions.
One widow named Guerline was forced to watch her 13-year-old daughter being gang raped by four men. "They told me that if I talked about it, they would kill me," she told researchers. "They said that if I went to the police, they would shoot me dead." That same night, Guerline was raped as well.
The Commission of Women Victims for Victims, a women's group run by and for rape survivors from the poorest areas of Port-au-Prince, registered 230 cases of sexual assault in 15 camps during the five months after the Jan. 12 quake. There are over 500 camps in the Haitian capital.
The vast majority of the women living in the camps who were interviewed reported being raped by two or more individuals. Most of those assaults occurred at night and by men who were armed.
Rapes are rarely reported to authorities because of the shame, social stigma and fear of reprisals from attackers, USA Today reported. The few brave women who have come forward to file a report with authorities were told that nothing could be done for them. Some police officers even demanded bribes to investigate the assaults, but the victims had no money.
Rape victims are also emotionally, spiritually and physically scarred by their attackers. Some become pregnant, suffer internal injuries or contract sexually transmitted diseases. Haiti has the highest infection rate for HIV in the Western hemisphere, with one in 50 people infected, The Associated Press reported.
In an effort to stem the tide of sexual assaults in Haiti's refugee camps, human rights groups are urging the government and charitable organizations to improve lighting and security in the camps, increase the number of private bathing facilities and make a serious effort to prosecute rapists. Additional tents, a more visible police presence, self-defense courses and better information about medical treatment options are also suggested.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
New Year, Peace Corps Budget, No Snow in DC, Zelaya, Chavez, Latin Violence, Arizona Medicaid, Wiki-Leaks/Cuba
To each and every one, a very Happy New Year! It’s always good to make a fresh start with brand new year, even though we may not live up to all our resolutions or realize many of our hopes and dreams. Still, it’s a good time to take stock, make plans, reevaluate—have that tough conversation, cut up the credit card, really start on that diet, quit smoking or drinking, tell those you cherish that you love them.
On Christmas Eve, about 35 members of Communitas, all ages, races, and nationalities, celebrated Mass. Communitas is the small Catholic group mentioned in my book that meets at the Dignity Center, a gathering place for gay Catholics, though few of us in Communitas are actually gay. We begin the Lord’s Prayer “Our father and mother” and the line between priests and laity is blurred. On Christmas Eve, the sermon was given by a lay member, Chris, a man from Nigeria, who said, corroborated by my own experience as well, that Christmas is celebrated all over the world, even by non-Christians. He cited examples in his own country of Christians and Muslims laying down their arms at this time of year. However, even as he was speaking, Muslims in Nigeria were attacking Christians, which we were unaware of at the time. His 8-year-old son did the Gospel reading in a strong, clear voice. We sang a number of Christmas carols, including “Silent Night,” which brought back childhood memories. Afterward, we held a potluck supper with champagne.
Amazingly enough, while snowstorms battered and inundated the East Coast from Atlanta to Maine, here in Washington, DC, we had only a light dusting on Sunday evening. By the next morning, it was nearly all melted. I went to work in a Md. Suburb without delay.
Much unfinished business will pass over to the new year from the old. Because the federal budget was not approved before this Congress adjourned, there is a real danger that the increases the president included for the Peace Corps will be cut—or even that funding will be reduced below current levels by the new Congress in the name of deficit reduction. This, after all the efforts of former PCVs to get a budget increase. We’ll have to start all over with the new members. I’m not sure that Tea Party folks will be receptive to a Peace Corps message. Peace Corps in a very small part of the federal budget, but all those small pieces do add up. Those reading this who have congressional representation, unlike those of us here in DC, please make a pitch to your representatives about the importance of keeping Peace Corps funding at the levels included in the current Obama budget.
I’ve noticed that ads popping up on my Yahoo account are often in Spanish, sometimes even in spoken aloud in Spanish. How does Yahoo know that I know Spanish? It’s kind of scary.
WikiLeaks cables from the 2008 ambassador to Honduras, Charles Ford, reveal his misgivings about Honduran President Manuel Zelaya well before Zelaya’s mid-2009 ouster. He cites Zelaya’s suspected ties with organized crime and his manipulation of events to make it look like he was a champion of the common man and the poor. Of course, Honduran presidents, even before Zelaya, have been no strangers to corruption and graft. Perhaps what was different about Zelaya was his open alliance with Cuba and Venezuela.
Along with the sweeping emergency powers that his legislature approved, Hugo Chavez has asked for and received power to regulate telecommunications, including the internet, amid protests from media outlets and spokespeople.
In other news from Latin America reported in the local Spanish-language press, a survey of the region shows 61% of respondents supporting democracy, up from previous surveys. Quite disturbing is the finding, no surprise to me, that Latin America with only 9% of world population, has 27% of violent deaths. The only countries in the region exempt from the wave of violence are Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, Peru, and Uruguay. Again, that is not a surprise. Cuba, while it has a high suicide rate, does not allow ordinary citizens to have firearms and has lots of police who take their job seriously.
Meanwhile, some 50 migrants, including women and children, from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador have apparently been kidnapped by armed men off a Mexican freight train halted with rocks and tree trunks on the track. Some of the US-based families of those kidnapped have apparently received ransom calls.
Arizona is sparking a national debate by cutting off transplants for working-age adults under its Medicaid program. In this recession, the whole question of how far to go with health-care expenditures has come to the fore. Indeed, I would argue, skyrocketing health-care costs are one of the reasons for the recession. Twenty-five years ago, when writing books, book chapters, and articles for my employer’s publications (the American Occupational Therapy Association), I tried to raise questions--ever-so-theoretically--about how far as a society were we willing to go and how much money were we willing to spend on what was already becoming a potentially infinite effort to preserve and extend life? Every time I dared speculate on the topic in print, even obliquely, it was immediately edited out, since our association was trying to increase employment opportunities and reimbursement for our members, as other health professions were also doing, so such cost questions could not be raised. Yet if the task of health care is to keep people alive and, if possible, enhance their quality of life, then the possible interventions are limitless, especially if “health care” is broadly defined to include things like toenail trimming (under Medicare Part B, I believe), Viagra, and hearing aids. Not that such provisions are undesirable; the examples are meant only to demonstrate the elasticity of what is defined as health or medical care. In bygone times, the definition was much narrower.
Additionally, the range of interventions is now much broader than previously and growing every day. Which brings us back to the transplant question. First of all, everyone single one of us will die sooner or later. We will probably die later and perhaps enjoy a better quality of life if we undergo cataract surgery, joint replacement, bypass surgery, and even organ transplant. Can we afford to do that for everyone? In a debate heard on NPR, an administrator for the Arizona Medicaid program argued that state residents have refused to pay higher taxes (no income tax there, only sales and property taxes), so there is insufficient money to fund organ transplants for people ages 21-65. She pointed out that an organ transplant costs about $250,000, is unsuccessful in more than half of cases, and entails life-time expenditures if the patient survives. In comparison, interventions like childhood immunizations are much more effective and cost-effective. “We don’t have the money to do it all; we have to cut somewhere,” she said.
An Arizona resident calling into the program said tearfully that her brother, only in his 40s, will die without a heart transplant. He was on the Arizona Medicaid transplant waiting list until the transplant program was recently eliminated. “You are killing my brother,” she told the Medicaid administrator, “How can you measure the worth of a human life in dollars?” Of course, it’s tragic that her brother had been given hope by being put on the waiting list to begin with, then was shocked when that hope was taken away. But I wondered if she would be willing to sell her house, if she has one, to gamble that her brother might be saved by a heart transplant when the success rate is less than 50% (for Arizona Medicaid recipients, it’s only about 25%, as I recall)? I suspect the answer would be “no,” but she expects the rest of Arizonans to take that gamble and bear that cost.
I’m not saying that Arizona has made the right choice—that’s up to Arizonans to decide—but there are limits, whether it’s heart transplants or something else. (And, of course, someone has to die before a heart is even available for transplant.) Another option would be to cut reimbursements and payments for medical personnel, equipment, and medications, but powerful interests resist that.
Finally, if there could be an expansion of Medicare to all age groups, which would help, but, of course, that would mean less profit for medical providers and more government intervention. All the hue and cry about “death panels” and “Obamacare” are probably designed to head off that possibility—put the onus on the government, whether the US or state government, or on insurance companies. The truth is that “death panels” and health care rationing already exist, but in covert form, otherwise health-care costs would be even higher than they are already. If the family of a very ill patient doesn’t authorize a feeding tube or issues a “do-not-resuscitate” order, as often happens, then the patient will probably die fairly soon. If the intervention had gone forward, the patient would have lived longer, but the cost would be considerable and their quality of life greatly diminished. In the case of patients with severe cognitive deficits and unable to decide independently, letting them go may be best for all concerned, including themselves. The medical-care cost debate is unavoidable—Arizona is only the canary in the coal mine. And Sarah Palin, staunch defender of Arizona and opponent of “death panels,” is strangely silent on the matter in this instance.
Speaking of cognitive deficits, I’ve begun having them myself. As my readers know, I’m an on-call Spanish interpreter, going everywhere by public transportation. Usually my travel to assignments require changing from one metro line to another and taking a bus at the end. And every destination is a different configuration. Sometimes I change trains going in one direction from a particular station, sometimes in another. The other morning, before daylight (maybe I was still a little groggy?), I automatically got on a train going in the same direction as the previous morning, but it was the wrong direction for that particular day. I was engrossed in reading the free abbreviated copy of the Washington Post given out at metro stops when I looked up and suddenly realized my mistake. So I had to get off at the next stop and reverse course, after having lost precious minutes in the process. As a consequence, I missed the bus I was supposed to take at the other end and had to wait for another. So, I barely arrived on time to the hospital where I was to report, whereas I like to arrive early. As it turned out, the scheduled patient never showed up himself and no one answered his phone, so I turned around and went home again, getting on the train going in the right direction this time. However, I must definitely pay more attention and can only hope this was not the beginning of a long downward mental slide. So far, no brain transplants!
Regarding my previous comments on tax breaks for the super-rich, one reader says: The only way progressives can get shitloads of money from "the rich" is to do what Vladimir Putin did: single out a guy like Khodorkovsky, pack his ass off to Siberia, and take his billions. That works just fine, and it also throws a scare into other rich thieves who might have thought about criticizing the government. What it doesn't really do is help the proletariat; but that doesn't matter because in Russia no one is naive enough to expect "fairness." What happened in Russia is just what's been happening in this country. Goldman is still ahead, and the rich thieves the government needs to support its bond market and all like that continue to thrive.
President Obama, no doubt about it, is a smart guy, very insightful, very quick on his feet, a refreshing change after an obviously handicapped poor guy like GW Bush, for whom you would almost feel sorry if he hadn’t been president and capable of inflicting so much harm. I just hope Obama knows what he's doing, but he's not God and cannot know, anticipate, and remedy every problem single-handedly.
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Cuba Jeopordizes [sic] Normalization, Publishes Wiki LeaksAuthor: Tim Paynter Published: December 27, 2010
Read more: http://technorati.com/politics/article/cuba-jeopordizes-normalization-publishes-wiki-leaks/#ixzz19Q7at03t
[Excerpt]
[Anna] Ardin, one of the Assange's alleged victims, works in Sweden's Uppsala University and is known in some Cuban exile and dissident circles. She visited Cuba about four times between 2002 and 2006 as a representative of Swedish social democrats, said Manuel Cuesta Morua, head of Cuba's Arco Progresista, a social-democratic dissident group.
Two left-of-center websites also alleged that she was close to Cuban exile author Carlos Alberto Montaner and the Ladies in White, female relatives of Cuban political prisoners.
The websites portrayed Ardin's links to Cuba as evidence of a U.S.-backed plot to smear and jail Assange. One site said Montaner had links to the CIA.
Montaner told journalists that he did not recall ever meeting Ardin and dismissed the CIA allegation as Cuban propaganda. Ladies in White spokeswomen Berta Soler and Laura Pollán said they did not know Ardin.
On Christmas Eve, about 35 members of Communitas, all ages, races, and nationalities, celebrated Mass. Communitas is the small Catholic group mentioned in my book that meets at the Dignity Center, a gathering place for gay Catholics, though few of us in Communitas are actually gay. We begin the Lord’s Prayer “Our father and mother” and the line between priests and laity is blurred. On Christmas Eve, the sermon was given by a lay member, Chris, a man from Nigeria, who said, corroborated by my own experience as well, that Christmas is celebrated all over the world, even by non-Christians. He cited examples in his own country of Christians and Muslims laying down their arms at this time of year. However, even as he was speaking, Muslims in Nigeria were attacking Christians, which we were unaware of at the time. His 8-year-old son did the Gospel reading in a strong, clear voice. We sang a number of Christmas carols, including “Silent Night,” which brought back childhood memories. Afterward, we held a potluck supper with champagne.
Amazingly enough, while snowstorms battered and inundated the East Coast from Atlanta to Maine, here in Washington, DC, we had only a light dusting on Sunday evening. By the next morning, it was nearly all melted. I went to work in a Md. Suburb without delay.
Much unfinished business will pass over to the new year from the old. Because the federal budget was not approved before this Congress adjourned, there is a real danger that the increases the president included for the Peace Corps will be cut—or even that funding will be reduced below current levels by the new Congress in the name of deficit reduction. This, after all the efforts of former PCVs to get a budget increase. We’ll have to start all over with the new members. I’m not sure that Tea Party folks will be receptive to a Peace Corps message. Peace Corps in a very small part of the federal budget, but all those small pieces do add up. Those reading this who have congressional representation, unlike those of us here in DC, please make a pitch to your representatives about the importance of keeping Peace Corps funding at the levels included in the current Obama budget.
I’ve noticed that ads popping up on my Yahoo account are often in Spanish, sometimes even in spoken aloud in Spanish. How does Yahoo know that I know Spanish? It’s kind of scary.
WikiLeaks cables from the 2008 ambassador to Honduras, Charles Ford, reveal his misgivings about Honduran President Manuel Zelaya well before Zelaya’s mid-2009 ouster. He cites Zelaya’s suspected ties with organized crime and his manipulation of events to make it look like he was a champion of the common man and the poor. Of course, Honduran presidents, even before Zelaya, have been no strangers to corruption and graft. Perhaps what was different about Zelaya was his open alliance with Cuba and Venezuela.
Along with the sweeping emergency powers that his legislature approved, Hugo Chavez has asked for and received power to regulate telecommunications, including the internet, amid protests from media outlets and spokespeople.
In other news from Latin America reported in the local Spanish-language press, a survey of the region shows 61% of respondents supporting democracy, up from previous surveys. Quite disturbing is the finding, no surprise to me, that Latin America with only 9% of world population, has 27% of violent deaths. The only countries in the region exempt from the wave of violence are Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, Peru, and Uruguay. Again, that is not a surprise. Cuba, while it has a high suicide rate, does not allow ordinary citizens to have firearms and has lots of police who take their job seriously.
Meanwhile, some 50 migrants, including women and children, from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador have apparently been kidnapped by armed men off a Mexican freight train halted with rocks and tree trunks on the track. Some of the US-based families of those kidnapped have apparently received ransom calls.
Arizona is sparking a national debate by cutting off transplants for working-age adults under its Medicaid program. In this recession, the whole question of how far to go with health-care expenditures has come to the fore. Indeed, I would argue, skyrocketing health-care costs are one of the reasons for the recession. Twenty-five years ago, when writing books, book chapters, and articles for my employer’s publications (the American Occupational Therapy Association), I tried to raise questions--ever-so-theoretically--about how far as a society were we willing to go and how much money were we willing to spend on what was already becoming a potentially infinite effort to preserve and extend life? Every time I dared speculate on the topic in print, even obliquely, it was immediately edited out, since our association was trying to increase employment opportunities and reimbursement for our members, as other health professions were also doing, so such cost questions could not be raised. Yet if the task of health care is to keep people alive and, if possible, enhance their quality of life, then the possible interventions are limitless, especially if “health care” is broadly defined to include things like toenail trimming (under Medicare Part B, I believe), Viagra, and hearing aids. Not that such provisions are undesirable; the examples are meant only to demonstrate the elasticity of what is defined as health or medical care. In bygone times, the definition was much narrower.
Additionally, the range of interventions is now much broader than previously and growing every day. Which brings us back to the transplant question. First of all, everyone single one of us will die sooner or later. We will probably die later and perhaps enjoy a better quality of life if we undergo cataract surgery, joint replacement, bypass surgery, and even organ transplant. Can we afford to do that for everyone? In a debate heard on NPR, an administrator for the Arizona Medicaid program argued that state residents have refused to pay higher taxes (no income tax there, only sales and property taxes), so there is insufficient money to fund organ transplants for people ages 21-65. She pointed out that an organ transplant costs about $250,000, is unsuccessful in more than half of cases, and entails life-time expenditures if the patient survives. In comparison, interventions like childhood immunizations are much more effective and cost-effective. “We don’t have the money to do it all; we have to cut somewhere,” she said.
An Arizona resident calling into the program said tearfully that her brother, only in his 40s, will die without a heart transplant. He was on the Arizona Medicaid transplant waiting list until the transplant program was recently eliminated. “You are killing my brother,” she told the Medicaid administrator, “How can you measure the worth of a human life in dollars?” Of course, it’s tragic that her brother had been given hope by being put on the waiting list to begin with, then was shocked when that hope was taken away. But I wondered if she would be willing to sell her house, if she has one, to gamble that her brother might be saved by a heart transplant when the success rate is less than 50% (for Arizona Medicaid recipients, it’s only about 25%, as I recall)? I suspect the answer would be “no,” but she expects the rest of Arizonans to take that gamble and bear that cost.
I’m not saying that Arizona has made the right choice—that’s up to Arizonans to decide—but there are limits, whether it’s heart transplants or something else. (And, of course, someone has to die before a heart is even available for transplant.) Another option would be to cut reimbursements and payments for medical personnel, equipment, and medications, but powerful interests resist that.
Finally, if there could be an expansion of Medicare to all age groups, which would help, but, of course, that would mean less profit for medical providers and more government intervention. All the hue and cry about “death panels” and “Obamacare” are probably designed to head off that possibility—put the onus on the government, whether the US or state government, or on insurance companies. The truth is that “death panels” and health care rationing already exist, but in covert form, otherwise health-care costs would be even higher than they are already. If the family of a very ill patient doesn’t authorize a feeding tube or issues a “do-not-resuscitate” order, as often happens, then the patient will probably die fairly soon. If the intervention had gone forward, the patient would have lived longer, but the cost would be considerable and their quality of life greatly diminished. In the case of patients with severe cognitive deficits and unable to decide independently, letting them go may be best for all concerned, including themselves. The medical-care cost debate is unavoidable—Arizona is only the canary in the coal mine. And Sarah Palin, staunch defender of Arizona and opponent of “death panels,” is strangely silent on the matter in this instance.
Speaking of cognitive deficits, I’ve begun having them myself. As my readers know, I’m an on-call Spanish interpreter, going everywhere by public transportation. Usually my travel to assignments require changing from one metro line to another and taking a bus at the end. And every destination is a different configuration. Sometimes I change trains going in one direction from a particular station, sometimes in another. The other morning, before daylight (maybe I was still a little groggy?), I automatically got on a train going in the same direction as the previous morning, but it was the wrong direction for that particular day. I was engrossed in reading the free abbreviated copy of the Washington Post given out at metro stops when I looked up and suddenly realized my mistake. So I had to get off at the next stop and reverse course, after having lost precious minutes in the process. As a consequence, I missed the bus I was supposed to take at the other end and had to wait for another. So, I barely arrived on time to the hospital where I was to report, whereas I like to arrive early. As it turned out, the scheduled patient never showed up himself and no one answered his phone, so I turned around and went home again, getting on the train going in the right direction this time. However, I must definitely pay more attention and can only hope this was not the beginning of a long downward mental slide. So far, no brain transplants!
Regarding my previous comments on tax breaks for the super-rich, one reader says: The only way progressives can get shitloads of money from "the rich" is to do what Vladimir Putin did: single out a guy like Khodorkovsky, pack his ass off to Siberia, and take his billions. That works just fine, and it also throws a scare into other rich thieves who might have thought about criticizing the government. What it doesn't really do is help the proletariat; but that doesn't matter because in Russia no one is naive enough to expect "fairness." What happened in Russia is just what's been happening in this country. Goldman is still ahead, and the rich thieves the government needs to support its bond market and all like that continue to thrive.
President Obama, no doubt about it, is a smart guy, very insightful, very quick on his feet, a refreshing change after an obviously handicapped poor guy like GW Bush, for whom you would almost feel sorry if he hadn’t been president and capable of inflicting so much harm. I just hope Obama knows what he's doing, but he's not God and cannot know, anticipate, and remedy every problem single-handedly.
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Cuba Jeopordizes [sic] Normalization, Publishes Wiki LeaksAuthor: Tim Paynter Published: December 27, 2010
Read more: http://technorati.com/politics/article/cuba-jeopordizes-normalization-publishes-wiki-leaks/#ixzz19Q7at03t
[Excerpt]
[Anna] Ardin, one of the Assange's alleged victims, works in Sweden's Uppsala University and is known in some Cuban exile and dissident circles. She visited Cuba about four times between 2002 and 2006 as a representative of Swedish social democrats, said Manuel Cuesta Morua, head of Cuba's Arco Progresista, a social-democratic dissident group.
Two left-of-center websites also alleged that she was close to Cuban exile author Carlos Alberto Montaner and the Ladies in White, female relatives of Cuban political prisoners.
The websites portrayed Ardin's links to Cuba as evidence of a U.S.-backed plot to smear and jail Assange. One site said Montaner had links to the CIA.
Montaner told journalists that he did not recall ever meeting Ardin and dismissed the CIA allegation as Cuban propaganda. Ladies in White spokeswomen Berta Soler and Laura Pollán said they did not know Ardin.
Monday, December 20, 2010
Happy Holidays, Human Rights Day, Son’s Death Annivers., Peace Corps on Screen, Raul Castro’s Hanukkah, Peace Corps in NYorker
First off, happy holidays to one and all. It hardly seems possible that another year has gone by. This blog entry is so long and rambling because I haven’t had time to post until now. But I’ve not been just sitting on my hands.
On Dec. 10, Human Rights Day, a number of people met at the DC Amnesty Int’l office to write letters to officials and to people in jail considered prisoners of conscience or to their families and supporting organizations. I wrote a few letters in Spanish to people in Guatemala and Mexico. Meanwhile in Cuba, human rights defenders and the Women in White had a peaceful march disrupted and suffered injuries at the hands of government-inspired groups that day, as is customary there. Eleven of the 75 arrested in the “Black Spring” crackdown of 2003, have not yet been released, though Raul Castro has promised to do so. And Alan Gross, a USAID contractor distributing electronic equipment to Cuban Jews, has been in prison is Cuba for more than a year without charges (see item below about Raul Castro’s synagogue visit).
On Dec. 11, my local Amnesty group hosted another Human Rights Day letter-writing event at an eatery popular with young people. We had a speaker who was an expert on the Democratic Republic of Congo. Since the program turned out to be about atrocities and rapes in the DRC, with slides of people there, men with AK47s, landscapes, and towns, it was very similar to scenes I had witnessed in south Sudan in 2006--even the terrain was similar. Southern Sudanese had fled to DRC and Uganda to escape the fighting there, only to be killed, raped, and forced to fight in those other countries. I had seen girls coming back to south Sudan pregnant and/or infected with HIV after being raped. I'd also heard similar stories as a board member of an organization called Rwanda Children's Fund. Somehow, to hear about it all happening again in Congo was too upsetting to me, so I had to leave. Maybe I was also feeling more sensitive because of the upcoming anniversary of my son's death and my late foster son's anniversary just past--also worried about the Sudan referendum and the possible return to civil war there.
Dec. 19, the actual anniversary of my son Andrew’s death, turned out to be OK. It was also daughter Melanie’s birthday---and I attended a holiday open house that day at a neighbor’s. Any particular day is usually not that different from the one before or after, but knowing the date of an important event does trigger feelings, as we’re culturally conditioned to recognize anniversaries and special days. Ever since my son died, I have not had a Christmas tree or sent out cards. Of course, the actual December when he died, I already had a tree up and decorated and cards mailed out, but that was the last time. Still, I do appreciate receiving holiday cards. Thanks to the senders. And I hope we are all ready to make a fresh start after New Year’s Day.
At a holiday party at the Museum of African Art, I found myself sitting next to a young woman from Kenya who is the cousin of someone who serves with me on the board of Action for Community Transformation, a local non-profit dedicated to education projects in Honduras and Kenya—small world. And while I am on the subject of the museum, if you are visiting DC, include it in your itinerary, as it really has a remarkable collection and not a huge public attendance. That evening a new acquisition was unveiled, a kaleidoscopic constantly moving artwork with sound, something positively mesmerizing by an Ethiopian artist who was introduced at the event.
I volunteered to do a review of a new Peace Corps self-published book for a writers’ website (the same one that gave me an award). It’s the second review of a self-published book that I’ve done for that website and, in both cases, the books were disappointing and not very well-written. As a self-published author myself and knowing all the hopes and efforts that went into the writing, I was reluctant to sound too critical, but felt an obligation to be honest and not lead readers and would-be buyers astray. On this last one, though I tried to be gentle and give praise where praise was due, the author was angry and upset by the overall tone of my review. If they would only write better books, I’d be most happy to praise them. It’s a thankless task otherwise.
At another recent holiday party, I was talking with a young woman from El Salvador with a son almost 3, born here, She said she had left her 6 year-old daughter back in El Salvador. As an interpreter in juvenile services, I've seen too many cases of mothers who've left kids behind, then had other kids born here, and finally sent for the older one as a teenager. The older child, observing younger siblings who not only speak English and feel at home in this country, but who have had their mother their whole life, feels resentful. Often he or she has not been to school in the interim and now is forced to sit in class with younger kids, not understanding anything. Such teens are often truant or worse, obligating the mother to take time off from work and get an attorney for juvenile court or truancy hearings, surprised that the happy reunion she has sacrificed for has turned out so badly. In Honduras, I've heard radio spots urging parents not to leave their kids, but stay in the country with them.
On another matter, in the current issue of the New Yorker, there's a disquieting article (“The Efficiency Dilemma,” Dec. 20, 2010) showing evidence that energy efficiency and more miles-to-the-gallon don't necessarily reduce pollution, because they increase consumption. The only thing that seems to reduce consumption is introducing higher energy costs.
One of my recent interpretation clients for an unemployment appeal hearing told me as we were leaving that he was from Honduras. I asked where? He was from La Esperanza, Intibuca, my second Peace Corps site!
Here in DC, it has been colder than normal, but no snow yet like that engulfing the mid-west, the northern east coast, and Canada, although we did have 2 inches last Thurs. that mostly melted.
In the local Hispanic press, I see that a deputy of the National Party, the party the current president, Porfirio Lobo, belongs to, was murdered in a carjacking in Copan Ruinas, site of the fabled Mayan ruins and of my first encounter with Honduras at age 3 (as per my book). That area is not considered particularly dangerous and is pretty well guarded because of tourism. But in Honduras, crime and violence can occur anywhere.
In other news from Spanish-language papers, UNICEF is predicting that mother-to-child transmission of HIV will be almost eliminated by 2015.
After natural disasters in Venezuela, Hugo Chavez plans to rule by presidential decree for the next year (and beyond?).
Deposed Honduran president Manuel Zelaya is reported to have said that he is not negotiating with anyone to return to his homeland nor has he been approached on the matter, although he calls on the US to take decisive steps in that regard.
Wiki-Leaks cables have revealed that Zelaya was smuggled back into the country in September 2009 by the FMLN, the militant Salvadoran group that had been involved in a long-standing civil war in El Salvador, with help from Hugo Chavez and his forces. Again, as with much Wiki-Leaks information, this is only corroboration of what was already known or suspected.
In other Honduras news, whereas the 35 OAS member nations voted unanimously to expel Honduras when Zelaya was first forced into exile, now all but 12 favor its return, but the 12, led by Venezuela, are blocking that prospect. A military man involved in Zelaya’s ouster, Brigadier General Romeo Vasquez, says he is writing a book about the incident.
Regrettably, a handful of Republican senators blocked approval of the Dream Act. I hope Hispanic voters will give Republicans their comeuppance in the next elections. Some fault Obama for stepping up enforcement at the border and deportations, leaving no room to bargain with Republicans, who got what they wanted. Incoming House Speaker John Boehner is quite capable of crying when he thinks about the tax burdens of future generations, but seems to have no tears for the current generation of Hispanic would-be college students and military service members who have lived their whole life in this country and would contribute to it.
Here’s a website review of an upcoming Peace Corps TV flick that we can all probably afford to miss: Brooke White, an “American Idol” Season 7 finalist, will star in Change of Plans, a TV movie presented by Fox. The 27-year-old singer-turned-actress will play a woman who becomes the legal guardian of four children after her best friend dies while serving in the Peace Corps. (Wait, a PCV with four kids?)
This is just the latest in a series of movies (and books) that uses the Peace Corps as a plot gimmick. The most famous one, and one of the first, was the very lowbrow movie “Volunteers” starring Tom Hanks years before Hanks was an Oscar-winning megacelebrity.
In this silly movie, Hanks meets and stars with Rita Wilson who Tom later married. Volunteers is set in 1962–back when the Peace Corps was all the rage–and Hanks, speaking with an unfortunate accent meant to represent aristocratic wealth, plays a compulsive gambler, recently graduated from Yale, whose father suddenly refuses to pay his debts. To escape some particularly shady characters, he joins the Peace Corps and boards a plane headed to Southeast Asia. (What no interview? references? endless emailing to the Recruiter? Medical? Hardly realistic.) But nevertheless… .
This movie, as has been written about it, is “far from being politically sensitive.” The politics of the movie are all messed up, and the movie ends as a huge indictment of the Peace Corps as a corrupt tool of the government, despite some kind words for the agency and PCVs at the end.
As more health care reimbursement is set by the government or insurers, doctors’ threats to opt out ring more hollow, because they may not have enough remaining private pay patients to stay in business. Also, consumer spending is never going to recover to its previous level, nor should it, because that level was a bubble, based on phony credit.
As for the tax cut bill, it seems entirely reasonable to me, perhaps because I’m not in that bracket, that a person earning more than $250,000 per year should not continue to get a tax break on the portion of their income over that amount, especially in light of the deficit (the thought of which, apparently moved Boehner to tears, but not sufficiently to let tax breaks for the rich expire). So why do Republican lawmakers insist on giving a break to those earners? Certainly most of their constituents are not in that category and the income gap between rich and poor continues to grow, so they are not responding to a voter mandate. Perhaps a few voters do aspire to becoming rich and so identify with the wealthy, but it seems more likely that Republicans’ insistence on perpetuating these breaks for high earners is because the latter are big contributors to their campaigns. Of course, Republicans are at least nominally against taxes and government programs in general (though not in favor of cutting military expenditures or their pet projects) and also they want to saddle Obama and the Democrats with responsibility for the debt. But even more pernicious, in my judgment, is the fierce Republican objection to taxing estates exceeding $3,500,000. Is it good policy for the nation or for the moral fiber of a single heir to inherit $5 million or perhaps $10 million from two parents, not earned and completely tax-free? Passing on inherited wealth through generations skews the income distribution even more.
An Op-Ed in the NY Times (Dec. 14, 2010) by Ray Madoff (any relation?) argues: In its first 60 years, the estate tax, along with other progressive policies, went a long way toward accomplishing this goal [of avoiding wealth concentration]. By 1976, the amount of the nation’s wealth controlled by the richest 1 percent of Americans had fallen from more than 50 percent to only 20 percent. And this greater dispersal of wealth fostered a strong middle class.
The tax policies of the past 35 years, however, have reversed the trend. Today the wealthiest 1 percent own more than a third of the country’s wealth, leaving 80 percent of Americans with just 16 percent of it. President Obama’s proposal would only accelerate this trend.
But Americans seem little inclined to resist wealth concentration. Efforts to impose taxes geared to the wealthy are lambasted as promoting class warfare. Moreover, because the estate tax is nominally imposed on the deceased, it has been vulnerable to the “death tax” rhetoric, which has convinced the public that it is a second tax imposed on the defenseless dead, who already paid taxes on the money they accumulated.
North and south Sudan cannot split entirely as a result of the January referendum, but must maintain a working relationship because, while oil is in the south, refineries are in the north. That’s one of the issues to be worked out, along with the location of the border. Southerners have unrealistic expectations about the benefits of the final split. Southerners now living in the north are moving back home in expectation of all problems being solved afterward, when, in fact, divisions in the south, now united for secession, will emerge when it actually happens.
No atheists in (Cuba's economic) foxholes? See http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/12/06/1960955/cuban-leader-reaches-out-to-religion.html about Raul Castro celebrating Hanukkah at a Havana synagogue. Cuban Jews there didn’t know about Alan Gross, being held in a Cuban prison for over a year now for distributing electronic equipment to Cuban Jews.
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There have been riots in Haiti, protesting that popular favorite Michel Martelly had been eliminated in the presidential run-off despite observers’ claims that he came in second. President Rene Preval has declared his own favorite, Jude Celestin, second when observers say he actually came in third. No one disputes that the top spot was won by 70-year-old former first lady and law professor Mirlande Manigat. Only the top two candidates may be included in a run-off. So, again, Haiti’s problems continue. Back in 1990, when I was an election observer there, we thought progress in rebuilding the country and its institutions could begin with the first free election in the post-Duvalier era. Twenty years later, little or no progress.
And the Wiki-Leaks saga continues. Like everything else these days, it has polarized opinion. While there may have been some value in publicizing a massive leak on a onetime basis, to continue seems unwise for future diplomacy. Is it desirable to promote less-than-candid exchanges among diplomats? I know many people consider Assange a hero, but I have mixed feelings at best. And apparently two Swedish women have genuine reasons for wanting to press charges with no obvious connection with the leaks. Sweden is not known for entering conspiracies with the US government.
A new leaks organization has sprung up to rival and challenge Wiki-Leaks, namely OpenLeaks, started by disaffected Wiki-Leakers who objected to Assange’s release of the names of secret informants and his sole focus and vendetta against the US. OpenLeaks promises to be more circumspect and ideologically neutral than Wiki-Leaks. Probably leaks and their massive dissemination are inevitable in the digital age. However, I still think they are a mixed blessing at best and a real danger at worst. Of course, like many of those aghast at the time at the actions of the GW Bush government, I’m not surprised by leaks confirming that Bush approved waterboarding, for example. And some foreign leaders have been revealed to be as venial and corrupt as I and others have always suspected. I don’t dispute that it gives a certain satisfaction to have guessed right in such cases. Perhaps confidential government documents should have a limited shelf life, a certain number of years, as with copyright expirations or Freedom of Information requests.
But every individual on the planet cannot be expert in everything or necessarily will show good judgment. When we face surgery, we don’t need to be in on the pre-operative staff conference, nor do we have to be awake and observing and critiquing everything being done to us as it’s happening. We have to delegate that to medical personnel who specialize in such matters. They may occasionally make mistakes, but will do better than if we operated on ourselves and there are always second opinions, lawyers, and other expert witnesses we can call on if necessary. Likewise, we have a representative government of elected officials and career diplomats. The American people (and especially all the world’s people) don’t need to know and weigh-in on each and every conversation and decision being made in real time on their behalf by US political leaders and diplomats.
Congressional representatives, the Congressional Research Service, and the Governmental Accountability all can be our watchdogs. Most ordinary people don’t have the intelligence or expertise, nor do they have the time to devote to diplomacy and political decision making. They are doing other things: raising kids, working in other enterprises, watching sit-coms on TV. Many of them don’t even vote. And many non-citizens, even enemies of our country, are now privy to confidential information, which is not desirable. Of course, we don’t want a completely government-controlled information system like Cuba’s, but I still contend that secrecy in diplomacy is no vice. An optimum balance of secrecy and transparency may be something the new OpenLeaks can provide.
Not to get into a long philosophical discourse here, but Wiki-Leaks supporters are probably affiliated with social ecology as a political theory. Social ecology envisages a free society without hierarchy and domination in harmony with nature. The rejection of hierarchy and domination is something that social ecology shares with anarchist doctrines.
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VILLAGE VOICE--
The Peace Corps’s brightest hopeby Peter Hessler DECEMBER 20, 2010
The New Yorker, December 20, 2010, p. 101
Read the full text of this article in the digital edition. (Subscription required.)
ABSTRACT: A REPORTER AT LARGE about Rajeev Goyal and his advocacy of the Peace Corps. In the part of eastern Nepal where Goyal served as a Peace Corps volunteer from 2001 to 2003, people sometimes weep when his name is mentioned. Locals refer to him as Shiva, the god who is the source of the Ganges River. In the halls of Congress, most people have no idea what to make of him. For the past two years, he has approached the place as if it were just another Nepali settlement with a caste system to untangle. He figured out the Washington equivalent of village-well routes—hallways, hearing rooms, and coffee shops where anybody can hang around and meet a member of Congress. During the past two years, funding for the Peace Corps has increased by record amounts, despite partisanship in Congress and a brutal economic climate. In March, the Peace Corps will turn fifty years old. The anniversary is bittersweet: despite the new funding, which has allowed for a significant increase in volunteers, the agency sends fewer than sixty per cent as many people abroad today as it did in 1966. Goyal grew up in Manhasset Hills, Long Island, where his parents had settled after immigrating from Rajasthan, India. In the Peace Corps, he was assigned to teach English at a school in Namje, a village of fewer than six hundred people, in eastern Nepal. Snowcaps provide Nepal with abundant water resources, but rivers are often inaccessible in mountain towns like Namje. Describes how Goyal and others conceived and executed the construction of a pumping system that brought water to the town. Also describes the later construction of a school in Namje built, in part, with funds from Rotary International. Tells about the history of the Peace Corps, which was created in 1961 by President Kennedy.Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/12/20/101220fa_fact_hessler?printable=true#ixzz182pUllmX
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Now I see that Sarah Palin, perhaps in an attempt regain the spotlight, visited Haiti. Palin’s second book, America By Heart, while now second on the NY Times’ Best Seller list behind GW Bush’s Decision Points, is not doing as well as her first, which sold 2.2 million copies. Maybe her star is fading and people are getting tired of her? We should be so lucky.
On Dec. 10, Human Rights Day, a number of people met at the DC Amnesty Int’l office to write letters to officials and to people in jail considered prisoners of conscience or to their families and supporting organizations. I wrote a few letters in Spanish to people in Guatemala and Mexico. Meanwhile in Cuba, human rights defenders and the Women in White had a peaceful march disrupted and suffered injuries at the hands of government-inspired groups that day, as is customary there. Eleven of the 75 arrested in the “Black Spring” crackdown of 2003, have not yet been released, though Raul Castro has promised to do so. And Alan Gross, a USAID contractor distributing electronic equipment to Cuban Jews, has been in prison is Cuba for more than a year without charges (see item below about Raul Castro’s synagogue visit).
On Dec. 11, my local Amnesty group hosted another Human Rights Day letter-writing event at an eatery popular with young people. We had a speaker who was an expert on the Democratic Republic of Congo. Since the program turned out to be about atrocities and rapes in the DRC, with slides of people there, men with AK47s, landscapes, and towns, it was very similar to scenes I had witnessed in south Sudan in 2006--even the terrain was similar. Southern Sudanese had fled to DRC and Uganda to escape the fighting there, only to be killed, raped, and forced to fight in those other countries. I had seen girls coming back to south Sudan pregnant and/or infected with HIV after being raped. I'd also heard similar stories as a board member of an organization called Rwanda Children's Fund. Somehow, to hear about it all happening again in Congo was too upsetting to me, so I had to leave. Maybe I was also feeling more sensitive because of the upcoming anniversary of my son's death and my late foster son's anniversary just past--also worried about the Sudan referendum and the possible return to civil war there.
Dec. 19, the actual anniversary of my son Andrew’s death, turned out to be OK. It was also daughter Melanie’s birthday---and I attended a holiday open house that day at a neighbor’s. Any particular day is usually not that different from the one before or after, but knowing the date of an important event does trigger feelings, as we’re culturally conditioned to recognize anniversaries and special days. Ever since my son died, I have not had a Christmas tree or sent out cards. Of course, the actual December when he died, I already had a tree up and decorated and cards mailed out, but that was the last time. Still, I do appreciate receiving holiday cards. Thanks to the senders. And I hope we are all ready to make a fresh start after New Year’s Day.
At a holiday party at the Museum of African Art, I found myself sitting next to a young woman from Kenya who is the cousin of someone who serves with me on the board of Action for Community Transformation, a local non-profit dedicated to education projects in Honduras and Kenya—small world. And while I am on the subject of the museum, if you are visiting DC, include it in your itinerary, as it really has a remarkable collection and not a huge public attendance. That evening a new acquisition was unveiled, a kaleidoscopic constantly moving artwork with sound, something positively mesmerizing by an Ethiopian artist who was introduced at the event.
I volunteered to do a review of a new Peace Corps self-published book for a writers’ website (the same one that gave me an award). It’s the second review of a self-published book that I’ve done for that website and, in both cases, the books were disappointing and not very well-written. As a self-published author myself and knowing all the hopes and efforts that went into the writing, I was reluctant to sound too critical, but felt an obligation to be honest and not lead readers and would-be buyers astray. On this last one, though I tried to be gentle and give praise where praise was due, the author was angry and upset by the overall tone of my review. If they would only write better books, I’d be most happy to praise them. It’s a thankless task otherwise.
At another recent holiday party, I was talking with a young woman from El Salvador with a son almost 3, born here, She said she had left her 6 year-old daughter back in El Salvador. As an interpreter in juvenile services, I've seen too many cases of mothers who've left kids behind, then had other kids born here, and finally sent for the older one as a teenager. The older child, observing younger siblings who not only speak English and feel at home in this country, but who have had their mother their whole life, feels resentful. Often he or she has not been to school in the interim and now is forced to sit in class with younger kids, not understanding anything. Such teens are often truant or worse, obligating the mother to take time off from work and get an attorney for juvenile court or truancy hearings, surprised that the happy reunion she has sacrificed for has turned out so badly. In Honduras, I've heard radio spots urging parents not to leave their kids, but stay in the country with them.
On another matter, in the current issue of the New Yorker, there's a disquieting article (“The Efficiency Dilemma,” Dec. 20, 2010) showing evidence that energy efficiency and more miles-to-the-gallon don't necessarily reduce pollution, because they increase consumption. The only thing that seems to reduce consumption is introducing higher energy costs.
One of my recent interpretation clients for an unemployment appeal hearing told me as we were leaving that he was from Honduras. I asked where? He was from La Esperanza, Intibuca, my second Peace Corps site!
Here in DC, it has been colder than normal, but no snow yet like that engulfing the mid-west, the northern east coast, and Canada, although we did have 2 inches last Thurs. that mostly melted.
In the local Hispanic press, I see that a deputy of the National Party, the party the current president, Porfirio Lobo, belongs to, was murdered in a carjacking in Copan Ruinas, site of the fabled Mayan ruins and of my first encounter with Honduras at age 3 (as per my book). That area is not considered particularly dangerous and is pretty well guarded because of tourism. But in Honduras, crime and violence can occur anywhere.
In other news from Spanish-language papers, UNICEF is predicting that mother-to-child transmission of HIV will be almost eliminated by 2015.
After natural disasters in Venezuela, Hugo Chavez plans to rule by presidential decree for the next year (and beyond?).
Deposed Honduran president Manuel Zelaya is reported to have said that he is not negotiating with anyone to return to his homeland nor has he been approached on the matter, although he calls on the US to take decisive steps in that regard.
Wiki-Leaks cables have revealed that Zelaya was smuggled back into the country in September 2009 by the FMLN, the militant Salvadoran group that had been involved in a long-standing civil war in El Salvador, with help from Hugo Chavez and his forces. Again, as with much Wiki-Leaks information, this is only corroboration of what was already known or suspected.
In other Honduras news, whereas the 35 OAS member nations voted unanimously to expel Honduras when Zelaya was first forced into exile, now all but 12 favor its return, but the 12, led by Venezuela, are blocking that prospect. A military man involved in Zelaya’s ouster, Brigadier General Romeo Vasquez, says he is writing a book about the incident.
Regrettably, a handful of Republican senators blocked approval of the Dream Act. I hope Hispanic voters will give Republicans their comeuppance in the next elections. Some fault Obama for stepping up enforcement at the border and deportations, leaving no room to bargain with Republicans, who got what they wanted. Incoming House Speaker John Boehner is quite capable of crying when he thinks about the tax burdens of future generations, but seems to have no tears for the current generation of Hispanic would-be college students and military service members who have lived their whole life in this country and would contribute to it.
Here’s a website review of an upcoming Peace Corps TV flick that we can all probably afford to miss: Brooke White, an “American Idol” Season 7 finalist, will star in Change of Plans, a TV movie presented by Fox. The 27-year-old singer-turned-actress will play a woman who becomes the legal guardian of four children after her best friend dies while serving in the Peace Corps. (Wait, a PCV with four kids?)
This is just the latest in a series of movies (and books) that uses the Peace Corps as a plot gimmick. The most famous one, and one of the first, was the very lowbrow movie “Volunteers” starring Tom Hanks years before Hanks was an Oscar-winning megacelebrity.
In this silly movie, Hanks meets and stars with Rita Wilson who Tom later married. Volunteers is set in 1962–back when the Peace Corps was all the rage–and Hanks, speaking with an unfortunate accent meant to represent aristocratic wealth, plays a compulsive gambler, recently graduated from Yale, whose father suddenly refuses to pay his debts. To escape some particularly shady characters, he joins the Peace Corps and boards a plane headed to Southeast Asia. (What no interview? references? endless emailing to the Recruiter? Medical? Hardly realistic.) But nevertheless… .
This movie, as has been written about it, is “far from being politically sensitive.” The politics of the movie are all messed up, and the movie ends as a huge indictment of the Peace Corps as a corrupt tool of the government, despite some kind words for the agency and PCVs at the end.
As more health care reimbursement is set by the government or insurers, doctors’ threats to opt out ring more hollow, because they may not have enough remaining private pay patients to stay in business. Also, consumer spending is never going to recover to its previous level, nor should it, because that level was a bubble, based on phony credit.
As for the tax cut bill, it seems entirely reasonable to me, perhaps because I’m not in that bracket, that a person earning more than $250,000 per year should not continue to get a tax break on the portion of their income over that amount, especially in light of the deficit (the thought of which, apparently moved Boehner to tears, but not sufficiently to let tax breaks for the rich expire). So why do Republican lawmakers insist on giving a break to those earners? Certainly most of their constituents are not in that category and the income gap between rich and poor continues to grow, so they are not responding to a voter mandate. Perhaps a few voters do aspire to becoming rich and so identify with the wealthy, but it seems more likely that Republicans’ insistence on perpetuating these breaks for high earners is because the latter are big contributors to their campaigns. Of course, Republicans are at least nominally against taxes and government programs in general (though not in favor of cutting military expenditures or their pet projects) and also they want to saddle Obama and the Democrats with responsibility for the debt. But even more pernicious, in my judgment, is the fierce Republican objection to taxing estates exceeding $3,500,000. Is it good policy for the nation or for the moral fiber of a single heir to inherit $5 million or perhaps $10 million from two parents, not earned and completely tax-free? Passing on inherited wealth through generations skews the income distribution even more.
An Op-Ed in the NY Times (Dec. 14, 2010) by Ray Madoff (any relation?) argues: In its first 60 years, the estate tax, along with other progressive policies, went a long way toward accomplishing this goal [of avoiding wealth concentration]. By 1976, the amount of the nation’s wealth controlled by the richest 1 percent of Americans had fallen from more than 50 percent to only 20 percent. And this greater dispersal of wealth fostered a strong middle class.
The tax policies of the past 35 years, however, have reversed the trend. Today the wealthiest 1 percent own more than a third of the country’s wealth, leaving 80 percent of Americans with just 16 percent of it. President Obama’s proposal would only accelerate this trend.
But Americans seem little inclined to resist wealth concentration. Efforts to impose taxes geared to the wealthy are lambasted as promoting class warfare. Moreover, because the estate tax is nominally imposed on the deceased, it has been vulnerable to the “death tax” rhetoric, which has convinced the public that it is a second tax imposed on the defenseless dead, who already paid taxes on the money they accumulated.
North and south Sudan cannot split entirely as a result of the January referendum, but must maintain a working relationship because, while oil is in the south, refineries are in the north. That’s one of the issues to be worked out, along with the location of the border. Southerners have unrealistic expectations about the benefits of the final split. Southerners now living in the north are moving back home in expectation of all problems being solved afterward, when, in fact, divisions in the south, now united for secession, will emerge when it actually happens.
No atheists in (Cuba's economic) foxholes? See http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/12/06/1960955/cuban-leader-reaches-out-to-religion.html about Raul Castro celebrating Hanukkah at a Havana synagogue. Cuban Jews there didn’t know about Alan Gross, being held in a Cuban prison for over a year now for distributing electronic equipment to Cuban Jews.
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There have been riots in Haiti, protesting that popular favorite Michel Martelly had been eliminated in the presidential run-off despite observers’ claims that he came in second. President Rene Preval has declared his own favorite, Jude Celestin, second when observers say he actually came in third. No one disputes that the top spot was won by 70-year-old former first lady and law professor Mirlande Manigat. Only the top two candidates may be included in a run-off. So, again, Haiti’s problems continue. Back in 1990, when I was an election observer there, we thought progress in rebuilding the country and its institutions could begin with the first free election in the post-Duvalier era. Twenty years later, little or no progress.
And the Wiki-Leaks saga continues. Like everything else these days, it has polarized opinion. While there may have been some value in publicizing a massive leak on a onetime basis, to continue seems unwise for future diplomacy. Is it desirable to promote less-than-candid exchanges among diplomats? I know many people consider Assange a hero, but I have mixed feelings at best. And apparently two Swedish women have genuine reasons for wanting to press charges with no obvious connection with the leaks. Sweden is not known for entering conspiracies with the US government.
A new leaks organization has sprung up to rival and challenge Wiki-Leaks, namely OpenLeaks, started by disaffected Wiki-Leakers who objected to Assange’s release of the names of secret informants and his sole focus and vendetta against the US. OpenLeaks promises to be more circumspect and ideologically neutral than Wiki-Leaks. Probably leaks and their massive dissemination are inevitable in the digital age. However, I still think they are a mixed blessing at best and a real danger at worst. Of course, like many of those aghast at the time at the actions of the GW Bush government, I’m not surprised by leaks confirming that Bush approved waterboarding, for example. And some foreign leaders have been revealed to be as venial and corrupt as I and others have always suspected. I don’t dispute that it gives a certain satisfaction to have guessed right in such cases. Perhaps confidential government documents should have a limited shelf life, a certain number of years, as with copyright expirations or Freedom of Information requests.
But every individual on the planet cannot be expert in everything or necessarily will show good judgment. When we face surgery, we don’t need to be in on the pre-operative staff conference, nor do we have to be awake and observing and critiquing everything being done to us as it’s happening. We have to delegate that to medical personnel who specialize in such matters. They may occasionally make mistakes, but will do better than if we operated on ourselves and there are always second opinions, lawyers, and other expert witnesses we can call on if necessary. Likewise, we have a representative government of elected officials and career diplomats. The American people (and especially all the world’s people) don’t need to know and weigh-in on each and every conversation and decision being made in real time on their behalf by US political leaders and diplomats.
Congressional representatives, the Congressional Research Service, and the Governmental Accountability all can be our watchdogs. Most ordinary people don’t have the intelligence or expertise, nor do they have the time to devote to diplomacy and political decision making. They are doing other things: raising kids, working in other enterprises, watching sit-coms on TV. Many of them don’t even vote. And many non-citizens, even enemies of our country, are now privy to confidential information, which is not desirable. Of course, we don’t want a completely government-controlled information system like Cuba’s, but I still contend that secrecy in diplomacy is no vice. An optimum balance of secrecy and transparency may be something the new OpenLeaks can provide.
Not to get into a long philosophical discourse here, but Wiki-Leaks supporters are probably affiliated with social ecology as a political theory. Social ecology envisages a free society without hierarchy and domination in harmony with nature. The rejection of hierarchy and domination is something that social ecology shares with anarchist doctrines.
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VILLAGE VOICE--
The Peace Corps’s brightest hopeby Peter Hessler DECEMBER 20, 2010
The New Yorker, December 20, 2010, p. 101
Read the full text of this article in the digital edition. (Subscription required.)
ABSTRACT: A REPORTER AT LARGE about Rajeev Goyal and his advocacy of the Peace Corps. In the part of eastern Nepal where Goyal served as a Peace Corps volunteer from 2001 to 2003, people sometimes weep when his name is mentioned. Locals refer to him as Shiva, the god who is the source of the Ganges River. In the halls of Congress, most people have no idea what to make of him. For the past two years, he has approached the place as if it were just another Nepali settlement with a caste system to untangle. He figured out the Washington equivalent of village-well routes—hallways, hearing rooms, and coffee shops where anybody can hang around and meet a member of Congress. During the past two years, funding for the Peace Corps has increased by record amounts, despite partisanship in Congress and a brutal economic climate. In March, the Peace Corps will turn fifty years old. The anniversary is bittersweet: despite the new funding, which has allowed for a significant increase in volunteers, the agency sends fewer than sixty per cent as many people abroad today as it did in 1966. Goyal grew up in Manhasset Hills, Long Island, where his parents had settled after immigrating from Rajasthan, India. In the Peace Corps, he was assigned to teach English at a school in Namje, a village of fewer than six hundred people, in eastern Nepal. Snowcaps provide Nepal with abundant water resources, but rivers are often inaccessible in mountain towns like Namje. Describes how Goyal and others conceived and executed the construction of a pumping system that brought water to the town. Also describes the later construction of a school in Namje built, in part, with funds from Rotary International. Tells about the history of the Peace Corps, which was created in 1961 by President Kennedy.Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/12/20/101220fa_fact_hessler?printable=true#ixzz182pUllmX
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Now I see that Sarah Palin, perhaps in an attempt regain the spotlight, visited Haiti. Palin’s second book, America By Heart, while now second on the NY Times’ Best Seller list behind GW Bush’s Decision Points, is not doing as well as her first, which sold 2.2 million copies. Maybe her star is fading and people are getting tired of her? We should be so lucky.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Book Reading, PC Budget, Son’s Death Annivers., Dec. Dates, Tax Cuts, Dream Act, Popular Leaders, Wiki-Leaks, Haiti
On Dec. 5, only about a dozen people came to my presentation and reading at a local arts’ venue, The Corner Store. It was a disappointing turnout, perhaps because the evening was very cold and windy. Still we had a lively exchange about Peace Corps, Honduras, and my book, as well as good refreshments, including hot cider. To my surprise, one woman brought a copy of my book bought used on Amazon. Inside was my personal endorsement to someone else completely. She insisted that I write her name and a message to her above the one I had written to the first buyer. I don’t get any profits from used copies that are resold, but wonder how often that happens? I suppose once a reader is finished with the book, it’s time to move it along, but rather tacky to recycle a book endorsed to a particular individual. From now on, maybe I should just sign my own name for buyers and nothing more.
While increases were included in the current Peace Corps budget, they have not been definitively approved and the agency is operating right now on a continuing resolution, so that’s another item pending before the lame-duck Congress and, if not finalized before January, it’s likely to be torpedoed by Republicans when they assume the House majority. Congressman Sam Farr from California, a former PC volunteer, is taking leadership on finalizing the PC budget for this year.
Dec. 19 is the 16th anniversary of my son Andrew’s death after a work accident, also daughter Melanie’s birthday. I’ve never felt very much in a holiday mood ever since Andrew died so close to Christmas and have not sent out cards ever since, although I do appreciate receiving them. Also in December, one year after Andrew’s death, my foster son Alex died of AIDS.
Another important December date is Dec. 1, International AIDS Day, that we used to celebrate in Honduras with educational skits performed by young people and a parade through town with chants and banners. Dec. 10 is Human Rights Day, which we in Amnesty International in Dc are celebrating on both Fri. Dec. 10 and Sat. Dec. 11.
In all the debate about tax cuts, I had hoped that policymakers would not exacerbate the growing divide between rich and poor. Although “income equality” dares not be put forward in this political climate, it does seem that an effort was made to avoid making things worse for those at the bottom by slashing benefits, while leaving tax cuts for the wealthy and reimbursement to doctors, drug companies, and other special interests intact. Got an e-mail message pointing out that if all the Bush tax cuts were not allowed to expire, millionaires like GW Bush himself, as well as Sarah Palin, Gingrich, Beck, and Limbaugh would benefit. Since Republicans have argued that tax cuts to millionaires spur job creation, I would have proposed giving it only to those millionaires who actually created x number of jobs. Of course, they’ve had the tax cuts for years now, but have been hoarding their money and don’t seem to have been creating many jobs, although their heavy campaign donations do support the legislators who are protecting their wealth, so maybe those are the jobs that they’ve created. But now, although the measures have not been quite finalized, it does seem that both rich and poor will benefit, but at a considerable increase in the deficit.
John McCain, once a champion of immigration reform, himself born in Panama and the adoptive father of a foreign-born daughter, has now bowed down to the donors who helped him retain his office and come out in favor of Arizona’s anti-immigrant assault. Yet, according to Census figures, without Hispanics, the group most excoriated by reform opponents, the number of young people in the U.S. would have declined between 2000 and 2010. Based on the estimates, the non-Hispanic youth population declined somewhere between 1.25 million and 2.9 million. We old people do need young people and so now we need Hispanic young people!
And we especially need college-bound Hispanics—our next generation of professionals. So, the Dream Act is long overdue and is a matter of national self-interest. Those who focus narrowly, labeling undocumented college students “lawbreakers,” have failed to recognize that a key element of any crime is intent, and kids brought to this country illegally certainly had no criminal intent or even awareness that a crime might have been committed.
Fidel Castro and Chavez, the most unpopularBy ANTONIO MARIA DELGADO, adelgado@elnuevoherald.com, 12-04-2010 [My translation from the Spanish]
Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez are the most unpopular leaders in Latin America, the NGO Latinobarómetro said Friday in its annual report highlighting the inhabitants of the region's growing appreciation of democracy.
At the other end of the scale are the U.S. president, Barack Obama, and the outgoing Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, both getting the highest reading, 6.3 points on a scale of 1 to 10. The readings of Castro and Chavez were 3.8 and 3.9, respectively, said the report that evaluates the perception of Latin Americans on the issues of greatest impact in the region.
About 20,200 people in 18 countries were consulted by the Santiago-based NGO to prepare the study, which placed the King of Spain Juan Carlos I, in third place in popularity with a reading of 5.8.
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As for Wiki-Leaks, I understand that former PFC Bradley Manning, who had been in Iraq with access to the files, has been arrested and, just now, Assange himself has been arrested. To the extent that the leaks reveal possible human rights violations, they do perform a valuable service. Also, this sudden massive burst of information is a historian’s dream, opening up a window onto a secret world. The leaks do offer a titillating, sometimes fascinating (and sometimes tedious) snapshot into that world, and show that US diplomats and others have a greater degree of knowledge and sophistication than was otherwise evident. But the leaks also smack of voyeurism, eavesdropping, and invasion of privacy, especially since the revelations are about current and ongoing relations, not simply long-ago activities. On a continuing basis, the value of wholesale and raw disclosure of diplomatic efforts and private conversations is questionable. Do we really want to get rid of political leaders and spokespeople and leave international relations, decisions, and actions subject to an ongoing plebiscite, with billions worldwide debating and voting online on every conceivable issue? That seems the logical implication of the continuous Wiki-Leaks dumps. Do we want less-than-candid conversations to take place between world leaders? There does seem to be a legitimate place for diplomacy and secrecy in international relations. The motivation for the leaks, while expressed in the lofty terms of promoting transparency, seems based more on a desire for notoriety and for harming US interests, not only reputations, but economies and actual people—and, of course, a means of making money, since payments are collected online.
As a one-time activity, the leaks may have been valuable—and certainly have been revealing, though not terribly surprising. Few shocking backroom deals have surfaced, nor have grand conspiracy theories been confirmed. Mostly, the stuff is just reports of ordinary, day-to-day efforts. Still, the result, regrettably, is going to be more secrecy and less openness, and more double-talk among diplomats, making it harder to reach agreement, especially with so many hard feelings to overcome. Continuous leaking of every private communication among political leaders to the whole wide world is undesirable; since we now get the idea, it needs to stop. Maybe it would be worth revealing such details in 75 or 100 years, but enough for now! That’s my opinion. The internet is truly a 2-edged sword.
The leaks regarding Honduras, so far, reveal that the US government did support Zelaya at first and opposed his ouster, so the US did not engineer his removal from office, as some have alleged.
A contrary view is expressed by The Atlantic contributor David Samuels, who supports the leaks and Assange http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2010/12/the-shameful-attacks-on-julian-assange/67440/
The Shameful Attacks on Julian Assange, Sunday, December 5, 2010
“Assange may or may not be grandiose, paranoid and delusional - terms
that might be fairly applied at one time or another to most prominent
investigative reporters of my acquaintance. But the fact that so many
prominent old school journalists are attacking him with such unbridled
force is a symptom of the failure of traditional reporting methods to
penetrate a culture of official secrecy that has grown by leaps and
bounds since 9/11, and threatens the functioning of a free press as a
cornerstone of democracy.”
However, in quoting what other journalists have said attacking Assange, Samuels undermines his own case. He says, “In a recent article in The New Yorker, the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Steve Coll sniffed that ‘the archives that WikiLeaks has published are much less significant than the Pentagon Papers were in their day’ while depicting Assange as a ‘self-aggrandizing control-freak’ whose website ‘lacks an ethical culture that is consonant with the ideals of free media.’"
And, Samuels, again: “In a column titled ‘WikiLeaks Must Be
Stopped,’ Mark Thiessen [of the Washington Post] wrote that ‘WikiLeaks is not a news organization; it is a criminal enterprise,’ and urged that the site
should be shut down ‘and its leadership brought to justice.’ The dean
of American foreign correspondents, John Burns of The New York Times,
with two Pulitzer Prizes to his credit, contributed a profile of
Assange which used terms like ‘nearly delusional grandeur’ to describe
Wikileaks' founder. The Times' normally mild-mannered David Brooks
asserted in his column this week that ‘Assange seems to be an old-
fashioned anarchist’ and worried that Wikileaks will ‘damage the
global conversation.’”
Samuels seems to be damning Assange with faint praise. One thing is certain, opinion on this matter, like on much else in the contemporary world, is highly polarized.
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In Haiti, the presidential elections have turned out to be quite contentious and not definitive. Someone has sent me an article from the Wall St. Journal (“Who Cares About Haiti?’ Nov. 23, 2010) alleging—nothing new—that corruption is rampant, especially at the port where crucial goods must enter, yet are being held up until exorbitant bribes or fees are paid.
I have long speculated, as possibly mentioned before, that since the cholera strain ravaging Haiti is of a SE Asian variety and not endemic to the Americas, perhaps one or more peacekeepers from Asia with asymptomatic or mild cholera (possible where cholera is common and people have developed some resistance) could have inadvertently brought it to beleaguered Haiti. Probably no one in the UN would have wanted to advertise this, for fear of provoking more unrest. My brother-in-law almost died of cholera picked up in India recently, which he developed on his flight home and led to an ambulance waiting to take him straight to the hospital from the airport when he arrived. Yet Indians sharing a meal with him before his nighttime departure did not get sick.
Haiti cholera likely from UN troops, expert saysBy JONATHAN M. KATZ, Associated Press Dec. 7, 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – A contingent of U.N. peacekeepers is the likely source of a cholera outbreak in Haiti that has killed at least 2,000 people, a French scientist said in a report obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press.
Epidemiologist Renaud Piarroux concluded that the cholera originated in a tributary of Haiti's Artibonite river, next to a U.N. base outside the town of Mirebalais. He was sent by the French government to assist Haitian health officials in determining the source of the outbreak, a French Foreign Ministry official said Tuesday.
"No other hypothesis could be found to explain the outbreak of a cholera epidemic in this village ... not affected by the earthquake earlier this year and located dozens of kilometers from the coast and (tent) camps," he wrote in a report that has not been publicly released.
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A blog reader comments on the last posting questioning how much the health system, and by implication, taxpayers, should spend on prolonging life a few days or months for terminally ill patients. As a society, we not only are failing to admit that life is finite, but our resources as well. She says: I agree not just in principle but in every other way with the fundamental wrongness of spending huge amounts of Medicare funds to extend the lives of terminally ill (or just plain ancient) people another few days. It seems to be wrong for the beneficiaries – more likely their families – to insist on this diversion of money from people who could or will be productive (read: capital-creating, tax-paying) citizens, given the chance to be treated with drugs or by surgery now beyond their reach. Rationing has always been countenanced in emergency situations, and we have one of those now. Pre-senescent Americans won’t like it, but I suggest that the Americans now in their 80s and 90s may well go quietly, even with relief, since their personalities were formed before the current age of entitlement was upon us.---------------------
In a NY Times column entitled “She who must not be named,” Charles Blow argues that even negative attention paid to Sarah Palin keeps her in the spotlight and rallies her defenders. “She’s the Zsa Zsa Gabor of American politics. She once did something noteworthy, but she’s now just famous for being famous. She was a vice presidential nominee. But she lost. She was the governor of Alaska. But she quit. Now she’s just a political personality — part cheerleader, part bomb-thrower — being kept afloat in part by the hackles of her enemies and the people who admire her resilience in the face of them. The left’s outsize and unrelenting assault on her has made her a folk hero.” He vows not to mention her again, good advice for us all.
While increases were included in the current Peace Corps budget, they have not been definitively approved and the agency is operating right now on a continuing resolution, so that’s another item pending before the lame-duck Congress and, if not finalized before January, it’s likely to be torpedoed by Republicans when they assume the House majority. Congressman Sam Farr from California, a former PC volunteer, is taking leadership on finalizing the PC budget for this year.
Dec. 19 is the 16th anniversary of my son Andrew’s death after a work accident, also daughter Melanie’s birthday. I’ve never felt very much in a holiday mood ever since Andrew died so close to Christmas and have not sent out cards ever since, although I do appreciate receiving them. Also in December, one year after Andrew’s death, my foster son Alex died of AIDS.
Another important December date is Dec. 1, International AIDS Day, that we used to celebrate in Honduras with educational skits performed by young people and a parade through town with chants and banners. Dec. 10 is Human Rights Day, which we in Amnesty International in Dc are celebrating on both Fri. Dec. 10 and Sat. Dec. 11.
In all the debate about tax cuts, I had hoped that policymakers would not exacerbate the growing divide between rich and poor. Although “income equality” dares not be put forward in this political climate, it does seem that an effort was made to avoid making things worse for those at the bottom by slashing benefits, while leaving tax cuts for the wealthy and reimbursement to doctors, drug companies, and other special interests intact. Got an e-mail message pointing out that if all the Bush tax cuts were not allowed to expire, millionaires like GW Bush himself, as well as Sarah Palin, Gingrich, Beck, and Limbaugh would benefit. Since Republicans have argued that tax cuts to millionaires spur job creation, I would have proposed giving it only to those millionaires who actually created x number of jobs. Of course, they’ve had the tax cuts for years now, but have been hoarding their money and don’t seem to have been creating many jobs, although their heavy campaign donations do support the legislators who are protecting their wealth, so maybe those are the jobs that they’ve created. But now, although the measures have not been quite finalized, it does seem that both rich and poor will benefit, but at a considerable increase in the deficit.
John McCain, once a champion of immigration reform, himself born in Panama and the adoptive father of a foreign-born daughter, has now bowed down to the donors who helped him retain his office and come out in favor of Arizona’s anti-immigrant assault. Yet, according to Census figures, without Hispanics, the group most excoriated by reform opponents, the number of young people in the U.S. would have declined between 2000 and 2010. Based on the estimates, the non-Hispanic youth population declined somewhere between 1.25 million and 2.9 million. We old people do need young people and so now we need Hispanic young people!
And we especially need college-bound Hispanics—our next generation of professionals. So, the Dream Act is long overdue and is a matter of national self-interest. Those who focus narrowly, labeling undocumented college students “lawbreakers,” have failed to recognize that a key element of any crime is intent, and kids brought to this country illegally certainly had no criminal intent or even awareness that a crime might have been committed.
Fidel Castro and Chavez, the most unpopularBy ANTONIO MARIA DELGADO, adelgado@elnuevoherald.com, 12-04-2010 [My translation from the Spanish]
Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez are the most unpopular leaders in Latin America, the NGO Latinobarómetro said Friday in its annual report highlighting the inhabitants of the region's growing appreciation of democracy.
At the other end of the scale are the U.S. president, Barack Obama, and the outgoing Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, both getting the highest reading, 6.3 points on a scale of 1 to 10. The readings of Castro and Chavez were 3.8 and 3.9, respectively, said the report that evaluates the perception of Latin Americans on the issues of greatest impact in the region.
About 20,200 people in 18 countries were consulted by the Santiago-based NGO to prepare the study, which placed the King of Spain Juan Carlos I, in third place in popularity with a reading of 5.8.
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As for Wiki-Leaks, I understand that former PFC Bradley Manning, who had been in Iraq with access to the files, has been arrested and, just now, Assange himself has been arrested. To the extent that the leaks reveal possible human rights violations, they do perform a valuable service. Also, this sudden massive burst of information is a historian’s dream, opening up a window onto a secret world. The leaks do offer a titillating, sometimes fascinating (and sometimes tedious) snapshot into that world, and show that US diplomats and others have a greater degree of knowledge and sophistication than was otherwise evident. But the leaks also smack of voyeurism, eavesdropping, and invasion of privacy, especially since the revelations are about current and ongoing relations, not simply long-ago activities. On a continuing basis, the value of wholesale and raw disclosure of diplomatic efforts and private conversations is questionable. Do we really want to get rid of political leaders and spokespeople and leave international relations, decisions, and actions subject to an ongoing plebiscite, with billions worldwide debating and voting online on every conceivable issue? That seems the logical implication of the continuous Wiki-Leaks dumps. Do we want less-than-candid conversations to take place between world leaders? There does seem to be a legitimate place for diplomacy and secrecy in international relations. The motivation for the leaks, while expressed in the lofty terms of promoting transparency, seems based more on a desire for notoriety and for harming US interests, not only reputations, but economies and actual people—and, of course, a means of making money, since payments are collected online.
As a one-time activity, the leaks may have been valuable—and certainly have been revealing, though not terribly surprising. Few shocking backroom deals have surfaced, nor have grand conspiracy theories been confirmed. Mostly, the stuff is just reports of ordinary, day-to-day efforts. Still, the result, regrettably, is going to be more secrecy and less openness, and more double-talk among diplomats, making it harder to reach agreement, especially with so many hard feelings to overcome. Continuous leaking of every private communication among political leaders to the whole wide world is undesirable; since we now get the idea, it needs to stop. Maybe it would be worth revealing such details in 75 or 100 years, but enough for now! That’s my opinion. The internet is truly a 2-edged sword.
The leaks regarding Honduras, so far, reveal that the US government did support Zelaya at first and opposed his ouster, so the US did not engineer his removal from office, as some have alleged.
A contrary view is expressed by The Atlantic contributor David Samuels, who supports the leaks and Assange http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2010/12/the-shameful-attacks-on-julian-assange/67440/
The Shameful Attacks on Julian Assange, Sunday, December 5, 2010
“Assange may or may not be grandiose, paranoid and delusional - terms
that might be fairly applied at one time or another to most prominent
investigative reporters of my acquaintance. But the fact that so many
prominent old school journalists are attacking him with such unbridled
force is a symptom of the failure of traditional reporting methods to
penetrate a culture of official secrecy that has grown by leaps and
bounds since 9/11, and threatens the functioning of a free press as a
cornerstone of democracy.”
However, in quoting what other journalists have said attacking Assange, Samuels undermines his own case. He says, “In a recent article in The New Yorker, the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Steve Coll sniffed that ‘the archives that WikiLeaks has published are much less significant than the Pentagon Papers were in their day’ while depicting Assange as a ‘self-aggrandizing control-freak’ whose website ‘lacks an ethical culture that is consonant with the ideals of free media.’"
And, Samuels, again: “In a column titled ‘WikiLeaks Must Be
Stopped,’ Mark Thiessen [of the Washington Post] wrote that ‘WikiLeaks is not a news organization; it is a criminal enterprise,’ and urged that the site
should be shut down ‘and its leadership brought to justice.’ The dean
of American foreign correspondents, John Burns of The New York Times,
with two Pulitzer Prizes to his credit, contributed a profile of
Assange which used terms like ‘nearly delusional grandeur’ to describe
Wikileaks' founder. The Times' normally mild-mannered David Brooks
asserted in his column this week that ‘Assange seems to be an old-
fashioned anarchist’ and worried that Wikileaks will ‘damage the
global conversation.’”
Samuels seems to be damning Assange with faint praise. One thing is certain, opinion on this matter, like on much else in the contemporary world, is highly polarized.
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In Haiti, the presidential elections have turned out to be quite contentious and not definitive. Someone has sent me an article from the Wall St. Journal (“Who Cares About Haiti?’ Nov. 23, 2010) alleging—nothing new—that corruption is rampant, especially at the port where crucial goods must enter, yet are being held up until exorbitant bribes or fees are paid.
I have long speculated, as possibly mentioned before, that since the cholera strain ravaging Haiti is of a SE Asian variety and not endemic to the Americas, perhaps one or more peacekeepers from Asia with asymptomatic or mild cholera (possible where cholera is common and people have developed some resistance) could have inadvertently brought it to beleaguered Haiti. Probably no one in the UN would have wanted to advertise this, for fear of provoking more unrest. My brother-in-law almost died of cholera picked up in India recently, which he developed on his flight home and led to an ambulance waiting to take him straight to the hospital from the airport when he arrived. Yet Indians sharing a meal with him before his nighttime departure did not get sick.
Haiti cholera likely from UN troops, expert saysBy JONATHAN M. KATZ, Associated Press Dec. 7, 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – A contingent of U.N. peacekeepers is the likely source of a cholera outbreak in Haiti that has killed at least 2,000 people, a French scientist said in a report obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press.
Epidemiologist Renaud Piarroux concluded that the cholera originated in a tributary of Haiti's Artibonite river, next to a U.N. base outside the town of Mirebalais. He was sent by the French government to assist Haitian health officials in determining the source of the outbreak, a French Foreign Ministry official said Tuesday.
"No other hypothesis could be found to explain the outbreak of a cholera epidemic in this village ... not affected by the earthquake earlier this year and located dozens of kilometers from the coast and (tent) camps," he wrote in a report that has not been publicly released.
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A blog reader comments on the last posting questioning how much the health system, and by implication, taxpayers, should spend on prolonging life a few days or months for terminally ill patients. As a society, we not only are failing to admit that life is finite, but our resources as well. She says: I agree not just in principle but in every other way with the fundamental wrongness of spending huge amounts of Medicare funds to extend the lives of terminally ill (or just plain ancient) people another few days. It seems to be wrong for the beneficiaries – more likely their families – to insist on this diversion of money from people who could or will be productive (read: capital-creating, tax-paying) citizens, given the chance to be treated with drugs or by surgery now beyond their reach. Rationing has always been countenanced in emergency situations, and we have one of those now. Pre-senescent Americans won’t like it, but I suggest that the Americans now in their 80s and 90s may well go quietly, even with relief, since their personalities were formed before the current age of entitlement was upon us.---------------------
In a NY Times column entitled “She who must not be named,” Charles Blow argues that even negative attention paid to Sarah Palin keeps her in the spotlight and rallies her defenders. “She’s the Zsa Zsa Gabor of American politics. She once did something noteworthy, but she’s now just famous for being famous. She was a vice presidential nominee. But she lost. She was the governor of Alaska. But she quit. Now she’s just a political personality — part cheerleader, part bomb-thrower — being kept afloat in part by the hackles of her enemies and the people who admire her resilience in the face of them. The left’s outsize and unrelenting assault on her has made her a folk hero.” He vows not to mention her again, good advice for us all.
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