AP, US
life expectancy in 2020 saw biggest drop since WWII
It’s been pretty exciting to journey, virtually, with
billionaires Branson and Bezos into space in real time, then come
back safely to earth again with them.
Washington Post,
Boredom's link to mental illnesses, brain injuries and dysfunctional behaviors
[This article shows how lack of meaningful
activity in both humans and animals has demonstrable negative effects.]
It’s quite understandable that an American blind-deaf
Paralympian swimmer could not be expected to navigate Japan, a foreign and
unfamiliar country, all by herself without an assistant, as is now being mandated
by US Paralympic authorities and so has withdrawn. I was involved with issues
for blind-deaf people when I worked at AOTA, just mentioned, and I’ve also met
some blind-deaf folks through their association with my late former husband, Tom
Joe, who was blind though with normal hearing. Special communication was
required with blind-deaf people, who were always were accompanied by a sighted,
hearing person.
Nor would my late husband have done
well alone in a foreign country, though he often traveled in the US alone for
his work. Once on an overnight business trip from DC to Chicago, my parents,
who lived in Chicago, begged my husband to bring along our 22-month-old
daughter, Stephanie, then under 2, who could fly for free sitting on his lap.
My parents met them at the other end. Even before that, back in 1972, when I
was 7 months pregnant, we traveled around Europe for my husband’s federal
government work, all over Western and Eastern Europe, also with 2 preschoolers in
tow, quite a logistical feat. Somehow the plight of the blind-deaf Paralympian,
has revied these memories for me.
There is a tendency now to downplay gender
differences in behavior, attributing much of any
differences, such as in male violence and incarceration rates, to cultural
factors. Certainly culture has a huge impact on behavior, but so does biology.
Among primates and other mammals in the wild, not subject to human culture,
males are not only on average bigger and stronger than females, but also more
aggressive, especially with other males.
Buzz Feed News, The US
Is Now Investigating Its Deadly Indian Boarding School System, And Native
Americans Are In Dire Need Of Mental Health Support
This article argues that
children raised in boarding schools who survived grew up never knowing how to
become adequate parents themselves, hinting that the high rate of child
and spousal abuse, alcoholism, and suicide among native people on both sides of
the border stems partly from their boarding school experience.
NBC News, Investigation of Native
American boarding schools faces missing records, legal questions
NYTimes, Lost Lives: Lost Culture, the Forgotten Story of
Indigenous Boarding Schools
Why are red state governors banning vaccine mandates
in schools and colleges, by employers, and on cruises (where so many people are
together for a time)? Is it just a matter of “individual freedom” to get sick
and die and to pass on the virus to others? In neighboring Maryland in June,
all Covid deaths were in unvaccinated people. I would certainly hope that a
vaccinated person would not die of Covid, though a few have gotten a positive
virus test, usually only asymptomatically. And why do so many Republicans
oppose mask wearing and vaccinations for Covid? Is it simply to be contrarian,
just to champion “individual rights” over concern for others even if it kills
Republicans?
And why are Republicans opposed to staffing up the IRS?
Do they want to give extra high earners a pass and to starve the federal
government of funds to make the Biden administration look bad? Their
motivations are a mystery.
We have been experiencing a hot and humid summer here in DC,
though not as severe as in the northwestern US and western Canada. Around the globe,
there have been recent unexpected heat waves, including in Scandinavia
and even Siberia.
MarketWatch, The birthrate in the U.S. fell 4% in 2020 and
immigration may be the solution, say economists
And why would the Texas AG be so downright mean as to try
to deny young “Dreamers” the ability to work legally after they turn 18? Is the
anti-immigrant stance of Republicans due to their effort to keep those with
white Anglo Saxon ancestry in the national majority, to prevent more future Democrats
from entering the electorate, or what? Majority white people like myself are
getting older on average, so we do need young workers like the Dreamers to help
support us in our old age.
Now Donald Trump, partly because of merciful bans by
Twitter and Facebook and partly because most of his false and bizarre messages
have simply gotten tiresome, seems to be losing ground. But his faithful hard
core remains dug-in, making many Republican lawmakers and candidates reluctant
to ditch him altogether. When asked if they still support his claim of a
“stolen” election, they go to great lengths to avoid answering the question.
Mr. Trump is reputed to be planning to run for president
again in 2024, bad luck for the Republican Party, which needs to emerge
from his grasp. Trump is not young, not in great physical shape with obvious
signs of a lack of mental acuity, but Biden is older still and would be 86 if
he won and served out a second term. At the same time, for many reasons,
including her gender, Harris would probably not be an acceptable alternative to
Biden if he didn’t run again. Without Trump at the top of the ticket,
Republicans would have a good chance of winning the presidency.
AP, Dutch crime reporter De Vries
dies after Amsterdam shooting
Business Insider, Leaked Kremlin documents
reportedly show Putin wanted to sow chaos in the US by supporting Trump. He
succeeded.
LA Times, News Analysis: U.S.
expands fight against Central American corruption. Will it stem immigration?
I’d
planned recently to cut back on my volunteer Caribbean responsibilities for Amnesty
Int’l (AI) USA, which I’ve carried out for more than 40 years now. But that
doesn’t look likely to happen soon given the recent turmoil in both Haiti and
Cuba and the lengthy process of recruiting and training new volunteers.
Although unpaid, volunteering with Amnesty has been almost like a job for me. Indeed,
human rights work has an ability to occupy almost all the hours in the day.
I’ve actually been to many Caribbean
countries, to some like Haiti, Cuba, the DR, Jamaica, Bahamas, British and US
Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico, more than once, even numerous times. Will I
ever be able to go back to Cuba in my lifetime? (I certainly could not go back
there otherwise.)
Between 2015 and 2017, I wrote series of
articles about Cuba for the Huffington Post, always fact-checked by the Post
before publication. At the end of 2017, the Post stopped accepting
outside submissions. However, my first article, Peace Corps in Cuba? You
Heard It Here First, came out on April 1, 2015. Now, I wonder if
that may be a real possibility?
I also went to Haiti several
times in the 1990s, mostly for election monitoring and related work. Haiti once
attracted tourists and its factories made shoes and clothes for export. Much
tourism and manufacturing went downhill after the cholera outbreak in 2010,
brought to Haiti by Nepalese UN Peacekeepers deployed after the earthquake, one
calamity after another.
Peace Corps in Haiti was
suspended in 2005. Then after the massive earthquake there in 2010, Peace Corps
Response volunteers (those with prior experience) went back to Haiti to help
out. A series of smaller quakes occurred there in late 2020. Now, if life in
Haiti can regain some semblance of normality, maybe the Peace Corps can return
to help rebuild the country.
Daily Mail [UK], Nikole
Hannah-Jones said Cuba is among 'most equal' countries because of socialism
Hannah-Jones
[1619 Project writer, said...] she believed the most "equal" and
"multiracial" country in the Western hemisphere is Cuba, which she
attributed to socialism. [Hannah-Jones reputation has certainly plunged in my
estimation if she considers Cuba an “equal” country.]
Washington Post ‘A powder keg about to explode’: Long marginalized Afro Cubans at forefront of island’s unrest
TIME, What the Protests in Cuba Mean
for the Future of Communism and U.S. Relations
Reuters, Cuba, gripped by unrest, battles highest COVID caseload in the Americas
Reuters, Cuban
government holds mass rally in Havana
A
show of solidarity by Cuban leadership on Saturday, as thousands attended a
government-organised rally in the capital Havana, including President Miguel
Diaz-Canel and former President Raul Castro. Many government supporters say
they were there to defend the Cuban revolution.
That
comes in the wake of unprecedented protests last week, as Cubans in towns
across the country marched against power outages, widespread shortages of basic
goods and the one-party system. But while the communist-run government admitted
to some shortcomings, it mostly blamed those protests on U.S.-backed
'counter-revolutionaries', which it says spread information against the
government on social media - and is exploiting economic hardship caused by U.S.
sanctions.
Diaz-Canel
called on the U.S. to lift its trade embargo on the island nation, denouncing
the blockade and what he calls U.S. aggression and terror...With a state
monopoly on telecommunications, information regarding the recent protests
including the number of those detained has been spotty. Exiled rights group
Cubalex says as many as 450 have been detained, although some have reportedly
already been released.
Our campaign at Amnesty International on behalf of the San
Isidro movement and for the release of former Prisoner of Conscience Luis
Manuel Otero may well have contributed to the willingness of Cubans to take
to the streets. He and his fellow artists have promoted a song and a saying now
popular on the island, Patria y Vida (Homeland and Life), to replace
Fidel’s slogan, Patria o Muerte (Homeland or Death). The fact that a
Castro is no longer in charge also gives the government less authority,
Reuters, Cuba protests spark
demonstrations in Latin America From Miami to Mexico City, protests have
erupted across Latin American communities this week in solidarity with
demonstrators in Cuba. On Tuesday, protesters in Mexico City gathered outside
the Cuban embassy, banging pots and pans, chanting "Free Cuba."
NBC
News, Rights
advocates blast Mayorkas for saying U.S. will turn away fleeing Haitians,
Cubans “It
is disappointing to see Secretary Mayorkas, himself the son of Cuban refugees,
attempting to foreclose that right for Cuban and Haitian nationals when they most
need it,” said Efrèn Olivares, deputy legal director for immigrant justice at
the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Under international and
U.S. law, asylum-seekers are allowed to make claims no matter how they enter
the country.
Engadget, Cuba blocks access to Facebook and Telegram in response to
protests
As protests
continue in Cuba over the country’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic and
the surrounding economic fallout, the Cuban government has moved to restrict
access to social media and messaging platforms. According to NetBlocks, an organization that tracks internet access, Facebook, Instagram,
WhatsApp and Telegram have all been at least partially blocked on the Caribbean
island.
Axios, "No more lies": What drove Cubans to protest
NBC
News, Rights
advocates blast Mayorkas for saying U.S. will turn away fleeing Haitians,
Cubans “It
is disappointing to see Secretary Mayorkas, himself the son of Cuban refugees, attempting to foreclose
that right for Cuban and Haitian nationals when they most need it,” said Efrèn
Olivares, deputy legal director for immigrant justice at the Southern Poverty
Law Center
Under
international and U.S. law, asylum-seekers are allowed to make claims no matter
how they enter the country.
[Part
of article repeated here.]
Tourism, mostly
from Canada
and Europe, dried up along with the hard currency it provided.
·
Mismanagement of the island’s
state-run economy, already under a U.S.
embargo since 1962, sent Cuba’s GDP crashing by 11% last year, its
worst showing since the former Soviet Union stopped subsidies in the early
1990s.
·
Chronic power cuts and shortages of food and medicines have been
more acute, while the nearly quarter-million people who have had coronavirus
have had to seek treatment from a healthcare system on the verge of collapse.
·
Vaccinations have been scarce since the
government decided not to participate in the COVAX sharing program for
developing nations and to develop its own
shots.
Between the lines: Pockets of overt dissidence had been
growing even before Raúl Castro, Fidel Castro’s younger brother and his deputy
during the revolution, stepped
down in
June as head of the Communist Party.
·
Movimiento San Isidro, a young coalition of artists, journalists
and academics formed in 2019, urged
more Cubans to make their dissatisfaction public.
·
Musicians and San Isidro members, Maykel Osorbo and El Funky,
were joined by Yotuel, Gente De Zona, and Descemer Bueno to release the
song “Patria y Vida” (Homeland and
Life), which became an anthem for this week’s protesters.
·
Its lyrics demand “no more lies” and “no more doctrine,” telling
those who cling to the revolution that their time is past.
The growing availability of the internet, though also controlled
by a state-run company, has allowed like-minded Cubans to share their frustrations
more easily, like they did on Sunday.
·
The protests erupted days after #SOSCuba began to trend on
social media, with Cubans demanding humanitarian assistance to address the
island’s many crises.
Where it stands: At least one person — 36-year-old Diubis Laurencio
Tejeda, who was from an especially impoverished part of Havana — has died
during the protests, according to local reports.
·
The government shutdown the internet and phone lines after the
first protest on Sunday.
·
Reliable information regarding arrests is hard to come by with
estimates ranging between 200 and 5,000 people.
In Washington, the Biden administration has said the protests are
“remarkable,” but has not yet indicated whether further policy changes were
coming.
In Havana, meanwhile, President Miguel Díaz-Canel has pointed to the
U.S. embargo as the cause of his country’s economic woes and accused U.S. authorities of
financing and promoting “non-conventional warfare.”
·
On Wednesday, the Cuban government announced that tariffs on the
private import of food, medicine and personal care products would be lifted at
least until December.
By the numbers: 3.5% of all Latinos in
the U.S. are of Cuban ancestry or Cuban immigrants, the fifth largest Latino or
Hispanic cultural group.
·
Most live in Florida. The state’s weight in the Electoral
College means Cuban Americans have outsized political
influence.
Business Insider, Florida
Gov. Ron DeSantis wants US firms to beam the internet to Cubans via satellite
during historic protests
Business Insider, Florida
Gov. Ron DeSantis wants US firms to beam the internet to Cubans via satellite
during historic protests
I made several trips to Cuba
in the 1990s as a tourist and stayed with Cuban families, traveling from one
end of the island to the other, as per my Confessions book. While as a
matter of principle, Amnesty Int’l opposes embargos, the US embargo against
Cuba is not quite as drastic as it sounds, because Cuba imports most of its
food (last time I looked, even more than it produces) from the US and also many
of its medicines. Because Cuba has been notorious about not paying its debts,
the US requires payment on delivery. So that is perhaps the main practical effect
of the embargo. Greatly reduced tourism is probably having a bigger economic
impact right now than the embargo.
Regarding
my previous statements about the US Cuba embargo, I don’t mean to belittle
embargos, which Amnesty In’tl opposes as a matter of principle. They do have a
psychological as well as a practical impact. But the Cuba embargo is hardly a
“blockade.” Nor is the US the only country failing to extend credit to Cuba.
However, most goods imported into Cuba, especially food, because of geographic
proximity, do come from the US. And the market price paid by Cuba for those
goods is more than offset by largescale remittances sent into Cuba from the
United States, $3.5 billion in 2018. I’ve sent money to Cuba myself via Western
Union (as well as to Honduras and Nicaragua.) And I don’t recall Amnesty
protesting the embargo against South Africa.
But it’s true that the Trump administration suspended Western Union
remittances to Cuba in 2020, although there are other ways to send money to
Cuba, provided the internet is not shut down. But Western Union to Cuba needs
to be restored.
NY
Times, The New Generation of Cubans Who Won’t Be Silenced, July 19, 2021, OPINION, Yoani Sanchez
Washington
Post, Haiti’s acting prime minister to step down amid
power struggle
Acting prime minister Claude Joseph told The Post that he will
hand over power to Ariel Henry, who has been backed by the international
community, in a move that is aimed at defusing a roiling crisis following the
president’s assassination.
BBC News, Haiti: Wife of assassinated President Jovenel Moïse returns after surviving attack, [Excerpt] Correspondents say that as a witness to the attack, Ms Moïse could help investigators understand who carried out the assassination and why.
Haitian police say a group of mainly foreign mercenaries - 26 Colombians and two Haitian Americans - made up the group that carried out the killing. At least 20 have been detained, while three were killed by police and five are still on the run.
Haitian police have also arrested a Florida-based Haitian doctor, Christian Emmanuel Sanon, whom they described as a "key suspect" in the assassination.
AP, Hundreds greet Aristide on return to troubled Haiti
Miami Herald, France pulled off one of the greatest heists ever. It left Haiti perpetually impoverished | Opinion
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