Events are moving right along, making it hard to keep up, so I need to post on the blog before anything else happens. Here I was with friends from out-of-town this week.

Here's blue-eyed cicada; cicadas have come out of hibernation now.

Yahoo News, Trump verdict live updates: Trump found guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records, becoming the first U.S. president to be convicted of criminal charges The jury deliberated over two days; sentencing will be July 11.

After the recent Trump guilty verdict, has anything changed in terms of voter support? Probably not much. His hardline supporters will see it as further evidence of a conspiracy against the Donald, who, so far, has managed with amazing luck and guile to weather a constant barrage of legal and political challenges. Trump may even have garnered a sympathy vote. So while he may be down right now, he certainly is not out, enjoying an amazingly lucrative fundraising binge.

NY Times, The Trump campaign announced it had raised $34.8 million since the conviction, shattering records.

As I mentioned to my (adopted from Colombia) son Jonathan:

The judge in the Trump trial, Juan Merchan, was born in Bogotá, Colombia, just like you!

· Merchan born: 1962, Bogotá, Colombia

Reuters, Muslim nurse in New York fired after calling Israel's war in Gaza 'genocide'

She is certainly not the only person in NY, the US, or the world to hold that view.

Now, President Biden has surprised us all with an about-face, summoning Netanyahu to Washington to discuss finally winding down the Gaza war. After maintaining silence for months on Israeli atrocities, suddenly with the US election looming, Mr. Biden seems to have decided to call a halt to hostilities, better late than never. Meanwhile, Netanyahu himself doesn’t seem to be on board, signaling that he won’t go quietly, defying Biden by authorizing the immediate bombing of Gaza once again, just to make his point. A little ”tough love” for Mr. Netanyahu may be in order now.

AFP, Israel pounds Gaza after Biden outlines ceasefire plan

I wrote much of the following comments before Biden’s unexpected and unexplained turn-around announcement. What I am saying still reflects what many of us have been feeling for quite a few months now. We don’t know yet what Biden’s “red line” was or what the trigger might have been for his sudden decision. Was it just a look at the calendar and at Trump’s emergence as a front-running presidential candidate as his trial ended? Joe Biden could have announced this so much earlier! Biden is going to have lay down the law to Netanyahu when he comes to Washington, where the Israeli leader will make ample use of his fluent English to challenge the President and go over his head to appeal to the American public.

President Biden never explained to us, the American voters who put him in office, why he had so doggedly supported Israel for so long despite that country’s flagrant and ongoing human rights violations. He never even attempted to offer an explanation or any justification, acting blissfully unaware for months of growing worldwide and domestic condemnation. It’s quite a mystery why Biden has insisted on bolstering Netanyahu up until now, come hell or high water. The Biden administration had taken great pains to specify that the recent horrific Rafah explosion did not cross “a red line.” Yet, a US-made bomb was used there. What, pray tell, has been Biden’s own red line?

Netanyahu has cavalierly dismissed the many Rapha deaths and injuries of civilians of all ages as mere “collateral damage.” Collateral damage sounds like it doesn’t affect actual people. Reportedly, most Israelis do still support their government’s military actions without reservations. But many (most?) Americans have not supported Biden’s apparently open-ended military support of Israel with our tax dollars. While I was sitting out on my front steps on a recent balmy afternoon, several folks walking by gave a thumbs up to my front yard sign posted there since last Nov.

The Holocaust of a generation ago does not give Israel a perpetual “get out of jail free” card. Yet even when much of the world has characterized the recent assaults on Gazan civilians of all ages as ethnic cleansing or even genocide, Biden has remained strangely silent, relentlessly funneling even more of our tax dollars and weapons to Israel, offering no response to all the many criticisms and pleas coming from around the world, or even to those coming from American voters. He has just kept on ignoring us all.

The following understatement by Mr. Finucane rings true. But faced with Donald Trump as the alternative, many of us have felt genuinely torn, planning to very, very reluctantly vote for Joe Biden. Maybe Biden has realized this with his continuing ironclad moral and financial support of Israel and its government, right or wrong.

“The Biden administration continues to have a very high tolerance for Israel killing Palestinian civilians in Gaza — including with U.S. weapons,” said Brian Finucane, a senior adviser to the International Crisis Group.

This image of civilians simply walking on the ruins of a recent Rafah attack has resonated with many viewers, prompting an upsurge in Palestinian support worldwide. Now the photo has been accused of having been AI-generated. Is that actually true and, if so, does that rob it of value, or is that accusation meant to simply discredit not only the veracity of the image, but also what it represents? It could be argued that for many viewers it still depicts a broader truth.

Huff Post, Human Rights Watch Co-Founder Says Israel Is 'Engaged In Genocide' Of Palestinians Human Rights Watch co-founder Aryeh Neier, a German-born Jewish man who survived the Holocaust, says he has been “persuaded” in recent months that Israel is “engaged in genocide against Palestinians” and that conflating antisemitism with criticism of Israel is ludicrous.

BBC, Micheál Martin condemns 'barbaric' strike on Rafah

Irish Foreign Minister Micheál Martin has condemned an Israeli air strike on a camp for displaced Palestinians, describing it as “barbaric”.

AP, Six officers injured as protesters clash with police outside Israeli embassy in Mexico

Wash. Post, Aid groups say Israel’s Rafah assault upends food and relief operations

Elsewhere:

Wash. Post, Biden administration eases some economic restrictions on Cuba

I was an admittedly harsh critic of the Cuban government in my 2013 Confessions book, still contending that Cuba has a long way to go in improving citizens’ rights. However, that island nation no longer poses a threat to the US or the world. So, easing economic sanctions now might not only help the Cuban government, but also ease the daily struggles of ordinary Cubans.

Wash. Post, RFK Jr. had a ‘visceral’ reaction to tear-downs of Confederate statues

Without an emotional investment in the issue, my own reaction to the proposed statue teardowns is not “visceral”. However, I do consider removing the statues to be completely unnecessary and gratuitous. Actually, I would rather leave them standing as visible historical emblems of a discredited and now bygone era. Do they still have power? No, not for most folks. So let’s just keep them for their historical value, as the American Civil war has been over for more than a century ago.

Does a representation of Napoleon with his hand in his vest imply that we still revere him? Should his statues and images therefore be destroyed?

No, Napoleon is simply part of our history. just like the Confederacy.

Switching over to a more contemporary issue, same-sex couples have won hard-fought rights to marry, share property, and inherit from each other. Now they also want bio children. While any children born may be recognized as legally belonging to both partners, they are only bio to one member of the pair and does that even matter?

Speaking of bio kids, 2 kids with 2 parents of opposite genders represent a common family ideal, as depicted in the photo below. Many couples find 2 children to be quite enough and today have the means to stop right there. Most American women want to work outside the home and, if so, must pay for childcare as well as bear other costs, both emotional and financial, for each and every child. More kids entail financial costs and an emotional investment, not to mention the physical toll of pregnancies on mothers. As mentioned before, I don’t know any US couples today with more than 2 kids and some have only one or none.

Post-partum depression is another consideration and seems to be on the rise, or at least attention to it here in the US is rising; I once felt it briefly myself. I suspect such depression was less common in the past or even today in traditional societies where the extended family usually pitches in to help and celebrate a new mother. A new mother here may feel left alone during the postpartum period, isolated at home coping with her new responsibilities while her friends and her husband are all going out to work. Apparently, there are new medications now specifically targeting post-partum blues.

To help make up for the baby gap, whatever its causes, the US still needs more immigration, so closing the border or limiting immigration is a counter-productive policy.

An extended family of Venezuelan migrants shares a Denver apartment.

I’ve been reviewing the previous iteration of this blog spanning some 10 years from 2009-2019, before it suddenly and mysteriously stopped, honduraspeacecorps.blogspot.com

There, I came across the following posting from April 2015, referring to one of my articles appearing then in Huff Post.

I would also remind folks of my dream of Peace Corps in Cuba, especially to revive agriculture there, so Cubans can feed themselves as they did before the revolution and as do other countries in the region: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/barbara-e-joe/peace-corps-in-cuba-you-h_b_6581182.html

THE BLOG CUBA-HEALTH-CARE CUBA PEACE CORPS Peace Corps in Cuba? You Heard It Here First

Before anyone starts bombarding Peace Corps headquarters with inquiries about Cuba service, it's only an embryonic idea right now, but one that I've been advocating for a while. By author, human rights activist, Spanish interpreter

A somewhat later blog posting is still relevant today and you can see that I have consistently supported more immigration.

Dec. 18, 2018 Why is immigration good for our nation? For starters, it keeps our population from shrinking, especially among workers and younger people, as has happened unfortunately in Western Europe and Japan. Angela Merkel in Germany recognizes this. Immigration also keeps our country vital intellectually and socially, introducing new ideas, different modes of dress, varied food options, and philosophical and religious enrichment. While some folks prefer to live in gated communities along with people of their same age, ethnicity, and beliefs, many others, like myself, prefer a more varied social landscape. We find sameness boring. I admit I’ve been an outlier in my choice of partners, friends, and housemates; I enjoy exchanging and merging divergent views and customs from around the world. So I’d like to support or even see an increase in US immigration.

On that predecessor blog, I also found many photos bringing back fond memories. Try to guess what they depict or look back for clues at honduraspeacecorps.blogspot.com