Latin America took another historic step forward this week with the creation of a new regional organization of 32 Latin American and Caribbean countries. The United States and Canada were excluded.
The increasing independence of Latin America has been one of the most important geopolitical changes over the last decade, affecting not only the region but the rest of the world as well. For example, Brazil has publicly supported Iran's right to enrich uranium and opposed further sanctions against the country. Latin America, once under the control of the United States, is increasingly emerging as a power bloc with its own interests and agenda.
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February 26, 2010
February 3, 2010
Open Borders
While we are focusing on tightening even further airline security--our long sea-lined borders are wide open. I first noted this when a relative of mine sailed with a bunch of friends from Isla Mujeres in Mexico and disembarked in St. Petersburg, Florida, without anyone checking her ID or the luggage she and her fellow travelers unloaded. I then remembered that when I was sailing in the Caribbean, we docked one night next to some twelve other boats, abutting what can only be described a floating bar. I did not get much sleep that night; the partying lasted until the wee hours. However, I met a fair number of crew members that manned various boats, mainly from the third world. I could have readily given a ride to any one of them, or agreed to carry a "gift," back to the United States.
I did not connect these two dots until I met a former head of the US Coast Guard at a meeting at the Charleston Plaza, in Charleston, SC. When we ran out of topics about which to chat, I asked, "By the way, if someone sails hundreds of miles away from the United States, visits another country, and returns, is he or his fellow passengers and crew ever checked?"
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I did not connect these two dots until I met a former head of the US Coast Guard at a meeting at the Charleston Plaza, in Charleston, SC. When we ran out of topics about which to chat, I asked, "By the way, if someone sails hundreds of miles away from the United States, visits another country, and returns, is he or his fellow passengers and crew ever checked?"
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January 26, 2010
When Political Correctness Gets in the Way of Charity
When I read last week that the cruise ships under the Royal Caribbean ownership were stopping in Haiti, I had the same immediate reaction that most people did: outrage. How insensitive! How disgusting! How shameful! Then I did something we tend to forget to do. I stopped and I thought about it. When I stopped reacting with my heart and started thinking with my brain, I actually came to a completely different conclusion; I was and am glad that the cruise ships are stopping in Labadee.
I know it sounds terrible. How could anyone with a conscience think frolicking in the sun in Haiti right now is appropriate in any way? Well, I will tell you. For those not familiar with Labadee, this is a private port city leased by Royal Caribbean for use as a tourist stop on select cruises. The people living there make their living off of the tourism from these ships. Some are employees of Royal Caribbean and some are native Haitians selling their wares in the local market. This is not a self-sustaining Haitian city. I have actually been to Labadee, Haiti so I have seen this with my own eyes. I'm not just buying what some press release is selling.
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I know it sounds terrible. How could anyone with a conscience think frolicking in the sun in Haiti right now is appropriate in any way? Well, I will tell you. For those not familiar with Labadee, this is a private port city leased by Royal Caribbean for use as a tourist stop on select cruises. The people living there make their living off of the tourism from these ships. Some are employees of Royal Caribbean and some are native Haitians selling their wares in the local market. This is not a self-sustaining Haitian city. I have actually been to Labadee, Haiti so I have seen this with my own eyes. I'm not just buying what some press release is selling.
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January 25, 2010
I Will Not Go Gently
I write this as I fly through the night, watching lightning course through thunderheads towering above the dark Caribbean. When the bolts arc through the clouds, for a second or so the sky becomes as blue as at noon. I've seen other lightening shows up close at many thousand feet, but have never felt so strangely unafraid. I'm concentrating on another illumination, within myself.
I've spent a couple of weeks traveling with groups. I enjoy the interplay of reacting with people. Living alone, I crave this interaction and validation, and seek notice like the rest of us. I try to stay current, I joined Facebook, I may even tweet.
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I've spent a couple of weeks traveling with groups. I enjoy the interplay of reacting with people. Living alone, I crave this interaction and validation, and seek notice like the rest of us. I try to stay current, I joined Facebook, I may even tweet.
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January 24, 2010
Pat Robertson’s Haitian Theodicy
Religion-based bigotry has been the mainstay of Rev. Pat Robertson's bully pulpit. And he mounts this pulpit as an uber-God, possessed with an inherent omniscience in knowing not only the mundane and wicked thoughts and actions of man but also in knowing the cataclysmic actions of God's wrath on man.
While scientists explain Haiti's recent natural disaster as an earthquake due to a fault it sits on along the border between two large tectonic plates - the North American plate to the north, and the Caribbean plate to the south - that slowly slide horizontally past each other, Robertson explains the disaster as "Something [that] happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it."
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While scientists explain Haiti's recent natural disaster as an earthquake due to a fault it sits on along the border between two large tectonic plates - the North American plate to the north, and the Caribbean plate to the south - that slowly slide horizontally past each other, Robertson explains the disaster as "Something [that] happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it."
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January 22, 2010
Haiti and Cuba: Dodo Birds of a Feather
The original 1957 blonde bedroom set of the Havana Hotel Riviera, approved by the late mafioso Meyer Lansky, was still doing duty on the eve a futuristic sounding decade: 2010. Generous dresser drawers and nightstands with George Jetson's version of the future accouterments were separated by a headboard that would bear tales of affairs and loss if it could only accept an offer that could not be refused and spill its Cedar guts.
But a more vexing story of benign neglect and decay was the real headliner. Moth heaven musty closets, rancid midnight blue carpets with a penchant for obscuring stains and moldy walls that smack you in the face; dank clothes drawers, unruly and fetid curtains blown indoors by the sea breeze, a cheap mattress and torn lampshades brown with water stains... It was enough to make you hold your breath while paring back the bed sheets to see what else might be revealed. Years ago I heard a rumor that J. Lo, her trademark rear end insured for a billion dollars (no joke), would not sleep on a hotel bed with sheets and blankets less than a certain regal thread count. Here on the "executive floor" of Lansky's erstwhile Caribbean jewel, it was a relief just to find that the bed linen was cum stain free. I chuckled and recalled the coarse remarks the Jewish capo purportedly made when Ginger Rogers was whisked down to Havana from Hollywood for the hotel's opening gala, broadcast live on American television: "she can wiggle her ass, but can't sing worth a god damn note."
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But a more vexing story of benign neglect and decay was the real headliner. Moth heaven musty closets, rancid midnight blue carpets with a penchant for obscuring stains and moldy walls that smack you in the face; dank clothes drawers, unruly and fetid curtains blown indoors by the sea breeze, a cheap mattress and torn lampshades brown with water stains... It was enough to make you hold your breath while paring back the bed sheets to see what else might be revealed. Years ago I heard a rumor that J. Lo, her trademark rear end insured for a billion dollars (no joke), would not sleep on a hotel bed with sheets and blankets less than a certain regal thread count. Here on the "executive floor" of Lansky's erstwhile Caribbean jewel, it was a relief just to find that the bed linen was cum stain free. I chuckled and recalled the coarse remarks the Jewish capo purportedly made when Ginger Rogers was whisked down to Havana from Hollywood for the hotel's opening gala, broadcast live on American television: "she can wiggle her ass, but can't sing worth a god damn note."
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Why We Need a “Marshall Plan” for Haiti
The saddening and horrific pictures from Haiti after its devastating earthquake brought back vivid memories for me. I lived through an earthquake when I was a young boy in Morocco, and I know how harrowing it is. At that time, there were forty thousand casualties -- nothing close to what has happened in Haiti -- but I still recall the traumatic scenes of collapsed buildings and mourning families.
Haiti has now been devastated on a far larger scale. The earthquake -- the worst in the region in more than 200 years -- is the latest in a series of natural and man-made disasters that have, over the years, turned the Caribbean country into the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. Some 80 percent of its nine million people live below the poverty line.
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Haiti has now been devastated on a far larger scale. The earthquake -- the worst in the region in more than 200 years -- is the latest in a series of natural and man-made disasters that have, over the years, turned the Caribbean country into the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. Some 80 percent of its nine million people live below the poverty line.
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Haiti: A View from the Middle East
Seldom does one watch a lead news story on Middle Eastern satellite television that does not offer a steady rotating stream of images of death, destruction, and devastation from places like Gaza, Fallujah, or Kabul. These past few days, however, although the images were familiar, they were from Haiti, and the devastation was not man-made.
Large networks such as Al Jazeera rushed to send their crews to Port-au-Prince, and the vast majority of news satellite networks operating in the region have been competing to update their viewers about the devastation and human agony in this tiny Caribbean country, but à la Middle East ...it had to be about more than just Haiti.
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Large networks such as Al Jazeera rushed to send their crews to Port-au-Prince, and the vast majority of news satellite networks operating in the region have been competing to update their viewers about the devastation and human agony in this tiny Caribbean country, but à la Middle East ...it had to be about more than just Haiti.
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January 20, 2010
Bottom’s Up for Haiti’s Water Future
When Christopher Columbus landed on the mountainous Caribbean island of Hispaniola in 1492, he marveled at its thick, varied forests "that seemed to touch the sky." Today, on the Haitian side of the island shared with the Dominican Republic, all but 2% of the forest cover is gone, has been chopped down for lumber, land clearance for colonial sugar cane plantations and small family farms following Haitian slaves' triumphant 1804 war of independence from France, and today for use as cooking fuel charcoal by desperately-poor Haitians.
During tropical storms, Haiti's deforested hillsides convey violently-rushing waters that trigger deadly mudslides, clog and contaminate freshwater streams and lakes with eroding topsoil and sewage, and rush off to the sea too quickly to replenish Haiti's overdrawn groundwater resources.
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During tropical storms, Haiti's deforested hillsides convey violently-rushing waters that trigger deadly mudslides, clog and contaminate freshwater streams and lakes with eroding topsoil and sewage, and rush off to the sea too quickly to replenish Haiti's overdrawn groundwater resources.
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