A New Year's Jaunt

Dr. Albert Schweitzer | Image via Wikipedia

Our House in Barrio Parque

It’s 1 January 2016.

I’m in my house in Barrio Parque, La Paloma, Uruguay, surrounded by Uruguayans who’ve come mostly from the departmental capital of Rocha to flock to the beach while I continue with the day-to-day struggles of life. This barrio is over on the opposite side of Cabo de Santa María from where the center of La Paloma is located. We´re farther from the beaches—La Aguada, Costa Azul, Antoniópolis, and Arachania—than we were when we lived in town, so we don´t get over there too much. But I can always hear the ocean from our second-floor balcony. I love the way that sometimes, it´s the waves crashing on the beaches over on the far side of the cape, sometimes it´s from the near side, and sometimes, I get it in surround sound.

And then there´s the night sky… We´re coming up on the time of year when the Southern Cross shines right into my house after nightfall, lighting my way up the stairs through the sliding glass door on the landing—how awesome is that!

Keeping Tabs on the Situation in Afghanistan (because somebody oughta be doing it)

Kabul, Afghanistan (image via Wikipedia)

As reported by the The New York Times on 26 April 2012,

Acting at the behest of President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, senior American officials told a California congressman last weekend that he was not welcome in Afghanistan because of concerns that his sharp criticism of Mr. Karzai would undermine Washington’s efforts to rebuild trust with the government and restart preliminary peace talks with the Taliban.

The congressman, Representative Dana Rohrabacher, a Republican, has made little secret of his desire to alter the Obama administration’s policies there radically. He has joined Afghan opposition leaders and former warlords in calling for a revamp of the Afghan government into a decentralized, federal state.

Here’s the kicker: 

Mr. Rohrabacher contends his approach would create a more stable Afghanistan...

Adrift in a Sea of Military Exportation

Rachel Maddow, via Wikipedia

In my previous post, I discovered the strange but true nature of the military mindset, that dreamy, quixotic, incurable optimism that has been perceived and discussed by such realists as Rory Stewart and Howard Zinn. What an amazing set of realizations – that it is members of the armed forces who are regularly deluding themselves about what can and cannot be, with Rory Stewart focusing on over-ambition and the failure-is-not-an-option determination, while Howard Zinn’s take pinpoints the inevitable overconfidence in the military’s ability to tame chaos and unpredictability.

The Answer for Afghanistan

Gentle Giant - Rory Stewart

Well, how is one to be hopeful about Afghanistan now, after these horrific incidences – the accidental Koran burning, and then the insanity unleashed in the Panjwai district of southern Kandahar Province on a dark, disastrous night last week, supposedly by an angry, possibly drunken soldier? Sixteen innocent civilians, mostly women and children killed – this goes beyond cultural insensitivity. It reveals the cancerous mass that has taken hold of the United States’ involvement in Afghanistan like Hugo Chávez’s bald head no longer allowing his secret truth to remain hidden from the public. But, as with cancer itself, the road forward is fraught with fear, the treatment, painful, the future, uncertain.

Give Afghanistan Peace a Chance!



Mujahideen crossing in from Pakistan border,
Afghanistan, 1985 (image via Wikipedia)

This is another article slamming the discombobulated way that members of the United States Congress have influence over the nation’s foreign policy (see my last diatribe here), and again, Dana Rohrabacher’s name appears – which means that something untoward is afoot.

Circle Round the Sun

Harmonia Macrocosmica

As Planet Earth has once again passed the place in its orbit around the Sun that we have chosen to mark as the beginning of a new year, I am very happy to have arrived at a place in my life where I can devote time to this Connectively Speaking blog once again. As I hop back on this path that I had exited for a while just after the Austral Summer Solstice, here in the unforgiving glare of the Mendoza Sun, I am reminded of the invigorating New Year’s Day thunderstorm that I raced against a year ago in the green, green Valdivian forests of Patagonia. I spoke then of hope beginning anew because, through Eduardo Galeano, I had discovered the amazing Swedish writer, Stig Dagerman and was greatly inspired by his “visionary realism,” his concordance with my own ideas of how fear causes human beings to do strange things like accept unverifiable and inaccurate claims as truth and dispel basic respect for other human beings.

Hope Began Anew

Euardo Galeano
photo by Wikipedia author, Daniel Zanini H

Ojalá podamos ser desobedientes, cada vez que recibimos órdenes que humillan nuestra conciencia o violan nuestro sentido común. †

If only we could be disobedient, each time we receive orders that humiliate our conscience or violate our common sense.

Imagine that – Eduardo Galeano’s wish has come to pass.

There are those who look upon the momentous events in North Africa and the Middle East, at the underlying food crisis at the base of these events, at an uncertain future with fear in their hearts, and then there are those who, like, me, are full of hope.

I am in no way optimistic but I remain a prisoner of hope. ‡

The Heroes of Egypt

Tahrir Square, Friday of Departure
photo by Mona sosh

79 million people strong, the Heroes of Egypt have at last triumphed over the Pharaos of Fear.

Hosni Mubarak has ruled the Land of the Pharaos through the Might of Fear – fear of the Muslim Brotherhood, which he fed to Israel and the United States in return for their support; fear of foreign imperialism, which he fed to his own people in return for their consent; and fear of chaos, behind which he built his wall of impenetrability; behind which the corruption by business and political elites continued to prop him up; behind which his brutal military and police tortured any Agents of Change that were perceived to be Enemies of the State of cruel Stability.

Hope Begins Anew

What a beautiful summer day we are starting the New Year out with. After a peaceful, gentle beginning, a late afternoon thunderstorm passed through, left a trail of evening sunshine in its wake, and then, all of a sudden, another, stronger one has moved in, striking bolts of lightning whose thunders echo all around the valley... and now – quel lluvias!

I can’t help but be filled with hope for the future, today. But it is not just the invigorating weather that is affecting me. It is the discovery, today, on this first day of 2011, of a writer and journalist by the name of Stig Dagerman, a Swede whose star blazed a brilliant path across post-WWII Europe, an enlightened soul who wrote of imagining peace long before John Lennon spoke of the same.