Category Archives: News to use

Useful news for all to advance knowledge of the world and how it works

Tens of Thousands of Cubans Travel to the USA Via Nicaragua – Havana Times (Me: Leaving your home and rising death = migrants whom US should welcome)

Even though the crossing is complicated, involving excessive risks to their lives, and leaving them at the mercy of “coyotes”, not to mention the high economic costs and the possibility of being deported, Arlyn and Angel left Cuba on the weekend of June 11-12, “without looking back.”

According to the US Office of Customs and Border Protection, between October 2021 and April 2022 nearly 115,000 Cubans have arrived at the US southern border via the Central American route that Arlyn and Angel are following. That number is now approaching the scale of the largest migration wave in recent Cuban history: the 125,000 who left during the “Mariel sea exodus” in 1980.

Fear “won’t stop us”

“We’re fearful. We’ve sold everything, they could deport us, and there are even stories of people who’ve been killed. The best thing is not to think too much about those things,” Arlyn commented. Thirty years old, with a university degree in accounting, she previously worked as a cashier at a private coffee shop in Old Havana.

Angel, her partner, is 27, and worked in a cigar factory. He never thought about leaving, but “a series of things” led them to make that decision. “We were both hospitalized for Covid-19 and food began becoming scarce,” he noted.

“We want to have children. So, we thought: ‘How are we going to feed our children without that stress of where to obtain food and what meal to invent?’”

Angel is now determined to reach their goal, in the face of the “lack of hope” in Cuba. He underscored the fact they’ve borrowed thousands of dollars from their relatives in the US, and he’s conscious of the “uncertainty of not knowing if we’ll get there. But no one can stop us,” he added.

 

Source: Tens of Thousands of Cubans Travel to the USA Via Nicaragua – Havana Times

Cu vederi largi

ore de drum

Paris, 2021, 2022

Când l-au ispravit, în 1977, Renzo Piano și Richard Rogers s-au ales cu iscarea unor vii polemici din partea adepților arhitecturii tradiționale și conservatoare, din cauza tehnicilor de avangardă folosite la construirea noului muzeu parizian.

Structura de metal și sticlă, culorile neobișnuite izbeau peisajul monoton, cenușiu al Parisului.

La fel de neconvențional, scara rulantă era integrată într-un tunel de sticlă amplasat în exterior pe diagonala clădirii, pentru ca, pe masură ce urci, să ai o priveliște din ce în ce mai amplă.

Profilul său acoperă modernii din perioada 1905 -1960 și contemporanii de la 1960 până azi, mulți deveniți parizieni cu orientările lor estetice aduse de peste tot : Brâncuși român, Natalia Goncharova rusoaică, Chagall bielorus, Luigi Russolo italian, Sonia Delaunay urcaineană, Man Ray American, Picasso spaniol, Giacometti elvețian. Toate aceste relații s-au hrănit una dintr-alta și au înfiripat idei, apoi opere, s-au întemeiat filosofii.

Ca o ilustrare…

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Miners, drug traffickers and loggers: Is Costa Rica’s Corcovado National Park on the verge of collapse?

  • Extreme polarization about what’s going on in Costa Rica’s Corcovado National Park has led to accusations of corruption, negligence, media manipulation, fights for control of the area’s management, and who does and doesn’t receive funds from international donors.
  • The park suffers from artisanal gold mining, hunting, logging and drug trafficking, but officials, scientists and NGOs have very different views on how badly these things are impacting the health of the park.
  • Some researchers say the populations of species like the jaguar and white-lipped peccary are on the decline, while others are optimistic about population trends and believe the park is healthy.
  • Dwindling staff and budget for basic resources like food and gasoline have made it difficult to adhere to the park’s protection plan, and there’s little consensus, even on very basic things, about what the future holds for the park.

News articles and opinion pieces have popped up in the pages of different Costa Rican newspapers over the past several years, warning of the imminent collapse of Corcovado National Park, one of the country’s most treasured protected areas. The park is in “agonizing” condition and “on a downward spiral,” some of the opinion pieces said. It’s “slowly dying.”

“In the case of Corcovado, if we don’t act quickly, the deterioration of wildlife populations could be irreversible in the medium term,” Eduardo Carrillo, a biologist at the National University of Costa Rica, wrote last year in the newspaper Semanario Universidad.

But other biologists, conservationists and park officials have scratched their heads at these kinds of comments, saying they’re not just overblown but completely outside reality. The park, in their eyes, is doing well. There are certainly issues that need to be addressed, but there’s nothing so grave as to warrant predictions of total collapse.

The extreme polarization over what’s going on in Corcovado National Park has led to accusations of corruption, negligence, media manipulation, fights for control of the area’s management, and who does and doesn’t receive funds from international donors. There’s little consensus, even on very basic things, about what the future holds for the park.

That could be a problem in the long run. The stakes are high in Corcovado. The park is believed to house approximately 2.5% of the entire world’s biodiversity — some 2,000 plant, 375 bird and 124 mammal species — all contained within around 45,000 hectares (113,000 acres) of primary forest and Pacific coastline.

 

Source: Miners, drug traffickers and loggers: Is Costa Rica’s Corcovado National Park on the verge of collapse?

Loving mother

De malinha pronta

20/06/1954

Lately, life has not been kind to her
And yet, she never complains
She struggles in silence
And has always a warm and kind smile
Her body has shrunk
Although her mind is brighter than ever
They both dance on a different rhythm
Sometimes she wishes to let go
Who am I to blame her?
Darkness hours, sleepless nights
She keeps going for the ones who love her
No matter what
She still paints the sky in blue.

Filipa Moreira da Cruz

Photos : Filipa Moreira da Cruz

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No man’s land

De malinha pronta

World Refugee Day

Reprise

They spend their lives running away
Escaping war, starvation, floods, diseases
They leave their family and friends behind
No time for tears or goodbyes
We call them foreigners, refugees, migrants
But we tend to forget that we are not so different from us
They are just human beings trying to survive.

Filipa Moreira da Cruz

Photos : KaDDD

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Why Searching Matters on Juneteenth

Context, Thought, and Learning: ShiraDest Offers Project Do Better

For years, many newly freed people searched across the country for their formerly enslaved loved ones who had been sold away.  Green 
             Heartbreaking advertisements for missing family members appeared for years after the emancipation.  Searching  

From the first Compensated Emancipation in DC, EmanDayDC to the ratification of the 13th Amendment, freed slaves moved around “restlessly” seeking their people, whom they remembered and loved, who had been sold from plantations and away from families by owners, traders, speculators, or debt collectors.  InfoWanted Please find  more examples, as there are many records of this, dear friends.  And I wonder if, in a few years, Willow and or Anna will be engaged in this same search for lost loved ones? 

    I look forward to your comments on honoring True Seekers this Minbari and Juneteenth Monday, Thoughtful Readers.
Shira

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Click here to read, if you…

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Minbari Mondays, and Two Lessons From “The Hour of The Wolf” (B5:s4e1) On Wisdom

Context, Thought, and Learning: ShiraDest Offers Project Do Better

This week’s lessons:

1. It is unwise, yet very human, to blame ourselves for things out of our control. Critical thinking, and keeping a journal, can help with this.

2. Wisdom includes seeing and acknowledging the growth in another person.

This is one of G’Kar’s best episodes:

Our thoughts form the universe -they always matter. … It takes a rare kind of wisdom to accept change and redemption in another. Many would refuse…

Let’s learn, ourselves, please, to see the person standing in front of us, at the present moment, and ourselves, at the present moment.

We can Do Better.

Last Monday’s review was S3e22 ,

and

Next Minbari Monday will be episode 2 of the year 2261, in this 4th season:

Season 4e2: ;

Nih sakh sh’lekk, sleem wa.

I come in peace, I am your friend.

Action Prompts:

1.) Share your thoughts on how…

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