CONTRA EL PINGALISMO CASTRISTA/
"Se que no existe el consuelo
que no existe
la anhelada tierrra de mis suenos
ni la desgarrada vision de nuestros heroes.
Pero
te seguimos buscando, patria,..." - Reinaldo Arenas
Direct passenger flights between Key West and Cuba, suspended in 1962, will resume on Nov. 15, one of the charter companies flying the route confirmed to EFE news agency. "We feel very emotional about being able to provide this service to the Cuban community with flights from Key West after 50 years and prevent travelers from having to travel to the Miami airport," Isaac Valdes, sales director for Mambi Travel, told EFE. The service will provide three flights a week to Cuba, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and a round-trip ticket will cost $449 to $469, Valdes said. The twin-engine aircraft will have the capacity for groups of up to 19 people and will take about 30 minutes to fly the route to the Havana international airport. "We have all the permits in order and hope that the (Florida Keys) community flies with us and is satisfied, avoiding the inconvenience it would pose to go to Miami," said Valdes, who added that he was happy about the possibility of "uniting the Cuban family a little more." In 2009, the director of the Key West international airport asked the U.S. Treasury Department, which enforces Washington's economic embargo against the Communist island, to permit the reestablishment of direct flights to Cuba, which is just 90 miles away. Two charter companies, Mambi Travel and Air MarBrisa, which already fly to Havana from Miami, Tampa and New York, will provide the service. Regular Key West-Havana flights were inaugurated in 1920. This year, the United States celebrates the centennial of the first flight between Key West and Havana. On May 17, 1913, Cuban Domingo Rosillo del Toro piloted his monoplane from Key West to Havana, thus winning a $10,000 prize for being the first to cross the Florida Strait by air. There are more than 2 million Cubans and their relatives in the United States, most of them living in Florida. At present, only Cuban-Americans with relatives on the island and Americans who meet certain requirements, such as traveling for academic and/or religious reasons, may travel to Cuba.
This is a letter from William Potts, who has been trying to return to the United States from Cuba.
Open Letter To The President From American Muslim Hijacker
Apparently High officials in the Obama administration have targeted me and have decided to make me into a modern day Black Nathan Hale by refusing to issue me a one way passport that would allow me to return home to the U.S. after having completed a 15 year prison sentence in Cuba for hijacking. On March 27th 1984 I hijacked a North American airliner from New York to Havana Cuba. There I was taken into custody, tried in a Cuban court of law and sentenced to fifteen years in prison, all in accordance with the strict and specific stipulations of The Hague Convention For The Prevention Of Unlawful Seizure of Aircraft to which both the U.S. and Cuba are both signatories. Robert Patrick Richter, a white American, who also hijacked a plane to Cuba, in July 1983, was issued such a passport and a twin engine private plane was procured and the white American hijacker did in fact return to the United States in 1988 where he was sentenced to five additional years by U.S. District Judge William Zloch taking into consideration the time Richter had already spent in Cuban prison.
Two convicted American hijackers. One white, the other Black. Why the double standard?
I have been in contact, since September of 2012, with the Asst. U. S. District Attorney’s office of Mr. Todd Mestepey and have made clear my sincere desire to return to the United States and face the charges against me. A Mr. Brent Brown, a U.S. federal officer I met with at the U.S. Interest Section here in Havana to discuss my imminent return to the U.S. informed me that he was awaiting instructions from Mr. Mestepey’s office to issue me a document, a one way passport, which would allow me to return directly to the United States. At that meeting Mr. Brown, to my surprise, treated me quite decently. He explained to me how, due to the outstanding federal warrants against me, I would formally be taken into federal custody and how the return would play out. Everything Mr. Brown explained was perfectly reasonable and completely acceptable to me. Over a year has passed however and I have yet to be issued this one way passport to travel back home to begin the judicial process, the only process by which this pending case of nearly thirty years can finally be brought to a close.
Veamos, esta historia me tiene intrigado desde hace tiempo. Lo tenía en la lista de asuntos pendientes, y posiblemente otro día haya que volver sobre ello con más calma, pero no me resisto a introducir hoy el tema, aunque sea de forma breve. El caso es que, revisando el viejo y gran volumen de Crónica de la aviación, de Plaza y Janés, he topado con este recorte mientras buscaba otro dato. He aquí lo allí referido:
Un viajero aéreo en hibernación. Madrid-Barajas, 4 de junio de 1969. Un DC-8 de Iberia llega de Cuba. De pronto, un hombre jóven cae del pozo derecho del aterrizador principal. Su rostro presenta síntomas de congelación. Permanece en estado de coma. Pasajero clandestino, ¡ha atravesado el Atlántico en hibernación! Recuperado el conocimiento, Armando Socarras, cuenta su aventura. Decidido a huir con un amigo, justo antes de que despegara el DC-8 de La Habana, trepó por el aterrizador hasta el pozo. Después perdió el conocimiento, y ha viajado a -35ºC durante 8 horas. Al llegar, la torre de control indica al DC-8 que realice un circuito de espera a baja altitud y Armando se deshiberna como en un quirófano. No ha vuelto a ver a su compañero. Escondido en el hueco del aterrizador principal derecho, probablemente cayó al vacío. [Su cuerpo nunca apareció].
Sorprendente, cuando menos. Lo que más me llama la atención es el asunto de la “hibernación”. En teoría el sufrido Armando debía haber fallecido por congelación e hipoxia, pero sobrevivió. El caso encontró bastante eco en la prensa de la época, como puede verse, por ejemplo, en esta edición del diario ABC del día 5 de junio de 1969.
According to WTSP in Tampa, terrorists are making practice runs on U.S. flights in preparation for an airline terrorist attack. WTSP said a memo it found was from a union that is comprised of pilots working for major airlines, and the memo wrote that terrorist dry runs have already been attempted, notably one on a flight inbound to Orlando on September 2.
According to the memo, on September 2, U.S. Airways Flight 1880 left Reagan National Airport in Washington D.C. to fly to Orlando International. Crew members stated that just after takeoff, a group of four "Middle Eastern" men acted in a suspicious manner. One bolted from his seat in coach toward the flight deck door, only to swerve to the forward bathroom "for a considerable length of time." While the first man was in the bathroom, the three other men started changing their seats, opening overhead bins, and "generally making a scene." Witnesses said they appeared to be intent on making a distraction.
WTSP investigators asked both US Airways and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) if the incident was true, and they both acknowledged that it was.
A current Federal Air Marshal who had to remain anonymous because he is prohibited from speaking to the media, said of the TSA, "They're liars. They're flat out liars." He added that the TSA doesn’t want to alarm the public, concluding, "We're waiting for the next 9/11 to happen, because it's not a question of if. It's a question of when."
Two hijackers who have been living in exile in Cuba claim they shot and killed a New Mexico police officer in self-defense after he stopped them in a stolen car in 1971 near Albuquerque.
Hill and Finney were interviewed in Havana, where they have been living since the 1971 hijacking of TWA Flight 106 at Albuquerque International Airport. Rosenbloom was shot days earlier.
At the time, the two men were members of a group called the Republic of New Africa, a Black Panther splinter group. They were driving across country when Rosenbloom stopped them.
After the shooting, the men went into hiding for several days and then called for a tow truck. They hijacked the truck and drove onto the tarmac at the airport where they commandeered Flight 106, which had 49 people aboard, to Tampa, Fla. They released the passengers there, and then took off for Havana after refueling.
On July 1, Chokwe Lumumba, an attorney with a long record of black radical activism, took office as mayor of Jackson.
A crowd of 2,500 packed the hall. The city councilors and other dignitaries, most of them African-American — Jackson, a city of 177,000, is 80 percent black — sat on the dais.
Then Lumumba smiled and raised his right hand halfway, just a little above the podium, briefly showing the clenched fist of a Black Power salute.
“And I want to say, free the land!”
Applause rang out, bells chimed, wooden staffs rose up and people shouted back, “Free the land!” That’s the motto of the Republic of New Afrika (RNA), the movement formed in 1968 that sought to turn the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina into an independent black nation.
Jackson’s new mayor is a former vice president of the RNA and a co-founder of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGM), a national group born in 1993 that seeks self-determination for African-Americans — whom it calls New Afrikans — “by any means necessary.”
CARTERSVILLE, Ga. — At an airfield in rural Georgia, the U.S.
government pays a contractor $6,600 a month for a plane that doesn’t
fly.
The plane is a 1960s turboprop with an odd array of antennas
on its back end and the name of a Cuban national hero painted on its
tail. It can fly, but it doesn’t. Government orders.
“The contract now is a ‘non-fly’ ” contract, said Steve Christopher of Phoenix Air Group, standing next to the plane. “That’s what the customer wants.”
The
airplane is called “Aero Martí,” and it is stuck in a kind of federal
limbo. After two years of haphazard spending cuts in Washington, it has
too little funding to function but too much to die.
The plane was outfitted to fly over the ocean and broadcast an American-run TV station into
Cuba. The effort was part of the long-running U.S. campaign to combat
communism in Cuba by providing information to the Cuban people
uncensored by their government.
But Cuban officials jammed the signal almost immediately, and surveys showed that less than 1 percent of Cubans watched. Still, when Congress started making budget cuts, lawmakers refused to kill the plane.
But
then they allowed across-the-board “sequestration” cuts. And there was
no more money for the fuel and pilots. So the plane sits in storage at
taxpayer expense — a monument to the limits of American austerity. In
this case, a push to eliminate long-troubled programs collided with old
Washington forces: government inertia, intense lobbying and
congressional pride.
The result was a stalemate. And a plane left with just enough money to do nothing.
“It’s hard to state how ridiculous it is” that the plane is still costing taxpayers money, said Philip Peters, an official in two Republican administrations and now the president of the Alexandria-based Cuba Research Center.
Peters
said the plane’s broadcasts had “no audience. They’ve been effectively
jammed, ever since their inception. And rather than spend the money on
something that benefits the public . . . it’s turned into a test of manhood on Capitol Hill.”
This
plane is a last remnant of a long, weird experiment in television
broadcasting across the Straits of Florida. The plan was to broadcast
uncensored news and commentary on a station named for Cuban patriot José Martí.
The
hope was that something boundless — American disdain for the communist
regime of Fidel and Raúl Castro — could overcome something fixed. Which
was the laws of physics.
Much of Cuba was simply too far over the
horizon to get a strong-enough TV signal from aircraft flying in U.S.
airspace. Still, the effort moved ahead.
“I am convinced that TV Martí will succeed,” then-Sen. Ernest “Fritz” Hollings (D-S.C.),
a major supporter, said in 1989. “Castro likes to tout his
revolutionary credentials,” Hollings said. “But he cannot begin to match
the revolutionary potential of television.”
As it turned out, he could.
The
first broadcast of TV Martí was March 27, 1990. It came in clear in
Havana for about 20 minutes. Then the American signal — weakened by
distance — was jammed by Cuban broadcasts on the same channel.
“ ‘La TV que no se ve.’ The TV that can’t be seen,” was what Cubans called it, said Fulton Armstrong,
a U.S. official in Havana at the time. Another problem: The early
broadcasts happened very late at night, to minimize interference with
other Cuban programming. What people saw, Armstrong said, was “a moving
shadow of an image of . . . something. At something like 4 a.m.”
The TV signal was first broadcast from a blimp called
“Fat Albert,” suspended 10,000 feet over the Florida Keys. But there is
weather at 10,000 feet. “Fat Albert” blew off into the Everglades in 1991. It was pulled frequently out of action to dodge high winds.
In 2005, it was torn to bits by Hurricane Dennis, and the government gave up on blimps. Instead, it tried planes.
First,
there was a military C-130. It cost too much. Then came “Aero Martí”
and a sister aircraft (now retired), smaller planes fitted with
broadcasting antennas and flown in a figure-eight pattern in U.S.
airspace near Key West.
Since these planes first flew in October 2006, they have cost taxpayers at least $32 million. That’s more than $12,000 a day.
But on Cuban TV sets, they didn’t make much difference.
In 2008, according to the Government Accountability Office, a telephone survey found about the same viewership as had been reported in 2006. And in 2003. And in 1990.
Less than 1 percent (after that, the U.S. government stopped taking the
survey, declaring it was impossible to get valid data on Cuban TV
habits).
But the planes kept flying.
The program was
repeatedly protected from Washington budget-cutters by a coalition of
Cuban American lawmakers and non-Cuban legislators from Florida. To
them, what looked like the program’s worst problems were actually proof
that it had to be saved.
By KIRSTEN GRIESHABER
An intruder managed to break into German Chancellor Angela Merkel's jet at Cologne Airport for several hours last month, playing around with buttons in the cockpit, activating the escape slide and using fire extinguishers before police put an end to his escapades.
The incident took place the evening of July 25 and the case is still being investigated, a spokesman for Germany's air force said Tuesday. Merkel was not in Cologne during the incident, he said.
"The man probably got onto the airfield because there was construction and that's why the alarm system was turned off," said the air force official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with department policy. "He then pulled down the jet engine's cover, climbed up and entered the plane through its emergency exit."
The intruder, a 24-year-old bodybuilder whose name was only given as Volkan T., somehow pressed an alarm button in the cockpit, which is how police were alerted to the incident. When he refused to leave the plane, police entered with dogs and he was bitten twice in the leg before they could overpower him, the German news agency dpa reported.
German media, citing a leaked report from the Federal Police, said he had taken ecstasy pills.
"According to witnesses, he seemed to have been under the influence of drugs, but we are still waiting for a scientific evaluation to confirm this," Ulrich Bremer, Cologne's senior prosecutor, told The Associated Press.
The Airbus A319 is one of two VIP planes that are usually on call for Germany's top lawmakers at the military section of Cologne's airport. In contrast to President Barack Obama's Air Force No. One, the two Airbus planes are not only reserved for Merkel but can also be used be the country's president, Joachim Gauck, or high-ranking ministers.
Bremer would not comment on German media reports that Volkan T. was dancing around on the plane in his underpants when he was caught by police.
"It seems his behavior may have been related to a psychiatric illness and he has been put up in a mental institution while we're waiting for a psychological evaluation," Bremer said. "He may not fully be held responsible for his acts."
The intruder had no previous history with the police, he added.
The air force official said there was no way the intruder could have started the plane, since it "was on power-off mode." Air force personnel made a complete technical check of the plane, changed the emergency exit door and held a test flight before it was put back on active duty on Aug. 13.
"As a consequence, we have ordered an extra employee to guard the government planes at all times,'" the air force spokesman said.
The main Cuban airline has taken delivery of an Antonov-158 passenger jet, a Russian leasing company said Thursday.
It's the second of three Antonov-158 planes, which seat 97 people,
that Cubana de Aviacion ordered from the state-controlled company,
Ilyushin Finance said.
The plane has a list price of $25 million
to $30 million, depending on furnishing. Ukrainian aircraft maker
Antonov sources about 60 percent of its parts in Russia.
Some components come from France, Germany and the U.S.
in a way that does not violate U.S. sanctions against Cuba,
the Aviation Explorer industry website reported.
Antonov performs the final assembly of the machines from knockdown kits manufactured at a Russian plant in Voronezh.
The first Antonov-158 arrived in Cuba in April, while the third will
enter into service later this year. Panama's South American Aircraft
Leasing company is an intermediary in the plane deal.
Cubana
wants to use the jets on its domestic flights and to ferry people
to the Dominican Republic, Mexico and other Latin American countries.
Ilyushin Finance earlier supplied seven other aircraft to Cuba: four
medium-range Russian-made Tupolev-204 planes and three long-range
Ilyushin-96-300 planes.
The latest and previous deals took place
with the support of the government, whose VEB bank lends money
for buyers of Russian hi-tech products as part of a state program
to boost their exports.
I’ve never been to Cuba before. Frankly speaking, today is my first visit. It’s a very short one of only 24 hours, of which now I have only half left to walk around Old Havana and to swim in the ocean while the global hysteria over the uncatchable Edward Snowden carries on.
For me, this story started on Sunday when I woke up and slowly went to the office. It was supposed to be a usual working weekend when almost nothing happens. Almost… Incoming calls suddenly started to light up my cell phone. The big story with Snowden as the lead actor flying somewhere via Moscow began. It is hard to describe all of the next 24 hours spent in the airport, with expensive tickets booked to get inside the transit zone at Sheremetyevo and disappointment that a lot of energy was wasted on information that turned out to be wrong.
The next morning I headed to the airport again to take the same flight as Snowden. It looked suspicious that everyone knew when and how a top secret target was going to leave Russia. The flight number, even the fugitive’s seat on the plane, was known 24 hours ahead of departure! I met around 30 reporters flying to Cuba near gate 28. All were filming a newly arrived plane while arguing with airport security.
An hour and a half before the flight, security blocked the gate and the windows, brought in tables and metal detectors to check all passengers who wanted to get aboard. “The situation is extraordinary, stop shooting if you don’t want to be kicked off the plane,” a policeman said with anger. People were starting to get nervous and security blocked the way to the gate. I didn’t even try to get my professional camera out, shooting on an iPhone and feeling an angry look from a security guard pretending to be a regular passenger. I smiled stupidly and pretended nothing had happened.
Boarding was delayed for a while. Row 17, where Snowden was expected to be seated, was full with cameras and Aeroflot staff. Ordinary passengers asked flight attendants to be re-seated. All were closely watching everyone getting aboard. It was 2:10 pm and the flight was being delayed. A flight attendant ran past us murmuring “Only three left, there is no Snowden among them”. People were stuck in their nervousness and hysteria was at its peak. All ended within 15 minutes when the flight attendant closed the door and the plane started to move.
Seat 17A was empty. Someone started to applaud, someone was smiling. Half of business class, and a quarter of economy class, was taken up by reporters. I managed to take a couple of frames of the empty seat which became a story in itself with the lack of Snowden. I transmitted it just before the plane started to taxi. I see now that it became a key picture in the story and was widely published by many newspapers and online. Aeroflot received wonderful PR and a nice increase in sales. We opened a small bottle of whiskey and blessed Snowden who gifted us this trip to Cuba.
I only have eight hours left here and I need to get a taxi and have a swim in the ocean.
A contact sheet with aerial images of Nikumaroro, the island where Amelia Earhart and her navigator are believed to have survived for a time as castaways. (Tighar)
An array of detailed aerial photos of the remote island where Amelia Earhart may have survived for a time as a castaway, has resurfaced in a New Zealand museum archive, raising hopes for new photographic evidence about the fate of the legendary aviator.
Found by Matthew O'Sullivan, keeper of photographs at the New Zealand Air Force Museum in Christchurch, the images lay forgotten in an unlabeled tin box in the museum's archives.
The box contained five sheets of contact prints -- for a total of 45 photos, complete with negatives -- and a slip of paper with the words "Gardner Island." PHOTOS: Sonar Possibly Reveals Earhart's Plane
Now called Nikumaroro, the uninhabited tropical atoll in the southwestern Pacific republic of Kiribati is believed to be Earhart final resting place by researchers of The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR).
The legendary aviator disappeared while flying over the Pacific Ocean on July 2, 1937 in a record attempt to fly around the world at the equator.
A number of artifacts recovered by TIGHAR during 10 expeditions have suggested that Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, did not crash in the Pacific Ocean, running out of fuel somewhere near their target destination Howland Island. PHOTOS: Amelia Earhart's Fate Reconstructed
Instead, they made a forced landing on the island's smooth, flat coral reef. The two became castaways and eventually died on the atoll, which is some 350 miles southeast of Howland Island.
"For 25 years we have struggled to tease details from a handful of printed photos. Now we have an amazing array of detailed aerial images of every part of the atoll taken before the first colonists, or even the New Zealand Survey party, set foot on the island," Ric Gillespie, executive director of TIGHAR, told Discovery News.
The images represent a complete set of aerial obliques taken on Dec. 1, 1938 by a Supermarine Walrus launched from HMS Leander in support of the New Zealand Pacific Aviation Survey. They were taken just 15 months after the Earhart disappearance and just before the first official habitation of the island in late December 1938.
According to Gillespie, the pictures could provide excellent views of areas on the island that are of particular interest for the Amelia's search.
"What do you expect to find in an unopened treasure chest? We can only imagine. We could find photographic evidence of the aircraft debris on the reef or beach, or spot signs of human activity on the beach and in other parts of the island," Gillespie said.
Recently TIGHAR released sonar imagery captured off Nikumaroro showing an "anomaly" that might possibly be the wreckage of Amelia's aircraft. The straight, unbroken feature is uncannily consistent with the fuselage of a Lockheed Electra, TIGHAR said. PHOTOS: Jars Hint at Amelia Earhart as Castaway
According to Gillespie, the aerial photos could also reveal evidence of the presence of the castaway whose partial skeleton was found in 1940.
Recovered by British Colonial Service Officer Gerald Gallagher, the human remains -- some 13 bones -- were described in a forensic report and attributed to an individual "more likely female than male," "more likely white than Polynesian or other Pacific Islander," "most likely between 5 feet 5 inches and 5 feet 9 inches in height." Unfortunately the human remains have been lost.
Gillespie believes that many of the bones might have been carried off by the island's numerous hermit and coconut crabs, suggesting an unmerciful end for Earhart.
"We're currently working out the logistics of a trip to Christchurch to examine the negatives with our forensic imaging specialist, Jeff Glickman," Gillespie said.
"We will be working not from a third generation print but from the original large-format, fine-grained negatives. In our fondest dreams we couldn't have wished for something like this," he said.
Laverne Everett's skydiving partner holds onto her after she fell out of her harness.
An 80-year-old woman on a tandem skydive slipped from her instructor’s harness then held on for life while rocketing toward Earth. An Alabama man busted his ankles trying to ride a bull. A Missouri man smashed his body – and his new motorcycle – minutes after buying the bike.
All were attempting items on their “bucket lists,” those rare experiences that people – particularly Baby Boomers (folks 49 years old and up) – ache to taste before kicking the bucket. But as injuries and close calls from these sacred agendas mount, some emergency workers want the bucket-listers to tone down their chosen adventures – or at least better prepare for such feats.
“If you’re going to build a bucket list don’t fill it with 18 different versions of Russian Roulette,” said Dr. Ryan Stanton, an emergency physician in Lexington, Ky. He treated the 60-something man who recently wrecked his new motorcycle in the store’s parking lot, breaking several bones in the crash.
“Fill your bucket list with things that are actually safe and enjoyable – or at least prepare for them sufficiently if you’re going to enjoy them,” Stanton said. “You don’t want your bucket to be full of the first bucket of dirt for your grave.”
Baby boomers have become the bucket-list generation, aiming to complete and cross off dozens of adrenaline-drenched exploits before their bodies fade or their time ends, says an official at the American Association of Retired Persons.
“Boomers are really known for this phenomenon called ‘Boomeritis,’ which is: We are weekend warriors and we go out and try to squeeze all our activities into the weekend,” said Gabrielle Redford, editorial projects manager for AARP the Magazine. She believes so many 50-plusers have inked bucket lists because they came of age amid the aerobics and jogging crazes, and because they’re more active than their parents’ generation.
Typical bucket lists may include marathons, triathlons and, lately, Tough Mudders and Spartan Races – along with pursuits like ziplining, rock climbing and scuba diving.
“We set our sites on a race and just go all out to get in shape for that race. But then we go out too fast and too long and we end up with the plantar fasciitis and the Achilles (tendon) pull,” Redford said. “We just end up with all these wear and tear injuries we might not have had if we weren’t quite so ambitious.”
Some bucket lists can lead to close calls with the hereafter.
TODAY
Laverne Everett, now 82, says despite her near-disastrous skydive, she's still seeking new adventures.
To celebrate her 80th birthday and notch her bucket list, Laverne Everett went tandem skydivingtwo years ago above Lodi, Calif. After she paused in fear while perched in the plane’s hatch, she went airborne but partially slipped out of her partner’s harness. A fellow jumper filmed the plunge and the video went viral.
“I had watched watched people jump, and it looked like such fun, just sailing in real smooth, you know? It didn’t work out that way,” Everett, 82, said in a phone interview Thursday. “[My partner] kept telling me: ‘Hold on! Hold on!’ That’s where my mind was, just holding on. He was just holding me. I was just barely holding on with my legs.
“I couldn’t see anything. My clothes were rolled up over my face. There was pinhole of light, that’s all I had. So I didn’t know what was what. I’m very thankful I didn’t know,” added Everett, who suffered some “doozy bruises” and a scraped knee when she landed otherwise intact after their chute opened.
Terry Hatfield's lifelong dream of riding a bull resulted in his breaking both ankles and an arm. In 2011, the 56-year-old Huntsville, Ala., man climbed on to a 1,000-pound animal that began bucking before they exited the starting pen, causing the injuries. Hatfield said later that moment had been “on my bucket list.”
Some emergency medical technicians believe a lot of bucket-listers could attack their ventures far more safely – though many EMTs are, similarly, adrenaline junkies and they grudgingly respect the daredevil efforts of the oldsters.
“We talk about it: They could stretch or hydrate or train properly – they could have done things to prevent blown-out knees and ripped hamstrings,” said Roy Poteete, vice president of the U.S. First Responders Association, and a retired firefighter and EMT who lives in Missouri.
But aren’t bungee jumping, parachuting and mountain scaling simply hobbies that exceed the technical knowhow and physical skills of some folks?
“You are correct, sir,” Poteete said.
In fact, there currently are no medical-practice guidelines as to which bucket-list items are considered safe or age appropriate, so advice often comes down to the intuition of individual physicians, said Carl Foster, director of the human performance laboratory at the University of Wisconsin, Lacrosse. He recently chaired an American College of Sports Medicine symposium of doctors discussing the perils of bucket lists.
“A lot of people identify with the concept of: Geez, I haven’t done this in my life and I’m willing to take the risk. That’s really the guts of this thing. If you look at the movie which the term came from, it gets at: I’m close enough to the end and I’m making the active choice,” Foster said.
“By the same token, the people who have to take care of them, who have to bail them out of bad situations, probably wish they prepared or had thought better of it.”
As for Everett, she’s still scratching lines off her bucket list. Last year, she rode shotgun in a NASCAR vehicle for several laps at a California racetrack.
“I figured we were doing 90 (mph), at least,” she said. “When we got out, I told the driver, I could have gone faster!’ ”
Evo Morales y Nicolás Maduro, en un reciente encuentro en La Paz. Foto: Efe
Bolivia tiene una deuda comercial con Venezuela por un poco más de 145 millones de dólares.
El presidente de Bolivia, Evo Morales, reveló que su país compró nueve aviones de entrenamiento militar con fondos del programa ‘Bolivia cambia, Evo cumple’, que en el período 2006-2011 recibió donaciones de dinero de Venezuela.
En su discurso, Morales se refirió al asunto en un acto del Colegio Militar de Aviación de la ciudad de Santa Cruz (este), en medio de una polémica entre su gobierno y la oposición sobre el uso dado a los fondos de ese programa gubernamental en Bolivia.
Relató que en 2006, cuando llegó a la presidencia, encontró una Fuerza Aérea Boliviana (FAB) con “oficiales desmoralizados” y a sus familiares solicitando a gritos en los actos públicos que se compren los aviones de entrenamiento. “Para información de nuestro comandante, de nuestro oficial de la Fuerza Aérea Venezolana, y (con) parte del programa ‘Bolivia cambia’, compramos nueve aviones de entrenamiento. Muchas gracias hermano general, muchas gracias al pueblo venezolano”, sostuvo Morales, sin detallar la identidad de ese oficial.
Morales pidió en el acto, al que asistió dicho militar venezolano, “un aplauso como justo homenaje a esta cooperación incondicional, que lamentablemente algunos opositores, algunos políticos empresarios cuestionan”.
El mandatario no precisó si hubo fondos venezolanos usados de forma directa en la compra de las naves, aunque el plan ‘Bolivia cambia, Evo cumple’ recibió donaciones de ese país hasta 2011.
Morales se refirió al tema en medio de una polémica que hay en Bolivia sobre el uso otorgado a ese programa, tras la publicación de un estudio hecho por el opositor y empresario Samuel Doria Medina, que habló de una supuesta falta de transparencia en el plan.
El Gobierno ha rechazado las denuncias de Doria Medina y ha defendido que el plan se enfocó en obras para combatir la pobreza. Según el estudio de Doria Medina, en ese programa se gastó en seis años una suma de 438,7 millones de dólares, mientras que el gobierno, según el matutino La Razón, ha emitido informes en el sentido de que en el período 2007-2012 se gastaron 402 millones de dólares.
El gobierno boliviano también ha insistido estos días en aclarar que se trataron de donaciones y no de créditos de Venezuela, por lo que no hay deuda acumulada por los fondos del citado programa.
El único contrato de préstamo contraído con Venezuela data de 2008 y fue de 300 millones de dólares para la construcción de una carretera, pero de los que el Gobierno venezolano solo desembolsó 20 millones invertidos en el comienzo de las obras.
Aparte, Bolivia tiene una deuda comercial con Venezuela por la compra de gasóleo por un poco más de 145 millones de dólares.
A grainy sonar image captured off an uninhabited tropical island in the southwestern Pacific republic of Kiribati might represent the remains of the Electra, the two-engine aircraft legendary aviator Amelia Earhart was piloting when she vanished on July 2, 1937 in a record attempt to fly around the world at the equator.
Released by The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), which has long been investigating Earhart's last, fateful flight, the images show an "anomaly" resting at the depth of about 600 feet in the waters off Nikumaroro island, some 350 miles southeast of Earhart's target destination, Howland Island.
According to TIGHAR researchers, the sonar image shows a strong return from a narrow object roughly 22 feet long oriented southwest/northeast on the slope near the base of an underwater cliff. Shadows indicate that the object is higher on the southwest (downhill side). A lesser return extends northeastward for about 131 feet.
"What initially got our attention is that there is no other sonar return like it in the entire body of data collected," Ric Gillespie, executive director of TIGHAR, told Discovery News.
"It is truly an anomaly, and when you're looking for man-made objects against a natural background, anomalies are good," he added.
A number of artifacts recovered by TIGHAR during 10 expeditions have suggested that Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, made a forced landing on the island's smooth, flat coral reef. Gillespie and his team believe the two became castaways and eventually died there.
In July 2012, Gillespie and his crew returned to Nikumaroro to carry out an underwater search for the plane with a torpedo-shaped Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) and a Remote Operated Vehicle (ROV).
Multi-beam sonar mounted on the ship mapped the underwater terrain and the AUV collected a volume of side-scan data along roughly 1.3 nautical miles of shoreline off the west end of Nikumaroro, while the ROV, capable of reaching depths of 3,000 feet, produced hours upon hours of high-definition video.
Plagued by a number of technical issues and a difficult environment, the hunt did not result in the immediate identification of pieces from Earhart's Lockheed Electra aircraft.
As they returned from the data collection trip, TIGHAR researchers began reviewing and analyzing all of new material recovered from the underwater search.
They identified a small debris field of objects at the depth of 200 feet, which TIGHAR forensic imaging specialist Jeff Glickman described as consisting of man-made objects.
Located distinctly apart from the debris field of the SS Norwich City, a British steamer which went aground on the island's reef in 1929, the site features objects which appear consistent with the interpretation made by Glickmann of a grainy photograph of Nikumaroro's western shoreline.
The grainy photo was shot by British Colonial Service officer Eric R. Bevington in October 1937, just three months after Amelia's disappearance on July 2, 1937. It revealed an apparent man-made protruding object on the left side of the frame.
Forensic imaging analyses of the picture found the mysterious object consistent with the shape and dimensions of the wreckage of landing gear from Earhart's plane.
"The Bevington photo shows what appears to be four components of the plane: a strut, a wheel, a worm gear and a fender. In the debris field there appears to be the fender, possibly the wheel and possibly some portions of the strut," Glickman told Discovery News.
A new twist in the search occurred last March when Richard Conroy, a member of TIGHAR’s on-line Amelia Earhart Search Forum, spotted an anomaly in a sonar map posted online.
In a major address Thursday President Barack Obama sought to reframe the nation’s counterterrorism strategy, saying, “Our systematic effort to dismantle terrorist organizations must continue. But this war, like all wars, must end. That's what history advises. That's what our democracy demands.”
He said in a speech at the National Defense University in Washington, “We must define our effort not as a boundless 'global war on terror' - but rather as a series of persistent, targeted efforts to dismantle specific networks of violent extremists that threaten America."
In an attempt to define a new post-Sept. 11 era, Obama outlined new guidelines for the use of drones to kill terrorists overseas and pledged a
President Barack Obama discusses civilian casualties resulting from U.S. drone strikes while speaking Thursday at the National Defense University
renewed effort to close the military detention center in Guantanamo Bay. In the speech, Obama argued that, “In the years to come, not every collection of thugs that labels themselves al Qaeda will pose a credible threat to the United States.” He warned that “unless we discipline our thinking and our actions, we may be drawn into more wars we don't need to fight.”
With efforts under way in Congress to redefine the 2001 authorization to use military force (AUMF) against al Qaida, Obama said he would work with Congress “in efforts to refine, and ultimately repeal, the AUMF's mandate. And I will not sign laws designed to expand this mandate further.”
Toward the end of Obama’s address as he discussed the Guantanamo detainees, he was repeatedly interrupted by heckling from Medea Benjamin, founder of the antiwar Code Pink, whose members have frequently been arrested for disrupting hearings on Capitol Hill – but Obama patiently said that Benjamin’s concerns are “something to be passionate about.”
“We must define the nature and scope of this struggle, or else it will define us, mindful of James Madison's warning that ‘No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.’ Neither I, nor any president, can promise the total defeat of terror,” he declared.
As part of his redefinition of counterterrorism, the president announced several initiatives:
Setting narrower parameters for the use of remotely piloted aircraft, or drones, to kill terrorists overseas and to limit collateral casualties;
Renewing efforts to persuade Congress to agree to close the Guantanamo detention site in Cuba where 110 terrorist suspects are being held;
Appointing a new envoy at the State Department and an official at the Defense Department who will attempt to negotiate transfers of Guantanamo detainees to other countries.
Lifting the moratorium he imposed in 2010 on transferring some detainees at Guantanamo to Yemen. Obama imposed that moratorium after it was revealed that Detroit “underwear bomber” Umar Farouq Abdulmuttalab was trained in Yemen.
Obama argued that when compared to the Sept. 11, 2001 attackers, “the threat today is more diffuse, with Al Qaeda's affiliates in the
Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP
President Barack Obama talks about national security, Thursday, May 23, 2013, at the National Defense University at Fort McNair in Washington.
Arabian Peninsula – AQAP – the most active in plotting against our homeland. While none of AQAP's efforts approach the scale of 9/11 they have continued to plot acts of terror, like the attempt to blow up an airplane on Christmas Day in 2009.”
So he said, “As we shape our response, we have to recognize that the scale of this threat closely resembles the types of attacks we faced before 9/11.”
He said that the current threat is often from “deranged or alienated individuals – often U.S. citizens or legal residents – (who) can do enormous damage, particularly when inspired by larger notions of violent jihad. That pull towards extremism appears to have led to the shooting at Fort Hood, and the bombing of the Boston Marathon.”
In discussing his drone strategy he indicated his remorse over the innocent people who had been killed: “it is a hard fact that U.S. strikes have resulted in civilian casualties, a risk that exists in all wars. For the families of those civilians, no words or legal construct can justify their loss. For me, and those in my chain of command, these deaths will haunt us as long as we live, just as we are haunted by the civilian casualties that have occurred through conventional fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq.”
There remains considerable doubt about Obama’s ability to persuade a majority in Congress to change the current law on releasing detainees held there.
The defense spending bill which Obama signed into law last year prohibits any transfers to the United States of any detainee at Guantanamo who was held there on or before Jan. 20, 2009, the day Obama became president.
And the law sets a very high legal bar for Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to transfer a detainee to his country of origin, or to any other foreign country.
Hagel would need to certify to Congress that the detainee will not be transferred to a country that is a designated state sponsor of terrorism. The country must have agreed to take steps to ensure that the detainee cannot take action to threaten the United States, U.S. citizens, or its allies in the future.
The law allows Hagel to use waivers in some cases to transfer detainees.
Speaking a day before Obama’s speech, Ben Wittes, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and co-founder of the Lawfare blog which covers detainee news, said, “I don’t see any significant change in congressional sentiment right now” on closing the Guantanamo site.
“He’s got a lot of domestic pressure from his base to be seen to be doing something and he’s also got a hunger strike there (at Guantanamo) — and I think there’s a lot of genuine sentiment in the administration that they want to do something (about Guantanamo) so they’re committed to another push and trying again – but the question of what they actually could get done is a difficult question. There’s very limited latitude.”
¨Saturno jugando con sus hijos¨/ Pedro Pablo Oliva
Seguidores
Carta desde la carcel de Fidel Castro Ruz
“…después de todo, para mí la cárcel es un buen descanso, que sólo tiene de malo el que es obligatorio. Leo mucho y estudio mucho. Parece increíble, las horas pasan como si fuesen minutos y yo, que soy de temperamento intranquilo, me paso el día leyendo, apenas sin moverme para nada. La correspondencia llega normalmente…”
“…Como soy cocinero, de vez en cuando me entretengo preparando algún pisto. Hace poco me mandó mi hermana desde Oriente un pequeño jamón y preparé un bisté con jalea de guayaba. También preparo spaghettis de vez en cuando, de distintas formas, inventadas todas por mí; o bien tortilla de queso. ¡Ah! ¡Qué bien me quedan! por supuesto, que el repertorio no se queda ahí. Cuelo también café que me queda muy sabroso”. “…En cuanto a fumar, en estos días pasados he estado rico: una caja de tabacos H. Upman del doctor Miró Cardona, dos cajas muy buenas de mi hermano Ramón….”. “Me voy a cenar: spaghettis con calamares, bombones italianos de postre, café acabadito de colar y después un H. Upman #4. ¿No me envidias?”. “…Me cuidan, me cuidan un poquito entre todos. No le hacen caso a uno, siempre estoy peleando para que no me manden nada. Cuando cojo el sol por la mañana en shorts y siento el aire de mar, me parece que estoy en una playa… ¡Me van a hacer creer que estoy de vacaciones! ¿Qué diría Carlos Marx de semejantes revolucionarios?”.
Quotes
¨La patria es dicha de todos, y dolor de todos, y cielo para todos, y no feudo ni capellanía de nadie¨ - Marti
"No temas ni a la prision, ni a la pobreza, ni a la muerte. Teme al miedo" - Giacomo Leopardi
¨Por eso es muy importante, Vicky, hijo mío, que recuerdes siempre para qué sirve la cabeza: para atravesar paredes¨– Halvar de Flake[El vikingo]
"Como no me he preocupado de nacer, no me preocupo de morir"- Lorca
"Al final, no os preguntarán qué habéis sabido, sino qué habéis hecho" - Jean de Gerson
"Si queremos que todo siga como está, es necesario que todo cambie" - Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
"Todo hombre paga su grandeza con muchas pequeñeces, su victoria con muchas derrotas, su riqueza con múltiples quiebras" - Giovanni Papini
"Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans" - John Lennon
"Habla bajo, lleva siempre un gran palo y llegarás lejos" - Proverbio Africano
"No hay medicina para el miedo"-Proverbio escoces "El supremo arte de la guerra es doblegar al enemigo sin luchar" -Sun Tzu
"You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother" - Albert Einstein
"It is inaccurate to say I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office" - H. L. Menken
"I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented" -Elie Wiesel
"Stay hungry, stay foolish" - Steve Jobs
"If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert , in five years ther'ed be a shortage of sand" - Milton Friedman
"The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life, but that it bothers him less and less" - Vaclav Havel
"No se puede controlar el resultado, pero si lo que uno haga para alcanzarlo" - Vitor Belfort [MMA Fighter]
Liborio
A la puerta de la gloria está San Pedro sentado y ve llegar a su lado a un hombre de cierta historia. No consigue hacer memoria y le pregunta con celo: ¿Quién eras allá en el suelo? Era Liborio mi nombre. Has sufrido mucho, hombre, entra, te has ganado el cielo.
Para Raul Castro
Cuba ocupa el penultimo lugar en el mundo en libertad economica solo superada por Corea del Norte.
Cuba ocupa el lugar 147 entre 153 paises evaluados en "Democracia, Mercado y Transparencia 2007"
Cuando vinieron a buscar a los comunistas, Callé: yo no soy comunista. Cuando vinieron a buscar a los sindicalistas, Callé: yo no soy sindicalista. Cuando vinieron a buscar a los judíos, Callé: yo no soy judío. Cuando vinieron a buscar a los católicos, Callé: yo no soy “tan católico”. Cuando vinieron a buscarme a mí, Callé: no había quien me escuchara.
Un sitio donde los hechos y sus huellas nos conmueven o cautivan
CUBA LLORA Y EL MUNDO Y NOSOTROS NO ESCUCHAMOS
Donde esta el Mundo, donde los Democratas, donde los Liberales? El pueblo de Cuba llora y nadie escucha. Donde estan los Green, los Socialdemocratas, los Ricos y los Pobres, los Con Voz y Sin Voz? Cuba llora y nadie escucha. Donde estan el Jet Set, los Reyes y Principes, Patricios y Plebeyos? Cuba desesperada clama por solidaridad. Donde Bob Dylan, donde Martin Luther King, donde Hollywood y sus estrellas? Donde la Middle Class democrata y conservadora, o acaso tambien liberal a ratos? Y Gandhi? Y el Dios de Todos? Donde los Santos y Virgenes; los Dioses de Cristianos, Protestantes, Musulmanes, Budistas, Testigos de Jehova y Adventistas del Septimo Dia. Donde estan Ochun y todas las deidades del Panteon Yoruba que no acuden a nuestro llanto? Donde Juan Pablo II que no exige mas que Cuba se abra al Mundo y que el Mundo se abra a Cuba? Que hacen ahora mismo Alberto de Monaco y el Principe Felipe que no los escuchamos? Donde Madonna, donde Angelina Jolie y sus adoptados around de world; o nos hara falta un Brando erguido en un Oscar por Cuba? Donde Sean Penn? Donde esta la Aristocracia Obrera y los Obreros menos Aristocraticos, donde los Working Class que no estan junto a un pueblo que lanquidece, sufre y llora por la ignominia? Que hacen ahora mismo Zapatero y Rajoy que no los escuchamos, y Harper y Dion, e Hillary y Obama; donde McCain que no los escuchamos? Y los muertos? Y los que estan muriendo? Y los que van a morir? Y los que se lanzan desesperados al mar? Donde estan el minero cantabrico o el pescador de percebes gijonese? Los Canarios donde estan? A los africanos no los oimos, y a los australianos con su acento de hombres duros tampoco. Y aquellos chinos milenarios de Canton que fundaron raices eternas en la Isla? Y que de la Queen Elizabeth y los Lords y Gentlemen? Que hace ahora mismo el combativo Principe Harry que no lo escuchamos? Donde los Rockefellers? Donde los Duponts? Donde Kate Moss? Donde el Presidente de la ONU? Y Solana donde esta? Y los Generales y Doctores? Y los Lam y los Fabelo, y los Sivio y los Fito Paez? Y que de Canseco y Miñoso? Y de los veteranos de Bahia de Cochinos y de los balseros y de los recien llegados? Y Carlos Otero y Susana Perez? Y el Bola, y Pancho Cespedes? Y YO y TU? Y todos nosotros que estamos aqui y alla rumiando frustaciones y resquemores, envidias y sinsabores; autoelogios y nostalgias, en tanto Louis Michel comulga con Perez Roque mientras Biscet y una NACION lanquidecen? Donde Maceo, donde Marti; donde aquel Villena con su carga para matar bribones? Cuba llora y clama y el Mundo NO ESCUCHA!!!
![NEOCASTRISMO [Hacer click en la imagen]](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_5jy0SZhMlaU/SsuPVOlq2NI/AAAAAAAAH1E/4xt2Bwd2reE/S150/ppo+saturno+jugando+con+sus+hijos.jpg)
