tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15025560793390907262024-02-19T05:27:25.784-08:00Random Notes from South of the EquatorI have named this blog in honor of Random Notes, a one-edition newspaper that eight cadets, including myself, published at the US Air Force Academy in 1972.
If God grants me a little self-discipline – which is asking for a lot – I will write weekly about those things I am passionately interested in: social justice, culture, living abroad, language and identity, and, of course, my children.
I hope you enjoy this little endeavor, or at least get something out of it.
Peace. Salaam. Shalom.Bill Sheltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15768358007493893006noreply@blogger.comBlogger20125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1502556079339090726.post-83353098908564103182016-01-14T12:14:00.002-08:002016-01-15T16:29:46.075-08:00I am Muslim.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"> “When politicians insult Muslims, when a mosque is vandalized, or a kid bullied, that doesn’t make us safer. That’s not telling it like it is. It’s just wrong. It diminishes us in the eyes of the world. It makes it harder to achieve our goals. And it betrays who we are as a country.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">- Barack Hussein Obama, January 12, 2016</span><br />
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I am Muslim<span style="font-size: x-small;">.</span></div>
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Faith is a very private matter, or, at least it should be. I have always been suspicious of those who proclaim their religion publicly, self-righteously putting it on display for all to see. Consequently, I have been very quiet and unassuming with my own religious convictions. They are mine and mine alone. I wear nothing that identifies my creed. I pray quietly, out of sight of others and, when I do acts of kindness or charity, I do so anonymously. I also do so out of an innate sense of goodness, not out of fear of divine retribution should I not act in this manner. I’m good with my beliefs and how I show them. After all, is not the best form of evangelization or, in my case, dawah, simply living as you should?<br />
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Today, I am breaking that rule. In some of my writings, I mention in passing that I am Muslim, the result of a decision I made some years ago after decades of interest and studies had finally convinced me that, at least for me, Islam would complement and complete my own prior commitments to my fellow men and women. I do so for a reason, a deeply heartfelt reason. The growing tide of Islamophobia in the United States, with its accompanying hysteria and distortions about my faith, have made those who share my faith targets in our own land.<br />
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I am Muslim. Let me say that again: I am Muslim. I am not writing here to defend or explain my faith. That is not necessary. Those of you with good will have multiple sources at your fingertips should you wish to know more or you can simply ask me for sources, which I will gladly provide. Those who have already swallowed the bile and distorted thinking of the Pam Gellers, Frank Gaffenys and Robert Spencers of the world and their ilk, including Donald Trump, are not interested in anything resembling the truth. I will not debate with you here. You have already chosen hatred over love, lies over truth. I will also not define for you, friend of foe, “what kind of Muslim” I am here. There is a widely-accepted precept in Islam that anyone who defines himself or herself as a Muslim is a Muslim. I believe that. Are there Muslims with whom I disagree? Obviously, but that is not up for discussion today. Besides, Islamophobes do not make that distinction. For them, Muslim is Muslim. Hence, I am Muslim.<br />
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I am Muslim. I will not be silent and I will not be intimidated. I am Muslim and I refuse to be a willing target. You see, even before I became Muslim, I was – and still am – an American. I was raised to believe in the promises of equal rights and equal protection of the law contained in our Constitution. I was raised believing that our country had shed its blood and its treasure for those rights to be guaranteed. While it is true that we, as Americans, have come up short time and time again in actually guaranteeing those rights for all, champions of those rights who are not afraid to speak truth to power have risen in every generation. The list is long. Martin Luther King Jr., Eugene Debs, Dennis Banks, Carter Camp, Mother Jones, Denmark Vesey, Malcolm X, Susan B. Anthony, Daniel Ellsberg, Rosa Parks, Emma Goldman, Dorothy Day, Joe Hill, Big Bill Haywood, Tecumseh, my brothers and sisters in both the Vietnam Veterans Against the War and the American Indian Movement who taught me how to struggle and how to fight back against injustice and racism, as well as many, many others – too many to begin to mention here. These are the Americans who taught me what this country should and can be. These are those who have inspired me for some 45 years to not be silent, to – as Karl Liebknecht put it – fight for the gates of heaven, to always struggle for what is right, just and good for ALL people. And over the years, I have seen those rights expand as I, too, have come to see that my own understanding of rights and equality, likewise, needed to expand.<br />
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I am Muslim. I am also a student of history. We, in the United States, have seen this hysteria before, most notably during the World War II internment of Japanese residents and US citizens of Japanese ancestry. The scenes of anxious US citizens – anxious to seize those residents’ and citizens’ property for their own selfish benefit – awaiting that internment are well known, even if conveniently overlooked. It’s no wonder that some of the most fervent voices against the demonization of Muslims since 9/11 have been those who were interned during that time and their descendants. We have seen this hysteria raised against numerous groups of immigrants, natives, political dissidents and others since before the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 were enacted. We have seen this specter used against Mexicans, immigrants in general, Native Americans, Catholics, Italians, Anarchists, Communists and anyone else not deemed “American enough”, regardless of their citizenship or place of birth.... and we will, unfortunately, see it again against whoever those in power decree to be our next threat, our next “enemy”, whether they, in fact, are a threat or not.<br />
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This latest round of American Exceptionalism’s dark side has already had impacts that go beyond what we can easily see. People are afraid. There is the story of the young Muslim girl who packed a bag with her favorite things because she was afraid “they were coming to get her”. Her mother spoke publicly about not knowing how to soothe her child’s fear. Fortunately, many good Americans, veterans, publicly made the following vow to her, the daughter: “I will protect you!” How many times has this scene been repeated, where young children are frightened because of the rhetoric being directed against them and their families, but there has been no one to make that same vow to them? There is no way of knowing, but it is undoubtedly far more frequent than this one case. It is repeated over and over again. Children do not live in a vacuum. Even my eight-year-old son, living here in Brazil with me, is not immune. He is concerned. He is afraid of what might happen if the likes of Trump have their way and are successful in persecuting our nation’s Muslims. Although he is not Muslim, he is well aware that I am. He is afraid for me, of what might happen should I return to the United States. He is not convinced when I remind him that I, as a white-skinned Muslim with an English name, will probably get a pass because the same idiots who mistake Sikhs for Muslims will not recognize me as one. He also knows that I am not inclined to remain quiet. Hence, my own son is afraid for me. For his sake, I am glad that I live far away.<br />
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I am neither innocent nor naive enough to believe that only we Muslims need be concerned. While we are the most current direct target of attacks, be they murders, the burning or desecration of mosques, random senseless assaults on people perceived to be Muslims (including many who are not because their assailants are too stupid to know the difference), we are not alone. The rising howl against those of my faith has been accompanied by myriad claims against immigrants, most notably those Spanish-speakers who are perceived as “invading” across our southern border, even though more of those undocumented immigrants have left in recent years than have arrived. That “outrage” has served as well to reinforce cries against any and all refugees, most recently Iraqis and Syrians. After all, they don’t look or pray like “us”, do they? And they’re all Muslims, aren’t they – in spite of the fact that there are Christians and Jews among those fleeing the war and chaos enveloping their countries. What about the young people escaping extreme violence in Central America, the result of a century and a half of American meddling – often openly and armed , particularly during the recent wars that served only to destructure that region? That same bile and hatred has been hurled against young black men, who are decried as being “thugs” when their only “crime” is being of African descent to some greater or lesser degree. Remember that, for those of ill will, Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown were thugs, even though they had never been convicted of any criminal offense when they were killed and, yet, Dylann Roof, who murdered nine people in Charleston simply because they were black, has been called a confused young man. Those same people also dismiss Robert Lewis Dear, who attacked the Planned Parenthood facilities in Colorado Springs, killing three and wounding nine, as mentally ill, which may well be true, but does not excuse him. Need I mention our country’s long vilification of our land’s native inhabitants, a vilification that has not yet ended?<br />
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It is well that we all remember the words of Dietrich Boenhoffer, who said, “First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.” I have lived by those words my entire life and, today, even though I am one of those targeted, I will not be silent. I never have been silent before and I will not be now. I will defend any and all who become targets. After all, this is not the first time I have had a metaphorical bulls eye painted on my back. I remember the 1970s too well. I do hope, though, that it will be the last time, although I have no reason to actually believe that it will.<br />
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Today, I would be Muslim, even if I weren’t.Bill Sheltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15768358007493893006noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1502556079339090726.post-17558659580151044952015-09-11T15:51:00.000-07:002015-09-11T15:51:21.145-07:00On September 7: An Independence Day Parade and Scouting in Brazil<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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On September 7, my son Jack and I marched with the Scouts during the Independence Day here in Juiz de Fora. It might not seem like much, but both of us were excited. It was Jack’s first time marching in a parade of any kind and my first in well over 40 years. So why on earth would this event turn into a blog post? Well, there are a lot of reasons, all of them very personal, very much mine. It was special to me because I am not yet a Brazilian. Almost, but not yet. I’ve applied for citizenship and, hopefully, it will be granted in about a year.<br />
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This was a civic celebration, a patriotic one by definition. As someone who has been heavily innoculated by the excesses of mindless, knee-jerk attitudes that are passed off as patriotism in the US, to discover that patriotism can be a force of good is a pleasant surprise. Brazilians, like Americans, love their country. Unlike Americans, however, they feel free to recognize its failings. Back home, to criticize our country for any reason, no matter how legitimate, is often taken as an attack on the country itself.<br />
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So, what is the difference between American patriotism and Brazilian patriotism? A lot, from where I see it. And, as an almost Brazilian, I have thought about this frequently. In fact, I thought about it while marching down Juiz de Fora’s principal avenue. I was very aware that I might well have been the only non-Brazilian in the parade. I’m the only foreigner in my Scout group and I know of no others in our city. When I took my Scouting promise, mine was different than the one Brazilians take. They promise to do their duty “to God and my country.” As a non-citizen becoming a Brazilian Scout Leader, that promise was “to God, to my country, and to Brazil”. Brazilians are non-exclusive. You don’t have to turn your back on who you are to become a Brazilian. You can be both. No one expects me to quit being an American just because I immigrated to Brazil. And when I become a citizen? It won’t make any difference. For Brazilians, I will be Brazilian. Period. That I also have another identity is not important. It is recognized as being part of who I am.<br />
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Anyone who seriously looks at how immigrants are received and viewed in the United States knows that this is not the case there. My oldest daughter Georgia, born in Brazil, is also a natural born citizen because of me. When she was a teenager, upon crossing the US border after a few day trips into Mexico with my wife Rosangela, she was repeatedly questioned about how she acquired US citizenship. She was interrogated far more than my wife, her stepmother, who was a legal resident of the US, not a citizen. Even when immigrants naturalize in the US, they are still all too frequently viewed as foreigners. In Brazil, we’re just Brazilians. In fact, I have been called a Brazilian and have been cited as a citizen simply because of my attitudes, for doing what is right, for doing what should be my civic duty. Brazilians notice – and are pleased – when they realize that I say “we” when speaking of this country. I’ve seen and heard too many examples of Americans questioning immigrants, even after being naturalized, for using that inclusive word “we”.<br />
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We need look no further than Donald Trump’s strident rhetoric to further illustrate this. If that isn’t enough, there is always history. We can start with the mass detention and internment of Japanese and Japanese-Americans during World War II in the name of “national security”. (Sound familiar?) Don’t forget that the latter, including George Takei and the late US Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, were all US citizens. Need more: how about the euphemistically called “Mexican Repatriation” recently featured in a story on NPR (“Mass Deportation May Sound Unlikely, But It's Happened Before”, September 8, 2015). Up to two million “Mexicans” were deported, the vast majority without the benefit of due process. It is estimated that 60 percent of them were actually US citizens. Do you want more up-to-date examples: how about all of the rhetoric surrounding those Central American refugees, many of whom are unaccompanied minors, crossing our southern border? Or our stinginess regarding today’s refugees from the horrors now engulfing Syria and Iraq? Lest we forget, our nation is largely responsible for the ongoing chaos in both of those regions. I could go on. Our reception of different waves of refugees and immigrants has always been hostile. What about the 1939 “Voyage of the Damned”, when over 900 Jewish refugees from Germany on board the MS St. Louis were denied entry into the US, after being turned away from Cuba? Forced to return to Europe, as many as a quarter of them would perish in the Holocaust. Irish and Italians immigrants were seen as threats to“American values” for the longest of times. And then there is our historical penchant for renaming things when other nations displease us. Do you want some “Freedom fries” with that? Or a big bowl of “I Hate the French” vanilla ice cream? Does “Liberty cabbage” ring a bell?<br />
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To counter this, to show you what Brazil is, does and thinks, let me offer this. The following link is to a musical video in which 50 refugees from 12 different countries collaborated. They are singing their thanks to this country for opening its arms and welcoming them. It expresses my feelings about my adopted country in a way that is far more beautiful and far more moving than anything I am capable of. This immigrant agrees wholeheartedly with those refugees:<br />
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<a href="https://www.facebook.com/UOLNoticias/videos/1215745298440284/?pnref=story">https://www.facebook.com/UOLNoticias/videos/1215745298440284/?pnref=story</a><br />
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(This is a short, minute-and-a-half cut. The video caption contains a link to the full video and an accompanying story in Portuguese. It is well worth watching, even without understanding the language. Just make sure you have a handkerchief or Kleenex handy.)<br />
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And so how does Scouting figure into all of this? Like anything else, Scouting reflects the society into which it has been inserted. The Boy Scouts of America is a reflection of American society. It historically has been xenophobic and homophobic. This is one of the main reasons I was reticent when my son, Jack, initially became interested in becoming a Cub Scout. That reticence reflected my own exposure to Scouting in the US, not in Brazil. Since his Cub Scout pack required an adult to be present during his first four meetings, I began attending. They tell you that they want you there in case your child has trouble adjusting to the program. I suspect, though, that they have ulterior motives. They want you involved, too. I began to see and experience what I cannot call anything other than Brazilian inclusiveness in the Scouts. That was not really what I was expecting. When I followed my son in and became a Scout Leader, this foreign Muslim was openly welcomed by our group, Scouting Group 72, Liz do Amanhã. It was founded by a Catholic priest 25 years ago and features a chalice and communion wafer on the group neckerchief. You can’t get more Catholic than that. Nevertheless, at the first encampment we attended, I was asked to give a Muslim prayer. And, as for homophobia, there is none. Period. Our training literature does not encourage us to foster the acceptance of Scouts’ sexual preference in all of its diversity, it commands us to do so. I have witnessed adult Scout Leaders here campaigning against changing the definition of family in the Brazilian family code to include homophobic, non-inclusive language. And when the US Supreme Court recently made its historic ruling in favor of marriage equality, some of the most vocal celebrants I saw in Brazil were Scouts and Scout Leaders. Contrast that with the BSA, which is being dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st Century only under the threat of being forced to do so by US Federal Courts as they correctly interpret the Constitution and supporting federal laws.<br />
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I have interacted with Scouts of all ages and Scout leaders of all kinds. The rainbow quality of our group, like all of Brazil, is not for show. All races and many diverse religions are present – and no one seems to notice. That’s just how Brazilians are. And religion? I answered that above. It’s the same.<br />
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So next year, Jack and I will once again march in the Independence Parade as Scouts. Maybe, by then, I will even be a citizen.<br />
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Bill Sheltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15768358007493893006noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1502556079339090726.post-30121851782087384292015-06-20T18:23:00.000-07:002015-06-23T05:31:21.360-07:00On Charleston<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Top row: Cynthia Hurd, Rev. Clementa Pinckney, Rev. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Middle row: Daniel Simmons, Rev. Depayne Middleton Doctor, Tywanza Sanders </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Bottom row: Myra Thompson, Ethel Lee Lance, Susie Jackson</span></div>
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Warning: this is a rant.<br />
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Watching the horror unfold in Charleston on Wednesday from a distance of 6,000 miles (or 10,000 km, if you prefer), I felt compelled to write. In reality, I felt compelled to scream, pull out my hair, gnash my teeth, rend my clothes and cover myself in ashes. Enough. This insanity must stop.<br />
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I am also at a loss for words. In my 62 years, this insanity has seemed to become a recurring theme but the truth is that it has always been present. We only need to look at the long history of lynchings, both “legal” and extrajudicial in this country. We need only look back at the long history not only of anti-Black racism that brought us slavery, Jim Crow and this, we must also look at the wholesale slaughter of our indigenous populations, the lynchings – again both “legal” and extrajudicial – of Spanish-speaking residents of this country along the Rio Grand Valley by local whites including the Texas Rangers of old, the internment of Japanese and Japanese-American citizens of this country during World War II. The list goes on and on, ad nauseam. It also includes our constant, seemingly perpetual state of war and the long list of countries that we have invaded, often because we just didn’t like their governments. (Of course, we are always presented a bill of goods, a pretext, to justify those atrocities.) Our history is steeped in cutting down in any and every way possible those who don’t quite fit the ideal profile of what some would call “typical Americans” or those opposed to our so-called values.<br />
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And today, the clown car Republican presidential candidates and their ilk jump in justifying, denying, diverting, obfuscating in a nauseating display of irrational denial. Perry: prescription medication caused an accident; Huckabee: because they weren’t armed; Jeb Bush, who doesn’t know that it was racism; others who call it a mistake, an accident... And then there is Charles Cotton, a member of the NRA board of directors, who blamed one of the victims, the late Rev. Pinckney, because, as a state legislator, he voted against expanded "gun rights". Not a single one of those deigned to admit that blatant racism was the cause, in spite of the shooter's very explicit statement, “You’ve raped our women...”<br />
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One would hope that we had made progress in the last fifty years, since the height of the Civil Rights movement. Sometimes we even pat ourselves on the back for having done so. After all, didn’t we elect Barack Obama? Doesn’t that make us “post racial”? No, not at all. Progress? In 1963, Klansmen used dynamite to blow up a church in Birmingham and murder four young girls – Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Carol Denise McNair, ages 14, 14, 14, and 11, respectively. Two days ago, a young man walked into a church in Charleston and proceeded to slaughter the nine people named in the photo above using a .45 pistol he had been given by his father as a birthday present. That’s progress? The only “progress” we’ve really seemingly made is that access to guns today is easier than it was fifty years ago. That’s why the Klan used dynamite back in 1963 and Dylann Roof used a gun this week. That access does not make it easier for us to “defend ourselves”. It only makes it easier for racist psychopaths to kill. And Roof? He’ll be described as mentally ill rather than as a terrorist, but if his name were Muhammad or Achmed? We all know the answer to that question. Trayvon Martin, 17, was called a grown man and a thug without ever having been arrested, and, yet we’ve already seen the pundits calling Roof, 21, just a young boy, in spite of his having been arrested twice on various charges earlier this year. That’s not progress either.<br />
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I want to believe in our country, in the promise that I was taught the United States represents as a young boy in Ardmore, Oklahoma, but I was taught that in segregated schools in a state where it was still illegal for Blacks and Whites to get married. Hell, we couldn’t even sit together at the movie theater or drink out of the same water fountain when we were children. I remember seeing the Freedom Riders' buses burning on the evening news in 1961 and reading reports of the 1964 killings of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner in Mississippi in the local newspaper. Those assaults and killings never stopped. The promise was never realized at home.<br />
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And what will our response as a nation be to this latest unspeakable but sickeningly familiar act of brutality? While those on the extreme right will refuse to even acknowledge that this attack, this act of terrorism, was thoroughly and undeniably racist, the rest of the country will wring its hands for a few days, expressing our indignant “outrage” and then will proceed to do nothing. Most will go back to their relatively comfortable lives after congratulating themselves on having expressed that outrage. Afterwards, life will go on. More Blacks, Latinos and others will continue dying at the hands of racists, gays will still be beaten and refused service, Muslims will forever be profiled, and psychopaths of all stripes will purchase arms impediment free. Ignorance runs rampant and unchallenged in our society. Our will to do the work to make necessary changes remains nil.<br />
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I cannot pretend to know what the Black experience is, as I am not only a white male, I am a white Southern male of a certain age. That being said, however, I do know our country’s history and have lived with my eyes open (Here's a special shout-out to, among others, my former students at Millwood Public Schools, a predominantly African-American school district in Oklahoma City, who taught me far more than I can ever begin to acknowledge.). However, just being who I am gives me a pass from growing up knowing that society will never accept me. No one follows me around the store as I go shopping, people don’t lock their car doors or cross the street when they see me approaching. Most of my interactions with local police have been amicable and respectful. Even as a Muslim, my white skin and English name allow me to pass through airport security and society in general unperceived. I am lucky. The victims of past, present and, unfortunately, future acts of extreme racism in our country were not, have not been, nor will be afforded that privilege.<br />
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I have no answers. I don’t know what I can do other than to raise my children to be aware of the world in which they live and to value the lives of all people and the concepts of liberty and justice for all, where “all” literally means just that: all. May the Lord have mercy on us all. I’m not so sure that many of us, as Americans, actually deserve it.Bill Sheltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15768358007493893006noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1502556079339090726.post-68873372584080028082015-05-26T04:41:00.001-07:002015-05-26T04:41:11.382-07:00My Father and I - the American Narrative<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">My father, Cecil E Shelton on </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">shore leave in the</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"> Philippines after </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">the invasion of Okinawa, 1945.</span></div>
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My father and I had a fraught relationship for the last forty years of his life. What I did not know until just a year or two before his death was that he suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). No one told me this nor, as far as I know, was he ever diagnosed with PTSD, but I finally put it together, with the last pieces of that puzzle falling into place because of a conversation with my aunt, his sister. She told me of his nightmares, his crying and screaming in his sleep – things she had learned from my mother, and of his experience relayed through his conversations with another aunt, also his sister and a World War II veteran in her own right, while on leave during the War.<br />
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This, however, is not about him. It is about trying to understand him and the war that made him who he was. In order to do so, I must look at that war, and the peoples who fought that war, including those he fought against. It is about trying to come to terms with what I was taught as a child and the things I learned growing up. It is about trying to put in context those very few things I heard him talk about that war – almost never to us, and to put them in a broader context. It is about my father, the United States, Japan and the Japanese, and how a generation of young men and women on both sides grew up under the influence of the mutual experiences of that war.<br />
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In the past forty years or so, I have read a fair amount of literature about World War II. Most of it has been about the war in the Pacific, for what should be obvious reasons. I have not, however, chosen to read about the heroics of American troops, battling their way across that ocean, storming ashore on islands that are now hallmarks of American military history: Tarawa, Okinawa, Iwo Jima, the Philippines. Nor will I deal with that here. There is no need. We – those of my generation, the children of that war’s veterans – were weaned on those stories. Whether what we heard was embellished or not, we know them. We know of hero Marines and evil, subhuman Japanese. Never were the Japanese given a human face in those stories. We might know of the Rape of Nanking, but not of the fire bombings of Tokyo and almost every other major Japanese city. We know nothing of those who lived through or died during those bombings.<br />
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This odyssey of reading began when I ran across an English language copy of Saburu Ienaga’s Pacific War: 1931-1945 in the early 1980s. (I still have that book.) Although somewhat dense and assuming knowledge of Japanese history that I did not have, this was the first glimpse I had of a Japanese perspective. And what does this have to do with my father? When I told my father about the book, the vehemence of his “Why would you want to read that?” eliminated any further mention to him of learning about the ‘enemy’s” perspective.<br />
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Sometimes those who have experienced traumatic events create narratives that justify those events. It is a form of self preservation. “What I went through was worth it because...” In his case, he and his fellow Americans had saved the world from the “evil Japanese”. He had seen American soldiers killed on the beaches of Okinawa as he ferried them to shore. Although some of those deaths were by friendly fire (I heard him mention this once when I was really young. He didn’t realize that I was listening to his conversation with other Pacific veterans.), he had to see the Japanese as completely evil in order to live with those experiences. He never questioned that narrative, just as many veterans of all wars from all countries do not question the narratives they have constructed and/or accepted. This is not a criticism of my father. It is an attempt to understand him for I, too, have created a similar narrative for myself. After all, that narrative, which he never saw a reason to question, was largely constructed for him.<br />
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It is a narrative that has been made necessary to sustain our constant state of war, our frequent foreign interventions, our seeming need to invade and impose our will on other countries. It is the narrative that we are the good guys, wearing the white hats who have sacrificed so much so people around the world can be free, without considering the incredible amount of destruction that we have caused and how little “freedom” has been the result, be it in Vietnam fifty years ago, Iraq and Afghanistan in recent years or against our native peoples in the more distant past. It is a constant in our history that precedes our founding as a nation... It is the underpinnings of phrases like George Bush’s now [in]famous “They hate our freedoms” and his “You are either for us or you are with the terrorists.” It creates a conformity that views anyone who would dare question our country’s motives for its constant wars or who wants to understand another country’s perspective or another people’s reasons as suspect – and that is what caused my father’s and my divergences over so many things.<br />
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One powerful word is sadly absent from that narrative: reconciliation. We are taught to hate them. We are not taught who they are and, when it is over, we move on to our next enemy du jour without either looking back or forward, without reflecting. Today, it is the “hajis” and “ragheads”. All Muslims are suspect. Yesterday, it was “gooks”, represented by the Vietnamese and, earlier, by Koreans and Chinese “chinks”. Before that, we had the “Japs”, the “Krauts”, the “Huns” and myriad other epithets, each reflecting the war from which it arose. And, in between wars, what do we do? We talk about our might and how it makes us right. We seek to keep out those we don’t approve of. Brown people, black people, red people who are within our borders are subjected to the same treatment because they dare to question our narrative. When they ask about their perceived exclusion from “Liberty and justice for all”, we use epithets, other justifications, without attempting to understand why they would feel as they do. After all, it goes against the narrative. We even come up with new epithets to substitute those that are no longer deemed acceptable. Does anyone really wonder why the protesters in Baltimore and Ferguson were called “thugs” and, yet, the bikers in Waco were not, even though more people died in Waco than in Baltimore and Ferguson combined?<br />
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And, so, how do we get to reconciliation? How do we attempt to humanize our “enemy”, especially once our so-called reasons for hating him have ended. Perhaps we can look at people who have gone beyond, have attempted to understand not only what happened to them, but also why. We can begin by looking at examples like that of Eric Lomas, a British soldier and prisoner of war of the Japanese, and Takashi Nagase, a Japanese officer and Mr. Lomax’s interrogator. Without going into details, both were wracked with trauma from their years of war - Lomax for what he had endured and Nagase for what he had participated in. Mr. Lomax suffered severely from PTSD. He had been brutally tortured while Mr. Nagase served as interpreter during those interrogations. Nagase knew he had been both complicit and silent during the torture of Lomax and other prisoners. He knew the narrative that he had been told and believed in was a lie. His remorse led him to become a Buddhist priest and to work for reconciliation. The short version of this story is that, in order to deal with his PTSD, Mr. Lomax found Mr. Nagase years later and forgave him. They both became friends and both continued working for reconciliation between former foes. It is an uplifting story, portrayed in Mr. Lomax’s book The Railway Man and the 2013 movie of the same name. Theirs is one story among many from different wars involving different people that are largely unknown. Those are the stories that my father never heard, largely because they ran against the narrative. Would they have helped my father deal with his trauma? I honestly do not know, but it would have also required him to step back from the narrative a little in order to avail himself of them had they been available. I don’t know if he could have done that, but those are also the stories that we, as humans, need to learn. They are everywhere. They remind us that, in the end, we are all the same. Without them, we are doomed to continue hating, and fighting, and letting our wounds fester rather than heal. We can do better than that.<br />
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Peace.<br />
<br />Bill Sheltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15768358007493893006noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1502556079339090726.post-20120954042880117092015-05-11T05:20:00.000-07:002015-05-11T05:20:01.036-07:00Rachim: My Friend, My Brother: How can you hate people you know? When you get to know the supposed enemy – by breaking bread, sharing stories, helping one another, it becomes difficult to hate. I wrote the following several years ago, but shared it with only a few friends. With the constant and ongoing rattling of sabers about Iran, I think it might now be appropriate to share with a larger audience.<div>
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In Memoriam: Mohammed Rachim Rezaizadeh</div>
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On my road to Islam, there have been many influences. Some have come from simply meeting and getting to know people from Muslim countries, interacting with them, seeing that they were good people, that we shared a common humanity, that we want and desire the same things, be it a reasonably comfortable life or social justice – or both. One of those was a friend from my days at the University of Arkansas in the mid-1970s: Mohammed Rachim Rezaizadeh.</div>
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When I met Rachim, he introduced himself as “Ray”, assuming that, like most Americans, it would be easier for me than using his real name. I insisted on learning his real name – the one given him by his mother and his father. When I successfully pronounced “Rachim”, he smiled and we instantly became friends. Even though he has long since departed this life, I still think of him often. Because of him I developed an unending love of his country and his people and a much deeper appreciation of what family means and does not mean. From him, I learned... well, let me tell you the story.</div>
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In order to truly write about Rachim and why he is so important to me, I will also have to delve into my background and into what was happening in my life at that time. It was 1976 and I was pursuing a bachelor’s degree in political science at the U of A. I had been extremely active politically, working with both the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) and the American Indian Movement (AIM) in the early 1970s. As a result, I had been expelled from the United States Air Force Academy, where I had been a cadet. I later went on to participate in the siege at Wounded Knee in 1973, where I had been fingerprinted and photographed upon our surrender. I also had spent some jail time, about six weeks, due to my two convictions for trespassing on a military installation and subsequently failure to appear for sentencing on the second conviction. (I had chosen to go back to Wounded Knee instead of to federal court.) Consequently, I was under fairly close surveillance by the FBI and would soon flee to Mexico, with the approval of my attorney. At this point, enter Rachim.</div>
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At the time I met Rachim, I was feeling very isolated. I had been working with a (very) small Marxist group for about a year before, but they had shunned me because I was “hot”. They were afraid I would bring unwelcome attention from the local Feds. I got along well enough with and had many acquaintances among non-political students, but very few if any real friends. I honestly no longer remember how I met Rachim. I was involved with a young women, Pam, and he began dating her twin sister, Patti. (I’m not sure if he began dating her before or after we met.) Rachim saw himself as secular Iranian, but, given his name – Mohammed Rachim – his family obviously was not. He was vocal in his opposition to the Shah (This was 1976), but understood that the SAVAK (the Shah’s secret police) had long tentacles. I had only a vague idea about what was happening in Iran and the rest of the Middle East. I knew virtually nothing about the culture and history of Iran and very little about that of other countries in the region. That, however, was about to change.</div>
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Rachim introduced me to this new and exciting world. Through him, I began to meet and make friends with Iranian and Arab students from a variety of countries. There was not talk of Persian or Arab superiority, no Shi’a-Sunni split, only brotherhood and sharing. These were young men who saw themselves as anti-imperialists, who spoke of social justice and equality, who seemed to be longing for the same things I was. We spent many long hours – Iranians, Arabs and myself – seated around the hookah, smoking, sharing, talking. It did not matter to them that I did not speak their language – they all spoke excellent English, which they spoke to me. Speaking among themselves, they reverted to Farsi or Arabic, unless, of course, they did not speak the same language. They also knew that I was not uncomfortable around people who spoke different languages. As for my being the subject of unwanted attention from the authorities, that was par for the course for them. They also were.</div>
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Theirs was a brotherhood and I was welcomed into it with open arms. I would not know for some time how important this was. I only knew that, because Rachim knew and trusted me, they came to know and trust me. Rachim, like all of them – the Iranians, the Arabs from various countries, everyone within this circle of friendship, spoke of each other as brothers – me included. I had never heard the expression, “My brother and I against our cousin, my cousin and I against the world.” We were all brothers, cousins. Rather than go on, let me relate one incident, which also marked the last time I saw Rachim. It speaks volumes about who he was. It also speaks volumes about his world, his people and his culture. It also speaks of a debt that I now have with him, with all Iranians and, by extensions, all people from the Middle East and all Muslims.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></div>
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In the fall of 1976, my position in the US had become untenable. The Federal harassment had increased and I made the decision to flee the United States. Pam and I packed an old car and drove it to Brownsville, Texas, accompanied by her sister’s three year old daughter Bianca. They would serve as a “cover”, giving us the appearance of a family, albeit a hippy family, driving down to the coast. Patti and Rachim would join us in a couple of days, which they did. After we arrived, things did not go well for us (the details are not important.). Our money soon ran out and Rachim had to return to Arkansas. He knew that I had a brother living in Dallas and suggested that I go with him, so I could ask my brother for help. We pooled our money and, calculating how much we needed for gas to get to Dallas, we gave the rest to Pam and Patti. We then proceeded to Dallas, where we spent the night with some of his friends. The next morning, I called my brother and made arrangements to meet him at the DFW Airport, where he worked, Rachim took me there and agreed to pick me up in about an hour. To make a long story short, the only help my brother offered was to find me a matchbook so I could light my cigarettes. Other than that, he was unwilling to do anything. When Rachim picked me up, I was extremely depressed. Here I was, facing the prospect of leaving the country, perhaps forever, with no money, not knowing where to go or what to do, and my brother, my flesh and blood, had been unwilling to help me, just as my father had refused a couple of weeks before. (That story need not be told here.)</div>
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Noticing my state, Rachim went into action. He told me that he needed to visit some cousins in Weatherford, about sixty miles to the west. He also mentioned that one of them was a fairly good barber. As my hair was well below my shoulders, he thought it would be a good idea for me to “clean my act up” before crossing the border, so as not to arouse any suspicion on anyone’s part. What I did not realize until later is that this was merely a pretext for me to accompany him. </div>
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We drove to Weatherford in relative silence. (I am not very talkative when experiencing a serious case of the mulligrubs.) Upon arriving at his cousin’s apartment, we found him and another half dozen or so Iranians in a rather heated discussion with their landlord. I do not remember exactly what the discussion was about, but always enjoying a good verbal fray, I jumped right in, citing municipal codes and tentants’ rights, much to everyone’s delight – with the obvious exception of the landlord. (It’s probably not necessary to say that I was citing codes from Fayetteville, Arkansas – not Weatherford, Texas.) After the landlord left, Rachim introduced me to everyone as his friend. We visited and, a short time later, I noticed that everyone had disappeared into a back room. Rachim soon came out, took me out onto the walkway in front of the apartment and put fifty dollars in my hand, saying that this was all he and his friends had on them and that, if I could wait until the morning to leave, they could come up with at least $200 more. I was stunned at their generosity. They did not know me, had never seen me before but, based upon Rachim’s word and friendship, everyone had delved deeply into their pockets. “My cousin and I against the world...” I was a friend; thus, I was family – and family had nothing to do with blood, but everything to do with human solidarity. This was their way.<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></div>
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I was anxious to leave, so I asked Rachim to take me to out to the highway, where I would begin hitchhiking back to Brownsville and then cross the border. When he let me out, we said our goodbyes. I was never to see Rachim again.</div>
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Fast forwarding, when the Iranian Hostage Crisis started in 1979, I began to read in the Mexican press rumors of an impending crackdown on and deportations of Iranian students in retaliation for the seizure of the embassy compound in Tehran. I went to the embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Mexico City where I, the supposed enemy, was graciously received. They were unable to give me any information on the impending deportations in general, much less on Rachim’s case in particular. (One must remember that at that time, Iran and the United States did not – and still do not – maintain diplomatic relations.) Several years later, after returning to the United States and reencountering Pam, I learned that Rachim had left the US voluntarily. (He and Patti had gotten married, in a vain attempt to forestall his eventual deportation.) After the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq War, Rachim was drafted, sent to the front and disappeared. Presumably, he was killed and his body was never recovered. <i> Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji'un</i>.</div>
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It has been thirty-five years since I have seen Rachim and I only knew him for a relatively short period of time and, yet, I think of him often. Today, I realize that I really knew – and still know – very little about him. His mother was still alive back then, but he hadn’t talked to her in three years (until I told him to call her on my telephone just before I left – I had no intention of paying the bill. They talked for over two hours.) He was from a city three hundred miles to the south of Tehran whose name I do not remember, if memory serves me correctly (which it probably does not). I have no photos of him and today cannot even remember his face. He was about my height (I’m short for an American male raised in the “Heartland”) and he had black hair, a dark complexion and dark eyes – but I just managed to describe the vast majority of Iranians. I do not know anything about the rest of his family, save the cousins that I met so long ago. What I do know is that Rachim introduced me to a sense of family and human solidarity that I so desperately needed, because my own family and my own society had failed miserably in that regard. He showed me the human face of another region of the world and of other peoples, societies that my own country would come to vilify and paint in the most brutal terms. He was raised in a religion that would be demonized, but that I would come to love and accept. He showed me that those future characterizations were lies before they became so commonplace in our country. He also showed me that his ethos was not his alone, but belonged to many other peoples, peoples that time has taught me to love and respect. He taught me that, if I were to see him today, the correct greeting would be “<i>Assalamu Alaikum</i>”. He also taught me, perhaps unintentionally, that every time I meet people from his country or from his region, I would be encountering people with whom I had much in common. I am, after all, a member of the same community. I, like Rachim and all others, am a human. We would all do well to remember that.</div>
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Bill Sheltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15768358007493893006noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1502556079339090726.post-10627587912467626062015-04-18T08:43:00.000-07:002015-04-18T08:43:20.700-07:00On Bilingualism and the American and Brazilian Ways of Life, Respectively.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Q: What do you call a person who speaks two languages?<br />
A: Bilingual.<br />
Q: What do you call a person who speaks three languages?<br />
A: Trilingual.<br />
Q: What do you call a person who speaks four or more languages?<br />
A: A polyglot.<br />
Q: What do you call a person who speaks only one language?<br />
A: An American<br />
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The joke cited above, told throughout the world in countless languages – with the notable exception of in English in the United States, illustrates a free ranging conversation I recently had with my niece Deborah. Among other things, we touched on the subject of people speaking other languages in public. She mentioned angry reactions that she got from people because of her effort to learn enough Spanish to communicate with customers at the convenience store where she worked. As she lives in Idaho, those customers were among the many migrant workers who flock there to work in the potato harvest. Most, presumably, are Mexican. Deborah felt that she was doing a good thing by attempting to help others out and delighted in telling about the positive reinforcement that she received from those Spanish-speaking customers, who helped her learn vocabulary and corrected her pronunciation. Those customers were extremely appreciative that someone – anyone – cared enough to try to help out. Some of her other customers and coworkers where less thrilled. They criticized her with that overly-trite and repugnantly dismissive attitude that “They’re here. They should learn English.”<br />
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No one – including those migrants – disputes that learning their new country’s language is not only desirable, but also necessary. Anyone who has studied the question likewise knows that many of those being raked over the coals for not doing so are adults whose children go to school. They know that their children will learn the language and, more often than not, act as interpreters for them. Language acquisition as an adult is more difficult than it is for a child, especially if those adult have lower levels of education and / or are working long hours at low pay in order to support their families. This, however, is not the point I wish to address.<br />
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Deborah’s comments confirmed my own personal observations back home in Oklahoma, both as a bilingual and as a casual observer. I am, as most readers already know, a native born and bred Oklahoman, and spent over 40 years of my life in that state. My wife, however, is not. She is Brazilian but lived in Oklahoma from 2005-2011. Because her English is rather limited, we always spoke Portuguese both at home and in public. Consequently, I was able to observe other people’s reactions to what they perceived to be non-English speakers – and what I observed was often not very pretty. We were subjected to hostile stares and occasional snide remarks. (Those making remarks never realized that I am a native speaker of English. They simply assumed that I didn’t speak English because I was speaking another language.) Rudeness was the norm. Solidarity was rarely expressed. We were shown that we were not wanted... “You’re in America. Speak English!” was what we saw in their eyes and felt in their attitudes. “Go home!” was the unspoken message. Most, upon learning that I was already “home”, assumed that I was the child of immigrants. (I’m not. I’m sixth generation Okie.) They simply could not conceive of why anyone would ever bother to learn another language. After all, you only need to know English because this is ‘Murica, right?<br />
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In contrast, Brazil is totally different. I have always spoken only English to my children. It is my language and it is how I choose to communicate with them. This is as true for Georgia, now 23, born in Brazil and raised in the US as it is for Jack and Melissa, ages seven and five respectively, born in Oklahoma and growing up in Brazil. We have never been subjected to scornful looks, dismissive attitudes or anything else negative because we speak English in public. Period. (Okay, there is one exception to that which I will mention later, but those involved were not Brazilians, even though it happened here.) We are greeted with curiosity – supportive curiosity. Brazilians, unlike the folks back in the States, realize that bilingualism is not only a good thing, it is an amazing gift when you are able to give it to your children. People ask us where we are from. They ask if we are visiting or if we live here and are ALWAYS pleased when they find out we not only live here in Brazil, but are locals, living in Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais. They comment on how cute it is to see our small children speaking English and then be able to turn around and speak Portuguese. Jack and Melissa are fluent for their ages in both languages and separate them with ease. English is for Daddy and Portuguese is for Mamãe. They also speak without “foreign accents” in both languages. My small fries own both languages, which is how it should be.<br />
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Okay, so what was that exception? Georgia’s grandparents were immigrants from Portugal who arrived in Brazil in the late 1940s and 1950s. They lived in a neighborhood in São Paulo with many other Portuguese immigrants, including close relatives – brothers, cousins, nephews and nieces, also all Portuguese. Being more insular than Brazilians, they were none too happy that a foreign (i.e., non-Portuguese) interloper had somehow managed to penetrate the sanctity of their family and, consequently, would complain that they couldn’t understand what I was saying when I spoke to Georgia. They wanted me to speak only Portuguese with her in their presence. My response was, well, not very acceptable, at least to them. I would simply inform them that I would speak to my child in my own language.<br />
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That somewhat less than civil answer is also what I expect anyone else to give, no matter who they are and no matter where they are. A person’s language is part of that person’s identity. To be expected to not speak your language is to be expected to deny a very important part of who you are. My ex-wife’s family never understood that, just as many people back in the good old USA also do not understand that. Their attitude was very similar to the attitudes of the xenophobes back home who feel insecure when faced with another language, or with anything else with which they are unfamiliar. In short, they are uncomfortable with the “other”. It is not an attitude that I frequently encounter in Brazil.<br />
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As a middle- and high Spanish teacher in Oklahoma, I often had students who complained about people speaking Spanish in the grocery store. “They’re talking about us, making fun of us!” was a refrain that I heard more than once – far more than once. “No,” I would tell those students. “I’ve listened to them. They’re complaining about the prices, wondering if the bread is fresh, talking about what happened at work. In short, they’re talking about the same boring things you and I talk about at the grocery store.” And I would then shake my head because, no matter how much or how often I reassured them, those students weren’t willing to accept what I said. After all, their attitudes had come from a lifetime of reinforcement in their homes from their parents, grandparents, siblings and from society in general. “The other” is, by definition, suspect.<br />
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To finalize, one of the greatest disservices that we, as a nation, commit to both ourselves and to everyone else is our unhealthy attitude in regard to the rest of the world, as exemplified by our refusal as a society to learn other languages. That refusal reflects the arrogance for which we are known throughout the world, be it as obnoxious tourists or as Marines attempting to inject the world with a little democracy. By that refusal, we are telling the world that we are better than everyone else and, therefore, the rest of the world needs to accommodate us wherever we are and whatever we are doing. We, obviously, have no need to accommodate them. That is what “American exceptionalism” means to the rest of the world.<br />
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POSTSCRIPT: Check out this link. It beautifully illustrates the above. You can’t make this stuff up.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.occupydemocrats.com/watch-tea-partier-warns-learning-other-languages-is-jihadist-socialism/">http://www.occupydemocrats.com/watch-tea-partier-warns-learning-other-languages-is-jihadist-socialism/</a><br />
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Bill Sheltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15768358007493893006noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1502556079339090726.post-68649550279148059422014-12-31T09:39:00.001-08:002014-12-31T09:40:52.460-08:00Otra Voz Canta / Desaparecidos<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;">The following video, also posted at the end of my blog entry "On Torture: <i>No me pongas la capucha", </i>really sums up everything I have written and expresses it far better than I ever could. In it, </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;">Daniel Viglietti sings "<i>Otra voz canta</i>" and Mario Benedetti recites his poem "<i>Desaparecidos</i>". </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;">Even if you don't speak Spanish, listen to the words and watch the images. You will understand.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.7900009155273px;"><br /></span>Bill Sheltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15768358007493893006noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1502556079339090726.post-50590439133946186612014-12-31T04:25:00.000-08:002015-06-21T16:46:47.674-07:00On Torture<div class="WordSection1">
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<span style="text-align: start;">On Torture: <i>No me pongas la capucha.</i></span></div>
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<i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggbgyyOV2xY9z2mf5HN32A5uyv9SS_LXPVHEUe1kqLnleqmuzH3pIajFPFPa6yMEwjY60xULDqHp2SXJMgzmnukAAog5NzO_-tL47y5xxcX9OR1yMP1SNagn6X7MwkH2209IyK5x0Gkyw3/s1600/Donde-Guatemala.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggbgyyOV2xY9z2mf5HN32A5uyv9SS_LXPVHEUe1kqLnleqmuzH3pIajFPFPa6yMEwjY60xULDqHp2SXJMgzmnukAAog5NzO_-tL47y5xxcX9OR1yMP1SNagn6X7MwkH2209IyK5x0Gkyw3/s1600/Donde-Guatemala.jpg" width="400" /></a></i></div>
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<span style="font-size: xx-small;">Photo taken by William Shelton in Guatemala City, July 1988</span></div>
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<i><span lang="PT-BR">No te suplico. Te
advierto: no me pongas la capucha.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i> – </i>Mario Benedetti <i><o:p></o:p></i></div>
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Knowing where to start is
somewhat difficult. Do I begin with the recent release of the Senate
Intelligence Committee’s Report on CIA Torture? Or do I go back further and, if
so, how much further? How do I tie everything that is floating around in my
head and consciousness together into one coherent thread. I’m not sure. Maybe I
should simply state what is on my mind.<o:p></o:p></div>
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When the <st1:country-region w:st="on">United States</st1:country-region> invaded <st1:country-region w:st="on">Afghanistan</st1:country-region> in the aftermath of the
September 11, 2001 attacks, photographs of prisoners taken by or turned over to
American forces began to circulate almost immediately. Invariably, those
prisoners were hooded and bound. The photos were uncomfortably familiar to me. I had seen them
before – often. Since then, the similarities between what I was already well
aware of and what was now happening, endorsed and carried out by the <st1:country-region w:st="on">US</st1:country-region> government,
have become all too apparent. <o:p></o:p></div>
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We have been shocked –
or not – by the release of the report on the use of torture by the <st1:country-region w:st="on">US</st1:country-region> military and
the CIA in the so-called war on terror. The report details many, many instances
of “enhanced interrogation techniques” or “alternative methods”. The current presidents of <st1:country-region w:st="on">Chile</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region w:st="on">Brazil</st1:country-region>
and <st1:country-region w:st="on">Uruguay</st1:country-region>
– Michele Bachelet, Dilma Rousseff and José Mujica, respectively – can all give
personal and intimate testimony about this. They experienced it first hand:
Bachelet for one year, Rousseff for three years and Mujica for 13, often at the
hands of agents trained by the <st1:country-region w:st="on">United
States</st1:country-region>. They call those “techniques” by
their correct name: torture. If you want to know what was done to them, just
read the Senate Report. It’s all there.<o:p></o:p></div>
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There is a constant immediately
apparent in the Senate report, information reported in the US press about
Afghanistan, Iraq and the “War on Terror” and the experiences of prisoners
throughout the Americas and elsewhere: hoods. Invariably, prisoners have been
hooded and bound when taken and transported so they could neither see nor move.
They are completely defenseless, totally at the mercy of their captors, be they
South American agents of repression in the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s or
representatives of the <st1:country-region w:st="on">US</st1:country-region>
and their proxies today. The remaining “techniques” are also the same.<o:p></o:p></div>
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As a young woman – kidnaped by <st1:country-region w:st="on">Chile</st1:country-region>’s
military, tortured and then expelled from the country alone at age 16 – stated
in testimony reported by the Centro de Estudios Miguel Enriquez in 2013: <o:p></o:p></div>
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“They always
taped our eyes shut, blindfolded us and then covered our heads with a hood.
They would laugh at us, offer us food and then give us orange peels. They kept
us awake at night so we would lose all notion of time.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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I have left out the more graphic
details of the abuse she was subjected to, largely out of respect for her and
all of the other victims who suffered similar fates in myriad other prisons
scattered about this hemisphere and elsewhere, including at the CIA’s so-called
black sites and US military facilities.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Many of these Latin American
torturers and their superiors were trained by the <st1:country-region w:st="on">US</st1:country-region> military and / or CIA agents
masquerading as US AID officials. One of the better known examples of the
latter was Dan Mitrione, captured and executed by <st1:country-region w:st="on">Uruguay</st1:country-region>’s Tupamaros guerrillas in
1970. Mitrione advocated using "the
precise pain, in the precise place, in the precise amount, for the desired
effect,” according to William Blum in his work cited below. A large number of
known torturers and advocates attended the US Army’s School of the <st1:country-region w:st="on">Americas</st1:country-region> either in <st1:country-region w:st="on">Panama</st1:country-region>
or at <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Fort Benning</st1:city>, <st1:country-region w:st="on">Georgia</st1:country-region></st1:place> after that school was moved
there in 1984. Among its more notorious graduates are Argentina’s Generals
Viola, Videla and Galtieri, Bolivia’s General Banzer, numerous underlings of
Chile’s General Pinochet, El Salvador’s Roberto D'Aubuisson who planned and
ordered the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero in 1980. There are
countless others from too many countries to name here, but least one graduate, <st1:country-region w:st="on">Argentina</st1:country-region>’s Colonel Mario Davico, went on to
advise <st1:country-region w:st="on">El Salvador</st1:country-region>’s
military during the 1980s about what was cynically called the "Argentine
Method". That “method”, used during Argentina’s “dirty war” from about
1974 to 1983 included arbitrary detention, torture, extrajudicial executions
and ways to dispose of victims’ bodies.
Hoods were omnipresent. There are still over 30,000 Argentines missing
from that “war”, which was nothing more than state terrorism.<o:p></o:p></div>
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To give you an idea of how
extensive the <st1:country-region w:st="on">US</st1:country-region>’s
involvement in the promulgation of torture has been, you will find a table
reproduced below. It documents the training of both the military and police by
the <st1:country-region w:st="on">US</st1:country-region>
in countries which have been identified as practicing torture by
Amnesty International. Please note that
this table includes neither <st1:country-region w:st="on">El Salvador</st1:country-region>
during Ronald Reagan’s administration nor <st1:country-region w:st="on">Cuba</st1:country-region> prior to 1959. It also only
covers a period of 29 years, ending 35 years ago. In short, it is extremely out
of date – and yet it is also extremely telling...<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Countries with US Training using Torture
– 1946 to 1975, Identified by Amnesty International</span></b><o:p></o:p></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Source:
<i>The <st1:state w:st="on">Washington</st1:state> Connection and <st1:place w:st="on">Third World</st1:place> Fascism</i>, Chomsky N, Herman ES, Spokesman
(1979), ISBN 0-89608-090-0, pg 361.</span></b><o:p></o:p></div>
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So why am I delving into this
“old news” in response to the Senate Report? If you have been paying attention
the last several decades, you already know this is just a repeat of the past.
Our use and sponsorship of torture abroad is long and ignoble. We have done
this before and, unless we react and make ourselves heard, we will do it again
and again and again. As Americans, we have short memories. We forget because,
well, it’s just a whole lot easier to do so if we want to keep on selling
ourselves as the New Jerusalem, the shining city on the hill, a country that
always takes the high road. Unfortunately for us, we are the only ones buying
this deception. The rest of this world knows. Today it is the Middle East. Yesterday,
it was Latin America and Southeast Asia, and over one hundred years ago, it was
the <st1:country-region w:st="on">Philippines</st1:country-region> during the
Moro Rebellion after a glorious little war with <st1:country-region w:st="on">Spain</st1:country-region> fought only to expand our
empire. And tomorrow, who knows. At some point, if we continue being
momentarily shocked at this country’s transgression <i>du jour</i>, only to forget as soon as it is convenient for us to do
so, the chickens will come home to roost.<o:p></o:p></div>
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As Mario Benedetti says in his
poem "<i>No me pongas la capucha</i>", cited
above, “I am not begging you; I am warning you: Do not cover my head with a
hood.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>Suggested Bibliography:</b><o:p></o:p></div>
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Blum, William.<i> Killing Hope. </i>Monroe, ME: Common
Courage Press, 2008. Updated edition<i>.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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Langguth, A.J.<i> Hidden Terrors</i>. <st1:state w:st="on">New York</st1:state>: Pantheon Books, 1978.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Brown, Cynthia, ed. <i>With Friends Like These: The <st1:country-region w:st="on">Americas</st1:country-region> Watch Report on Human Rights and <st1:country-region w:st="on">U.S.</st1:country-region> Policy in <st1:place w:st="on">Latin
America</st1:place>. </i><st1:state w:st="on">New York</st1:state>:
Pantheon Books, 1985.<o:p></o:p></div>
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CONADEP (Argentine National
Commission on the Disappeared). <i>Nunca
Más: A Report by <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Argentina</st1:place></st1:country-region>’s
National Commission on the Disappeared. </i><st1:state w:st="on">New York</st1:state>: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1986.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Feitlowitz, Marguerite. <i>A Lexicon of Terror: <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Argentina</st1:place></st1:country-region> and
the Legacies of Torture, Revised and Updated</i>. <st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city>:
<st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Oxford</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">University</st1:placetype></st1:place> Press, 2011.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Brazil Archdiocese of São Paulo,
author, Joan Dassin, ed. and contributor. <i>Torture
in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Brazil</st1:place></st1:country-region></i>:
<i>A Shocking Report on the Pervasive Use of
Torture by Brazilian Military Governments. </i><st1:city w:st="on">Austin</st1:city>:
Univerity of <st1:state w:st="on">Texas</st1:state>
Press. 1998.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Human Rights Watch.<i> <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Guatemala</st1:place></st1:country-region>: Getting Away with Murder</i>.
<st1:city w:st="on">New Haven</st1:city>: <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">Yale</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">University</st1:placetype></st1:place>
Press, 1990<o:p></o:p></div>
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Further information about the
<b>School of the <st1:country-region w:st="on">Americas</st1:country-region></b>,
recently rebaptized as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security
Cooperation, is available at the following website:<o:p></o:p></div>
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School of the Americas Watch: <a href="http://www.soaw.org/">Click here.</a><o:p></o:p></div>
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The following link from School
of the Americas Watch website makes available training manuals advocating the
use of torture, extortion, blackmail and the targeting of civilian populations
that were used at and by the School of the <st1:country-region w:st="on">Americas. </st1:country-region>: <a href="http://www.soaw.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=98">Click here.</a><o:p></o:p></div>
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The following video, in which Daniel Viglietti sings "Otra voz canta" and Mario Benedetti recites his poem "Desaparecidos" expresses far better than I can everything written above. Even if you don't speak the language, listen to the words and watch the images. You will understand.</div>
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Bill Sheltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15768358007493893006noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1502556079339090726.post-40798772852688648332014-11-26T10:07:00.002-08:002014-11-28T03:27:33.051-08:00Thanksgiving 2014 - Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais, BrazilI’ve been ambivalent about Thanksgiving for several decades, given its origins and my own personal history. After all, we know that the myth it is built upon - arising from that supposed first celebration shared by Pilgrims and Natives way back when - consciously denies what came afterwards: wars of genocide, centuries of lies and abuse, an eternity of broken promises and treaties, and a deep, blood-red stain on our country’s soul. This year, however, I’ve had to rethink my posture. No, I haven’t been wrong all of these years. That’s not the issue. It is my son, Jack, aged seven.<br />
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Jack, my little man, is my mirror. He is, in so many ways, who I was so very many years ago. He makes me look back at when I, too, was more innocent and did not understand the “subtleties” that history throws at us. He, like me, loves his country and he, like me, lives far, far away from our homeland. Unlike me, it was not his choice but, in spite of his tender age, he remembers where he is from and identifies with the United States. Yes, my son is thoroughly American.<br />
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A few days ago, he called me up at work to wish me a “Happy Thanksgiving”. It was his initiative. I don’t about talk this holiday at home. He’d been reading about it on the internet and knew it was on a Thursday in November. He just missed it by a week, which is pretty good, considering that no one is pushing this holiday here. Many Brazilians know it exists, and that’s about as far as it goes, especially considering that it is not a holiday here and has nothing to do with this country. When he called me, I thanked him, explaining that Thanksgiving is on the fourth Thursday of November. He quickly found a calendar, counted the weeks off and excitedly shouted, “It’s on the 27th! Next week!”<br />
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So, here I am. How do I proceed? Do I give the lowdown about how the holiday is wrong, how it should be a national day of atonement, or do I give in to the myth? Identity is a tricky thing and, as much as I love Brazil, I am, first and foremost, an American. It’s in my DNA – almost fifteen generations, not counting my Cherokee ancestors who met the rest of my family at the beach, so to speak. The last five generations have been in Oklahoma. I was raised on the myth. I believed in it when I was his age and now Jack wants to know about and celebrate this holiday – which inevitably leads to the next question: how do I teach my son the history of the land where he was born? How do I teach him about who he is and where he is from? How do I guarantee that he will be able to transit comfortably and knowledgeably between the culture of his homeland and that of his mother’s country, where he is being raised? How can I make sure that he will be comfortable in his skin as both an American and a Brazilian?<br />
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The question of his Brazilian identity will take care of itself. He lives here, goes to school here, celebrates its holidays, studies its history at school, speaks its language, which he does everywhere, including at home with his mother. Jack – for better or worse (and I think it is for better), like it or not (and I do like it) – is also Brazilian. It is the American side of the question that is more difficult. I am the only American he sees, other than his sister Melissa, who is almost five. Everything I say about Jack’s identity also applies to her.<br />
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My relationship with my country has been difficult, mostly probably because I was raised on the myth, the promise of equality inherent in its founding documents. I drank deeply from the well as a child and believed what I was taught. The Constitution was, for me, the most sacred of documents. (In fact, it still is, but more on that later.) Its founding fathers were the prophets of a new age where people were free and where those free people would protect and extend that freedom to others. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, Patrick Henry, and all of the others were my heroes, my role models. My ancestors served on the Continental Line and, during the Second World War, my fathers’ generation defended what those earlier heroes had established. They had all fought for freedom and won. Soon, however, I got old enough to see the cracks in our foundations. My hometown’s schools were segregated. I saw the Freedom Riders being attacked, their buses burned on the evening news. I learned about slavery in school but later found out that version had been sanitized. The Indian Wars, well, they just weren’t even really taught, but Dee Brown would change that when he wrote <i>Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee</i>. John Kennedy was assassinated, and then his brother Robert and Martin Luther King. There were riots. Vietnam kept rolling on and on and on, seemingly for no good reason. My Lai was uncovered and the Pentagon Papers were published. The lies began mounting and, yet, somehow, I was still naive enough to dress up in Air Force blue, but that lasted for only 361 days, two hours and 27 minutes. The dream had seemingly died and I began fighting back – against the war, against racism, against those violations of the American dream that I had been weaned on. The years passed. We fought more wars, all of which felt like reruns of Vietnam. (They just changed the jungle for the desert.) I left the country, returned, left again, returned again and then left again, this time more or less permanently, but knowing that the United States has a hold on me that I cannot shake.<br />
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And now, my son wants to celebrate Thanksgiving... What do I tell him? The truth? Whose truth? Which truth?<br />
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If I look deeply into my own heart, I know I must teach him how to decide whose truth to believe. I must teach him to find his own truth – not mine, not the official truth but his own truth. How do I do that? Well, maybe I have to start with what I know: I still deeply love our country. It is home. Its original promise, though unfulfilled, still rings true in my heart. Those early beliefs of mine – enshrined in the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and the writings of our Founding Fathers (and Mothers) – are what inspired me and made me fight back. Those principles guided me then – and they still do. Our country was founded to establish freedom with justice. We have strayed, failed, fallen down, but somehow keep getting back up and moving forward. Often it seems that we take one step backward for every two steps forward, but we still are moving ever so slowly in the right direction. With all of its problems, we have progressed in the 238 years since declaring our independence and the 391 years since that supposed mythical first Thanksgiving in Plymouth. Do we have a long way to go? Absolutely. Recent events in Ferguson, Missouri and elsewhere show us that, but we have also come a long way.<br />
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And so that is where I must start with Jack: with the myth, because there is, in fact, a kernel of truth in it. He is only seven, so I will start with that kernel, with that same promise I believed in as a child. It is my obligation to teach him the truth as I understand it but it is also my obligation to give him the tools and the information he needs so he can discern his own truth in the future. I must, however, give him these things in a way that will not overwhelm him. He is young. We have time to get where we need, but to get there, we must take that first step.<br />
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Tomorrow, for the first time in my adult life, there will be a real Thanksgiving in my house. When we sit down for Thanksgiving dinner, one of the things I will be most thankful for is my son Jack, who made me realize that it is time for this celebration to finally take place.<br />
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Bill Sheltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15768358007493893006noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1502556079339090726.post-77944686982780825932013-06-26T17:56:00.001-07:002013-06-27T05:52:53.062-07:00Dilma and the DoctorsLast night, we scored another victory. The Federal Chamber of Deputies voted 430 to 9 against proposed constitutional amendment PEC 37 that would have gutted the Public Ministry’s ability to independently investigate crimes and wrongdoing by public officials. While I do not believe for a second that all of those “no” votes were sincere, I do give credit to the people in the streets for this. Having won another round, let us turn to the subject at hand: health care.<br />
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During her speech to the nation last Friday evening, Pres. Dilma Rousseff offered a series of platitudes, made some vague promises and mentioned a few ideas for action that she would undertake in response to those protesting throughout the country. One, a plebiscite to elect a constitutional convention to deal with political reform has already been largely set aside. Another, her proposal to import physicians to help counter inadequacies in the public health sector, is being greeted with a large degree of skepticism. (Plans previously announced in Congress talk about bringing in up to 6,000 doctors from Cuba and other countries.)<br />
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The public’s response to this is perhaps best summed up by an internet meme that goes something like this, “Where are all of these new doctors going to treat their patients? In stadiums?” Another photo making the rounds shows Dr. Alex Araujo’s office in rural Minas Gerais (see accompanying photo). It is in a space which also serves as the local school’s library and kitchen. You can readily see cracks in the walls, a two-burner cook stove with a small gas tank next to it, numerous plastic pails, buckets and other types of containers, a storage shelf in the corner that seems to double as a book case, an extremely small wooden table behind which Dr. Araujo is sitting, and a chair in which we see a patient. There is also an open window that appears to have no glass in it.<br />
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A large part of the skepticism greeting Pres. Rousseff’s initiative to improve the country’s public health system (SUS – Unified Health System) arises from its crumbling infrastructure and the corruption within it which (like with many other public services) further diminishes its already inadequate resources. In other words, we need to improve what we already have on the ground before we bring more doctors into the system. If we don’t, where are they going to work?<br />
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Don’t get me wrong. I really like SUS. We don’t have anything like it in the United States. With all of its failings and all of its problems, even the poorest in this country are treated free of charge. They will be attended to – if there is a clinic within a reasonable distance and if it is staffed, of course. (We won’t even ask that it be adequately staffed at this point. That’s an altogether different question.) Here, for instance, you won’t be driven into bankruptcy if you develop cancer. We cannot say the same thing back home. One of the reasons my family and I came back to Brazil was the availability of good medical care at an affordable price. I’ve already stated elsewhere that my wife and children benefit from private health insurance and, for a variety of reasons, I rely on SUS. I have had no complaints, but my situation is not the norm. I want to see SUS benefitting everyone in this country because most of the population does not have the means to pay for private health care.<br />
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Let’s take a look at a few numbers. According to its own statistics, 80% of Brazil’s population depends on SUS. That means SUS is the only option available for almost 160 million of Brazil’s 196 million people. (Remember that over 72% of Brazilians make US$605 / month or less – mostly much less. It is their only option because private health insurance is out of their reach. Without SUS, they would have no access to health care at all.) Roughly 130 million people have access to SAMU (Mobile Emergency Service), which means they can take advantage of services analogous to EMS (Emergency Medical Services) in the United States. That population is essentially concentrated in urban areas, which also means that people in rural areas are not as well served, if they are served at all. In a similar fashion, the bulk of SUS’s six thousand hospitals are located in urban areas, as well as their 45,000 clinics. There are, however, a couple of problems. First, the rural population is largely left out of the loop and, secondly, what infrastructure there is, as stated earlier, is poorly maintained and understaffed. SUS has an extremely difficult time attracting doctors, particularly young doctors at the beginning of their careers, to rural areas. When you also consider the facilities, or rather, the lack of facilities awaiting them, coupled with extremely low pay, it is a small wonder there are any doctors willing to work in SUS in the first place.<br />
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For an example of a rural facility, all you have to do is reread my description of Dr. Araujo’s clinic above or just look at the accompanying photograph. Facilities in urban areas are hardly any better. The news media has been having a field day of late showing legions of broken down ambulances that have been scrapped due to little or no maintenance, warehouses filled with defunct hospital furniture and equipment. They are also reporting on under staffing. News stories abound, telling drastic tales of massive waits in grossly understaffed emergency rooms, about sick and injured patients who have to wait for hours on end to be tended to, insufficient beds, people being given IVs that are suspended from nails pounded into walls while they sit on wooden benches or, if they are lucky, metal folding chairs, patients stuck in rickety wheel chairs because the stretcher they should be lying on simply doesn’t exist – and, from time to time, patients dying while they wait. All of this makes for sensational journalism – and that sells, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, the nations’ journalists don’t have to look far to find something to report on.<br />
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And the doctors? What of the doctors? How do you attract good doctors when the average pay in SUS is US$884 per month. (Average salaries per state range from $329 to $1,883. Those on the lower end of the scale are often in rural areas.) How do you attract doctors to horribly under served rural areas when, in addition to the paltry salaries we have already mentioned, the working conditions are on par with – or even worse – than those Dr. Araujo faces day in and day out? Nevertheless, all of the doctors I have met in Brazil are qualified, highly trained professionals. Let me repeat that: they are qualified, highly trained professionals who, at least in the public sphere, are also used to working under adverse conditions. When the fancy equipment breaks down in US hospitals, our doctors often don’t know what to do until a replacement unit is found. SUS’s doctors don’t have that luxury. They often don’t even have the equipment. They have to practice medicine based on their knowledge, training and experience. And, yet, they are still there, practicing medicine. Brazil has been blessed with many dedicated doctors for whom their profession is a calling. Those are the doctors who have attended me. Dr. Araujo, whom I do not know, is a shining representative his profession in this country.<br />
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How are doctors reacting to President Rousseff’s proposal? Not well would be an understatement. Here in Juiz de Fora, SUS’s doctors will be joining their colleagues on July 3 in a twenty-four hour strike across the country to protest what many see as a slap in their face. (Emergencies will be treated. Optional procedures will not be performed.) Dilma spoke of bringing in “<i>médicos de qualidade</i>”, which can be translated as either “quality doctors” or "qualified doctors”. Either way, those here are both – and SUS’s doctors are outraged. They are asking the same thing the rest of us are: where are these imported doctors going to work if our infrastructure is inadequate? What they want are investments to improve the hospitals and clinics, to provide adequate equipment and to maintain that equipment once they get it, money for medications that patients need, etcetera, ad infinitum. For them, importing doctors can wait. Without structural improvements, bringing more in will not make much of a difference.<br />
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In the meantime, construction on pharaonic and overpriced facilities for both the upcoming World Cup and Olympics is continuing – and we are still in the streets.<br />
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Dr. Alex Araujo's clinic in rural Minas Gerais.</div>
Bill Sheltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15768358007493893006noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1502556079339090726.post-21162768621518505092013-06-24T14:51:00.005-07:002013-06-24T14:51:53.562-07:00Jô Soares’s Twenty CentsThe day after the current wave of protests began, an official in President Dilma Rousseff’s cabinet, Minister Gilberto Carvalho gave an interview in which he exclaimed that he didn’t understand why these protests were taking place. Jô Soares, a noted comedian, author and talk show host, as well as a renowned intellectual, made a point of explaining cent by cent why people are outraged.<br />
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Jô offered this explanation, as he stated, “For those who haven’t understood yet: the twenty cents, one by one.<br />
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1¢ – Corruption.<br />
2¢ – Impunity.<br />
3¢ – Urban violence.<br />
4¢ – The threat of inflation returning.<br />
5¢ – The amount of taxes we pay, seeing nothing in return.<br />
6¢ – The low salary of public school teachers and public service doctors.<br />
7¢ – Politicians’ high salaries.<br />
8¢ – Lack of opposition to the government.<br />
9¢ – The absolute shamelessness of those governing us.<br />
10¢ – Our schools and the poor quality of education.<br />
11¢ – Our hospitals and the lack of a dignified health system.<br />
12¢ – Our highways and inefficient public transportation.<br />
13¢ – The practice of trading votes for public positions in the centers of power, causing distortions in the way things work.<br />
14¢ – Those with little education trading their votes for small improvements in public services (paid for with public monies) that always put the same people in power.<br />
15¢ – Politicians who have been convicted of crimes and are still in office.<br />
16¢ – Those involved in the Mensalão corruption scandal, who, having been tried and convicted, are still free..<br />
17¢ – Political parties that look like organized crime.<br />
18¢ – The price of stadiums for the World Cup, overpricing and poor quality of public works.<br />
19¢ – A tendentious and sold out media.<br />
20¢ – The perception that we are not represented by those in government.<br />
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And, if you need it, I have another twenty cents here. All you have to do is ask.”<br />
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For those non-Brazilians who might not quite understand what Jô was talking about or be able to put this in context, let me add to these, penny by penny:<br />
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1¢ – Corruption syphons off at least US$25 billion dollars in public monies every year.<br />
2¢ – The wealthy and powerful rarely, if ever, go to jail for crimes they commit. Only 10% percent of murders are prosecuted, for openers.<br />
3¢ – High crime rates, in part resulting from extreme disparities in wealth and, in part, from a failed judicial system.<br />
4¢ – Brazil suffered from hyperinflation from 1980 until 1994. During the time I lived in São Paulo (1989-1994), inflation averaged 40% a month and the national currency was changed five or six times.<br />
5¢ – See 1¢ - corruption, 6¢ - teachers and doctors salaries, 10¢ – Hell, everything on this list qualifies for this one.<br />
6¢ – The base salary for teachers in Minas Gerais, where I live, is about US$530 a month and the average salary for doctors in the public sector is about US$870.<br />
7¢ – The salary of a federal congressman is about US$12,000 / month, not counting fringe benefits – and they are not the highest paid politicians. The legal minimum salary in is US$303 / month. 72% of the population earns US$606 or less per month (two minimum salaries or less.) Need I say any more?<br />
8¢ – There is no real opposition to the status quo in the government. Politicians are universally seen as corrupt and unwilling to cut their own privileges.<br />
9¢ – All you have to do to see this is look at how much politicians pay themselves and how much they steal – and that is just for starters. You can add nepotism and a few other things to the list as well.<br />
10¢ – See 6¢ for salaries. Students in public schools receive such poor instruction that very few gain entry into state and federal universities, which are the most prestigious in the country and are free of charge. Most of the slots in those universities are filled by students whose parents could afford to send them to excellent – and expensive – private schools. Shouldn’t graduates of public schools naturally be those eligible for admission to free public universities?<br />
11¢ – At least 72% of the countries population cannot afford health insurance and, therefore, rely on the national public health system. Hospitals are poorly equipped, understaffed and falling apart to the point that the ill have been known to die while waiting to be attended through no fault of the medical staff on duty. There are just too many patients for them to attend to. Rural areas are also grossly undeserved.<br />
12¢ – Highways are poorly constructed and maintained, and public transportation is inadequate to serve the needs of the population relies on it – the vast majority of Brazilians. Prices, for those receiving the lowest pay – again, the majority of the population – are already too high for them. Remember, the catalyst for the current wave of protests sweeping this country was a 20¢ increase in the bus fare in São Paulo.<br />
13¢ – This speaks for itself.<br />
14¢ – This also speaks for itself.<br />
15¢ – See 2¢.<br />
16¢ – See 2¢.<br />
17¢ – See 1¢ and 9¢.<br />
18¢ – The current estimated price for the 2014 World Cup is equal to the total price of the last three World Cups combined – and we are seeing that a lot of the work being done is shoddy. Can anyone say “corruption”?<br />
19¢ – All you have to do to see this is follow, among others, Rede Gobo’s poor coverage of current events. The vast majority of the ongoing protests have been peaceful, but that is not what is being reported both here and abroad. (In this aspect, social media is being extremely useful in getting accurate information out.)<br />
20¢ – This is not a perception. It is reality.<br />
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And that, my friends, hopefully will help you understand why we are in the streets.<br />
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Jô Soares</div>
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Bill Sheltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15768358007493893006noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1502556079339090726.post-2638787190884742092013-06-23T13:20:00.001-07:002013-06-23T13:20:10.926-07:00PEC 37 - Another Reason We Are in the StreetsYesterday, Brazil witnessed another round of protests. Although neither as large nor as widespread as those on Thursday, they are continuing. News coverage, however, was spotty and, as always, tended to focus on unrepresentative acts of vandalism and violence.<br />
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One of the major focuses of these demonstrations was PEC 37 (<i>Proposta de Emenda Constitucional 37/2011</i>), a proposed constitutional amendment that would eliminate the Public Ministry’s investigative powers. This proposed amendment is enough of a threat to the Public Ministry (PM) that it ran a full page ad in the news magazine <i>Veja</i> this week. (See accompanying photo.) In order for non-Brazilians to understand this, we need to focus on three things: what the Public Ministry is, why the PM has been targeted and what this implies for Brazil. We also need to look at the process by which Brazil’s Constitution is amended.<br />
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First, the Public Ministry (<i>O Ministério Público</i> in Portuguese), is body of independent prosecutors at the federal and state levels. As such, it is independent of the executive, legislative and judicial branches. The very reason for this independence is to inhibit coercion by any branch of government that could, in turn, impede investigations into crimes potentially committed by its members. The PM’s purpose is to uphold justice, whether this means bringing charges and trying cases or requesting acquittal if prosecutors later become convinced of a defendant’s innocence. Although Public Ministry prosecutors are allowed to investigate criminal activities, they normally do so only when those under suspicion are police officers or public officials. When involving members of the national congress, presidential cabinet or the President, the <i>Procurador Geral da República</i> (Attorney General of the Republic) files those charges and tries those cases before the Federal Supreme Court, which brings us to why this particular amendment is being pursued in Congress.<br />
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There has been a corruption scandal rolling around this country for a number of years. Know as the <i>Mensalão</i>, or the Monthly Allowance scandal, it includes many present and former members of Congress and the Executive Branch. This scandal initially broke in late 2004 and resulted in investigations by the Public Ministry which then issued indictments in 2007. The case has revolved around alleged monthly payments involving many millions of dollars by members of the governing Workers Party (PT) to political allies in exchange for votes in Congress. Those investigated include a wide-ranging list of members of the PT and other political parties, large business enterprises, prominent businessmen and underworld figures. After many delays and frequent attempts to prevent the trial, the case was finally heard last year, 2012, before the Supreme Court. A number of those accused were convicted, some of whom are still serving in Congress and who will be voting on PEC 37. So far, none of those convicted have gone to jail. Sadly, when this scandal broke, it really surprised no one in Brazil. Corruption is part and parcel of how the government operates. It, by no stretch of the imagination, began with the PT and, if changes are not forthcoming, it will not end when the PT eventually relinquishes power. The PT did, however, bring corruption to new and absurd heights.<br />
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And now we come to the amendment itself. The Brazilian Constitution can be amended after four rounds of votes, twice in the Senate and twice in the Chamber of Deputies, in which the proposed amendment must receive at least 60 percent of the votes cast. (I will not dwell here on how amendments are proposed.) Although this might seem to be a daunting task, the Constitution has been amended 72 times since its adoption in 1988. To put this in perspective, remember that the US Constitution has been amended only 27 times since its ratification in 1791 and that ten of those amendments were included in the Constitution’s initial ratification.<br />
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And what is PEC 37? Quite simply, it would strip the Public Ministry of its power to investigate. Public prosecutors have called this the Impunity Amendment, as it would limit the power of investigation to the federal and civil police, although Congress would still be allowed to investigate matters due to other provisions in the Constitution. Many here see PEC 37 as revenge for the Public Ministry’s role in investigating official corruption. It is a clear and direct response by Congress to the<i> Mensalão</i> scandal.<br />
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There is a saying in Brazil that “everything will end up in pizza,” in other words, nothing changes. If this amendment passes, that is exactly what will happen in terms of corruption – nothing. There will be no impartial investigative body to keep an eye on, among others, Congress. The fox will be left guarding the hen house and only he will be able to investigate who killed and ate the chickens. The farmer would only be able to stand by and watch.<br />
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In addition to PEC 37, there is another proposed amendment, PEC 33, that would subject decisions by the Supreme Court to Congressional approval. We will discuss this amendment at a later date.<br />
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The next vote in Congress on PEC 37, originally scheduled for Wednesday, July 26, has been postponed until the first week in July due to the ongoing protests.<br />
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See you in the streets.<br />
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Bill Sheltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15768358007493893006noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1502556079339090726.post-56433897092908968242013-06-20T20:26:00.003-07:002013-06-21T04:47:56.763-07:00Brazil – If They Think We’ll Go Away Quietly...<div>
Tonight, I witnessed something breathtakingly beautiful – 15,000 people marching in the streets of Juiz de Fora for a better Brazil. 15,000 people – peaceful, cheerful, jubilant because the street was ours. 15,000 united in trying to change this country because it is time to do so. </div>
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When you read or watch the news tomorrow, you will probably see reports about vandalism, rioting, looting – sensationalist stuff, reports that would discredit us if it were representative of who we are, but it is not. Yes, some of that did occur in other places, but in this country, we know that it is a very small faction, that it is totally unrepresentative, that some of it is probably planted to make us look bad. So, rather than dwell on this, let me tell you about my evening, about our march, about who we are. We are everyone. We are Brazil.</div>
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I’ve been to demonstrations before, here and elsewhere (mostly elsewhere), but tonight, oh let me tell you: we were one. There were no political parties spouting their rhetoric, there was no “unified agenda”, no single demand. There were signs about everything but they all pointed in one direction, to one idea – a better Brazil. And, so we took to the streets.</div>
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We took to the streets signing and chanting. At one people, a young man handed me a small plastic whistle. He had a bag full and he was handing them out left and right. And so we walked on, now singing, and chanting, and blowing our whistles. Some were even dancing. Soon, a few marchers began intoning the national anthem and everyone joined in. Believe me, I’ve never heard that back home – singing the national anthem during a protest march, much less singing it with a lightness of heart and with joy. Here, it is natural. These people in the streets, these people demanding justice, can only be called one thing. They are patriots, but they aren’t grim faced about it. Theirs is a cheerful, spontaneous patriotism. </div>
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And so we marched, or rather, walked. There was nothing martial about us. We were festive. Every once in a while, people would start applauding, so I would look around to see what was causing that applause. Often I had to look up. Families were on the balconies or at the windows of their apartments along the streets lining our route. They were also applauding, waving white cloths or Brazilian flags. People working in restaurants and stores would stop and applaud. Those workers were joined by the customers they were serving. They were of all ages: elderly with youngsters by their sides. In many apartments, those living in them flipped their lights on and off as a way to signal their support. And then there was the confetti. I don’t know how many times I looked up to see confetti wafting through the air, tossed from on high in a show of solidarity.</div>
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Tomorrow, you will read about the vandals. Here there weren’t any. I saw only one incident in which a couple of young men began attacking a structure at a bus stop. When we saw them, everyone sat down in the street and began to boo them. Sheepishly, they quit what they were doing and slipped away. End of story, end of vandalism.</div>
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Oh, and one more detail. It might not seem important to you, but to me it is. As I was leaving the area of the protests, I passed by a group of six or seven policemen. I wished them a good evening. Each and everyone of them returned my greeting with a smile and a friendly tone. You see, they, too, are Brazilians. This, too, is their country.</div>
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So this was my evening, but it didn’t happen just in Juiz de Fora. The news here is reporting that there have been demonstrations in over one hundred cities all over the country involving more than one million people. Our demands, though varied, are all for a better Brazil. As Brazilians are saying, the giant has awakened. We want an end to the waste and corruption that has wracked this country for too long. We want an end to the impunity enjoyed by the politicians and businessmen who are robbing this country blind. We want an end to attempts to undermine the concept of an independent judiciary. We want hospitals and schools, a living wage and adequate housing. And, most of all, we want Brazil to have the chance to be the country we all know it can be. We want a Brazil unencumbered, able to reach its potential</div>
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If they think we’ll go away quietly, they are mistaken. We will be heard.</div>
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See you in the streets!<br />
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For photos from today's demonstration in Juiz de Fora, please use this link (Juiz de Fora na luta!):<br />
<a href="https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.212098585605391.1073741829.202903859858197&type=3">https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.212098585605391.1073741829.202903859858197&type=3</a></div>
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Bill Sheltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15768358007493893006noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1502556079339090726.post-44152278001485520172013-06-18T11:13:00.002-07:002013-06-18T11:20:00.506-07:00Brazil: No, It’s Not about 20 Cents.A few days ago, I shared a photo of Dona Nair from São Paulo, 101 years young, on my FaceBook page. In it, she was holding a sign that read, in Portuguese, “I’ve seen two world wars and the Depression of 1929. I lived through the Revolution of 1932. I survived the Dictatorship. Believe me: it’s not just about 20 cents. ". I neither translated nor explained her sign. It is time I do so.<br />
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Last week, the streets of São Paulo exploded with rage when the municipal government announced an increase of R$0.20 (about 10¢ of a US dollar) in bus fares. The police were liberal in firing tear gas and rubber bullets into the crowds without provocation. The media and the local government were long on showing scenes of random acts of violence and vandalism and horribly short on context. In fact, one photo published was labeled to the effect that demonstrators were knocking over a small structure when, in fact, the sequence of photos clearly shows they were setting it back upright, after someone else had turned it over. Protests have since spread throughout the county. Yesterday, over 250,000 took to the streets in at least 25 major cities. So, what is going on?<br />
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People are frustrated. People are angry. But why? Well, like everything else here, it gets a little bit complicated. Even if it were just about twenty cents – which it isn’t – that would amount to a significant increase. Consider that the bus fare was already R$3.00. (To convert Brazilian reais to dollars, simply divide by two.) In a megalopolis like São Paulo, with a population of over 17 million, those who do the work do not live nearby. The poor tend to live in slums on the outskirts of the city and they will might well have to take a combination of at least two buses and/or subway trains to get to work and two more to return home. That’s four fares a day, five times a week, at least twenty times a month. In other words, they are paying at least eighty fares in a month, which already amounted to some R$240. And this in a country where the minimum legal salary is R$678. That is how much many of them earn. A hike of R$0.20 knocks at least another R$16 – another two and a half percent – from their already paltry wages,<br />
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As for the transportation itself, trust me, I know it well. I have ridden those buses and subways. Frequently. Sometimes 12 to 17 times a day. They are overcrowded, uncomfortable, and, consequently, not an experience to be enjoyed. While living in São Paulo, I would spend a minimum of three hours a day on public transport – if I was lucky enough to avoid rush hour. When I wasn’t, that time would easily double.<br />
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But, remember, this is not about twenty cents. Nor is it about just about public transportation. It’s about health care and education and public safety and crime and violence. And, ultimately, it is about corruption.<br />
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I have been reluctant to talk about some of these things to people in the United States because I love this country, because I don’t want to create the wrong image of this nation. I don’t want you to think badly about where I have chosen to live and raise my family. Where I will probably be buried after I die.<br />
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This also isn’t about all the bad things I will inevitably have to talk about. It’s about human dignity. It’s about perseverance. It’s about recovering the values that have made this the land where I want my children to grow up, where I want them learn what it means to be a citizen.<br />
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So, what is it about? We’ll have to answer this bit by bit, a piece at a time. A comprehensive examination is beyond the scope of what I can do in the small space provided here – but at least we can make a beginning.<br />
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It’s about health care. Brazil has a system of universal free medical care. That’s good, isn’t it? Well, that depends. If you are moderately well off, you can afford health insurance and, consequently do not have to depend on the public health care system. Here, once again we need to talk about dollars and cents, or, rather, reais and centavos. The 2010 Census shows that 39.2% of the population earn one minimum salary a month or less and another 32.9% earn between one and two minimum salaries. To put that in perspective, my wife and children have health insurance with moderately good coverage. It costs roughly one half of a minimum salary to insure them. (I depend on SUS – the public health system,) What this means is that roughly three quarters of Brazilians cannot even consider affording the luxury of not depending on the public health system. And what about how they, we, are being treated by that system? The country’s population has grown significantly, but funding for health has not. Public hospitals are overcrowded and understaffed. Infrastructure is crumbling as insufficient resources are not funneled into upkeep and updating what there is and corruption tends to chip away at those resources that are provided. If you are sick or injured, you will be cared for, but sometimes the wait is excruciating. On a recent Saturday evening, there was only one doctor on duty at one of Rio’s busiest public hospitals. One doctor to take care of all the accident victims, heart attacks, comas, children with flu or diarrhea, mothers in labor... One doctor for everyone... And, this, in a hospital damaged by a fire two years ago which still shows the effects of that incident. Yes, it’s about health care.<br />
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It is also about education. The base salary for a public school teacher in the state of Minas Gerais, where I now live, is R$1,178.10 for a twenty-four hour work week. That comes to less than US$600 a month. Schools frequently hold two session of classes per day, which means that a teacher can sometimes work two shifts and receive double the base salary. As a teacher, if you want to be able to pay a few bills and, just maybe, support your family, you really have no choice but to do so. For the record, Minas Gerais is one of the better paying states in the country. We are also talking about the earnings of professionals with at least a four year college degree. The infrastructure of Brazil’s public schools is on par with that of its public hospitals. Needless to say, public education at the primary and secondary levels is not really a priority and, like public health, those schools are understaffed, overcrowded and falling apart. On the other hand, at the university level, it is another story. You see, if you want to get into a public university – which is free to those who qualify, you need to attend a quality private school. This, once again, is out of reach for the vast majority of the poor, the majority of Brazil’s population. If they can’t afford decent health care, they also can’t afford to send their children to better schools. So, those who can afford to send their children to private schools are the only ones who can afford to prepare them to study in the country’s best universities – free of charge.<br />
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It is also about public safety and the law. Brazil has a wonderful constitution which is an example of social guarantees. Unfortunately, the country is also saddled with a morose and woefully ineffective justice system. Impunity is rampant. Money buys delays which prevent the wealthy from facing serious consequences for wrong doings. For the poor, however, justice is swift... and the prisons are cruel. And that impunity, which runs from top to bottom, means that crimes aren’t prosecuted and that the police are often as ineffective as the courts. They are poorly trained and poorly paid. I have had the privilege of meeting a small number of policemen who are truly committed to a just and democratic society, and yesterday, there was photo published of uniformed officers sitting and conversing with protesters in São Paulo, but, as policemen and woman, they are fighting an uphill battle. They are, if we believe what the media tells us, a very small minority.<br />
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It is also about the enormous corruption that seems to be endemic in Brazil and how that affects the population as a whole. During the current protests, I have seen a plethora of signs with the following message: “The World Cup – R$33 billion, The Olympics – R$26 Billion, Corruption – R$50 billion, Minimum Salary– R$678. And you still think it’s about 20 cents?” Some are crudely scrawled on posterboard, while others look like they were professionally printed, but they all point out the same thing. A recent study by the São Paulo State Federation of Industries (FIESP) estimates that corruption sucks up R$50 BILLION a year. That’s 50 billion down a toilet hole that benefits only those who are already at the pinnacle of society. That is enough money to build 57 THOUSAND schools a year in a nation whose public school system has been turned into a scrap heap. Combine that with the other billions being spent on the World Soccer Cup in 2014 and the 2016 Olympics –figures cited in the sign that are also presenting succulent opportunities for syphoning off even more money into the black waters of corruption. Compare that to a minimum salary of R$678 per month. No wonder people are angry. After all, those glorious stadiums and sports facilities will lie idle and deteriorate after these events and the cost of living in the cities where they are being built is already being driven up. All we have to do to see that is look at the twenty cents that broke the camel’s back last week. The people who are paying for all of this with their taxes see little or no benefit from them. Most – the 72% of the population that earn minimum salaries a month or less – won’t even be able to afford tickets to see the offer of “bread and circus” that is being now being rubbed in their faces when those events do take place. And afterwards? Please...<br />
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And, finally, it is about the Dona Nairs, the João da Silvas, the Josés and Marias who make up this country’s population. It is about my children – Jack, Melissa and Georgia, all Brazilian citizens – and their future. It is about a population that wants to recover its dignity and its humanity. It is about people who have long endured and have finally begun to shout “Enough!” at the top of their lungs. It is about remembering courageous examples from Brazil’s past: Tiradentes, the Cabanagem and Farrapo Revolts in the 1830s and 1840s, popular resistance to the Estado Novo in the 1930s and ‘40s and the military dictatorship that governed this country from 1964 through 1986, resistance that helped bring about a return to democratic rule. And it is about many, many other examples throughout this country’s history. People here and around the world have commented that this is the first widespread social movement to rock Brazil since the caras pintadas took to the streets over twenty years ago to demand the impeachment and removal of any extremely corrupt president: Fernando Collor de Mello. Millions marched and eventually Collor fell. I was one of them. We have done this before. We can do it again. Brasil, presente!<br />
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No, as Dona Nair says, it’s not about twenty cents.<br />
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<br />Bill Sheltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15768358007493893006noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1502556079339090726.post-82474448711784652452013-06-16T11:40:00.000-07:002013-06-16T11:40:01.454-07:00English is the Hardest Language to Learn. Oh, really?WARNING: NOT SUITABLE FOR GRAMMAR MARMS.<br />
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Growing up, I constantly heard people saying “English is the hardest language to learn”. Inevitably, all of the people making that claim were monolingual English speakers and their point of reference for making it was our orthography. English spelling is, admittedly, not the easiest thing in the world, but those claiming that it made English the most difficult language never took into consideration anything else: grammar, pronunciation, proximity to a person’s native language. Theirs was a narrow, one point focus. It also showed their lack of knowledge about language acquisition. I’ve often wondered if this claim was their way of justifying their monolingualism. After all, if they had already mastered the world’s “hardest language”, then they were ... well... better than everyone who hadn’t, right?<br />
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Now, let’s look at this claim for what it is. The difficulty you have in learning a language really involves many factors – the age at which you begin learning the target language, its proximity to your own language, the amount you are actually exposed to your target language – which includes but is not limited to where you are living. Are you in a place where that language is widely spoken? Do you already speak more than one language? Do you have a natural facility for learning languages? The list goes on and on. No two second language learners are alike and, consequently, no two second language learning situations are alike. There are children who learn two languages simultaneously and grownups, illiterate in their own languages, who learn another, often after immigrating as adults. Frequently the children of immigrants in the United States who are schooled in English never learn to read and write the language they speak at home. In short, it’s all relative.<br />
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If we look at the single factor of spelling, we are not considering that we learn our first language before learning to read and write. In fact, literacy is not required to learn a language. Of the more than 6,000 languages in today’s world, it is estimated that at least twenty percent have no written form. How do the speakers of those languages learn them? The same way you and I did. Babies are remarkably good listeners and are equally good at mimicking what they hear. We hear, we associate and we repeat. That’s how it works for everyone. It is only as adults trying to learn another language that many of us link literacy with language learning. Consequently, we associate our difficulty in learning another language with the difficulty we have in learning to read and write it and that is further complicated by our own often stubborn insistence on trying to apply our native language’s phonetics to the target language – something that rarely ever works. Is Chinese inherently harder to learn than English, when we consider that one needs to learn three to four thousand characters to be considered literate? I honestly do not know, but if that is the case, then English, with its twenty-six letter alphabet, should be a snap – even if there are languages, like Spanish and Portuguese, that use the same alphabet but are far more phonetic than English.<br />
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If we truly wanted to know which language is the hardest or easiest, we would need to isolate the intervening factors that have already been mentioned: grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, etc. The closest we can come is, perhaps, compare the relative ease with which children who are being raised with at least two languages simultaneously learn and even then, we can only compare the languages in that specific case. In my home, we have an almost perfect laboratory for such a comparison. Both Jack, who is now five and a half, and Melissa, three and a half, have heard both English and Portuguese in fairly balanced amounts since birth. Their mother Rosangela has spoken to them only in Portuguese and I have spoken to them only in English since both were in the womb. Although they were born in the United States, we made every effort for them to hear and experience Portuguese in all forms: children’s books and videos, songs, television, etc. Before moving to Brazil, in turn, we stocked up on English language books, videos, educational toys and other assorted paraphernalia. We use the SAP button (second audio program) whenever possible so they can see programs originally recorded in English in that language and we are meticulous in maintaining both languages separately, not mixing them. Both children know that English is for Daddy and Portuguese is for Mamãe and ne’er the twain shall meet.<br />
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So how is that working out? Well, it’s fun. We enjoy watching them learn to talk – and talk, they do – in both languages. Jack started off slowly. He didn’t really say much until he was about three, but when he did start speaking, he had already separated the two languages. As for his delay, research indicates that it was fairly typical for a child growing up with two languages, as is the clear separation of those languages when he finally did begin. That same research also shows that this has absolutely no negative impact on language learning. Melissa began speaking much earlier than Jack and, she, too, separates both languages. It’s instinctive. Daddy talks this way, so that’s how we talk to him. Mamãe talks that way and, with her, so do we. Even when we are having three and four way conversations, Jack and Melissa use the appropriate language with the appropriate parent. They simply don’t mix them. (Melissa will occasionally say something to me in Portuguese when she doesn’t know how to say it in English. All I do is say it back to her in English and she repeats it. That goes to learning.)<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><br />
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And which language seems to be easier for them? English. Most adults enjoy hearing the mistakes their children make when they are first learning to speak. In our case, it is doubly so, because those mistakes come with two flavors, two accents, two everything. Their mistakes are typical for small children in the two respective languages. In other words, Jack and Melissa make the same mistakes in English that are typical for children of their age. Ditto for Portuguese. And why do I say English is easier? Observation of those mistakes, which are related to the different grammars in question. Because of his relatively more advanced language skills, at five and a half years of age, I will focus on Jack, rather than Melissa. Remember that Melissa is at a much earlier stage of language acquisition.<br />
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In order to understand my contention, we need to look at grammar. I know. Grammar is probably the least sexy and potentially most boring of topics, unless, of course, you are a language freak, which is my case. In broad strokes, we will look at two aspects: the declension of nouns, adjectives and articles and also the conjugation of verbs.<br />
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English has no gender and modification of number affects only the noun. Portuguese has gender (masculine and feminine) and, hence, all adjectives and articles must agree with the noun in gender and number. Let’s take two phrases in both their singular and plural forms: the red ball and the red cake. In English, if I make those plural, I only need to change the noun from singular to plural – in this case by adding an “s”: the red balls and the red cakes. The article “the” and the adjective “red” do not change. Now, in Portuguese, it is a tad more complex: the word for ball is the feminine noun “bola” and the word for cake is the masculine “bolo”. (Please note that gender has nothing to do with male and female. It is merely a grammatical construct.) Thus, with “bola” we must use the feminine forms of the article (“a”) and the adjective (“vermelha”) to say “the red ball” – “a bola vermelha”. One letter differentiates the feminine word “bola” (ball) and the masculine “bolo” (cake). Thus, “the red cake” becomes “o bolo vermelho”. We have to make the article and adjective masculine (“o” and “vermelho”). In both phrases, we are using the singular form. When they become plural (“the red balls” and “the red cakes”), we have to change all the singular articles and adjectives to plurals, while retaining their respective genders, i.e., “as bolas vermelhas” and “os bolos vermelhos”. Sound complicated? For an adult, not some much, but for a five year old, definitely. Jack tends to make mistakes in gender and in number in Portuguese, which is typical for young speakers. After all, we are not born knowing all things. We learn them as we grow. Those mistakes are not possible in English simply because the distinction does not exist in our language.<br />
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And, now for verb conjugation, which is an even stickier wicket.<br />
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English is relatively simple, even in its irregular verbs, which we will not examine here. We will continue with our red cakes and red balls by “having gotten them”.<br />
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I got the red ball. You got the red ball. He got the red ball. We got the red ball. You all got the red ball. (Substitute cake if you prefer. It is, after all, tastier.)<br />
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That’s easy enough. In the simple past tense, we merely change the subject noun or pronoun. The rest remains the same. Even in the present, we only change the verb in the third person: I get the ball. He gets the ball.<br />
<br />
In Portuguese, we have to change the verb: Peguei (I got). Pegaste. (You got.) Pegou. (He or she got.) Pegámos. (We got.) Pegastes. (Y’all got. What can I say? I’m Southern.) Pegaram. (They got.) Notice that we do not need to specify the subject, as the verb form itself contains the subject. Eu (I), tu (you), ele (he), nós (we), vós (y’all), and, finally, eles (they) – just to use only the masculine forms – are all understood, contrary to English.<br />
<br />
The same holds true for the present: pego, pegas, pega, pegamos, pegais, pegam. Without even touching on the addition of “red balls” and “red cakes”, we can see that, for a five year old, this can be – and is – a little daunting. In time, it becomes second nature, but for a child, just beginning to talk, it is a lot to get wrap your head around. Language acquisition is a long-term and very complex process. It takes practice. It is also a long road upon which both Jack and Melissa have just begun to tread. I am certain both of them will eventually speak flawless, accent-free Portuguese and English. They have the advantage of having no choice in the matter. Two languages are natural to them. And, besides, their big sister Georgia, now 21, walked the same path. She has now added a third language to the mix: Spanish.<br />
<br />
And, in the final analysis, what is the impact of these mistakes Jack now makes? None at all. In English, when he says, “He don’t know”, he sounds like many adults back home. And, in Portuguese, when he says, “Pegueio as bolo vermelho,” from what he has in his hand, we know whether he is going to play with them or eat it. Context is everything. Besides, he’s only five, right?<br />
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Bill Sheltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15768358007493893006noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1502556079339090726.post-60562470590019373422013-06-09T09:44:00.008-07:002013-06-09T09:44:53.099-07:00On Religion in BrazilReligion is a frame of reference. Our choice of religion or lack thereof determines how we see the world. It frames our view. Familiarity with religions allows us to at least attempt to see the world from different perspectives, much like speaking different languages does. If we can cross the boundaries of the religions we were raised with, if we were raised with one, or cross the barrier imposed by non-belief if we weren't, and become "fluent" in another faith, then we can begin to better understand that religions' practitioners. We will be able to think like they do, feel what they feel and be moved by what moves them. In other words, we will be able to have a meaningful dialogue with them, especially when we disagree.<br />
<br />
I have long questioned those who refuse to read someone else’s sacred texts or visit their temples and abodes. When they tell me that their religion forbids them, that they cannot, I have to question the strength of their faith. Are they actually afraid that they will be led astray by "Satanic" forces? Are they so weak that the least little exposure to something else will destroy what they hold sacred. Are they in fact, of little faith? On the other hand, those who engage with others, pray and play with them, learn from them often strengthen their own faith. They learn to look back at themselves and analyze what it is they truly believe. It's a lot like learning another language. All of the sudden you better understand why you put the adjective where you do or what that strange word really does mean and, conversely, what it doesn't in both your native language and your target language. I am reminded of a scene in the movie The Shoes of the Fisherman when Anthony Quinn, in the role of the newly elected Pope Kiril, a Russian and former political prisoner, sneaks out of the Vatican dressed as a common priest and winds up helping a doctor in an emergency. The patient is dying, so Kiril begins to give the Last Rites. The man's family informs him that they are not Christians. Upon realizing that the dying man is Jewish, he covers his face and begins to intone the<i> Shema</i> in Hebrew. He is "bilingual". He "speaks" their religion and, thus, is able to help them in the hour of their need in a way that is meaningful to them. By praying as a Jew, he is the ultimate humble Christian. Pope Kiril is, obviously, a fictional character, but he gave me an example of what we should all strive to be and how we should all strive to act, whatever we believe.<br />
<br />
It is in this spirit of "multilingualism" that we will look at religion in Brazil. <br />
<br />
Perhaps we should begin with a short overview of Brazil’s religions. This is nominally a Catholic country. A recent census indicates that 64% of the population is Catholic and another 22% is Protestant, divided amongst the many and varied Protestant groups in the country. This leaves another 14% that, theoretically, embraces the non-religious, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Spiritists, <i>macumbeiros</i> – practitioners of religions derived from those brought over by enslaved Africans, and so forth and so on. It would be easy to simply leave things at that and move on to another topic, except that we are talking about Brazil, where, as I have said elsewhere, things aren’t that readily separated. The lines here are often blurred. Syncretism is – after soccer, of course – Brazil’s favorite pastime. Catholics and <i>macumbeiros </i>sometimes inhabit the same body and do so quite comfortably. And tolerance is a given. On the street 25 de Março in São Paulo, a street not only noted for its commerce, but also for having many Jewish and Arab merchants, you will often see them – Jews and Muslims – sitting together, drinking coffee, sharing the most spirited of friendships.<br />
<br />
After my seemingly bizarre assertion above, perhaps I should explain myself a little. First, when the Portuguese arrived, they brought their religion with them and encountered a native population that wasn’t the least bit enthusiastic about working for them or praying like they did – all for no pay. Hence, the importation of human beings from Africa began. Since those Africans also weren’t overly thrilled about being ripped from their homes and their cultures, sprinkled with a little water and being told they were Christians, they found subtle ways to resists. Theirs was the way of “If you can’t beat them, make them think you’ve joined them.” And, so, when their masters and priests would visit the<i> senzalas</i>, the slave quarters, they would look on approvingly at the altars the slaves had erected. They featured the images of various saints and were always lovingly covered with a cloth. What the masters and priests either did not see or, perhaps, simply chose to ignore, were the offerings underneath, hidden by the mantle – offerings to <i>Iansã</i>, disguised above as St. Barbara, <i>Xangô</i> as St. John, <i>Ogum</i> – St. George, <i>Iemanjá</i> – Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception... And, thus, African religions survived. In time, different versions developed, some of which included syncretizing with Native religions. Today, we have both <i>Candomblé</i> and <i>Umbanda</i>, among others. The former is much closer to its Yoruba origins, while the latter is a thoroughly Brazilian adaptation of the same. However we look at it, Africa’s influence in Brazilian culture is pervasive. In many ways, we can thank those priests’ and masters’ “blind eye” and the slaves determination to keep on being who they were for the beginnings of Brazilian tolerance. That is something that cannot be said about the relations between masters, preachers and slaves in the United States, where attempts to root out every last vestige of African culture were largely successful. In Brazil, they simply weren’t – and that is a good thing.<br />
<br />
Many years ago, I went to a festival put on by Alcoholics Anonymous in São Paulo. I very quickly noticed that there were strings of popcorn everywhere. In fact, popcorn was the central motif for the decorations. Being new to Brazil, I didn’t think about it much, other than to see it as being somewhat cool. When I mentioned this to a friend, who is both an anthropologist and a <i>macumbeira</i>, she explained to me that popcorn was the favorite offering to the<i> orixá</i> <i>Obaluaê</i>, the Lord of diseases and, consequently, of their cures. Popcorn not only is good to eat, it symbolizes conquering our problems. Most of the good folks at that festival probably considered themselves Christians and, yet, they chose to celebrate their overcoming one of life’s most devastating afflictions by using the symbol of an African god. That, my friends, is religious “multilingualism” at its best. And that is Brazil.<br />
<br />
There are many, many examples of this multilingualism and tolerance to be explored. We will, however, close here. We will later talk about the Catholic Church, Afro-Brazilian religions and other manifestations of spirituality and religion in Brazil in separate articles. All I wanted to do today is give you a small taste of what is to come. Popcorn, anyone?<br />
<br />Bill Sheltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15768358007493893006noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1502556079339090726.post-62973666382522250742013-06-01T06:54:00.001-07:002013-06-01T07:26:25.169-07:00Brazil Is Not for BeginnersI have had a long interaction with Latin America in general and with Brazil specifically. It all began in 1970, when I participated in the Civil Air Patrol’s International Air Cadet Exchange, spending a month in Costa Rica and passing through Panama and the Canal Zone both going and coming. I went on to spend three years in Mexico City from 1977 through 1980. While there, I traveled extensively throughout Mexico and visited Guatemala frequently. My interaction with Brazil began in 1986, when I took a course on Brazil at East Tennessee State University, which resulted in a lifelong friendship with Brazilian professor, political scientist and anthropologist, Maria Lúcia Montes. I began a master’s degree in Brazilian Studies at the University of Texas’ Institute for Latin American Studies that led to my first visiting the country during the summer of 1988, after which I then proceeded to Guatemala City to do archival research for a local organization for five weeks. I came back to Brazil in 1989 as an exchange student at the University of São Paulo, where I was to take classes for a year, do research, and return to the University of Texas to write my master’s thesis. I did take the classes and did do the research, but, instead of returning to Austin, I remained in Brazil for another four and a half years. The thesis, of course, fell by the wayside. I had contracted a non-curable disease – Brazilianitis, for which I also desire no cure. I returned to the US in 1994, with a Brazilian wife and three-year-old daughter in tow, by then having also visited Paraguay and Argentina. The wife, like my thesis, fell by the wayside, my daughter grew up, but my fascination with Brazil remained. Over the following 17 years, I would visit Brazil many times, using the pretext that I had to return at least every two years in order to not loose my permanent residency visa, but that was just an excuse. I had to get my periodical Brazil fix. During those years, I remarried (in a small city in rural Pernambuco, which is a story unto itself), had two more children and eventually retired as a public school teacher. My wife, our two small children and I returned to Brazil to live in 2011... All three of my children speak English and Portuguese and are dual US-Brazilian citizens.<br />
<br />
When I first visited Brazil in 1988, I began to note “differences” between this country and both the United States and others I had visited. Over the years, I have continued to do so. The idea for something called “Brazil Is Not for Beginners” first surfaced in discussions around 1990 with Maria Lúcia Montes. I hope to write a series of blog entries exploring Brazil and my experiences here. As time goes on, I do believe that you will come to believe, like my friend and I, that Brazil is not for beginners.<br />
<br />
Perhaps the best way to begin is by giving an overview of a few things on which I will be focusing. Let us first look at identity. How do Brazilians identify themselves? In order to understand that, we need to first examine our own definition of that concept. We Americans are extremely Manichaeistic. Everything is black and white, “either-or”. There is no gray, no “additionally”. We tend to identify ourselves in opposition to something else. We are Native Americans, Afro-Americans, Mexican Americans and so on. Often, when we hear “American”, what is really meant is White Anglo Saxon Protestant, or someone similar. By declaring ourselves to be hyphenated Americans, we are also telling you what we are not. I am American (i.e. WASP). Therefore, I am not African American. I am not Mexican American. I am exactly what I am telling you: no more and no less – all though, the truth is obviously far more complex. In other words, Barack Obama is our first Black President, our first African American President. We conveniently forget about or simple disregard the fact his mother was not and proclaim him to be our first President of African descent. Although it is true, we do so at the expense of fully half his family tree... Our standard is, like it or not, the old “one drop of blood” rule. If you’ve got any of this, you cannot also be that.<br />
<br />
On the other hand, identity is much more fluid in Brazil. Here, we don’t find hyphenated Brazilians. We are all Brazilians, including often those of us, like myself, who are not. Identity is far from being in opposition to something else. More often than not, it is complementary. Like the United States, Brazil is a country of immigrants from all over. The same countries that disgorged millions of their citizens who then either crossed one of the two oceans or came by land sent them here as well as to the United States. (Uruguay and Argentina also received many of those who came from Europe. From Asia, not so much.) The result is a mix that is typically, well, Brazilian, as people are also not afraid to or are ostracized for mixing. (Remember that miscegenation was still illegal in parts of the US until 1976.) Maria Akemi Nishimura da Silva is a name that would surprise no one here. People often use nationality or race as a description rather than as a classification. “Oh, he is German and she is Italian” is used here simply to say the people in question are of German and Italian descent. In fact, many are both “German” and “Italian”. This has nothing to do with their <i>brasileiridade</i>, their “Brazilianity”, if you will. You, quite simply, can be more than one thing. The city of São Paulo has a wonderful neighborhood, Liberdade, that is populated by many people of Japanese descent and the state of São Paulo hosts the descendants of Southerners who fled the “heel of Yankee oppression” after our Civil War. In southern Brazil, there are cities that were founded by Germans, Italians, Russians, and others. Not infrequently, the descendants of those original immigrants speak the languages of their ancestors in addition to Portuguese and, yet, no one would even consider claiming that they are not really Brazilian or demand that they learn to speak Portuguese – apart from the fact that they already do. Some twenty years ago, I had the good fortune to meet some of those “Southerners” I just mentioned. They had learned to speak English at home and Portuguese in school. They spoke a wonderfully preserved antebellum Southern English, complete with “y’all”, a drawl and many of the folksy expressions I grew up with. Their Portuguese was also perfectly rural, reflecting the area where they were raised.<br />
<br />
All of this means that Brazilians are far more tolerant of differences and even ambiguities than Americans. This can be seen in religion, attitudes towards sex, and, to a certain extent, in racial relations. Brazil’s history is replete with what we would see as contradictions but Brazilians take as par for the course. Here are some small examples we will later explore: It is not uncommon for people to be both practicing Catholics and to frequent a<i> terreiro,</i> where they openly participate in African religions brought here by slaves. Brazil, supposedly a Latin and macho country, not only hosts the world’s largest gay pride parade, São Paulo’s municipal government underwrites it to the tune of one million<i> reais</i> (about half a million dollars at today’s exchange rate.) The most democratic ruler Brazil has ever had – who did more to promote true republican values than any other – was Brazil’s last emperor, Dom Pedro II, who reigned for 58 years. The advent of Brazil’s republic when he was deposed in 1889 was more reactionary rather than progressive. Another head of state worth looking at is current President Dilma Rousseff, whose father immigrated here from Bulgaria. Ms. Rousseff was a guerrilla in the late 1960s. Arrested in 1970, she spent three years in prison during which time she was tortured. In 2010, she was freely elected president. To put this in perspective, we need only look at the violent criticism our own President Obama has been subjected to for merely having had contact with former Weather Underground member Bill Ayers, who admittedly committed but was never convicted of any crime. To close out this section on contradictions and tolerance, when Brazilians butt up against a pigheaded and unyielding bureaucracy that is so very characteristic of many Third World countries, they frequently resort to the <i>jeitinho</i> - a very Brazilian response to what would otherwise be an immovable object. After all, here, there is almost always a way around those rigid rules. We will also look at the changes Brazil has undergone since the early 1990s until today – changes that include going from an economy in free fall with inflation running at forty percent per month (not year) and a nascent democracy that saw its first freely elected president in thirty years impeached and removed from office for corruption to a nation with a stable, growing economy and a more mature, functioning, though still young, democracy.<br />
<br />
As we explore these and other aspects of Brazilian culture, I hope you enjoy it as much as I know I will. Trust me, this is going to be fun... at least for me.Bill Sheltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15768358007493893006noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1502556079339090726.post-7801662665427479062013-05-23T04:42:00.000-07:002013-05-23T05:32:12.573-07:00On Being from Oklahoma<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 125%; text-align: center;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="line-height: 125%;">The last few days have been trying.
Half a world away, I have been transfixed, watching the news about the EF5
tornado that struck </span><st1:place style="line-height: 125%;" w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Moore</st1:city>, <st1:state w:st="on">Oklahoma</st1:state></st1:place><span style="line-height: 125%;"> with a mixture of horror,
fascination and awe that only someone raised in tornado alley can understand.
The news, devastating as it has been, has had a certain degree of familiarity
about it. It is something we know all too well. We grow up with this. It is
part of who we are. It is something that will create a profound depth of pain
and sorrow, but we also know that life goes on. We will mourn and bury the
dead, rebuild our homes if we lost them or reach out to those who did if we did
not. We will pick ourselves up, knock the mud and dirt off and go on living,
but we will do so knowing that we will see this again. It is all part of being
from </span><st1:state style="line-height: 125%;" w:st="on">Oklahoma</st1:state><span style="line-height: 125%;">,
but what does that mean. What does being an Okie mean? What does it mean to me?</span></div>
</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 125%;">
I have a few treasured possessions.
One is, of course, my birth certificate. It states categorically that I was
born very early one morning in <st1:city w:st="on">Ardmore</st1:city>'s
Hardy Sanitarium approximately twenty minutes after my mother was admitted. The
hospital was torn down in the early 1960s but I have carted around a brick
taken from the wreckage of that structure for the past fifty years. It is with
me today, within reach, some 6,000 miles and a lifetime away from where it
originally stood. That is my real birth certificate.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 125%;">
Another possession is also a
certificate, this one signed by <st1:state w:st="on">Oklahoma</st1:state>'s
governor Dewey Bartlett in 1969. He officially declared that I was - and still
am - “an honored citizen from <st1:place w:st="on">Oklahoma</st1:place>”.
In other words, according to Gov. Bartlett, I am entitled to use the honorific
of “Okie”. That is something we affectionately call each other, but woe to he
who should proffer that name as an insult. As we like to say, “Them’s fightin’
words.”</div>
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<br /></div>
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I have numerous other bits and
pieces of memorabilia from back home, which includes the belt buckle I’ve worn
everyday for well over twenty years – the Great Seal of the State of Oklahoma,
several state flags, books, postcards, refrigerator magnets, and what not. The
greatest memorabilia, however, is stored in my head: memories, images, sights,
sounds, tastes and smells, stories told by many different people. Those are...
well, let’s just talk about some of them.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 125%;">
We have been in <st1:state w:st="on">Oklahoma</st1:state> for a long time, at least on my
mother’s side. James and Mary Willis, my great-great-great grandparents, came
in 1832 as Cherokee Old Settlers. James, a non-Cherokee who died in 1836, is my
first ancestor buried in what today is <st1:state w:st="on">Oklahoma</st1:state>.
This means that six generations of my family’s bones rest in the red dirt back
home. In addition, a number of Mary’s close relatives – and, consequently,
mine, too – walked the Trail of Tears a few years later and settled in the
Cookson Hills. My grandmother, who was born in Porum, <st1:place w:st="on">Indian
Territory</st1:place>, used to brag that she was the valedictorian of her high
school class. She wouldn’t even wince when we reminded her it was a class of
four. She went on to study at the Cherokee Female Seminary. My other
grandmother - my father’s mother, raised in Arkansas, used to regale us with
stories about spending nights in the storm cellar with copperheads near Spiro.
She would keep them at bay on the other side of the cellar by throwing dirt
clods. She also made the best pickles in the world.</div>
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<br /></div>
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As a child, I played with the
requisite reptiles: terrapins, lizards and, my favorite, horny toads. At school,
we reenacted the Land Run in April and the Civil War at recess the year round.
Of course, the South always won – and teachers would let us stockpile our toy
guns in the classroom. We started our days with the Pledge of Allegiance, the
Lord’s Prayer and the Apostles’ Creed, even for a few years after the 1962 and
1963 Supreme Court rulings to the contrary. We practiced tornado drills – and
learned to watch the sky. And those schools were segregated until 1965, eleven
years after another Supreme Court decision: Brown v. Board of Education.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 125%;">
My state is conservative, but,
somehow, it imbued me with the liberal and humanitarian values I hold today. I
didn’t learn them elsewhere. They came from home and school. When we were
taught that “All men are created equal”, I took it quite literally. As for the
Constitution, that most sacred of secular documents, I believed it too – lock,
stock and barrel. I was either naive, blind or simply did not accept the
restrictions many of my fellow Oklahomans seemed to put on those things. It
didn’t cross my mind that you could interpret things any other way. Of course,
Martin Luther King and his allies were seeking justice. If rights were being
denied, that had to be fixed. It was unconstitutional. It went against the
spirit of why our country was founded. I still believe that, even if I am
somewhat more cynical today about how evenly those guarantees are applied.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 125%;">
Do I get frustrated with many of my
fellow Okies’ bigotry, intolerance and narrow mindedness? Hell, yes! Sometimes
I get down right angry – and then something like the May 20 tornado happens. We
put those differences aside and become what we are supposed to be: brothers and
sisters. That is what we are seeing now. We saw it after the bombing of the <st1:placename w:st="on">Murrah</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Building</st1:placetype>
on April 19, 1995 and after the May 3, 1999 tornado in <st1:city w:st="on">Moore</st1:city>. We will see it again and again. At the
worst of times, we become the best we are capable of being. It’s that simple.
It is who we are. It is what we do.</div>
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<br /></div>
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I love my state. I could go on and
on in this vein, reminiscing, telling stories – most of which would be true
because I don’t need to embellish them to tell you about <st1:state w:st="on">Oklahoma</st1:state>. I love my state for what it is,
warts and all. We have everything from mountains to plains, from swampland to
desert. We have virtually any type of weather that you could ever want, and a
lot that you wouldn’t. Sometimes we even have it all in the same day. Our
summers are blistering, our winters are frigid. When it rains, it often floods
and, when it doesn’t, things dry up and die. We have wild fires and
thunderstorms, hail the size of baseballs or larger, ice storms that stop
everything. And we have tornadoes. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 125%;">
We are used to adversity. We
weren’t the best and brightest when we originally came to populate our state.
We were outcasts, the disinherited, the dispossessed: tribes expelled from
their homelands, followed by settlers who had nothing to start with. We had to
learn to live and prosper in a land that many people considered uninhabitable.
That’s why they gave it too us. Our
original settlers – Indians, Black and Whites – had a hardscrabble existence.
They had to be stubborn, doggedly persistent to survive – and they passed that
on to us. Sometimes it is not such a good thing, but this week we have been
reminded that, at times, it is absolutely necessary.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Just to finish the thought begun
above, there is an apocryphal story about our panhandle being offered to other
states that refused it, so we were stuck with it. I don’t know if the story is
true, but I do know that the Panhandle has a singular beauty, unlike anywhere
else I’ve ever been. It is solitude at its peak - a solitude so breathtaking
that it makes you realize how insignificant we are in the universe, how man is
a small speck of nothing. It is a place where, to quote Scott Momaday, “Your
imagination comes to life, and this, you think, is </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 125%;">
where Creation was begun”. Momaday
spoke for many of us when he wrote that. He, too, is an Okie. He was writing
about his – and our – home.</div>
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<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 125%;">
You can take this boy out of <st1:state w:st="on">Oklahoma</st1:state>, but you can’t take <st1:state w:st="on">Oklahoma</st1:state> out of this boy.</div>
Bill Sheltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15768358007493893006noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1502556079339090726.post-21256782689591551402013-05-03T14:07:00.002-07:002013-05-03T14:07:53.201-07:00<br />
Language and Identity<br />
<br />
Our very first contact with language begins while we are still within our mother’s womb. Studies indicate that by sixteen weeks, an unborn infant is “particularly receptive to its mother’s voice”. It is not until 20 to 24 weeks that the same infant recognizes it’s father’s voice. Once we are born, our first and most intense contact with language continues being our mother. The songs she sings and the coos she emits to soothe us, put us to sleep, form our very first steps on the road to language acquisition. It is no wonder, then, that we often refer to our first language as our mother tongue.<br />
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After our mother, our language learning continues in our immediate and extended family and, later, in school. Thus, we grow up and the oral traditions that are handed to us by way of songs, fairy tales, stories our parents, grandparents and teachers tell us become intrinsically intertwined with who we are. The basis of our becoming patriots - or not, religious - or not, and a whole plethora of other things begins in our mother’s womb and then extends outwards. Our cultural influences are also mediated by language more often than not. All of those times my parents took us to the park to eat watermelon were influenced by language. My dad would walk in with a watermelon and ask who wanted to go to the park. Although we knew what was coming because of that large green object under his arm, it was the words “Let’s go!” that put everything in motion. My mother would gather up a large knife, the salt shaker and some old newspapers, and off we would go.<br />
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The silly songs that my father would sing (my mother always said that she was tone deaf), like “Old Joe Clark” were also fundamental. “Old Joe Clark, he had a hen...” formed part of my early indoctrination into what music is. It and “Soldier’s Joy” are still two of my favorite songs.<br />
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The same could be said about our city’s Fourth of July Celebrations. They too were mediated by language. We were taught to recognize our nation’s symbols meant through the use of language, and that teaching was reinforced by language when we recited the Pledge of Allegiance every morning. (We also recited the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostles’ Creed, in spite of the First Amendment.) We were taught history through both oral story telling and reading our textbooks. Without language, we would have not known why or what we were celebrating. It had been told to us. We might have learned to question the official narrative later, but, as children, we believed what we were told – and language was the instrument for telling us, for explaining the meanings of the songs, symbols and images.<br />
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And what happens if we throw another language into the mix? That may well depend upon how old we are when another language is introduced. Although I was always interested in languages as a young child (A friend of mine and I used to utter unintelligible sounds to each other in grade school, pretending that we were speaking some other language), by the time I began studying Spanish in high school, my cultural identity was already firmly established. American by birth, Southerner by the grace of God. Even though my “self-identity” has shifted and expanded as I have learned other languages and have become assimilated into other cultures – I lived in Mexico for three years, Canada for almost a year and have been in Brazil now for a total of seven and a half years, at the end of the day, I still say “y’all” and speak with a drawl. Although I have learned to appreciate and to truly love music from around the world – AfroPop, Andean folk music, samba, la nueva canción, among others, a good country song still makes me homesick and, for however politically incorrect it might be, the sound of “Dixie” still stirs my blood. (Not too worry, my leftist friends. “The Internationale” does the same trick for me.) These are all the sounds of my childhood, of my roots.<br />
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For my children, the experience has been very different. I will leave their experience for a future article. After all, Jack and Melissa, at ages five and three, are still very much forming their identities. Georgia, at age 21, has established her identity, but her experience is also different from Jack and Melissa’s.<br />
Bill Sheltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15768358007493893006noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1502556079339090726.post-58619729846583505942013-03-30T04:55:00.001-07:002013-06-01T06:50:43.643-07:00Random Notes from South of the Equator<br />
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In 1972, while a fourth class cadet at the US Air Force
Academy, seven third classmen and I decided to publish an underground newspaper
in order to generate meaningful discussion on controversial topics both on and
off campus. We named it "Random Notes" after the Rolling Stone column
and intentionally made our first (and only) issue as moderate and balanced as we could.
Well, needless to say, we weren't very successful. Before we had even
distributed all of our 500 copies, two cadets were threatened with courts-martial
and we ceased to exist forthwith. Within a couple of months the other seven
cadets had resigned and I was dismissed.</div>
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I have named this blog in honor of that newspaper. If God is
so gracious as to grant me a little self-discipline - I know, I'm asking for a
lot - I intend to write an entry once a week or so about those things I am
passionately interested in: social justice in all of its ramifications,
culture, living abroad, language and identity. Of course, you'll also probably
learn more about my children than you care to.<br />
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I hope you enjoy this little endeavor, or at least get something out of it.<br />
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Peace. Salaam. Shalom.</div>
Bill Sheltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15768358007493893006noreply@blogger.com6