A continuation of events surrounding the drug war and related social issues of Baja California and Mexico. Keeping an eye on Seig Heil Trump. We are still trying to restore all blogs from 2006 which were hacked by Linton Robinson and his team, famous for supporting the Baja Trump Towers on one of his real estate sites. Highlights of Paris-Simone's favorite music !!
I have been down with a terrible cold and strep throat for days. Paris had surgery for her bumps, nothing is cancerous and this time around she is reacting much better, and we have been napping together, she is so precious.
Okay so here's the deal: You might know this already, but a few days back on his whirlwind tour through Central America, AMLO blasted Joe Biden for not coming through with more dinero for the migrantes down south and monetary support for a couple of AMLO's suggested "plans".
So, rather than trying to explain this with a foggy head, I'm going to come back and give you guys the most recent links I could find on USA's monetary assistance (there are a lot of them) to to the triangle countries and you can read for yourself what is going on. Once again, no oversight at all with these proposed "plans"(hahaha this is familiar, just like the oil & everything else), corruption up the ying yang,not to mention highest level drug dealings and money laundering with Hernandez and others in power positions, and huge amounts of remittances daily, monthly, yearly it will blow your mind. So, if you don't already,after reading these links you will know where the bullshit is coming from. And it is not from D.C.
Meanwhile, to hell with Putin's fucking Victory Parade, this should hold you over I will try to get back here with those links asap:
Weirdly, AMLO made the statement about not yet receiving funding for his "plans".
“Honestly, it seems inexplicable,” he added. “For our part, we are going
to continue to respectfully insist on the need for the United States to
collaborate.”
Well, maybe here is a pretty good reason for starters ya think :
Let's not forget Jimmy Moreles. Not only have Yo Jimmy's relatives been fingered for drug trafficking, but independent members of his Administration have been arrested. Wait, and Jimmy didn't know anything? Oh, Jimmy Mack, when are you comin back ?
Additional reporting by Sofía Menchú in Guatemala City.
~~~~
Like I said, that is just the tip of the iceberg....will be back with money figures shortly.
Slight emergency, another H20 line break ...looked up USGS and no earthquakes. Meanwhile:
Last month in Tijuana, there were 141 executions bringing the year to date total to 555 killed in the drug trafficking business. We are edging up to the low 20's so far in May.
Sorry, water line fixed, whew. Here are the links on USA's monetary aid to the triangle area. AMLO has inferred that Joe Biden is a cheapskate. Fox smells his own tracks first. Also, opinion pieces from a year ago, and on many of these, watch the figures for remittances, it is incredible. Also, most of you already know AMLO wants to get rid of US Agencies like USAID - he labels them part of the "neo-liberal" plan to to suffocate and eradicate the Latin world. Have fun.
Solís is the interim director at the Kimberly Green Latin
American and Caribbean Center at Florida International University. From
2014-2018 he served as the President of the Republic of Costa Rica.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Solís
served as the 47th president of Costa Rica (2014–2018). He has written
extensively on Latin America and co-chaired the UN Secretary-General’s
High-Level Panel for the Economic Empowerment of Women. Currently, Solís
is the interim director and a distinguished visiting professor at the
Kimberly Green Latin American and Caribbean Center at Florida
International University.
Naomi Roht-Arriaza (@roht_naomi)
is a Distinguished Professor of Law (emeritus) at the University of
California, Hastings Law in San Francisco. She is the author of "The
Pinochet Effect: Transnational Justice in the Age of Human
Rights" (2005) and "Impunity and Human Rights in International Law and
Practice" (1995), and co-editor of "Transitional Justice in the
Twenty-First Century: Beyond Truth versus Justice" (2006).
~~~~~
Question is: Will these guys get trapped by the "Plata o Ploma" Dogma? It happens all the time....
~ From Newsweek: ( also more good reference to remittances)
Kind of like trying to get rid of a damn raccoon, right Brian? (; Two insults in less than a week. Furthermore, I don't think he should be our clown faced emissary down there, send in Los Lobos ! Play it loud kids.
"A wise man was telling stories to meAbout the places he had been toAnd the things that he had seen
A quiet voice is singing something to meAn age old song about the home of the braveIn this land here of the freeOne time one night in America
A lady dressed in white with the man she lovedStanding along the side of their pickup truckA shot rang out in the nightJust when everything seemed rightAnother headline written down in America
The guy that lived next door in #305Took the kids to the park and disappearedAbout half past nineWho will ever knowHow much she loved them soThat dark night alone in America
A quiet voice is singing something to meAn age old song about the home of the braveIn this land here of the freeOne time one night in America
Four small boys playing ball in a parking lotA preacher, a teacher, and the other became a copA car skidded into the rainMaking the last little one a saintOne more light goes out in America
A young girl tosses a coin in the wishing wellShe hopes for a heaven while for herThere's just this hellShe gave away her lifeTo become somebody's wifeAnother wish unanswered in America
People having so much faithDie too soon while all the rest come lateWe write a song that no one singsOn a cold black stoneWhere a lasting peace will finally bring
The sunlight plays upon my windowpaneI wake up to a world that's still the sameMy father said to be strongAnd that a good man could never do wrongIn a dream I had last night in America
A wise man was telling storie to meAbout the places he had been toAnd the things that he had seenA quiet voice is singing something to meAn age old song about the home of the braveIn this land here of the freeOne time one night in America."
Courtesy Business Insider: Mariupol about a week ago
I'm not really avoiding Mexico, well c'mon maybe a little due to AMLO's "neutral" stance on Putin-Russia and locally their absolute non coverage of Putin the War Criminal Maniac Prick; and since we are coming up towards the end of April I will be back with the execution stats for our region.. In a few days.
Meanwhile, sign up for their instant email alerts on reports so you can stay in the loop:
"Lviv, Ukraine — Few beyond the metals
industry had heard of Mariupol’s Azovstal Steel and Iron Works before it
became the scene of a desperate last stand against Russia’s invading
forces.
Until recently Azovstal
was a major player on the global stage, producing 4 million tons of
steel annually and exporting the majority across the globe, according to
its owner Metinvest Holding, Ukraine’s biggest steelmaker.
From London’s Shard skyscraper to Hudson Yards in Manhattan to Genoa’s San Giorgio Bridge
(which replaced the collapsed Morandi Bridge), steel produced at
Azovstal is used in some of the world’s most recognizable landmarks.
But for weeks now, the world has been gripped by the battle raging over the steelworks on the coast of the Sea of Azov.
The pocket of Ukrainian fighters entrenched at the plant has
become a symbol of the country’s unwavering resistance in the face of an
enemy that far outnumbers them.
Yuriy Ryzhenkov, CEO of Metinvest Holding which owns the plant, is
devastated by what he sees happening to the plant and to Mariupol.
“The city’s literally under siege for almost two months now. And
the Russians, they don’t allow us to bring food into the city or water
into the city,” Ryzhenkov says.
“They’re not allowing us to take the civilians out of the city in a
centralized manner. They make the people either move out in their own
automobiles or even walk by foot through the minefields. It’s a
humanitarian disaster there.”
Asked why Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to take Azovstal
so badly, Ryzhenkov tells CNN, “I don’t think it’s the plant that he
wants.”
“I think it’s about the symbolism that they wanted to conquer Mariupol. They never expected Mariupol to resist.”
At least 150 employees have been killed and thousands remain unaccounted for, he says.
“What we know is that out of the 11,000 employees at Azovstal,”
says Ryzhenkov, “only about 4,500 people got out of Mariupol and got in
contact with us so we know their whereabouts.”
He seems haunted by the fate of Azovstal’s workforce.
“For the last two months, the whole company tried to do anything
possible to get the people to the safety. Unfortunately, at the moment,
we’re still not even half-way there.”
The company’s staff includes family dynasties who have made steel for as long as they can remember.
Ivan Goltvenko, a 38-year-old human resources director at the
plant, is the third generation of his family to work at Azovstal.
“I hoped I would work for Azovstal all my life and will contribute a lot to the fabric and to my city,” he says sadly.
“Seeing your city being destroyed is horrible, You could compare
it to a relative dying in your arms … And seeing him or her dying
gradually, organ after organ failing, and you can do nothing.”
From the city of Zaphorizhzhia, he finds it hard to watch the
scale of the devastation wrought by Russian airstrikes “because you want
your city to remain the same as it was in your memory.”
News of what’s happening back home is filtering through from friends and colleagues who are still trapped in Mariupol.
“Today, for example, I was shown a video of my apartment. Despite
the fact that the house survived, my flat is completely looted by
Russian soldiers. Nothing valuable was left – they even rummaged among
the children’s toys, and many of them were stolen.”
He says he spoke to one colleague on April 24 who revealed some of the horrors with which residents are being confronted.
“From one of the employees, who has a connection, we know that he
is in the city, he didn’t manage to leave, and he has been involved in
debris removal and transporting the bodies of dead citizens,” Goltvenko
says.
“And yesterday he told me that for one day from only one district
of the city, I would even say ‘from only one street’ he loaded four
trucks of bodies.
“He said: ‘I was drawn to volunteering at the morgue to collect bodies in the city and take them away.’”
“For that,” says Goltvenko, “he receives a dry ration.”
His colleague, 49-year-old Oleksiy Ehorov, Deputy Head for Repairs, has lived in Mariupol since he was a child.
“I studied there, I started working there, there I’ve become the
person who I am now. And seeing how it has been destroyed … You can’t
tell it without tears, without a lump in the throat,” he says.
The agony is not over. Russian jets and missiles continue to
pummel the site despite Putin saying last week there was no need to
storm the industrial area around the plant.
The defenders of Azovstal have repeatedly refused to give up their
weapons. There are thought to be hundreds of soldiers and civilians
still in the plant.
Before the war
What has happened at Azovstal is a mirror image of what’s happened
to a city proud of its history and industrial heritage.
The industrial port city was perhaps never conventionally
beautiful, with chimney stacks emitting smoke and steam into the sky
over the plant. At the port, blue and yellow cranes moved heavy items
around the bustling shipyard. But Mariupol had its charm and was beloved
by its residents.
In recent years, major improvements had been made, green spaces
were developed and quality of life for the working-class communities was
at last improving.
“The last eight years we’ve spent on building a modern and
comfortable city there … a good city to live in,” Ryzhenkov says.
“We’ve completed some major environmental projects, and there were
still plans to make sure that we have clean air, that we have clean
water and so on and so forth. And now we’re seeing all that is being
destroyed in less than two months.”
Maryna Holovnova, 28, says “it was like a living dream” because
“we had worked towards turning the city from just industrial small town
to a cultural capital.”
The Mariupol native, returned in 2020 after a 10-year absence to
find a burgeoning social scene. “It was completely different,” she tells
CNN, proudly adding it had even been designated Ukraine’s Cultural
Capital last year by the Ministry of Culture.
“We had so many festivals and we had so many people coming from
other cities and from other countries as well,” she continues. “We got a
chance to tell the people about the city not only from the perspective
of industrial development, but also from a cultural point of view [and]
from the historical point of view – because Mariupol has an amazing
history.”
A beaming smile spreads across her face as the former city guide
remembers the route she’d take visitors on. It would start at Mariupol’s
century-old Old Water Tower, she says, before winding around the city
center, taking in its many historic buildings and locations tied to
home-grown personalities.
Holovnova says with the waterfront metropolis continuing to
thrive, a sailing tour was introduced last year, and plans were underway
to launch an industrial-themed excursion complete with a factory tour
showcasing the process of steel production.
“One of my favorite places, which was weird as locals wouldn’t
understand me … was an observation point from where you could see the
whole Azovstal factory and you could see how big it was, how huge it
was, how great it was,” she says. “For locals it was nothing special
because we get used to it but all the foreigners, people from other
cities, they were amazed by the view.”
City under siege
The blossoming of Mariupol was an unlikely story, because it was
swallowed by the violence of the 20th century. It was the scene of
bitter fighting in World War II.
This time, the devastation is even greater. Ukrainian officials
say less than 20% of the city’s buildings are unscathed. Russia’s
merciless bombing campaign has left rubble where landmarks like the
Drama Theater once stood. Ukrainian officials say about 300 of the
estimated 1,300 civilians who had sought sanctuary in the cultural
institution are believed to have died when it was bombed in a brazen
attack by Russia on March 16.
The same applies to Azovstal. Built in 1933 under Soviet rule, it
was partially demolished during the Nazi occupation in the 1940s before
being rebuilt.
Now it is gone again – its carcass sheltering Ukrainian soldiers
and around 1,000 civilians in a maze of underground chambers, according
to Ukrainian officials.
An estimated 100,000 people remain in the city. On Thursday, local
authorities warned Mariupol was vulnerable to epidemics given the
appalling sanitary conditions in much of the city and the fact that
maybe thousands of bodies remain uncollected.
Oleksiy Ehorov can’t bear to think of what has happened to his
city – and his family. His mother-in-law died from injuries sustained
from shelling during their first attempt to flee to Zaporizhzhia.
“My emotions disappeared already there in Mariupol. That’s why there’s nothing but hate,” he tells CNN.
Ehorov says he loved living by the sea and had hoped to stay at the steelworks until he retired.
Now all he can do is watch as Russia continues to blockade the city and his former workplace.
When asked if he’d work under the Russians if they take the
factory, he echoes Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine’s richest man and the main
shareholder of the group behind Azovstal steel.
“No. I’m not going to. After what they did … never.”
__________
CNN’s Tim Lister contributed to this report from Lviv, Ukraine and Kostan Nechyporenko contributed from Kyiv.
~~~~~
The "Ukrainian Headquarters of Baja California"....
Holy Crap ! Oh wow, how radical 🙄 ! Yes, we are in enemy territory ! Escuchen - Los Juventudes de Morena, sounds like another Norteno Music Group ! And when they hear "Jefe de Jefes" by Los Tigres, to them, it symbolizes Putin the Maniac. Good Lord. Strange indeed.
We were laughing - and probably should not have been under the circumstances, but Mike commented that our house looks like the Ukrainian Headquarters of Baja California. There are two Ukrainian flags, Ukrainian stickers on the windows, Ukrainian stickers on my 1990 Volvo, and two really neat yellow and blue hanging wind socks, plus chimes. I haven't put up the sunflower flags yet.
Although Mike does not know these people( and there are a lot of them), he is related to both the Frentzko's (Mom's side which was entirely Ukrainian ) and the Grisaks (Dad's side) of Slovinky. His Dad wrote the book on the family lineage; the Grisak's were ethnic Russians who migrated to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. They considered themselves to be Russian, but held no allegiance to the Motherland.
"Two extensive accounts were published separately but authored by related
members of the Grisak/Gresock family who came from Slovinky, Spiš
County, to Jefferson and Indiana Counties. The Grisak Family (1978), by Michael J. Grisak, based on the manuscript of his father, Joseph Grisak
(1873-1950), is substantially about the family’s lineage and life in
Europe, but also with valuable accounts of his life in the U.S., around
Punxsutawney, Vintondale, and Dunlo (the latter two in Cambria County). The Gresocks of Chambersville, by Dennis J. Baca
(1994, rev. ed. 2011) followed the life of another branch of the same
family who settled in Indiana County. The amount of detail in The Grisak Family especially is quite remarkable, so I will have to be very selective in what excerpts I may have room to provide."
Additionally, during the 1950's, a Soviet Delegation came to Gary ,Indiana to study the US Steel Mills where Dad worked. They needed a Russian speaking interpreter, and chose Dad . The FBI came to the Grisak house several times when Mike was a kid and checked out Dad real good and gave him a good to go pass. Speaking of languages, because of all the migration mix in this part of the old world, Mike's Grandfather was fluent in Russian, German, Slovak and Hungarian.
Melanie still has it.....
I bring this up because - well, do any of you remember "Melanie" from the 1960's ? Pretty sure she made appearances on the Smothers Brothers. Anyway, Melanie's last name is "Safka" - her father is Ukrainian.
We could re-title the song to' Look What They've Done To My Mariupol', Ma !' But in truth it's not just Mariupol, it is all of Ukraine. Bastards.
Of course, nothing is said about this down here, at all. It's beyond creepy.
~~~~~
Brilliant, as usual. Were or are any of you Iggy Pop fans? At that time - around the release of "Raw Power", although anti-social, we were more just mellow surfers rather than punk rockers watching aghast as the Yuppies seemed to take over, the marches against the Vietnam War were fewer if not entirely over with, San Diego had finally given Angela Davis the boot and they were rejoicing and uncorking champagne at City Hall over her departure, boards were getting shorter, JFK, Bobby & MLK were all gone and everything seemed lost. And we were radical surfers...at least we believed Tom Wolfe was a dork.
I found a few interesting clips you might be interested in taking us from the inception and influences of "Raw Power" to present date anti-Ukraine War rock 'n roll - punk, hailing from Coachella 2022.
In one interview, the Stooges guitarist explained how he was attempting to replicate the sounds of battlefield machine gun fire and chaos. Someone more very recently took that to heart, and switched out the Ride of the Valkyries in the film Apocalypse Now, substituting Search & Destroy in its place. And, it works.
~~~~~
Maneskin: Well, I hope he doesn't catch a cold...just kidding but I do worry about Iggy too losing his trousers....
More Maneskin at Coachella are there hot springs there ? Nah.
Meanwhile little by little, more European and American music artists are coming forward with anti-Russian War in the Ukraine songs and sentiments. (well not down here doh ) One group, Maneskin from Italy performed channeling Iggy (their mentor)on the last set at Coachella:
"The Italian band Måneskin made its name in the U.S. with a crafty
cover, of the Four Seasons’ “Beggin,'” and there were more where that
came from during the band’s set Sunday night at Coachella: The group went to both ends of the pop/punk scale and memorably covered Britney Spears’ “Womanizer,” followed by Iggy Pop and the Stooges’ “I Wanna Be Your Dog.”
Although it may not exactly count as a cover, singer Damiano David
also offered a partial recitation of one of the greatest movie speeches
of all time — the climactic monologue from Charlie Chaplin’s classic anti-fascist film “The Great Dictator” — as the introduction to a new, original song that was dedicated to Ukraine.
Probably not much of the young crowd immediately recognized the 1940
Chaplin speech, which was shortly followed by David yelling “Fuck
Putin!” in the middle of the new song, “We’re Gonna Dance on Gasoline,”
their last number of the night on the Mojave stage.
But there was mass recognition, and an outbreak of joy, as the
“Eurovision” winners tore into Spears’ modern pop classic in a fercious
fashion befitting the rest of their hard-rocking set. As with another
already iconic cover from earlier in the weekend — Harry Styles doing
“Man! I Feel Like a Woman” with an assist from its originator, Shania
Twain — David took a song with a strong female point of view and did not
bother doing any gender-switching in the lyrics.
“As you know, we really like doing covers,” the singer told the
crowd. “More than how much we love doing covers, we love Britney
Spears,” he added.
Earlier in the set, David had made the closest thing to a costume
change by doffing a sheer nightgown he was wearing to reveal a skimpy
outfit that resembled bondage gear — saying that this stripping down was
supposed to happen later in the set, but the lack of promised cool
temperatures on stage made him get to it sooner. When the Spears song
soon came up in the setlist, he said, “Britney Spears makes us hot.”
The Stooges’ “I Wanna Be Your Dog” was dedicated to that band’s
singer, Iggy Pop, who was a featured guest recently on an original
Måneskin recording, the similarly titled “I Wanna Be Your Slave.” That
song naturally preceded the Stooges’ song in the set.
As saucy as much of the rest of the 10-song set was, from “ZItti E
Buoni” forward, the finale took on a more serious, if hardly less
rocking, tone, after David put his outer layer back on. The new
“Gasoline” song was preceded by a sober reflection on the war in Ukraine
— David’s own words mixed with Chaplin’s.
“Are you having fun?” the singer asked. “I’m happy to hear it. But
sometimes we’ve gotta understand how big our privilege is, to have the
chance to just attend a gig and have fun and be careless and have
nothing to think about. And none of us have to think of, (when) you wake
up, how many bombs have been launched on the city. So before we start
playing our last song, I just want to give you a pitch that Charlie
Chaplin gave.”
David then recited an excerpted and condensed version of the
climactic speech that the great movie actor gave in character at the
close of the satirical “The Great Dictator,” released in the early part
of World War II. The part of the famous recitation revived by David
reads in part: “Do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but
the passing of greed – the bitterness of men who fear the way of human
progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power
they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men
die, liberty will never perish… Don’t give yourselves to brutes, men who
despise you, enslave you, who regiment your lives, tell you what to do,
what to think and what to feel! Who … treat you like cattle, use you as
cannon fodder. Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men — machine
men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are
not cattle! You are men!”
~~~~~
(***Is any of this making you feel...a little bit old ? That's okay, I just hope these kids get around to watching Charlie Chaplin. And like it or not, these are the new poets, the new voices in our time. Anyone who is missing any of this has really missed the boat.
.....)
..........
" How are you sleeping at night?
How do you close both your eyes,
Living with all of those lives
On your hands?
Standing alone on that hill,
Using your fuel to kill.
We won’t take it standing still,
Watch us dancе.
How are you sleeping at night?
How do you close both your eyes,
Living with all of those lives
On your hands?
Standing alone on that hill,
Using your fuel to kill.
We won’t take it standing still,
Watch us dancе.
We’re gonna dance on gasoline!
We’re gonna dance on gasoline!
We’re gonna dance on gasoline!"
Keep it up kids.
~~~~~
Finally.....something sad but more soothing:
"Transcribed with the permission of Bob Hecht, from his Podcast:
During World War II there were a number of songs that
seemed to capture the ethos of the time. One of the most significant and
popular was “I’ll Be Seeing You,” famously recorded by Bing Crosby,
Billie Holiday, Jo Stafford and many others. The song became a virtual
anthem of the war, embodying as it did, the reality of wartime
separations and loss.
This is the story of a song that
began its life as just another poignant ballad of love and loss was
largely forgotten, and then came roaring back to life.
And the guy
who wrote the words to that song would never know that it not only
became a huge hit, but the virtual anthem of a wartime generation.
Partings were a fact of wartime life. Many of those partings were for
years, though many were forever, with nearly a million American and
British lives lost.
It’s hard to imagine a song more perfect for the time, even
though it wasn’t written with a war in mind, at all. For during WWII
there was a lot of saying goodbye. After all, between the Allied forces
of America and Britain alone, there were some 20 million people who
served in the war. Soldiers and civilians alike, became accustomed to
goodbyes. Partings were a fact of wartime life. Many of those partings
were for years, though many were forever, with nearly a million American
and British lives lost.
“I’ll Be Seeing You” became emblematic of
such separations. This sentimental ballad with its appealing and
sing-able melody, and its straight-forward relatable lyrics, resonated
with anyone who had either lost someone, or who was waiting and hoping
to see them again.
So how did the song happen? Well it came from the songwriting
team of Sammy Fain, who wrote the music and Irving Kahle, who wrote the
words.
Fain and Kayle had many hits together during their 17 year
collaboration, dating back to 1925; including “I Can Dream, Can’t I?”
and “Let A Smile Be Your Umbrella.”
They wrote “I’ll Be Seeing
You” in 1938 for a Broadway musical comedy called “Right This Way.” But
the show was a flop, lasting for only 15 performances. Sammy Fain once
joked that a lot of theater-goers at those 15 shows, never even stuck
around for the whole show. “Where’s the exit?”, Fain asked
sarcastically. Well, Right This Way.
Then in 1943, the
forgotten song was unexpectedly rescued from obscurity when someone must
have realized the timeliness of its sentiment for the universal plight
of wartime separations. Everyone big recorded it. Bing Crosby had one of
the biggest hits with the song, as did Jo Stafford, Billie Holiday and
Frank Sinatra.
But lyricist Kahle never knew of the song’s
surprising late success. He had died the year before its resuscitation,
at only 38, of a heart attack.
“I’ll Be Seeing You” differed from
earlier Tin Pan Alley songs about loss and separation. It wasn’t about
rejection by one’s beloved, about being dumped. It was a universal song
about the power of love transcending time and distance.
And it
wasn’t only lovers who related to the song. It was also meaningful to
mothers separated from their sons and daughters; and to children
separated from their parents.
In a World War II memoir, there’s
the story of a young girl desperately missing her father. She writes,
“the line ‘I’ll be looking at the moon, but I’ll be seeing you,’ had a
profound effect on me. It was amazing to be able to look at the moon,
and realize that all those miles away, he was able to look at the same
moon.”
The song didn’t have that same salutary effect on everyone,
however. Jazz critic Francis Davis spoke about that in an interview. “I
grew up in a home where my mother had lost her brother in World War
II,” Davis said. “We had my grandmother in the house as well. There were
certain songs that we had to turn off when they came on the radio,
because they just reminded my grandmother in particular, too much of her
son. One of them was ‘I’ll Be Seeing You.’”
For soldiers during
the war, the song was virtually ever present. One soldier recalls
overhearing his buddy on the phone to his girlfriend. He was singing to
her “I’ll Be Seeing You,” but he changed the words to “I’ll be squeezing
you in all the old familiar places.”
But another soldier recalls
hearing the song in the midst of the allied invasion of Sicily. “When we
hit the beach,” he remembered, “we were all hit, the medics couldn’t
get to us. I could hear a wounded soldier nearby singing ‘I’ll be seeing
you.’ And then he stopped. I had listened to him die.”
Lyricist
Irving Kahle had considered “I’ll Be Seeing You,” the greatest song he
had ever written. And he’d often expressed his disappointment that it
hadn’t become a hit – at least not during his lifetime. He would surely
have appreciated knowing what his words came to represent, and what the
song meant to so many millions of people, during very difficult times.
And
all it took for the song to catch on was the complete catastrophic
upending of the world order, in which parting became a normal fact of
life for so many; and for which there just happened to be a song already
made; a song that managed to distill the mood of an entire era.
At
Kahle’s funeral, his longtime songwriting partner, Sammy Fain, arranged
to have a special piece of music played during the service. Of course,
that was “I’ll Be Seeing You.”
But our last words go to songwriter
Sammy Kahn, who once said, “You know, old songwriters never really die,
because their songs keep them alive, forever."
~~~~~
And guess who is singing? Our own, Iggy Pop. Ahhh, sweet !
............
I know, I was too old to be into the punk scene. But as far as that other - like they say, it's only rock 'n roll but I like it like it yes I do. Apparently if you want to see Iggy, you'll have to go to France. I'd go, if he actually sang "I'll be seeing you". But with a shirt on.
Solís is the interim director at the Kimberly Green Latin American and Caribbean Center at Florida International University. From 2014-2018 he served as the President of the Republic of Costa Rica.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
About the Author(s)
Naomi Roht-Arriaza
Naomi Roht-Arriaza (@roht_naomi) is a Distinguished Professor of Law (emeritus) at the University of California, Hastings Law in San Francisco. She is the author of "The Pinochet Effect: Transnational Justice in the Age of Human Rights" (2005) and "Impunity and Human Rights in International Law and Practice" (1995), and co-editor of "Transitional Justice in the Twenty-First Century: Beyond Truth versus Justice" (2006).
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Question is: Will these guys get trapped by the "Plata o Ploma" Dogma? It happens all the time....
~ From Newsweek: ( also more good reference to remittances)
They Left Guatemala For Opportunities in the United States. Now they Want to Help Others Stay.
By Ciara Nugent