An announcement came out on June 12, 2019 that an agreement had been made between the governments of the United States and Ecuador that would allow the US military to extend the runway of the airport on San Cristóbal Island, then use it as a base for AWACS surveillance planes, specifically the Lockheed AP-C3 Orion and the Boeing E-3 Sentry (derived from the 707).

San Cristóbal Island is the easternmost of the Galapagos Islands, and is the second-most populous, with 5,600 people. Like all of the Galapagos Islands, it has a huge population of sea lions, birds, marine iguanas, and tortoises. The airport is one of three in the Galapagos Islands; the other two are Baltra and Puerto Villamil. There are commercial flights to the San Cristóbal airport from Quito, Guayaquil, and Baltra. The runway is 1,900 meters (6,230 feet) long.

The entire Galapagos Islands are an Ecuadorean national park and marine reserve, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. UNESCO has previously expressed concerns about the impact of human activity on San Cristóbal, at the airport in particular. Any expansion of this airport will reduce wildlife habitat, and any increase in air traffic will damage the bird population. Long story short, this is one of the most ecologically sensitive areas on this planet.

The stated purpose of the AWACS planes is "the fight against narco traffic".

I first heard the term "Americana music" about four years ago, and it's convenient, because it includes a lot of music I like: folk rock, folk, bluegrass, outlaw country, and Grateful Dead.

When I was first exposed to The Kennedys, I thought of them as a folk rock group, and specifically, a successor to The Byrds, a band that I liked a lot in my youth, and still do. However, "Americana music" appears quite a few times in this book, and during Pete Kennedy's long musical career, he has been in the thick of it. The long list of people he has worked or jammed with includes Emmylou Harris, Chet Atkins, David Bromberg, Charlie Byrd, Roger McGuinn, Dave Carter, Steve Earle, Danny Gatton, Doc Watson, Tom Paxton, and Eric Andersen.

I think that the most important lesson in this book is just how much hard work it takes to be a professional musician like Pete. In addition to the long hours of practice and jamming, he took lessons from Joe Pass and Johnny Smith.

If you've heard the phrase, "life begins at 40", that is about how old he was when he went on his first full-scale tour, with Mary Chapin Carpenter's band. That led to another gig with Nanci Griffith's band, the Blue Moon Orchestra, and ultimately meeting his wife, band mate, and songwriting partner Maura Kennedy.

I'm going to pass along two anecdotes from this book that I especially liked. When he was a teenager, his garage band chipped in and bought a copy of "Are You Experienced?", Jimi Hendrix' first album. After listening to it, they concluded, "this is what we're going to sound like from now on." The drummer said that he was going to have to quit, because he felt that there was no way that he would ever play that well. The rest of the band talked him out of it.

I recorded and edited this. Includes Spanish subtitles/subtitulo en español.

I first thought that something was wrong when comedian Bill Maher was invited to give the keynote address at the University of California Berkeley commencement in December, 2014. A small group of Muslim students there didn't like it, and several articles in Daily Kos took up the "islamophobia" cudgel.

One question you could ask is, if you're not a student, a member of the faculty or staff of UC Berkeley, or even root for their athletic teams, why is their choice of a commencement speaker even any of your business? Another valid question is, what exactly is this "islamophobia" that is a common insult hurled at Daily Kos?

If you were to ask Salman Rushdie about it, he would tell you that the religion of Islam is something to be afraid of. So would the employees of the Charlie Hebdo magazine. And the friends and relatives of people killed in the September 11, 2001 attack. And women forced to wear burqas and put up with all sorts of other restrictions on personal freedom.

Further, Maher has had several Muslim guests on the show in recent years; Maajid Nawaz, Nayyera Haq, Asra Nomani, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Keith Ellison.

This doesn't matter to the Haters. And although the stated objective of Daily Kos is to "elect more and better Democrats", it doesn't matter that Maher contributed a million dollars to the Democrats in 2012, and has committed another million to the Democrats for 2018. I wrote this article in response to the UC Berkeley dustup: Maher spoke at UC Berkeley commencement, world still turning

A resolution by San Miguel Center, PEN International

Endorsed by PEN México

Hérika Martínez Prado and Luis Christian Torres Chávez are Mexican journalists. Sra. Martínez Prado works for the France Press Agency (AFP) and the newspaper El Heraldo de Mexico. Sr. Torres Chávez works for the Xinhua News Agency.

They were working on a story about the detention center for migrant children in Tornillo, TX. On June 18, 2018, they accidentally strayed across the Mexican-US border south of Tornillo while attempting to take pictures of the detention center. This was an understandable mistake. In that area, the border is the Rio Grande, and at the time, the Rio Grande was a dry gravel bed.

Martínez Prado and Torres Chávez were arrested by agents of the US Border Patrol. They were detained for 16 hours, and released after signing a “voluntary deportation” order. They are now banned from entering the US for five years. This is in spite of the fact that both of them had valid B1/B2 Visa Border Crossing Cards; Sra. Martínez’ card was valid through November 11, 2020.

Martínez Prado and Torres Chávez are journalists with jobs to do. As an organization supporting the rights of journalists, the San Miguel de Allende Center of PEN International calls for lifting the travel ban immediately. We also call for an apology to these two journalists from the government of the United States.

Mexico continues to be the one of the most dangerous place in the world to be a journalist. Martín Méndez Pineda of Acapulco tried to get asylum in the US, but after being detained for 100 days in not-very-good conditions, he gave up and returned to Mexico. He is not safe there.

Patricia Mayorga of Chihuahua did better. She fled to an unidentified country.

The seven journalists murdered so far in 2017 include two high-profile ones, Miroslava Breach Velducea of Chihuahua and Javier Valdez Cárdenas of Culiacán. Breach was the Chihuahua correspondent for La Jornada, a major Mexico City newspaper; her beat was crime and politics. She was shot eight times as she was leaving her home. Valdez wrote several books about narcos, edited an award-winning weekly, and was a correspondent for La Jornada. He was dragged out of his pickup truck and shot several times.

David Lida is an author who found a home for himself in Mexico 25 years ago. He tells the story of his first visit to Puerto Escondido, when he started wondering what life is like for the Mexicans who live a few blocks away from the centre of town. Thanks to the Lockett v Ohio Supreme Court decision of 1978, he got his wish, along with a means of living in Mexico and earning a living.

The deal is, in all cases in the US where the death penalty is in play, a mitigation study must be done on behalf of the defendant. If the defendant is Latino, it’s important that the person who does the study is capable of speaking decent Spanish, and can interview relatives and contacts (teachers, former employers, etc.) in all parts of Mexico. So, Lida landed a job as a mitigation specialist.

What Lida has done, by publishing this book, is let us in on some of the many insights into Mexico’s less-prosperous areas that he has developed. The main character of One Life, Esperanza, is obviously a composite. She grew up in a dirt-poor Mexican town. She goes to a city, where conditions are better, and gets a job as a housekeeper. She meets a guy who is no good, and loses the job because of it. She goes to Ciudad Juarez (a very dangerous place for women) for a job in a “maquiladora”. Eventually, she ends up in New Orleans working to clean up the Hurricane Katrina damage. (That’s right, Mexicans and other Central Americans did this.) She has a child, the child dies, and she is accused of murdering it.

That’s where the narrator, Richard, enters the story. His task is to go to different places in Mexico and Louisiana to interview people who knew Esperanza, with the hope of getting some infomation about her that her lawyer can use to convince the prosecutors that she does not deserve the death penalty. The reader gets, through Richard’s eyes, insights into Mexico that are rarely found elsewhere. And it isn’t just about the poverty mentioned elsewhere in this review. Richard describes the quality of the food and the coffee, the religious celebrations, and how Mexicans outside Mexico’s affluent areas live their lives. Lida’s attempt to communicate to us what life is like for millions of Mexicans is a success.