Tomas Lopez story results in predictably anemic response by Hallandale Beach City Hall as growing public outrage re harsh treatment of lifeguard Lopez by his company, Jeff Ellis & Associates -an unpersuasive form letter- shows City Hall's longstanding myopia remains. Story has touched a nerve all over the world about moral imperatives and importance of doing the right thing despite strong possible negative consequences. We desperately need to change the culture and personnel at City Hall ASAP!

ABC News video: Correspondent Matt Gutman on Fla. Contractor That Fired Lifeguard For Saving Man Outside Zone Reconsidering. July 5, 2012.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/fired-fla-lifeguard-reinstated/story?id=16716225

Tomas Lopez story results in predictably anemic response by Hallandale Beach City Hall as growing public outrage re harsh treatment of lifeguard Lopez by his company, Jeff Ellis & Associates -an unpersuasive form letter- shows City Hall's longstanding myopia remains. Story has touched a nerve all over the world about moral imperatives and importance of doing the right thing despite strong possible negative consequences. We desperately need to change the culture and personnel at City Hall ASAP!

In short, in the official City of Hallandale Beach response thus far about the incident I discussed here yesterday, that was originally reported by Ihosvani Rodriguez of the South Florida sun-Sentinel, and which blew-up over the Fourth of July holiday to become international news, to the surprise of no one, the city says absolutely nothing about their own longstanding neglect, incompetency and culpability regarding the public beach areas, including the news that I shared with you that the two lifeguard stations on the beach are NOT grounded for lightning strikes, as they are supposed to be.

Lifeguard Tomas Lopez helps save the day at the city's public beach but get's fired for his trouble. Meanwhile, Hallandale Beach City Hall continues to act neglectful and NOT do what it's legally supposed to do around the beach areas, and nothing happens. Nobody is fired. Just more mindless bureaucratic apathy and incompetency from the same old crew!

http://www.hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2012/07/lifeguard-tomas-lopez-helps-save-day-at.html

By the way, if you didn't already know, the lifeguards are supposed to call their own company first in order to dispatch Fire/Rescue to the scene of trouble, despite the fact that HB Fire/Rescue is right next to the iconic Hallandale Beach Water Tower on State Road A1A and Hallandale Beach Blvd., on the border separating HB and Hollywood.  

Hallandale Beach Fire Station 60 is located in the building north of the city's iconic Water Tower on State Road A1A, just south of the Hollywood cityline. May 30, 2012 photos by South Beach Hoosier. © 2012 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved

When that was done, a lot of the life guards told me at the time that based on their past experience, this policy would inevitably cause casualties.

And I didn't even mention in my email and blog post of yesterday that, as I've noted here previously, for a very long time, the lifeguards lacked a motorized device that would allow the guards to actually respond to people caught in dangerous high wave/strong undertow situations far from shore, which greatly frustrated them and created a lot of anxiety on those sorts of days.

And lest you forget, we had an unusually high number of such days early last year, which was even more troubling when you know the lifeguards lacked the tools they desperately needed.

You'd think the city would've had a back-up plan after the one device they had -to share among the two lifeguard stands- broke.

You'd think that, but you'd be wrong -there was no back-up plan!

Is having Jeff Ellis and Associates' dispatchers calling 911 instead of the lifeguards on the scene part of what should be publicly discussed and re-examined while everyone is looking at what took place at the beach on Monday?

Should help for victims really be delayed from being dispatched solely because of company policy?

In my opinion, this whole topic ought to be the subject of a public meeting held at the city's Cultural Center, say, on a Saturday morning at 10 a.m., AFTER Labor Day when everyone is back in town, so that everyone who is interested can attend and hear what's what from Jeff Ellis, the city and any other people who have some knowledge to share, as well as HB residents?

Earlier today, Hallandale Beach civic activist Etty Sims, always a strong voice for common sense, financial accountability and the entire community's best long-term interests, sent the following email to HB City Hall and its denizens.

Along with her comments were links to just some of the dozen and dozens of news sites around the world that have reported on this troubling incident via a Google Alert on HB, a tool which I also receive and have encouraged you all to get as well if you live here, or one for your own community if you're anywhere else in the world.

Among the hundreds of news organizations and websites that have delved into this story are the BBC and ABC News, the latter of which did a three-minute story on it last night with reporter Matt Gutman during ABC Evening News, which was re-run this morning, the video of which I've posted at the top.

Here's Etty Sims' email:

Good morning city commissioners, mayor and city manager,

So Hallandale Beach is in the news all over the country and not for a good reason.

I am sure that you all heard about the incident on the beach.

If you read the comments to the stories on the different news media sites you will see that not only the private company that you, the commission hired to protect our beach goers , BUT the entire city's reputation is beefing affected negatively.

Please let us know what are you going to do about this issue.

if we want to improve our beaches, it is very important that beach goers  not only feel safe on our beach but are actually being protected by someone that cares about people's life and not the bottom line.

Since the lifeguard company's contract is coming  up for renewal, it is a perfect time to look into the different options available.

It is time to bring back the Beach in Hallandale Beach. Please make it a priority and transform the beach to a place that people want to go to. There are too many other options very close by such as Hollywood Beach Broadwalk.

Have a great summer 

Etty Sims

-----

Meanwhile... I continue to receive email from everywhere, including some thoughtful nuanced email from Las Vegas that gets right to the heart of the matter of what happened on Monday

Sarah Elizabeth has left a new comment on your post "Lifeguard Tomas Lopez helps save the day at the ci...":

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: City Manager <CityManager@hallandalebeachfl.gov>
Date: Thu, Jul 5, 2012 at 10:46 AM
Subject: RE: Lifeguard Tomas Lopez helps save the day at the city's public beach but get's fired for his trouble. Meanwhile, Hallandale Beach City Hall continues to act neglectful and NOT do what it's legally supposed to do around the beach areas...

Thank you for contacting the City of Hallandale Beach regarding the beach incident that occurred on July 2, 2012.  I am in close contact with Jeff Ellis of Jeff Ellis Management who has started a full investigation into the termination of their lifeguard.  The lifeguard is not a City employee, but was employed by Jeff Ellis Management, a private company contracted to provide lifeguard services for two city-owned beaches and the Municipal pool.  Jeff Ellis Management has committed to the City that if the lifeguard was terminated in haste, the company would move expeditiously to reinstate his employment.

It has always been the City’s policy that if there is an actual emergency inside or outside of the protected area, the lifeguard must respond. We do however have to ensure that certain safety protocols are followed to ensure the safety of all visitors to the City of Hallandale Beach.  At this time, the City is awaiting the facts of the termination and the results of our internal inquiry and the Ellis Management investigation.  Once the City has the results of the investigation, we can make an informed determination on the future of the relationship with this management company.

The City Hallandale Beach truly values your concerns and comments on this issue. The safety of our Beach patrons and the manner in which this service is provided is paramount to the City.  We are moving swiftly to address the situation.

Renee C. Crichton

City Manager

City of Hallandale Beach

400 S. Federal Highway

Hallandale Beach, FL 33009

954-457-1300 Phone

954-457-1454 Fax

Can anyone save egotistical Lauderhill mayor and amateur mind-reader Richard J. Kaplan from himself? The chronic Internet crank continues showing his true colors and ignorance at BrowardBeat, and other readers have finally had enough of his twaddle, too

Can anyone save egotistical Lauderhill mayor and amateur mind-reader Richard J. Kaplan from himself? The chronic Internet crank continues showing his true colors and ignorance at BrowardBeat, and other readers have finally had enough of his twaddle, too. Or will an intervention be necessary?

I was going to send in the comment below about an hour after seeing Lauderhill Mayor Richard J. Kaplan's initial smarmy comments to attorney and frequent contributor Sam Fields ill-informed essay, but I decided to just wait. 

BrowardBeat

Mitt Romney’s Lost Lesson On Tolerance  

By Sam Fields
May 13

http://www.browardbeat.com/mitt-romneys-lost-lesson-on-tolerance/

Good thing I did, because just like Hallandale Beach's own chronic Internet crank -whose name and multiple Internet identities I will try my best to avoid mentioning here to give him even more attention- Mr. Ego, Kaplan, couldn't help himself; he HAD to write yet again.
And again!
And yet again!


Yes, he's comment #1 -and #11 and #15 and #17.
http://www.browardbeat.com/mitt-romneys-lost-lesson-on-tolerance/#comment-698876

Here's what I know and what has already been independently confirmed -and mentioned here previously on Friday- though you would never know it by what was written in the  BrowardBeat post or by Mayor Kaplan's initial comment: the family of the individual at the center of the hair-cutting controversy, John Lauber, says that The Washington Post completely mis-characterized him and got major facts about him wrong.

His sister further says that she didn't know anything about the story, and as if more was needed, the so-called "witness" in the original WaPo, Stu White contradicted WaPo's reporting in an interview with ABC News and has since admitted that he was NEVER physically present at any such incident and did NOT know about the story UNTIL it was told to him by the WaPo. 

This year!

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/05/romney-friend-stu-white-says-campaign-wants-him-to-counter-prank-accusations/

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/05/sister-of-alleged-romney-target-has-no-knowledge-of-any-bullying-incident/

Yet White was initially used by the newspaper to authenticate a story he was neither present for or aware of. 

A perfect snapshot of the American Mainstream Media in 2012.

Given his own inconsistency, lack of personal knowledge on the matter in question and what we all now know is his giant sense of arrogance in making claims about Gov. Romney's honesty or lack thereof, from a thousand miles away, Mayor Kaplan should cool it and accept that considering how frequently he finds the need to post at Buddy Nevins' BrowardBeat blog in ways that strike so many well-informed people as the very definition of utterly self-serving, we DON'T put any stock into what he says. 

If he said it was raining, we'd check the window to see for ourselves.

As a prominent member of Broward County's status quo I've-got-mine society, where taxpayers are always at the bottom rung, he in particular is hardly in a position of lecturing or hectoring others about matters of morality or scruples. 

(Seriously, he's been on the Broward MPO for about twenty years? No wonder transportation issues in this county are discussed at a Junior High level and taxpayers who pay attention are so f-ed with geniuses like Kaplan making policy -garbage in, garbage out, with taxpayers left holding the bag for bad ideas.

In the near future I'll have a scathing post here on the blog for you all to chew over re the clique of geniuses over at the Broward MPO that details not only how truly ineffective they are in getting their "message" out, if that's what they're calling it these days, but how completely ignored they are by anyone who pays attention, whether concerned Broward taxpayers, bloggers or the sleepwalking South Florida news media. I thought that so-called "independence" the MPO was given was actually supposed to make things better. It's NOT! 
Especially for taxpayers in Hollywood and Hallandale Beach.)

A little more hubris and a lot less self-serving comments would do real wonders for Mayor Kaplan, but I doubt it'll take with him.

He sounds remarkably like many of the well-educated and smug upper- middle class Adams Morgan liberals I met in D.C. twenty years ago, who thought that they were down with the struggle because they voted Democratic, and had a Guatamalan gardener, a Honduran housekeeper and ate at a Salvadoran restaurant.

Yes, they were like their very own Model United Nations, and were so full of their own goodness.

But in 1991, when there was a riot there shortly after a Black female Metro cop arrested a drunk Hispanic man in a public park, and the liberals saw that their political sensibilities didn't prevent their neighborhood from being damaged or looted, some at least had the common sense to take off their blinders, stopped being so cowed by their friends PC ways and tried to stop being so oblivious to their own past condescending attitudes towards others.

Which is to say, people who had different opinions than them.

Me, I bet that Mayor Kaplan can't go two entire months without writing something on Buddy Nevins' popular blog.

And I will let you know how long he goes, too.
-----
Updated on May 16th at 3:54 to add Kaplan's fourth comment, #17

Factual Implosion at 1150 15th Street, N.W.: Ben Shapiro & Dana Loesch adroitly zero-in on the 47-year old Mitt Romney anecdote The Washington Post felt was too good to let the facts get in the way of printing. Oh, those inconvenient facts!

View Larger Map

Above, the entrance to The Washington Post, at left, 1150 15th Street, N.W., looking south towards L Street, K Street and McPherson Square in the distance. Google Maps

Factual Implosion at 1150 N.W. 15th Street, NW: Ben Shapiro & Dana Loesch adroitly zero-in on the 47-year old Mitt Romney anecdote The Washington Post felt was too good to let the facts get in the way of printing. Oh, those inconvenient facts!


Breitbart.com

WASHINGTON POST ROMNEY HIT PIECE IMPLODES

by Ben Shapiro

May 11, 2012

Today’s unconscionable Washington Post story, which implied without evidence that Mitt Romney was a homophobic bully to one John Lauber back in his high school days five decades ago, has totally imploded.

Read the rest of the post at:
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2012/05/10/Washington-Post-Hit-Piece-Implodes


Breitbart.com

WASHINGTON POST CHANGES STORY, DOESN'T ADMIT ERROR

by Dana Loesch

May 11, 2012

On Thursday, Breitbart's Retracto, the Correction Alpaca asked the Washington Post to correct its anti-Mitt Romney hit piece wherein it included an inaccurate and misleading statement about his past. The error was exposed when Stu White contradicted WaPo's reporting in an interview with ABC. 

Read the rest of the post at:
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2012/05/10/WaPo-Changes-Story-No-Correction



journalsentinel video: A Few Minutes with Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Bill Glauber. Guest: Conservative blogger Dana Loesch. April 14, 2012. 
http://youtu.be/gMoBETTiIhc


http://www.breitbart.com/


http://thedanashow.wordpress.com/

Coming this Fall: A 24/7 News Channel from Univision & ABC News -in English! Marriage of news & advertising convenience, necessity or desperation? And will it be hard news or soft?; Brazil abtains

Wall Street Journal: Disney's ABC, Univision May Launch News-Channel. February 7, 2012. 
http://youtu.be/pfOnlXlV8lA

Coming this Fall: A 24/7 News Channel from Univision & ABC News -in English! Marriage of news & advertising convenience, necessity or desperation? And will it be hard news or soft?; Brazil abstains

Naturally, as has been described here on the blog many times previously, given the rapturous and over-the-top way the Miami Herald has traditionally chosen to greet almost any quasi-news story that involved either Spanish-language marketing, advertising or television, always emphasizing the froth with lots of positive quotes from the people who stand to profit the most, in what is, essentially, a consumer transaction that involves selling soap to someone, possibly with a tilde, but never really looking hard at whether or not what is being offered is actually quality or not, I can hardly wait for the coming Herald article on this new way of trying to sell more advertising. 


I hereby predict that the Herald reporter, whomever it is, will say that that this move may well be "Revolutionary."
Or genius. Or overdue.
Or a guaranteed hit even before it hits the air.


We all know how the Herald gets when they have a brand-new shiny toy to talk about that has something to do with Latin America and marketing, witness their recent spate of pro-Brazil articles and editorials the past year.


Who can count the number of pieces they've done on the theme of visiting Brazilians make-the-world-go-around in Miami, which, given where we are and the current sad state of serious news coverage in local Miami TV stations, quite naturally copied the theme like nobody's business.


But when President Obama was leaving for Brazil last year, despite all the news coverage nationally in print and on TV about what the U.S. and the West wanted to do at the U.N. with regard to sanctions or counter-moves to the killings and repression in Syria, the Miami Herald NEVER wrote a single thing in the newspaper or online about Brazil abstaining from voting on the matter, did they?
Nope, and I was looking, too.


I checked not only the online archives but scrupulously checked the newspaper -everyday.
Before, during and after his trip.


The Herald said nothing even while writing about how important Brazil was asserting itself... blah, blah.
But when push came to shove, Brazil ducked.
That's many things, but what it's NOT is leadership.
Or positive.


For a country like Brazil that's forever talking so much about wanting to be taken seriously on the international scene, it hardly gets more transparent about what you really want to do than abstaining from an important vote at the U.N, does it?
Of perhaps having to vote against China and Russia.
So they did nothing.

Today's New York Times tells the tale of what that indifference has wrought months later:

In Turkey, once a strong supporter of Mr. Assad and now one of his most vocal critics, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told Parliament that the veto of the United Nations resolution on Syria by Russia and China had given Mr. Assad a “license to kill,” 

The only thing missing in this and so many other news articles the past about all the people who have been maimed or killed is a note that reads "Thanks Brazil" from President Assad.


And lest you forget, last year, on March 21st, I wrote about Brazil abstaining on a vote on sanctions against Libya.
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/rejecting-pixie-lotts-boys-and-girls.html


So why the South Florida news media refusal to report the facts about the Brazil abstentions on Libya and Syria, and their logical consequences?
Good question.


But not for me, for the Herald and the rest of the South Florida news media that far too often seems content to lets its own advertising bottom line dictate what actually gets covered or mentioned on-air on in print.


No, unfortunately, as I've said here before many times, the South Florida news media, and the Herald in particular, simply can't say enough good things about Latin America, whether its countries, its consumers or its markets, when there's money to be made, but rather curiously, they and their reporters only seem to seek out people for the article who will say good things.
Or who will directly or indirectly profit from it.


Where's the objective balance to the stories?
Where's the follow-up and perspective?


No, THAT won't come until months later.
Then, they may run an AP story that they post online, but which you never see in the newspaper itself.


Sort of like the one they used here to share the news:
Univision, Disney look at English news channel
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/02/06/2628257/univision-disney-look-at-english.html


No doubt we'll see that over-the-top story in the Herald soon, and I can already guess whom they will interview from their small list of Usual Suspects to say how great this is for everyone.
No, not really, mostly just some of the advertising folks who want to sell air time for Barack Obama political commercials.
-----


See more news video from The Wall Street Journal LIVE's News Hub at:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL40ABBAC77E4BF616&feature=plcp


Wall Street Journal YouTube Channel:
http://www.youtube.com/user/WSJDigitalNetwork

ABC News video: Diane Sawyer tours 'Nightwatch,' the U.S.'s high-tech 'Doomsday' plane capable of surviving a nuclear attack -sorry, no window seats!

'Doomsday Plane' Would Save President and Joint Chiefs in Apocalypse Scenario,

By Michael Murray, June 7, 2011

http://abcnews.go.com/US/doomsday-plane-save-president-joint-chiefs-apocalypse-scenario/story?id=13782736

I meant to post this interesting video two weeks ago after seeing this when it first aired on the ABC Evening News with Diane Sawyer, but after saving the embed info in Draft on my email account, I forgot about it.

A week later, I saw the Swedish version of it while perusing Aftonbladet's website
and their WebbTV page, so I decided then to go ahead and post both of them so that you could see what the latter emphasizes.

Just about everything as it turns out, but you also get a kee sense of how much the people in Sweden know about what's compelling news video here in the U.S., but when was the last time you saw a video segement of a foreign TV network news that wasn't BBC or ITN on U.S. TV?
I mean besides here on the humble blog?

Aftonbladet: Följ med in i domedagsplanet - Tål en kärnvapenattack
http://www.aftonbladet.se/webbtv/nyheter/utrikes/article13149866.ab


http://abcnews.go.com/

ABC News on one of Osama bin Laden's strategies: "to inflame race and class tensions in hopes of tearing down the [U.S.]"; Exploit Minority Converts

It will be very interesting over the coming weeks to see how the U.S. Mainstream Media -outside of ABC News- reports on this angle of this week's Osama bin Laden story, given how early on, the MSM seemed eager -almost devoted!- to framing anyone who said anything along the lines of what they're now reporting as fact at ABC News' The Blotter, http://abcnews.go.com/blotter, as either stupid, paranoid or possibly even racist.

Well, don't hold your breath waiting for the MSM to now suddenly see the error of their condescending and patronizing ways and suddenly apologize to those very individuals, many of whom spoke of the environmental role of prison life as a factor leading to Muslim conversions among minority prisoners, a topic which, itself, is one that has been reported on to the point that it's Common Knowledge.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/19/AR2005081901460.html
http://www.pbs.org/weta/crossroads/about/show_homegrown.html

And yet if you weren't a certified Beltway 'expert' and said this same thing, look out below!

ABC News
The Blotter
Osama Bin Laden's Anti-U.S. Strategy: Exploit Minority Converts
By Pierre Thomas, Richard Esposito, Lee Ferran
May 7, 2011

Osama bin Laden aspired to damage the United States not only through persistent terror attacks, but also by attempting to inflame race and class tensions in hopes of tearing down the country from the inside out, according to officials briefed on the evidence trove recovered from the al Qaeda leader's Pakistan compound.

According to materials in the cache of documents recovered in the U.S. Navy SEAL raid that brought down the terror leader, bin Laden planned to specifically recruit African-American Muslim converts to carry out attacks on the homeland.

Read the rest of the story at:
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/osama-bin-ladens-anti-us-strategy-exploit-minority/story?id=13547780&nwltr=blotter_featureMore

Marco Rubio is doing EXACTLY what he said he'd do last year -making a difference on policy in D.C. and NOT being an aloof, empty suit

ABC News video: Sen. Marco Rubio on ABC News' Nightline with correspondent Jonathan Karl, March 28, 2011.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqs0WAD7ZRE

Article: Exclusive Interview With Marco Rubio: GOP Rising Star Hints at VP Spot. Florida Republican Keeps a Low Profile as a Junior Senator, But Has Big Plans
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/tea-party-favorite-florida-sen-marco-rubios-national/story?id=13249824
http://abcnews.go.com/nightline




ABC News video: Sen. Marco Rubio appears on GMA, Good Morning America, with host George Stephanopoulos, March 30, 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAI4x-jI-_k




Local10.com video: Sen. Marco Rubio speaks with Channel 10's Michael Putney on his Sunday morning TV show, This Week in South Florida, about the federal budget gimmicks currently in place, i.e. continuing resolutions
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iGaPvq16Zo




Sen. Marco Rubio video: In His Own Words: Week In Review, March 11, 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xOMt0fFBAA




NBC-6 Miami news video: Report on Sen. Marco Rubio's Miami office Open House.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMnMiP2QnB8

-----
Michael Putney: http://www.local10.com/station/269244/detail.html

This Week In South Florida March 27

U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen speaks about Libya, new troubles between Israel and Palestine and the conviction of an aid worker in Cuba. Plus, what are the Miami-Dade County charter changes that will be on the May ballot?

Video at: http://www.local10.com/video/27347033/index.html

http://www.local10.com/index.html

http://www.sfltv.com/

Follow-up to shocking 20/20 Exclusive on Peace Corps - Video Exclusive: Peace Corps Women Tell Stories of Assaults Overseas -and Agency's Indifference

Peace Corps Women Tell Stories of Assaults

In roundtable with ABC News Chief Investigative correspondent Brian Ross, six women describe sexual assault while volunteering overseas. 01/14/2011

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/video/peace-corps-women-stories-assaults-12619514?nwltr=blotter_featureMore

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/slideshow/sexual-assault-peace-corps-12618764

This is the follow-up on The Blotter to Friday's 20/20 Exclusive which was the subject of this post of mine:
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/must-see-tv-tonight-abc-news-2020-on.html

ABC News Investigative Team Blotter
http://abcnews.go.com/blotter

---

See also: First Response Action

"First Response Action advocates for a stronger Peace Corps response for Volunteers who are survivors or victims of physical and sexual violence. We envision a Peace Corps with policies that reflect best practices in all areas of training, prevention and response."

For more information email firstresponseaction@gmail.com.
Visit their website at: www.firstresponseaction.org and their blog at http://firstresponseaction.blogspot.com/


-----
KESQ-TV, Palm Springs, California
http://www.kesq.com/news/26502628/detail.html

Peace Corps Murder Raises Questions On Safety Of Volunteers

By Philippe Djegal, News Channel 3 Reporter

POSTED: 9:35 pm PST January 14, 2011
UPDATED: 11:34 pm PST January 14, 2011
Story and video at:
http://www.kesq.com/news/26502628/detail.html

-------

Newsweek
Goodbye, Hollywood. Hello, Peace Corps!
Newsweek's 43-year old Hollywood correspondent Sean Smith quits his job to join The Peace Corps.
http://www.newsweek.com/2011/01/19/give-peace-a-chance.html

Must-see TV tonight: ABC News 20/20 on cover-ups at The Peace Corps re murder, gang rape of American volunteers; Pitt & Jolie as a bad Tarzan & Jane

ABC News 20/20: Parents of Slain Volunteer Say Peace Corps Error Led to Murder
Anonymous Whistleblower's Name Revealed to Suspect Accused of Sexually Abusing Children
By Anna Schecter and Brian Ross
January 14, 2011

The family of a 24-year old Peace Corps volunteer from Atlanta, Kate Puzey, says agency personnel set her up to be murdered by revealing her role in the dismissal of an employee she accused of sexually abusing children at a school in the African country of Benin.

Read the rest of the story at: http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/parents-slain-volunteer-peace-corps-error-led-murder/story?id=12607274&nwltr=blotter_featureMore

ABC News 20/20: Peace Corps Volunteer Murder

Cousin of victim Kate Puzey: 'It's hard to be a girl in that part of the world.'

ABC News chief investigative correspondent Brian Ross:
Why Would Anyone Want to Kill Kate?
20/20 Investigation: Scandal Inside the Peace Corps

Story at: http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/peace-corps-murder/story?id=12583120



ABC News 20/20: Peace Corps Volunteer Describes Brutal Rape
Jess Smochek said she was gang raped while working in Bangladesh.
January 12, 2011
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/video/peace-corps-volunteer-describes-brutal-rape-12600417

ABC News 20/20 Investigation: Scandal Inside the Peace Corps airs tonight at 10 p.m. Eastern on ABC-TV.

As I've mentioned here previously, I've had many friends from IU and former housemates in Washington, D.C. who were former Peace Corps volunteers in countries ranging from Mali to Nepal, quite literally, Timbuktu to Kathmandu.
In fact, I've even had Thanksgiving Dinner at a friend's home in Northern Virgina and around a large table, been surprised to discover that I was the only one there who hadn't been in the Peace Corps.

I'm sorry to say that the stories Brian Ross tells of a disconnect between Peace Corps HQ and the emotional and physical depredations suffered by American volunteers surprises me not a whit. According to Ross, nine-hundred Peace Corps volunteers have been sexually assaulted or raped in just the past decade. 900!

Yet the New York Times hasn't had a single story about assaults against Peace Corps volunteers since 2002.
It's like they think they're part of the South Florida news media, where stories happening right in front of you don't see the light of day, but Lisa Petrillo news stories -practically infomercials- on eyebrow surgeries for middle-aged yentas MUST make 6 p.m. newscasts.

I've heard days and weeks of stories of both heart-breaking tenderness and of the perils of feeling sorry for people who lived in poverty or near-poverty, and hearing how brazenly evil and corrupt many of these residents were, involved as they were with organized crime and the black market, happy to subjugate their own town or neighboring ones thru fear, violence and physical intimidation, while government workers in their area knew full-well what was going on.

The latter had practiced the art of looking the other way, either due to fear or unwillingness to be the bearer of bad news to some Ministry office.
(That behavior sounds awfully familiar to Floridians, does it not he said knowingly?)

When you know about these sorts of things from having been eyewitness to them, you feel the need to unburden yourself and try to tell others whom you think will profit from knowing the truth, which is why I never tired of hearing these stories from my friends, even if they often were such downers that we were drinking by the end of the story.
Even when I'd already heard the story before.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan described the Peace Corps in a letter as:

“a rip-off by the upper middle classes. Fortunes spent to send Amherst boys for an interesting learning experience in Venezuela,” paid for by “men equally young pumping gas on the New Jersey Turnpike.”

An even more negative and eye-opening view of what often happens when the West tries to help the poor and gets in the way of common sense public policy and hinders the responsibility of the people you're trying to help to actually help themselves, comes in the form of this prescient 2005 New York Times Guest OpEd essay by writer Paul Theroux, whose books and essays I've read for many years and who is, himself, a former Peace Corps volunteer to Malawi.

But Theroux was so much more than the average volunteer, and is more than just a critic of the bureaucracy of empire aid, as this makes clear:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Theroux
He puts his money and his body where his mouth is.

I read this essay in The Times the day it was printed, cut it out and still have it in a folder.
It's a keeper!


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/15/opinion/15theroux.html?scp=20&sq=%22Peace%20Corps%22&st=cse

New York Times
Op-Ed Contributor

The Rock Star's Burden
By Paul Theroux
December 15, 2005

Hale'iwa, Hawaii

THERE are probably more annoying things than being hectored about African development by a wealthy Irish rock star in a cowboy hat, but I can't think of one at the moment. If Christmas, season of sob stories, has turned me into Scrooge, I recognize the Dickensian counterpart of Paul Hewson - who calls himself :Bono"- as Mrs. Jellyby in "Bleak House." Harping incessantly on her adopted village of Borrioboola-Gha "on the left bank of the River Niger," Mrs. Jellyby tries to save the Africans by financing them in coffee growing and encouraging schemes "to turn pianoforte legs and establish an export trade," all the while badgering people for money.

It seems to have been Africa's fate to become a theater of empty talk and public gestures. But the impression that Africa is fatally troubled and can be saved only by outside help - not to mention celebrities and charity concerts - is a destructive and misleading conceit. Those of us who committed ourselves to being Peace Corps teachers in rural Malawi more than 40 years ago are dismayed by what we see on our return visits and by all the news that has been reported recently from that unlucky, drought-stricken country. But we are more appalled by most of the proposed solutions.

I am not speaking of humanitarian aid, disaster relief, AIDS education or affordable drugs. Nor am I speaking of small-scale, closely watched efforts like the Malawi Children's Village. I am speaking of the "more money" platform: the notion that what Africa needs is more prestige projects, volunteer labor and debt relief. We should know better by now. I would not send private money to a charity, or foreign aid to a government, unless every dollar was accounted for - and this never happens. Dumping more money in the same old way is not only wasteful, but stupid and harmful; it is also ignoring some obvious points.

If Malawi is worse educated, more plagued by illness and bad services, poorer than it was when I lived and worked there in the early 60's, it is not for lack of outside help or donor money. Malawi has been the beneficiary of many thousands of foreign teachers, doctors and nurses, and large amounts of financial aid, and yet it has declined from a country with promise to a failed state.

In the early and mid-1960's, we believed that Malawi would soon be self-sufficient in schoolteachers. And it would have been, except that rather than sending a limited wave of volunteers to train local instructors, for decades we kept on sending Peace Corps teachers. Malawians, who avoided teaching because the pay and status were low, came to depend on the American volunteers to teach in bush schools, while educated Malawians emigrated. When Malawi's university was established, more foreign teachers were welcomed, few of them replaced by Malawians, for political reasons. Medical educators also arrived from elsewhere. Malawi began graduating nurses, but the nurses were lured away to Britain and Australia and the United States, which meant more foreign nurses were needed in Malawi.

When Malawi's minister of education was accused of stealing millions of dollars from the education budget in 2000, and the Zambian president was charged with stealing from the treasury, and Nigeria squandered its oil wealth, what happened? The simplifiers of Africa's problems kept calling for debt relief and more aid. I got a dusty reception lecturing at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation when I pointed out the successes of responsible policies in Botswana, compared with the kleptomania of its neighbors. Donors enable embezzlement by turning a blind eye to bad governance, rigged elections and the deeper reasons these countries are failing.

Mr. Gates has said candidly that he wants to rid himself of his burden of billions. Bono is one of his trusted advisers. Mr. Gates wants to send computers to Africa - an unproductive not to say insane idea. I would offer pencils and paper, mops and brooms: the schools I have seen in Malawi need them badly. I would not send more teachers. I would expect Malawians themselves to stay and teach. There ought to be an insistence in the form of a bond, or a solemn promise, for Africans trained in medicine and education at the state's expense to work in their own countries.

Malawi was in my time a lush wooded country of three million people. It is now an eroded and deforested land of 12 million; its rivers are clogged with sediment and every year it is subjected to destructive floods. The trees that had kept it whole were cut for fuel and to clear land for subsistence crops. Malawi had two presidents in its first 40 years, the first a megalomaniac who called himself the messiah, the second a swindler whose first official act was to put his face on the money. Last year the new man, Bingu wa Mutharika, inaugurated his regime by announcing that he was going to buy a fleet of Maybachs, one of the most expensive cars in the world.

Many of the schools where we taught 40 years ago are now in ruins - covered with graffiti, with broken windows, standing in tall grass. Money will not fix this. A highly placed Malawian friend of mine once jovially demanded that my children come and teach there. "It would be good for them," he said.

Of course it would be good for them. Teaching in Africa was one of the best things I ever did. But our example seems to have counted for very little. My Malawian friend's children are of course working in the United States and Britain. It does not occur to anyone to encourage Africans themselves to volunteer in the same way that foreigners have done for decades. There are plenty of educated and capable young adults in Africa who would make a much greater difference than Peace Corps workers.

Africa is a lovely place - much lovelier, more peaceful and more resilient and, if not prosperous, innately more self-sufficient than it is usually portrayed. But because Africa seems unfinished and so different from the rest of the world, a landscape on which a person can sketch a new personality, it attracts mythomaniacs, people who wish to convince the world of their worth. Such people come in all forms and they loom large. White celebrities busy-bodying in Africa loom especially large. Watching Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie recently in Ethiopia, cuddling African children and lecturing the world on charity, the image that immediately sprang to my mind was Tarzan and Jane.

Bono, in his role as Mrs. Jellyby in a 10-gallon hat, not only believes that he has the solution to Africa's ills, he is also shouting so loud that other people seem to trust his answers. He traveled in 2002 to Africa with former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, urging debt forgiveness. He recently had lunch at the White House, where he expounded upon the "more money" platform and how African countries are uniquely futile.

But are they? Had Bono looked closely at Malawi he would have seen an earlier incarnation of his own Ireland. Both countries were characterized for centuries by famine, religious strife, infighting, unruly families, hubristic clan chiefs, malnutrition, failed crops, ancient orthodoxies, dental problems and fickle weather. Malawi had a similar sense of grievance, was also colonized by absentee British landlords and was priest-ridden, too.

Just a few years ago you couldn't buy condoms legally in Ireland, nor could you get a divorce, though (just like in Malawi) buckets of beer were easily available and unruly crapulosities a national curse. Ireland, that island of inaction, in Joyce's words, "the old sow that eats her farrow," was the Malawi of Europe, and for many identical reasons, its main export being immigrants.

It is a melancholy thought that it is easier for many Africans to travel to New York or London than to their own hinterlands. Much of northern Kenya is a no-go area; there is hardly a road to the town of Moyale, on the Ethiopian border, where I found only skinny camels and roving bandits. Western Zambia is off the map, southern Malawi is terra incognita, northern Mozambique is still a sea of land mines. But it is pretty easy to leave Africa. A recent World Bank study has confirmed that the emigration to the West of skilled people from small to medium-sized countries in Africa has been disastrous.

Africa has no real shortage of capable people - or even of money. The patronizing attention of donors has done violence to Africa's belief in itself, but even in the absence of responsible leadership, Africans themselves have proven how resilient they can be - something they never get credit for. Again, Ireland may be the model for an answer. After centuries of wishing themselves onto other countries, the Irish found that education, rational government, people staying put, and simple diligence could turn Ireland from an economic basket case into a prosperous nation. In a word - are you listening, Mr. Hewson? - the Irish have proved that there is something to be said for staying home.

Paul Theroux is the author of "Blinding Light" and of "Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town."

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