March 20^th, 2019

    It is actually the 22^nd today, Human rights day here in SA. Let me give you an idea what has been happening since March 3^rd.

March 4^th—feast of St. Casimir so that meant cake and some nice wine. Also my brother Bill’s birthday. I think he has passed the 70 mark. He is getting old.

Holy Moses.

March 6^th, Ash Wed. My resolution was to be a patient patient  when the knee got done. I will explain

     It was also the day when Katrina, my lovely grandniece arrived from Kenya after being healthily delayed by a strike. But she made it and spent some days catching up with old friends from the time in 2015 when she volunteered for the whole year to help at our orphanage. She had come back from the biggest slum in Africa, Kibera, in Nairobi, again volunteering, this time for only 6 weeks. She says that she learned a lot that is hard to put in a CV.

We had a couple of lunches together and a couple of beers too, although it was already lent.

March 9^th—in the morning we visited several friends here and there (me being the willing chauffeur). In the afternoon we visited the orphanage with the staff of Consolidated Travel who brought gifts and games for the kids and gave Katrina a chance to renew old friendships and start some new ones.

I quit taking services at the hospital and Savannah Park to give my knee a rest before the op.

March 11-14, my friend Steve Askin, a seasoned journalist, together with his wife, brought 8 Home schooled teen agers to spend a few days in and around Mariannhill/Durban. With some friends we organized some activities for the two days they had (12-13). They arrived late on the 11^th and wanted to leave early on the 14^th. In the meantime they tried to organize a trailer for all their luggage, and I tried to organize a mechanic to do a service for the vehicle. Unfortunately, the vehicle was a Nissan 12 seater made in Japan and bought in Zimbabwe. No parts available here. But and oil change and some basics were possible.

On the 13^th in the morning I said goodbye before they set of on a tour of our lovely area and I went off to the hospital for a total knee replacement which was done on the 14^th. One day in ICU, (Thurs. Op,   Friday half day ICU, Sat. half day ICU, rest of the day in the ward with a visit from the physiotherapist who taught me some basic exercises and we went fort the first short walk. Sunday, another visit from the Physio, this time a longer walk, not with the 4 legged walker but with some what are called elbow crutches. More and longer walking and more lessons and she said I could go home on Monday because she wished that all her 50 yr. old patients would be as good as this 83 yr old codger. Affirming. But I am determined to get on the plane for the home leave beginning of the 31^st of May, and I felt I needed more of her knowledge and experience so I asked he to come on Tuesday when the doctor also said I could be discharged.

So, since the 20^th, I have been here at Mater Dolorosa, old folks home, on the ground floor, trying to be faithful to the exercises bending the knee and making it bend a bit more each day and trying to get it to be straight, which is a real job, and it squeals when it feels that you are pushing it too much. Well they always said, no pain no gain, and here is a good example. I haven’t taken any pain pills yet but asked to have some handy just in case I want to jump out of my skin. The biggest problem is the bloody spasms. My let will just go into a spasm over which I have no control and it is like It has a very strong spring that forces the knee to bend almost totally and makes you want to scream. It has been slowing down but every once in a while it catches you off guard and you have to squelch a shout.

March 22^nd—some friends just went to get me some of those elbow crutches. If they bring them today I will start using them.

Well that is it for now. If I can get someone to show me how to put a picture in this blog, I will do it. Nice picture, with staples not stitches from above the knee to about 6 inches below the knee. Keep the prayers coming. Lots and Lots of love and really looking forward to the home leave and sooooo happy to have this op behind me. I just pray that nothing goes wrong now. Cas

March 3, 2019
    I can't resist sharing with you these few items that, pretty much, reveal how I think and feel as well. 

On the critically endangered list: The Principled Republican

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) in Washington on Feb. 14. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)

By Dana Milbank

Columnist

March 1 at 3:53 PM

Researchers in the Galapagos Islands last month discovered, alive, a giant tortoise of a species long feared to be extinct.

The return of the Fernandina Giant Tortoise, last seen in 1906, gives hope that another species, also thought extinct, might yet reemerge.

I speak, of course, of the Principled Republican. The last sighting in the wild of this noble breed was in 2016.

Hopes were kindled Thursday when Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), voicing concern about the “dangerous precedent” of President Trump claiming emergency power to subvert Congress, suggested Trump reconsider. Alexander could become the decisive fourth Senate Republican to oppose Trump’s power grab, guaranteeing the Senate joins the House in rejecting it.

Privately, most Republicans think Trump’s action reckless, but Alexander can say so publicly because he is retiring. If Republicans did not fear Trump, they would undoubtedly side with 31 retired GOP colleagues who pleaded with them in an open letter this week not to sacrifice the Constitution “on the altar of expediency.”

If heeding conscience, Republicans would have enough votes not just to reject Trump’s transgression but to override Trump’s veto. More likely, they will again retreat, more concerned about reelection than righteousness. Surely they know Trump’s actions are wrong: They called President Barack Obama a tyrant for his immigration executive action in 2014, and Obama’s policy, unlike this one, had support — in a Republican-controlled Congress.

As veteran Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) said in opposing Trump’s emergency declaration this week: “Previous presidents have used the authority” to implement policies “Congress would have supported, but could not do so quickly enough. They did not invoke the authority to subvert the will of Congress.”

Trump is figuring Republicans will buckle, as they have each time before. He told the faithful Sean Hannity on Thursday that Republicans “put themselves at great jeopardy” by opposing him, suggesting they would be casting a “vote against border security.”

He has reason to expect Republican spinelessness. In recent days, House Republicans have put on their most feckless performances of the Trump era. Though many privately oppose Trump’s border “emergency” declaration, only a dozen joined Sensenbrenner in defying Trump. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) shrugged off GOP hypocrisy with a Yogi Berra-ism (“Well, times change as it moves forward”), and other Republicans followed.

Rep. Mike Simpson (Idaho) admitted “Republicans would be going nuts” if a Democratic president did this. Rep. Chris Stewart (Utah) called Trump’s action a “mistake.” Reps. Michael R. Turner (Ohio) and Anthony Gonzalez (Ohio) declared it a “dangerous precedent” and Rep. John Curtis (Utah) a “harmful precedent.” Reps. Rob Bishop (Utah), Roger Williams (Tex.) and others voiced concerns. All then voted in support of Trump’s emergency.

Seemingly nothing can shake Republicans’ craven political calculation that appeasing Trump is a better course than voting their conscience.

This week in the House, Trump’s former personal lawyer documented a web of deceit by Trump in personal and public matters — and Republicans unflinchingly defended the president. At the same time in Hanoi, Trump accepted Kim Jong Un’s wordthat he had nothing to do with American Otto Warmbier’s death — just as Trump accepted similar denials of crimes by the Saudi crown prince and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Then, on Thursday, a fresh economic report showed the economy falling short of Trump’s forecasts, even though Trump’s economic stimulus — a tax cut and spending increases — will add some $2 trillion to the deficit.

Constitutional restraint, personal responsibility, human rights, fiscal conservatism: As recently as 2015, these were Republican principles, now sadly extinct.

Nearly two dozen Senate Republicans — enough to override a veto — have expressed misgivings about Trump’s emergency declaration. They have called it “a bad precedent” (Charles E. Grassley, Iowa), “a dangerous step” (John Cornyn, Texas) and “not the preferred way to go” (Rob Portman, Ohio). Ron Johnson (Wis.) told NBC that “many of us are concerned,” Marco Rubio (Fla.) warned that “no crisis justifies violating the Constitution,” Ben Sasse (Neb.) fretted that “it will be almost impossible” to reinstate constitutional balance, and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) said, “I hope he doesn’t go down that path.”

Yet only three — Susan Collins (Maine), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Thom Tillis (N.C.) — have had the strength to announce opposition.

Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), now the paragon of opportunism, was surprisingly candid about his motives. “If you don’t want to get re-elected, you’re in the wrong business,” he told the New York Times Magazine’s Mark Leibovich, also describing his quest to be “relevant” in Trump’s world and to claw his way to “influence” inside Trump’s “orbit.”

“There’s sort of a Don Quixote aspect to this,” Graham acknowledged.

How apt — except the president is a mad adventurer in service not to chivalry but to personal enrichment, while Republicans play Rocinante and Sancho Panza, his loyal nag and servant.

Surely they know what they are doing harms the country. But they pull their heads into their shells, as good as extinct

===================================================================

You can’t solve North Korea’s nuclear challenge if you ignore its torture chambers

President Trump and North Korean leader Kim JOng Un in Hanoi on Thursday. (Evan Vucci/AP)

By Jackson Diehl

Deputy Editorial Page Editor

March 1 at 3:58 PM

“North Korea is not the paradise your grandfather envisioned,”President Trump bluntly informed Kim Jong Un. “It is a hell that no person deserves.”

No, the president did not deliver that scolding in Hanoi. Instead, he heaped praise on Kim, calling him “a great leader.” He went so far as to absolve the dictator of responsibility for the unspeakable treatment of Otto Warmbier, the American student who died shortly after his release from a North Korean prison.

Yet, just 16 months ago, in a speech to the South Korean parliament, Mr. Trump told an entirely different story.

“An estimated 100,000 North Koreans suffer in gulags, toiling in forced labor and enduring torture, starvation, rape, and murder on a constant basis,” he said. “The horror of life in North Korea is so complete that citizens pay bribes to government officials to have themselves exported abroad as slaves. They would rather be slaves than live in North Korea.”

Unlike much of what Trump says, every word of that indictment is true. It is backed up by in-depth investigations by the United Nations, the International Bar Association and numerous human-rights groups. But in his zeal to embrace Kim and bolster his delusional bid for a Nobel Peace Prize, Trump has forgotten it all.

In 2017, his administration waged an aggressive campaign to call attention to North Korea’s record on human rights, including camps that have been described as worse than Nazi Germany’s and such crimes against humanity as extermination, enslavement and sexual violence. In addition to Trump’s speech, the United States convened a meeting of the U.N. Security Council to discuss the Kim regime’s offenses.

Now, the administration has veered to the other extreme. For the first time since 2014, there was no U.S.-sponsored Security Council meeting on North Korean human rights last year. Vice President Pence canceled a speech on the subject in December. Human rights did not figure on this week’s agenda in Hanoi, and neither Trump nor any other senior official said a word about it — apart from the president’s shameful statement concerning Warmbier.

By now, Trump’s shallow strategy for dealing with adversaries such as Kim has become painfully obvious: First hit them with sanctions and insults, then shower them with praise, excuse their abuses and hope that presidential charm will prompt them to make concessions their regimes have rejected for decades.

The diplomatic disaster in Hanoi ought to make clear once and for all that the gambit won’t work — not even on the 35-year-old ruler of one of the world’s most isolated states. The only apparent effect of Trump’s wooing of Kim was to make the dictator believe he could sell the president on a decidedly one-sided bargain that would have lifted most sanctions on North Korea while allowing it to keep its nuclear arsenal.

The failure goes beyond Trump’s gross overestimation of his dealmaking ability. The administration’s abrupt reversal on North Korean human rights shows that it fundamentally misunderstands the challenge presented by the world’s last Stalinist regime. The president’s theory is that Kim will trade his nuclear arsenal for the prospect of transforming North Korea’s economy so that it produces the prosperity seen in the South.

As U.S. intelligence professionals have tried to explain to Trump, Kim prefers holding nukes to feeding his people. He knows that his regime would not exist without them; nor could the totalitarian system survive economic modernization.

Let’s imagine that Kim was tempted by Trump’s offer. How would it be possible to open his country to foreign investors and normal trade while maintaining four huge concentration camps where, according to a U.N. report, tens of thousands of people, including entire families, are held incommunicado for life? What about the estimated 400,000 forced laborers, including children, working in construction and agriculture?

The simple truth is that the North Korean regime, its nuclear arsenal and its system of repression are intricately linked. If Kim were serious about denuclearization, there would be signs of an internal easing. There aren’t. Consider the report last month by the Seoul-based North Korean Strategy Center, which said it had confirmed accounts of 421 officials murdered or otherwise purgedby Kim since 2010. Methods included hanging, using antiaircraft guns or flamethrowers for executions, and feeding naked victims to dogs.

The U.N. rapporteur on North Korea, Tomás Ojea Quintana, reported late last year that “the human rights situation at the moment has not changed on the ground in North Korea despite the important progress on security, peace and prosperity.”

Trump’s diplomacy with North Korea has been revealed as a fantasy. Real progress would require a restart based on patient diplomacy, ramped-up pressure , and a recognition that the problem entails not just nuclear reactors and missile factories, but torture chambers and concentration camps.

Read more from Jackson Diehl’s archive, follow him on Twit

We have a similar situation here in South Africa with what has been named "State Capture". In case you haven't been following, the former president, Jacob Zuma, fell into the honey trap of a group of Indian businessmen named the Guptas. With a lot of hefty bribes and "gifts", they managed to persuade him to select people for top jobs in the various departments of government, who would then give them contracts and access to the government funds in different ways that led to billions and billions of government money going into their hands. One example is the electricity supply company, Eskom, which was actually making money and debt free when the government took over in 1994. However, now, as one example, it is R420 billion in debt, and has been given payouts for the government (taxpapayers money) for years now and it just kept getting worse. But the whole economy depends on this parastatal. All businesses, the mines, etc, can't function without electricity.  But, the Zuma supporters stubbornly support him when it comes to blaming him for this tragedy and for the revelations of systemic corruption at almost all levels of government and we are not talking about peanuts. We are talking about trillions. How we are going to get out and how long it will take no one really knows. And Zuma says, so innocently, "what did I do wrong", when he got more payments from the Guptas that one can count.
     And our Republican brothers and sisters... how can they, in their consciences, continue to support a person who praises the very people whose ideology we have been fighting against in the last wars, as though they are great leaders (Putin and Kim Jong un in particular) and befriends them and praises them when our intelligence people say they have been responsible and will continue to be responsible for undermining our democracy. He trusts and believes and praises people like Putin, Kin Jon Un, Duterte in the Phillippines, and many of those who are from the far right in many countries in Europe.
    ISIS is dead, finished, crushed, he said, some weeks ago. Ha. I wonder what he thinks about the ongoing fighting in Syria. Does he really believe that they and those who think like them will simply disappear, never to return.
   
There are too many things that go around in my head, but to contextualize them, now that lent has arrived, my reflection is that Jesus and the Father and the Spirit must be very disappointed to see the beautiful world that they created and the potentially beautiful people who have been created in their image and likeness, destroying themselves and the very creation that was their greatest blessing, aside for Jesus Himself.
    Time to so some introspection and shaping up.
Wednesday is Ash Wednesday. the ashes being a sign that we recognize how weak and frail we are but are still determined to get ourselves back on the right track and knuckle down to making this world or ours, in big and little ways, a little more reflective of what the creator had in mind and His Son.   I will be having a unique lent in that I will be recuperating from my knee operation and will be spending most of my time learning how to walk with this new knee of mine. I am a little nervous about that but so many have already shared with me that they have had the same thing done more than 2 to 20 years ago and are happy and mobile. So I feel a bit more at ease about it, but, having just come out of the hospital with the spinal operation, it is too soon to go back to that hospital scene for me.
    YOu all stay well and blessed and I pray for you and for myself, that lent will be a good time to take a good hard look at ourselves and see where we need improvement and maybe even reconstruction.   Love and Peace, as always. Cas.