From yesterday’s spam mountain,
You are my inhalation, I possess few blogs and sometimes run out from post . “Fiat justitia et pereat mundus.Let justice be done, though the world perish.” by Ferdinand I.
Ferdinand the Bull, that is?
American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture
By Fausta
By Fausta
live right now,
Cage Match: Romney vs. Perry. We’re discussing the Republican debate.
You can also listen to the archived podcast at your convenience.
By Fausta
BOLIVIA
Mother Earth now has legal standing in Bolivia
BRAZIL
A Reality Check for Brazil
CARIBBEAN
Panel on Caribbean migration opens 2nd day of Austin Forum
COLOMBIA
FARC Kill 13-year-old Girl for Desertion
Colombian President Overhauls Military
The reshuffling and rise in defense outlays, along with Mr. Santos’s tough talk, are a tacit recognition of the belief among many Colombians that he and his administration haven’t been hard enough on the leftist rebels, mainly the country’s biggest guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.
CUBA
Good News: Oil Drilling Off Florida Begins Nov. 1. Bad News: It’s in Cuba. As if that weren’t enough, U.S. Is Urged to Plan to Aid Cuba in Case of an Oil Spill.
Guatemala’s presidential election
The Sandra Torres question
HAITI
Haiti’s tent cities
Nowhere to go
The government’s housing plan faces an uphill battle
HONDURAS
Corruption but no corruptos in Honduras
MEXICO
Peña Nieto’s Empty Applause Line
Mexican Finance Minister Quits to Seek Presidency
NICARAGUA
La Constitución Apócrifa de Daniel Ortega
PANAMA
International Mover Question
PERU
Humala’s Drug Czar Vows to Halt Growth in Peru Coca Output
VENEZUELA
U.S. Sanctions Venezuela Officials, Citing Drug Ties
The U.S. added a Venezuelan general, two legislators and a top intelligence official to a kingpins list for their alleged involvement in drug dealing and arms trafficking with Colombian guerrillas, the U.S. Treasury said Thursday.
Is Chavez in such trouble that international pariah statute does not rattle him?
The week’s posts,
After Fast and Furious, Mexican narco’s defense: He was aiding the US
After 20 years, Cuba revokes Spanish journalist’s creds
Chavez throws BRICs for Gaddafi
Jane <3 Che
By Fausta
By Fausta
For the past few years I have posted on Joe Angelini, Jr., a man I never met, a true hero who now would have been 48 years old. As part of the 2996 project, I found out while doing my research that Joe’s dad, Joe Sr., was also a fireman who also was killed at the World Trade Center, a building that I used to go through every morning for nearly seven years every day to and from work. Michael Angelini, also a firefighter, son of Joe Jr., and brother of Joe Jr., lived.
It is with great humility that again, I post on two American heroes, men who gave sacrificed their lives for their fellow men. As importantly, their fellow brother firefighters save our lives every day.
In their honor, I am flying the American flag today.
>Joseph Angelini Jr., age 38 of Lindenhurst, NY, died heroically on September 11, 2001 in the World Trade Center terrorist attack. He was a New York firefighter with Ladder Co. 4
Joseph Angelini Jr.
A Firefighter Passionate About Family, Gardening
October 22, 2001
Joseph Angelini Jr. may have lived for the New York City Fire Department, but he didn’t hang around when his tour ended.
“Gotta get home to the kids,” he’d tell the guys in Manhattan’s Ladder Co. 4 before heading to the 6:33 p.m. train to Lindenhurst.
Angelini’s wife, Donna, has scheduled a memorial service for today to help 7-year-old Jennifer, 5-year-old Jacqueline and 3-year-old Joseph Angelini III to finally understand that he won’t be coming home anymore.
“My son asks everyone he sees in uniform, ‘Did you find my daddy, did you find my daddy?’” Donna Angelini said Friday.
The seven-year department veteran followed in the footsteps of his father, Joseph Angelini Sr., 63, who was the senior member of Brooklyn’s Rescue Co. 1 and also perished in the World Trade Center attacks.
The younger Angelini, 38, was assigned to a house that protects New York’s theater district. Its motto: “Never miss a performance.”
But at home, he was a cook, craftsman and avid gardener who grew pumpkins, zucchini, eggplants and hot peppers and filled the house with the smells of pizza and focaccia.
“He was the air in my lungs, and now that air is taken away from me,” Donna Angelini said. “I keep waiting for him to come off a 24 [hour shift] and come through the door and say, ‘You wouldn’t believe what happened to me today.’”
Angelini also is survived by his mother, Anne, a grandmother, Mary, sister Annmarie Bianco and brother, Michael, all of Lindenhurst; sister Mary Angelini of Washington D.C.; and by seven nieces and nephews.
A memorial service will be held today at 11 a.m. at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Roman Catholic Church in Lindenhurst.
– Elizabeth Moore (Newsday)
Living Tribute to Joseph Angelini, Jr.
Joe’s father, Joe Sr. also died that day:
The Veteran and His Son
Joseph J. Angelini Sr. and his son, Joseph Jr., were firefighters, and neither survived the twin towers’ collapse. “If he had lived and his son had died, I don’t think he would have survived,” said Alfred Benjamin, a firefighter at Rescue Company 1 in Manhattan who was partnered with Mr. Angelini for the last six months.
The elder Mr. Angelini, 63, was the most veteran firefighter in the city, with 40 years on the job. He was tough and “rode the back step” like everyone else. His 38-year-old son, who worked on Ladder Company 4 on 48th Street, was on the job for seven years.
“If you mentioned retirement to Joey, it was like punching him,” Mr. Benjamin said. Joseph Jr. was proud of his father’s reputation and tried to copy him any way he could, said Joseph Jr.’s wife, Donna.
And they never gave up their tools. “Think about climbing 20 stories with bunker gear, ropes, hooks, halogens and other different types of tools and somebody wants to borrow a tool — no way,” Mr. Benjamin said. “You ask them what they need done and you do it for them. You carried that tool all the way up there, so you’re going to use it. If they thought they were going to need a tool, they should have carried it up. Joey Sr. always said carry your own weight. He always carried his.”
Joseph Jr. applied to the department 11 years ago. He got called seven years ago. “It was the proudest day for my father-in-law. It was a great opportunity,” said Donna Angelini. “His father was a firefighter and he wanted to be one, too.”
Mr. Angelini, who had four children, taught Joseph Jr. carpentry. Often they worked on projects together, including a rocking horse. Joseph Jr., who had three children, had started building a dollhouse for one of his daughters. Unfinished, it is sitting on his workbench.
A brother, Firefighter Michael Angelini, was there as well, but, in a move that probably saved his life, left when asked to help carry out the body of the Rev. Mychal Judge, the fire department’s chaplain.
From Newsday:
Between Funeral and ‘Pile’
September 21, 2001
Michael’s choice: remain with his mother, Anne, in Lindenhurst and support his family during the wake, today, and the funeral, tomorrow, for his father, New York firefighter Joey Angelini, 63; or, return to The Pile to continue searching for his missing brother, New York firefighter Joey Angelini Jr., 38.
Michael, 33, knew yesterday that his mother and Joey Jr.’s wife, Donna, his two sisters and his nieces and nephews needed him, needed a strong, grown, male Angelini nearby, perhaps as much or more than he needed to be nearer his brother. “It’s hard to figure out what’s the right place to be in,” he said, already having decided to stay with the family. “I want so much to go back there.”
Michael works for the Fire Patrol of New York, which operates under the New York Board of Underwriters, protecting the interests of insurers during and in the aftermath of commercial property fires. Wearing the same firefighting gear, except for the distinctive red helmet that denotes Fire Patrol, he responded to the World Trade Center disaster last Tuesday morning, as did his father, a 40-year FDNY veteran assigned to Rescue 1, and his brother, of Ladder Co. 4 in the Theater District. “We were all in the same area, and none of us knew it,” he said.
In the lobby of one of the stricken towers, a fire supervisor suddenly ordered him out of the building. They passed firefighters who had just encountered the body of department chaplain Father Mychal Judge. Michael helped carry Judge away. “… but then my officer grabbed me and said, ‘Let’s go!’” he said. “We ended up a block or two north on West Murray Street.”
Michael entertained a slender hope that his brother might have finished his tour early and gone home. He suspected otherwise, and he learned later that afternoon that Joey had done what his father would have done and what so many other firefighters did who were supposed to be ending their tours at 9 a.m. They went to work.
Once a jokester and a partygoer, Joey Jr. had undergone personality changes increasingly noticeable to Michael during the past seven years, since he had joined the department and Donna gave birth to the first of their three children, Jennifer. He had worked previously as an electrician with the Transit Authority. “I didn’t want him to leave Transit,” said his mother, “because they were about to make him a foreman. But, for some reason, he switched over to the fire department.”
“Since then,” Michael said, “I saw him taking on more and more of my father’s traits. Before, we used to go out a lot, he and I. He was silly, funny. Now, getting him to go out was like pulling teeth. I tell old stories to guys he worked with, and they’ll look at me like I’m talking about somebody they don’t know. He had become so, like, straight. He just wanted to be with his family. He was showing more and more of that integrity, that seriousness, like my father.
“Three things were important to my father: his family, the church and the department, and I’m not sure in what order. My father was honest to a fault, religious. I remember walking back from the store with him. I was only little. He realized that the counter girl had given him 30 cents too much in change, and we had to walk all the way back. I mean, it was almost ridiculous. Joey was becoming more like that. It was good to watch, but it’s hard to live up to.”
The elder Angelini was in special operations that morning, and Michael hoped he too might have been sent elsewhere, but he really knew better. His father was legendary in the department for loving the work, for loving “to get dirty,” for loving “making a grab [rescuing somebody],” for routinely walking out of a mostly extinguished inferno and lighting a cigarette while younger firefighters lay sprawled around him, exhausted.
Earlier this year, at a Holy Name Society communion breakfast tribute for his 40th anniversary as a firefighter, the short, wiry, gray-haired Angelini resisted efforts by his fellow firefighters to get him to wear more of his medals. “They convinced him to put on maybe a third of them,” Michael said. “Then he said, ‘Stop. I’m tired of pinning these on.’
“He kept them in the back of a drawer, in a box,” Michael said. “He didn’t tell us about half of them. He didn’t talk about what he did. You would be eating dinner across from him and notice that he looked dif- ferent, like, strange, and then you would realize that his face was all red, and his eyebrows were completely gone, and his hairline had receded. He was burned. You would say, ‘What happened to you?’ And he would say, ‘Aw, something flashed over me.’
“At the site, all week, guys were joking about him finding a pocket and eventually walking out. They said to me, ‘He was probably buried in a void, and as soon as he runs out of cigarettes he’s gonna come walking out.’”
Rescue workers found the body of Joey Angelini on Monday. He had been listed as missing since the day after the attack. Joey Jr. still is missing. After tomorrow’s funeral Mass at Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Lindenhurst, Michael probably will return to the site.
#8211;Ed Lowe (Newsday Columnist)
The Veteran and His Son in Portraits of Grief
CBS News: A Company of Heroes, part 1.
By Fausta
By Fausta
By Fausta
Hopes cool for freedom of American jailed in Cuba
Hopes that a U.S. government subcontractor jailed in Cuba might soon be freed were dashed when former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson said the Cuban government refused to let him meet with the prisoner.
In an exclusive interview with The Associated Press, Richardson described 62-year-old Alan Gross as an “American hostage.” He said he would not leave the island until he was allowed to see him at a military hospital where he is being held.
“My mission here as a private citizen is to secure the release of Alan Gross, an American hostage,” Richardson said late Thursday. “I’ve been informed by the Cuban government that I would not be allowed to see Alan Gross during my visit.”
Richardson said that he had been scheduled to depart Saturday, but that he told Cuban officials he would not leave until he was granted a meeting with Gross.
“I promised his wife, Judy, that I would see him,” the governor said.
It was not clear whether he had any further meetings scheduled Friday.
This is not Richardson’s first trip to Cuba on Gross’ behalf; last year he went on a similar mission in August of 2010 and came back with no results, either.
My question is, why is a former Cabinet member of the current administration doing these trips? Apparently (I’m not totally clear on this – why invite him, just to deny him access to Gross?) the Cuban government invited him this time, and yes, back when he was a Congressman, Richardson secured the release of three political prisoners.
That was in 1996.
It’s not the same to have a former Congressman, a former Cabinet member, to try this sort of negotiation; it’s just a matter of time before the Cuban regime makes Richardson leave.
The question now is, Will Cuba’s Dissidents Save Alan Gross? Capitol Hill Cubans have an interesting take.