Israel's Independence, Patriot's Day, Boston Marathon

I love Boston. I nearly moved to Boston. It's a smart but stupid city. It's a small but big city. It has attitude, it has food and it is the center of America, spiritual America. New York is like our wang and DC is our brain but Boston is our heart; birthplace of our revolution. To strike at Boston is to wound our heart and as I was driving home from the desert, I was told by my best friend of the simultaneous explosions in Boston.
It has been hard to come to grasp with it and it is hard to really react because for one month I traveled through areas of the world devastated by United States policy. We know we have devastated areas for our way of life and if I lived anywhere in the world and I knew that someone for their comfortable life would cause so much harm to others, would you not try to hurt them back?
Let's look at Panama. Sure we gave them freedom in return for the canal but then we left them without anyway to profit from the canal. The country is essentially Honduras, a banana republic in spite of the 6% of world commerce that passes through it sidestepping all of South America. We the put in Noriega, had him do drug running and destabilizing and committing acts against humanity against his own people. We then came in to depose him, firing missiles at snipers, demolishing whole buildings full of people that go back three and four hundred years, going to colonial era. Entire blocks are missing that cannot be replaced. And these shells still stand there as only in 2009 was Panama able to run the canal at a profit and begin to invest money into infrastructure.
There's a famous downtown full of skyscrapers that city empty, essentially parked drug money. Drugs go up to United States to feed the Lawyer and Doctors' addictions and money stays there but is parked in Panama. In the meantime Panamanians live in squalor.

Then there's Colombia, where to fight the Marxist FARC we created paramilitary forces that are responsible for 80% of drug trafficking  kidnappings and murders. They used to have constant bombings there and their country is run by drug money that our citizens gladly give that allows us to keep the intelligent rich in a state of dependence and the poor in prisons.
What will happen on this day of Israeli independence, Patriots day? Will more of our freedoms be taken to find the perpetrators? Will we go and bomb more countries as revenge? Will we keep taking an eye for an eye until we are all blind?

Or will we reassess what "our way of life" actually means for us and the world? What this race to have American cars, American homes means for people working, means for people around the world? What it means to have this progress and it's effect on humanity, culture, environment?

Heart hurts for those who died, heart is angered by those who would in violent and cowardly manner would take that which does not belong to them. But we have done our share and the cycle of violence can only end when one puts down the arms and stops gouging at the eye.

Crossing the Darien Gap by Launcha, Sail boats are SCAMS!

It is MUCH easier is to fly from Panama for $90 to Puerto Obaldia and catch a launcha from there to Copurgana. There you can fly to Medellin for $150 rather than go on a dangerous overloaded launcha for three hours and then by bus 10 hours. YOUR HOSTEL WILL NOT TELL YOU OF THIS BECAUSE THEY MAKE COMMISSION OF THE BOATS!


Crossing by sea is now very commercialized and yet less safe.
Sail boats rip you off with fancy pictures, don't be lazy and go to Carti or Portobello to see the boat.
THEY ARE SCAMS!!! Four years ago a sailing trip was $300 max to Cartagena and now they drop you off in Subzurro for $500 which is about two days from Cartagena if you're lucky. Mike Wilson's Blog tells of their incompetent captain dropping off the party with no provisions and stealing the money days from their destination in the islands of San Blas.

Darien Gapster for $350 (excluding 4x4 and other fees so more like $450) is a known scam and does what I will say bellow for double the cost.

If you do take a Launcha the cost is high:

A 4x4 taxi to Carti is $30.
A rinki-dink launcha overburdened with barely enough gas to make it in good weather that regularly capsize and kill people is $115+$10 entry to San Blas=$125
It will probably be late for immigration to Puerto Obaldia so you will spend the night there $5.
Office of immigration opens next morning at eight but they need two photocopies of your passport (so get them in Panama or three in Colombia, need three to enter Panama) and the internet place opens at nine so by 10:30 you will be in Capurgana.
Capurgana is a nice place with clean beaches and in-off season you can easily find a place for $6.
The immigration office there opens once a day and works for about twenty minutes so don't miss it. Your hotel may say they don't open at all in hopes that you stay for more days but don't listen to them and go talk to Joey or the immigration office instead.

Get your launcha to Turbo in advance from Samuel for $32 as it sells out. Usually two leave at eight and at nine. They break and capsize as well.

If you have any questions in Capurgana, ask Joey, he's the Hawaian guy drinking beer near the doc.

You also don't really need proof of exit from Colombia and if they ask, anything fake will work.

America, You're Funny - War on Drugs

So between Noriega in Panama, Guatemala, El Sal, Mexico and Colombia and Afghanistan, we've spent a lot of money to fight drugs and yet when we read about countries like Colombia, we find out that we are responsible for the drug trade there. We spend money to fight that which we support so we spend money twice. Yet what we are really outraged is about welfare moms that take up a thousand dollars instead of the millions we waste on drugs that our own population demands. America.. you're funny.

"Paramilitarism in Colombia refers to the origins and historical development of far right paramilitary organizations in Colombia. The paramilitaries claim to be acting in opposition to revolutionaryMarxist-Leninist guerrilla forces and their allies among the civilian population. Right-wing paramilitary groups in Colombia are the parties responsible for most of the human rights violations in the latter half of the ongoing Colombian Armed Conflict. According to several international human rights and governmental organizations, right-wing paramilitary groups have been responsible for at least 70 to 80% of political murders in Colombia per year, with the remainder committed by leftist guerrillas and government forces. Paramilitary groups control the large majority of the illegal drug trade of cocaine and other substances together with the main Colombian drug cartels, especially in terms of trafficking and processing activities.

The first paramilitary groups were organized by the Colombian military following recommendations made by U.S. military counterinsurgency advisers who were sent to Colombia during the Cold War to combat leftist political activists and armed guerrilla groups. The development of later paramilitary groups has also involved elite landowners, drug traffickers, members of the security forces, politicians and multinational corporations. Paramilitary violence today is principally targeted towards peasants, unionists, indigenous people, human rights workers, teachers and left-wing political activists or their supporters."