text:
Random, Real Talk

hey i’m Rachel

(shout out to Brittany for wanting me to do this)
I’m a girl who’s learned not to take life so seriously, and instead, appreciate people and experiences. I understand 4.0s don’t mean much and stress kills you and people who are fake are easy to spot. I appreciate stupid humor and I’m always up for buying hilarious clothing for under $10. I’ve also learned to be one of those strong independent women types. But some boys are charming and I do vibe well with guys. I think it’s since I’m the only girl cousin on my dad’s side of the family and I’ve grown up with a twin brother! I can be creative when it comes to rhymes/lyrics/written words, doodles, handmade greeting cards, and “paintings”. People think since I’m 5’2 and have a baby face that I’m rather unintimidating. I kind of agree, but those who know me best know I can be quite the sassmaster. I only use that word because others have called me that though. I tend to be rather reserved while meeting people, but I have an inner actress that can be loud, lead tours, and not care what people think when I dance ridiculously or sing karaoke. Once you know me I have few limits with sass and weirdness! I also have this inner voice that makes me crave adventure and exploration. It really came into being while living the study abroad life. Since everyday things became an adventure. I think I use that word too much…… but regardless… I dream of hiking, driving all around California, watching sunsets, starry skies etc. I like seeking new things. And yet, I’ve got a soft spot for the littlest most comfortable things in life. Like best friends I’ve known since I was six, falling asleep while watching Netflix/movies, the Office, shopping with my mom, petting cute dogs, going for a drive, and being ridiculous with my brother. My taste in music and clothing cannot be categorized. I can appreciate everything besides country and heavy metal. I also wear everything from sweat pants to outfits that make people ask “why are you so dressed up.” I tend to not wear much makeup because I’m lazy, however, I have the skin of a 14 year old and dark circles that never disappear so… meh. Back to other stuff, I’m a bit of a daddy’s girl because of our senses of humor and adventurous go-do nature, but my mother is forever my inspiration. I’m the weirdest combination of introvert and extrovert and I tend to be rather happy and positive when it comes to emotions that people see from me. I don’t really tell my dramatic emotions and secrets to people too often. The closest thing I have to a blabbering mouth is a blog, journal, and a bff group message. I think this aspect helps me have all types of friends- I can appeal to the outgoing or the “different” types. I’m known as a nice person but I really hope to always be more selfless and giving.

Right now I’m at this weird place in life where I should stress about what I want to do with the rest of my life, but instead, I’m just enjoying relaxing, exploring and talking with friends. I want to find something to do that has a supportive, happy, passionate workplace, engaging work, and purpose. I’m not quite enough of a free spirit and social organizer to go the non-profit route, and I know I can’t make it in cutthroat corporate climbing madness. So we’ll see what happens.

I think that summarizes me for now. Um. Yeah. Cool.

College, Home, Journal, Travel

2014, where’d you go?

IMG_3265A selfie for the future’s sake.
If I had to divide this amazing and very quick year into six memorable, categorizable pieces it’d be the following:

1. Winter quarter
2. Spring break
3. Spring quarter/end of school year
4. Six week summer
6. Purgatory(home)
If I had to summarize each of those, it’d be the following:

Winter Quarter

A time for socializing, shenanigans, and beginning to understand adventure. During this time I became extra close with and grateful for everyone at SCU. I really built and solidified friendships and with people like Mary, Brittany, Alexa, Eddie and the “freshmen” who aren’t freshmen anymore. I got to spend time with Mary volunteering at Alma youth center every week. I also saw the Dalai Lama, nearly “failed” (C+) a class because I didn’t study (memorize) enough. On the other end of the spectrum, I took a hilariously ramble-based ethnic studies class with the sassiest yet greatest prof I’ve had at SCU. I also have fond memories of visiting SF with Kyra, watching/line-judging volleyball,  visiting a park and celebrating Valentine’s/Galentine’s day. By the end of the quarter, I had decided to rally the troops and create the perfect California Spring Break Adventure.

Spring Break

Honestly made some of the best memories with the best people. The first weekend involved chillin at SCU with whoever was around. Event of the weekend was a day trip to SF with Riley and Jake. It surely was one to remember – I will never forget hippy hill and the crazy drum circle that takes place there. The week (from Monday through Thursday) was my Big Sur/Santa Cruz adventure with Kim, Gio, and Joe. It originally was just going to be me and Kim, but I’m so glad we peer pressured the guys to come! I’m still amazed thinking about the starry sky, and I still laugh thinking about lugging three trunks full of camping supplies to and from the parking lot to the campsite. Especially when we left during the rain. Anyways…

Spring Quarter

Kind of a blur.
I spent the first 3-6 weeks FrEaKiNg out about how I was failing my finance class because of a terrible quiz, terrible midterm, and unfortunate timing of necessary absences. Eventually dropped it with a W. And will redeem myself soon. We had Preview Days which was fun as always. I had meetings for my Donovan Fellowship. I tried to be less predictable/grandma-ish and more adventurous by hiking with bros and having a birthday adventure weekend. The National concert rocked my socks. And the friends I was with were the bomb. What else… lots of breakfast burritos. Met and hung with Brittany’s family. They’re adorable. End of year bay cruise with the ambassadors. The bros moved into their new apartment and life was changed forever. And, I ended the quarter getting really sentimental about leaving.

Six Week Summer

I carried out my proposed plans for my Jean Donovan Fellowship by working at El Centro Humanitario. I was able to work with two others to plan the women’s group’s photo exhibit fundraiser. I loved getting to stay busy, drive a fair amount, practice spanish, and hear some of the workers’ stories. I did all of these things. Said bye to Anna. I received the funniest voicemails EVER from Andrew Porter. I appreciated home but experienced wonder and FOMO and longing for the Bay Area. Then, a short 6ish weeks later, I was off to Argentina!!!

Holy moly. The only time I freaked out a lot was when I was in Miami waiting to board my flight. Thank the lord for best friends who dealt with me via text message. Once I was there, the craziness ensued. There was Monica the host mom- who reminded me and Jen of more of a “glam”ma. I took a full course load with more than half my classes taught in Castellano. I wrote blog posts and tweets for an internship at Oasis Collections. And I blogged for fun. I stayed out til 6am a couple times. I made a bunch of great friends. I traveled with my family. And I traveled with friends. I now understand how to feel blissfully ignorant, literally out of the loop, and obsessed with adventure slash travel.
But downside that no one talks about= stress/overwhelming nature of it all, and… three really sad things happened while I was there which was hard to be physically removed from.

Purgatory (aka home)

SUCH a love-hate relationship being home from before Thanksgiving to just before January! I love time with my family and best friends. I am constantly reminded how “bubbly” Highlands Ranch is. I’m feeling like I can’t quite be adventurous like I have been in Argentina. I’m really really excited (but a little nervous) to get back to SCU. I’ve watched a lot of Netflix, worked at LOFT, seen some cool people but…. yeah. OH and highlights= making fudge and a shotski with my dad. Sue me for being a daddy’s girl. Oh and I’ve attempted to begin “running” (jog/walking).

Top things I’ve learned this year:
How to admire and seek adventure even in daily life
How to be one of those strong independent women types
How to be the foreigner slash outsider
Quality not quantity of friends
Sisters always and forever before misters
I’ve kinda left my heart in (the) San Francisco (Bay Area)
Communicate. Be a self advocate.
Journal and reflect. It keeps you sane and keeps your secrets from reaching the world.
Treasure moments and be grateful.
Don’t take life too seriously.
Challenge yourself.
Pay for experiences not things. (I say after shopping a lot lately yikes)

a day in the life

As I got antsy while binge watching Bob’s Burgers this morning, I embarked on a selfie slash self portrait series. These are simply the result of me always wanting to feel entertained. I never actually post selfies like some do, so whenever I start taking them, I get stuck between looking super awkward, super stereotypical, super serious and way too artsy. So here ya go. Me. Raw. Tangled hair. No makeup. Unbrushed teeth?

the creepiest night of my life

Hicks road? (Or another creepy part of the greater San Jose area)

I don’t even remember when it was exactly, but one night during freshman year, two cars of my SCU friends set out in search of something haunted. After hearing about and looking up creepy locations around San Jose, we settled with Hicks Road. Our sense of adventure fuelled us on this night away from campus. It started out like any adventure: Blasting music, laughing and joking with friends, and navigating to an unknown, exciting place. It turned a little more creepy with the thoughts that swirled in the back of our minds. Roshni told us she thought their was a creepy trail in the area and “warned” us about rumors of albinos who hated trespassers, ghosts, and a haunted bridge where a girl was murdered. I thought little of it because my main entertainment was riding in the car and thinking about how scared Roshni would be.

The night was freeing. Dark skies surrounded us and crisp air flowed through the windows we had open in the car. Eventually we got off the highway and found ourselves winding a narrow road up and around hills that became more and more removed from any familiar sense of suburbia San Jose. I joked of emergencies when we lost cell service, but we kept driving the fun, deserted road. Eventually (somehow) we ended up at a dead end at the bottom of a turn-off from the main road. We passed what Roshni had us all assume was the pathetic “bridge” that was definitely not a bridge. But regardless, just a little farther up, we hit a dead end. This “dead end” was little more than darkness and fenced-off private property. But we stopped the cars and got out.

It was impossible to see without headlights, car lights, or phone lights. It was nice to experience the quiet and blindness- only ruined by our social selves. To keep the creepy vibes flowing, people wandered off into the darkness. Some type of grassy fields surrounded us. In pairs or threes, people walked away then came back when they were a little too freaked out. They spoke of hearing something coming closer to them until they ran back. We assumed it could’ve been a cow or horse that we couldn’t see! But who knows. For me, the best moments were when we were all together, avoiding scary hype or anything ridiculous.

Our fun, adventurous times were cut short by paralyzing fear. We saw lights coming closer in the distance. They were winding down the same hill we had descended reach our dead end. Adrenaline kicked in and we chose “flight” instead of “fight.” The only assumption we had was that this car was about to confront us, in the darkness, in the middle of nowhere, where we were essentially lost and without cell service. Our childish ghost stories and creepy haunted fears took a back burner. We hurried to pack in the cars and speed back to where we came from.

As we were leaving the dead end, “bridge” area, we could make out the vehicle. It was a dark truck that stopped where we sped up the hill to escape.
But the fear continued.
The truck followed us.
It stalked us up along the winding road, back to the main road that was still much too far from comforts of civilization.

Suddenly, colored lights started flashing.
Confusion collided with our fear.
After hesitating a little longer, both our cars pulled over.

They (the most suspicious “officers” I’d ever seen) asked us classic questions. But the problem was, since there were two cars of us and two of the officers, we couldn’t tell what was happening to the other car at the same time.
My car was asked what we were doing and if we had been drinking.
We responded honestly and nervously: Looking for a haunted bridge, and sober as ever.
Our friends weren’t “let off” quite as easily.
Their officer asked to search their car. They obliged… although I’m not sure the officer had reasonable cause to be honest.
Eventually we learned they were park and wildlife patrollers and they let us go.

We hadn’t necessarily done anything wrong besides accidentally stop at potentially private property.
They followed (chased) us and pulled us over because we seemed suspicious.
Unbeknownst to us, the land is a popular area for drug lords to do business.

We cruised back, our heart rates stabilized, and we were left with only bizarre, confused memories of our creepy night.

Lists, Random

things to be grateful for

Considering it’s the 20th of November… the month of Thanksgiving… I really should be trying harder to think about everything I’m grateful for. I do try to notice little things in daily life. But I want to make a list to record what I’m thankful for too! One for each day of the month so far- here we go!

  1. Parents who support me and my brother in studying abroad, something quite costly and out of the norm.
  2. Friends from SCU who don’t forget about me and make me really really way too excited about going back to school.
  3. A dog that was a childhood companion and taught me so much.
  4. Friends from HOME that I can and will ALWAYS count on.
  5. Technology for making it way too easy to stay in touch.
  6. The fact that I have SO MUCH food to eat that I’m gaining weight instead of going hungry.
  7. People with patience who let me try to use Spanish even though I’m mostly clueless.
  8. Attending a university that values more than just academics.
  9. Being relatively healthy and free of major concerns (besides the fact I reeeally need to go to the gym).
  10. Cafe culture that has shown me the importance of conversation and connection.
  11. Tobasco, or any food with spice and major flavor.
  12. The Office, for making my days brighter.
  13. Study abroad friends who have been there during all the ups and downs.
  14. Nature! Oh how I love you.
  15. Inspirational quotes that aren’t the cheesiest and therefore actually relate to my life.
  16. Spotify- and music that fits every type of mood or day.
  17. Fresh flowers, comfy shoes, exact change, blue skies- simple pleasures
  18. Sass, sarcasm, and smiles that make the world go round.
  19. Creative people who inspire me and make life more colorful
  20. Dare I say… hugs? They make most things better. Unless they’re awkward. Awkward hugs are the worst.
Deep thoughts, Home

I knew I’d cry today.

It’s not that November 16th has any significance, it’s just that I knew I’d cry the day Buddy had to go. When you have a big black dog that miraculously lives from second grade until junior year of college (and who dictates your parents’ daily schedules), he’s truly really not just a pet. As lame as it sounds, he’s as much of a brother as Trevor and as much of a best friend as everyone else I’ve grown up with at home.

Cheesy memories and feelings below:

He was a two-year-old puppy we adopted from the Dumb Friends League when my brother and I were eight.
He was the sweetest of the dogs we met at the time. Automatically gentle and loved leaning on us while we pet him.  But as most shelter dogs, he had a couple oddities. For him, he had separation anxiety. But with the amount of time we spent with him, and how obsessed and in love we became, the problem eventually faded away (after a hole in our fence and many other destructive acts).When I was younger, I used to set up our couch and chair cushions on their side, then make him hurdle over them in order to get a piece of dry food. Along the same lines, I would pretend he was a skilled avalanche or drug-busting dog and make him sniff out where I hid food or toys. In fifth and sixth grade, we found out he liked to howl when Trevor played the trumpet. In the summer, we’d be outside in the backyard where he used to ferociously run laps around the yard and finish by jumping on us and play biting. Strangers we’re a bit put-off , but I knew it was all fun.

Growing up, he matured with us.
When we had to be up and moving every morning for middle and high school, he would cheerfully wake us up before our alarms with his jingling collar, panting, and really strange howling noise. He stopped playing so aggressively, but was still as present as ever. Hiking was always fun when he walked in front of us and scared people with his wolfish looks. He was always up for an adventure outside, or lying by our feet inside. I don’t know life without waking up to panting, having “dinner time” at 3pm, and making sure he got walked everyday.

Going to college was weird.
Each time I’d come home he’d be a little slower, skinnier, and a little more gray. But I was always excited to see him. Pictures of him peacefully sleeping gave me just enough motivation to finish classes and get back to Colorado. In many ways he was a symbol for everything I love about home: it’s consistency, love, and comfort. His deathly fear of thunderstorms and loud noises taught me patience and empathy. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve spent stuck in the basement or blasting the TV trying to comfort him. (We were pretty glad when he started to go deaf…) Over summers, his presence taught me the importance of humility and companionship. His presence minimized the attention placed on me when my brother was off somewhere and I was an only child. I’m not cut out to be an only child, and luckily, my parents treated Buddy like another (more important, more easygoing, less sassy, less financially draining) child. His presence was also reassuring when I was learning to be more independent than ever.

Even in his (mostly) silence, he was the social butterfly of our family. Dogs bring people happiness and dogs bring people together. Like most dogs, he showed me happiness, care, and LOVE. Tremendous love. He showed me values we can all use to relate to each other and carry on conversation regardless of the situation.

I’m struggling to write this because I don’t know how to explain everything. But yeah.

Our home may just be a house without Buddy.
It will lack the same warmth and black, furry friend we all know and love.
We have no one to say bye to when we leave to go out, and no one to welcome us enthusiastically when we get back.
I have no one to “force” me to go for a beautiful walk down the street or through the openspace.
No one to watch eat snow on the deck or get drenched in the rain.
No one to drool on my shoulder while riding up to the mountains.
No one to stay downstairs with me while I binge watch Netflix late into the night.
No one to eat scraps off the floor.
No one to successfully force into taking snapchats selfies with me.

I held hope (maybe a little too much hope) that he’d still be there when I return home in six days. But I guess my quivering jaw and awkward goodbye-but-hopefully-not-goodbye-forever at the end of July was needed.
There’s going to be a bit of a emptiness and change when I return.
Our selfless, cute-as-possible, physical embodiment of sweet happiness will be in dog heaven. I sure hope that place exists!
Otherwise I’ll probably go ahead and cry a little bit more…


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Attack on Peace Community in Colombia

Last July, two armed men in uniform identifying themselves as Black Eagle paramilitaries stopped a vehicle traveling to the small town of San José de Apartadó in northwest Colombia. They forced Dairo Torres from the car at gunpoint and told the driver to be on his way. Minutes later another car passed and discovered Torres’s lifeless body. He had been shot at close range.

Torres was a leader of the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó, which is made up of several hundred families who were forced to flee their lands. When it was founded in 1997, the Peace Community declared its neutrality in Colombia’s long-running internal conflict. This meant that the entry of armed actors into the community, including the state security forces, was forbidden. Another key principle was that community members refuse any direct or indirect assistance to the armed groups.

In recent years, the Peace Community, now numbering almost 1,300 people, has been organizing to recover lands its members were forced to leave. With a return by community members to the hamlet of Mulatos planned for February 2008, para- militaries are once again on the rampage, while the army and police continue abetting the repression—in many cases, as active participants.

On the ten-year anniversary of the Peace Community, campesinos and supporters gather to honor those assassinated by the paramilitaries—photo from

Torres was the fourth leader of the community killed in the last two years. In one month alone, two sympathetic neighbors of the community were also murdered—one by the army and the other by paramilitaries, according to a statement released by the community.

A recent legal study published by the Law School of the Autonomous University of Colombia found that in its 10-year history not one of the more than 600 crimes registered—including murders or disappearances— has ended in a conviction. In fact, few have even gone to trial. “You come face to face with the perversity of justice in this country, because the mechanisms of impunity operate in both directions: they not only declare the guilty innocent, but they also declare the innocent guilty,” says community leader Milton Barrera.

Indeed, the government often accuses the community of harboring guerrilla sympathies and even of being a guerrilla hotbed, despite the fact that out of the 168 violent deaths endured by the community about 25 were at the hands of guerrillas. The legal study attributes the remainder to paramilitaries and the military.

The Pacification of Urabá

San José is situated along the banks of the Apartadó River in the region of Urabá near the Panamanian border. Urabá has a long history of guerrilla activity, dating back to the 1960s and 1970s when guerrillas first arrived attracted by the growing banana workers’ unions, a total lack of official state presence, and the thick jungle cover perfectly suited for guerrilla warfare. The state response to the growing power of the rebels was fierce and by the 1980s Urabá became known as one of the most violent areas of the country.

A leftist political party called the Unión Patriótica (UP) emerged in 1985 out of failed peace negotiations between the government and the largest guerrilla group, the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC). The UP was made up of unionists, campesinos, and leftist social organizations of all kinds that sought to integrate the guerrillas into a legal, non-violent political movement. The UP became a formidable political force throughout Urabá and San José was a bastion of UP support until the late 1980s when the party dissolved after state security forces and paramilitaries assassinated or disappeared more than 3,000 of its members, including two presidential candidates.

Since San José de Apartado had been a UP stronghold, the right-wing paramilitaries, or “paras” as they are known locally, came down like a hammer on the small town. From 1994 to 1998, paramilitaries, backed by the military, initiated a campaign to “cleanse” Urabá of guerrillas. But much of the violence was directed at non-violent, social organizations deemed “subversive”—namely, unions, left-leaning political movements, farmers’ organizations, and clergy members. The military and paramilitaries proudly refer to this process as the “pacification of Urabá.”

“The Peace community was born out of this context of confrontation and extermination that social organizations suffered at the hands of the state and the paramiltaries,” says Pedro Rodríguez, a community lead- er. “When the exterminations began to increase is when we started thinking about a neutral community.”

Building Community

The community fiercely protects its neutrality from the state and the other armed actors. In 2004 the government proposed to install a police outpost in San José in direct violation of the community’s rules. At first, the government seemed receptive to the community’s counter-proposal of a peripheral police presence, but deadlines on decisions set by the talks continued to pass without results.

Then came the massacre of eight community members in February 2005. Eyewitness accounts and human rights reports implicate the Army’s 17th Brigade in the massacre. The government used the massacre, which it falsely blamed on the FARC, as an excuse to station the police within San José, illegally occupying the house of a community resident.

In response, the entire Peace Community left San José and reestablished itself a few miles down the road, naming the new settlement San Josecito, or little San José. San Josecito became the new headquarters of the Peace Community. The move marked another of at least ten mass displacements community members had been forced to endure by the armed actors.

Homemade sign stating the Peace Community’s principalsphoto from

As Rodríguez notes, “One of the community’s objectives is the return of our lands, so all the true owners eventually get their lands back.” Over the years, community members have progressively resettled land they were once forced to flee—in many cases, carrying “nothing more than the clothes on our back.”

“Returns,” as the resettlements are called, are complicated and dangerous endeavors. In other parts of Urabá and throughout Colombia the government has sanctioned and administered returns, but as one community member mentioned, “We don’t believe in the returns done by the state. We do ours autonomously.”

It’s not hard to understand why: on the trail between the different hamlets of the Peace Community there are a group of one-room brick shacks built by the government for one of its sponsored returns. The community says they were built for a photo-op during the visit of an international diplomatic delegation. The huts remain unoccupied.

The Community devised what could be called a “lily pad strategy” in which the closest areas to San Josecito are resettled first, from which they can then “leap-frog” to more distant resettlements at a later point. La Unión in 1998 was the first resettlement and is nearest to San Josecito, followed by Arenas Altas in 2000 and La Esperanza in 2006.

The return process takes months to complete. The Community starts by surveying the area to determine the security situation and to find out what infrastructure remains. Usually, next to nothing is left since these are areas that were subject to bombings and scorched earth tactics by the military and paramilitaries. The next step is planting crops and building rudimentary structures, all of which is done as quickly as possible by collective work groups. Finally, when the crops are ready for their first harvest a huge contingent of the community will accompany the first pioneer families to the resettlement and help them get situated.

Mulatos and Memory

The next return will be to Mulatos, which is particularly symbolic, painful, and dangerous because Mulatos was the site of the February 2005 massacre. It was in this area that eight people, including a founding leader of the community, Luis Eduardo Guerra, and his family were hacked to death by machetes.

When news of the killings arrived, a 100-person search party left San José with the hope of at least recovering the bodies. Guerra was found facedown in the mud with his 17-year-old partner, Beyarina Areiza, next to him. She had been cut in half. Next to her was Deiner, Guerra’s 11-year-old son.

Thirty minutes walk from this macabre scene, the Community found a mass grave with the bodies of the other five campesinos: a field worker, a couple, and their two children—Santiago was not even two- years-old, Natalia was six. As the bodies were pulled out of the mass grave, members of the 17th Brigade stood nearby laughing and were seen washing off a blood-soaked machete they had found on the scene. “It was used to slit throats,” explained the soldier. After the killings, 120 families decided to leave Mulatos.

Two years after this atrocity, the attorney general’s office called 69 members of the 17th Brigade in for questioning. To date, no formal charges have been filed. (The army’s 17th Brigade is one of the few army units that had been decertified by the U.S. government for human rights abuses. This means it is officially cut off from receiving U.S. military assistance through Plan Colombia.)

“We’ll make an initial return with eight families to Mulatos. And we’ll be holding our heads high because we won’t allow our lands to be stolen,” says Acosta. The return is planned for February 21, the second anniversary of the massacre. One community member adds, “We’ve always had one thing clear: at any moment we might die. That’s our reality. We know we’re going to a complicated area.”

Verbal threats from paramilitaries have increased recently, particularly around the more isolated hamlets. Their methods have changed, but the threat remains: “The paramilitaries have a presence in every municipality of Urabá. They no longer enter a town in huge blocs. Instead, they do it in groups, small groups. And they still do constant and permanent roadblocks and kidnappings. That’s how they control the area, economically, socially, and physically,” Rodríguez observes.

But the Peace Community remains hopeful. Says Rodríguez, “We’re a strong community. In ten years of struggling, not the guerrillas or the state has been able to finish us off.”

Teo Ballvé is NACLA’s web editor. A journalist based in Colombia, he edited, with Vijay Prashad, Dispatches From Latin America: On the Frontlines Against Neoliberalism (South End Press, 2006). Juan Ricardo Aparicio contributed to this article.

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World Religious Leaders Invited to a Day of Prayer for Peace

John Paul II Also Urges Catholics to Fast on Dec. 14

VATICAN CITY, NOV. 18, 2001 ( John Paul II today convoked a meeting of the world´s religious leaders, and extended a special invitation to Muslim leaders to attend.

The Pontiff made the announcement to the faithful gathered in St. Peter´s Square for the midday Angelus. The international prayer meeting will take place in Assisi, Italy, on Jan. 24.

A similar event took place in Assisi in October 1986. On that occasion, combatants in numerous conflicts around the world laid down their weapons for 24 hours, at the Pope´s request.

The Bishop of Rome also asked Catholics worldwide to observe Dec. 14 as a day of fasting and prayer for peace.

“The international scene continues to be disturbed by worrying tensions,” the Holy Father said from the window of his study. “We cannot forget the intense sufferings that have afflicted and still afflict so many of our brothers and sisters in the world.”

Peter´s Successor briefly reviewed the tragedies the world has endured in recent weeks: “thousands of innocent victims in the grave attacks of last Sept. 11; innumerable people forced to abandon their homes to face the unknown and, sometimes, a cruel death; women, the elderly and children exposed to the risk of dying of cold and hunger.”

“In a situation made dramatic by the always present threat of terrorism, we feel the need to cry out to God,” he said.

“The more insurmountable the difficulties and obscure the prospects, so much the more insistent must our prayer be, to implore God for the gift of mutual understanding, harmony and peace,” the Pope added.

He recalled that fasting is part of the Jewish, Christian and Muslim tradition, and gives greater intensity to prayer. He proposed the Dec. 14 day of fasting to coincide with the Muslims´ month of fasting, Ramadan, which began the previous weekend.

John Paul II mentioned the date as an opportunity for Catholics to fast “and pray with fervor to God so that he will grant the world a stable peace, based on justice, and make it possible to find adequate solutions to the many conflicts that trouble the world.”

Likewise, the Pope proposed that, “what is saved by fasting be placed at the disposal of the poor, especially those who at present suffer the consequences of terrorism and war.”

John Paul II went on to “invite the representatives of the religions of the world to come to Assisi on Jan. 24, 2002, to pray for the surmounting of oppositions and the promotion of authentic peace.”

“In particular, we wish to have Christians and Muslims come together, to proclaim before the world that religion must never be a reason for conflict, hatred and violence,” he said. “Whoever really accepts the word of the good and merciful God, cannot but exclude from his heart every form of rancor and enmity.”

John Paul II justified his initiative by saying that “in this historic moment, humanity needs to see gestures of peace and to hear words of hope.”

“It is urgent that a common invocation be raised from earth to heaven, to implore the Almighty, in whose hands is the destiny of the world, the great gift of peace, the necessary condition for any serious endeavor at the service of humanity´s real progress,” the Holy Father said. He entrusted the success of the initiative to the Blessed Virgin.

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Fork me on GitHub

Ice - Comprehensive RPC Framework

What is Ice?

Ice is a comprehensive RPC framework with support for C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, Python, and more.

Object-Oriented RPC

With Ice, network interactions are operations called on remote objects. Familiar object-oriented idioms allow you to design elegant and powerful networked applications.

Improve Productivity

There is no need to worry about details such as opening network connections, serializing and deserializing data for network transmission, or retrying failed connection attempts (just to name a few things).

Language and Operating System Interoperability

Write your client in one language, your server in another, and run them on your favorite platforms. It's all seamless, your client and server are unaware of the language and platform the other is using.

Ice provides 100% native C++, C#, Java, and JavaScript implementations. Other languages leverage Ice for C++ to deliver improved performance.

Intuitive IDL

Define the contract between your client and server using Ice's IDL, Slice.

Slice provides a rich set of data types that cleanly maps to all supported languages. User-defined types include enumerations, structures, sequences, and dictionaries, as well as classes and exceptions. Classes support pointer semantics, so complex graphs of objects can be passed over the wire.

module YP {
class PersonDetails {
   string phoneNumber;
   optional(1) string address;

interface PhoneBook {
    PersonDetails find(string name);

Ice is Flexible

Make synchronous and asynchronous invocations using TCP, UDP, SSL/TLS, and WebSockets. Bidirectional connections allow a server to reuse a connection established by a client to make callbacks.

Synchronous and Asynchronous

Ice supports both synchronous (blocking) and asynchronous (non-blocking) invocations. With a synchronous invocation, the caller's thread blocks until the RPC has completed. An asynchronous invocation allows the caller to continue using the thread while the RPC is in progress and to be notified of the result.

On the server side, Ice supports both synchronous and asynchronous dispatch. The default is synchronous dispatch, where a server's thread reads the request, then locates and executes the implementation. With an asynchronous dispatch, the server's thread gives a callback to the implementation and is immediately available for additional requests. The implementation provides the result asynchronously through the callback.

Bidirectional Connections

An Ice connection normally allows requests to flow in only one direction. If your application requires the server to make callbacks to a client, the server usually establishes a new connection to that client in order to send a callback request. Network restrictions often prevent a server from being able to create a separate connection to the client, such as when the client resides behind a firewall.

A bidirectional connection offers a solution. Requests may flow in both directions over a bidirectional connection, allowing a server to send callback requests to a client over the client's existing connection to the server.

Code Generation

A Slice compiler will map each Slice type to a default type in the target language. You can also customize this mapping. For example, a Slice sequence<string> becomes by default a std::vector<string> in C++ and a String[] in Java. Slice metadata allows you to generate another compatible type, such as std::list<string> in C++ and java.util.List<String> in Java.

Dynamic Invocation and Dispatch

Besides static invocation and dispatch, which rely on compiled Slice definitions, Ice supports dynamic invocation and dispatch, which delay the decision as to which types are used for communication until run time. This feature permits you to create applications (such as routers and protocol bridges) that must deal with Slice types that are unknown at compile time.

Ice is Secure

Ice offers powerful and easy to use security features. The IceSSL plug-in uses your operating system's SSL/TLS stack to encrypt your data and authenticate your connections.

Data Security

IceSSL is simple and easy to use, requiring just a few lines of code to get started.

Learn more about using IceSSL

// Client configuration file.

Ice.Plugin.IceSSL=IceSSL:createIceSSL // Initialize IceSSL plug-in
IceSSL.CAs=cacert.pem                 // Certificate authority
IceSSL.CertFile=client.p12            // Client Certificate
// Client.cpp

// Stringified proxy for an object reachable through a wss endpoint
string strProxy = "hello:wss -h localhost -p 5064";

// Create a proxy from stringified representation
HelloPrx hello = HelloPrx::checkedCast(communicator->stringToProxy(strProxy));

// sayHello over a secure connection

Ice is Fast

Ice uses a compact, efficient binary protocol to minimize CPU and bandwidth consumption.

Efficient Binary Protocol

Ice was designed from the ground up for applications that require the utmost in performance and scalability. At the network level, Ice uses an efficient binary protocol that minimizes bandwidth consumption. Ice uses little CPU and memory, and its highly efficient internal data structures do not impose arbitrary size limitations. This allows applications to scale to tens of thousands of clients with ease.

For bandwidth-limited communication (such as over satellite channels), Ice provides protocol compression, which reduces the size of invocations to the absolute minimum. Compression can be enabled and disabled at run time and requires no code changes.

Request Forwarding

Ice applications can receive requests as opaque blobs of data and forward these requests to new destinations. This enables the creation of very efficient message routers, such as IceStorm or Glacier2, because messages can be forwarded without the need to unmarshal and remarshal their payloads.

Ice is Reliable

Create fault tolerant and load balanced deployments.

No Single Point of Failure

Ice allows you to create fault tolerant applications. Multiple instances of a server can be deployed on different machines, with transparent fail-over if a machine crashes or is disconnected from the network. This not only makes applications resilient against failures, but also increases performance because Ice allows you to balance the load of an application across multiple servers.

All Ice services can be replicated for fault tolerance, so they do not introduce a single point of failure.

Ice is Everywhere

Develop in C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, Objective-C, PHP, Python, and Ruby. Deploy on Linux, macOS, Windows, Android, iOS, and more.

Multi Language

Ice provides 100% native C++, C#, Java, and JavaScript implementations. Other languages leverage Ice for C++ to deliver improved performance.

Multi Platform

Ice runs on a wide range of platforms, from mainstream servers to smart phones and embedded devices.

Ice Services

Ice is more than a RPC framework. It also provides a number of complementary services for your networked applications.

Deployment and Monitoring

Firewall Traversal

Event Publish/Subscribe

Freeze &

Persistent Object Storage

File Distribution and Patching


text:
Narcos: Season 1 (2015)

narcos season 1 poster

What I liked:

  • The cast. Seriously, they all brought something to the table.
  • How all the Colombians spoke Spanish, not English. Made it real authentic, and I loved that.
  • I really enjoyed the DEA cat story arc. Silly between all the serious, but it made me laugh.
  • Wagner Moura as Pablo Escobar. Seriously, this guy owns the role. Wow.
  • The dark humour that showcases from time to time. It is beautiful.
  • The way the story is told from both sides – Escobar and his cartel and then, of course, government, Americans, DEA, all of it. Very good.
  • The way that each and every episode was shot and the colours – it looked arresting and beautiful and just a tad dreary.
  • The politics and the wheeling, dealing, and scheming. There is always something cooking, always someone trying to screw someone over, advance themselves, use people, and it never gets old.
  • The real photos and footage that were sprinkled throughout made sure to remind people that this is not simply some crazy Hollywood concoction.

narcos geniuses

What I didn’t like:

  • Sometimes there are so many characters introduced, made to seem like they should be more important and then they disappear, and sometimes (and I mean sometimes) they get dragged back up for something and it is really difficult to remember how/if/when/where the fit in, exactly.

narcos where is she

After Netflix finally launched in South Africa recently, I decided to give the one month trial a shot to see how it would hold up with our delightful internet, see if it was worth it. My fiancé and I decided to test the concept with Narcos, and all round, everything worked out perfectly! Netflix runs smoothly, and Narcos was the most awesome place to start up. The show is absolutely bloody brilliant. Yes, everything I enjoy in a show, it had it. The cast carried the story wonderfully, and Wagner Moura was particularly good as the infamous Pablo Escobar. The show is shot so well and the colour palette is amazing, all washed out and dreary. The performances were solid and elevated the show some more, and there is never a dull moment to be found. The sarcasm in Narcos is golden, I love it – it is sharp and it is dark, so that’s great. Also, while this is Escobar’s show, Steve Murphy is highly entertaining, and watching him and Javier Peña together is well worth it. They just work off of one another, and they do so well. I am always sold on a show that features politics, violence, and, of course, gangsters, so I had high expectations for this show going in and I cannot say that I have been disappointed. While the show starts Escobar off as a small smuggler that hit the jackpot because he is business savvy, the story progresses and shows you that, while you can feel for him at times, he is a monster, no two ways about it! The show is so engrossing from the off that it is really quick to lose yourself and hours of your life. The story is so unbelievable that you just have to see more of Escobar and his crazy antics, and well as the extreme hard on the DEA had for him, and all the things that they set out to do to take this drug lord down. I am particularly impressed with the fact that Escobar and anyone touching on the local Colombian story and the law enforcement spoke Spanish, and the Americans spoke English because it gave it a way more authentic feel. Subtitles don’t irritate me in the slightest, and I would not sacrifice them whatsoever to have this all in English. I think it would ruin Narcos for me in some way. The pacing for the show is also awesome, as you are focused on this intense, gripping story that never really lets up. It is fast, it is slow, but it is never, ever for one moment boring. The pacing keeps you on the edge of your seat and desperately wanting more. I cannot recommend this show enough, obviously. Definitely the best new series I have seen in quite some time. I am officially suffering from a Narcos hangover, and it is so long till we get more!

narcos threat

10 thoughts on “Narcos: Season 1 (2015)

  1. Satua says:

    One more great show that I haven’t watched. Too many to watch. 😀 You should check out House of Cards if you like politics. It’s not very physically violent though but so dark that I couldn’t binge watch all three season as it made me feel so bad.

    Liked by 1 person

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