Hasta La Gadget!

The recent political witch-hunt against famed Venezuelan opposition legislator Maria Corina Machado reinforces growing concerns that democratic institutions are under concerted attack in the Western Hemisphere.

“Justice is on its knees in Venezuela with sentences being dictated from Miraflores or Havana,” Machado says, summing up the political alliance between Cuba and Venezuela’s governments that drive her country’s politics. She stands accused of conspiring to kill Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro. Another opposition leader, Leopoldo Lopez, has already been imprisoned.

Through its cohorts and directly, Cuba has been pounding democratic institutions not only in Venezuela, but also Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua. Democracy’s advocates in the region are too shortsighted, beleaguered or intimidated to fight back aggressively. In fact, they invited Cuba to participate in the upcoming Summit of the Americas in Panama, despite the fact that Cuba’s Castro dictatorship openly scorns the “democracy clause” that reserves Summit membership and participation to the region’s democratic governments. Thirty-four of the 35 nations comprising the Western Hemisphere adopted that clause during the Quebec Summit. Cuba was then and still is the Hemisphere’s last remaining totalitarian state; it also has a long history of “exporting revolution” into democratic states.

The Obama Administration initially stated its opposition to Cuba being invited to the Summit. However, in a turn-around announcement on December 17, it chose to “lead from behind” and acquiesce to the whims of those hemispheric leaders all-too-eager and willing to suspend the “democracy clause.” Not only has President Obama now accepted Cuba’s participation, but he will also be there to personally welcome dictator Raul Castro.

However, those who lobbied Obama to attend the Summit regardless of the violation of the “democracy clause” weren’t to be satisfied with his attendance alone. They also wanted the President to arrive with a gift bag for Cuba that includes a further lifting of U.S. sanctions. That, they argued, will ensure a warm reception for Obama from “troubled” Latin American leaders. And naturally, Castro would be thrilled.

If this sounds familiar, it’s because the exact same arguments were made in the months and weeks leading up to the 2009 Summit of the Americas in Trinidad. Just days before that summit, the Obama Administration did ease sanctions against Cuba. Despite this “gesture,” Obama was not received in Trinidad as a hero. He was treated as a pushover. Then Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez even engineered a photo-op with the President that featured copies of anti-American book, Open Veins of Latin America. Latin America’s “extreme Left” considers the book to be its bible. (The author, Eduardo Galeano, has recently disavowed his creation.) A few months after that summit, the Cuban government of Raul Castro seized an American hostage, Alan Gross, in a successful effort to coerce the United States into releasing a group of imprisoned Cuban spies.

For months, advocates for lifting sanctions used the Panama Summit as a prop in their campaign against what they call the United States’ “failed policy.” They would happily sacrifice our national interest in regional democracy to advance their narrow agenda. Not only is this dangerous and irresponsible, it also begs the serious question: What do they consider to be a “successful” policy alternative?

Is it the “China model,” whereby U.S. business helps to build the most lucrative dictatorship in human history?

A “Vietnam model” of state capitalism under an iron-fisted rule?

A “Burma model,” whereby reforms achieved through pressure are rolled back as soon as sanctions are lifted?

Raul Castro, Nicolas Maduro and their puppets revel in such models. But none should have a place — geographically or politically — in the Western Hemisphere. In this hemisphere, every nation (except Cuba) made a commitment to representative democracy in 2001. It was a historic commitment that, backed by the United States, has blocked the authoritarian ambitions of wannabe dictators in Latin America and generated continued support for democracy and civil society. It was a commitment that Obama’s December 17 announcement has now placed on the chopping block.

This post is part of a Huffington Post blog series called “90 Miles: Rethinking the Future of U.S.-Cuba Relations.” The series puts the spotlight on the emerging relations between two long-standing Western Hemisphere foes and will feature pre-eminent thought leaders from the public and private sectors, academia, the NGO community, and prominent observers from both countries. Read all the other posts in the series here.

If you’d like to contribute your own blog on this topic, send a 500-850-word post to impactblogs@huffingtonpost.com (subject line: “90 Miles”).

MILAN (AP) — Anita Ekberg, the Swedish-born actress and sex-symbol of the 1950s and ’60s who was immortalized bathing in the Trevi fountain in “La Dolce Vita,” has died. She was 83.

Ekberg’s lawyer Patrizia Ubaldi confirmed she died in Rome Sunday morning following a series of illnesses. She had been hospitalized most recently after Christmas. Ubaldi said that in her last days Ekberg was saddened by the illness and her advancing age.

“She had hoped to get better, something that didn’t happen,” she said.

Ekberg had long lived in Italy, the country that gave her worldwide fame thanks to the iconic dip opposite Marcello Mastroianni. The scene where the blond bombshell, clad in a black dress, her arms wide open, calls out “Marcello” remains one of the most famous images in film history.

Her curvaceous body and glamorous social life made her a favorite of tabloid press in the 1950s and 1960s. She married twice but never had children — a fact she came to regret later in her life. Some gossip magazines called her “The Iceberg” in a nod to her Scandinavian background.

But even as she became one of Sweden’s most famous exports, Ekberg maintained a problematic relation with her native country. She never starred in a Swedish film and was often at odds with Swedish journalists, who criticized her for leaving the country and ridiculed her for adopting an American accent.

Born on Sept. 29, 1931, in the southern city of Malmo, Ekberg grew up with seven siblings.

In 1951 she won the Miss Sweden competition, after being recommended to enter by organizers who saw her on the street, and went to the United States to compete for the Miss Universe title.

She didn’t win but became a model in Hollywood and later started taking on small acting roles.

Her role in Federico Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita” — where she played a movie star — shot her to stardom. The movie was a colossal success and came to define the wild and carefree days of the early 1960s.

Hosting a Swedish radio program in 2005, Ekberg recalled shooting the scene in the Trevi Fountain in Rome. She said it was shot in February, the water in the fountain was cold and Mastroianni was falling over in the fountain drunk on vodka.

“And there I was. I was freezing,” she said. “They had to lift me out of the water because I couldn’t feel my legs anymore.”

“I have seen that scene a few times. Maybe too many times. I can’t stand watching it anymore, but it was beautiful at the time,” she said.

Ekberg remained in Italy for years, appearing in scores of movies, many forgettable. She returned in two Fellini movies: “Clowns” and “Intervista.”

Ekberg married Briton Anthony Steel in 1956, but divorced him four years later. In 1963 she married again to actor Rik van Nutter, but that marriage also failed.

In an interview with Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet in 2006, Ekberg said her only regret in life was never having children.

“I would have liked to have a child, preferably a son,” she was quoted as saying. “It didn’t turn out that way. That’s life, you just have to accept it.”

In the interview, published in connection with Ekberg’s 75th birthday, she also said she wasn’t afraid of death.

“I’m just angry because I won’t get the chance to tell others about death, where the soul goes and if there is a life afterward,” she was quoted as saying.

“I don’t know if paradise or hell exist, but I’m sure hell is more groovy.”

Ubaldi said a ceremony would be held in the coming days at a Lutheran church in Rome, and that Ekberg had specified that her remains be cremated.

One of the grimmer small events of recent American life occurred just as 2014 was ending. A mother had her 2-year-old toddler perched in a shopping cart at an Idaho Wal-Mart. He reached into her purse, specially made for carrying a concealed firearm (and a Christmas gift from her husband), found his mother’s pistol in it, pulled it out, and shot and killed her. And she wasn’t the only victim of a child who came upon a loaded weapon. Between 2007 and 2011, at least 62 children 14 or younger died in similarly nightmarish accidents with loaded weapons.

Nor was this specific incident an anomaly. In fact, if you are an American, you are statistically in less danger of dying from a terrorist attack in this country than from a toddler shooting you. And by the way, you’re 2,059 times more likely to die by your own hand with a weapon of your choosing than in a terrorist attack anywhere on Earth. You’re also more than nine times as likely to be killed by a police officer as by a terrorist.

And remind me, how many American taxpayer dollars have gone into “security” from terrorism and how many into security from weaponry? You know the answer to that. In fact, guns of just about every variety seem to circulate ever more freely in this country as the populace up-armors itself in yet more ways. Think of it as a kind of arms race. Emboldened by the National Rifle Association (NRA), Americans are ever more weaponized. There were an estimated 300-310 million guns in the U.S. in 2009 (a figure that has undoubtedly risen), and up to four million Americans now own assault rifles — one popular weapon of choice, by the way, for mass killers. In the meantime, the percentage of Americans who favor a ban on handguns (25%) has fallen to an all-time low.

As for “carrying,” it’s now legal in every state in America and allowed in ever more situations as well. In the last year, for instance, Idaho, where that mother died, became the seventh state to green-light the carrying of concealed guns on college campuses. To put all this in perspective, less than two decades ago, fewer than a million concealed weapons were being legally carried in the U.S.; now, more than one million people are permitted to carry such weapons in Florida alone. In 21st-century America, the “right to bear arms” has been extended in every direction, while there has also been a “sharp rise” in mass killings.

Meanwhile — since what’s an arms race without a second party? — the police, mainlining into the Pentagon, have been up-armoring at a staggering pace. It’s no longer an oddity for American police officers to be armed with assault rifles and grenade launchers as if in a foreign war zone or to arrive on the scene with a mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicle previously used in our distant wars. And by the way, while much anger has been displayed, by the police in particular, over the recent murders of two patrolmen in Brooklyn by a disturbed man carrying a Taurus semiautomatic handgun, that anger seems not to extend to his ability to arm himself or to the pawnshop filled with weaponry that originally sold the gun (but not to him).

One mistake you shouldn’t make, however, is to imagine that Americans consider the right to bear arms universal. Just consider, for example, the CIA’s “signature drone strikes” in Pakistan and elsewhere. Over the last two presidencies, the Agency has gained the “right” to drone-kill young men of military age bearing arms — in societies where arms-bearing, as here, is the norm — about whom nothing specific is known except that they seem to be in the wrong place at the right time. The NRA, curiously enough, has chosen not to defend them.

If, to a visitor from Mars or even (as Ann Jones points out in “Is This Country Crazy?“) Europe, all this might seem like the definition of madness, it’s also increasingly the definition of a way of life in this country. What was once the “tool” of law enforcement types, the military, and hunters is now the equivalent of an iPhone, a talisman of connection and social order. It’s something that just about anyone can put in a pocket, a purse, or simply strap on in the full light of day in a land where all of us, even toddlers, seem to be heading for the O.K. Corral. Jones, author of They Were Soldiers: How the Wounded Return From America’s Wars — The Untold Story, has seen her share of carnage and experienced her share of stress. Today, however, she considers another kind of stress, the pressure to explain to others a country whose citizens don’t even notice how inexplicable they are becoming.

Ah, to go hands free is definitely a luxury – or a necessity if you happen to be driving and need to attend to an incoming phone call. Having said that, for those of us who do a fair bit of traveling and would like to make sure that our shoes are polished so that we look our very best for the upcoming meeting or presentation, why waste time using your hands, when you can be reading up on the latest pre-meeting reports and let the $129.95 Hands Free Electric Shoe Polisher do the (literally dirty) work for you?

Automatic polishers are nothing new, and this Hands Free Electric Shoe Polisher is one which is capable of dispensing liquid polish automatically to deliver a hands-free shoe shine – which would make it a great time saving tool in this day and age. The unit itself will come with a trio of rotating reels of bristles, where a nylon brush will remove dirt and dust, while a pair of reels of soft cotton bristles will rub in polish and buff the shoe to a brilliant shine. The dispenser is located within the unit can be refilled, and each purchase comes with 3 1/3 oz. of colorless shoe wax that is supposedly able to last for approximately 20 polishes. Make sure you use the Hands Free Electric Shoe Polisher on black or brown shoes only!
[ Hands Free Electric Shoe Polisher ensures you do not stain your hands copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

Online safety has come of age.

It is 21 years since “Child Safety on the Information Highway” was first published by journalist and online safety expert, Larry Magid. A year later, after the release of the notorious Rimm Sudy and the Time Magazine cover article on porn on the Internet, the U.S. Senate Judiciary held Congress’ first ever hearing on the subject. In 1996, my own organization launched what would become the world’s leading content labeling system for websites, linked to filters that parents could use to control what their kids could see on the Internet.

Since then we’ve had what one observer called a “technopanic” over online predators, which reached its apotheosis (or nadir) in NBC Dateline’s To Catch a Predator. By the mid 2000s, we saw the rise of social media, Myspace, YouTube and Facebook. Then came smart phones and the burgeoning world of apps. Web 2.0 blew away our quaint notions about online safety. Keep the computer in the main room. Look over their shoulder. Check the history button.

Kids now create the content we used to try and keep them away from and they do it with immensely powerful devices they carry around with them in their pockets.

So it behooves us to take a step back and ask ourselves what we mean by online safety in 2015. How do we frame the challenges and concerns while also positively pointing our kids, our seniors and ourselves to the extraordinary benefits of the Internet and digital technology?

At our recent annual conference, we asked the attendees in the hall and those following along on Twitter, to help us redefine online safety for a new generation of users growing up on Snapchat, Yik Yak and Tinder as well as their tech-challenged parents and grand-parents. To kick things off, we reported on our latest research entitled, “Parenting in the Digital Age” to show that a majority (53 percent) of parents felt that the benefits of their kids online use outweighed the harms. But a large minority (42 percent) was ambivalent — feeling the risks and rewards were about the same.

What emerged was a consensus around the three core elements of risks, harms and rewards:

1. Risks

Life is full of risks, both in the physical world and online. Climbing a tree, riding a bike, white water rafting are all risky behaviors. But a calculated risk, if done with care, can be a wonderful way to build confidence, resilience and a sense of self-worth in kids and adults alike.

Being online, signing up for an email account, downloading apps, posting updates on Facebook all pose some element of risk, particularly for kids and seniors. But if parents utilize content controls for their young kids, if we all set our privacy settings on social media sites, and we avoid the scams, unknown attachments and too-good-to-be-true offers of money and more, we can empower our children and ourselves. And we will better know how to deal with challenging content or experiences when they arise.

Of course there are bad risks or risky behaviors that increase the potential for harm to occur. “At risk kids” is a term used to denote those young people who act out online and who may flirt with danger or with strangers and who are most in need of help and intervention. A “bad” risk can tip the balance towards actual harm – whether emotional, mental or physical.

2. Harms

Just as in the offline world, there are real and serious dangers online. While incidences of a sexual predator using the Internet to abuse a child are very rare, these cases can create massive media attention and spread a sense of fear and foreboding amongst parents.

Cyberbullying can cause untold hurt and suffering, particularly among tweens and teens. Loss of privacy, of one’s reputation or identity and even, loss of innocence amongst younger kids are all harms that we need to identify, report and act on — both as individuals, but also collectively through the enforcement of existing laws and regulations. While we will never be able to eradicate evil or stop hurtful things from happening, we must do our part to mitigate or lessen the harm that bad online behaviors can cause.

3. Rewards

The benefits of being online are limited only by our imaginations. From education to communication, commerce to entertainment, we are all in the digital foothills of what the web and our technologies will bring. Many, like the author, Jeremy Rifkin, see an increase in empathy as young people, in particular, link and connect with others from across state and national boundaries and hear and see directly about others life experiences.

Many see the prospect of individualized learning using online resources as transforming our education system for the better. Our children will access health care, financial and government services and all forms of information in ways we can foresee and ways we can’t even conceive and we are just entering the world of the Internet of Things, wearables, robots and implants.

As each new technology is introduced, it will be up to us in the online safety community to assess the potential dangers, create new tools, policies and educational efforts as well as to articulate and celebrate what new wonders emerge.

So, here’s a working definition of online safety for 2015 and beyond:

“To acknowledge the risks, mitigate the harms while reaping the rewards of our online lives.”

We can’t have the rewards, for ourselves or our children, without taking some risks. We need to employ a mixture of tools, rules and schools to keep safe from the worst of the web, while exercising good digital citizenship within a broader culture of responsibility to ensure we enjoy the extraordinary benefits that technology and the Internet have to offer.