Aechmea Bromeliifolia and a rant

Hello Friends,

I used Plant Net to identify this plant I photographed a couple of years ago in Costa Rica as Aechmea bromeliifolia. It is a bromeliad native to southern Mexico, Central America, Trinidad, and South America as far south as northern Argentina. Per wikipedia, ... Aechmea bromeliifolia can be found growing on the ground or as an epiphyte both in hot jungles and in arid regions at an altitude of up to 2,500 feet. It grows bright green leaves that have prominent spines and a bottle-shaped rosette. The branched inflorescence bears red bracts with greenish-yellow petals; the flowers are followed by black berries that are considered edible.

I shot this with a Panasonic Lumix GX7 with 3D lens, using frame sides for phantogram processing.

As for the rant:

This week provided a vast trove of the Trump administration horror show. Two things stood out for me:

1) On the third anniversary of the war in Ukraine, the United States voted against a UN General Assembly resolution condemning Russia’s as the aggresor in Ukraine. It seems we're now allied with Russia, North Korea and other anti-democratic countries, and abandoning our democratic allies in Europe. This became all the more evident on Friday in the Oval office where Trump and Vance tried to shakedown Ukraine president Zelinski to agree to a cease-fire with Russia and a rare-earth minerals deal with the USA (Trump repeatedly referred to "raw earth"), all without any securities guarantees for Ukraine.

2) Former US Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall wrote an op-ed in the New York Times sounding an alarm about the firing of top leadership in the US military as well as all the Judge Advocate Generals. The Judge Advocate Generals are the senior military professionals who interpret and enforce the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the rules that guide troops in the field. Judge Advocate Generals have a key role in the military as the independent legal authority to tell any military commander or political appointee that an order from the president or the secretary of defense is unlawful, cannot be given and should not be obeyed.

Kendall concluded hs article as follows: Our country is in uncharted territory. We have an administration that is waging war against the rule of law. The evidence is everywhere. We don’t yet know how far it will go as it seeks to control, reinterpret, rewrite, ignore or defy legal constraints, including the Constitution itself. The replacement of the military JAG leadership is one skirmish in that war, but it’s time for the American people, across the political spectrum, to recognize what is happening. America has a rogue president and a rogue administration, and we need to acknowledge that and respond.

As many of my friends are still on the fence about what's going on, I am reminded of the words of the German pastor and theologian Martin Niemöller, who reflected on his early complicity in Nazi Germany and later change of heart:

"First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me."

Regards, and welcome to the new world order,

Barry Rothstein Barry Rothstein

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