Before becoming the greatest, to make a long story* sh!+, erh, aah I mean short... ran away from home at the age of 9 1/2 my mom left when I was 3 yo and I lived and begged on the streets for coins in the island of Brava CV, Africa, the smallest poorest country in the continent, it's people are abroad like America, France, Brazil and a few other countries. There are more of us abroad than incountry.
At a young age, I knew I wanted to be a somebody and ran away from home by hopping a boat, a plane and a subway car, according to New Bedford/ Fall Rive Public Library.
I ended up in B'klyn NY with my mom, 7 years later, thanks to my Uncle, who found me and brought me there.
A few years later, he moved to New York City, proper - that's Manhattan NY with my father, but we were so poor I continued to panhandle on the streets.
I left, my family when I was young yet again, they moved to Rhode Island, while I was away at school and didn't tell me. Lived in a friend's home as I investigated where they went to. I had just completed High School of Art & Design ( you know it's sister school Music & Art .or. more specifically, HS of Performing Arts, showcased in the movie "Fame," we were showcase in the novel "Up the Downstaircase" two(2) by my English Teacher, written under a pen name AKA Ms. "Eagle Eyed" Lipshitz,she used to have dreams about us male student as eunuchs in some hareem in Casablanca Morroco she was in, but I digress ... we were the ONLY school with an escalator in the Board of Ed system of public schools).
I began my professional career at 14. Fast forward... through two (2) college degrees... from CUNY-CCNY/B'klyn College/ John J. College of Criminal Justice & Long Island University... FAST FWD....
I still remember that Winter day in 2009 when I woke up and started with Wake Up - Cloud, AWS, iCloud & cloud.google.com etc. I had received a "Burn-Notice." from my job at an Aerospace Company.
I see that day as one of the defining moments in stepping into my "calling."
Before that, I let fear hold me back. A paralyzing set of fears. I was afraid of:
- Being criticized
- Not being good enough
- Not having anything to share
- Not being successful enough
- Not being a good writer etc.
They say that if you face your worst fear, fear ceases to exist.
I had a laundry list of reasons for why I couldn’t start.
But then one day I took the first step. I was sick of listening to the made-up stories in my head.
The shift was nothing magical. What changed was how I related to my mind and its stories.
I saw that I was the only one holding me back. I didn’t have to wait to be good enough or to be successful. Those were learned concepts. They weren’t true just because they were in my mind.
I decided to take one tiny step forward and start. I wanted to see what would happen.
So often our calling is not the comfortable path. It’s a path mixed with excitement and fear. Fear, because it is a path of growth.
Now, what if you don’t know what your calling is? That is another way of stopping yourself from starting. I didn’t know what my calling was when I started Wake Up Cloud.
All I knew was that it was exciting and fun. It felt magnetic to me.
That’s all I knew. That’s all I needed to know.
You do not need a map with every step laid out. You simply need to take the next step toward what resonates with you. And you need to prioritize your excitement over your fear.
To this day, I’m not fearless. I just listen to my fears less. I see them for what they are: Fearful stories.
So...
How are you stopping yourself from taking the next tiny step?
Confusion is not a problem. Uncertainty is a not a problem. The problem is how you relate to them.
When I took that first step, I realized that I was the one holding me back.
That was when my journey started.
A month or so ago, I was invited to contribute to a book where entrepreneurs share their journey to success.
That book is coming out this week. If you’re interested, you can learn more about it on the link below. There’s even an excerpt you can check out.
Here’s the link: http://www.windingroadtofreedom.com/
Until next time,
João
%
Henri
PS. The long and short of it..... have I got a story for you....
Homeless
I started my journey 'bout three (3) years ago give or take, in iNetwork Marketing. Among or college degrees. When I started this wonderful adventure, I was confident that I would succeed. I am going to make a long story sh!+ er ah mean, short, and resist listing names of Internet Business Offers that more or less took me to cleaners, amongst them a ponzy sheme. I was about to give up after charging over $12,000 + on my credit cards for programs from gifting, to matrix's, to Luxury Travel, to pre-launches, funnel systems, pyramids, and yes, ponzi schemes, to an Internet College that would take me by hand and have me making money within two weeks (ONLY $4,600 for that one). I think it was about one minute before I was going to take my computer and throw it through window, when I came across Worldprofit, and a live person called my name out. I almost fell out of my seat! y had to call my name again. I realized it was a real person talking to me from my computer. I called my son Robert and showed him. y greeted me and told me where to type my response. We were fascinated. live people are trained experts manning site. I was instructed to click on “watch video” button. I asked if y were live all time, or I just lucked out at moment. gentleman said y were live all time.
My son is a proud dealers with Worldprofit for 2 years now. He has received FAR more than ever promised there. training is focused and easy to understand, yet not boring. It is customized and delivered live or by video, whichever fits your schedule. It can start at go for internet challenged or fast paced for guru. I honestly feel that we have our fingers on pulse of internet. Included in our silver package is our domain, hosting, and we were able to select from over 60 gorgeous designs for our site. Sandi Hunter is one of top design experts in world. She is also one of co-founders of Worldprofit. She does designs for us and runs inner workings in back office. We have content management capabilities if we want to change anything with just a couple clicks. We have our own banner exchange and read for cash system that are just a couple streams of income from our package. only way to make real money online is to have multiple streams of income. We have over 10,000 products on our site for that. Robert and I use our site and dealer area as a hub for all our internet endeavors and have advantage of 75 live experts closing our sales, and taking care of our customers 24/7 at no charge. there is nothing like having live experts calling out your customer’s name and personally helping m. http/InstantComputerbiz.com and sponsor http://www.cyberwealthzone.com/ Worldprofit.com/members
Everything is automated for us in our dealer area. George Kosch, who is an internet genius loves creating gizmos for us. Wake up in morning…go to my dealer area and a new gizmo FREE.
Sean Silva left home from the Island of Brava, Cape Verde(CV), Africa when he was 9 1/2 yo and went via Portugal to Bklyn NY in the BIG Apple. His late grand parents still have a plantation in Brava CV Africa. Serf farmers take care of the estate on behalf of mum. Sean spent most of his days begging for coins in the streets of Brava CV, Africa, Lisbon Portugal & NY, NY. Went thru a one room school house in Brava, where you had to be careful where you steped on the dry rotted wooden planks that was the flooring, for fear one may end up one floor below, in the Jailhouse and have a tough time getting out. Went to PS 261, Nathan Hale Jr HS (IS 293, today) & HS of Art & Design, once arriving in USA.
Being homeless is one thing most of us avoid at all costs, but not this person. Sean Silva, "Sr. Teenager" and a philosophy/psychology major at City University(CUNY)/ City College of New York in New York, NY, USA, chooses it for his lifestyle.
Inside one of Sean's backpacks is a hp laptop, a Galaxy Tab 4.80 palmtop, a S6 cellphone, a small bag of tools, a bag of electronics, and an ultra-absorbent compressed towel the size of a washcloth. In the other is a convertible kettle, food supplies such as olive oil, fruit, cheese and bread, etc. and a bag of toiletries. His other three possessions are a down mat, a sleeping bag, 1/2 a tent, and a “bivy bag,” which is a large Gore-Tex sack.
Sean is a U1 Philosophy-Psychology student at CUNY-CCNY, and has been homeless for almost a year and a half. He lives on campus, using its facilities like most of us use different rooms in a house. He eats his meals in student lounges and does push-ups in the library. He showers at the gym or if he's outside the campus at Planet Fitness and stashes extra socks in convenient hiding spots throughout the campus. He won't say where – he guards his possessions closely.
He also sleeps outside year round, on campus in the winter and on the mountain in the summer, unless the weather is bad at which point he seeks some kind of shelter. Again, for his own safety and privacy, he doesn't disclose where. Every morning, he packs up his gear and begins another typical student day – he walks to class, and if it's warranted, he'll take a rented bicycle, or moped he built, to the further reaches of campus if he needs to be there on time, especially between classes for they give you a short time to go to/fro classes, like 10 mins.
He takes notes on his mini Acer/hp laptop at lectures, and logs long hours in the library to stay on top of his courses. He also takes MBA/ PhD courses on Computer Sci., on the side in his spare time online, noless. (You can usually find him in Blackader Lauterman, the Art History library in Redpath, Student Union at CCNY, Bklyn College or the Rathskeller at John Jay College). He goes to his college workstudy assignments every other day or so, and he logs onto an internet marketing company and tries to sell info products to the world in an effort to make some money, while sleeping and blogging about it. At the end of the day, he returns to his spot and sets up again, completing what must be the shortest commute in CUNY/CCNY Harlem NY, history. Take that back his website is 12sec commute dot com.
In the Summer months he's found at B'klyn College Student Union when he's not at his classes, there. He attends the Summer sessions there to shorten his stay in college - he can do two semesters in one Summer. When he's ot there he's at Planet Fitness working-out and using the pool, sauna, cold soaking tubs & shower facilities. On the weekends, when he visits friends, family or goes to parties, he's careful not to drink too much – alcohol slows the blood's circulation, something Sean can't risk while sleeping outside in February the middle of the Winter season's coldest days. And the strangest part? He does it all by chance or choice, you decide.
After Graduation
After completing a four-month incubator program at AOL's Palo Alto campus, Sean Silva discovered that his badge still worked so he decided to live there. "I couldn't afford to live anywhere," Simons recalled. "I started living out of AOL's headquarters."
For someone with neither money nor an aversion to sleeping on others' couches, the AOL building had plenty of allure. "They had a gym there with showers," Simons said. "I'd take a shower after work. I was like - I could totally work here...They have food upstairs, they have every drink on tap. This would be a sweet place to live."
He stayed there for twenty-two months until a security guard came to work an hour earlier and found out about Seans. He was kicked out, but they decided not to call the police.
After completing a four-month incubator program at facebook's Silicone valley campus, Sean discovered that his badge still worked so he decided to live there. "I couldn't afford to live anywhere," Simons recalled. "I started living out of facebook's headquarters."
For someone with neither money nor an aversion to sleeping on others' couches, the fb.com building had plenty of allure. "They had a gym there with showers," Simons said. "I'd take a shower after work. I was like - I could totally work here...They have food upstairs, they have every drink on tap. This would be a sweet place to live."
He stayed there for twenty-two months until a security guard came to work an hour earlier and found out about Sean. He was kicked out, again but they decided not to call the police.
After completing the usual, four-month incubator program at Google's Sunnyvale campus, Sean Silva discovered that his badge still worked so he decided to live there. "I couldn't afford to live anywhere," Simons recalled. "I started living out of AOL's headquarters."
For someone with neither money nor an aversion to sleeping on others' couches, Google's building had plenty of allure. "They had a gym there with showers," Simons said. "I'd take a shower after work. I was like - I could totally work here...They have food upstairs, they have every drink on tap. This would be a sweet place to live."
He stayed there for twenty-two months until a security guard came to work an hour earlier, one day and found out about Sean. He was kicked out, but they decided not to call the police. And so on and so forth... you get the drift... it was, just -- FUN!
In between Jobs
This man named lived in a library for two weeks, but that particular chapter in his life was ended by the police. Reports say that the homeless man, Sean Silva, was spotted peeking out of a basement window of the Ocean Township library in Monmouth County by an employee. But we suspect he was giving off some sort of tome-ing (sic) beacon.
Police discovered several books in his lair and found that the 26-year-old had taken food from the employee break room. All in all, it was a novel arrangement, but one that was frowned upon by the law. Mr. Silva, now has been released on a criminal summons and allegedly charged with misdemeanor burglary and theft.
His GF
Since he's often traveling and work and just NOT home, a homeless petite woman managed to sneak into the man's house and lived undetected in his closet for a year - and was only arrested after he became suspicious when food mysteriously began disappearing.
Police found the 25-year-old woman hiding in the top compartment of the man's closet. The resident of the home installed security cameras that transmitted images to his mobile phone, after becoming puzzled by food disappearing from his kitchen over the past several months. One of the cameras captured someone moving inside his home after he had left, and he called police believing it was a burglar. However, when they arrived they found the door locked and all windows closed. "We searched the house ... checking everywhere someone could possibly hide," the policeman said. "When we slid open the shelf closet, there she was, nervously curled up on her side."
The woman told police she had no place to live and first sneaked into the man's house about a year ago when he left it unlocked. The closet is part of a Japanese-style room, one of several rooms in his one-story house where the man lived alone - or so he had thought. Police were investigating how she managed to go in and out of the house unnoticed, as well as details of her life inside the closet, and if she had taken anything else besides food.
She had moved a mattress into the small closet space and apparently even took showers, police said, calling the woman 'neat and clean.'
She mustta had a friend when Sean's 1st wife had him arrested for trespassing in his own house in Nashua NH, he was encarserated next to a gentleman who was busted eating a sammich and drinking a soda at a house he was a squatter in, when he fell asleep while watching TV. The owner, came in, tackled him down and had him arrested after he bolted out of house.
While in Jail he attempted suicide, so he can go to a hospital rather than the county jail.
Living at the Airport
Scanning the many seated areas of Heathrow's Terminal #1, it seems like everyone is waiting for the call to board a flight. But would you spot someone who is going nowhere - and has been living in the airport lounge for four years? That is what 26-year-old Sean did until one day, by chance, he was spotted by his mother.
He had not seen or spoken to her in all that time. Sean Silva, who asked for his surname to be withheld, seemingly disappeared without a trace after falling into debt. The college drop-out sought shelter at the airport after building up a £2,000 overdraft and moving out of his home. Given the nature of international airports - with delayed passengers often taking a nap across a bank of seats - Sean found he could go relatively unnoticed, providing he kept himself clean and tidy. Free food was easy to come by, with coffee shops throwing out leftovers in clean plastic bags placed at the back of the building at the end of the day.
Sean's surreal existence came to an end when his mother spotted him using a payphone. She was at the airport to pick up a relative."We sat down and had a bit of a cry, a cuddle, and coitus in the comfort room, along with my GF," Sean said, "We're very close mum and I."
His Wife
Sean Silva met her - JoAn, in the Philippines at Kontiki Resorts Mactan Island, while I was on vacation - she was the Bookkeepper, we exchanged correspondence and became fast friends married shortly thereafter in Nashua NH, after bringing her to USA. She was born and raised in Davao City PI. We had 90 days to tie the knot, per the Finance, erh arh I mean Fiancee Visa.
While Sean was away in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait/Iraq, & Afghanistan during the war as a military civilian, working for ITT on communications for the troops, she sold the house, traded in the car a '98 Mustang Convertible, which was paid for she financed a new Chrysler's Sebring Touring car, a convertible, noless she took $25,000 and move to Florida. Came home found nothing, did some detective work and found that she moved to Clearwater, then Tampa and finally Orlando, where she worked for HUD - Orlando Housing as an Accountant. Got a new house and car etc. she bought me a Hummer, which I ended up paying for since she refused to give to me my car back. Asked her where she got the money to move 1,500 miles away, buy a new house and car etc., she said, "I hit the Lottery." OHA is missing $400K and they blame the accountants.
Everytime, I changed the oil or repaired the truck under warranty and pay for it, a check was sent in the mail from its Warranty Corporation, she would sign it and cash that check and say nothing 'bout the money. Everytime, we get a joint check from the tax man she'd sign the back and cash it and say not a thing to me 'bout the money to me. I know 'coz I'd call IRS or The Revenue Office for HSV AL, they'd tell me the check was cashed and send me the copy of the signed check wherein she'd sign my name and hers. That's a $10,000 fine and/or a year in jail, for eShe ran a background check using HUD resources on me without my written or verbal permission.
I got another job about 10 hrs away at HSV, AL I'd call and say I'll be there in Fla. in 10 hours. When I get home, find that she's not there, she's 150 miles away in Clearwater at a "female" friend's house on the beach, or her cousin's house, .or. 400 miles away, at a relatives' house, in Miami ...wink, wink. Often times, she'd stick me with my daughter, Kyle on a Friday and disappear for the weekend without saying a word and show up Monday night after work.
I get a new job in Arizona and then California, when my contract was up, worked for an Aerospace company. After six (6) years of visiting each other for conjugal purposes, came home to Fla one day after my "burn Notice" and found she moved to Chicago IL for a "better opportunity." I'm short another $10K a house and a truck, come to find out.
That's 30 days house arrest, my lawyer tells me - if I take her to court & get a divorce - WTF.
A curious thing, she moved to Fla 'coz it was cold in the winter months in Nashua NH and New England in general, now she moved without telling me to Wheaton Illinois per facebook post, where it is even colder with "Lake Effect" snow as opposed to the very winter season - she was talking about - I find she's with someone else, as expected.
She's with her Mother and My daughter, so that someone else is for the weekends, I gather. What else is new? Go figure, figures don't lie, and lies don't figure... to borrow an old accounting term. I read somehere that HUD there is missing ~$1M and they blame the accountants and the CEO of the Housing Athy is headed for Jail or was that in LA CA, it's hard to keep track without a scorecard.
Built his own, on his spare time
Sean Silva, 35, of São José de Piranha, Brazil, who use to bum spare change as a kid, built a functional car out of junk. He actually shaped the body himself out of sheet metal using a hammer and chisel. The 125cc engine is from a motorcycle, and the other parts were gathered from junkyards in his area. After four years of work, off and on, he was successful.
He used to ride around in a bicycle he made from parts he found in a junk yard and a tiny camper trailer. Silva is a handy fellow. Rent-a-Husband was his company.
Sean, on his spare time built a functional aircraft out of junk. He actually shaped the body himself out of sheet metal using a hammer and chisel. The 225cc engine (again, he think in terms of a motorcycle engine) is the air colled engine from a VW Beetle, and the other parts you guess it were gathered from junkyards in his area. After four years of work, 8 years later, off and on, he was successful.
Silva, on his pare time once again built a functional mobile home out of junk. He actually shaped parts of the body of the old school bus himself out of sheet metal using a hammer and chisel. The estimated 425cc engine (he think in terms of a motorcycle engine) is rebuilt original, engine that was in the now converted surplus school bus , and the other parts were gathered from junkyards in his area. After four years of work, 12 years later, off and on, he was successful.
Sean, on his spare time once and again built a functional LunchWagon out of junk. He actually shaped parts the body of the mail truck himself out of sheet metal using a hammer and chisel. The estimated 425cc engine (again, he think of a motorcycle engine) is rebuilt from the original engine found in the now converted surplus mail truck , and the other parts you guess it were gathered from junkyards in his area. he plans to use it to earn some money selling to the workers in plants, sugarcane fields etc. After four years of work, 16 years later, off and on, he was successful.
“Nobody believed, everybody laughed at me,” Souza told Globo.com. “I was very humbled by this, but I found and If I could built my car, I can build a plane, build a home, & build a biz, alone with my own hands.” "Well sometimes friends would help, but since it may happen that what they did was not up to par, so I had to do it again."
A few months later, along the way Silva was able to upgrade by replacing the motorcycle engine with a VW Beetle engine and the motorcycle engine's kick starter with a car ignition and add in a gearbox with reverse. The mostly Fiat shrimpmobile can reach 55+ mph on the highway, and Silva has been able to use it to find a tiny home built, himself from a shipping container, in his spare time built a food truck for his biz ( wife and son runs it ) and a job for the family in the local sugarcane fields. And maybe sell the idea(s) as a kit car, plane or home etc. for the homeless. We shall see.
Currently touring the National Parks in a small motor home and tent setup with a convertible FJCruiser love this free hp Laptop Galaxy Tab4.80 Mobilephone S6 lifestyle in the process my goal is to leave the country either go to the east coast .... the far east coast or go home. The property left behind by gr-parents is still there, taken care of my serf farmers in the event we should someday return to the homestead given to the family by the viceroy many centuries ago for services to the crown.
Homeless Millionaire maybe ...Billionaire.
Meet Sean Silva, a homeless billionaire with Worldprofit dot com. You read that right. Sean is worth billions but doesn't even own a home (he stays in hotels) because he's lost all interest in acquiring things. After making his millions and then billions, Mr. Silva, 46, lost interest in acquiring things; they didn't satisfy him, and in fact had become something of a burden. So he started learning about the Buddist philosophy paring down his material life, selling off his condo in New York, his mansion in Florida, and California, his castle in Europe and his only car, beat-up pickup truck, mobilehome and plane etc.
He hatched plans to leave his fortune to either a non-for-profit philanthropic foundation/ charity and his art collection to a new museum in Berlin. For him, wealth is about lasting impact, and legacy NOT "stuff," which you have on a self in a home or two or three all over the world. So you live a skizoidal lifestyle with stuff all over the place. Herein, some musings about how to survive everyday retaining your soul mission on earth. Living faithful in a soul-less world, getting messages in dreams- mental health news,other par-realities...
Actually, this "house," if you will is just a place for my "stuff," ya know? That's all; a little place for my stuff. That's all I want, that's all you need in life, is a little place for your stuff, ya know? I can see it on your table, everybody's got a little place for their stuff. This is my stuff, that's your stuff, that'll be his stuff over there.
That's all you need in life, a little place for your stuff. That's all your "house is" - a place to keep your stuff. If you didn't have so much stuff, you wouldn't need a "house," right? You could just walk around all the time. A "house" is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it. You can see that when you're taking off in an airplane. You look down, you see everybody's got a little pile of stuff. All the little piles of stuff. And when you leave your house, you gotta lock it up.
Sometimes, people use that as an excuse not ot go anywhere, well somebody has to watch the house like it's gonna go somewhere. Wouldn't want somebody to come by and take some of your stuff. And they come back to check if the house is still there with my stuff in it. They always take the good stuff. They never bother with that crap you're saving.
All they want is the shiny stuff. That's what your house is, a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get...more stuff! Sometimes you gotta move, gotta get a bigger house. Why? No room for your stuff anymore. This is also true for your vehicles, but that's another conversation.
Did you ever notice when you go to somebody else's house, you never quite feel a hundred percent comfortable or at home? You know why? No room for your stuff. Somebody else's stuff is all over the goddamn place! And if you stay overnight, unexpectedly, they give you a little bedroom to sleep in. Bedroom they haven't used in about eleven years. Someone died in it, eleven years ago. And they haven't moved any of his stuff! Right next to the bed there's usually a dresser or a bureau of some kind, and there's no room for your stuff on it. Somebody else's shit is on the dresser. Have you noticed that their stuff is shit and your shit is stuff? God! And you say, "Get that shit off of there and let me put my stuff down!"
Sometimes you leave your house to go on vacation. And you gotta take some of your stuff with you. Gotta take about two big suitcases full of stuff, paired down from three suitcases - gotta travel light - when you go on vacation. You gotta take a smaller version of your "house." It's the second version of your stuff. And you're gonna fly all the way to Honolulu.
Gonna go across the continent, across half an ocean to Honolulu. You get down to the hotel room in Honolulu and you open up your suitcase and you put away all your stuff , and there's stuff already there that is NOT yours. "Here's a place here, put a little bit of stuff there, put some stuff here, put some stuff- you put your stuff there, I'll put some stuff - here's another place for stuff, look at this, I'll put some stuff here." And even though you're far away from home, you start to get used to it, you start to feel okay, because after all, you do have some of your stuff with you.
That's when your friend calls up from Maui, Wawi and says, "Hey, why don'tcha come over to Maui for the weekend and spend a couple of nights over here." Oh, no! Now what do I pack? Right, you've gotta pack an even smaller version of your stuff minus a third - gotta travel light, right? The third version of your "house." Just enough stuff to take to Maui for a coupla days. You get over to Maui- I mean you're really getting extended now, when you think about it. You got stuff all the way back on the the island in Africa, OCONUS you were born in and stuff on the current mainland CONUS, you got stuff on another island, you got stuff on this island. I mean, supply lines are getting longer and harder to maintain.
You get over to your friend's house on Maui and he gives you a little place to sleep, a little bed right next to his windowsill or something. You put some of your stuff up there. You put your stuff up there. You got your Visine, you got your nail clippers, and you put everything up. It takes about an hour and a half, but after a while you finally feel okay, say, "All right, I got my nail clippers, I must be okay." That's when your friend says, "Aaaaay, I think tonight we'll go over the other side of the island, visit a pal of mine and maybe stay over." Aww, no. NOW what do you pack? Right- you gotta pack an even SMALLER version of your stuff. The fourth or fifth version of your version of your "house," it's getting harder to track with out a score card. Only the stuff you know you're gonna need. Money, keys, comb, wallet, lighter, hanky, pen, smokes, rubber and change. Well, only the stuff you HOPE you're gonna need. But I digress... but you get the jist of it, don'tcha
Forbes magazine estimated Sean Silva's net worth at $2.2 billion as of 2010, mind you that's a guess on their part. Silva moved to keep that quiet, for fear folks wouldn't understand. "But it would be foolish to think everything was going to be the same again, because they (his parents) have spent four years telling people they don't know where I am ( they gave me up for dead, when I do show up they - mum - will call the cops and have me escorted, out summarily ). You can't just walk back into their lives and say 'Hi, prodigal son returns' - you have to give everybody time.'" Angela his GF added, "It's like having a death in the family, except nobody has died - you talk to keep their memory alive."
You'll find him currently with some friends, remodeling a former HoJos in Fla. along with a consortium of other friends, fans and followers who have invested via CrowdFunding, for other transient peoples' stuff, might as well make some money on it.
There will be a death in the family soonest but again I digress...Dread Pirate Robert Robespierre....
Typically, he would send a couple of his men to the reporter’s hotel. In my case, they arrived in a late-model BMW and asked me to sit in the back, which I did, of course. But I wasn’t sure where to put my feet since their submachine guns were on the floor, making the ride to the headquarters of the Panamanian National Guard awkward and uncomfortable.
We drove into the underground garage, and from there I was escorted to Noriega’s subterranean office. The doors were made of what looked like bulletproof glass. And then there was a little waiting room with a peculiar collection of art works: Little toy toads—carved or stuffed or made of china—were arrayed on shelves. Toad or "sapo," is Panamanian argot for an informer, a snitch, a rat. And there were paintings on the walls as well. Several were of children with big eyes, some of them welling with tears.
After a few minutes, I was escorted into Col. Noriega’s office, but he was not there yet. In a position of honor above his desk he had what looked like a chrome-plated Kalashnikov. Nearby was a picture of Noriega with the late Israeli Gen. Moshe Dayan. (One of Noriega’s close advisers was Mike Harari, the notorious Israeli Mossad agent who murdered the wrong man in Norway when hunting down the people behind the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre.)
I studied my notes and my questions. Some considerable time passed, and Noriega’s pleasantly voluptuous secretary came into the office to dust. Perhaps she wanted to make sure I wasn’t getting too nosey in there by myself.
She had her hair in rollers. It wasn’t unusual for women in Panama in those days to keep their hair up like that even on the street, as if there were no hope of controlling it otherwise in the country’s heat and humidity. Indeed, there was, generally, an amazing sense of rot—of decadence, libertinage, and liberation—that even Graham Greene could not quite capture in his novel from the late 1970s, Getting to Know the General. But as I looked at my notebook and the floor, I caught a tiny glimpse of it.
Panama was way ahead of the United States when it came to the painting of nails—yin and yang symbols and what have you. The secretary was wearing flip-flops, and as she dusted around me, I could not take my eyes off her toes. Each was painted very delicately with red spiderwebs.
Finally, Noriega arrived, and as a bit of small talk I asked about the chrome-plated AK-47. Who gave it to him? "A trophy of war," he said, and laughed, but wouldn’t explain further. Instead, he wanted to talk about the social conditions of his country, which I took as an indication of the political ambitions he denied having. "Social injustices," he told me in his subterranean office, "are like a damp corner where they may grow poisonous mushrooms, and mold, and evil odors."
***
Manuel Noriega, now 83 years old, had brain surgery recently and is in a coma from which he may never recover. He long ago passed into history. But when I was covering Central America for The Washington Post in the early 1980s, and watching his rise to power, he seemed like one of those terribly transparent tyrants whose flirtations with insanity are right there on the surface for anyone to observe if they are willing to see them.
For many years, Gen. Omar Torrijos had been Panama’s strongman. He was handsome and charismatic. He played footsie with Fidel Castro and regional revolutionaries, but he also negotiated the return of Panamanian sovereignty over the Panama Canal after protracted talks with the U.S. administration of Jimmy Carter.
It was Torrijos who gave Noriega the critical position of intelligence chief and liaison with all the dark corners of the dictatorship. He probably assumed that this short, stocky man of humble origins whose face was so deeply scarred by acne that his enemies called him "La Piña," The Pineapple, would prefer to remain in the shadows.
But in August 1981, Torrijos died in a plane crash—"bad weather," it was said. And Noriega began to get publicly ambitious, giving interviews to the likes of me in 1982. Then, less than a year after Torrijos died, the civilian president he’d put in place as his successor, Aristides Royo, suddenly resigned, reportedly because of a sore throat.
I called Noriega and told him I could not credibly write that the president of Panama was quitting because of a minor health issue. So, Noriega listened for a moment, then said on background, "OK. One could say this is a constitutional coup à la panameña." He really didn’t care what we called it. He also said newspapers were being shut down to "avoid insults" and "restore social morality" while a purge would be carried out to clean up the government. But he promised that after a week, when "everything is established in order," then "a total democracy" would be put in place.
No such thing happened, of course. In short order, Noriega was the undisputed new strongman of Panama.
The Central American political landscape had grown incredibly complicated at that point. The Sandinistas, with popular support, Cuban backing, and eventual Carter administration acquiescence, had taken power in Nicaragua in 1979. Revolution was spreading to El Salvador and Guatemala. U.S. President Ronald Reagan, inaugurated in 1981, vowed to roll back the leftist tide.
Panama, with its established U.S. military presence, played an increasingly important role as a logistics hub for the Pentagon and the CIA. And Noriega positioned himself as a supporter of the "Contras" fighting to overthrow the Sandinistas. But in the shifting political landscape, when some of the Sandinistas turned on their old comrades, there was one compañero-turned-Contra that Noriega particularly disliked.
One of the swashbuckling figures who fought alongside the Sandinistas in the 1970s then joined their opposition in the 1980s was a handsome Panamanian doctor named Hugo Spadafora. In 1985, Noriega’s men grabbed him as he crossed from Costa Rica into Panama and tortured him with savagery rarely seen even among the savage militaries of Central America. Eventually they sawed his head off with a butcher knife and stuffed his body in a mail bag.
The head was never recovered.
No one doubted who was responsible. Spadafora had publicly denounced Noriega’s dictatorship and, even more to the point, his massive collusion with the Colombian drug cartels.
In the mid-1980s, the market for cocaine, especially crack cocaine, had exploded in the United States, fueling a huge crime wave in American cities. Panama offered a perfect transshipment point for the drugs going north, while its wide-open banking sector laundered the billions of dollars headed south, and Noriega oversaw all those operations.
By the late 1980s, Washington wanted to wash its hands of Noriega, but he was getting ever more deeply dug in, styling himself a dictator beloved by his people—whom he encouraged to march in the streets waving machetes.
The George H.W. Bush administration hoped to have him overthrown, but a coup attempt in late 1989 failed miserably. So a series of prods and provocations began until, finally, a car carrying four U.S. soldiers supposedly on their way from their base to a dinner in Panama City was shot up at a checkpoint and one of them died. Days later, Bush ordered the invasion that began began on Dec. 20, 1989 and lasted through the Christmas and New Year holidays.
Depending on how you look at it, "Operation Just Cause" was one of the shortest wars, or one of the costliest drug busts, in U.S. history. Some 27,000 American troops intervened in Panama, 23 of them died, and hundreds of Panamanians were killed. The Panamanian National Guard Headquarters where I had met Noriega years before was virtually leveled. For a time, Noriega hid out in the residence of the papal nuncio, the Vatican ambassador, and the Americans famously used psychological operations—relentless, blaring rock music—to try to force him out.
Finally, Noriega surrendered, and was flown to the United States to be put on trial. But the witnesses arrayed against him, including Carlos Lehder, co-founder of the Medellín Cartel, were almost as sleazy as he was. Charles Schumer, then a congressman from New York, prepared a critical report on the case that dubbed the state’s witnesses "the Felonius 15," according to Newsweek magazine’s story on the 1992 verdict. Noriega lawyer Frank Rubino joked that the prosecution had cut so many deals with criminals-turned-witnesses the trial "is going to relieve prison crowding."
But the Feds got their man. Convicted in April 1992, Noriega has been imprisoned ever since: in the United States for almost 20 years, then sentenced to seven years in prison in France on money laundering charges in 2010, before being shipped back to Panama in 2011 to serve out the remainder of his sentence.
Earlier this month Noriega underwent surgery to remove a benign brain tumor, but suffered a severe brain hemorrhage, which is why he was put into an induced coma. Even if he recovers, it is doubtful he will ever live to see the world outside a prison cell or a hospital room. Having spent so much of his life in the shadows, he is now condemned to die in them.
No comments:
Post a Comment