Second Short Quiz & Suggested Answers

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johnkarls
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Joined: Fri Jun 29, 2007 8:43 pm

Second Short Quiz & Suggested Answers

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SECOND SHORT QUIZ - EVEN SILENCE HAS AN END by Ingrid Betancourt

Editorial Comments:

(A) Every quarter of the year has 13 weeks, which means that once per quarter we have a 5-week gap between meetings. When this occurs, we have a second short quiz to fill the extra week.

(B) Following recent tradition for the last Short Quiz of the summer, the Second Short Quiz that follows is Yes/No to interfere as little as possible with the final vacation week of the summer and Labor Day next weekend.

*****

Question 1

Did Ingrid Betancourt write a book ("Until Death Do Us Part: My Struggle to Reclaim Colombia") which was published only a few weeks before her capture on 2/23/2002 by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia ("FARC"), Latin America's oldest Marxist guerrilla group which held her hostage for the next 6.5 years?

Answer 1

Yes.

Question 2

Had she been urged to write the book to explain herself and her mission by Dominique de Villepin (her university professor and mentor who, by 2002, was French Foreign Minister, who would later became Interior Minister and then Prime Minister, and who now appears poised to unseat French President Sarkozy in 2012)?

Answer 2

Yes.

Question 3

Did Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace-Prize Winner and another survivor of captivity (Auschwitz, Buna and Buchenwald in his case), write of "Until Death Do Us Part" -- "Courageous. Heroic....In the name of our shared humanity, I ask you to listen to her"?

Answer 3:

Yes.

Question 4:

Did her father serve as Education Minister in the Colombian Government, as the head of the Education Commission of U.S. President Kennedy's "Alliance for Progress" which focused on all of Latin America" and as Deputy Director of UNESCO -- then return to Colombia to become Education Minister again followed by becoming Colombia's Ambassador to UNESCO?

Answer 4:

Yes.

Question 5:

Did her mother win several prestigious beauty contests and use her new-found fame to obtain permission from the government to use a huge, unused prison as an orphanage for Bogota's destitute "street children" and to obtain funding from donors to operate the orphanage?

Answer 5:

Yes.

Question 6:

Was Ingrid's mother already immersed by her mid-20's in the thriving charities she had organized to house and educate homeless poor children when she met Colombia's Education Minister, a confirmed bachelor of 45?

Answer 6:

Yes.

Question 7:

Did Ingrid's mother later become a Colombian Senator in addition to continuing to operate a multitude of organizations that she had conceived to serve Colombia's poor and dispossessed?

Answer 7:

Yes.

Question 8:

Did Ingrid, who had one sibling (an older sister), develop a classic second-child personality, striving hard to attract attention?

Answer 8:

Yes.

Question 9:

Did she fall in love with politics at an early age as she eavesdropped on all of the frequent dinner guests of her parents = past and future Colombian Presidents, Nobel laureates, etc., etc., while her sister would become a conventional wife and mother?

Answer 9:

Yes.

Question 10:

Did Ingrid fall in love and marry a divorced French diplomat while working on her doctorate at the Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris, France's most prestigious university for studying political science?

Answer 10:

Yes.

Question 11:

Are "sicarios" young men with motorcycles who live in Colombia's poorest neighborhoods and who are hired every day to assassinate people for ridiculously small sums of money?

Answer 11:

Yes.

Question 12:

Does "Until Death Do Us Part" open long after Ingrid's divorce from her first husband because he refused to go to Colombia with her to champion the poor and dispossessed, as Ingrid is frantically trying to send their two children who had been in her custody to live with their father in the French Embassy in Auckland, because she has just learned that sicarios have already been paid to assassinate both her and her children? Does Ingrid stay on in Colombia, despite the danger?

Answer 12:

Yes. Yes.

Question 13:

As described at greater length in Q&A-5 of the First Short Quiz, does Ingrid build a career not only in serving the poor and dispossessed, but also built on denouncing corruption in general even though all Colombian politicians engaged in it, and in particular shining a spotlight on the corruption of both Colombian Presidents whose tenure overlapped with her career?

Answer 13:

Yes.

Question 14:

Indeed, did her first political campaign for the Colombian Congress feature Ingrid standing on street corners in Bogota, one of the world's most "old world" Catholic societies, handing out condoms with the slogan "I'll be like a condom against corruption!!!"

Answer 14:

Yes.

Question 15:

Was "Until Death Do Us Part" a run-away best-seller in Europe in general and France in particular?

Answer 15:

Yes.

Question 16:

Should Ingrid be excused from the commitment in the title of her first book published just before her 6.5 years of captivity ("Until Death Do Us Part: My Struggle To Reclaim Colombia") because her 6.5 years of captivity have left her with no desire to return to Colombia and no desire to engage in politics? [After all, she faced death daily for 6.5 years and had many close brushes with death, both due to hostilities and due to health.]

Answer 16:

Absolutely!!!

Question 17:

For a non-Catholic such as Yours Truly, is Ingrid a "Saint" despite often struggling introspectively in captivity with ugly human emotions?

Answer 17:

Obviously!!!

Question 18:

For The Vatican which requires not only an exemplary life but three miracles to confer "Sainthood" on anyone, should Ingrid qualify as a "Saint"?

Answer 18:

The Vatican should have little trouble finding 3 miracles associated with Ingrid Betancourt!!! The fact that such a human being could even exist is itself a miracle!!!

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