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http://www.soaw.org/new/article.php?id=1295
Vigil to Close the SOA/ WHINSEC
November 17-19, 2006
Together We'll Shut it Down!
This November 17-19, thousands will gather at the gates of Fort Benning, Georgia for the Vigil to Close the School of the Americas! Following on the heels of our first vote in Congress in seven years, this year's Vigil is shaping up to be a powerful time for movement building and an effective tool in the campaign to close the SOA/ WHINSEC.
2006 Schedule of Events
Read about past Vigils to Close the School of the Americas.
NOVEMBER ORGANIZING PACKET: The November Organizing Packet is a great resource for you and your community as you spread the word about the SOA/ WHINSEC and as you make plans to attend the November 17-19 Vigil to Close the SOA at Fort Benning, Georgia. In it, you'll find information about what to expect at Ft. Benning, logistical information to assist your trip planning, media, legislative, fundraising and outreach tips and resources, and flyers you can reproduce and use in your community. Click here to view or download a hard copy of the packet.
HOTELS: See a list of hotel and other accomodations in and around Columbus, Georgia. Contact Alyson Hayes at the Columbus Visitors Bureau with any questions at 1-800-999-1613.
OUTREACH: You can make a big difference by using a few simple resources at your disposal and reaching out to your local media. Taking a little time to carry out a handful of media-related tasks can profoundly impact the number of people in your area who know about the SOA/WHINSEC issue and the number of people who get involved in the work to CLOSE IT DOWN. Read about how you can Work With Your Local Media! or contact us in the SOA Watch office at 202-234-3440 or email media(at)soaw.org.
TRAVEL: See information on traveling to Columbus, whether by plane, car, bus, train or something more creative.
Click here to check the Ride Board for carpools and busses from your area.
ACCESSIBILITY & INTERPRETATION: Find out more about ASL and English<>Spanish intrepretation services, large print and Braille programs and wheelchair accessibilty.
PEACEMAKERS NEEDED:SOA Watch is looking for Peacemaker Volunteers to work at the vigil this year. Clickhere to read more about how you can participate, and to contact our Peacemaker coordinators.
LOCAL GROUPS: Do you know others in your area that are working to close down the School of the Americas? Connect with others now before heading to Georgia. Click here for a listing of SOA Watch local groups. If your group is not listed, please add your contact information.
Don't see a group for your area? Consider starting one! For more information, contact us at info@soaw.org or at 202-234-3440 or contact your regional representative for more information about those in your region working to close the SOA/ WHINSEC.
Photos by Linda Panetta, www.soawne.org
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/venezuela/story/0,,1944386,00.html
Friday November 10, 2006
All aboard as Chávez takes off on a four-hour flight of rhetoric
Rory Carroll in Caracas / The Guardian
The Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez, at a press conference with foreign correspondents in Caracas. Photograph: Juan Barreto/AFP/Getty Images
On the podium is a map of the world, a map of Venezuela and a desk piled with charts, reports, books and pens: essential navigational tools for a tour through the mind of Hugo Chávez.
The Venezuelan president is three weeks away from an election and has assembled cabinet ministers, aides and journalists at the presidential palace, Miraflores, for a rhetorical journey.
He wants to show that his socialist revolution is transforming the country into a progressive beacon, that his enemies are on the run, and that his eight years in power are just a warm-up.
"Good," says Mr Chávez, scanning the phalanx of cameras. Instead of the red beret and T-shirt, he is in statesman mode with a navy blue suit, white shirt and red tie. "Here we go."
Like a pilot checking instruments he rearranges his desk, clears his throat and soon we are airborne. Flying conditions are excellent, which is just as well since it is a long haul.
"I just heard that Bush has been beaten up by the Democrats," he beams. "It's a reprisal vote against the war in Iraq, against the corruption."
It is Wednesday afternoon and US midterm election results are bringing joyful tidings to a leader who used to call the US president "Mr. Danger" before downgrading him to "the devil".
More good news from Nicaragua, where his ally Daniel Ortega has won a presidential election, and from Brazil, where his friend Lula held power with a landslide. "This has been an extremely positive year for Venezuela."
A sip of coffee, a glance at the map and we zoom across the Atlantic, first to Africa, where Venezuela has been appointed an African Union observer, then north to meet the "amigos" of Belarus and Russia. "I felt I could touch the Russian soul," says Mr. Chávez, reminiscing about his latest trip.
Since his election in 1998 the former soldier is estimated to have spent more than a year overseas, prompting a comedian and marginal presidential candidate, Benjamin Rausseo, to note that while they both look similar, "the difference between us is I live here".
Mr. Chávez continues reeling off his visits, China, Vietnam, Malaysia, and anticipates adding to that list outer space, in the form of a Venezuelan satellite due for orbit in 2008. A sea of tar has been reclassified as oil, making Venezuela a world energy power, he adds.
Two hours have passed and Mr. Chávez, on to a third coffee delivered by a waiter in a bow tie, reads a note. Donald Rumsfeld, who once compared him to Hitler, has resigned. The smile widens. "Heads are beginning to roll."
Selected journalists are invited to ask questions, which are answered in great, looping discourses that quote Victor Hugo's Les Misérables, cite Mao Zedong and Clausewitz, distinguish between transitive and comitative properties in mathematics, and define the meaning of friendship. Just when he seems ready to finish a synapse surges, neurons flash and another idea occurs.
The actual question is sometimes lost in the vapour trail. Though Mr Chávez finally admits, when pressed three times, that a trumpeted oil pipeline through South America has stalled. Social progress at home, however, steams ahead: new health clinics have notched up 208m consultations and treatments, not including 20m dentistry cases.
Compare that to previous governments which pocketed oil wealth and ignored the poor, says the president. "How many people have we rescued from the gates of hell? And schools with computers, the Internet." His fingers dance across an imaginary keyboard. "I'm not a populist, I'm a revolutionary."
He says he would accept defeat on December 3, but with polls putting him more than 20 points clear of his main rival he expects another term to begin a more radical phase of his revolution.
An aide sneaks a glance at his watch as we pass the fourth hour. The pilot finally decides to land. "OK, finished."
For now. Air Hugo has many more miles ahead.
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http://granmai.cubaweb.com/ingles/2006/noviembre/vier10/47inagura.html
Havana. November 10, 2006
Hugo Chávez inaugurates International Book Fair, dedicated to Cuba
BY Ronald Suarez Rivas and Pedro de La Hoz – Granma daily special correspondents –
Caracas — President Hugo Chávez inaugurated the 2nd Venezuelan International Book Fair (FILVEN), where Cuba is the guest country of honor, on November 2, at an event where the first books produced by the Cultural Fund of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) were launched.
At the Parque del Este, a spacious open-air venue, where this fiesta of books and reading was opened, the Venezuelan leader received a collection of these valuable titles, including the biography of Venezuelan national hero Francisco de Miranda, by historian Carmen Bohórquez; an essay by Cuban historian Francisco Pividal regarding the anti-imperialist anticipations of the Liberator Simón Bolívar; La Edad de Oro (The Golden Age), an anthology of José Martí’s ideas on Our America; and a biographical sketch of the life and work of the Cuban national hero by Cintio Vitier.
Other titles launched included a compilation by Argentine writer Atilio Borón on the subject of Imperio e imperialismo (Empire and Imperialism); Operación Cóndor (Operation Condor) by Stella Calloni; Propagandas silenciosas (Silent Propaganda) by Ignacio Ramonet; Todo Calibán by Roberto Fernández Retamar, and a selection of Mark Twain’s chronicles of the United States, which because of their critical look at life in that country, would appear to have been written today, commented Cuban Culture Minister Abel Prieto, who presided over the launching of these books.
Translated by Granma International
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061110/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/argentina_iran_7
Fri Nov 10, 2006
Argentine judge wants 9 held in '94 bomb
By Mayra Pertossi, Associated Press Writer
Buenos Aires, Argentina - An Argentine judge wants former Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani and eight other officials detained for the 1994 suicide bombing of a Jewish center that killed 85 people and wounded more than 200.
Judge Rodolfo Canicoba Corral told reporters he wanted Iran to comply with his request, saying that he had received "serious" evidence warranting the detentions. He said he was trying to get Interpol's help.
"How Interpol or the Iranian state evaluates this request is beyond my jurisdiction," he said Thursday.
He did not say whether he had issued arrest warrants. Interpol didn't immediately return phone calls seeking comment Friday.
Investigators say the cultural center was attacked with an explosives-packed van that was driven up to the building and detonated in the worst attack ever on Argentine soil, which was orchestrated by leaders of the Iranian government and carried out by the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah.
Prosecutors sought the detention of Rafsanjani and other former Iranian officials, including former intelligence chief Ali Fallahijan, former Foreign Minister Ali Ar Velayati, two former commanders of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, two former Iranian diplomats and a former Hezbollah security chief for external affairs.
Alberto Nisman, the lead prosecutor, said in November 2005 that investigators believed a 21-year-old Lebanese Hezbollah militant was the suicide bomber.
Iran's government has vehemently denied any involvement in the attack following repeated accusations by the Argentine Jewish community and other leaders here.
Iran's leading diplomatic envoy in Buenos Aires, Mohsen Baharvand, told The Associated Press that his government would oppose any efforts to detain Rafsanjani or other Iranian nationals. Baharvand, Iran's charge d'affaires, said the case was politically motivated.
Baharvand called the detention effort a "huge propaganda" campaign against his country, adding Iran was "a scapegoat for the shortcomings of the countries that are not able to find the real perpetrators of this act."
"These are baseless allegations against my country," he added.
Two special prosecutors urged Canicoba Corral last month to seek international and national arrest orders for Rafsanjani, who was Iran's president between 1989 and 1997 and is now the head of the Expediency Council, which mediates between the parliament and ruling clerics.
Nisman said last month that the decision to attack the Jewish center "was undertaken in 1993 by the highest authorities" of the Iranian government at the time, and that the actual attack was entrusted to Hezbollah.
In March 2005, Argentina's government acknowledged that it failed to do enough to prevent the bombing and asked for the forgiveness of the victims' families.
President Nestor Kirchner said that the "lack of serious investigation" of the attack occurred during the government of his political rival, former President Carlos Menem, who held office from 1989 until 1999.
A judge who had been investigating the bombing, Juan Jose Galeano, was dismissed from the case in 2004 at the urging of victims' groups angry over his handling of the probe.
For years, Galeano headed a much-criticized investigation that culminated in September 2004 with the acquittal of a group of former Argentine police officers and civilians accused of supplying the vehicle used in the bombing.
The destruction of the seven-story Jewish center, symbol of a Jewish population numbering more than 200,000, was the second of two attacks targeting Jews in Argentina during the 1990s.
A March 1992 blast destroyed the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, killing 29 people in a case that also has been blamed on Hezbollah.
Some speculated the bombing was inspired by Argentina's support for the U.S.-led coalition that expelled Iraq from Kuwait during the Gulf War in the early 1990s. Others said Argentina's Jewish community, one of the largest in Latin America, represented an obvious target for Israel's opponents.
Although Jewish community leaders and others have suspected the involvement of Middle East terrorists, a lack of progress in tracking down the masterminds has made families of the victims increasingly bitter.
Israeli Ambassador Rafael Eldad told the independent Argentine news agency Diarios y Noticias that the judge's step was a "very significant" development and expressed hope it would help resolve the case.
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http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N10351299.htm
10 Nov 2006 20:24:22 GMT
Ecuador protesters seize oil workers, cut output
Source: Reuters
QUITO, Ecuador, Nov 10 (Reuters) - Protesters in Ecuador's Amazon region have seized 40 workers at an oil block operated by Chinese oil consortium Andes Petroleum and slashed its output to 14,000 barrels per day from 42,000 bpd, the company said on Friday.
Protesters often briefly seize oil workers during protests in Ecuador only to release them later, unharmed. Friday's protest was to demand the company give more jobs to local residents. Andes Petroleum consortium is led by PetroChina Co.
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http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10410096
Friday November 10, 2006
'I talk nonsense' quote gives Mexico's Fox red face
MEXICO CITY - Mexican President Vicente Fox, who is prone to verbal mishaps, put his foot in it again by admitting he talks nonsense, in an off-the-record comment splashed on front pages and played on television news.
Fox, who ended 71 years of one-party rule at elections in 2000, leaves office on December 1 and his government has been plagued with political upheaval as it stutters toward the finishing line.
"I can talk freely. Now I can say any nonsense. It really doesn't matter, I'm on my way out," Fox told the Spanish news agency EFE in an informal remark before a televised interview.
The comment, made last week, was part of a tape sent to clients by the agency. A US Hispanic channel played the remark, which was then picked up by Mexican television and radio stations.
Several newspapers carried the comments on their front pages on Thursday and presidential spokesman Ruben Aguilar criticized the Hispanic channel for broadcasting quotes that were not intended for public viewing.
It was the second embarrassment for Fox this week.
On Tuesday, Congress blocked a planned visit by the president to Australia and Vietnam because of political upheaval after bombs exploded in Mexico City and street clashes in a southern state. Fox retaliated in a televised address to the nation that he felt "kidnapped" because legislators refused him permission to travel.
Milenio newspaper published a caricature of Fox in a clown's suit and red nose. "You can kidnap my body but my soul will always be free to talk nonsense," read the caption.
Fox, who will hand power over to fellow conservative Felipe Calderon, was embarrassed in 2002 when Cuban President Fidel Castro made public a recording of a phone conversation between the two leaders. Fox, a former Coca-Cola executive. is heard asking Castro not to stay long at a UN summit in Mexico so as to avoid being there at the same time as President Bush. The call was seen by many in Mexico and the rest of Latin America as bad hospitality on Fox's part.
- REUTERS
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061110/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/mexico_oaxaca_leftist_1
Fri Nov 10, 2006
Sosa: Unrest in Oaxaca start of upheaval
By IOAN GRILLO, Associated Press Writer
OAXACA, Mexico - Flavio Sosa is remarkably relaxed for a wanted man. As the most visible leader of a leftist movement that has rattled the Vicente Fox administration, chased state police out of this southern Mexican city and challenged hundreds of federal troops, Sosa faces arrest warrants on riot and conspiracy charges.
He also has received death threats, no small worry in a city where there have been at least nine political killings since August, mostly of Sosa's fellow leftists. But sitting in a colonial plaza, just two blocks away from an encampment of police clutching rifles and riot shields, the 41-year-old activist couldn't stop smiling.
"It's no use living my life in fear and being scared every time I go out in the street," he said. "This movement is beautiful. I'm proud to be a part of it."
A former migrant worker who washed dishes in a New York diner, Sosa is one of the founders of the Oaxaca People's Assembly, a leftist front trying to oust state Gov. Ulises Ruiz. The assembly formed in June after police violently broke up a protest by striking teachers demanding higher wages.
The assembly accuses Ruiz of rigging the 2004 election to win office and sending gangs of gun-toting thugs against his opponents. But Sosa says the fight goes deeper.
He says Ruiz, of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), is part of a long line of Mexican politicians who have looked after the rich and ground down the poor. The Oaxaca unrest, he says, is the beginning of a social upheaval akin to the unrest in Bolivia that culminated in the December election of leftist Evo Morales, the nation's first Indian president.
"Ruiz is just the detonator. We are living through a historic transformation in Latin America," Sosa said. "Our movement shows that Mexico is part of the south, like Bolivia, not part of the north, like the United States."
Sosa's enemies, including Ruiz and Oaxaca's Attorney General Lizbeth Cana, describe the bearded, long-haired activist as a "terrorist," and an "urban guerrilla."
For five months, Sosa and his supporters seized the city center, keeping out state police and driving away tourists from one of Mexico's top destinations. They built barricades, burned buses and took over radio stations to broadcast calls for revolution.
The president on Oct. 29 sent 4,000 federal officers backed by helicopters and water cannons to push the leftists out of the city center.
But the violence persisted elsewhere as federal officers clashed with protesters using gasoline bombs and fireworks packed with glass and nails. Last week, 30 people were injured in confrontations with police.
Sosa claims the fighting is in self-defense.
Wanted by Oaxacan authorities, Sosa spends most of his time surrounded by supporters and hasn't slept at home in months.
He has asked the church to grant him asylum. Church officials have not responded.
The portly leftist also says Mexico needs a hard kick to bring about change.
As a young man in 1986, Sosa dropped out of his university to work as dishwasher in a New York diner.
"I went looking for the American dollar," he chuckled. "It was tough as an illegal migrant and I realized how little we have in my homeland."
Returning to Mexico in 1989, he helped found the Democratic Revolution Party, the nation's largest leftist group, and was elected to congress.
"I had high hopes we could make a difference through the ballot box," he said.
He left the party in 2000 to support Fox in his successful bid for the presidency. In one photograph, Sosa and Fox appear arm in arm, their hands raised making the "V" for victory.
Sosa said Fox was the best bet to end 71 years of PRI rule in Mexico. But Sosa quickly became disillusioned with the conservative president, who leaves office on Dec. 1 after a six-year term.
He said Fox just looked after rich businessmen and made deals with old power brokers.
"Instead of trying bring about real change, Fox lived with the dinosaurs and ended up trapped in a web of complicity," Sosa said.
Critics say Sosa is an opportunist who joins with the highest bidder. A profile of him in the Mexican magazine Reporte Indigo paints him as a pistol-packing thug who is using the Oaxacan movement to carve out a fiefdom.
Sosa laughs at that.
"I wouldn't even know how to fire a gun," he said.
He also points out he is only one of many leaders in the assembly of leftist, trade union, student, Indian and neighborhood groups.
"We are all equal. But my big beard and big stomach have made me become the favorite leader of the press and the police," he said.
Interior Undersecretary Arturo Chavez, whom Fox sent to Oaxaca to negotiate with the leftists, said they have no chief.
"They are a very hard group to bargain with," Chavez said. "We talk to some leaders but then we are not sure if other leaders agree with them."
The grass-roots nature of the movement empowers its followers, Sosa said, predicting it will grow to a national rebellion.
Three bombs in Mexico City on Monday, which caused property damage but no injuries, were claimed by guerrilla groups in support of the Oaxaca protest movement. Sosa said the assembly had no connection with the bombings, but did not condemn the blasts.
"Fox's ineptitude will bring about a new revolution," he said. Sosa has said he doesn't expect things to be different under President-elect Felipe Calderon.
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http://www.socialistworker.org/2006-2/609/609_04_Mendoza.shtml
A striking teacher from Oaxaca describes...
“Our fight for social and economic justice”
November 10, 2006
Fernando Mendoza has taught public school in Oaxaca, Mexico, for 26 years. He is father to four children, and his wife is also a teacher. Both have been on strike since May, along with 70,000 other teachers.
Fernando represents his section of Local 22 of the National Union of Education Workers (SNTE) in the People’s Popular Assembly of Oaxaca (APPO), the coordinating committee directing the struggle in Oaxaca. He was sent to California by APPO and his union to spread awareness and build solidarity. He has spoken to more than 50 meetings of students, union members and community activists.
Socialist Worker’s Jessie Muldoon and Todd Chrstien sat down with Fernando on October 29 after a meeting hosted by the Oakland Education Association--just as Mexico President Vicente Fox was ordering 5,000 federal police to invade Oaxaca.
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Can you explain why Oaxacan teachers went on strike in May, and why the APPO was formed in June to support them?
The starting point for our struggle is the intense poverty that the vast majority of Oaxacans suffer. In our state, we have 16 indigenous groups, all speaking different languages, and we are the majority of the population.
Our demands were to prevent the privatization of education and to get funding for libraries, learning centers, breakfast programs and access to health care for our students. We also asked for work programs in Oaxaca so that our people don’t have to keep going to the United States to find work.
Of course, working in the United States gives us a chance to improve our situation, but we know that the situation for undocumented workers living here is very hard, and we are hoping that the laws are changed so that Oaxacans can live hear legally.
APPO was formed because the struggle of teachers, indigenous people, students, farmers and farmworkers in Oaxaca has a very long history. We have fought for years to win basic demands like education, health and work.
The state government of Ulises Ruiz Ortiz [Oaxaca’s governor from the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), who is widely believed to have stolen the state election in 2004] refused to meet our demands. Therefore, on May 22, there was a great march of over 70,000 teachers and our supporters, and we established a permanent sit-in in the center of Oaxaca City.
APPO was formed on June 14, in response to the repression that Ruiz organized against us, in order to unite all the different struggles. Today, APPO is known all over the world.
APPO brings together delegates representing teachers, indigenous people, farmers, high school and university students, housewives, cooperative members, women’s organizations, political groups such as those in solidarity with Cuba, and workers from many different industries, such as the railways, telecommunications, electrical, health, university and roadways.
How are APPO delegates elected, and how many are there?
Delegates to APPO are named by each group according to their historic traditions, but all of the delegates have to gain the respect of those they represent and demonstrate the capacity to lead with honesty, transparency and with justice.
For example, in the teachers’ union, you have to go through many levels of elections and tests to become a leader, and you have to prove yourself in the struggle over many years. Typically, there are between 200 and 250 delegates at an APPO meeting.
IN July, the Party of Democratic Revolution’s (PRD) candidate, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, was cheated out of his victory in the presidential election by fraud committed by the National Action Party (PAN) and the PRI, handing the presidency to PAN candidate Felipe Cálderon. Millions of people in Mexico City took to the streets to protest. What impact did this have in Oaxaca?
The two struggles come from the same system of corruption and of imposing governors and politicians on the people.
No one in Oaxaca believes that Cálderon won. Everyone believes the fraud was total, deep and shameless. Even the most humble farmer knows that Cálderon is trying to take office illegally, and they feel cheated out of their legal right to vote.
Thousands of us teachers are members of the PRD because our political beliefs coincide more closely with its principles. AMLO has said many times in the national press that he supports our demands, and the PRD delegates in the national assembly and senate have also spoken our for our struggle.
However, as a party, the PRD is not leading the APPO. For example, Section 22 maintains as a principle complete independence from any political party. Our struggle is organized from the base up, and we do not divide up on the basis of political parties because we feel that this will divide the unity of our members in Oaxaca and at a national level.
In mid-October, there were signs that the national leadership of the SNTE had reached an agreement with the government to end the strike, based on a substantial pay raise, but it was rejected by the rank-and-file teachers. Why?
We have to be very clear. This struggle is run by the base, the rank and file, not by the leaders.
The national leadership of the SNTE met with the government and asked, “How can we return to classes,” but they didn’t consult with the teachers. Therefore, the teachers rejected the leaders’ right to enter into these negotiations.
Instead, we organized another consultation with the teachers and with our allies in the APPO to discuss the offers made by the government. After more than 13 people were killed by Ruiz, we could not simply forget about our demand for his resignation.
Our decision to reject this first offer led to a great increase in the amount repression against us. Also, the national leadership of the union was exerting a great amount of pressure on us to settle. After five months without pay and many threats, including the threat to cancel all collective bargaining agreements, some teachers began to feel that we had to return to work and continue the struggle in a different way.
In order to preserve our unity and not split our ranks, we voted to accept the government’s offer on October 24 and return to work on October 31 in order to continue our struggle while we taught our classes, without giving up our demand for Ruiz’s resignation.
However, after the teachers agreed to return to work, on October 27, Ruiz’s PRI thugs increased their repression by shooting many people and killing three, including IndyMedia journalist Brad Will. Why did they attack you after you agreed to return to work?
This is the criminality of Ruiz’s government. Ruiz is continuing to kidnap our members and assassinate us in order to create the impression of violence and chaos, so that they can turn public opinion and international opinion against us.
Ruiz wanted to continue his criminal war against APPO and the teachers, and he wanted to provoke the intervention of the federal government to help crush us. As we speak, we are very worried about Vicente Fox sending in the troops against us. We believe that if the army comes in, it will be to assassinate the Oaxacan people who are rising up for justice and dignity.
Fox is portraying his decision to send in the federal police as a measure to keep the peace, and bring order to a fight between a small group of leftists on the one hand and a small group of vigilantes on the other hand. Is this true?
Fox’s government is based on repression. In Mexico, there is a climate of repression, of violence, of jailing those who fight for social justice. The miners in Sonora were repressed and assassinated and jailed, as were the comrades from Atenco, from Guerrero, from Chiapas.
This is how this government operates, how it talks, how it discusses politics with the people. They want to create a blank slate based on terror in order to pursue their neoliberal projects, such as NAFTA and the Plan Pueblo-Panama. They want to steal all our natural resources and privatize everything.
Do you think there will be actions and strikes in other parts of Mexico to support you?
Of course, yes. Just two days ago, the National Coordination of Education Workers [the CNTE, a powerful dissident, left-wing caucus within the SNTE] met to begin planning, and many other indigenous, anti-neoliberal, student, union and community groups all over the country are taking the first steps to respond to the crisis in Oaxaca.
Oaxaca is a mirror, a reflection of what is happening all over the country and really the whole world.
Our first step is to continue maintaining our unity. Then we must continue our historic fight to win back our rights to democratically elect our leaders, and win economic and social justice for the people of Oaxaca and Mexico.
After nearly a month of speaking in California, what is you opinion of the working people and students in the U.S.?
There are many different types of people. I’ve met with immigrants from Oaxaca, teachers and students, union members, church groups, etc. But they all have something in common--that they are all very concerned about the violence in Oaxaca, and they support our demands for education, health and jobs.
I have a great optimism that we are going to succeed in forming this new unity--a permanent unity here in the United States between students and workers in solidarity with the struggle in Oaxaca. And that you are going to use that same unity to defend your own rights as workers, as immigrants and as students.
We need to form APPOs all over Mexico. You need to form APPOs in California. People all over the world must form APPOs in order to defend our universal rights as human beings against the attacks on our living standards and against repression
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What you can do!
Many well-known left-wing authors and activists have added their name to a letter honoring the memory of independent journalist Brad Will and supporting the struggle of the people of Oaxaca.
“We are extremely alarmed,” the letter reads in part, “to see that rather than cracking down on the violent paramilitaries who have been launching regular attacks on the people of Oaxaca, President Vicente Fox is using these murders as a pretext for escalating violence against the popular grassroots organization of the people of Oaxaca.
Signers include Tariq Ali, Noam Chomsky, Mike Davis, Eduardo Galeano, Danny Glover, Naomi Klein, Camilo Mejía, Oscar Olivera, Francis Fox Pivin, John Pilger, Katha Pollitt, Arundhati Roy, Wallace Shawn and Howard Zinn.
To add your name to this letter--as well as for information on the struggle in Oaxaca and on events to honor Brad Will--visit the Friends of Brad Will Web site. @
http://www.friendsofbradwill.org/
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http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=20061108151446352
Thursday, November 09 2006 @ 10:47 AM PST
Worldwide Direct Action to Take Place in Support of Those Struggling in Oaxaca on November 20
Contributed by: Anonymous
On November 20, blockades will be set up to show the Mexican government we mean business. We are calling upon YOU to join in these blockades. That could mean blockading the consulates’ websites, jamming their phone lines with calls about the conflict in Oaxaca, occupying the offices of the consuls, or shutting down the roads around the consulates in whatever way you see fit.
Worldwide Direct Action to Take Place in Support of Those Struggling in Oaxaca on November 20
On October 27, paramilitaries in Oaxaca, Mexico murdered Indymedia journalist Brad Will. He is one of dozens who have lost their lives at the hands of pro-government forces while participating in the largely nonviolent resistance to government oppression in that region. Mexican president Vicente Fox used Brad’s death as a pretext to send 4,000 federal police into the city of Oaxaca; these forces are systematically brutalizing the population.
The people of Oaxaca have not backed down – through days of courageous fighting, they have managed to protect their radio station at the university, repelling machine gun wielding armored police with only sticks, stones, and hope. On November 5, tens of thousands marched through the streets of Oaxaca, calling for the federal police to leave.
The only reason that hundreds more have not yet been killed in Oaxaca is that the Mexican government fears the response that would engender in Mexico and across the world. Those who have organized solidarity demonstrations at Mexican consulates can congratulate themselves on helping, however slightly, to deter the Mexican government from ordering a bloodbath.
That bloodbath will still take place, however, unless we continue to escalate the pressure upon President Fox’s government to withdraw federal forces from Oaxaca. The EZLN has announced that it will help coordinate a nationwide shut-down on November 20. This must be matched with international actions to show that the world has not taken its eyes off Oaxaca, that on the contrary, the mobilization in support of those who struggle there is only gathering momentum.
On November 20, blockades will be set up to show the Mexican government we mean business. We are calling upon YOU to join in these blockades. That could mean blockading the consulates’ websites, jamming their phone lines with calls about the conflict in Oaxaca, occupying the offices of the consuls, or shutting down the roads around the consulates in whatever way you see fit.
If we do not show Vicente Fox that paramilitaries and federal forces cannot brutalize Oaxaca with impunity, the blood of an entire murdered resistance movement will be on our hands. Now is the time to act in solidarity with those who struggle in Oaxaca, in solidarity with the Zapatistas who have called on us to support them, and in solidarity with all who struggle against government and capitalism across the world.
Actions are already being planned in cities around the US. Please plan actions in yours.
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http://granmai.cubaweb.com/ingles/2006/noviembre/juev9/46felipe.html
Havana. November 9, 2006
The economic war unleashed by the United States against Cuba qualifies as an act of genocide
Speech by Felipe Pérez Roque, foreign minister of the Republic of Cuba, under issue 18 of the General Assembly agenda, titled “The necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States of America against Cuba.”
November 8, 2006, New York
Madame President:
Ladies and gentlemen of the Assembly:
For the 15th consecutive time, Cuba is presenting to the General Assembly a resolution entitled, “The necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States of America against Cuba.”
We do so in defense of the rights of the Cuban people, but also in defense of the rights of the people of the United States and the rights of the peoples that you all represent in this Assembly.
The economic war unleashed by the United States against Cuba, the longest and cruelest ever known, qualifies as an act of genocide and constitutes a flagrant violation of international law and the Charter of the United Nations. Over the last 48 years, the U.S. blockade has caused economic damages to Cuba in excess of $86 billion. Seven out of every 10 Cubans have since birth suffered and resisted the effects of the blockade, which attempts to break us through hunger and disease.
The blockade prevents Cuba from trading with the United States and receiving tourism from that country. It prohibits Cuba from utilizing the dollar in its external transactions and receiving credits or carrying out operations with U.S. banks or their affiliates in other countries.
The blockade does not allow the World Bank or the Inter-American Development Bank to grant Cuba even a modest credit.
But more serious than all of that is the fact that the U.S. blockade imposes its criminal regulations on Cuba’s relations with the rest of the countries that make up this General Assembly.
We have seen, ladies and gentleman, how the representative of the United States government has repeated again here the same fallacious arguments and the same lies that he has uttered in this Assembly in previous years.
He lies when he says that the embargo is a bilateral issue.
He lies when he says that Cuba can trade and purchase in other countries what it is prevented from buying in the United States.
He lies when he says that the United States does not persecute the ships of other countries that attempt to go to Cuba.
He tells this Assembly, moreover, that Cuba is utilizing the blockade as a pretext.
I repeat to the distinguished delegate what I already told him last year: if the United States government believes that Cuba is using the issue as a pretext, why doesn’t it take away that pretext by lifting the blockade? Why doesn’t it eliminate the blockade against Cuba if, in its opinion, Cuba is using it as a pretext to justify its supposed failure?
The blockade prohibits companies in your countries from trading with Cuba, ladies and gentleman, not just U.S. companies, but companies from the countries that you represent in this Assembly and that are subsidiaries of U.S. companies. And ships with flags from your countries, ladies and gentlemen, cannot enter U.S. ports if they have previously transported goods to or from Cuba. That is the Torricelli Law, signed by President Bush Sr. in 1992.
The U.S. blockade also prohibits companies in the rest of the world — those in your countries, ladies and gentlemen — from exporting to the United States products that contain Cuban raw materials, and prevents those companies from exporting to Cuba products or equipment that contain more than 10% of U.S. components. That is the truth.
The blockade, ladies and gentlemen, persecutes business owners from other countries, not just from the United States, but those of other countries, your compatriots, who are trying to invest in Cuba. They are threatened with being prohibited, them and their families, from entering the United States, and even with being taken to court in the United States. That is the Helms-Burton Law of 1996.
I am not going to insist on giving examples that prove what I have said. The secretary general has presented a broad report, with contributions from 96 countries and 20 international agencies and organizations, which unequivocally demonstrates the suffering and shortages that the blockade imposes on the life and development of the Cuban people.
It does seem important to us, ladies and gentlemen, to inform the General Assembly about the plan to re-conquer Cuba approved by President Bush in May 2004 and updated in July 2006. In it, he clearly admits what the U.S. government would do in our country if at some point it was able to put Cuba under its control.
According to the president of the United States, the most important thing would be to return all of the properties in Cuba to their former owners. That would include, for example, snatching away their land from hundreds of thousands of farmers who are the owners of their land in Cuba, individually or via cooperatives, to reestablish the concentration of land ownership in a few hands. It would also imply throwing out of their houses millions of Cuban homeowners, to return those buildings or that land to their former claimants.
President Bush described this as an accelerated process, under the total control of the United States, and for it he would create a so-called Commission for the Restitution of Property Rights.
Another structure would also be created: the Permanent Committee of the U.S. Government for the Economic Reconstruction of Cuba, which would direct the process of imposing in Cuba an extremely harsh program of neoliberal belt-tightening, which would include the brutal privatization of health and education services and the elimination of social security and assistance. Retirements and pensions would be abolished, and retirees would be offered jobs in construction work, in a so-called Cuban Retirees Corps.
President Bush admits that “it won’t be easy” to implement this plan in Cuba. That is why he is charging the State Department with creating, “as an immediate priority,” a repressive apparatus, that we imagine will be trained in the brutal techniques of suffocation that Vice President Cheney does not consider to be torture, to strangle the unlimited resistance of the Cuban people. It is even acknowledged that the list of Cubans who will be persecuted, tortured and massacred “will be a long one.”
They have even thought up a Central Adoption Service for Children, to give away to families in the United States and other countries the children whose parents would die fighting or as victims of repression.
This entire cynical and brutal program to re-colonize a country, after destroying and invading it, would be directed by an individual who has already been appointed, and whose ridiculous post – which reminds one of Paul Bremer – is that of “Coordinator for Transition in Cuba.” This Caleb McCarry is a gentleman whose only notable experience is his close friendship with the Cuban-born terrorists who are still planning and carrying out from Miami, with total impunity, new plans for murder and sabotage against Cuba. They are the same groups that are asking President Bush to free the terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, the mastermind behind the explosion of a Cuban passenger plane, while they subject to cruel and prolonged imprisonment in the United States, since 1998, five courageous Cuban anti-terrorist fighters.
Two years after its proclamation, ladies and gentlemen, a large part of this plan has been carried out.
Thus, new and greater restrictions were imposed on family visits to Cuba by Cubans resident in the United States.
People from the United States who traveled to Cuba were viciously persecuted. In the last two years, more than 800 people accused of traveling to our country have been fined.
Additional restrictions were placed on remittances to Cuba. Academic, cultural, scientific and sports exchanges were practically eliminated.
Since 2004, 85 companies have been sanctioned for supposedly violating the blockade against Cuba.
Ferocious persecution has intensified against financial transactions and our country’s trade. There are visible results of the demented tracking on a global scale by the so-called Cuban Asset Targeting Group of anything it perceives as payments to or from Cuba.
Along with intensifying the blockade, in May 2004 President Bush approved another $59 million to pay for his scant and pathetic mercenaries in Cuba, with the goal of inventing a nonexistent internal opposition, and to pay companies for propaganda and for illegal, anti-Cuba radio and television broadcasts.
But it was all in vain. President Bush realized he was running out of time, and could not keep his promise to the Cuban extremist groups in Florida. His problems at home and abroad are growing and growing, and socialist Cuba has continued and continues to exist, upright and unwavering.
So, on July 10, 2006, President Bush added new measures to his plan.
A significant particularity of this new, 93-page monstrous creation is that it contains a secret appendix, with actions against Cuba that are not being made public, and they explain that that is “for its effective implementation” and “for national security reasons.” Could they be new plans of assassination against Cuban leaders, more terrorist acts or a military aggression? From this podium, we demand today, before the United Nations General Assembly, that President George W. Bush publicly release the contents of that document, which he has not had the courage to reveal to date.
The plan includes, of course, the allocation of more money. This time, it is $80 million in two years, and no less than $20 million per year until the overthrow of the Cuban Revolution. That is, forever.
Anti-Cuba radio and television broadcasts are also increased, in open violation of the norms of the International Telecommunications Union.
In addition, renewed efforts are being made to create a so-called “coalition” of countries to support so-called “regime change” in Cuba.
In Bush’s plan, one thing that particularly stands out is the extraterritorial application of the economic war against Cuba.
Thus, new mechanisms are established to improve the machinery that implements the regulations of the blockade, and new sanctions are adopted. One that stands out, for its novelty, is bringing violators to trial.
The authorization is announced, by virtue of Title III of the Helms-Burton Law, to bring lawsuits in U.S. courts against foreign investors in Cuba, particularly those from countries that support the continuation of the Cuban Revolution.
A more rigorous implantation of Title IV is also established, refusing entry to the United States for those who invest in Cuba and their families, but down particularly directing the persecution against those who invest in oil exploration and extraction; tourism; nickel; rum and tobacco.
As a tool for persecuting Cuban nickel sales to other markets – not the U.S. market, but persecuting Cuban sales to companies located in countries that you all represent here in this Assembly –, the so-called inter-agency Cuban Nickel Targeting Task Force was created.
The siege against exchange between U.S. and Cuban churches is also being improved, and it is prohibited to send humanitarian donations to Cuban religious organizations.
But there is a new measure of the blockade approved by President Bush that deserves its own comment. In the document, it is established that the United States will refuse all exports related to medical equipment that can be used in programs of healthcare for foreign patients.
That is to say, the United States government, which has always done the unspeakable to cause the failure of Cuba’s international medical cooperation, is now acknowledging that its persecution can go to the extent of trying to block Cuba from internationally acquiring the necessary equipment.
I repeat: the blockade has now come to the point of prohibiting exchange between churches in the United States and Cuban churches; to prohibiting churches in the United States from sending to humanitarian donations to friendly churches in Cuba – wheelchairs, medications or products for humanitarian use. President Bush’s blockade against Cuba is event leading him to declare war on U.S. and Cuban churches; it is even attempting to blockade the mandate of God. And in the second place, it is attempting to prevent Cuba from buying medical equipment for international medical cooperation programs.
Some history about this subject is essential:
- Since 1962, the year that Cuban doctors provided aid abroad for the first time, in Algeria, almost 132,000 Cuban doctors, nurses and health technicians have lent their services in 102 countries.
- Currently, 31,000 Cuban health internationalists are lending their services in 69 countries. Twenty thousand of them are doctors. I repeat: in 69 countries today, 31,000 Cuban health internationalists are working in many of the countries that some of you are representing here.
- Ladies and gentlemen: a medical continent specializing in disasters and emergency situations was founded on September 19, 2005, precisely in the midst of the battering caused by the combined effects of Hurricane Katrina and the irresponsibility and insensitivity of their government on two million poor and Black people in the southern United States. The contingent has 10,000 duly trained and equipped members, and is named after a young man from the United States, Henry Reeve, who died in combat gloriously in 1873 in the fields of Cuba, with the rank of general of our Liberation Army. At that time, more than 1,500 Cuban doctors were ready to go to the most affected areas and save who knows how many lives, which were lost due to President Bush’s refusal to receive them.
- A total of 2,564 members of that contingent worked for eight months in Pakistan after the earthquake there. They set up 32 hospitals that were later donated to that sister nation. They attended to 1.8 million patients and saved 2,086 lives. Subsequently, another 135 Cuban doctors brought help to Indonesia and set up two hospitals, also donated; they attended 91,000 patients and carried out 1,900 surgical operations.
- Cuban doctors had previously worked after natural disasters in Peru in 1970; Venezuela in 1999; Sri Lanka and Indonesia in 2004, and in Guatemala in 2005, to cite a few examples.
If President Bush were to be successful in his cynical plan, Cuba would be prevented from providing to other peoples – those than many of you represent here, ladies and gentlemen – their modest and generous efforts in a field in which nobody can deny our development and experience.
- Since 2004, Cuba has carried out Operation Miracle, by virtue of which almost 400,000 patients from 28 countries – without including about 100,000 Cubans – have received operations free of charge and have recovered their sight.
While our country cannot pay all of the pertinent costs, it is Cuban doctors, technicians, technology and equipment that have created the ability to provide surgery for one million Latin Americans and Caribbeans annually.
If the U.S. offensive manages to paralyze this effort, an equivalent number of people who are victim to more than 20 ophthalmological diseases would lose their sight. The U.S. government knows it, but does not let that stop it from its macabre project to strangle Cuba. This is only to refer to those who receive care for their sight, and not the hundreds of millions of people who benefit from the comprehensive health programs of the Cuban internationalist doctors.
Cuba not only provides health services; it is currently training more than 46,000 young medical students from 82 Third World nations in Cuba or in their own countries.
Madame President:
Ladies and Gentlemen of the Assembly:
But Cuba will not surrender nor will it falter in driving forward on these humanistic plans, symbols of the fact that a world of peace, justice and cooperation is possible. Cuba’s commitment to the rights of every dispossessed human being on the planet is stronger than the hate of the executioners.
Ladies and gentlemen:
Millions of Cubans right now are watching to see what decision you will make. We ask you today to respect Cuba’s right, which is also respect for the rights of the peoples that you all represent. We ask you to vote in favor of the resolution “The Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States of America against Cuba.”
We do so with our heads held high, optimistic and sure, with the hope of repeating the verses of the poet of our generation, because in Cuba, ladies and gentlemen,
Nobody is going to die, all of life is our talisman, is our mantle.
Nobody is going to die, least of all now, when the song of the homeland is our song.
And if they impose a war on us, there are not enough U.S. soldiers to cover the casualties that they would suffer in face of a country that has resisted and has prepared for its defense for more than 45 years.
Ladies and gentlemen:
This completes the speech that I brought prepared to present our resolution. However, an unprecedented event in this Assembly obliges me to make some additional remarks. For the first time since, in 1992, the Assembly began to consider the issue of the blockade against Cuba, the United States government is trying to sabotage – via an amendment – this vote. After several weeks of bringing brutal pressures to bear, the United States realized that it could not turn back the overwhelming support that this resolution attracts. It then tried to get a large number of delegations to abstain, and failed. Then, it threatened and blackmailed them to withdraw, and failed again.
And finally, it decided to boycott this vote, distract attention from the main issue, which is its blockade against Cuba, a flagrant violation of international law, and decreed that the Australian delegation would present an amendment drafted by Washington.
Here I have, ladies and gentlemen, the talking points distributed by the United Sates since Monday the 6th, asking for support for an amendment that Australia did not make its own until yesterday, the 7th, in the afternoon. It is interesting that the U.S. delegation, in this paper asks for support for an amendment that Australia had not yet even decided to present. The United States tried to get a European Union country to present it and was not able to; it looked for support from other countries, and failed again. Finally, a very high-level phone call from Washington to the Australian Ministry of Foreign Affairs determined that Australia would lend itself as a straw man for the U.S. amendment.
Ladies and gentlemen, is this amendment really an expression of a genuine concern for Australia? No. It is only proof of its abject submission to the government of the United States.
But, in addition, Australia does not have the moral authority to try to refer to the human rights situation in Cuba.
The Australian government is an accomplice of U.S. imperialism. It is a kind of “junior imperialist,” always at the ready in the Pacific to follow its mentors in Washington. It not only collaborated with them and sent troops together with the U.S. Army to the war in Vietnam, in which four million Vietnamese people lost their lives, but also enthusiastically participated, by sending more than 2,000 troops, in the invasion of Iraq, a pre-emptive and totally illegal war. There are still 1,300 Australian soldiers in Iraq despite the fact that just 22% of the Australian population supports that particular venture.
The Australian government, which subjects the Aboriginal population of its country to a veritable regime of apartheid, does not have the moral authority to criticize Cuba. The Australian government, which supports the U.S. torture center in Guantánamo, and backed summary trials before military courts of prisoners who are ill-treated and tortured there, including Australian prisoners, does not have the moral authority to criticize Cuba.
And less still, the United States. We have all seen the horrendous images of the prison at Abu Ghraib, the horrifying images of Guantánamo. We know that they have organized and still maintain clandestine prisons and secret flights on which they transfer prisoners who have been drugged and shackled. We have seen the footage of the horror of Hurricane Katrina, when human beings were condemned to die just because they were Black and poor. After everything that we already know, this Assembly cannot be deceived or manipulated.
For this reason, on behalf of Cuba, we ask you, honorable delegates, first to vote in favor of the No Action Motion we will present to counter Australia’s proposed amendment and then, to vote in favor of Resolution L.10 presented by Cuba.
At this Assembly, the U.S. delegate invoked in his speech the sacred name of José Martí, the hero of Cuban independence. He tarnishes this glorious name for the Cuban people. Martí stated that the independence war in Cuba was also being waged to stop the increasing force of the United States over the Antilles. It offends our delegation that the name of José Martí be mentioned as a means of justifying the blockade.
But I will remind the Assembly, and particularly the U.S. delegation, that José Martí also said that “trenches of ideas are worth more than trenches of stone,” and it is those trenches of ideas that have made the noble, generous and heroic people that I represent here, invincible. Thank you very much. (Applause).
(Translated by Granma International)
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061109/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/nicaragua_elections
Wed Nov 8, 2006
Ortega reaches out to Latin leftists
By TRACI CARL, Associated Press Writer
MANAGUA, Nicaragua - A beaming Daniel Ortega, who spent the 1980s fighting a U.S.-backed insurgency, said in his presidential victory speech Wednesday night that he would work closely with other leftist leaders in Latin American, while rejecting U.S. Republicans and the Iraq war.
After spending the day in meetings aimed at calming critics shaken by his return to power, Ortega gave a rousing speech before a sea of supporters calling for increased trade with all countries, including the United States. He blasted naysayers who warned his victory would scare away investors, saying "days have passed, and the country is calm."
In a veiled reference to the U.S. warnings against his return to power, he said: "The sovereignty of Nicaragua has triumphed!"
And he informed the crowd that the American people had thrown Republicans out of Congress in elections on Tuesday "because they are bent on maintaining a war that has been rejected by the entire world."
"I hope that the U.S. government listens to its people and pulls its troops out of that country," he said.
Mixing revolutionary songs with calls for peace and love, the speech echoed many of Ortega's campaign promises and showed the tug-of-war he faces in the next five years as Nicaragua's leader.
He has promised to fight for the rights of the poor, eradicate poverty and stay close to leftist leaders like Cuba's idel Castro and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. This while maintaining relations with Washington and building on the newly approved Central American Free Trade Agreement with the United States.
U.S. State Department spokesman Gonzalo Gallegos said Wednesday that cooperation with Ortega and his Sandinista colleagues will be "based on their action in support of Nicaragua's democratic future."
Ortega thanked his leftist "brothers" in Latin America, including U.S. foes Chavez and Castro.
Castro, a key backer of Ortega's leftist government in the 1980s, said Ortega's win "fills our people with joy, at the same time filling the terrorist and genocidal government of the United States with opprobrium." Chavez has said he and Ortega would be "uniting as never before" to construct a socialist future.
But Ortega also says he has changed since his 1985-90 presidency, which saw Soviet-backed Nicaragua descend into economic chaos under radical economic policies, including property seizures, and destruction from the U.S.-financed Contra insurrection.
On Wednesday, the new leader reassured business leaders that their investments were safe and promised to improve labor and environmental laws while respecting property and business contracts.
"No one is going to allow the seizure of property big or small," he said, adding: "We need to eradicate poverty, but you don't do that by getting rid of investment and those who have resources."
Chris Berry, one of the business leaders who met with Ortega, said he was more worried about possible U.S. sanctions against Ortega than the man himself.
"My fears aren't really about Ortega," said Berry, general manager and part owner of the Pelican Eyes resort in San Juan del Sur who holds both American and Nicaraguan citizenship. "He's among a group of wealthy men who want to protect their investments."
Second-place presidential candidate Eduardo Montealegre told a local television show on Wednesday that he would "use every connection I have to make the relationship with the U.S. work."
"We can't afford to give Ortega an excuse to let his only support be Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez," the Harvard-educated banker said, adding: "I will become an important channel so he doesn't fall into Chavez's hands."
The victory capped Ortega's 16-year quest to get his old job back. After losing the presidency to Violeta Chamorro in 1990, he ran two consecutive, unsuccessful presidential campaigns.
Ortega's party appears to have maintained most of its 38 seats in Congress, but the right was split. Montealegre's new Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance, which broke away from the Constitutionalist Liberal Party of former President Arnoldo Aleman, robbed the ruling party of its 41-seat plurality. Each party appears to have about two dozen seats and it was unclear if the rival Liberal parties would unite against Ortega.
As an opposition leader, Ortega forged several alliances of convenience with his old foe Aleman, whose backers revolted against outgoing President Enrique Bolanos when the he oversaw the prosecution of Aleman on corruption charges.
Those agreements stripped the presidency of key powers, so Ortega will need to rely heavily on Congress' support when he takes office Jan. 10.
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061109/wl_nm/nicaragua_election_dc_34
Wed Nov 8, 2006
Nicaragua's Ortega slams U.S. over Iraq By Kieran Murray
MANAGUA, Nicaragua (Reuters) - Nicaraguan leftist President-elect Daniel Ortega tried on Wednesday to allay U.S. and business leaders' fears over his Marxist revolutionary past but he also took a swipe at Washington and its war in Iraq.
Ortega, who led Nicaragua through a civil war with U.S.-backed Contra rebels in the 1980s, bounced back to power in Sunday's presidential election and is now trying to win support for an assault on deep poverty in the country.
He met with conservative rivals and investors on Wednesday, promising to keep the economy stable and work with the United States, his old Cold War enemy.
But he criticized the Iraq war, saying American voters made clear in congressional elections on Tuesday in which Democrats made big gains that it was time to end the military occupation.
"I hope the U.S. government listens to its own people and soon pulls its troops out of Iraq and puts an end to the war," Ortega said at a victory rally where thousands of supporters set off fireworks and waved the black-and-red flags of his Sandinista Party.
He said Republicans paid the price at the polls for "sticking to a war that is rejected by the whole world."
Washington worries Ortega will join a bloc of radical leaders in Latin America headed by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
Ortega first seized power in a popular 1979 revolution and has for years been close to Castro. He referred to both Chavez and Castro as "beloved brothers" at the rally on Wednesday.
Some in Nicaragua fear an alliance with Cuba and Venezuela could spark a new confrontation with the United States.
Ortega, 60, tried to ease concerns over his domestic plans by offering to work with former foes in rebuilding a country devastated by the Contra war, which only ended after he was voted out of power in 1990.
"I am not contemplating dramatic, radical changes in the economy, which has stabilized in recent years," he said, while calling on the rich to help finance his war on poverty.
CHAOS
Sandinistas confiscated many businesses and farms in the 1980s. The policies combined with a U.S. economic blockade and the war plunged the coffee-producing nation into chaos.
Ortega says he learned his lesson and has dropped Marxism for a center-left program. He vowed on Wednesday to prevent land seizures and work with the International Monetary Fund to protect hard-won economic stability.
Business leaders say they are giving him the benefit of the doubt but will keep a close eye on his policy decisions.
"There are worries, some apprehension. A lot of people were affected in the 1980s and the person who led that process is now president-elect," Erwin Kruger, president of the country's leading business group, Cosep, told Reuters.
Ortega was helped back to power by divisions among right-wing politicians and voter anger after three straight pro-U.S. governments did little to help the poor.
When he takes office in January, he will try to walk a political tightrope, pulling in help from Chavez and Castro for anti-poverty programs without upsetting the United States.
Many here think it is an impossible balancing act.
The White House says he will have to earn U.S. support by showing his commitment to democracy, while Chavez claimed a new ally in his so-called Bolivarian revolution, named after 19th-century South American liberation hero Simon Bolivar.
"Now like never before, the Sandinista revolution and the Bolivarian revolution are together. On to build the future, the socialism of the 21st century!" Chavez told Ortega in a telephone chat broadcast on Venezuelan state television.
Chavez has extended his influence in Latin America by giving cheap oil to allies and paying for free medical care and literacy for thousands in the region.
Ortega will need that kind of help as he tries to shore up support in the second-poorest nation in the Americas.
"This is a poor country. We need schools, oil, jobs. Daniel can't do it himself and the Americans won't help him. Chavez will help us," said Antonio Rios, a part-time laborer.
(Additional reporting by Ivan Castro)
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http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-fg-ortega8nov08,1,4208563,full.story?coll=la-news-a_section&ctrack=1&cset=true
November 8, 2006
Ortega's comeback is complete
Observers debate whether Nicaragua's new president will be a strongman or an older and wiser politician.
By Héctor Tobar, Times Staff Writer
Email= hector.tobar@latimes.com
MANAGUA, NICARAGUA — Daniel Ortega, confirmed Tuesday as the winner of Nicaragua's presidential election, decided a few months back to return an antique oak table to an old enemy — banker Jaime Morales Carazo.
In the 1980s, Ortega expropriated Morales' mansion and furniture in the name of the Sandinista revolution, and for years he and his comrades used it in strategy meetings during the war against the Contras.
Once a leader with the right-wing Contra army, Morales was happy to have the table back, even though Ortega kept the mansion.
The story of the table illustrates the unusual alliances and transformations that define the new Nicaragua, which this week returned Ortega to power after 16 years in the political wilderness.
Ortega's victory, announced Tuesday by election officials, also made Morales the country's next vice president.
"In business and in politics, I never trust anyone who hasn't suffered a serious setback," Morales said, explaining why he decided to bury old animosities and join the Ortega ticket. "Daniel Ortega has suffered many defeats. He's recognized them, and I think he's learned from them."
Ortega's decision to invite an old Contra to join his ticket was one of several savvy — some say cynical — political moves that helped secure a victory after he lost presidential elections in 1990, 1996 and 2001.
According to nearly complete results, Ortega defeated his nearest challenger in a fivecandidate field, conservative Eduardo Montealegre, 38% to 29%.
On Tuesday, Ortega struck a conciliatory tone as he met with Montealegre, who came to the Sandinista campaign headquarters to congratulate him.
"This is a sign that Nicaraguans want to work for the common good, and a sign that stability is more important than our political differences," Ortega said. "We are not talking now about winners or losers here."
Some Nicaraguans think Ortega has fashioned himself into a traditional Latin American strongman who rules not out of ideology but for power itself. Attempts by Sandinista dissidents to challenge Ortega as the party's leader have been quashed, with Ortega stopping attempts to stage an open primary. The dissidents formed their own party but finished fourth in Sunday's vote.
Others see in Ortega an older and wiser politician who may make a better ruler than the firebrand who helped lead a band of guerrillas, radical poets and priests to power in 1979.
Former President Carter, who led a team of election monitors, said he was heartened that Ortega had held off from declaring victory even after early indications in the excruciatingly slow vote count showed that he had won. It was Carter who refused to intervene on behalf of dictator Anastasio Somoza, allowing Ortega to become Nicaragua's revolutionary leader.
"At that time, he had a harsh and deserved reputation," Carter said of Ortega.
When Ortega was voted out of office in 1990, it was Carter who, in a long and tense meeting, persuaded Ortega to concede defeat. He told Ortega that he was "a young man who could return to power one day."
A generation later, Ortega is an avuncular 60-year-old who promises to respect private property and free enterprise.
He has kissed the hand of a Roman Catholic archbishop, come out for tough antiabortion laws, and adopted nonthreatening pink and blue pastels for the party's campaign materials.
"Whether these sentiments are genuine, I can't say," Carter said. "But certainly his demeanor and his approach and his public statements are different."
Like other Latin Americans from traditionally leftist movements who have been elected to office in recent years — Brazil's Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Uruguay's Tabare Vazquez among them — Ortega probably will rule only slightly to the left of center, analysts said.
"Even if Ortega hasn't changed … it's important to remember that this is the first time he's reached power in a truly democratic election," said Carlos Tunnerman, a former Nicaraguan ambassador to the U.S. "He will be obliged to respect the rules of the democratic system."
Nicaragua will abide by its commitments to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, Ortega's Sandinista advisors said.
Emilio Alvarez Montalvan, a conservative former Cabinet minister, said he expected Ortega to undertake some reforms to address Nicaragua's rampant poverty, including raising taxes on the wealthy, increasing the capital gains tax and eliminating customs tax exemptions enjoyed by a privileged few.
Ortega may try to create neighborhood organizations in poor communities similar to those formed by President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.
"But I'm sure that Ortega won't repeat the mistakes of the past and confiscate property," Alvarez Montalvan said. "He'll try to fight poverty by increasing rural salaries and building new housing in the countryside."
In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the Bush administration would not comment until the election results were final.
"We'll see what government this election produces," McCormack said. "We'll see what the platform of that government is. But we have very clearly demonstrated our commitment to the Nicaraguan people."
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Special correspondent Alex Renderos in Managua and Times staff writer Paul Richter in Washington contributed to this report.
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http://granmai.cubaweb.com/ingles/2006/noviembre/mier8/46daniel2.html
Havana. November 8, 2006
Message From Fidel To Daniel Ortega
Havana, November 7, 2006
“Year of the Energy Revolution in Cuba”
Dear Daniel:
The magnificent Sandinista victory fills our people with joy and at the same time fills the terrorist and genocidal government of the United States with ignominy. That is why both you and the heroic people of Nicaragua deserve our warmest congratulations.
Among the people of the United States themselves, you will have many friends, given that to fight for a better world is to fight for hope of life for all peoples.
Signed,
Fidel Castro Ruz
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http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/3688
November 8, 2006
Oaxaca Fights Back
Laura Carlsen, IRC
Editor: John Feffer, IRC
In regional lore, Oaxacans have a reputation for being like the tlacuache. A recurring figure in Mexican mythology, the tlacuache plays dead when cornered. But woe to the enemy who thinks the battle is over. The small but fierce creature merely awaits a more propitious moment to fight back.
The Oaxacan protest movement burns slow, but deep. Oaxacan teachers, who mobilized for a pay raise last May, consciously built on years of protest against social inequality in their state. On June 14, the state government goaded the Oaxacan tlacuachewhen it attempted to evict protesting teachers from Oaxaca's central plaza. Oaxacans responded by forming the broad-based Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO). The federal government confronted the growing movement on October 28 when it sent thousands of federal police to occupy the city. The murders, wounding, and disappearance of the protestors have only deepened the resolve of the movement as a whole.
Although the stage was set for confrontation, the movement continued to insist on non-violence. They lay down in front of advancing tanks and distributed flowers to riot-geared cops. On November 2, a crucial battle took place when the police attempted to retake the university. Inside the university, the radio station that has been the backbone of the protest organizing over the past five months was under siege the entire day. Radio APPO did not cease to broadcast and the people did not cease to defend it, despite the grossly uneven odds against them.
“Our eyes are burning with tear gas, but at least now we can see the government for what it really is,” a young woman commented over the air in a voice filled with urgency and determination. “We're not budging.”
People all over the world heard her. Radio APPO streamed through the computers of listeners who followed the battle for the university in blow-by-blow accounts. They instantly activated networks to plan their own protests. Within days, demonstrators gathered in front of Mexican consulates and embassies in the United States and Europe, calling for an end to police repression of the movement. People whose names are well known throughout the world wrote and published letters, and people whose names have been printed only in phone books signed petitions. In a small town in Italy, hundreds of young people gathered to discuss North-South cooperation and declare their solidarity with Oaxaca, and in New York several protesters were arrested in front of the Mexican consulate. The Zapatista Other Campaign mobilized a binational roadblock on the Mexico-U.S. border. The list of actions worldwide goes on and on.
Both houses of the Mexican congress and the secretary of the interior, who is charged with domestic policy, have called for Oaxacan Governor Ulises Ruiz to step down. Despite the breakdown of governance in the state, he has refused saying it is his duty to hold on to his job. On November 5, the movement mobilized tens of thousands of people in a march through Oaxaca. In the pre-dawn hours of November 6, bombs exploded in the offices of the electoral tribunal, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), and an international bank. No one was killed or injured, but the tension rose several notches. Several guerrilla groups claimed responsibility for the acts, demanding the resignation of the governor, freedom for political prisoners held following police repression in the town of Atenco, and investigation of the charges of electoral fraud.
The APPO immediately condemned the bombings and repeated that it has no relations with guerrilla groups. It has continued to try to negotiate a peaceful settlement of its demands. In the turbid political atmosphere following Mexico's presidential elections on July 2, Oaxaca's conflict has now catalyzed a series of events that threaten Mexico's stability.
Why Oaxaca?
The mountains of Oaxaca became the refuge of pre-Columbian civilizations that were never fully conquered. The history of resistance and persistence that developed there permitted the survival of cultures that bucked a colonizing mentality and rejected tacitly or explicitly the wholesale imposition of colonial political systems. At the same time, to subjugate the rebels required some of the nation's most brutal forms of repression. Many of these remain fundamentally intact to this day. The governor, whose resignation has become the principal demand of the current Oaxacan insurrection, has inherited the mantle of this centuries-old tradition of repression.
Oaxaca is a land of many peoples. The state encompasses 16 languages within its borders and has the nation's largest number of municipalities (570), in large part due to the determination to preserve and strengthen local self-government. Even in Oaxaca City, where fighting between police and protesters has transformed the urban landscape, diversity precludes any easy characterization. Mixtecos converge with Martians (the local name for the city's large population of foreign artists, writers, pensioners, and NGO workers), tourists with beggars, the rich with the poor.
This diversity, which in another context could fragment a social movement, has become the wealth and collective strength of Mexico's most important social justice rebellion in recent years. Oaxacan teachers have drawn on over 26 years of experience in the democratic teachers' movement. Section 22, the group of Oaxacan teachers organized in the National Education Workers Union (SNTE by its Spanish initials), has long been a stronghold of the democratic faction of the union. For years its leaders have been elected from this dissident faction and have become leaders in Oaxaca's social movements beyond the union as well.
Oaxaca's rebellion also has roots in the battles of the indigenous communities for autonomy and, since the 1970s, for the restoration of communitarian forms of self-government, collective work, and identity. Added to the mix has been the anger of a new generation of high school and university students sick of getting short shrift from governments impoverished by structural adjustment and corruption. And as a final ingredient in a recipe for rebellion, citizens sensitized to the injustice expressed in daily life rose up against a disputed gubernatorial election that seemed to doom their society to more of the same or worse.
Leading Edge
The significance of the Oaxacan movement to Mexico is obvious. It is the first challenge to a federal government with little legitimacy or credibility, elected amid charges of fraud last July. Although Felipe Calderon takes office on December 1, the rules of Mexican politics dictate that all major, and especially very visible, decisions like the repression of the Oaxacan movement must at least be approved by him. The government's decision to send in federal police is in part based on a desire not to pass on a problem to a weak president who lacks the political capacity to resolve it.
The frustrations that led to the formation of the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO) exist throughout the country. Elections that fail to reflect the popular will, inequalities that sunder communities, brutality and corruption that flourish with impunity—no region is immune from the kind of social unrest that gave birth to the Oaxacan movement. Many Mexicans openly celebrate each victory of the Oaxacans, and each day they maintain the resistance. Knowing this, the government seeks to repress the movement without conceding political ground, so as not to provide a dangerous precedent in a system that relies on the complacency of the political and economic have-nots.
But why do other people care? Does Oaxaca have a meaning beyond an inspirational tale for those who aspire to a more just world?
If the movement for global justice were a territorial battle, Oaxaca would be a tiny point on a very large map, of little consequence except to the people involved. But symbolic battles, although very real for the combatants themselves, are the true terrain of the movement for global justice. They offer an opportunity, even when lost, to defeat the myths that uphold the system.
Oaxaca is the South of the South. It is the truth to the lie that Mexico has joined the First World by grabbing onto the coattails of the United States through the North American Free Trade Agreement. The failure of this integration strategy in Oaxaca and other southern states in Mexico was so obvious that even a recent World Bank report felt obliged to address the issue. Its conclusion—“the southern states did not benefit from NAFTA because they were not prepared to reap the benefits of free trade”—was foregone and surprised no one who has studied the Bank's blame-the-victim logic. If forced to do an evaluation of globalization in general, defenders of neoliberalism would no doubt castigate the entire global South for this supposed failure. Needless to say, it is of little consolation to the hungry, the displaced, the disenfranchised, and the discarded.
The Oaxacan rebellion is proof that for many people, even physical preservation can become secondary to fighting for a conviction. With only the raw material of their own lives in their hands, they have set out to mold a different future. Although demands today center on the governor's resignation and fair pay for teachers, the new forms of organization and consciousness created will endure long after this movement and become the seeds of future movements.
They will also be the seeds of popular rebellions in other places. The Oaxacan rebellion is a reminder that an evaluation of the consequences of free trade and globalization is indeed overdue — and that the World Bank has no right to be the evaluator. The people who have suffered the consequences should evaluate the system. Too often in the North, the reports of protest and rebellion around the world are seen as disparate battles or isolated complaints and not as part of a growing consensus that something is gravely wrong. Those who live in countries that do “reap the benefits of free trade” — not through “preparation” but through the design of the system — have a responsibility to get the message.
What could have been a local conflict has detonated a national confrontation and contributed to the revival of violent factions. The government's lack of political will has blocked real negotiations. It has failed to respond to Oaxaca's valid demands and open up talks on the reforms needed to assure Mexico's peace and stability. Instead, the country is now perilously close to the opposite.
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Laura Carlsen is director of the IRC Americas Program in Mexico City, where she has worked as a writer and political analyst for the past two decades. The Americas Program is online @ http://americas.irc-online.org/ .
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Viernes, Noviembre 10, 2006= Oaxaca News Report
http://aztlannet-news-blog.blogspot.com/2006/11/viernes-noviembre-10-2006-oaxaca-news.html
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http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/world/15948201.htm
Posted on Tue, Nov. 07, 2006
Abortion in Latin America illegal, risky - but not rare
By Colin McMahon / Chicago Tribune (MCT)
SALVADOR, Brazil - Abortion is mostly illegal in Brazil, but you would not know it from the numbers. Every year an estimated 1.4 million Brazilian girls and women take the law into their hands, and often put their health at risk, to terminate their pregnancies. This gives Brazil an abortion rate much higher than that of the United States, even though one country allows the procedure and the other all but bans it.
Illegal abortion has become a fact of life, and not just in Brazil. Across much of Latin America, even as judges, legislators and activists debate whether abortion laws should be tightened or loosened, millions of women are finding clandestine ways to end their unwanted pregnancies.
For Brazilians such as Marta Leiro, the question is not whether to break the law but how.
There are strong teas and herbal mixes designed to cause miscarriage. There are potent prescription medicines, purchased illegally but easily found. There are private clinics with willing, if expensive, doctors. And then, if absolutely necessary, there is someone around the corner, around some corner in most Brazilian communities, who will put the girl or woman up on a table and end her pregnancy.
"My first choice was a safe abortion, an abortion done in a special clinic," said Leiro, a 38-year-old community activist and mother of two who was jobless when she became pregnant in September 2004. "But I was in no condition to pay," she said. "And so I chose this other method, the one that's used the most. And I did it while terrified of dying."
Leiro lives in Salvador, the biggest city in the poorest region of Brazil, and a place believed to have one of the highest abortion rates in the country.
Though no official figures exist, a recent survey indicated that 1 in 5 women under age 20 in Salvador has had an abortion.
Internationally, Brazil's estimated national abortion rate puts it above the United States, which is in the middle of the pack, but below the world leaders in abortion, which are dominated by the countries of the former Soviet Union and their former allies in Eastern Europe. The vast majority of Brazil's abortions are illegal, as they are almost everywhere in Latin America except Cuba.
Abortion-rights activists are trying to change that, with advertising campaigns, lobbying efforts and court challenges from Mexico City down to Santiago, Chile. They held events marking Latin American and Caribbean Day for the Decriminalization of Abortion on Sept. 28, part of a strategy to focus on abortion as a leading cause of maternal death, especially for young and poor women.
In an article released last week in the medical journal The Lancet, a group of public health experts and obstetricians estimates that worldwide about eight women die every hour from complications of unsafe abortion.
Abortion-rights activists argue that the laws fail to stop abortion: The United Nations estimates the number of abortions at 4 million a year across Latin America, despite some of the severest restrictions in the world. The activists have had some success: In May, a top court in Colombia made abortion legal in cases of rape or other limited circumstances.
But abortion opponents also have scored victories. Last month, Nicaragua's congress voted to strip away all exceptions to the country's abortion law. If signed into law by the president, the measure would make all abortions punishable by prison, even those designed to save the woman's life.
"Abortion has always been an issue here. It just hibernates from time to time," said Jacqueline Pitanguy, a Rio de Janeiro sociologist who runs a group called Citizenship Rights, Information and Action.
Pitanguy said certain incidents, such as the arrest of a woman or a court challenge, can re-ignite the debate. But little changes.
"We take two steps ahead and two steps back," Pitanguy said. "We just do not move here."
Religious groups opposed to abortion, from traditional powers such as the Roman Catholic Church to growing forces such as Latin America's evangelical churches, wield considerable influence in Brazil and the rest of the region.
Even nations that have elected leftist politicians, such as Brazil and Bolivia, remain socially conservative. Abortion opponents say the strict laws reflect the wishes and the values of the people.
"The right to life is inviolable," said Geraldo Cardinal Majella Agnelo of the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil.
"It is necessary to reaffirm the ethical principle of respect for the dignity of human life, no matter in what stage of development or in what condition that life is found," Agnelo said.
Maria Helena Souza, who heads a newly created department in the Salvador city government dedicated to women's issues, says surveys show that Brazilian voters want abortion laws relaxed.
A pregnancy can be terminated legally in Brazil only if it was caused by rape or incest or if it threatens the woman's life. Souza and others are backing a law that would lift criminal penalties, including possible prison terms, for other women who undergo abortions.
"We are building up our strength in Congress, and the long-term goal is to legalize abortion," Souza said. "But that is not going to happen today or next week. We don't have enough votes."
Despite the strict laws and potential prison terms, hundreds of thousands of women in Brazil end their pregnancies each year, sometimes at great risk.
Catholics for the Right to Choose, a group working to have abortion de-criminalized, estimates that each year in Brazil 250,000 women suffer health complications from secret abortions. Across Latin America, abortion-rights groups attribute 10,000 deaths a year to unsafe abortion.
The favored method for that in Brazil is to do what Leiro did. Take pills.
Leiro used a drug for treating ulcers that some obstetricians use to induce labor. An abortion in a private clinic would have cost at least $1,000. The pills cost her $120 for eight. Leiro swallowed some and inserted others in her cervix. And then she waited.
"It's a lot of pain," said Leiro, who was three months pregnant. "It's like the contractions of giving birth."
Among her other community activities, Leiro now runs a support group for women who have gone through abortion. She knows she was lucky her health did not suffer.
Many women who go through secret abortions suffer severe complications. And some of them end up in the Institute of Perinatology of Bahia, a maternity hospital that is also the lone clinic in Salvador that legally performs abortions.
Among the potential problems: cardiac trouble, hemorrhaging and infections, said Eliana de Paula Santos, the hospital director.
"Sometimes part of the fetus remains in the uterus," Paula Santos said. "So she will keep bleeding, because the body wants to eliminate the placenta. Or after some time an infection will occur."
Hospital figures show that nearly 100 times as many women are admitted for complications from clandestine abortions as women who are provided legal abortions.
Paula Santos said there is no way to estimate how many women undergo secret abortions, in part because the medicines used to cause the abortions are often contraband brought in from Paraguay.
"Abortion is an important problem that we cannot sweep under the rug," Paula Santos said.
"I see a lot of hypocrisy in the discussion because at times a person will have an individual position in favor of abortion, for oneself, or for a friend, or for a daughter.
"But as a leader, that person is distant and opposes abortion, alleging religious or moral questions," she said. "Because that was the dominant position for so long, it's necessary to promote a debate, a discussion, with all sectors of the population. We have to bring this to light."
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November 3, 2006= Oaxaca Video Collective Needs Your Support.
http://elenemigocomun.net/368
Email= justin@riseup.net
BRADLEY: In Memoriam
http://video.indymedia.org/en/2006/11/551.shtml
Video= Mexican government killed american journalist
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o22L-xEVRqY
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Peta-de-Aztlan
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Sacramento, California, Amerika
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Key Links=
* http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/
* http://www.crossculturalsolutions.org/default.asp
* http://www.eco.utexas.edu/~hmcleave/chiapas95.html
* http://www.nodo50.org/cipo/
* http://www.immigrantsolidarity.org/
* http://www.mylatinonews.com/
* http://www.vidaenelvalle.com/front/v-english/
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