1. SuJung, Kim 2. Argentine boy sex change approved 3. Few years ago, a female entertainer was spotlighted because she was a transgender. Until that time, the notion of 'transgender' was a very uncommon thing to lots of people. After her, many transgenders were coming out. In addition to that, for a while, there were some discussions about the difference between transgender and gay.
My memory of this case in Korea attracted me to this article. --------------------- A court in the central Argentine province of Cordoba has for the first time agreed that a sex change operation can be carried out on a minor.
The case concerns a 17-year-old male called Nati who wants to be a woman.
The decision ends a long-running legal process for Nati, who suffers from the transsexual disorder known as Harry Benjamin Syndrome.
The judge insisted that Nati receive counselling after the operation, which will take place in the next few days.
Nati knew from an early age that she had been born with the wrong body.
The decision by the court in Cordoba, the first of its kind in Argentina, means that that can now be put right.
Legal fight
After the operation Nati will also be able to officially change her name and apply for new documentation.
I'm very happy, she said, that my real identity has been recognised.
Her parents and friends have supported the 17-year-old during a long and often tortuous legal process that saw some decisions go against her.
The president of the Argentine homosexual community, Cesar Cigliutti, was one of those supporters.
"Not only the operation has been authorised but also the necessary changes to her birth certificate," he said.
"What's important and unusual about this case is that Natalie is a minor - she is not yet 18 years old - and this has become an emblematic case for people who have a gender identity different to their biological one." ----- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7013579.stm
A movie-like incident which indirectly tells so much of what a woman's life would be like within the rank and file of the FARC, noted as a guerilla group in the article.
It made me question however, what could've possibly happened to this woman that forced her to risk her life to escape it. It was a reminder of the US female soldier who suffered immense PTSD, and 'jumped-ship' after returning from Iraq for a short visit.
This was almost like a 'prison break' moment when the only way runaway convicts can get around is by threatening civilians with arms, when their intention is really not to harm them, but protect themselves.
The FARC seems to be no place for a woman. I hope justice is served in this situation and that she will attain legal civilian status.
--- BOGOTA, Colombia - An armed woman hijacked a small plane to escape the ranks of Colombia’s largest guerrilla group and rejoin civilian life, police said.
Police said the woman, identified only by her alias “Angelica,” took over the plane Thursday at an airstrip in Puerto Principe in eastern Colombia and forced its pilot to fly her two hours west to the city of Villavicencio.
Once there she handed over a Galil assault rifle and told authorities she wished to abandon the ranks of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.
Bid for a new start “Her intention from the outset was to run away from the guerrillas and try to restart her life far away from armed combat,” said Col. Pablo Gomez, head of police in the state of Meta where the plane landed.
Television news broadcast images of the woman clad in camouflaged cargo pants being treated by medical professionals.
Gomez said she was being interviewed to determine her legal status. Special amnesty laws cover armed combatants in Colombia’s half-century civil conflict who willingly disarm.
It was not clear whether she would face criminal charges for the alleged hijacking. ----------- http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21043302/
'Here goes Mr. drama-king again. What an eye-catching pair,' I thought when I saw Iranian and Venezuelan leaders together in the press photo. Hugo Chavez himself described his ally as "one of the greatest fighters for true peace," and how they are like brothers. Chavez‘s rhetoric vocabularies silently speak to me that, ‘Never mind the diplomatic calculations of you foreigner’s interest. This is a family issue of Latin America.’
Speaking from my speculations, this is only the very beginning and a nice opener of Chavez’s grand plan for Bolivarian Revolution, gathering a whole crew/army of Latin American nations and the people against the world villain who has launched the third World War against them. His first ally is indeed a successful starter as they both have very similar diplomatic positions against the US, and as they seem to share a dramatic and impellent power in terms of getting something done. It wouldn’t be too surprising to see other nations adding up to the list.
At this point, I wonder whether other Latin American countries also share similar diplomatic ideas, history, or position relating to US.
----------------------------------- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been in Venezuela for talks with President Hugo Chavez.
The two leaders - both critics of the United States - discussed expansion of joint projects and agreements.
The allies are becoming increasingly close as they seek to reduce the influence of the US.
Mr Ahmadinejad's visit follows a stop in Bolivia where he pledged $1bn (£495m) of investment to help the country exploit oil and gas reserves.
The Iranian president flew into Venezuela to a warm welcome from Mr Chavez.
The leaders embraced on a red carpet in front of the presidential palace.
'Fighter for peace'
Mr Chavez described his ally as "one of the greatest fighters for true peace" - a view that is not widely shared, especially in Washington.
The Iranian and Venezuelan leaders see themselves as brothers, with similar political aims.
Both are keen to reduce the influence of the US, so they are joining forces to create more state enterprise.
They are working together on a number of projects from gas and oil exploration to the manufacture of cars and tractors.
Similar agreements are in place in Bolivia, with further Iranian investment promised.
Critics and opponents are increasingly dismayed by their leaders' choice of friends.
But Mr Ahmadinejad said the alliance would allow their people to emerge victorious.
On the Carribean island of Hispaniola, the Dominican Republic and the Republic of Haiti share the border. Poor state of Haiti drives many of its people to leave their homeland and quite a number of Hatians've immigrated and smuggled into DR. And the situation is not good. In DR, strong anti-Haitianism prevails in both public and private sense, and the distinct ethinic feature between Dominican and Hatian-Dominican has made them segregated easily. Immigrants and racial, ethnic issues are common social problem in today's world. And those stem from economic structure. How can we find the way to achieve hamane goals in these difficult situation?
------------------- By MARC LACEY Published: September 29, 2007 SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic
Skip to next paragraph
Barbara P. Fernandez for The New York Times “On TV, the maids are always black and the models are always white.” SONIA PIERRE WHEN Sonia Pierre won an international human rights award last fall, there were two diametrically opposite reactions here: “Way to go!” and “Oh, no!”
Ms. Pierre is the Dominican Republic’s most polarizing human rights advocate, a dark-skinned woman who says she can only dream of a country in which her color — and the skin tone of hundreds of thousands of other Dominicans like her who are of Haitian descent — is a non-issue.
Carlos Morales Troncoso, the Dominican foreign minister, was among those who were infuriated at the honor Ms. Pierre received from the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights. He fired off a letter to Mr. Kennedy’s widow, Ethel, labeling the award “ill advised” and “myopic.”
“I fear that, unfortunately, the Robert F. Kennedy Prize is divorced from reality on the island of Hispaniola, and unfortunately there was bad information on the consequences of the work of Ms. Pierre in these parts,” wrote Mr. Morales, who blames her for smearing the reputation of the country internationally and creating, rather than healing, racial divisions.
The letter was the least of Ms. Pierre’s problems. Within months, the Dominican government began questioning her citizenship and suggested that she belonged on the other half of Hispaniola, the island that the Dominican Republic shares with Haiti.
Born in the Dominican Republic to Haitian parents, Ms. Pierre, 44, has spent her life advocating on behalf of Haitians and ethnic Haitians who hold Dominican citizenship but are subjected to racial discrimination in a society that places a high value on lighter skin. At the age of 13, she organized a protest by sugar-cane workers in one of the Dominican slums — known as bateyes — where she grew up seeing Haitian workers oppressed by their Dominican bosses.
Her current troubles with the government stem from 2005, when her organization, Movement for Dominico-Haitian Women, took to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights the case of two ethnic Haitian children who were denied Dominican birth certificates. The court found in their favor, ordering the government to provide the birth certificates and pay $8,000 in damages to each of the children.
The court could hardly have found otherwise. The Dominican Constitution grants citizenship to those born on Dominican soil, except the children of diplomats or those “in transit” through the country. That has long meant that the children of Haitians who came to the country to work, legally or illegally, gained Dominican citizenship.
But after the decision, the Dominican Supreme Court ruled that Haitian workers were considered “in transit,” and that their children were therefore not entitled to citizenship. (Those children are entitled to Haitian citizenship, however, because Haiti grants citizenship to the offspring of Haitians no matter where they are born.)
THE decision has been decried by human rights groups, who say it has prompted government officials to begin questioning the citizenship of many Dominicans of Haitian descent, putting them at risk of deportation. But Dominican officials respond that there is only one person to blame for the crackdown: Ms. Pierre.
She scoffs at that notion, saying that the problem is racism, not her efforts to end it.
Race is a complicated issue in the Dominican Republic, where much of the population traces its ancestry to the African slaves brought to the island, but where few regard themselves as black. Ms. Pierre said it was considered a compliment for a light-skinned Dominican to tell a dark-skinned one that he had the soul of a white person. Saying that someone thinks like a black person, Ms. Pierre says, is the equivalent of labeling the person ignorant.
“On TV, the maids are always black and the models are always white,” she said.
The American Embassy recently urged its staff members not to patronize one of Santo Domingo’s most popular nightclubs, Loft, because African-American diplomats were denied admission at the door while whites got past the bouncer. Ms. Pierre said she was not surprised.
“I’m sure they were confused with being Haitian,” said Ms. Pierre, who speaks Spanish as well as Haitian creole and is a flurry of activity in her office, sometimes pressing two phones to her ears at once.
“Haitianization” is what Dominicans call the negative influences that poor Haitians bring to their side of the island. Mr. Morales, the foreign minister, explained in his letter protesting Ms. Pierre’s award that his country could not handle the huge numbers of illegal Haitian immigrants. He put the blame on the United States and other countries for failing to improve conditions in Haiti. (Page 2 of 2)
Mr. Morales did not mention that as Haitians head to the more prosperous economy of the Dominican Republic, many Dominicans emigrate to better opportunities in the United States — sometimes legally, sometimes not.
Even as Haitians are shunned, Ms. Pierre argues that the Dominican economy relies on them. Haitian laborers can be seen on construction sites throughout the capital, including the new subway that is the personal project of President Leonel Fernández.
Ms. Pierre’s office, just down the road from the presidential palace, has become a gathering spot for Dominicans of Haitian descent who find their nationality questioned.
ON a recent day, there was a mother who had tried to get a government identity card for her 19-year-old daughter but was told that her daughter, who was born in the Dominican Republic, was a foreigner. The girl’s plans for college depended on her getting the card.
A father, an English teacher at a Dominican public school, came to Ms. Pierre’s office after trying for five months to get a birth certificate for his newborn daughter. “I’m as Dominican as they are,” he said, adding angrily that the government had begun issuing pink birth certificates for children it suspected of being foreigners as opposed to the white documents given to Dominican children.
In Ms. Pierre’s case, officials questioning her nationality have focused on disparities in her record. Her name is listed on her birth certificate as Solain Pie, which she says is a result of a government clerk’s error. She said her first name should be Solange (Sonia is a nickname), whereas Pierre is her last name.
Both her parents, she said, were Haitians who came to the Dominican Republic for work. Her mother had two children in Haiti, both of whom remain there, and 12 more in the Dominican Republic.
“I’m not Haitian, no matter what the government says,” Ms. Pierre said. “My parents were, but I’m not. I’m Dominican, and I have the same right of any citizen to criticize my country.”
2. Argentina's Berlusconi and the Triumph of Soccer
3. Mauricio Macri has elected to be the mayor of Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina. The interesting part of his career is that is owns the city's most popular soccer team, Boca juniors. (for thos who are not familiar with this team; Maradona is from this team:)) Since Soccer means so much to the people in Argentina, this outcome is something we can spend some time to thinks about. He is a super rich, who managed the team very well, and he promised the public he can do the same work for them. However, the author points out that Macri was the 'origianly member' of the corruption era of Menem, who led argentina to a complete economic disaster.
For the last presidency election(2002, Korea) the head of Korean soccer association run for presidency for a while based on the Korean team's great success in the World cup 2002. Although he ended up resigning and helping other candidate, it was impressing how he could get support from the piblic-who had almost no political experience before. In argentina Macri won the election besed on his popularity as the head of most famous team in the nation regardless of his dark past. It seems soccer is not just a sports, but also an important political power in some countries.
-------------------
by Teo Ballvé Buenos Aires has just elected a mustachioed, millionaire mayor who owns Argentina's most popular soccer team. Mauricio Macri is Argentina's answer to Italy's Silvio Berlusconi or New York's Michael Bloomberg. The only difference being shades of ideology, gradations of fabulous wealth and the fact that Macri's high-profile business is not media, but sport. In the fractured Argentine capital where the sentimiento for soccer is virtually the only language that cuts across class and ideological differences, that counts for a lot.
The "Bombonera" stadium in the heart of La Boca, a working-class Buenos Aires neighborhood. (Credit: CABJ)Macri holds the keys to the Bombonera, the legendary stadium near the old port where the city's scruffy, most trophy-decorated team plays: the Club Atlético Boca Juniors, or Boca. The team could fairly be described as the New York Yankees of Argentine soccer. Macri used his Boca credentials to full advantage during the mayoral campaign, appearing alongside the team's stars and at big games whenever possible. Boca, for its part, cooperated by winning, as is its custom. Just days before the June 24 mayoral runoff election, Macri's team won the prestigious pan-American Libertadores Cup by whipping a Brazilian side, Grêmio.
Boca is a winner. And now, so is Macri, the team's president. In the runoff he crushed his rival Daniel Filmus—a factotum for left-leaning President Néstor Kirchner—by roughly 22 percentage points.
In the language of sports, it was a blowout.
With October's presidential elections fast-approaching, Macri's landslide was interpreted as a sign that Kirchner's lock on re-election was perhaps not as sure as some had thought. His party, Frente Para la Victoria, controls most of the still-formidable Peronist Party machine, and is favored to win. But it was decided less than two weeks after Macri's victory that Kirchner's wife, Senator Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, would be the party's candidate—a new face to oppose the increasingly organized center-right opposition, which now has Macri as its most prominent figure.
But who is Mauricio Macri? Above all, he is a money man, and is generally in favor of anything good for business. Alongside other cronies of President Carlos Menem, he fed at the corruption-splattered trough of privatization schemes in 1990s Argentina. That era is reviled now for its kleptocratic government and ill-advised obeisance to Wall Street I-banks and the International Monetary Fund. The unproductive, liberalizing binge of the 1990s set up Argentina for the economic debacle of late 2001. On December 20 of that year the country—gutted by the privatizations and an anemic monetary policy—basically went up in flames. The president resigned in the face of mass protests, and then one mediocre politician after another tossed the unwanted presidency from lap to lap like a hot potato.
In early 2002, Argentina was an international pariah after going through five presidents in less than a month. The next year, President Kirchner was elected and things finally began to settle down. In 2003, the incredible shrinking Argentine economy effected a shrieking 180-degree turn and began to grow at an accelerated pace. There was no way to go but up, and Argentina is now booming, fat with soybean exports, tourism and real estate dollars.
Throughout the race, Macri's sophisticated campaign propaganda specialized in conflating his image with that of Boca Juniors. To that end, Macri's people chose yellow as the campaign symbol. To use both of the team colors—yellow and blue—would have been too heavy-handed, but yellow on its own got the message across well enough. After all, it is the same exact color emblazoned as a horizontal band across the chest of Boca stars like Juan Román Riquelme and Rodrigo Palacio (who play with the beloved Argentine national team as well).
"Gabriela and Mauricio," official campaign photo.Macri's other task was to rehabilitate his reputation as a reactionary, money-grubbing impresario. First, he selected a running mate with physical disabilities—a photogenic city legislator in her early forties who cruises around City Hall in a wheelchair. His and Gabriela Michetti's smiling faces against the Boca-yellow background were a ubiquitous presence on billboards and bus-shelters in the months and weeks before the elections. Another softening touch: throughout the campaign, whether in ads or while campaigning, Macri and Michetti only used their first names. They were Gabriela and Mauricio—friendly, accessible, nice.
One event in particular shadowed this campaign, the "Cromañón" nightclub fire in December 2004 that killed hundreds of young people and eventually led to the impeachment of Macri's predecessor, Ánibal Ibarra, leaving a caretaker city government in power for a year. Macri utilized the nightclub fire as a metaphor for the damage that can be done by a dysfunctional, inefficient and non-transparent city government.
Finally, Macri's nascent political party was re-baptized "Pro," short for the more cumbersome Propuesta Republicana. "Pro" was genius as a form of double-speak. The right-wing Macri suddenly seemed to be moving toward progressivism without actually having to offer any concrete evidence of it. In Spanish as in English the prefix "pro" is associated with a slew of positive-sounding words. Macri, a political newbie, suddenly seemed profesional (like the team) and progresista (progressive, as his opponents claim to be); also, Macri was full of propuestas (proposals) and proyectos (projects)—an idea man.
One of Macri's campaign videos combines a whiff of Boca fever with a pointed stoking of Argentine nationalism, and then ties a "Pro" ribbon around these sentiments. "What is Pro?" the ad asks rhetorically, and answers: "That the most popular soccer team in Argentina is also admired around the world, that is Pro." After that grandiose pronouncement the rest of the ad sounds like a throwaway: Oh, and Pro is good health care and schools too, by the way.
During this mayoral race, those wanting to blow the whistle on Macri's pseudo-progressivism pointed at his congressional record. Macri, who won his congressional seat after his first unsuccessful run for mayor, has distinguished himself with feeble attendance and a dismissive attitude toward the legislature as an institution. His voting record is solidly right wing. For example, he voted against a reproductive health law and against human rights trials for Dirty War-era torturers. He focused on promoting himself as a crime-fighter, a free-market booster and a defender of Catholic family values. He went on record saying jail-time might be the best solution for the cartoneros, as the city's vast army of impoverished, desperate trash recyclers are known.
For those with a bit of memory, Macri's zero-tolerance platform smacks of the reigning ethos in the latter half of the 1970s, when a mustachioed law-and-order man in a military uniform, Jorge Videla, oversaw a state-sponsored kidnapping, torture and murder apparatus, producing Argentina's 30,000 disappeared. In reference to these atrocities, Macri has told his followers to “look forward” and forget the "ghosts of the past." It was in that era that Macri's father amassed the family fortune, largely through contracts with the milicos, as Argentines call the juntas. Back then, Catholicism, Western culture, and the free market were used as justifications to brutally root-out "leftist subversives" who supposedly threatened to drag the country into chaos and Soviet atheism and obscurantism. These days, the enemy seems to be the under-class, the cartoneros, the unemployed, petty criminals—shadows that remind well-to-do city residents that Argentina is still dragging around the scourge of poverty, despite the recovery.
The progressive intelligentsia of Buenos Aires was appalled by Macri's trouncing of his more left-leaning opponents. They like to describe Macri as a neo-fascist, and compare him to Hitler and Bush. Opposition groups followed the lead of progressive blogs, who photo-shopped mustaches onto images of Mr. Burns from the TV cartoon series The Simpsons, by pasting posters throughout the city asking: “Would it be good for Mr. Burns to be mayor? Don’t forget who Macri really is.” Santiago Llach, a Buenos Aires poet who writes a blog called “Monolingua,” referred to the "March of the Yellow Shirts" in a post on election night, equating Macri's supporters to Hitler's brown-shirts. Other critics mock Macri's practice of giving interviews and planning his campaign from the gilded sands of Punta del Este, a beach resort in neighboring Uruguay.
These critics aren't necessarily enthusiastic about President Kirchner's peronist-populist style or the candidate he handpicked to run against Macri (Filmus, the long-faced, bearded Minister of Education). Yet neither can they satisfactorily explain the Macri landslide, even in traditionally anti-Peronist Buenos Aires. Ever since the Macri victory was celebrated with fireworks over the Boca stadium, the lefty smart set has been hyperventilating in political columns and TV interviews, deploying convoluted theories to explain why porteños, as residents of Buenos Aires are known, chose Mr. Burns. What are people thinking? Is this a city of amnesiacs? Has everyone forgotten the nightmarish 1970s, the disastrous 1990s, eras that are synonymous with the name Macri? What happened?
Soccer triumphed. In Buenos Aires as elsewhere, this is not the age of reason, but the era of spectacle. Macri mounted an impressive spectacle in which soccer glory occupied the center ring. It doesn't matter that soccer has nothing to do with the effective governing of a chaotic, socially heterogeneous city teeming with three million residents and millions more who pour into its stressed-out infrastructure to work and shop everyday. Soccer is meaningful on a visceral level. Soccer is the one realm of reality that brings satisfaction to millions of Argentines, a satisfaction they can share with others in the street, at the office, in the elevator. Week after week soccer serves as an escape valve for decades of individual and national frustrations framed by economic and political disasters. Boca Juniors, the soccer team, is basically the only consistent winner in a country that has been embittered by a long losing streak (even the national team is disappointing lately). Macri managed to convince the public he can do for Buenos Aires what he did for Boca. Argentines want to win. For voters, Mr. Burns and his yellow-shirts seem like the only team in town.
Teo Ballvé is NACLA’s Web editor. A journalist based in Colombia, he edited, with Vijay Prashad, Dispatches From Latin America: On the Frontlines Against Neoliberalism (South End Press, 2006).
'Naval centre to combat cocaine' By Dominic Casciani
The nature of these operations necessitates the secrecy of their specific strategies in order to be successful in cracking down on the organized criminals. However the countries involved need to be cautious in order to not violate the sovereignty of the Latin American states involved and their jurisdiction over their seas as well as the human rights situation in taking custody of the criminals and their ships. Although the intentions are good, the means in which it happens must also be checked to make sure that greater harm isn't done in the long term.
-------- The UK and six other nations are launching a fresh effort to intercept drug smuggling runs across the Atlantic into Europe from Latin America. A special centre is being opened in Portugal to co-ordinate rapid response naval operations against the trade.
A senior officer from Britain's Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) has been named the operation's first director.
Ministers hope the special naval operations centre will mean less cocaine reaches British drugs markets.
Officials say the amount of cocaine being smuggled into Europe has been rising - but the Lisbon-based Maritime Analysis and Operations Centre - Narcotics (MAOC-N) has been set up for a new concerted continental effort against Latin America-based producers.
The operations centre co-ordinates drug smuggling intelligence and vessels from each country's navy which are patrolling waters between South Africa and the Norwegian Sea.
Officers at the centre take decisions on which vessels from the partner nations are best placed to intercept a suspected cocaine shipment.
The centre is jointly run by the UK, Portugal, Spain, the Irish Republic, France, the Netherlands and Italy but will also include US military officers linked to naval operations in the Caribbean.
While the operation is being officially launched on Sunday, its officers have already run 22 operations since April, leading to 10 seizures totalling more than 10 tonnes, say officials.
In June intelligence gathered by British officials led to the French Navy intercepting a Brazilian vessel carrying 840kg of cocaine.
'Cutting pathways'
Home Office minister Vernon Coaker said: "Our law enforcement agencies are focusing efforts on reducing the supply of Class A drugs, which cause the most harm to the individual, communities and society as a whole.
"Soca involvement in the Maritime Analysis Operations Centre - Narcotics will help target cocaine smugglers by sharing intelligence with other countries and coordinating rapid air and sea operations, making the best use of law enforcement and military resources to stop attempted drug runs across the Atlantic.
"By taking an active role in this innovative drug trafficking centre we are cutting down the pathways used by those serious criminals attempting to infest our country with cocaine."
Despite increasing collaboration between European agencies, the amount of cocaine reaching Europe from Latin America has increased over the past decade.
The centre is seeking to attack that trend by targeting private vessels used to avoid detection by customs officials at ports.
Launched in 2006, Soca says that in its first year it seized one fifth of Europe's cocaine supply - 73 tonnes with a street value of £3bn.
While critics say the agency needs to be more transparent, its chiefs say it needs to be judged over the long-term.
Its strategy focuses on bringing down organised criminals by trying to make it impossible for them to do business, rather than focusing on just making arrests. ------- http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/7020321.stm
A very down to earth* kind of guy. I'm an environmental sociologist interested in establishing material and organizational sustainability worldwide. I'm always looking for interesting materials/technologies, inspiring ideas, or institutional examples of sustainability to inspire others to recognize their choices now. To be fatalistic about an unsustainable world is a sign of a captive mind, given all our options.
*(If "earth" is defined in a planetary sense, concerning comparative historical knowledge and interest in the past 10,000 years or so anywhere...) See both blogs.
9 comments:
1. SuJung, Kim
2. Argentine boy sex change approved
3. Few years ago, a female entertainer was spotlighted because she was a transgender. Until that time, the notion of 'transgender' was a very uncommon thing to lots of people. After her, many transgenders were coming out. In addition to that, for a while, there were some discussions about the difference between transgender and gay.
My memory of this case in Korea attracted me to this article.
---------------------
A court in the central Argentine province of Cordoba has for the first time agreed that a sex change operation can be carried out on a minor.
The case concerns a 17-year-old male called Nati who wants to be a woman.
The decision ends a long-running legal process for Nati, who suffers from the transsexual disorder known as Harry Benjamin Syndrome.
The judge insisted that Nati receive counselling after the operation, which will take place in the next few days.
Nati knew from an early age that she had been born with the wrong body.
The decision by the court in Cordoba, the first of its kind in Argentina, means that that can now be put right.
Legal fight
After the operation Nati will also be able to officially change her name and apply for new documentation.
I'm very happy, she said, that my real identity has been recognised.
Her parents and friends have supported the 17-year-old during a long and often tortuous legal process that saw some decisions go against her.
The president of the Argentine homosexual community, Cesar Cigliutti, was one of those supporters.
"Not only the operation has been authorised but also the necessary changes to her birth certificate," he said.
"What's important and unusual about this case is that Natalie is a minor - she is not yet 18 years old - and this has become an emblematic case for people who have a gender identity different to their biological one."
-----
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7013579.stm
Euna Lee
"Colombian woman hijacks plane, deserts FARC"
A movie-like incident which indirectly tells so much of what a woman's life would be like within the rank and file of the FARC, noted as a guerilla group in the article.
It made me question however, what could've possibly happened to this woman that forced her to risk her life to escape it. It was a reminder of the US female soldier who suffered immense PTSD, and 'jumped-ship' after returning from Iraq for a short visit.
This was almost like a 'prison break' moment when the only way runaway convicts can get around is by threatening civilians with arms, when their intention is really not to harm them, but protect themselves.
The FARC seems to be no place for a woman. I hope justice is served in this situation and that she will attain legal civilian status.
---
BOGOTA, Colombia - An armed woman hijacked a small plane to escape the ranks of Colombia’s largest guerrilla group and rejoin civilian life, police said.
Police said the woman, identified only by her alias “Angelica,” took over the plane Thursday at an airstrip in Puerto Principe in eastern Colombia and forced its pilot to fly her two hours west to the city of Villavicencio.
Once there she handed over a Galil assault rifle and told authorities she wished to abandon the ranks of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.
Bid for a new start
“Her intention from the outset was to run away from the guerrillas and try to restart her life far away from armed combat,” said Col. Pablo Gomez, head of police in the state of Meta where the plane landed.
Television news broadcast images of the woman clad in camouflaged cargo pants being treated by medical professionals.
Gomez said she was being interviewed to determine her legal status. Special amnesty laws cover armed combatants in Colombia’s half-century civil conflict who willingly disarm.
It was not clear whether she would face criminal charges for the alleged hijacking.
-----------
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21043302/
Yong Mie Jo
Title: Iran and Venezuela heads in talks
'Here goes Mr. drama-king again. What an eye-catching pair,' I thought when I saw Iranian and Venezuelan leaders together in the press photo. Hugo Chavez himself described his ally as "one of the greatest fighters for true peace," and how they are like brothers. Chavez‘s rhetoric vocabularies silently speak to me that, ‘Never mind the diplomatic calculations of you foreigner’s interest. This is a family issue of Latin America.’
Speaking from my speculations, this is only the very beginning and a nice opener of Chavez’s grand plan for Bolivarian Revolution, gathering a whole crew/army of Latin American nations and the people against the world villain who has launched the third World War against them. His first ally is indeed a successful starter as they both have very similar diplomatic positions against the US, and as they seem to share a dramatic and impellent power in terms of getting something done. It wouldn’t be too surprising to see other nations adding up to the list.
At this point, I wonder whether other Latin American countries also share similar diplomatic ideas, history, or position relating to US.
-----------------------------------
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been in Venezuela for talks with President Hugo Chavez.
The two leaders - both critics of the United States - discussed expansion of joint projects and agreements.
The allies are becoming increasingly close as they seek to reduce the influence of the US.
Mr Ahmadinejad's visit follows a stop in Bolivia where he pledged $1bn (£495m) of investment to help the country exploit oil and gas reserves.
The Iranian president flew into Venezuela to a warm welcome from Mr Chavez.
The leaders embraced on a red carpet in front of the presidential palace.
'Fighter for peace'
Mr Chavez described his ally as "one of the greatest fighters for true peace" - a view that is not widely shared, especially in Washington.
The Iranian and Venezuelan leaders see themselves as brothers, with similar political aims.
Both are keen to reduce the influence of the US, so they are joining forces to create more state enterprise.
They are working together on a number of projects from gas and oil exploration to the manufacture of cars and tractors.
Similar agreements are in place in Bolivia, with further Iranian investment promised.
Critics and opponents are increasingly dismayed by their leaders' choice of friends.
But Mr Ahmadinejad said the alliance would allow their people to emerge victorious.
- Friday, 28 September 2007
---
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7017467.stm
Kyung-Hee,Kang
"A Rights Advocate’s Work Divides Dominicans"
On the Carribean island of Hispaniola, the Dominican Republic and the Republic of Haiti share the border. Poor state of Haiti drives many of its people to leave their homeland and quite a number of Hatians've immigrated and smuggled into DR.
And the situation is not good. In DR, strong anti-Haitianism prevails in both public and private sense, and the distinct ethinic feature between Dominican and Hatian-Dominican has made them segregated easily.
Immigrants and racial, ethnic issues are common social problem in today's world. And those stem from economic structure. How can we find the way to achieve hamane goals in these difficult situation?
-------------------
By MARC LACEY
Published: September 29, 2007
SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic
Skip to next paragraph
Barbara P. Fernandez for The New York Times
“On TV, the maids are always black and the models are always white.”
SONIA PIERRE
WHEN Sonia Pierre won an international human rights award last fall, there were two diametrically opposite reactions here: “Way to go!” and “Oh, no!”
Ms. Pierre is the Dominican Republic’s most polarizing human rights advocate, a dark-skinned woman who says she can only dream of a country in which her color — and the skin tone of hundreds of thousands of other Dominicans like her who are of Haitian descent — is a non-issue.
Carlos Morales Troncoso, the Dominican foreign minister, was among those who were infuriated at the honor Ms. Pierre received from the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights. He fired off a letter to Mr. Kennedy’s widow, Ethel, labeling the award “ill advised” and “myopic.”
“I fear that, unfortunately, the Robert F. Kennedy Prize is divorced from reality on the island of Hispaniola, and unfortunately there was bad information on the consequences of the work of Ms. Pierre in these parts,” wrote Mr. Morales, who blames her for smearing the reputation of the country internationally and creating, rather than healing, racial divisions.
The letter was the least of Ms. Pierre’s problems. Within months, the Dominican government began questioning her citizenship and suggested that she belonged on the other half of Hispaniola, the island that the Dominican Republic shares with Haiti.
Born in the Dominican Republic to Haitian parents, Ms. Pierre, 44, has spent her life advocating on behalf of Haitians and ethnic Haitians who hold Dominican citizenship but are subjected to racial discrimination in a society that places a high value on lighter skin. At the age of 13, she organized a protest by sugar-cane workers in one of the Dominican slums — known as bateyes — where she grew up seeing Haitian workers oppressed by their Dominican bosses.
Her current troubles with the government stem from 2005, when her organization, Movement for Dominico-Haitian Women, took to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights the case of two ethnic Haitian children who were denied Dominican birth certificates. The court found in their favor, ordering the government to provide the birth certificates and pay $8,000 in damages to each of the children.
The court could hardly have found otherwise. The Dominican Constitution grants citizenship to those born on Dominican soil, except the children of diplomats or those “in transit” through the country. That has long meant that the children of Haitians who came to the country to work, legally or illegally, gained Dominican citizenship.
But after the decision, the Dominican Supreme Court ruled that Haitian workers were considered “in transit,” and that their children were therefore not entitled to citizenship. (Those children are entitled to Haitian citizenship, however, because Haiti grants citizenship to the offspring of Haitians no matter where they are born.)
THE decision has been decried by human rights groups, who say it has prompted government officials to begin questioning the citizenship of many Dominicans of Haitian descent, putting them at risk of deportation. But Dominican officials respond that there is only one person to blame for the crackdown: Ms. Pierre.
She scoffs at that notion, saying that the problem is racism, not her efforts to end it.
Race is a complicated issue in the Dominican Republic, where much of the population traces its ancestry to the African slaves brought to the island, but where few regard themselves as black. Ms. Pierre said it was considered a compliment for a light-skinned Dominican to tell a dark-skinned one that he had the soul of a white person. Saying that someone thinks like a black person, Ms. Pierre says, is the equivalent of labeling the person ignorant.
“On TV, the maids are always black and the models are always white,” she said.
The American Embassy recently urged its staff members not to patronize one of Santo Domingo’s most popular nightclubs, Loft, because African-American diplomats were denied admission at the door while whites got past the bouncer. Ms. Pierre said she was not surprised.
“I’m sure they were confused with being Haitian,” said Ms. Pierre, who speaks Spanish as well as Haitian creole and is a flurry of activity in her office, sometimes pressing two phones to her ears at once.
“Haitianization” is what Dominicans call the negative influences that poor Haitians bring to their side of the island. Mr. Morales, the foreign minister, explained in his letter protesting Ms. Pierre’s award that his country could not handle the huge numbers of illegal Haitian immigrants. He put the blame on the United States and other countries for failing to improve conditions in Haiti.
(Page 2 of 2)
Mr. Morales did not mention that as Haitians head to the more prosperous economy of the Dominican Republic, many Dominicans emigrate to better opportunities in the United States — sometimes legally, sometimes not.
Even as Haitians are shunned, Ms. Pierre argues that the Dominican economy relies on them. Haitian laborers can be seen on construction sites throughout the capital, including the new subway that is the personal project of President Leonel Fernández.
Ms. Pierre’s office, just down the road from the presidential palace, has become a gathering spot for Dominicans of Haitian descent who find their nationality questioned.
ON a recent day, there was a mother who had tried to get a government identity card for her 19-year-old daughter but was told that her daughter, who was born in the Dominican Republic, was a foreigner. The girl’s plans for college depended on her getting the card.
A father, an English teacher at a Dominican public school, came to Ms. Pierre’s office after trying for five months to get a birth certificate for his newborn daughter. “I’m as Dominican as they are,” he said, adding angrily that the government had begun issuing pink birth certificates for children it suspected of being foreigners as opposed to the white documents given to Dominican children.
In Ms. Pierre’s case, officials questioning her nationality have focused on disparities in her record. Her name is listed on her birth certificate as Solain Pie, which she says is a result of a government clerk’s error. She said her first name should be Solange (Sonia is a nickname), whereas Pierre is her last name.
Both her parents, she said, were Haitians who came to the Dominican Republic for work. Her mother had two children in Haiti, both of whom remain there, and 12 more in the Dominican Republic.
“I’m not Haitian, no matter what the government says,” Ms. Pierre said. “My parents were, but I’m not. I’m Dominican, and I have the same right of any citizen to criticize my country.”
---
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/29/world/americas/29sonia.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=americas
1. HyunJi Ju
2. Argentina's Berlusconi and the Triumph of Soccer
3. Mauricio Macri has elected to be the mayor of Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina. The interesting part of his career is that is owns the city's most popular soccer team, Boca juniors. (for thos who are not familiar with this team; Maradona is from this team:)) Since Soccer means so much to the people in Argentina, this outcome is something we can spend some time to thinks about. He is a super rich, who managed the team very well, and he promised the public he can do the same work for them. However, the author points out that Macri was the 'origianly member' of the corruption era of Menem, who led argentina to a complete economic disaster.
For the last presidency election(2002, Korea) the head of Korean soccer association run for presidency for a while based on the Korean team's great success in the World cup 2002. Although he ended up resigning and helping other candidate, it was impressing how he could get support from the piblic-who had almost no political experience before. In argentina Macri won the election besed on his popularity as the head of most famous team in the nation regardless of his dark past. It seems soccer is not just a sports, but also an important political power in some countries.
-------------------
by Teo Ballvé Buenos Aires has just elected a mustachioed, millionaire mayor who owns Argentina's most popular soccer team. Mauricio Macri is Argentina's answer to Italy's Silvio Berlusconi or New York's Michael Bloomberg. The only difference being shades of ideology, gradations of fabulous wealth and the fact that Macri's high-profile business is not media, but sport. In the fractured Argentine capital where the sentimiento for soccer is virtually the only language that cuts across class and ideological differences, that counts for a lot.
The "Bombonera" stadium in the heart of La Boca, a working-class Buenos Aires neighborhood. (Credit: CABJ)Macri holds the keys to the Bombonera, the legendary stadium near the old port where the city's scruffy, most trophy-decorated team plays: the Club Atlético Boca Juniors, or Boca. The team could fairly be described as the New York Yankees of Argentine soccer. Macri used his Boca credentials to full advantage during the mayoral campaign, appearing alongside the team's stars and at big games whenever possible. Boca, for its part, cooperated by winning, as is its custom. Just days before the June 24 mayoral runoff election, Macri's team won the prestigious pan-American Libertadores Cup by whipping a Brazilian side, Grêmio.
Boca is a winner. And now, so is Macri, the team's president. In the runoff he crushed his rival Daniel Filmus—a factotum for left-leaning President Néstor Kirchner—by roughly 22 percentage points.
In the language of sports, it was a blowout.
With October's presidential elections fast-approaching, Macri's landslide was interpreted as a sign that Kirchner's lock on re-election was perhaps not as sure as some had thought. His party, Frente Para la Victoria, controls most of the still-formidable Peronist Party machine, and is favored to win. But it was decided less than two weeks after Macri's victory that Kirchner's wife, Senator Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, would be the party's candidate—a new face to oppose the increasingly organized center-right opposition, which now has Macri as its most prominent figure.
But who is Mauricio Macri? Above all, he is a money man, and is generally in favor of anything good for business. Alongside other cronies of President Carlos Menem, he fed at the corruption-splattered trough of privatization schemes in 1990s Argentina. That era is reviled now for its kleptocratic government and ill-advised obeisance to Wall Street I-banks and the International Monetary Fund. The unproductive, liberalizing binge of the 1990s set up Argentina for the economic debacle of late 2001. On December 20 of that year the country—gutted by the privatizations and an anemic monetary policy—basically went up in flames. The president resigned in the face of mass protests, and then one mediocre politician after another tossed the unwanted presidency from lap to lap like a hot potato.
In early 2002, Argentina was an international pariah after going through five presidents in less than a month. The next year, President Kirchner was elected and things finally began to settle down. In 2003, the incredible shrinking Argentine economy effected a shrieking 180-degree turn and began to grow at an accelerated pace. There was no way to go but up, and Argentina is now booming, fat with soybean exports, tourism and real estate dollars.
Throughout the race, Macri's sophisticated campaign propaganda specialized in conflating his image with that of Boca Juniors. To that end, Macri's people chose yellow as the campaign symbol. To use both of the team colors—yellow and blue—would have been too heavy-handed, but yellow on its own got the message across well enough. After all, it is the same exact color emblazoned as a horizontal band across the chest of Boca stars like Juan Román Riquelme and Rodrigo Palacio (who play with the beloved Argentine national team as well).
"Gabriela and Mauricio," official campaign photo.Macri's other task was to rehabilitate his reputation as a reactionary, money-grubbing impresario. First, he selected a running mate with physical disabilities—a photogenic city legislator in her early forties who cruises around City Hall in a wheelchair. His and Gabriela Michetti's smiling faces against the Boca-yellow background were a ubiquitous presence on billboards and bus-shelters in the months and weeks before the elections. Another softening touch: throughout the campaign, whether in ads or while campaigning, Macri and Michetti only used their first names. They were Gabriela and Mauricio—friendly, accessible, nice.
One event in particular shadowed this campaign, the "Cromañón" nightclub fire in December 2004 that killed hundreds of young people and eventually led to the impeachment of Macri's predecessor, Ánibal Ibarra, leaving a caretaker city government in power for a year. Macri utilized the nightclub fire as a metaphor for the damage that can be done by a dysfunctional, inefficient and non-transparent city government.
Finally, Macri's nascent political party was re-baptized "Pro," short for the more cumbersome Propuesta Republicana. "Pro" was genius as a form of double-speak. The right-wing Macri suddenly seemed to be moving toward progressivism without actually having to offer any concrete evidence of it. In Spanish as in English the prefix "pro" is associated with a slew of positive-sounding words. Macri, a political newbie, suddenly seemed profesional (like the team) and progresista (progressive, as his opponents claim to be); also, Macri was full of propuestas (proposals) and proyectos (projects)—an idea man.
One of Macri's campaign videos combines a whiff of Boca fever with a pointed stoking of Argentine nationalism, and then ties a "Pro" ribbon around these sentiments. "What is Pro?" the ad asks rhetorically, and answers: "That the most popular soccer team in Argentina is also admired around the world, that is Pro." After that grandiose pronouncement the rest of the ad sounds like a throwaway: Oh, and Pro is good health care and schools too, by the way.
During this mayoral race, those wanting to blow the whistle on Macri's pseudo-progressivism pointed at his congressional record. Macri, who won his congressional seat after his first unsuccessful run for mayor, has distinguished himself with feeble attendance and a dismissive attitude toward the legislature as an institution. His voting record is solidly right wing. For example, he voted against a reproductive health law and against human rights trials for Dirty War-era torturers. He focused on promoting himself as a crime-fighter, a free-market booster and a defender of Catholic family values. He went on record saying jail-time might be the best solution for the cartoneros, as the city's vast army of impoverished, desperate trash recyclers are known.
For those with a bit of memory, Macri's zero-tolerance platform smacks of the reigning ethos in the latter half of the 1970s, when a mustachioed law-and-order man in a military uniform, Jorge Videla, oversaw a state-sponsored kidnapping, torture and murder apparatus, producing Argentina's 30,000 disappeared. In reference to these atrocities, Macri has told his followers to “look forward” and forget the "ghosts of the past." It was in that era that Macri's father amassed the family fortune, largely through contracts with the milicos, as Argentines call the juntas. Back then, Catholicism, Western culture, and the free market were used as justifications to brutally root-out "leftist subversives" who supposedly threatened to drag the country into chaos and Soviet atheism and obscurantism. These days, the enemy seems to be the under-class, the cartoneros, the unemployed, petty criminals—shadows that remind well-to-do city residents that Argentina is still dragging around the scourge of poverty, despite the recovery.
The progressive intelligentsia of Buenos Aires was appalled by Macri's trouncing of his more left-leaning opponents. They like to describe Macri as a neo-fascist, and compare him to Hitler and Bush. Opposition groups followed the lead of progressive blogs, who photo-shopped mustaches onto images of Mr. Burns from the TV cartoon series The Simpsons, by pasting posters throughout the city asking: “Would it be good for Mr. Burns to be mayor? Don’t forget who Macri really is.” Santiago Llach, a Buenos Aires poet who writes a blog called “Monolingua,” referred to the "March of the Yellow Shirts" in a post on election night, equating Macri's supporters to Hitler's brown-shirts. Other critics mock Macri's practice of giving interviews and planning his campaign from the gilded sands of Punta del Este, a beach resort in neighboring Uruguay.
These critics aren't necessarily enthusiastic about President Kirchner's peronist-populist style or the candidate he handpicked to run against Macri (Filmus, the long-faced, bearded Minister of Education). Yet neither can they satisfactorily explain the Macri landslide, even in traditionally anti-Peronist Buenos Aires. Ever since the Macri victory was celebrated with fireworks over the Boca stadium, the lefty smart set has been hyperventilating in political columns and TV interviews, deploying convoluted theories to explain why porteños, as residents of Buenos Aires are known, chose Mr. Burns. What are people thinking? Is this a city of amnesiacs? Has everyone forgotten the nightmarish 1970s, the disastrous 1990s, eras that are synonymous with the name Macri? What happened?
Soccer triumphed. In Buenos Aires as elsewhere, this is not the age of reason, but the era of spectacle. Macri mounted an impressive spectacle in which soccer glory occupied the center ring. It doesn't matter that soccer has nothing to do with the effective governing of a chaotic, socially heterogeneous city teeming with three million residents and millions more who pour into its stressed-out infrastructure to work and shop everyday. Soccer is meaningful on a visceral level. Soccer is the one realm of reality that brings satisfaction to millions of Argentines, a satisfaction they can share with others in the street, at the office, in the elevator. Week after week soccer serves as an escape valve for decades of individual and national frustrations framed by economic and political disasters. Boca Juniors, the soccer team, is basically the only consistent winner in a country that has been embittered by a long losing streak (even the national team is disappointing lately). Macri managed to convince the public he can do for Buenos Aires what he did for Boca. Argentines want to win. For voters, Mr. Burns and his yellow-shirts seem like the only team in town.
Teo Ballvé is NACLA’s Web editor. A journalist based in Colombia, he edited, with Vijay Prashad, Dispatches From Latin America: On the Frontlines Against Neoliberalism (South End Press, 2006).
--------
http://nacla.newsvine.com/_news/2007/08/01/871586-argentinas-berlusconi-and-the-triumph-of-soccer
Heaeum Cho
'Naval centre to combat cocaine'
By Dominic Casciani
The nature of these operations necessitates the secrecy of their specific strategies in order to be successful in cracking down on the organized criminals. However the countries involved need to be cautious in order to not violate the sovereignty of the Latin American states involved and their jurisdiction over their seas as well as the human rights situation in taking custody of the criminals and their ships. Although the intentions are good, the means in which it happens must also be checked to make sure that greater harm isn't done in the long term.
--------
The UK and six other nations are launching a fresh effort to intercept drug smuggling runs across the Atlantic into Europe from Latin America.
A special centre is being opened in Portugal to co-ordinate rapid response naval operations against the trade.
A senior officer from Britain's Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) has been named the operation's first director.
Ministers hope the special naval operations centre will mean less cocaine reaches British drugs markets.
Officials say the amount of cocaine being smuggled into Europe has been rising - but the Lisbon-based Maritime Analysis and Operations Centre - Narcotics (MAOC-N) has been set up for a new concerted continental effort against Latin America-based producers.
The operations centre co-ordinates drug smuggling intelligence and vessels from each country's navy which are patrolling waters between South Africa and the Norwegian Sea.
Officers at the centre take decisions on which vessels from the partner nations are best placed to intercept a suspected cocaine shipment.
The centre is jointly run by the UK, Portugal, Spain, the Irish Republic, France, the Netherlands and Italy but will also include US military officers linked to naval operations in the Caribbean.
While the operation is being officially launched on Sunday, its officers have already run 22 operations since April, leading to 10 seizures totalling more than 10 tonnes, say officials.
In June intelligence gathered by British officials led to the French Navy intercepting a Brazilian vessel carrying 840kg of cocaine.
'Cutting pathways'
Home Office minister Vernon Coaker said: "Our law enforcement agencies are focusing efforts on reducing the supply of Class A drugs, which cause the most harm to the individual, communities and society as a whole.
"Soca involvement in the Maritime Analysis Operations Centre - Narcotics will help target cocaine smugglers by sharing intelligence with other countries and coordinating rapid air and sea operations, making the best use of law enforcement and military resources to stop attempted drug runs across the Atlantic.
"By taking an active role in this innovative drug trafficking centre we are cutting down the pathways used by those serious criminals attempting to infest our country with cocaine."
Despite increasing collaboration between European agencies, the amount of cocaine reaching Europe from Latin America has increased over the past decade.
The centre is seeking to attack that trend by targeting private vessels used to avoid detection by customs officials at ports.
Launched in 2006, Soca says that in its first year it seized one fifth of Europe's cocaine supply - 73 tonnes with a street value of £3bn.
While critics say the agency needs to be more transparent, its chiefs say it needs to be judged over the long-term.
Its strategy focuses on bringing down organised criminals by trying to make it impossible for them to do business, rather than focusing on just making arrests.
-------
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/7020321.stm
Post a Comment