See instructions and format at the beginning of the first week's thread.
This week's theme: 100 years of U.S. military invasions of Latin America
Since Stockwell's voice is somewhat muffled, I post two links to the same audio. The first version has key phrases subtitled:
1a.
Whistleblower, Ex-CIA Station Chief, John Stockwell: The Third World War
[subtitled English phrases, his voice from 1988, without face, 6 min]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9VxnCBD9W4
1b.
John Stockwell (voice and face, same audio as above, 7 min)
John Stockwell: Crimes of the CIA (recorded in 1988)
http://video.yahoo.com/video/play?ei=UTF-8&gid=157767&vid=182610&b=66
2.
OPTIONAL: Case Studies: very violent images, be warned; we are not watching these in the course. I place them here as optional resources. The first is the famous BBC reporter John Pilger's documentary about U.S.-Nicaraguan relations in the 1980s:
Nicaragua - A Nations Right to Survive
52 min 34 sec
http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=727858608691408118
This one was produced by Canadians and won the 1992 Academy Award for Documentary Feature. The audio is slightly out of sync with the video. However, most of the film is narrated so this is not wholly annoying.
The Panama Deception
1 hr 31 min
http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=1723848710313426491
The Panama Deception is a controversial documentary film that won the 1992 Academy Award for Documentary Feature. The film is critical of the actions of the US military during the 1989 invasion of Panama by the United States, covering the conflicting reasons for the invasion and the depicting of the US media as biased. It was directed by Barbara Trent of the Empowerment Project and was narrated by actress Elizabeth Montgomery.
One of the many allegations made by the film is that the United States tested some form of laser or energy weapon during the invasion. The film also includes footage of mass graves uncovered after the US troops had withdrawn, and depicts some of the 20,000 refugees who fled the invasion.
3.
For a comparison of different ethnic politics, I mentioned on one side you could place very mixed-race Brazil (noted in the reading packet as an example, to where the European concepts were later inverted in their experience because the plurality of the population is mixed race despite ongoing skin color class stratification), versus very ethnically separated Bolivia where the majority of the population is indigenous. Particularly look at the ethnic politics involved in this short film:
Unreported World: Anarchy In The Andes
24 min - 12-Oct-07
This documentary has nothing to do with anarchy. But uses the word in the title in the common "anarchy is chaos" meaning. This sets the level of the documentary. Hamida Ghafour reports from Bolivia, where natives are exercising political power for the first time since the Spanish conquest more than 470 years ago. The election of the country's first indigenous president, Evo Morales, who pledged to redistribute land and resources, has rapidly led to confrontation between various factions (and the ethnic based mobilizations of these factions are well seen). [This was filmed before the factions agreed on the novel Bolivian Constitution.]
http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=6928016964832751026
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6 comments:
1. SuJung,Kim
2. Brazil shock at woman's jail rape
3. The title of the article caught my eyes at once. What the article says was shocking, but this article itself was good since it gave me a new idea about human right/women right in Brazil.
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Authorities in Brazil are investigating reports that a young woman was left in a police cell with some 20 men for a month and repeatedly sexually abused.
The governor of the state of Para, where the reported case took place, has promised a full inquiry.
Governor Ana Julia Carepa said the age of the woman, put variously at 15 and 20, was irrelevant as she should not have been jailed with male prisoners.
Women's rights groups in Brazil say it is not an isolated case.
According to reports in the Brazilian media, the number of men in the cell with the young woman ranged between 20 and more than 30.
Public anger
Media reports suggested that the girl was placed in a police cell in the town of Abaetetuba on suspicion of theft.
But human-rights groups say there is uncertainty about what offence the girl was accused of and she was not formally charged.
They say that she was raped relentlessly and forced to have sex in order to obtain food.
The girl's father has now alleged that he has been threatened by police who tried to force him to provide a birth certificate showing that the girl was 20 years of age - a document which he said did not exist.
The police are said to have believed at one stage that the girl was not under age.
Public anger
Gov Carepa said the girl's age did not matter.
"Whether she was 15, 20, or 100 doesn't matter. A woman should never be left in a jail with men," she said.
"I am shocked and indignant, as a woman and as a governor," Gov Carepa said, promising that those responsible would face "exemplary punishment" and that such an incident would not be allowed to happen again.
Jails in Brazil are notorious for overcrowding and appalling conditions, and this is not the first time that there has been a controversy over a female prisoner being detained alongside men.
However, on this occasion, the seriousness of the allegation has caused shock and considerable public anger, the BBC's Gary Duffy in Sao Paulo says.
Women's rights groups in Para state quoted by the Globo website say there have been at least three cases of women being put in cells with men.
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7108676.stm
1. Hyun Ji Ju
2. Doomed ship defies Antarctica odds
3. Antarctica is the place where Chile and Argentina governments can make a huge fortune with tourism business. But there are constant accidents like this one and this can make people feel unsafe to go to Latin American nations. People can think like "Latin American technology is not good enough" or "It is really dangerous to go there" The governments will have to work on some public relation issues related to their tourism and its safety.
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PUNTA ARENAS, Chile - A rare calm in Antarctic seas and the swift response by a passing ship helped save all aboard a Canadian cruise liner that struck an iceberg in the night and sank, rescued passengers and experienced sailors said Saturday.
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The MS Explorer, a Canadian-operated cruiser built in 1969 as a pioneer among rugged go-anywhere tourist ships that plied waters from the Amazon to the Arctic and Antarctic circles, struck ice Friday, took on water and dipped beneath the waves more than 15 hours later.
All 154 passengers and crew spent hours bobbing in life rafts on chilly seas before a Norwegian cruise ship plucked them up shivering but safe and took them to two military bases on King George Island for flights out.
A Chilean air force plane flew the first 77 survivors to the South American mainland Saturday from the island 660 miles south of here. The rest were to be flown out Sunday.
American Ely Chang of Urban, Calif. was among the first to get out of a Chilean Hercules C-130 in Punta Arenas, clutching his life jacket like a precious souvenir and reminder of anxious hours spent adrift.
"It was very cold but I'm so happy because we all survived this and everyone's all right. Now I'm going home," he said.
Dutch citizen Jan Henkel said he decided to propose to his girlfriend Mette Larsen after they survived the ordeal.
"There were some very frightening moments but the crew was very professional and the captain very good and had everything under control," said Henkel.
Others in Antarctica counted the survivors lucky.
"They were fortunate because other ships just happened to be in the area and came to their aid rapidly," said Lieutenant Col. Waldemar Fontes, chief of the small Uruguayan base where the rescued tourists and crew took shelter overnight. "The seas were calm and there weren't any storms. That doesn't happen often in Antarctica."
Capt. Arnvid Hansen, whose cruise ship Nordnorge rescued the castaways, said Explorer's distress call came hours before dawn and he steamed 4 1/2 hours "full ahead" to the rescue before weather could close in.
"We have to work together with the forces of nature, not against them," Hansen said.
He said blinding sleet, fog, high winds and treacherous seas are common in Antarctica, Earth's windiest continent, even in the October-to-April "summer" when cruise ships flock to the area by the dozens.
"I've been a captain for four seasons in Antarctica," Hansen said. "It's not dangerous but sometimes it's tricky and it's a challenge."
Hansen said calm seas and benevolently light winds prevailed as his crew took just an hour to collect the 154 passengers and crew, rounding up their lifeboats and rubber rafts as the crippled Explorer listed every more steeply to starboard, its hull gashed.
High seas would have made picking up the lifeboats much trickier and would have exposed the castaways to brutally cold weather and the chance of hypothermia.
Instead it was over barely before passengers aboard the Norwegian rescue vessel could finish breakfast, with many watching the orderly rescue through portal windows.
Shortly after the rescue though, winds began picking up considerably. After midday, when he reached a Chilean base at King George Island nearby, the winds and waters were so rough the captain had to wait hours to unload the passengers.
"The weather can change in a half hour in Antarctica and you never know if we are going to have it very good one moment or very bad," Hansen said.
On board the Explorer, a blackout had been triggered by water rushing in, shutting down bilge pumps of the doomed ship, Hansen said.
First reports suggested only a small hole was punched into the Explorer's hull, but the Argentine navy later said it received reports of greater damage as the ship slowly turned on its side and sank Friday evening.
Jerry DeCosta, vacationing on the Explorer, told The Associated Press from the bigger Chilean base nearby that passengers were grateful the rescue went so smoothly.
"Everything was done right: The captain got everybody off and the weather was ideal. It was a fluke of nature and luckily we got out," he said, marveling at Nordnorge's swift response. "We sent out a distress call and people came to help."
Guillermo Tarapow, captain of an Argentine navy icebreaker, Almirante Irizar, that caught fire last April 10 off Patagonia while returning from Antarctica, said he thought the dangers of castoff Antarctic ice to shipping were on the rise.
Tarapow, who saved his stricken ship from sinking and won praise for safely evacuating his 296 passengers, said he has seen a dramatic increase in the number of icebergs over 20 years and blamed climate change.
"You now see many more icebergs ... where there didn't use to be. It makes navigation difficult and they are all very dangerous," Tarapow told AP.
Susan Hayes of G.A.P. Adventures of Toronto, which runs environmentally oriented excursions and owns the stricken MS Explorer, said all passengers were accounted for and doing well.
She said the ship's 91 passengers hailed from more than a dozen nations, including 24 Britons, 17 Dutch, 14 Americans, 12 Canadians and 10 Australians. The ship also carried nine expedition staff members and a crew of 54.
The Explorer was on a 19-day circuit of Antarctica and the Falkland Islands, letting passengers observe penguins, whales and other wildlife.
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071125/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/antarctica_ship_sinking;_ylt=AlbHcJsATXjNz1gN2eaNGJ23IxIF
1. Heaeum Cho
2. 'Hostage situation tense after Colombia cancels mediation talks'
3. As stated in the article, the greatest victims are those who have been take captives and their relatives who have had their hopes dashed about being able to see their family members again. Uribe's cautious relationship with Chavez shows his stubbornness in these negotiations by cutting out his role in the talks. My question is then why doesn't Uribe directly try and deal with FARC and not depend on Chavez to solve the issue? Breach of protocol is grave, but more important than that are the lives of those held as prisoners and their safety.
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BOGOTÁ: Mediation by President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela with Colombia's largest rebel group was canceled late Wednesday night by President Álvaro Uribe, thwarting hopes for the release of dozens of hostages, including three American military contractors held since 2003.
The move raises international tension surrounding the captives of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. President Nicolas Sarkozy of France urged Uribe to reconsider; among the FARC's 45 or so political hostages is Ingrid Betancourt, a former presidential candidate here who holds Colombian and French citizenship.
But Uribe, who had welcomed Chávez's mediating role last August, said Thursday that he had no intention of changing his mind, basing his surprising decision on what he viewed as a breach of protocol by Chávez with General Mario Montoya, the top commander of Colombia's army.
Chávez, with the help of a Colombian lawmaker assisting him in the talks, had telephoned Montoya on Wednesday to request information on the hostages, despite a request from Uribe to refrain from direct contact with high-ranking military officials, the government here said in a statement.
"Chávez is not known for respecting protocol and Uribe's strength is not flexibility," said Michael Shifter, vice president for policy at the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington research group that specializes in Latin America.
The decision follows disappointing results in the mediations. Chávez met in Paris this week with Sarkozy, but failed to present proof that Betancourt or any of the other hostages were alive. Political analysts here said the Marxist-inspired FARC, which has been waging guerrilla war for the last four decades, could emerge strengthened.
"The great losers are the family members of the captives," said Camilo Gómez, a former peace commissioner for the Colombian government. "The winners are the FARC, which achieved an international political position they never had before," he said, referring to Chávez's reception of a FARC emissary this month in Caracas.
Indeed, the despair of relatives of the hostages, some of whom have been held in jungle camps for almost a decade, intensified following Uribe's announcement.
"I don't know how grave the incident was," said Patricia Perdomo, daughter of a lawmaker held by the FARC since 2001, regarding Chávez's telephone call to Montoya. "What is grave is the situation in which the captives find themselves once again."
The Americans held by the FARC are Marc Gonsalves, Thomas Howes and Keith Stansell, contractors for Northrop Grumman who were captured by the FARC in 2003 after their surveillance plane crashed in the jungle. The FARC, which finances itself through cocaine smuggling and kidnapping, calls the three men prisoners of war.
The United States sends Colombia about $600 million a year to combat drug smuggling, the FARC and a smaller rebel group, the National Liberation Army, or ELN, making Colombia the largest recipient of American aid in the Americas. The FARC was demanding the release of about 500 imprisoned guerrillas in order to release its captives.
On Wednesday, the U.S. ambassador, William Brownfield, took a sharply critical view of the negotiations.
"We are 2 months and 22 days into this process, and we still have no proof of life," Brownfield, who was Washington's top envoy to Venezuela in his previous posting, said here.
Uribe, the Bush administration's closest ally in South America, harbors a special hatred for the FARC, accusing it of murdering his father in a botched kidnapping attempt in the 1980s. But Uribe, who has a cordial political relationship with Chávez, had surprised many people here by welcoming his role in the mediations.
Economic ties between Colombia and Venezuela remain resilient, but the political relationship between the two countries seems headed into a new phase of uncertainty. Reports of Colombian rebel operations in Venezuelan territory along the border had already raised tension in recent days.
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http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/11/22/america/venez.php
1. Euna Lee
2. A Filmmaker and a Challenger of Brazil’s Conscience
3. It is interesting to see how the movie was criticized by both the military and human rights groups, who are on opposite ends of the pole. It almost proves the neutrality of the movie. This article reflects how instantly and pervasively people react to films that deal with social controversies. As for me, I think more films of this sort should be developed.
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By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
RIO de JANEIRO
JOSÉ PADILHA jokes that his next movie will include a bibliography at the end, to refer viewers to the copious research he does on every project. “We make movies that raise many questions that can’t be answered,” he said. “How do you solve urban violence in Rio? I don’t have all the answers.”
In a relatively short career, Mr. Padilha, 40, has made movies that have struck deep chords in the social consciousness of the country. His latest effort, “Elite Squad,” a violent look at Rio’s drug wars from the perspective of a SWAT team, has put him at the center of a furious debate over police violence and middle-class drug use and has become the most talked-about movie here since “City of God” in 2002. Critics have called Mr. Padilha everything from an extreme leftist to a right-wing fascist.
Based on the real-life experiences of Rio police officers, “Elite Squad” was Mr. Padilha’s first fictional feature film, following a handful of successful documentaries. But the harsh portrait of law enforcement has made him the target of Rio’s military police, who have demanded to know which police officers revealed their torture methods to him. Human rights groups and columnists, meanwhile, have accused him of glorifying the movie’s main character, the troubled Capt. Roberto Nascimento, who tortures and kills drug dealers by night and tries helplessly to cope with his violent life by day.
“Something really incredible has happened,” Mr. Padilha said recently from the Rio house where he and his business partner, Marcos Prado, run Zazen Productions, their six-person film company. “This little company that did this movie caused a fever. I don’t know what it means, but we never expected to create this big a social phenomenon.”
Still, Mr. Padilha said his movie had been grossly misunderstood by some, in Brazil especially. Those who have decried his treatment of police torture as excessive but necessary have missed the point of the movie, he said, which was meant to denounce the police as inexcusably brutal and corrupt. The Nascimento character ends up being a “complete antihero” in his mind, he said.
But none of that has stopped news kiosks all over Rio from displaying the Nascimento character, played by the actor Wagner Moura in a black beret, on magazine covers proclaiming him “the new Brazilian hero.”
FOR Mr. Padilha, who grew up in a privileged family that contained both scientists and artists, moviemaking was not an obvious path. His father was a scientist who received a graduate degree in chemical engineering at the University of Houston. Mr. Padilha toyed for a while with the idea of being a professional tennis player. He earned a degree in physics and worked for a spell as an investment banker.
But the business world bored him, and it was not long before he set out with Mr. Prado, a friend and well-known Brazilian still photographer, to make a documentary film.
In 1998, Mr. Padilha and Mr. Prado traveled to New York and sought out Nigel Noble, an Oscar-winning documentary director, at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. They persuaded him to come to Brazil and direct a documentary with them about workers who cut down trees in the Amazon rain forest to produce charcoal for Brazil’s steel industry.
The resulting film, “The Charcoal People,” was picked to screen at the Sundance Film Festival, a stroke of luck that set the two budding filmmakers on their way.
To raise funds, Mr. Padilha and Mr. Prado made a few television documentaries before moving on to independent documentary films. Until now Mr. Padilha’s most notable was the tale of the hijacking of a Rio municipal bus, a news event broadcast live and uninterrupted on television. His documentary about the episode, called “Bus 174,” won an Emmy in the United States for long-form documentary.
That success changed the filmmaker’s life. He was nominated to the Directors Guild and won a Peabody Award, and he and Mr. Prado hired a lawyer to represent them in the United States and an agent in Los Angeles.
More important, the success of “Bus 174” allowed Mr. Padilha to finance “Elite Squad.” He teamed with Rodrigo Pimentel, a former captain in the Rio SWAT team, called the BOPE in Brazil, to write a script that would tell the story of urban violence through the eyes of the police, a first in Brazil.
Mr. Pimentel, who had left the BOPE after becoming disillusioned with its mission to arrest and kill drug traffickers, said in an interview that Mr. Padilha soon recognized that his life would be in danger if he tried to make a documentary on the subject.
So they set out to tell a fictional tale, immersing themselves in research for nearly three years, talking to about 20 police officers and doctors who worked with the police, eventually creating Captain Nascimento.
The movie is set during “Operation Holiness,” the 1997 BOPE operation to root out a drug gang from a favela, or slum, months before the two-day visit to the area by Pope John Paul II, an operation that Mr. Padilha thought was “absurd.”
“Elite Squad,” he said, is “a sort of revenge” for the victims of police brutality and killing. “In a way, by looking at the movie the audience is taking a revenge on the police, you know what I mean? Especially in the favelas.”
BUT that kind of attitude drew a strong reaction from the police, which, after a pirated version was seen by millions, tried to get a court to ban the movie’s release. They later went after Mr. Padilha to get him to reveal the identities of police officers who had helped him make the movie. Rio’s governor stood behind the director, telling him to ignore such police requests. Mr. Padilha finally agreed to give a short deposition at his lawyer’s office but said he refused to divulge any names.
Financing initially proved difficult. Globo, a Brazilian media conglomerate, refused to contribute because the filmmakers would not guarantee a happy ending, Mr. Padilha said. “You never get to astonish the audience that way,” he said. “Our idea is to do unpolished movies.”
In the end Mr. Padilha drew interest from Eduardo F. Constantini, the son of the Argentine millionaire, who took the project to Harvey Weinstein’s film production company in New York, which soon signed on.
As the script went through its 12 treatments, Mr. Pimentel joined up with the author Luiz Eduardo Soares to produce a book, also titled “Elite Squad.” The process of coupling books with movies fits Mr. Padilha’s world view that the logic of science is better explored in books, but that movies are critical to drawing attention to subjects.
“All the films we have made so far have become a bunch of scientific pieces and have inspired work in universities,” he said. “If you publish a scientific paper it is very hard to start a nationwide debate about something. If you do this in a movie, you can start a debate.
“We like to create a bridge between those two worlds — film and science.”
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http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/24/world/americas/24padilha.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&ref=americas&pagewanted=print
1.Kyunghee Kang
2.A Health System’s ‘Miracles’ Come With Hidden Costs
3.'Operation Miracle', the medical care program of Cuban government, is the top eye hopital which offers its service to anybody in near regions for free. The campaign started in July, 2004, has treated more than 750,000 people for eye conditions while Cuban doctors has been setting up 37 small eye hospitals in Latin America.
Medical doctors are a strength of Cuba society/economy, though many of them have fled to the us and other countries. And this program functions as efficacious ads according to the article. I wonder what extent to which the program has worked for public in Latin America.
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By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.
Published: November 20, 2007
HAVANA, Nov. 16 — A shiny new tour bus pulled up to the top eye hospital in Cuba on a sunny day this month and disgorged 47 working-class people from El Salvador, many of whom could barely see because they had thick cataracts in their eyes.
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Jose Goitia for The New York Times
Dr. Eric Montero with Reina López, of El Salvador.
Among them were Francisca Antonia Guevara, 74, a homemaker from Ciudad Delgado whose world was a blur. She said she had visited an eye doctor in her home country but could not pay the $200 needed for artificial lens implants, much less pay for the surgery.
“As someone of few resources, I couldn’t afford it,” she said. “With the bad economic situation we have there, how are we going to afford this?”
Cuba’s economy is not exactly booming either, yet within two hours Ms. Guevara’s cataracts were excised and the lenses implanted, with the Cuban government paying for everything — including air transportation, housing, food and even the follow-up care.
The government has dubbed the program Operation Miracle, and for the hundreds of thousands of people from Venezuela, Central America and the Caribbean who have benefited from it since it was started in July 2004, it is aptly named.
Yet the program is no simple humanitarian effort, and it has not come without a cost. The campaign against vision loss serves as a poignant advertisement for the benefits of Cuban socialism, as well as an ingenious way to export one of the few things the Cuban state-run economy produces in abundance — doctors.
Cuban doctors abroad receive much better pay than in Cuba, along with other benefits from the state, like the right to buy a car and get a relatively luxurious house when they return. As a result, many of the finest physicians have taken posts abroad.
The doctors and nurses left in Cuba are stretched thin and overworked, resulting in a decline in the quality of care for Cubans, some doctors and patients said.
The Cuban authorities say they have treated more than 750,000 people for eye conditions like cataracts and glaucoma since the program started.
At the same time, Cuban doctors have set up 37 small eye hospitals in Latin America, the Caribbean and Mali. Twenty-five of the centers are in Venezuela and Bolivia, whose leaders have close ties to the Castros. The hospitals are staffed with more than 70 top-notch eye surgeons from Cuba and hundreds of other nurses and ophthalmologists.
Dr. Sergio M. Vidal Casali, 84, has worked at the Ramón Pando Ferrer Cuban Institute of Ophthalmology for more than 50 years, specializing in diseases of the retina. He said the heavy flow of foreign patients through the hospital, combined with the exodus of several physicians to other countries, had hurt his department. “I don’t like it, really,” he said. “It’s wonderful for the people, but not for us. It disturbs our work.”
Dr. Reynaldo Rios Casas, the director of the institute, said the first days of the program were hectic. Eye surgeons worked in three shifts, keeping the hospital’s operating rooms going all day and all night. It was not uncommon for a single surgeon to perform 40 operations in a shift.
“It was really heroic,” he said. “We were operating day, afternoon and night.”
Since then, Dr. Rios says his hospital has been training new eye doctors at an astounding rate of 2,100 this year, half of them surgeons. The hospital’s budget has been increased tenfold and its equipment upgraded. It now has 34 operating theaters with state-of-the-art equipment, including two outfitted for advanced laser surgery techniques.
One advantage of the program is that it has given young surgeons a steady flow of patients on whom to hone their skills. Just this year, they have performed 394 cornea transplants at the hospital, he noted. “Our specialists have an incredible amount of experience,” he said. “What specialist in the world can do dozens of cornea transplants a year?”
In recent years, the program has allowed Cuba to use its doctors as barter for subsidized Venezuelan oil and to forge closer relations with other countries in the region, including those, like El Salvador, that have not been historically close to the Communist regime here.
Of course, the people who have their sight restored could not care less about the political and economic repercussions of the program. For them, the offer of free surgery was a dream come true.
Mrs. Guevara, whose husband is a retired construction worker from San Salvador, said she had given up hope of seeing again. She heard about the Cuban project on a Mayan radio station. “I never imagined anyone would help me the way they have helped me,” she said as she waited for surgery. “I thought I was going to end up blind.”
Near her in the waiting room was Reina López, 58, of San Vicente, El Salvador, who has not been able to see for 13 years because of cataracts. Her daughter, Adilia Reyes, 33, said she had cared for her mother since she lost her sight. The family, including four children, survives on her father’s salary of $3 a day, plus whatever fruit can be sold at a market on Saturdays.
“For the poor, this is a tremendous benefit,” she said, as she guided her mother to a presurgery test. “If it works, we’ll be so grateful.”
Downstairs in the cafeteria, Manuel Agustín Isasi, 33, a professional fencing coach from Islas Margaritas in Venezuela, was eating a lunch of pork, rice and beans, able for the first time in years to see his food with both eyes. Three years ago, he had been whitewashing his home when he accidentally burned both corneas with a bucket of quicklime. The accident ended his fencing career.
He had been one of the first to receive a cornea transplant in his left eye when the program started, he said. Then, in early November, doctors in Havana replaced the cornea in his right eye. He was unabashed in his praise for the Cuban government and for President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela.
“I would have remained completely blind,” he said, fixing a reporter with a swordsman’s gaze. “Vision is half of one’s life.”
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http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/20/world/americas/20havana.html?ref=americas
Yong Mie Jo
Amid deadly turmoil, Bolivia approves new draft constitution
Besides Chavez being accused of endangering private property of people Venezuela, Bolivia’s president, Evo Morales, is facing a surging opposition and accusation that questions his standpoint in juggling between ‘more power to (poor, the majority) people’ policy of his administration and correcting the constitution, while nationalizing of many natural resources.
Can a nationalized economy and a centralized government go together with the notion of progressive people’s sovereignty?
Can a centralized government move on to decentralized democracy, once the nation’s economy grows, matures, and becomes stabilized?
Yet, history provides a more pessimistic view than optimistic one for Morales’ trial.
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A pro-government majority of Bolivia's constituent assembly approved a new draft constitution for the Andean nation Saturday, with the opposition boycotting and violent protests on the streets.The assembly, called by leftist President Evo Morales to rewrite the constitution to better address the needs of the country's majority poor, approved the new text on a preliminary basis, though it will be considered article-by-article at a later date, the chairwoman of the assembly, Silvia Lazarte, said without specifying that date.One demonstrator was killed and three other people were injured earlier as opponents of the new political charter clashed with police outside. Attorney Gonzalo Duran died of a bullet wound to the neck, doctor Mario Carvajal told local media.Sucre was also hit by violent demonstrations Friday and Saturday, as the some 150 pro-government delegates did their work inside a military academy.Opposition lawmakers boycotted the assembly and earlier called it illegal; the pro-government side however sang the national anthem as they wrapped up their work.Conservative ex-president Jorge Quiroga, leader of the Podemos Party, charged it was a "constitution drafted in a barracks, written with rifles and bayonets, and stained with the blood" of locals.Many Sucre residents are upset with the government because they want the legislative and executive branches to be moved out of La Paz and to Sucre.The pro-government assembly delegates are rushing to meet a December 14 deadline to get the new constitution in place. They have a majority in the constituent assembly but not a big enough one in the country's legislature to push the document through without a major political fight.Morales, majority-indigenous Bolivia's first indigenous president, in May 2006 nationalized oil and gas interests in foreign hands. He says he wants a new constitution to favor social change including taking back control of natural resources administration for the state.
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http://www.turkishpress.com/news.asp?id=203821
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