DebateGate

How ironic

Sonora, Mexico officials slam sanctions law in Tucson visit
SHERYL KORNMAN
Published: 01.16.2008

A delegation of nine state legislators from Sonora, Mexico was in Tucson on Tuesday to say Arizona's
new employer sanctions law will have a devastating effect on the Mexican state.

At a news conference, the legislators said Sonora - Arizona's southern neighbor, made up of mostly small towns - cannot handle the demand for housing, jobs and schools it will face as illegal Mexican workers here return to their hometowns without jobs or money.

The law, which took effect Jan.1, punishes employers who knowingly hire individuals who don't have valid legal documents to work in the United States. Penalties include suspension or loss of a business license.

Its intent is to eliminate or curtail the top draw for immigrants to this country - jobs.

The Mexican delegation, members of Sonora's 58th Legislature, belong to the National Action Party (PAN), the party of Mexico's president, Felipe Caldern.

They spoke at the offices of Project PPEP, a nonprofit that provides job retraining for farmworkers and other programs.

The lawmakers were to travel to Phoenix for a Wednesday breakfast meeting with Hispanic legislators.

They want to tell them how the law will affect Mexican families on both sides of the border.

"How can they pass a law like this?" asked Mexican Rep. Leticia Amparano Gamez, who represents Nogales.

"There is not one person living in Sonora who does not have a friend or relative working in Arizona," she said in Spanish.

"Mexico is not prepared for this, for the tremendous problems" it will face as more and more Mexicans working in Arizona and sending money to their families return to hometowns in Sonora without jobs, she said.

"We are one family, socially and economically," she said of the people of Sonora and Arizona.

Amparano said the Mexican legislators are already asking the federal government of Mexico for help for Sonora.

Rep. Florencio Diaz Armenta, coordinator of the delegation, represents San Luis, south of Yuma, one of Arizona's agricultural hubs, which employs some 28,000 legal Mexican workers.

"What do we do with the repatriated?" he asked. "As Mexicans, we are worried. They are Mexicans but they are also people - fathers and mothers and young people with jobs" who won't have work in Sonora."

He said the Arizona law will lead to "disintegration of the family," as one "legal" Mexican parent remains in Arizona and the other returns to Mexico.

Rep. Francisco Garcia G?mez, a legislator from Cananea and that city's former mayor, said the lack of mining jobs there has driven many Mexicans to Arizona to find work. He said they depend on jobs in Arizona to feed their families on both sides of the border.

Gov. Janet Napolitano, in her State of the State speech Monday, said the new law needs some modifications, including a better definition of what constitutes a complaint.

Barrett Marson, director of communications for the Arizona House of Representatives, said Speaker Jim Weiers, R-Phoenix, "has some concerns about how the law will be administered and applied."

He said the speaker sought testimony from the business community last fall "to get ideas about how to make following the law easier. In the end, that's what he wants - compliance, but make it as easy as possible to do."

Marson said Weiers is "waiting for the governor to come out with her idea of what she wants to do" before he makes his own recommendations.

http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/altss/printstory/border/74193

Chavez support slips in Venezuela
Food shortages and rising prices are eroding the leftist leader's approval ratings.
By Sara Miller Llana 
March 7, 2008


Caracas, Venezuela - Petare is a sprawling hillside barrio in Caracas, and poor neighborhoods like this have long been epicenters of support for Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez.

Yet when a candidate from a opposition party launched his mayoral bid here recently, residents greeted him with honking horns and enthusiastic handshakes.

"I used to believe in [Mr. Chavez], when I still believed he'd do what he promised," says Norelys Rangel, a lifelong resident here. Instead, she says, she often can't find milk or rice. In fact, she says, life has gotten harder.

Petare and other neighborhoods like it are still very much Chavez territory, but signs of his waning support in those areas highlights a broader trend. Despite the country's vast oil wealth and near record oil prices, Venezuelans are complaining about product shortages, crime, and high inflation.

Many also say the president too often meddles in international affairs while problems mount at home. For them, Chavez's move this week to deploy troops to the border with Colombia which is slowing the flow of key goods during milk and meat shortages is a case in point.

It all adds up to a key question: Will Chavez be able to ride out this political storm or is waning enthusiasm irreversible?

"I think he has a chance; I don't think it's easy," says Daniel Hellinger, a Latin America expert at Webster University in St. Louis. "He has to somehow overcome the administrative inefficiencies and corruption in the ranks of government itself. Governance is the key for this current year. He has to show progress."

So far he seems to be placing his attention elsewhere.

Chavez's role in regional crisis

He has taken center stage in the regional crisis that erupted this week after Colombia's military launched an airstrike against leftist rebels based in Ecuador, killing a top leader of the Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia (FARC). Chavez whom Colombia accuses of supporting the rebels threatened war if Colombia were to pursue rebels on Venezuelan soil and has since sent 9,000 troops to the border. The trading relationship between the two is valued at $5 billion a year, and Colombia is a top supplier of food to Venezuela.

"What he is doing is what semi-authoritarian leaders often do: saber-rattling to distract their people's attention from inflation or food shortages," says Riordan Roett, director of the Latin American Studies Program at Johns Hopkins University's School for Advanced International Studies in Washington.

But it could backfire. Chavez's first blow came in December, when voters rejected a constitutional referendum that included 69 amendments ranging from reducing the workweek to eliminating term limits for presidents. It was his first defeat after a long winning streak for the former military officer.

Since then he has called for a year of "revision, rectification, and relaunching." William Izarra, a retired Air Force officer and chief ideologue in the Chavez movement, runs workshops throughout Venezuela to teach the values of "21st century socialism." "Our goal is to convince people that the government is on the right track," he says, "and from what I've seen, President Chavez has total support from the bases of the movement."

Indeed, his most resolute supporters still see little fault in a leader who has poured billions of dollars into social programs, called misiones, which have given the poor access to college degrees, literacy programs, food kitchens, and medical care. Maria Garcia, for example, is a lifelong resident of Petare who studied for the first time in her life through Mision Ribas. "I think we have the best president in the world," she says.

But that staunch support is increasingly less widespread. Ana Rodriguez, who has a 3-year-old son, stands in a line wrapping around the corner of a grocery store waiting for milk ? one of many products increasingly hard to find.

The government claims that opposition store owners have hoarded products to undermine the government, but critics say that price controls have taxed producers, leaving them with little incentive. Ms. Rodriguez says she does not understand the complexities of the situation, but sees one offender: "It's the government's fault."

Residents worry about their safety ? Caracas suffers the reputation of being one of the most dangerous cities in Latin America and the high cost of living. There are fears that the new currency, the "strong Bolivar," will be devalued, giving rise to a black market where dollars are traded for well over the official rate of 2.1 to 1.

Colombia spat may add to woes

The dispute with Colombia could add to his troubles: Colombia officials claim that a laptop owned by slain leader Raul Reyes shows evidence that Venezuela gave $300 million to the FARC. Chavez has rejected that claim.

Chavez's approval has slipped, according to some polls published in the local media, to 40 percent from 60 percent two years ago.

His government faces a pivotal moment during mayoral and gubernatorial elections in November.

"Usually there is an erosion of enthusiasm for anyone that's been in power for so long. I wouldn't see it as a sign of upcoming defeat for Chavez," says Steve Ellner, a Venezuela-based author of "Rethinking Venezuelan Politics: Class, Conflict, and the Chavez Phenomenon." "But the Chavez movement is particularly weak at the local and statewide level."

William Ojeda, the opposition leader who launched the mayoral bid in Petare, lost this race before. But he claims that "Chavista" sentiment has been so dampened here that he has a new chance. "There is a rejection of this centralized power," he says. "We want a country with pluralism, development, and prosperity."

That is why Ms. Rangel says she attended his opposition rally in her neighborhood plagued by poverty after years of supporting Chavez. She says she is anxious for change, adding that she's not the only one: "I don't think Ch?vez is sleeping as well at night as he used to."

Daniel Cancel contributed from Caracas.


http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0307/p06s01-woam.html

Iran's recent student protests have become too large
and too public for the regime to conceal.

March 5, 2008

Ardeshir Arian reports, with videos.

By Ardeshir Arian

For nearly two weeks, Shiraz University in central Iran has been paralyzed by a student demonstration that refuses to die and appears to be encouraging an atmosphere of protest on campuses around the country.

The protests began on February 24, when more than 500 students in Shiraz University marched from their dormitories into the main campus and demonstrated against the school?s chancellor Mohammed Hadi Sedeghi, demanding that he resign. The angry protests have taken place daily ever since.

In another country, angry student protesters might be considered a campus matter and wouldn't necessarily have national significance, but the Shiraz students rising up and rebelling against Sadeghi, a former Revolutionary Guard Corps commander who was personally appointed by Mahmoud Ahmedinejad in an effort to crack down on campuses and rid them of non-Islamic influences, has wider implications. Sadeghi is clearly a political figure and an Ahmedinejad ally ? he was in charge of the upcoming parliamentary election committee in the province of Fars.

The angry students are chafing at the restrictive environment on campus in which campus guards are permitted to enter their dorm rooms without any prior warning. Students believe Sadeghi manipulated the internal election of the university council, rejecting 108 student candidates, which resulted in banning them from entering the race and imposing extreme limitations on student print media and activities. There is also general unhappiness with their food and housing, and underlying the action there is general discontent. Fliers distributed among the students are claiming that Sadeghi embezzled approximately $22 million following the sale of a university building.

It isn't the first protest against the unpopular chancellor. Last April, students protested against a tightened dress code which included huge bulletin boards at the school's male dormitories with a statement ordering male students not to wear "shorts and tank tops in the dormitory's halls" or where they sleep.

From the moment the protests first broke out, government security agents were keeping tabs on the students as they marched towards the chancellor?s office chanting: "This is the final message, the student movement is ready for insurrection, The movement continues, even if bullets come, "Resign, resign," "Freedom of the print media," "Long live freedom," "Support the noble nation, support, support, and They close the nuclear file, but where are the students files? "protesting jailed students that are missing since the time of their arrests, without any news or closure of their uncertain situation.

The campus was shut, but citizens gathered at the gates of the university to watch the students protest among them, faculty members and other university employees.

On that first day of demonstrations, Sadeghi managed to quietly slip away from campus. Demonstrators rushed in his direction to capture him, but the campus police prevented them from reaching him. After his departure from campus, students occupied his office and vowed to sit in until he resigned.

After, agents of the IRI, employed by the university, blocked the main gates of the campus and parked buses at the entrance to prevent the outsiders from entering the campus and to contain the demonstrations within. Islamic security forces stood at the gates preventing any contact between the students and the people.

Naturally, little has been heard of the student uprising on official Iranian media. But Radio Farda, a Persian-language, 24/7 radio service financed by the U.S., interviewed some of the demonstrators inside the campus. Its reports have been translated by Radio Free Europe:

Student Mohammad Mehdi Ahmadi complained to Radio Farda on February 26 of ?pressures? the university chief, whom he identified as Dr. Sadeqi, was imposing on the campus. He said these included the disqualification of 108 students who had sought to run for seats in a student council, the expulsion of various students from dormitories, the closure or evacuation of dormitories for married students, and pressures on student journals and activists. ?These all became a trigger for the ? protests,? he said.
As the protest has continued, the numbers of students has grown into the thousands, organizers say, despite attempts to break it up by the authorities, with actions such as shutting down the main water lines into the student dormitories.

Among the student chants: ?Sadeghi, the Pinochet, Resign, Resign,? and ?This is our last warning, the student movement is ready to rise up.?

Multiple YouTube videos have been posted, including those showing students marching and chanting "The noble people, we are ready, we are ready". As they gathered on the steps of the administration building, they chanted "The noble people, support, support? and ?Freedom and justice is the remedy for our people?s pain. There was also repeated chanting of Resign, resign, we don't want a corrupt chancellor," "This is our last warning, students movement is alive", or We don't want a Pasdar [a member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] as our chancellor.

The pro-government, pro-Sagedhi point of view has not gone unrepresented at the protests, but is not very popular.

At one point, a student took the microphone and said: ?Since the western media is reporting about your demonstration, then you are being supported by the United States.? Other students booed him and took the mic back from him.

Another representative of the dean claimed that the embattled administrator was ready to answer students questions in the auditorium, but the students shot back that the only thing that he can do is resign. There is nothing to be said between us.

As the protests entered their second week on Monday, Iranian secret police reportedly began to take more aggressive action to end the embarrassing incident. Ten student leaders have been contacted and threatened. About 25 families of the striking students have been contacted by the campus agents, pressured, threatened, and forced to get in touch with their children and ask them to call off the protest. Eight students have been named and summoned to the revolutionary court to answer for their conduct.

The student protest movement appears to be widening. There is news that students of another higher educational institution in the city of Shahroud, in the province of Khorasan, more than a thousand kilometers away, have followed suit and some students have been arrested by the secret police.

According to Radio Free Europe: Citing unnamed activists, Radio Farda reported other ongoing protests or sit-ins in Shahrud University in northeastern Iran and the Teacher Training University in Tehran. Ahmadi told Radio Farda that specific issues were merely triggers for protests in Iran?s increasingly restricted campuses. The atmosphere the government has created in universities is [one] of protest, and the slightest issue can trigger large protests, he said.

On Wednesday, reports emerged that the student unrest had made it to Iran's capital: between 100 and 200 students at Allameh Tabatabai Univeristy in Tehran protested against the banning of 40 student leaders who had organized a demonstration against the authorities.

An Iranian activist website also reported that:

Students of Bahonar College held an angry demonstration over a fellow student beaten up by the chief of the school's security. They shouted: ?University is not a military garrison.

Ardeshir Arian is a special correspondent; he covers Iranian affairs.

http://pajamasmedia.com/2008/03/angry_iranian_students_rebel_a.php

Wow
Hillary survives!
I am all over the map
When I voted I voted for Obama
But now I am glad Hillary won
Rush has a point
Keep the enemy fighting among themselves
The longer the better

What a dilemma:

Obama nice guy, but super super liberal
Obama is way to the Left of the American public
But the "Obama Trojan Horse" probably wins easily in Nov
Obama vs. an old, looks like hell, horrible boring speaker? come on
Obama would be a disaster, but such a disaster he'd be one term
Lani Guinier's would be commonplace
such a disaster Repubs would retake Congress at mid-term
such a disaster many dems would help block his far left agenda

Hillary, easy to dislike, high negatives
McCain would have better chance to defeat
But would not be the disaster for the country Obama would be
Probably would be much more effective than Obama at getting agenda passed

it's hard to decide
go for the Obama trainwreck knowing it won't last
or go for the liberal but realistic Hillary

i honestly don't know who is the lesser of two evils: Hellary or Barack Hussein Obama

poor hillary
she gets the first debate questions as the media fawns over Barack Hussein Obama

during a campaign rally in St. Clairsville, Ohio REUTERS runs a headline picture
of Hillary with a devil in the background yeah sure, it's just a complete accident 

Monday February 25 2008
Norway

Hospital emergency rooms in an emergency of their own

State health officials are sounding the sirens themselves over a state of emergency in Norwegian hospitals' emergency rooms, where patients face lengthy delays, inexperienced doctors and often chaotic organization.

Monica Newman had a frightening experience at the emergency room in Fredrikstad's hospital. She has filed a formal complaint after waiting seven hours, even though her own doctor suspected she had a blood clot.

Patients too often have to wait for hours for emergency medical care.

The Norwegian Board of Health Supervision (Helsetilsynet) reports that they found violations of state law and regulations at 19 of 27 emergency rooms that they monitored recently.

Only two emergency rooms (called akutt mottak in Norwegian) avoided any serious criticism from the state health regulators.

In some cases, the regulators claim, it was only the heroic efforts of staff on duty that saved lives.

Health authorities monitored care offered at 27 of Norway's 54 emergency rooms. Patients all too often received inadequate care and treatment.

"We have uncovered a total picture that shows management deficiencies, which affects both the patients and staff," said Lars E Hanssen, director of Helsetilsynet. "This is totally unacceptable."

In one case, a patient suspected of suffering a stroke was kept waiting six hours and 10 minutes before being treated. In another case, a patient who drifted in and out of consciousness didn't get treatment for nearly four hours.

All too often, reported the regulators, the emergency rooms are staffed by inexperienced doctors performing their residency requirements, and they often have to wait for back-up from staff doctors to confirm a diagnosis.

The regulators also found inadequate monitoring of patients who hadn't received a diagnosis, and that there were no clear procedures to determine which patients should receive priority.

Hanssen is demanding that the state, which owns Norwegian hospitals, and hospital administrators "roll up their sleeves" and improve working conditions and procedures in the emergency rooms. "They're operating with a level of risk that's much too high," he said. "They have to start caring about what's happening in the emergency rooms."

http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article2275900.ece

Ralph Nader joins US presidential race
By Megan Levy and agencies
24/02/2008



Independent candidate Ralph Nader has announced that he is entering the US presidential race, a move which many Democrats fear could deprive their party of vital votes.

Mr Nader was accused by supporters of Al Gore of handing the 2000 election to George W Bush by attracting voters who would otherwise have backed their candidate.
   
Mr Nader's run could prove a blow to the Democrats
 
The consumer rights activist announced on NBC television's Meet the Press that he was launching a third-party campaign for the White House because voters were disenchanted with the Democratic and Republican parties.

The 73-year-old believes none of the presidential contenders are addressing ways to stem corporate crime and Pentagon waste and promote labour rights.

Emerging Democratic frontrunner Barack Obama's "better instincts and his knowledge have been censored by himself," Mr Nader said, while Republican heir apparent John McCain was "the candidate for perpetual war."

He called Washington "corporate occupied territory" that turns the government against the interest of its own people.

"In that context I have decided to run for president," Mr Nader said.

Mr Nader's run could prove a a further blow to the Democrats' campaign after a bitter fight between Mr Obama and Hillary Clinton. In contrast, John McCain has had a virtually clear run to the Republican nomination.

In 2000, in the tightest presidential race in American history, Mr Nader ruthlessly targeted the liberal activist wing of the Democratic Party, picking up votes from disillusioned environmentalists, opponents of globalisation and radical feminists.

In all, Mr Nader gained 2.78 million votes in a contest that was eventually won by a margin of 537 votes.   
 
In Florida, where a controversial recount gripped the attention of the world, 97,488 votes were punched in his favour.

The trauma of Mr Gore's defeat in 2000 led to the creation of a "Repentant Nader voter" website, on which disconsolate Democrats confessed to voting for a candidate who had no chance of winning.

While Democrats have never forgiven him for splitting the liberal vote, Mr Nader refused to accept that his candidacy may have handed the presidency to George W Bush.
 
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/02/24/wuspols124.xml