Argentina on The Huffington Post

Buenos Aires Grants First Marriage License To Gays

2009-11-16T19:24:49Z

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Two men were granted a marriage license in Argentina's capital on Monday, breaking ground in a country and region where laws ban gay marriage.

Jose Maria Di Bello and his partner Alex Freyre won the right to get married when a judge ruled last week that a ban on gay marriage violates Argentina's constitution.

Gabriela Pochinki: Opera Diva Skips Bill, Shoves Owner At Nice Matin

2009-10-23T10:08:06Z

NEW YORK — An Argentine diva has been charged with creating a ruckus at a Manhattan restaurant, but the case isn't likely to take on operatic proportions.

The case against Gabriela Pochinki was adjourned Friday on contemplation of dismissal. That means the misdemeanor disorderly conduct, criminal trespass and obstructing-government charges will be tossed if she stays out of trouble for six months.

Miss Pole Dance Argentina 2009: Sexy Or Scary? (PHOTOS, POLL)

2009-10-22T18:26:08Z

The Miss Pole Dance Argentina 2009 competition was held in Bueno Aires on Tuesday, October 20th. 24-year-old Brazilian Rafaela Montenero took home the top prize. She had also won Brazil's Miss Pole Dancer 2009. 29-year-old Maria Luz Escalante of Argentina took home the second prize.

Both women will compete in the world championships in London in May.

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Bruce Kluger: LettermanGate: One Week Later

2009-10-08T01:10:31Z

It is now nearly one week since LettermanGate first burst onto TV screens, front pages and BlackBerrys nationwide, and the media remain in unapologetic full-throttle. Having already wrung every drop of dirty dishwater from this odd tale of sex, checks and affections, reporters continue to survey the outer fringes of the story's seedy landscape, hoping to tap a fresh reservoir of bodice-ripping, scurrilous slime.

Last weekend, the New York Post heavy-panted its way through a largely empty expose that dubbed Dave a "skirt-chasing funnyman" while depicting his private office at the Ed Sullivan Theater as a door-swinging sex-den, complete with fold-out couch.

The Daily Beast unveiled the down-and-dirty on Joe Halderman, the "rogue" CBS News producer-turned-alleged extortionist, whose clumsy attempt to blow the lid off Dave's randy past earned him a phony $2 million check and a very real bill for $200,000 in bail.

And TMZ.com -- ground zero for all that is knock-yer-socks-off-shocking -- posted an interview with a heretofore unknown Letterman intern, complete with the usual unspectacular quotes ("I was madly in love with him") and predictably blurry jpegs.

And yet for all the ink and bytes devoted to this bizarre saga, here's what I find most compelling: that David Letterman successfully navigated his way through three explosive crises -- personal, professional and legal -- by simply telling the truth.

Unlike the similarly cornered Sens. John Edwards and John Ensign, Gov. Elliot Spitzer and (sigh) Bill Clinton, who initially body-blocked media inquires about their affairs with everything from finger-wagging resentment to faux-humility to flat-out denial, Letterman confessed to his past philandering instantly ("I have had sex with women who work for me on this show," he revealed), and he did so proactively, rather than in the crouch of self-defense.

Unlike the bathroom-cruising Sen. Larry ("I am not gay") Craig, who responded to charges of "lewd conduct" at a Minneapolis airport by claiming that cops had simply misread a little innocent stall-footsie, Letterman approached authorities the moment he knew he was being shaken down, and even testified to the facts before a grand jury.

And unlike Gov. Mark Sanford, who justified his 5000-mile field trip to rendezvous with his secret Argentine "soul mate" as something more spiritual than your typical sleazy tryst, Letterman copped to the all-too-ordinary sordidness of his office-fling history, even calling his own actions "creepy."

This is why David Letterman will be forgiven his workplace hanky-panky. Because, in the end, what people (and, should it go this far, juries) admire most is straight talk, and that is precisely what Dave dished out last Thursday evening -- along with a few laughs, of course.

Which brings up an interesting question: Did Letterman effectively duck more serious scrutiny of his trespasses by donning his customary goofball persona and beating the media to the punch by beating himself up first?

Probably -- but the fact is, this is wholly consistent with the Letterman America has been inviting into its bedrooms for more than a quarter-century. Not only has he routinely used his late-night forum as his own personal scrapbook -- talking about his heart surgery, his speeding tickets, the birth of his son--he's also been the first to bust himself for the occasional idiocy -- such as mistakenly targeting the wrong daughter of Sarah Palin in an off-color joke last June. He apologized immediately.

CBS and Worldwide Pants (Letterman's production company) will undoubtedly continue to investigate this matter, if only to determine whether David Letterman crossed the line -- or broke a law--by engaging in sex with subordinates. But unless something else erupts -- and it would have to be something pretty big -- you can file the story of Dave's Deviant Dalliance where it belongs -- as yesterday's news.

This essay originally ran in the October 8th, 2009 edition of USA Today; Bruce Kluger is co-author, with David Tabatsky, of the new book, Dear President Obama: Letters of Hope From Children Across America]

Norm Stamper: Turning the Corner on Drug Law Reform

2009-10-07T18:50:34Z

A week ago I was in the Bay Area, touring medical marijuana dispensaries in Oakland and Berkeley, speaking to the Sausalito Rotary Club, visiting with police and elected officials, and addressing NORML's annual conference. (Special thanks to the extraordinary Carol Ruth Silver, former member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, close friend of the late Harvey Milk, and LEAP speaker extraordinaire for opening doors around the city.)

Sunday night, I spoke at the Sydney Opera House, the first in a month-long, 60-event tour of Australia.

Around the globe, drug policy reform experts and organizations are being swamped by demands for speeches, white papers, interviews. Fellow speakers at Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (www.copssaylegalizedrugs.org) have never been busier. We've been churning out on-demand op-eds for new and old media alike, giving talks to service clubs, universities, police officials, and lawmakers throughout North America and beyond. Our executive director, recently returned from The Netherlands, is off to Brazil mid-month.

It's not hard to understand the reasons for all this reform agitation: dismal economic conditions; impossible pressures on the criminal justice system (especially our overpopulated prisons); escalating fears of drug cartel violence, and their insidious, expanding influence; and moral outrage at the damage the drug war has done our families and communities. Also, I have to say, there's been a remarkable surge of old-fashioned common sense as more and more people awaken to the ruinous nature of our drug laws.

Many Australians are acutely aware that the U.S. is and has been since 1971 the chest-thumping, fist-banging four-star general in the global war on drugs. The Aussies' resentment is palpable, their willingness to stand up to our bullying ways growing.

The same can be said for Mexico, Argentina, and Colombia, all of which have moved recently to decriminalize drug possession cases. And for Brazil and Ecuador, which seem poised to do likewise.

Tango on UNESCO world heritage list

2009-09-30T08:55:52Z

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Tango was declared part of the world's cultural heritage by the United Nations on Wednesday and granted the international seal of approval Argentina and Uruguay have long sought for the dramatic dance and its sensual moves.

The 24 members of UNESCO's Intergovernmental Committee of Intangible Heritage granted the tango dance and its music protected cultural status at its meeting in Abu Dhabi.

Jim Luce: Pro Mujer: Journey Towards Women's Empowerment In Latin America

2009-09-22T11:36:02Z

Twenty years ago, a friendship between two women of different cultures and backgrounds cemented, and a bond was formed to create a women's development organization -- to empower women -- throughout Latin America.

Lynne Patterson, an American school teacher, and Carmen Velasco, a Bolivian professor in psychology, wanted to use their shared passion and expertise to help the poorest women in Bolivia achieve economic and social well-being.

Carmen and Lynne met in El Alto, Bolivia.

Seldom have cross-cultural partnerships produced such exceptional results. In 1990, Lynne and Carmen founded Pro Mujer, a women's development organization that offers credit, access to savings accounts, healthcare, and training to poor women entrepreneurs in Latin America.

They began by meeting women in houses and courtyards in El Alto. Their first task was to understand how to provide useful training to women in the barrios. These were semi-literate indigenous women, ages 30 to 40, who were qualifying for food donations.

Like the women's consciousness meetings of the 1970's in North America, Lynne and Carmen asked the women to answer basic questions: Who am I? What are my strengths? What are my goals? "This was the first time these women had ever been asked such questions," Lynne told me recently. "These were women sitting on a blanket with their kids, and they began to talk, to open up, to share their dreams."

With her increased income and savings, Pro Mujer in Bolivia Client
Flora Callisaya bought her own land and a house.

Lynne and Carmen eventually developed a participative process whereby the women reflected on their own experiences and began to think about their own lives and what they wanted for themselves and their children.

For example, when asked, How did your parents teach you? and How are you teaching your children?, they quickly saw traditional patterns emerging and repeating. "We watched our brothers go to school, while we stayed home to do the housework."

Lynne and Carmen quickly realized that their work was nothing short of ending centuries of racism, social and economic exclusion, and gender discrimination against women. While they wanted to help provide a better life for the women in the community, it was the women themselves who asked for help to start or improve small businesses.

The women's priority was to generate income which would enable them to provide life's basic necessities for their families. Lynne and Carmen first developed a training course in business skills. All the women made business plans.

Once they had their plans, they asked for credit to put these plans into practice. These women lacked the education and skills needed to access credit from commercial banks, but were smart and willing to guarantee each other's loans.

The regular group meetings provided an opportunity to give women the ongoing training they needed to develop themselves and their abilities. Microfinance and education became the means to an end --the empowerment of women, which Lynne and Carmen saw as the most effective way of alleviating poverty.

To develop Pro Mujer's unique integrated approach and group-based methodology, Lynne and Carmen first observed successful microfinance models, including Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. But given the specific needs and cultural differences in Latin America, they developed an innovative model that responds to the region's specific economic needs and cultural conditions. This model combines health care support and training with credit.

Poverty and health are deeply intertwined. If a woman or her child falls sick, she will not be able to run her business or care for her family. That is why Pro Mujer offers healthcare and health education to clients and their children.

Pro Mujer focuses on women because they are more apt to use their earnings and savings to better feed their children, care for their children's health and enroll their children in school. Women value the services they receive from Pro Mujer and recognize the vital role of health care and education in making a lasting impact on the futures of their children.

Pro Mujer reaches out to women whose income does not cover basic food, shelter, health, and education needs. These women engage in small income-generating activities such as food processing, sewing and weaving, shopkeeping, craft-making, and renting bicycles.

Pro Mujer staff provide check-ups through the mobile clinic in Peru.

"Credit alone is not enough to lift women and their families out of poverty," explains Lynne. "Just as the poor need access to credit to earn an income, they need access to healthcare and education to prevent illnesses that deplete their savings and wipe out their livelihoods."

Pro Mujer has grown organically in Latin America. A key to the distribution of its integrated services is its group lending or communal bank methodology. Pro Mujer organizes women into communal banks, groups of approximately 25 women who apply for loans as a group.

These women guarantee each other's loans; if one cannot pay, the others pay for her. The bank's leaders often recruit other women whom they trust to repay their loans. Such group guarantees result in low delinquency rates.

The communal banking methodology of Pro Mujer is best suited for women living right at the poverty line or below. Women who have only each other's word as a guarantee for repayment.

A Pro Mujer client helps her daughter with homework in Nicaragua.

Each communal bank has its own name and identity. It is a grassroots group with its own officers and agenda. Each group manages its loans; screens members; documents loans; ensures, tracks, and deposits loan payments; and provides a guarantee for the rest of the group. The groups meet at neighborhood centers once or twice a month.

These centers serve as the nexus of women's financial, health, and educational services. In short, all interventions needed to move the community forward. Simultaneous to financial services, women receive health care support and training. They have access to pap smears at low or no cost.

Cervical cancer is a leading killer of women in Nicaragua. Approximately 700 out of 9,000 clients in Nicaragua who have had a pap examination were found to have pre-malignant tumors. Women then become role models for the next generation.

At Pro Mujer poor women learn to embrace their strengths and believe in their own abilities. As one woman said, "For the first time in my life someone believes I can succeed."

Many of the children of the women that Lynne and Carmen began to help 19 years ago are currently studying in universities. Pro Mujer now offers education loans for elementary and high school education, and has a partnership with the Ministry of Education in Peru. Pro Mujer now serves 222,000 women and more than one million children and family members in Argentina, Bolivia, Mexico, Nicaragua and Peru.

In the past 19 years, the organization has disbursed over US$582 million in small loans, and provided healthcare and training to hundreds of thousands of women and their families.

Pro Mujer's success stems from its ability to directly address the structural problems of poverty and the need for employment and social security. It continues to provide health care where local governments fail to provide it. If the United States cannot provide adequate health care to its people, one can only imagine the challenges for countries with fewer resources.

Pro Mujer in Mexico Client Matilde Cruz works with clay.

The next stage for Pro Mujer is to scale up its services so that it can help thousands more women in Latin America who don't have access to financial or health services and lack the support of a strong social network like the one that Pro Mujer provides.

"We now have competition in the world of microfinance," Lynne told me. "We must provide the best services at the best prices, while remaining client-focused and maintaining our core mission of poverty alleviation and self-empowerment."

Surpassing Lynne and Carmen's vision, Pro Mujer is helping some of the poorest women in Latin America to increase their income, develop their full potential, and claim their basic human rights, enabling them to become agents of change in their families and communities.

Lynne and Carmen are thought leaders and global citizens. They sparked an initiative that has given thousands of poor Latin American women and their families the opportunity to live with dignity.

Lauri Lyons: Women in Hip-Hop: The B-girl Be Festival

2009-09-18T15:46:59Z

In the context of popular culture the history of Hip-Hop has been recited and mythologized many times over. Born in the 1970's South Bronx, from a foundation of Jamaican DJ techniques and verbal delivery, African-American soul music, Brazilian capoeira inspired breakdance moves, and technicolor aerosol paint, grew the international phenomena known as Hip-Hop. The one element of Hip-Hop that has never been fully acknowledged is the role of women in the spotlight and behind the scenes.

In 1979 Sugar Hill Records became the first record label to produce and distribute a rap record. The company's first single, Rapper's Delight became a national sensation and is considered to be a hip-hop classic. The co-founder of Sugar Hill Records was Sylvia Robinson. In 1981 Tommy Boy Records, released Planet Rock by Afrika Bambaataa and the Soul Sonic Force. Tommy Boy Records was also co-founded by a woman, Monica Lynch.

Once again women were at the forefront when the female trio, The Sequence (featuring a young Angie Stone) released the hit Funk You Right On Up. The 1979 single is considered to be the first female rap record. Soon afterwards female MC's such as Salt -n- Pepa, MC Lyte and many others became forces to be reckoned with. For rhythmic backup women employed female dj's such as Spinderella and Jazzy Joyce for beats and rhymes. When the male MC's hit you with machismo, the women counterpunched with sass and class.

On the graffiti wall of fame you can most certainly see the name Lady Pink. Lady Pink is considered to be a female graffiti artist and muralist with artistic skills as strong as, if not better than her male peers. She painted nyc subway trains from 1979-1985 and now her work is collected by major art museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Lady Pink also had starring roles in Wild Style and Bomb It, classic films about Hip-Hop culture.

In everyday life women are natural multi-taskers, and in hip-hop the fact remains the same.
Female artists that developed their artistic and entrepreneurial skills have taken the art form to another level. In the early '90's Dee Barnes, a former MC and radio host became the first woman to host a syndicated hip-hop television show, Pump It Up! Queen Latifah quickly followed in her footsteps with a very successful recording career, the TV sitcom Living Single, a talk show, major cosmetic campaigns and an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Eve, has also done well for herself . Her empire has encompassed records, a sitcom, and a clothing line.

Wendy Williams (the original DJ Spinderella for Salt-n-Pepa) was a wildly popular radio host, and now has one of the most highly rated talk shows on television. DJ Beverly Bond is using hip-hop as an educational tool to reach the youth. She is the founder of Black Girls Rock Inc! Black Girls Rock! is a mentoring program focused on helping young black women interested in careers in music obtain the skills and guidance necessary to be successful in the business.

For every woman in the spotlight there are hundreds more behind the scenes. Women are the people primarily working as artist's publicists, sylists and choreographers in the hip-hop world. If you liked the designs worn by Missy Elliot and Busta Rhymes, you can thank stylist June Ambrose. If you are familiar with the many hip-hop album covers shot in the last ten years, you were probably looking at the work of photographer Sarah A. Friedman. When it comes to choreographers who got their start in hip-hop, think of In Living Color's Fly Girls alumni Rosie Perez, Jennifer Lopez, and Laurie Ann Gibson. All of whom have choreographed too many television shows, videos, movies, and concerts to mention.

Today the future is brewing in Minnesota and there are many women's names about to be known. Intermedia Arts, located in Minneapolis, has unleashed the mother of all hip-hop festivals; B-girl Be. The B-girl Be festival is the only arts festival in the world solely dedicated to the contributions of women in hip-hop. The mission of B-Girl Be is to influence and inspire leadership to change the perceptions and roles of women in hip-hop for current and future generations. The fourth annul event is curated by Michele Spaise and Theresa Sweetland.

This year's festival features Mama Said Knock U Out! an international visual art exhibition showcasing 28 female artists from around the world who use their art to empower, inform and organize. These women are employing hip-hop culture as a means of expression, connection, education and global social activism. Mama Said Knock U Out! will include work in video, photography, painting, sculpture, film, and textiles. I am this year's featured artist. I was commissioned to produce my first sculpture and sound installation, in the main gallery. Past participants have included Lady Pink, Martha Cooper, Faith47 and Roxanne Shante.

On Saturday, September 19th, Intermedia Arts takes it back to the streets with the B-Girl Be Block Party, an all-day festival that brings together women from Minneapolis and all over the world to celebrate hip-hop's girl power. The B-girl Be Block Party will showcase dance, live mural painting, film, a spoken world slam and an art marketplace.

This year the B-girl Be organizers will have the power to literally choose the belle of the ball.
The McNally Smith College of Music has donated a $10,000 scholarship to a B-girl participant for the McNally Smith's Diploma program in Hip-Hop Studies. The program is for prospective students who want to explore and develop in a cross-departmental curriculum that covers music, recording technology, language, music history, and music business.

When it comes to women in hip-hop, don't call it a comeback. Women have been here for years.

Purchase tickets online for the B-girl Be Block Party. The Mama Said Knock U Out! exhibition will be on view until October 23.

Lauri Lyons is a photographer, artist and author. Her books include Flag: An American Story and Flag International.

Eric Ehrmann: The "Hand of God" Haunts Ex-Superstar Maradona and Argentina's World Cup Hopes

2009-09-16T18:02:00Z

Leading Argentina to the 1986 World Cup, football legend Diego Maradona scored a goal with his arm he attributed to the "the hand of God." As it often does, karma from that controversial score against England has caught up with the ex-superstar and with Argentina's football fortunes as well.

Maradona left football under a cloud of cocaine addiction during the 1990s. He got rehab in Cuba, nearly died of a heart attack after a relapse, had bariatric surgery and made a miraculous comeback as a popular TV talk show host in Buenos Aires.

In a football-crazy nation where populist heroes like Juan Peron, Hugo Chavez and even Al Capone are fixtures of national life, Maradona, with a little help from his friends, parlayed his popularity as a TV personality into a job as coach of the national team.

Argentina faces a serious reputation management problem because, as a coach, Maradona has proven to be a world class loser. His inexperience in prime time abounded last week when his team of millionaire superstars, many of whom play in not in Argentina, but in Europe, dropped a pair of must-win World Cup qualifying matches to Brazil and Paraguay. Maradona predicting victory against Brazil in pre-game trash talk only made matters worse.

Now only the hand of God can alter the fact that Argentina is on track to miss qualifying for the World Cup for the first time in 40 years. With or without Maradona, a demoralized Argentine team now needs to make it through a two-game playoff against teams from Central and North America and the Caribbean if it is to qualify for the finals next year in South Africa.

In a nation where sports and politics cooperate to form a sense of national identity, the Argentine Football Association selected Maradona, who has been out of the game for a decade, over a group of more qualified candidates. Instead of coaching successful football teams, Maradona has been successful at using his talk show bully pulpit to bash the United States, praise the actions of his pals Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and the Castro brothers in Cuba and promote Iran's rogue nuclear program.

Argentina's Peronist president, Cristina Kirchner, has had few problems with Maradona playing the nationalist card in the style of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck because it spares her from the political risks associated with energizing the more vitriolic factions of her party's base. Maradona, sporting tattoos of Fidel and Che Guevara, the Argentine doctor who joined the Cuban Revolution, resonates with radical populists in the Peronist movement because many are rowdy football fans from marginalized communities outside Buenos Aires like Moron, Nueva Chicago, and Lanus, where Diego grew up.

Maradona was no show for a scheduled meeting Monday to discuss team issues with Argentine Football Association president Julio Grondona and association general manager Carlos Bilardo, the man who coached him on the 1986 World Cup winning team. Bilardo left his position as secretary for sports in the Peronist government of Buenos Aires province and joined the federation when Maradona was named coach last year.

By boarding a plane for Italy Sunday night, Maradona may have sealed his own fate. Prior to that development, Bilardo said that "only Jesus or the Virgin Mary" could authorize Maradona's firing. A spokesperson for the Argentine Football Association has announced, however, that since Maradona is spending time at an Italian health spa, Bilardo has taken control of the team. It's not likely Argentina will be crying for Diego Maradona this time around.

Nikolas Kozloff: Honduras: Who's The Real Drug Trafficker?

2009-09-16T12:53:56Z

While the foreign policy establishment in Washington, D.C. certainly had diverse reasons for disliking Manuel Zelaya, the deposed Honduran president's criticism of the U.S.-driven drug war certainly did not help to ingratiate the Central American within the halls of power. In December 2008, just months before Zelaya was ousted from power by the military, he wrote Barack Obama and complained of U.S. "interventionism."

Audaciously, Zelaya wrote: "The legitimate struggle against drug trafficking ... should not be used as an excuse to carry out interventionist policies in other countries." The struggle against drug smuggling, the Honduran added, "should not be divorced from a vigorous policy of controlling distribution and consumer demand in all countries, as well as money laundering which operates through financial circuits and which involve networks within developed countries."

It was not the first time that Zelaya had been so outspoken. Just a month before, during a meeting of Latin American and Caribbean anti-drug officials in Tegucigalpa, he declared that drug consumption should be legalized to halt violence related to smuggling. "Instead of pursuing drug traffickers, societies should invest resources in educating drug addicts and curbing their demand," Zelaya said. Rodolfo Zelaya, the head of a Honduran congressional commission on drug trafficking, rejected Zelaya's comments. He told participants at the meeting that he was "confused and stunned by what the Honduran leader said."

From "Mano Dura" to decriminalization?

What could have driven Zelaya to confront the U.S. so openly on drug policy? In recent years Honduras has been plagued by drug trafficking and so-called maras or street gangs that carry out gruesome beheadings, rapes, and eye gouging. The small Central American nation has become a major transshipment point for Colombian cocaine. According to U.S. authorities, the drugs arrive on non-commercial aircraft from Venezuela and increasingly in speedboats from Colombia.

Prior to Zelaya's election, Honduras adopted a mano dura policy towards the maras as opposed to focusing on prevention and rehabilitation. In 2002, the country launched special anti-mara operations under a zero-tolerance strategy including the passage of stiffer laws. But the strong-arm policies led to persecution of young people simply because they bore tattoos, frequently an identifying feature for gang members, or wore baggy hip-hop style clothes. In 2005, 204 maras were detained under a special law which allowed people to be arrested merely on suspicion of belonging to gangs.

The Honduran government was even accused before the Inter-American Court on Human Rights of prison massacres of young gang members. The massacres were allegedly planned as "purges," and included one incident in the El Porvenir prison in the city of La Ceiba in which a whopping 69 prisoners including 61 mara members were murdered.

After he was elected in 2006, Zelaya pledged to negotiate with Mara Salvatrucha gangs MS-13 and MS-18 in an effort to get the narco-traffickers to hand in their arms. Offering an olive branch, Zelaya said he wanted to peacefully rehabilitate the maras and reincorporate the gangs into society.

Unfortunately for Zelaya, the violence showed no signs of abating. In a country of just 7.4 million, 710 murders were reported in the first quarter of 2006 -- 100 more than in the same period in 2005. Experts worried that if the violence continued in Honduras that it would be next to impossible to implement social development policies and the nation's democratic stability would be jeopardized. After kidnappings surged and the nephew of the Speaker of Congress Roberto Micheletti (and future Honduran President following Zelaya's overthrow) was killed, Zelaya carried out Operation Thunder -- a broad police and military crackdown.

San Pedro Sula, an important commercial city, has been in the crosshairs of drug violence. The city has been the center of activity for drug smuggling gangs who transport cocaine from Colombia to the U.S. In recent years, San Pedro Sula gangs have fought out brutal turf wars. The violence has taken on a brazen quality with assassinations curb-side and night club attacks. The local bishop of San Pedro Sula remarked to reporters, "The city has had enough blood -- every day deaths and more deaths." He added, "This is a hell...people don't want to go out at night, there's a tremendous fear."

Zelaya doubled the national police budget and claimed that his government had confiscated more cocaine than his predecessor. The President also pledged to establish a special police unit which would combat Colombian drug trafficking via the Honduran Atlantic coast en route to the U.S. Zelaya also said that the army would be sent into the streets to reinforce the police.

Zelaya's efforts however foundered amidst unending violence. In mid-2008, thousands marched in San Pedro Sula in protest over drug-related violence. Some women held photographs of their sons who had been assassinated. Realizing that his strategy was not yielding a positive result, Zelaya sent his letter to Obama and in early 2009 gave a feisty press conference at the Organization of American States in Washington, D.C.

The U.S., Zelaya said, was not doing enough to help countries like Honduras confront drug smuggling. The Honduran however backed away from his previous remarks about drug policy, saying that he merely favored an international law which would regulate anti-drug efforts. "From the U.S. to Cape Horn in Chile and the plains of Argentina there should be just one rule, and that rule should be respected and it should come out of consensus."

Zelaya did get on board with the Mérida Initiative, Washington's multi-billion dollar Drug War aid package for Mexico and the Central American nations. In January 2009, Zelaya's Security Minister Jorge Rodas Gamero signed an agreement with U.S. Amabassador Hugo Llorens for Honduras to receive $3.5 million in mostly military aid under the program.

But Zelaya meanwhile raised eyebrows when he declared his intention to turn the military base at Soto Cano--which has long been strategic to Pentagon operations in the region--into a civilian airport.

Pentagon access to Honduras

The question of Pentagon access to Honduras may have been a central one to the coup d'etat. In 2006, Zelaya and the Bush administration negotiated the future of Soto Cano air base, which is northwest of Tegucigalpa in central Comayagua department. The base was known as Palmerola back in the '80s when it hosted some 5,000 US troops. Since then it has intermittently hosted lesser numbers, as well as serving as a base for US drug surveillance flights. Zelaya insisted on its conversion to a civilian airport and following a Washington, D.C. meeting with Bush that June, the US agreed.

The payoff, it seems, was to be greater US military access to Mosquitia. Rendered by its indigenous Miskito residents as Miskitia, this is the remote area of rainforest and coastal wetlands along the Nicaraguan border in the Caribbean zone. Drug traffickers have long used its many sheltered coves with impunity. Honduran Defense Secretary Aristides Mejía said the Miskitia presence wouldn't necessarily be "a classic base with permanent installations, but just when needed. We intend, if President Zelaya approves, to expand joint operations" with the United States.

Gen. Romeo Vásquez Velázquez, the armed forces chief who would later lead the coup against Zelaya, had already traveled to Washington to discuss future plans for Mosquitia. Contradicting his colleague Mejía, Vásquez said the plan was "to establish a permanent military base of ours in the zone," including aircraft. The U.S., Vásquez added, would help to construct air strips on site.

Then-Assistant Secretary of State John Negroponte -- who was ambassador to Honduras in the '80s and would later serve as Bush's first National Intelligence director -- weighed in, saying that Honduras could not transform Palmerola into a civilian airport "from one day to the next." He made his own trip to Tegucigalpa to discuss Palmerola and the Mérida Initiative in June, 2008. Speaking later on Honduran radio, Negroponte emphasized that the airport would have to receive international certification before plans could proceed. The Spanish news agency EFE reported that Negroponte also sat down with the president of the Honduran Parliament and future de facto president Roberto Micheletti Bain. The account did not say what the two discussed.

In December 2008, US Ambassador Llorens actually made a tour of the remote Miskito Coast with the local press and spoke about the narco threat to the region. Two months later, the Honduran armed forces named Laguna de Caratasca, near the regional capital of Puerto Lempira, as the site for the new naval installation with construction underway.

It may be significant that the impetus for closing Soto Cano came from Zelaya, while that for opening Laguna de Caratasca came from Vásquez. Perhaps, the general gambled that his enthusiasm for militarizing the Miskito Coast and generally opening Honduran territory to the U.S. military would keep him in Washington's good graces despite a messy little putsch. And with the Sandinista Daniel Ortega once again in power in Nicaragua, a U.S. military presence in the border zone may once again be perceived as an imperative in Washington -- as it was in the 1980s.

Narcotics and propaganda

Charges of complicity in narco-trafficking make for convenient propaganda ammunition on both sides of the Honduran conflict. After the coup, the de facto government issued a request to Interpol for an arrest warrant for Zelaya and many of his officials. In addition to the usual charges of supposed constitutional violations, the request made accusations of the Zelaya administration's involvement in drug trafficking. Interpol declined to issue the warrant, citing sovereign immunity and not addressing the allegations.

Meanwhile the Havana-based website Cuba Debate sports a scanned version of what purports to be an undated document from the Honduran Defense Ministy that names one "Roberto Michelleti Bain" (with an evident mis-spellng) on a list of several Honduran nationals with international drug trafficking connections. His "connection" is named as the Calí Cartel and his area of operations is named as Yoro. In the '80s, when the Calí Cartel was at its peak of power, Micheletti was a member of the local council in Yoro department, in the north of the country near the Caribbean coast. He would later sucessfully run for congress from Yoro.

The same report quoted Andrés Pavón of the Honduran Committee for the Defense of Human Rights (CODEH), who accused Gen. Vázquez of working with narco-traffickers in league with corrupt elements of the DEA.

Vázquez and his chief collaborator in the coup, air force chief Gen. Luis Prince Suazo, are both graduates of the U.S. Army's School of the Americas. Leaders of the popular resistance in Honduras also allege that Negroponte -- now ostensibly retired from public life -- made a quiet trip to Tegucigalpa in the weeks before the coup, where he met with Gen. Vázquez and other coup plotters.

This article was co-written with Bill Weinberg, the author of Homage to Chiapas: The New Indigenous Struggles in Mexico (Verso 2000). His website is World War 4 Report.

Nikolas Kozloff is the author of Revolution! South America and the Rise of the New Left (Palgrave, 2008).

Kirchner and Clarin: Argentina Media Fight Gets Personal

2009-09-13T16:35:19Z

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP)-- An epic battle between Argentina's two reigning powers -- the presidency and media giant Grupo Clarin -- started with a political cartoon, the way one editor tells it.

When President Cristina Fernandez was drawn with an X taped over her mouth, she called it a "mafia-like" threat and accused "media generals" of using their newspaper and TV stations to rally her opponents.

She and her husband and predecessor Nestor Kirchner told Clarin to be more "disciplined," editor Ricardo Kirschbaum recalls -- one of many attempts to control the paper's coverage.

Now, in the name of "freedom of speech," Fernandez has proposed a law that would break up Clarin, one of Latin America's largest newspaper and cable TV companies, piece by piece.

The dispute involves motives of profit and power far more complex than a drawing published in March 2008 during a heated national debate over Fernandez raising taxes on windfall soy profits.

In the months since then, the fight has become vindictive and costly.

Clarin has published expose after expose accusing the Kirchners and other government officials of illegal enrichment and abuse of power. The Kirchners have responded in kind, using taxpayer money and government officials to attack Clarin's bottom line.

Last week, 200 tax agents were sent to question Clarin's employees. This week, appellate judges will hear arguments in open court that the Clarin director's children were illegally adopted orphans of Argentina's dirty war.

"This is a war without mercy, a bloody fight to the death," said Henoch Aguiar, a former Argentine communications secretary.

Fernandez now blames Grupo Clarin's critical coverage for her 20 percent approval rating and for punishing losses in June's midterm elections. It's a strange situation for both sides, since the interests of Clarin and the presidency have long been intertwined.

Argentina's largest and most-respected newspaper survived and prospered under dictators and leaders from right to left, and its coverage fit more or less comfortably within Nestor Kirchner's agenda as he brought the country out of an economic meltdown.

Kirchner rewarded Grupo Clarin during his last week as president by approving a cable TV merger that created a near-monopoly for a company already owning newspapers, magazines, Internet portals, television channels and radio stations. Clarin cable now reaches 80 percent of the homes in the capital and about 50 percent nationwide.

But in Clarin's huge newsroom, editors and reporters watching Fernandez denounce them on television three months into her presidency realized that the relationship was broken, probably for good.

"It was a turning point," Kirschbaum recalled in an interview Friday in his corner office. "From there the political tension with the media grew."

Fernandez made good on her threat to take up a media reform project that Clarin and previous governments had repeatedly blocked in the 25 years since Argentina's dictatorship fell.

The proposal is designed to prevent media monopolies, preserving two-thirds of the digital spectrum for noncommercial TV and radio, and creating an agency like the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to regulate content.

But Fernandez's version adds clauses that seem specifically aimed at carving up Clarin.

One, for example, could enable Telecom Argentina telephone company to package television, Internet access and phone service for everyone, while cable providers could sell to no more than a third of Argentine homes. It wouldn't prevent monopolies but could destroy Clarin, Aguiar said.

Grupo Clarin's stock soared after Fernandez's congressional defeat in the June elections; investors may have thought the president would back down.

Instead, she persuaded Argentina's football association to break its pay-per-view cable contract with Clarin and began broadcasting the games for free on a government channel. Then, her government abruptly ordered the cable merger undone.

By last week, the company's stock had lost all its gains since June. Kirschbaum said Thursday's surprise visit by 200 tax agents failed to intimidate, and reminded lawmakers how the media law could be used to punish opponents. Now the divided opposition in Congress seems to be lining up against the proposed law.

The battle has Argentines transfixed, trying to divine the political and financial intrigues behind each development.

Many see hidden influences in this week's appellate court hearings in the case of 22 adopted children who have refused DNA tests to determine if they were stolen from victims of the dirty war.

Two of the children were adopted in 1976 by Clarin's director and majority shareholder, Ernestina Herrera de Noble, the founder's widow and a symbol of Argentina's powerful elite.

Some say Clarin's influence delayed the judicial process for years and suggest Wednesday's hearings wouldn't have been scheduled if not for a push by pro-government judges.

Noble made a rare public comment about the war between Clarin and the Kirchners during the 64th anniversary of the paper's founding last month.

"Today we suffer new attacks for defending our journalistic integrity," she said -- "campaigns of unusual virulence, coming from obscure zones of power."

Fernandez tried for higher ground on Friday. Her tax agency chief denied ordering the raid on Clarin and said he fired the two officials responsible. And the president proposed decriminalizing libel, which now carries a three-year prison term.

Kirschbaum said he supports aspects of the proposed media law and says regulations are necessary -- but that they shouldn't be designed to punish one company in particular.

Fernandez wants the law passed before she loses her congressional majority in December. The Inter-American Press Association is asking for patience and prudence, and warns against giving a president the power to decide media content.

Both sides claim "freedom of expression" as their goal, but some journalists fear that it could end up as collateral damage.

"This law is an unpaid debt to democracy," said Jorge Lanata, founder of the publication Pagina 12, who resisted editorial pressure from the Kirchners for years before Clarin bought his paper and ousted him.

"It has been more than 20 years and in all that time it was impossible to seriously consider such a law. Each president wanted to get in good with Clarin to avoid trouble. And Clarin saw to it that the law never advanced."

Mexico And Argentina Move Towards Decriminalizing Drugs

2009-08-31T11:08:18Z

Argentina and Mexico have taken significant steps towards decriminalizing drugs amid a growing Latin American backlash against the US-sponsored "war on drugs".

Adam Isacson: Tensions Flare in South America Over U.S. Troops in Colombia

2009-08-28T14:56:29Z

South America's presidents are meeting today in the ski resort of Bariloche, Argentina. Despite the tranquil setting, things could be tense.

Their agenda will be dominated by revelations that the United States and Colombia have quietly been discussing a deal to allow the U.S. military to operate from at least seven military bases inside Colombia. The base-deal negotiations - which only became known through leaks to the Colombian media - have created alarm throughout South America, as they involve, in the words of Argentina's most-circulated newspaper, Clarín, "The military presence in South America of the most powerful army on Earth."

Nearly every government on the continent has voiced concerns about the likely U.S. presence (except Peru, whose center-right government supports the deal). But there are varying degrees of opposition.

"Winds of war"

Venezuela, Colombia's neighbor sharing a 1,375-mile border, has been by far the most vocal opponent. Far-left President Hugo Chávez argues that the U.S. presence will seek to destabilize his government. He has announced plans to retaliate by cutting all diplomatic ties with Colombia, bringing the two countries' $7 billion of trade down to zero within a year, and buying tanks and other weapons from Russia. "These seven Yankee bases are a declaration of war against the Bolivarian Revolution [Chávez's term for his government]," he said Tuesday, building on earlier rhetoric about "winds of war" sweeping through the continent.

Few observers see much possibility of actual war between Colombia and Venezuela anytime soon. It is clear, though, that the base deal has given Chávez a huge political opportunity. The Bush administration's deep unpopularity had made it easy for the Venezuelan leader to portray the United States as an enemy bent on removing him from power. That argument became much less credible during the first months of the Obama administration, when the new U.S. president offered an "outstretched hand" to adversaries. It was difficult for Chávez to portray Barack Obama as an imperialist enemy.

But the U.S. and Colombian governments' ham-handed, secretive rollout of the base deal played right into Chávez's hands, giving the Venezuelan leader just what he needed to reignite his rhetoric about the "empire" on the march. (The lack of transparency about the deal, in fact, stirred up old resentments against the United States in almost every country. Would the United States have kept the deal secret from neighboring countries if the continent in question was Europe? Is a double-standard in effect?) Chávez has taken full advantage, dominating the debate.

Colombia has responded with new accusations about weapons from Venezuela's arsenal ending up in the hands of the FARC, a bloodstained, drug-funded insurgent group that continues to fight Colombia's government 45 years after its founding. Colombia's government also filed a formal complaint at the OAS this week demanding that Venezuela's government stop meddling in Colombian internal politics.

For Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, the crisis with Venezuela brings distinct domestic political advantages. The right-wing president is in the midst of a knock-down, drag-out battle to convince Colombia's Congress to schedule a referendum on a constitutional change allowing Uribe to run for a third straight 4-year term. Every time Chávez uses threatening language against Uribe or Colombia, Uribe gets a boost in public opinion polls, and a third term becomes more of a certainty.

The base deal has further worsened relations between Colombia and its neighbor to the south, Ecuador. These relations could hardly be worse already, as neither country has had an ambassador in the other's capital since March 2008, when Colombia's army launched a raid 1 mile inside Ecuadorian territory that killed a top leader of the FARC. Ecuador's pro-government-majority legislature approved a resolution on Tuesday contending that the Colombia base deal would undermine peace in the region. Ecuador's foreign minister said Wednesday that his government's problems with Colombia "would not be resolved with a simple handshake at Bariloche."

In Bolivia, leftist President Evo Morales has said that any leader who invites foreign troops onto his soil is a "traitor" to Latin America. At the Bariloche meeting, Morales will call for a multi-country referendum to approve or reject the U.S. presence in Colombia, something that Colombia will most likely reject out of hand.

Perhaps most significantly, Brazil, Argentina and Chile, the continent's wealthiest countries with its best-equipped militaries (after Colombia), all three led by left-of-center presidents, have voiced strong discomfort with the U.S. presence in Colombia. Despite earlier declarations of opposition, at least Brazil and Chile have indicated that they will accept the base deal as long as Colombia offers assurances, in the form of a written diplomatic note, that U.S. personnel will never support operations beyond Colombia's borders.

How we got here

This story really began a decade ago, in 1999, when the last U.S. soldier left bases in Panama that dated back to Teddy Roosevelt's time. The base closures, in compliance with a treaty Jimmy Carter had negotiated in 1977, left the U.S. military without a runway from which to conduct counter-drug surveillance flights.

In order to fill that gap, the Clinton administration negotiated 10-year agreements with El Salvador, Ecuador and the Netherlands (Aruba and Curaçao). From these so-called "Forward Operating Locations," U.S. aircraft - piloted and maintained by military personnel and contractors - sought to identify planes and boats suspected of carrying cocaine to the United States.

The agreement with Ecuador allowed U.S. personnel to use a base in Manta, on the Pacific Coast, and strictly limited them to counter-drug missions. The agreement caused an outcry among Ecuador's leftist opposition, which was voted into office with the election of President Rafael Correa in 2006. Correa swore that he would "cut off his arm" before allowing the Manta base agreement to be renewed in 2009, when the 10-year arrangement ended.

As a result, starting in 2008 the Bush administration quietly set out to find a new site from which to launch its counter-drug missions. Talks with Peru didn't get very far, but Colombia proved quite willing to host the U.S. assets. When the United States requested a presence at one base, Colombia offered five, then seven. (Many of these bases already had a semi-permanent U.S. military presence anyway, as Colombia has received more than $5 billion in U.S. military and police aid so far this decade.)

Secrecy - and real concerns

These negotiations occurred in total secrecy, however. Apparently, even Colombia's friendlier neighbors weren't briefed about what was going on. When details about the agreement found their way into Colombia's media in early July, the response was - and continues to be - explosive.

Critics of the deal are concerned about what appears to be a greatly expanded mission for the U.S. personnel at the Colombian facilities: instead of simply monitoring suspect drug-trafficking as they did in Manta, the U.S. assets will also be used to help Colombia fight its long, bloody war of attrition against the FARC.

There are concerns about the size of the U.S. footprint. A congressionally mandated "troop cap" - an attempt to discourage "mission creep" - currently limits the U.S. presence in Colombia to 800 military personnel and 600 U.S. citizen contractors. The "cap" has been increased before (in 2004), and there is reason for concern that, once the new U.S. presences are established, the Pentagon will go back to Congress asking for a bigger presence.

Despite U.S. and Colombian assurances that this will not happen, neighboring countries are concerned that the U.S. presence will be used to carry out operations beyond Colombia's borders.

Human rights advocates worry about the United States entering further into a marriage of convenience with the most abusive military in the Americas, accused of well over 1,000 extrajudicial executions since 2002.

The continent's leaders are now in Bariloche (the United States is not attending), and the meeting could be contentious. We must hope that it is not. A day of hostilities between Colombia and Venezuela could make tensions far worse than if the meeting had not taken place at all. The two countries have hardened their positions in advance of the meeting. Colombian Foreign Minister Jaime Bermúdez is saying that "we are not going to Bariloche to consult about anything," and that the basing deal is all but signed. For his part, President Chávez published an open letter to the other presidents in an Argentine newspaper Thursday warning of a "counter-offensive from the North American empire."

Brazil's role, and South America's moment

Much will be up to Brazil, the Americas' largest country, which under center-left President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva has been playing a greater leadership role in regional politics. As the main regional military power in South America, Brazil is genuinely worried about having a significant U.S. presence nearby. Though it may sound odd to us, the Brazilian military for decades has operated under the threat hypothesis that the United States wishes to control the Amazon basin. The under-the-radar base negotiations with Colombia unhelpfully play into that hypothesis. Nonetheless, Lula has indicated that he will not oppose the base arrangement if he is given written assurances that the U.S. personnel will never leave Colombian territory and airspace.

In its regional leadership role, Brazil wants to calm tensions. Lula spoke on the phone for half an hour with Chávez on Thursday and is breakfasting with him before the Bariloche meetings, in an attempt to get him to tone down the rhetoric.

The Bariloche meeting could, years from now, be seen as a crucial turning point for South America's political stability and security. This is so because Latin America, as a whole, is suddenly in bad shape. Drug-related violence is killing nearly 5,000 people per year in Mexico, and the power of organized crime is growing almost everywhere. The June 28 military coup in Honduras has yet to be reversed. The tensions between right and left-wing governments in South America are like nothing we've ever seen, even during the Cold War. And militaries throughout the continent are seeing their budgets and arsenals increase dramatically, spurring fears of an arms race.

Will today's meeting be seen as the moment when the continent got together, independently of the United States, to reduce tensions and increase cooperation to solve common problems? Or will it be viewed as the moment when things really began to unravel, as the U.S. basing deal in Colombia - and the Obama administration's failure to explain it - became the catalyst for years of acrimony and instability?

Tony Newman: Mexico and Argentina Move to Decriminalize Marijuana and Other Drugs

2009-08-26T16:12:16Z

In the last week both Mexico and Argentina made international news by passing a law and making a major Supreme Court ruling calling for low-level drug offenders to receive treatment instead of jail.

On Friday Mexico decriminalized small amounts of drugs including heroin, cocaine and marijuana. The new law removes criminal penalties for possession of drugs considered to be for personal use -- up to five grams of marijuana (roughly three to five joints) and half a gram of cocaine, (equivalent of three to eight "lines"). The law will offer treatment instead of incarceration for people caught with small amounts of drugs for personal use. A similar decriminalization bill passed Mexico's Congress in 2006 but the Fox administration decided not to sign it, reportedly because of pressure from the United States.

"This new law is a step in the right direction toward removing criminal penalties for people who possess small amounts of drugs for their own use," said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance. "But Mexican authorities need to avoid the temptation to arrest even more people for other low level drug offenses -- a possibility that this law allows. Mexico is trying to make smarter choices on law enforcement priorities; it's time for the United States to do the same."

Yesterday, Argentina also made news when its Supreme Court ruled out prison for marijuana possession, saying the government should go after major traffickers and provide treatment instead of jail for consumers of marijuana. Ruling in a case involving several young men caught with marijuana cigarettes in their pockets, the judges struck down a law providing for up to two years in prison for possession of small amounts of marijuana. Although the Court Order was about marijuana, most of the arguments can be made about other illicit drugs and may open the door to larger drug law reform in Argentina. While the vast majority of people who get busted with small amounts of marijuana don't need treatment, they certainly don't need a jail cell.

Argentinean President Cristina Fernandez has supported certain drug law changes, saying in July 2008, ''I don't like that an addict is condemned as if he were a criminal. The ones who need to be punished are those who sell the drug.''

"Mexico's new law to decriminalize personal possession of illicit drugs and the ruling out of Argentina yesterday are consistent with the broader trend throughout Western Europe, Canada and other parts of Latin America to stop treating drug use and possession as a criminal problem," commented Nadelmann. "But it contrasts sharply with the United States, where marijuana possession arrests top 870,000 annually -- and now represent nearly half of all drug arrests nationwide."

Tony Newman is the director of media relations at the Drug Policy Alliance

Mark Joseph: The Only Thing Weirder Than The Birthers....

2009-07-30T17:49:45Z

The only thing weirder than the Birthers are the anti-Birthers, who blame the Birthers for being conspiracy theorists yet actively feed the conspiracy by refusing to call for President Obama to release his birth certificate.

The state official in Hawaii who manages such things has reiterated that there is indeed an original birth certificate on file which would confirm President Obama's having been born in Hawaii and that she has seen it, but state law won't allow her to release it unless the president authorizes it.

So what's the problem here? Release the original and let's be done with this madness.

I realize there are some faith-based Obama supporters who believe without seeing, but the rest of us in the reality-based world are starting to get that strange feeling we got when Mark Sanford tried to convince us that he was away from his family on Father's Day, hiking the Appalachian trail in order to clear his head and write a book.

During the last campaign, John McCain faced similar questions and promptly responded by releasing his original birth certificate. That's how normal people with nothing to hide handle these things.

Most American's aren't Birthers or anti-Birthers, but we are beginning to wonder why the president doesn't put this one to rest once and for all. Every day he allows this circus to continue is another day that he behaves less like the President of the United States facing weird accusations from fringe groups and more like a strange politician flying to Argentina to visit his soul-mate while pretending to be hiking the Appalachians.

Jim Luce: Helping Women: Eliminating Obstetric Fistula in Developing World

2009-07-28T11:32:33Z

Ana Langer, M.D., spoke recently at a Smith Barney seminar on health in the developing world. She was talking about the problem of obstetric fistula, of which I was ignorant.

Obstetric fistula is a devastating medical condition in which a fistula (hole) develops between the vagina and either the rectum or bladder (or both) after severe -- long and obstructed -- labor and delivery, when adequate medical care is not available. Most often, fistula and stillbirth go hand-in-hand.

Ana Langer, M.D., with Bill Clinton at the Clinton Global Initiative.

In lay terms, the wall -- soft tissue -- of the birth canal gets compressed by the baby's head during an obstructed labor. The pressure causes blood to stop flowing, and the tissue dies. The vagina then leaks urine and/or feces.

Sometimes this happens because the young woman's body was not physically ready for pregnancy -- countries plagued by fistula are also places where early marriage of young girls by their families, usually to older men, is common.

Once a woman has a fistula, social problems often ensue and compound the tragedy of losing of a baby: In a typical scenario, the baby's father then ostracizes the injured woman, even throwing her out of their home. She is devastated -- physically, socially, and psychologically.

The award winning documentary A Walk to Beautiful tells the stories of five Ethiopian women who suffer from devastating childbirth injuries and embark on a journey to reclaim their lost dignity.

Ana Langer heads an organization, EngenderHealth, that coordinates helping thousands of women in the developing world living with fistula access surgery so that a physical repair can be made.

They also address prevention by increasing access to contraceptive services, as well as to emergency obstetric care. Once a physical repair is completed, social and psychological repair follow, along with reintegration with the families and communities that had shunned them.

I have heard few reports as unsettling. The injury is horrific enough, but the response and outcome are tragic and perverse. Ana is trying to help solve this complex, painful problem. She has caught my undivided attention.

Raised in Argentina, the daughter of two Austrian refugee physicians, Ana was brought up to care. "I grew up in an environment where I always knew I would one day respond to the needs of the community," she told me last week in her Manhattan office.

A Walk to Beautiful features women rejected by their husbands and ostracized by their communities who are left to spend the rest of their lives in loneliness and shame.

"I decided to study medicine. But Argentina was going through difficult times in the 1970's. A young, progressive professional was considered subversive. Many of my colleagues were put in jail or simply disappeared.

"I moved to Mexico where it was safe to complete my training as a neonatologist. There, working with newborn infants and their mothers, I realized that for babies to be healthy, their mothers had to be, too...

"My thinking and practice evolved into more of a public health focus, with less clinical involvement, as I saw the difference that supportive policies could make in women's health and lives" she explained.

The women in A Walk to Beautiful make the choice to take the long and arduous journey to the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital in search of a cure and a new life.

Ana became one of the first directors of research on women and children's health on the Mexican National Institute of Public Health. Founded in the late 1980's, Ana spearheaded research that led to new evidence and policy changes.

"This was my introduction to the complexities of reproductive health," she said, which I got fully immersed in during the 12 years I worked for the Population Council, as Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean.

"As I became more immersed in the field, I realized these were global issues. I wanted to widen my scope and specifically to improve women's health in developing countries across the world."

Four years ago she became president and C.E.O. of EngenderHealth.

I recall the BASF ad: We don't make the products you buy, we make the chemicals in them. As founder of Orphans International Worldwide, I have traveled Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Yet I had never heard of EngenderHealth.

With a 2009 budget of $60 million and a presence in more than 25 countries, I should have. But this organization does not use its name often in the field. Rather, it partners with national and local governments and local organizations. I had heard of their many partners throughout the world.

"As a technical organization focused on strengthening local capacity, we often operate under the radar," Ana explained.

EngenderHealth focuses on far more than fistula repair and prevention. They are dedicated to improving the overall health and well-being of people in the countries where they work.

With decades of experience to guide them, they strengthen local health systems so that local medical needs can be assessed and addressed in ways that make sense for each community.

But the concept of helping women who had been harmed in the process of trying to bring a new life into the world -- and then rejected by their spouses and families -- touched my very soul.

"I came to understand the importance of good reproductive health care -- and that includes maternal health care -- in the lives of not only women, but families, communities, and ultimately nations.

Being able to plan and safely deliver a healthy baby is a basic human right, a foundation for everything, really," Ana told me.
"And while it's true that you encounter cultural differences, and even obstacles," she continued, "if you can understand the needs and concerns of a community, and work with local leaders and share points of view, you learn that of course they want to solve these problems, too.

"Often it's not so much culture per se, it's that they feel forgotten by the rest of the world, they've become fatalists. But when people see a glimmer of hope, everything can change. It's so inspiring, and together you find ways to make life better."

I have understood since childhood that women must be able to make informed decisions about their health and lives. Being able to do this is a core part of overall reproductive health (which also demands that choices, and high quality services, be available).

I was raised by a mother [Frances D. Alleman-Luce] who often told me, in the words of Flo Kennedy, "If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament."

"I have seen first-hand the consequences of the lack of access to safe abortions," Ana explained. "Severe disease. Death."

Young Americans may not understand this, having been born after Roe v. Wade. And it seems that our national leaders haven't always understood this, either.

Ronald Reagan imposed a "global gag rule" that started to govern how U.S. funding for global health could be used.

The gag rule said that local healthcare groups that receive U.S. government support, in places like Kenya and Ghana, had to promise to have nothing to do with abortion -- even if a woman asked, even if it was with money from other sources, and even if it was legal!

We're not talking about U.S. dollars being used to pay for abortions overseas -- Jesse Helms put a stop to that in the 70s; we're talking about talking about abortion.

The gag rule was lifted by Bill Clinton, then reinstituted by George Bush. During those years it had disastrous consequences, and those local groups that stood their ground really suffered.

Clinics closed -- clinics that provided malaria treatment, immunizations, prenatal care. Lifesaving services that had absolutely nothing to do with abortion.

Barack Obama got rid of the gag rule on his third day in office. A president needs to be a Democrat to have common sense?, I wonder to myself.

Last week, the Senate appropriations committee voted on language in the Foreign Assistance bill that would get rid of the gag rule forever.

EngenderHealth is an evidence-based organization. And one shocking and upsetting fact that informs so much of its work is that, according to the World Health Organization, 536,000 women die each year due to the complications of pregnancy and delivery -- including unsafe abortion.

That is the entire population of Vermont. Dead. "The tragedy is that this is 99% preventable," Ana explained. (And, of those who do survive pregnancy, countless face long-term consequences, including fistulas.)

But if you don't believe me, watch some of EngenderHealth's videos. Many of them tell stories about women who have survived fistula, HIV, and other life-altering problems related to sex and reproductive health. I have watched all of them and was riveted.

Learn From My Story: Women Confront Fistula in Rural Uganda.

Men: Telling It Like It Is, Volume 1.

Men As Partners: South Africa Digital Stories.

Men Today, Men Tomorrow.

In fact, they have more than 80 videos on their YouTube channel. Several videos talk about EngenderHealth's "Men As Partners" program, which helps men become better husbands, boyfriends and brothers. Other videos are calls to action to improve U.S. policies related to their work. One in particular was created at YouTube's request to educate viewers about Millennium Development Goal #5 for last year's "In My Name" campaign.

Bottom line: EngenderHealth is saving lives. Moms, dads, kids, families, communities. Take a minute to become a fan of theirs on Facebook, a friend on MySpace, and a follower on Twitter.

Subscribe to their YouTube channel and forward their videos to your friends. (Don't you love social media savvy organizations?) Then send money. They will make sure that it makes a difference.

Edited by Ethel Grodzins Romm.

Joel Sawyer, Sanford's Communications Director, Resigns

2009-07-17T13:41:40Z

Gov. Mark Sanford's affair has resulted in at least one break-up. Joel Sawyer, the governor's communications director, has announced he will depart his post at the start of August.

Here the full press release:

Columbia, S.C. - July 17, 2009 - Governor Mark Sanford and his Communications Director Joel Sawyer today announced that Sawyer will be departing the Governor's Office to pursue other opportunities in the private sector, effective Wednesday, August 5.

"It's truly been an honor to serve both Mark and the people of South Carolina for the past six and a half years," Sawyer said. "This has been one of the most difficult decisions I've ever had to make, because I have and will continue to be such an ardent supporter of what this Administration is working to accomplish. I firmly believe that despite recent events, great things to move our state forward can be done during the remaining 18 months of this Administration."

"The public nature of my job might lead some to speculate about my reasons for leaving, but I want to be crystal clear that my departure is purely about what's best for me and my family on a personal and financial level. I wish Mark and the rest of my talented and dedicated colleagues the best."

Gov. Sanford issued the following statement:

"Joel has been a wonderfully devoted and skillful member of our team. The people of our state have benefited greatly from his service, as has this Administration , and I sincerely thank him. We will miss him, but I join the rest of the staff in wishing Joel and his young family all the best in their future endeavors," Sanford said.

Sanford's cabinet director, Ben Fox, will take over as communications director.

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South Carolina Republican Wants Investigation Of Sanford Affair

2009-07-17T12:55:27Z

Sen. David Thomas said Thursday he plans to chair hearings into whether Gov. Mark Sanford spent any state money on his yearlong affair with an Argentine woman.

Argentina Swine Flu Epidemic Closes Schools, Theaters

2009-07-16T15:00:08Z

It's vacation time in the Northern Hemisphere as families pile into cars for a day at the beach. But in South America, it's winter, and this year that means swine flu.

Sanford's Affair Might Have Jeopardized His Top-Secret Clearance

2009-07-11T15:59:07Z

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford's love-struck romp in Buenos Aires with his Argentine "soul mate" wasn't just a threat to his marriage, job, and presidential aspirations. It also jeopardizes his Department of Homeland Security clearance and raises new questions about his candor on the steamy affair.

Isha Judd: To Beaver or Not to Beaver? In Pursuit of Greatness

2009-07-08T17:53:51Z

Several years ago, I visited Tierra Del Fuego, an incredibly beautiful island off the tip of Argentina, and home to the southernmost village in the world. This land of jagged snowy peaks is also the home to an enormous colony of beavers. These beavers are not native to Argentina, I was told, but were brought there from Canada in the 1940s by some ambitious entrepreneurs, who thought they would be able to make a fortune out of the beaver's furs. Their reasoning seemed ingenious: the beaver's only predator was the bear, and there were no bears in Argentina! With no predators, the beavers would multiply quickly, and they would reap the benefits, selling the expensive furs and making a fortune.

The plan was soon put into action, and 25 pairs of beavers arrived in Tierra Del Fuego. As the beavers went about their beavery ways, the entrepreneurs waited gleefully for the fruits of their labor. The beavers did indeed multiply, but something rather unexpected happened -- the newborns did not develop thick coats like their Canadian relatives. In fact, their coats were totally useless.

The distraught entrepreneurs soon learned that the beaver's coat grows thick when the animal experiences fear. With no bears, there was no fear, and so their coats did not grow!

In our society, comfort is king. Anything that makes life easier and requires less effort, is prized. We have learned to avoid confrontation and conflict, to value routine over the unknown, and security over spontaneity. Yet often it is the things that make us uncomfortable -- the hard knocks, the disappointments and the losses -- that challenge us most in our lives. They are the storms we wish we did not have to weather, yet they are the storms that make us strong. They give us maturity and responsibility, for what better teacher can we have than our own direct experience?

Life becomes stagnated when we remove the challenges. Just like a spoiled child, who when finally facing the world, finds himself without the skills to function in society, if we overprotect ourselves and try to avoid the inevitable conflicts of life, we may find comfort, but not growth. We may find distraction, but not self-realization. To flourish and grow as an individual, we must face the world head on, and embrace the losses and disappointments life brings us. Then, instead of perceiving them as the obstacles in our way, we can use difficult situations to grow, to push through our boundaries and expand our horizons.

How did you grow from a child into a responsible adult? Was it by not making any mistakes? Or was it through learning from the consequences of your actions? Ultimately, we have to go through things ourselves before we fully understand. Maybe, when we do so, we will think, oh, now I see what mom was talking about, but it is having the experience that brings us to maturity. The way we raise our children often reflects our need to protect ourselves from the natural challenges of life; we don't want them to make the same mistakes we did, yet maybe they have to in order to become wise.

It is natural to experience ups and downs in life. We are having a human experience, and that entails a wide range of feelings and situations. When we begin to nourish an internal space of security and unconditional love through the expansion of consciousness, we start to experience these extremes more freely. We begin to embrace the contrasts of life, and find adventure in change and uncertainty. Self realization is not about living in a permanent blissed out state where you never feel any emotions. It is about embracing the contrasts of life fully, without fear: established in internal freedom, the need to control our circumstances falls away, and we can dance unfettered to the varying harmonies of the symphony of life.

You can receive notice of this blog every Wednesday by clicking on "Become a Fan" at the top of this page. Isha's latest book and movie, Why Walk When You Can Fly? explains her system for self-love and the expansion of consciousness.

Before She Met Mark: Jenny Sanford's Wall Street Past

2009-07-08T11:54:15Z

Long before she was the sad-eyed First Lady of The Palmetto State, Jenny Sullivan Sanford was a well-respected investment banker at Lazard Freres. In fact, she could have been become a major dealmaker had she not put her career on hold to manage the political one of her husband, South Carolina's philandering governor Mark Sanford.

Poll: Majority Of South Carolinians Want Sanford Out

2009-07-06T17:01:34Z

A new poll suggests that a majority of people in South Carolina want Governor Mark Sanford to resign.

The poll, released by Survey USA, measured the responses of 500 South Carolinians one week after Sanford made his now-infamous confession.

Asked whether or not the governor should resign, 69% said they wanted Sanford to step down, while only 28% wanted him to remain in office.

Fifty-eight percent said Lieutenant Gov. Andre Bauer is completely or somewhat prepared to be governor.

The results showed significant differences of opinion among the various groups polled. While 70% of women said Sanford should resign, men were slightly more forgiving: Only 66% said the governor should step down.

A larger divide separated Democrats and Republicans. While 39% of Republicans said they think the governor should remain in office, only 12% of Democrats agreed.

One question that most people agreed on was whether or not Sanford has over-shared. When asked whether his confessions have revealed too much about Sanford's personal life, 78% of Republicans, 62% of Democrats and 63% of Independents all said, yes.

Despite the majority opinion against Sanford, only half of those polled said they think his career is "finished."

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Elizabeth Rigby: Mark Sanford is the Luckiest Politician on the Planet

2009-07-05T17:52:23Z

It has been merely twelve days since Mark Sanford's disastrously-rambling press conference in which he admits to an on-going affair, not to mention leaving the country secretly without letting others know where he was going. Now 69 percent of South Carolina's citizens want him to resign. And more and more elected officials are calling for his resignation. But, what is most shocking is not that he remains in office, but how far this potentially-career-ending story remains from the top news of the day.

This political damage-control does not stem from shrewd political spin by Sanford or his associates. In fact, Wayne Washington of South Carolina's The State newspaper articulates it best by stating: "Political strategists say Sanford has done just about everything wrong in his attempt to manage the fallout from his affair with a woman in Argentina. He lied about it. He tried to cover it up. Then, he admitted it -- parts of it, anyway. And then he offered up sensational details, some of which contradicted sensational details he had offered before."

Instead, Sanford has benefited from a series of scandal-eclipsing news stories. Most notably, the death of Michael Jackson the day after Sanford's news conference. At that point, I thought, this guy is one lucky politician. But I expected that as the wall-to-wall MJ coverage subsided (at least for a few days until Tuesday's memorial), public scrutiny would turn back to Mark Sanford. Yet, like manna from the heavens, on Friday came another rambling, unexpected, bizarre press conference from a Republican Governor--but shockingly it wasn't Sanford this time. In a "statement " (best described by Paul Begala here on Huffington Post) Palin announced that she was resigning--shifting attention even further from Mark Sanford and his foibles.

At this point, I realized Sanford was the luckiest politician on the planet.

But, I can't really figure out why. I am sure it isn't good karma. This is the guy who refused federal stimulus funds for his state's many unemployed workers (third highest rate in the nation) and actually went to court to try to return federal funding to fill budget gaps in South Carolina's public schools and universities. Some others suggest that his luck might simply be true love winning out in the end. Maybe.

Regardless, it is hard to believe his luck will continue. In fact, I tremble at the thought of a news story that could possibly knock media-sensations Michael Jackson and Sarah Palin from this week's headlines. Instead, I predict that Sanford's luck will run out long before he stops talking himself out of office. I mean, even Jon Stewart chastised Sanford's media savy, saying: "God killed Michael Jackson to save your a**; and you gave ANOTHER INTERVIEW?" [video below]

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Diane Tucker: Did Mark Sanford And Maria Belen Chapur Fall Victim To The Dance?

2009-07-02T23:31:36Z

"It was innocent," insisted Gov. Mark Sanford while recollecting his first encounter with Maria Belen Chapur on a beach-side Uruguayan dance floor.

Oh really? You're in my wheelhouse now, Mark Sanford. I know a thing or two about rhythm and romance.

That sultry evening at Punta del Este was undeniably seductive. Because why? Because "to dance is to be out of yourself. Larger, more beautiful, more powerful," explained legendary dancer and choreographer Agnes De Mille years ago. In other words, dancing makes mighty fine foreplay.

De Mille wasn't the first person to suggest that if you're looking for a short cut to happiness, dancing might be one of them. In Goethe's wildly popular 18th century novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, this is how the book's hero described an evening of dancing:

I felt myself more than mortal, holding this loveliest of creatures in my arms, flying with her like the wind, till I lost sight of everything else; and I vowed at that moment that a girl whom I loved, or for whom I felt the slightest attachment, should never waltz with another, even if it should be my end!

Jane Austen, the widely read British novelist, loved to dance as a teenager and often used the power of dance to move her heroes and heroines through their romances. In Emma, Austen wrote:

It may be possible to do without dancing entirely. Instances have been known of young people passing many, many months successively without being at any ball of any description, and no material injury accrued either to body or mind. But when a beginning is made -- when the felicities of rapid motion have once been, though slightly, felt -- it must be a very heavy set that does not ask for more.

How timeless are the felicities of rapid motion? Socrates -- the ancient Greek philosopher -- learned to dance when he was 70, having felt he was neglecting an essential part of himself.

More recently in the film The Thomas Crown Affair, actor Pierce Brosnan posed this question to actress Rene Russo while they were dancing: "Do you want to dance? Or do you want to dance?" (In the movie they did both.) Speaking of dance as metaphor, didn't a well-known writer once say dancing is the perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire?

In Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, the 17th-century French playwright Moliere wrote:

There is nothing so necessary to mankind as dance. All the miseries of mankind, all the dreadful tragedies that history is full of, all the blunders of politicians, all the inadequacies of great captains -- they all come from not having taken dancing lessons.

I studied dance. I even taught dance for a few years. That's why at the end of the day I subscribe to this old Japenese proverb:

We're all fools whether we dance or not, so we might as well dance.

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In Brazil, an American ex-pat has declared "the time for standing is over. It's time to dance."

In Afghanistan, dancing in public can get you killed. Here's my interview with Havana Marking.

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Update 8.18.09: Jenny Sanford will unburden her soul in the September issue of Vogue magazine. Wait...Vogue? Why not Bitch magazine? Anyway, in the soon-to-be-published Vogue interview, Jenny tellingly described the Sanford's courtship this way: "We weren't madly in love, but we were compatible and good friends." Holy Marriage of Convenience, Batman! No wonder Mark got swept off his feet in Argentina.

Update 8.20.09: Jenny Sanford has been diligently tending to her public image, but who is providing all the behind-the-scenes media advice? That would be longtime Sanford consultant John Lerner, who is orchestrating a media blitz to set up the first lady for something bigger. "There's more to come," according to the Palmetto Scoop. Hmmm, I wonder who turned the media on to the Sanford-Chapur affair in the first place...