by Margine Quintanilla Romero

Free Hands law takes effect Driving while holding the cell with one hand, and with the other the wheel could become a thing of the past, or income for the government if drivers don’t change their habits.

The new “free hands” law that restricts the use of cell phones while driving, might save thousands of lives, said a study published by Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC).

According to this information it is expected that of 4,000 deaths that the state of California registers at present, there should be 300 deceases less when this law takes effect on July 1.

The New York experience, which in the year 2001 became the first state with a ¯free hands” law, it indicated that the deaths in adverse conditions remained in a level more under several years after the law entered into effect, especially when there is bad weather or the highways are wetted, says the study.

Likewise, it reaffirms that the laws that demand “ free hands ” have limited the deaths in 30 to 60 percent.

These conclusions differ from previous studies that said that motorists who were  free hands ” were so distracted as those who were using the hand phones. These investigations are based on motorists’ polls, laboratory simulations and remarks on vehicles equipped with devices to record the behavior and the distractions of a motorist.

A cell could destroy you auto and also your life

On this topic Jed Kolko, attached investigator of PPIC, declared that it is possible that the motorists consider the technology “ free hands ” bothersome, and use the phone with less frequency. “Or they might change the minutes of conversation to moments when the conditions to drive are less dangerous ”, he said.

Nevertheless, for Kolko, the fact itself of having this law might serve as an educational function, a warning on the dangers of speaking while driving.

In spite of the questions without response on the way in which the cell phones affect the deaths toll when driving, and the motive of these, the results of the study suggest strategies to guide public policy. ¯Since the benefi ts of the laws ‘ free hands ’ depend on the conditions of conduction, it is logical to apply with more force the laws when the above mentioned conditions of conduction are more diffi cult. That can save lives ”, pointed out Kolko.

In the United States, the “free hands¯ laws are in effect in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and in the District of Columbia, as well as in several cities, among then Chicago and Santa Fe, New Mexico. The state of Washington also will have a ¯free hands¯ law that will take effect on July 1.

by los servicios de noticias de El Reportero

Cristina Fernández de Kirchner

Thousands of people took to the streets in several cities around Argentina on 16 June to protest against President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s refusal to negotiate with the farmers.

The nationwide protests were the largest since the meltdown of the economy in 2001. They indicated that Fernández has completely lost the population’s support during her dispute with the rural sector, which has now lasted more than three months.

The Farc’s four disasters

The Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Farc) is reeling from four hammer blows. The guerrilla group’s two most senior leaders – Manuel Marulanda and Raúl Reyes – died in March. Moreover, the Farc’s most powerful international supporter, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, has turned his back on the group, while the Farc’s most prominent defender in Colombia Senator Piedad Córdoba has been totally discredited.

The defeat of the Farc, Latin America’s oldest and most resilient guerrilla group, for the fi rst time appears to be a genuine possibility.

Fury of Opus Dei in Latin America

Lawyer Ives Gandra Martins da Silva, the principal exponent of the fascist sect Opus Dei in Brazil, is concerned about the advancement of the left in Latin America. In an angry article in the column Trends / Debates of Folha de Sao Paulo, he distilled hatred and prejudice against Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales, Fidel Castro and Lula.

He took advantage to also criticize a “lack of preparation” of governments in the outside world and to offer his courses to a new generation of political leaders. “In this world plagued by false leaders and fantastic mediocrity, I think it is worth the idea, as I proposed in my book, a ‘school of government’ Funded by governments.

“ In the environment of right-wing defense, a merchandising for his lucrative business!

In his elitist point of view, “the world reaps, at present, a remarkable harvest of pseudo leaders, populist and unprepared, leading more or less developed nations exclusively based on the power of communication with the people, especially with the design less favored”. This harvest, according to the leader of the sect, would include “the histrionic Venezuelan president – capable of creating unnecessary resistance by being unable to control his sudden offenses – which transforms the Colombian drug traffi cking industry of kidnappings into ‘idealistic’ guerrillas. The same can be said of Morales, who also wants to perpetuate in the power that begins with his encyclopedic and truculent ignorance, to divide the nation.”

The influence of the fascist sect

After criticizing President Lula for raising taxes affecting mainly banks, Ives Gandra closed the Latin American harvest with another fascistic schizophrenia. “It is to remind you that the three presidents are friends of a dictator who was shot without trial – the homicides perpetrated in the famous’ paredóns’ – far more people than Pinochet.” Besides lying about the reality of human rights in Cuba, he cannot hide his sympathy for the dictatorial regime of Chile, which has always had the active support of Opus Dei. Even when he criticizes the “disaster-prone presidency of George W. Bush,” Ives Gandra alerts about “the risk of voting in another populist unprepared to carry out their objective”- perhaps in a sickly reference to Barack Obama.

­

by Alex Meneses Miyashita

John McCAin

The Hispanic vote could sink the aspirations of Republican Sen. John McCain goverment reach the White House because of his party’s approach to immigration over the past two years, claimed the progressive think tank and advocacy organization NDN at a May 28 press briefing in Washington, D.C.

The NDN was formed in 2006 as successor to the New Democrat Network.

With 78 percent of the Latino vote favoring a Democratic candidate in the primaries, the think tank claimed the Republican Party is continuing to lose the Hispanic support that it had gained in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections.

President Bush won 35 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2000 and 40 percent in 2004, according to most exit poll data.

Latino support for the Republican Party decreased in the 2006 legislative elections to 30 percent, which the NDN attributes to the rise in anti-immigrant rhetoric within the Republican Party.

Rosenberg blamed the GOP for unleashing an “extraordinary racism in the United States,” saying it has fueled Hispanic voters to steer back to the Democratic Party.

“The immigration debate has changed American politics,” said Andrés Ramírez, NDN vice president for Hispanic programs. He cited a 2006 poll where 54 percent of Hispanics said immigration alone would motivate them to vote.

The Latino vote in the 2008 primaries has represented 15% of the national vote, compared to 9°/0 in 2004. “That’s a phenomenal increase,” Ramirez said.

The NDN estimated in its new report that about 12 million Hispanics could cast ballots in November, surpassing by more than 4 million the Latino turnout in 2004.

The growing Latino electorate gains further relevance as four of the states expected to be most contested, Colorado, Florida, Nevada and New Mexico, have a large and growing Hispanic presence that could tilt the results, the organization maintained.

The organization also claimed that the Hispanic majority in Florida is no longer Republican.

According to 2008 exit  polls, Hispanic Democrats outnumber Hispanic Republicans nationally by a ratio larger than 3 to 1, Rosenberg predicted McCain’s recognition within the Hispanic community will not do him much good.

He claimed that in spite of the leading role McCain initially played to push a comprehensive immigration reform bill, he has ‘’betrayed the Hispanic community” by switching his position on immigration while speaking on the campaign trail.

“John McCain abandoned his bill,” he said. “That is an indisputable fact.”

But Hessy Fernandez, spokesperson for the Republican National Committee, challenged the claim as an unfounded political attack.

She claimed neitherof the two Democratic candidates, Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama, has shown “any leadership” to address the issue, and defended McCain as being the only candidate who has. She blamed the Democratic majority in Congress for failing to pass comprehensive immigration reform “after they promised our community that they would.”

Rosenberg, however, maintained the 2007 immigration bill being debated in the Senate did not pass largely because McCain “abandoned” the debate and the Republicans speaking on the bill were opposed to it.

“In the spring of 2007 (McCain) made a bad choice, and now he’s going to have to live with that,” Rosenberg said, adding that his changing position on immigration will be a “major issue in Hispanic media in 2008.”

Fernandez acknowledged the importance of the Hispanic vote in the upcoming elections, but dismissed the trends presented by the NDN as being politically biased.

“This is just a campaign of a partisan organization that wants to somehow steer visibility away from the internal discussions the Democratic Party is having,” she said.

Rosenberg stated that Republicans outspent Democrats 10 to 1 in Spanish-language media in 2004, but said that will not happen again as the party has “woken,’’ adding that “the energy in the Hispanic electorate today is against the Republican Party.” Hispanic Link.

by Tim Rogers

This article was first published in The Miami Herald

(Note: when this edition was going to the printer, the Supreme Electoral Council had ruled to disqualify the two main political parties in Nicaragua for which the hunger strike protest was started).

L-R: Efraín Payán, of the ALN party; Dora María Téllez, at center; and Dr. Vilma Nuñez de Escorcia, president of Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (CENIDH); members of CENIDH; and reporters. (photo by trinchera de noticias)

Former Nicaraguan guerrilla commander Dora Maria Tellez, cofounder of the Sandinista Renovation Movement, sits in a hammock near the Supreme Electoral Council in Managua to protest a government move to invalidate her political party.

A veteran guerrilla leader who helped spark a revolution here 30 years ago is again putting her life on the line to protest a government she claims is returning Nicaragua to its dark, dictatorial past.

Dora María Téllez, 52, started a hunger strike this week, plopping down in downtown Managua to ‘’sound the alarm bell’’ against what she says are President Daniel Ortega’s authoritarian intentions.

The former rebel leader and ex-Minister of Health under the first Sandinista government in the 1980s says her protest is a continuation of the revolutionary struggle she started three decades ago against the U.S.-backed Somoza dictatorship.

In 1978, Téllez, then 22, captured the nation’s attention as the courageous ‘’Comandante 2’’ who, along with legendary guerrilla icon Edén ‘’Comandante Cero’’ Pastora, led a small band of Sandinista rebels in a daring takeover of the legislative National Palace.

That event exposed the vulnerability of the Somoza dictatorship and gave Nicaraguans hope  that revolutionary change was possible. The following year, she helped topple the Somoza dictatorship by leading the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) to its first major military victories in the northern cities of León and Chinandega.

Thirty years later, the Sandinista Front has gone from a clandestine rebel movement to the government establishment, but Téllez says the threat of dictatorship remains.

‘’When we took over the National Palace we were fighting for the same thing because the politicians weren’t respecting the rights of everyone else,’’ Téllez told The Miami Herald Thursday while swinging from a nylon hammock set up under a makeshift plastic tarp where she’s camping out next to Managua’s main roundabout.

‘’Now, 30 years later, we have a group of people, a political elite, who want to (run government) as if it were a dictatorship,’’ she said.

Téllez, who is on a water and salt diet, says that Ortega and incarcerated former President Arnoldo Alemán who is still considered the ‘’maximum leader’’ of the opposition Liberal Constitutional Party — are in the process of reworking their infamous power-sharing pact to re-divide state institutions and  cut out minority parties. Political analysts have speculated that the final negotiation point of the new pact will be freedom for Alemán in exchange for constitutional reforms to allow Ortega to remain in power indefinitely.

Also upsetting to Téllez is a recent ruling by the Supreme Electoral Council, which Ortega’s party controls, to eliminate four minority parties — including Téllez’s Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS) — from the ballot in municipal elections scheduled for Nov. 2. Téllez says that is further proof that the so-called pacto is still alive and well.

‘’Daniel wants to be alone on the electoral ballot; he wants to remain in power by making an arrangement with Alemán to stay in power indefinitely,’’ Téllez said, as she waved to passing cars that honked in support of her protest.

Yet some revolutionaries, even those who don’t identify with Ortega today, think it’s a mistake to compare the current government to the Somoza dictatorship.

‘’Ortega and Somoza are a thousand light years apart,’’ said Pastora, 71, who fought alongside Téllez during the takeover of the National Palace. “It is political error to say that the Ortega government is a dictatorship.’’­

Pastora, who also went on a 34-day hunger strike in 1998 to restore his Nicaraguan citizenship, said he thinks Téllez’s hunger strike is not the right move, and says the fact that she’s even allowed to protest civically against the government is proof that Nicaragua is not under a dictatorship. Pastora, who in the 1980s defected from the Sandinista Front to battle the government for being

‘’Marxists disguised as Sandinistas,’’ said the Ortega government in the 1980s was a dictatorship, and was one that Téllez and the rest of the MRS leaders supported at the time.

After the first Ortega government was voted out of power in 1990, Téllez, along with a large group of Sandinista intellectuals, led the FSLN brain drain by defecting from the party on the grounds that it had been hijacked by Ortega. The MRS, founded in 1995, currently holds three legislative seats in the National Assembly and has become a leading opposition voice from the left.

The political right is also raising concerns about Ortega’s dictatorial intentions. Eduardo Montealegre, the Liberal Party’s candidate for mayor of Managua who finished second to Ortega in the 2006 presidential elections, says he thinks Ortega is trying to ­‘’eliminate me politically.’’ The former banker says he fears Ortega’s recent public accusation that he stole $600 million in the 2000 banking-system collapse is now going to be used against him to remove him from the race.

Public opinion is also leery of Ortega. A poll released in May by M&R Consultants showed that 64 percent of those surveyed describe Ortega as an authoritarian ruler who wants to implement a dictatorship. Even self-described Sandinistas are having a hard time with the Ortega government.

‘’Like many Sandinistas, Ortega wasn’t an ideal candidate, but we saw him as an option after three neoliberal governments,’’ said Cecilia Espinoza, a social worker involved in Nicaragua’s feminist movement.

“But after assuming power, I could see that there was a great difference between Ortega’s discourse in favor of the poor and his politics that don’t respect people’s rights, especially women’s.’’

A disgruntled Téllez says she’s had enough of the Ortega government and plans to strike indefinitely, unless the CSE rules to reinstate the minority parties on the election ballot.

‘’The role of a revolutionary in Nicaragua is to oppose attempts to install a dictatorship,’’ Téllez said. “If I were born again, I would choose the same path in life.’’