by the El Reportero news services

Presidenta de Argentina Cristina Fernández

TEGUCIGALPA, Jul 30 (Prensa Latina) – Honduras is the venue on Wednesday for the 1st Agriculture Ministerial Summit of Petrocaribe, held to determine how member states will benefit from a fund created with the sale of Venezuelan oil.

The Council of Ministers of Agriculture, body created to run the budget recovered from each barrel exported outside the cooperation agreements and sold at more than $100, will be made official during the summit.

The resources will finance food initiatives to counteract social problems in Petrocaribe’s member states.

Honduras is submitting projects of irrigation, agriculture research, agricultural supplies, fertilizers and improved seeds production, machinery and production equipment, drying and storage, lab installation and rural funding.

The 1st Agriculture Ministerial Summit answers to the initiative approved during the 5th Extraordinary Petrocaribe Ministerial Conference held in Maracaibo, Venezuela, in July 13, 2008.

Killings accelerate again

The Mexican government has a major PR problem: it is failing to show that it is winning the war against violent gangsters. The government does have a decent story to tell but ministers are not articulating it. They are allowing the media to imply that the forces of law and order are on the retreat as the death toll mounts.

Ecuador gives U.S. notice to quit

On July 29 Ecuador for mally gave the U.S. notice that the lease on the airbase at Manta would expire in November 2009. Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa has consistently promised to end the lease. In addition, the draft constitution, which faces a referendum on 28 September, explicitly outlaws any foreign bases on Ecuadorean territory. The U.S., although working out a contingency plan, had apparently nursed faint hopes that the lease on Manta could be renewed. U.S. officials had consistently said that they would not discuss alternatives until the Ecuador had made an announcement on Manta.

The March 1 raid on Ecuador: The beginning of the end

The ramifications of the 1 March raid by Colombia on the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (Farc) camp just inside Ecuador are still developing. This report is being written and edited within weeks of President Alvaro Uribe’s stunning success in securing, without bloodshed, the release of Ingrid Betancourt and 14 other hostages held in captivitity for years by the Farc. Our view is that the 1 March raid was decisive in signalling to the world that the Farc would be defeated. The 2 July rescue of Betancourt is proof that is now happening.

Serious splits emerge in Kirchnerismo as prime minister resigns

Argentina’s prime minister, Alberto Fernández, one of the lynchpins of Kirchnerismo, resigned on 23 July. Fernández felt compelled to step down after the dramatic setback in the senate last week when Vice-President Julio Cobos, the president of the senate, cast the decisive vote to sink the government’s agricultural reform bill and with it the cross-party coalition, Concertación Plural, carefully constructed by Néstor Kirchner when he was in office. President Cristina Fernández was subsequently forced to withdraw the bill, which was at the root of the long-running dispute between the government and the country’s four farming unions.

­by Tim Chávez

NASHVILLE, Tenn. –  It’s not my Nashville anymore. It’s Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib. We have replicated the water-boarding this nation used against the untried captives we stored on Cuba’s edge and the various degrees of degradation we forced on Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

Juana Villegas was literally tortured this month by the Davidson County Sheriff’s Department here in Nashville as she went through childbirth.

She was handcuffed by the wrist and leg to the hospital bedrail during must of her labor, restrained by skin-peeling shackles on her legs for trips to the bathroom and, worst of all, denied by the sheriff s department the use of a breast pump to feed her newborn and ease the pain from her swollen breasts.

Separated from her mother, the infant developed a dangerously high blood level of a chemical that induces jaundice.

All the while, the 33-year-old Villegas was under visible guard by the sheriff’s department, including the watch of e male sentry as she changed from jail jumpsuit into hospital clothes.

Attending nurses left her hospital room in tears.

Villegas, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, was arrested three days before giving birth. She was charged with operating a vehicle without a driver’s license and care State law recognizes a photo ID card and registration as sufficient proof that a person will show up in court for a traffic offense. However, despite having a Matrícula Consular card, vehicle registration, and three children who are U.S. citizens, Villegas spent seven days in sheriffs custody.

Ironically, over the Fourth of July weekend. Nashville was host to an episode of torture that the United Nations forbids.

Nothing in state or federal law required that Villegas, an undocumented immigrant who had been ordered deported once before, be treated so mercilessly. It was the department’s policy and politics under one man, Sheriff Daron Hall, that: led to her inhumane treatment.

In Nashville and Davidson County, more than 3,500 heads of households have been deported in the past 14 months. More than 1,500 human beings LEGALLY in this country have been arrested and questioned for hours by the sheriff’s department. Law enforcement authorities in 57 U.S. communities now have the power to enforce federal immigration law.

Nashville considers itself a progressive city. It is home to Vanderbilt University and a host of other institutions of higher education. Democrats, or what passes for a Democrat in the South, dominate politics here. Yet what is transpiring reinforces the portrayal of the small town run by a Southern sheriff.

The sheriff is allowed to torture expectant mothers by virtue of the 287g deportation

program, authorized by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Amnesty

International USA points out that only three states forbid: the kind of treatment that Villegas endured.

Sick and pregnant female prisoners are chained to their hospital beds all over the USA, it reports.

Because of what happened to Juana Villegas, the organization should investigate and put Nashville under its “human rights watch.” Public servants such as Nashville Mayor Karl Dean, our Congressional Rep. Jim Cooper and Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen – Democrats all—have failed to speak up about this outrage. They should be put on notice that our popular tourism sites will be much less appealing until they open their mouths and call for the termination of 287g.

Only California and Illinois have laws forbidding the torture of expectant mothers in custody. Wisconsin has recently improved its Department of Corrections policy. There is much work to do in other states, too.

For your own good, stay away from Nashville. It is not mine or anyone else’s anymore. It belongs to those who create and support public policy rooted in bigotry and flee from the responsibility of public service to all through the cowardice of silence.

­(Tim Chavez writes political commentary for Hispanic Link News Service in Washington, D.C. A columnist with the Nashville Tennessean for nine years, he has his own web site, www.po/iticalsaisa.com. You can contact him at timchavez787@yahoo.com).

by Juliana Birnbaum Fox

Deputy public defender Ricardo López, Supervisor and candidate for judge Gerardo Sandoval, an unidentified woman activist, and Salomon Rizzo, protest the Mayor’s budget. (photo by Marvin J. Ramirez)

Amidst strong protest from the city’s largest labor union, San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors approved a $6.4 million budget for the coming year by a 10 – 1 vote. The Service Employees International Union (SEIU), concerned about layoffs and service cuts, voiced their opposition outside the meeting at City Hall. The budget is the largest ever for the city, and managed to avoid laying off over 1000 workers by slashing funds for a variety of city services.

In an effort to address a deficit of approximately $338 million, the budget makes significant cuts to city programs, hiking fees for many existing services and creating new ones for recreation programs, ambulance services, and health inspections. Unlike the federal budget, the city’s budget must be balanced by law.

“We put together a budget that reflects the collective compassion that is San Francisco,” Supervisor Jake McGoldrick, chair of the board’s Budget and Finance Committee, said at Tuesday’s meeting. “None of us got everything, a lot of us got something,”

Despite the cuts, some officials are already estimating that next year’s budget will be another $250 million short, a figure which could rise higher if state or federal lawmakers take more dollars away from San Francisco than city leaders are estimating. In November, city voters will decide several measures that also will impact the number.

Supervisors rejected Mayor Newsom’s plan to hire private security guards instead of city-employed ones at San Francisco General and Laguna Honda hospitals, perhaps because of the pressure by labor unions. To make up for the $5 million Newsom ‘s security guard plan would have saved, the is likely to eliminate funding for other programs rather than dip into the pool of money reserved for emergencies.

“The money is there to fund these services,” opined Ed Kinchley, a board member of the SEIU Local 1021 that represents about 12,000 workers. “But the Mayor and the Budget Committee prefer to spend it on another 55 six-fi gure salaried executives instead.”

Approximately 140 full time positions were eliminated, but many of them were vacant. Only about 30 people would actually lose their jobs, according to the city’s human resources department.

Robert Haaland, the political coordinator for SEIU 1021, told the San Francisco Chonicle he thinks there will be a signifi cant number of employees retiring this year and that layoffs will be unnecessary.

The biggest budget beneficiary, the Department of Public Health, is to get more than $1.5 billion. Almost $2.4 billion goes toward public works, transportation and commerce service departments, including the Municipal Transportation Agency, San Francisco International Airport and the Public Utilities Commission. Public safety services such as police, fire and courts will get more than $1 billion.

Supervisor Chris Daly was the dissenting voice in last week’s vote, which will go back to the Board for another fi nal approval in the coming week. Daly criticized the process in general, saying that the mayor’s office is at odds with the board regarding many of the budget policies.