| esión Ordinaria del Consejo Permanente de la OEA Regular Meeting of the OAS Permanent Council Fecha: 20 de febrero, 2008 Lugar: Washington, DC Fotos: Juan Manuel Herrera - OAS/OEA Website OEA: http://www.oas.org |
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The Democratic contenders on Wednesday both focused their campaigns on Texas, which has emerged as a critical race for the campaign of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Capture, post and share photographs of the voting in Wisconsin, Washington and Hawaii.
With Senator Barack Obama having won primaries in Wisconsin and Hawaii on Tuesday by broad margins across nearly every voter group, Mrs. Clinton has now lost 10 contests in a row since splitting votes and delegates with him on Super Tuesday, Feb. 5. Mrs. Clinton's aides have calculated that she must win the party's next two major contests, in Texas and Ohio, on March 4.
Senator John McCain, all but assured of the Republican nomination, is in Ohio on Wednesday. Mr. McCain has turned his attention to Mr. Obama, calling on him to pledge to abide by the limits of public financing for the campaign.
Mrs. Clinton also focused on Mr. Obama as she went on the offensive early Wednesday in a speech at Hunter College in Manhattan, arguing that her rival has substituted rhetoric for practical experience.
"It is time to get real," Mrs. Clinton, of New York, said. "To get real about how we actually win this election and get real about the challenges facing America. It's time we moved from good words to good works, from sound bites to sound solutions."
It is a familiar theme, but Mrs. Clinton delivered it with fresh intensity after the crushing defeats in Wisconsin and Hawaii on Tuesday.
Mrs. Clinton spent Wednesday morning in New York raising money before flying to Texas to campaign. Voters in Texas and Ohio, along with Rhode Island and Vermont, go to the polls in less than two weeks in contests that Democratic strategists say Mrs. Clinton must win if she is to have any hope of capturing the nomination.
Mr. Obama sought to counter Mrs. Clinton's charges at a campaign appearance on Wednesday afternoon in Dallas, saying "it is time to move beyond the politics of yesterday."
"Today, Senator Clinton told us that there was a choice in this race and you know, I couldn't agree with her more," Mr. Obama said. "But contrary to what she's been saying, it's not a choice between speeches and solutions, it's a choice between a politics that offers more of the same divisions and distractions that didn't work in South Carolina and didn't work in Wisconsin and will not work in Texas."
"Or a new politics of common sense, of common purpose, of shared sacrifice and shared prosperity," he said. "It's the choice between having a debate with John McCain about who has the most experience in Washington or having a debate about who's most likely to change Washington."
One day after victories in Wisconsin and Hawaii, Mr. Obama drew about 17,000 people to a rally at the Reunion Arena in downtown Dallas. While the primary is on March 4, early voting began on Tuesday and Mr. Obama encouraged his supporters to cast their ballots soon.
"As this movement continues, as this campaign builds strength, there are those who will tell you not to believe," Mr. Obama said. "There are those who will tell you it can't be done."
Saying he offered voters a chance to break from the policies of the past years, including the war in Iraq and the current economic situation, Mr. Obama said the race was a choice "that is not just about turning a page on the politics of the past but of turning the page on the policies of the past."
David Plouffe, the campaign manager for Mr. Obama, said that Mr. Obama had amassed a 159-delegate lead over Mrs. Clinton, based on his campaign tally. Following a win in Wisconsin by 17 percentage points, Mr. Plouffe said Mrs. Clinton would need to win in Texas and Ohio by double-digits to gain an edge in the fight for delegates.
"We have opened up a big and meaningful delegate lead," Mr. Plouffe said, speaking in a conference call with reporters. "They are going to have to win landslides to reverse it."
Reflecting Mr. Obama's lead on the Democratic side, Mr. McCain focused his criticism on him during a news conference in Columbus on Wednesday. He pounded Mr. Obama yet again for his commitment in writing a year ago to accept public funds for the general election about $85 million for each candidate — if the Republican nominee did the same. In doing so, Mr. Obama would have to surrender a phenomenal advantage in fund-raising and accept the limits of public financing.
Mr. McCain, who was the only other presidential candidate to sign on to the pledge, was responding to a column by Mr. Obama in USA Today on Wednesday in which the candidate wrote that he remained open to public financing, but that he was concerned about the spending of outside groups on behalf of candidates and that he wanted to reach a "meaningful agreement" with whoever is the Republican nominee. But he did not expect, he wrote, "that a workable, effective agreement will be reached overnight."
As conditions for such an agreement, Mr. Obama wrote that candidates "will have to commit to discouraging cheating by their supporters; to refusing fund-raising help by outside groups; and to limiting their own parties to legal forms of involvement."
Mr. Obama has broken all political fund-raising records in this election he has taken in more than $150 million so far, $36 million in January alone, and Mr. McCain's advisers have privately questioned why he would disarm himself of that advantage and not spend the prodigious amounts he has raised on his own. Mr. McCain, who raised $12 million in January, appears to be preparing for that possibility, but in the meantime is attacking Mr. Obama as someone who could not keep his word and should bear the responsibility for breaking the pledge.
If Mr. Obama or Mrs. Clinton do not accept public financing in the general election, Mr. McCain said, "I obviously would have to re-evaluate."
As the war of words continued throughout the day, Bill Burton, Mr. Obama's national campaign spokesman, e-mailed reporters with the retort that Mr. McCain, who has built a large part of his political persona around limiting the amount of money spent on campaigns, has not accepted public financing for the primaries and caucuses. On that score, neither has Mr. Obama.
WASHINGTON — The many moving parts of a mission to shoot down a dying spy satellite with an anti-missile interceptor lined up Wednesday after the space shuttle Atlantis returned to Earth, officials said.
Military officials were reviewing the weather in the Pacific Ocean to determine if the operation could be launched overnight on Wednesday, as rough seas west of Hawaii prompted officials to caution that the attempt to destroy the satellite, carrying 1,000 pounds of toxic rocket fuel, might be delayed.
The goal of the mission is to prevent the fuel tank from reaching Earth and spilling its hazardous contents in a populous area. In the event that any of the hydrazine fuel falls on a populated area, the Federal Emergency Management Agency on Wednesday issued directions to community first responders on how to deal with dangerous debris from the satellite.
Military officials said their goal was to carry out the mission before March 1, when the satellite is predicted to start skidding against the upper reaches of the atmosphere. That initial friction would bump the satellite into a more unpredictable orbit around the Earth, even before it starts a fiery descent through the atmosphere.
Providing new information about how the mission would be carried out, a senior military officer on Wednesday described the vessels, weapons and command structure for the unusual operation, the first time an interceptor designed for missile defense would be used to attack a satellite. The senior military officer briefed reporters on condition of anonymity.
The officer said that three Navy warships were in position in the Pacific Ocean to launch the interceptors, and that radar and other tracking equipment, both in space and on the ground, were being monitored at Vandenberg Air Force Base, in California, and at a space command headquarters in Colorado Springs.
The operation is being controlled from the Strategic Command headquarters in Omaha, Neb., with additional monitoring of information transmitted from the interceptor managed by the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency.
Although the satellite circles the globe every 90 minutes, analysts have pinpointed a single overhead pass each day that would offer the best chance of striking it and then having half of the debris fall into the atmosphere during the very next three orbits over water or less-populated areas of the Earth.
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who left Washington on Wednesday for a week of meetings in Asia, has been empowered by President Bush to issue the order to shoot down the satellite. Officials said Mr. Gates would have to weigh the opportunity of success against the many risks — including weather, technical problems and even world politics — before issuing the order.
Given rough seas on Wednesday, it was likely the mission would await at least a day. As the deadline approaches, officials said, such moderate risks as high seas might be overlooked.
The senior military officer said the mission would be launched in daylight to take advantage of radar, heat-sensor tracking and even visual tracking equipment.
When the order is given to carry out the mission, the Navy will have a window that lasts only tens of seconds as the satellite passes overhead, the senior military officer said.
An Aegis cruiser, the Lake Erie, has two Standard Missile 3 rockets on board that have been adapted to track the cold satellite, as opposed to the heated enemy warheads for which it was designed. A second Aegis ship, the Decatur, has a third missile as back-up, and another Navy vessel, the Russell, is sailing with the convoy for added tracking capabilities — what the senior military officer described as providing a "stereo picture."
Separately, a Pentagon spokesman, Bryan Whitman, dismissed suggestions that the operation was designed to test the nation's missile defense systems or antisatellite capabilities, or that the effort was to destroy sensitive intelligence equipment.
"This is about reducing the risk to human life on Earth — nothing more," Mr. Whitman said.
While officials should be able to determine within minutes of the launch whether the satellite was hit by the interceptor, which carries no explosive but strikes with destructive force, it may take a day or more to determine whether the fuel tank with 1,000 pounds of toxic Hydrazine was destroyed. Any decision to launch a second or third missile may take several days.
The 5,000-pound satellite, roughly the size of a school bus, is managed by the National Reconnaissance Office and went dead shortly after it was launched in December 2006.
FEMA on Wednesday issued an 18-page instructions document, "First Responder Guide For Space Object Re-Entry," to help local authorities deal with debris from the satellite should it fall in their areas. "The satellite that is degrading from orbit has hazardous materials on board that could pose immediate hazards to people if they come in contact with the material," the FEMA document states. "Any debris should be considered potentially hazardous, and first responders should not attempt to pick it up or move it. First responders should secure a perimeter and control access around any debris. DO NOT pick up any debris."
The document describes specific dangers posed by the hazardous material, what protective clothing is required for emergency workers in the vicinity, and how to manage populations near a site where debris falls.
CONVOCATORIA A SEMINARIO-TALLER:
LA DEFENSORíA DE LAS PERSONAS EN CHILE: ¿AHORA SÍ?
Santiago de Chile, 14 y 15 de Abril de 2008
Chile, a pesar de varios compromisos programáticos, desde 1990 hasta la fecha, no cuenta aún con una institución pública protectora de derechos humanos y ciudadanos. Razones políticas y de orden institucional explican en parte esta demora en la satisfacción de una legítima aspiración ciudadana y en el cumplimiento de sucesivas recomendaciones del sistema de Naciones Unidas.
Se observa cierto desconocimiento por los actores políticos y sociales de la institución del Ombudsman y de sus beneficios para la ciudadanía. Otros, si bien poseen mayor conocimiento, presentan o perciben la figura del Ombudsman, Defensor del Pueblo o de las Personas como algo ajeno a nuestra institucionalidad y una suerte de amenaza a las funciones de las instituciones preexistentes y a sus propias competencias.
El Capítulo Chileno del Ombudsman, desde hace más de dos décadas viene propiciando esta figura, y a pesar de avances obtenidos, su acción es insuficiente para producir un cambio en la cultura política corporativa predominante en el país y lograr un masivo apoyo ciudadano que exija la instauración de la figura. Algo similar ocurre con la comisión asesora presidencial creada en 2001 para conocer situaciones de desprotección en la Administración central.
La persistencia de vulneración de derechos ciudadanos y la necesidad de su mejor prevención y protección en un sistema democrático, hace indispensable apoyar significativamente la labor interna chilena, pública y de sociedad civil, en pos de la Defensoría del Pueblo. Y esto en dos órdenes de incidencia: a) transmisión de la doctrina y experiencia internacional al respecto y b) el análisis crítico de la legislación que se propone, de modo que ella se adecúe a las normas y principios internacionales. La Comisión de Derechos Humanos de la Cámara de Diputados recientemente, en enero 2008, ha aprobado la idea de legislar sobre la Defensoría, de modo que este objetivo pasa a ser prioritario, pues pronto se iniciará la discusión en particular.
El seminario-taller reunirá a organizaciones y personeros internacionales vinculados a la figura defensorial, autoridades chilenas de gobierno, parlamentarios y a organizaciones de sociedad civil, provocando repercusiones positivas y significativas, tanto para los actores llamados a adoptar las medidas necesarias para la creación de la Defensoría de las Personas, como para la ciudadanía, destinataria final de esta nueva institución.
Objetivos específicos:
| a) | Colaborar con el Gobierno en el cumplimiento del Programa, que contempla la creación de la Defensoría, como ente autónomo y de rango constitucional. |
| b) | Contactar, proporcionar argumentos y dilucidar dudas de los parlamentarios y sus asesores, en especial los de las comisiones legislativas, llamadas a analizar en profundidad el proyecto. |
| c) | Colaborar en dilucidar la institucionalidad mas adecuada para Chile en materia de Derechos Humanos, en especial por la coexistencia de un proyecto de Instituto Nacional de Derechos Humanos. |
| d) | Lograr una adecuada difusión de contenidos del Seminario-Taller hacia sectores de la sociedad civil y la opinión pública, mediante invitación amplia a la actividad, notas de prensa y publicación posterior. |
| e) | Producir un espacio de debate de expertos nacionales e internacionales sobre el Proyecto de Reforma Constitucional y el anteproyecto de ley orgánica que norman la Defensoría de las Personas. |
| f) | Obtener un "Cuaderno de Observaciones" que recoja las propuestas e indicaciones, fortalezas y debilidades de los proyectos constitucional y legal, hechas presente por los participantes, sobre sus contenidos y la participación ciudadana en el desarrollo de la figura defensorial. |
Organizaciones que convocan:
Organismos que patrocinan:
Además, pueden adherir todas aquellas organizaciones de sociedad civil, que apoyen el Seminario-Taller.
Metodología y estructura del Programa:
Será un Seminario-Taller, esto es, la combinación en la actividad de una parte expositiva mediante paneles y preguntas (seminario); y una parte de análisis participativo en grupo y obtención de conclusiones (taller) . En síntesis, la actividad comprende.
1-. El Acto Inaugural con intervención de autoridades políticas, organizadores y copatrocinantes, dando cuenta de distintas voluntades en pos del objetivo de la Defensoría de las Personas
2-. La parte expositiva o Seminario comprende dos paneles:
a) "Las experiencias de Defensoría del Pueblo en América latina. Lineamientos y lecciones para nuevas instituciones", con participación de los invitados extranjeros presentes.
b) "El camino chileno para una Defensoría de las Personas. Diagnóstico de un compromiso pendiente", con participación de expertos nacionales.
3-. La parte de análisis o Taller, bajo el lema "Tu opinión cuenta", comprende la formación de cuatro grupos destinados al análisis del proyecto de reforma constitucional y contenidos de ley orgánica, en cuatro grandes materias fundamentales para la creación de un Ombudsman. Cada grupo es coordinado por un experto internacional y uno nacional.
Se trabajará especialmente con el proyecto de reforma constitucional y borrador de anteproyecto de ley orgánica constitucional
4-. Concluye la actividad con: Mesa Redonda de Parlamentarios (en estudio) o un Plenario de Exposiciones de los grupos, Conclusiones y Compromisos.
Lugar y Fecha:
En Santiago de Chile, local a determinar, los días Lunes 14 de Abril (de 17.45 horas a 20.00 horas) y Martes 15 de Abril de 2008 (de 9.00 a 18.30 horas), según Programa. Se confirmará el lugar antes del 5 de Marzo de 2008
Invitaciones e Inscripción:
Las invitaciones serán cursadas vía correo ordinario y mayoritariamente mediante correo electrónico durante el mes de marzo. Deberá efectuarse la inscripción, que es gratuita, vía correo dirigido a seminario-taller@ombudsman.cl
Puede desde ya solicitar ser invitado/a (nombre, profesión, institución, correo) a la dirección electrónica antes mencionada. Asimismo, por el mismo medio, su organización puede adherir a la realización de este seminario-taller.
Los cupos para recibir carpeta de documentos son limitados.
) El gobierno nacional creó la Defensoría del Pueblo en 1994. Su titular es Eduardo Mondino. ) ) |
