Venezuela’s new president Nicolás Maduro has a vigorous schedule of international travel. The country’s position in the international arena must not be allowed to weaken even temporarily. Venezuela’s traditional partners need to be shown that Hugo…
Category: Latin America
As it does in many non-adversarial countries, the surveillance agency is bulk collecting the communications of millions of citizens of Brazil I’ve written an article on NSA surveillance for the front page of the Sunday edition…
CIA Operatives and the Targeted Assassination of Foreign Leaders No one’s safe from America’s long arm. From inception, CIA operatives developed skills to kill. Fidel Castro survived hundreds of assassination attempts. He…
On June 30 opposition political forces in Egypt brought people into the streets demanding early elections and the resignation of the Muslim Brotherhood dominated government headed by President Mohamed Morsi. Despite Morsi’s efforts to defend his views through…
I have yet to spend too much time digging into the corporate press reaction to the latest news from Ecuador, but I’m sure it’s not pretty. The South American country recently announced that it is…
If, as Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote, “the degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons” then we are a nation of barbarians. Our vast network of federal and state prisons, with some 2.3 million inmates, rivals the gulags of totalitarian states. Once you disappear behind prison walls you become prey. Rape. Torture. Beatings. Prolonged isolation. Sensory deprivation. Racial profiling. Chain gangs. Forced labor. Rancid food. Children imprisoned as adults. Prisoners forced to take medications to induce lethargy. Inadequate heating and ventilation. Poor health care. Draconian sentences for nonviolent crimes. Endemic violence. Bonnie Kerness and Ojore Lutalo, both of whom I met in Newark, N.J., a few days ago at the office of American Friends Service Committee Prison Watch, have fought longer and harder than perhaps any others in the country against the expanding abuse of prisoners, especially the use of solitary confinement. Lutalo, once a member of the Black Liberation Army, an offshoot of the Black Panthers, first wrote Kerness in 1986 while he was a prisoner at Trenton State Prison, now called New Jersey State Prison. He described to her the bleak and degrading world of solitary confinement, the world of the prisoners like him held in the so-called management control unit, which he called “a prison within a prison.”
While joint military exercises between the Pentagon and South Korea gained tremendous attention over the last week, there have been two major maritime and ground operations carried out under United States leadership with the involvement of…
Those scientists, technicians and workers of the DPRK who contributed to the success of the third underground nuclear test were accorded the most cordial hospitality in Pyongyang. From the moment they arrived in Pyongyang on…
Introduction President Hugo Chavez was unique in multiple areas of political, social and economic life. He made significant contributions to the advancement of humanity. The depth, scope and popularity of his accomplishments mark President Chavez…
Chavez spent his last days in the army hospital of Caracas. The fourth cancer surgery in Cuba failed to improve his health. He took a decision to return. There were rumors going round that it…