Without technology and know-how, even the world’s largest oil reserves are worthless.
WikiLeaks: Venezuela’s Crude Awakening
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Venezuela
WikiLeaks XX: Chavez — First Citgo, Now Burger King?
Venezuela tests the fast-food waters. Expansion to U.S. unlikely though because it’s subsidized by the government.
Iran’s Adventures in Latin America
As the United States continues to isolate Iran over its nuclear program, the Islamic regime is engaging in a foreign policy counter-attack with profound strategic consequences. The theater of strategic warfare between the United States and Iran has expanded well beyond the Middle East.From sub-Saharan Africa to Latin America, Iran is selling arms, offering aid and investments, and otherwise establishing a new pattern in south-to-south relations as it battles what President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad calls “Western arrogance.”
Is Chavez Following Iran Down the Radioactive Brick Road?
It might be easier to talk Venezuela off the nuclear-weapons ledge if the U.S. weren’t so intent on filling the coffers of its own nuclear-weapons industry.
Recent Colombian Mass Grave Discovery May Be “False-Positives”
“False positive” is the Colombian armed forces operation that murdered civilians and dressed them up in insurgent uniforms to fake the success of the army’s counterinsurgency strategy.
John McCain and the International Republican Institute
Senator John McCain presents himself as a what-you-see is what-you-get presidential candidate: clean, pragmatic, following his convictions even when not politically expedient. He considers himself to be someone who would make an excellent foreign policy president.
Sharp Attack Unwarranted
Gene Sharp, an 80-year-old scholar of strategic nonviolent action and veteran of radical pacifist causes, is under attack by a number of foreign governments that claim that he and his small research institute are key players in a Bush administration plot against them.
The Andean Crisis
On the first day, Colombian military and police forces launched an attack on an encampment of the Colombian guerrilla group Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) in Ecuadorian territory, killing over 20 people.
Nonviolent Action and Pro-Democracy Struggles
The United States has done for the cause of democracy what the Soviet Union did for the cause of socialism. Not only has the Bush administration given democracy a bad name in much of the world, but its high-profile and highly suspect “democracy promotion” agenda has provided repressive regimes and their apologists an excuse to label any popular pro-democracy movement that challenges them as foreign agents, even when led by independent grassroots nonviolent activists.
In recent months, the governments of Zimbabwe, Iran, Belarus, and Burma, among others, have disingenuously claimed that popular nonviolent civil insurrections of the kind that toppled the corrupt and autocratic regimes in Serbia, Georgia, and Ukraine in recent years – and that could eventually threaten them as well – are somehow part of an effort by the Bush administration and its allies to instigate “soft coups” against governments deemed hostile to American interests and replace them by more compliant regimes.
Siesta time for the World Bank
The problem with the World Bank is much bigger than its president, Paul Wolfowitz.