Someone finally got around to uploading Hugo Chavez’s infamous Sept. 20 speech at the United Nations to Google Video. So, thanks to Google and C-SPAN, you can now watch that speech in its 26-minute entirety. But you only need to watch a few minutes to see the choicest bits. Chavez opens by flogging Noam Chomsky’s book, “Hegemony or Survival.” And he gets right to the hyperbole too, claiming right at the outset that “the hegemonistic pretensions of the American empire are placing at risk the very survival of the human species.” But if you want to cut right to the [...]
In an Oct. 20 report, the International Crisis Group says the next four years for Colombian President Alvaro Uribe may be difficult: As he begins his second four-year term, Uribe seems to be in a stronger position to tackle Colombia’s long-standing problems: drug trafficking, the internal conflict, continued lack of security and poverty in rural areas, corruption, and social inequality. But appearances may be deceiving. His governing coalition is fractious, his popularity vulnerable to what a still powerful insurgency chooses to do. He has yet to define a comprehensive second-term strategy for peace and development that addresses these issues and [...]
For what must be the first time in history, a blog has figured prominently in an international diplomatic incident. U.N. envoy Jan Pronk was expelled from Sudan today after he reported setbacks for Sudan’s armed forces on his personal blog , the New York Times reports: Sudan’s action against him was apparently provoked by an entry he made in his personal blog — www.janpronk.nl — last weekend that said Sudan’s armed forces had suffered two major defeats with extensive casualties against rebels in Darfur in the past six weeks. He also reported that generals had been cashiered, that morale had [...]
