by Jim Lobe In perhaps his boldest foreign policy move during his presidency, Barack Obama Wednesday announced that he intends to establish full diplomatic relations with Cuba. While the president noted that he lacked the authority to lift the 54-year-old trade embargo against Havana, he issued directives that will permit more American citizens to travel
by Thomas W. Lippman The country that could ultimately suffer the most damage from a sustained depression in the world price of oil could be one that is not a major producer: Egypt. Unable to sustain itself, Egypt is being propped up by big infusions of cash from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates
From the IPS United Nations Niewsbriefs
Despite escalating tensions and anti-government demonstrations, the Venezuelan government has not addressed any human rights issues regardless of the rising death toll and captive political prisoners, a panel of experts stressed Monday.
via LobeLog
by Jim Lobe
Last Thursday, the highly respected, non-profit investigative news agency ProPublica featured a 2,400-word article, “The Terror Threat and Iran’s Inroads in Latin America”, by its award-winning senior reporter, Sebastian Rotella, who has long specialized in terrorism and national-security coverage. In support of its main thesis that Iran [...]
via Lobe Log
by Daniel Luban
The death of Hugo Chavez has triggered a predictably dizzying amount of commentary, and I’ll leave it to the experts to evaluate his complicated legacy in Venezuela and in Latin America more broadly. The accusations of “totalitarianism” from the right were clearly absurd and hypocritical — whatever his [...]
via IPS News
Graphic: The figures signify the number of times each country was mentioned in the Oct. 22 presidential debate. Credit: Zachary Fleischmann/IPS
U.S. strategy in the Greater Middle East, which has dominated foreign policy-making since the 9/11 attacks more than 11 years ago, similarly dominated the third and last debate between [...]
Everyone and their brother knows that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is in Venezuela as part of a Latin American tour. It’s no secret and yet the amount of press this event has received suggests it’s more newsworthy than it is. The hype is reminiscent of the hot air blown over an Israeli announcement of a weekly flight [...]
If someone is the Vice President of Foreign and Defense Policy Studies at a prominent Washington think-tank, it’s fair to expect a certain level of scholarship. After all, these institutions are supposed to be in influencing policy. In the case of the American Enterprise Institute, they just about ran foreign policy during George W. Bush’s first term.
Yet [...]
News and views relevant to U.S.-Iran relations for September 16.
Reuters: Louis Charbonneau reports on calls from the U.S., British and French envoys to the UN to expedite the formation a UN panel to monitor Iran’s compliance with sanctions. “We are concerned by the delay in setting up the panel, and we urge a [...]
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