Dive into the archives.
- How Panama became Independent
A computer-colored satellite photograph of the Panama Canal.
President Theodore Roosevelt’s most famous foreign policy initiative is the construction of the Panam Canal. Roosevelt believed that a US-controlled canal across Central America was a vital national strategic interest. Upon completion, it reduced the freighter distance between San Francisco and New York by 8,000 miles.
Panama [...]
- Pinochet v.s. Castro
The Washington Post has a great article about two former dictators dead or near death, Pinochet and Castro, and discusses the substantive differences between the two in a manner similar to how Kaplan (and myself) have approached the issue before:
A Dictator’s Double Standard
Augusto Pinochet tortured and murdered. His legacy is Latin America’s most successful country…
Like [...]
- Is Castro already dead?
An article in the National Review by Otto Reich implies that Castro may already be dead; and regardless of whether he is or not, preparations are on for a funeral of Catholic (emphasis on the capital ‘C’) proportions
This time the rumors are real: Castro is dying of stomach cancer. He may have already died, even [...]
- Chavez Wigs OUT!
Chavez just delivered a speech to the UN where he referred to George Bush the devil, and had some choice quotes as he brandished the Spanish-language version of Noam Chomsky’s “Hegemony and Survival.” To sum up a few picked from the blogosphere:
The devil came here, and it still smells of sulphur here at this [...]
- Argentinian Irredentism
Once a child touches a hot stove, he doesn’t do it again. When Argentina loses a war against Britain over islands that never even belonged to it in the first place, it apparently learns nothing.
Falkland Islands dispute heats up
Argentina is stepping up efforts to reclaim the islands over which it lost a 1982 war to [...]
- After Castro, Reloaded
Castro has gone under the knife (intestinal surgery) and has appointed his brother Raúl Castro as the interim head of state. Very regular readers may remember that I profiled Raúl in June 2005. To quote in part:
[Raúl] was at his brother’s side during the invasion of Cuba and is currently the Armed Forces [...]
- Politics v.s. the National Interest
In international waters off the shore of the US and Cuba—but within the sovereign boundaries of neither— sits possible oil and gas reserves. You would have thought that the US would have tried to exploit this years ago, with rising fuel prices and increasingly scarce sources of new oil. It turns out that [...]
- Chavez throws his hat into the ring
Venezuela seeks UN ‘balance’
Venezuela’s efforts to join the UN Security Council have been endorsed by Latin American countries in Mercosur. South America’s largest trade bloc said in a statement that Venezuela would “help bring necessary balance” to the council. Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president, has said that he wants his nation to join [...]
- “Stinking Yankee Narcissists”
Sonagi asserts:
A Colombian friend was fond of pointing out to me, “If you Americans didn’t buy cocaine, we wouldn’t sell it to you.”Â?
I feel the need to share this piece from the Colombia-based CMLIITC to get some perspective.
Today is Colombian Independence day. I was talking to a guy at the airport the other day who [...]
- Wealth and Poverty in the Western Hemisphere
Jared Diamond and Shaun Miller have a new article in Nature on poverty and wealth, geography and history in the New World. This is a must-read for both fans and critics of the Diamond school of geography and civilization. In many ways it is an inclusion of the VDH “Culture”Â? rebuttal to Diamond’s Guns, [...]
