Her comments at odds with the court measures recently taken in Venezuela against journalists and media owners have made Venezuelan authorities accuse her of protecting the interests of the "media dictatorship" and "taking active part against governments dissenting of the imperial power." But the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression, Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Organization of American States (IACHR), Colombian Catalina Botero, refused the charges...

President Evo Morales has responded to recent overtures by the Obama Administration to normalize relations by threatening to expel the U.S. Agency for International Development from Bolivia, adding to his list of U.S. government officials he has thrown out of the country. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Arturo Valenzuela recently traveled to Bolivia to accelerate talks on an agreement to re-establish full diplomatic relations between the two countries. His trip also set the stage for a...

As Mexico’s 2012 presidential election gets underway, a national conversation has finally begun on the country’s future. Thanks in part to the recently published book *A Future for Mexico*, which I coauthored with Héctor Aguilar Camín, one of the country’s most distinguished pundits, historians, and novelists, the issue of how Mexico can become in the next 15 years what we call a “middle-class society” has taken center stage. Through public debates...

The Bolivian government announced last week it is re-launching an effort to explore for uranium within its territory. The announcement comes at a time when international pariah Iran has been actively courting relationships with anti-American governments in the Western Hemisphere, principally Bolivia and Venezuela, which is also known for its reserves of the radioactive mineral essential for the development of nuclear power. Many experts see Iran not only in a desperate drive to secure...

Introduction As the Obama administration strives for achievements at the NPT review conference currently taking place in New York, Tehran launched a countermove in the nuclear issue vis-à-vis the U.S. and the West. Tehran, which at the time of this writing is hosting the G-15 conference of developing countries, presented today, May 17, an agreement together with Turkey and Brazil on a uranium exchange deal - after rejecting an identical agreement proposed by the West in late 2009 in...

Last week Lebanese commentator Tony Badran published an article on the Now Lebanon Web site discussing the Iranian way of war. In "The shape of things to come," he discussed the significance of the breakup of a Hizbullah cell in Kuwait and the deportation of Hizbullah agents from Bahrain. Badran explained that like the Hizbullah ring arrested last year in Egypt, the Hizbullah cells in Persian Gulf states demonstrate how Iran uses Hizbullah to extend its regional power. Badran...

According to the reports gathered by El Confidencial Digital, the Mossos d’Esquadra are investigating the Sunni Islamist organization named Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami (HuT) -or Party for the Islamic Liberation-. The number of Islamist groups of this kind is rising on the Internet, and using the WWW to gain supporters, that could be even recruited by the radical Islamism. HuT was born in Jerusalem in 1953 founded by the Palestinian Taqiuddin al-Nabhani. They are supporters of an Islamic...

This tiny, palm-fringed island off the Atlantic coast seems like an idyllic Caribbean paradise. Duty-free shops, resort hotels and rustic snack bars line streets filled with European scuba divers on holiday. But a powerful Arab presence here has led to claims that San Andres is becoming a hotbed of Hezbollah terrorist activity. Ely Karmon, director of Israel's Institute for Counter-Terrorism in Herzliya, says that since the 1980s Hezbollah has been recruiting and raising money from...

In recent years, U.S. concerns have increased over activities of Hezbollah and the Sunni Muslim Palestinian group Hamas (Islamic Resistance Movement) in the tri-border area (TBA) of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay, which has a large Muslim population. The TBA has long been used for arms and drug trafficking, contraband smuggling, document and currency fraud, money laundering, and the manufacture and movement of pirated goods. A 2009 RAND study examines how Hezbollah has benefitted from...

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called on 35,000 armed militias on Tuesday to defend his socialist revolution with their lives if necessary as he faces a test of its popularity in elections in September. Young militias raised assault rifles and clenched fists in the air when Chavez entered the parade area in Caracas in an open military jeep for a rally marking the anniversary of an abortive coup that ousted him briefly in 2002. "You should be ready to take up arms at any moment and...