The year 2010 began with the West being comprised of untraditional economically weak states developing out of the US economic crisis that started in 2008. Since January, it has expanded into economically crippling other states as the Euro continues to plunge after a Trillion dollar bailout and Spain, Portugal, Greece and Italy quickly try to […]
Jamaican police and military are hounding one of the most wanted drug dealers on earth, Christopher ‘Dudas’ Coke. After initially resisting call for his capture, three days ago Prime Minister Bruce Golding gave in to pressure from the United States, and ordered his capture for extradition on drug trafficking charges. He is widely known to […]
Sean Murphy of FPA’s Global Film Review blog has posted yet another intriguing post on a documentary called Inside Guantanamo (2009) in which the director interviews those who work with Guantanamo detainees, including former prisoners there and the legal counsel for many current detainees in Guantanamo. With no official legal status of detainee’s being yet […]
If you cherish the environment don’t go to the Galápagos, that’s the message of TIME’s most recent Postcard. In 2008, an estimated 175,000 people visited the islands 600 miles off the coast of Ecuador, a tenfold increase from 1980, and the permanent population has doubled to 30,000 since 2000. The human influx has brought invasive […]
OFAC authorizes more Cuban options (UPI) The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) did not authorize a single new service to do business with Cuba in 2009, but in 2010 has already expanded the list of authorized U.S. travel and remittance services allowed to do business with Cuba by 42, according to the U.S. Treasury Department. […]
Today and tomorrow the Spanish Presidency of the EU will be hosting the 2010 EU-Latin America Summit in Madrid. Since 1999, the Summit has sought to engage Europe and Latin America in increased cultural and trade ties and create a defined relationship between the two regions on a permanent basis. Latin American and European economic interests between […]
The last summer created a great shift in the discussion on security and the nuclear issue worldwide. Protesters in Iran took to the street after a perceived action by President Ahmadinejad in fixing the elections in Iran to maintain himself in power with the backing of Iran’s religious leaders. The popular protests in Iran’s major […]
Lately music appears to be the only successful avenue for achieving greater US-Cuba exchange, and likewise for expressing critique of the government on the island. Something about this medium allows for greater flexibility on both counts. Silvio Rodriguez, the Cuban folk singer that has been called “the voice of the Cuban revolution” for his songs […]
Carbon credits are bought and sold to offset carbon emissions. Over the past five years the carbon credit market has gone from zilch to $300 billion, in anticipation of government’s placing a tax on carbon emissions. The logic behind CCs is simple: those who surpass their state-mandated quota buy credits from parties whose emissions stay […]
Another important “mutual concerns” pro-engagement argument is presented by the New America Foundation’s Anya Landau French in a recent Havana Note post. The jist: future prevention/mitigation of disasters like the April 20 explosion (and ongoing spreading mess of an oil spill) of BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico is too important […]
We seldom post on Guantánamo and the US detention facilities there because most times (as below), the relevant stories and issues have little to do with Cuba per se, other than the fact that the property lies on the island. But every so often, a note on it is necessary, as the area and the […]
It used to be the case that new technology in Latin America and abroad would be seen as a threat to the new regimes in the region and in similar oppressive governments worldwide. One story that stood out in my mind was the description of the feared Fax Machine, one that was kept under armed […]
Remember the multi-syllabic deprived days of 2006? I sure do, and I don’t think I am alone. A good many people seemed to despair when an American leader stood up in front of an audience only to throw out some obtuse generalization. Awkward phrases and K-5 conceptualizations were par for the course. Then Bill Clinton […]
During his tenure President da Silva has been a welcome, universally adored, conciliator in Latin America. In this week’s TIME, the annual “World’s Most Influential People” list starts with Lula. I am still not sure what to make of Michael Moore’s essay on him. Now Lula is moving center stage in negotiations with Iran over […]
An interesting, mostly below-the-radar note (for some reason this story had little traction in the brief window of its relevance, and I missed it entirely until now): from April 2009 to March 2010, Cubans that owned cars were allowed to import new cars from abroad as replacements. The idea was to get some of the […]