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China’s Crisis - As the Bo Xilai saga continues, the New York Times reveals that for much of the last decade, while the now-disgraced official was moving up the ranks of the Communist Party, his relatives were using his influence to quietly amass wealth estimated at more than $160 million. Bo’s downfall has surely changed the fortunes of [...]
Sure, Fidel Castro kept the Roman Catholic Church in Cuba buried under his cigar ash for decades, shutting down its schools, exiling priests and declaring the Communist island an atheist state until the 1990s. But it’s likely Castro also admires the Vatican in a sad way: like him, the Pope is an autocrat who doesn’t [...]
Non-cooperation – The Jerusalem Post reveals Israel will not cooperate with an international probe into the effects of settlements on Palestinian human rights, after a 36 to 1 U.N. Rights Council vote in favor of the fact-finding mission Thursday. The U.S. was the only country to vote against it. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu labeled the [...]
According to scholars, the fact the Mayan calendar ends by the winter solstice of 2012 is not an omen of the apocalypse, but a rather savvy political move by an ancient monarch. To that end, Global Spin offers its predictions for Latin American politics before this fateful year draws to a close.
TIME’S Dolly Mascareñas reports out of Mexico that Saadi Gaddafi, one of the sons of the late Libyan dictator, attempted to enter Mexico on Sept. 6 under the name Daniel Bejar. The Mexican government said Saadi Gaddafi’s wife and two daughters would have accompanied him. Mexican intelligence sources said they prevented them from using the [...]
If Iranian government operatives really did try to contract a Mexican drug cartel to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the U.S., as the Obama Administration alleges today, then they weren’t just being diabolical. They were being fairly stupid. Granted, the Zetas – the drug mafia that Iranian-American Manssor Arbabsiar allegedly thought he was dealing with [...]
William Lloyd George explores the “Caravan of Solace” anti-drug violence movement for TIME. Just as hundreds of Mexicans screamed “Justice” during the final stop of the Caravan, many of the activists associated with the protest questioned both the success and the overall mission of the week-long tour. While Mexican activists agree that the country’s war [...]
Maybe it’s because it’s Semana Santa, or Holy Week, when everyone in Mexico heads for the beach or their country homes. But the record $1 billion fine levied over the weekend against América Móvil – the mobile telephone giant controlled by the world’s richest man, Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim – hasn’t generated the buzz you’d [...]
Mexican President Felipe Calderón could stand to build a few bridges with Washington at the moment. Last month saw the resignation of the U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, Carlos Pascual, who many believe was forced out by Calderon’s unusually public complaints about confidential U.S. diplomatic cables, released last December by WikiLeaks, in which Pascual criticizes certain [...]
When WikiLeaks released U.S. diplomatic cables last fall expressing fears and criticism about the safety of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program, the Pakistani government largely shrugged. That’s because its leaders understood that frank private discussion is what any country’s taxpayers expect of their diplomats. They knew that blowing a fuse because some of that foreign-service chatter [...]
