Stalinist Cuba, mass graves, and a U.S. president’s legacy

Stalinist Cuba, mass graves, and a U.S. president’s legacy

Special to WorldTribune.com By Frank Calzon On Jan. 8, 1959, as Fidel Castro entered Havana in triumph and the dictator Fulgencio Batista fled Cuba, Raul Castro opened up a mass grave in Santiago and immediately executed seventy one Cubans without due process. As the Obama Administration begins a final year of diplomatic appeasement of tyrants […]

Getting the band back together: Putin’s victory march through Latin America

Getting the band back together: Putin’s victory march through Latin America

UNITED NATIONS — It’s been a momentous week for Russian President Vladimir Putin. While the major media focused on his trip to Brazil to accept the handover for the next FIFA World Cup football tournament in Russia as well as his participation in the Summit of the BRIC economic powers, the real story was the […]

While UN’s Ban was making nice in Havana, the Cuban delegation punished NGOs back in NYC

While UN’s Ban was making nice in Havana, the Cuban delegation punished NGOs back in NYC

John J. Metzler UNITED NATIONS — If it’s Tuesday, this must be Havana. Given UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon’s peripatetic global travels, the two-day visit to Cuba, especially in the midst of a frigid New York Winter, seemingly made sense. After all, the trip was officially to attend the meeting of the Community of Latin […]

Targeting Sen. Menendez: Obama’s push to ‘normalize’ U.S.-Cuban ties made strange bedfellows

Targeting Sen. Menendez: Obama’s push to ‘normalize’ U.S.-Cuban ties made strange bedfellows

Special to WorldTribune.com Global Information System/Defense & Foreign Affairs The seemingly unrelenting wave of media “revelations” in the United States against one of the key strategic policy officials in the government, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Robert Menendez (Democrat, New Jersey), has its origins not in any malfeasance or misadventure by the Senator, but in […]

While U.S. focuses on politics, Iran plays geopolitical chess

While U.S. focuses on politics, Iran plays geopolitical chess

John J. Metzler UNITED NATIONS — Amidst the swirl of the presidential primary season in the United States and thus the blurring of the international news focus, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been on a political campaign swing of his own throughout Latin America. But while the Islamic Republic relentlessly pursues the nuclear genie, and […]