Hugh Pickens writes:  "Strengthening intellectual property enforcement has been a bipartisan issue for the past 25 years, but Stewart Baker writes in the Hollywood Reporter that when the fight went from the committees to the floor and Wikipedia went down, the Democratic and Republican parties reacted very differently to SOPA. 'Despite... » read this article

At least 37 people have been killed in South Sudan during a shoot-out at a peace meeting aimed at ending recent violence, officials said. Officials from three states and the UN had met for talks in the remote town of Mayendit in Unity state in an effort to reduce inter-ethnic... » read this article

Thirteen years ago yesterday, Hugo Chávez was sworn in as President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. With a socialist-oriented program for the country, the president continues to maintain popular support with an approval rating of over 60 percent, according to recent polls. On December 6, 1998, Venezuela experienced one... » read this article

The Government of Argentina condemned the decision of Great Britain to deploy one of its most powerful and modern warships, the destroyer HMS Dauntless, to the Malvinas Islands (also known as Falkland Islands). The action was considered an attempt to try to militarize the conflict in the region. Buenos Aires... » read this article

TEHRAN: Iran's parliament is to discuss a bill on Sunday that seeks to halt its oil exports to the EU. The bill calls for a ban of oil exports to the EU as early as next week, Hossein Ebrahimi, deputy head of Majlis (parliament) national security and foreign policy committee,... » read this article

A fire at a drug rehabilitation centre in the Peruvian capital Lima has killed at least 26 people, officials say. Another 10 people were injured at the Christ Is Love centre, which used biblical teachings to treat addicts. Firefighters said the doors were locked, trapping patients inside; some leapt from... » read this article

Co-ordinated attacks by Islamist militants in the northern Nigerian city of Kano on Friday killed about 150 people, witnesses and reports say. Hospitals are struggling to deal with the numbers of killed and injured. A series of explosions ripped apart police buildings, passport offices and immigration centres around the city,... » read this article

War Architects Have Written a New Script- This Time with Azerbaijan in the Lead Actor Role The imperial establishment’s desperation to militarily go after and take over the last ‘real’ domino – Iran, has truly reached a peak, and with that desperation comes a new farfetched and fantastical scenario. Last... » read this article

19 January 2012 President Obama voiced his support for regime change in Syria on Tuesday as calls for intervention in the Middle Eastern country continued to mount. Following White House talks with Jordan’s King Abdullah, Obama declared the actions of the Syrian government “unacceptable” and reiterated the US demand that... » read this article

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has told opposition leaders that he will relinquish power if he loses elections due in October. In his annual address to Congress, Mr Chavez said the opposition should also accept the result if he wins. The left-wing leader - who has governed Venezuela for 13 years... » read this article

January 14, 2012 The US Army announced Thursday that the presiding officer in last month’s pretrial hearing for Private Bradley Manning, the US soldier charged with handing over thousands of classified documents to whistleblower site WikiLeaks, has recommended that Manning face a full court-martial. Col. Paul Almanza wrote to his... » read this article

Editor's note: On the left of the political spectrum many see the 2008 to 20?? corporate, bank & stock market failures, the tanking of whole national economies, indeed even the weakening dollar and euro, as a failure of the capitalist system. It may very well be a failure of that... » read this article

Two Articles on Venezuelan Prisons The President of the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ), Luisa Estela Morales, said on Tuesday that 4,000 humanitarian releases have been granted to inmates in prisons of the country since June. During a televised interview, Morales explained that the measures have been granted to those... » read this article

13 January 2012 A video published yesterday shows four US marines in Afghanistan urinating on the heads of three Afghan dead, joking among themselves as they desecrate the corpses. It will join the litany of images that have provided a glimpse of the inhumanity and brutality with which American soldiers... » read this article

The job of Iranian nuclear scientist has become exceedingly dangerous, as strange accidents have resulted in dozens of deaths with nuclear plants exploding and individuals being shot, poisoned and blown up in separate events. The latest was clearly no accident: two men on motorcycles attached a bomb to the car of a University... » read this article

Venezuela and Peru took a further step towards strengthening bilateral relations last Saturday when the two nations entered into ten new agreements during President Ollanta Humala’s visit to city of Puerto Ordaz in the central state of Bolivar. Energy cooperation and a memorandum of understanding addressing joint hydrocarbon exploitation in... » read this article

Well, this is a bad way to start the year. Over the past 48 hours, news has broken in India of the existence of at least 12 patients infected with tuberculosis that has become resistant to all the drugs used against the disease. Physicians in Mumbai are calling the strain... » read this article

HAVANA, Cuba, Jan 9 (acn) The Foreign Ministers of Chile, Cuba and Venezuela, which make up the troika of the recently created Community of Latin American and the Caribbean States (CELAC) will have their first meeting in Santiago de Chile, reported Prensa Latina news agency. Chilean FM Alfredo Moreno will... » read this article

The United States has declared Venezuela's consul general in Miami persona non grata and said she must leave the country by Tuesday. The diplomat, Livia Acosta Noguera, is alleged to have discussed possible cyber-attacks on the US while based at the Venezuelan embassy in Mexico in 2008. The FBI has... » read this article

BEIJING | Mon Jan 9, 2012 BEIJING (Reuters) - China's Ministry of Defence warned the United States on Monday to be "careful in its words and actions" after announcing a defence rethink that stresses responding to China's rise by shoring up U.S. alliances and bases across Asia. The statement from... » read this article