NEWS
October 25, 2007
When President Bush suggests, as he did yesterday, that the Cuban people should rise up against their despotic leader, he conveniently ignores the fact that U.S. policy toward Cuba has done little to spur a revolt. Decades of isolation - and his administration's toughening of the policy - haven't lessened Fidel Castro's hold on power or diminished the influence of his brother Raul, now serving as the de facto president since Mr. Castro took ill a year ago. Indeed, the only Cubans who have benefited from U.S. policy are the thousands of refugees who are given a free pass to live here.
NEWS
November 11, 2007
LUIS HERRERA CAMPINS, 82 Former president of Venezuela Former Venezuela President Luis Herrera Campins, part of a generation of political leaders who helped end a decade of dictatorship and usher in democracy in 1950s Venezuela, died Friday. A lawyer and a journalist, Mr. Herrera was jailed for four months in 1952 for pro-democracy political activism during the dictatorship of Gen. Marcos Perez Jimenez, and then expelled from the country. He returned from exile in Spain after the dictatorship fell in 1958 and went on to serve as a lawmaker and as president from 1979 to 1984.
NEWS
By STEVE CHAPMAN | December 21, 2007
For a few years in the 1980s and 1990s, the world was changing for the better and seemingly destined to keep doing so indefinitely. Back then, freedom resembled justice as described in the Bible - rolling down like waters. But in the last few years, various governments have managed to dam it up, and in some cases even reverse the flow. Between 1990 and 1997, the number of democracies in the world rose from 69 to 118, according to the human rights group Freedom House. In the past decade, though, the number has crept up by just five.
NEWS
August 10, 2007
Remember Brooklyn -- Olney Theatre Center, 2001 Olney-Sandy Spring Road, is presenting Donald Margulies' Brooklyn Boy, a play about a newly successful writer returning to his roots, through Sunday. Tickets are available for tomorrow's matinee at 1:45 p.m. Michael Frayn's Democracy, a play about West German Chancellor Willy Brandt, is showing on the center's Mainstage, also through Sunday. Tickets are $25-$46, with discounts available for groups, senior citizens and students. 301- 924-3400, or www.olneytheatre.
NEWS
By Firas Maksad | October 10, 2007
Don't complain about American politics. The U.S. system may seem complex and unwieldy, with multiple candidates vying to win multiple caucuses and primaries - and endless debates, speeches and television advertisements. But American politics look simple compared with the chaotic situation half a world away, in the Middle East, where elections are a matter of life and death. Take Lebanon - a small country in a rough neighborhood. A political tug-of-war has left four members of parliament dead and a presidency that may or may not be filled before the end of the year.
NEWS
By George F. Will | May 20, 1999
WASHINGTON -- The court ruling transfixed this city but probably has been barely noticed elsewhere. It should be noticed. It touches the vitality of representative government.Last week, a federal appeals court ruled, 2-1, that some air quality standards promulgated by the Environmental Protection Agency were so ill-defined and unprincipled that the EPA must have exceeded its powers in setting them. It must have because -- this is the dynamite in the court's decision -- Congress would have acted unconstitutionally if it had delegated such unfettered authority under the Clean Air Act.That is, if Congress intended the EPA to exercise almost uncircumscribed discretion, Congress made a mockery of the separation of powers by delegating essentially legislative powers to an executive branch agency.
NEWS
By Frank Langfitt | January 5, 1999
BEIJING -- At a time when the majority of the world's nations hold democratic elections, the recent scenes here have seemed like footage from a Cold War newsreel.Behind closed doors and surrounded by police, Chinese courts sentenced three democracy advocates to double-digit prison terms last month for trying to form the first open opposition party. Judges also sent labor activist Zhang Shanguang to jail for 10 years because he spoke to the U.S.-funded Radio Free Asia about protesting farmers.
ENTERTAINMENT
By Glenn McNatt | May 30, 1999
Goya is a painter for the ages, so each era has had to have its own Goya to admire for its own reasons. The Philadelphia Museum of Art's "Goya: Another Look," gives us a Goya for the '90s, which is to say Goya as decorative artist, entrepreneur, relentless social climber, media celebrity and (surprise!) art collector. This is not the whole Goya, of course. But perhaps it is, alas, the Goya we deserve.Other ages have admired Goya for different (and better) reasons. He has been recruited as a proto-Romantic, proto-Realist, proto-Modernist and -- given the triviality of the present moment -- no doubt will be tagged shortly as a proto-postmodernist, as if gypsies, bullfighting and flamenco ever could be encompassed by so vapid a formula.
TOPIC
By Rick Rockwell and Celina Barrios-Ponce | September 19, 1999
ON A STREET corner in the sleepy provincial capital of Guanare, a man tries to explain Venezuela by using a fresh pastry. From the outside, "it looks big and filled with promise," he says, before biting off a corner. "But look inside. It's less than half-filled." He pokes at the creamy cheese filling. "We expect more."The man whom Venezuelans expect to supply the missing cheese and everything else a country could want is President Hugo Chavez. Since he took office after running as an independent in December's elections, Chavez has promised to break the stranglehold of Venezuela's corrupt two-party system.
NEWS
By Bill Glauber | April 25, 1999
BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- Out of power and mostly out of sight, pro-Western politician Zoran Djindjic has not yet run out of ideas.Even as war rages overhead, the leader of this country's Democratic Party is seeking to keep his eyes on a future prize for Serbia -- democracy. And he's also engaged in what might be the toughest profession in town."It is my job to be a democratic politician in the Balkans," he said in a telephone interview.The West is giving war a chance to end Kosovo's crisis and transform Yugoslavia.