If someone were to rank the most embattled Jewish communities in the world today, the Jewish community of Venezuela would certainly be high on that list. Over the past decade the community has shrunk by half its size. “Ten years ago we had about 18,000 members,” said Salomon Cohen. “Now we have about 9,500.” Cohen, head of the Confederacion de Asociaciones Israelitas de Venezuela (CAIV), an umbrella group representing the South American country’s Jewish...

Here’s a puzzler. Latin America has never been more democratic: of 34 nations in Central and South America and the Caribbean, all except one (Cuba) are constitutional democracies, with laws guaranteeing open elections, independent courts, legislatures, and freedom of expression. So why do so many governments still trample on citizens’ rights, bully journalists, harass private business, and generally lord over hearth and home? Incidents in just the last few weeks range from the...

Now that Colombia’s crackdown on the FARC has significantly weakened the group, there are signs that it is setting up in neighboring Venezuela and preparing for a rebirth of sorts, Samuel Logan writes for ISN Security Watch. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) made an unusual appeal on 23 August to UNASUR, South America's multilateral security forum, to explain its political and strategic goals in Colombia. Within 24 hours, Colombian Defense Minister Rodrigo Rivera, part...

A complaint brought against Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez at the International Criminal Court and another complaint against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has legal effects, as opposed to what some experts purport. This is what Asdrúbal Aguiar, former judge at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, thinks. Everything depends on the contents of the materials submitted to the Commission and the Court. "I reckon...

The long-running feud between Venezuela and Colombia escalated into outright hostility this week, as Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez abruptly severed diplomatic relations between the two South American neighbors. Chávez closed his country's embassy in Bogotá, expelled Colombian diplomats, and accused rival President Alvaro Uribe of attempting to provoke a war. Could it really come to that? Here's a brief guide: (Watch a report about the conflict ) What is this dispute...

There is a rise in anti-Semitic incidents in Latin America in the aftermath of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Gaza -- and the most troublesome part of it is that it's often fueled by racist propaganda in state-sponsored media. Granted, there have long been isolated incidents of anti-Semitism in Latin America, much like in other parts of the world. But now, after Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez's self-proclaimed "strategic alliance" with Iran's openly anti-Jewish...

Her comments at odds with the court measures recently taken in Venezuela against journalists and media owners have made Venezuelan authorities accuse her of protecting the interests of the "media dictatorship" and "taking active part against governments dissenting of the imperial power." But the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression, Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Organization of American States (IACHR), Colombian Catalina Botero, refused the charges...

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called on 35,000 armed militias on Tuesday to defend his socialist revolution with their lives if necessary as he faces a test of its popularity in elections in September. Young militias raised assault rifles and clenched fists in the air when Chavez entered the parade area in Caracas in an open military jeep for a rally marking the anniversary of an abortive coup that ousted him briefly in 2002. "You should be ready to take up arms at any moment and...

As Washington policy makers scramble to craft effective sanctions against Iran, they seem to have completely ignored Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's blossoming relationship with Venezuela's Hugo Chávez. This strategic alliance provides the Iranian regime with a clandestine source of uranium, helps it evade restrictions on trade and financing, and gives Middle Eastern terrorists access to weapons from Mr. Chávez's growing arsenal. So even if the West is able to implement a sanctions plan...

RUSSIAN PRIME Minister boasted after returning from a visit to Venezuela on Monday that he had sold President Hugo Chavez another $5 billion in weapons -- a huge sum for a Latin American army. Hours later State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley was asked for a reaction at his public briefing. First answer: "We don't care." Mr. Crowley went on to say that State didn't see a legitimate need for all that equipment and was concerned that it might "migrate into other parts of the...