Today, as on every Mardi Gras Day, New Orleans is in the midst of full-on mayhem. Depending on when on Fat Tuesday you are reading this, the Zulu and Rex parades are either lining up at their staging sites or rolling down the streets amongst crazed revelers.
Peruvian President Ollanta Humala has ambitious plans to transform the country into an energy hub, but his desire to diversify the nation’s energy industry depends on drilling for natural gas in a protected reserve in the Peruvian Amazon. Critics say such drilling could wipe out isolated indigenous tribes living in the area.
Venezuela’s latest round of violent protests appears to fit a pattern, and represents the tug-and-pull nature of the country’s divided opposition. Several times over the past 15 years since the late, former president Hugo Chávez took office in 1999, the political opposition has launched violent protests aimed at forcing the current president out of office.
Election day in Tegucigalpa kicked off with the feel of a carnival, a rare sensation in a city where the vast majority of residents are faced with grinding poverty, regular gang extortion and a murder rate that is among the world’s highest. But for Marta de Jesus Raudales Varela, who lives in a small house on a steep unpaved street, it was a heart-wrenching day.
A captain ready to drive himself and all around him to ruin in the hunt for a white whale. It’s a well-known story, and over the years, mad Ahab in Herman Melville’s most famous novel, Moby-Dick,has been used as an exemplar of unhinged American power, most recently of George W. Bush’s disastrous invasion of Iraq.
Few are aware that Martin Luther King, Jr. once applied for a permit to carry a concealed handgun.
Copyright Toward Freedom 2019