Warning: The subject of this exploration will constrict your blood vessels, choke your windpipe and dispatch you to an early grave, 5 million of you a year . The most lucrative crop the Americas have ever seen, it kept the British at bay, kept the enslaved entrapped, kept Hollywood sexy. Until it didn’t anymore. Read full article > >

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On Maryland tobacco farms, turning a tradition into potential health benefits

Satellite tags confirm that bowhead whales are using the Northwest Passage to journey across the top of the Americas.

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Whales take passage as ice melts

New fields in the Americas are an emerging prize in the global energy market, with Western oil companies looking to exploit untapped reserves in a part of the world with greater political stability.

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Recent Discoveries Put Americas Back in Oil Companies’ Sights

How long are we prepared to police the partitioning of Libya?

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Regime change in Libya isn’t America’s duty

Hugo Chavez’s support for proxy terrorism is a real threat to the Americas, and the U.S. should treat it as such.

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Is there a Chavez terror network on America’s doorstep?

Hugo Chavez’s support for proxy terrorism is a real threat to the Americas, and the U.S. should treat it as such.

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Is there a Chavez terror network on America’s doorstep?

The news Thursday evening that Egypt had severed itself from the global Internet came at the same time as an ostensibly far less inflammatory announcement closer to home. Verizon, the telecom giant, would acquire “cloud computing company” Terremark for $1.4 billion. The purchase would “accelerate Verizon’s ‘everything-as-a-service’ cloud strategy,” the press release said . The trouble is that Terremark isn’t merely a cloud computing company. Or, more to the point, the cloud isn’t really a cloud. Among its portfolio of data centers in the US, Europe and Latin America, Terremark owns one of the single most important buildings on the global Internet, a giant fortress on the edge of Miami’s downtown known as the NAP of the Americas . The Internet is a network of networks. But what’s often forgotten is that those networks actually have to physically connect — one router to another — often through something as simple and tangible as a yellow-jacketed fiber-optic cable. It’s safe to suspect a network engineer in Egypt had a few of them dangling in his hands last night. Terremark’s building in Miami is the physical meeting point for more than 160 networks from around the world. They meet there because of the building’s excellent security, its redundant power systems, and its thick concrete walls, designed to survive a category 5 hurricane. But above all, they meet there because the building is “carrier-neutral.” It’s a Switzerland of the Internet, an unallied territory where competing networks can connect to each other. Terremark doesn’t have a dog in the fight. Or at least it didn’t. Verizon insists there’s nothing to worry about. Terremark will be set up as a wholly owned subsidiary. Its carrier-neutral status will remain. “We’re not going to try to cramp their style at all,”  said  Lowell McAdam, President and COO of Verizon. “There will be no moves to take certain customers out of play.” I can’t help but think of it in the context of another recent purchase. Earlier this month, Google bought its New York office building, 111 8th Avenue, for a reported $1.9 billion. As the Wall Street Journal described , “about one third of the space is occupied by telecommunications companies.” But that’s severely understating the situation: 111 8th is another of the most important buildings on the Internet, on a short list of fewer than a dozen worldwide. Like the NAP of the Americas, it houses hundreds of independent networks, scattered across the office spaces of multiple independently owned sub-landlords. And now Google owns the whole thing. One assumes that they’re not going to cramp their style either. “It’s not about the ‘carrier hotel’ space,” said Google Senior Vice President Jonathan Rosenberg. “We have 2,000 employees on site. It’s a big sales center, but also a big engineering center. With the pace at which we’re growing, it’s very difficult to find space in New York. There are very few buildings in New York that can accommodate our needs. This gives us a lot of control over growing into the space.” But on a day when the government to 80 million people managed to throw the Internet’s “kill switch,” it’s worth remembering that the Internet is a physical network. It matters who controls the nodes. With these two deals, Google and Verizon may have chipped away at the foundation walls of an open, competitive–and therefore free — Internet. Images: 1. Alex Hoyt. 2. Terremark .

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Tunisia, Egypt, Miami: The Importance of Internet Choke Points

America is a creedal nation and the creed is, as Robert Penn Warren wrote, the “burr under the metaphysical saddle of America.” It is a recurring source of national introspection, discontent, self-indictment and passionate politics. We are in the midst of a recurrence.

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America’s political disharmony

This article titled “Barack Obama abandons Guantánamo closure plan after Congress veto” was written by Chris McGreal in Washington, for The Guardian on Thursday 20th January 2011 18.21 UTC

The Obama administration is abandoning attempts to close the Guantánamo Bay prison in Cuba and will shortly begin new trials there after Congress blocked the president from bringing accused terrorists before courts in the US.

The defence secretary, Robert Gates, is shortly expected to lift an order imposed on the day of Obama’s inauguration two years ago halting the start of new military tribunals, according to the New York Times. New charges against some of the more than 30 detainees identified for prosecution are expected within weeks.

Likely targets include Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a Saudi accused of planning the suicide bombing of the American warship USS Cole in Yemen in 2000, which killed 17 sailors. He is a “high-value detainee” who prosecutors have indicated could become the first to face the death penalty.

The New York Times said that preparations for a new batch of military tribunals, including draft regulations for their conduct, are underway.

Al-Nashiri’s trial is likely to prove controversial because some of the evidence against him is based on his interrogation and torture, including waterboarding, at secret CIA “black sites”, including one in Thailand. CIA tapes of the interrogation were later destroyed reportedly on the orders of the head of the agency’s clandestine operations, José Rodriguez, although no charges were brought.

Al-Nashiri has told military tribunal hearings that he made a series of false statements under torture, through waterboarding and being subject to mock execution with a power drill and a gun, including confessing to the attack on the USS Cole and claiming that Osama Bin Laden has a nuclear bomb.

Al-Nashiri’s military-appointed lawyer, Lieutenant Commander Stephen Reyes, has said that his client is only being prosecuted at Guantánamo because of the issues concerning his torture. Reyes noted that two of al-Nashiri’s alleged co-conspirators in the attack on the USS Cole were indicted in federal court.

The New York Times, quoting anonymous administration sources, said the government is also preparing an executive order to create a parole board-like system to periodically review the cases of the nearly 50 detainees who will continue to be held without trial.

The move to begin new military trials is a defeat for Obama, who had promised to close Guantánamo within a year of taking office in January 2009 after describing the prison there as damaging to the US. He proposed to try some detainees before civilian courts while others would still face military tribunals but with restrictions on evidence gathered during torture.

But that plan was repeatedly postponed as the administration faced problems finding a prison to house alleged terrorists in the US and in the face of resistance from Congress which, among other things, cut off funds to move the accused men. The US attorney general, Eric Holder, had proposed prosecuting some of those accused of the 9/11 attacks, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, in a Manhattan court near Ground Zero. But two weeks ago, Obama signed a bill passed by Congress that blocks the transfer of detainees to the US or foreign countries, effectively preventing closure of the prison at Guantánamo.

The president said he objected to the provisions and would work with Congress to overturn them but that appears unlikely to happen now that the Republicans control the House of Representatives.

There are 174 detainees remaining at Guantánamo. A government-created taskforce has recommended that 36 be prosecuted and 48 be held indefinitely as enemy combatants.

Thirty Yemenis were approved for release if security conditions in their home country improve.

The Pentagon did not respond to questions about the plan to begin new trials.

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This article titled “WikiLeaks cables detail Fidel Castro’s doomed love for Obama” was written by Rory Carroll, for The Guardian on Friday 17th December 2010 21.30 UTC

Barack and Fidel: like so many great love affairs it was doomed. But memory of the passion, or at least infatuation, lingers.

Having seen off 10 US presidents – all committed to his assassination, overthrow or isolation – Fidel Castro had more reason than most to beware the occupant of the Oval Office.

But Barack Obama was different. The octogenarian communist revolutionary fell for the young new president and became “obsessed”, according to confidential US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks.

Having confidently predicted the US would not elect a black man, Castro sat bolt upright when the candidate of hope and change swept to the White House. His Reflections columns in the communist party newspaper, Granma, were filled with observations about, then praise for, Obama.

The US diplomatic mission in Havana, long accustomed to reporting the commandante’s diatribes against American tyranny, was not prepared for fan mail.

“Fidel’s subsequent Reflection on 9 June will only add to speculation from our civil society and diplomatic contacts that Fidel is obsessed with President Obama,” said one memo.

Obama’s speech in Cairo on US relations with Muslims inspired a 3,500-word response from the retired Cuban leader in which he lauded Obama as a “very good communicator” with “impressive working capacity”. Coming from a workaholic famous for marathon speeches, this was praise indeed.

He noted that the president of the US, called “Potus” in the cables, took office at an “exceptionally complex time” and could not be blamed for the Middle East quagmire he inherited.

“Fidel mostly sympathised with Potus – in his own way,” said a memo from Jonathan Farrar, the US chief of mission. “Fidel then continued his attempts to walk a thin line between a positive impression of a popular US president and the idea that the evil empire will never change.”

In other Reflections columns, the US nemesis who called George Bush a genocidal drunk praised Obama as intelligent, sincere, serene, honest and well-meaning. He welcomed the president’s Nobel peace prize and called his position on global warming courageous.

Latterly, the commandante’s ardour for Obama began to cool, with a tone of disappointment and sense of betrayal over the president’s stance at the Copenhagen climate change summit.

“Following the conference, Fidel wrote three straight Reflections devoted to attacking President Obama’s participation in Copenhagen. Fidel called President Obama’s conference remarks ‘deceitful, demagogic and ambiguous,’” a cable said.

Cuba’s leader, it noted, had taken to calling Obama the “yanki president”.

Communication failure

US diplomats were left isolated and afraid that Cubans were intercepting every call after secure phone lines were cut at the mission in Havana, a leaked cable shows.

They complained to Washington that the mission could not function properly until the technological glitch was fixed.

“Post is experiencing extreme difficulty establishing secure voice calls,” a classified dispatch said in January 2010.

Several solutions had been tried but secure voice calls were unable to be established, it said.

“This has left post with no secure voice link to Washington or other missions. As post operates in a critical technical threat environment, this situation is unacceptable and post needs assistance in resolving the situation expeditiously.”

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

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On Monday, The Lede continues to update readers on the leak of American diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks, the whistle-blowers’ Web site.

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The Lede: Hackers Take Down Swiss Bank’s Site

On Friday, The Lede continues to update readers on the leak of American diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks, the whistle-blowers’ Web site.

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The Lede: The Lede: Ron Paul Defends WikiLeaks

It’s important to national security, but also demonstrates our character as a country.

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America’s global fight against AIDS

Video of Clinton’s remarks; a cool response from the Kremlin; Turkey’s leader called the leak “suspicious.”

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The Lede: Reaction to the Leaks

Suppose he is serious. What if Barack Obama is telling the truth about his own beliefs when he says that neither party by itself can realistically hope to solve the challenges facing the United States?

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Suppose neither political party can solve America’s problems