Holiday breaks at Guantanamo Bay

166 men are still imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, 150 or more of them are still being detained indefinitely without any trial, charge or accusations against them after 11 years..... yes! 11 years!  Around half of the prisoners have currently been on hunger strike for the last two months causing some of them to be hospitalised and force fed.  The hunger strike is no doubt an embarrassing inconvenience for the US authorities who are disregarding the human rights of these men and thus predictably it's not the huge media story it probably should be.  You can find mainstream media reports if you search for it and looking at one BBC news article I found the following part ridiculously comical...
"Nearly 100 of the detainees have been reportedly cleared for release but remain at the facility because of restrictions imposed by Congress and also concerns of possible mistreatment if they are sent back to their home countries."
So they're looking after them! aah how nice!  Rather than send them home where apparently they may be "mistreated" it's better they stay at Guantanamo and enjoy more meaningless years with occasional torture sessions to look forward to.  I'm sure it's been one long holiday for these prisoners, why would they want to go home?  That's what the hunger strike is for right?  To protest that they want to stay?
It's time to close Guantanamo Bay and send these men home, if there is nothing to be tried for after 11 years then they are innocent.

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Venezuela

Thankfully Capriles was not elected by the Venezuelan people, but is was close and the Americans won't be happy.  Maduro may not be the perfect leader but if he can continue the Socialist movement built by Chavez then the country will be far better off than falling for the trap of the pro-America, pro-capitalism direction Capriles would take them in.

Already there's trouble with demands for a recount and violent protests causing 7 deaths.  Maduro states that the U.S. Embassy has been "financing and leading all the violent acts" He says the embassy is backing what he calls "neo-Nazi groups" that he claims are behind the violence.  The United States said earlier Tuesday that it will not consider the election results valid unless the vote-by-vote recount demanded by opposition candidate Henrique Capriles is done.

That's all fairly mild talk at the moment if you consider the US backed coup to overthrow Chavez in 2002, the US funded and helped orchestrate a violent armed uprising which toppled Chavez. The people didn't want this and it failed after only 48 hours.  US aggression has escalated against Venezuela ever since the Chavez government moved to take control of the country’s oil industry in 2001 and use its revenues to fund programs meeting the needs of Venezuela’s poor majority, rather than enriching the Venezuelan capitalists and US oil corporations.  Read more about this here

So Chavez's preferred successor Maduro is in the seat for now but he's also in for a fight from the elite capitalists who want a bigger foot in the door to suck away the countries oil wealth, and be assured they will do whatever they can to destablise the country and continue their propaganda against Maduro.  Maduro has 3 choices- fall into line, be overthrown, or be Chavez II.

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