The Stroud Communications Blog is Alive!

We wanted to kick off our new blog with one of our amazingly relevant and knowledgeable guests: International human rights attorney Bob Amsterdam. Bob, who represented Yukos oil billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsy, spoke to Martha Zoller this morning about the counter-intuitive and ultimately correct nature of President Obama's stance on the current turmoil in Iran.

Prior to his interview, Bob had been in Brazil talking to the former president of Brazil, discussing the human rights problems taking place in Venezuela and trying to raise awareness about the human rights disaster in Venezuela among Venezuela ’s key allies. He held a meeting with the President of the Brazilian Senate Jose Sarney to ask that Venezuela ’s entry into Mercosur be conditioned upon human rights.

Bob is releasing a white paper on Wednesday (the 24th). It not only takes on the state’s fraudulent case against a political prisoner named Eligio Cedeño but also exposes exactly how the Chavez government has converted the justice system into a political weapon. All the while Chavez is making deals right, left and center with Iran, Russia and China, including buying $5 billion in arms from Russia. The case of the political prisoner in Venezuela that Bob represents, Mr.Cedeño, is much bigger than any one single personal vendetta. His plight is symbolic of some 50 political prisoners, whose swelling ranks have been successfully hidden by Venezuela . This worsening situation is on the verge of boiling over into serious political problems for the president, especially in combination with the severe economic contraction the country is experiencing as part of the global crisis.