Free Republic

Remembering Another 9/11 Allende's 1973 Ouster Halted Communist Rule in Chile Henry Kissinger once quipped that Chile was a dagger pointed straight at the heart of Antarctica. That quip melted in the white heat of another 9/11--Sept. 11, 1973, when the Chilean military ousted from power the first Marxist-Leninist regime to reach power via the ballot box. The revolution that put an end to the government of Salvador Allende Gossens would become the most successful in the history of Latin America. It would also become the most reviled in the annals of Latin America. Since--by comparison with other major...

If Willy Sutton were alive today, he’d be eyeing the oil industry. Sutton, you’ll remember, was once asked why he robbed banks. “‘Cause that’s where the money is,” he replied. According to our sources, Evo Morales may be doing a Willy Sutton number. As candidate for President, he promised the Bolivian peasants a big pay increase. Then, when he got into office, the mean people at the national treasury had a little talk with him. “Where was the money going to come from?” they wanted to know. Evo looked around. He was losing popularity fast. What did the country have...

Former CIA undercover agent: KGB and GRU former intelligence operators assist Hezbollah to penetrate the US Hezbollah - the Iranian-backed Lebanese terrorist organization - has more American blood on its hands than any Islamic terrorist ring with the sole exception of al-Qaeda, The American Spectator writes. Last week FBI Director Robert Muller announced that though the FBI and Customs had caught others, Hezbollah had succeeded in smuggling some operatives across the Mexican border into the US, he said. "This was an occasion in which Hezbollah operatives were assisting others with some association with Hezbollah in coming to the United States....

Date: Feb 5, 2006 3:08 PM From: Kenneth T. Tellis kenttellis@gmail.com To: Editor@VHeadline.com Subject: The time for Russia to act in defense of its own interests As long as the Russian nation sits back and accepts the world situation as a fait accompli Russia is doomed to medocrity ... but Russia can and must put its own interests before all. Perhaps the Russian families who lost their sons, fathers and youth in Afghanistan, might do well to remember who created that situation for them. It was the US that spent millions of dollars in a proxy war, fought by US-armed,...

Medea Benjamin's organizations Code Pink and Global Exchange have enjoyed a long and peculiar relationship with both Castro's Cuba and Hugo Chavez's Venezuela.The question is, how peculiar? And specifically, is she working as a foreign agent as defined by the United States Code?From the US Department of Justice, Foreign Agents Registration Act Q & A: United States Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) Q. What constitutes an agent? A. An agent of a Foreign principal is any individual or organization which acts at the order, request, or under the direction or control of a foreign principal, or whose activities are directed...

WASHINGTON - Miami's Jesús Soto supports Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez's vision of ''participatory democracy.'' Valerie Pusch of Chicago backs Chávez because of his policies on behalf of the poor. And they say so loudly, as heads of their local Bolivarian Circles -- among the dozen or so U.S. copies of the groups Chávez has set up throughout his country to mobilize Venezuelans on behalf of his socialist ``revolution.'' Even as Chávez attacks President Bush as his sworn nemesis, his government is running a strong campaign to curry favor with U.S. citizens through leftist grass-roots groups, paid lobbyists and public relations...

WASHINGTON -- While most of Congress was spending an August recess tending to local constituents, Representative William D. Delahunt was in Caracas, sitting down to a four-hour, one-on-one dinner conversation with President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, one of the Bush administration's most ardent critics. That meeting -- unusual for a sitting member of Congress and a head of state so critical of the White House -- sparked negotiations that led to the official announcement scheduled for today: A US subsidiary of a Venezuelan-owned company will provide 12 million gallons of discounted home heating oil to Massachusetts consumers and organizations serving...

CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Thousands of supporters of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez marched in Caracas on Saturday to support the leftist leader in his dispute with Mexico's president over U.S. free trade proposals. State workers, unionists and students, many wearing red T-shirts, waved flags and anti-U.S. placards as they marched through the capital accompanied by trucks blaring revolutionary songs, Venezuelan folk ballads and Mexican mariachi music. Venezuela and Mexico withdrew their ambassadors on Monday after Chavez called his Mexican counterpart, Vicente Fox, a "lap dog" of U.S. imperialism for his close ties to Washington and told him, "Don't mess with...

CARACAS - A book published and distributed by the Venezuelan army argues that ''revolutionary Islam'' and U.S. religious extremism are moral equivalents and quotes approvingly from the Venezuelan terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal. The 250-page Peripheral Warfare and Revolutionary Islam was written by Spanish politician and academic Jorge Verstrynge and is being distributed on the personal orders of Army Chief Gen. Raúl Baduel, a long-time supporter of leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. Baduel's office said he's not available for an interview until January. Armed Forces Inspector General Gen. Melvin López Hidalgo said he was unaware of the book but...

Excerpt 1: "Inside a dank warehouse in the working-class Buenos Aires neighborhood of La Boca last week, young Argentines were standing cheek to cheek and swaying to the danceable rhythms of a live band. But the violins and bandoneones of a tango orchestra had been replaced by the acoustic guitars and percussion instruments of a Venezuelan folk group called Mestizo. The sweat shirts and windbreakers worn by the musicians featured the logo of Venezuela's Ministry of Energy and Petroleum, and the warehouse walls were festooned with fliers that read, toward the construction of 21st-century socialism. Mestizo was in the final...

Oct 27, 2005 Russia has quietly worked to forge a quasi-alliance of that to rival the US-led NATO, between current and future nuclear powers of Pakistan, China and Iran. This alignment is specifically geared toward confronting the US in a hotly contested market for geopolitical status in the middle east and to dictate economic trends concerning natural resources in the region. Decision by the IAEA to refer Iran to the UN Security Council has also put Russia in a difficult position between choosing its long-term economic ties with the EU and US or short-term ones with Iran. As the world...

Oil rich Venezuela scared of the same fate as Iraq, is planning some extreme measures to confront United States in case it is attacked. Venezuela is fast spreading arms, money and military training tactics to left-wing groups in Ecuador and six other Latin American countries. According to some international think tanks, the plan is to rage insurgency from outside Venezuela in case Venezuela is attacked and occupied. According to media sources, left-wing groups in Ecuador and six other Latin American countries have received training in urban guerrilla war tactics from Venezuela this year, The Miami Herald reported Oct. 22, citing...

Arms Proliferation: Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez, who recently visited Iran, reportedly is seeking nuclear weapons. Will they come from Russia with love?Maybe — if Russia continues to run a weapons bazaar where rogue nations are given special-shopper privileges.Already, it appears Russia has acted as a broker by greasing the way for North Korea to transfer technology that will let Iran build missiles with a 2,200-mile reach. That puts several European capitals, including Athens, Rome and Berlin, within Tehran's range.Russia also is supporting Iran's "nuclear power" program, having sold it a reactor. Which is to say Russia supports Iran's nuclear-weapons program.All...

Communism is not dead in Latin America. In fact, the dominoes are falling south of the border, but no one seems to be noticing. “It’s a new day. Communism is dead. It’s even dead in Cuba.” So declared Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing in May 2002. “I hate to say it,” she continued, “it’s dead.” The senator’s proclamation was a surprise, no doubt, to Fidel Castro, whose regime was (and is) alive and as Red as ever. It also must have come as welcome news to the people of Cuba, still suffering, after nearly half...

CARACAS, Venezuela, Feb. 8 (UPI) -- When the Organization of American States asked its press freedom expert, Santiago Canton, to report on the state of the independent press in Venezuela, they must have known it was a sensitive mission. President Hugo Chavez's radical populist government does not take kindly to criticism nor does it appreciate outside scrutiny of its internal affairs. It's doubtful, though, that anyone at the OAS expected Canton to fall victim himself to the kind of tactics the Venezuelan press faces every day. Just moments after beginning the final press conference of his four-day visit to ...