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CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) -- Cindy Sheehan, the peace activist who just announced that she is weighing a run for Senate, plans to protest again outside President Bush's Texas ranch, Venezuela's president said Sunday with Sheehan by his side. Hugo Chavez, his arm around Sheehan's shoulders, told a group of activists that Sheehan had told him that during Holy Week, in April, "she is going to put up her tent again in front of Mr. Danger's ranch." "She invited me to put up a tent. Maybe I'll put up my tent also," Chavez said, to applause from activists invited to his...

With its restrictions on everything from foreign ownership of real estate to the carrying of sidearms by American drug agents assigned there, the government of Mexico has made its touchiness about its sovereignty clear time and again. But when it comes to the sovereignty of the United States of America, Mexican contempt seems to know few limits. The latest example came at 3:15 p.m. Monday, as yet another standoff between armed Mexicans and American law-enforcement officers took place in Texas at the very spot where a similar standoff (described by Paul Green in a column on the Opinion 2 page...

Posted on Tue, Jan. 24, 2006 LATIN AMERICA Bolivian praises coca and CastroEvo Morales' first day as president of Bolivia included meeting leaders of Cuba and Venezuela and the swearing-in of a leftist Cabinet. BY JACK CHANG, Knight Ridder News Service LA PAZ, Bolivia - Newly inaugurated Bolivian President Evo Morales began his historic, five-year term Monday by meeting with leaders from Cuba and Venezuela, two of Latin America's harshest critics of U.S. policy, before swearing in a Cabinet largely made up of political radicals. His Cabinet choices included a former housekeeper turned union activist as justice minister and a...

IN ONE of the bloodiest incidents for more than a decade, Shining Path guerrillas ambushed and killed eight police officers, amid fears that money from drug trafficking is giving the Peruvian rebel group a new lease of life. The ambush was set along the road to Aucayacu, more than 240 miles east of Lima. As the vehicle carrying nine officers entered the rebel killing zone, 20 members of the Shining Path opened up with automatic weapons. The police driver managed to get the vehicle off the road, where those not killed in the initial hail of gunfire fought on for...

NEW YORK - A Taliban-linked drug lord who allegedly sought to poison U.S. streets with millions of dollars of heroin in a deadly "American jihad" has become the first person extradited from Afghanistan to face federal charges, officials said Monday. Haji Baz Mohammad, one of the world's "most wanted, most powerful and most dangerous" drug kingpins, had helped finance the Taliban by selling opium since 1990, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administrator Karen Tandy said. "In return, the Taliban protected Mohammad's crops, his heroin labs, his drug transportation labs and his associates," Tandy said after a conspiracy indictment was unsealed accusing Mohammad...

LIMA, Peru, Aug. 19, 2005 – Peru has become a leader in confronting terrorism and narcoterrorism, but it's critical that the region's countries all work together to deal with the common threats they face, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said here Aug. 18 during a joint press conference with Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo. "The problems that our respective countries face of terrorism, ... narcotrafficking, hostage-taking (and) crime are problems that no one country can deal with alone," the secretary said in the Peruvian presidential palace. "It requires regional cooperation." Toledo called these challenges a "shared responsibility" among the South American community...

WND Exclusive CONTROLLING THE SUBSTANCES Big money in Mexican meth New laws cut down on U.S. labs, but drugs still flow Posted: August 19, 2005 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2005 WorldNetDaily.com While new state and federal laws are cutting down the number of U.S. meth labs, the deadly drugs continue to flow into the U.S. across the porous border with Mexico, say law enforcement authorities. The federal anti-meth law was recently amended to permit states to impose their own stiffer restrictions and penalties. In Oregon, for instance, legislators now require cold medicines containing pseudoephedrine, a principal ingredient in methamphetamine, to...

The three Irishmen in hiding after being sentenced to 17 years in prison for training Farc rebels in Colombia have returned to Ireland and insisted they are not on the run. Martin McAuley, Niall Connolly and Jim Monaghan have been on the run since a Bogota court overturned their original acquittal in December. A Government spokesman has been quoted as saying the Government had no prior knowledge of the men's return. "This issue was not part of the Government's discussions with Sinn Fein and we had no prior knowledge of their return to Ireland," a spokesperson said. The Department of...

TUMACO, COLOMBIA - Tipped off by informants, Colombian authorities were nonetheless stunned by what they found on a jungle mission near the Ecuadorean border. In the largest-ever drug seizure in Colombia, police and naval forces seized eight boats on the Mira River that were packed with 15 metric tons of cocaine. Agents confiscated so many packets of white powder that the stash later burned for 19 hours in a police bonfire. But the quantity of cocaine, worth an estimated $400 million, wasn't the only surprise during the raid conducted earlier this month. According to Colombian authorities, the narcotics were produced...

BOGOTA, Colombia May 17, 2005 — Speedboats laden with tons of rebel-produced cocaine slip through Caribbean waters to the palm-fringed coasts of Central America, and return to Colombia stuffed with weapons for the guerrillas. Police investigate high-profile kidnappings in Venezuela and Paraguay, and find the fingerprints of Colombian rebels all over them. From the jungles of Central America to South America's southern cone, Colombia's main rebel group has been expanding its criminal activities, according to law enforcement officials and political leaders across the continent. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, began battling for the rights of peasants in...

WASHINGTON: Maoists in Nepal are reportedly involved in smuggling narcotics, mostly to India, to fund their insurgency and the Kingdom does not have laws to target drug-related corruption, the US has said. The state department, in its annual report on narcotic drugs, said the Maoist insurgency has an impact on rule-of-law and interdiction efforts in many parts of Nepal. "Police have reconfirmed that production of cannabis is on the rise in the southern areas of the country, and that most is destined for the Indian market," it said. The report said that police have also intercepted locally produced hashish en...

Drugs and Terror: Understanding the Link and the Impact on America "It's so important for Americans to know that the traffic in drugs finances the work of terror, sustaining terrorists, that terrorists use drug profits to fund their cells to commit acts of murder. If you quit drugs, you join the fight against terror in America." President George W. Bush There is an undeniable link between acts of terror and illicit drugs. Law enforcement officials around the world have long recognized this close connection, but a changing world and recent events have made this link more relevant in the daily...

Drugs, Russia and Terrorism Joseph D. Douglass Jr. Editor's Note: This article is the first part of a two-part article. quot;When we fight drugs, we fight the war on terror,quot; President Bush explained on Feb. 12 as he announced an increase in the budget for the war on drugs. He is right. Additionally, we cannot wage a real war on terrorism without waging a real war on illegal drugs, because the two are closely coupled. The two are so intertwined that perhaps the real question is quot;How can we win a war on terrorism if we can't win a war...

Defense and Foreign Affairs, October 21, 2004 KLA Video Shows Holbrooke, Clark Raising Funds for Kerry Campaign from KLA-linked Albanians, and Shows Ongoing Acquisitions From GIS Station Amsterdam and other sources. A recent video produced by Albanians who identified themselves as members of the ostensibly-banned Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) has been broadcast on Dutch television, showing KLA members giving donations to members of the US Presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry. The video also shows former US Presidential candidate and former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Gen. Wesley Clark and former US Ass. Sec. of State Richard Holbrooke - now both...

John Kerry's Fellow TravellersA 5-part series exposing John Kerry's Communist connections.Part 4: Subversion in the Senate: Kerry's Communist ConstituencyBy Fedora *NOTE: The term "fellow traveller" as used in this article series refers to someone who is not a member of the Communist Party (CP) but regularly engages in actions which advance the Party's program. Some apparent fellow travellers may actually be "concealed party members": members of the CP who conceal their membership. Which of these classifications is applicable to the Kerrys is a question this series leaves unresolved. This series does not argue for any direct evidence of Richard or...

Beslan militants were drug-dependent, forensic study shows By C.J. Chivers Monday, October 18, 2004 MOSCOW Forensic analysis of the remains of 31 militants who seized the public school in Beslan last month has determined that all of them were dependent on drugs, a senior law enforcement official said in a statement reported by Russian news agencies Sunday. Nikolai Shepel, the deputy prosecutor general of Russia's southern federal district, also said that blood tests had found very high levels of heroin and morphine among a majority of the attackers who died at the siege, "which indicates that they were long-term drug...

The Balkans' uncharacteristically silent exit from the world stage as the most prominent international hot spot of the last decade belies its status as a major recruiting and training center of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. By feeding off the region's impoverished republics and taking root in the unsettled diplomatic aftermath of the Bosnia and Kosovo conflicts, al Qaeda, along with Iranian Revolutionary Guard-sponsored terrorists, have burrowed their way into Europe's backyard. For the past 10 years, the most senior leaders of al Qaeda have visited the Balkans, including bin Laden himself on three occasions between 1994 and ...

I have created a public register of "bump lists" here on Free Republic. I define a bump list as a name listed in the "To" field used to index articles. Free Republic Bump List Register

Marxist rebels in Colombia have killed ten hostages, after the army bungled a helicopter mission to rescue them. The captives, including Governor Guillermo Gaviria and former Defence Minister Gilberto Echeverri, were killed as Government soldiers approached the rebel camp where they were being held. President Alvaro Uribe confirmed that one hostage escaped unharmed and two others survived but were wounded. No rebels were captured or killed in the failed rescue operation. Gaviria and Echeverri were kidnapped on April 21, 2002, as they led hundreds of peace marchers from Medellin to the village of Caicedo to meet with the rebel commanders....

PICHARI, Peru - Shining Path guerrillas ambushed a 30-man marine patrol in a section of steep, mountainous jungle, killing seven and wounding 10 in the Peruvian military's worst loss to rebels in at least four years, military sources said Friday. A marine captain, four other marines and two civilian guides were killed in the attack Thursday afternoon in the Ayacucho region when rebels opened fire after they stopped to take a break in a clearing, said an army officer who spoke on condition of anonymity. The attack was another strong sign of a resurgence in Shining Path activity. Last month,...