Free Republic

The Netanyahu government's slow-moving, lackadaisical handling of the Goldstone commission mandated for accusing Israel of war crimes in Gaza, played into the hands of a coalition formed to strip the Israeli military of legitimacy as a defensive strike force against Iran's fast-moving nuclear weapons program and its Middle East allies' missile arsenals. Those missiles are poised to strike Israel's population centers if Iran is attacked. Israel had - and still has - plenty of moral, diplomatic and strategic tools for defending itself. They were not applied and so this hostile coalition was allowed to strike Israel on three fronts in...

MANAGUA, NICARAGUA — On the rim of a volcano with a clear view of the U.S. Embassy, landscapers are applying the final touches to a mysterious new Russian compound. Behind the concrete walls and barbed wire, a visitor can see red-and-blue buildings, manicured lawns, antennas and globe-shaped devices. The Nicaraguan government says it’s simply a tracking site of the Russian version of a GPS satellite system. But is it also an intelligence base intended to surveil the Americans? “I have no idea,” said a woman who works for the Nicaraguan telecom agency stationed at the site. “They are Russian, and...

Three decades after this tiny Central American nation became the prize in a Cold War battle with Washington, Russia is once again planting its flag in Nicaragua. Over the past two years, the Russian government has added muscle to its security partnership here, selling tanks and weapons, sending troops, and building facilities intended to train Central American forces to fight drug trafficking. The Russian surge appears to be part of the Kremlin’s expansionist foreign policy. In other parts of the world, President Vladimir Putin’s administration has deployed fighter planes to help Syria’s war-battered government and stepped up peace efforts in...

Marine Corps Gen. John Kelly, commander of the U.S. Southern Command, predicted last week that the Ebola virus will not be contained in West Africa, and if infected people flee those countries and spread the disease to Central and South America, it could cause “mass migration into the United States” of those seeking treatment. “If it breaks out, it’s literally, ‘Katie bar the door,’ and there will be mass migration into the United States,” Kelly said in remarks to the National Defense University on Tuesday. “They will run away from Ebola, or if they suspect they are infected, they will...

Sometime in the next few weeks, the U.N. General Assembly will elect a pugnacious, anti-American politician from Nicaragua as its 63rd president. Not since the final years of the Cold War 20 years ago has a vocal opponent of Washington held this leadership position. But after Daniel Ortega, the Sandinista leader, stole the election in Managua last year, Nicaragua turned on a dime from an alliance with Washington to a close friendship with Fidel and Raul Castro, Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The selection is set, and U.N. bylaws require the vote to be taken no later than June 16....

THE “D’ESCOTO CASE” AND THOSE WHO WANT TO WIPE OUT THE WORK DONE BY JOHN PAUL II AND BENEDICT XVI Antonio Socci Libero September 7, 2014 In the era of Bergoglio, the Vatican has practically rehabilitated Liberation Theology, which came into existence in the 1960s and has caused untold disasters, mainly in Latin America, by fostering the Church’s subordination to Marxist thought. Over the past months there have been startling occurrences, such as the “landing” of Gustavo Gutierrez (“the father” of Liberation Theology) in the Vatican itself. A year ago, “L'Osservatore Romano” published large extracts from one of his books...

The New York Times Sept. 4 feature on Tim Kaine1, shows that his year in Honduras introduced him not to Jesus Christ, but to Karl Marx. The story doesn't say that, exactly, but connect the dots with a little history, and an alarming picture emerges of Kaine's adventures with radicals and revolutionaries in 1980s Latin America. The Times notes that in Honduras: “Mr. Kaine embraced an interpretation of the gospel, known as liberation theology...” This wasn't mainstream “Catholic thought” at the time. It was a radical, Marxist-based ideology at odds with the Church, the pope, and the United States, but...

''People will understand that we are serious about going after government corruption,'' he added. ``There is a very selfish reason for this: We end up paying for the bill when these people steal the money, because we have to provide aid, or accept the citizens as refugees or as migrants.'' The Bush administration says it is about to unveil a new weapon to help fight corruption in Latin America: a list of corrupt government officials from the region who will be denied entry visas to the United States. The anti-corruption drive is being led by Otto J. Reich, the...

In his young pontificate, Pope Francis has begun to rehabilitate radical Latin American priests. He invited Liberation Theology founder Gustavo Guttierrez to meet with him in Rome and now has revived the priestly faculties of a priest who called Ronald Reagan a butcher.

She’s a walking parody of an unhinged leftist ‘reporter.’...But even among leftist hacks, Amanpour is a special case: It’s almost as if she’s trying to mock herself — a Trump-is-a-Clinton-plant conspiracy theory, if you will, but in the mainstream media. She referred to devout Christianity as “totalitarian” in her August 23, 2007, CNN profile “Christian Warriors.” But in 2008, she fawned over the “progress” achieved by Fidel Castro, and in 2013 she wished Zimbawean dictator Robert Mugabe a happy birthday. If a higher-profile (read: important) person had such a rich historical cache of commentary, they would have already been driven...

Takeout food? Yeah! That's just the ticket! It's about as good excuse as consumerism to explain the economic woes of Venezuela. A few weeks ago reporter Nicholas Casey of the New York Times almost completely avoided any mention of socialism and placed the blame for Venezuela's economic woes on a vague "consumerism" during an interview on National Public Radio's Fresh Air as chronicled in Newsbusters by Clay Waters. Since that "consumerism" excuse seems to have been widely mocked, Casey went to bat with an even more laughable excuse, comparing Venezuela's economic woes to someone who has been ordering takeout food for years...

...Chávez was either admired as a progressive visionary who gave voice to the poor or dismissed as just another third-world buffoon. Reality was more complex than that: Chávez pioneered a new playbook for how to bask in global admiration even as he hollowed out democratic institutions on the sly.Step one was his deft manipulation of elections. Chávez realized early that, as long as he kept holding and winning elections, nobody outside Venezuela would ask too many questions about what he did with his power in the interim. And so he mastered the paradoxical art of destroying democracy one election at...

Some U.S. lawmakers still take their jobs seriously, especially members of the House Committee on Homeland Security. You see, as a crowning component of his fetish for “normalizing” relations with (embracing and subsidizing) the Terror-Sponsoring Castro-Family-Crime-Syndicate (called “Cuba” by Obama and his lapdog mainstream media) President Obama has given rapid and enthusiastic approval for six U.S. airlines to start flying one hundred direct flights a week from nine airports in Terror-Sponsoring Cuba to fifteen airports in our homeland.In light of this, some members of the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security thought it prudent to check on what security measures...

A staggering 87 percent of Venezuelans say they do not have money to buy enough food, the most recent assessment of living standards by Simón Bolívar University found. About 72 percent of monthly wages are being spent just to buy food, according to the Center for Documentation and Social Analysis, a research group associated with the Venezuelan Teachers Federation. In April, it found that a family would need the equivalent of 16 minimum-wage salaries to properly feed itself. Ask people in this city when the last time they ate a meal, and many will respond that it was not today....

“Socialism failing to work as it always does, this time in Venezuela,” Scully said. “You talk about giving everybody something free and all of a sudden there’s no food to eat. And who do you think is the richest person in Venezuela? The daughter of Hugo Chavez. Hello. Anyway. Oh and two.”

In 2001 a group of Castroite spies in south Florida known as the Wasp Network were convicted of charges ranging from espionage to conspiracy to commit murder (of U.S. citizens.) They were sentenced to terms ranging from 15 years to two life sentences. According to the FBI’s affidavit, the charges against these KGB-trained Communist spies included: • Compiling the names, home addresses, and medical files of the U.S. Southern Command’s top officers and that of hundreds of officers stationed at Boca Chica Naval Station in Key West.• Infiltrating the headquarters of the U.S. Southern Command.This past April, on Obama’s orders,...

Food riots and violent looting have become a daily occurrence across scarcity-struck Venezuela and a major problem for the struggling leftist government of President Nicolas Maduro. Despite hours in lines, Venezuelans increasingly find that coveted supplies of subsidized flour and rice run out before they can buy them. Many are skipping meals, getting by on mangoes stripped from trees - or taking matters into their own hands.

What happens when a National Public Radio host interviews a New York Times reporter on the subject of Venezuela’s economic collapse? You get a perfect storm of cluelessness. The host is Terry Gross, the guest is New York Times reporter Nicholas Casey, and the program is Fresh Air. Gross asks Casey about the utter disaster that Venezuela has become. Casey understands the depth to which Venezuela has fallen–he lives in Caracas!–but he can’t bring himself to offer an honest diagnosis.

Until recently, Julio Noguera worked at a bakery. But he now spends his evenings searching through the garbage for food. "I come here looking for food because if I didn't, I'd starve to death," Noguera said as he sorted through a pile of moldy potatoes. "With things like they are, no one helps anyone and no one gives away meals." Across town, unemployed people converge every dusk at a trash heap on a downtown Caracas sidewalk to pick through rotten fruit and vegetables tossed out by nearby shops. They are frequently joined by small business owners, college students and pensioners...

The Broad-based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE) Amendment Bill eliminates all white people including the disabled. “The definition of black people is now clear and aligned with the Constitution,” Tlhoaele said.... Read more on South Africa Today