Free Republic

Little attention has been paid recently to Nicaragua. "Only right," you may well respond. "After all, that tiny, troubled country in Central America became only relatively important when the Marxist Sandinistas took over in 1979 -- becoming temporarily the 'second Cuba' in the hemisphere." But recently, despite the dearth of news coverage, Nicaragua has become pivotal again. Recent events there confirm that there is indeed a new pattern emerging in the hemisphere that is certainly cause for alarm.

Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega (R) and his wife Rosario Murillo gesture during a meeting in Managua October 20, 2009. REUTERS/Cesar Perez/Nicaragua Presidency/Handout WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States on Thursday expressed concern about a Nicaraguan court ruling that opens the way for leftist President Daniel Ortega to seek re-election in the 2011 election. Nicaragua's Supreme Court on Monday issued a ruling that helped to clear the way for Ortega to run for another term, following a petition from him and a group of mayors last week. The country's electoral court said it would comply with the ruling. The U.S. State...

"Obama doesn't know what he's doing!" snapped Honduran foreign minister Enrique Ortez this July, 4. "He doesn't know anything about anything!" continued Ortez. "He probably can't even find Tegucigalpa on a map."   The U.S. was then (as now) denouncing the democratic Honduran government's actions to uphold their constitution and thwart a Chavez/Castro satrap hell-bent on converting their nation into a client narco-state for Hugo Chavez. Honduras' Supreme Court voted unanimously to oust Zelaya, and her legislature voted the 125- 5 for same. The five contrarian legislators belong to Honduras' Communist party, long known for dutifully carrying water for papa Fidel....

A few weeks ago, at a public celebration to mark the 30th anniversary of the 1979 Sandinista revolution, Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega moved one step closer to creating an autocracy. Speaking to a large crowd, Ortega called for changing the Nicaraguan constitution to allow his own reelection. Under current law, Nicaraguan presidents are prohibited from serving consecutive terms and are limited to two five-year terms overall. In order to be "just and fair," said Ortega, whose term ends in 2012, the country should amend its constitution to let presidents seek reelection. His timing was impeccable. The ongoing political crisis in...

It's good, occasionally, to take a trip down memory lane. It helps to put things into perspective. Hugo Chavez ought never to have been elected president. By rights, he ought to be growing old in a jail cell somewhere. Well, it's been seventeen years, maybe he’d be in a half-way house by now. As an army officer in 1992, he led a military revolt against the legal, constitutional government of Venezuela, and attempted to overthrow the democratically elected president of the time, Carlos Andres Perez. He gambled that once the shooting started, the minister of defense and the rest of...

MANAGUA, NICARAGUA -- While the second round of dialogue (regarding Honduras) ended without an accord in Costa Rica, the deposed president of Honduras, Manual Zelaya, announced he has begun organizing resistance to the new Honduran government after the failure of negotiations in San Joe, while the mediator of the crisis (Oscar Arias) asked for more time to avoid a civil war in Honduras. "As of now, we have begun to do everything to organize the internal resistance so I can return to the county," Zelaya said in a press conference in Managua. The former president made these declaration just hours...

MANAGUA, July 19 (Reuters) - Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, a former guerrilla fighter, said on Sunday his country should extend presidential term limits after neighboring Honduras toppled its leftist president in a coup over the same issue. Ortega, a U.S. foe during the Cold War, first ruled Nicaragua after taking power in a 1979 Marxist revolution.

Edén Pastora threatened to attack Honduras According to the former military, the Honduran conflict could only be resolved by guns. 18.07.09 - Updated: 18.07.09 06:56 pm - Writing: redaccion@elheraldo.hn Tegucigalpa, Honduras . Former Nicaraguan guerrilla Eden Pastora, threatened to take up arms if there is no agreement in Costa Rica on the return of Manuel Zelaya as president. Pastora, a former Sandinista commander, is known for having led the command that took the National Palace, in the late 70s, during the Somoza dictatorship. See the biography of Eden Pastora According to El Universal of Venezuela, "Commander Zero," he told the...

Suddenly, size matters. That’s the central conclusion of a lengthy Washington Post article Monday that sought to assess the national security implications of Iran’s 2007 move into leftist Sandinista President Daniel Ortega’s Nicaragua. The newspaper’s badly belated first weigh-in on the Islamic Republic’s most northern presence in the Americas wound up fixating on a curious detail: the physical size of the Iranian embassy there. Was it a huge mega-embassy, as some U.S. officials have said? A smallish embassy? Something mid-range but perhaps aspiring to be architecturally grandiose? The Post’s writers, offering no basis for such a wacky thesis, seem to...

The Obama administration jumped quickly into the fray over the removal and expulsion of president Manuel Zelaya from Honduras, calling the action a “coup” and demanding his reinstatement. Fellow Democrats in Congress followed suit, but The Hill reports that they may be changing their minds. Suddenly, they have begun acknowledging the crimes Zelaya committed and stopped calling for his return to office: Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), chairman of a key House subcommittee with jurisdiction over Honduras, roundly criticized both factions at a Friday hearing. But he also stopped short of calling for Zelaya’s immediate reinstatement, which he’d done in previous...

It took the Obama administration less than eight hours to side with Cuba's Fidel Castro, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega over the ouster of Manuel Zelaya in Honduras. As we have come to expect, Mr. Obama got it wrong again, but this time, nobody noticed. The U.S. news media, preoccupied with the sudden demise of Michael Jackson, ignored the event in Central America. For those who care about things more important than the passing of a "pop music legend," here's the rest of the story: Manuel Zelaya, a wealthy rancher and agribusiness executive but self-described "poor farmer," won...

Honduras says Nicaragua has troops moving on border 05 Jul 2009 20:20:26 GMT Source: Reuters TEGUCIGALPA, July 5 (Reuters) - Honduras' interim President Roberto Micheletti said on Sunday Nicaraguan troops were moving to the mutual frontier and urged Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega to respect Honduran sovereignty. He gave no further details about troop movements in Nicaragua which shares a border with Honduras to the southeast of the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa.

Standing unified with his amigo Hugo Chavez, President Obama appears ready to engage in a spirited defense of another leftist head of state, Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, who was tossed out of power and out of the country over the weekend. While it took days for Obama to pass judgment on events following Iran's presidential election, he swiftly expressed "deepest concern" over Zelaya's ouster at the hand of the Honduran government. A few hours after the ouster, Obama called on leaders in Tegucigalpa to "respect democratic norms," which would seem to be a call to restore Zelaya to power. There...

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In condemning the removal of Honduran President Mel Zelayaya by the Honduran military, Pesident Obama stands shoulder to shoulder with the Fidel Castro and his thug epigones Hugo Chavez and Daniel Ortega. Zelaya sought to conduct an illegal referendum to extend his rule. The Honduran military has sought to enforce the rule of law by providing for Zelaya's departure from the scene. Mary Anastasia Grady explains: Yesterday the Central American country was being pressured to restore the authoritarian Mr. Zelaya by the likes of Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega, Hillary Clinton and, of course, Hugo himself. The Organization of American States,...

One of Venezuela's main opposition leaders, who is facing a corruption trial in his own country, has arrived in Peru, Peruvian officials say. Manuel Rosales, who ran against President Hugo Chavez in the 2006 presidential poll, has said the charges against him are politically motivated. He had been in hiding since charges were filed last month. Peruvian officials said Mr Rosales was in Lima as a tourist and had so far not requested asylum. Mr Rosales, who is mayor of Venezuela's second biggest city, Maracaibo, is facing multi-million-dollar corruption charges relating to his time as the governor of Zulia state.

After he sat listening to a 52-minute tirade about America the Fascist Imperialist tyranny, a droll Barack Obama told the media that the rant by Nicaragua’s Daniel C. Ortega “wasn’t about me.” No, it wasn’t. It was about America which evidently didn’t concern the narcissistic U. S. president since it involved John F. Kennedy, not he. And it did not occur to him to defend America since he himself wasn’t named: thus the narcissism. Also the lack of patriotism. Criticism about Obama back here has centered on his spinelessness and unwillingness to defend his country from attack. Yes, that’s part...

The president's critics ought to lighten up. We should give him credit for not knowing any better. (He was "finished" and "polished" at Harvard, after all.) Barack Obama is an accident of history, a street hustler from the South Side of Chicago with the gift of gab who landed on the world stage like a whale beached at the whim of a storm, the wrong man at the right time...The masses...eagerly stepped forward to take the pledge of the cult. This wouldn't be one of Dr. Freud's difficult cases. He was born to a mother obsessed with the pursuit of...

MY president went to Trin idad and Tobago, and all I got was this lousy Che Guevara T-shirt. At a Caribbean resort, Obama grinned through a semi-erotic encounter with Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, then failed to answer a "strategic rape" charge lodged against America by ex-Sandinista Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua (who knows plenty about rape). Ignoring America's allies in favor of photo ops with anti-American leftists, such as Ecuador's Rafael Correa and Chavez, Obama blamed the United States for Latin America's problems. Whoa! Plenty of US policies toward Latin America have been misguided and myopic. But the primary causes of...

Daniel Ortega at the Summit had a 50 minutes anti American rant, this, a portion of that speech translated, from the CNN.com webcast. Obama didn't respond to this, being previously made comfortable from sitting in Jeremiah Wright's church for 20 years, probably felt right at home..

A summit meeting of Latin American and Caribbean leaders in Trinidad has ended without a consensus on a final declaration. Thirty-four countries spent two days in talks on the issues facing the continent, but were unable to agree on a clear statement. In a positive outcome, the United States and Venezuela agreed to work towards improving their frosty relationship. US President Barack Obama says he feels that many countries in the Americas want a more constructive relationship with the United States. "I do not see eye to eye with every regional leader on every regional issue and I do not...

PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad – President Barack Obama offered a spirit of cooperation to America's hemispheric neighbors at a summit Saturday, listening to complaints about past U.S. meddling and even reaching out to Venezuela's leftist leader.

Ortega denounced the U.S.-backed attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro's new Communist government in Cuba in 1961, a history of US racism and what he called suffocating U.S. economic policies in the region. In his 17-minute address to the summit, Obama departed from his prepared remarks to mildly rebuke Ortega. "To move forward, we cannot let ourselves be prisoners of past disagreements. I'm grateful that President Ortega did not blame me for things that happened when I was three months old. Too often, an opportunity to build a fresh partnership of the Americas has been undermined by stale debates. We've all...

PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad – President Barack Obama offered a spirit of cooperation to America's hemispheric neighbors at a summit Saturday, listening to complaints about past U.S. meddling and even reaching out to Venezuela's leftist leader. While he worked to ease friction between the U.S. and their countries, Obama cautioned leaders at the Summit of the Americas to resist a temptation to blame all their problems on their behemoth neighbor to the north. "I have a lot to learn and I very much look forward to listening and figuring out how we can work together more effectively," Obama said. ... Later, during...

President Obama endured a 50-minute diatribe from socialist Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega that lashed out at a century of what he called terroristic U.S. aggression in Central America and included a rambling denunciation of the U.S.-imposed isolation of Cuba's Communist government. Obama sat mostly unmoved during the speech but at times jotted notes. The speech was part of the opening ceremonies at the fifth Summit of the Americas here. Later, at a photo opportunity with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Obama held his tongue when asked what he thought about Ortega's speech.

CAMARILLO, Calif. – A woman tortured by Nicaragua's Sandanista regime is pleading with the United States for asylum, but American immigration officials have shown her little sympathy – even though she faces rape, abuse and possibly death if she returns to her country. Sandinista torture Nicaragua President Daniel Ortega has employed neighborhood committees called Citizens Power Councils, or CPCs, used by his corrupt left-wing Sandinista party to spy on citizens, intimidate and torture them. Auxiliadora Martinez, 23, is a political refugee and campaign organizer for Eduardo Montealegre, Constitutionalist Party candidate for Managua mayor. She told WND the CPCs attacked her...

MANAGUA -- To offset the recent wave of factory closings and work suspensions at U.S. textile and manufacturing plants in Central America, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega is asking the U.S. government for an economic bailout plan for Central America. Speaking at Wednesday's extraordinary presidential meeting of the Central American Integration System, Ortega went against the current of other leaders in attendance by criticizing the U.S.-Central American Free Trade Agreement-Dominican Republic (CAFTA-DR) as being fickle and unjust. Despite the promises of CAFTA-DR, Ortega said, ``What's happening now is that they are closing U.S. investment linked to the trade agreement in Central...

I am pretty sure that I remain the only American reporter to have traveled to leftist President Daniel Ortega’s Nicaragua to find out what the Iranian government is doing there. I apologize if I missed something out there. While I appreciated having the exclusive at the time, more than a year after my travels I continue to wonder why there there is such a persistent lack of curiosity from my mainstream press corps colleagues. The press, quite rightly, has swarmed like migrating wildebeest all over the the Islamic Republic of Iran’s burgeoning economic and diplomatic ties to Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela...

MIAMI, March 16 -- Mauricio Funes, a former TV newsman who was recruited to run for president, declared himself the winner of El Salvador's presidential contest Sunday night, bringing into power a leftist party built by former guerrillas and ending two decades of conservative rule. Funes, a dynamic speaker and political outsider who compares himself to President Obama and pledged to be an agent of change in the small Central American nation, was leading the polls late Sunday night with 51.2 percent of the vote and more than 90 percent of the ballots counted. Turnout was high and election day...

Sounding more like a rebel leader than the president of a democratic republic, Daniel Ortega last week called for a permanent Sandinista insurrection to “struggle constantly” against what he calls “the enemy.” Ortega's inflammatory words came hours after Sandinista mobs clashed violently with anti-government protesters who marched on nine cities Feb. 28 to protest last year's alleged election fraud and what many consider the return to dictatorship here under the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN). Sandinista mobs shot mortars and threw rocks at opposition protesters, who responded in kind. Liberal Party lawmaker Luis Callejas – one of several people injured...

From PoliticalWarfare.org... Compañera Panetta, with Hugo Chavez and Daniel Ortega January 10, 2009 This photo shows Chavez with his arm around Linda Panetta, while former Sandinista junta leader Daniel Ortega smiles on, at left. You saw it here first. If the adult daughter of a CIA Director-designate hangs out with sworn enemies of the United States, it's a matter for the United States Senate to probe aggressively. And so the Senate really has to ask some very pointed questions about Linda Panetta, daughter of President-Elect Obama's pick to lead the CIA, and her ties to Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega and...

If the adult daughter of a CIA Director-designate hangs out with sworn enemies of the United States, it's a matter for the United States Senate to probe aggressively. And so the Senate really has to ask some very pointed questions about Linda Panetta, daughter of President-Elect Obama's pick to lead the CIA, and her ties to Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega and Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. Linda Panetta is a noted anti-military activist who has accused the US military of teaching Latin American officers how to torture. She has also been close to causes hostile toward the United States and friendly...

Ortega said the current crisis would hit remittance flows to Nicaragua, as immigrants sending money home to relatives lose their jobs in the United States due to the slowdown.

Russia offered aid to the leftist government of Nicaragua on Wednesday, a former Cold War ally, as part of a push to increase its influence in Latin America after years on the sidelines in the region. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin was in the Central American country following a tour of Cuba, where he promised to help areas devastated by recent hurricanes. Sechin said his country wants to promote trade, energy and education projects while increasing "political cooperation" with Nicaragua. Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, a former Marxist guerrilla, had close ties to Moscow when he first governed the country...

A bitter political-cultural confrontation that exploded in Nicaragua in late August could mark the final end of the passionate romance between the world’s leftist intellectuals and Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega. Ortega, you may recall, was the leader of the Sandinista National Liberation Front when it seized power after overthrowing the 40-year Somoza family dynasty. A dashing young revolutionary who electrified liberals and leftists around the world, Ortega served as Nicaragua’s president for most of the 1980s. He lost power in 1990, but after 16 years in opposition, he was elected president again in 2006. For years — in and out...

Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega charged Saturday that the opposition was "openly conspiring" with US help to overthrow his government, and threatened to unleash "weapons of war" if they did not stop. Thousands of Nicaraguans marched against Ortega last month after the Electoral Tribunal disqualified two political parties from the November municipal and the 2011 general elections. "We want peace, but we're also prepared to raise the steel weapons of war if they try to overthrow the people's government, the power of ordinary citizens," Ortega said on the 29th anniversary of the rebel uprising that overthrew the Anastasio Somoza dictatorship. The...

A woman was shot 13 times by the father of her two young boys today, and the man then took the children and fled, authorities said. The shooting occurred about 10:40 a.m. at a home in the 10000 block of McBroom Street, near the 210 Freeway just west of Sunland. The woman, who was not identified, is in serious condition at a local hospital, police said. The father, Jose Luis Ortega, 27, and the woman got into an argument after she dropped the boys off at the house, said Los Angeles police Officer Julianne Sohn. Ortega then pulled out a...

MANAGUA, Nicaragua — The government billboards and graffiti in this sultry city tell a visitor a lot about the ideological battle racking Nicaragua. President Daniel Ortega Saavedra beams from the billboards, promising “Citizens Power” as a solution to Nicaragua’s endemic poverty. “The world’s poor arise!” the signs say. But beneath the billboards, on walls and benches all over town, others have scrawled “No to CPC. No to dictatorship.” The graffiti alludes to Citizens Power Councils — or C.P.C.’s. In December, Mr. Ortega established the neighborhood committees, which are controlled by his left-wing Sandinista party and administer antipoverty programs, despite a...

Return to the Article April 27, 2008Another Obama MarxistBy Lance Fairchok Barack Obama has a thing for Marxists. He befriends them, listens to their counsel, and he even hires them to work in his campaign.  And they seem to feel the warmth.  President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, who led a revolution there in 1979,  says Barack Obama's presidential bid is a "revolutionary" phenomenon, and Americans are "laying the foundations for a revolutionary change." A captured computer revealed that an unknown person chatted with Marxist FARC guerillas on Obama's behalf (they believed), stating he would be the next President and US policy...

MANAGUA, Nicaragua - Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega announced Thursday that he is breaking off relations with Colombia because of his country's opposition to the Colombian raid on a guerrilla base in Ecuador. Ortega announced his decision publicly after meeting with Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa, who is on a multination tour in the region to rally opposition to Colombia's action, which killed the No. 2 commander of the Colombian FARC guerrilla group and 23 other Colombian guerrillas. "We are breaking off relations because of the political terrorism being carried out by the governnent of Alvaro Uribe, not because of the Colombian...

Election 2008: It always helps to know how America's enemies size up presidential candidates. South of our border, for example, Barack Obama draws praise from Nicaragua's dictator as John McCain enrages Cuba's.Daniel Ortega, the Marxist whom President Reagan once called "the little dictator," is feeling the love these days. Perpetually at odds with Reagan, who funded the Contra resistance in a war against his bid to turn Nicaragua into a Soviet beachhead, Ortega is pleased with what he sees in Barack Obama. He has called Obama a spokesman for Nicaragua's illegal immigrants in the U.S. and has said Obama's campaign...

MANAGUA, Nicaragua: President Daniel Ortega, who led the 1979 revolution in Nicaragua, says Barack Obama's presidential bid is a "revolutionary" phenomenon in the United States. "It's not to say that there is already a revolution under way in the U.S. ... but yes, they are laying the foundations for a revolutionary change," the Sandinista leader said Wednesday night as he accepted an honorary doctorate from an engineering university. Ortega led a Soviet-backed government that battled U.S.-supported Contra rebels before he lost power in a 1990 election. He returned to office last year via the ballot box.

MIAMI - At the end of Nicaragua's civil war, Juan Gregorio Rodriguez traded his life as a Contra rebel for that of auto mechanic in Florida. He kept in touch with other rebels and supported their political efforts, but mostly from afar. That changed in 2006, when the Contras' nemesis, Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega, was elected president, 16 years after his Soviet-backed government lost power in a vote that ended the guerrilla conflict in which some 30,000 people died.

MONKEY POINT, Nicaragua — If the ruling mullahs of the Islamic Republic of Iran were chafing enough about U.S. Navy vessels in the Strait of Hormuz to send speedboats after them last month, they must take some comfort in having projected an equivalent threat in America's own backyard, in this unlikeliest of locales.

Nicaraguan leader Daniel Ortega is reverting to radicalism, writes JAIME DAREMBLUM. But the opposition is fighting back. When Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega returned to power as president of Nicaragua last year, there were encouraging signs that this time would be different. Ortega’s first term as president in the 1980s was marred by failed socialist economic policies, his support of Communist revolutions in the region, and a military conflict with the U.S.-backed Contra rebels. Even so, at the time of Ortega’s election in late 2006, Latin American democrats hoped this onetime revolutionary had abandoned his radical past in favor of a...

MONKEY POINT, Nicaragua — The second military helicopter in as many days hovered over the jungle and then landed to a most unwelcome reception from several dozen angry Rama Indian and Creole villagers. Rupert Allen Clear Duncan, a leader of some 400 Creole who live along the shoreline, confronted the foreigners dressed in suits and military uniforms that day in March and demanded to know the purpose of their aerial trespasses. "This is our land; we have always lived here, and you don't have our permission to be here," Duncan spat, when refused the courtesy of an explanation. Not until...

SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) - The king of Spain told Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to "shut up" Saturday during a heated exchange at a summit of leaders from Latin America, Spain and Portugal. Chavez, who called President Bush the "devil" ...

Translator - AltaVista/Babelfish: SANGTIAGO DE CHILE. - The United States had to pay 50,000 million dollars to Nicaragua by their support in the decade of 1980 to the "cons", maintained Central American president Daniel Ortega during XVII the Latin American Summit. "the United States must pay to Nicaragua a compensation of 50,000 million dollars by the sanction that applied in 1986 the Court the International to him of Is It", it affirmed Ortega Saturday in an extensive speech in which it reviewed to American interventions in the world. Ortega indicated that There is condemned It to the United States by...

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega has accused foreign textile companies, mostly Taiwanese, of "enslaving" workers and leaving the country instead of paying higher wages. Ortega said several industries closed in free zones following the government's recent decision to increase the minimum wage by 18 percent. "There is talk that the companies are going to leave the free zones, that people are going to be left unemployed," the leftist Ortega said in a speech late on Wednesday. "When they find that they have to pay more, it is no longer worthwhile and they leave," he said. The president said the owners of...