Free Republic

A poor, agrarian, landlocked country in South America with a nearly 100 percent Christian population is hardly the place one would expect to become a hotbed of Islamic extremism in the Western Hemisphere. But a recent report by the Open Source Center (OSC) of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence says it's so. .... One Muslim leader named in the OSC report is Mahmud Amer Abusharar, founder of the Centro Islamico Boliviano (CIB) in Santa Cruz. Abusharar emigrated from the Palestinian territories in 1974 and claims to have built Bolivia’s first mosque in 1994 so that he would...

Caracas - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez Sunday praised the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president of Iran as a 'great victory' and condemned nay-sayers who have raised questions about the legitimacy of Friday's election results. Chavez, who hailed Ahmadinejad as a colleague and close ally, said such critics are 'spokesmen for imperialism.' He congratulated Ahmadinejad personally on the phone on Saturday and the two leaders agreed to meet in the near future. 'It has been a great victory' but it was being 'besmirched' by such critics, Chavzez charged. Iran's Interior Ministry said that Ahmadinejad had won Friday's election with more...

Barack Obama's obvious comfort level with leaders of unfree countries shouldn't surprise anyone. He is not only our first black president. He is also our first president who doesn't like the free country he was elected to lead and feels his job is to change it. Obama's cordial encounter with Venezuelan thug Hugo Chavez and his bow of deference in London to the Saudi Arabian king are extensions of behavior we have always seen on the black left. Jesse Jackson openly embraced Chavez, as well as having maintained relations with the likes of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi and Yasser Arafat....

Just two days after US President Barack Hussein Obama shared a controversial and landmark handshake with Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez at the Summit of the Americas, the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center has released a study analyzing the flowering alliance between the increasingly anti-Western Latin America and the virulently anti-Israel Iran. The study was conducted at the Israel Intelligence Heritage & Commemoration Center (IICC), a non-governmental organization dedicated to Israeli intelligence and terrorism issues. According to the study, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is using anti-Western Hugo Chavez as a springboard into several Latin American countries, such as Bolivia, Nicaragua, and...

National Security: Iranian missile experts are helping North Korea with the imminent launch of an ICBM that can hit Alaska and Hawaii. Imagine a Taepodong-2 with a nuke. This is no time to gut missile defense.The enemy of my enemy is my friend, the saying goes. On Sunday, the Japanese paper Sankei Shimbun reported that a 15-member delegation from Tehran has been advising the North Koreans on their imminent "satellite" launch since the beginning of March. Iran recently launched its own satellite to demonstrate its global reach. The Iranian experts include senior officials with rocket and satellite producer Shahid Hemmat...

/begin my excerpts Iranian Delegation in N. Korea to Monitor the Missile Launch 2009.3.28 20:09 While N. Korea is yet to launch its long-range missile, a group of 15 Iranians have been reportedly staying in N. Korea for 28 days since March 1st, according to authoritative source on N. Korean affairs. Following the invitation of N. Korean government, the group is participating in the launch preparation which would last 8 days until Apr. 4, and would also observe the launch. It reveals the close cooperation between N. Korea and Iran on ballistic missile development again. The visiting Iranians are high-level...

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...

United in Hate: The Left’s Romance With Tyranny and Terror FrontPage magazine.com - ‎Mar 4, 2009‎ But Glazov’s last two sections, on Islamism and then new romance of today’s far Left with terrorism, is by far the most important part of his book. ...

Melanie Phillips says there is a dangerous new alliance between anti-Israel Christians and radical Muslim groups, often plotting in secret against their common enemy Last weekend the Revd Stephen Sizer, vicar of Christ Church, Virginia Water appeared at an anti-Israel meeting with an Islamist called Ismail Patel. Patel has not only accused Israel of ‘genocide’ and ‘war crimes’ but considers Disney to be a Jewish plot and supports Hamas, Iran and Syria. Sizer is a virulent opponent of Christian Zionism and of Israel, which he has said he hopes will disappear just as did the apartheid regime in South Africa....

In the March 9, 2009 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, March 2), "Radical Islam is A Fact of Life. How To Live With it" Fareed Zakaria makes the case for why the West needs to adopt a more sophisticated strategy toward Radical Islam. Plus: Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman discuss the country's future in their first foreign media interview since winning in the recent election. Lastly: A review of the latest comic book inspired movie, "Watchmen."

Israel has informed Washington, Cairo and Nicosia that surface missiles bound for Hamas are concealed in the steel holds of the Cypriot-flagged Iran Hedayt which the US intercepted but did not stop in the Red Sea last week. Military sources report that after neither the US nor Egypt laid hands on the cargo when they had the chance, Cyprus finds itself stuck Saturday, Jan 31, with hard choices: the US and Israel are pressing Nicosia not to let the ship go without a further search for fear Israel will seize it and precipitate an armed clash with Iran. Tehran on...

BETHLEHEM, West Bank: Venezuelan flags and portraits of President Hugo Chavez have been flying high during protests in the West Bank against Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip. The Venezuelan president’s decision on January 6 to expel Israel’s ambassador from Caracas – the only country apart from Mauritania to take such a step – has made the left-wing South American leader a hero to Palestinians. Hamas has welcomed Chavez’s “courageous decision,” while Hassan Nasrallah, head of Lebanon’s Hezbollah group, urged Arab states to follow the Venezuelan president’s example. Chavez on Saturday accused Israel of being the “murder arm” of the...

The Venezuelan government expelled Israelí Ambassador Shlomo Cohen in protest against his country's military offensive in the Gaza Strip, in which hundreds of people are reported to have been killed. The decision was first announced by the Foreign Ministry, and afterwards by National Assembly President Cilia Flores, the Foreign Minister's wife, in the legislative chamber. Legislators, nearly all of them members of President Hugo Chávez' ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) applauded as Flores spoke. Chávez has publicly repudiated the Israeli military action, urging the government to withdraw its military forces immediately and to halt the violence. During a...

On Wednesday, November 26, a 39-year-old woman, Fatemeh Haqiqat-Pajouh, was hanged, together with nine male prisoners, in Tehran’s infamous Evin prison. A few days before Fatemeh’s execution, Medea Benjamin and Jodie Evans, two wealthy American women and co-founders of Code Pink, arrived in Tehran on a “citizen diplomacy” trip. Well known for their radical stances and for their continued disruption of political events like the Hillary Clinton event where they protested by exposing their nude upper torso — or as they call it, “breasts for bombs” — until escorted to the exit by security, and the Republican Convention, where they...

America seems to be asleep at the wheel once again: Brazil and Iran agree to take relationship to a new level. Iran's foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki said, "Iran affords South America major priority in its foreign policy and Brazil enjoys a special position in this respect.” While Brazil's counterpart, Mr. Amorim, said their meeting was a "turning point" that would lead to a new level of cooperation when the two President's meet in Tehran. Brazil's "special position" is in two areas: oil, and uranium. Brazil's decision to turn down an OPEC invitation in September was good. But with the price...

Iranian Hezbollah has set up training camps in Venezuela. It is expected that these "trainers" will then expand their operations, reported to be drug and weapons smuggling, and money laundering, to the countries Iran has established diplomatic relations with in the region. This is not news to the United States. The U.S. Navy and State Department are both well aware of this recent activity. An example is that of St. Vincent, (a large drug transfer point in the Caribbean), which has Iran providing funds for a new airport. The U.S. Ambassador to region recently asked the prime minster to break...

9/11: Chavez financed Al Qaeda, details of $1M donation emerge Osama Bin Laden: 9/11 made Chavez happy. Hugo Chavez: Terrorism sponsor, $1M to Al Qaeda. His Ambassador, Walter Marquez: Bin Laden's link. His pilot, May. Juan Diaz Castillo: Planned the operation, then defected. By Johan Freitas, in Caracas, with Luis Garcia, in Miami High-level military defectors reveal new terrorist links between Al Qaeda and Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez. The man who control's the largest oil reserves in the Western hemisphere gave $1 million to the world's most wanted terrorist right after the 9/11 attacks. Hugo Chavez would not admit it...

Iranian Industries and Mines Minister Ali-Akbar Mehrabian announced here on Sunday that the country has commissioned hundreds of millions of dollars worth of industrial projects in Venezuela. Speaking on the sidelines of a meet with Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro, the Iranian official said that two development projects in the housing and tractor manufacturing fields will soon be inaugurated, the Mehr News Agency reported. The two sides discussed the status quo of projects underway by Iranian entities in Venezuela as well as enforcing the 17 cooperation agreements inked in the fifth Tehran-Caracas joint economic session. Nicolas Maduro expressed his satisfaction...

October 4, 2008 Israel accuses North Korea of supplying Mideast with arms and nuclear technology Times Online and news agencies Israel has accused North Korea of supplying at least half a dozen Mideast governments with nuclear technology or conventional arms. World powers at a 145-nation Vienna meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency at the same time urged North Korea to stop reactivating its weapons-producing atomic programme. The comments focused on North Korea's black market role and its reversal of a commitment to mothball its nuclear activities in exchange for trade and security guarantees. In the latest setback, US chief...

Hong Kong, China — China’s official media have released photos of K-8 fighter trainers demonstrating impressive attack power against land-based targets. The aircraft are the same model that China has exported to Sudan, ostensibly for training purposes. However, the K-8 trainers are very much like standard attack aircraft, and their tactical application in the Sudanese Air Force is not only for training but also for land attack operations. The K-8 has flight endurance of three hours, a maximum flight range of 2,100 kilometers, and its combat radius covers the whole of Sudan’s territory