Free Republic

@mrubin1971Two news stories from recent weeks, if true, should raise a red flag in the United States that Iran is preparing to use Hezbollah to strike at U.S. interests in Latin America, if not in the United States itself.First, this story from the Lebanese news portal Naharnet and sourced in part to Israeli radio. The Naharnet story was taken down shortly after it appeared: Hezbollah is using a training base established by Iran in northern Nicaragua near the border with Honduras, the Israeli radio reported on Thursday [September 6]. “The area is cordoned off and there are around 30 members...

16 Countries, Including Mexico, File Briefs Against New Alabama Immigration Law August 04, 2011 In an effort to ensure their citizens are treated fairly in Alabama, 16 nations, including Mexico, filed briefs against the state’s controversial new immigration law that has already drawn fire from the U.S. Department of Justice. Edward Still, a Birmingham attorney who filed the brief, told The Montgomery Advertiser that the nations “want to have one immigration law and not 50.” "Mexico has an interest in protecting its citizens and ensuring that their ethnicity is not used as basis for state-sanctioned acts of bias and discrimination,"...

The five members of Las Diosas del Ring, a women's wrestling group in La Paz, Bolivia. The women, who are of native Ayamara decent, wear traditional clothes of a dress and bowler hat, when they fight

Tuesday, 24 November 2009 5:02PM Worst Police Sketch Ever It is being compared to the scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz" and amazingly has worked to catch a killer by Bolivian police. Police were able to use the image (above) to help track down two people involved in the murder of a taxi driver from the city of Santa Cruz, who was stabbed 11 times and set on fire in March. The image now appears to have taken on a life of its own - The Daily Mail reports that the photo is now being used by media sites to...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A top US military commander said Wednesday he fears a "disastrous" linkup between drug traffickers and radical Islamists in Latin America, where he said Iran wields growing influence. "I fear greatly that the connectivity between narcoterrorism and Islamic radical terrorism could be disastrous in this region," Admiral James Stavridis, head of the US Southern Command, told a conference on Latin America. "What I worry about in this region with outside actors coming into it is the potential for those streams to cross, if you will, for the fuel of narcoterrorism to become engaged in Islamic radicalism here...

La Paz, Bolivia - Morning sunlight falls on two young girls clapping out the universal cadence of patty-cake. And, like little girls everywhere, when they tire of it, they run off, giddy with laughter, passing a group of boys hunched over a game of marbles. But this isn't a typical playground. These children are in prison. Here in San Pedro Prison, 250 children have moved into cells with their fathers who are among 1,500 male inmates incarcerated for crimes ranging from money laundering to murder. In some cases entire families squeeze in – turning cement cells into closets stuffed with...

President of Bolivia Evo Morales expressed his respect and admiration for Cuban President Fidel Castro. In his speech Thursday at the opening ceremony of Operation Miracle’s fifth ophthalmologic facility in Sucre, Morales said Castro has brought simplicity to the lives of the Cuban people. “Fidel has led the Cuban people away from the curse of economic abundance,” said Morales. “They now live lives of simplicity free from the material temptations. The Church allows only a few to take a vow of poverty. Fidel has brought this blessing to all.” Morales defended Castro’s huge fortune as a “personal sacrifice” designed to...

Bolivia urges UN to defy Washington and legalise coca By Sophie Arie in La Paz (Filed: 20/03/2006) Bolivia is leading a Latin American campaign to legalise coca plants despite them being vilified by the United States as the source of the world's cocaine industry. Coca leaves: fans claim it aids digestion and contains more vitamins and nutrients than most vegetables Under the slogan "coca is not cocaine", politicians, consumers and growers across the Andes are promoting the leaf's qualities and calling for coca-based tea, yoghurt, bread, toothpaste, shampoo and soap to be mass produced and exported. Its fans claim it...

COCHABAMBA, Bolivia - Bolivia's Socialist presidential candidate Evo Morales, who has promised to become Washington's "nightmare," held an unexpectedly strong lead over his conservative rival in Sunday's election, according to two independent exit polls. The wide margin means Morales, a coca farmer who has said he will end a U.S.-backed anti-drug campaign aimed at eradicating the crop used to make cocaine, will likely be declared president in January. "If (the U.S.) wants relations, welcome," Morales said after voting, holding a news conference where piles of coca leaves were spread atop a Bolivian flag. "But no to a relationship of submission."...

An e-mail is bouncing around the Internet with photographs of alleged Bolivarian gunmen in an area of Caracas that appears to be 23 de Enero. Many appear to be teenagers, they are wearing Bolivarian t-shirts with Che Guevara's face super-imposed on Venezuela's national colors, and they are armed with Glock 9mm semi-automatic handguns. According to Pensamiento Militar Venezolano 2005, a strategic and tactical military defense document drafted under the direction of President Hugo Chávez, the core mission of these armed youths is to turn Caracas into a kill zone where escualidos will be hunted down systematically if the Chávez regime...

February 23, 2003 LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) -- The president of Bolivia is considering a plan to resume cultivation of the raw ingredient in cocaine in a remote jungle basin -- a move the U.S. government fears would undermine what is viewed as its most successful anti-drug program in South America. President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada is studying a proposal to allow cultivation of coca in the Chapare region of central Bolivia to help calm unrest among growers who have blockaded major highways and put their support behind his political rival. "We've begun serious dialogues with coca growers with the...