Free Republic

Diplomacy: As the Castros rejoice at President Obama's move to normalize ties, extend trade credits, take their country off the terror list and free its deadly spies, the queasy question remains: What did the U.S. get in return? The question is being asked by the more serious leaders in Washington. Marco Rubio for one. "(Obama's) foreign policy is, at a minimum, naive and perhaps truly counterproductive to the future of democracy in the region," said the Florida senator in the wake of the giveaway. "Barack Obama is the worst negotiator that we've had as president since at least Jimmy Carter,...

Fresh off his 2012 re-election victory, President Barack Obama summoned senior advisers to a series of meetings, asking them to “think big” about a second-term agenda, including the possibilities of new starts with long-standing U.S. foes such as Iran and Cuba. Two years later, after painstaking secret diplomacy on separate but surprisingly similar tracks, efforts with Tehran and Havana are in full swing. The nuclear negotiations with Iran continue and are far from a guaranteed success. But Wednesday’s announcement that the U.S. and Cuba will normalize relations after more than 50 years of hostility suggests one of the last chapters...

WASHINGTON, DC -- U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, today released the following statement regarding the President’s announcement to change U.S. policy with Cuba and lift economic embargos. “We rejoice that Alan Gross’ wrongful imprisonment by the brutal Castro regime has finally come to an end, and that he will be able to spend the holidays with his loved ones. But make no mistake, although we are glad Alan is now free, the agreement the Obama Administration has entered into with the Castro regime has done nothing to resolve the underlying problem. Indeed, it has made it worse. “Fidel and Raul...

Colombian government negotiators reached agreement with Marxist FARC rebels on the illegal drugs trade, the third item on a five-point agenda in peace talks to end a five-decade war, a source at the High Peace Commission told Reuters on Friday.

Shortly after Hugo Chávez won his first election as Venezuelan president in December 1998, a lawyer from the western state of Barinas, which was then governed by Chávez's father, delivered a prescient warning to Newsweek magazine: "Venezuelans are dreaming of a savior, but Chávez is a dictator. People don't know what they are getting."  More than 14 years later, a cancer-stricken Chávez is reportedly near death, but his autocratic legacy is very much alive. Venezuela long ago ceased to be a real democracy: The ruling regime effectively controls the Supreme Court (which in 2004 was expanded and packed with Chávez allies), the National Assembly...

@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...

Islamic SocialismFrom the CIA factbook: Following a 1969 military coup, Col. Muammar Abu Minyar al-QADHAFI began to espouse his own political system, the Third Universal Theory. The system was a combination of socialism and Islam derived in part from tribal practices and was supposed to be implemented by the Libyan people themselves in a unique form of "direct democracy.[1] The "Green Book" - Arabism, Islam & socialism, with Islam the main line Author John L. Esposito: Under Qaddafi three interrelated ideas were woven into Libya's ideological identity: Pan-Arabism, socialism, and Islam. Qaddafi's appeals to Islam were influenced by his...

Colombia's main rebel group freed what it says were its last 10 military and police captives, a goodwill gesture that President Juan Manuel Santos praised but called insufficient to merit a peace dialogue.

Senator Chuck Schumer wrote a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton today calling for “increased scrutiny” of the Iranian Mission to the United Nations in light of potential terrorist attacks against New York City. Pointing to NYPD’s director of intelligence warning that Iran is “essentially” the number one threat, Mr. Schumer argued these diplomats must ”be vigorously monitored.” “With Iran’s increasingly bellicose and threatening behavior, it’s imperative that agents of the Iranian government in the United States receive additional scrutiny to ensure that they pose no threat to New York or the rest of the country,” Mr. Schumer said...

His full name is Simón José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad Bolívar y Palacios Ponte y Blanco, and his legacy is equally voluminous. Born on July 24, 1783, he was serendipitously raised in an age of revolutions, and was one of the key leaders in the struggle for independence from Spain which spread throughout Latin America. On June 15th, 1813 he dictated his “Decree of War to the Death,” and the rest is history. He would go on to lead Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia to independence from Spain. At one point he was dictator of Peru, president of Colombia,...

The FBI said it searched eight addresses in Minneapolis and Chicago as part of a terrorism investigation Friday. Warrants suggest agents were looking for connections between local anti-war activists and terrorist groups in Colombia and the Middle East. FBI spokesman Steve Warfield told The Associated Press agents served six warrants in Minneapolis and two in Chicago. "These were search warrants only," Warfield said. "We're not anticipating any arrests at this time. They're seeking evidence relating to activities concerning the material support of terrorism." The homes of longtime Minneapolis anti-war activists Mick Kelly, Jess Sundin and Meredith Aby were among those...

A woman and her baby die in Orito, southwest of Bogota, in a bomb attack that targeted a police station. A bomb has exploded at a police station in southern Colombia, killing two people and injuring at least seven others, the authorities said. Police General Rodofo Palomino said the blast killed the wife of the regional police commander and their eight-month old son. The commander, along with his two-year old son and four other people, were seriously wounded and flown to a Bogota hospital for emergency treatment. Palomino blamed rebels with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) for the attack, and...

Ecuador has deployed some 10,000 security forces to its border with Colombia to deal with a "most grave" security problem, President Rafael Correa said Saturday. Correa said the troops and police forces were deployed to bolster security amid concerns about "organized crime, drug trafficking (and) irregular groups," including paramilitary groups and Marxist guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia known as FARC.

As Occupy Wall Street droned on about the evils of corporate avarice last month, a multimillion-dollar international scandal broke in Bogotá, exposing greed and corruption in the "nongovernmental organization" (NGO) world of human rights.

Reuters) - Colombians rejoiced at the killing of top FARC rebel leader Alfonso Cano and hoped the biggest blow yet against Latin America's longest insurgency could herald an end to nearly five decades of war. In a triumph for President Juan Manuel Santos' hardline security policy, officials said forces bombed a FARC jungle hide-out in the mountainous southwestern Cauca region. Troops then rappelled down from helicopters to search the area, killing the widely hated Marxist rebel boss, his girlfriend and several other rebels in a gun battle on Friday. Pictures of his dead body showed him without his trademark beard,...

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — The top leader of Colombia's main rebel group, the bookish ideologue Alfonso Cano, was killed Friday in a military bombing in the country's southwest, authorities said. "The fingerprints matched," said one senior security official who confirmed the death, adding that Cano was killed in "a standard military operation" in Cauca state in which ground troops also participated. The official spoke on condition he not be further identified. Cano, the 63-year-old head of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, had been the top target of Colombian authorities since September 2010, when they killed the insurgency's...

Media: Just days before the U.S.-Colombia free trade pact heads for a vote, the Washington Post publishes a story claiming Colombia's miracle is a sham. This is a smear unworthy of the name "journalism." Topping the front page in its Sunday edition with "A case of aid gone bad in Colombia," the Post attempted to rewrite history by claiming the U.S.'s $8 billion Plan Colombia military program that broke the back of its drug cartels was really ... a waste. Pay no attention to the safety, security and economic growth that have made Colombia such an attractive partner for a...

MINNEAPOLIS – When Meredith Aby met with members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia in 2006, she asked what it would take to get them to stop fighting. Jess Sundin did the same during her trip to Colombia 11 years ago. They returned and openly wrote and spoke about their experiences, while criticizing the U.S. government’s involvement in that country. FBI documents recently found by the anti-war activists suggest the trips may have started an investigation into apparent connections between local activists and radical groups in Colombia and the Middle East. One document says the probe expanded to include...

The account of the female warriors from Colombia came this week as rebels identified a host of foreigners fighting for the Gadhafi regime or supplying the dictator with valuable material. Mercenaries are paid up to $1,000 a day, according to some reports. The rebels said they have captured Algerian mercenaries and claim that the authoritarian government of Belarus has sent more than 100 military advisers to help Col. Gadhafi. They said the regime also has received aid from supporters in Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Ukraine. Algerian and Belarusian officials have denied the rebels’ allegations. Officials with other governments cited...

MEXICO CITY – The most fearsome weapons wielded by Mexico’s drug cartels enter the country from Central America, not the United States, according to U.S. diplomatic cables disseminated by WikiLeaks and published on Tuesday by La Jornada newspaper. Items such as grenades and rocket-launchers are stolen from Central American armies and smuggled into Mexico via neighboring Guatemala, the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City reported to Washington. The assertions appear in embassy cables written after three bilateral conferences on arms trafficking that took place between March 2009 and January 2010 in Cuernavaca, Mexico; Phoenix; and Tapachula, Mexico, respectively. The cables’ authors...