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Colombia's armed forces say they have killed a Farc rebel leader who acted as the group's main contact with Mexico's drug cartels. The rebel known as Oliver Solarte controlled drugs and weapons smuggling operations in southern Colombia, President Juan Manuel Santos said. He died in an attack on rebel positions near the border with Ecuador. It is the latest in a series of blows to the guerrillas, who have lost many of their top leaders in recent years.Farc setbacks President Santos said the death of Oliver Solarte was an "important blow" to the left-wing group. ""I want to tell them...

Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi is well known now for the abuses he has inflicted on his own people during more than four decades of brutal rule in Libya, but few remember the vast campaign of carnage and terrorism he orchestrated across West Africa and Europe when he was at the height of his powers. Nor are his more recent alliance with Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and his long-standing relationship with Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua -- both of whom are busy trampling their constitutions and moving toward dictatorship -- well understood. And the fact that all three governments support the Revolutionary Armed...

It's not every day that an American labor union gets investigated for possible ties to two of the world's most lethal terrorist organizations. But Chicago's Service Employees International Union Local 73 isn't an everyday union. Last September 24, FBI agents raided residences in Illinois, Minnesota and Michigan of more than a dozen radical activists in an effort to connect them to the Hamas (Gaza and the West Bank) and FARC (Colombia) guerrilla movements. Two of the occupants were SEIU Local 73 chief steward and executive board member Joe Iosbaker and former local board member-steward Tom Burke. Neither they nor anyone else has...

21st Century SocialismThe attempt to destroy democracy in Latin America.  The Obama administration started out on the wrong foot in world affairs. It used techniques better suited for domestic political campaigns — popularity contests — in its foreign policy. In our own hemisphere, the result was confusion for our allies and our enemies alike. The overriding objective of U.S. policy — in Latin America and elsewhere — should be to advance U.S. national interests, not to curry favor with foreign leaders. If we can be liked while advancing our interests, so much the better. But when we try to befriend...

Prominent current and former members of SEIU local 73 are being investigated for their potential ties to the Hamas and FARC terrorist groups. Late last year, their homes were raided by the FBI, and they were subpoenaed to appear in front of a grand jury for questioning. Joe Iosbaker, Chief Steward of SEIU 73, and Tom Burke (former board member of SEIU 73) are among 9 people who are subjects in the investigation. None of them have been charged with any crimes, yet. Two days ago, they refused again to appear in front of the grand jury. The interesting thing...

The release of over 250,000 diplomatic cables has revealed a lot about the intricacies of U.S. diplomacy. However, one aspect of the WikiLeaks release that has been much under the media's radar is what the leaked cables have said about Russia and its surrogate-state sponsorship of what would most accurately be described as an international terrorist network. In a diplomatic cable dated August 6, 2008, regarding a meeting between U.S. and Russian experts on the export of Man-Portable Air Defense Systems (MANPADS) from Russia, the State Department expressed its concern about "Russian ammunition, sold to Venezuela ... found in possession...

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Thursday he would promote a general accused by the United States of helping Colombian guerrillas smuggle cocaine, to armed forces' general in chief. General Henry Rangel is currently head of strategic operations and will be promoted to the top military rank as soon as Saturday, Chavez said. Rangel became embroiled in another controversy this week when a Venezuelan newspaper published an interview in which he reportedly said the army would not accept an opposition victory in the 2012 presidential election. In a live address broadcast on all Venezuelan TV and radio stations, Chavez said...

Think the IRA has stepped off the world stage? Their role is closer to that of ringleader. One of America’s most influential terrorist enemies traces its lineage back some thirty years — and it isn’t a Muslim organization.In splinter groups like the Continuity IRA and more recently the Real IRA, Irish terrorists have positioned themselves at the center of a network connecting revolutionary FARC rebels in Colombia, Hezbollah in the Middle East, al-Qaeda in Iraq, and Taliban forces in Afghanistan currently fighting and killing American troops. The IRA and PFLP have trained together and coordinated attacks, weapons smuggling, and other...

A DUTCH woman who joined Colombia's largest rebel group only to complain of disillusionment in a diary found in 2007 at an abandoned jungle camp has now appeared in a video pledging allegiance to the guerrillas. In a brief interview, Tanja Nijmeier, speaking in Spanish, said she was not being held against her will and was proud to belong to the left-wing Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. "Just come and try to 'free' me and we'll receive you here with AK (Kalashnikov rifles],, with mines, with mortars, with everything," she said in the video, which Colombian journalist Jorge...

US communists called for unity against McCarthy-style witch-hunts at the weekend. Their appeal came in the wake of a series of raids on the homes of 12 peace activists during which computers and photographs were seized. The Communist Party USA (CPUSA) said the September 24 raids had nothing to do with protecting the US people against terrorism and "everything to do with chilling the long-cherished tradition of the right to dissent." FBI and Joint Terrorism Task Force agents ransacked the activists' homes across the Midwest for evidence of "material support" for organisations such as the Popular Front for the Liberation...

The FBI arrests affirm an emerging terror alliance between American-based leftists, Islamic terror organizations, Colombia’s FARC, and Irish Republican groups. Weeks ago, news broke of a September 24 FBI raid on the homes of Minneapolis activists — part of an investigation related, as the Bureau told the Star-Tribune, to “the material support of terrorism.” But in the absence of further reporting by the mainstream media, Americans are left wondering just who these activists are, if they remember the story at all. An ongoing PJM investigation reveals that the revolutionary American socialists targeted by the FBI are connected at multiple levels...

When Juan Manuel Santos came into office as Colombia's president and emphasized economic issues over the fight against terrorist guerrillas, he was suspected of going soft on those he had combated as minister of defense under the previous administration. Little did his critics know that he was planning the "coup de grace" against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The devastating Sept. 22 attack on FARC headquarters in Colombia's central Meta province all but signifies the end of the five-decade-old conflict. It will take a little while for the official end to be declared, but this war is pretty...

Colombia's largest rebel group FARC will not be able to replace their recently slain military commander "Mono Jojoy," national police director General Oscar Naranjo told Colombian radio. In an interview with W Radio, Naranjo said that within the high ranks of the FARC there is no commander who is as feared as Mono Jojoy was before he was killed by armed forces on Wednesday. "There is no terrorist [within the FARC] who is able to generate so much intimidation ... They will not find a commander who can take up this role," the police commissioner said. Naranjo denied earlier reports...

Top FARC commander "Mono Jojoy" was killed by Colombian state forces. President Juan Manuel Santos confirmed the death of the rebel leader from New York City, where he is attending the U.N. General Assembly. The head of the FARC's Eastern Bloc and member of its Secretariat was killed in a massive air strike in a region called La Macarena in the central Colombian Meta department, 200 miles south of Bogota. Some 20 other guerrillas were killed and five members of the security forces were injured in the attack, the government's Defense Minister Rodrigo Rivera said. Mono Jojoy, also known as...

Victory: Colombia's army blew away the field marshal of FARC's narco-terror war Wednesday, showing with a jolt that to win, it's terrorists who must "absorb" attacks, not innocents. Mexico and the U.S. have much to learn. Seems the adage that Colombia is the only country where guerrillas die of old age isn't true anymore. On Thursday, Colombia celebrated news of the demise of Jorge Briceno, military commander and second-highest chief of FARC. The 57-year-old terrorist went down in a hail of bombs and gunfire over three days in a jungle bunker near La Macarena. The Colombian army suffered no deaths...

Colombia's military killed the field marshal and No. 2 commander of the country's main leftist rebel group on Thursday in the country's eastern plains, authorities said.

Thank you New Zeal http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iq9K90bvaX0&feature=player_embedded

SNIPPET: "BOGOTA – Police seized 100 kilos of pentolite and arrested five people, including four Ecuadorians, who were transporting the high explosive on a highway in southwestern Colombia, a police commander said Tuesday. A 17-year-old girl carrying a baby was among the foreigners arrested, the National Police commander in the southern border province of Putumayo, Col. Orlando Polo, said. Officers also seized 6,000 meters (6,565 yards) of detonating cord, Polo told reporters in Mocoa, the capital of Putumayo. The explosives and detonating cord were in a truck apparently headed for Florencia, the capital of neighboring Caqueta province." SNIPPET: "The pentolite...

Marxist rebels' open letter asks South American body to facilitate peace talksColombia's largest insurgent group asked the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) to help resolve the country's decades-old political struggle in a open letter published Wednesday. "Although the government of Colombia has closed the door to dialogue with the insurgency spurred on by the mirage of a military victory and Washington's interference, we want to convey to the Union of Nations of the South, UNASUR, our unyielding determination to seek a political solution to the conflict," said the letter from the communist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), published...

NOTE The following text is a quote: FARC Associate Pleads Guilty in Manhattan Federal Court to providing material support to a Foreign Terrorist Organization AUG 11 -- (MANHATTAN, NY) JOHN P. GILBRIDE, the Special Agent-in-Charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration's New York Field Division ("DEA") and PREET BHARARA, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced yesterday the guilty plea of JUANITO CORDOBA-BERMUDEZ, an associate of the 57 Front of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia ("FARC"), A Colombian terrorist group, to a Indictment charging him with participating in a conspiracy to provide material support to...