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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...