Free Republic

Before there was Iraq, there was Lebanon.  In 1982, following Operation Peace for Galilee, JINSA reported on the international terrorist haven that had arisen in Fatahland – the southern part of Lebanon controlled by Yasser Arafat.  Aside from the expected mélange of Middle Easterners, there were Japanese Red Army, German and Italian Red Brigades, Nicaraguan Sandinistas, Salvadorans, Colombians and Peruvians.  There were Iranian Shi’ites, East Germans and Bulgarians.  Before there was Iraq, there was Lebanon, again.  Religious Iran and secular, Ba’athist Syria made a deal to use Syrian-controlled Lebanon as a base for Hizballah to attack Israel.  Today, Israel...

LEON, Nicaragua (Reuters) - After years of setbacks, many Nicaraguans from Leon, the cradle of the 1979 Sandinista revolution, believe their aging former guerrilla leaders could soon return to power in elections that could also prove a diplomatic nightmare for Washington. "We need a change. It's been bad, bad, bad," said 60-year-old war Sandinista war veteran Daniel Sauro, referring to 16 years of pro-Washington governments that took power after Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega's electoral defeat in 1990. Sauro lives in a city where colonial churches and dilapidated houses are still splattered with aging bullet holes from 1970s street battles between...

CARACAS, Venezuela - U.S. missionaries accused by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez of espionage have been forced from their remote outposts among jungle tribes by a government order, the final pair leaving Thursday after years of evangelical work. The New Tribes Mission flew those two out of the rain forest to regroup with other missionaries in the eastern city of Puerto Ordaz. There they will decide what to do next: leave the country or continue with a legal battle seeking to overturn the government's order to expel them from indigenous areas by Sunday. Most of the group's missionaries are Americans. Since...

CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Thousands of supporters of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez marched in Caracas on Saturday to support the leftist leader in his dispute with Mexico's president over U.S. free trade proposals. State workers, unionists and students, many wearing red T-shirts, waved flags and anti-U.S. placards as they marched through the capital accompanied by trucks blaring revolutionary songs, Venezuelan folk ballads and Mexican mariachi music. Venezuela and Mexico withdrew their ambassadors on Monday after Chavez called his Mexican counterpart, Vicente Fox, a "lap dog" of U.S. imperialism for his close ties to Washington and told him, "Don't mess with...

MANAGUA, Nicaragua, March 20 - Raising tensions that have revived the politics and personalities of the cold war, the United States has suspended military assistance to Nicaragua because it has failed to move forward with the destruction of an arsenal of shoulder-launched antiaircraft missiles that the Bush administration considers a possible terrorist threat. American diplomats here said Friday that about $2.3 million in aid to the Nicaraguan Army had been suspended pending the destruction of the Soviet-made SA-7 missile systems. In Washington, a senior State Department official confirmed that "part of our security assistance is on hold" while an agreement...

MANAGUA, Nicaragua (AP)-Miskito Indians leaders on Thursday asked government and human rights investigators to probe allegations that at least 150 of their people were killed under Nicaragua's Sandinista regime.The leaders said that the country's independent Permanent Human Rights Commission should investigate and the government prosecute those who carried out the killings and burned houses, destroyed crops and slaughtered livestock.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This piece appears in the July 18th, 2005, issue of National Review. Twenty years ago this summer, Washington’s hottest debate centered on the Contras’ war against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua — and how to keep the nations of Central America from falling into the hands of Marxist terrorists or right-wing death squads. It was the equivalent of today’s Iraq debate. The eventual victory of freedom in Nicaragua came at a cost of tens of thousands of lives — and it is now in jeopardy. The hard Left in Latin America has learned its lessons: It is no longer...

Facing down the Sandinistas By Enrique Bolanos On Tuesday, April 26, in Managua, Nicaragua, I approached, face-to-face, a crowd violently protesting a 3-cent increase in the public bus fare -- a rise triggered by the recent world oil price surge. There had already been four days of violent street demonstrations centered around three national universities and orchestrated by the Sandinistas. Private buses and government vehicles had been burned and several policemen injured, two of them seriously. Public transportation had been paralyzed for several days and smoke from protesters burning tires in the streets wafted above the city, and the long-gone...

FORT STEWART, Ga. - A soldier who said he refused to return to duty because he opposes the war in Iraq left his unit as its job became more dangerous, his commanding officer testified Thursday. Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia, an infantryman with the Florida National Guard, is charged with desertion after failing to return to his unit in Iraq after a two-week furlough in October. He said his experiences in Iraq turned him against the war, and he claims he deserted his unit partly to avoid orders to abuse Iraqi prisoners. Capt. A.J. Balbo, the lead prosecutor, said in his...

MANAGUA (AFP) - Nicaraguan President Enrique Bolanos put the army and police on high alert amid mounting protests against bus fare hikes, which have prompted calls for the president to resign. Blaming the unrest on opposition Sandinistas, Bolanos said in an address to the nations he wanted the armed forces to be ready "to contribute to the maintenance of tranquillity and order in the country. He also urged police to "take all necessary measures to ensure security and freedom of movement across national territory." The announcement came hours after demonstrators hurled rocks Bolanos, who had to be dragged back...

Code PinkoBy Jean PearceFrontPageMagazine.com | March 26, 2003 Like any other group, Communists come in a lot of shapes, sizes and colors. This time they’re wearing pink, they’re on the nightly news, and more than anything, they want the mothers and grandmothers of America to identify with them. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think the leaders of the women’s anti-war group Code Pink got lost on their way to the carpool line. Since October, these hot pink-clad "marching moms" have been spinning the same tale to reporters from coast to coast, the one about how concern for their...

Treasonatrix Barbie: Meet the Real Marla Ruzicka April 21, 2005 By Debbie Schlussel When The New York Times, “Nightline,” and CNN nominate a young blonde for sainthood ahead of the Pope, it’s time for a reality check. Especially when that blonde, Marla Ruzicka’s sole purpose is to legitimize our enemies, cause problems for U.S. troops already in harms way, and morally equivocate dead terrorists with victims of 9/11. Jane Fonda lite—but unfortunately without having been spat upon by right-thinking veterans. The recent death of Ruzicka, an American “activist” in Iraq, elicited an orgy of gush—everywhere from Time Magazine to The...

A historian and former Sandinista leader who helped overthrow Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza is no longer scheduled to teach classes at Harvard Divinity School this spring after she said she was denied a visa because of her role in alleged "terrorist activity." Since 1998, Tellez has been president of the Sandinista Renewal Movement, a political party allied with the Sandinistas. At Harvard Divinity School, Tellez was scheduled to teach a class on Nicaragua and the Sandinista aftermath, as well as a seminar on Caribbean identity, race, and ethnicity.

Nicaragua: the Ortega former president will briguera the presidency in 2006 MANAGUA - the former president of Nicaragua and historical leader of the Face sandinist of national release (FSLN, left) Daniel Ortega was designated Sunday like candidate for the presidential one of 2006. This nomination is disputed by the renovating wing of the party. Daniel Ortega imposed his candidature. Herty Lewites, another historical head sandinist, however claimed the behaviour of primary elections. Herty Lewites, very popular in Nicaragua and better placed than Daniel Ortega, according to surveys', was even excluded from the Face to have announced its presidential aspiration....

When Gen. Omar Halleslevens was installed Monday in Managua as chief of the Nicaraguan army, the U.S. government was represented by a mere major at the change-of-command ceremony. The slight was intentional. Halleslevens is regarded at the Pentagon as a hard-line Sandinista, whose rise to power represents profound problems in Latin America. The Sandinistas, the Marxist-Leninist revolutionary party repeatedly rejected by Nicaraguan voters, are on the verge of accomplishing what U.S. officials call a ''golpe technico'' (technical coup), stripping President Enrique Bolanos of power. It is no isolated event restricted to a small Central American country. The Sandinistas have a...

Mexicans who toiled on U.S. farms between 1942 and 1964 under the Bracero program are ready to "besiege" U.S. President George W. Bush's ranch in Texas to press their demands for money owed them in their retirement, an activist who fought with Nicaragua's Sandinista rebels said Tuesday. José Puente León told EFE that the former braceros are determined to march on Bush's ranch just as they did last year on the ranch owned by President Vicente Fox in Guanajuato.

Communism is not dead in Latin America. In fact, the dominoes are falling south of the border, but no one seems to be noticing. “It’s a new day. Communism is dead. It’s even dead in Cuba.” So declared Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing in May 2002. “I hate to say it,” she continued, “it’s dead.” The senator’s proclamation was a surprise, no doubt, to Fidel Castro, whose regime was (and is) alive and as Red as ever. It also must have come as welcome news to the people of Cuba, still suffering, after nearly half...

MANAGUA, Nicaragua (AP) -- President Enrique Bolanos told U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld Friday that Nicaragua would completely eliminate a stockpile of hundreds of surface-to-air missiles with no expectation of compensation from the United States. The Sandinista party, now out of power, wants the United States to compensate the country for destroying the missiles, but a senior American defense official said that was unlikely.

In singular moments in our history, the security of the United States hinged on a single presidential election.... Today's vote determines how the United States finishes the present war against terrorists, and, indeed, whether we continue to defeat Islamic fascism.... John Kerry sees our struggle as an unending law enforcement problem, akin to gambling and prostitution. Thus the terrorist attacks of the 1990s were not deadly precursors to 9/11, but belong to a now nostalgic era of "nuisance." In contrast, George W. Bush envisioned September 11 as real war.... Most of Sen. Kerry's allegations about this war ring false or...

John Kerry's Fellow TravellersA 5-part series exposing John Kerry's Communist connections.Part 4: Subversion in the Senate: Kerry's Communist ConstituencyBy Fedora *NOTE: The term "fellow traveller" as used in this article series refers to someone who is not a member of the Communist Party (CP) but regularly engages in actions which advance the Party's program. Some apparent fellow travellers may actually be "concealed party members": members of the CP who conceal their membership. Which of these classifications is applicable to the Kerrys is a question this series leaves unresolved. This series does not argue for any direct evidence of Richard or...