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Police in Nicaragua have ended the siege of a church where opposition supporters had sought refuge after being attacked by riot police and pro-government militias. Doctors have been allowed to treat the injured inside the church in the city of Masaya. Two people have died. Some 30 people who were inside the church were released after the local Catholic Church intervened. More than 100 people have been killed in Nicaragua in six weeks of violence. … Ortega, the former Sandinista rebel leader, is in his third consecutive term in power. He was re-elected in 2016, after the constitution was changed...

Daniel Ortega, the rabid, "freely elected" dictator of Nicaragua, and a guy who's been at it for so long that even the great Ronald Reagan knew about him and loathed him, has been having some problems in the Cuba-style hellhole he created in the name of "social justice." The socialist thug has been siccing his goons to shoot protesters dead in the streets after a few of the youthful ones got the ball rolling with protests against his long, corrupt rule.  Get a load of how bad it was, according to the BBC: Some students said they had been beaten and...

You've heard of skunks at the garden party? Such as still-ruling Nicaraguan socialist strongman, Daniel Ortega, who got his famous nickname from none other than the great Ronald Reagan? Well, now we have pigs at the garden party of democracy, the Organization of American States' Summit of the Americas, and this time, quite literally. At the globally watched summit, locals released a bunch of pigs through the streets of the Peruvian capital of Lima, around the Plaza San Martin, which is one of its main public spaces, spray-painted with the names of Venezuela's dictator, Nicolas Maduro, and Cuba's dictator, Raul...

As that Old Saying goes, "Birds of of a feather flock together" With all the revelations about President-elect Barack Obama's Socialist Party Ties, it is not surprising that he would try add like minded people into his cabinet. Former Congressman David Bonior fits the bill. Obama was a member of the Chicago chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, Bonier was a Boston member. Here's a little snippet from the 9/07 issue of the Yankee Radical, the Boston DSA's Newsletter It should also be noted that Edward’s recent statements on this issue have shown real improvement, which might be due...

...praised the Vermont lawmaker and even empathized with his humble beginnings. “He is an emerging candidate with a renovating and revolutionary message,” Maduro told a crowd congregated in Caracas to commemorate the “Anti-Imperialism Day” — a holiday created last year to mark March 9 as the day President Obama declared Venezuela a national security threat. ... Meanwhile, during the Wednesday night debate Sanders was asked to comment on positive remarks he made in the past about Cuba’s Fidel Castro and Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, two close allies of Venezuela’s Chavismo. One of the hosts played a 1985 video in which Sanders...

PUNTA BRITO, Nicaragua — One of the largest engineering projects in history would start here, on this desolate and pristine crescent of dark-sand Pacific beach. From in front of the hammock-swinging shrimpers on the porches of their tin-and-wood shanties, the trench would run east in sinuous curves up through the mangroves and banana fields until it reaches the shores of Central America’s largest freshwater lake, then cut across the Caribbean highlands and through indigenous territory, ending its journey 172 miles away on the beaches of the Atlantic. They call it the Grand Inter-Oceanic Canal: an audacious $50 billion plan by an...

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega has banned two American lawmakers from his country after they helped push through legislation last week to ban Venezuelan officials from the United States. “Just like they [U.S. officials] have their lists, we can make our own lists in Latin America of those who shouldn’t enter our country,” Ortega told Costa Rica’s Tico Times. Sen. Marco Rubio and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen laughed off Ortega’s ban, The Miami Herald reported. …

The Liberal Agenda: On the heels of Sunday's "People's Climate Change" march came Monday's "Flood Wall Street" demonstration, starring limousine liberal darling Naomi Klein. So who is Klein, and why is she such a hot ticket? Not since the 1980s, when Daniel Ortega, Nicaragua's Marxist dictator, bought $3,000 sunglasses on Fifth Avenue during a U.N. General Assembly have we seen such a confluence of free-market hate and consumer hog-wallow. But the leaders of the Climate Change March and the "Flood Wall Street" Occupy reunion put left-wing hypocrisy on full display this week in their loathing for capitalism and all-too-eager enjoyment...

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, a Marxist and long-time friend of Communist Cuba and who Ronald Reagan once described as a “little dictator,” criticized Israel’s actions against Hamas terrorists as genocidal and said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “appears to be possessed by the Devil” and “needs Pope Francis to exorcise it.” "Prime Minister Netanyahu appears to be possessed by the Devil; he needs Pope Francis to exorcise it, to become appeased,” Ortega was quoted as saying on Aug. 1 in Globovision. Ortega also said that Israel is “committing genocide” in Gaza, a crime so “terrible that it is only comparable...

(Original title: John Kerry, Barack Obama, and Ukraine Foreign Policy) In 1984, Jeane Kirkpatrick, a lifelong Democrat who Ronald Reagan appointed Ambassador to the United Nations, took to the stage at the Republican National Convention in Dallas. The Republicans and this Democrat roundly mocked the unseriousness of the Democrats who wanted to replace Ronald Reagan. Calling them “San Francisco Democrats” — the Democrats had held their convention in San Francisco — Kirkpatrick delivered many broadsides that ring true today. As she said of these San Francisco Democrats, “they always blame America first.” The San Francisco Democrats in 1984 included the...

Colombia has announced it is negotiating with China to build an alternative to the Panama Canal. The proposed transport route is intended to promote the flow of goods between Asia and Latin America. The plan is to create a "dry canal" where the Pacific port of Buenaventura would be linked by rail, across Colombia, to the Atlantic Coast. Trade between Colombia and China has increased from $10m in 1980 to more than $5bn last year. The announcement came from the Colombian president, Juan Manuel Santos, who told the Financial Times that the project was "a real proposal... and it is...

The recent border dispute between Costa Rica and Nicaragua is a sign of an ambitious plan by Venezuela, Iran and Nicaragua to create a "Nicaragua Canal" linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans that would rival the existing Panama Canal. Costa Rica says that last week Nicaraguan troops entered its territory along the San Juan River – the border between the two nations. Nicaragua had been conducting channel deepening work on the river when the incident occurred. Sources in Latin America have told Haaretz that the border incident and the military pressure on Costa Rica, a country without an army, are...

Nicaragua's parliament is due to vote on Thursday on one of the biggest infrastructure projects in Latin America's history – a trans-oceanic canal that is to be built and run by a Chinese company. If it goes ahead, the $40bn (£26bn) scheme, which is twice as expensive as Brazil's Belo Monte dam and likely to be three times longer than the Panama canal, looks set to transform global shipping and jump start the economy of this Central American nation. As well as the waterway, the draft agreement between Nicaragua and a Hong Kong registered firm — Nicaraguan Canal Development Investment...

Nicaragua has approved plans for a mysterious Hong Kong-based company to build an estimated $40 billion canal across the middle of the country, Luis Manuel Galeano and Michael Weissenstein of The Associated Press report. The waterway, which would have to be roughly three times as long as the 50-mile Panama Canal, would be one of the largest infrastructure projects ever. The plan has some serious detractors: Environmentalists say it would devastate Lake Nicaragua, the country's primary source of fresh water, while shipping experts say that it may be an economically unfeasible power play by China. The company, HK Nicaragua Canal...

If Honduras manages to preserve its democracy despite U.S. pressure to abandon it, the tiny Central American country may wind up thanking Nicaragua's Danny Ortega, of all people. Last week, President Ortega inadvertently provided the best defense yet of the Honduran decision this summer to remove Manuel Zelaya from the presidency. Nicaragua has a one-term limit for presidents, and Mr. Ortega's term expires in 2011. However, the Nicaraguan doesn't want to leave, and so he asked the Sandinista-controlled Supreme Court to overturn the constitutional ban on his re-election. Last week the court's constitutional panel obliged him. The Nicaraguan press reported...

Democracy: Daniel Ortega muscled Nicaragua's courts to permit his permanent re-election, effectively making him dictator. He's not alone. After the U.S.' shabby treatment of tiny Honduras, a new wave of tyrants is rising. 'Nothing can stop me from re-election," crowed Ortega, a man Ronald Reagan once called "the little dictator." Last Monday Nicaragua's Supreme Court issued a ruling permitting the Marxist Ortega to run for a second term after he and a group of allied mayors petitioned them, overruling a one-term limit in the constitution. Same old Ortega: His dictatorial hunger hasn't changed. But one thing is different: U.S. actions...

Prosecutors in Honduras say a decomposed, bullet-riddled body found near the border with Nicaragua has been identified as the purported leader of a shadowy Nicaraguan resistance group.

With U.S. policymakers distracted by the situation in Honduras, Nicaragua continues to move toward authoritarianism. On October 19, a Nicaraguan Supreme Court panel overturned a constitutional provision limiting presidents to two non-consecutive terms in office. The ruling will allow incumbent Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega--the Sandinista party leader, former Soviet client, vociferous critic of the United States, and current Hugo Chávez acolyte--to run for another term in 2011. If there were any doubts that Nicaraguan democracy is slowly being extinguished, this latest development should remove them. The Nicaraguan Supreme Court is composed of 16 members. Thanks to a political deal made...

MANAGUA, Nicaragua — The presidents of Nicaragua and Venezuela offered Friday to grant asylum to NSA leaker Edward Snowden, one day after leftist South American leaders gathered to denounce the rerouting of Bolivian President Evo Morales’ plane over Europe amid reports that the American was aboard. Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua and Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela made their offers during separate speeches in their home countries Friday afternoon. Snowden has asked for asylum in numerous countries, including Nicaragua and Venezuela. “As head of state, the government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela decided to offer humanitarian asylum to the young American...

MANAGUA — Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega said Friday his government was willing to give political asylum to US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden "if circumstances permit" it. "We are open, respectful of the right to asylum, and it is clear that if circumstances permit it, we would receive Snowden with pleasure and give him asylum here in Nicaragua," Ortega said at a public event.