Free Republic

Iran is increasing its military presence in Venezuela, with officials and personnel, with some members of the country's elite acquiring properties in the Latin American country and being offered political asylum ... The relationship between the two countries has grown over the years, Infobae has detailed, with Iran having established a drone development base at the El Libertador air base in Venezuela, where training for Venezuelan military personnel is also carried out. That project includes the production and training in the use of a wide range of unnamed aerial vehicles (UAV) Among them are the ZAMORA V-1 (Shahed-131), used for...

Latin America is undergoing a political transformation. Seven countries in the region have recently or will soon hold elections: Bolivia, Honduras, Chile, Costa Rica, Peru, Colombia and Brazil, in chronological order. In the four elections that have already taken place, the right wing triumphed; while in the remaining three, according to polls, conservative presidential candidates are highly likely to win.. This shift is namely due to three factors: the governance failures of the left-wing parties, new evidence of the close relationship between the left and organized crime, and the significant influence of the United States’ new National Security Strategy... The...

Early on the morning of March 16th, 1984, William Buckley left for work at the American embassy in Beirut, Lebanon. Officially, Mr. Buckley, a decorated veteran of the Special Forces, served as the political officer at the embassy. In reality, however, Mr. Buckley was the embassy’s CIA station chief. On his way to the compound, Buckley’s car was stopped by a group of masked men, who forced him from his car at gunpoint. His assailants would later be identified as terrorists from the group Islamic Jihad, which served as an alias for the real perpetrators, Hezbollah. The circumstances surrounding the...

Goodfellow’s BedfellowsWho’s in Bed with the Washington PostBy Fedora Introduction I. A Radical Education: Boston University and Cambridge-Goddard II. Vietnam Roots: Indochina Resource Center A. Luce at International Voluntary Services B. Luce and Cornell’s Hanoi for Lunch Bunch C. Luce’s Tiger Cages and the Indochina Mobile Education Project D. Luce and Branfman: The COLIFAM Connection E. Luce, Branfman, Winter Soldier, and Project Air War F. The Indochina Resource Center: Branfman, Luce, and Goodfellow G. The IRC and the Indochina Peace Campaign: The Hayden-Fonda Link III. Post-Vietnam Transition: Campaign for a Democratic Foreign Policy and Coalition for a New Foreign and...

More than a dozen Latin American leaders joined the U.S. president to launch a new security initiative, called ‘The Shield of the Americas’ in Miami.DORAL, Fla.—U.S. President Donald Trump on March 7 welcomed his Latin American allies to Florida for a summit focused on addressing regional issues and announced a new military coalition to combat drug cartels in the Western Hemisphere. “On this historic day, we come together to announce a brand new military coalition to eradicate the criminal cartels plaguing our region,” Trump said as he began his remarks at the summit. He said that the new partnership, called...

Their revolution could soon be coming to an end. January 3, 2026. Caracas. 2:47 AM. The helicopters had come in low over the Caribbean, running dark. The Delta Force operators on board were well-rehearsed. By 3:29 AM, it was over. Thirty-two Cuban bodyguards lay dead in the compound. Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores were in flex cuffs, hustled onto a transport aircraft bound for New York. At Mar-a-Lago, President Trump watched the operation unfold in real time with his national security team. It was January 3—exactly 36 years to the day since American forces had extracted military dictator Manuel...

Sanctioned Ilyushin Il-76 follows same flight pattern seen before Maduro's capture in VenezuelaA Russian cargo plane typically used to transfer military equipment landed at a military airfield in Havana Sunday night, echoing flight patterns seen ahead of the capture of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela.The U.S.-sanctioned Ilyushin Il-76, operated by Russian state-linked airline Aviacon Zitotrans, was tracked landing at San Antonio de los Baños Airfield, a Cuban military installation roughly 30 miles south of Havana, according to public flight data.Flight-tracking records show the aircraft stopped in St. Petersburg and Sochi in Russia; Mauritania, Africa; and the Dominican Republic. Each landing would...

Maryland governor Wes Moore (D.) declared he won't waste "a second" of his time finding his missing graduate thesis, which he now claims made him an expert on Hamas. Oxford University, meanwhile, refuses to confirm whether Moore was ever a doctoral candidate in 2006, a representation he made in the résumé he submitted that year to obtain a prestigious White House fellowship that jump-started his political career. "I am not going to spend a second of my time trying to dig up a paper that I wrote 20 some odd years ago because a blog, because a right-wing blog post...

It has been disappointing but not entirely surprising to see the widespread hysteria in Europe in support of the illegitimate Maduro gangster regime in Venezuela, and the new round of anxiety about a possible US military seizure of Greenland. The pedantic fuss-budgetary about the legality of the American action in Venezuela is nonsense. Former President Maduro and his wife were authentically indicted in New York during the Biden administration as drug traffickers intimately involved in illegally bringing into the United States large quantities of lethal narcotics. President Trump is correct in his conclusion that this traffic caused the death of...

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega sent a letter to Russian leader Vladimir Putin, offering his full support for Russia’s actions in Ukraine and recognizing the occupied Ukrainian territories of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia as part of Russia, as was reported on July 30. -snip- The letter, co-signed by Ortega’s wife and Vice President Rosario Murillo, expressed solidarity with the Russian people and praised the sacrifices of Russian military families. Ortega also reiterated Nicaragua’s support for Russia’s so-called “special military operation,” which the Kremlin claims is being conducted to protect Russian citizens and defend its sovereignty. In the letter, Ortega stated,...

Here is a Latin America map (image), I marked in green the countries already pro US, and even pro Trump: * Argentina. * Chile * Panama (nothing new) * Paraguay * Honduras

Below is a geopolitical map of the Western Hemisphere as I see it today. The principal geopolitical foes of the US in the Western Hemisphere—Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua—are firmly in the China and Russia camp.Other countries can shift depending on the outcome of recent elections.Here’s an overview of some of the most geopolitically important countries in the Western Hemisphere to help frame the broader picture.VenezuelaA military confrontation over Venezuela appears increasingly likely.Since Hugo Chávez’s rise to power in 1999, Caracas has aligned itself with Russia and China. Venezuela’s vast oil and gold reserves make it a geopolitical prize. The country...

Dec. 17 (UPI) -- Latin America's political shift toward conservative governments was reinforced this week when Chileans elected far-right politician Jose Antonio Kast for the 2026-2030 term. It was the largest vote total ever recorded in a presidential election there. Chile's result strengthened a regional trend that is reshaping domestic political balances and points to closer political and economic alignment with the United States. Chile became the latest country in the region to deliver an electoral swing by handing victory to the opposition and rejecting the ruling coalition's candidate backed by President Gabriel Boric, a leftist. The outcome reflects a...

TEL AVIV –The Democrat strategist identified as an architect of the social protests currently rocking Israel previously ran the campaign of Bolivia's former president, who was ushered into office amid escalating social protests in that country.After Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada took power in Bolivia in 1985, he quickly implemented an economic "shock therapy" crafted by Jeffrey Sachs, a Columbia University professor who sits on the board of an organization literally seeking to reorganize the entire global economic system. That group is the Institute for New Economic Thinking, or INET.Philanthropist George Soros is INET's founding sponsor, with the billionaire having provided...

The Trump administration on Thursday said import taxes on coffee and bananas will be lowered as part of trade deals with four Latin American countries. The agreements with Argentina, Guatemala, El Salvador and Ecuador come as US President Donald Trump faces scrutiny over his handling of the economy and concerns about affordability. As part of an initial framework, a reciprocal tariff of 10% will stay on goods from Guatemala, Argentina and El Salvador, as will a 15% rax on imports from Ecuador into the US. But the deals will exempt products that cannot be produced in the US "in sufficient...

Over the past year, Hezbollah has faced a growing existential crisis, intensified by the targeted assassinations of senior figures including Fuad Shukr, Ibrahim Aqil, Jawad Tawil, and particularly Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah and his successor, Hashem Safi al-Din. Once Iran’s most formidable proxy and a significant strategic actor in the Middle East, Hezbollah now contends with depleted leadership, military setbacks, and mounting international pressure. Does this signal genuine weakening within the Shiite terrorist organization? According to Lebanese sources, Hezbollah is undertaking drastic measures to ensure its survival, notably relocating the families of hundreds of senior commanders to Latin America. Lebanese journalist...

A report from the USDA last year estimated an outbreak of screwworm could cost Texas at least $1.8 billion due to livestock deaths, labor costs and medication.The first human case of the flesh-eating parasite new world screwworm has been detected in the United States, the Department of Health and Human Services said early Monday. The case, related to a person who had recently traveled to El Salvador, was confirmed to be screwworm by the CDC on Aug. 4, HHS spokesman Andrew G. Nixon confirmed to Reuters, who first reported the story. "The risk to public health in the United States...

Argentine President Javier Milei channels his $1 million Genesis Prize into a groundbreaking alliance, bringing Israel closer to Latin America through the newly launched Isaac Accords. In a bold diplomatic move underscoring his unwavering support for Israel, Argentine President Javier Milei has announced the launch of the Isaac Accords – a visionary initiative aimed at boosting cooperation between Israel and Latin American nations

The famous DataRepublican data analyst dropped damaging information she had gathered about Code Pink's connections to the communist Chinese government after the group threatened legal action against her. The database kernel engineer, whose real name is Jennica Pounds, said Wednesday on social media that the group sent her a message accusing her of libel. "We are writing to formally address and correct the false and defamatory statements made in your recent social media posts regarding CODEPINK," the group reportedly wrote. "These claims — which falsely allege that our organization is funded by China, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), or any...

The most vulnerable nations on Earth are facing a “tidal wave” of debt repayments as a Chinese lending boom starts to be called in, a new report has warned. The analysis, published on Tuesday by Australian foreign policy thinktank the Lowy Institute, said that in 2025 the poorest 75 countries were on the hook for record high debt repayments US$22bn to China. The 75 nations’ debt formed the bulk of the total $35bn calculated by Lowy for 2025. “Now, and for the rest of this decade, China will be more debt collector than banker to the developing world,” the report...