Free Republic

Designating Hezbollah as a terrorist group is a legal tool On the heels of the Third Western Hemisphere Counterterrorism Ministerial Conference in Bogota, noted journalist Jana Beris from Colombia’s daily newspaper El Tiempo conducted an extensive interview with SFS Executive Director Joseph Humire on the implications of the recent terrorist designation of Hezbollah (and other Islamist terrorist organizations) by the Duque government in Colombia.  The following is an unofficial translation of the interview: JosephHumire, one of the foremost experts on Hezbollah and Iran in Latin America,doesn’t have any doubt: designating Hezbollah as a foreign terroristorganization isn’t just a political show—it’s a legal...

In the years leading up to the Civil War, many Northerners and Southerners alike wanted the federal government to take a more aggressive approach toward acquiring new territory. In fact, some private citizens, known as filibusters, took matters into their own hands. They raised small armies illegally; ventured into Mexico, Cuba, and South America; and attempted to seize control of the lands. One particularly successful filibuster, William Walker, actually made himself president of Nicaragua and ruled from 1856 to 1857. For the most part, these filibusters were just men in search of adventure. Others, however, were Southern imperialists who wanted...

Brazilian authorities said on Feb. 26 that tests confirmed the first case of the new coronavirus in the country. The 61-year-old man, who lives in Sao Paulo, traveled to Italy earlier this month. The confirmed case is the first in Latin America. Previously, only the United States and Canada had confirmed cases in the Americas. Brazil’s Ministry of Health said that the first test, which was done at Albert Einstein Hospital, came back positive. A counterproof conducted at the Adolfo Lutz Institute confirmed the infection. The patient is in good condition and is at home with his family, authorities said...

So long as the world is entertaining worst-case scenarios, the media does Americans no favors in omitting that Iran-Hezbollah has for years prepared to strike in their own hometowns. Weirdly absent from much of the professional speculation about where and how Iran will exact its promised “severe revenge” for the U.S. drone strike killing of Quds Force Gen. Qassem Suleimani is mention of the dead man’s highly suggestive hint. During a time of intense saber rattling between Iran and President Donald Trump in July 2018, Suleimani gave a speech during which he called out the American president: “Mr. Gambler, Trump!...

Qasem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s external terrorism forces eliminated overnight Friday by a U.S. drone strike, oversaw every military decision taken by Iran in Latin America, according to a report by the Argentine news network Infobae last year. Soleimani ran the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, the “elite” terrorism unit responsible for, along with Hezbollah, the 1994 bombing of the Argentine-Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA) headquarters in Buenos Aires. The attack was the deadliest in the Western Hemisphere prior to September 11, 2001, killing 85 people. Soleimani took over the Quds Force after that attack, in 1998, and focused...

If these predictions come to pass, their fulfillment will have lasting effects upon America in the 2020s and beyond. In 2008, as the Obama administration prepared to take control in Washington, retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey offered a list of bold predictions for the coming five years. Some of them bore out: The economy performed well globally despite the Great Recession, relations with Russia became more hostile without devolving into outright dysfunction, and the United States withdrew from Iraq right at the 36-month mark, which McCaffrey specified. Other predictions, such as a North Korean collapse, improved prospects for success in...

Catholic Traditionalism Booming in Latin America Pachamama triggers liturgical backlash ROME (ChurchMilitant) - The rise of Catholic traditionalism in Latin America, rooted in the Latin Mass, is rapidly reversing the long march of progressivism and Protestantism. "We see that traditionally oriented churches and seminaries are increasingly full, especially with young people, while those of progressive orientation, increasingly empty," Juan Migel Montes, director of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP), Rome, told Church Militant.  "Catholic traditionalism is back in fashion," an upbeat Montes said. "This explains the defeat the Left is suffering in ballot boxes everywhere as the social, political and cultural realities linked...

What will Americans face if southern countries fall into chaos? When President Trump proclaimed “Build the wall!” in 2015, pundits mocked the slogan as an empty promise, a simplistic non-solution, or a dog whistle for racist nationalism. But astute observers of Central and South American geopolitics heard something different. Rather than a call for a more robust physical barrier or even a byword for immigration reform, “Build the wall!” suggested that candidate Trump grasped the cataclysmic threat to U.S. stability evolving in the south. Unlike President Trump, however, few Americans think about what a multi-national breakdown of order among our...

QUITO, ECUADOR — Protesters here in this capital city dug up cobblestones to throw at the police and set fire to the office of the comptroller general. In Peru, enraged marchers picketed Congress and images of a traffic cone, hurled from a distance, crashing onto a lawmaker's head went viral. In Chile, protesters clashed with police, looted shops and burned buses. And in Bolivia, marchers have been peacefully confronting police decked out in full riot gear across the country. Across South America, October has been a month of public fury at elected leaders, in expressions ranging from social media ridicule...

Iran’s main proxy terrorist group is expanding in Latin America and networking with organized crime and other violent groups, according to U.S. and Argentinean officials. “It matters whether the U.S. can move the dial and thwart Iranian-backed penetration in our backyard,” Toby Dershowitz, a senior vice president at the U.S.-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told the Washington Examiner. "This may be the year that serves as a wake-up call for others in the region impacted adversely by Hezbollah’s malign activities — including but not limited to money laundering and narco-terrorism.” Faurie emphasized that Hezbollah has formed ties with historically...

The Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on Tuesday unveiled new travel restrictions to Cuba as part of President Donald Trump's foreign policy position. The Department amended the Cuban Assets Control Regulations (CACR) which now bans all non-family travel to the country. The State Department said the United States will no longer permit visits to Cuba via passenger and recreational vessels, including cruise ships and yachts, as well as private and corporate aircraft. The goal of the restrictions is to significantly hinder Cuba's economy and pressure its government to stop aiding Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro. “Cuba...

Latin America accounts for one third of world's homicides, life expectancy dropping in some countries: study. (Full title). The rising number of people being murdered across Latin America and the Caribbean is so high that the life expectancy in some of those countries is dropping, a new study claims. Unlike the rest of the world where homicide rates have generally dropped, statistics in some countries show that the murder rate has skyrocketed in recent years. So much so, that Latin America now accounts for about a third of the world’s homicides. ... more than 2 million people aged 15-19 in...

CARACAS - Buoyed by a telegenic new congressional chief, Venezuela’s opposition is daring to hope that President Nicolas Maduro’s days in office could be numbered, but the unpopular leader’s bedrock base - the armed forces - shows few signs of erosion. Opposition sympathizers, rallying around opposition leader Juan Guaido, are holding open air town-hall meetings that buzz with excitement about the legislature’s recent challenges to the legitimacy of Maduro, who this month began a new term widely slammed as illegitimate. Bolstered by the United States and numerous Latin American neighbors promising to back the opposition in seeking a transition, the...

President Jair Bolsonaro said in his address to the nation on Tuesday that Latin America’s most populous country has now been "liberated from socialism and political correctness". He promised to combat the "ideology of gender" teaching in schools, "respect our Judeo-Christian tradition" and "prepare children for the job market, not political militancy". Notable foreign leaders attending the inauguration include Hungary's hardline Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Israel's hawkish premier Benjamin Netanyahu, who has hailed a budding "brotherhood" with Brazil's new leader. Leftist Presidents Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela, Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua and Miguel Díaz-Canel of Cuba, deemed dictators by Bolsonaro,...

For non-Chinese journalists, in Africa and elsewhere, working for Chinese state-run media offers generous remuneration and new opportunities. When CCTV launched its Washington headquarters in 2012, no fewer than five former or current BBC correspondents based in Latin America joined the broadcaster. One of them, Daniel Schweimler, who is now at al-Jazeera, said his experience there was fun and relatively trouble-free, though he didn’t think many people actually saw his stories. But foreign journalists working at Xinhua, the state-run news agency, see their stories reaching much larger audiences. Government subsidies cover around 40% of Xinhua’s costs, and it generates income...

As this is being written, Manuel Zelaya, the ousted and exiled ex-president of Honduras, is holed up in the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital, having been smuggled there on Sept. 21. His followers acted like the anti-capitalist protesters who haunt G-20 meetings, smashing windows, spraying graffiti, attacking police cars, and suchlike. Here is how we got to this point: Zelaya was elected president of Honduras in 2005. His administration has been plagued by charges of corruption, with the impartial group, Transparency International, ranking Honduras under Zelaya as corrupt as Ethiopia, Indonesia, and Libya. In 2008, Zelaya joined the...

But Congressional aides said that less than 10 days after Mr. Zelaya was ousted, Mr. Noriega and Lanny J. Davis, a confidant of Mrs. Clinton and a lobbyist for a Honduran business council, organized a meeting for supporters of the de facto government with members of the Senate. Mr. Fisk, who attended the meeting, said he was stunned by the turnout. “I had never seen eight senators in one room to talk about Latin America in my entire career,” he said. As President Obama imposed increasingly tougher sanctions on Honduras, the lobbying intensified. The Cormac Group, run by a former...

<p>The Hondurans in the caravan, the 7,000 people walking north to America, where do they go to the bathroom?</p> <p>And eat and sleep and store their clothes?</p> <p>And how is it that after a week on the road they are clean and their hair and clothes are well kept?</p>

Migrants traveling with the 7,000-strong caravan headed to the U.S.-Mexico border to overwhelm the country’s asylum and immigration system are admitting that they are merely foreign workers looking for jobs. Migrants with the caravan — many of whom are previously deported illegal aliens — recently admitted to the Washington Post in interviews that they are economic migrants, not asylum-seekers. Evin Mata, a 21-year-old previously deported illegal alien, told the Post that his travels with the caravan to the southern border are about getting a U.S. job, which is not an eligible claim for asylum. “We are workers,” Mata said. “What...

As hundreds of thousands of desperate Venezuelans flee their country, in many cases on foot, their Latin American neighbors face a critical test: whether they can respond effectively to a crisis that threatens their own stability without the leadership of the United States. So far, they are flunking — and they know it. “The answer is, we can’t,” says Colombia’s ambassador in Washington, Francisco Santos. “It’s sad to say, but we can’t.”