Free Republic

n Monday, Nicaragua’s ruling Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) initiated an overhaul of the country’s constitution that will codify the rule of longtime dictator Daniel Ortega and his wife, Rosario Murillo, as “co-presidents.” The reform follows an escalating campaign of persecution against the Catholic Church, the last bastion of opposition against the Ortegas, who nonetheless claim that their regime is a beacon of “Christian socialism.” Days prior, they had celebrated the New Year by expelling all Catholic nuns from the country. Nicaragua’s attacks on the Church and broader descent into tyranny culminates the stunning fall from grace of an erstwhile...

Cuba has officially declared its intention to join South Africa’s case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the court announced on Monday. “Cuba, invoking Article 63 of the Statute of the Court, filed in the Registry of the Court a declaration of intervention in the case concerning Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip,” the court stated. With the move, Cuba joined Nicaragua, Colombia, Mexico, Libya, Bolivia, Turkey, the Maldives, Chile, Spain, Ireland and the Palestinian Authority, all of which had previously joined the South African...

Jimmy Carter's No Real Humanitarian by Gordon Smith When former President Jimmy Carter speaks to the graduates of University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill on May 3, the listeners might bear in mind that Carter's reputation for principled concern for the downtrodden is open to question. Carter has done some benevolent things after 1981, as ex-President. He's built homes for the poor, spoken eloquently on behalf of human rights, helped the Haitian dictator Cedras resign, and presided over the negotiations ending the Yugoslav War. While all of this is good, Carter presided over some serious war crimes in the Third World....

Burisma Holdings founder Mykola Zlochevsky, who allegedly paid a total of $10 million in bribes to Joe and Hunter Biden in 2015 and 2016 in exchange for then-Vice President Joe Biden’s assistance in getting Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin fired, is believed to be an asset of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) by the United States intelligence community, according to a national security source speaking to RedState on condition of anonymity. The official said:

US politics three national polls two of them giving Kamala Harris the lead... In New York City this week more FBI raids aimed at officials close to Mayor Eric Adams... Colin Gray the father of the suspect in the Georgia school attack yesterday arrested... Telegram CEO Pavel Durov making his first comments since his arrest...he was told that he could be held responsible for other people's illegal use of Telegram... "I don't know if I'm insulted or he did me a favor" Donald Trump's reaction to Russian President Vladimir Putin's comments earlier today... "you're not going to have an Israel"...

At least 47 killed in Israeli airstrikes on towns and villages... Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro accused of plotting a coup... Visible damage on an anchor of the Chinese merchant ship "Yi Peng 3"... German politics Chancellor Olaf Scholz will remain leader of the Social Democrats... The Illinois Supreme Court overturning the convictions of actor... Russian President Vladimir Putin tonight confirmed that a ballistic intermediate range missile without a nuclear warhead was used to strike... Here in Pennsylvania Democrat US Senator Bob Casey conceding to Republican challenger... Former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi the new choice...for Attorney General... ...Matt Gaetz...

The persecution of religious figures in Nicaragua, particularly those of the Catholic Church, has intensified since the 2018 protests against President Daniel Ortega’s government. According to a recent report by Colectivo Nicaragua Nunca Mas, a human rights organization operating in exile from Costa Rica, the situation has reached unprecedented levels of severity. The report reveals that more than 50 representatives of the Catholic Church, including 43 priests, have been banned from Nicaragua since 2018. This crackdown has resulted in the arbitrary detention of at least 74 religious figures and the stripping of nationality from 35 others. The organization describes this...

With the election and inauguration of Claudia Sheinbaum to the presidency, Mexico is rapidly descending into a dictatorship. Here's the marquee case: #Mexico's entering a #constitutionalcrisis. Pres @Claudiashein said she'll willfully fall in contempt of court after a federal judge orders congressional approval of the dismantling of the #judicialbranch halted due to legislative procedural violations-so much for the #RuleOfLaw. — Tony Payan (@PayanTony) October 19, 2024 Sheinbaum plans to ignore the courts and do what she wants, which doesn't portend much future for rule of law there. The MORENA party of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, and Sheinbaum seems to have...

Mexico is building the Interoceanic Corridor railway to compete with the Panama Canal and ease international trade. The new railway would aim to relieve the burden on the Panama Canal, which is struggling to receive shipments due to a drought. The Panama Canal has raised toll prices nearly eight-fold, and water levels at an all-time low make ship passage through the canal challenging. Mexico’s Interoceanic Corridor The $7.5 billion dollar project will stretch 188 miles across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. The railway will move containers from ships to the train and transport them to ships on the other side that...

Why shipping choke points like Panama are FUBAR and getting worse. Long, detailed explanation of all the problems.

For months, a withering drought has created major traffic jams at the Panama Canal. The drought, which may have been exacerbated by climate change, has left the canal’s water levels lower than ever, forcing Panama to let fewer ships through. The restrictions have led to delays, increased shipping costs, and uncertainty over the future of one of the world’s critical trade chokepoints. “This has fundamentally changed how shipping through the canal works,” said Soren Stokkebaek Andersen, a regional commercial manager at Leth Agencies, a shipping agency.

Two gas tankers crossed the Pacific, then U-turned within 10 miles of the Panama Canal, Bloomberg reported. An intense drought has lowered the canal's water level, limiting the number of ships that can pass through. That has created a massive backlog of ships waiting to cross, forcing some to seek alternate routes. Two gas tankers crossed the Pacific Ocean, but recently took a U-turn just short of the Panama Canal because of the huge traffic jam caused by low water levels, Bloomberg reported. The tankers, Pyxis Pioneer and the Sunny Bright, were within 10 miles of the canal before they...

In what is being called the “world’s worst traffic jam,” some 200 cargo ships are waiting to pass at the Panama Canal as, thanks to global climate change, the area experiences its worst drought in 100 years. As Futurism reports, the huge backlog has been growing for some time and might not get any better for a few weeks yet. The human-made passageway is famous not only as one of the world’s most impressive feats of engineering but as one of the most important trade routes on Earth. "..the flow of ships at the Panama Canal started at about 1,000...

Bolivian President Evo Morales met with German and Swiss officials in Bern, Switzerland, on December 14 to sign an agreement on building one of the largest infrastructure projects of the century—a coast-to-coast railroad across South America. The Central Bi-Oceanic Railway Corridor, or “Panama Canal on Railway Tracks,” will stretch from the Pacific coast of Peru, through Bolivia, and across Brazil to the Atlantic Ocean. The total length of the projected route is 2,333 miles. Paraguay, Argentina and Uruguay also plan to add connection routes to the corridor. Germany and Switzerland will assist in the ambitious project’s construction and will also...

Another connection that bridges this historical cooperation between the far right and far left into the modern age of terrorism is that between Carlos the Jackal and the Swiss Nazi Francois Genoud. Genoud's life, in fact, spans the history of this collaboration. Francois Genoud was an early admirer and proponent of Adolf Hitler's, and a founder of the National Front, a Swiss Nazi party. Genoud met and befriended Haj Amin al-Husseini and worked with him to recruit Arabs into the service of the Nazis. He also set up the Banque Commerciale Arabe in Geneva with Syrian money and ran the...

On the eve of the 2016 Presidential election, Issue #464 of Revolution announced in its headline, “In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE To Accept a Fascist America. . .Rise Up. . .Get Into The Streets. . .Unite With People Everywhere to Build Up Resistance in Every Way You Can. . .Don’t Stop: Don’t Conciliate. . .Don’t Accommodate. . .Don’t Collaborate”.Revolution is an online newspaper published by the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), a Maoist group descended from splinters of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). In 1969, RCP founder Bob Avakian and fellow Maoist H. Bruce Franklin had cofounded the...

The Biden-Harris parole program that allows as many as 360,000 illegal aliens a year from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela (CHNV) to enter the United States is not only illegal, but is fraud-ridden. The fraud is so massive that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) quietly paused the program in the hope they could get it fixed before the American public learned about the extent of the problems.

A Venezuelan court granted an arrest warrant Monday for opposition presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, who claims to have rightfully won July elections that authorities awarded to incumbent Nicolas Maduro.The court, the prosecutor's office said on Instagram, had granted its request for a warrant for Gonzalez Urrutia for "serious crimes."The office had earlier published its request to the court on social media, in which it listed the alleged crimes that stem from the opposition's insistence that Maduro and his allies stole the July 28 presidential vote.

The Nicaraguan newspaper Confidencial reported on Sunday that Russia established a spy center in one of Nicaragua’s military bases under the auspices of the country’s communist regime. Confidencial, citing unnamed sources in the Nicaraguan military, warned in its report that the communist regime uses the spy base’s systems to monitor embassies and detect possible “traitors” of dictator Daniel Ortega.

By the end of Biden’s term in office, his DHS will have arrested and released or allowed into American via the CBP One App and released over 1,000,000 illegal alien Venezuelans. It has been reported beyond argument that Venezuela has emptied her insane asylums and prisons and directed those individuals to America. What has happened to Venezuela’s murder rate? Well, Venezuela now claims the lowest murder rate in the last 22 years! I wonder what the number of murders of American citizens are at the hands of illegal alien Venezuelans. I would need a lot more space on Substack to...