Free Republic

CARACAS (Reuters) – Russia has agreed to lend Venezuela over $2 billion to finance the purchase of weapons including tanks and advanced anti-aircraft missiles, Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez said on Sunday. Chavez said the purchases agreed on a trip to Moscow last week included 92 tanks and the S-300 missile system, which is capable of shooting down fighter jets and cruise missiles. "We have to thank the Russian government, which approved a $2.2 billion loan for arms spending," Chavez said on his weekly television show. He did not say how much the new weapons cost. A major oil exporter, Venezuela's...

A senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary committee is demanding that U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration chief Anne Milgram address allegations of improper hiring and contracting of her past associates. The request Thursday by Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa follows an Associated Press investigation finding that a federal watchdog is investigating whether strict federal rules on no-bid contracting and hiring may have been violated to channel DEA work to Milgram’s associates. “These are serious allegations, and DEA must respond to them and clear the air,” Grassley wrote in a letter sent to Milgram’s office, a copy of which was obtained by...

On Tuesday, Attorney General Pamela Bondi held a press conference announcing a week-long, multi-agency and multi-law enforcement and tribal operation headed by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the New Mexico District Attorney’s Office. The operation resulted in huge drug busts and multiple arrests of high-level members of the Sinaloa cartel. According to Bondi, the agents garnered 11.5 kilos of fentanyl, including three million fentanyl pills — the largest seizure in the nation's history. The main head of the Sinaloa cartel, Alberto Salazar Amaya, was arrested along with five others, all in the country illegally. Amaya was arrested in Salem,...

A new deadly drug called carfentanil is in Santa Clara County, medical experts say. It's a synthetic opioid like fentanyl, but much stronger. On Wednesday, Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Michelle Jordan announced that the county's first overdose death due to carfentanil was reported last week. "Carfentanil is 100 times more potent than fentanyl," Dr. Jordan said. National Fentanyl Awareness Day highlights the dangers of the drug causing a crisis in San Francisco and killing thousands across the country. Last week, a 39-year-old man was found dead with M30 pills, counterfeit pills made to look like prescription oxycodone. "What I'm really...

Federal authorities announced Sunday that more than a hundred illegal immigrants were detained in a massive raid at an underground nightclub in Colorado Springs that officials say was "frequented by TdA and MS-13 terrorists." The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Rocky Mountain Division led a multi-agency operation early Sunday morning and arrested 114 illegal immigrants at the venue that contained more than 200 people inside. Authorities uncovered drugs, including pink cocaine, as well as evidence of prostitution and multiple firearms during the operation, according to the DEA. "@DHSgov has taken more than 100 illegal aliens into custody," DEA Rocky Mountain said...

The first RICO racketeering charges against members and associates of the migrant terrorist group Tren de Aragua were filed this week in New York. A statement by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York said that the case is part of "Operation Take Back America," which it said is a "nationwide initiative that marshals the full resources of the Justice Department to repel the invasion of illegal immigration, achieve the total elimination of cartels and transnational criminal organizations (TCOs), and protect our communities from the perpetrators of violent crime." According to the statement, the charges filed...

(CNSNews.com) - Amid growing concern about the illicit drug trade across the U.S.-Mexico border, the terrorist groups Hezbollah and Hamas have been linked to South American drug trafficking organizations–and the money Hezbollah and Hamas make from narco-trafficking is used to finance their organizations, according to the non-partisan Congressional Research Service (CRS). “International terrorist groups, including Hamas and Hezbollah, have also reportedly raised funding for their terrorist activities through linkages formed with DTOs in South America, particularly those operating in the tri-border area (TBA) of Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina,” stated CRS in an April 30 report. As evidence that Hezbollah and...

The president of Peru, Dina Boluarte, declared a state of emergency in the capital city, Lima, on March 18. The decree, which came amid a wave of violence, gives the police and military full control of the security situation there for a period of 30 days. Peru is no stranger to emergencies of this kind. Only last year, in September 2024, Boluarte’s government declared a 60-day state of emergency in 12 districts of the capital. The rationale for declaring the emergency now, as in the past, remains the same: to address the threat posed by criminal gangs. The latest emergency...

Not In Our Name and the World Wide Terrorism WebBy Michael TremoglieFrontPageMagazine.com | March 19, 2003 In the run-up to this war, Not In Our Name became one of the major “peace” organizers and coalitions in the United States. Not In Our Name has spared no cost purchasing ads in newspapers around the world to publish its anti-American Statement of Conscience.  Its signatories include scores of Hate America bigwigs, like Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Michael Parenti, Gloria Steinem and Barbara Kingsolver.  Hollywood icons (and many more has-beens) like Danny Glover, Jessica Lange, Tyne Daly, Martin Sheen and Ed Harris have...

FBI Director Kash Patel announced on Tuesday the extradition of an alleged MS-13 leader to the United States after his arrest in Mexico, marking a significant victory in the fight against international gang violence. The individual, who had been on the FBI's Most Wanted list, is accused of leading violent operations of "several offenses for his alleged role in ordering numerous acts of violence against civilians and rival gang members, as well as his role in drug distribution and extortion schemes in the United States and El Salvador." Patel praised the successful extradition as a testament to the collaboration between...

March 10 (UPI) -- Former President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines was arrested Tuesday morning in Manila on an International Criminal Court warrant for crimes against humanity over his bloody war on drugs. He was arrested at 9:20 a.m. local time after he arrived in Manila from Hong Kong aboard Cathay Pacific flight CX 907, the Philippines government said in a statement. "The former President and his group are in good health and were examined by government doctors to ensure his well-being," the statement said. This is a developing story.

A Grammy Award-winning rapper and music producer originally sentenced to 14 years in prison for smuggling cocaine is one of 16 people receiving pardons or reduced sentences from President Bush. John Edward Forte of North Brunswick, N.J., a graduate of the elite Phillips Exeter Academy prep school who later became a producer for the rap group The Fugees and released two albums on his own, was caught in 2000 at Newark International Airport with two briefcases filled with $1.4 million worth of liquid cocaine, according to court documents. Forte, 33, a first-time offender, was convicted of possessing the 31 pounds...

That means they’re eligible for drone strikes

On an October morning in 2022, an alleged drug trafficker drove a white pickup truck into the parking lot of a Global Fresh Market in San Gabriel, Calif., and stopped alongside a blue Maserati. After a quick discussion with a woman in the Maserati, the man placed a large black bag in the sportscar’s back seat. Members of a U.S. government task force, who were watching, say it contained some $300,000 in cash. The drop was part of what U.S. officials say is a new front in America’s war on drugs: an emerging partnership that has made China a crucial...

President Donald Trump announced on Monday that he had nominated Joe Kent to serve as the Director of the National Counter Terrorism Center. Kent, who hails from the Pacific North West, lost his wife Shannon, who was posthumously promoted to Senior Chief Petty Officer, in Syria. Kent is a veteran who served on 11 combat deployments with the Green Berets. "It is my pleasure to nominate Joe Kent as the Director of the National Counter Terrorism Center," Trump said. "As a Soldier, Green Beret, and CIA Officer, Joe has hunted down terrorists and criminals his entire adult life. Above all,...

Remember back in the fall when ABC did its best to make Donald Trump and JD Vance out to be liars when they said the Venezuelan gang members were causing problems in Colorado? It started during the presidential debate and continued on ABC's "This Week" when Martha Raddatz tried to school Vance on the topic, leading to his viral, "Martha, do you hear yourself?" moment. Well, it's looking more and more like ABC was wrong and the president and vice president were right. (Shocking, I know.) On Sunday, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Rocky Mountain Field Division, along with help...

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's plane landed in West Palm Beach, Fla., this evening, not far from where incoming U.S. president Donald Trump's transition team is based at his Mar-a-Lago estate. The Prime Minister's Office is refusing to comment on whether the two are meeting. This comes days after Trump threatened to impose a 25 per cent tariff on all imports from Canada and Mexico unless the two countries stop migrants and illegal drugs from crossing the border. Trudeau and Trump spoke on the phone Monday evening after the president-elect made the threat on social media. Trudeau also convened an emergency...

Did his attempt to curry favor with Iran work? One of the ways Hezbollah earns money — about one billion dollars a year — is by drug trafficking. It controls much of the sale of drugs sent from Colombia and Venezuela to customers in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East. For eight years, beginning in 2008, a wide-ranging investigation by the Drug Enforcement Agency known as Project Cassandra uncovered how Hezbollah had transformed itself from a Middle Eastern political and military organization into an international crime syndicate, but Project Cassandra was shut down by the Obama administration, that...

Deaths from fentanyl appear to be going down for the first time in a decade after reaching astronomic levels - but experts warn there's a 'horrific' reason behind it. They say the drug is simply running out of people to kill, after claiming the lives of around 320,000 Americans in the last decade. Last year, around 75,000 people in the US were killed by the lethally potent drug, which was slightly down on the previous year and the first time deaths have fallen annually since 2011. Dr Caleb Banta-Green, an addiction expert at the University of Washington, says King County,...

University Middle East expert Hussein Mousavian was a former Iranian official A former Iranian official who is a faculty member at Princeton University recently bragged in an interview about how his hardline government’s death threats against a former top Trump administration official had him and his family "trembling" with fear. Hussein Mousavian, a former member of Iran’s nuclear negotiating team who works as a Middle East security and nuclear policy specialist at Princeton University, said in a recent interview that the Iranian regime’s threats to murder Brian Hook, the Trump administration’s special envoy for Iran, have heavily impacted Hook’s family...