As Washington policy makers scramble to craft effective sanctions against Iran, they seem to have completely ignored Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's blossoming relationship with Venezuela's Hugo Chávez. This strategic alliance provides the Iranian regime with a clandestine source of uranium, helps it evade restrictions on trade and financing, and gives Middle Eastern terrorists access to weapons from Mr. Chávez's growing arsenal. So even if the West is able to implement a sanctions plan...

RUSSIAN PRIME Minister boasted after returning from a visit to Venezuela on Monday that he had sold President Hugo Chavez another $5 billion in weapons -- a huge sum for a Latin American army. Hours later State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley was asked for a reaction at his public briefing. First answer: "We don't care." Mr. Crowley went on to say that State didn't see a legitimate need for all that equipment and was concerned that it might "migrate into other parts of the...

The Miami Herald few months ago reported that the Colombian FARC has likely already fulfilled its long-time goal of purchasing surface to air missiles to be used against U.S.-supplied helicopters in Colombia. The FARC has long placed a very high strategic priority on acquiring SAMs, going back to at least 2003. The commanders officially requested money from Libya and Nicaragua at that time to purchase the weapons because the insurgency was being so badly hurt by helicopters acquired by the...

In the last seven years in Mexico, 35 journalists were killed and six went missing, 84 media workers filed complaints of insults or attacks in 2007, and in the first few days of 2008, the prestigious independent radio commentator Carmen Aristegui, who has often criticised the powers that be, was fired. Given that outlook, many analysts wonder whether the media in Mexico is really as free as the government of conservative President Felipe Calderón claims. "The record in terms...

"one of the fears that imperialism has, is for the southern revolution to also becomes a North revolution (...) that only possibility scares them, because a North revolution is coming, I see it, I feel it and I predict it ". Hugo Chavez "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" Islamic, Proverb… Islam teaches its followers to take full advantage of every opportunity an adversary provides… Aikido, an Eastern form of Martial Arts, redirects through effective leverage the...

Where Pacific coast State, Michoacan, Mexico Who 1 Ostensibly, China,, Hugo Chavez -Venezuela, USA, Carlos Slim, Salinas Pliego, Kansas City Southern Mexico, Drug Cartels - La Familia Michoacana - Los Zetas, EZLN. Who 2 Iran - Islam What Destabilize, proselytize - convert - ideological social, political and religious loyalties Objectives - Geopolitical General Reinforce existing Mexican popular sentiment to support Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales and Cuba against the US....

I had the privilege of covering Senator Kennedy's trip to Argentina and Chile in 1986 for Newsweek. It was one of the most memorable experiences in six years of reporting from the region.In Buenos Aires, the government of President Raul R. Alfonsin had just successfully prosecuted in civilian court the military architects of the Argentine "dirty war," and Kennedy's coming to Argentina in the aftermath of that singular and momentous event was in itself an important symbol of...

Five years after March 11th, which made Spain a target of the Islamist terror, Interior Minister has stated that Spain is now a source of Human Resources for future terrorists"..."situated in the 1st place in the ranking of their preferred recruitement's places for Al-Qaeda's recruitment in Europe, and, at the same time, it continues to be a target of international terrorism. Since March 11th, State Security Forces have detained 384 alleged Islamist terrorists. Some of the them had...

Thank you for the opportunity to discuss the issue of Iran in Latin America with you today. I believe the growing influence of Iran is a significant threat to the United States and is an under-reported part of the equation that is driving the instability and uncertainty in Latin America, from the crisis in Honduras to the rapidly-closing space for democratic freedoms in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua and elsewhere where the Bolivarian revolution has gained a foothold. There is broad...

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad must love the tropics', commented ironically The Miami Herald.[1] He has spent more time in Latin America than President Bush. Since his inauguration in 2005, Iran's foreign policy focus has shifted from Africa to Latin America in order to, as Ahmadinejad puts it, ‘counter lasso' the US.[2] Iran's Goals in Latin America Farideh Farhi argues that while Iran's increased attention to Latin America as a region is a relatively new development, its...