Finally, one of the big blogs pays attention to the Venezuela-Hezbollha connection

Little Green Footballs has the link to the Washington Times article.

Bill Roggio and I blogged about it last month.

Yes, I flogged the story.



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US Treasury Dept: Venezuelan diplomat helped Hizbollah

On June 11 I translated a report by Patricia Poleo that stated that Venezuelans of Arab ancestry are being recruited under the auspices of Tarek el Ayssami, Venezuela's vice-Minister of the Interior, for combat training in Hezbollah camps in South Lebanon.

Yesterday the US Treasury Department designated a Venezuelan diplomat as a Hezbollah supporter.

The Jerusalem Post (h/t Siggy) reports that Venezuelan diplomat Ghazi Nasr al Din, former Charge d' Affaires at the Venezuelan Embassy in Damascus and Director of Political Aspects at the Venezuelan Embassy in Lebanon, who is also president of a Caracas-based Shi'a Islamic Center, used his position to give financial assistance to Hezbollah.

Noticias 24 from Caracas (in Spanish) states that a source at the Venezuelan chancellory verified that Nasr al Din is a Venezuelan diplomat based in Damascus. The Venezuelan government refused to issue an official statement "for the time being".

The U.S. Department of the Treasury designated Nsr al Din and Fawzi Kan'an, along with two travel agencies owned and controlled by Kan'an, as terror supporters

Nasr al Din has counseled Hizballah donors on fundraising efforts and has provided donors with specific information on bank accounts where the donors' deposits would go directly to Hizballah.

Ghazi Nasr al Din has met with senior Hizballah officials in Lebanon to discuss operational issues, as well as facilitated the travel of Hizballah members to and from Venezuela. In late January 2006, Nasr al Din facilitated the travel of two Hizballah representatives to the Lebanese Parliament to Caracas to solicit donations for Hizballah and to announce the opening of a Hizballah-sponsored community center and office in Venezuela. The previous year, Nasr al Din arranged the travel of Hizballah members to attend a training course in Iran.

The Treasury Dept. statement lists 12 aliases for Nasr al Din, who was born on December 13, 1962 in Lebanon.

The Treasury Dept. identifies Fawzi Kan'an as a

a Venezuela-based Hizballah supporter and a significant provider of financial support to Hizballah. Kan'an has facilitated travel for Hizballah members and sent money raised in Venezuela to Hizballah officials in Lebanon.

Kan'an has met with senior Hizballah officials in Lebanon to discuss operational issues, including possible kidnappings and terrorist attacks. Further, Kan'an has also traveled with other Hizballah members to Iran for training.

The Treasury Department shows Kan'an as a naturalized Venezuelan citizen born in 1943. Kan'an owns and operates the Biblos Travel Agency, located in Caracas, which reportedly he uses to courier funds to Lebanon.

In Caracas, Noticias 24 reports that Kan'an denied the the U.S. accusations, said that his accounts in the US have not been frozen, and sstated that his Biblos and Hilal agencies closed a year ago. However, as you can read in the AP report, who interviewed Kan'an, he was at the "Hilal travel agency in Caracas, a street-level office with barred windows" itself.

The BBC, which also interviewed Kan'an in Caracas, also says he operates two travel agencies in Caracas.

The US assets of both Kan'an and Nasr al Din have been frozen.

William Davila, candidate for governor for Merida, Venezuela, brought a complaint to the Venezuela Attorney General's re: Hezbollah, which has remained ignored.

Why is this important:
As Efraim Karsh explained in his article, Islam's Imperial Dreams (via Siggy)

As the 14th-century historian and philosopher Abdel Rahman ibn Khaldun wrote, "In the Muslim community, the jihad is a religious duty because of the universalism of the Islamic mission and the obligation [to convert] everybody to Islam either by persuasion or by force."

The Venezuelan government is in bed with this scheme. As the Treasury Department stated,

"It is extremely troubling to see the Government of Venezuela employing and providing safe harbor to Hizballah facilitators and fundraisers. We will continue to expose the global nature of Hizballah's terrorist support network, and we call on responsible governments worldwide to disrupt and dismantle this activity," said Adam J. Szubin, Director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).

Bill Roggio is also posting on the story. Noticias 24 has a background article (in Spanish) on Hezbollah in Latin America.



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Venezuelans recruited by the Interior Ministry trained by Hezbollah

Via Noticias 24, journalist Patricia Poleo reports that Venezuelans of Arab ancestry are being recruited under the auspices of Tarek el Ayssami, Venezuela's vice-Minister of the Interior, for combat training in Hezbollah camps in South Lebanon.

I have not been able to cross-reference the information in her article, however, the information is specific and detailed enough that it merits review.

Bearing that in mind, here is my translation of Poleo's article. If you use the translation, PLEASE CREDIT ME.

Hugo Chavez pretends to cut back on his support of the FARC, when his "dangerous" associations go well beyond the Colombian guerrilla.

Presently young Venezuelans are being recruited for training in Lebanon.

Tarek el Ayssami, Venezuela's vice-Minister of the Interior, along with others affiliated with Hezbollah, such as Lebanon-born Gahzi Nasserddine currently the Business Liaison at the Venezuelan embassy in Damascus, along with [his brother by surname] Ghasan Atef Salameh Nasserddine (a) Abu Ali, are in charge of recruiting young Venezuelan Arabs affiliated to the PSUV [Chavez's own Venezuelan Socialist Party], to be sent to South Lebanon for combat training in Hezbollah camps.

The purpose of the training is for preparing the youths for asymmetrical war against the United States.

Once back in Venezuela, the youths are welcomed by two members of the Islamic Center of Venezuela, who were previously involved in illegally bringing Hezbollah Lebanese through the area of Margarita with fake passports. During February 2002, one of these men brought a group of Hezbollah members who came from Brazil, from Margarita, and then sheltered at the Islamic Center in El Paraiso.

Once the Venezuelas return from their training in Lebanon they meet with radical youths from the PSUV affiliated with UNEFA [the university run by the Armed Forces] and the Unversidad Bolivariana de Venezuela [Venezuelan Bolivarian University].

These groups and individuals are closely affiliated with the Hezbollah Organization in Venezuela, along with al-Qaeda Iraqis currently living in Venezuela. They are also related to the Palestinian Democratic Front, headed by Salid Ahmed Rahman, whose "official" office is located in Caracas's Central Park.

In the training camps now in Venezuela, they receive training in firearms, explosives and munitions provided by vice-Minister of the Interior Tarek el Ayssami.

The Venezuelan training camps are located in: Monagas state, Maturin district. Miranda state, Los Teques, at a location called El Jari. Trujillo state, El Paramo. Falcon state, Churuguara, Sierra de San Luis. Yaracuy state, Yumare.

From the start of President Chavez's government, terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah, Hamas and al-Qaeda have used Venezuela as their bridge to other Latin American countries since Venezuela is an allied government.

At this very moment, a group of Iraqi activists from the al-Qaeda terrorist organization are touring Caracas and Venezuela. They are Mohammed Adnan Yasin Al Janabi, born in Baghdad, Iraq; Falah Amin Taha, born in Baghdad, Iraq; Muhi Alwan Mohammed Al Qaisi, born in Wassit, Iraq.

They all arrived in Venezuela with temporary visas, are very dangerous and are experts in explosives.

Other Hezbollah members in Venezuela with temporary visas are:

• explosives expert Abdul Ghani Suleiman Wanked, born in Lebanon in September 26, 1967, who is Hassan Nasrallah's right-hand man. Nasrallah has been the leader of Hezbollah since 1992 and is Secretary General of the Party of God (Hezbollah).
• Rada Ramel Assad, born in Barranquilla, Colombia on January 5, 1955. His Colombian passport was issued at the Colombian consulate in Beirut, Lebanon on November 13, 2006 and will expire on November 13, 2016.
• Abouchanab Daichoum Dani, also bearing a Colombian passport, born on September 22, 1982, His passport was issued on July 10, 2007, in Maicao, La Guajira, and will expire on July 10, 2007 [sic]. He is the organizer of the group currently touring Caracas.

End of translation.

UPDATE
Welcome, Investor's Business Daily, Infidels are cool, Latin America Watch, Counterterrorism Blog, and Gates of Vienna readers. Please visit often.

Welcome, Colossus of Rhodey, Jawa Report, HACER, W. Thomas Smith, Jr./World Defense Review and Free Republic readers. Please visit often.



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Paraguay: Fernando Lugo, Hugo's latest buddy

From the looks of it, Paraguay's new president Fernado Lugo is Hugo Chavez's latest buddy. As you can read in Bridget Johnson's article, Latin America’s Latest Marxist Leader Takes Power in Paraguay, Marxist former Bishop Fernando Lugo is the latest of Hugo's friends to come to power with the help of Hugo's oil money. He joins Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, Bolivian President Evo Morales, and Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa in the choir paid for by Hugo's money. And I'm not including those suitcases full of money Hugo was sending Argentina's Cristina Kirchner.

This means the least competitive economy in South America is now in Chavez's pocket.

Paraguay has elected former Catholic bishop Fernando Lugo in spite of the fact that the Paraguayan constitution prohibits ministers of any faith from standing as a political candidate. Lugo claims to have resigned from his position, but unfortunately for him, the Catholic Church isn't amenable to resignations by ordained clergy since ordination is a Sacrament and carries a lifetime commitment. He may be defrocked.

Here is Lugo's BBC profile, which says that Lugo's ready to put the squeeze on Brazil:

In particular he wants Brazil to pay Paraguay a lot more money for the electricity it buys from their jointly-owned Itaipu dam, the world's biggest hydroelectric plant. He says he will take Brazil to the World Court in The Hague if necessary.

He also wants to establish relations with China

Lugo fits the populist cookie-cutter:

They are protectionists, rejecting Washington's proposals for free trade throughout the Western hemisphere, and preferring to build up a South American bloc as a counterweight to Nafta.

They are populists, using public projects to buy support. They are nationalists, picking fights with the US, the World Bank and, when all else fails, each other.

They are, if not anti-democratic, at least anti-parliamentary, articulating their peoples' contempt for politicians: Bonapartists, if you like.

Monsignor Lugo fits the mould neatly. He is a brilliant orator, whether in Spanish or in the indigenous language, Guaraní.

While he recently tempered his anti-yanquismo, he none the less attacked Washington's unhappy record of backing dictators. And, for all his ideological proximity to Brazil's leader, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, he played on anti-Brazilian nationalism.

Lugo's victory completes the triumph of the radical Left in South America.

Which makes Paraguay ripe for Hugo's Bolivarian Revolution.

The Latin Business Chronicle urges Lugo to follow Chile's example because of the dismal economic conditions after sixty-one years of Colorado party rule:

Paraguay needs to follow Chile's - not Venezuela's - example as a way to reduce the country's poverty and corruption.
...
First and foremost, Lugo should realize that Paraguay's status as the poorest nation in South America is not due to Capitalism, but rather the lack of true free markets. Even after Paraguay became a democracy nearly 20 years ago, the country continued to be dominated by corruption and the rule of influence instead of transparency and the rule of law.

Paraguay has the least competitive economy in all of Latin America, according to the 2007 Global Competitiveness Index from the World Economic Forum. It ranks 121 worldwide among the 131 nations the survey looked at. Its low rank was due to such factors as weak institutions, inefficient infrastructure, insufficient macro economic stability, little innovation and low technology readiness. Paraguay is among the countries with the lowest Internet and fixed telephony penetration in Latin America, according to the 2007 Latin Technology Index published by Latin Business Chronicle, which ranked its overall technology level at 15th out of 20 nations in the region.

Meanwhile, the Milken Institute says that Paraguay ranks as the second-worst in Latin America when it comes to access to capital for entrepreneurs. Only Haiti ranks worse, according to the Capital Access Index released in February. Paraguay ranked in 94h place out of 122 nations worldwide.
...
Transparency International gave the country a score of 2.4 (with 10 being best) on its 2007 survey of corruption perception. That makes Paraguay the fourth-most corrupt nation in Latin America.

Lugo will be following Chavez's example,

n contrast, the radical-populist policies implemented in Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Ecuador have increasingly deterred foreign investment and in most cases spurred even more poverty. Corruption has also been growing. Venezuela's international ranking has fallen from 71st place (out of 90 nations) in 2000 - when Chavez became president - to 162nd place this year (out of 179 nations), according to Transparency International. Only Haiti is more corrupt in Latin America.

Unfortunately there possibly are dire consequences in the region's security, since Paraguay has significant organized crime and terrorist activity in the TriBorder Area (TBA), which continues to show in the terrorist radar where meetings attended by Hezbollah and al-Qaeda have recently taken place.



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From Illich Ramirez to Osama Bin Laden

I just received an interesting article, and decided to translate it. Mind you, I can not vouch for its accuracy, but it brings up a serious issue,
De Ilich Ramírez a Osama Bin Laden
(my translation, emphasis added)
From Illich Ramirez to Osama Bin Laden
by Jose Brechner

Pakistanis? Afghans? No, indigenous Venezuelans

Before Osama Bin Laden, the world's best-known terrorist was Venezuelan Illich Ramirez Sanchez, alias "Carlos the Jackal", who was captured in 1994 and is serving a life sentence at the Clair-vaux prison in Northeastern France, from where he sporadically corresponds with Hugo Chavez, who calls him a "distinguished compatriot" and referred to him as a "friend" during an OPEC conference in Caracas.

Carlos worked for Muammar Gadafi of Libya, Saddam Hussein of Iraq, Hafiz-al-Assad of Syria, George Habash of the FPLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) , the Italian Red Brigades, the Colombian M-19 Movement, the German Baader-Meinhof, and any other socialists and communists that would pay him. The name Illich is no coincidence, since his father was a millionaire leader of the Venezuelan Communist Party that named his three sons after his heroes, Vladimir, Illich, and Lenin. Carlos joined the party as a child, received a Communist education in Cuba, and traveled to Jordan where he became a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine Islamic group. After that, he traveled freely throughout the Middle East with official passports granted by the governments of the region.

In prison, Carlos embraced Islam as a religion, as many other Communists do, not because they believe in Allah, but because they feel kinship with Muslims in their hatred of the USA. Aristotle said, "Evil unites men." In a recent interview, The Jackal laughed remorselessly when asked about his murders, and criticized Al Qaeda by saying, "They are not professional. They are not organized. They don't even know how to make explosives or detonators well." When asked how many did he kill, he replied, "I can’t count, less than 100 anyway." French police has documented 83 murders. And what did he achieve from that? "Our example has been followed not only by Communists, but also by Jihadists."

In a nearer and more dangerous scenario, which also has Venezuela as a starting point, Hezbollah in Latin America, also called Hezbollah Venezuela, converts to Islam any indigenous Chavista it can, because they are the ones that least understand what is going on. Evangelical missionaries have disappeared from the jungle because according to Chavez they are genocidal spies. Evo Morales in Bolivia repeats Chavez's same words.

Chavez has invited Iranian Shiite "missionaries" to convert the Guajiros and other indigenous peoples in Amazonia. The entire Wayuu tribe is now Muslim, women wear veils while men go to Kalashnikov shooting practice. Some have themselves photographed wearing suicide vests loaded with bombs, and the Venezuelan government distributes the photos, publicizing its friendship with Ahmadinejad and Middle East terrorist groups.

Hezbollah Venezuela refers to Jose Miguel Rojas Espinosa - the mastermind of the terrorist attack against the American Embassy in Caracas - as "the first mujeheddin, an example of strength and dignity in Allah's cause, the first prisoner of war of the Revolutionary Islamic Movement in Venezuela." The group is linked to Argentinian socialist-terrorist Norberto Rafael Ceresole, who is allegedly linked to the AMIA (Argentine Israelite Mutual Association) attack in 1994, and who is the acting ideologue for Chavez and Morales's regimes of Socialism for the 21st Century.

In Bolivia - South America's most indigenous country - conversion to Islam didn't start visibly, but it is an important part of the Islamist-Leftist scheme towards a conquest of America, imposing totalitarianism under Morales's whip, with Chavez and Ahmadinejad at the helm. Converting Quechuas and Aimaras will not be as quick or as easy as converting the Venezuelan tribes because the indigenous Bolivian population is in the millions, but the goal of the Muslims is precisely to convert millions.

As I said, I can not vouch for its accuracy, but this is worth keeping an eye on.

More:
The Shi'ite Indians of Venezuela, via A colombo-americana's perspective.



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A few thoughts on immorality

When I get up in the morning I never have to worry about having nothing to post about. To the contrary, between the New Jersey and local news, American politics, the Latin Americans, the French and Europeans, the hundreds of books and CDs in the house, and the movies playing in theaters and at TCM - and, of course, shoes - my habitual morning dilemma is not not having something to post about but rather having too much to post about.

And then sometimes the subject for a post just falls on my lap.

Yesterday Siggy commented, Immorality is a powerful drug.
His comment referred to the MSM's coddling of Chavez, Castro, Arafat, Che, et al

To now anticipate any kind of appropriate response from the MSM is an absurd thought.

The press has tried mightily for decades to turn night into day. Despites decades of failure, they will forge ahead.

Immorality is a powerful drug.

Siggy is a very dear friend whose blog I visit daily and on whose support I rely on for my podcasts. I owe him much.

As it is customary for him, he's come up with a most insightful comment.

Because in all decisions, big and small, the question is, what is the right thing to do: Not the convenient thing. Not the fashionable thing. Not the thing that will get you the most attention or the most readership or the most celebrity and acclaim from the cool kids, whoever they may be.

Doing the right thing boils down to morality, to doing the moral thing. Doing the right thing implies that the person has a moral compass that will lead them to moral actions.

By consistently avoiding doing the right thing, a person ends up sinking into immorality. An immoral person's moral compass is broken. This breakdown means that, like the picture of Dorian Gray, a gradual process corrodes the soul and blinds the spirit.

Journalists tossed away what moral compass, broken as it was, they had to begin with.

For over a century the press has willfully ignored morality and has consistently brought out stories with ever-greater depravity and evil. Mind you, not stories of depravity and evil, not because they were writing about evil things, but because by avoiding the reality of evil they have facilitated the evil doings of others.

By doing so, they have descended into immorality.

While Walter Duranty wasn't the first, and is certainly not the last, he is the classic example of the immoral journalist. He attained seldom-reached heights of immorality:

What we do know is that, in March 1933, while telling his readers that there had indeed been "serious food shortages" in the Ukraine, he was quick to reassure them that "there [was] no actual starvation." There had been no "deaths from starvation," he soothed, merely "widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition." So that was all right then.

But, unlike Khrushchev, Duranty, a Pulitzer Prize winner, no less, was keeping count - in the autumn of 1933 he is recorded as having told the British Embassy that ten million had died.

Lest you think that statement is exaggerated, check the footnote in the article, and also read The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression a book I highly recommend, but suggest that you don't read it before going to bed at night. The writers estimate that communists killed between 85 million and 100 million people in the 20th century. I specifically say that communists killed, not that Communism killed, because the ideology needed the executioners.

Duranty in the 1930s was the precursor of hundreds of present-day collaborators who under the guise of journalism continue to promote and publicize dictators, big and small, everywhere in the world. As regular readers to my blog know, Matt Lauer, Barbara Walters, Charles Enderlin, and dozens other journalists go and report without mentioning dissidents, concentration camps, censorship, Hezbollah's Israeli casualties, and whatever else doesn't fit their glowing image of the dictator du jour. By doing so, they show they are not good men, they show how immoral they are. As John Milton once wrote,

None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license.

They don't love freedom. If they did, they would be on the streets of Caracas talking to the people protesting the closing of TV stations as their colleague Adam Housely does. They would be asking about the hundreds of Cuban dissidents in concentration camps. They would name the hundreds of people that Che executed. They would be showing the real story about Hezbollah. They would shed some light on the manifestations of 21st century communism.

Instead, they propagandize for all the above so they can self-congratulate each other, and earn the acclaim of the Left and the license (in every sense) of the regimes they continue to support.

They do it in part because, as Bob Godwin was saying the other day.

the more unpleasant reality impinges, the more denial is necessary.

Bob's commenter Cryptic Life pointed out,

The media is often guided by principles which de-emphasize the truth in service of sales or politics, often to the point where it becomes quite difficult to make valid comparisons

I'll leave to Siggy, Bob, and the Sanity Squad to examine the causes for this denial, but as I see it, it is due to a blindness to the humanity in others.

A blindness that leads to immorality.

And, as Siggy said, Immorality is a powerful drug.



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Of course he isn't!, and today's items

Of course he isn't!,
Russian President Vladimir Putin has strongly denied claims that Russia is using its energy resources as a lever to put pressure on other countries

Update: Via Maria, Why are Vladimir Putin’s opponents dying?
------------------------------------------------
Cassandra posts on The Virtues of Gratitude, and she lets it rip.

Via Larwyn, It's Official: The Press Has Gone To War - with us.
Important Analysis

"U.S.-Iran tensions could trigger war," cautions an article by the AP, which appears to be just waking up to this possibility.

In a similar vein, this morning's BBCA newscast managed to blame the centuries-old, thirteen centuries, that is, Sunni-Shia rivalry on - you guessed it - Israel and the Americans:

"It's America and Israel who want trouble here," said another participant.

I kid you not.
------------------------------------------------
Must-see video: The Islamic Mein Kampf
The Terrorism Awareness Project

Don't miss Pamela's CAIR censorship round-up
------------------------------------------------
The French work only 35hrs/week, and now they're taking naps after lunch:

"Sleep must not be trivialised," Xavier Bertrand, the Health Minister, said.

But they're not lazy.

Obviously Cassandra's husband (see above) is not French.
------------------------------------------------
A little romance, a little sadness, from Siggy,

You'll find a line from the lyrics in today's Twitter box on the right sidebar.
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In a lighter mode,
I'm always amazed by what brings some people to my blog. The latest are two people doing google searches for "Bear Grylls naked picture." These two have been doing that search for the past couple of days but I guess they haven't given up on me yet. (For those of you who don't remember, Bear's one of the Discovery Channel guys.)

Sorry to disappoint you, folks, but this is a mostly PG-rated blog. However, You Tube has several videos of the fully clothed Bear. I might post one of those one of these days.

I watched the Discovery Channel the other night and they had Stephen Hawkins talking about black holes. I can't say I understood most of what he said, but I came out pondering the possibility that my long-lost pair of eyeglasses dropped into a mini black hole.

Back to Man vs Wild, then.