Dive into the archives.
- Fishing for coke!
If you are into high stakes angling, it seems Nicaragua is the place to be.
Locals in Tasbapauni and Bluefields have been fishing for the elusive “white lobster” — 35 kilo bales of cocaine. Drug trafficking routes from Columbia and Nicaragua pass by these villages. Frequent patrols force traffickers to toss their cargo overboard. The bales [...]
- The Beard is Out
Breaking News:
Fidel Castro announces retirement
Cuba’s ailing leader Fidel Castro has announced he will not return to the presidency, in a letter published by official Communist Party paper, Granma. “I neither will aspire to, nor will I accept, the position of president of the council of state and commander in chief,” he wrote in the letter. [...]
- Venezuela Update
As if Venezuela couldn’t get any crazier with Chavez engaging in battles of insults with the King of Spain and President of Colombia, everyone’s favorite buffoon-president is now signing oil production agreements with Belarus of all places (showing once again that birds of a feather flock together). Belarus and several Latin American countries are [...]
- Unheralded military successes
Kaplan alert! A typical piece by the man himself in the typical travel writing/war correspondent/archair historian format that makes him so great. From the LA Times, slightly abridged:
Unheralded military successes
Low-cost, low-risk operations such as those in Colombia and the Philippines show what the U.S. can achieve.November 25, 2007
When I visited Arauca province in [...]
- King of Spain v.s. King of Spin
Spanish King Juan Carlos tells Chavez to “shut up”.
Chavez repeatedly interrupted Spanish PM Jose Luis Zapatero at the Ibero-American summit in Chile last weekend, calling former Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar a “fascist.” Zapatero, a socialist who defeated Aznar at the polls after the Madrid bombings, argued with Chavez openly that Aznar was [...]
- Landlocked Navies, Part 1: Paraguay
Note: I’m away on vacation biking around Japan’s northernmost island of Hokkaido with family. The posts in this series are autoposted. Hope you enjoy.
Paraguay is a small Latin American country sandwiched between Argentina, Bolivia, and Brazil. It is a geographical mix of desert and rivers, and landlocked hundreds of miles from [...]
- Mexico Drug Cartel Map
Inspired by Warfare 2050, image from Stratfor:
- City of God II
Gang rule of prisons isn’t limited to Brazil—it’s an epidemic across Latin America
Prisoner caught with grenade where?
An inmate at an El Salvador jail was caught with a hand grenade stuffed up his backside—a novel attempt to disguise his apparent escape plans. Guards at the San Francisco Gotera prison outside the capital San Salvador found [...]
- Venezuela allied with Al Qaeda?
Via superb Venezuela blog DE comes this, a response by Chavez General Staff member Rear Admiral Luis Cabrera to a question about a possible Al Qaeda threat against Venezuela’s oil facilities:
“It should be seen how truthful that information is….it sounds illogical that Al Qaeda, that is against the North American imperialism would go against a [...]
- So much for Cuban medical care
Castro in ‘serious condition after failed operations’
The Cuban leader Fidel Castro is in a serious condition after three failed operations and complications from an intestinal infection, a Spanish newspaper has reported. El PaÃÂs said on Monday that the 80 year old suffered an infection that worsened to peritonitis, citing two medical sources at the [...]
