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2009-09-19 Caribbean-Latin America
Iran runs secret arms plants in Venezuela which also buys it weapons
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Posted by Alaska Paul 2009-09-19 14:52|| || Front Page|| [336145 views ]  Top

#1 It's all BS.
Vz couldn't run a secret whisper machine.

A little money laundery likely, but a collusion of any serious proportion between Persia and Gran Columbia is purdy much the marching powder talking.
Posted by .5MT 2009-09-19 17:53||   2009-09-19 17:53|| Front Page Top

#2 They don't have to keep it secret as long as the useful (to them) retarded idiots are willing to laugh it off up here with "Venezuela couldn't run a secret whisper machine." We know they supply FARC, we know they have made the children of Hezbollah officials part of their government...

And now we know about all this junk, which is no longer secret, and shouldn't be dismissed via "Venezuela can't keep secrets."
Posted by Thing From Snowy Mountain 2009-09-19 18:27||   2009-09-19 18:27|| Front Page Top

#3 Yes I know that, Snowy, but... to what end?

Does the Bolivarian Government owe you money? Fucker's couldn't pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were written on the heel.

0// LABJ
Posted by .5MT 2009-09-19 19:15||   2009-09-19 19:15|| Front Page Top

#4 Early in 2005 the interior minister under Chavez admitted that they'd 'misplaced' about 12,000 officially stamped but otherwise blank Venezuelan passports.

At about the same time we began to hear about Hezb'allah camps in several remote places in South America. Now they are believed to have set up at least one training camp in Venezuela, filling (among other things) the role of a now-weakened FARC as Chavez' proxies ... but also filling their main role as Iran's shock troops. I've heard unofficial account to this effect from people in uniform who know the area well.

It's been a few years since reports that the revolutionary leader Commando Marcos in Chiapas Mexico converted to Islam, along with most of his followers after wealthy arabs handed out significant money to Chiapans who became Muslims. This isn't the only such report.

About three years ago MS-13 began arming with .50 caliber weapons and started smuggling a lot more in the way of groups of spanish-speaking young men across the border. Spanish speaking, but not latino. Here's a FrontPage article with a fair amount of detail, co-authored by the Senior Army Advisor to the Air Command and Staff College.

Venezuela doesn't need money to pay for arms. They are providing a much more valuable capability to Iran.
Posted by lotp 2009-09-19 19:58||   2009-09-19 19:58|| Front Page Top

#5 So basically they're a bunch of guys who can't pour piss out of a boot but still manage to get leftist governments back in power in Bolivia, Nicaragua, Ecuador, and almost got one in Honduras, and even have our government's backing in their campaign to get Mr. Pre-Counted Referendum back into power?

For incompetents they're doing pretty damn slick.
Posted by Thing From Snowy Mountain 2009-09-19 20:23||   2009-09-19 20:23|| Front Page Top

#6 Geostrategy-Direct, Rantburg, and internal intelligence agency reports are not exactly the front page of the New York Times or CNN. Those who know have done nothing visible about it, and those who pay attention to the likes of the NYT/CNN would say the same thing .5MT did, unless their comment was, "But I thought Venezuela was near Mexico, not Iran... isn't Iran near China or Russia or something?" But the real bottom line is that Presidente Chavez need only provide the land to Iran or whomever, who are thoroughly capable of doing whatever it is without Chavista fuckers underfoot.
Posted by trailing wife">trailing wife  2009-09-19 20:52||   2009-09-19 20:52|| Front Page Top

#7 Iran was also said to be establishing weapons factories in remote areas of Venezuela for the production of advanced and strategic systems.

GS-D must be on drugs to think this.

If these camps exist, their purpose isn't to produce advanced and strategic systems. Training and indoctrination is far more likely. Perhaps Chavez plans his own Revolutionary Guards.
Posted by phil_b 2009-09-19 21:04||   2009-09-19 21:04|| Front Page Top

#8 Training camps are old news in the region.

From a 2003 Library of Congress review of open source information:

Hizballah clearly derives a quite substantial amount of income from its various illicit
activities in the TBA, in addition to financial support from the government of Iran and income derived from narcotics trafficking in Lebanon’s Al Beqa’a Valley. Reports of Iranian intelligence agents being implicated in Hizballah-linked activities in the TBA (ed: the triborder area where Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina meet) since the early 1990s suggest direct Iranian government support of Hizballah activities in the region


The report also notes that as many as 11,000 Muslims may have left the tri-border area and moved to areas of latin america which were less scrutinized after 9/11 From the conclusion:.

�� Hizballah has reaped hundreds of millions of dollars in profits from narcotics and arms trafficking, product piracy, and other illicit activities in the TBA;

�� a substantial number of members of the Islamic terrorist groups in the TBA have probably moved out of the region since late 2001 to other areas of South America, such as Chile, Uruguay, and Venezuela, where they may be under less pressure by security forces than in the TBA

Posted by lotp 2009-09-19 22:12||   2009-09-19 22:12|| Front Page Top

#9 That was in 2003. In 2006 Robert Mueller, then Director of the FBI, testified before a Congressional committee that in the Spring of that year agents had intercepted two Hezb'allah cells attempting to enter the US across the southern border.
Posted by lotp 2009-09-19 22:17||   2009-09-19 22:17|| Front Page Top

#10 But if you want a more recent take, consider the September 9th comments of the Attorney General of NYC

The Iranians have also opened International Development Bank in Caracas under the Spanish name Banco Internacional de Desarrollo C.A., an independent subsidiary of Export Development Bank of Iran. Last October the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control imposed economic sanctions against both of these Iranian banks for providing or attempting to provide financial services to Iran's Ministry of Defense and its Armed Forces Logistics—the two Iranian military entities tasked with advancing Iran's nuclear ambitions.

My office has been told that that over the past three years a number of Iranian-owned and controlled factories have sprung up in remote and undeveloped parts of Venezuela—ideal locations for the illicit production of weapons. Evidence of the type of activity conducted inside the factories is limited. But we should be concerned, especially in light of an incident in December 2008. Turkish authorities detained an Iranian vessel bound for Venezuela after discovering lab equipment capable of producing explosives packed inside 22 containers marked "tractor parts." The containers also allegedly contained barrels labeled with "danger" signs. ...

In the past several years Iranian entities have employed a pervasive system of deceitful and fraudulent practices to move money all over the world without detection. The regime has done this, I believe, to pay for materials necessary to develop nuclear weapons, long-range missiles, and road-side bombs.


The Attorney General is not on drugs nor is he delusional and paranoid about the threat.
Posted by lotp 2009-09-19 22:29||   2009-09-19 22:29|| Front Page Top

23:54 .5MT
23:53 trailing wife
23:51 .5MT
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