Free Republic

Media: In Orwellian fashion, ABC has edited its 9-11 miniseries to please the Clintonistas on whose watch the al-Qaida threat mushroomed. Perhaps, as someone once said, history is indeed a lie agreed upon. In Friday's Washington Post, an ABC executive who for some reason chose to be anonymous confirmed that "adjustments and refinements" have been made to its TV movie "The Path to 9/11," and that the changes were based on objections by members of the Clinton administration and Bill Clinton himself. The Post said the changes were "intended to make clearer that it was general indecisiveness" by Clinton officials...

Saudi Arabia's religious police, normally tasked with chiding women to cover themselves and ensuring men attend mosque prayers, are turning to a new target: cats and dogs. The police have issued a decree banning the sale of the pets, seen as a sign of Western influence. The prohibition on dogs may be less of a surprise, since conservative Muslims despise dogs as unclean. But the cat ban befuddled many, since Islamic tradition holds that the Prophet Muhammad loved cats - and even let a cat drink from his ablutions water before washing himself for prayers. The religious police, known as...

I don't understand why Richard Armitage won't come clean. In America today he won't face any real repercussions. And if he did, he can always become a Democrat. There are many kinds of courage. Courage in leadership, like that evinced by America during the first six dreadful months of World War II, when we suffered so many grievous defeats. In that short period of time, we lost the battleships and other vessels at Pearl Harbor, the air force and land forces in the biggest surrender of US forces to date in the Philippines, the losses of Wake and Guam, the...

A gown designed for female Muslim patients who wish to preserve their modesty for religious reasons is being introduced to hospitals in Lancashire. The £12 outfits - made in Yorkshire - cover the entire head, neck and body, leaving just a slot for the eyes. The burqua-style gowns come with trousers, two styles of head-dress and elasticated cuffs to prevent women's arms from being revealed. They will be available to patients at in Chorley and Preston from November. The gowns were trialled at Royal Preston Hospital and proved so successful that a number of other NHS Trusts have also expressed...

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Sunday he had made numerous and unsuccessful overtures to his Lebanese counterpart to talk peace. Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora's office responded that no such invitations had arrived and would be rejected anyway. Olmert said: "How natural it would be if the Lebanese prime minister replied to the many requests I conveyed to him, through different people, to sit down together, shake hands, make peace and end once and for all the hostility, fanaticism and hatred that part of his country feels towards us." A statement from Siniora's office said: "Nobody has conveyed such...

Muslim Brotherhood (MB) is one of the most important Islamic movements in the Arab world and the Muslim world. It represents a broad and distinguished trend within modern Islamic thought. Moreover, the ideological dissertation developed by its intellectuals is taken as a reference authority for most of Islamic movements. The significance of the movement lies in its faculty of understanding and expressing all social powers at the time of its emergence, in addition to its ability to survive in spite of all hardships, obstacles and oppression. This ability of defeating all difficulties relates, for the most part, to the great...

LONDON, Sept. 2 (UPI) -- A top British police official warns in a new documentary that supporters of terrorist plots in the United Kingdom could number into the thousands. London Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clark said that while exact numbers were difficult to pin down, there was a broad base of support for terrorist attacks in Britain ranging from actual conspirators to those urging them on. The Mirror quoted Clark as saying, "All I can say is that our knowledge is increasing and certainly, in terms of broad description, the numbers of people we have to be interested in are...

We all remember Mr. Chamberlain as the great appeaser, which he was up to a point. But he finally understood the Nazi menace, while the Democrats utterly fail to grasp the true horror offered by militant Islam. Neville drew his line in the sands of shifting fortunes and honored his commitments to Poland on September 1st, 1939, when the panzers and the Luftwaffe, in their first real test, crushed the Polish cavalry and massacred the Polish air force in the air and on the ground in record time. In the time leading up to this drama, however, the government of...

SUDAN has vowed to defy a UN takeover of peacekeeping forces in the strife-torn Darfur region, but the US declared Khartoum's agreement was not needed. The battle of words yesterday came after a Security Council vote that approved the deployment of up to 17,000 UN troops to the Sudanese region to take over from the African Union force. The AU mission has been unable to stop the conflict in the poor but oil-rich region, in which up to 300,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million displaced. Deploying a strong UN force is seen as crucial to shore up the...

TEHRAN (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan is expected to press Iran on Saturday to help shore up the Hizbollah-Israel ceasefire, but diplomats say the talks will also cover Iran's nuclear standoff with the West. Annan's visit to Iran takes place two days after the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), reported Tehran had failed to meet the U.N. Security Council's Aug. 31 deadline to halt uranium enrichment. The United States, which accuses Iran of seeking atomic bombs, said on Friday it was consulting European governments about possible sanctions against the Islamic Republic, but the EU signalled...

WHITE PLAINS, New York (AP): Delta Air Lines Inc. told a bankruptcy judge Friday it has no choice but to eliminate its pilots' pension plan if it is to come out from bankruptcy and remain afloat. The third biggest U.S. air carrier had asked to end its pension plan for pilots effective on Saturday, saying that keeping it in place would mean a "crippling'' operational and financial crisis that would prevent it from emerging from bankruptcy protection as it hopes to do by mid-2007. But the plan, for now, stayed in place, as the hearing was set to continue on...

BRITISH police are currently trying to monitor "thousands" of potential security suspects, the head of the anti-terrorism unit at London's Metropolitan Police said in an interview to be broadcast on Sunday. In an interview recorded in July, before the arrest of more than two dozen people on suspicion of an alleged plot to blow up US-bound aircraft, Peter Clarke said Britain was facing an increasing threat from home grown extremists. He refused to give an exact figure about how many people he said were either directly or indirectly involved in plotting atrocities on British soil but said the number ran...

THE UN Security Council overwhelmingly approved the deployment of as many as 17,000 UN peacekeepers to Sudan's strife-torn Darfur region to take over from a cash-strapped African Union force. The resolution, which states that the deployment would take place “on the basis of the acceptance of the (Sudanese) Government”, was endorsed by 12 of the council's 15 members, while China, Russia and Qatar abstained. The draft calls for a 17,000-strong UN force to take over from the ill-equipped and underfunded African Union (AU) mission, which has been unable to prevent killings, rape and the internal displacement of civilians in Darfur....

JOHN Howard has singled out Muslim migrants for refusing to embrace Australian values and urged them to fully integrate by treating women as equals and learning to speak English. The call for a shift in attitude among some Muslims infuriated community leaders last night, and comes as The Australian can reveal the Prime Minister's own Islamic advisers have already accused Mr Howard and senior ministers of fuelling hatred and mistrust by using "inflammatory and derogatory" language. Mr Howard said: "There is a section, a small section of the Islamic population, and I say a small section ... which is very...

SAN FRANCISCO – The driver in a bloody hit-and-run spree that killed one man and injured more than a dozen people was mentally unstable and had been undergoing stress from a recent arranged marriage, according to relatives. Omeed A. Popal, 29, of Fremont, was taken into custody Tuesday following a 20-minute rampage that terrorized pedestrians, bicyclists and motorists throughout San Francisco. Authorities believe it began more than an hour earlier when his black Honda Pilot fatally struck a man in Fremont. -snip- A woman who identified herself as Popal's cousin said he had been having recurring nightmares about someone coming...

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Her father said it would be a two-week holiday to learn about her Pakistani heritage. But the British woman soon found herself captive in a remote tribal village for over a year and promised in marriage to a first cousin she'd never met. With the British High Commission's help this month, the woman escaped Pakistan shortly before her planned wedding, avoiding the phenomenon of forced marriage that befalls scores of foreign women, including Americans, annually in this deeply conservative Islamic country. -snip- Malik described forced marriages as "despicable" and contrary to Pakistan and Islamic law. She said...

For an event that would turn a page in American history, former president Jimmy Carter has agreed in principle to host former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami for talks during his visit to the United States starting this week. Carter's term as president was dominated by the rupture in relations after the 1979 Iranian revolution and the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, where 52 Americans were held hostage for 444 days until the day he left office. Iranians made the overture for the meeting, and the Carter Center in Atlanta is working on the possible timing, said Phil Wise,...

THE Saudi Arabian royal family arrived for their annual visit to a palace in Marbella on Spain's southern Mediterranean coast last week, bringing with them a new - and unwelcome - spirit of frugality. King Abdullah, the new ruler, stayed away, but 14 princesses were among a party of 1500 assorted royals and courtiers at the Palacio El Rocio, with the late King Fahd's widow Jawhara al-Ibrahim and Abdullah's brother Prince Salman Bin Abdul Aziz. Unlike his indulgent half-brother Fahd, who died last August at 84, Abdullah is determined to curb spending. Gone are the days when the ailing Saudi...

WASHINGTON - Democratic Sen. Daniel Inouye said Tuesday he is supporting Ned Lamont over Sen. Joe Lieberman because of the Connecticut lawmaker's contention that the Democratic Party doesn't stand for mainstream America. Inouye, who campaigned in Connecticut for Lieberman prior to the Aug. 8 primary, issued a statement endorsing Lamont and citing Lieberman's recent criticism of the party. Lamont upset Lieberman in the Democratic primary and the three-term senator is running as an independent in hopes of holding his seat. "After the primary, Senator Inouye was most disappointed and unhappy when Senator Lieberman remarked that the Democratic Party no longer...

Palestinian witnesses and medics say Israeli forces have killed five Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. They say Israeli troops killed three Palestinians near Gaza City Tuesday, as Israel pressed ahead with its Gaza offensive. Palestinian sources say one of the dead belonged to the militant Islamic group Hamas. The Israeli army said its troops fired at a group of militants preparing a bomb, but did not confirm any deaths. Earlier Tuesday, Israeli troops killed two Palestinians in clashes that broke out when Israeli forces raided the Balata refugee camp in the West Bank town of Nablus. The...