Free Republic

The CIA should be abolished. After a trial run of 67 years, the agency has proven a sorcerer’s apprentice. The director and his subordinates have became insufferably arrogant Platonic Guardians hiding behind secrecy in the belief that the rest of us are too stupid or naive to judge what risks to accept to preserve liberty and the rule of law. The CIA has made Americans less safe. Its incorrigible anti-democratic ethos was epitomized by legendary chief of counterintelligence James J. Angleton. He voiced contempt for the Church Committee’s investigation of chronic agency abuses, i.e., the “Family Jewels.” As reported in...

If Brad Singer knew for sure what was happening three miles under an odd-shaped lake in the Andes, he might be less eager to spend a good part of his career investigating a volcanic field that has erupted 36 times during the last 25,000 years. As he leads a large scientific team exploring a region in the Andes called Laguna del Maule, Singer hopes the area remains quiet. But the primary reason to expend so much effort on this area boils down to one fact: The rate of uplift is among the highest ever observed by satellite measurement for a...

“Outlaw abortion and abortion won’t stop. Women will just do it illegally and women will die!” Or so the argument goes… But facts are pesky things, and they show that the opposite is true in Chile.  According to new research from the MELISA Institute, since Chile’s ban on abortion, not only has maternal health improved but the number of women seeking illegal abortion has plummeted!  Since Chile banned abortion in 1989, the number of maternal deaths decreased from 41.3 to 12.7 per 100,000 women (69.2% reduction). That puts Chile in second place for the lowest maternal mortality rate in the Americas (that’s right, even...

Rising Turkish Menace: U.S. and NATO Ally Wants Islamic Advance in Latin America By Julio Severo The president of Turkey has re-written history by claiming Muslim explorers, not Christopher Columbus, discovered America. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan Recep Tayyip Erdogan, chief of America’s NATO ally, said November 15 that Islamic sailors found the New World in 1178. He said, “Muslims discovered America in 1178, not Christopher Columbus.” Turkey is the only Islamic nation in the NATO. His theory — which is supported only by Islamic historians — came to light in a televised speech during an Istanbul summit of...

U.S. officials report that more than 1,000 foreign fighters are streaming into Syria each month as a United Nations report says that the terrorist influx has reached an "unprecedented scale." According to the new U.N. report, a lot more terrorist boots are on the ground these days as an "unbelievably small" — to use Secretary of State John Kerry's phrase — air campaign, which has taken months to do what should have been done in a day, has failed to achieve the administration's proclaimed goal: to "degrade and destroy" the Islamic State. More than 15,000 foreign fighters from as many...

Chile's President Michelle Bachelet saw her approval rating fall for the third straight month in September, though support for her key reforms improved, a poll showed on Thursday. Overall approval of the center-left president slipped 2 percentage points from August to 47 percent, said pollster Gfk Adimark, Bachelet's lowest rating in the monthly survey since returning to power in March. As well as flagging economic growth, there was a spate of bombings in capital Santiago in September, including one that left 14 people injured and another that left a man dead. Ahead of her second non-consecutive term, Bachelet promised an...

Explanation: Galaxies, stars, and a serene reflecting pool combine to create this memorable land and skyscape. The featured panorama is a 12-image mosaic taken last month from the Salar de Atacama salt flat in northern Chile. The calm water is Laguna Cejar, a salty lagoon featuring a large central sinkhole. On the image left, the astrophotographer's fiancee is seen capturing the same photogenic scene. The night sky is lit up with countless stars, the Large and Small Magellanic Cloud galaxies on the left, and the band of our Milky Way galaxy running diagonally up the right. The Milky Way may...

Explanation: You might not guess it, but sunrise was still hours away when this nightscape was taken, a view along the eastern horizon from a remote location in Chile's Atacama desert. Stretching high into the otherwise dark, starry sky the unusually bright conical glow is sunlight though, scattered by dust along the solar system's ecliptic plane . Known as Zodiacal light, the apparition is also nicknamed the "false dawn". Near center, bright star Aldebaran and the Pleiades star cluster seem immersed in the Zodiacal light, with Orion toward the right edge of the frame. Reddish emission from NGC 1499, the...

Magnitude Mw 6.6 Region VALPARAISO, CHILE Date time 2014-08-23 22:32:24.0 UTC Location 32.72 S ; 71.41 W Depth 40 km Distances 108 km NW of Santiago, Chile / pop: 4,837,295 / local time: 18:32:24.0 2014-08-23 41 km NE of Valparaíso, Chile / pop: 282,448 / local time: 18:32:24.0 2014-08-23 19 km W of Hacienda La Calera, Chile / pop: 49,106 / local time: 18:32:24.0 2014-08-23

Navi Pillay said Tel Aviv's two-week onslaught on Gaza - which has cost more than 650 Palestinians lives - would be thoroughly investigated. Ms Pillay, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said the attacks have destroyed houses and hospitals and killed civilians. "These are just a few examples where there seems to be a strong possibility that international humanitarian law has been violated, in a manner that could amount to war crimes. "Every one of these incidents must be properly and independently investigated." According to Gaza officials, 475 houses have been destroyed and 2,644 damaged, while 46 schools, 56 mosques...

GENEVA, July 23 (Reuters) - The United Nations on Wednesday launched an international inquiry into human rights violations and crimes that may have been committed by Israel during its military offensive in the Gaza Strip. The U.N. Human Rights Council condemned the Israeli assault which it said had involved "disproportionate and indiscriminate attacks", including aerial bombing of civilian areas, collective punishment, and the killing of more than 650 Palestinians. At the end of an emergency session, the 47-member forum adopted a resolution presented by Palestinians by a vote of 29 states in favor, 1 against (the United States) with 17...

Parts of central London were brought to a standstill on Saturday as thousands of pro-Palestinians marched in protest against Israel’s offensive in Gaza, while in Paris a banned demonstration descended into violence. Organizers of the London rally claimed that “tens of thousands” of people joined the march from Prime Minister David Cameron’s office to the Israeli embassy, many of them chanting “Israel is a terror state”. Police refused to give an estimate for the number present but several roads through the centre of the capital were closed during the three-mile (4.8-kilometer) march, which passed off peacefully. …

The United States is helping Chile build a major solar power plant in the Atacama Desert, US President Barack Obama said. In his meeting with Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, Obama said the 141-megawatt plant would "help meet their energy needs." The 230 million dollars in backing will come from the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), a US government arm that mobilizes private capital for development projects. Bachelet noted strong economic ties with the United States through a 10-year-old free trade agreement. Chile has further strong trade programmes with California and Massachusetts. Obama saluted Chile as a "model of democracy in...

In New Mexico almost no food, no meal is without the influence of the famous chile pepper. So it should be no surprise that New Mexico claims the invention of the Breakfast Burrito. It is the wrapped wonder that brings spice to the morning. It is now a staple on menus across the Southwest, and showing up frequently on menus nationwide. Even fast food chains now offer versions. Now, to celebrate this success and its New Mexico heritage, we have created the New Mexico True Breakfast Burrito Byway.

Seemed like a good idea at the time. Last week in Copenhagen, 1,000 people gathered in a public square to participate in a collective act that some might call idiotic and others brave. Together, bound in solidarity, they each ate one ghost chili pepper — one of the spiciest chili peppers on Earth. Also called the "bhut jolokia," the ghost pepper grows in the Indian states of Assam and Nagland and, from 2007 till it was dethroned in 2012 by the Trinidad moruga scorpion, it was certified as the hottest pepper in the world by Guinness World Records. It measures...

One of the forgotten battles of the first world war was fought for Chilean dirt. It wasn't just any dirt, though – it was caliche, a whitish substance rich in the crucial mineral sodium nitrate. Nitrates are the active ingredient of bombs and bullets.

<p>February 20, 2004 -- Remember "Missing," the 1982 movie by left-wing director Costa-Gavras, which starred Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek? The hit film accused the U.S. government of complicity in the disappearance and murder of a young New Yorker in the days following the 1973 military coup that toppled Chile's Marxist president, Salvador Allende, from power.</p>

Firefighters battled deadly forest fires in Valparaiso, Chile for a second night after coastal winds whipped up the flames again. At least 12 people were killed and 500 injured as the blaze swept through the hills above the city, destroying 2,000 homes and forcing 10,000 people to flee.

M7.8 - 23km S of Iquique, Chile 2014-04-03 02:43:15 UTC Event Time 2014-04-03 02:43:15 UTC 2014-04-02 23:43:15 UTC-03:00 at epicenter 2014-04-02 19:43:15 UTC-07:00 system time Location 20.430°S 70.113°W depth=20.0km (12.4mi) Nearby Cities 23km (14mi) S of Iquique, Chile 184km (114mi) N of Tocopilla, Chile 217km (135mi) S of Arica, Chile 256km (159mi) NNW of Calama, Chile 481km (299mi) SSW of La Paz, Bolivia

07:30 pm: Copper mining unaffected by quake The quake seems to not have impacted Chile's flourishing copper mining industry as state-owned copper miner, Codelco, said there were no reports of injuries to employees or damage to its operations in the area affected, reported the Wall Street Journal. 05:00 pm: Bigger quake waiting in the wings? The northern Chile that had been witnessing tremors since last two weeks on Tuesday was rattled by a stronger quake of magnitude 8.2 earthquake. But if a geophysicist is to be believed, a bigger quake might be waiting in the wings. According to the CNN,...