Free Republic

...after what they consider to be the failure of a 2016 peace deal to guarantee their political rights... "When we signed the accord in Havana we did so with the conviction that it was possible to change the life of the most humble and dispossessed," said Marquez... "But the state hasn't fulfilled its most important obligation, which is to guarantee the life of its citizens and especially avoid assassinations for political reasons."... Marquez was a key negotiator of the peace agreement signed in 2016... The announcement, which Marquez said was filmed in Colombia's Amazon, comes as the complex agreement faces...

Workers at a Maryland office space are lucky to be alive after narrowly escaping a powerful gas explosion that authorities said 'totaled' the building. The incident started just before 7am on Sunday when someone pulled the fire alarm at the Lakewood Office Building and shopping center in Columbia Maryland, a town located about 19 miles southwest of Baltimore, authorities said. Howard County Fire and Rescue emergency crews responded to the scene where fire fighters found gas hissing out of a crater in the parking lot. They made sure the shopping center was completely evacuated just before the office exploded around...

'After Ulysses S. Grant, the 18th president of the United States, died 130 years ago today, a million and a half Americans watched his funeral procession. His mausoleum was a popular tourist attraction in New York City for decades. But for most of the 20th Century, historians and non-historians alike believed Grant was corrupt, drunken and incompetent, that he was one of the country's worst presidents, and that as a general, he was more lucky than good. A generation of historians, led by Columbia's William A. Dunning, criticized Grant for backing Reconstruction, the federal government's attempt to protect the rights...

Of the rock festivals of the sixties, the Woodstock Music and Art Fair was by far the most famous. Held on a 600-acre dairy farm near Bethel, N.Y. on August 15–17, 1969, the festival is the iconic representation of the drug-addled culture and sexual revolution that upended American life. This August marks the fiftieth anniversary of the era-defining event. Some have called for celebrating with another concert. The occasion is hardly a cause for celebration—so many of the cultural changes after Woodstock had catastrophic consequences. Most do not know that the concert was a disaster—even from an organizational point of...

Think the IRA has stepped off the world stage? Their role is closer to that of ringleader. One of America’s most influential terrorist enemies traces its lineage back some thirty years — and it isn’t a Muslim organization.In splinter groups like the Continuity IRA and more recently the Real IRA, Irish terrorists have positioned themselves at the center of a network connecting revolutionary FARC rebels in Colombia, Hezbollah in the Middle East, al-Qaeda in Iraq, and Taliban forces in Afghanistan currently fighting and killing American troops. The IRA and PFLP have trained together and coordinated attacks, weapons smuggling, and other...

<p>SURREY, British Columbia — The separate discoveries of three bodies and a burning car with missing occupants are shaking rural northern British Columbia.</p> <p>Canadian police said Monday they were searching for two men whose burning car was discovered on Friday about 30 miles south of Dease Lake. During that investigation, they found an unidentified body a little over a mile from the car.</p>

Full Title: Colombian National Pleads Guilty to Operating an International Fentanyl Trafficking Organization from a Canadian Prison Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Friday, July 12, 2019 Colombian National Pleads Guilty to Operating an International Fentanyl Trafficking Organization from a Canadian Prison A Colombian fentanyl trafficker, who was scheduled to go to trial on Oct. 1, 2019, pleaded guilty earlier today to drug trafficking and money laundering charges as the leader and organizer of an international continuing criminal enterprise while incarcerated in Quebec, Canada.  The enterprise involved distributing fentanyl and other similar substances from Canada and...

The Brooklyn Museum has sparked outrage in the black community after tapping a white woman to curate its vast African art collection. On Monday the museum appointed Kristen Windmuller-Luna, 31, who has a Ph.D. in African art history from Princeton University, lectures in Columbia University’s department of art history and archaeology, and once worked as an educator for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she was “responsible for adult and college gallery tours in the African galleries.” Despite the stellar résumé, her hiring left some wondering why a qualified person of color did not get the post. “Seriously, @brooklynmuseum?...

The release of over 250,000 diplomatic cables has revealed a lot about the intricacies of U.S. diplomacy. However, one aspect of the WikiLeaks release that has been much under the media's radar is what the leaked cables have said about Russia and its surrogate-state sponsorship of what would most accurately be described as an international terrorist network. In a diplomatic cable dated August 6, 2008, regarding a meeting between U.S. and Russian experts on the export of Man-Portable Air Defense Systems (MANPADS) from Russia, the State Department expressed its concern about "Russian ammunition, sold to Venezuela ... found in possession...

On Thursday 11 April, shortly after 11pm, a black Columbia student named Alexander McNab walked through the gates of Barnard college—the undergraduate all-women’s school at Columbia University—after ignoring a security guard’s request to show his student ID. In search of a midnight snack, McNab got all the way to the library canteen before a public safety officer confronted him and asked for his ID a second time, a request McNab once again refused. Several more officers had arrived on the scene and were continuing to request ID when McNab began yelling. What happened next, depicted in the video below, has...

In a now-deleted Facebook post Saturday, a Columbia University professor likened Israel to ISIS, but with more mainstream media support. Hamid Dabashi, the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia, shared the post in reaction to the United States recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. According to Fox News, Dabashi went on a bizarrely capitalized rant before removing the post. "What's the difference between ISIS and ISRAEL?" he asked. Neither, he said, has a claim to the Golan Heights. "All of Syria belong to all Syrian people, not an inch it either to ISIS or...

COLUMBIA, SC (WIS) - The Columbia Police Departments says their investigation in the disappearance of 21-year-old University of South Carolina student Samantha Josephson has now become a death investigation. Columbia Police Chief Skip Holbrook said that the State Law Enforcement Division is charging Nathaniel David Rowland, 24, with kidnapping and murder in Josephson's death. According to police, Josephson was last seen on surveillance video after 2 a.m. on Friday entering a dark vehicle, possibly a newer model Chevrolet Impala. Police say Josephson’s body was found by two turkey hunters in a wooded area in Clarendon County on Friday afternoon near...

My children I AM with you in the storms of life. My hand is eternally yours to hold onto. Pay no attention to the circumstances and do not look back , leave all distractions behind holding tightly onto My Hand of Hope for I AM with you even now and remember your life is in ME . Deuteronomy 31:6 Be strong and courageous. Do not fear or be in dread of them, for it is the LORD your God who goes with you. He will not leave you or forsake you.” Colossians 1:27 For God wanted them to know that...

Obama USAID Used U.S. Taxpayers’ Funds to Back Soros Group’s Effort to Give Albania’s Socialist Government ‘Full Control Over Judiciary’ (Washington, DC) — Judicial Watch obtained 32 pages of records showing the Obama administration sent U.S. taxpayers’ funds to a group backed by billionaire George Soros, which used the money to fund left-wing political activities in Albania, including working with the country’s socialist government to push for highly controversial judicial “reform.” The records also detail how the Soros operation helped the State Department review grant applications from other groups for taxpayer funding. The records were obtained in a May 26,...

Venezuelan lawmaker Freddy Superlano, a member of the opposition party, is in serious but stable condition after being poisoned in Colombia, his party says. His cousin has passed away. Voluntad Popular, the party of opposition leader Juan Guaidó, said late on Saturday that Superlano was poisoned at a restaurant in Cúcuta, a city near the border with Venezuela. His assistant and cousin, Carlos Salinas, died.

Russia’s position on Venezuela is to prevent American-backed regime change, the country’s Foreign Ministry has announced, amid a jostle for power among rival political factions in the crisis-struck Latin American country. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has accused the United States of backing a coup in his country after Washington recognized opposition leader Juan Guaido as president. Moscow and Beijing have continued to express support for Maduro, who retains control over key state institutions including the military. “Our goal is to prevent another color – or black and white – [revolution] tailor-made by the Americans,” Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov...

MIAMI — President Donald Trump declared 2019 as the “twilight of socialism” in the western hemisphere Monday during a speech in Miami and cast impending regime change in Venezuela as a harbinger of things to come in Cuba and Nicaragua. Appearing in the capital of the Americas, Trump addressed the Venezuelan people in an effort to further increase pressure on embattled ruler Nicolas Maduro to flee and end a blockade of shipments of medicine and food sitting on the Colombian border. He spoke directly to military leaders who continue to support Maduro, warning that the U.S. has identified their off-shore...

Cucuta, Colombia -- U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio visited a border staging point for U.S. aid to Venezuela on Sunday and warned soldiers loyal to socialist President Nicolas Maduro that it will be a "crime against humanity" if they block entry of the goods that are being channeled through Maduro's rivals. An enthusiastic throng of Venezuelan migrants, some chanting "Rubio! Liberty," met the Florida Republican as he visited Cucuta and held a news conference in sight of a border bridge that has been flooded in recent months by people fleeing the hardships of Venezuela's hyperinflation and severe shortages of food and...

US military planes have been delivering humanitarian aid for Venezuela in the Colombian border town of Cucuta. The aid is being stockpiled at the request of the Venezuelan opposition leader, Juan Guaidó, who declared himself interim president last month. President Nicolás Maduro has alleged that the aid is part of a US plot to disguise an invasion into Venezuela. Mr Guaidó said some 600,000 Venezuelan volunteers would carry the aid across the border on 23 February.

A man and woman walked out of a subway car at the 51st Street station in Manhattan and darted into the next one on the same train. A plainclothes police officer noticed. It was rush hour on a Tuesday evening in September on the busy No. 6 line. The officer watched as the woman dipped her hand into a commuter’s purse while her partner stood in front of her, shielding her from view, according to the officer’s affidavit. The woman lifted out a wallet, and the officer and his partners closed in. She threw the wallet to the ground, and...