Free Republic

August 11, nine Chinese workers were killed in a blast in Pakistan, the latest in the string of attacks targeting Chinese citizens. The incident highlighted the vulnerability of Chinese nationals and assets abroad and the need to improve protection and security for workers in foreign countries. As a solution, China has come to see private military companies (PMC) as an eminently necessary tool. PMCs and Chin Though first emerging in the 1990s, the need for Chinese PMCs became clearer from the 2000s onward. This is because threats to China’s international ambitions grew in tandem with the country’s economic impact and...

The species would have looked similar to modern rats but ranged in size from about 1.5 kilograms to five kilograms. Researcher Julien Louys said the creatures were probably herbivores and became extinct suddenly about 1,000 years ago. He said they were the largest known rats to have ever existed and acknowledged some people thought they sounded terrifying. "Most people seem to think that," Dr Louys said. "But I think they would have been, well not cute, but certainly they would have been fascinating to see them in the flesh." He said it appeared the rats were a popular meal for...

Stacey Addison, DVM, 41, of Portland, Oregon, is in a Timorese prison after being arrested in early September while traveling abroad. A chance encounter—a cab shared with a stranger—led to her witnessing a crime, which kicked off a chain of events that has family and friends doing everything they can to bring her home. Addison, a graduate of University of California-Davis, left her job of 10 years at a Portland veterinary hospital in January 2013 and set off on a year-and-a-half-long dream trip around the world to see wildlife. She had been planning the trip for two years. Addison began...

ISLAMIC GENOCIDESome of highlighted mass casualties by (political) Islam in course of the last century, from 1915 and on (updated June, 2012) Casualties: 2,700,000 Chritians - (1915-1923) by Ottoman-Empire Muslim Turkey. 750,000 Assyrians, 500,000 Greeks and 1.5 million Armenians.[1] Nature: 1.) Ethnic cleansing.[2] 2.) Islamic Jihad.[3] Casualties: close to 27,000. In Israel between 1920-2012, at the hands of Arab/Muslims. 24,526 Israelis/Jews killed, 35,356 injured, and 1,967 Arab "Palestinians" killed by other Arab "Palestinians."[4] Nature: roots and motivation: the genocide campaign[5][6][7][8] began (mainly) in the early 1920s by the supreme Islam leader, the pan-Arab Mufti, Haj Amin al-Husseini, motivated by both:...

Jimmy Carter - Mass Murderer Pravda 16.05.2012 Boni pastoris est tondere pecus, non deglubere. - Tiberius By John Fleming   ... Jimmy Carter affects a superficial appearance of amiability and since leaving the White House, besides his well-known work for Habitat for Humanity, he has espoused time and again humanitarian causes. He has been appointed a diplomatic plenipotentiary time and again, especially under Clinton, and he made a well-publicized trip to Cuba and met Fidel Castro recently, where he, without mentioning the repression under corporate monopoly capitalism, in Georgia and everywhere else in the U.S., chided Castro in a would-be...

DILI, East Timor—Jose Ramos Horta has indicated he's ready to step down as East Timor's president after a poor showing in weekend elections

Tuna has been on the menu for a lot longer than we thought. Even 42,000 years ago, the deep-sea dweller wasn't safe from fishing tackle according to new finds in southeast Asia. We know that open water was no barrier to travel in the Pleistocene -- humans must have crossed hundreds of kilometres of ocean to reach Australia by 50,000 years ago. But while humans had already been pulling shellfish out of the shallows for 100,000 years by that point, the first good evidence of fishing with hooks or spears comes much later -- around 12,000 years ago. The new...

Ancient stone faces carved into the walls of a well-known limestone cave in East Timor have been discovered by a team searching for fossils of extinct giant rats.The team of archaeologists and palaeontologists were working in Lene Hara Cave on the northeast tip of East Timor. “Looking up from the cave floor at a colleague sitting on a ledge, my head torch shone on what seemed to be a weathered carving,” CSIRO’s Dr Ken Aplin said. “I shone the torch around and saw a whole panel of engraved prehistoric human faces on the wall of the cave. “The local landowners...

The United States has signed a deal with Bhutan giving US citizens in the country immunity from prosecution by the International Criminal Court (ICC), the State Department said Tuesday. The deal with Bhutan brings to 34 the number of countries with which the United States has signed so-called "Article 98" agreements exempting US citizens from the court's jurisdiction, said Lynn Cassel, a department spokesman. Bhutan and Bosnia-Herzegovina both agreed to the pacts on May 16 but the deal with Thimphu was not announced until Tuesday. Washington refuses to support the ICC, arguing that it could become a forum for politically...

"Going to the Dogs in Bali" is my December 2010 "Rights Watch" column in GUNS Magazine. Aside from humans falling victims to rabid dogs, and to Sea Dogs engaged in rampant piracy throughout the region, we can also observe, not unexpectedly for those of us who warn against "monopolies of violence," tyrannical government abuse of its exclusive franchise. An excerpt: And in Gun Ownership and Human Rights, authors David B. Kopel, Paul Gallant and Joanne D. Eisen tell us of a much larger threat to human life and liberty than rabid dogs and pirates: "[I]n East Timor, it was the...

Remains of Earth's largest rat discovered in cave The remains of the largest rat to ever roam the Earth have been discovered in a remote cave in East Timor. Bonnie Malkin in Sydney Published: 12:35PM BST 26 Jul 2010 The huge rodent, which died out about 2,000 years ago, was three times as big as its modern cousins and weighed more than 13lbs, about the same as a small dog. Australian archaeologists from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) found the bones of the giant rat alongside 11 new species of rat, eight of which weighed more than...

AUSTRALIA is willing to extend its Defence Force presence in East Timor beyond 2012 if necessary, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says. Australia has 400 personnel stationed in the fledgling nation as part of the International Stabilisation Force which is supporting the United Nations to maintain stability. If the UN wanted to extend its mandate Australia would respond "positively", Mr Rudd said in Canberra. President Jose Ramos-Horta said the economy of East Timor was "doing well" enjoying double-digit growth during the past three years. "Those of you who might go there, or who were there is the past, wouldn't recognise Dili,"...

How radical Islam makes you: a bigot religiously - a racist ethnically UNIQUENESS OF ISLAM'S INTOLERANCE While Christianity, ever since the termination of the Crusades and the Spanish inquisitions has no plans to "convert by force" anybody else, nor is ever Buddhism or Judaism, Islam --on the other hand-- even modern day Islam is about to Islamize the world, with any means possible. When (thank God) not "yet" accomplished, the Islamists bigotry has a few levels, the "people of the book" a.k.a. Christians & Jews are "allowed" to stay as an inferior class [Dhimmis], the other non-Muslims are "totally"...

ON the 10th anniversary of the vote that led to East Timorese independence, President Jose Ramos Horta yesterday invited the fathers of Indonesian soldiers killed in the territory's 25-year civil war to visit their son's graves. This act of reconciliation came as official ceremonies in Dili were delayed by the late arrival of Indonesian Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda, underlining the continuing importance of the former occupier to the new state. A decade ago the East Timorese people voted in a UN-administered ballot to achieve independence from Indonesia, ending 24 years of occupation by Indonesian forces and giving birth to Asia's...

BANGKOK, Thailand - A Russian dubbed the "Merchant of Death" for allegedly supplying weapons to Africa's bloody conflicts over power and diamonds was arrested Thursday in Thailand on suspicion of conspiring to smuggle guns to Colombia's leftist rebels. Viktor Bout, 41, whose dealings reportedly inspired a 2005 movie about the illicit arms trade, was arrested at U.S. request in his hotel room in Bangkok, said police Lt. Gen. Pongpat Chayapan. Bout had eluded arrest for years and was finally seized after a four-month sting organized by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. In New York, federal authorities unsealed a criminal complaint...

Women are now equal to men...at long last! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEtw3XJoJrE Check this link.

In wee morning hours on Friday, January 23, a U.S. spy plane killed at least 15 in Pakistan near the Afghanistan border. It was Barack Obama's first blood and the U.S.'s first violation of Pakistan's sovereignty under the new dministration. The attack was an early sign that the newly minted president may not be overhauling the War on Terror this week, or even next.

EAST Timor's Prime Minister is supporting a new law that would allow civilians to own guns, less than five months after illegally armed rebel soldiers tried to kill him and the President.

Curfew in East Timor following assasination attempt February 11th, 2008 by Nancy Reyes Nobel prize winner and president of East Timor has been airlifted to an Australian hospital following an assasination attempt connected with an attempted coup. In the meanwhile, his country is under a curfew. The accused assassin is an ex General, Alfredo Reinado, who was killed in the attempted assassination, along with one rebel and one of the president’s bodyguards. An hour later, the country’s Prime minister’s motorcade was attacked. The unrest by disaffected militants has been growing in the last year or two. Australia will send more...

Professors laud East Timor leader UI The Daily Iowan, IA (Feb. 12 2008) ...Teague said that before the vote for independence, Muslims were in charge of the military and Christian citizens were afraid to vote because of it. ... There are currently a sizable number of Muslim radicals supporting former officials. Retish, who has visited East Timor "four or five times,"