Free Republic

Some great easy listening and big band sounds to open us up to joy and celebration. I look for the good and want to share it with you. Canada's election day Monday brought the election of an independent candidate in the Vancouver Granville riding.... And courtesy of "Ruptly" the pictures of Maria Butina on her way home to Russia..... "She served a ridiculously long sentence essentially for not filing the right paperwork. But now she is free...." Why do the Adam Schiff's and Marco Rubio's read from the same script when it comes to Russia... Angela Merkel may get things...

Acting Defense Secretary Mark Esper announcing the deployment of 1,800 additional US troops to Saudi Arabia.... The move comes hours after explosions were reported on an Iranian oil tanker..... Iran hailing the notion of mediation in its relations with Saudi Arabia..... Intense fighting in northeastern Syria as the Turkish military continues its attack to take Kurdish controlled territory..... Citing a Kurdish source and one at the Pentagon "Newsweek" reported today that some US Special Forces got caught in the Turkish shelling..... In Syria Friday one Russian soldier and two Syrian soldiers wounded when an improvised explosive device exploded..... The Russian...

The 2019 Nobel Peace has been awarded to Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, multiple news outlets reported early Friday morning. In addition to his efforts to "achieve peace and international cooperation," Ahmed was also cited for his "decisive initiative to resolve the border conflict with neighboring Eritrea," the Nobel committee said in its official statement. According to CNN, Ahmed was awarded the 100th Peace Prize after brokering "an audacious peace deal" between the two African nations that had raged for two decades. Although Greta Thunberg had been considered a front-runner for the 2019 prize, Ahmed bested hundreds of nominees including...

Beautiful testimony and prayer by Mahalet, an Ethiopian-born young woman of intelligence and dignity. Abandoned by her parents, she lived as an impoverished orphan, was then adopted by a Christian American family at the age of 11. Click the pic to see her 2 minute talk on Youtube.

quite disturbing to learn that, contrary to what the press had .. assured us about a supposedly disgruntled aircraft mechanic who got caught trying to disable a Boeing 737, the guy had ISIS video on his cell phone. ... Doesn't everyone with labor beefs against his boss have ISIS video murders on his cell phone? ... Abdul-Majeed Marouf Ahmed Alani might just have been motivated by ISIS's brand of Islamism, not a woikin' man's desire for more overtime. The gullible media reported it otherwise, always eager to look the other way on Islamist terror. ... Alani's phone also had a...

A sign commemorating the arrival of the first Africans is displayed at Chesapeake Bay, in Hampton, Va., August 24, 2019. (Michael A. McCoy/Reuters) It didn’t begin or end in the United States. The same people most obsessed with slavery seem to have little interest in the full scope of its history. There has been an effort for decades now — although with new momentum lately, as exemplified by the New York Times’ 1619 project — to identify the United States and its founding with slavery. To the extent that this campaign excavates uncomfortable truths about our history and underlines...

(WIkipedia...."During the certification process, the FAA delegated many evaluations to Boeing, allowing the manufacturer to review their own product.[48][49] It was widely reported that Boeing pushed to expedite approval of the 737 MAX to compete with the Airbus A320neo. That aircraft hit the market nine months ahead of Boeing's model.") Article excerpt... ...During his time as President of the United States, Barack Obama promoted the sale of Boeing planes—including the 737 Max 8 planes—around the world. In November 2011, in Bali, Indonesia, President Obama announced an agreement between Boeing and Lion Air. "For the last several days I’ve been talking...

It can be shown for the first time after a near complete skull of Australopithecus anamensis was found in Ethiopia. The ape-like adult male was about 5ft and weighed about 100lbs. Females were about 3ft 5in and around 62lbs. An upper jaw was found first. Dr Yohannes Haile-Selassie, of Cleveland Museum of Natural History, told journal Nature: “I couldn’t believe my eyes when I spotted the rest. "It was a dream come true.” "This is a game changer in our understanding of human evolution during the Pliocene." Professor Fred Spoor, an expert in anatomy at London's Natural History Museum, said...

In an unprecedented move last week, India voted in support of Israel at the UN’s Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) to deny observer status to a Palestinian human rights organisation named ‘Shahed’. This is the first time India has taken a step back from its decades-old position on the two-state theory under which New Delhi sees both Israel and Palestine as separate and independent countries, seeking to bring peace in West Asia.The vote, which took place on 6 June at the UN, saw countries such as US, France, Germany, India, Japan, UK, South Korea and Canada polling in favour of...

How a “post-Stalin Stalinist” suppressed slave revolt history. Anthony Flood, Herbert Aptheker: Studies in Willful Blindness, 91 pages, 2019. After U.S. recognition of the USSR in 1933, the Communist Party USA made significant gains in America. Many left the Party after Stalin’s show-trials and purges of the mid-1930s, and many others after the Stalin-Hitler Pact of 1939. By contrast, the American Herbert Aptheker joined the Communist Party “virtually because of it,” explains his former research assistant, friend, and comrade Anthony Flood. Four years before the Nazi-Soviet Pact, Aptheker approved when Stalin shipped oil to Mussolini to aid the fascist dictator’s...

Some of my international university students just returned from Ethiopia. The trip is optional for gap year students learning about the Jewish people. There is a backstory to the Ethiopian Jews returning home to Zion that is more exciting and fraught with Israel's good intentions that continues decades later. Their travel guide was one of my Ethiopian Jewish former students who is now a serial entrepreneur living back in Ethiopia. "It's not like anything in any country I've seen before," one young woman from South Africa told our class in Middle East politics. The students joined Ethiopians still living there...

"I Don't Know Why They Attacked Our Village": Persecution of Christians, February 2019 by During just the first two weeks of February, "[a]t least 10 incidents of vandalism and desecration of Catholic churches have been reported in France." — Catholicherald.co.uk, February 15, 2019; France. "The attack was so terrible that Haroon's kidney was cut into two pieces" from the stabbings....After he was rushed to hospital, "doctors were forced to remove his kidney." As is common in such cases, police and local authorities tried to pressure the family not to press charges against the Muslim youths.... — Persecution.org; International Christian Concern;...

A military council has taken control of Sudan and arrested longtime President Omar al-Bashir, the country's military said Thursday. The move comes after opposition protesters recently gained new momentum in demanding al-Bashir leave office. Sudan's defense minister, Awad Mohamed Ahmed Ibn Auf, said the "regime" had been removed and its head arrested, as he announced the coup in a televised statement. The minister said a transitional military council will rule the country for two years. Protesters have been calling for al-Bashir's ouster for months. Thousands swelled the capital Khartoum's streets as the military promised to make an important announcement earlier...

A special election for a House of Commons seat in Wales on Thursday with the Labor Party holding the seat well ahead of the Conservatives 40 percent to 31 percent with the party of Brexit, UKIP, more than tripling their share to nine percent of the vote..... The "Daily Mail" publishing a poll with 48 percent calling on Mrs. May to resign..... Italy's Interior Minister Matteo Salvini meeting in Paris Friday with France's leading opposition politician, Marine Le Pen of the National Rally.... Debate and discussion in France's National Assembly over giving the government of French President Emmanuel Macron new...

Pilots at the controls of the Boeing Co. 737 MAX that crashed in March in Ethiopia initially followed emergency procedures laid out by the plane maker but still failed to recover control of the jet, according to people briefed on the probe’s preliminary findings. After turning off a flight-control system that was automatically pushing down the plane’s nose shortly after takeoff March 10, these people said, the crew couldn’t get the aircraft to climb and ended up turning it back on and relying on other steps before the final plunge killed all 157 people on board. The sequence of events,...

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...

As I tell friends, I worked on computers before the public knew computers existed. Can you say SOAPII? Anyway, I can't begin to imagine what the programmers that coded the MCAS boxes are going thru. I know, Boeing needed to more thoroughly train pilots on using or interacting with the MCAS box. But none the less, "in a manner of speaking", the programming of those boxes has indirectly killed over 300 people. But nobody will ever say that.

The office of Prime Minister of Ethiopia disclosed on Friday that US president Donald Trump had a telephone conversation with Abiy Ahmed. Although the office did not say how long the conversation was, the two leaders have reportedly expressed condolences for victims of ET 302, crashed on March 10, 2018, claiming the lives of 157 people on board of the plane. The US president ordered on Wednesday that Boeing 737 Max – 8 planes be grounded in the US after his administration admitted striking similarities of circumstances between Indonesian Lion Air plane, crashed in October 2018, and Nairobi bound Ethiopian...

A screw-like device found in the wreckage of the Boeing 737 Max that crashed last Sunday in Ethiopia indicates the plane was configured to dive. ============================================================== A screw-like device found in the wreckage of the Boeing 737 Max that crashed last Sunday in Ethiopia indicates the plane was configured to dive, a piece of evidence that helped convince U.S. regulators to ground the model, a person familiar with the investigation said late Thursday night. Federal Aviation Administration chief Daniel Elwell on Wednesday cited unspecified evidence found at the crash scene as part of the justification for the agency to reverse...

Full title: DGCA lays down the law , says no Boeing 737 MAX aircraft will be allowed to enter, transit Indian airspace An official of aviation watchdog DGCA (Directorate General of Civil Aviation), on Wednesday, said that all Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft in India will be grounded by 4 pm today.  According to news agency PTI, the regulator, which on Tuesday, decided to immediately ground the aircraft amid global concerns following the Ethiopian Airlines crash that killed 157 people, including four Indians, shall ground all the Bowing 737 MAX 8 aircraft in India by 4 pm. The planes will...