Free Republic

Note: The following news brief is a quote: - In cooperation with various other countries, Dutch authorities have rounded up a big cocaine gang that had links with Hezbollah. Seventeen suspects were arrested on Curacao, the biggest island of the Netherlands Antilles, the Public Prosecutor's Office (OM) has revealed. International cooperation between police and judicial services of the Netherlands and the Netherlands Antilles, Belgium, Colombia, Venezuela and the US led to the arrest of the 17 suspects by the Curacao police. They are believed to be part of a drugs and money-laundering organisation with international branches, thought to be responsible...

The FBI is looking for Ghazi Nasr Al-Din and believes he could be in South Florida. He was just added to the bureau’s seeking information terrorism list. The agency wants to talk to him about his fundraising efforts with Hezbollah contributors. Hezbollah is an Islamic militant group. Nasr Al-Din is 5 foot 7 and weighs about 175 pounds. He has black hair, brown eyes and an olive complexion. He speaks Arabic and Spanish and he has dual citizenship in Lebanon and Venezuela. If you see him call the FBI’s toll-free tip line at 1-800-CALL-FBI (1-800- 225-5324) or contact your local...

An ISIS chemical weapons expert was killed in an airstrike on Saturday near Mosul, Iraq, U.S. Central Command said in a statement on Friday. Abu Malik worked in a chemical weapons production facility under Saddam Hussein before joining al Qaeda in Iraq in 2005, Central Command said. He then joined ISIS, allowing the terrorist group to make use of his experience in chemical weapons capabilities, according to Central Command. "His death is expected to temporarily degrade and disrupt the terrorist network and diminish ISIL's (ISIS') ability to potentially produce and use chemical weapons against innocent people," the statement said. The...

On Tuesday, Barack Obama adamantly defended his policy of emptying the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, demanding that Congress get on board with it as well. As Jim Hoft noted at the time, the military leadership present at the State of the Union address didn’t appear too enthusiastic about it:CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO Perhaps the New York Times has an explanation for that stone-faced reaction. At the same time that Obama bragged about “turning the page” on war and the end of combat operations in Afghanistan, one of the men transferred from Gitmo worked to establish a...

Obviously as a reward for committing theft of classified documents for the democrats, Barack Obama has named Alissa Starzak to the legal department at the Pentagon. It’s a position she has never achieved on her own and is a large promotion over her previous jobs. But why put someone with a history of stealing classified secrets to a job where she could steal the country’s most guarded secrets? It’s a reward. Republicans in both houses of congress have accused her of making copies of documents and carrying them out of the Pentagon for use by Diane Feinstein and her committee...

Ali Saleh Kahlah al Marri, an admitted former al Qaeda operative, has been released from a American jail and permitted to return home to Qatar. No formal statement has been released yet by either government, but it is being reported that al Marri's release was the result of a bilateral agreement between the Qatari and American governments. According to the US Bureau of Prisons, a prisoner with the same name and estimated age (ID number 12194-026) was freed on Friday. Additionally, a source from al Marri's family told the Qatari press he was recently released and arrived in Doha Saturday....

Boehner and Bibi blindside Barack There is a heaping helping of poetic justice in Speaker Boehner’s invitation to Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address Congress on Iran sanctions. Just a week ago, the president stood alongside British PM David Cameron as he confessed to lobbying Senators on Iran sanctions, not uttering a peep about any impropriety in a foreign head of government interfering in domestic politics. Of course, that didn’t stop press secretary Josh Earnest, who will say anything, from protesting: Press secretary Josh Earnest said Wednesday afternoon that Boehner's invitation is a breach of normal diplomatic protocol. Typically,...

Nearly six years ago, President George W. Bush declared Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri an enemy combatant and had him swept out of federal court and into a U.S. Navy brig so he could be interrogated without the legal protections afforded by the criminal justice system. Bush said the Qatari national, arrested as a material witness in Illinois in December 2001, possessed critical intelligence that "would aid U.S. efforts to prevent attacks by al-Qaeda on the United States." In an agreement Marri entered Thursday in Peoria, Ill., he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to provide material support to al-Qaeda and admitted to...

Syrian government airstrikes Tuesday killed at least 39 people, mostly civilians, in two main battlegrounds in the north of the country, a monitor said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based anti-regime monitoring group, said at least 27 people were killed in airstrikes that targeted a livestock market in the village of Khansaa, south of the city of Qamishli. Speaking to AFP, Observatory director Rami Abdel-Rahman said nine of those killed in the village of Khansaa near the town of Tal Hamis had been identified by his group as civilians. “More of the dead may be civilians too, but...

France announced sweeping new measures to counter homegrown terrorism Wednesday, including giving security forces better weapons and protection, going on an intelligence agent hiring spree and creating a better database of anyone suspected of extremist links. Since three police were among those killed by the Paris terrorists, the prime minister said improving officers' weapons and protective gear was among the top priorities. France has repeatedly strengthened its counterterrorism laws over the years, including a measure passed in November that focused on preventing French extremists from joining fighters abroad. Another measure — expected to be activated in the coming weeks —...

With a roaring engine, 30-mm. cannon and nose painted like a toothsome, snarling beast, the A-10 Thunderbolt sends ISIS fighters scattering like cockroaches on the Iraqi desert plains, but the legendary fighter plane pilots call the "Warthog" may be fighting for its own life. The venerable plane, first built for destroying Soviet tanks, has been on the chopping block since the sequester of 2011 mandated steep cuts in the Pentagon budget. Although the planes haven't been built in more than 30 years, the Defense Department believes it can save maintenance costs by phasing them out. Air Force brass believes newer,...

A day after President Barack Obama addressed a joint session of Congress with the State of the Union address, House Speaker John Boehner is inviting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak before the same group of lawmakers next month. In a letter to Netanyahu dated Wednesday, Boehner invited the Israeli leader to address the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate on February 11. It would be the prime minister’s third appearance before Congress. “Prime Minister Netanyahu is a great friend of our country, and this invitation carries with it our unwavering commitment to the security and well-being of...

The government for the first time yesterday said illegal immigrants on Algerian-flagged LNG tankers in Boston ``may have had indirect associations'' with the so-called millennium plot to blow up the Los Angeles airport.

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — An alleged bomb threat prompted a massive police response at John F. Kennedy International Airport Monday night. Around 8:15 p.m., emergency alarms went off at the airport for a security alert, due to what officials told CBS2 was a telephone bomb threat called in to a Delta flight that was landing at JFK, Joe Biermann reported from Chopper 2.

Trevor Loudon wrote an article that each and every one of us should read and take note of: Intifada USA? American Radicals Build Ties to “Palestinian” Revolutionaries. I agree completely with Trevor when he says that 2015 could usher in chaos, unrest and violence as we have not seen in our lifetime. The Communists are now joining hands in America with the Radical Islamists, forming an American Intifada – an uprising, resistance, revolt. They are using racism as the building blocks and their hate for America as the glue to forward massive havoc and violence in our streets. The riots...

Here’s an interesting tidbit we can thank jailed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for: according to cables included in the recent WikiLeaks document drop, informants have told diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia that American television–particularly Fox News Channel and David Letterman’s Late Show–are proving to be powerful weapons against “violent jihad.” As the U.K.’s Guardian reports, uncensored satellite broadcasts of popular American shows–with Arabic subtitles–carried via Saudi channel MBC, have turned young Saudis into huge fans of Desperate Housewives, Friends, and Fox News: “It’s still all about the war of ideas here, and the American programming on MBC...

Once more the spoiler. Despite the earnest persuasion of the White House to preserve a useful weapon in the war against the terrorists, the New York Times has revealed the workings of a covert surveillance program, indisputably within the law, to use administrative subpoenas to examine, through a Belgian financial consortium known by the acronym SWIFT, the financing of international terrorism. Once the story was out, the Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal covered it as well. Now the program is damaged, perhaps severely so, and the financing of terror is harder to track. This is another unnecessary leak,...

While Western newspapers were debating whether or not to reprint the Mohammed cartoons, in Nigeria as many as 2,000 people were massacred by the Islamic State in Nigeria, also known as Boko Haram, in what is being called the deadliest attack by the Muslim group to date. Survivors described the Islamic State setting up efficient killing teams and massacring everyone while shouting “Allahu Akbar”. “For five kilometers (three miles), I kept stepping on dead bodies until I reached Malam Karanti village, which was also deserted and burnt,” one survivor said. There’s a word for that. It’s genocide. The Islamic State...

As President Obama frees droves of terrorists—including five Yemenis this week—from the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo news reports confirm that a Gitmo alum who once led a Taliban unit has established the first Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) base in Afghanistan. His name is Mullah Abdul Rauf and international and domestic media reports say he’s operating in Helmand province, actively recruiting fighters for ISIS. Citing local sources, a British newspaper writes that Rauf set up a base and is offering good wages to anyone willing to fight for the Islamic State. Rauf was a corps commander during...

John Quincy Adams The precept of the Koran is perpetual war against all who deny that mahomet is the prophet of God. The vanquished may purchase their lives by the payment of tribute The victories may be appeased by a false and delusive promise of peace and their faithful followers of the prophet may submit to the imperious neccesities to defeat but the command to propagate to the muslim creed by the sword is always obligatory when it can be made effective. The commands of the prophet made be performed alike by fraud or by force.