Free Republic

Title Forget the Internet - soon there will be the OUTERNET: Company plans to beam free Wi-fi to every person on Earth from space An ambitious project known as Outernet is aiming to launch hundreds of miniature satellites into low Earth orbit by June 2015 Each satellite will broadcast the Internet to phones and computers giving billions of people across the globe free online access Citizens of countries like China and North Korea that have censored online activity could be given free and unrestricted cyberspace 'There's really nothing that is technically impossible to this' Known as Outernet, MDIF plans to...

The late journalist Christopher Hitchens once suggested that it was as if Kim Il Sung -- the founder and “Eternal President” of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) -- had read George Orwell’s famous dystopian novel “1984,” and then tried to bring it to life. That was one of his first thoughts, he said, after visiting the country. North Korea, as most people know, is probably the most impoverished and terrorized police state on the face of the earth. Unspeakable atrocities happen there every single day. And now, in a new report, the UN is using its perch to...

GENEVA (Reuters) - North Korean security chiefs and possibly even Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un himself should face international justice for ordering systematic torture, starvation and mass killings bordering on genocide, U.N. investigators said on Monday.

SUWON, South Korea, Feb. 17 (Yonhap) -- In a landmark ruling, a district court Monday sentenced a left-wing lawmaker to 12 years in prison for plotting an armed rebellion against the South Korean government in case of an inter-Korean war. Rep. Lee Seok-ki, affiliated with the minor opposition Unified Progressive Party (UPP), was found guilty of conspiring with members of a clandestine organization to topple the Seoul government if a war with North Korea broke out. The Suwon District Court in Suwon, south of Seoul, also stripped the 52-year-old legislator of his civic rights, such as suffrage, for 10 years...

Dennis Rodman checking himself into an alcohol rehabilitation center upon returning from a trip to North Korea was the first news all over the U.S. media, but at that time, he confirmed only to the fact that he is an addict and has never recovered from the habit. But according to a report cited by Free North Korea Radio, he was practically forced out of the hermit kingdom for his full-blown drunk and disorderly behavior. “Rodman was drunk the whole week of his stay. And the night before he left for the U.S., he was drunk unconscious, and vomited everywhere...

"If these negotiations [with Iran] fail, there are two grim alternatives," said Sen. Richard Durbin, "a nuclear Iran, or war, or perhaps both." Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham returned from the Munich security conference saying that even John Kerry agrees that President Obama's Syrian policy has failed. They are urging another look at air strikes. North Korea is warning that should the annual U.S.-South Korean military exercises go forward in March, it could mean war, possibly nuclear war. Philippines President Benigno Aquino III this week compared his country's situation to Czechoslovakia in 1938, and the disputed islets off his...

SEATTLE — A U.S. citizen detained in North Korea for 15 months has been returned to a labor camp, prompting worries about his health, his sister said Friday. Kenneth Bae, who led tour groups in North Korea, was arrested in late 2012 and sentenced to 15 years hard labor for unspecified hostile acts. Calls for his release on humanitarian grounds have gone unanswered. After he lost 50 pounds, he was moved last summer to a hospital from a prison work camp where he had been farming vegetables.

It is happening in slow motion, to be sure. But we are witnessing how a nuclear armed Iran is changing the face of the Middle East. For years, US leaders, including President Barack Obama warned that a nuclear armed Iran would spark a regional arms race. And this is happening. As the Wall Street Journal's Bret Stephens noted this week, Turkey signed a nuclear cooperation agreement with Japan that includes "a provision allowing Turkey to enrich uranium and extract polonium, a potential material for nuclear weapons." Saudi Arabia has long had a nuclear cooperation deal with Pakistan, whose nuclear weapons...

That doesn't matter. It gets crazier daily. Do others notice or care?Venezuelans lack food, toilet paper and other basic necessities. Violent crime is rampant. But their intensely brilliant leaders have found great solutions.To refer to Venezuela as an economic basket case insults baskets everywhere. The economy is massively controlled, yet planning is a big mystery to Government officials. The Bolivar has been devalued officially, again, as through inflation at about fifty percent annually were not enough to screw the economy and Venezuelans dependent upon it. There is internet censorship and violent crime is endemic, as are power outages. Perhaps the recent brain spasm of el Presidente Maduro (replacement for the late lamented el Presidente...

North Korea is stepping up pressure on the US and South Korea to cancel a major military exercise due to begin next month, with a senior official warning that the drills will push the peninsula “to the brink of war”.

Secretary Kerry is truly amazing. Secretary of State Kerry has had at least two historic diplomatic successes recently: demanding that Israel give the Palestinians whatever they want in exchange for destruction peace and begging Iran and her Supreme Leader Khamenei to be slightly more discrete about their acquisition and development of nukes. With those successes behind him, having little else to do and needing an encore, Secretary Kerry plans next to seek an audience with Kim Chi-un, North Korea's Supreme Dear Leader, to propose a technology exchange agreement similar to that between North Korea and Iran. Although it is still unclear whether...

A Friendlier Iran? Or Have They Just Moved Their Nukes to North Korea? Posted on January 31, 2014 by By Ilana Freedman, Editor After years of intransigence and unwillingness to even consider abandoning its nuclear program, Iran has suddenly become amenable to what appears to be real negotiations and an apparent readiness to compromise. The change was dramatic. Although still firing off occasional tirades against the West in general and Israel in particular, Iran is now allowing daily inspections of some of its nuclear facilities in exchange for the lifting of international sanctions. The sudden shift in Iranian policy has...

Sen. Lindsey Graham blasted President Obama for the foreign policy portion of his State of the Union address Tuesday night. “The world is literally about to blow up,” the South Carolina Republican told Roll Call. “The world as I know was not remotely described by the president.” “Syria is a contagion … Iraq is disintegrating. The whole region is moving toward chaos, and we’re doing nothing. We’re talking about limiting drones?” he continued. “I hope he will leave a residual force in Afghanistan [so] they can do the job, because if he doesn’t,

The purge of Jang Song Thaek associates has reportedly continued with the execution of a senior Central Administrative Department official in North Korea’s ruling party, a Japanese news agency reported Tuesday. Choe Byung Hee, a division chief at the Central Administrative Department of the Workers’ Party of Korea, has been shot to death following the execution of Jang Song Thaek’s associates Ri Yong Ha and Jang Soo Kil from the same department, the Asia Press agency reported, quoting a local government official in the northern Ryanggang province of North Korea.

The special operations branch of the Korean People's Army, tasked with conducting asymmetric warfare against the United States and South Korea, is reported to comprise 200,000 soldiers, according to the Seoul-based Chosun Ilbo. As the South Korean government's defense white paper noted in 2010, North Korean special forces consist of 60,000 specialized troops and 140,000 light infantry soldiers. General Walter Sharp, the former commander of the South Korean-US Combined Forces Command stated that the infantry soldiers are lightly armed and trained to infiltrate deep behind enemy lines to destroy key installations and engage in black ops. Specialized troops may infiltrate...

North Korea is in the grip of a crystal meth epidemic with the drug being produced on an industrial scale by corrupt officials in collusion with criminal gangs and the number of addicts spiraling. Use of meth is reportedly so common in the shadowy communist state that offering some to house guests has been described as the equivalent of making them a cup of tea. […] As one of the few commodities easily available, it is used for everything from treating colds to curbing hunger pangs during times of food shortages. But few users realize the dangers or what the...

In a shocking declaration on her 1 p.m. ET hour MSNBC show Tuesday, host Andrea Mitchell asserted that one of America's fiercest enemies was actually a friend to the U.S. before George W. Bush came along: "Up until that moment, Iran was cooperating with the United States on the border of Afghanistan, it was post-9/11, Iran was more or less an American ally. By being included in the Axis of Evil, it turned the Iranian government in a completely different direction." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump] The topic came up when The Washington Post's...

All the direct relatives, including children, of Jang Song Thaek, the late uncle of Kim Jong-un who was put to death on December 12 2013, have been executed in North Korea, according to South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency. “Multiple sources” told Yonhap, a publicly funded news agency, that entire families related to Thaek have been executed. Thaek was convicted of plotting to overthrow North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and the whole North Korean government, and was sentenced to death by firing squad at the end of last year. The North Korean regime issued photos of his arrest.

All relatives of Jang executed too: sources 2014/01/26 10:37 SEOUL, Jan. 26 (Yonhap) -- All relatives of the executed uncle of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, including children and the country's ambassadors to Cuba and Malaysia, have also been put to death at the leader's instruction, multiple sources said Sunday. Jang Song-thaek, the once-powerful uncle, was executed last month on charges of attempting to overthrow the communist regime, including contemplating a military-backed coup. All direct relatives of Jang have also been executed, the sources said. "Extensive executions have been carried out for relatives of Jang Song-thaek," one source said on...

American intelligence and security agencies are not currently capable of detecting when foreign nations are building nuclear weapons or ramping up their existing programs, according to a newly released Pentagon report that faults a range of U.S. agencies. “The nation is not yet organized or fully equipped” to detect clandestine nuclear activities across the globe, and in most cases “current solutions are either inadequate, or more often, do not exist,” according to the report, which was compiled over three years by the Pentagon’s Defense Science Board.