Free Republic

As the Islamic State seeks to export its brand of barbaric terror to would-be affiliates, the U.S. faces a growing challenge to find the sources of ISIS funding and blunt its flow to allied militants. The terror army's most recent atrocity was the mass beheading of 21 Coptic Christians in Libya. It remains unclear how closely tied those militants are to ISIS in Iraq and Syria, but the Islamic State's underground economy continues to thrive. Even as the U.S.-led coalition strikes at what was long the heart of ISIS' revenue stream -- oil fields and refineries -- officials say the...

President Obama will unilaterally remove most of the embargo on Cuba, according to John Kavulich of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council and White House officials. According to Mr. Kavulich, by himself, President Obama will remove nearly all restrictions on Cuba and will forgo Congress. The “embargo” will still exist, but it will be in name only. “The embargo is a container — it’s been that way since President Eisenhower — that’s had regulations and laws put into it and taken out of it and mixed about,” Mr. Kavulich said. “President Obama is saying, ‘I’m going to leave a shell,...

Edward Levine, a Kerry confidant who formerly worked on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, lambasted the anti-terror mandate in a recent analysis for the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. Requiring Iran to cease its terror activities against the United States could harm the negotiations over its contested nuclear program, according to Levine. “This language would mean that if, say, Hezbollah were to explode a bomb outside a U.S. firm’s office in Beirut, the sanctions would go into effect (because Iran gives financial and other support to Hezbollah) even if Iran’s nuclear activities...

ENSAAF today released its report, Punjab Police: Fabricating Terrorism through Illegal Detention and Torture (June 2005 to August 2005) (http://www.ensaaf.org/ft-report.html). This report details human rights violations committed by Indian security forces in recent militancy-related arrests. From June 2005 to August 2005, Indian police claim to have arrested several dozen individuals intent on reviving or supporting militancy in Punjab. These arrests center around the apprehension of Jagtar Singh Hawara, the main accused in the 1995 assassination of Punjab’s chief minister. In August and September 2005, ENSAAF documented 28 cases of detention of Punjabis accused of militancy-related activities. Its study reveals that,...

BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) - Syrian President Bashar Assad described armed attacks against U.S.-led troops in neighboring Iraq as legitimate "resistance" against foreign occupation. His remarks, aired Wednesday on the Qatar-based pan-Arab al-Jazeera satellite station, are likely to strain already tense U.S.-Syrian relations. Assad, whose country strongly opposed the U.S.-led war on Iraq, said anti-American resistance was widespread in Iraq, where most people opposed the U.S. occupation. "The public reaction (in Iraq to the U.S. occupation) ... gives legitimacy to the resistance," Assad said, adding that Iraqi opposition stems from the killing of Iraqi civilians by American-led soldiers. Al-Jazeera did not...