Free Republic

The First Lady wants you to drink more water. On a call announcing Michelle Obama‘s newest healthy living initiative Wednesday, Let’s Move Executive Director Sam Kass explained that the White House is working with cities, private companies and public taps to promote the message to “drink up.” Participating companies include Brita, Poland Spring, Evian, Dasani, Voss and others, which will carry a “Drink Up” logo on their bottles, and participating cities include Chicago, Los Angeles county, Houston and, appropriately, Watertown, Wis., where the First Lady is visiting Thursday to kick off the initiative.

A Sudanese woman says she is prepared to be flogged to defend the right to leave her hair uncovered in defiance of a "Taliban"-like law. Amira Osman Hamed faces a possible whipping if convicted at a trial which could come on September 19. Under Sudanese law her hair -- and that of all women -- is supposed to be covered with a "hijab". But Hamed, 35, refuses to wear one. Her case has drawn support from civil rights activists and is the latest to highlight Sudan's series of laws governing morality which took effect after the 1989 Islamist-backed coup by...

A dentist who offered to perform genital mutilation on two young girls in a sting by an undercover reporter has been struck off. Omar Sheikh Mohamed Addow, 56, is the first dentist to be struck off by the General Dental Council for the crime, which carries a maximum 14-year sentence in the UK. The council's Professional Conduct Committee found that Addow had also performed an inappropriate examination of the reporter's chest, abdomen and vagina at his surgery, which was illegal as he was not a doctor registered with the General Medical Council. ... When asked to perform FGM on the...

South Sudan Breaks Oil Embargo Imposed By Moslem NorthBy Joe OdabyJuba — September 5, 2013 (SSN)... The visit by South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir to Sudan’s capitol Khartoum on September 3-4, 2013, might prove a turning point in both bilateral and regional terms. In the climax of the Summit, Presidents Kiir and Omar al-Bashir signed oil export agreement guaranteeing the South Sudanese oil exports will continue “without any impediments” across “flexible but secure borders” between the two countries. The agreement removes the immediate threat of economic strangulation and uncertainty by repeated Sudanese threats to close down the oil exports of...

It seems to be "show me the Muslim" or "show me the oil." Blacks and Christians in Sudan and Rwanda get the near genocide treatment and the U.S. does not intervene. Nor did we hit Saddam real hard when he gassed many and more Kurds in Iraq. Coptic Christians in Egypt were treated very harshly even before the military ousted Morsi, but did the U.S. intervene? No. Kosovo intevention: Muslims involved. Libya: oil and Muslims. Syria: Muslims, and in a region region where instability could affaect oil prices. But Christians there --- who cares about them, right? Rand Paul is...

The oldest human artifacts have been found in Africa. Two regions in particular have yielded archaeological riches: Sudan and southern Africa. Sudan has more pyramids than Egypt, in places like Nuri and Bijrawiyah, though they are smaller and not as old. In the town of Sedeinga in northern Sudan, 35 small pyramids have been excavated in the past few years. Twin pyramids and a sphinx have also been found in Niger, suggesting a pyramid building culture that extending from the Nile to the Niger River Basin at a time when the Saharan was wetter. Other important artifacts of Sudan include...

An international relief agency plans to airlift some 3,400 Christians out of Sudan, where they face increasing persecution from the Islamist government. The Barnabas Fund has already whisked about 5,000 Christians from the embattled country, where President Omar Hassan al-Bashir has vowed to create a “a 100 percent Islamic constitution, without communism or secularism or Western [influences].” The Christians will be taken to South Sudan, a smaller nation formed in 2011 where religious freedom is better tolerated. “We launched this as major global initiative, and have had such a tremendous response from the Christian community,” Julian Dobbs, a bishop and...

- FrontPage Magazine - http://frontpagemag.com - Escalation in GazaPosted By P. David Hornik On October 25, 2012 @ 12:40 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 2 Comments Those who have long dreamed of a Palestinian state need dream no longer. Hamas-ruled Gaza, while not internationally recognized as a state, is now a self-governing entity in every meaningful sense. On Tuesday it even had its first official visit, with full pomp and splendor, by a foreign head of state—the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani.The emir announced he would be donating to Gaza an aid package reportedly worth as much...

Israel’s security agencies are stepping up targeted attacks throughout the world on Hamas‘ leadership in what one Israeli official called “intelligence-based prevention.” In the past two months, Israeli operatives have intercepted a German ship in international waters, fired a missile at a suspected Hamas leader in Sudan, and captured a Hamas engineer in the Ukraine, according to Israeli and Western officials and press reports from the region. “Israel defeated the wave of suicide bombing attacks against it in 2002 by identifying the leadership that was behind it and making it clear to them that they would pay a price,” said...

Obama Tries To Return South Sudan Into Khartoum’s FoldBy Joe OdabyJuba, South Sudan – August 5, 2013 … In late-July 2013, the Obama Administration intensified its blatant intervention in the domestic political affairs of the Republic of South Sudan – a country considered a close friend of the United States. Washington intervened in an effort to sway the resolution of the government and political crises in Juba in favor of candidates and policies the Obama White House favor and against the democratically elected and widely supported President Kiir and his government. In the process, the Obama Administration made demands of...

Editor's note: Below is Thomas Joscelyn's testimony to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade, on al Qaeda, the nature of the group's central command and its relationship with its affiliates, and the future challenges the West faces in battling the terror organization. Chairman Poe, Ranking Member Sherman and members of the Committee, thank you for inviting me here today to discuss the threat posed by al Qaeda. We have been asked to "examine the nature of global al Qaeda today." In particular, you asked us to answer the following questions: "What is [al...

Harpoon missile among weapons aboard patrol vesselsThe U.S. Senate has rejected an effort to crack down on U.S. taxpayer monies being forwarded to the violence-ridden nation of Egypt, and now the Obama administration is preparing to send more heavily armed, missile-equipped naval patrol ships to the interim government there. For that purpose, Washington is hiring private contractors to make the transoceanic delivery on its behalf. This shipment of Fast Missile Craft, or FMC, comes at a time when congressional interest in suspending U.S. military aid to Egypt had heated up – to the point there was a Senate proposal to...

The West Has Failed South SudanBy Joe Odaby South Sudan NewsJuba — July 23, 2013 (SSN) … The Fashoda Institute, South Sudan’s leading think-tank, asserts in its latest analysis that the West has betrayed this young democracy. Two years ago, on July 9, 2011, the Republic of South Sudan became the world’s youngest nation. Independence came in the aftermath of more than two decades of genocidal liberation struggle and five years of failed stifling autonomy. The Fashoda Institute states that South Sudan has huge potential. The land is exceptionally rich. The Fashoda Institute points to the CIA’s World Factbook, South...

When rebel forces, led by Arab-speaking Muslims, seized control of the Central African Republic this March, it deepened fears that a co-ordinated Islamist insurgency could now be spreading through swathes of the continent. Four months on, the landlocked country is living through a reign of terror, largely directed against its Christian minority.“Churches have been routinely robbed and pillaged here, while Muslim mosques have been left untouched,” Mgr Cyriaque Gbate Doumalo, secretary-general of the Central African Republic’s Catholic bishops’ conference, told me in an interview. “Our public institutions aren’t functioning and our hospitals have been ransacked, leaving the sick and destitute...

Omar Al-Bashir Presses For War, Not Peace With South Sudan To Save HimselfBy Joe Odaby South Sudan NewsJuba — July 19, 2013 (SSN) … The Fashoda Institute, South Sudan’s leading think-tank, asserts in its latest analysis that Khartoum’s objective in provoking armed conflict with Juba goes beyond the on-going drive to coerce South Sudan into giving up on independence and returning to the Sudanese fold. This time Khartoum is yearning for a major crisis that will serve its own domestic imperatives – particularly the building of international pressure on President Omar al-Bashir. At the same time, Khartoum seems convinced that...

CAIRO (AP) -- Gunmen ambushed a United Nations peacekeeping team Saturday in Sudan's western region of Darfur, killing seven and wounding another 17 in the deadliest ever single attack on the international force in the country. The assault included sustained heavy fire from machine guns and possibly rocket-propelled grenades, targeting the force some 25 kilometers (15 miles) west of the town of Khor Abeche, U.N. forces spokesman Chris Cycmanick said. Reinforcements later arrived to rescue the wounded, who included two female police advisers, the force said in a statement.It wasn't immediately clear if any civilian personnel accompanied the team into...

Pictures of Barack Obama have popped up all over Cairo. Some have his faced crossed out in paint. Heavy black beards are daubed onto others. No matter which side you talk to in Egypt, where people have been polarized by a violent political crisis, the U.S. president is cast as the villain. Four years ago, cheers greeted Obama's speech at Cairo University, amid brief hopes of closer ties between the United States and the Muslim world. For most Egyptians, those hopes had faded long ago.

Egypt has less than two months' supply of imported wheat left in its stocks, ousted President Mohamed Mursi's minister of supplies said, revealing a shortage more acute than previously disclosed. Speaking to Reuters near midnight in a tent at a vigil where thousands of Mursi supporters are protesting against the Islamist president's removal, former Minister of Supplies Bassem Ouda said the state had just 500,000 metric tons of imported wheat left. Egypt usually imports about 10 million metric tons a year. Two and a half years of political turmoil have caused a deep economic crisis in Egypt, scaring away investors...

JUBA — 3 July, 2013 … The Washington-based think-tank The International Strategic Studies Association has devoted the latest issue of Global Information System (GIS) Special Analysis, a confidential newsletter used by the Western governments and select subscribers, to the latest Sudanese-Iranian designs for the entire west Africa. “The governments of Iran and Sudan are preparing for a major strategic surge into western Africa, into both the Sahel and the shores of the Gulf of Guinea,” the report warns. “The ultimate objective of this surge is to consolidate control and/or influence over this extensive region and its considerable oil, gas, uranium,...

A logistics base for handling tanks, missile systems, self-propelled artillery and other heavy weaponry bound for Syria and Hizballah is secretly under construction in a section of Port Sudan which Omar al Bashir has leased to Tehran Iranian Revolutionary Guards engineers in civilian dress are overseeing the hundreds of Sudanese workmen laboring flat out to build Iran’s second Red Sea base after Assab in southern Eritrea. As a safeguard against an Israeli strike, the new Iranian facility abuts directly on Port Sudan's oil exporting installations, through which South Sudan, Israel’s ally, exports its oil, the new republic’s only source of...