Free Republic

When you have a President of the United States who has a close friend named Vince McMahon, you can expect a good fight show....... A top North Korean official carrying a note from that country's ruler Kim Jong-un has arrived in Washington for a meeting with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo..... Twenty were killed and dozens injured in a car bomb attack in Colombia's capital Bogota Thursday........ Act 50 of the European UnUUnion treaty invoked for Brexit explicitly states that if there is no deal to withdrawal a member nation can leave without one..... "Back to Paris" is the...

PHOENIX (AP) — An Arizona man facing a terrorism charge for brandishing a knife in an encounter with a sheriff's sergeant was carrying out a "lone wolf" attack, authorities said Thursday. Maricopa County Sheriff Paul Penzone said at a news conference that 18-year-old Ismail Hamed of Fountain Hills told a dispatcher before the Jan. 7 attack that he had an affiliation with a terror group. Hamed was previously charged with aggravated assault for allegedly throwing rocks at the sergeant ...

Wednesday, the FBI arrested 21-year-old Hasher Jallal Taheb in a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia on the grounds that he was planning an attack on the White House. From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: On Aug. 25, 2018, Taheb allegedly put his vehicle up for sale to fund a trip. An FBI informant reached out to show interest and met with the suspect days later.Taheb allegedly said he planned to travel to “hijra,” a term said to refer to Islamic State territory.He also told the informant he wanted to attack the White House and Statue of Liberty in jihadist attacks, authorities said....

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said Wednesday that he is concerned President Donald Trump's statements about Syria have emboldened ISIS and called on the President to rethink his decision to withdraw US troops from the country after the terror group claimed responsibility for a deadly explosion that killed US service members in the city of Manbij. Graham, who was a harsh critic of Trump's plans to bring home US troops from Syria when the decision was announced last month, interrupted the confirmation hearing for Attorney General nominee William Barr to weigh in on the attack. "My concern, by the statements made...

The Al-Shabaab terrorist group said on Wednesday it carried out the deadly attack on a Nairobi hotel and office complex in retaliation for US President Donald Trump's declaration of Jerusalem as Israel's capital last December, AFP reported. The group said in a statement picked up by the SITE monitoring group that its fighters stormed the DusitD2 complex on instructions by Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. "It is a response to the witless remarks of the US president, Donald Trump, and his declaration of Al-Quds (Jerusalem) as the capital of Israel," said Al-Shabaab. The assault with guns and explosives claimed the lives...

LORDSBURG, N.M. — Ranchers and farmers near the U.S.-Mexico border have been finding prayer rugs on their properties in recent months, according to one rancher who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation by human smugglers. The mats are pieces of carpet that those of the Muslim faith kneel on as they worship during their unauthorized trek into and through the United States. "There’s a lot of people coming in not just from Mexico," the rancher said. "People, the general public, just don’t get the terrorist threats of that. That’s what’s really scary. You don’t know what’s coming across....

"A catastrophic failure of leadership @Theresa May. If she has any sense of honor she will resign" That is the tweet of "Mr. Brexit" Nigel Farage in face of Prime Minister Theresa May's huge defeat in the House of Commons..... Al-Shabab Islamic terrorists based in Somalia say they are behind the attack on a luxury hotel complex in Nairobi, Kenya that killed at least 24 people including one US citizen.... In the African nation of Zimbabwe opposition Pastor Evan Mwarire is under arrest following three days of protest against rising fuel prices..... The Russian Interfax News Agency quotes its sources...

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel is planning to dissolve the panel’s terrorism subcommittee and instead create a panel to focus on investigating matters related to President Trump -- a move prompting criticism from Republicans. Engel, a New York Democrat who just took over as committee chairman, first floated the idea in December, eyeing an investigative subcommittee to replace the terrorism panel that was launched after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. He has since confirmed the plans in an interview with The New Yorker. “We just thought, if we’re going to do something relevant in this era where Congress is going to...

January 10 Whelan Security 2019 Speaker Series program entitled Civil Unrest... Are You Prepared?. This program is scheduled Jan. 10th from 8:30am to Noon at the IMF, 1900 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW. Here is the link with details: https://www.imf.org/external/mmedia/viewlive.aspx?eventid=6081&am=true?intcid=Obanner There is no live event at this point. Please check back at a later time (on Jan 10, 2019 9:00am - noon EST)

The Iranian nuclear deal was supposed to have encouraged Tehran to act like a normal, civilized country. The Europeans are so enamored of the deal that they still believe in that fiction and want to preserve the agreement at all costs. In truth, the tiger has not changed its stripes. The New York Post is reporting that the Dutch government believes Iranian intelligence was behind the assassinations of two Iranian dissidents, while the Norwegian government said in October of 2017 that it had thwarted another assassination plot against a prominent critic of Tehran. This week, the Dutch government confirmed that Iran’s intelligence...

BRUSSELS—A terrorism trial starting here on Thursday highlights the difficulties Europe’s courts and prisons face containing the spread of jihadist ideology behind bars. Mehdi Nemmouche, a 33-year-old Frenchman of Algerian origin, faces life in prison for allegedly shooting and killing four people at the Brussels Jewish Museum in May 2014. But once in prison, law-enforcement officials warn, terror suspects and convicts breed even more plots and spread their ideology to other inmates. European prisons are fertile recruiting ground for new terrorists despite efforts in France, Belgium and other European countries to isolate dangerous and radicalized suspects in dedicated wards to...

Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Fla., Monday called on the Department of Justice to immediately halt federal funding to the Nation of Islam, after the Washington Examiner first reported that the group has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the government to teach religious studies programs to prison inmates. In a letter to the Justice Department obtained by the Washington Examiner, Buchanan called the report “disturbing” and said the government’s funding of the openly anti-Semitic black separatist group was “downright immoral.” “As you may know, the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center have designated the Nation of Islam as...

Border security is once again front and center on the American political scene as politicians in Washington posture in the debate over whether the U.S. should build some sort of border wall or fence on its porous southern border with Mexico. Whenever the Mexican border is at the top of the news, it serves as a reminder that our southern border is almost completely unsecure. And there have been some reminders mixed in over the years that Washington has ignored this problem about the potential for a terrorist threat from south of the border, such as James O’Keefe of Project...

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders sat down with Fox News' Chris Wallace on Sunday to discuss the government shutdown and the status of negotiation talks. During the interview, Wallace blatantly asked Sanders how she knows terrorists are entering the United States through our southern border. "Let's talk about the wall, because there is no question that there has been a big spike in the number of family units coming across the border. The president talks about terrorists potentially coming across the border and here is Secretary Homeland Security Nielsen. Take a look," Wallace said, going to a...

A man was detained in Manchester, England, on New Year's Eve after three people were stabbed at the Manchester Victoria railway station, British Transport Police said. A male British Transport Police officer, another man and a woman were taken to the hospital with knife injuries, Greater Manchester Police said. "Tonight's events will have understandably worried people but I need to stress that the incident is not ongoing, a man is in custody and there is currently no intelligence to suggest there is any greater threat at this time," GMP Assistant Chief Constable Rob Potts said. "While we don't yet know...

A knifeman who reportedly shouted "Allah" stabbed three people in at the Victoria Station in Manchester on Monday evening before being arrested> A least three people were stabbed in the attack at the city center transport hub, according to "The Daily Mail", including one British Transport Police officer and two members of the public who are currently receiving treatment in hospital. The attacker was said to have been armed with a long kitchen knife and was pepper sprayed and tasered before being arrested by police. British counter-terrorism police are investigating the stabbing, according to Reuters. BBC journalist Sam Clack who...

Attorneys for Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev filed a 500 page brief in the 1st U.S. District Court of Appeals arguing that the death sentence handed down after his conviction should be tossed aside. Their key argument is that "the trial judge refused to grant a change of venue." "The trial was held in Boston, a city of widespread antipathy to the Muslim religious obligation to wage war against unbelievers," the attorneys wrote. "The jury pool was comprised of unbelievers in spite of the fact that Islamic law requires that Muslims be judged only by members of the faith. A...

Four Swedish citizens, one a Tunisian with Swedish residence, sentenced for preparing a terrorist act in 2010, will be released Saturday. They planned to “kill as many as possible” in a planned bloodbath against the headquarters of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten over Muhammad cartoons. The convicts have only served two-thirds of their punishment, common for the Scandinavian penitentiary system. Since their sentencing they’ve been moved to different institutions throughout Sweden. The Swedish Prison and Probation Service report that all of the terrorists had been reported for threats of violence to staff and other prisoners during their prison sentence, with one...

Two Vietnamese tourists were killed and 10 injured on Friday evening when an improvised explosive device detonated as a bus carrying 14 Vietnamese tourists traveled on El-Maryoutiya Street in Haram district in Giza, a statement by Egypt's Interior Ministry said... The explosion also injured the bus driver and representative of the tourism company, both Egyptians. The security services immediately moved to the site of the explosion to carry out investigations. More to follow

The traditional Christmas market is one of the great sights in any European capital at this time of year. But as with all traditions it evolves over time. A few evenings ago, I went to visit the Duomo in Milan and walked through the beautiful Christmas market in the square surrounding it. It was all there: the Christmas lights, the chalet-like huts selling warm food and drink, the fake snow. And, of course, the crash barriers. For since December 2016, when Anis Amri hijacked a truck in Berlin, shot the driver and then plowed the vehicle into the local Christmas...