Free Republic

Secretary of State Antony Blinken acknowledged disagreements within the State Department over the Biden administration’s approach to the Israel-Hamas war in an email to staff Monday. His message to personnel, sent on the heels of his recent travels, comes amid growing anger and dissent not only from staff at the State Department but within the broader Biden administration. CNN reported last week that hundreds of personnel at the US Agency for International Development signed an open letter calling for a ceasefire, and there are reports of a “dissent memo” inside the State Department. “I know that for many of you,...

All across the country, monuments to the Confederacy, which lost a traitorous war waged for their right to own slaves, are being beheaded, toppled, and thrown into the river. The Southern Poverty Law Center has a map of where these monuments are located, if you were interested in such a thing.

The twitter post is JPG file but the title says it all.

Conservatives have been forced to reckon with some uncomfortable truths about racism and police brutality in America over the past two weeks. But perhaps no pill proved harder to swallow than this: Rage Against the Machine is a political band. Yes, that Rage Against the Machine. The one that wrote “Killing in the Name” in response to the Rodney King riots. The one that equated the police to the Ku Klux Klan in that very song. The one whose debut album cover features a photo of the self-immolation of Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thích Quảng Đức, who was protesting Vietnam’s oppression...

In recognition of everything that’s going on right now, LEGO’s actions for #BlackOutTuesday involved not just a $4 million donation to organisations devoted to racial equality, but a request for sellers to not advertise any sets involving police or the White House. As The Toy Book report, emails went out on Tuesday from Rakuten (who handle LEGO’s affiliate marketing) asking resellers to avoid promoting a long list of products that included police stations, police vehicles, a donut shop that included a police minifig and the excellent Architecture Series version of The White House (pictured above).

Some "highlights" from the press release: The murder of George Floyd was the result of inhumane police brutality that is perpetuated by a culture of white supremacy. What happened to George Floyd was not the result of a bad apple; it was the predictable consequence of a racist and prejudiced system and culture that has treated Black bodies as the enemy from the beginning. What happened to George Floyd in Minneapolis is the fruit borne of toxic seeds planted on the shores of our country in Jamestown in 1619, when the first enslaved men and women arrived on this continent....

American influence in culture, science and education around the world is facing a high-profile blow Friday as the U.S. is stripped of its voting rights at the world's cultural agency, UNESCO. And it would cost the U.S. hundreds of millions of dollars to win this voice back. The U.S. hasn’t paid its dues to the Paris-based U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in three years, in protest over the decision by world governments to make Palestine a UNESCO member in 2011. … The UNESCO tension has prompted new criticism of U.S. laws that force an automatic funding cutoff for any...

Our Norwegian correspondent The Observer offers the second part of his series of essays on the Left in Norway. In this installment, he examines the left-wing community in Norway and its sympathy for various terrorist organizations. Part 1 is available here. The terrorist supporters of the Left by The Observer This is the second essay in a three-part series in which I take a look at left-wing media bias in Norway, the Norwegian Left’s fraternizing with militant organizations abroad, and undemocratic elements within the Muslim community in Norway. In the first instalment, ‘Left-wing media bias in Norway’, I looked at...

Rome, 8 June (AKI) - Twenty ships with more than 5,000 activists on board will leave for Gaza in September in a bid to deliver aid and break the three-year-old Israeli blockade, according to Mohammad Hannoun, president of the Italian Association of Palestinians in Italy. "Freedom Flotilla II will leave around September," he said during a panel discussion at the Turkish Embassy in Rome. Six ships have already left, he added. Nine activists were killed by Israeli soldiers last week when they stormed a ship in international waters that was flying the Turkish flag and directed toward Gaza with...

Jeremiah Wright on estrogen Posted: April 18, 20081:00 am Eastern © 2008  Last Friday in this column I reported on a brewing scandal that would be front-page news on the New York Times if the developments had concerned anyone other than their hero:Barack Hussein Obama.Instead, the new media was left to pick up and disseminate how one of Barack Obama's presidential campaign bundlers is Jodie Evans – a political ally to Venezuelan dictator, Hugo Chavez, and an advocate for Islamic militants.The story was also a yawner for ABC News "journalist" George Stephanopolous, because he didn't see fit to ask a single...

The new member of the U.S. House spoke to a Muslim group. He offered praise as well as some admonishment. Inside the posh Hilton Philadelphia last night, a dinner crowd of several hundred Muslims was full of praise for the political courage it said U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak had shown merely by showing up to speak. Outside the City Avenue hotel, amid Passover week snow flurries, about a dozen Jewish protesters held up signs blasting Sestak for what they said was his nerve in showing up. One sign read, "Say it ain't so, Joe." Sestak, a Democrat from Philadelphia's western...

Members want to cut program over 'Don't ask, Don't tell' The San Francisco Board of Education appears poised to kick the military's Junior ROTC programs out of the city's public schools, saying the Pentagon's refusal to allow openly gay service members is deplorable and not in line with the school district's anti-discrimination policy. School board members are scheduled to introduce a resolution tonight outlawing the JROTC because of the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" rule. The resolution calls that policy an "unjust, indefensible, unintelligent, state-sanctioned act of homophobia." The resolution, which won't get a final vote until June, would create...

LONDON, United Kingdom -- In its most detailed report yet on alleged secret rendition flights of terror suspects, Amnesty International said three former detainees have lent support to the idea that eastern European countries may have been involved in secret CIA flights to so-called "black site" prisons. The report provides detailed accounts of the experiences of three Yemeni men — Muhammad Bashmilah, Muhammad al-Assad and Salah Nasser Salim Ali — who believe they were taken by U.S. authorities to secret prisons following lengthy journeys through different climates and time zones. Bashmilah said he was detained in Jordan in October 2003...

Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaf slammed Monday a unanimous UN Security Council resolution demanding Syria's full cooperation with a UN investigation into the assassination of Lebanon's former prime minister. The Security Council warned of possible "further action" if Damascus doesn't comply with the resolution. Al-Sharaf said the international body accused his country of a crime it did not commit. "The council proceeded on the presumption of a criminal act rather than on the presumption of innocence," he said. The Syrian minister denounced the resolution for targeting Syria, calling it "illogical" because, he claimed, the council based its action on inconclusive...

IDF generals should not visit England, Germany, Spain and several other European countries since they are in danger of being arrested and being put on trial for war crimes, international law experts warned Monday. On Sunday, Maj.-Gen. (res.) Doron Almog - former OC Southern Command - skipped arrest at Heathrow Airport in London after he was warned not to disembark from an El Al flight since British detectives were waiting to arrest him. The arrest warrant had been issued on Saturday by the Bow Street Magistrate's Court per the request of a pro-Palestinian Muslim group. The warrant, reportedly the first...

The members of Code Pink who descend on the Walter Reed Army Medical Center each Friday purport to know the truths governing the foreign policy of the Bush administration, although theirs are the kind of truths spun in the dark recesses of Oliver Stone's mind. They are a cartoonlike series of messages made out of the same old cloth, from the "lies" of the administration to the all-powerful influence of Halliburton. These charges are in the family of "No blood for oil," which, as we all know, never resulted in dollar-a-gallon gas. The latter was one of the theories going...

MADRID, Spain (CNN) -- A Madrid train bombing suspect wanted on an international warrant since last year has been arrested in Serbia where he was carrying forged Iraqi documents, Spain's Interior Ministry said Wednesday. The suspect, Moroccan-born Abdelmajid Bouchar, 22, fled from a Madrid suburban apartment three weeks after the March 11, 2004 train bombings, as police closed in to make arrests there. Seven train bombing suspects blew themselves up during the raid. An international warrant was issued for Bouchar but the trail ran cold until his recent arrest in Belgrade for violating Serbian immigration regulations, the Interior Ministry said...

The first attack on American soil by Islamic terrorists was the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. On 9/11, Islamic terrorists had hoped to kill 40,000 people. The 1993 attack was a dry run that did not give them the bang for their buck. Only six Americans lost their lives that day. It was a great disappointment to the terrorists. Cyanide was in the van that was blown up in the basement-parking garage of the WTC that day, but the extreme heat of the fire destroyed the poisonous gas before it killed anyone. It was a failed experiment. But...

Yesterday, in its first post-Memorial Day issue, the New York Times ran a frontpage top of the fold investigative story whose main and indeed sole purpose was to blow the cover on a CIA operation designed to protect this country and its citizens from the terrorist enemy. While posing as a private charter outfit - "aircraft rental with pilot" is the listing in Dun and Bradstreet - Aero Contractors is in fact a major domestic hub of the Central Intelligence Agency's secret air service. When the Central Intelligence Agency wants to grab a suspected member of Al Qaeda overseas and...

LONDON -- Actress Vanessa Redgrave, her brother and the father of a Guantanamo detainee on Saturday launched a new political party devoted to human rights. The Peace and Progress Party says it will field candidates and endorse politicians with strong human rights records in the next general election. Organizers discussed the party's platform and strategies at a conference that drew several hundred people. "Our goal is to ring the alarm bells about the human rights abuses our government is sanctioning, and to act as a focus for people who want to stand up against them," said Vanessa Redgrave's brother, political...