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A loud explosion was heard in the Galilee panhandle. Police and IDF forces investigating the circumstances of the event. Security officials estimate that the explosion was caused by a Katyusha rocket fired from Lebanon. The location of the explosion is as of yet unknown. Emergency hotlines have not received any reports of injuries.

ISLAMABAD – Pakistan's army pushed deeper into a Taliban sanctuary close to the Afghan border Tuesday, claiming to have killed 42 militants in the latest stage of an offensive against extremists blamed for relentless attacks in recent weeks . In the capital, gunmen attacked a high-ranking Pakistani army officer in the second targeted shooting against top military brass in less than a week, part of a wave of violence sweeping the country in apparent retaliation for the 11-day long offensive in South Waziristan. The army officer, and his mother who was traveling with him, escaped unhurt from the assault in...

Oct 21, 2009 — Plants are not as stationary as one might think. Parts of them, like seeds, can travel for miles. One good example is the maple seed. Its little helicopter seeds can catch an updraft and fly a long distance from the tree. Now, engineers at University of Maryland have imitated its physics and designed a radio-controlled mono-copter that can sustain stable flight for hours...

If you want to witness a massacre on television, take at look at this debate on MSNBC’s Morning Joe between Joe Scarborough and Lawrence O’Donnell over Dick Cheney, Iraq, and weapons of mass destruction. Scarborough uses an avalanche of facts to bury O’Donnell’s contention that Dick Cheney lied about WMD and based the case for war on a “wild guess.” In addition to all the sources Scarborough cited and who claimed Saddam Hussein possessed WMD — including leading Democrats like Bill and Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry, John Edwards, and more — you could add the intelligence agencies of...

As we look back on the eight years in which we have fought the war in Afghanistan, the Obama administration is embroiled in a decision that will define its foreign policy for years to come. Although he campaigned as the anti-Bush candidate in 2008, one would be hard pressed to see any substantial differences between the two administrations with regard to how they are handling the war. Fresh off the success in Iraq, Generals Petraeus and McChrystal have unmatched expertise in waging a counterinsurgency. But it is only fair to point out that in order to wage a counterinsurgency, you...

As a doctor and psychiatrist, I spent an awful lot of my professional life trying to change individuals in a direction that I thought appropriate and beneficial for them. I am not under any illusions about how far I succeeded. I think I succeeded very little. At the best, I implanted the seeds of change rather than caused change itself. It was often the case that my patients had adopted grossly self-destructive paths in life, that viewed dispassionately and with a minimum of common sense could lead to nothing but misery, despair and chaos. Indeed, my patients often acknowledged this...

When America entered the war in Vietnam, Ho Chi Min said that it would be a long war and that the communists would win by using propaganda in the media and the universities. He was correct. It is time to take stock in the war between Israelis and the Palestinians and deal with some forbidden subjects. Israel is losing the propaganda war, hasbarah, and for a very good reason. Israel is not in the hasbarah game, unless one counts belated responses to the Palestinians' propaganda offensives. Pierre Rehov, a Moroccan French Jew, is a documentary filmmaker. He claims that the...

Senator John McCain made clear that he and the Republican Party should send the message that they support whatever President Obama's strategy in Afghanistan ends up being, rather than send messages that the U.S. is "waffling" or "dithering." In response to former Vice President Dick Cheney's recent remarks, in which he said, "signals of indecision out of Washington hurt our allies and embolden our adversaries," McCain said, "I wouldn't use that language." Speaking Wednesday evening while accepting an award from the conservative Center for Security Policy, Cheney said, "The White House must stop dithering while America's armed forces are in...

The two car bombs were detonated near Baghdad's provincial government building and Iraq's Justice Ministry.

A mile from South Station, an outpost of US marines in Helmand province, the tribal chief was openly hostile. “The Americans threaten our economy and take our land for bases. They promise much and deliver nothing,” he said. “People here regard the American troops as occupiers,” said Haji Khan, a leader of the Baluch tribe, who rules like a medieval baron. “Young people are turning against them and in time will fight them.” Inside South Station, soldiers are proud of the progress...Until they arrived, this remote part of Helmand had not had a government presence for years. But many are...

ISLAMABAD – Soldiers captured the strategically located hometown of Pakistan's Taliban chief Saturday after fierce fighting, officials said, the army's first major prize as it pushes deeper into a militant stronghold along the Afghan border. A suspected U.S. missile killed 22 people elsewhere in the northwest, but apparently missed a top Taliban figure, authorities said. Pakistan's eight-day-old offensive in the Taliban and al-Qaida stronghold of South Waziristan is considered its most critical test yet in the campaign to stop the spread of violent Islamist extremism in this nuclear-armed, U.S.-allied country. The army operation has prompted a wave of retaliatory attacks...

..""Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Ali, a senior commander in the young, told reporters late last night in Mogadishu:" We will make their people crying, we will attack Bujumbura and Kampala, will convey our fight to these cities.."

How much access can a possible agent of influence for state sponsors of terrorism buy from President Barack Obama? For Jodie Evans, a progressive Hollywood activist, the going rate appears to be $30,400 for dinner and a conversation. Last week in San Francisco, Obama headlined a three million dollar fundraiser at the Westin St. Francis Hotel. The San Francisco Chronicle reports about 160 people paid $30,400 or more per couple for a private dinner with Obama followed by a reception costing $500 to $1000 that drew over 900 attendees. Among those at the dinner was the leftist, so-called antiwar group...

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama’s leadership is being tested on two historic fronts: health care reform and U.S. involvement in Afghanistan. By the time he has made decisions on these two titanic issues, we will know whether he has the courage to make tough calls and we will know more about his bottom-line principles. On health care, Obama thought he had learned lessons from 1993 when Hillary Clinton, then the first lady, was put in charge of developing a universal health plan when her husband was president. She flunked partly because she did not touch base with Congress. She didn’t...

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, initially dubbed Sarko the American for his pro-U.S. stance, is finding it much tougher to deal with Washington than he had anticipated and is recalibrating his policies accordingly. Stung by perceived snubs from U.S. President Barack Obama and encouraged by the growing importance of the G20, Sarkozy is increasingly reaching out to non-aligned states in an effort to extend France's international influence. He has forged especially close ties with Brazil, is seeking alliances in central Asia and is intensifying his activities in the Middle East, using multi-billion dollar military and civilian nuclear trade deals as his...

PEORIA, Ariz. - Peoria police are looking for a father suspected of running down his daughter because she was becoming too "westernized" and was not living according to their traditional Iraqi values. Peoria police say 48-year-old Faleh Hassan Almaleki of Glendale allegedly ran his daughter down Tuesday at an Arizona Department of Economic Security parking lot in Peoria. "When I walked out the door I saw two ladies on the ground, so my first thought was some kind of domestic dispute," says witness Synthia Diaz. The victim, 20-year-old Noor Faleh Almaleki of Surprise, is hospitalized with life-threatening injuries. A second...

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AFP) – A mine killed 16 wedding guests in Pakistan's tribal belt on Friday while a suicide bomber targeted an air force base, inflicting another reverse on the military in its war on the Taliban. A car bomb exploded outside a restaurant in the northwestern city of Peshawar, wounding 15 and underlining the threat to civilians in a nation where more than 190 people have died during Taliban-linked attacks in 19 days. The explosion ripped through the wedding party minibus in the Sorandara area of Mohmand, where security forces have been pressing an offensive against Islamist rebels for...

A day after learning Marine Lance Cpl. David Raymond Baker made the ultimate sacrifice, local residents who knew him continue to honor and remember the young man from Painesville Township. Baker, 22, was killed by an improvised explosive device Tuesday in the Helmand Province of southern Afghanistan. He joined the Marines shortly after graduating from Riverside High School in 2006. "Every time I saw David he had a smile on his face. He was a great person, good-natured and very bright," Wade said. "We are all shocked and saddened by the loss of one of our students. I will always...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday joined the battle between former Vice President Dick Cheney and Obama administration officials over the strategy of the war in Afghanistan. Pelosi chided Cheney for asserting Wednesday that President Obama is "afraid" to make a decision about whether to ramp up war at the request of his military advisers or scale back the effort and focus on going after Al Qaeda in Pakistan, as some of his political advisers are urging. "That's really not a dignified statement," Pelosi said Thursday. "The president has a very difficult decision to make. I don't think that's a...

Some of those musicians -- Nine Inch Nails and Rage Against the Machine -- say their music has been played at ear-splitting level to torment terror suspects and coerce confessions at the detention facility. Other petitioners want to know whether their works have been used in such capacity, including R.E.M., Pearl Jam, Jackson Browne and Billy Bragg. "The fact that music I helped create was used in crimes against humanity sickens me," said Tom Morello, former lead guitarist for Rage Against the Machine, an industrial rock band whose song "March of the Pigs" has been linked to torture tactics at...

Police in Pakistan say that unknown gunmen shot and killed a senior army officer and his driver in Islamabad. The attack is the second this week in the city and the violence is seen as retaliation for the ongoing military offensive against Taliban extremists in their stronghold of the South Waziristan region, near the Afghan border. Police say the early-morning attack took place in a residential part of the city, where assailants ambushed a military vehicle carrying a senior officer of the Pakistani military. An eyewitness says two men took part in the assault that instantly killed the driver and...

A strong earthquake has shaken buildings in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The earthquake had a preliminary magnitude of 6.1 and was centered in the Hindu Kush region of Afghanistan. That's according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The quake was felt in the Afghan capital, Kabul, and in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.

Thankfully another terrorist plot by American Muslims, was stopped and the so called men convicted. Unfortunately though, as Muslim immigration increases we will be seeing more and more of these plots. Is this something that we want for our country? Of course not, please sign the end Muslim immigration petition. The future of our country is a stake.

Democrats in Congress care more about protecting terrorists' rights than protecting the American public, a Republican lawmaker charged Wednesday. Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) made the incendiary claim during an interview on a conservative news radio program that the decision to close the terrorist detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba would "strengthen the hands of terrorists." "I've been on the Judiciary Committee as well as the Armed Services Committee, and it has bewildered me as to why this Democratic majority has worked to seemingly protect the rights of terrorists more than to protect the American people," Franks said in an interview...

Via ABC News: A pharmacy college graduate made a defiant appearance in federal court Wednesday, hours after being charged with conspiring with two other men in a terror plot to kill two prominent U.S. politicians and carry out a holy war by attacking shoppers in U.S. malls and American troops in Iraq. Authorities say the men's plans — in which they used code words like "peanut butter and jelly" for fighting in Somalia and "culinary school" for terrorist camps — were thwarted in part when they could not find training and were unable to buy automatic weapons, authorities said....

BOSTON - A pharmacy college graduate conspired with two other men on a terror plot to kill two prominent U.S. politicians and carry out a holy war by attacking shoppers in U.S. malls and American troops in Iraq, prosecutors said Wednesday. But their plans — in which the men used code words like "peanut butter and jelly" for fighting in Somalia and "culinary school" for terrorist camps — were thwarted in part when they could not find training and were unable to buy automatic weapons, authorities said. Tarek Mehanna worked with the men from 2001 to May 2008 on the...

After this weekend saw all the usual suspects like Rahm and Axelrod spouting to all the Sunday morning news shows (except Fox of course) about how today’s Afghanistan issues are all Bush’s fault because he turned over nothing except 8 years of being “adrift” there, Dick Cheney called them on it today in a major way. "Recently, President Obama’s advisors have decided that it’s easier to blame the Bush Administration than support our troops. This weekend they leveled a charge that cannot go unanswered. The President’s chief of staff claimed that the Bush Administration hadn’t asked any tough questions about...

BRAMPTON -- The two scrawny terrorists are unloading bags labeled ammonium nitrate from the back of a delivery truck when one of them looks up and recoils in shock, while his partner backs into a wall and raises his hands in surrender. A four-member police tactical team dressed all in black descends, laying them spread-eagled on the floor of the warehouse and cuffing their hands behind their backs before one of the officers raises his thumb to say mission accomplished. The dramatic arrests of Saad Khalid and Saad Gaya, members of the "Toronto 18" terrorist group that was planning to...

In his remarks, Dick Cheney states that the Bush administration launched a detailed Afghanistan policy review in the final months of the Bush administration but didn't release the details at the request of the Obama team.

BRAMPTON -- The two scrawny terrorists are unloading bags labeled ammonium nitrate from the back of a delivery truck when one of them looks up and recoils in shock, while his partner backs into a wall and raises his hands in surrender. A four-member police tactical team dressed all in black descends, laying them spread-eagled on the floor of the warehouse and cuffing their hands behind their backs before one of the officers raises his thumb to say mission accomplished. The dramatic arrests of Saad Khalid and Saad Gaya, members of the "Toronto 18" terrorist group that was planning to...

While the naive and ignorant of America continue to drool over America Muslims, facts show us that Muslims here are causing the same problems that Muslims cause across the world. There is a definite uptick in Muslims being busted for plotting terrorist attacks on America. Their immigration is not needed here at all, it is time to end it.

A Republican sends over this video of the State Department press briefing today, in which Assistant Secretary P.J. Crowley calls Gitmo detainees "refugees" at about the 24-minute mark. QUESTION: Talk to us a little bit about response and talks and any commitments that you may have gotten from our European and other friends in the international community about taking in Guantanamo detainees as the camp in Guantanamo is expected to close at some point in the near future. Have you gotten any commitments from our European friends and anybody else? CROWLEY: Ambassador Dan Fried continues his efforts to resettle, you...

President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize, and we are having a difficult time figuring out why. The prize committee cited its decision on this: “For his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” Really? We missed this. Obama seemed surprised by this announcement and said winning the prize was a “call to action.” The nominations for the prize took place in February, which was only a couple months after Obama’s inspirational and change-promising “Yes We Can” campaign. In fact, he is the first U.S. president to be awarded the prize in his first term. Obama...

President Obama's announced decision this week to remain undecided on new troops in Afghanistan for weeks, or even months, rejects his top commander's determination that without urgent reinforcements the war may be lost. At yesterday’s White House press briefing, presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs reconfirmed that President Obama had not decided when a decision on a possible troop surge for Afghanistan would be reached. At issue was the forthcoming runoff election in which incumbent Hamid Karzai will compete again, after an earlier polling was apparently tainted by voting fraud. "The UN, NATO, the US stand ready to assist the Afghans in...

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7 AM - Meet at World Financial Center Plaza (if you want to meet up, please freepmail me) 8 AM - 21 Gun Salute SALUTE TO NEW YORK CITY AND NEW YORK STATE... At approximately 8:00 a.m. on Monday, Nov. 2, the yet-to-be commissioned ship will come to a halt in the Hudson River. There, opposite the former World Trade Center site, USS NEW YORK (LPD-21) will dip her colors, fire a 21-gun salute to the people of her namesake city and state, and proceed to Pier 88 to be formally inducted into the Fleet five days later at a...

A 27-year-old man from Sudbury has been arrested on charges he planned terrorism attacks inside and outside the United States, according to a spokeswoman for Acting U.S. Attorney Michael K. Loucks. The man was identified as Tarek Mehanna, who was arrested in November of last year for allegedly lying to authorities about a man who trained with al Qaida, federal officials tell the Herald. Loucks and Warren T. Bamford, special-agent-in-charge of the Boston FBI field office, have called a 10 a.m. press conference to discuss the arrest. The announcement will be made at the federal courthouse in South Boston. Developing...

You’ve all seen horror movies in which the stupid characters just don’t look behind them at crucial moments. And you want to yell: “Look out!” Or: “Can’t you see that he’s the murderer!” Or: “That innocent-looking green globule is actually a man-eating silicon-based creature from Andromeda!” Welcome to my world, the world of analyzing the contemporary Middle East or, to put it a different way, yelling, “Look out!” to those who think the best way to handle a threatening regime or revolutionary foe is to take them out to dinner and a movie. Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Zapatero and...

On July 25, Najibullah Zazi, a lanky man in his mid-twenties, walked into the Beauty Supply Warehouse in Aurora, Colorado, a suburb of Denver. The visit was captured on a store video camera. Wearing a baseball cap and pushing a shopping cart, Zazi appeared to be just another suburban guy.Of course, not many suburban guys buy six bottles of Clairoxide hair bleach, as Zazi did on this shopping trip--or return a month later to buy a dozen bottles of "Ms. K Liquid," a peroxide-based product. Aware that these were hardly the typical purchases of a heavily bearded, dark-haired young...

Accuracy in Media (AIM), America's first independent watchdog of the news media, is giving FREE tickets to FReepers to attend AIM's 40th Anniversary Conference in Washington, DC on Friday, October 23, 2009. To get your ticket, visit www.aim.org/events and enter discount code "freerepublic" or go to: http://aim40thconference.eventbrite.com/?discount=freerepublic Speakers include Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), Tony Blankley, John Fund, Andrew C. McCarthy, Cliff Kincaid, Trevor Loudon, Anita MonCrief, Hans von Spakovsky, Marc Morano, Robert Bluey, Ann McElhinney, J.P. Freire, and Don Irvine. Tickets are regularly $75 and include a buffet luncheon and morning and afternoon snacks. YOU MUST REGISTER IN ADVANCE for...

9/11-101 Sarah Carlsruh, October 20, 2009 September 11th, 2001 is now a part of U.S. history, and so the issue of how to teach about it in high school history classes is necessary, albeit controversial. The Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) and the American Institute for History Education (AIHE) hosted a Summer Institute for Teachers in Philadelphia this June. Mary Habeck, associate professor of strategic studies at John Hopkins University and author of Knowing Your Enemy: Jihadist Ideology and the War on Terror, spoke on the topic, “Teaching the Long War and Jihadism.” In an essay based on her presentation,...

KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ: Is the Obama administration keeping America safe? DEBRA BURLINGAME: When Barack Obama was sworn in as president, I actually had a sliver of hope that he would surprise his worst critics and govern from the center — the smart pragmatist. That hope pretty much evaporated on January 22 when he signed a series of executive orders shutting the Guantanamo Bay detention center by a date certain and suspending the trial of 9/11 conspirators — who were at that moment sitting at Gitmo, crowing about their role in the murder of 3,000 of our fellow human beings. Surrounded...

Writing in the July/August 2007 issue of Foreign Affairs, then-candidate Barack Obama outlined his foreign-policy views. He wrote that after the financial and human cost of the Iraq War, “many Americans may be tempted to turn inward and cede our leadership in world affairs. But this is a mistake we must not make. America cannot meet the threats of this century alone, and the world cannot meet them without America.” He then harkened back to three Democratic presidents: Such leadership demands that we retrieve a fundamental insight of Roosevelt, Truman, and Kennedy — one that is truer now than ever...

Said Sheikh Hassan Yacoub, spokesman for the movement "The Somali gunmen shot down a U.S. drone, which was flying over the port of Kismayo in southern Somalia on Monday"

ABOARD A U.S. MILITARY AIRCRAFT (Reuters) - The United States cannot wait for problems surrounding the legitimacy of the Afghan government to be resolved before making a decision on troops, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said. Gates, speaking to reporters on board a plane traveling to Tokyo, described the situation in Afghanistan as an evolutionary process that would not improve dramatically overnight, regardless of what course is taken following the country's flawed August election. "I see this as a process, not something that's going to happen all of the sudden," Gates said. "I believe that the president will have...

On Sept. 17, a Shin Bet-undercover police unit detained three Palestinians fabricating bombs and using pipes as components for rockets in a covert workshop in the Abu Dis village of Jerusalem, DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources report. They worked in the grocery storehouse under the direction of an engineer. The terror cell planned a rocket assault on Jerusalem and Maaleh Adummim. The facility also contained a large cache of side arms which the suspects admitted had been stocked ready for terror attacks in the city. Their questioning led to the arrest Thursday, Oct. 15 of a fourth Palestinian under orders to carry...

ST. STEPHEN - The RCMP bomb squad stood by in St. Stephen Sunday night as American authorities questioned five people who attempted to enter the United States. The Canada Border Services Agency closed the Ferry Point Bridge from St. Stephen to Calais, Maine, shortly after 6 p.m. and asked the RCMP to divert traffic. Police at the Calais end of the bridge did the same. Not only did the police not allow traffic across the bridge but, at the St. Stephen end, they did not allow motorists to drive up Milltown Boulevard past the end of it. Traffic coming one...

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan – Pakistan's army, in the midst of a major new offensive against Taliban militants, has struck deals to keep two powerful, anti-U.S. tribal chiefs from joining the battle against the government, officials said Monday

The 20th century was famously called “the American century”, yet its being so called occurred in an improbable way. The phrase itself was actually not used until Time publisher Henry Luce coined it in a special issue of Life magazine in 1941—by which time 40 percent of the 20th century had already passed. Moreover, 1941 was a year in which the superiority of America and of the American way of life appeared decidedly problematic. Only the year before had the United States finally exited, statistically speaking, the decade of the Great Depression. Nazi Germany’s armies occupied most of Europe, stretching...