Free Republic

Yemen's government offered on Saturday to resign within a month and to review an unpopular decision to cut fuel subsidies in an attempt to end protests by the Shi'ite Houthi movement, a government source told Reuters. Yemenis are unhappy about the government's decision in late July to cut energy subsidies to ease the burden on its budget deficit, a move which led to a rise in fuel prices. The government spent about $3bn on subsidies last year, nearly a third of state revenues. A previous attempt by the government to cut subsidies in 2005 led to unrest that left about...

An Arvada woman charged with aiding a foreign terrorist organization has agreed to change her plea to guilty. Conley, 19, is charged with conspiracy to provide support to ISIS, or Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. U.S. Department of Justice spokesman Jeff Dorschner said in a statement released Monday morning that a plea hearing has yet to be scheduled in the case. Court documents claim Conley joined the Army Explorers to be trained in U.S. military tactics and firearms, and that she told the FBI she wanted to wage Jihad and to go overseas and fight. She attended middle school...

(Please Make Note Of The WARNING not everyone can bear to view this video) The brutality of ISIS in Iraq and Syria has been well documented – even al Qaeda warns ISIS not to be “too extreme.” But the horrors these monsters invent are terrifyingly new each day, and the latest example is the stuff of horror movies. Is our planet entering a new day where a large portion of our population is cloaked behind an “Iron Curtain” of Islamic barbarism? How can life continue “normally” in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, Nigeria, Somalia, Egypt, Lebanon, Gaza and the West...

Events in Iraq and Syria have alarmed U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. Extremists from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria control vast swaths of Iraq and Syria. Its members may be mingling with Yemeni bomb makers who have a track record of getting devices on Western planes. And thousands of Europeans have gone to Syria ready to give up their lives. Holder has voiced "extreme concern" that the volatile mix could spread to Western shores.

Syria has risen as a top threat to the U.S. homeland that rivals Yemen's al Qaeda affiliate known for its innovative bombs successfully smuggled aboard airplanes, a top Pentagon official said on Thursday. "Syria is probably the number one threat -- or, with... threats out of Yemen -- to the American homeland right now and elsewhere in the west," said Michael Vickers, the Pentagon’s Under Secretary for Defense Intelligence. In answer to a question by moderator Brian Ross of ABC News at a panel at the Aspen Security Forum, an annual gathering of national security veterans, Vickers, himself a former...

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. expressed “extreme, extreme concern” on Sunday over reports that bomb makers from Yemen responsible for the 2009 underwear-bomb plot are now in Syria cooperating with foreign militants there, possibly to develop new, nearly undetectable explosive devices. Asked on Sunday whether that threat was a “clear and present danger,” Mr. Holder responded: “I think it is. In some ways, it’s more frightening than anything I think I’ve seen as attorney general.”

With the rise of Islamist organizations, repressive regimes, and civil conflicts which threaten regional stability, the promise of the Arab Spring of 2011 quickly devolved into an Arab winter. In an expansive article in The Economist, the threat to the Middle East is discussed in appropriately grave terms; Syria and Iraq are in flames while Jordan looms as the next domino to potentially fall. Libya and Yemen, where Islamic terror networks operate with impunity, are labeled “failed states.” Those Middle Eastern nations that are not in danger of imminent collapse are either absolute monarchies or counties which merely maintain...

Obama bundler Jodie Evans, far left, protests in Yemen with al Qaeda tied group al Karama, June 17, 2013. Photo via al Karama. Obama bundler Jodie Evans and Code Pink, the leftist group she co-leads, have been found to be working with a group whose leaders have recently been declared terrorists and al Qaeda supporters by the Treasury Department. This is not the first time the Democratic Party allied group has been caught in bed with terrorists. As this writer has reported over the years, Code Pink works with terrorists, state sponsors of terrorists, the Democratic Party and President Barack...

The Dubai Court of Appeal acquitted a Yemeni teacher accused of forging her marriage certificate and increasing her dowry from Riyal 100,000 to Riyal 500,000. Last December, the lower court had convicted her and sentenced her to three months in jail. According to the records, FM, 38, is seeking divorce from her husband MH and submitted the forged contract to the Sharia Court judge asking her husband to pay her Riyal 500,000 dowry. The 39-year-old husband, a jobless Yemeni testified that he had married the accused in Yemen in 1999 and promised to pay Riyal 100,000 as dowry. “I was...

With reports indicating that forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad are gaining ground in that country’s brutal civil war, moderate Syrian rebels have told a visiting journalist that the United States is arranging their training in Qatar. In a documentary to be aired Tuesday night, the rebels describe their clandestine journey from the Syrian battlefield to meet with their American handlers in Turkey and then travel on to Qatar, where they say they received training in the use of sophisticated weapons and fighting techniques, including, one rebel said, “how to finish off soldiers still alive after an ambush.” The...

At a secret base in Qatar, the US military is training rebels to raid Syrian government troops and vehicles, as well as to “finish off the soldiers still alive after an ambush,” first-hand interviews in a Frontline documentary have revealed. The documentary, scheduled to air Tuesday night on PBS stations, offers rare insight into how Washington is fostering the armed insurgency against Syrian President Bashar Assad. It features interviews by journalist Muhammad Ali with Syrian rebels presented as members of a “moderate faction” who describe a clandestine meeting with their “American handlers” in Turkey, along with the receiving of weapons...

OAKLAND (CBS SF) – An act of retribution may have provoked a woman to brutally attack a third grader inside an Oakland elementary school bathroom, police say. Students at Oakland’s Lafayette school knew something was wrong when they saw officers arrive at school Friday morning. They arrived to arrest Haseemah Diame, a parent and volunteer at the school. Police say Diame walked onto the campus during recess armed with a hammer and pulled a 9-year-old girl aside.

The Obama administration intends to publicly reveal a secret memo outlining its legal justification for using drones to kill U.S. citizens it accuses of terrorism overseas, it emerged Tuesday. An official told Al Jazeera that the Department of Justice has decided not to appeal a court order requiring disclosure of a redacted version of the document under the Freedom of Information Act. The decision to release the documents comes a day before the Senate is to vote on advancing President Barack Obama's nomination of the memo's author, Harvard professor and former Justice Department official David Barron, to sit on the...

<p>BIRMINGHAM, AL (WBRC) - A DEA spokesperson says up to $40 million of synthetic drug, or "spice," money was sent to Yemen, sparking suspicions of a terrorist connection.</p> <p>Rusty Payne with the DEA says they aren't 100 percent sure that the money is going to a terror group but says it's a red flag when so much money is sent overseas.</p>

Girls, sometimes as young as eight, are forced into marriages with men decades older. Anthea Ayache speaks to campaigners fighting for the introduction of minimum marriageable ageNujood Ali was once just like any nine-year-old girl – happy, cheerful and carefree. She loved school, had
 big dreams of studying and having a career, and in her spare time she could be found playing with her 
15 doting siblings. Although times were hard as slum dwellers in the Yemeni capital Sana’a, and the family often fell asleep hungry on the cold floor of their two-roomed home, Nujood maintained an innocence typical of...

Just weeks after an al-Qaeda convention in Yemen, the US has closed its embassy operations in the capital of Sanaa. Citing “extremely serious” threats and recent attacks on foreigners, the facility has closed its doors — indefinitely. The threat may be a reaction to the sustained drone campaign against AQAP targets following the release of the video of the massive meeting held by the terrorist network in Yemen: -SNIP- Sources within the Yemeni government told CNN that the US is taking these threats more seriously than any other prior threat, even the warnings that preceded the 2012 mob attack on...

Russia has cut a deal with Sudan to deliver a dozen advanced MiG-29 Fulcrum jet fighters to the war-torn country. The deal, announced Christmas Day in Moscow, also includes 14 MiG-29 jets for Yemen. The transfer of fourth-generation MiG-29 Fulcrums to Sudan has raised concerns inside the Pentagon and is certain to alter any possible U.S. plans for air strikes at known terrorist bases inside the African nation. Sudan was cited as one of a limited number of nations with direct links to the Al-Qaeda terrorist network. The U.S. State Department also listed Sudan as one of a few hostile ...

Since the start of the ill-named “Arab Spring,” the Muslim Brotherhood has been very much in the news. Coming to power through democratic elections in Egypt and Tunisia, they were toppled within a short time by the people, who discovered their true intentions. There were some in the West – but not all – who saw the light as well. British Prime Minister David Cameron has ordered a comprehensive review of the movement,... its activities in Britain and its impact on the country’s interests. The decision was made because the Brotherhood is allegedly behind terrorist operations in Egypt, and because...

The people giving the demonstration were trained by the British-based imam Abu Hamza al-Masri. How did Abu Hamza, who as an imam had dedicated his life to understand and teaching Islam properly, come to misunderstand Islam so spectacularly as to think it had to do with slitting the throats of Infidels? Why do the learned analysts never ponder such questions?“Witness recalls demo in ‘how to slit a throat’ as terror trial opens,” by Tina Susman for the Los Angeles Times, April 17: NEW YORK — On a ranch in rural Oregon, a radical Muslim holding a dagger with a curved...