Free Republic

BEIJING (AP) - A Chinese general said Beijing might respond with nuclear weapons if the United States attacked China in a conflict over Taiwan, news reports said Friday. While the general has no policy-making role in China, his comments could add to tensions with Washington at a time of U.S. worries about China's military buildup and the proposed takeover of the oil company Unocal Corp. by a Chinese state-run company. "If the Americans draw their missiles and position-guided ammunition into the target zone on China's territory, I think we will have to respond with nuclear weapons," Maj.-Gen. Zhu Chenghu, a...

Colombia has officially announced the death of Manuel "Sureshot" Marulanda, the commander of Latin America's largest armed group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc). David Moreno, an admiral in the Colombian navy, confirmed in Bogota on Saturday previous statements by senior officials suggesting that Marulanda was no longer alive. Juan Manuel Santos, Colombia's defence minister, had told Semana magazine that Marulanda, Farc's leader for four decades and believed to be about 80 years old, may have died on March 26, citing "a source who has never failed us". He said quoting "guerrillas" that Marulanda died of a heart attack,...

Telephone Call from Chavez to "Reyes" Allowed Colombians to Locate FARC Camp Elpais.com.co-EFE A telephone call that the President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, would have made to the guerrilla leader "Raul Reyes,"1 permitted location of the encampment, according to reports from Colombian intelligence, RCN Radio divulged today. The telephone call took place Wednesday the 27th of February, the day in which four Colombian Congressmen (Gloria Polanco, Luis Eladio Pérez, Orlando Beltrán, Jorge Eduardo Gechem), kidnapped for almost seven years, were liberated.2 "Chavez, emotionally moved by the liberation of the kidnapped prisoners, called Reyes (alias of Luis Edgar Devia) and told...

It took exactly one month — until the president's prime-time news conference of Oct. 11, 2001 — to refute the notion that 9/11 "changed everything." When a reporter said "you haven't called for any sacrifices from the American people," he replied, "Well, you know, I think the American people are sacrificing now. I think they're waiting in airport lines longer than they've ever had before." And that was before the sacrificing became really hellacious with the requirement that passengers remove their shoes at security checkpoints. The idea that Katrina would change the only thing that matters — thinking — perished...

The tree, known as Prometheus, was cut down to study, with permission from the US Forest Service. The stump of Prometheus in the Wheeler Bristlecone Pine Grove at Great Basin National Park, Nevada. Image credit: James R Bouldin via Wikimedia Commons (public domain) Science isn't always perfect; mistakes are made, occasionally to the detriment of one's subject. But what about inadvertently chopping down what would later turn out to be the world's oldest non-clonal tree? That’s exactly what happened to an unfortunate graduate student named Donald R. Currey back in the summer of 1964, who ended up responsible for the...

It's not every day that an American labor union gets investigated for possible ties to two of the world's most lethal terrorist organizations. But Chicago's Service Employees International Union Local 73 isn't an everyday union. Last September 24, FBI agents raided residences in Illinois, Minnesota and Michigan of more than a dozen radical activists in an effort to connect them to the Hamas (Gaza and the West Bank) and FARC (Colombia) guerrilla movements. Two of the occupants were SEIU Local 73 chief steward and executive board member Joe Iosbaker and former local board member-steward Tom Burke. Neither they nor anyone else has...

As Pacific Air Lines Flight 773 made its final approach to SFO, all seemed well. May 7, 1964, had dawned cloudy, but as the two pilots navigated the short flight from Stockton, they’d had no trouble. Behind them, 41 passengers and a flight attendant prepared for landing. At 6:47 a.m., as the plane glided toward San Ramon, an air traffic controller made contact to let them know their transmission wasn’t coming through clearly. A moment later, what sounded like a scream ripped through the airwaves. “Skipper’s shot,” someone was shouting. “We’ve been shot.” The air traffic controller asked the pilot...

On this date in 1964, three officers were executed in Bhutan, including former deputy commander in chief Namgyal Bahadur, for assassinating Prime Minister Jigme Dorji. A member of the powerful Dorji family and brother-in-law to the Bhutanese king, Dorji was overseeing a modernization campaign for the insular Himalayan kingdom. On April 5, 1964, while the king was in Europe for medical treatment, Dorji was shot dead while relaxing on his veranda. No wholesale seizure of power was attempted. The entire affair has long been murky, and it seems it was murky to those involved, too. The assassin, one Zambay,* was...

World leaders either become known for quickly learning life’s lessons–or not. The latter category is largely a product of one’s personal lust for power intertwined with an ideology allowing it to flourish. But membership is at times encouraged by the former’s failure to appropriately discourage the latter’s aggressive behavior early on.Falling into the latter category is Iran’s mullahs. It has taken them nearly a half century to learn an important lesson, coming after testing two U.S. presidents—one weak, one strong—who served in two different centuries. That lesson employs a simple rule of thumb concerning who has a foreign policy backbone:...

Robert Ellsberg speaks on whistleblowing, truth-telling and the Pentagon Papers Oct 2, 2019 by Heidi Schlumpf JusticePolitics The autumn of 1969 has been on Robert Ellsberg's mind lately, as the 50th anniversary of a life-changing request from his father approaches. A half century ago, as a 13-year-old, Ellsberg agreed to help his dad photocopy documents from a government report he had worked on. Those documents, which came to be known as the Pentagon Papers, revealed the United States' role in the build-up to the Vietnam War and the lies told to the American public and to Congress about U.S. actions...

From the Beatles touching down in America and sending fans into a frenzy, to underdog Cassius Clay (soon to be known as Muhammad Ali) shocking the world by defeating Sonny Liston, 1964 was undeniably electric. It was the year that saw a huge win in the fight for equality as President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law, while a little show called “Jeopardy!” made its debut on TV. Everywhere you looked, history was being made — and these photos capture it all.

Key names, entities: François Genoud, Shukeiri, Fatah, PLO, PFLP, Yasser Arafat, George Habash [Habbache], Karl van de Put, Johan Schuller, Herald Angelke, [Udo] Otto Albrecht, Karl-Heinz Hoffmann, Gundolf Keller [Köhler], Willi Voss [Pohl], L'oeuvre Francaise, Jean Tireault, Jean Robert Debbaudt, Manfred Roeder [Röder], Volker Heidel. AHMAD SHUKEIRI [SHUKAIRY / SHUQAIRY] AND TACUARA (1962) (his promoting of neo-Nazis at UN, while quoting NYT, which in fact details its Nazism) Recall of Arab Delegate from U.N. is Sought; ‘saluted’ Tacuara December 3, 1962 [PDF] A move for the recall by Saudi Arabia of its permanent representative to the United Nations, Ahmad Shukairy,...

Communism is not dead in Latin America. In fact, the dominoes are falling south of the border, but no one seems to be noticing. “It’s a new day. Communism is dead. It’s even dead in Cuba.” So declared Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing in May 2002. “I hate to say it,” she continued, “it’s dead.” The senator’s proclamation was a surprise, no doubt, to Fidel Castro, whose regime was (and is) alive and as Red as ever. It also must have come as welcome news to the people of Cuba, still suffering, after nearly half...

The Communist Roots of Palestinian Terror   By David Meir-LeviFrontPageMagazine.com | Friday, December 14, 2007 The following is chapter from David Meir-Levi's new book, History Upside Down: The Roots of Palestinian Fascism and the Myth of Israeli Aggression. The Terrorism Awareness Project previous printed his history of the "right-wing" influence on Islamic extremism, "The Nazi Roots of Palestinian Nationalism and Islamic Jihad." Taken together (with his entire book), these chapters show that Islamofascism is a political, not merely a religious force; and the potent and deadly offspring of the totalitarian ideologies of the past. -- The Editors. Although many Nazis...

Brainchild of the KGB As Ion Mihai Pacepa, onetime director of the Romanian espionage service (DIE), later explained, the PLO was conceived at a time when the KGB was creating “liberation front” organizations throughout the Third world. Others included the National Liberation Army of Bolivia, created in 1964 with help from Ernesto “Che” Guevara, and the National Liberation Army of Colombia, created in 1965 with help from Fidel Castro. But the PLO was the KGB’s most enduring achievement. In 1964, the first PLO Council, consisting of 422 Palestinian representatives handpicked by the KGB, approved the Soviet blueprint for a Palestinian...

To honor the memory of the conservative Christian singer, beauty queen, commercial spokeswoman, and culture warrior who recently passed, this video clip shows her in her prime performing a cover of the classic hit song on show biz legend Ed Sullivan's show back in 1964.

And leftists are wearing it proudly. Like everything that is “Palestinian,” the keffiyeh comes from somewhere else. Its name is derived from an Italian word, cuffia, or headdress. It originated among the Bedouins as a protection from the sun, and not just Palestinians, or Arabs in general, wear it; Kurds and Yazidis sometimes sport it as a non-political statement. Nevertheless, the close identification of this headdress with the Palestinian jihad against Israel has made it unmistakable: the keffiyeh is today what the broken cross of National Socialism was in the 1930s and 1940s. It is a symbol of an irrational...

It’s November 2023, and, following the October 7 attacks by Hamas terrorists that killed some 1,400 Israelis and at least 31 Americans, thousands of demonstrators march through New York City, calling for the destruction of the Jewish state. Chants of “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” echo through the streets, along with “there is only one solution: intifada revolution.” Among the crowd is the infamous Palestinian American activist Linda Sarsour, who warns through a megaphone that a cabal of wily Jews has conspired to place “their little posters” (of kidnapped Israeli civilians) across the city, seeking...

A hub for rocketry research and development in its early days, the Cape served as a test center not just for spaceflight and research but also for the US missile development programs...and along the eastern coastline, the iconic “missile row” of Atlas and Titan launch complexes dominated the skyline. Many of the Cape’s launch facilities have long since fallen silent, but with newcomers Firefly and Relativity preparing for their first launches from Cape Canaveral, the sight of rockets lifting off along the “row” is about to return. The eight launch pads that made up the core of what is unofficially...

One of the most accurate aspects about Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza is the use of the word Nazi to describe the terrorist enemy. No other label or historical parallel could capture the chilling ferocious madness – but not scope – of Palestinian butchery of Israelis. The Nazi vilification epithet has now become conventional Israeli discourse in public and media circles with the vivid revelation – in words and photos – of Palestinian savagery and barbarism by Hamas on October 7. Hamas terrorists, without an ounce of inhibition or remorse, shot youth in cold blood at the music festival...