Free Republic

ROME - Police raided homes across Italy before dawn Friday and arrested seven alleged members of the radical Red Brigades suspected of the 1999 killing of a Labor Ministry consultant. Authorities said the arrests struck at the heart of the left-wing terror organization, which sprang back into action a few years ago after more than a decade of silence. The suspects, officials said, might also have had a role in the slaying of another government adviser last year. Police arrested three men in Rome and one in Florence, prosecutors said. A woman was picked up in Pisa and another near...

The far left’s disgraceful response to September 11—it has temporized about terror, embraced moral equivalence between the Islamist fanatics who killed thousands of innocent Americans and the military actions of the democratically elected U.S. government, and even blamed the U.S. for the atrocity—shows that its hatred of democratic capitalism and, more broadly, Western civilization itself remains fierce more than a decade after the collapse of socialism. The intensity of this hatred will come as no surprise, however, to anyone who has paid attention to the praise that the academic left and its sympathizers in the liberal media have been showering ...

Skylab was America’s first space station and first crewed research laboratory in space. The complex consisted of four major components: the Orbital Workshop (OWS), the Airlock Module (AM), the Multiple Docking Adapter (MDA), and the Apollo Telescope Mount (ATM). The Apollo Command and Service Module transported crews to and from Skylab and remained attached to the station throughout a crew’s occupancy. The OWS, converted from the upper stage of a Saturn rocket, served as the main working, living and sleeping compartment for the crews, and contained exercise equipment, a galley, and many of the scientific experiments, in particular for the...

Syria decided on Tuesday to postpone releasing the findings of its investigation into the Feb. 12 assassination of Hezbollah operations chief Imad Mughniyah just as Iranian media outlet, Fars News Agency, reported through its Persian language service that Syrian authorities had detained a Saudi Arabian intelligence official for allegedly participating in the assassination. According to the Fars report, the Saudi official’s Syrian girlfriend bought the two vehicles used in the bombing that killed Mughniyah. We are also told that Prince Bandar bin Sultan, a top Saudi national security official, masterminded the operation. While Damascus is refraining from officially implicating Riyadh...

“Robbie” Stethem was born into a proud Navy family on November 17, 1961, in Waterbury, Connecticut. His father Richard served for 26 years and retired as Senior Chief Petty Officer. After retiring, he continued to work for the Navy as a civilian for another 20 years. Robert’s mother Patricia served in the Navy before leaving active duty to raise the family. Brother Kenneth served for 20 years and retired as a Navy SEAL. Brother Patrick, like Robert, was a “Seabee” diver and served for 10 years in the same Underwater Construction Team One.

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:...

There is an shocking amount of misinformation and misunderstanding going on right now regarding Iran and Israel, and what brought us to this situation. We need to unpack this and be brutally honest as this is much bigger than you think and affects literally the whole world.You need to sit down and read this the entire way through and share widely — because this affects your life whether you want to admit it or not.To understand what is going on, we need to go back 46 years, to 1979, when Ruholla Khomeini established the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) during...

“America can’t do a damn thing against us,” Ayatollah Khomeini bragged while holding our hostages. The Carter administration had undermined the Shah’s government in favor of the Islamists who seized power and then prevented the embassy’s Marine guards from defending the facility and the people inside against the Muslim ‘student’ groups who claimed to be coming in peace. The “peaceful” student activists took over our embassy and held our people hostage. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei taunted President Trump with the same slogan in June after being asked to give up Iran’s nuclear weapons program. “Our response to the US nonsense...

Below is a list of notable attacks attributed to Iran and its proxies against the United States or U.S. interests since 1970, based on available information. Iran’s proxies include groups like Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and various Shiite militias in Iraq and Syria, often supported by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) or its Quds Force. The list focuses on direct attacks, proxy actions, or plots with credible evidence of Iranian involvement. Note that some incidents involve plausible deniability by Iran, and the extent of their control over proxies varies. Attacks and Incidents by Iran and Its Proxies Against the...

For 40 years, Iran’s relentless hostility toward the U.S. has fueled proxy wars, terror attacks, and nuclear ambitions. Now, after diplomatic overtures were rejected, America’s decisive strike on Iran’s nuclear sites signals a historic turning point in the Middle East power struggle. For 40 years, Iran has reverberated with the menacing chant of “Death to America” and “Death to Israel,” a rallying cry born from the 1979 Islamic Revolution under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Last night, Saturday, June 21, 2025, that decades-long hostility faced a decisive response when President Donald Trump authorized a U.S. military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities at...

“America can’t do a damn thing against us,” Ayatollah Khomeini bragged while holding our hostages. The Carter administration had undermined the Shah’s government in favor of the Islamists who seized power and then prevented the embassy’s Marine guards from defending the facility and the people inside against the Muslim ‘student’ groups who claimed to be coming in peace.The “peaceful” student activists took over our embassy and held our people hostage.Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei taunted President Trump with the same slogan in June after being asked to give up Iran’s nuclear weapons program. “Our response to the US nonsense is clear:...

From the oral history collections of the University of Georgia. Recorded in 1983

Former Sen. Larry Pressler (R-S.D.), who was the first Vietnam veteran to serve in the United States Senate, is the latest Republican to back Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign, Politico learned Sunday. Pressler, who said that in addition to casting an absentee ballot for Obama he'd donated $500 to the Illinois senator's campaign, cited the Democrat's response to the financial crisis as the primary reason for his decision. "I just got the feeling that Obama will be able to handle this financial crisis better, and I like his financial team of [former Treasury Secretary Robert] Rubin and [former Federal Reserve...

New book fights popular narrative on radical leftists.. Andy Ngo fell to the concrete, bleeding from his ear. Vessels in his brain had burst, doctors later told him, and blood pooled on his brain. Ngo, a journalist, had been attacked by members of Antifa while covering one of the "antifascist" group’s demonstrations in Portland in 2019. "No hate, no fear," Ngo recalled the group shouting around him. The Portland native learned early on, however, that hate and fear are bedrocks of this radical movement. Ngo began covering Antifa for the Portland State Vanguard, where he went to graduate school, taking...

BATA, Equatorial Guinea—Classified American intelligence reports suggest China intends to establish its first permanent military presence on the Atlantic Ocean in the tiny Central African country of Equatorial Guinea, according to U.S. officials. The officials declined to describe details of the secret intelligence findings. But they said the reports raise the prospect that Chinese warships would be able to rearm and refit opposite the East Coast of the U.S.—a threat that is setting off alarm bells at the White House and Pentagon. Principal deputy U.S. national security adviser Jon Finer visited Equatorial Guinea in October on a mission to persuade...

Buckets of blood dripped from Ebrahim Raisi, the 8th president of Iran, for his roles on the “Death Committee” and other atrocities under his direction. He wore a black turban to claim that he descended from the Prophet Muhammad. The Shiite president did not survive the helicopter crash of May 19, 2024. Who will mourn the death of an evil man who presided over the death and torture of so many? Dissidents were tortured, subjected to cruel inhuman treatment, and killed. A political purge against political dissidents lasted five months during 1988. Ordered by Ayatollah Khomeini, the “Death Committee” was...

In 1979, Saddam Hussein publicly accused 68 of his own party members of treason.

I recently found some interesting articles about anthrax, the domestic theory, and Hatfill that gave me some new ideas to consider. Foremostly, I found that the first comments espousing the domestic theory often arose in the context of a war on Iraq, or finishing the war, depending on how you look at it. For years the government tried to build the consensus to getting rid of Saddam. Before and immediately after 9/11 Bush made it clear he wanted to complete the job. Interestingly the first voice after 9/11 against finishing off Iraq and dissuading consideration that the anthrax was Iraqi...

On her best-selling studio album, Summer began to bring new influences into the disco sound that had made her a star.By 1979, Donna Summer had cemented her status as the “queen of disco.” Singles like “Love To Love You Baby” and “I Feel Love” had taken her into the upper echelons of the charts and made her a global star. She’d also gained a reputation as a master of the double album through 1977’s Once Upon A Time, a record that was described by critic Robert Christgau upon release as the first “disco opera.” Once Upon A Time showed...

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has said he intends to partially reopen the “Jungle School,” where up to 9,000 troops a year trained in jungle warfare from the 1950s to 1999 in the former Panama Canal Zone. Secretary Hegseth made the announcement to U.S. troops in Panama amid an ongoing trip to the Central American country, where he will attend the Central American Security Conference (CENTSEC). Thanking the troops for their service, Hegseth said, “We will have your back; President Trump has asked me to share that with all the groups of troops I talk to,” stressing the importance of...