Free Republic

Iran's deranged state media has today gleefully celebrated the sickening attack on Salman Rushdie, hailing the British author's suspected knifeman and branding the novellist an 'apostate' and 'heretic' whose book The Satanic Verses 'blasphemed' the Prophet Muhammad. Rushdie, 75, was stabbed up to 15 times - including once in the neck - on stage in upstate New York - more than 30 years after the theocratic dictatorship in Tehran issued a fatwa calling for the murder of the writer and anyone involved with the publication of the 1988 novel. The edict forced Sir Salman to go into hiding for a...

Muammar Gaddafi (Al-Gadhafi, Qaddafi)Highlights of the brutal genocidal dictator: Muammar Gadhafi: Planting the seeds in the 1970s for the recent genocide in the Sudan. Involved in the bloody violence there, early on.* His (pan-Arabism) 'racist,' 'facsist' influence on Al-Bashir, who brought the genocide upon non-Muslims first (pan-Islamism), than on non-pure-Arabs in Sudan.* * * Allied with the butcher of Uganda, strong fanatic 'Islamic' ties. (indeed, at the opening of 'Idi Amin's Dream Mosque, named after Qaddafi, the crowds chanted "long live Gaddafi")*. Influencing anti-Jewish bigotry on the African leader.* The terror massacres, the 1986 bombing of the La Belle Cafe...

For the first time ever, significant light is being shed on one of the most horrendous human rights atrocities of the second half of the 20th century. In 1988, more than 30,000 political prisoners were senselessly massacred by Iranian officials. More than 30 years later, one of the people who participated in the massacre, Hamid Noury, is on trial in Sweden. The Noury trial should spark more media and public scrutiny about the 1988 massacre, and ultimately trigger a long overdue international investigation. Hamid Noury has been incarcerated in Sweden since November 2019 when he visited the country for personal...

“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...

“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:...

Trump on Oprah’s Show in 1988 Talking About Countries Ripping America Off in Trade https://www.youtube.com/shorts/cPg-cmvOpHo

When Pan Am Flight 103 set off from Heathrow to New York, its passengers and crew were looking forward to returning home to celebrate Christmas - but tragically, they never made itThe Lockerbie bombing where 270 people sadly lost their lives is still the deadliest terror attack in the history of the UK, even though it took place more than 30 yeas ago. It was 21 December, 1988, when the Pan Am Flight 103 from Heathrow to New York exploded just 38 minutes into its flight while travelling over Lockerbie, with the wreckage of the plain raining down on the...

OTTAWA - Canadian health authorities are worried an outbreak of West Nile virus infection in Louisiana, which has killed four of 58 infected people, could mean the mosquito-borne illness is changing the way it spreads. "Something seems peculiar about Louisiana with such a large number of human cases," said Harvey Artsob, head of zoonotic diseases at Health Canada. "It's important for us to understand why, so that all our messages of reassurance in other parts of North America still hold. What's changed in Louisiana?" As Canadians head to summer cottages this weekend, the official government message remains that West Nile...

Trump’s presidential blitz is realizing the dreams of conservative intellectuals in the Reagan-Bush era.Imagine a populist president who set out to create, “in the first weeks of his administration, a radically different perception of the presidency.” He could use “far-reaching executive orders” to “give various constituencies throughout the country the immediate conviction that this president, for a change, looks out for them.” The burst of presidential edicts would serve visceral as much as practical purposes: “The nation as a whole needs to be jarred by this newcomer’s determination to protect the country’s vital interests, perhaps by ordering, on national security...

While the media and military have been silent, what the Navy did against a Houthi attack is pretty magnificent. Has the U.S. grown ashamed of its military victories? There are reasons to believe this is true. In April 1988, the U.S. Navy effectively destroyed the Iranian navy following a mine attack on the destroyer USS Roberts. The Navy sank an Iranian frigate, four armed speedboats, blew up two armed oil platforms, and damaged another frigate in one of the shortest and most successful campaigns of the postwar period. Yet even today, there is no actual name attached to the engagement....

ACAPULCO, Mexico (AP) - For generations, leftist activists have fought the Institutional Revolutionary Party in the southern state of Guerrero through the ballot box and the rifle. After skirmishes, massacres and hundreds of martyrs, they were celebrating victory Monday with dancing and the honking of horns in the state's famous resort, Acapulco. Official state election results showed former Acapulco Mayor Zeferino Torreblanca with a stunning victory, 55 to 42 percent, over the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which has run Guerrero for 76 years. "After nearly 50 years of social struggle, we have achieved the miracle of the vote," said...

We recently wrote about the Brett Kimberlin saga -- which is long and involved, and which we'd avoided jumping into for a long time, given how complex and nutty it was. If you're not familiar with it, go back and read that post to catch up on it, but the super short version is that Kimberlin has been suing a lot of people, in large part because he doesn't like the way they're characterizing his past. And he's more or less indicated that he intends to tie people up in court for as long as possible, leading some to put...

A drug cartel kingpin, known as the US Drug Enforcement Administration’s top target for his role in the killing of a DEA agent, was moved from Mexico to New York City on Thursday and is expected to face a judge on Friday, according to officials and sources. Rafael Caro Quintero was among 29 cartel members the Mexican government released into US custody as President Trump has threatened to slap imports from Mexico with a 25% tariff on March 4 if the country doesn’t do more to crackdown on illegal immigration drug smuggling. “Obviously, this is one of the biggest days...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — In the 1980s, a young woman from Arroyo Hondo was in the running to be the Taos Fiesta Queen. That summer, she visited the house of a renowned El Prado seamstress many times to get fitted for her elaborate, traditional outfit, always making sure to say “hi” to the woman’s 14-year-old son. She graduated from high school and moved to Albuquerque, where she attended the University of New Mexico. On June 22, 1988, 21-year-old Althea Oakeley was walking home from a party after getting into a disagreement with her boyfriend. It was around 8:15 when she crossed...

Israel on Wednesday made public for the first time some 200,000 pages of documents related to the fate of the 1950s missing Yemenite children, something Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said was meant to “correct the historical injustice” of hiding the fate of the children. “It is difficult to believe that for almost 70 years, people did not know what happened to their children,” Netanyahu said. “And as difficult as the reality may be, we are not willing for this to continue.” Netanyahu's comments came at a ceremony in the Prime Minister's Office where a website was launched with the documentation...

Ethiopia’s brutal Marxist dictator, known as the African Pol Pot, became the first fallen leader to be found guilty yesterday of genocide in his own country after a 12-year trial.Mengistu Haile Mariam, the former President, who fled to Zimbabwe in 1991, was accused along with top members of his military Government of killing thousands during his 17-year rule. The period was marked by vicious crackdowns on opponents, disastrous wars with neighbouring countries and rebel groups and devastating famines in which starvation was used to force peasants into submission. “Members of the Derg [Government] who are present in court today and...

Journalists increasingly see their job as protecting their preferred candidates, not asking tough questions.On September 25, more than two months after entering the presidential race, Democratic nominee Kamala Harris finally sat down for her first one-on-one interview with a national television reporter. It wasn't just any reporter. Stephanie Ruhle, host of a nightly show on the Democrat-cheerleading cable network MSNBC, had, just five days prior, ridiculed the very notion that journalists, let alone voters, needed to hear anything more from the vice president before Election Day. "Let's say you don't like her answer. Are you going to vote for Donald...

More effective and sustainable firearms are on the horizon — but future technology is now banned before it can even come to fruition. For 63 years, the United States Congress has drafted and passed the National Defense Authorization Act. The purpose of this act: to pass the country’s defense budget for the following fiscal year. While Americans are focused on inflation and other trending topics, this bill passes every year under the radar. It’s Congress’s way of slowly chipping away at the constitutional rights of millions of Americans without any pushback — mainly because people don’t know about it. However,...

CANTON, Mass. — A Massachusetts man convicted as a teen of killing a 14-year-old classmate "for the heck of it" in Canton has been granted parole — 37 years after he was sent to prison. Rod Matthews was convicted in 1988 of second-degree murder in the November 1986 beating death of 14-year-old Shaun Ouillette, who he lured into the woods and bludgeoned with a baseball bat. He was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole. According to court documents, in late October 1986, then-14-year-old Matthews told two classmates that he "wanted to know what it was like...

Hundreds of people in Miami took to the iconic Calle Ocho, the heart of Little Havana, to celebrate former President and now President-elect Donald Trump’s victory on Tuesday night, waving American and Cuban flags and dancing in the streets. The former president is the projected winner of the 2024 presidential race, and he defeated Vice President Kamala Harris with a significant victory in the state of Florida. Trump reportedly won nearly 55 percent of the vote in Florida, according to counts at press time. Local media reported that Trump is the first Republican to win Miami-Dade County since 1988, leaning...