Free Republic

Almost all media commentators seem convinced that Donald Trump’s foreign policy in his second term is a disaster. He is bogged down in Iran, snookered in Ukraine, his tariff agenda has failed and he has alienated his NATO allies. But this consensus has been too hastily formed. Looking at the bigger global picture, Trump’s foreign policy has been a spectacular success. Take the western hemisphere. We have the so-called “Donroe Doctrine,” the updated version of the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine. In 1822, president James Monroe, having welcomed South America’s overthrow of Spanish and Portuguese imperial rule, stated that Latin American nations...

Evidence in the trial against HLF showed that Ghassan Elashi, the treasurer of the charity, became the founding board member of CAIR’s Texas chapter and that HLF transferred funds to CAIR for “consulting services.” The prosecution also presented evidence that Hamas provided “seed money” for CAIR, according to a congressional hearing. “The history is very clear,” said Lorenzo Vidino, director of the Program on Extremism at GWU. “CAIR was created by this core group of Hamas leaders in the US in the early 1990s. There are FBI wiretaps of a workshop given by the group’s leaders on how to deal...

ALBAWABA- Unconfirmed reports circulating on social media and in several regional media outlets claim that Ahmad Vahidi, commander-in-chief of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), was killed in recent Israeli airstrikes targeting sites in or around Tehran. On Sunday afternoon, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) carried out an airstrike allegedly on a Hezbollah command centre in the Dahiyeh district of Beirut, following earlier rocket fire launched into northern Israel by Hezbollah. In response, Iran declared that Israel had “crossed all red lines” in Lebanon and launched multiple waves of ballistic missile strikes targeting Israeli territory late on Sunday, June 7...

Earlier today Robert Creamer, the husband of Cong. Jan Schakowsky, (D-IL), was sentenced to five months in prison and 11 months house arrest for his role in a 1990s check-kiting scheme while he was the head of defunct Illinois Public Action Council, a consumer advocacy group. Schakowsky has not been implicated in the scheme. Jan Schakowsky is one of the most liberal members of Congress. She is a member of the far-left Progressive Caucus. Other members of the caucus include such "stars" as Cynthia McKinney, Maxine Waters, Dennis Kucinich, Jim McDermott (Baghdad Jim), Bernie Sanders, and Lynn Woolsey. Schakowsky made...

Teens who use marijuana may be at greater risk of permanent brain damage later in life, a study has revealed. About 18 million Americans report using marijuana daily or nearly every day, and use is on the rise, largely due to recent decriminalisation across the US. From 1992 to 2022, for example, daily and near-daily use saw a 15-fold increase. About one in seven of those users are teenagers, whose brains are still undergoing rapid changes in areas responsible for judgement, decision-making and memory. Now, the largest-ever study of American teenagers has found regular cannabis use restricted vital growth in...

Marrakech – The United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) issued an urgent travel warning for Algeria late on Monday after two suicide bombings struck the town of Blida, roughly 50 kilometers south of the capital Algiers. The FCDO confirmed it is “aware of reports of an explosion on 13 April in the town of Blida” and urged British nationals in the area to “remain vigilant at all times and follow the advice of the local security authorities.” The twin attacks unfolded in the early afternoon. The first explosion targeted the security directorate in central Blida. A second suicide...

SADDAM HUSSEIN'S REGIME PROVIDED FINANCIAL support to Abu Sayyaf, the al Qaeda-linked jihadist group founded by Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law in the Philippines in the late 1990s, according to documents captured in postwar Iraq. An eight-page fax dated June 6, 2001, and sent from the Iraqi ambassador in Manila to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Baghdad, provides an update on Abu Sayyaf kidnappings and indicates that the Iraqi regime was providing the group with money to purchase weapons. The Iraqi regime suspended its support--temporarily, it seems--after high-profile kidnappings, including of Americans, focused international attention on the terrorist group. The...

KUALA LUMPUR - The radicalisation of former Malaysian army officer Yazid Sufaat, suspected of abetting two Sept 11 hijackers and of being a Jemaah Islamiah bomb-maker, shows that Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's ambitious effort to use Islam as a vehicle for economic progress and social change has backfired, The Asian Wall Street Journal said in a report yesterday. It said that Yazid - the son of a poor rubber tapper and the winner of a government scholarship to study biochemistry in the US - was an 'ideal candidate for transformation into the progressive Muslim professional', a type of citizen that...

Al-Qaida had extensive contacts with Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security, as well as with an elite military unit which helped the terrorists train and plot attacks against Americans, according to a former intelligence officer who recently fled Iran. Hamid Reza Zakeri, a former inspector and director of Iran's Revolutionary Guards and Ministry of Intelligence, or MOIS, member said models of the World Trade Center, the White House, Pentagon and other United States government buildings "were in our headquarters." In an explosive interview with a London-based Arabic newspaper last week, Zakeri stated that al-Qaida leader and Egyptian terrorist Ayman al-Zawahiri,...

At 6:30 p.m. on Sept. 14, Ana Belen Montes, a senior analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), walked into a public telephone booth outside Washington's National Zoo and made two calls to pager numbers later traced by federal agents to Cuba's Directorate of General Intelligence (DGI). She already had compromised the identities of CIA agents, revealed U.S. military secrets and exposed the contents of classified files. But, as Montes sent repeated signals to her DGI handlers during the days immediately following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the twin towers of the World Trade Center, the ...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department inspector general is investigating whether FBI agents involved in espionage and terrorism cases improperly used informants and subjects of investigation to benefit private businesses they were running on the side, according to officials and documents. The allegations, according to court documents reviewed by The Associated Press, include that agents' and intelligence assets' private companies were involved in business deals in China and the Middle East about the same time the FBI was investigating Chinese efforts to acquire sensitive technology. The FBI says it is cooperating with the investigation. "Any time there is a request...

An African church minister who supplements his meagre stipend by scrabbling for minerals in the artisanal mines of eastern Sierra Leone has discovered one of the largest diamonds ever found. The 709-carat stone was extracted this week by Emmanuel Momoh, a pastor in one of the myriad churches that ministers to the mining communities of Kono district, the diamond centre that became the crucible of Sierra Leone’s blood-soaked civil war. It is believed to be the 13th largest uncut diamond ever to be pulled from the ground, industry analysts said. The stone is to be auctioned, the Sierra Leonean government...

Financed by JPMorgan, Jointly Owned by US DoD Under the plan, the U.S. Department of Defense will hold a 40% stake in the JPM Financed smelter joint-venture. GFN – WASHINGTON: Korea Zinc plans a $7.4 billion investment to construct a large-scale non-ferrous metals smelter in Clarksville, Tennessee, a project U.S. officials say will materially expand domestic critical minerals processing capacity and strengthen supply chain security.1 The project, known as the “U.S. Smelter,” is expected to require approximately $6.6 billion in capital expenditures, with total investment reaching $7.4 billion including financing costs. It is being developed in coordination with the U.S....

Sant Chatwal courts controversy for helping Hillary By Arun Kumar, Washington, Sep 3 : Indian American businessman Sant Chatwal helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for Hillary Clinton's campaigns even as he battled to escape bankruptcy and millions of dollars in tax liens, the Washington Post alleged Monday. The founder of the Bombay Palace restaurant chain, Chatwal is one of a growing number of fundraisers in the 2008 presidential campaign whose backgrounds have prompted questions about how much screening the candidates devote to their "bundlers" while they press to raise record amounts, the daily said. Chatwal's case reached from...

Russia - Masque Of The Red Death Vladimir Putin has been hailed perhaps as the pivotal post cold war Russian leader. He has executed a skillful dog and pony show, convincing both the Bush and Blair administrations that the former Soviet Union was not only no longer a military threat to the West but was indeed now becoming a close ally. Obviously Russia's cooperation with the French and German UN delegation's intransigence in dealing with Iraq has done much to throw cold water on this heretofore-budding union. It's important to note that such a relationship offered hope, though ultimately unfounded,...

The United States has designated the Cartel de los Soles (Spanish for Cartel of the Suns) - a group it alleges is headed by Venezuela's president, Nicolás Maduro, and senior figures in his government - as a foreign terrorist organisation. Labelling an organisation as a terrorist group gives US law enforcement and military agencies broader powers to target and dismantle it. In recent months, the US has been ramping up pressure on Maduro, saying his government is illegitimate following last year's election, which was widely dismissed as rigged. The designation gives it another way to turn up the heat. But...

CHECHEN WARLORD WARNS OF NEW TERRORIST ATTACKS. Since masterminding the hostage-taking in the south Russian town of Budennovsk in the summer of 1995, radical Chechen field commander Shamil Basaev has claimed responsibility for a series of terrorist acts that have claimed hundreds of Russian lives. His ill-fated incursion into Daghestan in August 1999 in the wake of an unsuccessful attempt to sideline Chechen President Aslan Maskahdov served as the rationale for the Russian leadership to launch its second war against Chechnya in October of that year under the pretext of combating terrorism. Yet although Basaev is routinely reviled by leading...

This is the genocide that no one will talk about.Islamic terrorism is the outcry of the oppressed, apologists tell us. If the perpetrators only had access to more advanced weapons, they wouldn’t feel the need to massacre civilians with everything from machetes to rockets. Terrorism is a local phenomenon, not a global one.Jihadist terrorism only grabs our attention when it occurs on a large scale, like 9/11 or Oct 7, and then its allies, apologists and appeasers quickly redirect attention by indicting the response to the attacks as ‘oppression’, faking atrocities, complaining about ‘Islamophobia’ and a police state, and quibbling...

Colombia, which is America's strongest ally, has always had the most level-headed voters in the region. They've had two conservative parties, sometimes at once, and voters there have always rejected the crazy left, which in their case, is a Castro-grade revolutionary crazy grade of left, with Bill Ayers-types on steroids. They did, after all, fight a 60-year war against Marxist narcoterrorists, with only a few university wokesters defending them. So it was shocking news that on Sunday, Colombians went and elected just about the worst leftist of this stripe, a former M-19 narcoguerrilla named Gustavo Petro, president, turning one of...

The imprisoned leader of a Peruvian rebel group that was once involved in a lengthy hostage drama says his group has given up armed conflict and now wants to become a political movement. In an interview published in Wednesday's Peru21 newspaper, Victor Polay acknowledged that the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement has been defeated. "The moment has arrived for the MRTA to actively join the political fight, within the framework of democracy," said Polay, using the group's initials in Spanish. He said he would like authorities to grant amnesty to imprisoned MRTA guerrillas. "I hope there will be a political way...