Free Republic

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...

Angry Sierra Leoneans jeer Sankoh's body August 02, 2003, 09:27 PM Hundreds of angry Sierra Leoneans turned out in the capital Freetown today to jeer the body of former rebel leader Foday Sankoh, a man reviled for launching one of Africa's most horrific wars. "Take his body to hell or give it to us, the crowd, to burn his body to ashes," shouted Dowu Johnson, a woman in the crowd. The former warlord, who had been indicted for war crimes by a UN-backed court investigating atrocities during the West African nation's decade-long civil war, died in hospital on Tuesday. His...

Israel has taken the controversial decision to recognise the breakaway state of Somaliland as an independent nation, sparking condemnation from many other countries. China is the latest to condemn the decision, with its foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian telling reporters: "No country should encourage or support other countries' internal separatist forces for its own selfish interests." China outlined its position ahead of the UN Security Council holding an emergency session to discuss Israel's decision. Israel on Friday became the first country in the world to acknowledge Somaliland as a standalone republic, more than 30 years after the region declared independence...

Yeah, another bombshell. This is a subtle yet significant deal, completely under the radar screen and not reported anywhere, to my knowledge. This is a very slick move, IMO. 1: Israel recognizes Somaliland statehood 2: Who even knew that there was an entity separate from Somalia "Somaliland"? 3: Israel recognizes S-Land well before the UN recognizes it as a state. Very pre-emptive. 4: Israel and S-Land sign cooperation and development deal(s) 5: Possibly this creates a platform where states in that region find out that peaceful cooperation w/Israel can be highly advanatageous. Yeah, sure? 6: While there is certain to...

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday announced today the official recognition of the Republic of Somaliland as an independent and sovereign state. Netanyahu, Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar, and the President of the Republic of Somaliland signed a joint and mutual declaration. “This declaration is in the spirit of the Abraham Accords, signed at the initiative of President Trump,” said a statement from the Prime Minister’s Office. Prime Minister Netanyahu congratulated the President of Somaliland, Dr. Abdirahman Mohamed Abdallah, and praised his leadership and commitment to promoting stability and peace. The Prime Minister invited the President to pay an official visit...

The UN Security Council will convene an emergency session on Monday to discuss Israel’s recognition of Somaliland, with members slated to condemn Jerusalem’s move. Israel announced the step on Friday, days before Somalia is slated to take over the presidency of the Security Council. In the announcement, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the recognition was “in the spirit of the Abraham Accords,” and that the countries would cooperate in “economic fields, on agriculture, [and] in the fields of social development.” The decision was met with anger from several regional powers who accused Israel of undermining the sovereignty and territorial integrity...

16:56 2002-05-03 1994: NIGHT TANK ATTACK ON THE CITY OF GROZNY. PART I Ex-head of Chechen Nadterechny Region’s administration, ex chairman of Supreme Soviet of Chechen Republic, Umar Avturkhanov tells about his three-year fight against Dudaev’s regime. Question. Umar, seven years ago, by the night attack on Grozny, military actions on Chechen territory were initiated. Answer. Yes, at night on 25th to 26th November, the so-called tank attack broadly advirtized by mass media really took place. Though, as a matter of fact, the situation was different. December 1993, the most active levels of Chechen society who were against general Dudaev’s...

Brooklyn black community runs off Antifa thugs Brooklyn, NYC — Antifa showed up in Crown Heights to agitate for a riot in honor of a black child who was killed in 1991 when a Jewish person was involved in a car accident there. Antifa were not welcomed by the black people in the neighborhood.

COPENHAGEN-Denmark's Prime Minister apologised in person on Wednesday (Sept24) to women who were victims of a decades-long involuntary birth control campaign, which has left islanders with deep scars and strained relations with their former colonial power. Thousands of women and girls as young as 12 were fitted with intrauterine devices without their knowledge or consent between 1966 and 1991, the year Greenland was given authority over its healthcare system... An investigation this month showed that 4,070 women had been fitted with intrauterine devices by the end of 1970-roughly every second Greenlandic-born woman of childbearing age. A large number of women...

The president of Uzbekistan on Wednesday offered his country's assistance in investigating the deadly terror attack in the lower Manhattan area of New York City. The suspect in the attack was identified as an Uzbek national, Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov. Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev expressed his condolences to the families of the victims, but the country has been linked to at least three other terrorist incidents over the last year. In April, Uzbek national Rakhmat Akilov drove a truck into pedestrians in Stockholm, Sweden, killing five people. Earlier that same month, Akbarzhon Jalilov, a Russian citizen who was born in Kyrgyzstan...

<p>Former Australian prime minister Paul Keating has warned that his country should not be drawn into a conflict with China over Taiwan and has no obligation to assist if U.S. forces launch an attack over the disputed island.</p><p>Keating, who was prime minister from 1991 to 1996, told Australia’s National Press Club that China was not a “contiguous threat” to his country.</p>

On the eve of the 2016 Presidential election, Issue #464 of Revolution announced in its headline, “In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE To Accept a Fascist America. . .Rise Up. . .Get Into The Streets. . .Unite With People Everywhere to Build Up Resistance in Every Way You Can. . .Don’t Stop: Don’t Conciliate. . .Don’t Accommodate. . .Don’t Collaborate”.Revolution is an online newspaper published by the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), a Maoist group descended from splinters of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). In 1969, RCP founder Bob Avakian and fellow Maoist H. Bruce Franklin had cofounded the...

A survivor of the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings said she still carries the psychological scars of the atrocity 50 years on. Twenty-one people died in The Mulberry Bush and the Tavern in the Town after a vague IRA warning gave inadequate time to evacuate. Another 220 people were injured. Robyn Tighe, who had just turned 19 when she was caught up in the blasts, told a new BBC documentary: "I’m a survivor with scars." Memorial services are being held in Birmingham on Thursday to mark the anniversary of the bombings, for which no-one has been held responsible. Although six men...

Two years ago this month, the U.S. television network NBC had the bright idea to create a reality show about vigilante terrorist hunters who would do something unspecified to terrorists who had evaded the long reach of justice. The first episode of the execrable series, "The Wanted," put the spotlight on Mullah Krekar, an Iraqi national flagged by the United States, the U.N., and Interpol for his involvement with Iraqi terrorist groups. The program showed NBC's terror team stalking Krekar on the streets of Oslo, a venture that was depicted as extremely dangerous, although Krekar was always just a phone...

Norway probes four refugees suspected of al-Qaeda links Monday, 26-Aug-2002 4:40AM      Story from AFP Copyright 2002 by Agence France-Presse (via ClariNet) </CLARI-ITEM HEADER>OSLO, Aug 26 (AFP) - Norway's intelligence agency PST has launched a probe into four refugees suspected of having links to the al-Qaeda network, Norwegian daily Verdens Gang reported Monday.One of the four being investigated at the request of British and US intelligence agencies is Mullah Krekar, a Kurd presumed to be the leader of the suspected bio-warfare group Ansar al-Islam, which is linked to al-Qaeda.The Norwegian Directorate of Immigration confirmed last week that Krekar has had...

He walks with a cane and is a bit hard of hearing. Yet Boris Chertok, 95, a former deputy chief designer in the Soviet bureau that put the first Sputnik satellite into orbit 50 years ago, still has strong opinions on the evolution of the country's space program. Chertok says the free-market changes instituted by President Boris Yeltsin after the Soviet Union fell apart were disastrous for Russian science. "We need to restore what we have lost over 15 years of destructive reforms," said Chertok, whose very name was once a state secret. "The market economy is incapable of fulfilling...

A three-decade-old clip of US president Joe Biden saying “it would not matter” if Haiti sunk has resurfaced as his administration faces a backlash for its handling of the influx of Haitian migrants. The remarks were made by Mr Biden in 1994 during an interview with PBS when he was the senator for Delaware. Mr Biden was asked if then president Bill Clinton would invade Haiti following the 1991 military coup against democratically-elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. During the conversation, he said: “If Haiti, a god awful thing to say, if Haiti just quietly sunk into the Caribbean or rose up...

Genocidal Islamic Fascist Republic of Iran - threatening annihilation at least since 1991.COLUMN ONE: Hezbollah: The Latin Connection : Bombings in Argentina and Panama prompt concern over the radical group's growing presence in the region. Experts say lax security and porous borders create a prime base for terrorists, by Tracy Wilkinson, Times Staff Writer, Los Angeles Times, August 04, 1994. The embassy's cultural affairs officer, Imam Mohsen Rabbani, rose. "Israel," he intoned in accented Spanish, "must disappear from the face of the Earth." He and a dozen speakers who followed quoted Iran's late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and called for unity...

Symposium: When an Evil Empire Returns By Jamie GlazovFrontPageMagazine.com | June 23, 2006  The Cold War is back. Russian President Vladimir Putin, a former KGB agent, is leading his country back into the dark ages of Soviet totalitarianism and instigating a global confrontation between Russia and the United States -- as well as between Russia and the West as a whole. The Russian President has consistently rolled back democratic freedoms. And he is proving that the genie can be placed back into the bottle: he has centralized authority and suffocated dissent in the media and in the nation at large. Reformers making efforts to build...

Vladimir Zhirinovsky, an odious leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia has approved militarization of the Russian Federation and said that all the countries of the former Soviet Union were a zone of Russian interests. Vladimir Zhirinovsky, a leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia praised the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office, which began to verify the legitimacy of recognition of independence of the Baltic republics by the State Council of the USSR in 1991, Joinfo.ua reports referring to the Russian media...