Free Republic

Academic says Trump trade war cut off spies China influenced American policies for decades through a covert network of “old friends” — sympathizers and agents — who had penetrated the highest levels of the U.S. government and financial institutions before the Trump administration, according to an academic linked to the Chinese government. Di Dongsheng, a professor and associate dean of the School of International Studies at Renmin University in Beijing, also suggested in a Nov. 28 speech that China’s Communist Party helped Hunter Biden, a son of presumptive President-elect Joseph R. Biden, obtain Chinese business deals. On influencing the United...

With far more political acuity than critics expected, President George Bush disarmed world government proponents while promising more aid to developing nations. The U.N.'s High Level Panel on Financing Development concluded its four-day conference in Monterrey, Mexico, without explicit authorization for U.N. taxes on currency exchange, fossil fuels and a host of other tax targets. The conference, publicized as a poverty-reducing initiative, was, in fact, another effort by the U.N. to gain taxing authority. Ernesto Zedillo, head of the U.N. panel, issued a report on June 28, calling for the new taxing authority. U.S. delegates to the conference made it...

Late last month, a 2001 Odyssey-like monolith appeared in the Utah desert. Not long after, another identical-looking structure appeared in Romania. They've both since vanished (men were photographed dismantling the Utah monolith). Now, yet another monolith has been discovered, this time in California.

A mystery metal monolith identical to one which recently disappeared from a desert in the US has been discovered in Europe.

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A mysterious silver monolith that was placed in the Utah desert has disappeared less than 10 days after it was spotted by wildlife biologists performing a helicopter survey of bighorn sheep, federal officials and witnesses said.

The bankruptcy of the Catalan electronic voting company Scytl is approaching its outcome. The Irish group Paragon will take control of the technology company, after months of negotiations with the bank to find a solution to its liquidation, according to ARA from sources close to the operation. Yesterday was the deadline the judge had given the creditors to reach an agreement on Paragon’s proposal, which, as he advanced The vanguard, was the only offer in this phase. Scytl was dragging a debt of 75 million euros, of which creditors will end up collecting only 3 in return for the brands...

FR VICTORY BRUNCH Fond memories of a great time with FReeper FRiends. In my presentation, I called Hillary the Daughter of Satan. Some thought it was way over the top. What about now? Start at about 1:09.35

Elizabeth Jo Shirley, of Hedgesville, West Virginia, has admitted to unlawfully retaining a document containing national defense information and committing international parental kidnapping, the Department of Justice announced.Shirley, 47, pled guilty to one count of “Willful Retention of National Defense Information” and one count of “International Parental Kidnapping.”  Shirley admitted to unlawfully retaining a National Security Agency (NSA) document containing information classified at the TOP SECRET/SENSITIVE COMPARTMENTED INFORMATION (TS/SCI) level relating to the national defense that outlines intelligence information regarding a foreign government’s military and political issues.  Shirley also admitted to removing her child, of whom she was the...

An armed protester at "Clock Boy" Ahmed's mosque in Irving, Texas, told a Houston-based radio station that his December 12th armed protest is planned for a mosque that he says has been connected to terrorism. David Wright III told KTRH AM740 in Houston that a Richardson, Texas, mosque has funded terrorist groups. He said of the mosque, the Islamic Association of North Texas, "Back in 2005, there was an investigation into that mosque and the Holy Land Foundation which was tied to that mosque, and they found they had funded terrorist groups." The Holy Land Foundation was one of the...

For years, many Republicans and conservatives have charged that President Barack Obama was shielding embarrassing intelligence and policy details about Iran in order to support the nuclear deal reached last year. With Donald Trump's upset victory, the party of Lincoln will have an opportunity to declassify and disclose this information. While no decisions have been made, two early picks to Trump's cabinet suggest this is going to happen. Let's start with retired general Michael Flynn, the next president's choice to be national security adviser. Flynn served for two years as Obama's director of the Defense Intelligence Agency from 2012 to...

UNITED NATIONS - A former Russian top spy says his agents helped the Russian government steal nearly $500 million from the U.N.'s oil-for-food program in Iraq before the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. Sergei Tretyakov, who defected to the United States in 2000 as a double agent, says he oversaw an operation that helped Saddam's regime manipulate the price of Iraqi oil sold under the program — and allow Russia to skim profits. Tretyakov, former deputy head of intelligence at Russia's U.N. mission from 1995 to 2000, names some names, but sticks mainly to code names. Among the spies...

A Saudi suspected of being the "20th hijacker" in the Sept. 11 attacks has recanted his confession, saying he made false statements after he was beaten, abused and humiliated at Guantanamo, according to documents obtained Friday by The Associated Press. Mohammed al-Qahtani — who U.S. officials have said previously was subjected to harsh treatment authorized by former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld — denied knowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks in his first appearance before a military panel at Guantanamo Bay in October. "I am a businessman, a peaceful man," al-Qahtani testified under oath, nearly five years after he was...

On a late January afternoon, as press secretary Sean Spicer walked into the White House media briefing room, a tall, thin, bespectacled man poked his head in the doorway for a moment before turning around and heading back into the West Wing. Later that week, at another briefing, the man stayed longer, standing in the corner behind the podium, out of view of the array of television cameras. The reporters peppering Spicer with questions were unlikely to know it, but the wallflower watching over the proceedings happened to be the leading conservative intellectual to argue for the election of Donald...

During his twelve-year reign as FBI Director, Robert Mueller not only protected his criminal friends by silencing those who could expose their bad acts, he projected his friends’ crimes onto others in order to fraudulently appoint a Special Counsel. And the FISA court judge Reggie Walton — who was hacked by Obama officials John Brennan and James Clapper, according to whistleblower evidence — has been involved in more than one of these plots. There is no better Deep State tool for punishing your enemies than a fraudulent Special Counsel (who is not accountable to anyone) with an unlimited budget and...

TROUBLED pop queen Whitney Houston is dabbling with a strict Hebrew sect in a bid to sort out her life. The singer was in Israel with wayward husband Bobby Brown yesterday to find out more about the Jewish group. The pair also prayed at Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Whitney, 39, who had a No1 hit with Saving All My Love For You, became interested in the Black Hebrews after her sister-in-law Pat joined them. They are an African-American community that moved to Israel in 1969 and settled in the southern town of Dimona. Followers are banned from eating...

They took as their reference an existing mission study to send six humans to Mars and back in a five year timescale. The study found the spacecraft mass could be reduced by a third by removing the crew quarters with a similar reduction in consumables, equivalent to several tons of saved mass. Hibernation would take place in small individual pods that would double as cabins while the crew are awake. The assumption was that a drug would be administered to induce "torpor"—the term for the hibernating state. Like hibernating animals, the astronauts would be expected to acquire extra body fat...

When Bruce E. Ivins, an Army microbiologist, took a fatal overdose of Tylenol in 2008, the government declared that he had been responsible for the anthrax letter attacks of 2001, which killed five people and set off a nationwide panic, and closed the case. Now, a former senior F.B.I. agent who ran the anthrax investigation for four years says that the bureau gathered “a staggering amount of exculpatory evidence” regarding Dr. Ivins that remains secret. The former agent, Richard L. Lambert, who spent 24 years at the F.B.I., says he believes it is possible that Dr. Ivins was the anthrax...

HOUSTON –– The National Organization for Women and other groups said Monday they are helping to raise money to defend Andrea Yates – the mother accused of drowning her five children in the bathtub

Ukraine's main opposition chief back in race Reuters Kiev : Ukraine's main opposition leader, still undergoing treatment for a mystery ailment, has rejoined a campaign to overturn the scandal-plagued legacy of outgoing President Leonid Kuchma in a presidential election this month. Viktor Yushchenko, looking haggard and flushed, flew back to Kiev on Sunday after a second stay at an Austrian clinic where doctors failed to confirm his team's suspicions that he was poisoned to knock him out of the October 31 election. His main rival, Prime Minister Viktor Yanuko-vich, is backed by Kuchma, whose decade in office has been marked...

World 15 Islamist Kurds suspected of planning attacks arrested across Europe 12/11/2015 BARCELONA, Spain - Radical Kurdish cleric "Mullah Krekar" and 14 other Iraqi Kurds were arrested across Europe on Thursday in a coordinated police swoop on Islamist militants planning attacks, Italian media reported. The Corriere della Sera newspaper said the suspects were arrested in countries across Europe in collaboration with police from Italy, the UK, Norway, Finland, Germany and Switzerland. A non-Kurd, a man from Kosovo, was also arrested. Among the suspects picked up for links to the Islamic State group (ISIS), seven were arrested in Italy, four...