Free Republic

A video unearthed from 2001 by the Republican National Committee’s research team revealed then-Senator Biden praising Russian President Vladimir Putin for embracing the West, heralding his actions as comparable to Peter the Great. “I’m close to amazed by how far Putin seems to have come in making – throwing – his lot in with the West,” Biden said as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “He seems to have – out of all the briefings I’ve gotten – actually stiff-armed his military and stiff-armed some of the browns and reds in his government and out of government.”

Visual effects pioneer Douglas Trumbull, one of the masterminds behind the visual effects on some of the most visually audacious science fiction films of all time, including “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “Blade Runner,” died Monday from complications from mesothelioma. He was 79.

SHANGHAI (Kyodo) Two Japanese nationals in their 50s received heart transplants between 2001 and 2004 at a Shanghai hospital whose organs mainly come from death-row inmates, sources at a Taiwanese company that arranged the procedures said Thursday. Japan was seemingly unaware of the cases, as a survey released March 9 by the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry said there were no cases of Japanese receiving heart transplants in Asia outside of Japan. Ethical and medical concerns have often been raised regarding organ transplants in China over issues that include the use of organs of prisoners on death row and uncertain...

Dong Jingwei, who has been rumored to be a high-ranking defector to the United States, attended a meeting in Beijing on June 23, according to the Chinese Ministry of Public Security (MPS). The MPS announced on its website that Dong participated in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) security meeting in Beijing on Wednesday, as a member of the China team which was led by Zhao Kezhi, China’s public security minister. In the announcement, the ministry released a photo, in which Dong was sitting at the right end of the table. This is the first time that the Chinese regime has...

XILINX AND PIXEL VELOCITY TEAM TO DELIVER WORLD'S MOST ADVANCED 3-D FACIAL RECOGNITION TECHNOLOGY 3-D biometric "fingerprint" of human face to revolutionize airport security SAN JOSE, Calif., November 29, 2004 - Xilinx, Inc., (NASDAQ: XLNX), the world's leading programmable logic supplier, and Pixel Velocity, a leading image processing solutions company, today announced a collaboration that resulted in the world's most advanced 3-D facial recognition technology. Using the advanced features of Xilinx Virtex-II Pro FPGAs, Pixel developed the revolutionary biometrics technology to replace today's limited two-dimensional (2-D) technology in applications such as airport surveillance cameras and automated travel kiosks in airports...

Genome sequencing has given rise to a new generation of genetically engineered bioweapons carrying the potential to change the nature of modern warfare and defense. Introduction Biological weapons are designed to spread disease among people, plants, and animals through the introduction of toxins and microorganisms such as viruses and bacteria. The method through which a biological weapon is deployed depends on the agent itself, its preparation, its durability, and the route of infection. Attackers may disperse these agents through aerosols or food and water supplies (1). Although bioweapons have been used in war for many centuries, a recent surge in...

Joseph Mahmoud Dibee, 50, was arrested by the FBI and booked into the Multnomah County Detention Center at 4:53 p.m. Thursday. He's been wanted for 12 years, after he was indicted in 2006 on charges of arson, conspiracy and animal enterprise terrorism. In 2008, he was believed to have been living in Syria with family members, and federal officials announced a $50,000 reward for his arrest. (FBI) A fugitive sought for more than a decade and accused of taking part in a string of eco-sabotage attacks across the West is in custody in Portland and was to make his...

Iraq: Pope’s Trip Leaves Collateral DamageMuslims mock Francis' visit as surrender to Islamic supremacyERBIL, Iraq (ChurchMilitant.com) - Pope Francis' Iraq trip has triggered a tidal wave of mockery on social media, with Muslims gleefully announcing that the pontiff has surrendered to Islamic supremacy, an Iraqi Muslim convert has told Church Militant. Billboard welcoming Pope Francis in Mosul The Kurdish response to Francis on the final day of his visit has been largely negative, as "many Kurds see the pope as a person who flatters wicked people like President Erdoğan," observed Nasser Aza, an academic from Erbil. While the pope's visit...

Cuomo told HUD's then-Inspector General Susan Gaffney that his top aides saw her as the "embodiment of evil," she told senators. Two decades before being accused of misconduct against women while he was New York governor, a younger Andrew Cuomo was the subject of a sexual harassment complaint from a government official who claimed that Cuomo — serving at the time in Bill Clinton's cabinet — also hounded her with "a series of attacks and dirty tricks." Susan Gaffney filed the 2000 complaint against Cuomo while he was secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development and she was...

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...