Free Republic

A violent street gang whose members were arrested as part a nationwide sweep by Immigration and Customs officials on Monday had ties to al Qaida, U.S. intelligence officials say. Officials said the Central American gang MS-13 is one of the largest and most violent street gangs in the United States, and the majority of its members are in the country illegally. The gang has carried out beheadings and grenade attacks in Central America and is known to hack their enemies with machetes in cities along the East Coast in the United States. Intelligence officials warned in January that al-Qaida members...

Communism is not dead in Latin America. In fact, the dominoes are falling south of the border, but no one seems to be noticing. “It’s a new day. Communism is dead. It’s even dead in Cuba.” So declared Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing in May 2002. “I hate to say it,” she continued, “it’s dead.” The senator’s proclamation was a surprise, no doubt, to Fidel Castro, whose regime was (and is) alive and as Red as ever. It also must have come as welcome news to the people of Cuba, still suffering, after nearly half...

Bush forces UN refugee chief to go Israeli pressure backed by conservative and Jewish groups in US stops reappointment of controversial head of relief agency Chris McGreal in Gaza City Thursday January 20, 2005 The Guardian The Bush administration has blocked the reappointment of the UN's Palestinian refugee agency chief, Peter Hansen, after a campaign by conservative and Jewish groups in the US, and the government in Jerusalem which accused him of being an "Israel hater". Some European and Arab governments were keen for Mr Hansen to stay on at the end of his nine-year tenure but the US supported...

Letters sent to Gold Country Media newspapers claiming to be from the eco-terrorist Earth Liberation Front and declaring responsibility for the recent firebomb plantings in Lincoln and Auburn were reportedly sent by an Emma Goldman from Sacramento. Letters were received Jan. 18 by the Lincoln News Messenger and Auburn Journal and on Jan. 19 by the Roseville Press-Tribune. Only the letter sent to the Journal was opened and the others were turned over to the Federal Bureau of Investigations. "We appreciate the newspapers' cooperation," said Karen Ernst, spokeswoman for the Sacramento FBI office. "We are not going to comment on...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 8 (Yonhap) -- The United States will take issue with the kidnapping of a Korean-American pastor by North Korean agents at future six-party talks over Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program, a South Korean interpreter close to the case said Tuesday. "U.S. State Department officials said they will raise the issue of the abduction of Rev. Kim Dong-shik with the North through various channels, including the six-way talks," said Chang Hak-keun, a South Korean interpreter who assisted Rev. Kim's wife during her visit to the State Department on Tuesday afternoon. Rev. Kim's wife, Chung Young-hwa, met State Department officials...

The relations between Russia and the Shiite's religious leadership in Lebanon started to develop in the beginning of the seventies. The spiritual leader of the Lebanese Shia community, Imam Moussa Al-Sadr, visited Moscow in 1972 and asked Soviet authorities to issue humanitarian aid to his people. At the same time cooperation between the Marxist factions of the PLO that were active in Lebanon and Soviet military intelligence – GRU, intensified greatly. Several soviet officers (speaking fluent Arabic) even visited Palestinian terrorist training camps in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon between 1972-1975. Using their connections in PLO they managed to establish...

VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran, which the United States accuses of secretly pursuing nuclear weapons, has a stake in the world's biggest open-pit uranium mine in the African state of Namibia, the mine's owner told Reuters. Rossing Uranium Limited, which is majority owned by Anglo-Australian firm Rio Tinto, sells its uranium to nuclear power plants in the United States, Japan, South Korea and Sweden. Graham Davidson, the general manager for operations at Rossing, said in a letter to Reuters that the company's board of directors only permits the sale of uranium for use in generating electricity. "The government of Iran has...

<p>BOSTON — The revelation last week that a laboratory slip-up led three Boston University scientists to become infected with tularemia, a flulike disease sometimes referred to as "rabbit fever," has fueled criticism of a plan to build a state-of-the-art research lab to study some of the world's most lethal germs in Boston's South End.</p>

Borrowing a page from President Bush, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton told a Boston audience this week that prayer has always played a meaningful role in her life - though accounts from her days as a student radical suggest that's probably not true. "I've always been a praying person," Clinton told a crowd of more than 500, including many religious leaders, at Boston's Fairmont Copley Plaza. According to the Boston Globe, the newly religious former first lady "invoked God more than half a dozen times" as she urged society to accommodate religious people who "live out their faith in the...

On this date in 2008, Chinese biochemist and businessman Wo Weihan was shot for espionage along with his alleged co-conspirator Guo Wanjun. Wo was arrested in China in January 2005 and accused of passing “state secrets” to Taiwan and the U.S. He didn’t have a lawyer until 2006 — by which time he had produced a coerced confession that he tried in vain to retract — and the 2007 trial took place in secret, so the case against him was troublingly opaque at the time of his execution. The verdict publicly released in March 2008 even included such trifles as...

The Fusion GPS news-for-hire scandal has not only led to the public identification of the source of the “Trump Dossier”—a for-profit company that provides opposition research to whoever could write big checks, which is staffed by four former Wall Street Journal reporters led by Glenn Simpson. The scandal has also lifted the lid off a sewer of corporate information warfare and opposition research that the flailing institutions of the mainstream press now regularly re-package as news, without ever saying where it came from—or who paid for it. While the idea that the products of paid opposition research are being main-lined...

Although President George W. Bush received more votes than any other presidential candidate in history, not everyone will be celebrating his second inauguration in the nation’s capital today. Pro-terrorist socialists and violent extremists pledge “direct action” – including initiating physical confrontations with police officers – that could divert critical attention from a terrorist attack. Among those who will take part in today’s protests is a group known as Anarchist Resistance, but is more commonly called “the Black Bloc” for the black ski masks its members wear destroying property. Its history of riotous incitement is well-known. On the first day of...

A Capitol HatefestBy Ben JohnsonFrontPageMagazine.com | January 20, 2005 Although President George W. Bush received more votes than any other presidential candidate in history, not everyone will be celebrating his second inauguration in the nation’s capital today. Pro-terrorist socialists and violent extremists pledge “direct action” – including initiating physical confrontations with police officers – that could divert critical attention from a terrorist attack. Among those who will take part in today’s protests is a group known as Anarchist Resistance, but is more commonly called “the Black Bloc” for the black ski masks its members wear. Its history of violent rioting...

The following are excerpts from the televised confessions of Muayed Al-Nasseri, who commanded Saddam Hussein's "the Army of Muhammad" throughout 2004. The confessions were aired by the Iraqi TV channel that operated from the UAE, Al-Fayhaa TV, on January 14, 2005. Interrogator: What is your name? Muayed Al-Nasseri: Colonel Muayed Yassin 'Aziz 'Abd Al-Razaq Al-Nasseri, commander of the Army of Muhammad, one of the resistance factions in Iraq. The Army of Muhammad was founded by Saddam Hussein after the fall of the regime, on April 9, 2003. At first, Yasser Al-Shab'awi was put in charge, until his captured in July...

Clinton Judge Emasculates Law Enforcement Agencies as Communist and Anarchist groups Plan Disruptions of Inaugural; Colombian Terrorists Target Bush for Death By Special Reports | January 18, 2005 Rulings by a Clinton-appointed federal judge, Gladys Kessler, have given unprecedented access to protesters to the inaugural parade route so that their "civil rights" may be protected. While the Washington Post and other Bush-bashing media are focusing on the cost of the January 20 Inauguration, a much more serious issue has emerged. Communist and anarchist groups may be planning to disrupt the inaugural and possibly commit violence. One organization sympathetic to a...

It is this reporter's opinion that often behind a great man is the driving force of a great woman. Never was this truer than in the case of Kateryna Chumachenko Yushchenko, the American-raised wife of the newly elected leader of the Ukraine. This tough-minded, savvy businesswoman hails from Chicago; the daughter of an electrician and a seamstress, Kateryna grew up steeped in the traditions of her ancestral homeland. She graduated from Georgetown University and became known for her commitment to freewheeling capitalism. But Ukrainian democracy was the zeal of her life. During WWII, Kateryna's parents were forced to emigrate to...

The online free encyclopedia, Wikipedia, informs that noted Philippine publicist Salvador “Bubby” Dacer was murdered on November 24, 2000 by members of the police force. According to Wikipedia, “Bubby Dacer and his driver, Emmanuel Corbito, were abducted in Makati, the business district of Manila. They were later killed, and their vehicle dumped. In 2001, a number of arrests were made. One of the accused, police colonel Glenn Dumlao, named Cesar Mancao and Michael Ray Aquino as the organisers of the murders. Mancao and Aquino both fled the country. Dumlao later disappeared.” “The ultimate reasons for Dacer’s murder remain a...

Two Indian brothers are among four men who have been indicted by a US federal court on charges of providing material support to slain Al Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki, prosecutors said. The two Indians are Yahya Farooq Mohammad, 37, and his brother Ibrahim Zubair Mohammad, 36. The other two are Asif Ahmed Salim, 35, and his brother Sultane Room Salim, 40. All four men have been indicted on one count of conspiracy to provide and conceal material support and resources to terrorists, one count of providing material support and resources to terrorists and one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice....

Friday, Feb. 25, 2005 6:47 a.m. ESTHillary Rebuked by Iraqi Leader New York Sen. Hillary Clinton has caused an international incident after she criticized Iraq's leading candidate to become prime minister as a result of last month's historic election, prompting a sharp rebuke. "Hillary Clinton, as far as I know, does not represent any political decision or the American administration, and I don't know why she said this," Dr. Ibrahim Jafari, who is expected to become prime minister, told the Times of London on Thursday. "She knows nothing about the Iraqi situation," he added. During an interview last Sunday,...

Explanation: Delivered by Saturn-bound Cassini, ESA's Huygens probe touched down on the ringed planet's largest moon Titan, ten years ago on January 14, 2005. These panels show fisheye images made during its slow descent by parachute through Titan's dense atmosphere. Taken by the probe's descent imager/spectral radiometer instrument they range in altitude from 6 kilometers (upper left) to 0.2 kilometers (lower right) above the moon's surprisingly Earth-like surface of dark channels, floodplains, and bright ridges. But at temperatures near -290 degrees C, the liquids flowing across Titan's surface are methane and ethane, hydrocarbons rather than water. After making the most...