Free Republic

The Qataris, and their ruling al-Thani family, are slavers, narcotics traffickers, and financiers of international terrorism. They also happen to be America’s closest ally under Obama. When analyzing the foreign policy interventions of the Obama administration with respect to the Middle East, it is hard to reconcile their respective approaches Libya (2011) and Iraq (2014). In 2011, Obama justified the military action to remove Muammar Gaddafi on the basis of anticipated genocide by the Gaddafi regime. Speaking at the National Defense University on March 28, 2011, Obama explained “I refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves...

SEQUIM — Jesse Marunde, who long aspired to be the world’s strongest man, died suddenly this week at the age of 27. Mr. Marunde, who was born in Glennallan, Alaska, but raised in Sequim, collapsed and died Wednesday night while working out at his gym in Sequim. Chuck Marunde said his son died of a heart attack. Autopsy results will be known in about a month. Mr. Marunde made an international splash in the weightlifting world with a second-place finish in the World’s Strongest Man competition in China in 2005. He won a local strongman event this spring in...

Hong Kong (AsiaNews/Agencies) - Embattled Hong Kong Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa, whose unpopular leadership spawned massive pro-democracy demonstrations, has resigned for personal reasons, local newspapers reported on Wednesday. The reports come just weeks after Tung was publicly reprimanded by Chinese President Hu Jintao for his poor performance over the past seven years. Asked to confirm if Tung had stepped down, a government spokesman said: "We don't comment on speculative reports". Citing unidentified sources, most reports said Tung's right hand man, Chief Secretary Donald Tsang, would be made acting chief executive after Tung's departure. Tung, a businessman with little political experience,...

The United States Military Academy at West Point hosted the Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party’s top propaganda effort that seeks to “influence foreign governments and other actors to take actions or adopt positions supportive of Beijing’s preferred policies” as a speaker, The National Pulse can reveal.The United States Military Academy (USMA) has also partnered with state-run Chinese universities – including institutions accused of doubling as espionage and cyberattack training grounds and Xi Jinping’s alma mater – on exchange programs.What’s more, West Point leadership has visited the China-based schools to call for increased collaboration, including a former superintendent “inviting national...

How the Pentagon’s top-brass generals burned the careers of subordinates but then pivoted to lucrative careers all while losing the wars they were supposed to be winning. My new book, A Few Bad Men, details the mendacity and mad dishonesty of retired Marine General James “Mad Dog” Mattis. The fact that it was written by a Marine once under his command, whom he betrayed for the sake of politics and getting to slap on another star, says volumes about this once-lionized figure. It all goes back to an incident in Afghanistan in 2007, and the Court of Inquiry trial of...

On or about this date in 1974, a young American traveler — or perhaps intelligence agent — named Charles Dean and his Australian friend Neal Sharman are believed to have been executed in Laos by the Pathet Lao guerrillas. The 23-year-old Dean was in the midst of a protracted post-university globetrotting when he was apprehended with his friend traveling down the Mekong River in the war-torn country. They were held in captivity for three months — long enough for the family to learn they were detained, and Dean’s father to fly to Laos to negotiate in vain for his release....

...This slightly rambling epistle is authored by a titan of the world literature, a schizophrenic, a gambler, a true believer, a sufferer, a humanitarian, an epileptic, a Russian, a philosopher, a St. Petersburger, the Writer. Let us forgive him a certain incongruity of thought, since that letter was his first salute to a newly acquired chance to live. On this date in 1849, Dostoevsky, along with some 20 other condemned, was brought out to St. Petersburg’s Semyonovsky platz. They were meant to be shot for affiliation with the Petrashevsky circle, a group of idealistic young intellectuals, apologists of Fourier and...

WASHINGTON - Notes from the jury deliberating the fate of ex-White House aide Lewis (Scooter) Libby gave a hint there might be one or two holdouts on a conviction. "We would like clarification of the term 'reasonable doubt,'" the jury wrote to U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton on the eighth day of deliberations. "Is it necessary for the government to present evidence that it is not humanly possible for someone not to recall an event in order to find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt?" The notes from the 11 jurors weighing the fate of Vice President Cheney's former chief of...

MAS' Esam Omeish Seeks Virginia Office Campaign Mum on MAS Ties, Radical Omeish Speeches IPT News May 1, 2009 The last time the public got a good look at Esam Omeish, he was resigning from a Virginia immigration panel, claiming that the posting of videos showing him praising Palestinians who chose "the jihad way" to liberate their land was part of a smear campaign against him. Now Omeish is diving into the deep end of smear campaigns, offering himself as a candidate for a partisan legislative seat in Northern Virginia. Omeish is among four Democrats vying to win their party's...

A presenter on Russian state television has issued an apparent threat to "traitors" living in Britain. Kirill Kleymenov warned of the dangers of spying on Russia and advised those who betrayed their country: "Don't choose Britain as a place to live." The comments, made on Channel One's Vremya news programme on Wednesday evening, came amid speculation over who was behind the attempted murder of a double agent on British soil. "I don't wish death on anyone, but, purely for educational purposes, I have a warning for anyone who dreams of such a career," he reportedly said. "The profession of a...

Most of you know her as Nancy Pelosi. When I first met my one-time neighbor, she was daughter to one Mayor of Baltimore, Tommy D’Alesandro, Jr., and sister to Tommy, III, who’d later become Mayor. Some of the stories about her, as she prepares to become Speaker of the House, have mentioned her past, but not honestly. At most, the glowing stories refer to the Baltimore City politics she grew up in as “rough and tumble.” Politics there and then were much more than rough and tumble. They were crooked as a dog’s hind leg. I know. I grew up...

FBI releases 60 year old files on Nancy Pelosi's father. The files detail a two-month investigation into Thomas D'Alesandro Jr., a Maryland politician who served in a long career in Congress and as mayor of Baltimore, Just the News noted in a Feb. 19 report on the FBI files. An FBI agent wrote on page 14 of the files: "There have been allegations that D'Alesandro has associated with the Baltimore criminal element and [redacted] and the son, Franklin Roosevelt D'Alesandro, had been arrested for rape." The allegations may have been rumor, the agent noted. Agents had written that Franklin Roosevelt...

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Friday’s shocking assassination of Japan’s former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in one of the world’s safest country stunned the world and drew condemnation, with Iran calling it an “act of terrorism” and Spain slamming the “cowardly attack.” (snip) “We are shocked and saddened to hear about the violent attack against former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe,” the White House said in a statement. “We are closely monitoring the reports and keeping our thoughts with his family and the people of Japan.” (snip) Other former world leaders also condemned the appalling attack on Abe, who was...

One of the most overlooked aspects of the year just ended is the vindication of Chief Justice John Roberts -- a vindication that showed up as the national catastrophe known as ObamaCare got rolling. Roberts may have also doomed Hillary Clinton's chance to live in the White House again. The chief justice, an appointee of President George W. Bush and reputedly a constitutionalist in his jurisprudence, set his diabolical trap (diabolical to Democrats) on June 28, 2012, when he joined with the four liberal justices on the Supreme Court to uphold the constitutionality of ObamaCare. Conservatives and Republicans across the...

In mid 2007 the Bank for International Settlements (The central bank of central banks) released a statement predicting an impending “Great Depression” caused by a credit market implosion. That same year the International Monetary Fund also published warnings of “subprime woes” leading to wider economic strife. I started writing alternative economic analysis only a year earlier in 2006 and I immediately thought it was strange that these massive globalist institutions with far reaching influence on the financial world were suddenly starting to sound a lot like those of us in the liberty movement.This was 16 years ago, so many people...

Caught in the Searchlight: Hsu, Reid, and the Searchlight Leadership Fund Harry Reid’s Mob Money, Part 5By Fedora Fugitive fundraiser Norman Hsu’s donations to Hillary Clinton have understandably grabbed the limelight, but there is another story lurking in the shadows of the affair. Federal Election Commission documents record that on May 17, 2007, Hsu donated $1,000 to the Searchlight Leadership Fund, a political action committee associated with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. On the same day, Searchlight received a $1,000 contribution from Winkle Paw, described by Hsu’s lawyer as a business associate of Hsu. Also donating $1,000 to Searchlight that...

A University of Pennsylvania law student couldn't shake his paranoid suspicion that his two neighbors, Drexel University graduate students, were foreign spies sent to work on some sort of a terrorism plot, police said. His anger-laced curiosity grew after he approached the roommates, both Indian-born bio-engineering majors, during a seemingly friendly conversation yesterday morning as the three men left the apartment building at 43rd near Pine streets before class, said cops. At about 12:30 p.m, the 31-year-old Korean-American law student returned home, took out his legal Glock-9, and knocked on his neighbors' front door. The 22-year-old Drexel student, the only...

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, her Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills, and Sen. Bob Menendez (D., N.J.) supported a visa waiver for the daughter of a fugitive Ecuadorian banker in exchange for significant campaign contributions to the Democratic Party. On Tuesday, NBC 4 New York reported that Menendez, with express written support from Clinton, intervened on behalf of Estefania Isaías, who was banned from traveling to the U.S. due to accusations of visa fraud. Isaías is the daughter of Roberto Isaias, who lives in Miami and is currently fighting extradition to Ecuador for banking crimes and under investigation for...

Google’s head of diversity strategy said in a 2007 blog post that Jews have an "insatiable appetite for war" and an "insensitivity to the suffering [of] others." The comments were part of a longer meditation from Kamau Bobb, now head of diversity strategy at Google, that also slammed Israel’s military actions in Gaza and Lebanon that same year. Bobb was at the time a research associate in technology at Georgia Tech, according to his LinkedIn. The post, titled "If I Were A Jew," described how he believed Jewish people should view the Middle East conflict. "If I were a Jew...

WASHINGTON, Aug 3: Five years after her mysterious disappearance in Karachi, the FBI has finally conceded that an MIT-trained Pakistani neuroscientist is alive and is in US custody in Afghanistan. Aafia Siddiqui, 36, disappeared with her three children while visiting her parents’ home in Karachi in March 2003, around the same time the FBI announced that it wanted to question her over her alleged links to Al Qaeda. Her family’s lawyer Elaine Whitfield Sharp said she believed recent media reports about Mrs Siddiqui’s incarceration increased pressure on the US and Pakistani authorities to divulge more information. “I don’t believe that...