Free Republic

Twenty-first-century Russia may look like a liberal democracy, with elections, law courts and parliament. In truth there are two parallel states. One is for show. The other is almost completely corrupt, with part of it run by a clique of secret servicemen who owe their allegiance ultimately to the prime minister, Vladimir Putin, and the small group of former KGB thugs who surround him. Stay in with them, and you stay safe. Fail to pay your dues, and you risk personal destruction. ....the so-called siloviki, the strongmen who control modern Russia, with a career background in the intelligence or security...

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, who is one of President Vladimir Putin's closest confidants and is regularly mentioned as a possible successor to Putin in 2008, made some uncharacteristic political statements in a 1 March interview with "Moskovskii komsomolets." "Only democrats, with their split personalities, could believe that we might get help from abroad," Ivanov said. "Nobody will help us except ourselves. Therefore we should be powerful and capable of guaranteeing our national security in any situation."' He also criticized Russian liberals for viewing Russia only as "a money-making enterprise." Recent Russian media reports indicate that the Kremlin has ordered...

In Salt Lake City, Utah, on February 12, 2007, wearing a tan trench coat, Sulejman Taloviæ , age 19,went on a shooting rampage killing five civilians and wounding several others at Trolley Square, a Salt Lake City shopping mall, before being fatally shot by police. The killings by Talovic, a Bosnian Muslim, was immediately labeled NOT a terrorist act. Both the authorities and the media took pains NOT to identify him as a Muslim. In 2002, Muslim convert John Allen Muhammad, one of the Washington, DC snipers, killed 10 innocent Americans and wounded three more critically. Authorities claimed no connection...

After Islamic gunmen attacked the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya, the collective reaction from the US media was to speculate whether such terror could happen here, as if a jihadist assault on a mall inside America had never before been tried. CNN was typical: “Can it happen here? Yes, say security experts, but it hasn’t.” News flash: it did. On the evening of Feb. 12, 2007, a young Muslim man walked into the Trolley Square mall in Salt Lake City with a pistol-grip, 12-gauge shotgun and a 38-caliber revolver and opened fire on shoppers, killing five and wounding four others,...

(ISLAMABAD) -- Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari is hoping to head off a potential military coup by imploring Pakistanis to reject attempts at usurping democracy. Zardari made his remarks Tuesday in southern Sindh province on the fourth anniversary of the assassination of his late wife, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Bhutto had just returned from exile two months earlier and was rumored to be seeking a return to power when she was slain on Dec. 27, 2007. [Snip] Zardari has always had uneasy relations with Pakistan's powerful military and his camp believes they will either try to remove him by...

For more than a year we’ve been investigating Cambridge Analytica and its links to the Brexit Leave campaign in the UK and Team Trump in the US presidential election. Now, 28-year-old Christopher Wylie goes on the record to discuss his role in hijacking the profiles of millions of Facebook users in order to target the US electorate The first time I met Christopher Wylie, he didn’t yet have pink hair. That comes later. As does his mission to rewind time. To put the genie back in the bottle. By the time I met him in person, I’d already been talking...

Breaking on CNN and Fox - 2 pp being decontaminated. FBI responding.

NOTE The following text is a quote: MS-13 Driver in 2007 Murder in Springfield Sentenced to Life in Prison ALEXANDRIA, VA—Carlos Bladimir Montoya, also known as "Ciego," 26, of Sterling, Va., was sentenced today to life plus a consecutive 120 months in prison for his role in the murder of a rival gang member on May 5, 2007. Neil H. MacBride, United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia; Shawn Henry, Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI Washington Field Office; and Colonel David Rohrer, Fairfax County Chief of Police, made the announcement after sentencing by United States District...

Jordan: Militant Sentenced for Attack By JAMAL HALABY – 4 hours ago AMMAN, Jordan (AP) — Jordan's military court convicted an al-Qaida militant Monday of involvement in the deadly suicide car bombing of the Jordanian Embassy in Iraq in 2003 and sentenced him to death. Muammar Ahmed Yousef al-Jaghbeer, a Jordanian of Palestinian origin, was arrested in 2005 upon his return from Iraq and charged with the embassy attack, which killed 19 people. Al-Qaida in Iraq, which was then headed by Jordanian-born Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, claimed responsibility for the attack. The court dropped charges against al-Zarqawi on Monday, citing his...

When U.S. authorities got their hands on terrorist Mohammed Mansour Jabarah in May 2002, he agreed to inform on some of the most influential al-Qaeda leaders. So instead of being sent to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, or a high-security CIA detention facility, Jabarah was housed with relatively lax security at Fort Dix, N.J., where he was allowed to watch television and movies, speak to his family in Canada by telephone, go for walks and even make his own meals, all under 24-hour FBI watch. That arrangement soon proved to be a major problem for the bureau. In court papers filed in...

A federal judge has denied terror suspect Mohamed Elzahabi's request for an acquittal or new trial. Elzahabi was convicted in August of possessing and using a fraudulent immigration document to get a job in Minnesota. Evidence submitted during the trial showed Elzahabi had paid an exotic dancer in Houston to marry him so he could obtain the green card. U-S District Judge John Tunheim wrote that a reasonable jury could find Elzahabi guilty. Elzahabi was arrested as part of a terrorism investigation. The F-B-I says he acknowledged that he attended a jihad training camp, fought in Afghanistan as part of...

FBI agent Pellegrino; "But there were missed opportunities before. And you always have to wonder what else could have been done to possibly have picked him up. And if we had picked him up, I just, I can't imagine that an event like 9-11 would have happened." CBS. Sep 11, 2026. How '9/11 mastermind' slipped through FBI's fingers. BBC. Sep 5, 2021. Mohammed seems to have been tipped off about the US interest in him and fled Qatar, ending up in Afghanistan.''

Earlier this month, the State Department learned that debris from the Chinese weather satellite destroyed in their 2007 anti-satellite test would be coming uncomfortably close to another — functioning — Chinese satellite. So, like any good neighbor, State told China about the possibility of a collision. In technical terms, the US shared conjunction analysis with our PRC brethren. But, as often happens with the fabulously opaque Chinese government, the US isn’t sure if China heard us or believed us. At a conference on space debris last week in Germany, a U.S. military officer spoke with someone presumed to be a...

Archives from Stalin’s secret police have become a flash point because of the rise of a movement that has sought to idolize Stalin as a leader who defeated Nazi Germany, spurred industrialization and made the Soviet Union a superpower. Last year, the Kremlin promoted a study guide for high school teachers that deems Stalin “one of the most successful leaders of the U.S.S.R.,” while describing his “cruel exploitation” of the population. Mr. Putin himself has acknowledged the losses under Stalin, but has said Russians should not be made to feel ashamed of them. “We do have bleak chapters in our...

Twilight of the Magicians: Aleksandr Dugin and the War Against the West "If the Fourth Political Practice is not able to realize the end of times, then it would be invalid. The end of days should come; but it will not come by itself. This is a task, it is not a certainty. It is active metaphysics. It is a practice.” ALEKSANDR DUGIN, THE FOURTH POLITICAL THEORY [I] The “philosopher” who has done the most to justify Russia’s war against the West is Aleksandr Dugin. He was the first to advocate a Russian invasion of Ukraine. He has also advocated...

A liberal Swiss billionaire known for meddling in U.S. elections has funneled millions of dollars to former attorney general Eric Holder's effort to redraw electoral maps in favor of Democrats, newly obtained documents reveal. The Berger Action Fund, the advocacy arm of Swiss megadonor Hansjörg Wyss's Wyss Foundation, passed $3 million to the National Redistricting Action Fund (NRAF) between 2018 and 2020. The NRAF is the 501(c)(4) lobbying arm of Holder’s National Democratic Redistricting Committee, a self-described "centralized hub for executing a comprehensive redistricting strategy" to give Democrats an edge in congressional races. Holder, who chairs the National Democratic Redistricting...

Russian espionage in UK 'at Cold War level' By David Blair, Diplomatic Correspondent Last Updated: 1:11am BST 08/09/2007 Russia's espionage operation in Britain is operating at the level of the Cold War and involves about half of the staff accredited to its diplomatic missions in London, it has been claimed. Boris Berezovsky: an outspoken critic of Putin Their tasks range from seeking military and commercial secrets to monitoring Russian dissidents based in London, most notably Boris Berezovsky, the billionaire and outspoken critic of President Vladimir Putin. When Britain expelled four Russian diplomats in July - responding to Moscow's failure to...

A nationwide alert has been issued for 17 members of the Afghan military who have gone AWOL from a Texas Air Force base where foreign military officers who are training to become pilots are taught English, FoxNews.com has learned. The Afghan officers and enlisted men have security badges that give them access to secure U.S. defense installations, according to the lookout bulletin, "Afghan Military Deserters in CONUS [Continental U.S.]," issued by Naval Criminal Investigative Service in Dallas, and obtained by FoxNews.com. The Afghans were attending the Defense Language Institute at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas. The DLI program teaches...

FBI agents also didn't tell the Al Qaeda leader he could call a lawyer. Using the Article III system to try Al Qaeda terrorists was a reasonable solution, the trouble is that military tribunal personnel in this century look nothing like the guys who took a smoke break and sentenced Nazi saboteurs to death during WWII. Their ideal is A Few Good Men, they’re liberals if not outright leftists, and they’re far more likely to be on the side of the terrorists than to be on our side. The few Islamic terrorists whom Obama and Biden didn’t free from Gitmo...

Venezuela's new petroleum minister sees her South American home not as a dilapidated former oil giant, but as an emerging energy economy ripe for U.S. and foreign investments in new oil and gas exploration, both onshore and offshore. Paula Henao, who took over as the hydrocarbons minister in March after the forced U.S. removal of former leader Nicolás Maduro, told an overflowing Houston energy audience on Wednesday that Venezuela is much more than just its famed heavy-grade crude oil. There are more than 916 exploration opportunities awaiting foreign investment, she said, including natural gas and other untapped oil basins. She...