Free Republic

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian forces are so poorly equipped they could not launch an offensive war, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov was quoted as saying Tuesday. Ivanov, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, has spearheaded military reform in Russia and is trying to transform bloated Soviet-style conscript units into a modern professional force. "Conditions are on an acceptable level only for the fulfillment of nuclear deterrent, counter-terrorist and peace-keeping activities," Ivanov told a meeting of military top brass also attended by Putin, according to Interfax news agency. Only last month, Ivanov said Russia reserved the right to launch pre-emptive non-nuclear...

MOSCOW. Feb 15 (Interfax) - President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree appointing Sergei Ivanov first deputy prime minister and relieving him of the duties of defense minister. At a Thursday meeting with Cabinet members where he announced the decision Putin said he had appointed Anatoly Serdyukov, previously head of the Federal Tax Service, as the new defense minister

Security: After Iran admits building a second enrichment facility inside a mountain, the Pentagon shifts money from other programs to urgently fund the mother of all bunker-buster bombs. Why the need for speed? At the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh last month, President Obama announced, "The Islamic Republic of Iran has been building a covert uranium enrichment facility near Qom for several years." U.S. officials said they knew for some time that the facility existed. The announcement was made after U.S. officials learned Iran had told the International Atomic Energy Agency of Qom's existence. Our knowledge of the facility built in...

One of the major cop-outs in the illegal immigration debate is this: There are millions and millions of foreigners already here. It would be an overwhelming task to find and deport them all. Let me suggest a good starting point – an all-out declaration of war on the organized criminal street gang MS-13, comprised mostly of illegal aliens and now threatening the lives and quality of life of nearly all Americans nationwide. Just last week, for instance, the Washington Post reported three leaders of the Mara Salvatrucha participated in or planned four murders in the area during a span of...

In an apparent lack of confidence in the leadership of Raul Castro, the number of Cubans leaving the island illegally by sea has been rising, according to U.S. officials. The number of people attempting the perilous voyage across of the Florida Straits has risen 21 percent compared to the same period last year. The number intercepted by the Coast Guard increased 65 percent. Since the beginning of October 2007, some 2,891 Cubans have attempted the journey across the straits. While 1,697 successfully reached the United States, 1,194 were intercepted at sea and returned to Cuba. Nearly ten times the number...

("an analyst told CNN." CNN, June 15, 2025 https://www.cnn.com/world/live-news/israel-iran-strikes-news-06-15-25) _______ CAMERA Special Report: The National Iranian American Council; Tehran’s Best Friend in Washington. By: Sean Durns November 24, 2015. [...] Parsi’s dissertation on Israeli-Iranian relations served as the basis for his book Treacherous Alliance (2008, Yale University Press). Parsi is a resident alien, with Swedish and Iranian passports, not an American citizen, although he runs an organization that claims to represent Iranian-Americans... Upon coming to the United States in 2001, Parsi worked as a managing director for Hooshang Amirhadmadi of the American Iranian Council (AIC) while completing graduate study. Parsi...

San Francisco (AP) -- A federal judge on Wednesday granted a request by labor and civil liberties organizations to temporarily block the U.S. government from proceeding with a plan to crack down on businesses who may be employing illegal immigrants. U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer said the Social Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security could not go ahead with a plan to send joint letters warning businesses they'll face penalties if they keep workers whose Social Security numbers don't match their names. Breyer said the new work-site rule would likely impose hardships on businesses and their workers. "The...

The U.S. State Department said on Tuesday it was investigating how engines made by a Canadian subsidiary of United Technologies Corp wound up in prototypes of the Z-10, China's first domestically developed military attack helicopter. State Department spokesman Karl Duckworth said information was being gathered before deciding whether to take any action. "We are reviewing the matter and have no further comments at this time," he said.

Nikolai Glushkov, a Russian exile who was a close friend of a noted critic of President Vladimir Putin, has died from an "unexplained" cause in London, police say. The Metropolitan Police says that its counterterrorism unit is handling the case "because of associations that the man is believed to have had." Glushkov, 68, was a close friend of Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky, a prominent critic of the Kremlin who was found dead in 2013. At the time, an inquiry found he had hanged himself — but Glushkov publicly disputed the idea that his friend and former business ally would have...

The following is an excerpt of the book description written for The National Security Constitution in the 21st Century which Professor Harold Hongju Koh published on June 25, 2024.If re-elected, could President Trump, by a single tweet, withdraw America from the United Nations, NATO, and every treaty and international organization to which the U.S. belongs? Or if re-elected, could President Biden gradually take us to war throughout the Mideast—Gaza, Yemen, Iran, the Red Sea—by supplying weapons and ordering drone strikes, cybercommands and Special Forces without congressional approval?SNIPThis increasing imbalance of foreign affairs power has intensified across recent administrations of both...

A California man was charged Monday with operating a ring of illegal test-takers who helped dozens of Middle Eastern nationals obtain U.S. student visas by passing proficiency and college-placement exams for them. Eamonn Daniel Higgins, 46, of Laguna Niguel made an appearance in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana on one count of conspiracy to commit visa fraud as immigration agents arrested 16 of his suspected clients who remained in Southern California... The allegations revealed a potentially dangerous security breach in the country's student visa system and underscored the vulnerability of a tracking process that relies on schools to verify...

MRC President Brent Bozell and MRC Free Speech America Vice President Dan Schneider rebuked the Soros empire for financing groups that have voiced support for the terrorist group Hamas. In an Oct. 12 letter to Open Society Foundations (OSF) founder George Soros and his son — OSF Chairman Alex Soros — Bozell and Schneider called on both George and Alex Soros to disclose all of their pro-Hamas grantees, publicly disavow them and terminate all funding to those groups. “Given that your donations have gone straight into the bloodstream of those who seek to exterminate Jews and push Israel into the...

On Friday, March 30, 2012, Hisham Y. Altalib visited the White House. According to visitor logs, Altalib was received by Joshua DuBois, the director of President Obama's Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Four days later, White House officials welcomed a foreign delegation of the radical Sharia-enforcing Muslim Brotherhood from Egypt. The White House meeting with overseas Muslim Brotherhood leaders was reported in April by a few mainstream journalists and questioned loudly by conservative media. But the White House confab in March with U.S.-based Altalib -- which appears to be a prep session with the global Muslim Brotherhood's American...

Sunday's Der Spiegel had a massive expose on the continuing efforts of Bashar al-Assad to build a nuclear weapons plant, which included evidence that Iran is constructing such a plant for Syria in Qusayr, less than two kilometers from Syria's border with Lebanon. The issue came up in the State Department's Monday daily briefing. Disturbingly, spokeswoman Marie Harf said that the United States did not plan to raise the issue in the Iranian nuclear talks, claiming that those talks only deal with Iran's nuclear capabilities and not with Syria's. According to findings of Western intelligence agencies, however, the situation...

As the cliche goes, there are no coincidences in politics. Obama fundraiser group Code Pink just happened to have arrived in Cairo last week for the group’s ninth visit there in two years as part of its campaign to undermine the Mubarak government and help Hamas, the terrorist group that controls Gaza. Code Pink and the media are trying to portray the leftist group's 'sudden' appearance in Cairo Wednesday as an act of courageous support for a democratic revolution. Nothing could be further from the truth.Code Pink protests the Mubarak government in Tahrir Square, Cairo, Egypt. February 2, 2011. Code...

A Massachusetts judge has been slapped with fresh charges after she was accused helping a twice-deported illegal immigrant evade Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2018. Judge Shelley Joseph, now assigned to Boston Municipal Court, is under fire again six years after she allegedly allowed Jose Medina-Perez to walk out a back door of the Newton District Courthouse to avoid getting arrested by the ICE agents on duty. In a scathing 112-page report, the state's Commission on Judicial Conduct accused Joseph of 'willful judicial misconduct' and bringing 'disrepute' to the court system. While these aren't criminal charges, the commission did ask...

A marathon deportation case against two Palestinian immigrants, pursued by the administrations of four U.S. Presidents over 20 years, has been dismissed. The ruling closes a Byzantine legal saga that wound its way through federal appellate courts, the U.S. Supreme Court and federal immigration boards, breaking new legal ground along the way. It ended at the Department of Homeland Security, where the dismissal order was entered Tuesday. One of the defendants, Khader Musa Hamide, said in an interview that he will never get over the experience of being under suspicion for 20 years but now "I can breathe better." A...

Five-and-a-half years after being convicted of providing material support for terrorism, terror lawyer Lynne Stewart finally received a sentence commensurate with her crime. She was resentenced last week to 10 years. But if George Soros had his way, she would be free today. Stewart made a career out of defending street criminals and terrorists, including Sammy "The Bull" Gravano (pleaded guilty), Weather Underground terrorist David J. Gilbert (convicted), and Larry Davis (acquitted of wounding six policemen and killing several others in 1986, only to be convicted of a later murder and killed in prison). It should have come as...

Note: The following text is a quote: Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEMonday, November 23, 2009 Arrests Made in Case Involving Conspiracy to Procure Weapons, Including Anti-Aircraft Missiles Arrests were made today in a case involving a conspiracy to procure weapons, including anti-aircraft missiles. A criminal complaint, unsealed today, charged Dani Nemr Tarraf with conspiring to acquire anti-aircraft missiles (FIM-92 Stingers) and conspiring to possess machine guns (approximately 10,000 Colt M4 Carbines). In addition, Tarraf and other defendants — including Douri Nemr Tarraf, Hassan Mohamad Komeiha, and Hussein Ali Asfour — were charged with conspiring to...

ALLEGED COP KILLER EXTRADITED FROM MEXICOJorge Arroyo-Garcia Accused of Killing Sheriff’s Deputy in 2002 Washington, D.C. - In the pre-dawn hours this morning, Deputy U.S. Marshals and agents of Mexico’s Agencia Federal de Investigationes (AFI) delivered fugitive Jorge Arroyo-Garcia to the Orange County California jail in Santa Ana. Garcia is a vicious fugitive wanted for the murder of Los Angeles County Deputy Sheriff David March four years ago. Garcia was flown from Mexico City to Tijuana late last night, where the Marshals and AFI agents turned him over to Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Investigators. A convoy of Sheriff’s Deputies,...