Free Republic

A list of the national security and foreign policy advisers to the leading presidential candidates from both parties. DEMOCRATS Barack Obama Robert Malley, President Clinton’s Middle East envoy and now International Crisis Group’s Middle East and North Africa program director, national security adviser

Many people are wondering how Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old socialist Muslim who wants to defund the police, globalize the intifada, and destroy capitalism, has emerged as the Democratic Party's nominee for New York City mayor, with leaders like former President Bill Clinton fawning over him. To understand Mamdani’s political ascent, you have to trace the red-green-blue spider’s web that brought him here. This isn’t a complete map — I've written a book, "Woke Army: The Red-Green Alliance That Is Undermining America’s Freedom," to document that story — but it is a snapshot of key turning points over two decades of...

Petraeus Patience By the Editors If Gen. David Petraeus wasn’t denounced as a traitor upon his arrival on Capitol Hill Tuesday, his testimony was the occasion for the same dreary willful obtuseness on the part of congressional Democrats as in September. Petraeus and Amb. Ryan Crocker again were cautious and understated, perhaps to a fault. Without over-promising, they explained how we have built on the tentative security gains that Democrats were so skeptical of six months ago, and that there has begun to be political movement. The progress we have won is “fragile and reversible” as they repeatedly said, dependent...

Agency says getting all people, legal and illegal, to safety is its top priority The U.S. Border Patrol said today it is not checking the documents of individuals who are fleeing Hurricane Dolly, and it has no intention of using natural disasters as a pretext for rounding up and deporting illegal immigrants, 1200 WOAI news reports. Officials in the Rio Grande Valley have been worried about Border Patrol actions ever since a reporter spotted a Border Patrol official conducting a document check during a hurricane evacuation drill in McAllen in May. Some officials had expressed concern that Rio Grande Valley...

Evidence in the trial against HLF showed that Ghassan Elashi, the treasurer of the charity, became the founding board member of CAIR’s Texas chapter and that HLF transferred funds to CAIR for “consulting services.” The prosecution also presented evidence that Hamas provided “seed money” for CAIR, according to a congressional hearing. “The history is very clear,” said Lorenzo Vidino, director of the Program on Extremism at GWU. “CAIR was created by this core group of Hamas leaders in the US in the early 1990s. There are FBI wiretaps of a workshop given by the group’s leaders on how to deal...

Abstract: North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il's faltering health has raised concerns about regime stability. Succession rumors have been swirling for years, with Kim's third son, Jong-eun, currently rumored to be Kim's favored choice. But regardless of whether leadership stays in the family or is wrested away by a challenger, a new North Korean leader is likely to keep in place the same belligerent policies--toward South Korea, toward China and Japan, and toward the U.S. If succession does not go smoothly, and if the North Korean regime were to collapse, the ensuing chaos would require immediate action by the U.S. and...

If wasn't clear before it should be now: the Bush administration can't afford to attack Iran. With gas already at $4 a gallon and rising almost every day, Iran figuratively and literally has the United States over a barrel. As much as the administration is tempted, it is not about to test Iran's promise to "explode" the Middle East if it is attacked.

April 03, 2009, 2:00 p.m. Imperial Judiciary Goes GlobalBy the Editors In 2004, the Supreme Court sowed the seeds for a national-security upheaval when it ruled, in Rasul v. Bush, that war prisoners held outside the United States had a right to challenge their detentions in federal court. Last year, in Boumediene v. Bush, the justices continued the seismic shift, holding that the right they had invented in Rasul — a right extended to aliens whose only connection to the United States is in waging war against it — was somehow rooted in our Constitution. Thursday, the inevitable earthquake...

May 15, 2009 Note: The following text is a quote: United States Transfers Lakhdar Boumediene to France Lakhdar Boumediene, an Algerian national who had been held at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility since 2002, has been transferred to France. As directed by the President’s Jan. 22, 2009, Executive Order, the interagency Guantanamo Review Task Force conducted a comprehensive review of Boumediene’s case. As a result of that review, Boumediene was approved for transfer to France, which was carried out today pursuant to an arrangement between the United States and France. Boumediene was involved in the Supreme Court case, Boumediene v....

In 1955, Algeria had over 1 million Catholics and 140,000 Jews. Today, as Pope Leo visits Algeria, there are some 8,000 Catholics in Algeria and there are fewer than 200 Jews.99% of the population of what was one of the old territories of Christianity are Sunni Muslims.Was Islam so popular that all the Christians and Jews decided to convert? Not at all. They were persecuted, murdered, tortured and driven out by Islamic violence that occurred in our lifetimes.Christians and Jews had lived in Algeria since Roman times. Now they’re gone.This Christian genocide was endorsed by major world powers, aided and...

Seth Klarman: We've Been Feeding On The Government's "Hostess Twinkie Market" And We're About To Starve Courtney Comstock May 24, 2010, 8:48 AM At the CFA institutes's annual conference, Seth Klarman spoke to the audience about how we've been living off a "Hostess Twinkie Market" since 2008. Marketfolly has the full notes from his speech from the conference, in which he explains: Hostess Twinkies make childhood happier with totally artificial ingredients. The market has been made happier by government manipulation. 0% interest rates, Mortgage Lending Programs, Cash for Clunkers, TARP, etc...I'm worried to this day about what would happen if...

The empty desks appearing across Colorado today are the delayed consequence of decisions made years ago by politicians, educators, and cultural elites. Colorado colleges are bracing for what education experts call an “enrollment cliff.” Fewer high school graduates mean fewer college applicants, shrinking tuition revenue, budget cuts, mergers, and even campus closures. The same phenomenon is unfolding nationwide. After years of warnings, the demographic reckoning has arrived. According to recent Colorado education data, public school enrollment fell by more than 10,000 students this year, the state’s largest decline since the pandemic. State officials point to a simple explanation: there are...

NEW YORK, (AP) -- A federal judge in Manhattan on Wednesday confirmed the freezing of $300 million in cash held by Venezuela's state-run oil company, finding it probable that Exxon Mobil Corp. will win its legal battle against the company. Exxon Mobil is challenging Petroleos de Venezuela SA, or PDVSA, over compensation for the nationalization of one of four heavy oil projects in the Orinoco River basin, one of the world's richest oil deposits. Irving, Texas-based Exxon Mobil, the world's largest publicly traded oil company, is seeking to freeze billions in Venezuelan assets in the United States and Europe to...

The FBI is offering a $200,000 reward for information leading to the apprehension and prosecution of Monica Witt, a former U.S. service member and counterintelligence agent.Witt was indicted by a federal grand jury in the District of Columbia in February 2019 on charges of espionage, including transmitting national defense information to the government of Iran.Witt, a former active-duty U.S. Air Force intelligence specialist and special agent for the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, served in the military between 1997 and 2008 before working as a U.S. government contractor until 2010. FBI Washington Field Office Announces $200,000 Reward for Information...

Former Rep. Barney Frank, a liberal icon who was a key architect of the landmark Wall Street regulations Democrats enacted in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, has entered hospice care at his home in Maine. And as one of his last acts, he is preparing to release a book repudiating his party’s left flank. A champion of liberal causes during his 32 years representing Massachusetts in the House, Frank says progressive Democrats have “embraced an agenda that goes beyond what’s politically acceptable.” “Until we separate ourselves from that agenda, we don’t win,” he said in an interview Tuesday.

It hasn't made much noise worldwide, but Iran's rapidly deteriorating relationships with several African countries is huge news across the continent. On February 16, the Nigerian Federal High Court in Lagos began the prosecution of an alleged member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), Azim Aghajani, and a Nigerian associate, Usman Abbas Jega. They are accused of arms smuggling. This video link is in Arabic, but is very self-explanatory. It is of the opening day of the court proceedings.The story is a classic, just one of many on the Dark Continent nowadays: In late October 2010, Nigerian intelligence officials...

In an interview with Germany's ARD television in 2008, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that Moscow recognizes all of Ukraine's borders, and that there is no issue of ethnic conflict in Crimea. His comments, delivered shortly after Russia's military intervention in the Georgian breakaway region of South Ossetia, stand in stark contrast with Moscow's annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its support of armed separatists in eastern Ukraine. VIDEO https://www.rferl.org/a/putin-crimea-ukraine/26942862.html

Was this illegal part of a Venezuelan or Cuban military intelligence operation? Why, again, was he let in? Joe Biden's open borders may be about more than just replacing the electorate. The New York Post found that one of the most malevolent of the border surgers, a Venezuelan illegal named Leonel Moreno, who famously urged other illegals to squat in Americans' homes and waved hundred-dollar bills around to boast of his public benefits on TikTok, is being investigated by the feds for his military intelligence work for the Marxist dictatorship back home. According to the Post: Joe Biden's open borders...

The Texas gunman who shot two dead and wounded 14 others had photos of Iranian leaders and the Iranian flag inside his home, sources have revealed. Ndiaga Diagne, 53, a former New York City resident and US citizen originally from Senegal, was identified as the shooter by a law enforcement source to the Daily Mail. Two people were shot dead and 14 more were wounded at a packed-out bar in Austin during the early hours of Sunday, before officers killed the attacker in return fire. There is speculation that the attack may have been triggered by the recent US strikes...

A former New York City resident who killed two people and wounded 14 others at a packed Austin, Texas, bar was possibly motivated by the US attacks on Iran, sources told The Post. The FBI is investigating the shooting as a possible ideologically motivated act of terrorism, the sources said. The killer, who is a US citizen from Senegal, had a Quran in his car and clothing described as Islamic garb when he opened fire on Buford’s Backyard Beer Garden near the University of Texas-Austin campus, according to sources familiar with the investigation. The gunman has a history of arrests...