Free Republic

Anyways, talk of war is just people like us realizing that South Korea is definitely taking a leading role in this crisis by internationlizing this incident as it forces China and to an extent the U.S. to address the issue. So here, when we read about 3,000+ articles about the possibility of war, it's actually a good thing. Yes, I'm saying it's a good thing [well, not so much for China] as it puts a giant magnifying glass on both China and obscure, little North Korea. This makes the political and diplomatic price of China supporting North Korea very expensive...

What began as a so-called “spontaneous protest” against ICE enforcement operations in Los Angeles has now been exposed as something far more insidious: a well-funded, coordinated riot, with ties to radical left-wing organizations, government-backed NGOs, and even a billionaire known for pushing Chinese Communist propaganda. According to a damning exposé by investigative account @DataRepublican, several nonprofit organizations and shadowy political fronts played a pivotal role in igniting the chaos that saw federal officers attacked, flags burned, and city streets blocked. But what’s more alarming: tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer money may have indirectly fueled the unrest. WHO’S BEHIND...

A top adviser to President Obama is the contact person within the White House for communications with the Free Gaza Movement over plans to challenge Israel's blockade of the terrorist Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, according to a reputable source close to the Netanyahu government. The source, a career official whose reliability was established through his tips for the book, "Why Israel Can't Wait," identified John O. Brennan, deputy national security adviser for homeland security and counterterrorism, as the contact. The allegation raises the bizarre possibility that the Free Gaza Movement's flotilla action in the Mediterranean was being coordinated with the White...

As we have watched things unfold, we have noticed that Tulsi Gabbard and Marco Rubio seem to be the most effective at delivering results despite the efforts of the entrenched control mechanisms of the deep state intelligence community. Actions speak louder than words, and while the words of many are strong, it is the actions of Gabbard and Rubio that show focus.Previously Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard removed the National Intelligence Council from the CIA and removed the heads. In the latest development, the intelligence apparatus is in a state of apoplexy because DNI Gabbard has experienced the politicization...

Russian officials voiced fear Wednesday that the rise of the Republican party could threaten President Barack Obama’s “reset” of relations with Russia. “We all understand the reason for this [defeat]: disappointment that Obama isn’t a magician,” said Sergei Markov, a senior legislator from the ruling United Russia party. “ Unlike voters in the U.S., we in Russia already knew he wasn’t a magician.” He and other Russian officials voiced fear that the rise of the republican party could threaten Mr. Obama’s “reset” of relations with Russia. On Wednesday, the chairman of a key committee in the Russian parliament said it...

A major Russian telecommunications company appears to have begun providing an Internet connection to North Korea. The new link supplements one from China and will provide back-up to Pyongyang at a time the US government is reportedly attacking its Internet infrastructure and pressuring China to end all business with North Korea. The connection, from TransTeleCom, began appearing in Internet routing databases at 09:08 UTC on Sunday, or around 17:38 Pyongyang time on Sunday evening. Internet routing databases map the thousands of connections between telecom providers and enable computers to figure out the best route to a destination. Until now, Internet...

"It's good to have an enemy," says George Birnbaum, one of the godfathers of modern populism. "Very rarely will you find someone who's loved by everybody." A political consultant for 30 years, he helped Benjamin Netanyahu come to power in a surprise victory in Israel in 1996, and Hungary's Viktor Orban in 2010. He has clients in many countries, and flits nowadays between New York, Dubai and Harare. George Birnbaum built his reputation as one of "Arthur's kids" - under mentor and late business partner Arthur Finkelstein, a brilliant mathematician who re-invented the art of political campaigning in the US,...

SA's adult employment rate is less than that of every other African economy... This was despite SA being considered a much wealthier country with a more advanced economy. The employment ratio of adults in SA was only 41,4% compared with a ratio of 83% in Uganda, 80% in Rwanda and 78% in Tanzania and Malawi. the number of people choosing not to participate in the economy grew by almost 25%... Schüssler said employment policies and laws had to change before cultural shifts occurred in the mind-sets of people who had given up on job-seeking. He said a major cause of...

David Brock was smoking a cigarette on the roof of his Washington, D.C. office one day in the late fall of 2010 when his assistant and two bodyguards suddenly appeared and whisked him and his colleague Eric Burns down the stairs. Brock, the head of the liberal nonprofit Media Matters for America, had told friends and co-workers that he feared he was in imminent danger from right-wing assassins and needed a security team to keep him safe. The threat he faced while smoking on his roof? “Snipers,” a former co-worker recalled. ...more...

Have you ever noticed what Paul Manafort’s major crime was? After two years of investigation, after the predawn raid in which his wife was held at gunpoint, after months of solitary confinement that have left him a shell of his former self, have you noticed what drew the militant attention of the Obama Justice Department, the FBI, and, ultimately, a special counsel who made him the centerpiece of Russia-gate? According to the indictment Robert Mueller filed against him, Manafort was an unregistered “agent of the Government of Ukraine.” He also functioned as an agent of Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine’s president from...

Documents just made public show how groups aligned with the Democratic Party hit a third party rival with an array of underhanded schemes that put Watergate tricksters to shame. “We can just rig our own poll to make it look as s**t as possible…” “Block signature-gathering…” “Make [them] seem like they might be totally crazy/right-wing wackos to mid-low-info voters…” “Hijacking their ballot line and pushing extremist candidates to muddy [their] brand…”The above quotes are just a few excerpts from incredible documents made public after a long court fight. Details of a plan to “shun,” “stigmatize,” and “destroy” the third party...

Actor Danny Glover has taken on a new role - as international statesman. The "Lethal Weapon" star traveled to South Africa late Wednesday to escort exiled former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide back home. Aristide has been issued a diplomatic passport after seven years in exile but has encountered resistance to his return to Haiti before a presidential run-off election on Sunday. Glover questioned why former Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier would be allowed to return, but the twice-elected Aristide would not. "People of good conscience cannot be idle while a former dictator is able to return unhindered while a democratic leader...

WASHINGTON (AP) — A former FBI agent and Pentagon contractor has sued the founder of a conservative nonprofit known for its hidden camera stings over secretly recorded videos showing the contractor criticizing President Donald Trump to a woman he thought he had taken on a date.Jamie Mannina says in his lawsuit that he was misled by a woman he met on a dating website who held herself out as a politically liberal nurse but who was actually working with the conservative activist James O’Keefe in a sting operation designed to induce Mannina into making “inflammatory and damaging” remarks that could...

The Miami Herald is reporting Hugo Chávez early demise was recognized long before the rest of the world was privvy to the details of a late diagnosed and lethal cancer. With the help of Cuban brothers Fidel and Raúl, and Chávez' hand-picked successor Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan presidential election was moved from December 2012 to October 2012, two months that the report says were crucial. In October Chávez could still stand before his supporters to applaud his re-election, but there was no certainty that he could do so in December. He returned to Cuba for a fourth round of cancer treatments in early...

It was Christmas 2011, a year after Roman Abramovich had taken delivery of his new superyacht, Eclipse. But it seemed the oligarch would not be using it over the festive period - records show it had been chartered by a company based in the British Virgin Islands. And yet photographs from Christmas Day that year show Mr Abramovich in the Caribbean sunshine, standing on the swim platform at the rear of the yacht, with Eclipse's large letter-E logo behind him. Charter records such as this were part of a decade-long scheme to mislead tax authorities, now uncovered in an investigation...

PEMEX You might say Mexican state-owned petroleum company Pemex had a bad day Thursday. As Reuters reported, there were fires at three different facilities owned by the company — two in Mexico and one in Texas. And while there are still some unknowns, in an update, the wire service gives what details are known:(Reuters) – A Thursday night fire at Pemex’s 312,500 barrel-per-day (bpd) Deer Park, Texas refinery broke out in a crude distillation unit (CDU), said people familiar with plant operations.The sources did not know which of two Deer Park CDUs were hit by fire. The plant has a...

GARLAND, Texas (AP) — Investigators are looking into whether a Texas man was inspired by foreign terrorists when he killed a Lyft driver in a Dallas suburb and later opened fire in the police station of another suburb where officers fatally shot him. Police said Imran Ali Rasheed ordered a Lyft in his home city of Garland Sunday then fatally shot the driver, Isabella Lewis. Her stolen car was found a short time later outside the police station in the neighboring community of Plano, where Rasheed began shooting in the lobby before being shot by officers, police chiefs in both...

Just two days after US President Barack Hussein Obama shared a controversial and landmark handshake with Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez at the Summit of the Americas, the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center has released a study analyzing the flowering alliance between the increasingly anti-Western Latin America and the virulently anti-Israel Iran. The study was conducted at the Israel Intelligence Heritage & Commemoration Center (IICC), a non-governmental organization dedicated to Israeli intelligence and terrorism issues. According to the study, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is using anti-Western Hugo Chavez as a springboard into several Latin American countries, such as Bolivia, Nicaragua, and...

Kyrgyzstan may be a landlocked country with a population of less than 5.5 million, but it still looms large in the regional calculations of China, Russia and the United States. The Kyrgyz Republic is the only country to host both a Russian and a US military base. The Russian base at Kant symbolises Moscow’s preeminent security role in the region, while the US base at Manas plays a vital role in sustaining NATO military operations in Afghanistan. And Kyrgyzstan also borders Xinjiang, prompting concerns among Chinese policymakers over infiltration by terrorists and narcotics smuggling into this sensitive province as well...

Obama Burgers Come to BishkekNovember 1, 2010 - 8:52am, by Natasha Yefimov Kebabistan Eating in Kyrgyzstan US President Barack Obama has come to be known for his salt-of-the-earth taste in food and drink: coconut custard pie in small-town Ohio, Kumbaya beers on the White House porch, down-home "hell burgers" with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev. Now, if the president deigns to visit the capital of Kyrgyzstan, he'll have a chance to sample the local version of real American bar food -- surrounded by endless portraits of himself. The Obama Bar & Grill opened in Bishkek last month to accolades from expats...