Free Republic

Despite its efforts over the last several years, Iran is not yet the naval power it hopes to become, according to a Moscow analyst, but Tehran already has sufficient capacity to disrupt shipments of oil in the Persian Gulf, an ability that already “represents a serious danger and requires an adequate response from the international community.” In an assessment of “The Naval Power of Iran: From Intention to Reality” prepared for the Moscow Near Eastern Institute, V.V. Yevseyev argues that most of what Iran has done in this sector to date represents “a cover” for plans to engage in “diversionary...

http://www.un.org "Welcome to the United Nations: It's Your World" # Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=33849 UN joins forces with computer giants to tackle Internet terrorism 22 February 2010 – The United Nations and computer giants, including Microsoft and Google, are joining forces to identify ways to combat terrorists’ use of the Internet to recruit members, organize criminal acts and raise money. The UN Working Group on Countering the Use of the Internet for Terrorist Purposes is holding talks with CISCO, Symantec and others in the United States city of Seattle to examine the technical issues involved in...

Hunter Biden's top business partner had met with then-vice resident Joe Biden in one of 19 visits he made to the White House between 2009 and 2015, according to visitor logs from the Obama administration. Eric Schwerin, former president of Hunter's now-dissolved firm Rosemont Seneca, met with Biden on November 17, 2010, just as Hunter was striking multi-million dollar deals abroad, the New York Post reported. The logs revealed that Schwerin made a total of 19 visits to the White House during Biden's vice presidency, with nine of those visits including meetings with Biden, members of his staff and members...

Is the Tea Party-connected group, the Oath Keepers, an "extremist right" group as the partisan bomb-throwers on the left have been fond of alleging? That's the proverbial question of the day as Oath Keepers founder, Stewart Rhodes, made an appearance on the self-proclaimed "humble correspondent's," Bill O'Reilly's, No-Spin Zone. His appearance was the direct result of O'Reilly opening up this question of so-called "radicalism" among Tea Party supporters by hosting committed left-winger, Mark Potok (handsome devil, if you call overly gelled, curly hair and overly big eyeglasses "handsome"), of the Southern Poverty Law Center on his show a day before....

Ivins was bondage and sorority obsessed cross dressing yankee hater. March 1- After the Department of Justice last month formally closed its probe of the 2001 Anthrax attacks, the FBI released the years-long investigation that ended with officials concluding that Bruce Ivins, a government scientist who committed suicide in July 2008, was responsible for the mailings that killed five victims. ...

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today it received records from the U.S. Secret Service showing that, for the first five and a half years of the Obama administration, Hunter Biden traveled extensively while receiving a Secret Service protective detail. During the time period of the records provided, Hunter Biden, son of then-Vice President Joe Biden, took 411 separate domestic and international flights, including to 29 different foreign countries. He visited China five times. Judicial Watch’s February 7, 2020, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request sought: Records reflecting the dates and locations of travel, international and domestic, for Hunter Biden...

KIEV, Ukraine — Ukraine's Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, apparently narrowly beaten in last week's presidential vote, ended six days of silence on a defiant note Saturday, saying the vote had been rigged and she would challenge the result in court. Preliminary results from the Feb. 7 ballot gave her rival, opposition leader Viktor Yanukovych, a lead of just 3.5 percentage points. International observers called the elections free and fair, but no official winner has been declared, and Tymoshenko has refused to concede defeat. She said Saturday she had evidence of fraud and would fight the result, for which the final...

Background A little after 1600 UTC on February 21, 2010, in the #wunclub IRC channel, a user (LDO, a European region monitor) threw out the question "Vietnamese numbers? 10255" I had been paying fairly close attention to the Asian numbers stations for the past year or so, and immediately tuned to the indicated frequency of 10255 kHz. Sure enough, there was a previously unreported Vietnamese language numbers station on that frequency. S6 or stronger here in Southern California. What made this signal fairly interesting is that as far as I know no Vietnamese numbers station of any kind had been...

The FBI previously declassified Huma’s 302 summary from her 2016 interview with Peter Strzok and David Laufman. Hillary’s ride-or-die aides, Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills both lied to Strzok and Laufman. Abedin lied to Strzok in her 2016 interview when said she had no knowledge of Hillary Clinton’s private server until after leaving the State Department in early 2013. “Abedin did not know that Clinton had a private server until about a year and a half ago when it became public knowledge,” according to Strzok’s 302 summary interview with Huma. Email exchanges between Huma Abedin and other Clinton aides in...

The strategic framework and the correlation of forces in the Gulf of Guinea — one of the most significant and growing energy resource regions of the world — is changing rapidly. A new era in security arrangements for the region is beginning. The region is moving from an area of low technology defense and security systems, and minimal command and control at national levels, to one of growing sophistication, higher mobility, and the potential for military confrontation. The five-year, $250-million Equatorial Guinea maritime security program - essentially the build-up of an integrated naval and air capability - announced on February...

In yet another blow to Mueller’s investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, the special counsel was forced to fire a top FBI agent after possible anti-Trump text messages were discovered. “ The agent, Peter Strzok, is considered one of the most experienced and trusted F.B.I. counterintelligence investigators. He helped lead the investigation into whether Hillary Clinton mishandled classified information on her private email account, and then played a major role in the investigation into links between President Trump’s campaign and Russia,” reports the New York Times. Chuck Ross of the Daily Caller combed through emails from...

SNIPPET: "Midway through the trial, two jurors were excused after they told the judge that a man in the visitor's gallery made a hand motion as if he were firing a gun at them and mouthed an obscenity. One of the jurors told the judge he was "really freaked out" by the incident and another said he could not remain impartial "anything anyone makes what I view as a death threat." The guilty verdict on all counts means that at sentencing the judge could order Siddiqui spend the rest of her life in a federal prison."

President Obama spent his first term pushing from power long-standing Arab allies in Egypt and Tunisia; seeking to engage the now blood-soaked Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad; pulling his punches against Iran’s nuclear program; and putting “daylight” between his administration and Israel. Now for his second term, he has nominated for the highest posts bearing on the Middle East three figures who give the strongest indication we can expect much more of the same – John Kerry for State, Chuck Hagel for Defense and John Brennan for the CIA. Kerry opposed Congress’ 2009 hold on appointing an ambassador to a regime...

A new batch of Hillary Clinton's emails made public by the State Department Monday night show her expressing interest in the presidential aspirations of Gen. David Petraeus, who ultimately took a job as CIA director in the Obama administration instead of running for president in 2012 and was then driven out of government by scandal. Clinton--who's now the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination next year--sounded intrigued when her longtime friend Sidney Blumenthal reported to her on a Saturday morning in February 2010 that prominent Washington foreign policy blogger Steve Clemons said Petraeus was talking frankly about the possibility of...

Just weeks before government scientist Bruce Ivins' suicide, a grand jury was convening on the third floor of the federal courthouse, near the U.S. Capitol, looking into the 2001 anthrax murders. Things weren't looking good for Ivins, the only suspect in the case. It was July 2008. His attorney, Paul F. Kemp, according to court documents reviewed by AOL News, had just filed court papers to become a death-penalty-certified attorney in the case -- a little-known fact. And the chief U.S. District judge in Washington, Royce C. Lamberth, had approved the request. "I thought this was a precaution to take....

National Treasury Employees Union President Colleen Kelley (in tan jacket) leads a protest earlier this month. About 250 Federal workers massed in Federal Plaza in Manhattan May 7 to protest the sequester cuts. (The Chief) This explains things… President Obama met with anti-Tea Party IRS union chief Colleen Kelly in the White House the day before the agency targeted Tea Party. The Spectator reported: “For me, it’s about collaboration.” — National Treasury Employees Union President Colleen Kelley on the relationship between the anti-Tea Party IRS union and the Obama White House Is President Obama directly implicated in the IRS scandal?...

<p>U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Orlando, was evacuated last week from the Central African nation of Niger, where he was stranded during a coup, by a military contractor the outspoken congressman has railed against in the past.</p> <p>Grayson was on a House Committee on Science and Technology tour last Thursday when a military coup closed the airport in Niger and then took over the government, violently entering buildings close to the U.S. Embassy compound where he was staying.</p>

CAIRO—Nobel Peace laureate Mohamed ElBaradei on Saturday withdrew his candidacy from Egypt's coming presidential race in protest over the autocratic governance that has persisted under Egypt's post-revolutionary military leadership. Though Mr. ElBaradei wasn't considered among the top contenders for presidential elections scheduled for this spring, his global stature makes his pullout a symbolic blow to the military leadership and its often faltering stewardship of the country's transition to democracy. Mr. ElBaradei's statement on Saturday marks the highest-profile censure of the military's governance since a leading group of generals, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, or SCAF, assumed power from...

Osama bin Laden's personal files revealed a brazen idea to hijack oil tankers and blow them up at sea last summer, creating explosions he hoped would rattle the world's economy and send oil prices skyrocketing, the U.S. said Friday. The newly disclosed plot showed that while bin Laden was always scheming for the next big strike that would kill thousands of Americans, he also believed a relatively simpler attack on the oil industry could create a worldwide panic that would hurt Westerners every time they gassed up their cars. U.S. officials said the tanker idea, included in documents found in...

Man could face death penalty for slaying of soldier in ArkansasBy The Associated Press Story Updated: Aug 1, 2009 at 3:30 PM CDT LITTLE ROCK, Ark., -- Prosecutors say they'll seek a death penalty against a man accused of killing a soldier outside an Army recruiting center. Abdulhakim Muhammad pleaded not guilty on Friday at a Pulaski County court hearing to charges that he shot and killed Pvt. William Andrew Long. The judge set a trial date of Feb. 15. Muhammad's lawyer says his client is in good spirits but wouldn't say whether his client's calls to reporters to claim...