Free Republic

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has technically been banned from visiting China by its communist government, but he accompanied President Donald Trump on his trip to Beijing on Tuesday using a bureaucratic loophole created by the Chinese to let him in. Rubio, the son of Cuban exiles to Florida who was elected to the Senate in 2011, was one of several congressional representatives banned from traveling to China in July 2020 because they spoke out against China’s brutal oppression of the Uyghur Muslims of occupied East Turkistan. The U.S. had previously sanctioned four Chinese officials for herding the Uyghurs into...

Donald Trump is riding high in conservative Republican circles, thanks in part to the wall-to-wall coverage center-right Newsmax, the national magazine and heavily-trafficked website, is giving to his upstart and popular presidential candidacy. Need proof? Time's story on Trump has The Apprentice host waving a copy of a Newsmax poll showing him in the lead and says Trump speaks regularly to conservative "force" Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy. And the liberal media watchdog Media Matters has suggested that the two are in cahoots. So is there a Trump-Newsmax conspiracy? "Yes," cheers Ruddy. "Trump realizes the great potential of Newsmax and has...

What, exactly, is a “US Day of Rage?” Well, on September 17th we may find out for certain, but until then, The Blaze is revealing what information does exist about this very nefarious-sounding campaign. A US Day of Rage is the title given to a day of ostensibly “non-violent” civil disobedience orchestrated by a group of radicals — that reportedly include SEIU’s Stephen Lerner and ACORN founder Wade Rathke (who, coincidentally, formerly served as president of SEIU’s local New Orleans branch) — targeting Wall Street and U.S. capitalism. It’s worth noting that the title of the movement — if its...

In 2013, hundreds of CIA officers — many working nonstop for weeks — scrambled to contain a disaster of global proportions: a compromise of the agency’s internet-based covert communications system used to interact with its informants in dark corners around the world. Teams of CIA experts worked feverishly to take down and reconfigure the websites secretly used for these communications; others managed operations to quickly spirit assets to safety and oversaw other forms of triage. “When this was going on, it was all that mattered,” said one former intelligence community official. The situation was “catastrophic,” said another former senior intelligence...

Leader of White Supremacist Group ‘Maniac Murder Cult’ Recruited Others to Bomb and Poison the Jewish Community and Racial Minorities Defendant Allegedly Planned Scheme to Distribute Poisoned Candy on New Year’s EveGeorgian national Michail Chkhikvishvili, also known as Mishka, Michael, Commander Butcher, and Butcher, 21, of Tbilisi, was extradited to the United States from Moldova on May 22, and will be arraigned in federal court in Brooklyn today. Chkhikvishvili was arrested in Chișinău, Moldova, in July 2024 in connection with a four-count indictment returned in the Eastern District of New York charging him with soliciting hate crimes and acts of...

Iranian authorities have hanged another 30 prisoners at Vakilabad Prison in Mashhad on drug-related charges, says the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. The campaign cites “local knowledgeable sources” saying 12 prisoners were executed on Wednesday June 29 and another 18 were hanged on the following Sunday. The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran say the executions once again were carried out in secret and en masse, with no prior notification of families and attorneys and no official announcement from the judiciary. The report indicates that on June 29, the judiciary announced the execution of one convicted murderer...

James Alex Fields Jr., the driver charged with killing a woman at the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, was previously accused of beating his mother and threatening her with a 12-inch knife, according to transcripts from dramatic 911 calls released Monday. Samantha Bloom, who is disabled and uses a wheelchair, repeatedly called police about her son, in 2010 and 2011, telling officers he was on medication to control his temper, transcripts from 911 calls show. Records show that Fields was arrested and put in juvenile detention after his mother reported in 2011 that he stood behind her wielding a knife. Earlier...

Reena Ninan, FOX reporter on Syria today, "While the world was watching the capture, no actually the murder of Osama Bin Laden"....

WASHINGTON — A former C.I.A. officer suspected of helping China unravel the agency’s spy network in that country was indicted on Tuesday on a charge of conspiring to commit espionage. The officer, Jerry Chun Shing Lee, 53, was arrested by F.B.I. agents in January after federal prosecutors accused him of illegally possessing classified information. But the new charge reflected a willingness of prosecutors to disclose sensitive details they might have been reluctant to acknowledge publicly. According to prosecutors, two Chinese intelligence officers approached Mr. Lee in April 2010 and offered to pay him for information. The intelligence officers “provided Lee...

Elena Branson, a dual Russian and U.S. citizen, has been charged with acting and conspiring to act in the United States illegally as an agent of the Russian government, willfully failing to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (“FARA”), as well as conspiring to commit visa fraud and making false statements to the FBI. As alleged, beginning in at least 2011, Branson worked on behalf of the Russian government and Russian officials to advance Russian interests in the United States, including by coordinating meetings for Russian officials to lobby U.S. political officials and businesspersons, and by operating organizations in...

For decades, the Iranian government has avoided judicial accountability as the No. 1 nation-state sponsor of international terrorism. This will end on November 27, 2020 in Antwerp, when Belgium’s criminal court commences proceedings against senior Iranian diplomat, Assadollah Assadi. In June 2018, as third secretary in the Iranian Embassy in Vienna, Assadi delivered over half a kilo of Triacetone Triperoxide (TATP) to Iranian sleeper agents in Luxembourg. TATP is a high explosive used in bombs, suicide attacks, and improvised explosive devices.The target was a major international gathering near Paris, in support of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI)....

WASHINGTON—U.S. authorities said Tuesday they had charged two men in an Iranian-directed plot to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the U.S. The alleged assassination plot would represent an escalation in the confrontation between mostly Shiite Iran and mostly Sunni Saudi Arabia, two longtime Middle East rivals. The charges are also a rare instance of Washington accusing Iranian groups of fomenting terrorism on U.S. soil. Elements of the Iranian government were ready to spend $1.5 million to hire what they believed was a drug-cartel hit squad from Mexico, said U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. Prosecutors filed several criminal charges against...

The Mexican law student was surprised by how easy it was to get into Iran two years ago. By merely asking questions about Islam at a party, he managed to pique the interest of Iran’s top diplomat in Mexico. Months later, he had a plane ticket and a scholarship to a mysterious school in Iran as a guest of the Islamic Republic. Next came the start of classes and a second surprise: There were dozens of others just like him.

To Kill Without a TracePosted By Mark Tapson On March 24, 2015 @ 12:21 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 3 Comments On July 18, 1994, a van loaded with explosives destroyed the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA), murdering 85 innocents and injuring over 300. The government accused Hezbollah, but it was not until 2006 that sufficient legal evidence was gathered to request warrants for the arrest of those allegedly responsible.On January 19, 2015, the chief investigator of the case, prosecutor Alberto Nisman, was found murdered (though it had been made to look like a suicide). Nisman had been on the verge of...

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...

The brother of a terrorist who rammed a vehicle into a Michigan Jewish preschool was a Hezbollah commander, Israel Defense Forces have said. Ayman Muhammad Ghazali, 41, was shot dead after driving the vehicle into Temple Israel in West Bloomfield Township, Mich., on Thursday. His brother, Ibrahim Muhammad Ghazali, was responsible for managing weapons operations within a specialized branch of Hezbollah’s Badr Unit, the IDF said in a statement Sunday morning. This unit of the Lebanese terror group is responsible for launching hundreds of rockets toward Israeli civilians throughout the recent war with Iran, the IDF said. Ghazali’s two brothers,...

Health officials have confirmed 12 cases of rat lungworm disease in the continental United States since January 2011 — including six patients who had not traveled abroad but still contracted the illness caused by a parasite endemic to tropical regions in Asia and Hawaii. [...snip...] The disease is also known as angiostrongyliasis, after the parasitic roundworm Angiostrongylus cantonensis whose larvae hatch in the lungs of rats and then are expelled in the rodents’ excrement. At that point, the larvae can be picked up by snails and slugs, and then passed along to humans if the snails and slugs are eaten...

Soros: The Chinese Model Of Suppressing Individuals Could Become The Envy Of The World Courtney Comstock Apparently, Soros is considering the possibility that people might some day want to be censored and live in a socialist society like China's. He said yesterday at the Traveller’s Club in Paris, according to Dealbook: “The world does need order, and that order needs maintenance. The idea that markets can correct their excesses turned out to be false. “Perfect order and global governance are not realistic expectations. However, it is a sad fact that Western democracies provide less successful leadership than China.”

By staff reporters Zhang Bing, Zheng Fei and Zhao Jingting 10.11.2011 14:36 Cash Crash for Wenzhou's Private Loan Network Everyone can win and everyone can lose in a Chinese city that plays a risky game of high-interest rate, private lending Dubbed the nation's capital of private financing, the city of Wenzhou offers a textbook example of how non-bank lending has fueled private sector prosperity – and risk-taking – in China. A recent central bank survey said about 60 percent of all local businesses and the vast majority of households are interconnected through the city's private lending system. a It's a...

Call me a glutton for punishment, but in order to keep an eye on the moonbat crowd, I receive e-mails from Nancy Pelosi. Every time there's a "crisis," she's there, cranking the spigot for cash, cash, cash. When Jared Loughner went on a shooting spree in Tucson, dollar-signs filled her orbitals. And, yes, the rise of "extremists" in Wisconsin - the one that puts its public employee collective bargaining in line with... gasp!... Maryland's - has roused her again. Dear Fellow Democrat- This week's shameful action by the Wisconsin GOP is just the latest example of radical Republicans standing with...