Free Republic

So long as the world is entertaining worst-case scenarios, the media does Americans no favors in omitting that Iran-Hezbollah has for years prepared to strike in their own hometowns. Weirdly absent from much of the professional speculation about where and how Iran will exact its promised “severe revenge” for the U.S. drone strike killing of Quds Force Gen. Qassem Suleimani is mention of the dead man’s highly suggestive hint. During a time of intense saber rattling between Iran and President Donald Trump in July 2018, Suleimani gave a speech during which he called out the American president: “Mr. Gambler, Trump!...

Two Middle East immigrants in the United States have been arrested in connection with terrorist activities after the FBI found out their chilling ties to the terrorist organization known as Hezbollah. This is a wake-up call to every American. According to a news release from United States Attorney’s Office, District of New York, “Ali Kourani and Samer El Debek, a/k/a ‘Samer Eldebek,’ were arrested on Thursday, June 1, 2017, on charges related to their alleged activities on behalf of Hizballah[sic], a designated foreign terrorist organization. “ Kourani was reportedly living in the Bronx in New York, while Eldebek was living...

In the early morning hours of Thursday, Syria’s al-Tala’i military research facility located in Masyaf was reduced to ash and flames. The Jerusalem Post reports that contemporaneous with the strike on al-Tala’I, a Hezbollah weapons convoy in the vicinity was also hit and destroyed. According to Western intelligence sources, al-Tala’i is a center for the production of chemical weapons. Syria blamed Israel and claimed that at least two regime soldiers were killed in the attack. The regime issued a banal and somewhat hypocritical warning of the “dangerous repercussions of this aggressive action to the security and stability of the region.”...

Perhaps you didn’t hear about Israel’s alleged air strike on a Syrian military installation last week, but the incident has significant global ramifications about which you should be aware.In Israel, it’s always reported that incidents like these are “allegedly” carried out by Israel because in most cases, Israel neither officially confirms nor denies responsibility.  This is part of a culture where all military items go through a censor. Overtly stating that Israel did something like this is typically not allowed.  Ambiguity also allows Israel’s enemies the wiggle room that, though they may know full well that something might have Israeli...

Two security experts from the Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory drove to San Antonio, Texas, in March 2017 with a sensitive mission: to retrieve dangerous nuclear materials from a nonprofit research lab there. Their task, according to documents and interviews, was to ensure that the radioactive materials did not fall into the wrong hands on the way back to Idaho, where the government maintains a stockpile of nuclear explosive materials for the military and others. To ensure they got the right items, the specialists from Idaho brought radiation detectors and small samples of dangerous materials to calibrate them: specifically,...

CBS late-night host Stephen Colbert used Tucker Carlson’s spat with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) over the Israel-Iran conflict and the United States’ role in it to smear President Donald Trump as “Nazi-friendly,” during his Late Show monologue on Wednesday. Stephen Colbert: ‘Trump Wasn’t Nazi Friendly Until 2017’ NEW YORK, NEW YORK - JULY 17: Stephen Colbert speaks with Alex Edelman at 92NY on July 17,Noam Galai/Getty Images Jerome Hudson19 Jun 202513 1:42 CBS late-night host Stephen Colbert used Tucker Carlson’s spat with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) over the Israel-Iran conflict and the United States’ role in it to smear President...

Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denounced “acts of terror and terrorism” on Sunday, seemingly in response to the assassination attempt on former U.S. President Donald Trump in Pennsylvania on Saturday evening, although Ahmadinejad did not refer to Trump by name in his message. “Acts of terror and terrorism, both state and non-state, are among the most heinous anti-human actions, the depth of whose evil, words cannot fully express. Humanity is suffering such severe pains all over the world,” Ahmadinejad said on Twitter, where he has over 144,000 followers, although his account has been largely inactive for about two years. Ahmadinejad...

<p>There seems to be a general consensus in Washington that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s ongoing purge of princes and businessmen — including the wealthiest of them all, the business mogul and Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal — is motivated by his determination to consolidate his power, well before his father, King Salman, passes from the scene. He is in this regard a latter-day Adonijah, who had himself crowned king while his father King David was alive. And, like Adonijah, Mohammed bin Salman has made some very powerful enemies in the process. Unlike that Biblical figure, however, he has his father’s support and has taken care to arrest anyone who might threaten his drive to preeminence.</p>

It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Hariri's resignation, the Saudi purge, and the Houthi missile fired at Riyadh are interconnected.Saturday night was a busy one for Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The kingdom’s 32-year old heir to the throne excelled himself. He surpassed the high levels of chaos and human misery he had already achieved as the defence minister who launched the air campaign on Yemen. First up was the sudden resignation of the Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri after just one year in office. Hariri made his announcement from Riyadh, which is a curious place...

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, a bitter and vocal rival of U.S. President Donald J. Trump, has been arrested in the royal family’s sweeping anti-corruption crackdown. Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz has arrested and removed a slew of corrupt and prominent officials, including dozens of princes and former ministers. Al Arabiya, a Saudi state-run news outlet, reported bin Talal was among those arrested. People’s Pundit Daily (PPD) confirmed he was one of at least 11 princes arrested. The billionaire chairman of Kingdom Holding Co. was once a business associate of President Trump. But his “America First” platform was a direct threat...

The Supreme Court has ordered New York courts to reconsider Diocese of Albany v. Harris, a case challenging New York’s abortion mandate, in light of Becket’s unanimous victory in Catholic Charities Bureau v. Wisconsin Labor & Industry Review Commission. In 2017, a group of Catholic and Anglican nuns, Catholic dioceses, Christian churches, and faith-based social ministries challenged New York’s mandate forcing them to pay for employees’ abortions. After New York courts declined to protect the faith groups, Becket and Jones Day asked the Supreme Court to step in. In 2021, the Justices reversed the lower courts’ rulings and told them...

Protests against the arrest of a pro-Palestine Columbia graduate student are being organized by a Marxist revolutionary group that is pro-Communism, anti-Israel, and has potential links to the Chinese Communist Party. Mahmoud Khalil, a leader in the pro-Palestine and anti-Israel encampments at Columbia University, was detained earlier this month by the Trump administration, with the Department of Homeland Security arguing that he “led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.” The People’s Forum helped organize some of the campus chaos and is now organizing protests to free Khalil. Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) is the pro-Palestine and anti-Israel group...

AFTER A 50-YEAR siege, the great strategic fortress of liberalism has fallen. With the elevation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh, the Supreme Court seems secure for constitutionalism — perhaps for decades. The shrieks from the gallery of the Senate chamber as the vote came in last Saturday, and the sight of that bawling mob clawing at the doors of the Supreme Court as the new justice took his oath, confirm it. The Democratic Party has sustained a historic defeat. And the triumph is President Trump’s. To unite the party whose nomination he had won, Donald Trump pledged to select his high...

Newly released CIA memoranda suggest the tech gurus behind the Alfa Bank hoax also tracked Donald Trump’s movements to devise another collusion conspiracy theory. Newly released CIA memoranda suggest the tech gurus behind the Alfa Bank hoax also tracked Donald Trump’s movements to devise another collusion conspiracy theory. While smaller in scale than other aspects of Spygate, the Yotaphone hoax represents an equally serious scandal because it involved both the mining of proprietary information and sensitive data from the Executive Office of the President (EOP) and the apparent surveillance of Trump’s physical movements. When Special Counsel John Durham charged former...

A South Dakota newspaper that failed to report on the case of a Somali man convicted of trying to molest a severely handicapped woman, changed gears Wednesday after being outed by WND and decided to publish a story about the crime. The story ran on page three of the Aberdeen American News under the headline “Sentencing later this month for a man convicted of attempted sexual contact.” But the newspaper left out an important detail. The convicted sex criminal, 39-year-old Liban Mohamed, was a recently arrived refugee brought to the state from Somalia at the invitation of the U.S. government....

The girlfriend of Vegas madman Stephen Paddock said Wednesday she had no idea of the massacre he was planning — and only thought he was breaking up with her when he shipped her off to the Philippines and then wired her $100,000. Marilou Danley said through her attorney that Paddock sent her on a weeks-long trip to visit family in the Philippines before he carried out the worst mass killing in US history and wired her the large sum of cash while she was there — but she saw that as a sign he was going to end their relationship,...

People are finding origami butterflies with ominous messages, scattered on the ground throughout Seattle. The folded papers have a puzzling warning about safety, but no one seems to know who is behind the campaign or what it’s about. When unfolded, the message “you are not safe,” is revealed and there is a date: 9-28-17. The flip side has illustrations of Russell Wilson, Kurt Cobain, the Starbucks siren, and a message about peace.

Rodriguez's trip to People’s Congress of Resistance at Howard University sheds light on path to radicalism. A radical left-wing group described as a "conduit" between the Chinese Communist Party and domestic anti-Israel groups raised money for Elias Rodriguez, the 30-year-old Chicago native who allegedly murdered two Israeli diplomats in Washington, D.C., to attend a "resistance" conference in September 2017. There, Rodriguez rubbed shoulders with "comrades" from pro-Hamas groups and other radical organizations, coming away impressed with their "commitment to actually getting things done," according to a video and an online fundraiser unearthed by the Washington Free Beacon. Rodriguez’s attendance at...

Hunter Biden and his business associates attempted to get Burisma founder Mykola Zlochevsky a U.S. visa shortly after the president’s son became a board member of the Ukrainian energy firm, according to emails reviewed by the Daily Caller. The emails in Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop archive show a coordinated attempt to obtain a visa for Zlochevsky while he was being investigated by Ukrainian authorities for corruption. Biden and some of his associates were potentially “engaging in registrable lobbying activity,” and one email indicates that Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) violations could have been occurring outside of the exchanges, a FARA...

A disgraced ex-Arkansas police chief who was serving 80 years in prison for rape and a shotgun-to-the-head execution escaped from a high-security prison disguised as a cop. Grant Hardin, 56, the former police chief of Gateway near the Arkansas-Missouri border, was seen on security cameras walking out of the North Central Unit prison, in Calico Rock, dressed in what appears to be a homemade law enforcement uniform on Sunday afternoon. Hardin, who is considered extremely dangerous, used the outfit to sneak through the controlled gate while inconspicuously pushing a cart full of utility materials, according to the Stone County Sheriff’s...