Free Republic

People walk past the building that houses the offices of Cambridge Analytica in central London, March 20, 2018. Share WASHINGTON — Long before its controversial roles in the 2016 Brexit vote and U.S. presidential election, Cambridge Analytica influenced elections in Africa. The data mining company, under fire for its alleged use of 50 million Facebook accounts to shape campaign messages for then-candidate Donald Trump, also played a role in elections in Kenya and Nigeria, according to new reports. The company's first involvement in Africa dates to the general election in South Africa in 1994. That election marked the end of...

Alexander Downer — the Australian diplomat whose tip to the FBI about a London pub conversation led to the massive probe of allegations of collusions between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia — is himself closely tied to a Chinese firm experts say is deeply involved in espionage against America. Just last month, all six top U.S. intelligence bosses warned Americans against using digital telecommunications equipment produced by Chinese smartphone producer Huawei.

Remember when President Trump had his first conversation with Australia's prime minister and, inexplicably, the conversation turned into a slam-down-the-receiver fight? Maybe Trump knew something. The ostensible issue at the time was refugees and a stanky little deal President Obama made for America to take in Australia's high-risk illegal refugees from Islamic hellholes who had paid smugglers to bring them to Australia's shores illegally. The illegal entrants were being awarded for their illegality with American residence and citizenship, something they will eventually come to abhor before one of them lashes out at us through a terror attack or some other...

The Australian diplomat whose tip in 2016 prompted the Russia-Trump investigation previously arranged one of the largest foreign donations to Bill and Hillary Clinton’s charitable efforts, documents show. Former Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer’s role in securing $25 million in aid from his country to help the Clinton Foundation fight AIDS is chronicled in decade-old government memos archived on the Australian foreign ministry’s website.

FLASH: FBI Investigating Millions Of “Mishandled” Dollars Funneled To Clinton Foundation Another day, another scandal for the Clinton Foundation. According to reports, the FBI is investigating millions of “mishandled taxpayer” dollars funneled to the dubious non-profit from Australian taxpayers. Zerohedge reports via LifeZette: The FBI has asked retired Australian policeman-turned investigative journalist, Michael Smith, to provide information he has gathered detailing multiple allegations of the Clinton Foundation receiving tens of millions of mishandled taxpayer funds, according to LifeZette. “I have been asked to provide the FBI with further and better particulars about allegations regarding improper donations to the CF funded...

There is no way to evaluate the trustworthiness of anonymous sources and unpublished documents, so why try?At this point, it’s safe to say the publicly available reports muddle the Mueller investigation so much that the only thing we “know” is all sides have more than enough circumstantial evidence to justify their pre-existing hopes and dreams. Left-wing partisans would have you believe that Mueller has the goods on Trump, and that conservative critiques of Mueller’s team or the Clinton campaign’s role in creating the so-called Steele dossier are nothing more than bad-faith attempts to discredit the investigation and undermine faith in...

Immediately following confirmation by Senator Lindsey Graham about the origin of the 2016 FBI Counterintelligence Operation against candidate Donald Trump, The New York Times, via Clinton’s favorite voice Maggie Haberman, pushes out an article attempting to cloud, obfuscate and justify the joint FBI and DOJ surveillance operation against Trump. The timing, content and presentation of the disinformation is transparent in the intended motive. More and more people are recognizing the FBI application to the FISA court was based on political information, the Steele Dossier, assembled by political operatives and used by political operatives within the DOJ National Security Division and...

During a night of heavy drinking at an upscale London bar in May 2016, George Papadopoulos, a young foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign, made a startling revelation to Australia’s top diplomat in Britain: Russia had political dirt on Hillary Clinton. About three weeks earlier, Mr. Papadopoulos had been told that Moscow had thousands of emails that would embarrass Mrs. Clinton, apparently stolen in an effort to try to damage her campaign. Exactly how much Mr. Papadopoulos said that night at the Kensington Wine Rooms with the Australian, Alexander Downer, is unclear. But two months later, when leaked Democratic...

GEORGE W. Bush is "a person of enormous courage", Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer said yesterday. His comment was just days after former US president Jimmy Carter described the Bush Administration as the worst in history for its global impact. Mr Downer, speaking at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Los Angeles, compared Mr Bush's war on terror to Mr Reagan's Cold War victory over the Soviet Union. "When I think about the war on terror and the decisions he has had to make, these have been tough decisions," Mr Downer told about 300 guests, including Mr Reagan's widow,...

VENEZUELAN President Hugo Chavez resembled a dictator who lacked class during his "rant" at the UN in which he called George W Bush "the devil", (Australian) Foreign Minister Alexander Downer has said. Mr Downer, who was at the UN General Assembly when Mr Chavez attacked the US President this week, said his comments reflected badly on Venezuela. He said Mr Chavez had dictatorial tendencies and compared him to Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe. "The United Nations is a place where you can speak freely and America's a place where you can speak freely," Mr Downer said on US news network Fox in...

The Hon. Alexander Downer, MP MINISTER FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS, AUSTRALIA :: Home :: Biography:: Department :: Speeches :: Media Releases :: Transcripts :: Photo Gallery :: Contacts :: Website Feedback Speech to the National Newspaper Publishers' Conference Gold Coast, 28 August 2006Foreign Policy Values and the Media IntroductionThank you for the chance to speak to you this morning. I would like to use this opportunity to cover two inter-related topics today.First I would like to talk about the principles that drive Australian foreign policy under this Government. You might feel sometimes that our foreign policy is driven by the 24...

The media war against Israel Early in the recent Lebanon war, the blogosphere revealed the fabrication of images by Reuters, whose reputation is now in shreds among those dwindling numbers in the western mainstream media who still acknowledge there is such a thing as the truth. Since then, the nature and scale of the various frauds perpetrated by the media during that war put those doctored Reuters pictures into the shade. The western media are no longer merely producing questionable professional practices in reporting a war. They are now active participants in it — and on the wrong side of...

Alexander Downer's meeting with George W. Bush soon after the start of the Iraq war is a revealing, intimate snapshot of the two countries working to form a much closer relationship, writes Greg Sheridan WASHINGTON in April, a cool, crisp spring day. The snow is all gone and by the Potomac River the cherry blossom is just beginning to flower. The tourists are coming in numbers; so are some protesters. For this is April 1, 2003, and Washington is a city at war. Today, in the (Teddy) Roosevelt Room at the White House, Australia's Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, is to...

(Australian) FOREIGN Minister Alexander Downer says the United States has always treated terror suspect David Hicks and his fellow Guantanamo Bay detainees in accordance with the Geneva Convention. The Bush administration said overnight that all detainees in US military custody in Cuba and elsewhere would be treated in accordance with the Geneva Convention. The new policy appears to reverse Washington's earlier insistence that Guantanamo detainees, including Mr Hicks, were not prisoners of war and therefore not subject to Geneva protections. It reflects the recent five to three US Supreme Court decision blocking military commissions set up by US President George...

A CARTOON depicting Prime Minister John Howard and Foreign Minister Alexander Downer as fornicating dingoes was a grotesque stunt by a tacky publication, Mr Downer said today. But the minister said the Indonesian paper which published the lurid cartoon had every right to do in a free society. The Islamic-leaning Rakyat Merdeka (People's Freedom) newspaper has run the cartoon on its front page amid Indonesia's continuing anger over Australia's giving visas to 42 West Papuan asylum seekers. The cartoon depicts the two dingoes having sex under a palm tree on an otherwise barren island signposted "Papua". Headlined "The adventure of...

SYDNEY (AFP) - Australia is considering a plan to "de-programme" Islamic militants held in jail despite criticism by a rights group saying it amounted to brainwashing. Police Commissioner Mick Keelty proposed the idea, saying the technique involved using respected imams or people previously connected with militant organisations to convert extremists to more moderate views. Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said that while "re-programming isn't the phrase I would use", the idea would be considered as it had been implemented successfully in Europe, the Middle East and Indonesia. "Those governments have made an attempt to persuade extremists and terrorists who have been...

Of course we back Bush: DownerNovember 1, 2004IT WAS inevitable the federal government would show support for its American centre-right counterpart in the lead-up to the US elections, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said today. But while Prime Minister John Howard had a "very close relationship" with George W. Bush, the coalition would also work effectively with an administration led by Democratic challenger John Kerry, he said. Mr Howard today came under attack from the opposition and Mr Kerry's camp for his open support of George W. Bush ahead of tomorrow's election. Mr Howard last week said he hoped Mr...

SYDNEY: There is clear evidence Iraq had a biological weapons programme even though none of the armaments have been found there since US-led forces invaded the country, Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said on Thursday. Downer cited a US Central Intelligence Agency report released yesterday, which said two trucks had been discovered in northern Iraq filled with laboratory equipment, as proof that Iraq had such a programme. No prohibited weapons were found in the trucks, but US intelligence officials say the vehicles fit a description from an Iraqi source of a mobile biological weapons laboratory. "The equipment has now been...

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer and his German counterpart, Joscka Fischer, have confirmed a mutual commitment to fight the threat of terrorism, after holding talks in Berlin. Mr Downer has also opened the new Australian embassy in the German capital. Mr Downer and Mr Fischer have very different opinions on how the Iraq crisis should be managed. While Australian servicemen are already on their way to the Gulf, Germany has vowed none of its military personnel will play any role in a war. But in acknowledging that both countries had lost citizens to terrorism in the last year, Mr Downer said...