Free Republic

One is moved by a quotation from the late Enzo Baldoni, the Italian freelance journalist and Red Cross volunteer who was murdered on video by the Jihadis in Iraq this week. "Some people think I am some sort of Rambo who loves strong emotions and watching people die. I am miles away from that. I am a convinced pacifist, and for that reason I am curious to understand what makes normal people brandish guns." Poor Baldoni, who survived previous adventures in East Timor and Colombia, had stopped appearing in the Milan weekly, Diario, and started appearing on Al Jazeera, as...

The Inmates are Running the Asylum How much damage will men like George Bush, James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Sam Brownback, Ralph Reed, and Rick Santorum inflict before reason prevails and they are unmasked as the twisted, malevolent charlatans that they are? Fundamentalist Christians, adherents to a nauseating perversion of Christianity (conjured from their twisted imaginations and their distorted interpretations of the Bible) wield a significant amount of power in the United States, socially and politically. Fund-raising, promotional, and organizational skills have enabled these Corpora-Fascist Capitalists masquerading as practitioners of the Christian faith to gain pervasive influence over the Republican Party....

The following image has been posted on the front page of the Al Jazeera website: The caption below reads: Photos of some US soldiers killed in Iraq were lifted on a poster during an anti-war protest in front of President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, where he spends his month-long vacation (Annahar, 8/13/05)

Aljazira bemoans illligitimate Iraqi Election: “Bait and Switch” -Shades of Florida / Ohio. Disenfranchisements2.0 Chad will hang. See full article below.

Why did the exit polls show Kerry winning the election, but the vote showed Bush winning?The apologia by the exit poll system architects reported in the New York Times Nov 5 sounds like post-facto reasoning which assumed that the vote is correct, and therefore the exit polls must be wrong. In its own words, it then "theorized" reasons why the exit poll could have been wrong.Why did these problems occur now and not in previous elections? Didn't the poll architects plan for them? The wrong-exit-poll theories should be tested. At the polls where the reasons occurred, how are the results...

The Al-Jazeera network’s recent insult of the Iranian nation was totally unacceptable. The Arabic network, which broadcasts its programs from the little Arab country Qatar, has recently posted an insulting cartoon about the Islamic Republic of Iran on its English site. In the cartoon, a cleric, who is the symbol of the Islamic Republic of Iran, indifferently passes by various scenes of the current problems in the Islamic world, but reacts strongly when he sees that the name of the Persian Gulf has been changed to the unacceptable “Arab Gulf”. Iranian officials made a prompt denunciation of this very amateurish...

Kerry sets the record straight Charles A. Beers JohnKerry.com, September 23, 2004 The war in Iraq is President Bush's signature failure. To reduce the damage the war has caused him, Bush and his campaign operatives have spent the last six months attacking and distorting John Kerry's position on Iraq and military service. But yesterday, in a powerful speech in New York, Kerry set the record straight. John Kerry laid out a plan to end Bush's irrational, deceptive and unilateral policy in Iraq, and pursue a policy of international cooperation to end the worsening rebellion and rebuild Iraq -- and bring...

Democratic Delegate Has Terror Ties | By Debbie Schlussel John Kerry is trying to show he’s "tough on terrorism." But with delegates like Ismael Ahmed, it’s a tough sell. Ahmed, a Michigan delegate to this week’s Democratic National Convention, is a long-time Democratic activist and a repeat delegate. But the Democrats aren’t touting him to the media. In fact, the only place you’ll read about Ahmed’s delegate credentials is on Al-Jazeerah’s website. In this first Presidential nominating convention since 9/11, Ahmed’s presence at the convention and his views are more disturbing than ever.

Thousands rallied in Washington on Saturday to protest U.S. policy in Iraq, the first major demonstration since President Bush declared an end to major combat in the war on Iraq. "We need to make President Bush realize that our children are being killed," Fernando de Solar Suarez said at a rally near the Washington Monument, where the crowd later planned to march to the White House. Suarez's son, a Marine, was killed in Iraq on March 27. Guerrillas fighting the U.S.-led occupation have killed 108 U.S. soldiers since May 1, when Bush declared major combat in Iraq over. Peace activists,...