Free Republic

After months of controversy in the press, and threats from the South African government, the website that aims to show the world the real crime situation in South Africa has finally launched. Already the ANC government has expressed concern that the website will "harm South Africa's good image", and "scare away tourists and investors". The website is still partially under construction, but already contains some chilling stories and statistics. Let's hope it has some influence, and saves some lives. Excerpt from the website: "CRIME EXPO SA aim to provide foreigners with detailed information and regular updates regarding the issue of...

Paris - An Algerian Islamist organisation, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), has issued a call for action against France, which it describes as "enemy No 1", intelligence officials said on Tuesday. "The only way to teach France to behave is jihad and the Islamic martyr," said the group's leader, Abu Mossab Abdelwadoud, also known as Abdelmalek Dourkdal, in an internet message earlier this month. He was quoted as saying: "France is our enemy No 1, the enemy of our religion, the enemy of our community." France was mentioned 15 times in the text and the Algerian government...

SA govt to grab 1st farm 22/09/2005 13:55 - (SA) Pretoria - The first expropriation of commercial South African farmland for restitution was announced by the Commission on Restitution of Land Rights in Pretoria on Thursday. An expropriation notice would be served on the owner of the 500ha farm Leeuwspruit in the Lichtenberg district of the North West without fail, said provincial land claims commissioner Blessing Mphela. This comes after two-and-a-half years of inconclusive negotiations on the value of the property - with the owner wanting R3m and the government offering R1,75m, he said. Mphela said expropriation was the last...

http://www.michaelhodges.com/missing.html Seems like Hillary is getting an early start on a prime-time ad....

London - President Thabo Mbeki criticised the United States for calling Zimbabwe an "outpost of tyranny" saying, in an interview published on Tuesday, that it went against Washington's efforts to promote democracy worldwide. The comment attacked by Mbeki was made by US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, who listed six "outposts of tyranny" last month; Zimbabwe, Belarus, Cuba, Iran, Myanmar and North Korea. "It's an exaggeration and whatever (the US) government wants to do with that list of six countries, or however many, it's really somewhat discredited," Mbeki told the Financial Times. South Africa has served as an important mediator...

Pretoria - Neither South Africa, nor Sudan have yet been able to establish societies acceptable to all their people, President Thabo Mbeki told that country's national assembly. He noted that while the two countries achieved their respective democracy and independence nearly 40 years apart, both had to work out what of societies they wanted to build, amid dynamics of diversity and filled with tensions and antagonisms. Mbeki was in Sudan after attending last week's signing of a peace agreement between the Khartoum government and the Sudanese People's Liberation Movement in neighbouring Kenya. He also visited the troubled Darfur region and...

US embassy blast suspect freed Dar Es Salaam - A High Court judge on Thursday found a Tanzanian businessman innocent of conspiracy to commit murder in the 1998 bombing of the US Embassy in the East African nation. Judge Emilian Mushi ordered the immediate release of Rashid Saleh Hemed, 34, who was charged in connection with the terror attack that killed 12 people and was blamed on Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network. "You cannot convict someone with doubtful evidence," Mushi told the court after declaring that prosecutors failed to prove beyond doubt that Hemed was involved in the conspiracy to...

MERRY CHRISTMAS, MY FRIEND author: Lance Corporal Schmidt Twas the night before Christmas, he lived all alone; In a one bedroom house made of plaster and stone. I had come down the chimney with presents to give, And to see just who in this home did live. As I looked all about, a strange sight I did see, No tinsel, no presents, not even a tree. No stocking by the fire, just boots filled with sand. On the wall hung pictures of a far distant land. With medals and badges, awards of all kind, A sobering thought soon came to...

JERUSALEM - Lightning fried 10 000 chickens in an Israeli coop on yesterday. "The lightning short-circuited the power supply and everything went up in flames," a farmer at Kibbutz Yifat in northern Israel told Channel Two television at the entrance to the charred hen battery. "It's tough, we raised them since they were chicks," he said.

The Iranian, Egyptian and Syrian governments accused the Unied States on Tuesday of using excessive force to quell rebels in Iraq. The Syrian foreign minister, Farouk al-Sharaa, said at an international conference in Sharm el-Sheikh that although condemning terrorism, "we cannot over-emphasise the need to refrain from shelling civilians, destroying cities and killing innocent people". More than 20 countries and organisations, including the US, Britain, the United Nations, and Iraq's neighbours took part in the one-day meeting on the future of Iraq at the Egyptian Red Sea resort. The Iranian foreign minister, Kamal Kharrazi, criticised "the use of excessive force...

Kirkuk - Security forces were on Tuesday focussing their hunt for Iraq's most wanted man, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, on an area in north-central Iraq after receiving a tip-off, an Iraqi national guard officer said. "We received concrete information from very reliable sources that Zarqawi was transferred today (Tuesday) to Tuz Khormatu and is heading to Baquba," staff brigadier general Anwar Hamad Ameed, the national guard chief in the northern city of Kirkuk, told AFP. He gave no further details. Tuz Khormatu lies about 180km north of Baghdad. The US military believes Zarqawi, who has a $25m bounty on his head,...

Two Louisiana alligators were sitting at the side of the swamp. The smaller one turned to the bigger one and said, "I can't understand how you can be so much bigger 'n me. We're the same age, we was the same size as kids. . . I just don't get it. " "Well, " said the big 'gator, "What you been eatin' boy? " "Democrats, same as you, " replied the small 'gator. "Hmm. Well, where do ya catch 'em? " "Down at 'tother side of the swamp near the parkin' lot by Boudreaux's." "Same here. Hmm. How do you...

Moscow - A top official said here on Thursday that Iran would bar international nuclear inspections in its country if debate on its nuclear programme is taken up in the UN security council. If the issue goes to the security council "there will be no place for any kind of inspections, no continuation of our openness" with IAEA inspectors, Aladdin Broujerdi, chair of the Iranian parliament's committee on national security and foreign affairs said. p>The US has pushed for examination of Iran's nuclear programme to be taken up in the security council, while Russia reiterated on Wednesday that it opposed...

Can someone explain to me what it means if I try and post something, and it says :"Source blocked", "article from this source not welome on FR." Does it mean that FR keeps a tab on what publications consistently publish anti-American etc articles, or is it instigated from the publication's side? Just curious, although I see more drivel from the NY times etc than from the source I tried to quote.

Hanoi - French President Jacques Chirac warned on Thursday of a "catastrophe" for global diversity if the United States' cultural hegemony goes unchallenged. Speaking at a French cultural centre in Hanoi ahead of Friday's opening of a summit of European and Asian leaders, Chirac said France was right to stand up for cultural and linguistic diversity. The outspoken French president warned that the world's different cultures could be "choked" by US values. This, he said, would lead to a "general world sub-culture" based around the English language, which would be "a real ecological catastrophe". Citing Hollywood's stranglehold over the film...

By Timothy Heritage Paris - Nearly nine out of ten French people would back John Kerry if they could vote in the American election, according to an opinion poll on Friday which showed deep distrust of President George Bush since the Iraq war. The poll, published after Kerry and Bush battled over Iraq in a television debate, came as no surprise in the country which led opposition to the US-led war and whose people were dubbed "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" by American Republicans. But it underlined concern abroad over US policies and highlighted the gulf that has opened with France -...

Stockholm - The United Nations' former chief weapons inspector, Hans Blix, said on Monday that the consequences of the war in Iraq were for the most part "terrible and tragic". "A murderous dictator was removed but all the other consequences are terrible and tragic," Blix said. He was speaking in Stockholm, where he received France's highest award, the Commander of the Legion of Honour, from French Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie. Blix said the international community had other urgent weapons inspections and verifications procedures to undertake, notably in the Middle East and the Korean Peninsula. "The United Nations must be involved...

London - European newspapers Wednesday accused US President George W. Bush of refusing to face facts over Iraq after he called for greater international involvement in reconstructing the country in an address to the UN General Assembly. The president's speech "systematically refused to engage with what actually has happened in Iraq," the Financial Times commented. "The extent of the president's disengagement from the reality of a sinking Iraq is alarming," it said. Bush "exhibited no sense whatsoever of grievous US policy mistakes, of the serious failures of the occupation authorities, or the extent to which the Iraqi misadventure had handed...

Las Vegas - The Bush administration is "intentionally blind" to the needs of the environment and has rolled back years of advances in improving air and water quality, actor and activist Robert Redford said on Wednesday. "Sadly, the erosion that's occurred is disastrous, frightening and dangerous," Redford said. Speaking at an event sponsored by the Environmental Accountability Fund, a political action committee, Redford said he is insulted when President George W Bush and vice-president Dick Cheney tout their status as Westerners. "I take particular offence as a Westerner when I see all the swagger and all the strutting. .... And...

Mugabe blasts 'god Bush' New York - Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, long a thorn in the side of the United States and Britain, drew applause at the United Nations on Wednesday for a scathing speech that tore into the Iraq war allies. Mugabe blasted the two nations for holding up reform of the UN Security Council in "calculated" attempts at trying to preserve their influence at the United Nations. "Ironically, it is some of the same forces that since last year have been raining bombs and hellfire on innocent Iraqis, purportedly in the name of democracy," he said. "Iraq today...