Free Republic

When President Barack Obama announced the death of Osama bin Laden, his demeanor was properly restrained. It is hard to imagine George W. Bush issuing a similar pronouncement without cracking a grin and making a disparaging remark. The killing of bin Laden, Obama reflected, said much about America: “We will be true to the values that make us who we are.” Sadly, the media showed too many Americans greeting the news of bin Laden’s death with fist-pumping elation. Raucous, shouting mobs gathered outside the White House and at New York’s “Ground Zero” to wave US flags and chant “USA! USA!”...

Today's AP story on the Gate on the Berkeley vote not to pass a resolution to resettle Gitmo detainees reports: The resolution singled out two Guantanamo detainees who have been cleared of wrongdoing but don't want to return to their home countries because they fear persecution -- Ravil Mingazov, a Russian ballet dancer, and Djamel Ameziane, an Algerian chef. That is just plain wrong. As I wrote Sunday, these detainees have not been cleared. On another note, the Center for Constitutional Rights has put together profiles on Guantanamo detainees, including this one for possible Berkeley-transplant, Djamel Ameziane. Languages: French, Arabic,...

(IsraelNN.com) Eleven of Israel’s most prominent leftist authors and members of the intellectual elite have published a call to negotiate with the Islamist Hamas terror group. The statement, which was dispatched to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and published in Haaretz, calls upon Olmert to “make every possible effort” to reach a diplomatic agreement with Mahmoud Abbas and to open up negotiations with Hamas for a ceasefire. "We believe an opportunity to promote the peace process ahead of the international conference in November has been created,” the statement says. “We urge the prime minister to make the greatest effort to reach...

WASHINGTON, (AP) -- The American Bar Association expressed concern Friday over Bush administration plans to limit lawyers' access to detainees at Guantanamo Bay. The ABA was responding to a recent Justice Department court filing alleging that lawyers' visits to Guantanamo Bay and attorneys' mail to the detainees threatened to undermine security at the U.S. facility in Cuba. Many of the detainees have been imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay for five years. The department proposes to limit each detainee-lawyer visits to four. Currently, there are no limits on the number of visits. After an initial face-to-face meeting of up to eight hours,...

Lawyers and civil rights activists rallied support Sunday for eight former black militants arrested in the 1971 slaying of a police officer, saying the men were tortured during an earlier investigation of the murder. At a news conference held before the premiere of a documentary detailing the decades-old abuse allegations, supporters described last week's arrests as part of a law enforcement vendetta against the Black Panthers and other black liberation groups that has lasted 40 years. "The case began in torture. It's now moved into fabricated evidence," said Stuart Hanlon, a lawyer for one of the men accused of storming...

Editor's note: In 2004, Richard D. Lamm, former governor of Colorado, addressed a conference sponsored by the Federation for American Immigration Reform in Washington. The following remarks are reprinted with his permission. Richard. D. Lamm I have a secret plan to destroy America. If you believe, as many do, that America is too smug, too white bread, too self-satisfied, too rich, let's destroy America. It is not that hard to do. History shows that nations are more fragile than their citizens think. No nation in history has survived the ravages of time. Arnold Toynbee observed that all great civilizations rise...

LONDON -- The United States has failed to eradicate "widespread" torture of prisoners in its war on terrorism despite the outcry from the Abu Ghraib scandal and abusive behavior at U.S. detention facilities in Cuba and Afghanistan, Amnesty International charged Wednesday. The London-based human rights group made its criticism in a report to the U.N. Committee Against Torture, which is meeting in Geneva this week to consider American compliance with the U.N. convention against torture and other cruel forms of punishment. "Evidence continues to emerge of widespread torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of detainees held in U.S....

Claiming that the actions of Israel Defense Forces troops at the Jericho prison this week violated international law, human rights group B'Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights appealed to Military Advocate General Brigadier General Avi Mandelblit on Thursday, demanding that the treatment of the Jericho detainees be investigated. During the operation, IDF troops forced detainees to strip down to their underwear. Pictures of the detainees in their underwear were broadcast on local and global television stations and printed in newspapers in Israel and abroad. In testimony given to B'Tselem, the detainees described the humiliation they felt when their pictures were...

A forum entitled "Why we must boycott apartheid Israel" was held at the University of London's student union to tie in with the trial at Uxbridge Magistrate's Court of seven activists accused of blockading the UK offices of Agrexco, an Israeli agricultural export company, in 2004. Dr. Ghada Karmi, a Palestinian writer and academic living in London, told the audience of about 60 people that a boycott and sanctions against Israel must focus on attacking support for Israel. "Israel must be a pariah until they learn to be civilized," she said at the forum, which was hosted last week by...

See Dick talk. See Hanoi Jane talk. Mark Malaszczyk July 29, 2005 She is nipped. She is tucked. She is enhanced. And she is BACK. Sixty-seven year old Actress/Activist Jane Fonda has announced that she will launch a cross-country bus tour to protest the war in Iraq, scheduled for March 2006. "I've decided that I'm coming out," she said. Green tea drinking, tofu-eating, Birkenstock-wearing, pale, emaciated vegans with multi-colored ribbons all over their tattered backpacks are rejoicing across America, running to get a second tattoo on their lower back and a ninth piercing in their left ear in tribute to...

Ted Turner called Fox propaganda tool of the Bush administration and indirectly compared the Fox News Network's popularity to Adolph Hitler's popular election to run Germany before WWII. Turner made those fiery comments in his first address at NATPE since he was ousted from Time Warner five years ago. The 66-year-old billionaire who leveraged a television station in Atlanta into a media empire, made the comment before a standing-room-only crowd at NATPE's opening session Tuesday. His no-nonsense, sometimes humorous, approach during the one-hour Q&A generated frequent loud applause and laughter. Among the highlights: On Fox News: While Fox may be...

Special Dispatch - Jihad & Terrorism Studies January 30, 2004 No. 651 The Arab and Muslim debate over supporting suicide bombings has continued in 2004. This week, Sheikh Faysal Mawlawi, the Deputy Chairman of the European Council for Fatwa and Research, stressed the need to differentiate between martyrdom, which is encouraged, and suicide, which is forbidden, saying, "I call on every Palestinian not to hesitate in carrying out such operations."(1) The January 14, 2004 suicide bombing at the Erez crossing on the Israel-Gaza border that was carried out by female bomber and mother of two young children Reem Saleh Al-Riyashi...