Free Republic

An internet security specialist says that Stuxnet, the computer malware that targeted Iran's nuclear facilities in 2010 and widely attributed to Israel and the US, has spiraled out of control and attacked a Russian nuclear plant and the International Space Station.

IRGC and the spiritual vacuum of Latin American leftists The following is a glimpse of the kind of thing I often see while researching the activities of the IRGC (writ large) in Latin America. Communism fails to provide for the spiritual needs of leftwing political activists, and the Islamic Republic of Iran seems to have done a pretty good job of inserting themselves and the Khomeinist version of Shiism into that void. (Either that or the IRI is throwing lots of money around and the leftists are whores, which is certainly possible, but for the moment I'll take the more...

The 2013 Atlantic hurricane season is an ongoing annual cycle in tropical cyclogenesis. It is the first Atlantic hurricane season since 2002 to feature no hurricanes through the month of August. The season officially began on June 1 and will end on November 30. The first tropical cyclone of the year, Andrea, developed on June 7 in the Gulf of Mexico. This season continued a pattern of unusually early starting hurricane seasons – the first named storm of a season typically forms around July 9. Below average activity continued afterwards into October. The strongest tropical cyclone of the season thus...

Those old enough to remember the 1929 crash on Wall Street and the US exit from the Gold Standard under Franklin Roosevelt – thin in numbers these days – will recall the pervading sense that America had already peaked, its capitalist model overtaken by history. The Russian trade agency Amtorg in New York famously advertised for 6,000 skilled plumbers, chemists, electricians, and dentists, and suchlike, to work in the Soviet Union, then deemed the El Dorado of mankind, or the "moral top of the world where the light never really goes out", in the words of Edmund Wilson. It is...

Governor Rick Perry was once alleged to have stated that Texas could secede in the future. But he now states he opposes succession: http://www.usatoday.com/story/onpolitics/2012/11/13/rick-perry-texas-secession-petition/1702359/ If the different states were to become different nations, the federal government would cease to exist. That means that the federal debt would be reduced to Zero. But the price that Americans would pay, would be the loss of super power status. Would Americans be better off or worse off, if the states were to become different countries?

Unidentified foreign forces have launched a night-time raid on a militant base in the south Somali town of Barawe from the sea, reports say. A spokesman for the al-Shabab Islamist group told Reuters news agency that one of its fighters had been killed during the raid....... Al-Shabab claimed responsibility last month for the deadly attack on a Kenyan shopping mall..... According to the Somali news website Midnimo, two helicopters were also involved in the raid..... "Westerners in boats attacked our base as Barawe beach and one was martyred from our side," Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Masab, described as al-Shabab's spokesman for...

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Saturday brought home a 2,700-year-old Persian artifact the US administration gave him as ?a special gift" to Iranians, media reports said. ?The Americans contacted us on Thursday and said 'we have a gift for you',? Rouhani told reporters upon arrival at the airport in Tehran, the ILNA news agency reported. ?They gave it back as a special gift to the Iranian nation.? Rouhani was speaking of a 7th century BC silver Persian drinking cup in the shape of a winged Griffin, a legendary creature with the head of an eagle and body of a lion....

Skipper Jimmy Spithill and Oracle Team USA won the 34th America's Cup today in one of the greatest comebacks in sports history. Spithill steered Oracle's space-age, 72-foot catamaran to its eighth straight victory, speeding past Dean Barker and Emirates Team New Zealand in the winner-take-all Race 19 on San Francisco Bay to keep the oldest trophy in international sports in the United States. All but defeated a week ago, the 34-year-old Australian and his international crew twice rallied from seven-point deficits to win 9-8 Wednesday.

Muslims block traffic in midtown Manhattan so they can pray for the coming Islamic Caliphate to destroy the USA as we know it

The U.S. Air Force has a message for Iran: Don’t mess with our drones.

In an audio message released yesterday, Zawahiri laid out a plan of attack, saying he wanted a "few of the brothers" to commit small-scale strikes to trigger big spending by Washington on security, while awaiting the opportunity for a major onsalught later.

Exactly 30 years ago, when early warning systems indicated the Soviet Union was under nuclear attack by the United States, air defence officer Stanislav Petrov went by gut instinct and decided the alarm was false. It was a decision that saved the human race – and ended his career. Place: Serpukhov-15, a ballistic missile early warning command and control post south of Moscow. Time: Just after midnight, September 26, 1983. Officers of the elite Soviet Air Defence Force are about to begin their night shift at the top secret installation. Their commander, Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov, 44, pushes back in...

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad insisted that the U.S. give up its "policy of threats" and halt arms shipments to rebels before his government turns over its chemical weapons, as U.S. and Russian delegations began talks in Geneva aimed at forging a road map for the shutdown of the weapons program. Mr. Assad's comments, in his first public statement on the Russian proposal that Syria hand over its chemical weapons to an international monitors, underlined the distance between Syria and its backers in Moscow on one side and the U.S. and its allies on the other. Before starting their discussions, Secretary...

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Needing a victory over Mexico and a little help from Honduras to punch its ticket to next summer's World Cup, the U.S. took care of business Tuesday, riding second-half goals by Eddie Johnson and Landon Donovan to a 2-0 victory in front of a raucous 24,584 at Columbus Crew Stadium. Then the Americans retired to their locker room, where they watched Honduras and Panama play to a 2-2 tie, assuring the U.S. one of CONCACAF's three berths in Brazil. So when the dressing room opened again an hour later, it smelled of champagne.

United States residents have an extra reason to smile according to a recent report released by Columbia University's Earth Institute. According to their findings, northern Europe received the highest satisfaction and happiness ranking in life, while Egypt and a few others hit the lowest since the Eurozone crisis via background information from the 2013 World Happiness Report released Monday. When looking at a survey of over 156 countries, Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Sweden were ranked as the happiest places, and regions in Sub-Saharan Africa were noted as being the least likely places for overall life satisfaction, according to...

Countries often issue travel advisories warning citizens of danger abroad: war, for instance, or a terrorist threat or an outbreak of disease. The Russian Foreign Ministry posted advice of a somewhat different nature on Monday, cautioning people wanted by the United States not to visit nations that have an extradition treaty with it. “Warning for Russian citizens traveling internationally,” the Foreign Ministry bulletin said. “Recently, detentions of Russian citizens in various countries, at the request of American law enforcement, have become more frequent — with the goal of extradition and legal prosecution in the United States.” Citing examples in Costa...

My favorite place in Washington is the Lincoln Memorial. Its grand size, pivotal location and sweeping view of our capital city are a backdrop for the inspirational addresses inscribed on its walls. Lincoln's second inaugural address and his Gettysburg Address are there for all visitors to read. In the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln's most well-known speech, he never uses the word "I" or "me;" instead, he focuses on our nation. He closes by asking the nation to be more, to do more. "It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from...

Is the President of the United States certain chemical weapons were used to kill innocent civilians in Damascus last week, and is he certain that the Assad regime was, in fact, responsible for the attack? Is the evidence clear and compelling? Will such evidence stand up in the court of public opinion? The U.S. administration thinks so, and will make the evidence public soon. We are told such evidence will include: Intercepted telephone calls between Assad regime officials and military leaders discussing the chemical attack, picked up by U.S. intelligence. Intercepted communications from the Syrian military picked up by Israeli...

An American military attack on Syria could begin as early as Thursday and will involve three days of missile strikes, according to "senior U.S. officials" talking to NBC News. The Washington Post has the bombing at "no more than two days," though long-range bombers could "possibly" join the missiles. "Factors weighing into the timing of any action include a desire to get it done before the president leaves for Russia next week," reports CNN, citing a "senior administration official."

There are far more blacks on Death Row in the United States than whites, and this is attributed by the usual suspects, namely the mainstream media and Lefties, to - you'll never guess - racism. This is an exampe of the kind of pro-black, anti-white prejudice that we have to constantly endure from the self-proclaimed "progressives" (who are anything but): Today people of color continue to be disproportionately incarcerated, policed, and sentenced to death at significantly higher rates than their white counterparts. The much simpler, Occam-razor-obeying in its parsimony, explanation is that blacks commit disproportionately many more crimes, including capital...