Free Republic

Unconfirmed reports from Iran say the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, returned his soul to his maker. According to the same reports, an official announcement will be made only after the transfer of powers to his son, Mojtaba Khamenei, are completed. Sayyid Ali Hosseini Khamenei, 81, was the supreme leader of Iran since 1989. He previously served as the president of Iran from 1981 to 1989. Khamenei is the longest serving head of state in the Middle East, as well as the second-longest serving Iranian leader of the last century, after Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Reports on Saturday suggested that...

The method prosecutors said they used to get Alexander Yuk Ching Ma to reveal the nature of his espionage was worthy of a spy novel itself. A 15-year veteran of the CIA was charged Monday with selling U.S. secrets to China then unwittingly admitting his spying to the FBI. The method prosecutors said they used to get him to reveal the nature of his espionage was worthy of a spy novel itself. Court documents said 67-year-old Alexander Yuk Ching Ma of Honolulu was charged with violating U.S. espionage laws. Prosecutors said he joined the CIA in 1967 then served as...

“Statecraft: The Bush 41 Team” offers a unique look at the foreign policy legacy of President George H.W. Bush as told via the George H. W. Bush Presidential Oral History, the historical record and the accounts of the advisers who shaped it. “Statecraft: The Bush 41 Team” reflects on the pillars and strategies of American diplomacy at the end of the Cold War. When George H.W. Bush became president of the United States in 1989, much of the world was in turmoil and it was clear that American diplomacy was entering a new era.

Should you trust “experts” whose predictions are always wrong? It is too late to do anything about the unproven hypothesis that humans are causing enormous planet Earth’s climate to change. Maybe human activity is affecting the planet’s temperature (it isn’t). Maybe we could have done something about it (we never could, that’s ludicrous considering the size of the planet). But whatever we could have done, it’s too late now. We should just stop worrying about it. United Nations’ experts told us that by 1999 it was too late to halt global warming. In 1989, there was a 10 year window,...

At Mass in memory of those killed in Tiananmen, Msgr. Joseph Ha, auxiliary bishop of Hong Kong, prayed "that they may find eternal peace in the afterlife, for justice to be done". Hong Kong has had many "June 4ths". Loving God and one's neighbor means that "the value of man is far more important than any other institutional value: the people before the government; the truth before interests". "Could this be the last commemoration mass in memory of June 4th? I do not know"Hong Kong (AsiaNews) - Among the moments scheduled to commemorate the 31st anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre...

The next feud between America's freedom and democracy hawks and old United Nations diplomats will likely develop this week with the release of a much-anticipated report. Ordered by Secretary-General Annan, it was prepared by a panel of 16 former world movers and shakers now in their 70s, who will undoubtedly be hailed at Turtle Bay as wise men, and derided elsewhere as has-beens. Men who held previous posts like Russian foreign minister and Saddam champion Yevgeny Primakov, British U.N. envoy David Hannay, or current Arab League chief Amr Moussa, are not going to excite anyone looking for fresh insights into...

I do SO apologize for another silly Vanity. I can't find this information after an hour of searching, and I know some Dear FReeper will. I'm involved in a discussion about the WHO and its directives on Vaccines and Parental Consent.

When communism collapsed across Eastern Europe in 1989, the process was swift and surprisingly peaceful. Decades of terror and tyranny came to a sudden end with hardly a shot fired: governments stepped down, borders opened, walls fell. One country, however, proved to be the exception. Thirty years ago this week, citizens of Romania were being killed by the hundreds as they took to the streets to demand liberty from their brutal communist regime. Unrest that had begun December 16 in the southwestern city of TimiÅŸoara soon spread throughout Romania, fueled by the news that protesters were being gunned down by...

Friday December 6th marks the thirtieth anniversary of the "Montreal Massacre" - a grim day in 1989 when fourteen female students at the École Polytechnique were murdered by a man known to posterity as "Marc Lépine". Much followed from that terrible slaughter, including various useless "gun control" measures - and the formal annual commemorations that, three decades on, are attended by as many eminences as Remembrance Day or Dominion Day. The men present in that classroom are now in their mid-fifties; the women are not. I was far from home that December and was not back in Quebec until Christmas....

There were more shocking revelations from abortionists this week as the witness and evidence presentations ended yesterday for the civil trial in the San Francisco Federal District Court. Admissions on the witness stand this week included the founder/president Linda Tracy and procurement manager Perrin Larton of Advanced Bioscience Resources, Inc. (ABR), a U.S. wholesaler of aborted baby body parts since 1989. ABR’s yearly revenues are about $1.1 to $1.5 million, all from harvesting and purchasing livers, lungs, and brains in abortion facilities and re-selling the body parts to taxpayer-funded research laboratories at enormous mark-up prices. Tracy stated under oath in...

UNITED NATIONS (AP) _ A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000. Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of ″eco- refugees,′ ′ threatening political chaos, said Noel Brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program, or UNEP. He said governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect before it goes beyond human control. As the warming melts polar icecaps, ocean levels will rise by...

Over the past decade, the mass media has made a concerted effort to alter the public’s perception of two very different foreign policy “scandals”: the Cox Report and the infamous “16 words” in George W. Bush’s most recent State of the Union Address. The differences between how the so-called mainstream media – CBS, NBC, ABC, Time Magazine, Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report and the New York Times – could not be more obvious. Whereas the media single out George W. Bush for blame over the “16 words,” they deflect criticism of Bill Clinton’s role in transferring nuclear secrets to...

You're John McCain, a fallen hero who wanted to become president so desperately that you sold yourself to Charlie Keating, the wealthy con man who bears such an incredible resemblance to...

Xi Jinping is poised to become the most potent Chinese leader since Mao Zedong — and to guide his country’s continued emergence as a fascist global superpower for at least the next decade. The 19th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is scheduled to start on October 18, when it will appoint leaders and establish the country’s course for the next five years. Xi undoubtedly will be re-appointed head of the CCP, followed by re-selection as China’s president and head of state early next year. But he appears also to have overturned the collegial, limited term system of leadership...

Federal Judge John Roll was killed in Tucson trying to save another man’s life. As soon as madman Jared Lee Loughner finished his attempt to murder Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, he turned his gun on the people to his left, then the people to his right. Recently released video shows his first target to the right was Ron Barber, Gifford’s district director, who was standing next to Justice John Roll. Barber was shot in the arm. Judge Roll then pushed him down and, shielding Barber with his own body, steered him to shelter under a nearby table. While under the table,...

“Criminalisation of ‘Islamophobia’:” the “Organization of Islamic Cooperation’s” legal jihad By ICLA Admin • on October 11, 2012 PRINTCOMMENT FEEDSTUMBLE ITDIGG ITDEL.ICIO.USFACEBOOK You will find the forum of Alexandre del Valle in this week’s Atlantico * Since the scandal surrounding the Islamophobic film “Innocence of Muslims” erupted on an Egyptian Islamist channel on the occasion of the anniversary of September 11th, much ink and blood has flowed. The fanatical Salafists resurrected a film (which previously had gone totally unnoticed) which was attributed to a US-Egyptian, who himself had attempted to gain the endorsement of “Zionist Jewish donors.” This version has naturally found...

Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) is highly regarded within political circles for his ability to capture the mood of the moment and milk it to his advantage. However, whether Senator Schumer should command respect based upon consistency and willingness to put principles ahead of "politics of the moment" is another matter. This can be seen clearly by the Senator's statements in the current flap over whether a White House official - Karl Rove is the one taking the rap in press allegations -- had permitted disclosure of a CIA agent's name. Don't take my word for it. Let Senator Schumer's...

Well, look what’s back: the instantly compelling and ultimately confounding parlor game of “What do we do about flag burning?” Dormant for years, largely because this is something virtually no one ever does, the flag burning issue is back. You could hear it knocking lightly when several idiotic pro athletes decided to lodge their concerns over policing issues by showing public disdain for the flag that is a symbol of the nation that has made them free and wealthy. Throw in the Donald Trump victory, which has dredged up some of the most hateful and juvenile reactions in election history,...

At the height of the frenzy of China’s Cultural Revolution, victims were eaten at macabre “flesh banquets”, but 50 years after the turmoil began, the Communist Party is suppressing remembrance and historical reckoning of the era and its excesses. Launched by Mao in 1966 to topple his political enemies after the failure of the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution saw a decade of violence and destruction nationwide as party-led class conflict devolved into social chaos.

Convicted leftist terrorist Susan Rosenberg must be counted among the unlikeliest candidates ever to be awarded a university teaching post. Just four years ago, Rosenberg was serving out the 16th year of a 58-year sentence for the possession of more than 700 pounds of explosives and a stockpile of illicit weapons. Moreover, the onetime member of a leftist terrorist outfit called “The Family” was also a suspect in a 1981 robbery-gone-awry that left three people dead in Nyack, New York. However, next January students at Hamilton College, a small liberal arts school in upstate New York, will know Susan Rosenberg,...