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WASHINGTON — When the U.S. State Department announced this week that it finally is going to designate the Haqqani network as a foreign terrorist organization, it was a nonevent for most of our countrymen. That's because few Americans know how deadly the organization is. For that we can thank those at Foggy Bottom who are wedded to the naive hope of a near-term "diplomatic breakthrough" in Afghanistan. Couple that misguided belief with the Obama administration's self-deception that the radical Islamic jihad against the West ended with the demise of Osama bin Laden and it's understandable why the Haqqani network...

When Jihad Came to America by Andrew C. McCarthy On May 2 and 3, 1990, the U.S. embassy in Cairo alerted its counterpart in Khartoum that Egypt’s “leading radical,” Omar Abdel Rahman, was on his way to Sudan. Warning that his ultimate plan might be to seek exile in the United States, the Cairo embassy asked its colleagues to pass along any information they might learn about his activities on Sudanese soil. What did U.S. officials already know about Abdel Rahman in 1990? As the 9/11 Commission would later determine, they knew that he had been arrested repeatedly in Egypt...

CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE READ. This article was published in 1989. A prescient article by Michael Lewis in 1989 looked at the systemic risk of a Japanese earthquake. TO SUMMARIZE: An earthquake destroys the Tokyo Stock Exchange and all financial records. Shares of Western insurance companies lead a global selloff. Japan liquidates overseas holdings. This causes the U.S. bond to collapse. Recession ensues. Lewis observes that a huge earthquake devastates Tokyo roughly every 70 years or so For the past 400 years. 1923, 1853, 1782, 1703 and 1633.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Warren Zimmerman, the last U.S. ambassador to Yugoslavia, died Tuesday of pancreatic cancer. He was 69. Zimmerman, a career Foreign Service officer, was named ambassador to Yugoslavia in 1989 by the first President Bush. At the time, the former communist country was breaking up into warring factions, and Zimmerman led the administration's efforts to keep the state together. Bush recalled Zimmerman in 1992 to protest the outbreak of civil war. The war lasted until 1995 and pitted the country's Muslims, Orthodox Christian Serbs and Catholic Croats against each other. The war killed 260,000 and forced 1.8 million...

A Virginia man who once spent eight years on the run from naval investigators was arrested in Somerset County early today with a trove of high-powered weapons, including a grenade-launcher and two assault rifles, along with maps of a U.S. military base and a civilian neighborhood, authorities said. The federal government’s Joint Terrorism Task Force quickly joined the investigation into Lloyd R. Woodson, 43, who had been staying at a Branchburg motel since last week. Woodson, whose last known address was in Reston, Va., was wearing a bullet-proof vest and carrying one of the assault rifles — customized to shoot...

<p>IF YOU ENJOYED the election crisis of 2000, you’re going to love what Democrat leaders are cooking up for November.</p> <p>"George Soros has purchased the Democratic Party," charges Republican National Committee spokeswoman Christine Iverson. (2) Some might dismiss Miss Iverson's comment as hyberbole. However, Soros' massive soft-money contributions have indisputably given him power over Democrat strategy.</p>

Copenhagen climate change talks must fail, says top scientistExclusive: World's leading climate change expert says summit talks so flawed that deal would be a disaster Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 2 December 2009 20.54 GMT The scientist who convinced the world to take notice of the looming danger of global warming says it would be better for the planet and for future generations if next week's Copenhagen climate change summit ended in collapse. In an interview with the Guardian, James Hansen, the world's pre-eminent climate scientist, said any agreement likely to emerge from the negotiations would be so...

The Kurdish Halabja Centre CHAK has submitted new and possibly incriminating evidence in the appeal case against Dutch businessman Frans van Anraat. The documents were reportedly supplied by the Iraqi tribunal that sentenced former dictator Saddam Hussein to death. In December last year, Frans van Anraat was sentenced to 15 years in jail. The court in The Hague found him guilty of supplying materials for chemical weapons to the Saddam Hussein regime in the 1980s. He was acquitted of complicity in genocide because he reportedly did not know that Saddam Hussein intended to use poison gas on the Iraqi population....

Poland remembers its bloodless revolution of 1989 By VANESSA GERA WARSAW, Poland (AP) — It began in Poland at the ballot box: A season of revolutions that toppled communist regimes from Berlin to Bucharest was set in motion 20 years ago this week by the first semi-free elections ever to take place in the Soviet-dominated eastern bloc. On Thursday, Poles celebrate the anniversary of the ballot, which delivered a sweeping victory to Lech Walesa's pro-democracy Solidarity movement, kicking off a stream of events that will culminate with celebrations of the fall of the Berlin Wall this November and the Dec....

Poland: From Soviet satellite to 'Tiger of Europe' 7:26 a.m. EDT, Sat May 30, 2009 (CNN) -- Leszek Balcerowicz, Poland's former finance minister, recently said his country is enjoying "its best period in 300 years." CNN looks at how the country emerged from communism to become one of eastern Europe's most stable and thriving democracies. Solidarity leader Lech Walesa Solidarity leader Lech Walesa addresses striking workers in Gdansk, Poland in 1989. Modern Poland gained independence in 1918 only to be overrun by Germany and the Soviet Union during the Second World War. Almost six million Poles, including the majority of...

Former Chinese Premier Zhao Ziyang's secret journals were smuggled out of China and are to be published May 19th, for the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations.

When new information about Americans who had cooperated with the Soviet KGB began to emerge in the 1990s, no individual case generated as much controversy as that of the journalist I.F. Stone, who had long been installed in the pantheon of left-wing heroes as a symbol of rectitude and a teller of truth to power before his death in 1989.

Last of two parts. The leader of the local Islamic organization preparing to build a major new mosque in Boston is allegedly linked to a network of Muslim companies and charitable groups in Virginia suspected by federal investigators of providing material support to Islamic terrorists. The chairman of the board of trustees of the Islamic Society of Boston, which has city approval to construct a $22 million cultural center and mosque in Roxbury, was also a leader of an Indiana-based Muslim organization known for its anti-Western rhetoric and for providing a platform for radical Islamists, some of whom have been...

DETROIT - A man charged with smuggling dlrs 12 million in bogus cashiers checks into the United States told agents the man named on the checks may belong to al-Qaida, authorities said Wednesday. Omar Shishani, 47, also told investigators during an interview that "if you want to know about terrorism, I can help you with that," Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Straus said during a hearing. Defense attorney Nabih Ayad denied his client ever made such statements. Shishani, who was born in Jordan but is of Chechen descent, was arrested last week after arriving at Detroit Metropolitan Airport on a flight...

A young clerk with no knowledge of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown allowed a tribute to victims slip into the classified ads page of a newspaper in southwest China, a Hong Kong daily reported on Wednesday. The tiny ad in the lower right corner of page 14 of the Chengdu Evening News on Monday night, read: "Paying tribute to the strong(-willed) mothers of June 4 victims". An investigation was launched by Chinese authorities to find out how the advertisement slipped its way past censors. Public discussion of the massacre is still taboo in Beijing and the government has rejected calls...

South Korean authorities have charged five residents of Seoul, including a Korean-American businessman, with spying for North Korea. Prosecutors say the five took orders from Pyongyang, and funneled an abundant amount of information to North Korean spies, including some sensitive national intelligence. VOA's Kurt Achin reports from Seoul. Friday's indictments followed an intensive two-month investigation of the five defendants, who were arrested in October. South Korean senior prosecutor Ahn Chang-ho announces result of spy scandal investigation, 8 Dec. 2006 South Korean senior prosecutor Ahn Chang-ho announces result of spy scandal investigation, 8 Dec. 2006 Senior South Korean prosecutor Ahn Chang-ho...

Fitting the pieces together In February 2001, the Sunday Times ran the article Was this Saddam’s Bomb by Gwynne Roberts. I couldn't find the original but it is also on Globalsecurity.org . I only recently read this article and found it interesting but very hard to believe. One of the newly released documents CMPC-2003-015757 contains the Roberts' article in English. This is the first time I have seen it. I did some research and found no serious academic or professional rebuttals other than people who also found it hard to believe. However, it seems that supporting evidence has been right...

Hopefully, I can finish writing this column today before it is OTBE. That's slang for the phrase "Over Taken By Events" On Wednesday, I had cranked out a piece for Sunday on two topics: Reaction to the Amish school murders and the nasty Mark Foley flap that has gripped the halls of power. The first part expressed outrage because members of the Westboro Baptist Church had announced they planned to protest at the funerals of the Amish girls killed Monday in Lancaster County, PA. In case you don't remember them, they're the bunch out of Kansas that pickets the funerals...

AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS - Armed men broke into an upscale Amsterdam home and kidnapped the daughter of a millionaire whose fortune came from selling chemicals, including to Iraq in the 1980s, police said Tuesday. Her children were left unharmed. Police said the gunmen stormed into the home of Claudia Melchers, 37, late Monday and took her away. They said they were treating it as a kidnapping. Melchers, who runs a catering company, is the daughter of Hans Melchers, who owns Melchemie Holland, which supplied chemicals to Iraq in the 1980s. It was unclear whether the kidnapping was related to the company's...

The Chinese authorities have compensated the mother of a youth who died after being beaten in police custody during the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protesters, in the first known payment of its kind. A human rights activist said yesterday that police in Chengdu had reportedly paid 70,000 yuan (£4,800) as "hardship assistance" to Tang Deying, who has campaigned for 17 years for an official apology and redress for the death of her son.