Free Republic

Biden-linked Lobbyist Bought Property from Biden’s Bro, Gave Him Mtg Loan in 2005 <><>Lobbyist got two Federal Emergency Mgmt Agency govt contracts worth $5.8M in 2010. <><> Lobbyist was decade-long Senate staffer for Joe Biden Financial records reviewed by Politico show that Joe Biden’s brother James sold one of his three parcels of land in the U.S. Virgin Islands at a substantial profit to a well-connected lobbyist who then extended a mortgage to James on the remaining two parcels. In May 2005, James Biden purchased an acre of land on Water Island for $150,000. He then applied for and received...

While European negotiators focus on Iran's development of enriched plutonium, U.S. intelligence officials say Tehran already has completed all of the elements required for an atomic bomb. The news has stunned President Bush, according to Geostrategy Direct, an intelligence news service led by national security reporter Bill Gertz of the Washington Times. "It's an incredible piece of intelligence that overshadows everything we thought we knew on Iran's nuclear program," one U.S. intelligence source said.

Vice-president Dick Cheney stepped up America's war of words with North Korea yesterday by calling it a police state run by an irresponsible leader indifferent to the fate of his malnourished people.His words came just 48 hours after the Pentagon announced that it was sending 15 F-117A Nighthawk stealth fighter-bombers to South Korea, a US ally, for an undetermined period. The aircraft crews, trained to seek out targets with precision weapons, needed to familiarise themselves with the Korean terrain, the air force said. Speaking to CNN in an interview broadcast last night, Mr Cheney described North Korea's leader, Kim Jong...

If Bill Clinton was the victim of a crank telephone call, don’t blame the Republicans - he can thank his fellow Democrat Jimmy Buffett. It all started when a 22-year-old busboy at a Delray Beach, Fla., restaurant, Jason Martin, found the singer's cell phone on May 29 after Buffett had left. Martin and his friends "were scrolling down the list on Jimmy's phone, going 'Wow!'" Martin told Palm Beach Post "Page Two" columnist Jose Lambiet. The big names on Buffett's phone included Clinton, Al Gore and Jimmy Carter, country stars Clint Black, George Strait and Alan Jackson, actors George Clooney,...

What happened in Uzbekistan? The government and opposition protesters are sharply at odds in Uzbekistan days after the eastern city of Andijan exploded into violence. A May 15 AP report claimed some 500 bodies had been laid out in a school in Andijan for identification by relatives, "corroborating witness accounts of hundreds killed" when soldiers opened fire on street protests. Medical authorities also reported some 2,000 wounded in local hospitals. However, a May 18 account on Russia's MosNews.com quotes Uzbek officials denying this very death toll. “Not a single civilian was killed by government forces there,” Prosecutor General Rashid Kadyrov...

By JAMES GORDON MEEK WASHINGTON - Before he was captured last spring, Osama Bin Laden's top operational commander was solely focused on killing President Bush and Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharaff, the Daily News has learned. The capture last May of Al Qaeda's No. 3 leader, Abu Faraj Al-Libi, apparently thwarted plots to assassinate the two partners in the global war on terror, said a senior Pakistani official, whose information was corroborated by two senior U.S. counterterrorism officials. "Al-Libi had one mission: Kill Bush and Musharraf," the Pakistani official told The News. "He wanted to kill Bush in the White...

Another couple of letters from my friend's son. Words in brackets are mine. - Swordmaker Salome-Ma-LA-ka (Peace be unto you). The Date is now 11 May 2005, and I find myself writing you once again. I know . "WOW, two letters in less than 4 months, he must be bored" (Not that that is a bad thing, except if you are on the receiving end of my mundane letters... (grin). My newly assembled Team has now been on several large raid/ strike operations with the famous Wolf Brigade and in three raids, and have netted over 156 suspected insurgents. For...

Ankara The government is close to making its decision on a Washington proposal to use the southern air base of Incirlik as a cargo hub for U.S. forces operating in the region, said a deputy from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). A decision on the issue will be made very soon. I cannot tell you when exactly since I am not in the government but it will be very soon, Murat Mercan, AKP's deputy chairman told a meeting in Washington, called, "Can the U.S.-Turkish Relationship be Repaired" Other attendees of the event, hosted by the American Enterprise Institute,...

LONDON, May 11 (IranMania) - Two of Iran's most senior dissident pro-reform Shiite clerics have hit out at the Islamic regime ahead of next month's presidential election, accusing hardliners of failing to deliver on revolutionary promises of fundamental freedoms. In interviews with AFP, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri and Grand Ayatollah Yusef Saanei also voiced pessimism over the prospect for a free and fair poll on June 17. "My point of view, and I cannot say more than this, is that things are not going in the right direction," said Montazeri, who is in his mid 80s and is one...

How many have heard of Nadhmi Auchi? Why are we not hearing more about him? Nadhmi Auchi was born in 1937. He is an Iraqi born British-resident and Britain's 22nd wealthiest individual. Nadhmi Auchi co-conspired with fellow Baathist Saddam Hussein in 1959 to assassinate then Prime Minister Abd al-Karim Qasim. Rezko and Obama are both financially connected to him. MSNBC reports that Nadhmi Auchi had helped Orascom (which owns Djezzy GSM), owned by Onsi Sawiris, gain a contract to set-up mobile phone networks in post-Saddam's Iraq. As per Orascom's annual report, page 65, Huawei Technologies is listed as a subsidiary...

An animal rights group and six members were convicted Thursday of inciting violence against a company that tests drugs and household products on animals. The group, Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, maintained its actions were protected under the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech. The government charged that SHAC waged a five-year campaign of threats, harassment and vandalism against Huntingdon Life Sciences and posted information on the SHAC Web site about the lab's employees and those who do business with Huntingdon. Many of those targeted saw their homes vandalized, and they and their families received threatening e-mails, faxes and phone...

Obama's Chilling Crew   By Andrew WaldenFrontPageMagazine.com | Tuesday, April 28, 2009 Why is there so little media investigation of the financing behind Barack Obama’s early political sponsor—and now convicted felon—Tony Rezko?      The dual US-Syrian citizen Rezko--who assisted Obama in the purchase of his Chicago mansion--was heavily funded by loans from Iraqi-British ex-Baathist billionaire Nadhmi Auchi.  According to testimony at Rezko’s trial, Obama met Auchi at an April 3, 2004 event at Rezko’s home during Obama’s 2004 US Senate campaign.  The Times of London reports discovering, “state documents in Illinois recording that Fintrade Services, a Panamanian company, lent...

A female Palestinian security prisoner in Ashkelon’s Shikma Prison tore up pages from a copy of the Quran and threw them toward the toilet during a routine search Sunday, the Israel Prison Service said. The 22-year-old detainee from a village near Hebron is an Islamic Jihad member who was arrested three months ago in suspicion of hostile terror activity. She resisted a routine search by a female guard, and then took out torn Quran pages from her skirt and hurled them toward the toilet. The guard handed the torn Quran pages to the prison’s director, and Prison Service officials said...

MOSCOW (AP) - A Muslim cleric formerly held at Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba said Tuesday U.S. guards there regularly desecrated the Qur'an by putting it into a toilet, although he added he never witnessed it himself. Airat Vakhitov, who described himself as a former imam of a mosque in Tatarstan, a majority Muslim republic in southern Russia, is one of seven men released from Guantanamo in 2004 and returned to Russia. He and the six others were held in Russia for three months, then released a year ago. Vakhitov said at a news conference organized by the state RIA-Novosti...

By labeling the U.S. anti-terrorism prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the "gulag of our times," the people of Amnesty International must think we're stupid or ignorant. Stupid or ignorant enough to fall for the assertion that whatever is happening at Guantanamo is the legal and moral equivalent of what happened in the hundreds of slave labor and concentration camps scattered throughout the former communist Soviet Union. Equivalent to a system that brutalized tens of millions, of which untold millions died of starvation, exposure, exhaustion, torture, illness or execution. OK, maybe in light of this generation's dismal ignorance of history, we...

May 29, 2008 By Andrew Walden (Hawai'i Free Press) Nadhmi Auchi, seen here with the Governor of Illinois, Rob Blagojevich (middle) at a 2004 Chicago dinner in Auchi's honor arranged by Antonin Rezko (potentially, right)[1]. All three men have been convicted of corruption related charges (Auchi 2003, Rezko 2008, Blagojevich 2009).[2] “A British-Iraqi billionaire lent millions of dollars to Barack Obama's fundraiser (dual US-Syrian citizen Tony Rezko) just weeks before an imprudent land deal that has returned to haunt the presidential contender, an investigation by The Times discloses. The money transfer raises the question of whether funds from Nadhmi Auchi,...

NEW YORK --A Florida doctor was convicted Monday of providing material support to terrorists by agreeing to treat injured al-Qaida fighters so they could return to Iraq to battle Americans. Dr. Rafiq Abdus Sabir, 52, was convicted in federal court in Manhattan after a three-week trial that featured testimony by him and Ali Soufan, an FBI agent who posed as an al-Qaida recruiter in a sting operation that led to four arrests. When the verdict was read, Sabir looked straight ahead. Later, as he was escorted from the courtroom, he waved to supporters, who said, "Stay strong." His lawyer, Ed...

PESHAWAR, Aug 18: A son-in-law of Al Qaeda No 2 Dr Ayman Al-Zawahiri is believed to be the mastermind of the plot to blow up transatlantic flights and he met one or some of the plotters at a place close to the Pakistan-Afghan border, credible sources told Dawn. “The mastermind in the planes bombing plot is Zawahiri’s son-in-law,” said the sources who did not want to be named. “He is the guy being looked for,” they added. Osama bin Laden’s top lieutenant is known to have several sons-in-law. One of them was reported to have been killed in a...