Free Republic

For Our Readers we now bring you a welcome Coffee Break from politics as usual. Break away for a few minutes from the grind of work and from this non-stop election; take a few minutes for yourself, spend some extra time with the kids. This we bring you two non-political books for a review. One for you, and one that will spark the imagination of your children and yourself...

ESCHWEILER, Germany — Heinrich Boere's first victim was a pharmacist. Two more victims would follow on a single day, one gunned down at point-blank range in his doorway, the other on the road. Although the killing spree happened in 1944, a footnote to the far greater carnage raging across World War II Europe, it still haunts Germany and the Netherlands, leaving a sense of justice denied by dueling court systems despite the Continent's long march to unity and harmonized institutions.

One of the women who unsuccessfully tried to assassinate President Ford 32 years ago was released on parole Monday from a federal prison in California, according to a Bureau of Prisons spokesman. Sara Jane Moore was released in the morning from the federal women's prison in Dublin, outside San Francisco, according to Mike Truman of the Bureau of Prisons. There was no immediate comment from the prison facility itself, where Moore had been Inmate No. 04851180. Officials said she had a recent parole hearing, but did not know what prompted her release at this time. Nor was it clear what...

The controversy over the manner in which former prime minister Benazir Bhutto died in a Dec 27 attack in Rawalpindi deepened on Saturday night when DawnNews TV aired chilling images of an armed assassin taking a shot at her as she acknowledged the cheers of jubilant party activists from the sunroof of her bullet-proof vehicle. Shot by an amateur photographer, the images telecast by DawnNews TV make it abundantly clear that there was no security cordon around Ms Bhutto’s vehicle. They show a young clean-shaven man, wearing a waistcoat and dark glasses, inch inconspicuously towards the slow-moving vehicle of Ms...

Andrei Lugovoi, the former KGB officer who is subject to a extradition request from the UK, strolled into his Moscow office flashing his broadest grin.As always, he was nattily dressed - this time in an open-necked Thomas Pink shirt. Extending a cuff-linked arm in greeting, he offered his guests a cup of tea and settled languorously into his leather swivel chair. For a man at the heart of the worst diplomatic crisis between Russia and Britain since the end of the Cold War, Mr Lugovoi seems to be insouciance personified. It was not always so. When The Daily Telegraph first...

Nestled at the foot of Syria's coastal mountains, an ancient citadel has been put on the tourist map by restoration and excavation that revealed mysteries of the medieval Assassins sect, once based here. Saladin, the great Muslim leader, laid siege to Masyaf castle in the 12th century. But he thought twice before launching an assault on the Assassins, who had a reputation for mounting daring operations to slay their foes. "Anyone who tried to take the Assassins' castle would be dead the next day," said Haytham Ali Hasan, an archaeologist involved in the restoration project. Although Saladin had conquered Crusader...

1968 - Robert F. Kennedy shot At 12:50 a.m. PDT, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, a presidential candidate, is shot three times in a hail of gunfire in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Five others were wounded. The senator had just completed a speech celebrating his victory in the California presidential primary. The shooter, Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan, had a smoking .22 revolver wrested from his grip and was promptly arrested. Kennedy, critically wounded, was rushed to the hospital, where he fought for his life in the next 24 hours. On the morning of June 6, he died. He was 42...

Reflections of a Green Beret LTC Daniel Marvin is the author of "Victory Edition - Expendable Elite - One Soldier's Journey Into Covert Warfare" and a Veteran of the Korean and Vietnam Wars The Psyche of a Trained Military Assassin By Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Marvin, U.S. Army Special Forces (Retired) Watcher Magazine Contributer November 30, 2006 PEOPLE should know who and where I was when, like a human robot, I eagerly and without question participated directly as an "operative" in government sponsored illegal activities perpetrated by certain powers against any individual, government or activity who would attempt to disrupt the...

PALENVILLE, New York — A suspect in the 1999 assassination of a leftist former Ecuadorean presidential candidate was handed over to U.S. immigration officials in New York state. Christian Steven Ponce, 36, of Quito, Ecuador, was arrested Saturday during a routine traffic stop. A check of his license and a warrant check showed he was wanted in Ecuador in connection with murder, Greene County Sheriff's Deputy Greg Stewart said Sunday. Officials say Ponce was wanted in Ecuador in connection with the killing of Jaime Hurtado and his two assistants. Hurtado, a Marxist congressman and former presidential candidate, and the two...

DUBLIN, Calif. - A woman who once tried to assassinate President Gerald Ford says she regrets the murder attempt and joins Americans in mourning his recent death. Sara Jane Moore was only 40 feet away from Ford outside the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco when she fired a single shot at him on Sept. 22, 1975. As she raised her .38 caliber revolver, Oliver Sipple, a disabled former U.S. Marine who was standing next to her, pushed up her arm as the gun discharged. The bullet flew over Ford's head by several feet, ricocheted off the side of the...

Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned on the direct orders of the Kremlin because of his biting mockery of President Putin, according to a former Soviet spy now living in Britain. Oleg Gordievsky, the most senior KGB agent to defect to Britain, said that the attempt to kill Mr Litvinenko had been state-sponsored. It was carried out by a Russian friend and former colleague who had been recruited secretly in prison by the FSB, the successor to the KGB. The Italian who allegedly put poison in Mr Litvinenko’s sushi “had nothing to do with it”. “Of course it is state-sponsored. He...

11 October, 2006 TURKEY – VATICAN Concerns over the Pope’s visit to Turkey after Father Santoro’s murderer is sentenced The speedy trial left many grey areas uncovered: eyewitnesses not called to testify; instigators not investigated. The culprit’s mother praises the murder calling it “a gift to the state and the nation”. Nationalist-Islamist groups might create problems during the Pope’s upcoming visit. Rome (AsiaNews) – The sentence imposed on O.A., the 16-year-old teenager found guilty of killing Italian priest Fr Andrea Santoro as he was praying in St Mary’s Church in Trabzon, leaves many questions unanswered. Whilst the boy’s mother...

Political terrorism is as old as human history-the very word assassins derives from the Arabic hashshashin (hashish takers), after a terrorist cult that was established in Iran in the 11th century. The followers of this cult are the forerunners of today's terrorists. As their story is told by the great historian Bernard Lewis in The Assassins (first published in 1967), these cultists operated from castles in remote mountain areas under a shadowy leader known as "the Old Man of the Mountain." Their victims were rulers of Islamic dynasties and some lords of the Crusader principalities in the land of Islam....

The man who shot Pope John Paul II has written Pope Benedict XVI from a Turkish jail cell to warn him he risks assassination if he visits Turkey. Vatican officials consider Mehmet Ai Agca's letter to be a warning, not a threat, The Times of London reported Tuesday. The pope is scheduled to visit Turkey in November. "I write as one who knows about these matters very well," Agca said. "Your life is in danger. Don't come to Turkey -- absolutely not!" Benedict caused an uproar in the Muslim world when he quoted a 14th-century Byzantine emperor who said Islam...

The Sad Tale of Two MarinesAssassin Lee Harvey Oswald (October 18, 1939 – November 24, 1963) Lee Harvey Oswald was born in Slidell, Louisiana. His father, Robert Edward Lee Oswald, died before he was born and his mother, Marguerite Claverie, raised him along with two older siblings, his brother Robert and his half-brother John Pic (Marguerite's child by her first marriage). His mother is said to have doted on him to excess, but despite this has been characterized as domineering and quarrelsome. They lived an itinerant lifestyle and before the age of 18 Oswald had lived in 22 different residences...

WASHINGTON -- It was 25 years ago today that John Hinckley tried to kill President Reagan. He fired the shots that struck President Ronald Reagan and three others outside a Washington D.C. hotel. The shooting came just 70 days into the Reagan presidency. It nearly killed him and permanently disabled White House Press Secretary James Brady. The shooting was said to be an attempt by Hinckley to impress actress Jodie Foster. At his trial a year later, Hinckley was found innocent by reason of insanity. He is still in a Washington mental hospital, continuing his efforts to be allowed to...

Robert F. Kennedy's assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, comes up for parole again this week in a potential conflict for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is married to RFK's niece. Sirhan shot Kennedy to death at a Los Angeles hotel in 1968, minutes after the New York senator claimed victory in the California presidential primary. Sirhan received a death sentence, which was commuted to life in prison in 1972 when the California Supreme Court declared the death penalty unconstitutional. The assassin's parole hearing at Corcoran State Prison on Wednesday _ the 13th since his conviction and the first since Schwarzenegger's election in 2003...

ANKARA, Turkey — The man convicted of trying to assassinate Pope John Paul II and released from prison this week failed to report to police Saturday, Turkish media reported Saturday, but his lawyer insisted he was "a free person" who did not have to check in. Mehmet Ali Agca has not been seen in public since his release Thursday, and failed to show up at a police station both Friday and Saturday despite a warning that a warrant could be issued for his arrest, Turkish television networks said. Agca was released from an Istanbul prison after serving some 25 years...

ANKARA, Turkey — A court has approved the release from prison the man who shot Pope John Paul II in 1981, saying he completed his sentence for crimes he committed in Turkey, the semiofficial Anatolia news agency reported Sunday.

An Arab-American college student was convicted Tuesday of joining al Qaeda and plotting to assassinate President Bush. The federal jury rejected Ahmed Omar Abu Ali's claim that Saudi authorities whipped and tortured him to extract a false confession. Abu Ali, a 24-year-old U.S. citizen born to a Jordanian father and raised in Falls Church, Virginia, could get life in prison on charges that include conspiracy to assassinate the president and providing support to al Qaeda. Sentencing was scheduled for February. Abu Ali confessed shortly after his June 2003 arrest at a university in Medina, Saudi Arabia, that he joined al...

‘He Had No Choice’ - The wife of Yitzhak Rabin’s assassin on why her husband wants a new trial, his life in prison and his desire to have a child. Yigal Amir, the right-wing extremist serving a life sentence for assassinating Israeli leader Yitzhak Rabin a decade ago, is demanding a new trial. Though he admitted in court to pulling the trigger and was even filmed in the act, the 35-year-old religious Jew now claims new evidence suggests there might have been a high-level plot to kill Rabin--and that Amir’s bullet therefore may not have been the fatal one. The...

On CNN and MSNBC TV News

Tehran, Iran, Sep. 05 – A brigadier general in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps announced that dozens of “trained volunteers for martyrdom-seeking operations” will soon stage a manoeuvre in a mountainous area west of the Iranian capital to display their “readiness”. “At a time when the American government insists on the existence of a ‘military option’ against Iran, one cannot be opposed to martyrdom-seeking operations”, Hossein Allahkaram told Baztab, a Persian-language website run by former top Revolutionary Guards commanders. “Of the 400 well-trained members of martyrdom-seeking groups, dozens will be taking in the exercise on the heights near Karaj reservoir...

More than half the world's population was not born or was less than 10 years old when a 23-year-old Turk named Mehmet Ali Agca shot the pope four times with a 9-mm pistol from a distance of 15 feet as the pope drove through a crowd of 20,000 in St. Peter's Square. In the round-theclock coverage of the Pope John Paul II's death, remarkably little was said about the plot, even less about those who wanted the pope dead ASAP. It was the Polish pope's election in 1978 and his first visit a year later to his homeland (where he...

POMONA - Calling her husband's killer an ignorant coward, an angry Heidi Steiner wiped away tears and asked a judge to send the teen to prison for life. Steiner's wish was granted when Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Philip Gutierrez on Thursday sentenced 16-year-old Valentino Mitchell Arenas to life in prison without the possibility of parole. He received an additional 25-years-to-life sentence for using a firearm. "My family needs this part of the nightmare to end today," said Steiner, wife of slain California Highway Patrol Officer Thomas Steiner. "We need the peace of mind to know he will spend...

A federal judge denied bail yesterday for an American student charged in an alleged conspiracy to kill President Bush after an FBI agent testified that the man had admitted plotting with al Qaeda to conduct a Sept. 11-style terror attack in the United States. Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, 23, of Falls Church, told FBI agents that he and other members of an al Qaeda cell in Saudi Arabia planned to hijack airplanes overseas and crash them into targets on the East Coast, according to testimony. They also discussed plans to kill members of Congress, blow up ships in U.S. ports...

The coming economic crisis. Unemployment. Health care for the poor. The almost 1,500 dead soldiers. The almost 100,000 dead Iraqis. Armstrong Williams and Maggie Gallagher. The Christian Conservative takeover of our nation. The missing 9 billion. The missing weapons of mass destruction. The impending invasion of Iran, and Syria. The total failure to protect us on 9-11.

Abu Mus'ab Al Zarqawi, on whom the U.S. put a bounty of US$10 million, has been arrested in the Iraqi city of Baakuba, the Emirate newspaper al-Bayane reported on Tuesday citing Kurdish media. According to Al-Bayane’s correspondent in Iraq, the report on Al Zarqawi’s arrest was also reported by the Kurdish media, the first to announce Saddam’s seizure. However, no official report on arresting Al Zarqawi, declared by the U.S. occupation authorities as its "target number one" in Iraq has yet emerged. The real name of Al-Zarqawi, 38, Jordanian is Ahmad al-Khalayleh. Al Zarqawi’s armed group's has divided Iraq into...

The assassin's master sermon By Spengler Westerners identify readily with secular Muslims such as Ayaan Hirshi Ali, member of the Netherlands' parliament and the late Theo van Gogh's collaborator in a film attacking Islam's treatment of women, or with the Canadian Irshad Manji, the lesbian "Muslim refusenik" who published The Trouble with Islam: A Muslim's Call for Reform in Her Faith. But they have something to learn from the letter that Mohammed B pinned with a knife to van Gogh's corpse after he murdered him with knife and pistol on November 2. The text can be found at FaithFreedom.org, along...

The three ambassadors who died violent deaths were Cleo Noel Jr.,killed in March 1973 when Palestinian terrorists struck an embassy in Sudan; Adolph Dubs, killed in 1973 when Afghan police stormed a hotel room where he was being held by terrorists; and Arnold Raphel, who died in 1988 when a plane crashed. Receiving waivers as longtime diplomats with military service were William Rivkin and Philip Crowe. Rivkin, who died in 1967, served as ambassador to Senegal, Gambia and Luxembourg and spent five years of in the Army during World War II, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel. Crowe, who...

WHEN Geert Wilders, a Dutch politician, collected his post from the letterbox on Wednesday he got an unpleasant surprise. Among the bills and junk mail was a letter addressing him as “ugly dog”. It told him he would soon be beheaded. It was an unnerving way to start the day. Only 24 hours earlier Theo van Gogh, the film maker who had often attacked radical Muslims, had been riding along on his bicycle when a Muslim fanatic first shot and then butchered him on a busy street with the nonchalance of an abattoir worker.

Islam's Terrorist Dogma in Muhammed's Own Words Islam rises and falls on Muhammad. He is the religion's sole prophet, Islam’s solitary example, Allah’s lone conduit. Without Muhammad, Allah, the Qur’an, and Islam would be unknown. Yet the picture the Islamic scriptures paint of this man is not flattering; his words aren’t believable. According to the Qur’an and Hadith, Muhammad was a thief, rapist, and terrorist. It’s hardly the example you’d want your neighbor to emulate. Muhammad, Allah, Mecca, and the formation of Islam are completely unknown to secular history. All we know of them is derived from the Qur’an and...

In 1967 and 1968, Japan, Europe and America were aflame with violence. From the London School of Economics, to the Sorbonne, from Japan to Rome and in dozens of cities across the United States, tens of thousands of students staged protests and sit-ins throughout the countries of the First World. While dozens of books with varying theories concerning the causes of this conflagration have been written, most agree implicitly or explicitly on one thing: post-war fecundity, the unusually high world-wide population of young people following World War II, was the fuel for the fire. The irony is rather interesting.

Jailed Assassin 'Weds' Using Loophole Fri Sep 3,10:25 AM ET By Dan Williams JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Defying a life prison term in isolation, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's assassin has secretly married by proxy, his bride said Friday. Larisa Trimbobler said she hoped her in-absentia wedding to Yigal Amir last month would help overturn a court ban on conjugal visits for the ultranationalist who shot Rabin at a 1995 rally in a bid to block peace deals with the Palestinians. Jewish law requires that two men witness a bride receiving her ring and marriage contract from the groom. According to...

BELGRADE: A notorious paramilitary leader suspected of masterminding the assassination of Serbia's prime minister last year has surrendered to police. Milorad Lukovic, known by his nickname "Legija", surrendered in Belgrade on Sunday night, Serbian Interior Minister Dragan Jocic said. He had been on the run since March 12, 2003, when reformist prime minister Zoran Djindjic was gunned down by a sniper in front of his Belgrade government headquarters. Lukovic, who led a feared paramilitary unit loyal to then president Slobodan Milosevic during the 1990s wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, is the prime suspect in the slaying. He has been...

A Vietnam veteran who plotted to kill members of Congress in 1971 is reportedly ready to accept a position working in the presidential campaign of John Kerry. Leaders of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, including John Kerry, debated a plot to assassinate congressmen in November 1971, according to a report in the New York Sun. The Kerry campaign denies the senator and presidential candidate was present at the meeting, saying he quit the organization prior to the heated session in Kansas City, Nov. 12-15, 1971. However, Randy Barnes of Missouri Veterans for Kerry, disputes that account. Barnes participated in...

It was a dark dream full of movement: The jury walks in and hands up the verdict, the judge mouths the words on the paper, the assassin nods his head forward and backward and closes his eyes. The parents cry in happiness, and the government lawyers are struck dumb. The spectators look at each other in astonishment. The dream jumps. In a suburban home sits a witty and competent man whose life was quite ruined by the young man who nods and closes his eyes and hears that he is not guilty of committing ruin. The dream ends with a...

Would-be assassin 'a foreigner' (Filed: 27/12/2003) A suicide bomber who attempted to assassinate President Pervaiz Musharraf of Pakistan by driving a pick-up truck packed with explosives into his motorcade has been identified by police. Authorities in Islamabad did not name the man held but said he was one of three terrorists involved in the Christmas Day attack in Rawalpindi, when two vehicles rammed police cars in the presidential convoy killing 12 people and wounding dozens, but leaving Gen Musharraf unscathed. The attack was the second bombing the Pakistani leader had escaped by seconds in under a fortnight. Sheikh Rashid Ahmed,...

PARIS, Nov 19, 2003 (AP WorldStream via COMTEX) -- Counter-terrorism agents this week arrested a man suspected of links to the assassins of anti-Taliban military commander Ahmed Shah Massood, France's interior minister said Wednesday. The suspect, not identified by name, was arrested Monday, Nicolas Sarkozy told lawmakers during a question and answer session. Sarkozy said the suspect "was in liaison with the assassins of Commander Massood," the western-backed head of the northern alliance opposed to the Taliban. Massood was slain on Sept. 9, 2001 in northern Afghanistan, two days before the terror attacks in the United States, by two men...

<p>THREE decades after being sent to prison for trying to assassinate President Gerald Ford, Charles Manson disciple Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme has found love - with a lesbian serial killer.</p> <p>Kristen Gilbert, a former Northampton, Mass., veterans affairs nurse, was convicted in 2001 of poisoning four patients in her care. Now she is said to be carrying on a caged-heat affair with none other than Manson's former groupie Fromme.</p>

TIME MAGAZINE</FONT COLOR> SEPTEMBER 15, 1975THE GIRL WHO ALMOST KILLED FORD</FONT COLOR> Her name was Lynette Alice Fromme, and she was the first woman ever to attempt to kill a President of the U.S. Her manner was gentle, and while she was pretty in a freckle-faced, red-haired, little-girl sort of way, she would turn few heads on the street. But the 27-year-old woman behind this innocent facade was anything but normal. In her way, Lynette Fromme was as much a social aberration - an amoral freak - as Lee Harvey Oswald, the killer of John F. Kennedy, or Sihan...

RUSSIA SPIED ON BLAIR FOR SADDAM... // Top secret documents obtained by the Sunday Telegraph in Baghdad show that Russia provided Saddam Hussein's regime with wide-ranging assistance in the months leading up to the war, including intelligence on private conversations between Tony Blair and other Western leaders... MORE...

Supreme Court Rejects Appeal of Sirhan-Sirhan Sirhan Sirhan WASHINGTON — Sirhan Sirhan lost a U.S. Supreme Court appeal today. He sought to overturn his conviction in the assassination of U.S. Senator Robert Kennedy in 1968 in Los Angeles. The justices refused without comment to consider claims that Sirhan's defense lawyer was secretly working with the government to win his conviction. Sirhan's new attorney, Lawrence Teeter of Los Angeles, also argued unsuccessfully that a California judge who was a prosecutor in Sirhan's trial had tainted his appeals. Teeter said that colleagues of U.S. District Judge William Matthew Byrne Junior should have...

From The Critics: Publishers Weekly Originally published in 1982 but out-of-print for years, '70s television icon Barris's forgotten autobiography is being reissued to coincide with the December release of a major film adaptation. After two decades of relative obscurity, Barris's memoir may finally find an eager audience. Readers will probably best remember Barris as the creator and host of The Gong Show, but his resume also includes such classic shows as The Dating Game and The Newlywed Game, as well as a hit song, "Palisades Park," and a New York Times bestselling book, You and Me Babe (1970). What...

Interview With the Assassin I know the Lefts infatuation with the JFK assassination is nauseating but here's something new: a documentary movie is coming out on Nov. 8. It is apparently about a guy who says he killed JFK. The promo clip is of an old guy being interviewed from someone off camera. If you have QuickTime you can watch the promo clip here, but here is the full transcript of the clip: Q: Tell me about the crime? A: I was in Dallas November 22, 1963. That mean anything to you? Q: What is it? The day Kennedy was...