Free Republic

.. US filmmaker Sean Stone, son of Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone, converted to Islam on Tuesday in Iran, where he is making a documentary, he told AFP. "The conversion to Islam is not abandoning Christianity or Judaism, which I was born with. It means I have accepted Mohammad and other prophets," he said in a brief telephone call from the central Iranian city of Isfahan, where he underwent the ceremony. Sean Stone's famous father is Jewish, while his mother is Christian. The 27-year-old filmmaker did not say why he converted. According to Iran's Fars news agency, Sean Stone had become...

Sean Penn Appointed Haitian Ambassador LOS ANGELES, USA (defend.ht) - Sean Penn has accepted the job of Ambassador for Haiti, where he has spent the last two years managing a tent camp for displaced Haitians after the earthquake. Sean Penn will now be the "ambassador at large" for the Caribbean nation. Penn was offered the position by Haitian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Laurent Lamothe, while at the Cinema for Peace benefit in Los Angeles on Saturday night. Picking up a humanitarian award for his work in Haiti, he told the crowd: "I do accept [the job]," before adding it would...

Cuba's iconic revolutionary Fidel Castro warned that the world was on an "inexorable" march into the abyss this year because of climate change and the threat of nuclear war. In an article published Thursday -- Castro's first since November 2011 -- the 85-year-old retired leader also took aim at the United States and at gas shale "fracking," a new source of fossil fuels condemned by environmentalists. He did not, however, address rumors of his death, which were denied by an official Cuban blogger after they surfaced on Twitter earlier this week. "Many dangers threaten us, but two of them, nuclear...

Buddy of mine just heard it on a Dominican radio station Can anyone confirm this?

PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) — North Korea says a fierce snowstorm paused and the sky began glowing red above sacred Mount Paektu just minutes before leader Kim Jong Il's death. State media say the ice on volcanic Lake Chon at the mountain in the far north cracked with a load roar. And in the city of Hamhung, a Manchurian crane circled a statue of Kim's father, late President Kim Il Sung, before alighting on a tree, its head drooping before it took off toward Pyongyang. State media say Kim died Saturday morning at age 69. His death was announced two...

Occupy DC protesters violently injured peaceful Tea Party go-ers (some elderly) and attemped to force entry into the Washington Convention Center on Friday (Nov 4, 2011), where Americans for Prosperity is hosting their "Defending the American Dream Summit." The protesters also formed roadblocks, surrounding the convention center and only allowing non-luxury cars to pass. Parents with their children were caught in the violence. Some injured... Auto/pedestrian accidents occured as Occupy protestors rushed into the streets hurling profanities at drivers and attempting to block drivers' paths. This has to stop...

Last night during the tent city construction at Occupy Chicago on Michigan Ave, John Bachtell, a spokesperson from the national board of the Communist Party U.S.A., addressed the angry mob of nearly 3000. He claimed to “bring greetings and support” from the party, to the occupy movement. Bachtell received a very warm welcome and overwhelming applause form the “occupiers.” “We will be with this movement….til we make all the changes that we know we have to make….This movement is part and parcel in the great tradition in this country of people powered democracy….This is the next big step of the...

From the outside looking in, Occupy Wall Street's headquarters at Zuccotti Park may look like a clutter of tents and sleeping bags. But just a few blocks away, the so-called Trojan Horse of this well-organized movement is in plain sight. That's where the Occupy Wall Street supply room is located, a stockpile of food, clothing, and medical supplies housed in a former bank on the corner of Broadway and Exchange. "We get anywhere from 100 to 400 boxes a day," protester Saum Eskandandi told NBC New York as he led a tour of the supply room. "People have been sending...

<p>One day, at the height of her fame in the mid-Seventies, Jane Fonda turned up on the doorstep of her ex-husband, Roger Vadim. She was lugging a bulging sack.</p> <p>Vadim’s glamorous new girlfriend let her in, thrilled to meet the movie icon at last. But her excitement soon turned to disbelief. The star of Julia, Klute and The China Syndrome had come to do her laundry. Why? Because her second husband, Tom Hayden, a Left-wing activist with a bulbous nose and acne-scarred cheeks, had forbidden her to have either a washing machine or dishwasher. Far too bourgeois.</p>

An analysis of the exhumed remains of former Chilean president Salvador Allende has confirmed that he committed suicide during the September 1973 coup against his regime that brought General Augusto Pinochet to power. Experts studying the remains of Salvador Allende concluded the former president committed suicide as soldiers involved in a 1973 coup closed in on the presidential palace, the late leader's daughter said Tuesday. "The conclusion is the same one that the Allende family had already reached," said Senator Isabel Allende. "On September 11, 1973, faced with extreme circumstances, he made the decision to take his own life instead...

There's a troubling irony in today's vigorous debate about environmental policy. Some of the most vocal groups clamoring for a cleaner planet are also the ones stalling progress toward that same goal. A closer look at contemporary interest-group politics reveals why this is the case. Republicans and Democrats both desire cleaner air and water. As policymakers we debate the best way to achieve these goals, balancing environmental progress with economic costs. We consider and weigh multiple objectives: grow jobs, expand the economy and protect the planet. While not always agreeing on the means, we share the same aspirations. But some...

One of the worst doctored photographs in Internet history? That's the emerging verdict on a clumsily altered photo of bureacrats in the sleepy county of Huili, in southwest China's Sichuan province. In an ill-fated PR stunt, the trio of area government officials are shown appearing to float over the surface of a road, casting nary a shadow in a bid to promote a local road construction project. "The saga began on Monday when Huili's website published a picture showing, according to the accompanying story, three local officials inspecting a newly completed road construction project this month," the Guardian's Peter Walker...

Hugo Chávez extended stay in a Cuban hospital is because he is in critical condition, according to a report in El Nuevo Herald. The Venezuelan president, who was last seen in public June 9 and last heard from on June 12, on a phone call with Venezuelan state television, was said to have been treated for a pelvic abscess in Cuba. During the call Chávez said that medical tests showed no sign of any "malignant" illness.

It is clear that we are an utterly failed species. Left to our own devices, all we do is embrace the profane, the untrue, and outright evil.In only a few decades, I have seen America START as a world leader in industry; a world policy maker; and a world instructor in how to be free and a functional representative republic. I have seen America FINISH as a second-rate financial has-beenl a country ridiculed on the international stage; and a nearly-complete Police State where SWAT kills with impunity and political 'crimes' abound.Russia, too, attempted to throw off the chains of Communism,...

May 10, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Warren Buffett apparently thinks you can have too many customers. Several years ago, I went toe-to-toe with Buffett — and won. The occasion was the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting. I had introduced a resolution designed to stop company funds from being spent on population control and abortion campaigns. Buffett, you see, was convinced that there were too many people on the planet and, as the company’s majority shareholder, he was using company money to try and reduce their number. Buffett is not a religious man, so I made the argument in economic terms that any...

TERRACE, British Columbia, April 27, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A British Columbia Green party candidate in Canada’s upcoming federal election said he’s glad he decided to “get rid of” his unborn child and appeared to imply that pregnant women look “like the back end of a bus.” “I am sick to death about hearing murdering babies,” said Roger Benham, Green candidate for Skeena-Bulkley Valley, in a candidates’ debate April 20th.  He told the audience that he had conceived a child with a woman when he was 25.  “Thank God we decided to get rid of it,” he said, according to the...

Last weekend, Tea Parties throughout the country held Tax Day rallies to protest bloated government budgets, ever increasing debt, and the ballooning entitlement state. Some among the Left were not content to let the Tea Party own Tax Day. In Arkansas, an anti-Tea Party rally dubbed "Make Them Pay" took place on the steps of the state capitol. Jim Lendall, a former state representative and 2010 Green Party Gubernatorial nominee, was applauded when he took the podium to call for the beheading of businessmen and conservatives. The French, inspired by our American Revolution, knew how to deal with the wealthy...

Remember when churches used to have "Sunday School" buses that picked up your children and gave them Bible lessons on their way to church? Now, thanks to the Southern California Young Communist League (YCL), a branch of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), little red school buses may be coming to your neighborhood. But they won't be teaching your children Bible lessons, or courses in American history that highlight the freedom we have and those who died to protect it. They'll be teaching your children the wonders of communism and socialism. According to an article at The Blaze, the "National Red...

BEIJING, Dec 23 (ANTARA) - Chinese newspapers, books and websites will no longer be allowed to use English words and phrases, the country`s publishing body has announced, saying the "purity" of the Chinese language is in peril. The General Administration of Press and Publication, which announced the new rule on Monday, said the increasing use of English words and abbreviations in Chinese texts had caused confusion and was a means of "abusing the language". Such practices "severely damaged the standard and purity of the Chinese language and disrupted the harmonious and healthy language and cultural environment, causing negative social impacts,"...

Unbelievable. The Obama Administration knew that Manuel Zelaya was an anti-democratic anti-Semitic pig whose goal was to become ruler for life like his buddy Hugo Chavez. But, Team Obama decided to support him for the greater good of Latin American relations. Barack Obama even cut off aid to Honduras in order to appease tyrant Hugo Chavez.

f First Lady Michelle Obama has her way, every public school cafeteria across this great nation will have a salad bar full of lettuce, carrots, and communism. The First Lady's Let's Move Salad Bars To Schools program aims to put 6,000 kid-sized salad bars in schools. Each salad bar costs $2,500, and the whole program costs $15 million. So on top of promoting a vegetable-y socialist agenda, they're also expensive! (Schools are being encouraged to raise part of the money themselves.) Big government run amock! The goal of course is to hoodwink children into eating their vegetables. >>> The goal...

After three years of eating steaks the size of elephants' ears, Kevin bids farewell The BBC's America correspondent Kevin Connolly is packing his bags for a new post in the Middle East. During his three years in the US he has visited 46 out of 50 states and covered the country's election of its first black president.Sometime around the spring of 1835, a young Frenchman called Alexis de Tocqueville travelled to the United States on a mission guaranteed to make Americans bristle with irritation. He was going to understand them, and explain them. De Tocqueville was smart, Gallic and aristocratic...

WikiLeaks cables reveal the crew of an American Airlines jet was detained in Venezuela in 2008 after making a minor joke over the plane's PA about President Hugo Chavez, forcing American to fly the plane empty to get them home.

Did Ronald Reagan secretly give the FBI names of people he suspected were communists when he was a movie star and Hollywood labor chief in the 1940s? This allegation resurfaced in the media just before Thanksgiving when the San Jose Mercury News, which published excerpts from Reagan's FBI file to great international acclaim in 1985, ran a column revisiting its original story about Reagan the snitch. It implies that Reagan was a shadowy operator in cahoots with the notorious FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover, orchestrating their next Hollywood Red scare. The answer? Maybe. But Reagan was hardly betraying friends and...

It started innocently enough, like many encounters with obscenity on the internet. I was just surfin’ away, minding my own business, looking for something I don’t even remember now on Google… when up popped something utterly profane. It was a search result with this intriguing line: Help me build a library of lefty kids books – Do you know any good left wing propoganda for toddlers? (I know, I know. This individual should master English before he hits the “propaganda” too hard… his spelling and punctuation skills leave a bit to be desired.) ANYWAY. Allow me to drag you over...

Without intending to, I've indoctrinated my kids. Lately, I've found myself in the odd position of explaining and even justifying the conservative point of view. If you shut out the noise, you can find persuasive arguments on both sides of the divide. Here are a few that I came up with: On the social safety net The conservative view • People are responsible for themselves – and, given the chance, they're capable of supporting themselves and their families. If the government makes a practice of providing for people (with welfare, for example), they become dependent and lose their will to...

Mark Ritchie File 4 hereMinnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie is regarded as a "non-party friend" by the Communist Party USA. So highly does the Communist Party regard Mr. Ritchie, that he has been allowed to attend an high level "not to be publicized" Party meeting in Minneapolis. Some of the Communist Party members at this meeting, later supported Ritchie in his Secretary of State election campaigns. One of them, labor leader Mark Froemke, went on to support two of Ritchie's Democratic - Farmer - Labor - Party colleagues - Al Franken and Mark Dayton in their respective election campaigns....

(Link only.) Perhaps the biggest catch since the Cold War, or so the article says. Head of US deep cover.

FORT LEONARD WOOD, Mo. (Nov. 10, 2010) — FOX News contributor and retired Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North is coming to Fort Leonard Wood today for a book signing tour featuring his newest book, After Jihad. “We have some great events going on in November,” said Lisa Comstock, sales and merchandise manager for Fort Leonard Wood PX. North will be available for from noon to 1 p.m. for a book signing at the PX where copies of his book will be available for purchase. “He’ll have a bus and we’ll be doing pictures as well as autographing; we will have...

New Delhi: The Left may have staged protests during his visit but US President Barack Obama was "glad" to meet an Indian communist leader last evening. "I am glad to meet an Indian communist. I am told that communists have been part of the (Indian) political mainstream," Obama told CPM Politburo member Sitaram Yechury at the Rashtrapati Bhawan banquet as they were introduced and both shook hands. Yechury told Obama that the Indian communists have been in the political mainstream "throughout". Marking a departure from their past practice, leaders and MPs of the CPM and CPI, known for their anti-US...

Communist Party USA campaigns for Obama

Olivia Wilde has seen the future, and if you don't vote, it's "terrifying." The stunning "House" star gets political in a new video for MoveOn.org called "Back From the Future," aimed at increasing voter turnout by showing what will happen if Democrats don't hit the polls. It starts with a mock newscast to show just how bad things have gotten in the future. "Pamela Anderson announced today that she and MTV 'Jersey Shore' star The Situation will be getting married in early November," a news anchor reports. "We'll be devoting all our resources to this story, even taking reporters off...

When comics Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert announced their rallies on the national mall scheduled for this Saturday, they may not have expected—or wanted—an endorsement from Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers. But Ayers told the Ford Motor Company-sponsored Green Festival in Washington, D.C. last Saturday that the event will be a needed respite from the “Alice in Wonderland” world of military domination of the planet and wars waged by the U.S. “empire.” The October 30 Stewart/Colbert rallies, dubbed “Restore Sanity” and “Keep Fear Alive,” are “worth attending,” Ayers said. Ayers’ wife, Bernardine Dohrn, once labeled a “violent maniac” by a...

I have heard Savage and some others calling for the return of the House Un-American Activities Committee. While that may sound like a good idea on the surface, in fact it would be a terrible mistake. I found several threads on Dunderground discussing how a revived HUAC could be used to investigate talk radio, the Tea Party, this site, Fox News, etc. I'd like to hear people's thoughts on this.

Nearly a year after Haiti’s devastating earthquake, Sean Penn’s JP Haitian Relief Organization is managing a massive tent city. And now, as several of his relief partners announce they are pulling out, Penn is standing his ground.

COMMIES AND THOSE TIED TO COMMIES (primary source) Obama Has Communist Trumka in the Same Position He Has Us. Communist Unions: SEIU (Eliseo Medina 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) (SEIU thugs attack 1, 2) (illegal immigrants) (Obama worked for SEIU) (Gerry Hudson, EVP), AFL-CIO (1, 2, 3), UNITE HERE, Blue Diamond Workers Organizing Committee, Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, Change to Win, United Farm Workers of America (Dolores Huerta), United Steel Workers of America (1, 2), Chicago Teamsters Union, National Health & Human Services Union, Workers Party of Brazil, Party of Democratic Socialism of Germany. Communist Organizations: Progressive Party, Democratic...

<p>A backlash against China's powerful presence in the Zambian economy has been triggered by an incident in which 11 miners were shot by Chinese managers.</p> <p>Police said that the Chinese executives opened fire on workers protesting against poor pay and conditions at the Collum coal mine in the southern Sinazongwe province on Friday.</p>

What is it with Hollywood personalities going to Venezuela and being swept off their feet by the thuggish dictator Hugo Chávez. They come back with these stories claiming he is just misconstrued by the media and that he’s really a great guy. On Oct. 7, at an appearance at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C., CNBC “Power Lunch” co-host Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, in an appearance promoting her book “You Know I'm Right: More Prosperity, Less Government,” explained how this could happen. She told an audience that Chávez has a very charismatic, seductive personality. “I was telling – my two most interesting...

Insane, self-righteous lib says she would strangle handicapped (BBC) Virginia Ironside of London's Independent newspaper sparks outrage

Brazil has long accepted far-left Lula da Silva as their beloved president. Relying on natural resources and help from our far-left White House resident, he has kept the Brazilian economy on course and enjoyed popularity. As you might expect, Brazil didn’t seem to mind that their most popular presidential candidate, Dilma Rousseff, is a communist and a terrorist. After all, history classes in Brazil don’t teach that communism killed off 100 million, so they simply aren’t aware of the death connection. (Of course, how many Americans are?). So the last thing you might expect of this country that tolerates Marxism...

Cliff Kincaid writes of the protest, "The “peace director” of the October 2 “One Nation Working Together” rally says that the U.S. should immediately withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan, military aid to Israel should be ended, and that Iran has the right to develop nuclear weapons as long as the U.S. has them. He also says that Marxists are invited to participate at his upcoming rally. Michael McPhearson, one of the key organizers of the event and former executive director of Veterans for Peace, tells Accuracy in Media, “I’m not all that concerned if you’re a Republican, Democrat, or Marxist...

While certain executives at News Corp. may not agree, it is obvious that at the moment, the top business news channel on Wall Street is CNBC. With that in mind director Oliver Stone prominently features the network's anchors prominently in the upcoming sequel to his 1987 film "Wall Street." This despite the fact that the film is produced by the 20th Century Fox film studio, a sister company to Fox News Channel and Fox Business Network. Per MarketWatch.com's : And no actual journalists shine brighter in the new 20th Century Fox production than Maria Bartiromo and her CNBC posse. If...

A scientist and his wife who both once worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory were arrested Friday after an FBI sting operation and charged with conspiring to help develop a nuclear weapon for Venezuela. After their arrest, the two appeared in federal court in Albuquerque, N.M. They were accused of dealing with an FBI undercover agent posing as a Venezuelan agent. The government did not allege that Venezuela or anyone working for it sought U.S. secrets. The pair were indicted for allegedly communicating classified nuclear weapons data to a person they believed to be a Venezuelan government official.

Every fall local organizations in Germany assemble goodie bags to give to children on their first day of elementary school... But following a mix-up involving Germany's Communist Party, six-year olds have been left grasping pens that project erotic images. The incident... occurred at the Adolf Reichwein School in Essen, northwest Germany... "The German Communist Party deeply regrets what has happened and is outraged that this kind of thing, which borders on pornography, can be purchased in normal shops," the party said in a statement. They claim to have purchased the pens from a discount shop under the impression the pens...

“You know, half the people in this place could be prosecuted.” Oliver Stone, the film director, was sitting across from me over a late lunch in the Grill Room of the Four Seasons restaurant in Midtown Manhattan last week. [SNIP] If one man epitomizes the populist view of Wall Street and corporate America, it is Mr. Stone, whose new film, “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps” opens next week. It is the sequel to his hit movie “Wall Street” in 1987. The original tapped into the zeitgeist of the moment — “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good,” as...

Independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders may have a Communist Party USA agent in his camp. The person in question is Mike Bayer, who is currently serving as Treasurer of Bernie Sanders' Vermont Progressive Party. The Senator from Vermont, is a self proclaimed socialist and proud of it. As a student in Chicago, Sanders was active in the Young Peoples Socialist League and has a decades old relationship with America's largest marxist organization, Democratic Socialists of America. It was in conjunction with D.S.A. that Sanders formed, in 1991, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, now a more than eighty strong alliance of far...

Massachusetts (Reuters) - President Barack Obama on Thursday made four recess job appointments to his administration, including a new U.S. ambassador to El Salvador, postponing the need for Senate approval. Recess appointments, which have been made by presidents of both parties, allow a president to temporarily bypass the Senate confirmation process required for senior federal posts by filling vacant positions while lawmakers are on vacation.

Amazon review of 1959 book by Merrill Root. Reveals how totalitarian enemies try to control what is taught in public schools. ///START REVIEW/// The Illusion of Choice. Or: How Commies Win and We Lose /// One big question circa 1955 was why so many American POWs in the Korean War had surrendered to Communist interrogation techniques? Why had these young soldiers become what the Communists themselves called "progressives"--that is, men who were Communist sympathizers or collaborators--or both--during their time in captivity? The author's starting point is that these young Americans knew little that was positive about their country, for the...

MILWAUKEE (AP) -- For students entering college this fall, e-mail is too slow, phones have never had cords and the computers they played with as kids are now in museums. The Class of 2014 thinks of Clint Eastwood more as a sensitive director than as Dirty Harry urging punks to "go ahead, make my day." Few incoming freshmen know how to write in cursive or have ever worn a wristwatch....