Free Republic

A specter has been haunting the Western Hemisphere since mid-summer 2012, the specter of China's People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) routinely patrolling the waters of the Atlantic Ocean. At first sight, it might seem that Beijing is truly laying the groundwork for its foothold in the Atlantic Rim. Not least, Chinese government signed a free-trade agreement with Iceland in April and PLAN vessels recently made a month-long trip in the Mediterranean Sea and Eastern Atlantic. Even so, China's strategic projection in the Atlantic is still far from becoming reality. The whole psychodrama unfolded at the end of June 2012, when...

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia - Prosecutors are pursuing rape charges against a 40-year-old Malaysian who allegedly had sex with a 13-year-old girl and then married her. Restaurant manager Riduan Masmud was charged with committing statutory rape in a parked car in Borneo in February, but his lawyer said he has since married the girl. Rights activists have long criticised Malaysian laws that allow very young Muslims to be wedded with the permission of Islamic courts. Attorney General Abdul Gani Patail said late Wednesday that authorities remain firmly against statutory rape and were compiling a DNA report and other evidence in Riduan's...

“How many isolated incidents does it take to make it not isolated?” Stephen Coughlin on the events in Europe over the last couple of days. Yesterday’s barbaric attack on a British Soldier on a London street & muslim riots in Sweden... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZX6PW6hESPQ

  The European Parliament met Tuesday to discuss the issue of tax evasion throughout the UK and the Eurozone, and how the European Parliament might clamp down on those attempting to protect their well earned wealth from government confiscation.    All was going according to plan, until UKIP member Nigel Farage was given the floor.    Farage immediately launched into a classic rant against Barroso and the rest of the EU bureaucrats, stating that it is not the average man on the street that is engaging in tax fraud, but the European Parliament members themselves:    If we look at the...

Sky sources: military commanders tell soldiers not to wear uniform in public until further notice.

As multiple scandals have simultaneously engulfed the Obama administration, a number of political observers have cautioned Republicans against overreaching. Liberal blogger Greg Sargent writes over at the Washington Post that, “the current scandal-mania gripping the GOP risks bringing about a rerun of 1998, when the frenzy amid the Monica Lewinsky revelations led the GOP to overreach, resulting in backlash.” Charlie Cook reaches a similar conclusion: Red-faced Republicans, circling and preparing to pounce on a second-term Democratic president they loathe, do not respect, and certainly do not fear. Sound familiar? Perhaps reminiscent of Bill Clinton’s second term, after the Monica Lewinsky...

Washington - India and the US have called upon all nations - without naming any country - to take effective steps to work toward eliminating sanctuaries and infrastructure that supports terrorism and to increase efforts to counter violent extremism. The call was made in a joint communiqué issued after the Second US-India Homeland Security Dialogue here Tuesday co-chaired by Indian Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde and US Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano. The communiqué reaffirmed the two nations' own "commitment to, and importance of, bilateral homeland security cooperation on common challenges faced such as terrorism, and countering violent extremism." India...

A British soldier was decapitated a few hundred yards from a UK Army base by two men with large knives and saying ‘ we swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you’. The men were shot when police responded 20 minutes later. The photo above shows a scene. This is the dramatic moment a woman appears to remonstrate with a man carrying a knife following a brutal attack in Woolwich. The two alleged attackers are thought to have waited around for 20 minutes until Metropolitan Police officers arrived and then tried to attack them – but were swiftly...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK) You know that part in the video where the announcer is speaking over the Muslim killer. That’s the part where the killer is saying, “Many, many Ayah throughout the Koran that we must fight them as they fight us.” Instead the official media video cuts the Koran part out and picks up only when the Muslim killer says, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” That doctrine is used today by Muslim countries to demand a literal eye for an eye justice. In August 2000, the Saudi Arabian media reported that Abdel Moti Abdel Rahman...

May 23 (Reuters) - Indonesia's energy regulator says the country's oil production target next year is too optimistic, and wants it scaled back between roughly 4 percent and 8 percent, domestic media reported on Thursday. The former OPEC member was once self-sufficient in oil and gas but has been struggling for years to attract investment to halt declining oil output. Southeast Asia's largest economy has often missed annual oil production targets, which have gradually fallen from a peak of 1.6 million bpd in 1995. The government set an oil production target of between 900,000 and 930,000 barrels per day in...

TEL AVIV – In a largely unnoticed speech to a think tank seven months before the Benghazi attack, a top State Department official described an unprecedented multi-million-dollar U.S. effort to secure anti-aircraft weapons in Libya after the fall of Muammar Gadhafi’s regime. The official, Andrew J. Shapiro, assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, explained how U.S. experts were fully coordinating the collection efforts with the Libyan opposition. He said the efforts were taking place in Benghazi, where a leading U.S. expert was deployed. Shapiro conceded that the Western-backed rebels did not want to give up the...

“Children and women will not be spared,” warned the leaflet. It wasn’t an idle threat. On May 1, Islamist insurgents from the Pejuang Kemerdekaan Fatoni — the Fatoni or Pattani Fighters — opened fire on villagers outside a grocery store in Thailand’s restive deep south. A 2-year-old boy was killed along with his father and four others. Gunmen reportedly fired point-blank into the head of each victim to make sure they were dead. Afterward, the leaflet and its blood-curdling message were circulated around mosques, markets and tea shops, leading to fears the decades-old conflict may have taken a new terrifying...

If news reports correctly reflect public sentiment, it seems fair to deduce that worry and frustration are rising in the Philippines amid diplomatic tension with Taiwan, triggered by the tragic killing of a 65-year-old Taiwanese fisherman by members of the Philippine Coast Guard on May 9 in Balintang Channel. Angered by the incident, Taiwan has made four demands: a formal apology, compensation, punishment for the guilty officers, and fishing talks. Taiwan has since stopped issuing work visas to Filipinos and has conducted military exercises near Philippine waters. To make matters worse, Filipinos, especially politicians, did not immediately recognize the political...

Revelations concerning Benghazi, the IRS, and government probing of the Associated Press make it increasingly clear that Barack Obama was led astray by his friends in the media. They intended no harm to the president, needless to say. But by withholding the criticism that prods public officials into doing a better job, by choosing not to print negative stories and commentaries about the Obama administration, the press corps tempted the president and his staff with visions of invincibility. The pro-Obama news crew—with a boost from the Nobel Peace Prize committee—confirmed the president’s exalted view of himself. They are in part...

WASHINGTON — More than a year after it took effect, a highly touted trade deal with South Korea has failed to produce as expected for the U.S.: Exports are down, imports are up and the trade deficit with the Asian economic powerhouse has ballooned. In Washington state, where global trade is now linked to 2 of every 5 jobs, trade backers are happy: Exports of aircraft and parts to Korea rose by more than 75 percent last year, and Koreans are gobbling up more of the state’s prized cherries and apples. But across the nation, the picture looks far bleaker....

South Korea imported 4.18 million barrels of Iranian crude oil in April, equivalent to 139,400 barrels per day (bpd), Reuters reported citing the latest official data on Wednesday. Earlier in January, statistics by Korea Customs Service indicated that Seoul bought 793,361 metric tons, or 188,000 bpd, of crude oil from Iran in December 2012 which showed a 24-percent rise compared with the 639,281 tons in the corresponding period a year earlier. South Korea halted crude imports from Iran in August and September 2012 after its refiners lost insurance coverage on ships because of the illegal sanctions imposed by the US...

President Barack Obama wants Russia to be friends. Since he and former president Dmitry Medvedev, now the country’s Prime Minister, discussed a “reset” of relations, the Cold War’s Punch & Judy have been more like frenemies than friends.

An energy revolution is unfolding in the United States -- but unlike most past or promised revolutions, this one is not confined to a single fuel or technology. After falling for more than two straight decades after 1985, U.S. crude oil production has now risen for four consecutive years, and in 2012, it posted its largest one-year increase since the dawn of the oil industry more than 150 years ago. Meanwhile, in 2011, natural gas surpassed coal as the United States' biggest source of domestically produced energy, thanks to surging output and plunging prices. And all this growth in U.S....

You may be appalled about IRS inquisitions for Tea Party groups and dragnet subpoenas for investigative reporters, but what's really outrageous, according to some commentators, is that a couple of Republicans recently dared to use the "I-word"—"impeachment." I'm not convinced that any of President Obama's recent scandal eruptions constitute an "impeachable moment." But surely something's gone wrong with our constitutional culture when opinion leaders treat the very invocation of the "I-word" as akin to screaming obscenities in a church."The notion of impeachment is industrial-strength insane," Michael Tomasky fumes in the Daily Beast. Over at the Atlantic, "communitarian" guru Amitai Etzioni...

Days after Hitler’s suicide a group of American soldiers, French prisoners, and, yes, German soldiers defended an Austrian castle against an SS division—the only time Germans and Allies fought together in World War II. Andrew Roberts on a story so wild that it has to be made into a movie.

I am healthy in body and mind, and I am filled with love for my wife and children. I love life and expect nothing beyond the perpetuation of my race and my mind. However, in the evening of this life, in front of huge dangers for my French and European country, I feel the duty to act while I still have strength. I think I need to sacrifice myself to break the lethargy that plagues us. I offer the rest of my life with the intention of protest and foundation. I chose a highly symbolic place, Notre Dame de Paris...

She denies she was close to the Communist rulers in East Germany, where she grew up. So this 1972 photo of her in military-style uniform has left German Chancellor Angela Merkel ‘not amused’. Then called Angela Kasner and aged 17, she is shown happily involved in a civil defence exercise under the gaze of an East German officer. Snip Sonja Felssberg, now 58 and an old school comrade, found the photo and handed it to a national German newspaper. Mrs Merkel will hope the row doesn't undermine her bid for a third term in office Mrs Merkel will hope the...

LONDON — British police on Wednesday arrested two people as they tried to quell anti-Islamist disorder following the brutal murder in London of a man, believed to be a soldier. ... In the hours following the attack, around 250 supporters of the anti-Islamist English Defence League (EDL) gathered at Woolwich Arsenal train station. The group hurled bottles and became involved in minor skirmishes with the police, but later dispersed without any arrests being reported. EDL leader Tommy Robinson was among the crowd and explained: "They're chopping our soldiers' heads off. This is Islam. That's what we've seen today... "Our next...

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Argentina’s president announced a $3.2 billion annual increase in cash handouts for the poor, students and pregnant women Wednesday, saying the programs will reach nearly 700,000 additional children, pay their families 35 percent more and encourage consumer spending in what is an election year. Cristina Fernandez said the total cost of the programs will rise to 41 billion pesos, or $7.8 billion a year at the official exchange rate. She called it a powerful boost to consumer demand. ... Earlier Wednesday, the government announced that a price freeze on 500 consumer goods would remain in place...

The Knights Templar cartel is extorting protection payments from cattlemen, lime growers and businesses such as butchers, prompting some communities to fight back, taking up arms in vigilante patrols. Lime picker Alejandro Ayala chose to seek help from the law instead. After the cartel forced him out of work by shutting down fruit warehouses, he and several dozen co-workers, escorted by Federal Police, met on April 10 with then-state Interior Secretary Jesus Reyna, now the acting governor of the state in western Mexico. The 41-year-old father of two only wanted to get back to work, said his wife, Martha Elena...

Exclusive: A cub scout leader confronted terrorists just seconds after they had beheaded a soldier asking them to hand over their weapons and warning them: "It is only you versus many people, you are going to lose." A mother-of-two described tonight how she put her own life on the line by trying to persuade the soldier’s murderers to hand over their weapons. Cub scout leader Ingrid Loyau-Kennett selflessly engaged the terrorists in conversation and kept her nerve as one of them told her: “We want to start a war in London tonight.” Mrs Loyau-Kennett, 48, from Cornwall, was one of...

A young Somali journalist in Sweden named Amun Abdullahi got herself in trouble with the politically correct elite by reporting the truth about the radicalization of young Somalis in Rinkeby (a culturally enriched suburb of Stockholm), where they were recruited for jihad by the Islamic terrorist group Al-Shabab. The treatment meted out to Ms. Abdullahi made her decide to move back to Somalia. She acknowledges that Mogadishu is a dangerous place, but she considers Sweden more dangerous, because “here you cannot tell the truth.”

HORROR! ISLAMIST WIELDING CLEAVER CHATS WITH VIDEOGRAPHER AFTER MURDERING UK SOLDIER!“We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you.” The Islamists charged police when they arrived. (Warning on Content) (VIDEO-AT-LINK) More video here. Open ISLAMIC Beheadings come to South London! Sky News reported: Two attackers armed with meat cleavers filmed their deadly assault on a man in London, according to Sky sources. A man reported to be a serving soldier died and two people have been shot in Woolwich, after what Sky sources understand is being treated as a terrorist attack. Senior Whitehall sources said the two attackers...

Asghar Bukhari condemns Woolwich attack but then goes on to propagate the Al Qaeda narrative that Britain is to blame for home grown Muslim terrorists due to British military involvement in Muslim countries. He didn't explain that most of the Muslims who die in Muslims countries are murdered by other Muslims i.e. Syria. He also didn't thank NATO for removing the Libyan tyrant Gaddafi. What he did demonstrate quite eloquently was that a proportion of British born Muslims identify with being part of Islam ahead of being part of Britain, how large that proportion is perhaps more worrying... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DaN7quv48jk

One day before President Obama is due to deliver a major speech on national security, his administration on Wednesday formally acknowledged that the United States had killed four American citizens in drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan. In a letter to Congressional leaders obtained by The New York Times, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. disclosed that the administration had deliberately killed Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical Muslim cleric who was killed in a drone strike in September 2011 in Yemen. The American responsibility for Mr. Awlaki’s death has been widely reported, but the administration had until now refused to confirm...

UK: Muslims screaming "Allahu akbar" behead British soldier with machete on public street In the face of appeasement and denial everywhere in the West, the jihad grows more brazen. Here is the feed from the BBC: 1753: Senior aides to Mayor of London Boris Johnson describe the Woolwich killing as a 'sickening deluded deranged act of violence', says the BBC's Robin Brant. 1744: Senior Whitehall sources have told the BBC that the Woolwich attackers are thought to have tried to film their attack whilst shouting "Allahu Akbar" - God is Great, says political editor Nick Robinson. The men were said...

Two as yet unidentified Muslin terrorists chanting Allahu Akbar assaulted a British soldier on a street close to the Royal Barracks at Woolwich in southeast London, shot him, hacked him with knives and a machete and finally beheaded him. This happened in broad daylight Wednesday afternoon, May 22, in the presence of dozens of witnesses, the first such outrage seen in a West European capital. Witnesses told the police that the two terrorists covered in blood had held up body parts of their victim and shouted: "We swear by Allah never to stop killing you.” British TV stations are airing...

The Pew Research Center’s latest survey on Europeans’ attitudes toward EU politics and economics brings across one message loud and clear: Europeans are not happy. People from every major country report extreme dissatisfaction with the economy and their political leaders. Increasingly, they also share a sense that the European Union and economic integration were mistakes for their countries: only 45 percent now view the EU favorably, down from 60 percent in 2012. The one notable exception is Germany, whose people remain the most optimistic about the European project. Despite Germans’ hand-wringing about their spendthrift neighbors, they gave the EU a...

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_907701&feature=iv&src_vid=6Ks6uFjXMos&v=lDtL0TKjw3w

Local MP Nick Raynsford said he had been told the man attacked in the street was a soldier serving at the Royal Artillery Barracks near the attack. Mr Raynsford said the soldier had been returning to the barracks after a day out when he was attacked. London Ambulance Service said one man, believed to be the victim of the machete attack, had died in the incident and two others were injured, one seriously. Several witnesses described seeing a "beheading" while another described seeing a man wearing a Help for Heroes T-shirt being attacked with a machete-style knife and dumped....

What’s the difference between keeping President Obama “updated throughout the night” on a deadly terrorist attack in Benghazi and keeping him “updated throughout the night” on a deadly tornado in Oklahoma? The president could have actually done something about Benghazi. Have you been watching the president the past 36 hours or so? Lots of photos of him calling officials in Oklahoma, offering federal help. Speeches in front of the camera expressing his condolences to the tornado victims and pledging to rebuild. “Our prayers are with the people of Oklahoma today,” Obama said yesterday, “and we’ll back up those prayers with...

The spin that the American people aren’t interested in Benghazi or that it’s only Republicans who think something is fishy isn’t faring too well in a plethora of other polls. The GOP figures on all these are off the charts (vs. the administration). But independents are much more like GOP voters than Dems. In some cases, they view the president more harshly.

While the Obama Administration battles scandals that reveal his administration to be anything but “competent, transparent, and accountable,” Team Obama is sending Kenya fifty million U.S. taxpayer dollars to help make their government more “competent, transparent, and accountable.” The fifty million dollars is being doled out through USAID’s Kenya Democracy, Rights and Governance Office in Nairobi, Kenya. The purpose of the money is to develop a new Kenyan government program that is supposed to: “…Build the capacity of civil society to more effectively represent citizen interests and aspirations to County governments…and…support the development of institutions and structures that will help...

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe on Wednesday signed into law a new constitution and vowed to hold peaceful and clean elections later this year. Mugabe said the new constitution, including democratic reforms and was unanimously accepted in a March referendum, has shown that Zimbabweans are united regardless of political affiliation and was achieved without outside interference. … The new constitution limits the presidency to two five-year terms but is not retroactive, allowing Mugabe, 89, to run against Tsvangirai, 60, for two more five-year terms, enabling him to rule to age 99 if he wins. …

<p>The controversy over the Obama administration’s response to the Benghazi attack last year began at a meeting over coffee on Capitol Hill three days after the assault.</p> <p>It was at this informal session with House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that the ranking Democrat asked David H. Petraeus, who was CIA director at the time, to ensure that committee members did not inadvertently disclose classified information when talking to the news media about the attack.</p>

The European Union’s leaders have agreed to push through a major policy to tackle tax evasion by the end of the year. The EU said the 27 heads of state and governments agreed at summit in Brussels Wednesday to an automatic exchange of bank information among the bloc’s tax authorities to catch tax cheats. … European Union leaders on Wednesday sought to advance their fight against tax fraud and close the loopholes for large corporations’ tax avoidance schemes. … According to a draft summit conclusion obtained by The Associated Press, the leaders are urging rapid progress in the “efforts taken...

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ITV News has obtained footage of a man with bloodied hands and carrying knives speaking into a camera in Woolwich. He made a series of political statements. "We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you," he said.

Fraud in the organic farming sector has become a thriving international industry made up of a complex network of companies that bears all the marks of traditional organised crime. Earlier, in the supposedly good old days, lone farmers or traders in the organic business stooped to cheating at their worst. Here, they sprayed a little pesticide on the field; there, they mixed in a handful of conventional low-cost eggs with the pricey organic eggs. Since neither the volume nor weight changed, hardly anyone twigged. But organic fraudsters in Italy have long passed that stage. There, bands of professionals working with...

A major battle with big consequences for Canada’s labour movement is set to play out over the coming weeks in the Senate. While attention on the Red Chamber is largely focused on expenses, Senators are preparing to debate and likely pass Bill C-377, which would have big policy implications for Canada’s unions.

Hundreds of youths attacked police and emergency services last night as rioting in Stockholm's poor immigrant suburbs escalated. Yesterday's violence, which has intensified over three days of rioting, saw gangs torch dozens of cars and attack two schools and a police station. It is Sweden's worst disorder in years and has shocked the country and provoked a debate on how Sweden is coping with youth unemployment and an influx of immigrants.

IAF Commander, Major General Amir Eshel, spoke Wednesday about the IAF's preparedness for a surprise war scenario with Syria. "A surprise war can come about through many scenarios at present," he said at a conference of the Fisher Institute for National Security in Herzliya. Isolated incidents can escalate very quickly, he explained, and added that "we are committed to being ready in a matter of hours and to operate up to the end of the spectrum."

A man wearing a Help For Heroes T-shirt has reportedly been hacked to death by two machete-wielding assailants in broad daylight in south-east London. The two knifemen are understood to have been shot by armed police, although Scotland Yard will still only confirm officers had been called to reports of ‘an assault’ on John Wilson Street at around 2.20pm. SNIP Eyewitness James Heneghan told LBC 97.3 he and his wife had witnessed two men hacking at a third with two large kitchen knives. ‘We saw the whole incident,’ he said fighting back tears. ‘They were hacking at this poor guy,...

HAVE YOU DONE YOUR PART TO SUPPORT FR FOR THE QUARTER? Over / under Appropriate / inappropriate: 30 Any reference to investigations: 50 Ask somebody else: 25Odds “Mistakes were made” 200:1 Carney is confronted on his bald faced lies about WH role in sanitizing Benghazi talking points: 5:1Benghazi Emails Directly Contradict White House Claims WH Live Stream

President Again Denies Georgia Co-Opted Chechen Fighters April 28, 2013 Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili has again denied that the previous Georgian government recruited and trained a group of Chechens with the aim of infiltrating them into the Russian Federation. Saakashvili was responding to what he termed “irresponsible” and “extremely dangerous” comments made by Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili in an April 26 interview with the TV channel Rustavi-2. Referring to the annual study of the human rights situation in Georgia presented to parliament on April 1 by Public Defender Ucha Nanuashvili, Ivanishvili said in that interview the ongoing probe into the...