Free Republic

History: President Salvador Allende of Chile really did commit suicide in 1973, an inquest concluded on Tuesday. Now will the Left stop saying the U.S. and Chile's army did him in? Except perhaps for Che Guevara, no one has quite been the heroic totem to the global left than the late Marxist president of Chile, whose death in 1973 made him a martyr to socialism. Allende seemingly legitimized socialism as a democratically elected leader, the first Marxist who in 1970 didn't shoot his way to power.That gave the left hope for more. Elected with just 36% of the vote in...

If anyone has a right to be frustrated and demoralized about the eligibility issue, it is me. For nearly three years, I have stuck my neck out on it, devoting massive news-gathering resources to unwrapping Barack Obama's real-life narrative, endured abuse as a "conspiracy theorist" and "wacko" only to see my news organization still standing virtually alone. Ironically, I'm not discouraged at all about getting resolution to this controversy. In fact, I believe it is right around the corner. I can understand the reason for the discouragement of others. They've watched court case after court case dismissed. They've watched an...

In July, the (NEH) sponsored a workshop on “History and Commemoration: The Legacies of the Pacific War in WWII” for college professors in Hawaii. Professor Penelope Blake, a veteran professor of Humanities at Rock Valley College in Rockford, Ill., was one of 25 American scholars chosen to attend the workshop, but was reportedly disheartened to find the conference “driven by an overt political bias and a blatant anti-American agenda.” Professor Blake is now reportedly calling on Congress to implement better oversight over the NEH. In a letter addressed directly to her Illinois congressman, Rep. Don Manzullo, Blake documents conference details...

The Secret Financial Network Behind "Wizard" George Soros by William Engdahl EIR Investigation Executive Intelligence Review (EIR), November 1, 1996 The dossier that follows is based upon a report released on Oct. 1 by EIR's bureau in Wiesbaden, Germany, titled "A Profile of Mega-Speculator George Soros." Research was contributed by Mark Burdman, Elisabeth Hellenbroich, Paolo Raimondi, and Scott Thompson. ......................................................... Time magazine has characterized financier George Soros as a "modern-day Robin Hood," who robs from the rich to give to the poor countries of eastern Europe and Russia. It claimed that Soros makes huge financial gains by speculating against western...

Wikileaks continues to rock the political world by shedding light on conspiracies, corruption and cover-ups. The latest batch of diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks reveals what can only be characterized as a U.S.-led conspiracy to force GMOs onto European countries by making those countries pay a steep price if they resist. The cable reveals the words of Craig Stapleton, the US ambassador to France, who was pushing the commercial interests of the biotech industry by attempting to force GMOs into France. In his own words (below), he expresses his frustration with the idea that France might pass environmental laws that...

Alleged WikiLeaks source suffers out of spotlightThe Irish Times - Tuesday, December 21, 2010 Concern is growing over the harsh conditions of Bradley Manning’s detention as he awaits his court martial, writes LARA MARLOWE, Washington Correspondent WHILE JULIAN Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, celebrated his release on bail last week with cocktails before being driven to “mansion arrest” at a 650-acre estate in Sussex, Private First Class Bradley Manning was mouldering away in solitary confinement in the brig at the Marine Corps base at Quantico, Virginia, deprived of exercise, news or even a sheet or pillow. Assange (39) is preparing...

Richard C. Holbrooke, 69, passed away Monday after doctors conducted the surgery to repair a tear in an artery in his heart. Most recently he served as the President’s point man in the highly volatile Afghan-Pakistani war zone. World leaders today mourn the death of a diplomat who led the end of the Bosnian war on the 15th anniversary of the peace deal he helped design. Deal Maker Of Respect In 1995 Mr Holbrooke seized the opportunity presented by the Bosnian/Croatian military prowess against the Serbs and the Nato decision after the Srebrenica massacre to finally intervene with air attacks....

WE'RE NOT in the habit of writing movie reviews. But the recently released film "Fair Game" - which covers a poisonous Washington controversy during the war in Iraq - deserves some editorial page comment, if only because of what its promoters are saying about it. The protagonists portrayed in the movie, former diplomat Joseph C. Wilson IV and former spy Valerie Plame, claim that it tells the true story of their battle with the Bush administration over Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and Ms. Plame's exposure as a CIA agent. "It's accurate," Ms. Plame told The Post. Said Mr. Wilson:...

The Leftwing extremist group called 'The Southern Poverty Law Center' of Montgomery, Alabama has with one stroke of the pen smeared conservatives and Patriots in its new, infamous 'blacklist' it entitles, 'Meet the Patriots.' Among those it includes in the blacklist are some of the most reputable conservative Patriots in America today, such as U.S. Representative Michelle Bachmann (R-MN), federal judge and Fox News legal analyst Andrew Napolitano, U.S. Representative Ron Paul (R-TX), Gun Owners of America (GOA) chief Larry Pratt, Fox News personality Glenn Beck, and U.S. Representative Paul Broun (R-GA), among others.

What do you get when you try to check out Mao Tse-Tung's infamous "The Little Red Book" from the library? A visit from Homeland Security agents. At least that's what happened to a senior at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, according to the Standard-Times newspaper of New Bedford, Mass. The college student was visited by federal agents two months ago, after he requested a copy of Mao's tome on communism. Two history professors at UMass Dartmouth, Brian Glyn Williams and Robert Pontbriand, said the student told them he requested the book through the college library's interlibrary loan program. The student,...

<p>NEW BEDFORD -- The UMass Dartmouth student who claimed to have been visited by Homeland Security agents over his request for "The Little Red Book" by Mao Zedong has admitted to making up the entire story.</p> <p>The 22-year-old student tearfully admitted he made the story up to his history professor, Dr. Brian Glyn Williams, and his parents, after being confronted with the inconsistencies in his account.</p>

Minutes after Naomi Watts, movie star, arrived at the CIA’s secret Virginia training center called The Farm, she was thrown to the ground in a way that left bruises. When she cried out in pain, her instructor glared and informed her, “Don’t say 'ow’ again unless you need to go to the hospital.” During the days that followed, she was “stripped of everything that cloaked her in specialness,” said director Doug Liman. The actress chose the rough treatment, Liman said. He chose Watts to play Valerie Plame Wilson, the spy who was outed in one of the most controversial episodes...

Members of Congress Internal Memorandum -- What to Tell Your Constituents in Answer to Obama Eligibility Questions - Their Talking Points Internal Memo Revealed. This was the spin that the Members of Congress were given to keep the American electorate at bay and confused in the debate about Obama's eligibility issues all the while the Congress did nothing to investigate the matter in a congressional hearing like they did for similar concerns about John McCain.

Section 4 of the 25th Amendment likely to be invoked; Obama being shipped out! Washington has not witnessed so much top level White House intrigue since October 20, 1973, when a Saturday night saw President Nixon fire the Watergate independent counsel, the U.S. attorney general, and the deputy attorney general in the “Saturday Night Massacre.” Just ten days earlier, Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned after being charged with accepting bribes while governor of Maryland. In the case of President Obama, the senior firings are not happening during a single nght but the recent involuntary sudden departures of the White House...

(CBS) A German resident held by the U.S. for almost five years tells 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley that Americans tortured him in many ways - including hanging him from the ceiling for five days early in his captivity when he was in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Even after determining he was not a terrorist, Murat Kurnaz says the torture continued. Kurnaz tells his story for the first time on American television this Sunday, March 30, at 7 p.m. ET/PT. Kurnaz, an ethnic Turk born and raised in Germany, went to Pakistan in late 2001 at age 19 to study Islam and...

On Tuesday, President Barack Obama told Americans from the Oval Office: ...So tonight, I am announcing that the American combat mission in Iraq has ended. Operation Iraqi Freedom is over, and the Iraqi people now have lead responsibility for the security of their country. The Associated Press thinks that's not quite an accurate reflection of how things really are in Iraq. In a memo to the wire service's staffers posted on AP's website, standards editor Tom Kent writes: ...To begin with, combat in Iraq is not over, and we should not uncritically repeat suggestions that it is, even if they...

A new report set to be released Tuesday renews concerns about the long-term environmental impact of the Gulf Coast oil disaster, and efforts to permanently plug the ruptured BP oil well have been delayed again. Researchers at the University of South Florida have concluded that oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill may have settled to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico further east than previously suspected -- and at levels toxic to marine life. Initial findings from a new survey of the Gulf conclude that dispersants may have sent droplets of crude to the ocean floor, where it has...

The Federal Reserve's latest report on regional economic activity shows that the U.S. recovery continued in June and early July, but that signs of a slowdown were evident.

As our readers have already learned, Rep. Andre Carson gathered Capitol Hill reporters around him and told the tale of racial slurs and menacing crowds on the verge of hurling rocks at the congressmen. Our first few videos showed the congressmen coming out of the Cannon Office Building, walking down the steps and into Independence Avenue from various angles. None of those videos revealed the racial hatred Rep. Carson conveyed to reporters that day and none of the videos showed a mob rushing or in any way impeding the congressmen. When Rep. Carson gathered reporters around him to spread the...

A healthcare policy expert says there are details in the Senate healthcare bill that will frighten everyone. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) has unveiled his more than 2,000-page healthcare bill with an estimated price tag of $849 billion. However, as Grace Marie Turner of the Galen Institute points out, one of the reasons the bill was scored under President Obama's $900 billion cost goal is because no one gets any benefit from the program until 2014. "So they start collecting taxes and fees now, and...the first ten years of full implementation of this bill is $2.5 trillion, and that's...

In her new role as a Fox News Channel contributor, Sarah Palin blasted a “60 Minutes” report on her knowledge during the 2008 presidential campaign. She appeared on “The O’Reilly Factor,” the top-rated program in cable news. The segment on the CBS newsmagazine suggested that she didn’t know the difference between North and South Korea. “I had been warned, you know, don’t watch,” Palin said of the segment. “It’s a bunch of B.S. from [Steve] Schmidt and from of those.” Schmidt was the manager of Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign, and Palin was McCain’s running mate. She said the Korea...

The map, which demonstrates the devastating effects of global warming in just a century, shows how San Francisco Airport would be completely underwater if sea levels were to rise by ...60in. The coastline on the map was also coloured, highlighting how nearly half a million Californians are at risk from rising sea levels. The map, named CalAdapt, which was revealed at a press conference on Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay by Mr Schwarzenegger and Google CEO Eric Schmidt, was created as part of a plan for the state to adapt to global warming. 'Within a century, Treasure Island, this...

Meanwhile, in a parallel universe, the blogs are still making the running on the "hack" – which is now looking more like a leak - leaving the government with an inauspicious start to its poster campaign – which starts today – on climate change. Billboards across 900 locations in the UK will "offer a stark message for any climate change sceptics" and are timed to precede a United Nations climate conference in Copenhagen next month, the Department of Energy and Climate Change is saying. The sceptics aren't listening though ... the game has moved on. The warmists have been outed.

Earlier this month, Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) stirred up a tempest when they announced that they could overcome their political differences and agree on the critical need for a national policy that addresses the threat of climate change and moves the United States toward energy independence. Since the publication of their opinion piece, “Yes We Can (Pass Climate Change Legislation)” in the New York Times, pundits and policy experts alike have declared the Senators’ announcement a “game-changer” and possible tipping point that could lead to the passage of a bipartisan climate change bill — maybe even...

On the June 3, 2009 Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, host Rachel Maddow cited a false quote attributed to Rush Limbaugh in which the radio host supposedly said he wanted to award Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassin the Medal of Honor. Since Limbaugh expressed interest in becoming part owner of the St. Louis Rams in October, several MSNBC hosts have repeated that and other false quotes. Reacting to Limbaugh calling then Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor a racist, Maddow declared: “When you get called racist by the guy who says the assassin of Martin Luther King, Jr. should get the...

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Tuesday the worst recession since the 1930s is probably over, although he cautioned that pain — especially for the nearly 15 million unemployed Americans — will persist. Bernanke said the economy likely is growing now, but he warned that won't be sufficient to prevent the unemployment rate, now at a 26-year high of 9.7 percent, from rising. "From a technical perspective, the recession is very likely over at this point," Bernanke said in responding to questions at the Brookings Institution. "It's still going to feel like a very weak economy for some time because...

I was reading the Chron’s piece about Sheila Jackson Lee’s town hall, when something caught my eye: One supporter, Dr. Roxana Mayer, a physician who does not live in Jackson Lee’s district, praised the reform plan for overhauling a broken system. “I don’t know what there is in the bill that creates such panic,” she said. In this video, Mayer claims to be a general practitioner, eliciting applause and even a hug from Queen Sheila: I’m not sure why, but something didn’t smell right. So my colleagues and I did a little digging, and wouldn’t you know it? Roxana Mayer...

9/11 widow Ellen Mariani(Derry, N.H.) says George W. Bush is a gangster. We talk to her and her lawyer Philip J. Berg: Ellen Mariani last saw her husband Louis Neil early on the morning of September 11, 2001, at Logan Airport, where they were taking different flights to Los Angeles for a daughter’s wedding. He hadn’t gotten his tickets until the last minute, and couldn’t get on her flight, but there were seats open on Flight 175. Neil Mariani died when that plane crashed into the south tower of the World Trade Center, and after rejecting a settlement offer of...

Last month, the Statistical Assessment Service (STATS), a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization affiliated with George Mason University, released "Science Suppressed: How America became obsessed with BPA," a report which accuses the media "of ignoring the extensive research of respected scientists and major health agencies in the United States and around the world, which found BPA was not only safe but played an important role in ensuring food safety."   It also confirms what countless previous studies have said; BPA is safe. If you're unfamiliar with Bisphenol A (BPA), it is a chemical used to make lightweight, versatile, durable, high-performance plastics.  It's...

"To entertain her daughter, Michelle Obama loves to make monkey sounds." Photo caption of Michelle Obama speaking to her daughter Malia posted on The Free Republic. Disclaimer on The Free Republic: "Free Republic does not advocate or condone racism, violence, rebellion, secession, or an overthrow of the government. " For those of you who have argued vociferously with me that we are living in a "post-racial America" rather than an America in which Jim Crow is on steroids, you apparently have not read the daily diet of racism that the readers and bloggers on this site consume and then regurgitate....

MOSSAD'S KILLING MACHINE COMES TO BRITAIN A killing war between Israel's Mossad and Islamic fanatics came closer this weekend in Britain. The Israeli intelligence agency has sent four members of its kidon assassination squad to this country, to join fifteen other handpicked katsas, its relentless field agents. Their brief is to "disable" any of the "close to 50" British Muslims that the extremist Islamic group, Al-Muhajiroun, last week boasted were ready to carry out suicide missions similar to the one in Tel Aviv. Al-Muhajiroun spokesman, Asif Butt, said the 50 were "primed and ready to go". The threat was sufficient...

Gordon Brown is today engulfed in crisis after a key aide resigned and the Tories threatened legal action over explosive leaked emails discussing how to smear senior Conservatives, including David Cameron's wife, Samantha, with rumours about their private lives. Damian McBride, one of the prime minister's closest advisers, quit over his exchange with the Labour blogger Derek Draper, in which the two discussed setting up a website to air scurrilous allegations about opponents, including unfounded allegations about affairs between leading opposition MPs. The idea was still being actively discussed until a fortnight ago, the Observer has learned. ..... Among the...

There is no science to validate the thesis that follows, no academy to adjudicate it, and little hope of convincing the Obama faithful even to consider it, let alone concede its validity.  That much said, the evidence is self-evident, accessible to all, and overwhelming.  The thesis is simple enough:  Bill Ayers served as Barack Obama's muse in the creation of Obama's 1995 memoir, Dreams From My Father.  Ayers breathed creative life into this ungifted amateur, who had written nothing of note before, and reconceived him as a literary prodigy.  "I was astonished by his ability to write, to think, to...

In a sequence of events that neatly captures the contradictions of Barack Obama’s rise through Illinois politics, a phone call he made three months ago to urge passage of a state ethics bill indirectly contributed to the downfall of a fellow Democrat he twice supported, Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich. Mr. Obama placed the call to his political mentor, Emil Jones Jr., president of the Illinois Senate. Mr. Jones was a critic of the legislation, which sought to curb the influence of money in politics, as was Mr. Blagojevich, who had vetoed it. But after the call from Mr. Obama, the...

CHERRY HILL, N.J. - He railed against the United States, helped scout out military installations for attack, offered to introduce his comrades to an arms dealer, and gave them a list of weapons he could procure, including machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. These were not the actions of a terrorist, but of a paid FBI informant who helped bring down an alleged plot by six Muslim men to massacre U.S. soldiers at New Jersey's Fort Dix. And those actions have raised questions of whether the government crossed the line and pushed the six men down a path they would not...

NEW YORK, (AP) -- MSNBC was the victim of a hoax when it reported that an adviser to John McCain had identified himself as the source of an embarrassing story about former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, the network said Wednesday. David Shuster, an anchor for the cable news network, said on air Monday that Martin Eisenstadt, a McCain policy adviser, had come forth and identified himself as the source of a Fox News Channel story saying Palin had mistakenly believed Africa was a country instead of a continent. Eisenstadt identifies himself on a blog as a senior fellow at...

CNN) -- With 10 days until Election Day, long-brewing tensions between GOP vice presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin and key aides to Sen. John McCain have become so intense, they are spilling out in public, sources say. Several McCain advisers have suggested to CNN that they have become increasingly frustrated with what one aide described as Palin "going rogue." A Palin associate, however, said the candidate is simply trying to "bust free" of what she believes was a damaging and mismanaged roll-out. McCain sources say Palin has gone off-message several times, and they privately wonder whether the incidents were deliberate....

With his electoral prospects fading by the day, Senator John McCain has fallen out with his vice-presidential running mate about the direction of his White House campaign. McCain has become alarmed about the fury unleashed by Sarah Palin, the moose-hunting “pitbull in lipstick”, against Senator Barack Obama. Cries of “terrorist” and “kill him” have accompanied the tirades by the governor of Alaska against the Democratic nominee at Republican rallies. Mark Salter, McCain’s long-serving chief of staff, is understood to have told campaign insiders that he would prefer his boss, a former Vietnam prisoner of war, to suffer an “honourable defeat”...

Eric Haney, a retired command sergeant major of the U.S. Army, was a founding member of Delta Force, the military's elite covert counter-terrorist unit. Q: What's your assessment of the war in Iraq? A: Utter debacle. But it had to be from the very first.

(CBS) Shortly after 9/11, the Pentagon ordered a top secret team of American commandos into Afghanistan with a single, simple order: kill Osama bin Laden. It was America's best chance to eliminate the leader of al Qaeda. The inside story of exactly what happened in that mission, and how close it came to its objective has never been told until now.

WASILLA, Alaska- Back in 1996, when she first became mayor, Sarah Palin asked the city librarian if she would be all right with censoring library books should she be asked to do so. According to news coverage at the time, the librarian said she would definitely not be all right with it. A few months later, the librarian, Mary Ellen Emmons, got a letter from Palin telling her she was going to be fired. The censorship issue was not mentioned as a reason for the firing. The letter just said the new mayor felt Emmons didn't fully support her and...

VILLANOVA, Pennsylvania: As the 60th anniversary of the Berlin Airlift approaches, recycled myths about its accomplishments drop from the sky like candy into the waiting arms of Americans hungry for a foreign policy alternative to endless war and secret torture. But politicians and pundits looking for a humanitarian policy to win the world's hearts and minds should look back to the airlift with caution. Sixty years after British and American planes began to fly supplies to West Berliners facing a Soviet blockade, even the faux news program "Colbert Report" has reprised the Cold War refrain that the airlift saved the...

Three months ago, at a birthday party, I met a dour young man wearing a “9/11 was an inside job” T-shirt. I’d already been noticing a lot of “inside job” stickers and graffiti around town, and now, faced with a real-life Truther, I found that I couldn’t stop staring at him: He was at a celebration of a friend’s life and he was wearing a shirt announcing that nearly 3,000 American citizens were killed by our own government. It’s easy to dismiss a guy like this as a lone wolf, but he’s actually not alone: A 2006 Scripps Survey Research...

MI6 plotted to murder Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic in a staged car accident in a tunnel five years before Diana, Princess of Wales died in a similar crash, a renegade former spy has told the inquest into her death. Richard Tomlinson, who worked for MI6 in the early 1990s, told the High Court he had seen a two page document, drawn up in 1992, detailing three plans to kill Mr Milosevic. Diana inquest: MI6 plotted tunnel murder One plan was to use a strobe light to blind Mr Milosevic’s chauffeur The first involved using a Serb opposition paramilitary group, which...

Reagan's War, Not Charlie Wilson's Media Bias: Hollywood would have us believe that Democrats defeated the evil empire in Afghanistan, and that President Reagan played only a minor role and even helped pave the way to 9/11. If you think Hollywood's idea of a Christmas movie being one about the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan is strange, even stranger is the plot line. "Charlie Wilson's War," which opened Friday, manages to reduce the president who won the Cold War to a background footnote. Charlie Wilson was a pro-abortion, Equal Rights Amendment-supporting congressman widely known as "the liberal from Lufkin." To his...

I saw that Coca-Cola is promoting the movie [<a href="http://zenit.org/article-21008?l=english">What Every Parent Should Know About "The Golden Compass"</a>], and I wrote to them to express my feelings about it -- including mentioning that the villains are called "The Magisterium" in the movie. Here is the response I got: "We appreciate the opportunity to respond to your concerns. "The Golden Compass movie is a story about friendship, love, loyalty, tolerance, courage and responsibility. This movie also provides an opportunity for Coca-Cola to help raise awareness about climate change and the perilous state of the polar bear. "We do not believe that...

By now, almost everyone in America has heard of Jena, La., because they've all heard the story of the "Jena 6." White students hanging nooses barely punished, a schoolyard fight, excessive punishment for the six black attackers, racist local officials, public outrage and protests – the outside media made sure everyone knew the basics. There's just one problem: The media got most of the basics wrong. In fact, I have never before witnessed such a disgrace in professional journalism. Myths replaced facts, and journalists abdicated their solemn duty to investigate every claim because they were seduced by a powerfully appealing...

Mike Huckabee would not have been our first nominee to be engineer of the Straight Talk Express, but among the Republican presidential candidates that is what he unmistakably is. Except for the dour libertarian, Ron Paul, Huckabee alone among the nine gray eminences dares to challenge party orthodoxy. Whether it is conviction or a calculated attempt to bring some attention to his laggard campaign we cannot say, but at the moment we are sort of proud of the second boy from Hope. Back in 2000 it was Sen. John McCain who separated himself from the field by insisting on a...

The History Channel is running a pretty good special on the assorted groups behind the 9-11 conspiracy theories. I decided to take a look at some of these sites, particularly the site devoted to the "documentary" called "Loose Change". This is the one that Charlie Sheen is supposed to be considering narrating. What I found was the usual collection of goofballs, morons and runaway nutjobs. It seems no amount of factual information can influence these people. What they display is the expected amount of self-delusional fantasies and paranoia. What I found that I DID'T expect (but should have) was that,...

Army investigators have concluded that the private whose dispatches for the New Republic accused his fellow soldiers of petty cruelties in Iraq was not telling the truth.... ~~~Snip~~~ An investigation has been completed and the allegations made by Pvt. Beauchamp were found to be false," an Army statement said. "His platoon and company were interviewed and no one could substantiate the claims."... ~~~Snip~~~