Free Republic

Lt. Gen. Gary North was to assume command Wednesday of Pacific Air Forces at Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii. Before the ceremony, he was to be promoted to the rank of general, according to a news release. North succeeds Gen. Howie Chandler, who took command in November 2007. Chandler is heading to the Pentagon to be the vice chief of staff of the Air Force. North commanded the 9th Air Force and U.S. Air Forces Central, at Shaw Air Force Base, S.C. There, he ran air campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, the release said.

PHUKET, Thailand | So much for diplomacy with North Korea. The Pyongyang government and the Obama administration's chief diplomat Thursday escalated a war of words, with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton telling Pyongyang it has "no friends" and North Korea calling her "vulgar" and criticizing her appearance. Representatives of both nations were at an annual Asian security summit that the countries have used in the past to engineer high-level encounters. This year, the two traded insults and even found themselves competing for the same stage to address the media. The back-and-forth further diminished hopes that the Obama administration will...

BOGOTA — He calls himself "Cesar," but his real name is Gerardo Aguilar Ramirez. As "comandante" of the 1st Front of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia — and one of the top 10 leaders of the hyper-violent FARC — he has well-earned credentials as a drug-dealing terrorist with a penchant for trading in hostages. This Thursday, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents put Ramirez, aka Cesar, in shackles, marched him aboard an aircraft here in Bogota, and took him to the U.S. to stand trial for his crimes. Our Fox News' "War Stories" team was here to record the event...

Community Standards Your problem is a theological one. But you did address a real problem. The problem you addressed is the problem you would not admit. The problem is that the American community agrees with the Supreme Court of the United States. The general American public agrees that abortion should be legal. Maybe it does not agree that the third-trimester abortions should be legal, but it is not going to throw out of office the civil magistrates who enforce the Supreme Court's ruling. In fact, the Supreme Court has authorized third-trimester abortion and any other kind of abortion, but the...

Our Goal and Solution:We are seeking a long-term and sustainable peace with North Korea. We can't be afraid of them just because they have nuclear weapons, and we should make that point clear. But we should offer them our markets to compete in. The Situation:There are supposedly two more missiles in the works one from each coast with a 4000 mile range. Seattle is 4,700 miles away, which makes it not far-fetched to consider North Korea a nuclear threat. Let’s look at the blast that they set off last week. Some called it a fizzle, but the blast itself was...

It's been a week since this happened (on May 25, 2009 Beijing Time), and strangely enough, this is story is not in the mainstream media in the United States. There are only a few American outlets such as the Wall Street Journal that have reported on this. The others seem to want to only focus on the missile firing instead of the actual nuclear testing that is the size of the one that once destroyed Hiroshima. This is huge. It means that NORTH KOREA ACTUALLY HAS THE BOMB. From Guardian UK: Country risks further international isolation as underground nuclear explosion...

According to the media script, Dick Cheney delivered a 5,000-word rebuttal to President Obama’s speech last Thursday. The fact that Cheney’s speech was scheduled, and penned, weeks before Obama’s staff loaded the president’s teleprompter, won’t persuade the media that Cheney wasn’t “rebutting” Obama, any more than 10 years of planetary cooling will persuade Gorebots that the Earth isn’t erupting into flame. (We’re following that piper to the pier: hold the life preservers…) Cheney delivered his speech to the American Enterprise Institute, and, as usual, acted like he was in a race to conclude his remarks before the bug up-his-butt reached...

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - North Korea announced Monday that it successfully carried out a second underground nuclear test, less than two months after launching a rocket widely believed to be a test of its long-range missile technology. North Korea, incensed by U.N. Security Council condemnation of its April 5 rocket launch, had warned last month that it would restart it rogue nuclear program, conduct a second atomic test as a follow-up to its first one in 2006, and carry out long-range missile tests. On Monday, the country's official Korean Central News Agency said the regime "successfully conducted one more...

The failure so far of the U.N. Security Council or other international organization to respond to a weekend rocket launch by North Korea does not signal a "win" for the rogue nation, the State Department said Monday.

President Bush is pursuing a globalist agenda to create a North American Union, effectively erasing our borders with both Mexico and Canada. This was the hidden agenda behind the Bush administration's true open borders policy. Secretly, the Bush administration is pursuing a policy to expand NAFTA politically, setting the stage for a North American Union designed to encompass the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. What the Bush administration truly wants is the free, unimpeded movement of people across open borders with Mexico and Canada. President Bush intends to abrogate U.S. sovereignty to the North American Union, a new economic and political...

The Hershey Co.'s Reading operation is closing and 252 workers are losing their jobs A bitter taste Reading never claimed to be the sweetest place on earth. But since 1986, this self-appointed "home of the pretzel" has been the proud host of a Hershey Co. plant that cranked out somewhat glitzier snacks such as York Peppermint Patties, 5th Avenue and Zagnut candy bars and Jolly Rancher hard candies. It all ends today. The last Peppermint Pattie line will come to a halt after the final swing shift, workers interviewed this week said. Unlike with much of the grim economic news,...

Al Qaeda terrorists have been left fearing the Black Death plague after it wiped out at least 40 insurgents at an Algerian training camp, it was reported today. The horror disease, which killed 25 million people in medieval Europe, is understood to have been found in a militant’s body dumped at a roadside. Terror group AQLIM (al Qaeda in the Land of the Islamic Maghreb) was forced to turn its shelter in the Yakouren forests into mass graves and flee, it has been claimed. Now al Qaeda chiefs are said to fear the plague has been passed into other cells...

Researcher: North Korea has 'weaponized' plutonium Updated Sat. Jan. 17 2009 8:23 AM ET The Associated Press BEIJING -- North Korea has hardened its stance on disarmament, saying it has "weaponized" plutonium into warheads, but hopes for better ties with U.S. President-elect Barack Obama, a U.S. researcher who visited the North said Saturday. Officials say the weapons cannot be inspected and Pyongyang might keep them even if it normalizes relations with Washington, said Selig Harrison, director of the Washington-based Center for International Policy's Asia program. Harrison said he met this week with the North's nuclear envoy, Ri Gun, and other...

AP's headline is "Cousins plead guilty in plot to kill US soldiers." But of course they didn't get involved in this plot because they were cousins. The Department of Homeland Security doesn't need to begin a Global War On Cousins. They did this because they wanted to wage jihad. They met the jihad recruiter at a Muslim convention. They were clearly inspired by Islamic teachings regarding the necessity to wage war against unbelievers. But since none of that is suitable for an AP headline, we get...cousins. An update on this story. "Cousins plead guilty in plot to kill US soldiers,"...

I recall reading that a Union soldier, observing his comrades fleeing in wide-eyed panic from the "rebel yell" at Chancellorsville said his former unit resembled "close-packed ranks rushing like legions of the damned."

There are very few positive things one can say about the North Korean communist regime. For years they have lashed out at their neighbors, openly defied any request made of them, and worst of all they basically imprisoned all of their people with the fear of death. shindonghyuk In North Korea,The Punishment is Always Death picture Shin Dong Hyuk, who grew up in one of North Korea’s worst prison camps, is one of the few have have broken North Korean law and lived to tell of it. The interview Shin Dong Hyuk gave upon successfully escaping the prison camp is...

During financial disaster week, Barack Obama took the lead over John McCain in national polls, by 2.3 percent in the Real Clear Politics average. But the reshuffling of the political deck seems to have opened up more states for McCain and have closed off some states for Obama, specifically, in the northern tier of the country: call it the Frozen North. Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Washington seem to be in play now. Preconvention polls showed Obama well ahead in each; postconvention polls show him leading by only a few points. That's 31 electoral votes on the table. And North Dakota, Montana,...

North Korea says it has stopped disabling its nuclear facilities, accusing the US of reneging on a six-party disarmament deal.Work was suspended on 14 August, a foreign ministry spokesman told the state news agency KCNA. North Korea says it took the step because the US failed to remove it from a list of state sponsors of terrorism.

Have you ever noticed that herds of grazing animals all face the same way?Images from Google Earth have confirmed that cattle tend to align their bodies in a north-south direction. Wild deer also display this behaviour - a phenomenon that has apparently gone unnoticed by herdsmen and hunters for thousands of years.

ISNA, A Named Hamas Co-Conspirator, Recently Propagated Material Calling For Murder Of Jews (Denver, CO) Americans Against Hate (AAH) is calling on the Democratic National Convention Committee (DNCC) to disinvite Ingrid Mattson, the National President of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), from speaking at its Denver convention. Mattson is scheduled to help lead a convention interfaith forum tomorrow, Sunday, August 24th. ISNA, a group related to the violent Muslim Brotherhood, was named by the U.S. government a co-conspirator for a 2007 federal trial which dealt with the financing of millions of dollars to Hamas. Also, as recently as...

listen live to their interview here http://player.play.it/player/player.html?id=80&onestat=wtic

Research Casts New Light on History of North America Research by a Valparaiso University geography professor and his students lends support to evidence the first humans to settle the Americas came from Europe, rather than crossing a Bering Strait land-ice bridge. Valparaiso’s research shows the Kankakee Sand Islands – a series of hundreds of small dunes in the Kankakee River area of Northwest Indiana and northeastern Illinois – were created 14,500 to 15,000 years ago and that the region could not have been covered by ice as previously thought. Newswise — Research by a Valparaiso University geography professor and his...

Ollie North calls Wes Clark "petty and small"

In the summer of 1863, Robert E. Lee led an ill-advised incursion into Pennsylvania. His army was defeated at Gettysburg, and thence afterward Lee beat a fighting retreat until the South lost the Civil War. One hundred and forty-five years later, the South--or what has become the South-Southwest--has won another kind of Civil War. It has transformed the sensibility of the country. It is setting the agenda for our political, social and religious mores--in Pennsylvania and everywhere else. This thought, which has been recurring to me regularly over the years as I've watched the Southernization of our national politics at...

Enjoy your stay... at North Korean embassy By Harry de Quetteville in Berlin Last Updated: 1:52am BST 05/04/2008 North Korea, one of the poorest countries in the world, is reportedly raising much needed funds by transforming parts of its Berlin embassy complex into a backpacker hostel. The deal would see North Korea, famous for the secretive regime of dictator Kim Jong-il, throwing open the doors of former diplomatic buildings to budget travellers from around the world. The large embassy compound is located in former East Berlin close to tourist attractions including Checkpoint Charlie and the Brandenburg Gate. A display case...

As we noted here and, I believe, elsewhere, it has been rumored that North Korean nuclear engineers have been sent to Syria to aid that country's nuclear weapons development program. Today, diplomatic sources confirmed that North Korean engineers and "materials" have, in fact, been dispatched to Syria: Read more at the link.

Saying John McCain is the only candidate that wants to win the war on terror retired Marine Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North has endorsed the Republican front runner. Col. North, a man who has been to Iraq more times than any politician, warned of the serve consequences of a loss in this battle with those who want to murder Americans. As an American, a Marine and a most knowledgeable observer, North has stepped forward to support the safety of America. He recognizes the danger we are in and the best course of action to win out over terrorists. He is a...

Friday, February 1, 2008 WASHINGTON -- In the movie "The Wizard of Oz," Dorothy's little terrier, Toto, pulls aside a curtain to reveal that the awesome wizard is really a little man frantically pulling levers to create an illusion of power. Moscow is not quite the Emerald City, but Vladimir Putin certainly is acting like the wizard, and he seems intent on trying to recreate the Iron Curtain. Worse still, leaders here in the United States and in Europe appear to be as fearful as Dorothy's craven lion in looking at what really is going on behind the curtain. In...

On the Road in Myrtle Beach, SC http://blip.tv/file/590446

China 'plans to send troops into North Korea' By Richard Spencer in Beijing Last Updated: 7:58pm GMT 08/01/2008 China is planning to send troops into North Korea to restore order and secure its nuclear arsenal in the event of the regime’s collapse. China would consider acting unilaterally, the report indicated According to a new report, Beijing would send in the People’s Liberation Army if it felt threatened by a rapid breakdown in Kim Jong-il’s rule over the country. China would seek to win the backing of the United Nations first, but would be prepared to act unilaterally if necessary. “If...

North by NorthwestThe planet's wandering magnetic poles help reveal history of Earth and humans Sid Perkins Hikers in the wilderness often place their faith in a trusty compass. But any navigator worth his salt knows that compasses can't truly be trusted: Only along certain longitudes in the Northern Hemisphere does a compass needle point due north. MOVED BY MAGNETISM. Explorers first found the north magnetic pole at Canada's Cape Adelaide in 1831. Blue dots (direct surface observations) and red dots (models using satellite data) denote the pole's movement since then. Green dots indicate the pole's future location if its current...

<p>For generations, American elites from the North have treated the South as a benighted land of knaves, fools, and charlatans, a proper subject of scorn and satire and certainly not a region to be admired or emulated. They are comically wrong.</p>

Colonel Oliver North will appear in Roanoke, VA on Tuesday, Oct. 23 for a Republican fundraiser. I do not yet know the ticket price, but Freepmail me if you are interested in getting more info when the price is announced.....

N Korean denies link to Israel's strike on Syria By Tim Butcher in Jerusalem Last Updated: 12:02pm BST 18/09/2007 North Korea has strongly denied allegations from unnamed American intelligence sources that its regime provided nuclear technology and expertise to Syria. The allegations came after Israel's covert airstrike in northern Syria, with US sources suggesting the target was some sort of shipment of nuclear-connected material provided by Pyongyang. Israel has not given any details on the operation in Syria While North Korea has been providing arms for years to Syria, most notably customised Scud missiles, this was the first allegation about...

Amid reports in the American media that the alleged Israeli raid into Syria 10 days ago targeted a North Korean-Syrian nuclear facility, John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the UN, told The Jerusalem Post over the weekend that "simple logic" suggested North Korea and Iran could have outsourced nuclear development "to a country that is not under suspicion" - namely Syria. Tellingly, he added: "Why would North Korea protest an Israeli strike on Syria?" Bolton suggested that Syria, which he said has long sought a range of weapons of mass destruction, might have agreed to provide "facilities for uranium...

During a telephone conversation three days before Gen. Petraeus sat down next to Ambassador Ryan Crocker in the Caucus Room of the Cannon House Office building, my friend, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) told me that Democrats were conducting a “guerrilla campaign of character assassination” to impugn the general and that it would culminate with “a frontal attack” on his integrity. Congressman Hunter posited that based on my personal experience in a similar atmosphere, I would understand. But not even I could gauge how low the Democrats had sunk or how vicious they have become...... What happened this week to Gen....

North Korea power struggle looms By Richard Spencer Last Updated: 1:52am BST 28/08/2007 Kim Jong-nam has been living in the Chinese territory of Macau A power struggle to succeed Kim Jong-il as leader of North Korea's Stalinist dictatorship may be looming after his eldest son was reported to have returned from semi-voluntary exile. Kim Jong-nam has been living for at least three years in the Chinese territory of Macau Having once been predicted to follow his father as the country's supreme leader, he was said to have fallen out of favour after being caught trying to enter Japan on a...

Saltier North Atlantic should give currents a boost 13:12 23 August 2007 NewScientist.com news service Catherine Brahic The surface waters of the North Atlantic are getting saltier, suggests a new study of records spanning over 50 years. And this might actually be good news for the effects of climate change on global ocean currents in the short-term, say the study's researchers. This is because saltier waters in the upper levels of the North Atlantic ocean may mean that the global ocean conveyor belt – the vital piece of planetary plumbing which some scientists fear may slow down because of global...

I escaped North Korea after famine, violence By Sergey Soukhorukov in Dandong, Sunday Telegraph Last Updated: 1:04am BST 05/08/2007 Like most of her fellow "massage girls" at her brothel in the Chinese city of Dandong, Ban Yong Mee has a smile that is purely for business. On the days it becomes difficult to maintain, she need only remember why she fled here from neighbouring North Korea. "Most of us had absolutely nothing to eat," she said, recalling the famines in the communist state that killed an estimated 300,000 people between 1995 and 1998. "We went to the hills to look...

North Korea's Kim Jong-il bans smoking By Richard Spencer in Beijing Last Updated: 6:17pm BST 24/07/2007 In most cities, smoking bans are intended to protect the non-smoking majority from the minority who insist on lighting up. Kim Jong-il's health has deteriorated recently In Pyongyang, the latest and most unlikely international capital to be subject to a ban, it is the other way round. The ban is to protect one man from the effects of his puffing compatriots, but since that man is the reclusive North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il, it is still likely to be vigorously implemented. Kim's health has...

N Korea to be removed from US terror list By Richard Spencer Last Updated: 3:07am BST 17/07/2007 Christopher Hill said talks for peace treaty between the two countries could begin next year Washington's chief negotiator on North Korea outlined a dramatic programme of rapprochement with America's long-time Stalinist foe yesterday after international inspectors verified that it had closed its main nuclear reactor at Yongbyon. Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, confirmed a North Korean statement that the reactor, which processed the plutonium for the country's nuclear weapons test last October, had been shut down. In response, Christopher...

IAEA Confirms N. Korea Has Shut Reactor Published: 7/16/07, 6:05 AM EDT By KWANG-TAE KIM SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - U.N. inspectors have verified that North Korea shut down its nuclear reactor, the watchdog agency's chief said Monday, the first on-the-ground achievement toward scaling back Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions since the international standoff began in late 2002. The main U.S. envoy on the issue, meanwhile, said that the United States is looking to build on momentum and will start deliberations on removing North Korea from a list of terrorism-sponsoring states. North Korea pledged in an international accord in February to shut...

North Korea calls for talks with US military By Alex Spillius Last Updated: 2:05am BST 14/07/2007 Christopher Hill: no peace agreement on the peninsula 'ahead of de-nuclearisation' North Korea yesterday proposed holding direct talks with the US military, raising hopes that it was serious about signing a peace treaty more than 50 years after the Korean War ended in a ceasefire. The North Korean People's Army proposed the talks "for the purpose of discussing the issues related to ensuring the peace and security on the Korean peninsula", in a statement carried by the official KCNA news agency. Diplomats from the...

If George Orwell where alive today he would certainly rewrite his classic tale of Government Fascism and re-title it “2010.”

North Korea fired a short-range missile toward waters between the Korean Peninsula and Japan, a South Korean intelligence official said Tuesday, amid signs of progress in ending North Korea's nuclear weapons program. The North "fired the short-range missile around 3:30 p.m. (0630 GMT)," the South Korean official said, asking not to be named, citing the sensitivity of the issue. He said the range of the missile is about 100 kilometers (62 miles) but did not give further details. The missile launch, the second in as many weeks, came as the United States and South Korea and their regional partners explore...

Is Kim Jong so ill he needs surgery? By Sergei Soukhorukov in Beijing Last Updated: 12:56am BST 10/06/2007 Ailing: Kim Jong Il, has been so unwell that he needs an assistant to carry a chair for him Kim Jong Il, North Korea's reclusive leader, has been so unwell that he could not walk more than 30 yards without a rest, western governments have been told. Diplomats in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, are increasingly convinced that the 65-year-old dictator needs heart surgery to restore his apparently flagging health. He has had to be accompanied by an assistant carrying a chair...

Friday, May 4, 2007 WASHINGTON -- This week the State Department published its annual Country Reports on Terrorism. For those who want facts about the radical Islamic jihad being waged against the West, it's fascinating reading. For simpering solons in Congress, slithering back up Capitol Hill with their vetoed "surrender supplemental," it is bad news. And for those with any grasp of history, it's deja vu. Twenty years ago this summer, a joint select committee of Congress convened to investigate certain activities of the Reagan administration. In the midst of what became a nationally televised circus, one of the witnesses...

Friday, April 27, 2007 If Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is right, nearly 60 percent of Americans agree with him that the war in Iraq is already lost. And if he is correct in saying that losing the war will increase Democrat majorities in future elections, then it may be fair to conclude that Americans now love losers. I'm not buying any of it -- and neither are the troops who are fighting this war. In the days since Reid announced "this war is lost," I have heard from dozens of the soldiers, sailors, airmen, Guardsmen and Marines that I...

Winston Churchill called him "one of the noblest Americans who ever lived," and Theodore Roosevelt called him "the very greatest of all the great captains that the English-speaking peoples have brought forth." But has political correctness turned Robert E. Lee into a villain? That will be the question explored by six historians this weekend at a symposium commemorating the bicentennial of the Confederate commander's birth. "We were afraid that Lee would not receive the honors he should get because of the prevailing political correctness," says Brag Bowling, a Richmond resident who helped organize Saturday's event at the Key Bridge Marriott...

Lost world warning from North Sea By Sean Coughlan BBC News education How a homestead might have looked in the flooded area Archaeologists are uncovering a huge prehistoric "lost country" hidden below the North Sea. This lost landscape, where hunter gatherer communities once lived, was swallowed by rising water levels at the end of the last ice age. University of Birmingham researchers are heralding "stunning" findings as they map the "best-preserved prehistoric landscape in Europe". This large plain had disappeared below the water more than 8,000 years ago. Scientists at the University of Birmingham have been using oil exploration technology...