Free Republic

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...

Sunday, April 15, 2007 - Page updated at 02:03 AM N. Korea nukes: buying time? By Glenn Kessler CHUNG SUNG-JUN / GETTY IMAGES Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill speaks to reporters after discussing efforts to curb North Korea's nuclear program with Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei on Tuesday in Seoul, South Korea. WASHINGTON — Two months before North Korea tested its first nuclear weapon, President Bush was asked about a Treasury Department investigation of North Korean counterfeiting of $100 bills, which had ruptured talks on ending Pyongyang's nuclear programs. "Counterfeiting U.S. dollars is an issue that every president...

Friday, April 13, 2007 Washington, D.C. -- Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the public face of Iran's radical Islamic theocracy, has a knack for making news. His recently released "guests" -- 15 British military hostages -- had hardly traded their Tehran tailor togs for military uniforms before the tyrant was once again prancing on the world stage. This week he chose Iran's Natanz nuclear enrichment facility as a backdrop to proclaim: "With great honor, I declare that as of today our dear country has joined the nuclear club of nations and can produce nuclear fuel on an industrial scale." Thumbing his nose at...

April 6, 2007 "Where is the outrage?" Those are the words of one of five former U.S. hostages I have spoken with since March 23, when 15 British sailors were taken hostage by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Another previous victim of the mullah's malice inquired, "Doesn't anyone realize that the Iranians will continue to seize Westerners until they have to pay a price for doing so?" And a third American, held captive in Tehran by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his colleagues back in 1979-80, asked: "Why, after all these years, hasn't anyone stopped them?" The answer, in a word:...

March 30, 2007 On March 27 the solons of the U.S. Senate voted to assure defeat in Iraq by setting a "date certain" -- one year from now -- for the withdrawal of U.S. forces. As the 50-48 vote was being tallied, 15 British sailors and Royal Marines were being held hostage somewhere in Iran. While the barons of bombast were rushing to the microphones to crow about repudiating this president's failed strategy, U.S. aircraft from two carrier battle groups were screaming into the air over the Persian Gulf. And in a little-noticed footnote that same afternoon, the newswires from...

N Korea boycotts talks session Kenichiro Sasae says the North wants to see its money Six-party talks aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear programme hit a snag after Pyongyang's negotiators refused to attend a meeting of chief delegates. Japanese envoy Kenichiro Sasae said the North had refused to participate until it was able to access $25m of its money that was frozen in a Macau bank. The US announced on Monday that the North Korean money would be transferred from Macau to a bank in China. Unblocking its assets was a key demand for the North in a recent nuclear...

March 16, 2007 Last summer we went to Vietnam to shoot several "War Stories" episodes for FOX News Channel. As one might expect in a communist country where they take red tape very seriously, my producers spent weeks before our trip filling out forms, questionnaires and documents required by numerous government bureaucracies. In the process it became evident that not all the folks in Hanoi were on the same sheet of music -- but after several weeks of negotiation we were able to accomplish all that we set out to do and more, thanks to their cooperation. As it turns...

March 9, 2007 Oil-rich Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez has pulled out all the stops to protest the man he calls "the devil." Well-organized anti-American crowds are dogging President Bush at every stop during his weeklong swing through Latin America. What Chavez and his Latin-leftist allies don't realize is that rioting radicals clashing with security forces are nothing compared to what Bush left behind. He picked a good time to get out of town. Here in Washington the weather is cold and the politics are even colder. The administration is being beaten like a rented mule over the deplorable conditions in...

WASHINGTON -- Thanks to the masters of the media, Americans know more about how Anna Nicole Smith died than they do about terrorists dying to kill the rest of us. Pay tribute to the Fourth Estate, former Vice President Al Gore and his pals in Tinsletown for explaining that humans in general, and Americans in particular, are responsible for global warming. Credit the potentates of the press with revealing that hundreds of American servicemen are petitioning Congress to get us out of Iraq. And be grateful to Hollywood producers and their media lackeys for reporting the exciting "discovery" that Easter...

WASHINGTON -- "The lion and the bear are hunting the eagle." That's how a refugee from Tehran put it when he called me this week about recent developments in his homeland. The lion to which my friend referred was on the coat of arms of nearly every Persian king for more than a thousand years. The bear, of course, is imperial Russia. We're the bird. It's an apt metaphor. Vladimir Putin, Moscow's current czar, is behaving like a bear awakened from hibernation -- hungry and territorial. His recent words condemning U.S. foreign policy are mirrored by actions, both overt and...

SPOTSYLVANIA, Va. -- He was an American hero. On his second tour of duty in Iraq, he had already served in the Western Pacific and a prior combat tour in Afghanistan. On Friday afternoon, Feb. 16, when Sgt. Joshua Frazier, USMC, was laid to rest in the soil of his native Virginia, his comrades in arms from the 1st Battalion, 6th Marines were fighting terrorists on the mean streets of Ramadi, in Iraq's bloody Al Anbar Province. As Sgt. Frazier's grieving mother was being presented with a carefully folded American flag, the Congress of the United States was debating a...

Kim's son lives it up as people starve By Richard Spencer in Beijing Last Updated: 1:53am GMT 02/02/2007 The son of Kim Jong-il, North Korea's reclusive dictator, has been living in five-star luxury in the gambling haven of Macau even as his people starve, according to reports in Hong Kong yesterday. Kim Jong-nam, 35, was tracked to the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, where he has been staying on and off for three years. Kim Jong-nam: disgrace While the international community alternates sanctions on his father for his nuclear weapons programme with economic aid for his starving subjects, the younger Kim has...

The new head of the United Nations, Ban Ki Moon, has ordered an emergency external review of all UN expenditure after claims that up to $100 million meant for development aid was channelled into the hands of North Korean officials.

NEW YORK — Has North Korean leader Kim Jong Il subverted the United Nations Development Program, the $4 billion agency that is the U.N.’s main development arm, and possibly stolen tens of millions of dollars of hard currency in the process? According to a top official of the U.S. State Department —

Kim Jong Il's useful Idiots:Clinton and Carter Found 70 days ago on torydrroy.blogspot.com The Clinton Legacy: North Korea's Bomb Dave Eberhart, NewsMax.com Monday, Oct. 9, 2006 North Korea's first detonation of a nuclear weapon may have taken place during the watch of George W. Bush - but it was under the Clinton administration's watch that the communist regime began gathering necessary materials and constructing the bomb. ...

Both having served their country from Viet Nam to Iraq, Marine warriors Col. (ret.) Jack Holly and Lt. Col. (ret.) Ollie North briefly enjoyed a few moments together during North’s recent visit to the USACE-GRD LogisticsMovement Control Center. BAGHDAD -- “That’s what we are. That’s what we do. We are the concierge of the battlefield,” affirms Jack Holly, the still erect postured, retired Marine colonel. “When travelers require something while staying in hotel to whom do they go? The concierge of course! Thus, that is what we are to this effort here in Iraq. If something is needed we provide...

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.