Free Republic

It is not too soon for "United 93," because it is not a film that knows any time has passed since 9/11. The entire story, every detail, is told in the present tense. We know what they know when they know it, and nothing else. Nothing about Al Qaeda, nothing about Osama bin Laden, nothing about Afghanistan or Iraq, only events as they unfold. This is a masterful and heartbreaking film, and it does honor to the memory of the victims. The director, Paul Greengrass, makes a deliberate effort to stay away from recognizable actors, and there is no attempt...

Freed US hostage says Iraq insurgents 'will win:' video 18 minutes ago US authorities guarded freed hostage Jill Carroll in Iraq after insurgents released her from nearly three months of captivity and published a video showing her praising them. US officials declined to say when the 28-year-old freelance journalist would go home to the United States, but a top Sunni leader at whose office Carroll showed up on Thursday said she could arrive "anytime in the US." Video footage posted on the Internet late Thursday showed Carroll in an interview with her kidnappers before her release in which she praised...

The Russian Government had a spy inside the US military command who passed information to Saddam Hussein on America’s war plan in the opening days of the invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon announced yesterday. The explosive revelation was based on Iraqi documents captured since the fall of the dictator and were set last night to trigger a major diplomatic incident between Washington and Moscow. The Russian spy, who was not named, passed detailed information on US troop movements through the Russian Ambassador in Baghdad, who sent the information to Saddam’s personal secretary. The first document is a handwritten account of...

Jews, neo-Nazis on same page? New York-based Jewish weekly Forward published article over the weekend depicting goings-on at recent conference sponsored by white supremacy magazine, which was attended by representatives of neo-Nazi organizations from all over the U.S., as well as by group of extreme right-wing Jews. Magazine editor: As far as I’m concerned, a white Jew is white The New York-based Jewish weekly Forward published an article over the weekend depicting the on goings at the American Renaissance Conference in Virginian last February. The conference, which is sponsored by a magazine dedicated to the purity of the race, was...

Actor and director George Clooney says he is proud to be denounced as unpatriotic for questioning US policy because he wanted to be on "the right side of history". Interviewed on BBC television about his latest films Syriana and Good Night, and Good Luck, Clooney said that not only did he accept the right to be attacked for his views but he even relished them. Clooney, who has weathered attacks since opposing the 2003 Iraq invasion, said at one point that it was "frustrating" to be listed as a "traitor" on a set of playing cards, but he also accepted...

In a surprisingly strong Op Ed on Friday, Ted Koppel, the former "Nightline" host who is now an occasional columnist for The New York Times, argues that when it comes right down to it, the U.S. adventure in Iraq is, as some charge, "about the oil." He likened the situation to H.L. Mencken's statement that when someone says something is "not about the money" it is indeed "about the money." The same is true in this case relating to oil. While it's wrong to say that we invaded the country to take over its oil supply, Koppel writes in the...

This is an update to my thread the other night about Cindy Sheehan. A group called Yearly Kos was auctioning off Cindy Sheehan to do a speaking engagement. Last time I checked, the bids were up to $1,275.00. There is also a thread about this auction on the eBay sellers central discussion forum called "AHHHHHH! Uh, well, at least shipping is free. Is this for real?" It can be found at http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=1000218333 This thread is still running in that forum, even after several days. Several of the posters there noted that the Cindy Sheehan auction violated ebay's policys, and apparently...

NEW YORK (NNPA)— “I don’t know if President Bush is the greatest terrorist— I’ve not met them all, but he’s damn sure in the running.” As mild and gentile as you want to be, that’s what civil rights activist and beloved performer Harry Belafonte said as he addressed the audience at the Canaan Baptist Church annual King Day celebration. Introduced by the Rev. Al Sharpton, Belafonte was a surprise guest speaker at an event attended by ambitious politicos like Democratic New York Senators Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer, and higher-office hopefuls like Jeanine Pirro, Thomas Suozzi, Mark Green and Eliot...

Dear Friends, As most of you have probably heard, I was arrested before the State of the Union Address tonight. I am speechless with fury at what happened and with grief over what we have lost in our country. There have been lies from the police and distortions by the press. (Shocker) So this is what really happened: This afternoon at the People's State of the Union Address in DC where I was joined by Congresspersons Lynn Woolsey and John Conyers, Ann Wright, Malik Rahim and John Cavanagh, Lynn brought me a ticket to the State of the Union Address....

Dear Friends, As most of you have probably heard, I was arrested before the State of the Union Address tonight. I am speechless with fury at what happened and with grief over what we have lost in our country. CindySheehan's diary :: :: There have been lies from the police and distortions by the press. (Shocker) So this is what really happened: This afternoon at the People's State of the Union Address in DC where I was joined by Congresspersons Lynn Woolsey and John Conyers, Ann Wright, Malik Rahim and John Cavanagh, Lynn brought me a ticket to the...

A CINDY SHEEHAN FOR SENATE BLOG: Why not?

Boxer’s letter is as follows: On December 16, along with the rest of America, I learned that President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to spy on Americans without getting a warrant from a judge. President Bush underscored his support for this action in his press conference today. On Sunday, December 18, former White House Counsel John Dean and I participated in a public discussion that covered many issues, including this surveillance. Mr. Dean, who was President Nixon’s counsel at the time of Watergate, said that President Bush is “the first President to admit to an impeachable offense.” Today, Mr....

The bitter truth, as we feast on the bounty of the empire -Our myth of Thanksgiving warps a history of genocide ONE indication of moral and intellectual progress in the United States would be the replacement of Thanksgiving Day with a National Day of Atonement. Indigenous people have offered such a model; since 1970 they have marked the fourth Thursday of November as a Day of Mourning in a spiritual/political ceremony on Coles Hill overlooking Plymouth Rock, one of the early sites of the European invasion of the Americas. But the thought of changing this white-supremacist holiday is hard to...

For more than a year, former Marine Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey has been telling anybody who would listen about the atrocities that he and other Marines committed in Iraq. In scores of newspaper, magazine and broadcast stories, at a Canadian immigration hearing and in numerous speeches across the country, Massey told how he and other Marines recklessly, sometimes intentionally killed dozens of innocent Iraqi civilians. Among his claims: • Marines fired on and killed peaceful Iraqi protesters. • Americans shot a 4-year-old Iraqi girl in the head. • Tractor-trailers were filled with the bodies of civilian men, women and children...

NEW YORK -- An Arabic interpreter for the Army may have secretly helped Iraqi insurgents by improperly taking classified documents from Iraq home to Brooklyn, where he made dozens of phone calls to numbers linked to the insurgency, a federal prosecutor said Monday. The man's attorney said he simply had been maintaining innocent relationships with Iraqi contacts approved by his military supervisors. After returning to the U.S. earlier this year, the man had more than 100 cell phone conversations with numbers directly involved with the insurgency, Buretta said, including numbers found at suspected safehouses for Jordanian extremist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,...

Maverick British lawmaker George Galloway solicited and received nearly $600,000 in profits for himself and a charity he ran from secret deals under the Iraq oil-for-food program, Senate investigators charged yesterday.

WASHINGTON, D.C., October 16, 2005 -- The constitution voted on yesterday in Iraq may well constitute an obstacle to securing human rights and individual liberties should it be approved, Freedom House said today. Immediate and comprehensive efforts should be undertaken to ensure that post-referendum amendments and enabling legislation for the constitution address the most problematic provisions. On October 15, Iraqis voted in a national referendum on whether to adopt a constitution that emerged in mid-September after months of negotiation and was expected to be approved. A political agreement reached last week commits Iraq's leaders to consider new amendments to the...

Sean Penn bales water out of a boat with a plastic cup as he and members of his entourage make an attempt to rescue stranded people in New Orleans.