Free Republic

South African apartheid-era death squad commander Eugene de Kock has been granted parole after 20 years in jail. He was nicknamed "Prime Evil" for his role in the killing and maiming of activists fighting white minority rule in the 1980s and early 1990s. Justice Minister Michael Masutha said De Kock would be released "in the interests of nation-building". De Kock, 66, was sentenced in 1996 to two life terms in prison and a further 212 years for the crimes he committed. Mr Masutha said the time and place of De Kock's release would not be made public. The justice minister...

India has rejected pleas from the Obama administration to enter into an agreement to put a future limit on its greenhouse gas emissions in order to fight global warming. President Barack Obama went abroad hoping to strike a climate deal with India — the world’s third-largest greenhouse-gas emitter — in order to build support for an international global warming treaty ahead of a United Nations summit later this year. But India had other ideas. Obama wanted India to announce it would peak its greenhouse gas emissions by a certain year, mirroring a pledge China made last year to peak its...

Boreholes and a reservoir on former president Nelson Mandela’s farm in Qunu in the Eastern Cape have reportedly run dry, affecting livestock and the watering of plants at the family gravesite. The Daily Dispatch spoke to two sources who claimed Mandela’s farm has been without water since early January. Two cows have died in the last two months, and the gardens are no longer tended, including Mandela’s gravesite. There is no water for the plants and flowers next to his grave and these are dying, the sources stated. However, Mandela’s eldest grandson Mandla Mandela denied this, telling the Daily Dispatch...

Soon after becoming House Speaker in 2011, Republican John Boehner started running the traps on inviting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak to a joint meeting of Congress. But when Barry Jackson, then Boehner’s chief-of-staff, checked with President Barack Obama’s top advisers, Jackson said he was left waiting a month only to get no response. Ultimately the Netanyahu speech went ahead in May but soon after Jackson faced the opposite problem: the White House had promised South Korea’s leadership an appearance before Congress, he said, without checking first with the speaker. None of these slights justify what seems like...

South African authorities have re-established order—for now—in Soweto and other Johannesburg townships, after a week of looting of foreign-owned shops and violence in which four people were killed. The 19-year-old mother of an infant who died after being trampled by a mob during the looting said she was accidentally caught in the street chaos. Some witnesses, however, said the mother was herself pillaging when she was knocked down with her baby strapped to her chest. …

"In our petition we rely, among other sources, on an Amnesty International report that was published in 1995... "There was tension in Rwanda as early as January of 1994. Several of the world's most powerful states imposed international arms control regulations and on May 17 1994 there was a UN embargo. Israel breached the embargo, as did Russia, Belgium, South Africa, France, Spain and others. Many of the planes that transported the shipments were British. The last license to export arms was issued by the Israeli Ministry of Defense in October 1993, about half a year before the massacres began....

Poachers kill 300 Zimbabwe elephants with cyanide • Cyanide has been used to kill 300 elephants in Zimbabwe's biggest nature reserve - three times the original estimate - as new photos show the scale of the slaughter Poachers in Zimbabwe have killed more than 300 elephants and countless other safari animals by cyanide poisoning, The Telegraph has learned. The full extent of the devastation wreaked in Hwange, the country's largest national park, has been revealed by legitimate hunters who discovered what conservationists say is the worst single massacre in southern Africa for 25 years. Pictures taken by the hunters, which...

Former president Nelson Mandela’s assistant Zelda La Grange sparked a debate on Twitter on Saturday after saying she felt white people were not welcome in South Africa.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — As schools reopen here in the coming days after the Christmas break, South Africans are braced for a surge in the power cuts that have plagued the country since early December, and the rolling blackouts could spell trouble for the ruling African National Congress at the ballot box. During the week, schools, factories and offices will move to full capacity, drawing on an already-fragile national grid. And in the heat of the Southern Hemisphere summer, air conditioners will be turned on full blast. A state-owned company, ESKOM, has the monopoly to produce more than 95 percent...

My Kingdom Economics are derived through "Thanksgiving"for it was in this manner the waters parted for Moses and the snakebites were of no consequence(I will lift my eyes to the hills) for as The Son Of God is lifted up doors open and miracles begin ! My endowment to Him( Jesus) is you( My children of Light ) and so it is as your love for Us is poured out ," Truly " it is returned flowing down upon your heads pressed down shaken together and flowing over into My very Will. So enter My Courts with Thanksgiving "YES" but...

After long probe, Palm Beach billionaire faces solicitation charge By Larry Keller Palm Beach Post Staff Writer Wednesday, July 26, 2006 Palm Beach billionaire Jeffrey Epstein paid to have underage girls and young women brought to his home, where he received massages and sometimes sex, according to an investigation by the Palm Beach Police Department. Palm Beach police spent months sifting through Epstein's trash and watching his waterfront home and Palm Beach International Airport to keep tabs on his private jet. An indictment charging Epstein, 53, was unsealed Monday, charging him with one count of felony solicitation of prostitution. ******...

There is no man (flesh) that can stand in my presence for " I AM " I AM Everlasting , I AM life giving and I AM Omnipresent Though a Vessel is Heavenly or earthly truly I AM GOD and there is no other for I AM The Breath of Life and Creation. At My Will alone Existence(Creation) "IS" whether anatomical or spiritual, "I AM" The Hand(Spirit) And King( God and Creator) . Though many see and have seen themselves as king over their very lives "TRULY I ENTHRONE ALL ! My courts and Throne are eternal and accessible yet...

( Nelson Mandela (right) and F.W. de Klerk) As South Africa descends into what its radical rulers refer to as the “Second Phase” of their communist revolution, warnings about an approaching genocide and full-blown communist tyranny are growing progressively louder. In a statement released last week, the organization Genocide Watch again sounded the alarm surrounding the ongoing, regime-linked preparations to exterminate minority Afrikaner farmers. South Africa’s credit rating, meanwhile, was downgraded again last month to barely above “junk” status. Parliament recently descended into a brawl after a politician called the president a "criminal and a thief." As the warning signs...

... Across a series of blogs and far-right message boards, someone going by the moniker of “the Real Luigi Warren” (a.k.a. “Luigi ‘Anthrax’ Warren”) had operated a lurid rumor mill about Hatfill for more than a decade—promoting, in particular, hearsay about the years he lived and worked in southern Africa during the throes of apartheid. In 2010, after the aggressor surfaced in the comments section of theatlantic.com, Hatfill’s lawyers made their move. They sent a six-page letter to the man they assumed to be the real Luigi Warren, a stem-cell researcher at Harvard Medical School named, not incidentally, Luigi Warren....

I'm browsing Google Earth around Kauai Hawaii and I noticed a really deep spot in the water just off the coast( 21°57'19.39"N 159°20'21.30"W). The surrounding water depth is about 50 feet, but the depth of the hole is over 6,000 feet. So I decided to dive in and take a look. Next thing I know, I am in South Africa. Pretty weird, so I try it again. Same result. Every time I try it, I end up in or near South Africa. Does this happen for anyone else?

Sitting on a salvaged sofa in the centre of her small tin shack, Nomfusi Panyaza looks increasingly worried, as heavy clouds gather in the sky outside. “When it rains, the public toilets overflow into my living room,” she says. “Water comes in through the ceiling and the electricity stops working.” Outside her makeshift home in the sprawling township of Khayelitsha, on the eastern edge of Cape Town, barefoot children play on the banks of an open sewer, while cows roam next to an overflowing rubbish heap. Panyaza shares this tiny cabin with her two daughters and four grandchildren, a family...

My children of light you have arrived for you abide in My presence in Zion yet many remain earthbound in distractions. Therefore throw off these hindrances "yeah" fast the earth for though I am coming I have already arrived in "you" My Zion on earth. You see as you strip your wellspring of earthly desires Heaven arises in you in all the fullness of The Godhead and it is then My will "is" done. Let there be freedom for My Spirit to "speak" to you of new things and allow Me to bless you through your obedience to My Voice...

Dr. Greg Stanton of Genocide Watch Warns of Crime in South Africa At a press conference at the Transvaal Agricultural Union today, Dr. Gregory Stanton, Founding President of Genocide Watch, warned that early warnings of genocide are still deep in South African society, though genocide has not begun. Dr. Stanton was deeply involved in the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, worked against Apartheid with the United Democratic Front in 1989 – 1990 as a Fulbright Professor of Law at the University of Swaziland, and was the author of the UN Resolutions that created the International Criminal Tribunal for...

A British-born U.S. photojournalist and a South African aid worker held hostage in Yemen by al Qaeda militants have been 'murdered' in a failed rescue attempt. American citizen Luke Somers had been held hostage since September 2013 in Yemen's capital Sana'a having moved to the country two years earlier. The 33-year-old was reportedly shot by his captors as Navy SEAL Team six, made up of around 40 men, carried out a dramatic rescue bid in the Wadi Abdan region of the southern Shabwa province late on Friday night. It is the second attempted extraction by special forces in as many...

United States military and intelligence officials are still piecing together what happened early Saturday that sabotaged an attempt to rescue two hostages from al Qaeda in Yemen. Despite being ready with a roughly 40-man special operations team and days to plan the operation, U.S. photojournalist Luke Somers and South African teacher Pierre Korki both died shortly after the midnight raid. The key problem, officials told the Wall Street Journal, came when some kind of sound alerted militants who were holding the hostages that the special operations team was nearby. The militants were part of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula,...