Free Republic

There can be no repeat of the 1990 attempted coup or anything “remotely close” to it once National Security Minister Gary Griffith is in charge. This minister said so as he dispelled rumours that a coup was set to take place yesterday (Thursday). Griffith said the rumours, which caused widespread panic throughout the country yesterday, stemmed from a prank phone call. He said the identity of the prank caller is being investigated. He called on citizens to me more “mature” and not fall prey to “rumours, propaganda, hearsay and sensationalism”. Griffith was speaking to members of the media following a...

SNIPPET: "The arrest of a woman accused of hiding more than 10,000 diamonds inside her body when she landed at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport comes amid warnings that Canada is one of the countries where illicit diamonds have been used for money laundering." SNIPPET: "The woman had landed at Pearson on a Feb. 3 flight from Trinidad and Tobago, when she came to the attention of a Canada Border Services Agency officer, according to CBSA spokeswoman Vanessa Barrasa. The RCMP said the woman was found to have carried 10,202 stones inside her. The 1,500 carats (about 300 grams) of rough...

Snippet: "Iran and its terrorist proxy groups’ influence in Latin America remains a troubling security threat to the region and world, experts said at a congressional hearing on Tuesday."

A photo of the author On the day of college graduation, I told my friends and family the news: I was leaving the country I had lived in since childhood. “I just need a change,” I told them, but they knew there was more. Was it some romance gone awry, they wondered? Some impulsive response to a broken heart? And I was running from heartbreak. My relationship with the United States of America is the most tumultuous relationship I have ever had, and it ended with the heart-rending realization that a country I loved and believed in did not love...

"IRAN SPY NETWORK 30,000 STRONG Pentagon report: Iranian intelligence linked to spying, terror attacks" SNIPPET: "Iran’s intelligence service includes 30,000 people who are engaged in covert and clandestine activities that range from spying to stealing technology to terrorist bombings and assassination, according to a Pentagon report." SNIPPET: "“MOIS provides financial, material, technological, or other support services to Hamas, Hezbollah, and al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), all designated terrorist organizations under U.S. Executive Order 13224,” the report said. The spy service operates in all areas where Iran has interests, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Central Asia, Africa, Austria, Azerbaijan, Croatia, France,...

SNIPPET: "An Argentine prosecutor has accused Iran of trying to infiltrate countries in Latin America to sponsor and carry out "terrorist activities". Alberto Nisman said Iran was attempting to set up intelligence-gathering stations in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and other countries in the region. Mr Nisman is investigating a bomb attack that killed 85 people in a Jewish centre in Buenos Aires in 1994." SNIPPET: ""I legally accuse Iran of infiltrating several South American countries to install intelligence stations - in other words espionage bases - destined to commit, encourage and sponsor terror attacks like the one that took place against...

AN INTRUDER was shot and killed when he attempted to rob a pharmacist at his home in Chaguanas on Monday night. The dead man, who was not yet identified up to late yesterday, was shot once in his chest and died in the yard of the home of the man he came to rob. The shooting happened at around 2.45 a.m. at the home of Ravi Sobie, 35, at Edinburgh Village. Other relatives were asleep in the house at the time, police said. Sobie told police he too was asleep when he was awakened by a noise in his bedroom....

They are the gun-toting, scripture-spouting, government-hating Texan family who warn anyone daring enough to approach the fencing around their home: 'We fear no man. We believe in an eye for an eye and a bullet for a bullet.' Led by grandfather John Joe Gray, the tribe of a dozen or so men, women and children have been waging a war against both local sheriffs and federal agencies for an incredible 11 years. Welcome to America's longest-running police standoff. It shows no signs of ending. SNIP They grow their own food and live in a shack and trailer – always wearing...

Last Modified: Wednesday, November 3, 2010 at 11:49 p.m. LAKELAND | Jennifer Carroll has the distinction of being the first black female Republican elected to the state legislature. She made history again Wednesday when she became the state's first black lieutenant governor. Florida's new governor, Rick Scott, called Carroll, 51, a "history-maker and a barrier-breaker" when he announced her as his running mate in September. And while Adrienne Frazier, a teacher at Southwest Middle School in Lakeland, is a Democrat, she agrees that Carroll is an inspiration. "As a black woman, it makes me confident to see someone who is...

(CBS/AP) NEW YORK -- The question was simple: “Would you like to die as a martyr?” The putative terrorist unhesitatingly replied yes—there was no greater way to die in Islam. The right answer put the man in the midst of a terrorist plot conceived as more devastating than the 9/11 attacks. He was soon making surveillance trips around John F. Kennedy International Airport—the “chicken farm,” as the planners dubbed their target -- and visiting the Trinidad compound of a radical Muslim group. On Saturday, the insider—a twice-convicted drug dealer—was revealed as a government informant whose surreptitious work undermined a plot...

Four men including former PNCR Member of Parliament Abdul Kadir were yesterday charged by United States law enforcement officials with allegedly conspiring to blow up the John F Kennedy International airport as well as tanks storing aviation fuel and underground fuel pipelines. Those charged with Kadir are former JFK worker Russell Defreitas, a Guyanese-born US citizen; Kareem Ibrahim, an imam from Trinidad; and Guyanese Abdel Nur. Kadir and Ibrahim were arrested in Trinidad, while Defreitas was held in New York. Up to press time, however, Nur had not been apprehended and was thought to be still at large in Trinidad....

Washington - A former US State Department official has been sentenced to life in prison for spying, while his wife was ordered to spend nearly seven years behind bars for helping to pass highly classified information to Cuba, the Justice Department said Friday. Walter Kendall Myers, 73, and wife Gwendolyn, 71, pleaded guilty in November to espionage charges and acting as agents for the Cuban government. Myers had also admitted to passing top secret information in a conversation with an undercover FBI agent, the Justice Department said.

The twin-island Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago would seem to be the last place to raise alarm bells over the threat of radical Islam. Trinidad was briefly catapulted into the spotlight in June 2007 when reports surfaced that one of the suspects linked to an alleged plot to attack New York City’s John F. Kennedy International Airport was a Trinidadian national and that the suspects reached out to Yasin Abu Bakr, the leader of Jamaat al-Muslimeen (JAM, Association of Muslims), for assistance in executing their plan. JAM is an enigmatic Trinidadian Muslim militant group that is implicated in violence,...

Trinidad and Tobago elected its first female prime minister on Monday. Kamla Persad-Bissessar took a multiparty coalition to victory over the People's National Movement (PNM) and its leader, Patrick Manning, who had been in power for 13 of the last 17 years. During this campaign, Persad-Bissessar's gender was used by the opposition to appeal to deepseated but, hopefully, bygone fears. Manning repeatedly painted Persad-Bissessar as a pawn in the hands of strong and dangerous men and suggested that "the lady" was not strong enough to rule. Persad-Bissessar, by contrast, bravely appeared on her campaign platforms to the tune of Helen...

The thing that caught our eye in the plot to blow up John F. Kennedy International Airport and its oil lines concerns a detail in respect of the arrest of one of the key Guyanese suspects. It was the fact that the former member of the Guyanese legislature who was fingered in the plot, Abdul Kadir, was arrested in Trinidad on his way to Caracas, Venezuela. According to Mr. Kadir's wife, who was quoted in the Guyanese press, he was there to pick up an Iranian visa that would enable him to attend an Islamic conference in Tehran. No doubt...

Incoming Global Warming Czar Carol Browner was — until last week — listed as one of 14 leaders of a socialist group that advocates what's called "global governance" and says rich countries must shrink their economies to address climate change. The Washington Times reports Browner's name and biography were listed on the Web page for Socialist International . Mr. Obama's transition team says Browner's membership in the organization is not a problem and that it brings experience in policymaking to her new role. But House Minority Leader John Boehner’s spokeswoman Antonia Ferrier asks, “Does she agree with the group's positions...

Note: The following text is a quote: Former State Department Official and Wife Arrested for Serving as Illegal Agents of Cuba for Nearly 30 Years Couple Allegedly Conspired to Provide Classified Information to Cuban Government A former State Department official and his wife have been arrested on charges of serving as illegal agents of the Cuban government for nearly 30 years and conspiring to provide classified U.S. information to the Cuban government. The arrests were announced today by David Kris, Assistant Attorney General for National Security; Channing D. Phillips, Acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia; Joseph Persichini, Jr.,...

Obama said in Trinidad, after attending the Summit of the Americas, that the language of the draft declaration prepared for the conference “raised a whole set of objectionable provisions” and raised the risk of a repeat of the 2001 Durban Conference, “which became a session through which folks expressed antagonism toward Israel in ways that were often times completely hypocritical and counterproductive.” “We expressed in the run-up to this conference our concerns that if you adopted all of the language from 2001, that’s not something we can sign up for. Our participation would have involved putting our imprimatur on something...

Sometimes a politician says something so ridiculous that you think its something out of a satire. But I assure you that everything below actually did come out of the mouth of the President of the United States. Defending his brand of world politics, President Barack Obama said Sunday that he is "strengthening our hand" by reaching out to enemies of the United States and making sure that the nation is a leader, not a lecturer, of democracy. Obama's foreign doctrine emerged across his four-day trip to Latin America, his first extended venture to a region of the world where resentment...

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad: United States President, Barack Obama will have a face-to-face meeting with his Venezuelan counterpart Hugo Chavez in April in Port of Spain, when the two leaders will be among three dozen heads of government and state at the three day Summit of the Americas.