Free Republic

Re: Eric Holder, Obama's pick for Attorney General! From David Horowitz's FrontPageMag.com/DiscoverTheNetworks.org:PROFILE: ERIC HOLDER (note that this is just an excerpt on one issue. The linked piece addresses all of Holder's record) Holder and the Pardon of FALN Terrorists: Holder was also intimately involved in President Clinton's August 11, 1999 pardon of 16 members of the FALN, acronym for the Armed Forces of National Liberation—a violent terrorist organization (as designated by the FBI) that was active in the U.S. from the mid-1970s through the early 1980s. The FALN was a Marxist-Leninist group whose overriding mission was to secure Puerto Rico's...

FBI Warns of Potential Terror Attacks The FBI and Department of Homeland Security today issued an analytical "note" to U.S. law-enforcement officials cautioning that al-Qaida terrorists have in the past expressed interest in attacking public buildings using a dozen suicide bombers each carrying 20 kilograms of explosives. Authors with the U.S. Office of Intelligence and Analysis added that they have "no credible or specific information that terrorists are planning operations against public buildings in the United States." The FBI and DHS analysts said they were releasing the note because "it is important for local authorities and building owners and...

Russian, Delta Jets Nearly Collide Over Caribbean WASHINGTON (AP) ― Federal authorities say two airliners were a minute away from colliding when they turned away from each other over the Caribbean this week. The National Transportation Safety Board says the Delta Air Lines flight and a Russian-registered passenger jet were heading toward each other north of Puerto Rico on Thursday when cockpit alarms went off. In a statement Friday, the NTSB says the pilot of the Russian plane -- a Transaero Boeing 737 -- descended 200 to 300 feet to avoid Delta Flight 485. The planes were 33,000 feet over...

Five illegal immigrants pleaded guilty to conspiracy to fraudulently obtain immigration documents, commonly known as green cards, in Houston federal court. Steavan Boxie, a citizen of Trinidad and Tobago, and Rajesh Kumar Ratilal Chauhan, Dipak Kumar Patel, Kamlesh Kumar Nana and Hitesh Patel, all of India, were arrested in September as a part of an 11-month sting operation. The five contacted Immigration and Customs Enforcement undercover agents who they believed to be corrupt and offered about $15,000 per set of documents. Several payments were made at ICE offices in north Houston. The defendants each face up to five years imprisonment...

I have been only mildly irritated by reports on the alleged plot to blow up JFK Airport which suggest that the unusual suspects in this case were simply too broke and stupid to pull it off. But I’ve been positively incensed by the fact that some of those reports were written by Caribbean natives who posited this condescending notion in a misguided attempt to express the shame and mitigate the guilt they presume we all feel. The Caribbean-American community in New York is understandably upset, embarrassed and miffed over the weekend revelations that four immigrants from the Caribbean, one of...

The investigation into the thwarted plot to bomb John F. Kennedy International Airport is widening beyond the four men in custody, with more suspects sought outside the U.S. for their suspected roles, a law enforcement official said Friday. The defendants identified last weekend were "just a piece of it," the official told The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because of not being authorized to speak publicly. "We are definitely seeking more players. We are targeting others overseas." The official declined to provide details about the possible suspects, or in what countries they are being sought. Law enforcement officials,...

Trinidadian police tell The Associated Press that Abdel Nur, a Guyanese suspect in an alleged plot to attack New York's John F. Kennedy Airport, has surrendered. The news comes a day after surveillance video was released of one of the suspects in the terror plot targeting the airport, taken just minutes before his arrest. In the video, the accused mastermind of the terror plot is seen leaving a diner shortly before his arrest. Eyewitness News reporter Jeff Rossen takes a closer look. In the diner surveillance tape, obtained by Eyewitness News, you can see the alleged ring leader and a...

British Intelligence: Al-Qaida Expanding -Full Story- British intelligence officials said they believe that al-Qaida has a secure base in Pakistan's Waziristan region and is planning terrorist operations.The group is reaching out to Muslims in North Africa, The Telegraph reported. Last year, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, an Algerian terrorist group, merged itself into al-Qaida, a move announced by Osama bin Laden's chief lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahiri, in a tape promising action against the "apostates" in the Algerian government and "the treacherous sons of France."Al-Qaida is also believed to be planning expansion into Lebanon and Syria, the newspaper report...

"Under the agreement, Venezuela will cover shipping costs, aid in the development of distribution infrastructure and storage sites, contribute to the formation of state-controlled facilities, and provide fuel-efficient systems in member countries. The one catch is PetroCaribe will only deal with a state controlled entity, meaning that the PetroCaribe agreement is based on eliminating all intermediaries. “We’re not talking about discounts…We’re talking about financial facilities, direct deliveries of products, [and] infrastructure,” said Energy and Petroleum Minister and President of PDVSA, Rafael Ramírez; the goal is to cut down on unnecessary, middlemen costs......"

"Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and the Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Patrick Manning met in Caracas yesterday to sign an energy agreement between the two oil producing countries. Despite previous conflicts regarding regional energy agreements, the two nations took a historical step forward in terms of economic integration, agreeing to unify the oil and gas reserves found along their maritime border...."

Fighting Jihad: Strategic Thinking Needed -Full Story- The United States of America has some of the smartest leaders in government, military, and business in the world. Yet the American government has failed to collectively use this formidable brain-power 5+ years after the attack by Jihadists on the American homeland to develop a truly strategic plan to fight the global threat of Jihad and Islamist extremism. In one of the most complex wars in American history, rather than starting with holistic, big-picture thinking towards the challenges and prioritizing resources and actions accordingly, America has spent much of the past five...

**WARNING** Graphic pic of the injured. THE Capital city was convulsed after what military investigators confirmed was a bomb exploded in a garbage bin yesterday in front of Maraj Jewellers at the corner of Frederick and Queen Streets, Port of Spain. The incident is not being viewed as a terrorist act but the city was under lockdown following the event and all of last night. But business is expected to resume as usual today. Fifteen persons were injured when, just after 2 p.m., the device which had been placed in a wrought iron bin outside of the store tore through...

Trinidadian authorities have detained an Israeli national found living in a remote mountainous area east of the capital, police said, declining to state if he was being questioned in connection with a recent spate of bombings in the Caribbean island nation. A string of bombings, the latest one occuring last Thursday, have rocked the capital of Port-of-Spain. The bombings have injured 28 people. Authorities identified the detained man as Dahtang Mik Agarunov, 26. They said he was found living in a wooden shack in Arouca, about 10 miles east of Port-of-Spain. Agarunov was detained on Friday and questioned by Interpol,...

CHARLIEVILLE, Trinidad and Tobago – Five years ago, as 19 al-Qaida operatives in the United States put the finishing touches on what would become the Sept. 11 attacks, a frail, asthmatic computer engineer from South Florida paid a visit to this tiny Muslim enclave where he’d lived as a boy. Adnan Gulshair Muhammad el Shukrijumah, then 25, kept a low profile over the course of the week. He hung out with a small circle of devout older men who were leaders of the local Islamic community. They prayed in mosques, went fishing and enjoyed long walks and leisurely dinners, recalled...

While I was on a visit to Toronto recently, police arrested 17 men, the oldest of them 43 but most much younger, on charges of plotting a terrorist attack. They wished, apparently, to blow up the parliament in Ottawa and publicly behead the prime minister. Cops caught them in the process of buying three times as much material for explosives as Timothy McVeigh used in the Oklahoma City bombing. Reporting the arrests, the New York Times called the men “South Asians”—though one of them was an Egyptian, two were Somali, and most had been born in Canada—thus concealing by an...

Starting off the day will be Real Salt Lake's Douglas Sequeira and his Costa Rican teammates, who play Ecuador at 8:55 a.m. ET in Hamburg (ESPN2). The ticos showed pluck in their Group A opener against Germany on Friday, making a game of it by scoring twice against the hosts before falling 4-2. The Central Americans will need to have more players get involved in the attack against Ecuador, as Paulo Wanchope provided their only offense. The Ecuadorians got a huge weight off their shoulders by downing Poland 2-0 in their group play opener Friday. Previously, the side had been...

Arima · Seated at a table under a traditional Carib Indian thatch roof, cousins Jason Calderon and Rosa Bharath are busy hot-gluing sequins on decorations for Carnival, listening to pop music on the radio while clad in the latest teen fashions: hip T-shirts, knockoff adidas shoes and earrings that look like diamonds.

Trinidad and Tobago: A Nation of Two Islands Ansil Williams “You’re from where?” That’s a question I often hear as an international student. My name is Ansil Williams. I am a senior cadet at Millersburg Military Institute in Kentucky, but I come originally from Trinidad and Tobago, two small islands in the Caribbean. These islands comprise the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. Trinidad and Tobago won independence from Great Britain in 1962. The islands had been under Dutch, French and Spanish rule before they came under Great Britain. My country’s flag has a rectangle shape and appears with three colors:...

PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad -A radical Muslim group in Trinidad that staged an attempted coup in 1990 is under fire from the government for allegedly inciting violence. Fifteen years ago, a radical Muslim group firebombed the police headquarters here, hijacked the nation's only television station and held Parliament hostage for six days. The failed coup by Jamaat Al-Muslimeen -- the only Islamic revolt in the Western Hemisphere -- left 24 dead and the prime minister with a gunshot wound in his leg. The attackers were given amnesty two years later, and the group and its charismatic leader, Yasin Abu Bakr, have since...

PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad (AP) - Police fired warning shots at a man who drove too close to the president's convoy, authorities said yesterday. Nelvin Lion Moore, 35, swerved near a convoy Thursday escorting President George Maxwell Richards to his private residence in St Joseph, a suburb of the capital. "The police took action against a driver that interfered with the president's police escort. In spite of the warning he failed to move and the police fired some shots," said Oswyn Allard, deputy police commissioner. Moore has pleaded innocent to charges of using obscene language, driving under the influence of...