Free Republic

CáRDENAS, Cuba · Elián González says he wants to be a gymnast when he grows up. But his grandfather, Juan González Sr., knows Elián's future career choices are as variable as any normal preteen's and could change next month. "I want him to be a good man, to do good deeds, not do anything he will regret. Everything else is all right," he said, sitting in his home in the coastal town of Cárdenas under a large photograph of a very young Elián. At age 11, the boy whose bitter custody battle stands as a symbol of the Cold War...

In order to understand what the Times is up to, one needs to approach its stories as one would approach those emitted by the Soviet Union or other totalitarian regimes. Is the New York Times playing four-dimensional chess? Or is it only tic-tac-toe with a three-year-old? I ask because I cannot quite fathom the Times’ latest intervention into the January 6 miniseries, its aromatic aria bewailing the fate of Ray Epps. Who is Ray Epps? We don’t really know—not yet. In the immediate aftermath of the January 6 jamboree, he was on the Stasi’s—er, the FBI’s—list of most wanted “domestic...

SENIOR Zanu PF politicians and members of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces have with the help of Canadian lobbyists Dickens & Madson turned Zimbabwe into a hub for trade in "blood" diamonds illegally brought into the country from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), it emerged this week. The Zimbabwe Independent has been told how gemstones from the DRC have been laundered to line the pockets of Zanu PF big-wigs. American international diamond buyer, John Marsischky, managing director of gemstones company Flashes of Color, revealed in an interview this week that Dickens & Madson, the company which last week claimed it ...

WASHINGTON, March 31 (UPI) -- The White House was worried about the damaging testimony of a former counter-terrorism chief to a commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks last week but was trying to let the issue die on its own, according to Pentagon briefing notes found at a Washington coffee shop. "Stay inside the lines. We don't need to puff this (up). We need (to) be careful as hell about it," the handwritten notes say. "This thing will go away soon and what will keep it alive will be one of us going over the line." The notes were...

New York Sen. Hillary Clinton is renovating and enlarging her Whitehaven mansion in Washington, D.C. so she can host even larger fundraisers - in the property Democrats already refer to as "the White-House-in-waiting." She is gutting and remodeling the first floor of the home and adding a 1,000-square-foot room on the back, reports the New York Post. The improvements, which are expected to cost $1 million, include a new raised terrace that will overlook a quarter-acre of perfectly manicured gardens when the work is finished in Feb. 2006. "A lot of this is social one-upmanship," political scientist Larry Sabato told...

A little known Swedish-Canadian oil and mining conglomerate human rights groups have repeatedly charged produces “blood minerals” is among the Clinton Foundation’s biggest donors, thanks to a ($100 million pledge) in 2007, a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation has found.“Blood minerals” are related to “blood diamonds,” which are allegedly mined in war zones or sold as commodities to help finance political insurgencies or despotic warlords. When the Vancouver, Canada-based Lundin Group gave its $100 million commitment to the “Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative,” the company had long been cutting deals with warlords, Marxist rebels, military strongmen and dictatorships in the...

Convicted leftist terrorist Susan Rosenberg must be counted among the unlikeliest candidates ever to be awarded a university teaching post. Just four years ago, Rosenberg was serving out the 16th year of a 58-year sentence for the possession of more than 700 pounds of explosives and a stockpile of illicit weapons. Moreover, the onetime member of a leftist terrorist outfit called “The Family” was also a suspect in a 1981 robbery-gone-awry that left three people dead in Nyack, New York. However, next January students at Hamilton College, a small liberal arts school in upstate New York, will know Susan Rosenberg,...

They picket Hamilton College fund-raiser over employment of Susan Rosenberg. About 30 Rockland County police officers and friends picketed a Hamilton College fund-raiser in Manhattan Friday night to protest the college's hiring of a former radical once indicted in the murder of two police officers. Members of the Rockland County Patrolmen's Benevolent Association want the college to rescind the hiring of Susan Rosenberg. She served 16 years in prison for possessing more than 600 pounds of explosives, and was indicted in a Brink's armored car robbery in 1981. Two Nyack police officers - both members of the Rockland County PBA...

At Hamilton College... you can take... "Resistance Memoirs: Writing, Identity and Change."... Its teacher is Susan Rosenberg, formerly of the Weather Underground. ...Its self-described revolutionaries, mostly middle-class, dedicated themselves to supporting radical black causes and tearing apart American society in the 1970s and early 1980s. In 1970, they blew up a townhouse when a bomb detonated prematurely and killed a few of their troops. Kathy Boudin, Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn and other high-profile members of the group spent the next decade or so running from the police and, some of them, continuing to pursue careers in criminal violence.... So why...

HAMBURG/MADRID, 27 October 2004 — A witness at the retrial of a Moroccan charged with involvement in the Sept.11, 2001 attacks in the United States said yesterday he heard him discussing the plans and had alerted German police and intelligence services. The court in Hamburg in northern Germany heard the testimony of the man, a 42-year-old restaurant owner, over the objections of the defendant, Mounir El-Motassadeq. In February 2003 Motassadeq became the first and only person to be found guilty in connection with the Sept. 11 plane bombings in New York and Washington. He was given a 15-year-prison term for...

Rodham Allegedly Received Fraudulent Loan as Payment for Securing Pardon Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced last week that it filed a formal request with the U.S. Department of Justice, calling for a criminal investigation into the reported activities of Hillary Clinton and her brother, Anthony D. Rodham, former President Clinton, and Vonna Jo Gregory, former owner of the carnival company, United Shows International. Recently released court documents provided new details concerning a scheme involving Anthony Rodham, who allegedly received $107,000 in fraudulent loans from United Shows International as compensation for securing a...

An embattled former Obama administration appointee -- who was part of a group of attorneys accused of being terrorist sympathizers for defending "enemy combatants" -- has been hired for a post at the US Attorney's Office in Brooklyn, officials confirmed today. Tali Farhadian was one of several private attorneys who created a rift between Republicans last spring when the Obama Administration assigned them to posts within the Justice Department. Although Farhadian was handling unrelated matters in Attorney General Eric Holder's office, a political watchdog group accused Obama of overloading the agency with officials sympathetic to enemy combatants. Their appointments even...

Al-Qaida assassins after GadhafiIntelligence suggests Libyan dictator's sudden cooperation due to holy war Posted: December 24, 20035:00 p.m. Eastern © 2003 WorldNetDaily.com Canadian intelligence suggests al-Qaida-backed militants in Libya want to assassinate Col. Moammar Gadhafi, possibly shedding light on the dictator's sudden efforts to cozy up to the West. Libyan President Col. Moammar Gadhafi (Courtesy: Sky News) Citing a Canadian Security Intelligence Service, or CSIS, report, The National Post reports the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, or LIFG, is waging holy war against Gadhafi in an effort to establish an Islamic state in Libya. "In order to achieve their goals, the LIFG has...

NEW YORK — In an historic hearing in the federal courthouse in Manhattan on Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge George Daniels said he planned to issue a ruling in the coming days declaring that Iran shares in the responsibility for the 9/11 terror attacks. “The extensive record submitted to this court, including fact witnesses and expert testimony, is satisfactory to this court,” Judge Daniels said. The court “accepts as true” the various allegations of the plaintiffs and their experts, he declared, and “will issue an order” in the coming days that Iran bears legal responsibility for providing “material support” to...

The American-born Jihadist cleric Anwar Awlaki likely played an important support role in the September 11 attacks nearly ten years ago, according to a new book that examines the threat of home-grown terrorism. The book, “The Next Wave,” by Fox News national security reporter, Catherine Herridge, reveals new documents that find Mr. Awlaki was nearly arrested after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon for providing false information on his passport application. Today Mr. Awlaki is one of the leaders of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Mr. Awlaki is also the only known American citizen on a...

Czar is perhaps the perfect title for Carol Browner, the person President Obama chose to rule over his climate policy. The woman will run her kingdom like an autocrat, she will take no prisoners and she will hide all the "bodies" For Example: Until early January Carol M. Browner, was listed as one of 14 leaders of a socialist group's Commission for a Sustainable World Society, which calls for "global governance" and says rich countries must shrink their economies to address climate change. Then Mrs. Browner's name and biography had been removed from Socialist International's Web page, though a photo...

IN A LITTLE-NOTICED DECISION in a New York courtroom on September 25, 2003, a man described as Osama bin Laden's "best friend" got some good news. U.S. District Court Judge Deborah Batts ruled that Mahmdouh Mahmud Salim could not be sentenced to life in prison. Salim--who was present at the founding of al Qaeda in 1989 and who was for years one of bin Laden's most trusted confidants--had been captured in Germany in 1998 and extradited to the United States for prosecution related to his role in the grand conspiracy that resulted in the 1998 bombings at U.S. embassies in...

Other group helping in Iraq not prosecuted Friday, March 07, 2003By Renee K. Gadoua The same federal act used to indict three Central New Yorkers accused of illegally sending money to Iraq has not been enforced against at least a dozen local residents who openly violated U.S. law by traveling there. The International Emergency Economic Powers Act authorizes U.S. sanctions against Iraq. Four Muslims, including three Onondaga County residents, were indicted Feb. 26 on charges that include violating the act by using the Syracuse-based charity Help the Needy to send money to Iraq without a license. About 600 people have...

As Saddam Hussein pressed the United Nations oil-for-food relief program for more money that he used to buy banned weapons, an unwitting ally may have been the American driver. Almost until the eve of the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, American oil companies were among the largest purchasers of Iraqi crude oil. The role that the companies, including ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco, played in the oil-for-food program is now coming under greater scrutiny in the wake of a report by the chief arms inspector for the Central Intelligence Agency that disclosed how extensively Mr. Hussein was abusing profits from the...

Convicted Terrorist Abdurahman Alamoudi, Al Qaeda, and Iraq were all at the same Anti-US, Anti-Israel CONFERENCE in Beirut, Lebanon in early 2001! Alamoudi's attendance at this meeting was part of the US government case that convicted Alamoudi in October on terrorism charges. Testimony by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Special Agent Brent Guntrum specifies Alamoudi's transaction with international terrorism to include the following: 38. According to a Jerusalem Post article, dated June 22, 2001, Alamoudi participated in a Beirut Conference in January 2001 alongside leaders of Hamas , Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and al- Qaeda. A communique issued by the conference...