Free Republic

Fifteen or twenty years ago, and for some years following, there was a great deal of publicity about bee colonies dying out. The cause of the decline was unclear, but most people assumed it was somehow our fault. Where I live, “Save the Bees” signs started cropping up in yards and in front of apartment dwellings, along with “All Are Welcome Here” and “We Believe In Science.” Some people let their lawns go wild, not, as one might suspect, because they were too lazy to mow, but because they hoped a weed-filled lawn would be good habitat for bees. But...

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Facing life in federal prison with no chance at parole while carrying a conviction of raping and killing a 14-year-old Iraqi girl, a former U.S. soldier hanged himself in his cell in Arizona. Steven Dale Green, 28, of Midland, Texas, did not leave a note explaining the reason for taking his own life over the weekend. He died five years after a federal jury spared him a death sentence in the attack on the teenage girl and the shotgun slaying of her mother, father and younger sister near Mahmoudiya, Iraq, in 2006.

For the second time in less than a month, senior Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard officers have been killed in a suspected Israeli airstrike in Damascus, Syria. Iran's unofficial Mehr news agency said, "The Revolutionary Guards' Syria intel chief, his deputy, and two other Guards members were martyred in the attack on Syria by Israel." Updated reports say that five IRGC officers, plus some of their Syrian counterparts, were killed in the attack. The icons are already circulating. The intelligence chief, Sadegh Omidzadeh, was a close associate of Brigadier General Sayyed Reza Mousavi, the IRGC commander in Syria, who, along with...

While nearly everyone agrees that it was a colossal intelligence failure on the part of Israel and its allies that led to the slaughter on October 7, the ensuing war in Gaza, and other instability in the region, the little-known truth is that it was US military aid to Lebanon provided by Joe Biden's national security brain trust that effectively prevented Israeli intelligence from sniffing out the plan and preventing the attack. To understand this, one has to look at our history with Lebanon since the Bush (43) administration. If you find yourself asking how the United States ended up...

It wasn’t a US Army sniper who killed IDF Lt.- Col. Dov Harari and seriously wounded Capt. Ezra Lakia on Tuesday. But the Lebanese Armed Forces sniper who shot them owes a great deal to the generous support the LAF has received from America. For the past five years, the LAF has been the second largest recipient of US military assistance per capita after Israel. A State Department press release from late 2008 noted that between 2006 and 2008, the LAF received 10 million rounds of ammunition, Humvees, spare parts for attack helicopters, vehicles for its Internal Security Forces “and...

There have been more mass shootings with four or more deaths in 2023 than in any year since at least 2006, according to gun violence data. There have been 38 mass killings this year, up from last year’s previous high of 36, The Washington Post’s gun violence database shows. A pair of shootings in Dallas and Vancouver, Wash., on Sunday broke the record and pushed the number of deaths in such shootings to 197 — excluding the gunmen. Mass killings have been on the rise in recent years, especially since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. There were 21 mass...

U.S. President Joe Biden is caught in a quadfecta of corruption, cognitive decline, a failed agenda and eroding polls. Amid this apparent vacuum, an opportunistic Barack Obama, who used to be more discreet in managing his third term, is re-entering the arena. Last week, he came out as the overseer of the Biden administration’s AI agenda, even as his foundation’s “Democracy Forum” was warning Americans about the need for “inclusive capitalism” and the pathologies of “material consumption”—all this from a multi-mansioned multimillionaire. Now, Obama is weighing in on the Gaza war by undercutting his third-term presidential proxy. Yet just as...

NEW DELHI -- At a time when even friendly governments are quick to distance themselves from the United States and its pugnacious, embattled president, India is a strategic maverick. The former firebrand of the Non-Aligned Movement has chosen this moment to forge a close partnership with Washington and to speak up positively about American power in world affairs. "This lack of nuclear cooperation is the last remaining cobweb from our old relationship, and we can now sweep it aside," Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said with an expressive wave of his hand. "There are no other barriers to a more productive,...

Hamas Leader Khaled Mash'al at a Damascus Mosque: The Nation of Islam Will Sit at the Throne of the World and the West Will Be Full of Remorse – When it's Too Late The following are excerpts from an address by Hamas leader Khaled Mash'al at the Al-Murabit Mosque in Damascus. The address was delivered following the Friday sermon at the mosque, and was aired on Al-Jazeera TV on February 3, 2006. "We Say to This West... By Allah, You Will Be defeated" Khaled Mash'al: "We apologize to our Prophet Muhammad, but we say to him: Oh Prophet of Allah,...

PATNA, India — The drug that could have cured Munia Devi through a series of cheap injections was identified decades ago but then died in the research pipeline because there was no profit in it. So Mrs. Devi lay limp in a hospital bed here recently, her spleen and liver bulging from under her rib cage as a bilious yellow liquid dripped into her thin arm. The treatment she was receiving can be toxic, and it costs $500. But it was her best hope to cure black fever, a disease known locally as kala azar, which kills an estimated half-million...

For the past 20 years, the best minds in Washington and Jerusalem treated Hamas as a pragmatic political operator whose leaders were satisfied living in the same world as the rest of us. Their charter, first adopted in 1988, endorsed a set of bloodcurdling millenarian goals. But despite the open madness and world-making ambitions of their public pronouncements, Hamas remained a semi-legitimate player, treated as just one unremarkable thread in the Middle East’s rich tapestry of mildly threatening, gun-toting political dreamers. Even to the most hardened Israeli security officials they were a Muslim Brotherhood offshoot whose extreme rhetoric and regrettably...

Friday on CNN’s “The Lead,” anchor Jake Tapper asked Israeli ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan if his country could “hold all 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza responsible” for the Hamas terror attacks in Israel by bombing Gaza. Erdan said, “Sadly, it’s very sad, because I really feel sorry for the suffering of the people of Gaza. But we should all remember, they elected Hamas 18 years ago. Hamas is the only one responsible for everything that is happening there. Hamas embedded its terrorist infrastructure within the civilian population under public facilities and there’s no other way to eradicate...

Russia's richest woman sues Forbes magazine MOSCOW, Feb 14 (Reuters) - Russia's richest woman, who is also the wife of Moscow's mayor, is suing the Russian edition of Forbes magazine for defamation over a story detailing her business interests, her company said on Wednesday. A spokesman for Yelena Baturina's Inteko firm said it had filed a suit against the magazine and its editor in Russian courts seeking compensation totalling 213,000 roubles ($8,100). "The article published in the December edition of Forbes magazine contains information which is not true," said Inteko spokesman Gennady Terebkov. That information included "the incorrect reproduction of...

The bodies of Altynbek Sarsenbaev, a co-chairman of the Naghyz Ak Zhol opposition party, his bodyguard, and his driver were found in the Almaty outskirts early today. The three were reportedly shot dead. A former information minister and a former ambassador to Russia, Sarsenbaev was a fierce critic of Kazakhstan's current regime.

Earth has a new moon - or at least a 'quasi-moon', a new study has revealed. A quasi-moon is a space rock that circles the Earth, but is gravitationally bound by the sun. This quasi-moon, called 2023 FW13, was discovered by experts using the Pan-STARRS telescope at the top of the Haleakala volcano in Hawaii, and is one of a handful of known quasi-moons. Experts think the ancient cosmic companion has been in Earth's vicinity since 100 BC and will keep circling our planet for at least another 1,500 years, until AD 3700. Thankfully, neither 2023 FW13 or a similar...

BREAKING: Katie Hobbs and Runbeck election services have been named as recipients of Sinaloa cartel bribes via deeds of trust and phony mortgages in AZ senate investigation. When are the criminals running this country going to be held accountable? A California-based law firm has accused Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, Runbeck Election Services, and a slew of other election officials, mayors, judges, city councilman, and county supervisors in the state of receiving bribes from the Sinaloa cartel. During a Thursday hearing before the Senate Elections and Municipal Oversight & Elections Joint Committee, the principal investigator for...

On July 20th, 2006, Tom Tilley of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada was on a canoeing trip with his dog, Sam. A predatory black bear stalked them during a portage. Sam, an American Staffordshire, warned his owner Tom of the bear’s presence. As the bear closed in, Tom’s dog Sam interposed himself between the bear and Tom. When the bear attacked Sam, Tom leaped on the bear’s back, Tarzan style, and killed the bear, using a hunting knife with a six-inch blade.Wawa is a township not far from Lake Superior, about 400 miles North and West of Waterloo. It is about a...

U.S. Sen. Joe Biden really got into the Q and A with his audience at the Columbia, SC, Rotary Club Monday (Nov. 27, 2006), wading out into the crowd to answer a question about immigration.

ALEXANDRIA, Virginia — A current FBI special agent and a former bureau analyst who both served on Robert Mueller’s team testified that the special counsel’s office declined to investigate and never interviewed Charles Dolan, the Clinton-allied business associate of the main source for Christopher Steele, despite their urging. Supervisory special agent Amy Anderson and former FBI intelligence analyst Brittany Hertzog both testified Friday that, as members of Mueller’s team who were specifically tasked with scrutinizing the allegations within the Trump dossier, they believed the FBI should interview and further investigate Dolan, a longtime ally of Bill and Hillary Clinton, partly...

A Democrat running for election to serve as California state controller, the state's independent fiscal watchdog, traveled to Venezuela in 2006 to learn about Hugo Chavez's socialist revolution. Malia Cohen, a Democrat running for the position who has received praise from Democratic leadership, currently serves as a member of the California State Board of Equalization and made the 10-day trip to the socialist country for $1,250. Cohen's trip to the country was documented in a CNN story about the group's tour, with Cohen claiming that "revolutionary thought" is "generational" as it showed an image of her gazing at a mural...