Free Republic

China, Russia welcome Iran into the fold M K Bhadrakumar April 18, 2006 The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which maintained it had no plans for expansion, is now changing course. Mongolia, Iran, India and Pakistan, which previously had observer status, will become full members. SCO's decision to welcome Iran into its fold constitutes a political statement. Conceivably, SCO would now proceed to adopt a common position on the Iran nuclear issue at its summit meeting June 15. Speaking in Beijing as recently as January 16, the organization's secretary general Zhang Deguang had been quoted by Xinhua news agency as saying:...

Brig. Gen. Terryl Schwalier was stunned when he read the account of the June 25, 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia that appeared in my recent book, Countdown to Crisis: the Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran. I was writing many years after the fact, drawing on sources from inside Iranian intelligence but also on published U.S. government reports. It was those U.S. reports that prompted General Schwalier to contact me a few months ago. “You paint a picture of significant government awareness that “Iran was up to something” in the months prior to the Khobar Towers attack,” he wrote...

Tehran, Aug. 13: One of Osama bin Laden’s sons, Saad, together with a number of top Al Qaeda commanders, including Seif al Adel, are hiding in Iran and are not in Syria as reported by several Western papers this week, a well informed source said. The source, a top Iranian intelligence official until a few months ago, said Al Qaeda and members of Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guard, the Pasdaran, are negotiating coordinated actions against the United States and Israel. The Al Qaeda members had been living for the past four years in a neighbourhood in northern Tehran under the surveillance...

On June 16, 2006, by Executive Order 13405, the President declared a national emergency pursuant to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701-1706) to deal with the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States constituted by the actions and policies of certain members of the Government of Belarus and other persons to undermine Belarus’s democratic processes or institutions, manifested in the fundamentally undemocratic March 2006 elections; to commit human rights abuses related to political repression, including detentions and disappearances; and to engage in public corruption, including by diverting or...

George Soros failed in a bid to overturn an insider-trading conviction at France's highest appeals tribunal, but vowed to pursue an appeal....... The Court of Cassation, the tribunal of last resort in France, yesterday upheld a March 2005 judgment that Soros violated the law when he bought Societe Generale SA shares in 1988 with knowledge that the bank might be a takeover target. The Hungary-born financier....has been fighting the case for 17 years, will appeal......The verdict came as the 75-year-old former financier turned his attention from his investing career to political and charitable activities.

Border guards seized a British lorry on its way to make a delivery to the Iranian military - after discovering it was packed with radioactive material that could be used to build a dirty bomb. The lorry set off from Kent on its way to Tehran but was stopped by officials at a checkpoint on Bulgaria's northernborder with Romania after a scanner indicated radiation levels 200 times above normal. The lorry was impounded and the Bulgarian Nuclear Regulatory Agency (NPA) was called out. On board they found ten lead-lined boxes addressed to the Iranian Ministry of Defence. Inside each box...

This case is unusual as it is rare for an Admiral to even face criminal proceedings Source: http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/San-Diego-Navy-Admiral-Guilty-Plea-Navy-Bribery-Scheme-382400401.html#ixzz4B8MhpHYZ Follow us: @nbcsandiego on Twitter | NBCSanDiego on Facebook A rear admiral in the U.S. Navy plead guilty to one felony charge in connection with a multi-million dollar bribery scheme that has led to the arrest or imprisonment of more than a dozen U.S. Navy officers and Pentagon employees. Rear Admiral Robert J. Gilbeau appeared in court Thursday in the downtown San Diego federal courthouse. Gilbeau entered a change of plea to one count of providing false statements to federal investigators and...

WASHINGTON, June 22 - Under a secret Bush administration program initiated weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, counterterrorism officials have gained access to financial records from a vast international database and examined banking transactions involving thousands of Americans and others in the United States, according to government and industry officials.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - One of Saddam Hussein’s main lawyers was shot to death Wednesday after he was abducted from his Baghdad home by men wearing police uniforms, the third killing of a member of the former leader’s defense team since the trial started some eight months ago. Khamis al-Obeidi, an Iraqi who represented Saddam and his half brother Barzan Ibrahim in their trial, was abducted from his house Wednesday morning, said Saddam’s top lawyer, Khalil al-Dulaimi. His body was found on a street near the Shiite slum of Sadr City, police Lt. Thaer Mahmoud said. Chief prosecutor Jaafar al-Moussawi confirmed...

The US military has intensified its offensive against al-Qaida in Iraq, staging 38 more raids based on information uncovered during the hunt that led to the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi... The al-Qaida appeals suggested al-Zarqawi's network may be feeling the heat from the US raids, which have extended beyond Hibhib to include a series of locations in and around Baghdad. ...Major General William Caldwell displayed a suicide belt, explosives and Iraqi army uniforms uncovered in 17 raids conducted in the immediate aftermath of al-Zarqawi's death. The raids targeted people whom the US had been monitoring in the build-up to...

A member of a homegrown terrorist group pleaded guilty Friday to participating in a plot to set off truck bombs in front of Canada's main stock exchange and two government buildings.

Al Gore’s campaign against global warming is shifting into high gear. Reporters and commentators follow his every move and bombard the public with notice of his activities and opinions. But while the mainstream media promote his ideas about the state of planet Earth, they are mostly silent about the dramatic impact his economic proposals would have on America. And journalists routinely ignore evidence that he may personally benefit from his programs. Would the romance fizzle if Gore’s followers realized how much their man stands to gain? Earlier this year Gore experienced a notable public relations debacle. The Tennessee Center for...

DENVER - A judge denied a request to subpoena Dick Cheney in a lawsuit filed by a man who claims he was wrongfully arrested for comments he made to the vice president about the Iraq war. Steve Howards' attorney, David Lane, had argued that Secret Service agents involved in Howards' arrest in Beaver Creek in June 2006 told different versions of the incident and that only Cheney could clear up what happened. In denying Lane's motion Tuesday to have U.S. marshals serve Cheney with a subpoena, U.S. Magistrate Judge Craig Shaffer said Lane had "not made a sufficient showing to...

A DESPERATE search is under way for a “chemical vest” that a British suicide bomber was ready to deploy in a terror attack on London. Police fear that the strike, using a home-made chemical device, was imminent after an informant told MI5 that he had seen the lethal garment at the home of two young men. Last night detectives were at the hospital bedside of a 23-year-old postal worker shot during a raid on his parents’ home, while his younger brother, aged 20, was being questioned at Paddington Green high security police station. Armed officers who led the assault on...