Free Republic

Sotoudeh has represented opposition activists and women who removed mandatory headscarf. Nasrin Sotoudeh, an internationally renowned human rights lawyer jailed in Iran, was handed a new sentence on Monday which her husband said was 38 years in prison and 148 lashes. Sotoudeh, who has represented opposition activists including women prosecuted for removing their mandatory headscarf, was arrested in June and charged with spying, spreading propaganda and insulting Iran's supreme leader, her lawyer said. She also was jailed in 2010 for spreading propaganda and conspiring to harm state security — charges she denied ... The news comes days after Iran appointed...

The Iranian Regime has always harshly repressed all protests. The repression and systematic violations of human rights have been the Islamic Republic's main response to the political, social and economic demands of the population. On Mar.7, 2019, Ali Khamenei, leader of Iran’s religious dictatorship, appointed Ebrahim Raisi, a member of the Death Committee in the massacre of 30,000 political prisoners in 1988, and a devoted supporter of the supreme leader, as head of Iran’s judiciary. Raisi should be subject to international prosecution for committing crimes against humanity in the massacre of political prisoners in 1988, and tried for genocide of...

Two die as Boko Haram launches bomb attacks in Adamawa Published A bomb blast in Shuwa in Adamawa State on Sunday morning while Christians are preparing for Sunday mass has killed two persons. The bomb blast attack is suspected to have been launched by Boko Haram using a rocket-propelled launcher, a day after the governorship elections were held. Mohammed Sanusi, the District Head of Duhu, told PUNCH that one of the two female suicide bombers planning an attack on churchgoers failed in her tracks as the bomb went up with her before she could reach her target. He said, “There’s...

[…]Barr told the magazine of Obama’s alleged involvement. “That’s what I was told and I tend to believe it because the woman who fired me is now working with the Obamas at Netflix.”(snip) Barr added that her tweet—which she concedes was a “very stupid thing” — was intended to be an attack on the Obama administration’s ties to Iran, which she sees as anti-Semitic. She also cited unsubstantiated claims that the Iran-born Jarrett may be Muslim. “I should have written it backwards,” she said. “It came out dyslexic. It should have been, ‘Valerie Jarrett’s ties to the Muslim Brotherhood have...

The appointment of Cleric Ebrahim Raisi as head of the Iranian judiciary on Thursday was met with wide-ranging international condemnation. Statements from groups such as Amnesty International have highlighted Raisi’s record as one of the most brutal figures in the modern history of Iranian jurisprudence, owing especially to his leading role in the massacre of 30,000 political prisoners in the summer of 1988.The National Council of Resistance of Iran echoed this criticism. It has sought over the years to bring broader international attention to the massacre. This is to be expected, since the NCRI’s main constituent group, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran...

Do blame me, I’m from Massachusetts. The commonwealth ranks as the most intolerant state in the U.S. Don’t blame me too much, though. I live in Worcester County, tied for the most tolerant county in Massachusetts. Sure, nationwide it’s in the 99th percentile, “which means,” according to the PredictWise survey, “that 1 out of every 100 counties is more prejudiced against the political ‘other.’” But at least I don’t live in Suffolk (home to the Boston Globe), Middlesex (home to Harvard and MIT), or the six other Bay State counties that rank in the 100th percentile. You see, my county,...

“On both sides it should be called out,” she said about hate crimes in the US. “And just because I don’t technically have Jewish family that are blood-related to me doesn’t mean that I don’t take this as seriously, and it is very dangerous, very dangerous. … What Ilhan Omar is saying is very scary to me,” she said. Enlarge ImageMehdi Hasan Mehdi HasanTwitter “And it’s very scary to a lot of people, and I don’t think you have to be Jewish to recognize that.” But Omar defiantly lashed back by retweeting a post by Medhi Hasan, an Intercept columnist...

US 18 code 2385 - she could be in violation of that federal law - anyone who aids and abets the enemy for the takeover of the USA she could be inviolation of that law because of her ties to muslim brotherhood front groups for Hamas. She last Thurs spoke at a fund raising event for Yemen. ..... she will be speaking next month for the council on American Islamic Relations. CAIR. We allknow CAIR was listed as an unindicted co conspirator in the largest terrorist fundraising operation in the history of the USA.....

There are growing signs of a potentially destabilising rift between the king of Saudi Arabia and his heir, the Guardian has been told. King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman are understood to have disagreed over a number of important policy issues in recent weeks, including the war in Yemen. The unease is said to have been building since the murder in Turkey of the dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, which the CIA has reportedly concluded was ordered by Prince Mohammed. However, these tensions increased dramatically in late February when the king, 83, visited Egypt...

Germany will not declare Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement a terrorist organization, a top official said Friday. Deputy Minister in the Foreign Ministry Niels Annen told news magazine Der Spiegel that the Iran-backed Shiite Islamist movement is a relevant factor in Lebanese society and part of the complex political landscape in the country. The comments come after Britain last month banned Hezbollah’s political wing, accusing the movement of destabilizing the Middle East. “The British move is a national decision that has no direct impact on the position of the German government or the EU,’ said Annen. The European Union had already added...

While I was heartened to hear that USAF Senior Airman Ahmad Al Halabi, like Army Chaplain (Capt) James Yee before him, had been cleared of charges of espionage and treason, I am nevertheless still deeply disturbed by the lack of media attention given this case. Granted, the allegations made a huge splash when they first surfaced in the fall of 2003, fueled to a white hot frenzy by prosecutorial whisperings of possible death sentences. At that time, the government was happy to have us believe that the tentacled reach of Al Qaeda extended all the way to the ranks of...

“We did call her Bloody Gina. Gina was always very quick and very willing to use force. Gina and people like Gina did it, I think, because they enjoyed doing it. They tortured just for the sake of torture, not for the sake of gathering information.”-John Kirakou I would take anything John Kirakou says with a grain from the salt pit.  I question his credibility. What does anyone really know about Gina Haspel, President Trump's nominee to be the next director of the CIA? Not a heck of a lot. So far what we have is media and ideology-driven hysteria:...

In his three addresses in February, the Iran Supreme Leader tried to convince regimes' authorities not to be afraid of the crises that affected his power. The Supreme Leader had probably not repeat it so often in such a short period of the time: "do not be afraid"! On February 8, he first told his soldiers, gathered to mark the 40th anniversary of the regime, "Do not be afraid of the enemy and do not let yourself be overwhelmed by fear". On February 25, he spoke to executive, judicial and legislative leaders emphasizing: "Don't get caught up in depression, boredom,...

Donations from Trump and his family add another wrinkle to a Democratic primary where candidates are trumpeting their distance from the president. Kamala Harris received money from Donald Trump as recently as six years ago. Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner hosted a Park Avenue fundraiser for Cory Booker. Kirsten Gillibrand took in Trump family donations three times across a seven-year period — and then gave a similar amount of money to a nonprofit years later after the president mocked her in a tweet. As the president gears up for his re-election fight, donor records show that six of the declared...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - North Korea has restored part of a rocket test site it began to dismantle after pledging to do so in a first summit with U.S. President Donald Trump last year, while Trump’s national security advisor warned that new sanctions could be introduced if Pyongyang did not scrap its nuclear weapons program. South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency and two U.S. think tanks reported on Tuesday that work was underway at the Sohae Satellite Launching Station at Tongchang-ri, even as Trump met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at a second summit in Hanoi last week.

Obama Scandal: Former President Obama and his political supporters have repeatedly stated that his administration was scandal-free, unlike administrations before and after. "We're probably the first administration in modern history that hasn't had a major scandal in the White House," Obama himself said. A new book puts the lie to that statement. Never mind that the left-leaning big media basically ignored major scandals during the Obama years, ranging from the IRS targeting scandal and the VA's deadly waiting lists for veterans to Hillary Clinton's illegal use of an unsecured, hackable home-brew server for her official duties as secretary of state...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0U-j5Ej7fQ

Ships carrying Chinese troops are heading to Djibouti to set up Beijing's first overseas military base, reports state media. China says the support base will be used for peacekeeping and humanitarian aid in Africa and West Asia. It will also be used for military co-operation, naval exercises and rescue missions, Xinhua said.

“We Muslims will set India on fire. We will kill them and blow them up.” Many Muslims in Pakistan are seeing the prospect of war between India and Pakistan as the latest episode of the 1,400-year jihad against India, one of the bloodiest of jihads, very little known in the West. The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS contains the whole shocking story of the jihad against India, told from Muslim sources. “Jamaat-e-Islami is recruiting volunteers if India and Pakistan go to war,” by Roohan Ahmed, Samaa, March 2, 2019: Eleven-year-old Aamir Khan is homeless, doesn’t know who his...

Jerusalem (AFP) - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that Israel and Russia are to form a joint team to examine the withdrawal of foreign forces from Syria. Israel is seeking the removal of Iranian forces and has vowed to keep its main enemy from entrenching itself militarily in the neighbouring country. Netanyahu met Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday in Moscow to discuss Iran's presence in Syria. "I made it unequivocally clear that Israel will not allow the military entrenchment of Iran in Syria, and I also made it unequivocally clear that we would continue to take military action...