Free Republic

The head of Turkey’s National Intelligence Organisation Hakan Fidan was in the Kurdistan region of Iraq to meet with the region’s President Masoud Barzani in the city of Duhoq between 14-15 March, according to local news agency Roj News.The agency, which bases its story on ‘inside sources’, reported that Fidan met with both Masoud Barzani, who is also the leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), and the Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government (and Deputy Leader of the KDP) Nechervan Barzani during his visit.The same sources said that the KDP’s relations with Turkey and a joint plan...

Mark S. Zaid, the activist attorney representing the so-called whistleblower at the center of the impeachment movement targeting President Donald Trump, advocated for Robert S. Mueller III to become an anti-Trump whistleblower. On April 25, 2018, while Mueller’s Office of the Special Counsel was investigating ultimately collapsed claims of collusion between Russia and Trump’s presidential campaign, Zaid co-authored an oped in the New York Times calling for Mueller and his staff to become “lawful whistle-blowers.” The scheme outlined by Zaid was an option to be implemented if Trump had moved to fire Mueller and dismantle the Special Counsel’s office. Zaid...

One of the many news-making revelations in Ronan Farrow’s upcoming book, Catch and Kill, is that he received pressure from Hillary Clinton to back off his reporting on Harvey Weinstein. In summer 2017, while Farrow was trying to lock down an interview with Clinton for his foreign policy book — while also still working on the Weinstein story — he received a call from Clinton’s publicist, Nick Merrill, who told him that the “big story” Farrow was working on was a “concern for us.”

Under a long-term deal sealed by the Obama administration, a Chinese Communist company was set to control the second-busiest container port in the United States. In an unreported Trump administration victory, the Communists are out after a drawn-out national security review forced a unit of China-based COSCO Shipping Holdings Co. (Orient Overseas Container Line—OOCL) to sell the cherished container terminal business, which handles among the largest freight of imports into the U.S. It all started with a 40-year container terminal lease between the Port of Long Beach in southern California and Hong Kong. The Obama administration proudly signed the agreement...

DES MOINES, Iowa – On September 19, 2019, a federal grand jury returned an Indictment charging defendants, Jessica Rae Reznicek and Ruby Katherine Montoya, with one count of conspiracy to damage an energy facility, four counts of use of fire in the commission of a felony, and four counts of malicious use of fire, announced United States Attorney Marc Krickbaum. Montoya was recently arrested in the District of Arizona and detained pending court proceedings to determine her appearance in the Southern District of Iowa. Reznicek appeared in Des Moines on October 1, 2019 and was conditionally released pending trial. Trial...

More people are leaving the New York region than any other major metropolitan area in the country. More than 1 million people moved out of the New York area to other parts of the country since 2010, a rate of 4.4 percent — the highest negative net migration rate among the nation’s large population centers, US Census records show. The number of people leaving the region — which includes parts of New Jersey, Connecticut, the lower Hudson Valley and Long Island — in one year swelled from 187,034 in 2015 to 223,423 in 2016, while the number of international immigrants...

This is making the round on the net: I’ve spent the past few nights in never ending rabbit holes on US, China, and Ukraine relations over the past 10 years..I’ve took what I believe is the most critical and important information and structured this timeline, from 2009 until Biden’s decision to run for president. 2009 Hunter Biden (son of Vice President Joe Biden) and Chris Heinz (stepson of Secretary of State John Kerry) create Rosemont Capital, an international investment firm with the help of Devon Archer, a businessman and close friend of Heinz. Rosemont would eventually expand and adding two...

So much production in industries like steel is based on demand for more production, but should that demand falter, the whole system could come crashing down... Consider crude steel production, a test-tube example of how command economies get it wrong. In the mainland this stood in June (2017) at an all time monthly record of 73 million tonnes, five times the total production in all of Europe. Why is so much steel needed? ...to build more steel mills ...to build more shipyards, ...so that more ships can be built to carry more iron ore, ...to build more shipyards... What we...

China’s efforts to lure its scientists back from overseas institutions have been paying off militarily, with more than a little help from the United States. Military projects they have been involved in include China’s development of hypersonic weapons capable of penetrating missile-defence systems and the design of new submarines able to patrol quietly along the US west coast, researchers familiar with the programmes told the South China Morning Post. For more than a decade, China has been ramping up efforts to lure back talented scientists working at laboratories in the US linked to America’s nuclear weapons programme and other military...

Another Internet sleuth (REX) put together some more pieces to Spygate over the weekend.  The sleuth’s analysis shows that Obama’s Spygate scandal started much earlier than expected and Deep State leaks support this claim. On April 13, 2017, the far left Guardian posted an article about Trump and Russia collusion that began by making a couple now key assertions,1)  British spies played a crucial role in the Trump – Russia conspiracy 2) Trump – Russia scandal began in at least 2015 3) The UK was involved 4) The UK and US worked together for the next six months Via The Guardian:...

Video at link 1:41 mins. Not worth posting any content. Just watch video Good luck escaping your past Baltimore Sun...

On Saturday night, billionaire financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was arrested on charges that he recruited dozens of underage girls into a sex-trafficking ring in Florida and New York between 2002 and 2005. The details of his indictment became public on Monday morning when federal prosecutors unsealed the sex-trafficking charges against him. Though Epstein is the only person named, many powerful people with ties to the 66-year-old are likely feeling a little nervous about the consequences of the billionaire’s arrest — including Ghislaine Maxwell, a confidante of Epstein’s who has been connected to him for more than two...

In recent years, Hezbollah has stepped up its activities beyond Lebanon’s borders. This uptick has been clearest in the Middle East—in Iraq, Yemen, and especially Syria—but plots have also been thwarted in South America, Asia, Europe, and now, possibly, the United States. Reports of Hezbollah activity in North America are not new, though such reporting tends to focus on the group’s fundraising, money laundering, procurement, or other logistical activities from Vancouver to Miami. But last month, the criminal prosecution and conviction in New York of the Hezbollah operative Ali Kourani revealed disturbing new information about the extent of Hezbollah’s operations...

Last month, when Trump dispatched the USS Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group to the Persian Gulf region, it was reportedly the Israeli Mossad that tipped off the U.S. “on an Iranian plan to attack either a US or a US-allied target.”If so, the warning has already been borne out as just a week later Iran—trying to bully and threaten its way out of the Trump administration’s economic chokehold—attacked Norwegian, Emirati, and Saudi oil tankers, and last week attacked a Japanese and a Norwegian oil tanker.It’s not the first time Israeli intelligence has warned of impending attacks by Iran or...

Cables sent from the United Kingdom's Ambassador to the United States to the British Foreign Commonwealth Office (FCO) describe President Donald Trump as "inept," "insecure" and "incompetent," a UK government official confirms to CNN. The cables were leaked to and first published by the Daily Mail. Sir Kim Darroch, the British Ambassador to the US, used secret cables and briefing notes to warn the UK government that Trump's "career could end in disgrace," and described conflicts within the White House as "knife fights," according to the Daily Mail. A UK government source tells CNN the memos described in the Daily...

A newly unsealed court document reveals the FBI opened an obstruction of justice case against President Trump before Special Counsel Robert Mueller was appointed to investigate Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. Trump claimed earlier this year that he was assured by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein he was not a target or subject of Mueller's probe. But the final Mueller report showed his investigators looked closely at the question of whether Trump obstructed justice, while not reaching a conclusion. And according to the court document released this week, that avenue of investigation was being pursued before Mueller even took...

The Florida Highway Patrol says they arrested a man who took extreme measures to avoid paying Florida tolls. WFTV in Orlando reports that Joshua Concepcion-West, 27, installed a device on his car that shielded his license plate with the push of a button on a remote control. Troopers caught Concepcion-West dropping the "curtain" over his tag on the east-west expressway at Conway Road in Orlando, right before he went through the toll plaza. "After he cleared the tool booth, the tag cover came back up and the tag was exposed again," said FHP Sgt. Kim Montes. "Because the tag was...

A Colorado truck driver has been charged with five counts of vehicular homicide nearly two years after a fiery crash that killed five people on the Kansas Turnpike near Bonner Springs. Kenny B. Ford, 58, of Greeley, Colorado, appeared without an attorney Friday morning in Leavenworth County District Court. The misdemeanor charge carries a maximum penalty of one year in jail on each count. The charges were filed Feb. 26, but remained sealed until Friday’s court appearance. The July 11, 2017, wreck occurred on westbound Interstate 70 near 174th Street. Traffic was backed up due to road construction when, around...

Yes, President Donald Trump, who gave legitimacy to White supremacist groups, dated a Black woman. Kara Young, who is biracial, was Trump’s girlfriend for two years in the 90s. She’s surprised that her ex-boyfriend is up to his neck in racial controversy. “I never heard him say a disparaging comment towards any race of people,” she told the New York Times.

International officials trying to prosecute American military personnel will not be allowed to enter the United States, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Friday. “We are determined to protect the American, allied, and civilian personnel from living in fear of unjust prosecutions for actions taken to defend our great nation,” Pompeo told reporters at the State Department. Pompeo’s decision puts personal pressure on the International Criminal Court, a European-based tribunal that is trying to investigate whether “war crimes and crimes against humanity have been committed” since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. The top diplomat said that the court, which was...