Free Republic

Obama admin gave taxpayer money to Soros to spark leftist political revolution A group of leading senators is calling on newly installed Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to immediately launch an investigation into efforts by the Obama administration to sway foreign elections by sending taxpayer funds to "extreme and sometimes violent political activists" that promote leftist causes, according to a copy of the letter. The lawmakers disclosed multiple conversations with foreign diplomats who outlined active political meddling by the Obama administration's State Department, including the use of taxpayer funds to support leftist causes in Macedonia, Albania, Latin America, and Africa....

In Agatha Christie’s classic Murder on the Orient Express, the great detective Hercule Poirot faces an unusual challenge. There are too many suspects—too many people with obvious motives for committing the crime. That’s how I feel about the news that Archbishop Charles Brown, the apostolic nuncio in Ireland, is being transferred to Albania. This is not a subtle move. The Vatican is explaining that it’s just a routine rotation; every now and then papal diplomats are given new assignments. That would make sense, except that: +Archbishop Brown is not a career diplomat. Pope Benedict sent him to Ireland, at a...

An Albanian town has made Donald Trump an honorary citizen, hailing the US president-elect as "revolutionary" following his victory at the polls. The town hall in Kamza, a few kilometres (miles) north of Albania's capital Tirana, unanimously voted to give Trump the honour on Wednesday. "Donald Trump is a revolutionary model of the new democratic order" and "a great leader of modern times," Kamza's mayor Xhelal Mziu told AFP. Trump "won his battle in spite of media attacks," said Mziu, who belongs to the rightwing opposition to Prime Minister Edi Rama. During the US campaign Rama made no secret of...

Israel’s World Cup 2018 qualifying game in Albania was moved and Israelis have been warned not to attend the match on Saturday after four Islamic State suspects were arrested on suspicions of planning attacks at the event. “In recent days, Balkan officials have arrested individuals affiliated with ISIS who have planned terror attacks against a range of targets in the Balkans, including the international soccer game between Albania and Israel,” read the the Counter Terrorism Bureau warning. “Despite the arrests, and depending on the situation, there is still a significant threat of attacks in the area. Therefore, the Counter Terrorism...

Thousands gathered in prayer Saturday at a cathedral in Albania to celebrate the beatification of 38 Albanian Catholic martyrs executed or tortured to death during the former communist regime. In April, Pope Francis officially recognized as martyrs Archbishop Vincens Prenushi and 37 other priests who died in prison or were murdered from 1945 to 1974 by the late communist dictator Enver Hoxha's regime, which banned religion in 1967 and persecuted its believers. During Francis' visit in 2014, giant posters of the 38 clergy were placed along the Martyrs of the Nation Boulevard in Tirana, the capital. On Saturday, up to...

IRANA, Albania (AP) — Albania's main opposition Democratic Party made a criminal complaint against Prime Minister Edi Rama Monday, accusing him of illegally funneling $80,000 to U.S. President Barack Obama's re-election campaign in 2012 in return for a photograph of the two men together. The Democrats brought the case to the Prosecutor General's office, saying Rama — who was then the opposition leader — paid the money in violation of U.S. and Albanian laws to gain access to a campaign event in San Francisco in October 2012. Last week Bilal Shehu, 48, a U.S. citizen of Albanian origin, pleaded guilty...

PEJA, Kosovo — FIRST, a three-part quiz: Which Islamic country celebrates as a national hero a 15th-century Christian who battled Muslim invaders? Which Islamic country is so pro-American it has a statue of Bill Clinton and a women’s clothing store named “Hillary” on Bill Klinton Boulevard? Which Islamic country has had more citizens go abroad to fight for the Islamic State per capita than any other in Europe? The answer to each question is Kosovo, in southeastern Europe — and therein lies a cautionary tale. Whenever there is a terrorist attack by Muslim extremists, we look to our enemies like...

A bust of U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has been erected in Albania’s southernmost city of Saranda to honor what officials say is her contribution to Albania in the international arena. […] The city council took a unanimous decision more than a month ago to put up the bust to depict Clinton’s “dimension as a woman in politics, as a representative of the old Albania-U.S. friendship, for her contribution to the Albanian nation in different historical moments.” …

Green cards, or Lawful Permanent Residency, puts immigrants on the path to citizenship and allows for lifetime residency, federal benefits, and work authorization. Included in the totals are refugees, who are required to apply for a green card after one year of residency in the U.S. Unlike other types of immigrants, refugees are immediately eligible for welfare benefits including Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), food stamps, and Medicaid Green Card Totals, FY09-FY14: Pakistan (102K), Iraq (102K), Bangladesh (90K), Iran (85K), Egypt (56K), Somalia (37K), Uzbekistan (30K), Turkey (26K), Morocco (25K), Jordan (25K), Albania (24K), Afghanistan (21K), Lebanon (20K), Yemen...

I have a close friend, Mark, who was born in Scotland and has lived in England since he was ten years old and he has shared with me how Muslims are steadily destroying his country.Over twenty years ago, a large number of Muslims, many from Albania, began immigrating to England. Many of them stuck together, moving into the same cities, just like they are doing here in the US.The Muslims claimed that they had no intention of changing English culture or laws. Yet, Mark told me that as their numbers grew in some of the cities, they wasted little time...

RINASI AIR BASE, Albania — If you want to buy a secondhand fighter jet, Albania's the place to go right now. The 40 obsolete Soviet and Chinese-made aircraft up for sale once roared over what was Europe's most exclusive airspace. The Albanian pilots were members of an exalted military elite that had its own food-tasters and was tasked by Communist Albania's paranoid regime with deterring countless enemies who never did come to this country on the Adriatic Sea. Now a NATO member, Albania is auctioning off the rusting jets to pay for modernizing its military and to save space in...

The seat of government in the capital, Pristina, briefly caught fire after it came under a hail of petrol bombs. Firefighters quickly doused the flames and police used tear gas to drive back several thousand opposition demonstrators. They were protesting against a European Union-brokered deal to give Kosovo's ethnic Serb minority greater local government powers and the possibility of financing from Belgrade. Opposition leaders say the government should resign over the accord and call an early election. ... Kosovo's government has accused opposition party leaders of organizing the violence and attempting to drag the country into "crime and anarchy." "The...

The European Union border protection agency Frontex says it will deploy forces along Greece’s border with neighboring Albania. Frontex head Fabrice Leggeri on Friday told Albanian television station Top Channel the agency wants to prevent migrants from attempting to reach Western Europe by traveling through Albania. That route isn’t used at the moment by the large number of people fleeing conflict and poverty in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Tirana says, however, it has made preparations to shelter refugees should they begin arriving during the winter. Leggeri said there was no plan for a camp in Albania as “that...

Has German Chancellor Angela Merkel lost her mind?Based on her decision to accept upwards of 1 million refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and other jihadist hotbeds, Donald Trump says the German leader is definitely ‘insane.”Republican front-runner for Republican presidential nomination Donald Trump “They’re going to have riots in Germany,” the GOP presidential hopeful said in an interview Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation.  “I always thought Merkel was, like, this great leader. What she’s done in Germany is insane. It’s insane… letting in that many people.”“I’ve been watching this migration. And I see the people. I mean, they’re men, they’re mostly...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said that the huge number of Muslim migrants flooding Europe and Germany represent an "opportunity". Here's what that opportunity looks like now. A mass brawl occurred between refugees from Afghanistan and Albania. Some 60 refugees went after one another in the camp in the Wilhelmsburg district on Tuesday evening. Some were armed with iron bars, also witnesses had testified that a refugee had a firearm, a police spokesman said. In Lower Saxony in Braunschweig there was also an altercation between 300 to 400 refugees between Algerians and Syrians from a dispute over stolen goods. In the...

It’s Time for a Formal U.S. Alliance With Israel Here’s a quick pop quiz: Which of the following nations do not enjoy the protection of a mutual military defense treaty — a formal alliance, if you will — with the United States. (You know this type of treaty, right? It is one that requires our nation, by force of treaty, to come to the defense of another nation if it is attacked.) So which nation are we not sworn to defend: 1. Philippines 2. Israel 3. Albania 4. Slovenia Very few U.S. citizens would get this one right. We are...

Germany expects to receive up to 800,000 asylum-seekers in 2015, a new record, Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said on Wednesday, as he urged action from the European level on the crisis. "This development is a challenge for us all," de Maiziere told reporters as he announced the new official estimate. Berlin had previously expected 500,000 asylum-seekers to arrive this year. Germany, the EU's most populous country and top economy, has struggled to accommodate a flood of asylum-seekers from war zones such as Syria but also from countries without military conflict in southeastern Europe, including Albania, Serbia and Kosovo. ......

Former US Presidential candidate and publisher of Forbes Magazine, Steve Forbes, used the platform of his magazine to pen an open letter to the prime minister and finance minister of Greece, Alexis Tsipras and Yanis Varoufakis. The full text of his letter appears below. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Dear Prime Minister Tsipras and Finance Minister Varoufakis: You may have won a four-month reprieve of sorts from your creditors, but your situation is desperate, and everyone knows it, most particularly Europe’s paymasters, the Germans. As you just painfully learned, your ability to blackmail your creditors is a fraction of what it once was. Businesses,...

Adolf Hitler started World War II by attacking Poland on September 1, 1939. Nazi Germany moved only after it had already remilitarized the Rhineland, absorbed Austria and dismantled Czechoslovakia. Before the outbreak of the war, Hitler's new Third Reich had created the largest German-speaking nation in European history. Well before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Imperial Japanese government had redrawn the map of Asia and the Pacific. Japan had occupied or annexed Indochina, Korea, Manchuria and Taiwan, in addition to swaths of coastal China. Attacking Hawaii, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Indonesia was merely the logical 1941 follow-up...

One is the plight of Greece, with the nation's leftist government and its creditors engaged in the latest round of brinksmanship over its debt. Greece is running out of cash, but international creditors are refusing to release bailout money unless the government makes concessions. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, elected on a platform of fighting back against European-imposed austerity, has refused to budge. Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, had expected to have a proposal from Tsipras several days ago, but he was "visibly angry," according to The Guardian... A Greek exit would pose a challenge to a beleaguered...