Free Republic

The United Nations General Assembly's first committee, which deals with disarmament, global challenges, and threats to peace that affect the international community, voted 152-5, on Friday, on a resolution concerning "the risk of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East". The resolution states that Israel must dispose of all its nuclear weapons and place its nuclear sites under the International Atomic Energy Agency's purview. The resolution, which is submitted every year to the UNGA in New York, was submitted by Egypt and sponsored by the Palestinian Authority and 19 counties including Bahrain, Jordan, Morocco, and the United Arab Emirates. Canada, Israel,...

Six men went on trial in Vienna on Tuesday over their alleged links to a sympathizer of the Islamic State group who carried out a deadly shooting in the Austrian capital in 2020. A verdict in the trial at the Vienna state court is expected in February at the earliest, public broadcaster ORF reported. Four people were killed in the attack on Nov. 2, 2020, and the gunman also died. More than 20 other people, including a police officer, were wounded. Assailant Kujtim Fejzulai, a dual national of Austria and North Macedonia, had a previous conviction for trying to join...

Charles McGonigal, the former head of counterintelligence at the FBI field office in New York City who was involved in the investigation into the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia during the 2016 election, has fallen under the scrutiny of a grand jury convened by U.S. attorneys late last year for his own ties with Russia and other foreign governments, reports Insider. The grand jury is reportedly investigating McGonigal’s business dealings with a top aide to Oleg Deripaska, the billionaire Russian oligarch who was at the center of allegations that Russia colluded with the Trump campaign, according to a recently obtained...

This week in history witnessed one of the most stalwart defenses against the Islamic spear-thrust into Europe—the Battle of Albulena in Albania, 1457. To appreciate the significance of this epic clash, one must first appreciate the leader of the Albanian forces, George Kastrioti, better known as Skanderbeg (“Lord Alexander”). Today, he is as little known in the West as he was once widely celebrated all throughout Europe. His life, which is featured in the new book, Defenders of the West: The Christian Heroes Who Stood Against Islam, certainly validates the saying that “truth is stranger than fiction.” Born of Albanian...

Iranian embassy staff in the Albanian capital worked through the night after they were given 24 hours to leave the country over a major cyberattack that the Albanian government blames on Iran. It is the first known case of a country cutting diplomatic relations over a cyberattack. Movement inside the Iranian embassy in Tirana continued nonstop from Wednesday into Thursday. An empty barrel was seen taken into the compound and later a fire was started in it, apparently burning documents. A diplomatic car went in and out, while an Albanian police officer communicated with the embassy before two officers entered...

Albania is ranked as one of the least religious countries in the world, with only 30% of the population stating they consider religion to be important, according to Gallup. Yet, roughly 60% of the population state they belong to Sunni Islam, with only a 17% minority Christians. Such statistics seem to create a contrast between Albania today and the historical Albania. Centuries ago, Albania was one of the main battlegrounds between the Christian Europe and the armies of the Ottoman Empire. With a tiny population, rivalling feudal families and poor finances, the Albanians demonstrated some of the fiercest and most...

Tirana, Albania — It is the stuff of wild nightmares. Despite the passage of three decades, for Iranian dissidents residing in a sprawling Albanian compound — far from their homeland — the torture and trauma of life inside an Iranian regime prison is still raw. “I was a university student, almost seven months pregnant, when the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) came,” Kobra Jowkar, now 59, says softly. “They raided our home at midnight and were very ruthless.” That ruthlessness, she claims, included kicking her around like a soccer ball — and walking on her bulging belly. The worst would...

Bassania was an Illyrian city that came under Roman control during the Illyrian Wars. The location of Bassania has previously been suggested to be near the village of Pedhanë in the Lezhë County, or the village of Bushat in the Shkodër County. Bassania was described by the Roman historian Livius (59 BC – AD 17) in the context of the struggle of the Roman army with the last king of the Illyrians, Gentios.The site was first discovered in 2018, when researchers from the University of Warsaw identified cyclopean defensive walls and two stone structures previously thought to be natural rock...

Saturday, 27 July, 2002, 16:22 GMT 17:22 UK Ancient chess history unearthed The chess piece was found in the ancient city of Butrint A team of British archaeologists have unearthed evidence suggesting that Europeans were playing chess as early as the sixth century. An ivory chess piece, excavated at a Byzantine palace in what is now southern Albania, is more than 500 years older than any previously discovered. Leaders of the University of Anglia expedition said it proves the game has a much longer history in Europe than was previously thought. Until now chess historians had agreed that the game...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Western weaponry pouring into Ukraine helped blunt Russia’s initial offensive and seems certain to play a central role in the approaching, potentially decisive, battle for Ukraine’s contested Donbas region. Yet the Russian military is making little headway halting what has become a historic arms express. The U.S. numbers alone are mounting: more than 12,000 weapons designed to defeat armored vehicles, some 1,400 shoulder-fired Stinger missiles to shoot down aircraft and more than 50 million rounds of ammunition, among many other things. Dozens of other nations are adding to the totals. The Biden administration is preparing yet...

A weed farmer worked in a commercial-scale cannabis factory to pay off a £20,000 debt to the gangsters who trafficked him to the UK from Albania. Gentian Haroku, 33, wasn’t told where he’d been working off the debt and had never worked with the class B drug before he was placed in the converted Cutteslowe house. Jailing him for six months, Recorder John Hardy QC said: “I’ve taken into account everything that’s been so ably advanced by [your barrister]. “The prevalence of this kind of offending particularly in this particular area is such that those who engage in this conduct...

That stark warning followed the release of a “draft treaty” proposal from Moscow that Russian officials portray as a resolution to the standoff, which has intensified as Russian forces amass near Ukraine's borders. Yet the Russian document demands not only that NATO promise never to admit Ukraine to the alliance, but it also goes so far as to demand the removal of U.S. and Western European forces from Central and Eastern Europe — a rollback that would amount to a practical breakup of NATO. “It’s not even valid to consider it,” a Baltic official told the Washington Examiner on condition...

For the first time ever, significant light is being shed on one of the most horrendous human rights atrocities of the second half of the 20th century. In 1988, more than 30,000 political prisoners were senselessly massacred by Iranian officials. More than 30 years later, one of the people who participated in the massacre, Hamid Noury, is on trial in Sweden. The Noury trial should spark more media and public scrutiny about the 1988 massacre, and ultimately trigger a long overdue international investigation. Hamid Noury has been incarcerated in Sweden since November 2019 when he visited the country for personal...

The Iranian regime is not only covering up its nuclear weapons ambitions. For more than three decades, the extremist theocracy has tried to cover up one of its greatest crimes against humanity. In 1988, in what became known as the 1988 massacre, Tehran began the systematic killing of thousands of dissidents and opposition activists. Ultimately, an estimated 30,000 people lost their lives in the brutal massacre. But a court in Sweden is now ending the regime's cover-up. In November 2019, Swedish authorities arrested a man, Hamid Noury, believed to have been involved in the 1988 massacre. On July 27, 2021,...

The bus apparently ripped through a guardrail on a highway, though authorities have said the cause is still under investigation. Photos taken shortly after the crash showed the vehicle engulfed in flames as plumes of thick, black smoke rose. Daylight revealed a burned-out shell with all of its windows blown out, sitting in the median. A portion of the guardrail was peeled away and lying in the road. In 2019, Bulgaria had the second-highest road fatality rate in the 27-nation European Union, with 89 people killed per million, according to European Commission data. “Let’s hope we learn lessons from this...

As most of my followers on social media and Substack must know by now, I have spent a considerable amount of time the last two years trying to discover the actual ingredients of the new COVID vaccines. The reason is simple: Big Pharma has gone to considerable trouble to hide them. Do the Big Pharma companies want to submit the vaccines to independent analysis? They do not! Do the Big Pharma companies want to disclose all the ingredients? They do not! Do the Big Pharma companies have any liability for lying to the public about the proprietary ingredients in their...

Human rights usually feature prominently in America's political rhetoric but fade insignificance when it comes to concrete action. That trend can take a historic turn when it comes to Iran, where a genocidal madman has taken the presidency. That the presidency of Ebrahim Raisi in Iran hasn't galvanized governments in the West and in the U.S. in particular to pursue his prosecution is still a mystery. Human rights groups, UN experts, Nobel laureates, scores of elected officials, lawmakers, and journalists have already expressed outrage over Raisi's rise to power. And justifiably so. In 1988, Raisi was one of the members...

Thodex, a crypto platform based in Turkey, said its platform has been “temporarily closed” to address an “abnormal fluctuation in the company accounts.” Local media reports say that Faruk Fatih Ozer, Thodex’s founder, has flown to Albania, taking $2 billion of investors’ funds with him. According to the state-run Anadolu Agency, Turkish authorities have now issued an international warrant seeking Ozer’s arrest. ...In 2019, Canadian crypto exchange QuadrigaCX went bankrupt after its CEO died, resulting in millions of dollars’ worth of digital assets being trapped in a digital wallet.

German researchers have discovered the oldest known case of osteopetrosis or "stone bone" disease in the remains of a man from the Neolithic lacustrine settlement of Maliq in southeast Albania. Osteopetrosis is a rare disorder which manifests through the hardening and solidifying of bones, making them more susceptible to fracture. The study was conducted by palaeopathologist Julia Gresky of the German Archaeological Institute and colleagues. The researchers describe the area as having an important role in the Neolithisation of the Balkan region as it was home to some of the first agricultural economies in the area. The bones they found...

d biological weapons, sought nuclear weapons, supported terrorism, and threatened peace. In October 2002, then-U.S. Sen. Biden voted in favor of a resolution that authorized Bush to enforce ''all relevant'' United Nations Security Council resolutions on Iraq and if needed, to use military force against Iraq. In a Senate floor speech before voting for the resolution, Biden said that "failure to overwhelmingly support" the resolution was "likely to enhance the prospects that war will occur." The objective of the resolution was to compel Iraq to destroy its weapons of mass destruction, Biden said. He left open the possibility that Hussein...