Free Republic

The European Commission is planning use of EU budget funds for the next rescue of Greece, roping Britain into future responsibility for shoring up the eurozone currency structure. Günther Oettinger, Germany's EU commissioner, said on Sunday that a third package worth over €10bn will be needed in 2014 and will partly come in the form of direct help rather than a debt haircut for existing creditors. Most of the rescue aid so far for Greece, Portugal, Cyprus, and Spain's banking system has come from the eurozone's rescue machinery, outside the EU treaty structure. Use of EU budget funds appears not...

Today, President Obama is meeting with the Greek Prime Minister. Hopefully the President isn’t seeking fiscal tips from Greece! Sadly, unemployment in Greece continues to rise and is at 27.6%. greekunemp Even more sad, Eurostat Unemployment Greece People Under 25 Year of Age is 58.7%. Appartently, Greece is “No Country For Young Men,” like the USA. greekyouthunemo Clearly, unemployment in Greece is a sad and terrible problem. To rub salts in their wounds, Greece’s international lenders are pressuring the coalition government led by Prime Minister and New Democracy Conservative leader Antonis Samaras again to lift a ban prohibiting banks from...

SNIP Sissi: The dilemma between the former president and the people originated from [the Muslim Brotherhood’s] concept of the state, the ideology that they adopted for building a country which is based on restoring the Islamic religious empire. That’s what made [former president Mohamed Morsi] not a president for all Egyptians, but a president representing his followers and supporters. Weymouth: When did that become obvious to you? It was obvious on the first day – the day of his inauguration. He started with offending the judiciary and not giving them the appropriate treatment. The Brotherhood experience in ruling a country...

Egypt’s deeply troubled president, Mohamed Morsi, proved to be too uncreative compared to his Turkish brothers in arms when he blamed the mass protests against his Muslim Brotherhood regime on foreign countries only. He could have been better inspired by his Turkish comrades. Even Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Beşir Atalay was able to add some (well, the usual) sauce on his "evil foreign powers recipe": The Turkish unrest had been sparked by the Jewish diaspora. So, where, President Morsi, in your assessment of "Tahrir Square – Revisited," are the Jewish conspirators, Western capitals, financial lobbyists, global capitalists, BBC, CNN International,...

In an almost palpable irony, Russian and U.S. officials simultaneously announced their intent to move forward with controversial arms transfers to opposing sides in the Syrian civil war Monday.

An attack two weeks ago that destroyed an advanced Russian missile shipment delivered to Syria’s Assad regime should also serve as a warning to Iran – and to those complacent Western diplomats who have (dangerously in my view) reconciled themselves to the idea of allowing Iran to go nuclear and then trying to contain it. For it seems that the July 5 attack on an arms depot near the Syrian naval base of Latakia, which has been attributed to Israel, came not from the air (as CNN and the New York Times reported last weekend) but from under the water....

Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad recently transferred two shipments of chemical weapons to Lebanon-based Hizbullah, the Syrian rebels are claiming. Fahad al Masri, a spokesman for the Western-backed Free Syrian Army, told the Lebanese news website El Nashra on Thursday that “the Syrian regime managed to deliver shipments of chemical weapons to Hizbullah.” He added that the weapons were delivered from an area near the capital Damascus and arrived in Lebanon sometime in the past several weeks. The transfer of the weapons, al Masri told El Nashra, was coordinated by Syria and Iran. …

Turkey's parliament has amended an internal armed forces' regulation long relied on by the country's once-powerful generals as grounds for intervening in politics, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported Saturday, in a move that further strips the military of its political influence. The military has wielded huge political power in the country, overthrowing four governments between 1960 and 1997 and issuing a warning against Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Islamic-rooted government as recently as 2007. The generals have in the past pointed to an internal military regulation that stipulated the army's duty as watching over and protecting the Turkish republic, to...

Yes, the most transparently opportunistic administration is becoming more transparent every day. In the midst of negotiations for a free-trade agreement between Europe and the U.S., the NSA Papers, made transparent by Edward Snowden, reveal that America has been spying on allies as well as enemies. Yeah I know. Obama has a hard time telling the difference between U.S. allies and U.S. enemies. Hence he’s arming our allies, er, enemies, Al Qaida, in Syria; he’s being flexible for Vladimir Putin, the Russian dictator, er, president; helping the Venezuelan government wing disguised as an oil company, our ally, er, enemy; and...

Iran’s Foreign Ministry on Sunday criticized the Egyptian military’s toppling of the nation’s Islamist president, calling the move improper in its first official reaction. “We do not consider proper the intervention by military forces in politics to replace a democratically elected administration,” said ministry spokesman Abbas Araghchi, according to the official news agency IRNA. Egypt’s military ousted Mohammed Morsi Wednesday after four days of mass protests against him. …

Turkey and Honduras, in different ways, highlight the lack of effective leadership the United States currently is able to exercise in the world. Turkey: Turkish government support for the IHH ship in the Gaza flotilla is now well understood and the anti-Semitic ravings of both official Turks and the Turkish media have made Turkey's intention to split from Israel clear. But it is a mistake to think this is only about Israel. Support for the flotilla was only the latest in a series of Turkish decisions designed to distance itself from the United States and move toward closer political relations...

Drawn from deep in the Mediterranean Sea, the water has flowed through pipelines reaching almost 4,000 feet off of Israel's coast and, once in Israeli soil, buried almost 50 feet underground. Now, it rushes down a tube sending it through a series of filters and purifiers. After 90 minutes, it will be ready to run through the faucets of Tel Aviv. Set to begin operating as soon as next month, Israel Desalination Enterprises Technologies' Sorek Desalination Plant will provide up to 26,000 cubic meters -- or nearly 7 million gallons -- of potable water to Israelis every hour. When it's...

My sister in California wanted a better life for her and her two daughters,” explained Marianne Aziz, a 25-year-old pharmacist. “There was a big fight between us and our Muslim neighbors over our parking place ... . They cut my brother-in-law’s face with a knife.” Aziz said that after that incident, “My sister felt she was no longer safe anymore. She got a hospital report on her husband’s injuries and a police report and when they went to the U.S., she immediately [applied for] asylum.” Egyptian now ranks as the second highest nationality to receive asylum in the United States...

Moscow has reiterated its vivid interest for Cyprus’ natural gas by expressing once again its interest for the exploitation of the reserves in the island’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ). The interest was expressed during a meeting in Moscow between the Cyprus House President Yiannakis Omirou and Russian Deputy Minister of Energy Yury Sentyurin. The meeting lasted two hours and was also attended by the members of the parliamentary party delegation which accompany Omirou, as well as by representatives of Russian natural gas companies, NOVATEK and Gazprom Bank. Omirou arrived in Russia this morning, for a two-day official visit, heading a...

The Syrian conflict has become a “profound game changer” and poses the biggest terror threat to the UK and Europe for a decade, the Home Office’s terror chief has warned. Charles Farr said there are thousands of al-Qaeda-inspired fighters now operating in the war torn country with many wanting to attack the UK and other Western nations. He said there has never been so many groups and fanatics linked to the terror organisation so close to Europe... He said foreign fighters are “flocking” to the country in numbers last seen in Iraq and warned they are likely to exceed such...

Moody’s Investors Service late on Monday said that it considers Cyprus to have defaulted after the debt-stricken island country swapped some local bonds for longer-term bonds. The ratings agency, which does not use a “default” or “selective default” rating, said it will revisit Cyprus’s rating to assess the impact of the exchange on the sustainability of the nation’s debt burden. Other factors, including the likelihood that Cyprus will comply with the rest of the measures spelled out in its bailout agreement with the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the European Union, will be taken into consideration as...

Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Beir Atalay has denied media reports that he blamed the Jewish diaspora for the Gezi unrest. Atalay’s press office said in a written statement today that the minister had not used such an expression. “There are some circles that are jealous of Turkey’s growth. They are all uniting, on one side the Jewish diaspora,” Cihan News Agency quoted him in a video as saying on July 1 in the Central Anatolian province of Kırıkkale in an earlier report. Before the statement from Atalay’s office, the Turkish Jewish community issued a press release on its website, saying...

Obama’s war on the Christian religion, particularly the Catholic variety, has claimed another casualty in the Middle East. The Vatican confirmed that “Syrian priest François Murad was killed in Gassanieh, in northern Syria, in the convent of the Custody of the Holy Land where he had taken refuge.… According to local sources, the monastery where Fr. Murad was staying was attacked by militants linked to the jihadi group Jabhat al-Nusra.” A graphic video of unknown origin- linked below- shows a crowd of Islamic militants gathered in a circle around three men kneeling on the ground. Many of the onlookers were...

Did you actually believe that they were not going to use the precedent that they set in Cyprus? On Thursday, EU finance ministers agreed to a shocking new plan that will make every bank account in Europe vulnerable to Cyprus-style bail-ins. In other words, the wealth confiscation that we just witnessed in Cyprus will now be used as a template for future bank failures all over Europe. That means that if you have a bank account in Europe, you could wake up some morning and every penny in that account over 100,000 euros could be gone. That is exactly what...