Free Republic

Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) – A Saudi-owned newspaper has claimed that Islamic State chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has moved to Afghanistan via Iranian territories. Quoting Pakistani security and other extremist group sources, Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper reported that Baghdadi arrived in Nangarhar Province in eastern Afghanistan after crossing Iranian territories via the eastern city of Zahedan. According to the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, IS manages a location to host its fighters in Zahedan in cooperation with the Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Al-Baghdadi has been reported killed or wounded on a number of occasions. Last month, Baghdadi was reported to be...

Nations that struck the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, except for the United States, meet on Monday in what many diplomats fear may prove a quixotic effort to keep the agreement alive after U.S. sanctions targeting Iranian oil exports resume in November. Ministers from Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and Iran will gather in New York at 8 p.m. EDT on Monday (0000 GMT Tuesday) to grapple with U.S. President Donald Trump’s May 8 decision to withdraw from the deal and restore the full force of U.S. sanctions on Iran. Their delicate, and perhaps unrealistic, task is to build a case...

Currencies should not be used as instruments to attack other countries' economies, says Mevlut Cavusoglu, referring to US ANKARA / CARACAS, Venezuela Turkey is eager to use local currencies in bilateral trade deals to counter attacks by the U.S., Turkey’s foreign minister said late Friday. "We are so keen actually to use local currencies in our bilateral trade, not only between Turkey and Venezuela, but also between Turkey and other countries," Mevlut Cavusoglu told a joint press conference in Caracas with his Venezuelan counterpart Jorge Arreaza. Cavusoglu said since Washington has been using the dollar as a tool to attack other countries’ economies,...

Debate in Europe framing illegal immigration from the third world as a problem is “dangerous”, the United Nations (UN) refugee chief has warned, insisting that the mass movement of peoples has been “a source of progress and prosperity since people first began to migrate”. “Distorted” political debate on the subject has led to Europe becoming “obsessed” with a migrant crisis that “does not exist”, Filippo Grandi said, urging EU politicians to stop squabbling “over a few boats” [of illegal immigrants]. In an interview published in the German press Thursday, he dismissed plans backed by Austria and Italy among other member...

In May 1997, NATO and Russia signed the “Founding Act,” which stated, among other things, that “NATO and Russia do not consider each other as adversaries,” and that “in the current and foreseeable security environment,” NATO would not seek “additional permanent stationing of substantial ground combat forces” inside nations close to Russia. Nothing was discussed about the Founding Act at the U.S.-Poland summit, but permanently deploying U.S. troops — especially a division-sized element — on Polish soil would essentially make the agreement moot. Right now, U.S. and NATO troops are regularly deployed on Polish soil, but only on a rotational...

It has been 17 years since the Islamic jihadists conducted their terrorist attack on America, 11 September, 2001, killing almost 3,000 innocent Americans who were doing nothing more than going to work. What was the ideology that drove these Islamic jihadists to carry out such atrocious acts? Our political and military leadership who have been thoroughly indoctrinated in “political correctness” still remain incapable of identifying the ideology and the enemy. Clearly, the plague of jihadi terrorism has its roots in Islam. However, due to our former president’s obfuscation of the scriptures of Islam found in the Quran and Shariah law,...

A green card is no longer an immigrant’s insurance policy against deportation in the Donald Trump era. Documented immigrants can now be deported from the United States if they break the rules of federal and state programs that offer public benefits to immigrants. New guidelines implemented last week by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services say that immigrants who abuse “any program related to the reception of public benefits” will be summoned to appear before an immigration court. Immigrants will be subjected to removal procedures if there’s evidence of “fraud or willful misrepresentation” in connection “with any official matter or application...

The Trump administration on Saturday proposed rules that could deny green cards to immigrants if they use Medicaid, food stamps, housing vouchers and other forms of public assistance. Federal law already requires those seeking green cards and to prove they will not be a burden — or “public charge” — but the new rules detail a broad range of programs that could disqualify them. The Department of Homeland Security said current and past receipt of certain public benefits above thresholds would be considered “a heavily weighed negative factor” in granting green cards as well as temporary stays. […] Coming less...

Leo Varadkar is set to travel to New York today ahead of the United Nations Nelson Mandela Peace Summit. The Taoiseach will visit the UN headquarters in New York tomorrow to attend the summit, which is being held in honor of the centenary of Mandela’s birth. […] The Taoiseach will address the plenary and will also hold a number of bilateral meetings with heads of state during which he will raise Ireland’s campaign for an elected seat at the UN Security Council for the 2021-2022 term. …

Relatives of the disappeared protested the arbitrary practice and started marching towards the Galatasaray Square, upon which they were attacked by the police. The Saturday Mothers, who have been fighting for 23 years to have the fate of their relatives disappeared in custody brought to light and perpetrators punished, have been attacked by the police once again. Relatives of the disappeared including HDP MPs have been battered. The Saturday Mothers, whose demonstrations have been banned by the Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu since the demonstration of the 700th week, were subjected to another police attack on the 704th week’s demonstration. The...

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. -- An MQ-9 Reaper drone has bagged its first air-to-air kill of another small, aerial vehicle in a controlled simulation, an official revealed to Military.com this week. The successful test late last year showed the U.S. Air Force that an unmanned vehicle like the MQ-9 has the ability to conduct air-to-air combat, much like its manned fighter brethren such as an F-15 Eagle or F-22 Raptor, according to Col. Julian Cheater, commander of the 432nd Wing at Creech Air Force Base, Nevada. "Something that's unclassified but not well known, we recently in November … launched an air-to-air...

With rising unilateralism challenging its very existence, the United Nations convenes its annual meeting of world leaders Monday and will try once more to tackle problems together as a community of nations, addressing threats ranging from Mideast conflicts to the effects of global warming — and also encouraging the glimmer of hope over the nuclear standoff in North Korea. This year, 133 world leaders have signed up to attend the General Assembly session, a significant increase from last year’s 114. Secretary-General António Guterres called the expected large turnout “eloquent proof of the confidence of the international community in the United...

Interest in the goodwill visit has been building since the Pentagon announced in August it was sending its own hospital ship, the USNS Comfort, to neighboring Colombia to provide free medical treatment for thousands of Venezuelan migrants fleeing their homes amid widespread food and medicine shortages. U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, in a visit to Colombia last month, called the ship's deployment a humanitarian mission to deal with the fallout of President Nicolas Maduro's mismanagement of the economy. The United Nations estimates that 2.3 million Venezuelans have fled the crisis-torn country in recent years, mainly to Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and...

The Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office on Friday issued detention warrants for 110 members of the Turkish Air Forces including six pilots over alleged links to the faith-based Gülen movement, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported. According to the report, 100 of the 110 officers who were accused of communicating with people from the Gülen movement have been detained in operations in 16 provinces. The Turkish government has dismissed over 40,000 military personnel including gendarmerie and military cadets over alleged links to the movement since a failed coup attempt in July 2016, the tr724 new website reported on Aug. 4....

This month, the doors will open at the Institute of Social, Economic and Political Sciences (ISSEP) in Lyon, France’s third-biggest city. It will, its high-profile backers hope, become a breeding ground for the country’s next generation of conservative thinkers and leaders. It also marks the return to public life of Marion Maréchal, once the great hope of the French far right, who is the college’s director. She said the idea was to train a new crop of politicians and officials to replace the “visionless” Parisian elite. She was the youngest member of France’s parliament before stepping away from politics in...

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas met President Michael D. Higgins, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, and Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney today. Coveney had invited Abbas to come to Ireland at their meeting in Ramallah in January. To coincide with the visit, the Tánaiste announced additional funding of €1 million to the UN Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA). “Ireland is a longstanding supporter of UNRWA’s vital work in delivering healthcare, education and food to 5.3 million Palestine refugees. The ongoing conflict in the Middle East region has meant an increased demand for UNRWA’s services but funding has not kept pace...

While the Chinese make good on a pledge to refuse negotiations while under threat, President Trump is making good on his campaign pledge to improve trade conditions for the United States with countries he believes have long taken advantage of the American market, the largest in the world. It’s hard to fault the president. China’s trade imbalances with the U.S. have been massive — in the hundreds of billions — for years. Now, much of that is due to the fact that U.S. manufacturing capacity had fallen off over the past few decades (not altogether caused by, but accelerated after,...

For most of Germany’s postwar history, the conservative CDU/CSU and the Social Democrats (SPD) were the undisputed twin poles of German politics. Known as Volksparteien, literally “popular parties,” these big-tent associations of interests have led every government since 1949. They were the German equivalents of the Republicans and Democrats in the United States or Tories and Labour in the United Kingdom. But their popularity is eroding alarmingly. In the words of venerable German political scientist Herfried Münkler, the Volksparteien look increasingly like “last year’s models.” The most recent Deutschlandtrend survey, published on September 20, put support for the CDU/CSU at...

As of July 2015, the USA's annual trade deficit of $803B was more then the next 14 largest debtor nations combined!

TEHRAN, Iran — Gunmen attacked an annual Iranian military parade Saturday in the country's oil-rich southwest, killing at least 24 people, including eight members of the country's elite Revolutionary Guard, and wounding 53 others, local media reported. Iran's state-run IRNA news agency cited "knowledgeable sources" without elaborating. It said gunmen were dressed in Guard uniforms and targeted a riser where military and police commanders were sitting. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the assault in Ahvaz, which saw gunfire spray into a crowd of marching Guardsmen, bystanders and government officials watching from a nearby riser. However, Iran faced a bloody...