Free Republic

Of the more than 1,100 Army captains notified last month their military careers would soon end, 87 were deployed worldwide and 48 were serving in Afghanistan at the time, Army officials said Wednesday. The Army has been talking for months about the need to separate the captains as well as more than 500 majors this summer as part of the broad Army drawdown, but it’s the first time details have emerged about the sobering business of delivering pink slips to troops in harm’s way.

Israeli security forces have been put on heightened alert after two Palestinians were killed during a massive protest in the West Bank. The victims were among an estimated 10,000 people who clashed violently with soldiers and border police at a checkpoint in Qalandiya, between Jerusalem and Ramallah. Israel said today it had deployed thousands of security forces were deployed in and around Jerusalem to "deal with any disturbances". Sky's David Bowden in Ashkelon, near Israel's border with Gaza, said: "After Friday prayers who knows what might happen. We are coming to the end of Ramadan. All of this is boiling...

While Islamic Jihad remains an Iranian protégé, Hamas decided two and a half years ago to break with Iran and return to its natural Arab and Sunni home. This decision was sparked by the Iranian-backed Syrian government’s slaughter of its largely Sunni citizens, which generated pressure to sever ties from both fellow Palestinians and Arab states. But Hamas also thought this move wouldn’t exact too high an economic price, thanks to the support it received from Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood-led government. That calculation collapsed when Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi was ousted last year; Egypt’s new government is waging war on the...

JERUSALEM–At least five times in the past week in Gaza, Israeli tanks equipped with a revolutionary defense system have deflected anti-tank missiles fired at them by Hamas fighters, according to the Israeli army. The success of the Windbreaker system, as it is called in Israel, augments on the ground the technological achievement in the air of the Iron Dome anti-rocket defense system which Israel credits with neutralizing the intensive rocketing from Gaza of the past two weeks. The Windbreaker system (known abroad as Trophy), which became operational in 2009, has since been successfully tested by live fire twice when Israeli...

Hamas is employing a new tactic to conceal its true terrorist nature from the world. It has begun asking Gaza’s social media users to disseminate lies throughout the West and the Arab world. This news will come as no surprise to those familiar with the radical Islamist organization’s usual methods. However, now mainstream media outlets will have to think twice before blindly quoting reports from Hamas about what’s really happening in Gaza. The Middle East Media Research (MEMRI) published Thursday a translation of a new Hamas internet campaign to provide guidelines for Gaza’s social media users. According to MEMRI, the...

As opposed to previous campaigns, the army has a concrete goal — finding the tunnels — which means Hamas knows precisely where to strike. On Wednesday morning three paratroopers were killed, bringing the death toll since the beginning of the ground operation in Gaza to 32. It’s highly possible that those sitting around the General Staff table knew that this would be the price Israel would have to pay if it sought to neutralize the tunnel threat from Hamas. The public, still very much supportive of the operation, has been surprised. After all, during Operation Cast Lead in 2009, over...

Similar in-country screening programs were set up in East Asia after the Vietnam War and in Haiti in the 1990s. The government is considering a program to give refugee status to young people from Honduras The plan would involve screening youths in Honduras to determine whether they qualify for refugee status If successful the program could be expanded to other Central American families The goal is to deter children who would not ultimately qualify for refugee status from attempting the dangerous trek to the U.S The plan would involve screening youths in their home country to determine whether they qualify...

Vilification of Hamas in Cairo has only increased since Operation Protective Edge erupted. CAIRO (AP) — In the Gaza war now in its third bloody week, Hamas’ battle isn’t only with Israel, even though that’s the country it is firing rockets at. The terrorist group that rules Gaza is demanding Egypt open its border with the tiny, blockaded strip of territory Even as it presents itself as a mediator in the conflict, Egypt is taking a hard line, refusing any opening that would strengthen Hamas, a group it accuses of fueling militancy on its soil. And so far, the Egyptian...

Hamas’s attack tunnels are now recognized as a major danger, but Israel would have to reconquer Gaza to make sure they aren’t rebuilt, and that would cause untenable losses. The tunnels inside Gaza and under the Israeli border are not a secret project Hamas ran under the noses of Israel and the Palestinian public. Every child in Gaza, like every junior officer in IDF Military Intelligence, knew that, beneath Gaza City and beyond, a network of tunnels was being dug over the past five years, with an investment of millions of dollars. In other words, Gaza Underground Yet the Israeli...

More than 1,000 people took part, Thursday, in a pro-Israel rally in front of the Finnish parliament building in Helsinki.

U.S. dismisses Russian concern about THAAD system in S. Korea 2014-07-25 10:44 The United States said Thursday an advanced missile defense battery it plans to deploy to South Korea is not aimed at Russia, after Moscow expressed concern that the system would negatively affect the regional situation and provoke an arms race. The U.S. military plans to bring a Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense battery into South Korea to help deter threats from North Korea. The U.S. has conducted a site survey for the system, though no decision has been announced as to where to put it. Russia's...

North Korea to build underwater hotel in East Coast city of Wonsan North Korea announces major plan to renovate Wonsan beach area North Korean authorities have announced an expansive development project for the east coast city of Wonsan that will include the construction of an underwater hotel, a Pyongyang Times article said last Tuesday. The ambitious plan, which focuses on the construction and development of infrastructure and buildings primarily related to the leisure sector, will see Wonsan become a “tourist city,” the Pyongyang Times said.

The protracted hostilities have used up the financial resources set aside for the conduct of the anti-terrorist operation (ATO), thus undermining salary payouts to the Ukrainian military as early as from August 1, Ukrainian Finance Minister Oleksandr Shlapak said on July 24.

... “They are people who have already made money and are now scared to lose it,” Paley said.... “I don’t share the opinion of 90 percent of the country: I feel like a foreigner here now so why not leave?” said Tatiana Konkova, a Russian literature teacher and singer, giving her last concert in Moscow this month.... The number of Russians emigrating in the last two years was some five times higher than in the two before Putin began a new six-year term in May 2012, official figures show.... Echoing the post-Soviet brain drain, sociologists say Russia is bleeding exactly...

Google’s interpretation of the European Court of Justice’s “right to be forgotten” ruling is prejudicing the intention of the court, the State’s data protection watchdog said yesterday, as regulators and search engine giants met in Brussels to discuss the matter. Billy Hawkes, who will shortly retire as Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner, described the ruling as “a very difficult decision by the European Court of Justice”. The ruling, made in May, has effectively exposed Google to criticism both for removing links and for refusing requests for links to be removed. …

A foolproof plan to ease pressure on the border that’s currently being considered by the White House. Why force kids to make a dangerous trip through Mexico only to end up as illegal immigrants in the United States when we could go to them, grant them legal status, and send them north to America ourselves? It’s so crazy it just. might. work. Minor footnote: Federal law doesn’t allow refugee status to be granted for fear of street gangs, only for fear of racial/religious/political persecution, but oh well. Legal details never stopped Obama before. If approved, the plan would direct the...

Vladimir Putin’s daughter has fled her Dutch home as fury grows over Flight mH17. Maria Putin lived just 20 miles from the airport where the doomed jet dpoarted from. News that the Russian president's daughter was living among a nation of people still fuming over Russia’s role in the downing of Flight MH17 was only going to spark more outrage. And once it became known the 29-year-old had a £2million apartment not far from the Dutch airport where the doomed jet left on its final, tragic journey, the angry protests quickly started. There were demands for Maria to be deported...

It's taken a long time, but the International Monetary Fund finally seems to be talking some sense about the beleaguered deficit economies of the eurozone. In a new analysis of continuing imbalances within the single currency area, it pretty much concludes that the situation is hopeless without the sort of eurozone-wide macro economic policies – monetary as well as fiscal – which are specifically rejected by the high command in Berlin. OK, so it doesn't quite say that, but even so, this will make deeply depressing reading for the struggling economies of Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain.

How to curb the reemergence of the old Soviet bear can be described as the greatest gut-check that the western nations have faced in a long time. Right now, there is increasing talk of an arms embargo against Russia. The timing would be perfect as Russia’s military capacity is in tatters. Two years ago, Russia embarked on a ten-year rearmament plan; its Soviet era weapons were largely ineffective against advanced military rivals as they had all gone past their expiration dates. Economic sanctions in a global economy mean collateral damage for all the players, and possibly a winter without gas...

Stagnation is automatically causing debt ratios to spiral upwards yet again across a large part of the currency bloc ___ Europe's economic recovery has stalled. The EMU policy elites took a fateful gamble that global growth alone would lift the eurozone off the reefs, without the need for serious monetary stimulus or a reflation package to ensure take-off velocity. Their strategy has failed. The Bundesbank says German growth may have slumped to zero in the second quarter. French industrial output has fallen for three months in a row. French business surveys point to an outright contraction of GDP, with a...