Free Republic

WASHINGTON– TransCanada Corp.’s chief executive said the cost to build the Keystone XL pipeline, currently estimated at $5.4 billion, is expected to double by the time the U.S. government completes its review of the largest part of the project. Russ Girling, chief executive of the Calgary, Alberta,-based company, in an interview this week said he expects the project’s cost could increase to a “number that gets you into the high single digits to a 10 number.” He was hesitant to say the project’s cost could double. “I was actually trying to avoid saying those words,” Mr. Girling said. “Obviously, the...

The influential Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani on Friday urged vigilance against Western political interference in Iraqi affairs but stopped short of opposing the American-led military campaign against the Islamic State extremists. “All political leaders of the country must be aware and awake to prevent the external assistance against the Islamic State from becoming an entrance to breach Iraq’s independence,” Ayatollah Sistani said. “Cooperation with the international effort shall not be taken as a pretext to impose foreign decisions on events in Iraq, especially military events.”

They want to keep the Christians ignorant and subservient. But Obama say, They have legitimate grievances! “Mosul, the Islamic State ‘bans Christians from school," ” Asia News, September 19, 2014 (thanks to The Religion of Peace): Ankawa (AsiaNews) – For the first time in history, Iraqi Christians who always had a “high standard of education” in the region, are being deprived of the right to study and cannot attend schools.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and his aides swear the Syrian “rebels” he was pictured last year with weren’t ISIS members or supporters, and the mainstream media is by and large buying the 2008 GOP presidential nominee’s story. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has endured brutal criticism—media fact checkers, reporters, and political figures have shredded him—for questioning just who McCain posed with. But a closer look at the situation tells perhaps a different story than McCain’s office or the mainstream media have pushed. The criticism of McCain centers around how the Arizona senator met with Syrian rebel leaders in May 2013 when...

Confronted with pure evil in the form of ISIS, President Barack Obama treats the jihadists as if they represented an isolated threat that can be dealt with on its own. ISIS (or ISIL as the U.S. government calls it, or the Islamic State as the jihadists now call themselves) has no relationship to Islam, according to the president and his Secretary of State John Kerry.

An American-Israeli woman is fighting for her daughter’s right to leave Israel after her ex-husband filed a case in the Rabbinical Court on September 4 demanding visitation rights. The child in question, a 13-year-old named Inbar, or Amber Hope Layman, cannot leave Israel during the legal proceedings, and her mother promises to “raise hell” in order to bring her home. The mother, Danielle Layman, currently lives in Kansas and is married to an American, Jeremy Layman. She left Shahar Abecassis, Inbar’s father, in 2003. Danielle Layman said Shahar was abusive and made threats on Inbar’s life, and that she had...

A Hawaiian defense contractor will serve more than seven years in prison for giving classified documents to a Chinese citizen, the Justice Department announced. Benjamin Pierce Bishop, 60, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, gave classified information to a 27-year-old Chinese woman he was having a romantic relationship with, prosecutors said Wednesday, including information on U.S. nuclear weapons capabilities. Bishop also gave the woman classified information on training and planning sessions between the U.S. and South Korea, prosecutors said.

Brett LoGiuratoSeptember 19, 2014France's military conducted its first airstrike in Iraq, becoming the first foreign country in addition to the US to strike the extremist group calling itself the Islamic State (also ISIS or ISIL) in the country. French President Francois Hollande said in a statement the strike, which was conducted around 9:40 a.m. local time Friday, destroyed a logistics depot held by ISIS in northeastern Iraq. He promised more operations would continue "in the coming days." Rafale fighter jets "conducted a first strike against a supply depot terrorist organization Daech in north-eastern Iraq. The goal was reached and destroyed,"...

A group of aid workers and journalists trying to stop the spread of Ebola were slaughtered by residents of a small African village where they went to provide help, reports said.

Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) came to prominence and notoriety when he famously shouted, ‘You Lie’ at Barack Obama during the president’s speech to a joint session of Congress. If ever there was a prime opportunity for a reprise, it occurred during an exchange between Wilson and Secretary of State John Kerry.Wilson asked Kerry if the U.S. was at war. If Kerry’s response had been a yes or no, the clip below would be no more than five seconds. As it was, Kerry took a more circuitous route to his answer, which was beyond ridiculous. After several seconds of hemming and...

ISIS is calling for radicalized "lone wolves" in the United States to go to the homes of U.S. soldiers and "slaughter" military personnel.This is part of what is expected to be "a continued call" for American military personnel to be targeted within the United States.According to Fox News, one British jihadist "encouraged radicals still living in the West to use Facebook and Linkedln to find and target soldiers." The jihadist tweeted: "You could literally search for soldiers, find their town, photos of them, look for addresses in Yellowbook or something. Then show up and slaughter them." Militants in Syria have...

A blogger in 'poor psychological condition' has been sentenced to death after being found guilty of insulting the Prophet Mohammad on Facebook. According to an 'informed source', speaking to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, Soheil Arabi, 30, had kept eight Facebook pages under different names and admitted to posting material insulting to the Prophet on these pages. Arabi, who was arrested along with his wife in November last year by agents from the Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), is said to have written the "material without thinking and in poor psychological condition". Branch 75 of Tehran's Criminal Court,...

A female member of Saudi Arabia’s National Society for Human Rights (NSHR) has reportedly been fined for driving herself to the hospital.When police pulled her over, Aliyah Al Farid said she had a medical emergency and there was no one available to drive her to the hospital so she took her husband’s car.The officers reportedly allowed her to continue driving. They followed her to the hospital and waited while she saw a doctor, before taking her to the traffic department where she was fined for driving without a licence.Women are unable to get a driver’s licence in Saudi Arabia, despite...

On Thursday, Australian authorities claimed they thwarted a plot by supporters of the Islamic State to grab random people off the street and then behead the captured citizens on videotape. Australia’s attorney general said that the massive raid, the largest counterterrorism operation in the nation’s history, involving more than 800 police officers and raids of at least twelve properties, was necessary because, “If the . . . police had not acted today, there is a likelihood that this would have happened.” Australian prime minister Tony Abbott confirmed that the raids were prompted by intercepted phone calls, from an Australian of...

Fresh terror busts in Australia expose a common Achilles’ heel of the West: Indiscriminate refugee policies turn free countries into breeding grounds for jihad. It’s the same game in America. Soldiers of Islam have weaponized our blind generosity against us. In Sydney this week, authorities detained a half-dozen Muslim plotters and arrested a top collaborator in an alleged conspiracy to kidnap and behead a random Australian citizen. The accused mastermind? Mohammad Ali Baryalei, an Afghan refugee turned Aussie Islamic State recruiter. He and his aristocratic family were welcomed Down Under decades ago. Baryalei returned the favor by taking to the...

Luhansk is licking its wounds. After a long summer of bombardment by government forces, it is mourning its dead and slowly coming back to life. But it is a grim, pessimistic place, full of hardship and queues. Under a green tent, a quiet line of grateful citizens waits for a decent plate of food, courtesy of one the few soup kitchens operating across the city. There is still no electricity or water in the city, so thousands of people depend on handouts. Rebellious past I find Anatoly Bukhalov sitting alone in the corner. When he finds out we're from Britain,...

As a species, we don't seem to cotton to facts—especially when it comes to Jews Years ago, I was seated...next to a British law professor... The conversation soon turned, as conversation often does among professional intellectuals, to Israel, specifically to the then-recent conflict between Israeli soldiers & Palestinian fighters in the West Bank town of Jenin, . Oops—forgot about it already? Here’s a refresher: in 2002, the IDF w ent into Jenin during the Second Intifada, after Israel determined that the town served as a launching pad for missile and rocket attacks against Israeli civilians. The 10-day operation claimed the...

PARIS (Reuters) - France said on Friday its jets had launched strikes inside Iraq for the first time since the country promised to join military action against Islamic State insurgents who have taken over parts of the country. "This morning at 9:40 (0740 GMT) our Rafale jets launched a first strike against a logistics depot of the terrorists," said a statement from President Francois Hollande's office on Friday shortly after the raids.

It is a popular aspect of media mythmaking about the Islamic State that it is so extreme that even other “extremists” such as al-Qaeda shun and repudiate it. But this claim, like the many declarations by both Muslim and non-Muslim leaders that the Islamic State has nothing to do with Islam, is always left unexplained and unsupported.The recent Saudi statement against terrorism is yet another example of this. The credulous and ignorant will wax enthusiastic over this display of Saudi “moderation,” but in reality — yet again — the closer one looks, the less there is to see.The Associated Press...

Alex Salmond’s independence blueprint aims to attract thousands more immigrants, who could use Scotland as a back door to England. The Scottish National Party say they would ’celebrate’ more people arriving from overseas, reversing what they claim is years of ’depopulation’. Mr Salmond says Scotland needs an extra 24,000 immigrants a year to fill jobs and bankroll the welfare system for ageing Scots, but without tough border controls many could use it as an easy route into England and Wales.