Free Republic

Human rights groups and Venezuela’s opposition are criticizing the government’s new authorization for riot police to use firearms to control protests. […] Venezuela’s constitution bans the use of firearms and toxic substances to control demonstrations, although in practice such means have long been used, including during last year’s deadly street battles between police and anti-government demonstrators. …

A new poll commissioned by French magazine Marianne reveals that if presidential elections happened today, Le Pen would gather the most votes and France’s unpopular incumbent President Hollande would be knocked out in the first round. It’s the first opinion poll on voting intentions this year, and the solid advantage enjoyed by Le Pen and her traditional-conservative Front National (FN) party appears to have been confirmed in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo shootings in Paris earlier this month. Front National is the only mainstream French political movement that shows willing to tackle the problem of rising Islamism, and this...

Considering that he has given our enemy Iran 80% of what they want in negotiations that were supposed to curtail their nuclear enrichment program, you bet I would. The guy is a pushover and if I played my cards right, I might end up walking off the lot with a free car. According to Channel 10 in Israel, Israeli officials believe that the American president is so desperate for a deal, he will give away the store — and American and Israeli security — in his quest to “make history” with the Iranians. Jerusalem Post: Israeli officials told Channel 10...

Here are five reasons Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should politely decline House Speaker John Boehner’s invitation to address a joint session of Congress: ● It’s inappropriate. It doesn’t matter what good allies the United States and Israel are, and it doesn’t matter how bad relations may be between Netanyahu and President Obama. Allies don’t go big-footing around in each other’s politics. It also doesn’t matter how worthy the cause. In 1793, when Citizen Genêt traveled through the United States, drumming up support for revolutionary France (and overtly violating President George Washington’s policy of U.S. neutrality), he no doubt thought...

DONETSK, Ukraine (AP) — Artillery fire killed at least 12 civilians in the main rebel stronghold of Donetsk on Friday amid fierce fighting between pro-Russia separatists and government troops as hopes for a break in hostilities were dashed when an attempt to call a new round of peace talks failed....(excerpt)

Israel is working to create "free trade zones" with Communist China and the Eurasian Union, as the world is being divided into geographic "regions" for the eventual New World Order. Globalism Wins as Israel Plans "Free Trade" With Putin, Beijing The New American 30 January 2015 As the world is increasingly divided up into geographic “regions” under regional regimes cobbled together under the guise of pseudo-“free trade,” Israeli authorities are now quietly working to create what they call “free trade zones” with both the Communist Chinese regime and the Kremlin-dominated Eurasian Economic Union (member countries shown in green). The...

“Has President Obama launched a political campaign against Prime Minister Netanyahu and his representatives?” Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz and New York Rep. Lee Zeldin, also a Republican, asked Sec. of State John Kerry in a letter Thursday.They asked “for information regarding media reports that U.S. taxpayer dollars are being used to fund efforts to influence upcoming elections in Israel.”The Jewish Press reported here this week that non-profit and tax-exempt leftist groups  are campaigning to dump Netanyahu.Sen. Cruz asked: This administration’s relentless harassment of Israel is utterly incomprehensible. The Islamic Republic of Iran is pursuing the deadliest weapons on the...

US lawmakers propose PM move speech to joint session of Congress until after Israel election on March 17.WASHINGTON – Democrats in the House of Representatives are suggesting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu postpone his speech to a joint session of Congress until after the Israeli election on March 17. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-California) said it was “not appropriate” for Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to invite Netanyahu without first notifying the White House – a move that angered the Obama administration.Netanyahu is expected to advocate for a different policy on Iran that the president has thus far pursued. “Such...

Antisemitic British Baroness Jenny Tonge Pressures UK Jews to Condemn Israel JANUARY 30, 2015 11:50 AM Ben Cohen Baroness Jenny Tonge, a member of Britain’s House of Lords with a long record of inflammatory, often antisemitic, statements against both Israel and the British Jewish leadership, has again been pressuring British Jews to collectively condemn Israel. Earlier this week, Tonge tabled a written question in the House of Lords in which she asked “Her Majesty’s Government whether they plan to encourage Jewish faith leaders in the United Kingdom publicly to condemn settlement building by Israel and to make clear their support...

A nuclear-capable Iran is the gravest threat facing America today. The Obama administration’s nuclear negotiations with Iran, the so-called P5+1 talks, were supposed to stop Iran’s rush to a nuclear bomb. Regrettably, what began as an unwise gamble has descended into a dangerous series of unending concessions, which is why the time has come for Congress to act. Our negotiating “partner,” Iran, is not a rational or peaceful actor; it is a radical, Islamist tyranny whose constitution explicitly calls for jihad. Iran’s ayatollahs have honored the call: Iran has been killing Americans for more than three decades. In 1983 Iran...

Washington (AFP) - The US military will no longer divulge facts and figures about its costly effort to assist Afghan security forces, declaring the information top secret, officials said Thursday. The move marks an about-face for the Pentagon, which for the past six years has reported a range of data about the $65 billion program to build up the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF). The information included how US taxpayers' money has been spent and the state of the troubled country's police and army. John Sopko, special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction (SIGAR), voiced disappointment with the change and said...

Police armed with pistols in heavily gun-controlled European countries are realizing a hard lesson fast–jihadists with no respect for the law are side-stepping gun control and stockpiling weapons that will give them the upper hand in confrontations with officers. Europol chief of staff Brian Donald says there were two “large seizures” of firearms–particularly “assault weapons”–over the last two weeks and more seizures are expected as investigations and tracking continues.

When the United States rejected former Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli’s request for spying equipment to eavesdrop, U.S. diplomats feared, on his political enemies, the former supermarket baron turned to another source: Israel.Now scores of Panama’s political and social elite are learning that the eavesdropping program that Martinelli’s security team set in place sprawled into the most private aspects of their lives – including their bedrooms. Rather than national security, what appears to have driven the wiretapping was a surfeit of the seven deadly sins, particularly greed, pride, lust and envy.Nearly every day, targets of the wiretapping march to the prosecutors’...

"Eight former U.S. national security practitioners — the two of us, plus former U.S. representative to NATO Ivo Daalder, former undersecretary of defense Michèle Flournoy, former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst, former deputy undersecretary of defense Jan Lodal, former NATO European commander James Stavridis and former U.S. European Command deputy commander Charles Wald — come together issuing following recommendations for immediate action. (releasing Monday report: “Preserving Ukraine’s Independence, Resisting Russian Aggression: What the United States and NATO Must Do.”) First, White House and Congress must commit serious money to Ukraine’s defense: $1 billion in military assistance this fiscal year,...

Mexico’s drug war was completely rocked in February 2014 after news broke of the arrest of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera, the notorious long-time head of the Sinaloa cartel and arguably the most wanted man in the Western Hemisphere. But despite the U.S. government’s deep desire to prosecute and incarcerate Guzmán in the United States, Mexico’s attorney general announced the kingpin would not be extradited. Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam told the Associated Press, “I could accept extradition, but at the time that I choose. ‘El Chapo’ must stay here to complete his sentence, and then I will extradite him.”...

The Islamic State announced its arrival in Libya in brutal fashion this week with the slaying of an American contractor in a suicide attack on a Tripoli hotel, an act that will make it harder for Washington to continue ignoring the conflict and chaos raging in this North African country. Until now the United States and the European Great Powers have been content to look the other way as Libya had descended into violence and anarchy. Four years ago, NATO bombed the rebels to victory in their war against Muammar Qadhafi, then packed its bags and left the country to...

Greece's government will not cooperate with the EU and IMF mission bankrolling the country and will not seek an extension to the bailout program, its finance minister said on Friday. Jeroen Dijsselbloem, head of the euro zone finance ministers' group who is in Athens for talks with the new government, said the two sides would decide what would happen next before the program ends on Feb. 28.

Greece's new nationalist defense minister prompted Greece's perennial rival Turkey to scramble jets on Friday, just days after he took office, by flying over uninhabited islets off the Turkish coast that nearly triggered a war in 1996. Turkish fighter jets entered Greek airspace and were intercepted by Greek jets as Defence Minister Panos Kammenos and military chiefs flew by helicopter to the islet of Imia to drop wreaths in memory of three Greek officers killed nearby in a helicopter crash 19 years ago, the Greek Defence Ministry said. Kammenos heads the small, right-wing, Eurosceptical Independent Greeks party, and the episode...

Isreali officials told Channel 10 on Friday that they are convinced the Obama administration has already agreed to most of Iran’s demands in the P5+1 negotiations over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program. According to unnamed officials, Washington “has given the Iranians 80 percent of what they want” out of the negotiations, Channel 10 is reporting.

The African Union’s rotating post of chairman has gone to Robert Mugabe. Zimbabwe’s veteran president enjoys respect across the continent, but faces travel bans from both the US and EU for harassing opponents. Mugabe assumed the largely ceremonial role on Friday at an African Union (AU) summit in Addis Ababa as it leaders and UN chief Ban Ki-moon called for global action against Boko Haram in Nigeria. […] Western nations accuse Mugabe, a former guerrilla leader who fought against white-minority rule in former British-ruled Rhodesia, of crushing political dissent and ruining Zimbabwe’s rural-based economy. For many in Africa, however, he...