Free Republic

The European Union's massive spending on farm subsidies and infrastructure projects will be in the spotlight at difficult talks this week to set the bloc's next longterm budget. Sources at both the European Commission and the European Parliament say EU leaders will be looking to trim a further 20 to 25 billion euros ($30-$35 billion) off the almost trillion-euro ($1.36 trillion) budget for 2014-2020 at a February 7-8 summit... The summit will be the second attempt by the 27 leaders to reach a deal on the budget after a November summit collapsed in acrimony. The Commission had originally sought 1.047...

The Daily Telegraph has seen confidential spending proposals and internal documents planning an unprecedented propaganda blitz ahead of and during European elections in June 2014. Key to a new strategy will be “public opinion monitoring tools” to “identify at an early stage whether debates of political nature among followers in social media and blogs have the potential to attract media and citizens’ interest”. Spending on “qualitative media analysis” is to be increased by £1.7 million ($2.7 million), and while most of the money is to be found in existing budgets, an additional £787,000 ($1.24 million) will be need to be...

With Washington DC alight with the buzz of the approaching debt ceiling, Germany wants its gold back from the NY Fed and other central banks. Here is a country-by-country list of country gold reserves. (I hope the Germans find more gold in the New York Fed than we would find in Ft. Knox!) Of course, Germany looks at the USA and wonders how we can borrow SO much money and generate SO little economic growth. 113% increase in Federal Debt held by public since Q2 2008 and a measly 2.57% growth in real GDP. This comes at a time when...

Germany’s Bundesbank is to repatriate gold reserves held abroad to tighten control and combat currency crises in the future, pulling a chunk of its holdings from New York and all its bullion from Paris. The move marks an extraodinary breakdown in trust between leading central banks and has set off ferment among gold enthusiasts, with some comparing it with France’s withdrawal of gold from the US under President Charles de Gaulle as the Bretton Woods currency system crumbled in the early 1970s. Handelsblatt said the Bundesbank will announce on Wednesday that it intends to relocate the gold to vaults in...

(Reuters) - French warplanes pounded Islamist rebel camps in the far north of Mali on Sunday, military sources said, a day after French President Francois Hollande was hailed as a savior during a visit to the West African country. Thierry Burkhard, spokesman for the French army in Paris, said the overnight raids targeted logistics bases and training camps used by the al Qaeda-linked rebels near the town of Tessalit, close to the Algerian border. ... France says the rebels are also holding hostage in these mountains seven of its citizens, seized in recent years in the Sahara region. Malian military...

A U.S. Army brigade will begin sending small teams into as many as 35 African nations early next year, part of an intensifying Pentagon effort to train countries to battle extremists. The teams will be limited to training and equipping efforts, and won't be permitted to conduct military operations without specific, additional approval from the secretary of defense. The sharper focus on Africa by the U.S. comes against a backdrop of widespread insurgent violence across North Africa, and as the African Union and other nations discuss military intervention in northern Mali.

**SNIP** The catalyst for the Islamic fighters was a military coup nine months ago that transformed Mali from a once-stable nation to the failed state it is today. On March 21, disgruntled soldiers invaded the presidential palace. The fall of the nation's democratically elected government at the hands of junior officers destroyed the military's command-and-control structure, creating the vacuum which allowed a mix of rebel groups to move in. With no clear instructions from their higher-ups, the humiliated soldiers left to defend those towns tore off their uniforms, piled into trucks and beat a retreat as far as Mopti, roughly...

To avoid being whipped, mutilated, and jailed, women in Timbuktu now have to wear black veils and loose-fitting clothing. Radical Islamists, who took control of the city months ago, are laying down their law – Sharia law – and for the first time since they’ve arrived, they’re specifically targeting women. Over the past few weeks, Islamists from two armed groups – Ansar Dine and Mujao, who took over northern Mali in April – have increasingly made use of corporal punishment against the local population. This includes whipping, amputations, and even stoning people to death who do not obey Sharia law....

BAMAKO, Mali — Isolated for centuries by the harsh desert that surrounds it, Timbuktu now finds itself even more cut off from the rest of the world. Rebels who captured the city in northern Mali in April have imposed a form of hard-edged Islamic rule, prompting many residents to flee in fear and changing the face of what had been a tolerant and easygoing destination that drew tourists from around the world. Women are now forced to wear full, face-covering veils. Music is banned from the radio. Cigarettes are snatched from the mouths of pedestrians. And the look of the...

Ethno-religious violence in Islamic MaliBackground: Mali is 90% Muslim, the ethnic Manding are in the majority.[1] ... Mandinka by ethnicity. King Keita (1210-1260 A.D) introduced Islam in the Malian Empire, and by the turn of the 13th century, Mali was one of the first African states (South of the Sahara) to embrace Islam. King Keita was later succeeded by his grand nephew Mansa Musa (1312-1337). King Musa was a devout Mandingo Muslim, and it was under his rule that Mali became the first country in Africa to make Islam a state religion. He built several mosques as well as Islamic...

WASHINGTON: The famous African explorer Dr David Livingstone might have been impressed, even if the agenda was suspect. Pakistan’s disgraced nuclear proliferator-hero Abdul Qadeer Khan traversed the breadth of Africa in his hey day as a nuclear salesman , going to as romantic a getaway as Casablanca in Morocco and as remote an outpost as Timbuktu in Mali.   US officials might dearly like to get hold of Khan’s travel agent, or simply his itinerary, since he seems to have pretty much charted his own course during his profligate proliferating days. According to accounts now surfacing in the Pakistani media,...

A London accountant has described how Pakistan's disgraced nuclear hero Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan visited the West African state of Mali on three occasions between 1998 and 2000. Abdul Ma'bood Siddiqui accompanied A.Q. Khan on three mystery trips  between 1998 and 2000. Their final destination was Timbuktu, a remote outpost in the desert that has always been a magnet for explorers and adventurers from around the world. The mystery behind the visits has deepened following recent revelations that Khan is also the owner of a small hotel in the town that he has named after Hendrina, his Dutch-born wife and...

The London accountant who accompanied Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan to Timbuktu on three occasions in 1998, 1999 and 2000 says the 'father' of the Pakistani bomb witnessed the digging of a well, toured an ancient Islamic library and enjoyed the views of the desert. A remote outpost in the middle of the West African desert, Timbuktu usually attracts explorers associated in the popular mind with the adventures of the comic character Tin Tin. And Pakistani dissidents told rediff.com the reason for Khan's visit to Timbuktu, part of landlocked West African state of Mali, was to prospect for uranium. They say...

The window of opportunity for diplomacy over Iran’s nuclear program “will not be opened indefinitely,” US Vice President Joe Biden warned in an interview with the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung on Friday. snip Biden set out on a European tour during which he was to meet with Syrian opposition leader Mouaz Alkhatib on Saturday to discuss US concerns about the Syrian conflict with representatives from Russia and the UN. He was scheduled to meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin on Friday, French President François Hollande on Monday, and British Prime Minister David Cameron on Tuesday. On Thursday, outgoing...

France’s president, François Hollande paid a triumphant visit to this ancient city on Saturday, receiving a rapturous welcome from thousands of people who gathered next to a 14th-century mosque to dance, play drums and chant “Vive la France!” The muezzin, whose singing calls residents to pray five times a day, wore a scarf in the colors of the French flag as he shouted, “Vive Hollande!

The following video shows a French Foreign Legion (2e régiment étranger de parachutistes – 2eREP) paradrop into Timbuktu, Mali, from a C-160 Transal airlifter of the French Air Force. It was taken on Jan. 28, from the Infra-Red camera of a Harfang drone, supporting Operation Serval from Niger. The Harfang drones are the only French UAVs reportedly operating in West Africa. These ISR (Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance) platforms are about to be supported by a RAF Sentinel R1 deployed in Senegal.

Here is the crux of the argument and why an irrational Obama and the rabid left's ensuing power grab on gun control is utter madness. The Newtown school massacre was a known madman on a psychotic mission. Adam Lanza was a deeply sick and disturbed individual that had to medicated and home schooled and kept away from the general population. The problem was his violent lunacy. If he hadn't kill them with guns he might have killed them with bombs. The Toulouse school massacre was jihad as enshrined and commanded in the Quran. Holy war against the non-Muslims is a...

Ramón Mercader from Barcelona killed Trotsky with an ice axe in Mexico City. On 20th August 1940, the exiled Leon Trotsky was fatally wounded at his home in a suburb of Mexico City when an ice axe was driven into his skull. He cried out to his guards as they burst into his study, ‘Don’t kill him! He must talk.’ Despite struggling fiercely, and even managing to bite the hand of his assassin, Trotsky died the next day, and the man who wielded the murder weapon was sentenced to 20 years in prison. He insisted throughout his trial and his...

More evidence is emerging of alleged summary executions by Malian forces in the north of the country where French forces are completing their operations. An eyewitness told BBC Newsnight he saw three Islamic students shot dead in a public place because they failed to show identity papers. The Malian government has promised to investigate the allegations. It says there should be no revenge attacks against people suspected of collaborating with the rebels. But there are fears that militia due to be deployed to the north are seeking vengeance against Islamists and Tuareg separatists. The main allegations against the Malian military...

**SNIP** Under the new law, the interior lights of nonresidential buildings will have to be turned off an hour after the last worker leaves, and lights on building facades and in shop windows will have to be extinguished by 1 a.m. Ms. Batho also presented the decree as a matter of public health. Artificial lighting can damage sleep patterns, she said, and also “cause significant disruptions on ecosystems by changing communication between species, migrations, reproduction cycles or even the prey-predator relationships.”