Free Republic

Yet, even by Vlad’s standards, it was bad. Let’s just say it won’t do anything to challenge the stereotype of Russians as stiff and melancholic. Putin hijacked the exchange with his eccentric view of history. He gave that lecture he loves, about how Ukraine is an “artificial state” magicked up by Stalin. But there was very little grilling. Carlson asked for evidence that the CIA blew up the Nord Stream gas pipeline and then just accepted it when Putin said “I won’t get into details.” Hold on — the man who just bored us to tears with his fantasy history...

A US destroyer intercepted a hijacked Israeli-managed oil tanker in the Gulf of Aden earlier today, freed the crew, and took the Houthi pirates into custody. My colleague Jeff Charles covered the piracy in this post, High Seas Drama: Another Israeli Tanker Seized by Unidentified Attackers Near Yemen.Shortly after dawn local time, the Central Park, a small Liberian-flagged oil and chemical tanker managed by an Israeli company registered in London, sent a distress call saying it was being boarded by armed men. The USS Mason, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, was operating in the area. According to reports, the Mason directed...

Fair warning: Do NOT update passwords until advised by FR admins that the site is back to normal. After seeing the raft of posts, I believe that the server was either mirrored or hijacked. I just now recalled that about an hour or so ago my screen header said 'sign in'. I hit refresh a couple of times and didn't pay any attention to it. I now believe that those who signed in exposed their accounts.

A recent surge in illegal migration into Lithuania represents a hybrid attack on that country and the region and European Union as a whole, defense minister Kalle Laanet (Reform) says. Laanet said Friday that: "Lithuania is our close ally, and our duty is to support them immediately in this crisis." "We are also ready to send three unmanned aircraft crews to Lithuania from August 1 to improve situational awareness at the border," he added, according to a defense ministry press release. Laanet made the remarks during a phone call with his Lithuanian opposite number Agnė Bilotaitė, while both ministers agreed...

Pelosi's tweet hinting Russia was behind Trump's win remains untouched as Twitter hits those doubting Biden's victory A resurfaced May 2017 tweet from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has led to calls for consistency from Twitter as the social media giant continues its efforts to crack down on those skeptical of the results of the 2020 presidential election. Twitter has been at the center of a political firestorm since it announced Friday that it had banned President Trump from the platform. After slapping Trump tweets that challenged President-elect Biden's victory with various labels and temporarily suspending him following last week's...

Data Expert Edward Solomon analyzed the 2020 election results in Georgia and identified another pattern in the data showing ultimately 200,000 votes transferred from President Trump to Joe Biden at the precinct level. President Trump was reportedly ahead in the 2020 election in Georgia on Election night by over 100,000 votes. But within hours his lead was diminished. It’s likely even when President Trump was hundreds of thousands of votes ahead, he had already had 200,000 votes (net) moved from his totals to Joe Biden. Then when this was not enough to steal the election for Biden, the Democrats implemented...

For months now there have been calls in all the major riots around the country to defund the police as a solution in the wake of the death of African-American George Floyd. Now large numbers of Black communities are coming out against that ‘stupid’ idea. . The assumption by many is that these demands were only coming from within black communities, where many of the BLM protests occur. The truth is that many community leaders and locals from these do not want this at all. Many locals feel the only thing keeping their communities safe during these times is the...

PUTRAJAYA, Malaysia — A Malaysian-led independent investigation report released Monday, more than four years after Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 disappeared, highlighted shortcomings in the government’s response and raised the possibility of “intervention by a third party.” The report, prepared by a 19-member international team, reiterated Malaysia’s assertion the plane was deliberately diverted and flown for over seven hours after severing communications. Chief investigator Kok Soo Chon said the cause of the disappearance cannot be determined until the wreckage and the plane’s black boxes are found. He said there was no evidence of abnormal behavior or stress in the two pilots...

An Afriqiyah Airways A320 with around 120 people on board has just landed in Malta after it was hijacked. Prime Minister Joseph Muscat tweeted he is informed of a potential hijack situation of an internal Libyan flight diverted to Malta. Security and emergency operations were standing by. According to reports received by Times of Malta, the plane was on an internal flight from Sebha to Tripoli in Libya. A total of 111 passengers and a crew of seven are on board. The reports indicated that one hijacker is on board. He is claiming to be in possession of a hand...

As you may know, Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert cartoon strip, is a Trump fan and writes a blog on the Dilbert site that has predicted Trump's win for months. Tonight the blog (not the main Dilbert page, just the blog section) has been hacked, perhaps by anti-Trumpers, and at least on my iPad, is hijacked to a clearly fake page offering a "Free Apple App". It is inescapable. I don't know how it acts on other non-iOS platforms, haven't had a chance to try it yet.

An EgyptAir airliner has been hijacked and forced to divert to Larnaca airport on the south coast of Cyprus. Flight MS181, an Airbus A320 carrying 81 passengers from Alexandria to Cairo, was taken over after a passenger said he was wearing an explosives belt. Negotiations are under way but no demands have been made by those in control of the plane, reports say. A local journalist has told the BBC that some passengers had been seen leaving the plane.

BREAKING: At least one armed hijacker seized control of an EgyptAir flight from Alexandria to Cairo and ordered it flown to Cyprus Tuesday morning, according to officials from both countries. A Cypriot government official told the Associated Press the hijacked plane landed at the airport in Larnaka, on the southern coast of the Mediterranean island, and that there are suspicions of a bomb on board. A second Cypriot official says there "seems like there's more than one hijacker." He says there have been no demands other than that police vehicles move away from the aircraft. Another Cypriot official said that...

It was a grainy cellphone video and a picture that were seen by millions around the world. But the full story of how Beyoncé was unwittingly dragged into a political row after having her Super Bowl performance hijacked by her dancers and activists can be revealed. The star knew nothing about the decision by members of her dance troupe to join a protest by members of the Black Lives Matters organization on the pitch of the Levi's Stadium about the death of Mario Jones until the video went viral the next morning.

At an event marking the end of the Ramadan fast on Sunday, President Reuven Rivlin spoke with Arabic language mediaand discussed a number of issues, chief among them the relations between Arabs and Jews in Israel. At the outset, Rivlin noted that both Jews and Muslims had fasted on Sunday – the latter for Ramadan, and the former for the Seventeenth Day of Tammuz, commemorating the events leading up to the destruction of the Holy Temples in Jerusalem. A common fast, said Rivlin, could help build a bridge to understanding to both communities. “I am aware of the distress and...

According to the Times of Israel, Israel's Channel 2 has revealed that Israeli air defenses have been boosted, and approaching civilian aircraft will be asked to identify themselves far earlier. Though the flight was presumed at first to have crashed, whole or in pieces, into the ocean, passive satellite transmissions from the aircraft suggest that it made a deliberate course change and may have headed north into central Asia. Pakistan has already said that the flight never registered on its radar, but at least one expert has suggested the flight could have landed in Bangladesh, whose air defenses presumably would...

At 5:00pm Pacific Time, Ethiopian Flight 702, a Boeing 767-300 was flying over Sudan when it started squawking 7500. The transponder code, is supposed to indicate a “hijacking.” (snip) The flight, operating from Addis Abba to Rome has been confirmed by Rome Airport not to have arrived yet. As of now, it is over France, but has recently taken a steep northeast heading. Based on flight tracking, it appears the plane is headed to Geneva. Emergency crews are standing by.

“Second Term Begins With a Sweeping Agenda for Equality,” ran the eight-column banner in which the Washington Post captured the essence of Obama’s second inaugural. There he declared: “What binds this nation together … what makes us exceptional – what makes us American – is our allegiance to an idea, articulated in a declaration made more than two centuries ago.” Obama then quoted our Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit...

Burly-and-bearded country singer Trace Adkins ruffled all the usual feathers and bruised all the usual feelings when he dared to wear a Confederate battle flag earpiece in full view of gasping national TV viewers while singing “The Christmas Song” in the Yankee stronghold of Rockefeller Center on November 28. Adkins, who belches out such venerable neo-country chestnuts as “Honky Tonk Badonkadonk” and “Brown Chicken, Brown Cow,” was subjected to the predictably rage-stroking vilification that comes whenever anyone suggests that the American South has ever been anything beyond a rancid cultural cesspool of lynching, incest, bestiality, racism, toothlessness, retardation, and yes,...

It's easy to use the deceased to claim support for one's positions. The dead aren't around to deny, rebut, and refute false or misleading statements. William F. Buckley, Jr., intellectual giant and "maker" of the conservative movement, has of late become a crutch for statists and ruling-class elites to denigrate the Tea Parties and the surge of the constitutional, small-government conservative movement. Liberals trying to smear the Tea Party cause and constitutional, small-government conservative candidates by referring to Buckley are, however, attempting to rewrite history to suit their own agendas and ideology. For example, E.J. Dionne writes in Monday's Washington...

video, Wellesley, Massachusetts Public School Students Learn to Pray to Allah In late May of 2010, Wellesley, Massachusetts public middle school students took a field trip to the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center - a controversial Saudi-funded mega-mosque run by the Muslim American Society of Bostn. There, the students were separated by gender and the boys were asked to join the Muslim adults in their prayer. Several of the public school boys took part.(read the related article at Americans for Peace and Tolerance)