Free Republic

Putin’s dialing down of the rhetoric is an effort to mask his intentions. He — Russia — still has the same foreign policy interests in Syria as he did before the plane was shot down, and those aren’t going to change anytime soon. When journalists asked him about the much more hostile statement of his Defense Ministry, which also vowed a retaliatory response, Putin stated clearly that it was “fully coordinated” with him (of course it was). He defined what ‘retaliatory’ meant. “The retaliatory measures will be directed above all to boosting the security of military men and installations in...

WASHINGTON - The United States is seeking to negotiate a treaty with Iran to include Tehran’s ballistic missile program and its regional behavior, the U.S. special envoy for Iran said on Wednesday ahead of U.N. meetings in New York next week. Iran has rejected U.S. attempts to hold high-level talks since President Donald Trump tore up a nuclear deal between Tehran and six world powers earlier this year. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo listed a dozen demands in May that he said could make up a new agreement, although Hook’s reference to a treaty, which would have to be approved...

When President Trump announced in May that he was going to withdraw the United States from the nuclear agreement that the Obama administration and five other countries negotiated with Iran in 2015 and reimpose sanctions on the country, the decision was fraught with potential disaster. If Mr. Trump’s approach worked too well, oil prices would spike and hurt the American economy. If it failed, international companies would continue trading with Iran, leaving the Islamic Republic unscathed, defiant and free to restart its nuclear program. But the policy has been effective without either of those nasty consequences, at least so far.

In March, State Department veteran and former adviser to Barack Obama, Frederic Hof, bid farewell to public life with a stunning admission. Amid a confession regarding his failure to prevent the expansion of the Syrian civil war into a regional crisis, Hof laid the blame for that all-consuming conflict (as well as a notable uptick in Russian aggression) at the feet of Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. The administration sacrificed Syrian civilians and American credibility for the mistaken notion that Iran required appeasement in Syria as the price for a nuclear agreement,” Hof wrote. Today, with 500,000 dead, millions...

The United States' commitment to global development does not look good compared with that of other wealthy countries — and it's likely to get worse. According to an annual index released Tuesday by the Center for Global Development that ranks 27 of the world's wealthiest countries, the U.S. scored dead last on foreign aid contributions and quality — despite being the largest donor in dollar amount. That's because in 2017, it allocated a mere 0.18 percent of its gross national income for development assistance. That is well short of the 0.7 percent that wealthy countries have committed to strive for...

Russia has blamed Israel for the downing of one of its military planes in Syria and threatened "retaliation." An Ilyushin IL-20 aircraft was shot down by Syrian air defense missiles in what has been called a "friendly fire" incident. The Russian defense ministry has claimed that Israeli jets were attacking nearby targets and purposely "used the Russian plane as a cover, exposing it to fire from Syrian air defenses."

Moscow places S-400 'Growlers' in Syria's Latakia base, in an escalation that places Ben-Gurion Airport within range. Russia has revealed in photographs that it has deployed a highly advanced anti-missile system in western Syria, that is capable of downing planes taking off in Tel Aviv. The S-400 anti-missile system, known to NATO as the SA-21 "Growler," was shown to be stationed in the Latakia Airbase on the Syrian coast of the Mediterranean Sea in photographs released by the Russian military, reports the Daily Mail on Thursday. In the past there have been Arab media reports of Israeli airstrikes in Latakia...

The military base that was hit by the car bomb is considered one of the most important military centers of the Russian forces on the Syrian coast, located some 15 kilometers from Latakia.

Russia and Syria plan to significantly expand strategic relations in 2010. Officials said the Kremlin was discussing strategic programs with Syria during a meeting between Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Syrian President Bashar Assad. "The Russian visit will mark a sign of support for isolated Syria, which Western countries accuse of supporting terrorism, although it mainly only supports Palestinian movements," Russian professor Yelena Melkumyan said. Ms. Melkumyan, professor at the Russian State University, said Syria marked an important regional partner for Russia. She said the Assad-Medvedev visit would result in strategic cooperation between Moscow and Damascus, both of which regard...

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has expressed his outrage to Israel's Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman after 15 Russian servicemen died when their plane was shot down by Syrian air defenses during a sudden Israeli air attack. Russia's Defense Ministry says 4 Israeli F-16's used the larger Russian IL-20 plane as a decoy for their attack on the northern Syria city of Latakia. Russia says it reserves the right to an "adequate response"....

BUENOS AIRES (AFP) - Ex-Argentina president Cristina Kirchner was charged with corruption as a judge asked that her parliamentary immunity be lifted so she can be detained, reports said Monday. She is accused of having accepted tens of millions of dollars in bribes in the notorious "corruption notebooks" scandal that has rocked Argentina's political and business elites. As a senator, Kirchner is protected by parliamentary immunity from imprisonment, although not from prosecution. Unless that immunity is lifted, she cannot be jailed, even if found guilty. However, last month the Senate did vote to partially lift her immunity so that investigators...

ISTANBUL (REUTERS) - President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has defended his decision to accept a luxury plane from Qatar at a time of economic hardship, saying it was a gift, not a purchase, and that it had been donated to the Turkish state, not to him personally. State broadcaster TRT Haber said last week the Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani had given Mr Erdogan the aircraft, which Turkish media said was a Boeing 747, sparking criticism from Turkey's opposition. A lawmaker from the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), Mr Sezgin Tanrikulu, had expressed concern that the aircraft...

Distressed by what he called the “human rights disaster perpetrated by President Trump,” former President Jimmy Carter said “I may have to come out of retirement to save the nation from his reelection.” “My main grievance is the blatant inequality Trump is willing to foist on this country,” Carter complained. “When I was president the entire country suffered through a malaise, but we did it together as one united people. The prosperity Trump is forcing on the country has shattered this unity and encouraged individuals to compete to get ahead. I don’t believe this is what Americans truly want. Otherwise...

Karen Monahan, the woman accusing Minnesota Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison of domestic abuse, responded to a Twitter user on Monday who asked if Democrats believe Monahan’s allegations, saying they don’t, and that she’s been threatened and isolated from her own party. The user was following up on a tweet about Christine Blasey Ford, the woman accusing Judge Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault. Peter Daou, a Democratic strategist and former advisor to Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, tweeted on Monday that Ford will be “attacked, smeared, and demonized” and that people must “BELIEVE WOMEN.”

A few new books are coming out as Fall releases and I fully expect headlines like the one above to be frequent as the authors head out on book tours. Case in point: former Secretary of State John Kerry. Both President Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo responded to Kerry’s admission of meeting with leaders of other countries and advising them to wait out Trump’s time in office. Needless to say, they rightfully called out Kerry for unprecedented behavior. So, Kerry has begun to personally attack President Trump in a schoolyard bully type of way.Though it may be...

George Logan, call your office. That’s my reaction to news that former Secretary of State John Kerry has, by his own account, been meeting privately with Iranian officials to try to save the nuclear deal. Logan was the Pennsylvania politician whose unauthorized efforts to end the Quasi-War between France and America led to the Logan Act of 1799, which outlaws freelance diplomacy. The New York Post has called Mr. Kerry’s conniving a “textbook violation” of the law. President Trump, after all, has pulled out of the nuclear accord and decided on a different course. Iran’s leaders, at least for the...

Huckabee said Kerry could be suited for the first successful prosecution of the Logan Act of 1799, which prohibits conducting unauthorized diplomacy with governments in dispute with the United States. The act's name refers to a 1798 incident in which Philadelphia farmer George Logan traveled to France, outside the purview of President John Adams, to try to avoid war during a time of tension over merchant shipping.

At the height of Thursday night’s gas emergency that affected 8,000 people and in which one person was killed, Massachusetts state police posted to Twitter a map of responses to fires and explosions...But the image also showed something else: a bookmarks bar at the top of the browser window which listed several leftwing groups. {snip} ...Efforts have been made to curtail surveillance of leftwing groups. A 2017 bill in the Massachusetts legislature, “The Fundamental Freedoms Act”, proposed a prohibition on public agencies collecting information about first-amendment protected activities and speech. The one allowance would be reasonable grounds to believe a...

OK, here’s another one of those occasions when we try to avoid featuring Twitter randos, but some of the things they say just throw so clearly into perspective just how some on the Left actually think and feel that we can’t leave them alone. To jump on this train of thought, you have to go back a day and revisit a tweet from former Secretary of State John Kerry, who for some reason has kept up relations with Iran’s government even though he no longer holds public office. Plus he’s got a book to plug any chance he gets. [snip]...

Are we on the brink of a new war?... They will go to war without waiting for the facts to be checked, and without recalling Parliament..... he was asked about plans-now being openly discussed at high levels in Washington-for a devastating attack on Damascus. This will be in response to a supposed atrocity that has yet to take place but about which the Americans openly say they already have evidence-probably an alleged poison gas attack, in which we will see heartbreaking but unverified film of dead or dying children, from propaganda sources, and claims of multiple deaths from untraceable 'eyewitnesses'........