Free Republic

JOHN KERRY, SECRETARY OF STATE: ISIL claims to be fighting on behalf of Islam but the fact is that its hateful ideology has nothing do with Islam. ISIL a manifestation of evil, a vicious terrorist organization and it is an organization that achieves its goals only through violence, repression and destruction. Fed by illicit funding and a stream of foreign fighters, it has seized territory and terrorized the people who live there regardless of their sect or ethnicity. There is literally no place for their barbarity in the modern world. This is a fight that the Iraqi people must win...

Infidels are infidels as far as Islam is concerned: Make no difference if the sin of Christian America were over-producing greenhouse gases or being who we are, a mainly Christian nation Secretary of State John Kerry has an interesting worldview if he believes that addressing “Muslim-majority” nations with the concept that climate change is the prevalent challenge for this generation. He probably wouldn’t get much agreement among the very people he thinks we should be protecting. Frankly, if Muslims were more worried about climate change perhaps there wouldn’t be such a surge in jihad, that is, if they believed that...

Secretary of State John Kerry announced that he will be trying to create as broad a coalition as possible to deal with ISIS. Not all of the countries in this coalition will be providing military support. Some will be providing humanitarian aid and some will make sure Islam, “one of the world’s great peaceful religions,” isn’t tarnished by ISIS: Tomorrow, I will travel to the Middle East to continue to build the broadest possible coalition of partners around the globe to confront, degrade, and ultimately defeat ISIL. On Wednesday, President Obama will lay out in even greater detail our coordinated...

Well, this sounds a bit like a strategy, does it not? John Kerry’s essay in the New York Times this weekend (in one of the more sleepy news cycles of the year) raises echoes from both Bush administrations in dealing with a clear threat to global security, and in fact explicitly cites the first Bush coalition to repel Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. That has its own irony, but we’ll get back to that in a moment. Kerry prefaces this call for a global coalition on the imminent and clear threat from ISIS, which Kerry argues exceeds that of any...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)There are 65 prominent people who might run for president in 2016. The Democratic and Republican fields contrast sharply. Hillary Clinton is the clear front-runner, while there is no front-runner on the Republican side. Twenty-three Democrats have been mentioned as a candidate or are eyeing a bid, according to an analysis by The Hill. The GOP side has 42. Most of the people on this list won’t run, and some have adamantly claimed that they’re not interested. But many politicians have changed their minds on seeking the White House. Before mounting his 2008 bid, then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said he...

US Secretary of State John Kerry on Saturday called for “a world coalition” to defeat the Islamic State (Isis) militant group which has seized control of large parts of Iraq and Syria and was cited by the British prime minister, David Cameron, when he raised the UK’s terror threat level to “severe” on Friday. In an op-ed for the New York Times that was released online on Friday night and in print on Saturday, Kerry wrote: “In a polarised region and a complicated world, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria presents a unifying threat to a broad array of...

Palestinians are taking notice of the effectiveness of extremist, violent resistance movements against the governments of Israel and Iraq, said former US special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations Martin Indyk in an interview published this week. Speaking extensively on US relations with Jerusalem since the end of the latest round of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians last April, and throughout Operation Protective Edge, a candid Indyk said at times US President Barack Obama has become “enraged” at the Israeli government, both for its actions and for its treatment of his chief diplomat, US Secretary of State John Kerry. [....]...

Editor’s Note: When you’re too far left to work in the government for a Democratic Administration, an academic berth probably awaits. With wars raging in the Middle East, and Russia still threatening Ukraine, the problem of anti-Americanism in Latin America has been put on the back burner. But since Secretary of State John Kerry declared last year that the Monroe Doctrine was dead, Vladimir Putin of Russia has traveled to Brazil, Argentina, Nicaragua and Cuba. This doesn’t seem like an accident. The Obama administration is inviting aggression against the U.S. During the Cold War, Cuba hosted Soviet nuclear missiles targeting...

Western intelligence agencies have been assisting the Syrian government of Bashar al Assad fight militants of Isis (now called the 'Islamic State'), by providing details on the location of militant leaders for targeted air strikes. The information was passed to Assad's government by German intelligence service Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), which acted as an intermediary, a source told the Independent... In recent weeks, Syrian forces have launched a series of airstrikes against Islamic State commanders and headquarters, as they battle to halt the advance of jihadist forces from their stronghold in the east of the country. The Assad regime has been accused...

Deputy State Department spokesperson Marie Harf on Wednesday condemned the beheading of American journalist James Foley by Islamic terrorists, but she also stated that the ISIS threat “is not about the United States and what we do.” Harf spoke after President Obama told the nation that “governments and peoples across the Middle East” should come together in a “common effort to extract this cancer, so that it does not spread.” He then went golfing. "I think ISIL wants to make this about the United States and our actions. And I think what the President was trying to say was that...

The American government has been asked by the international community to directly intervene in any truce agreement between Israel and Hamas, according to a report in Arabic daily Al-Hayat, and force Israel to agree to Hamas's demands in future ceasefire agreements. Egypt was reportedly behind the guarantee, as rumors swirl that the current conditions being discussed have found support both from the international community at large and from UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon. Israel has denied agreeing to any truce deal proposed so far, however, and diplomatic sources in Jerusalem have emphasized repeatedly that Israel will not agree to any...

German secret agents intercepted one of Hillary Clinton's phone calls while she was US secretary of state and also listened in to a call by John Kerry, her successor, it emerged this weekend, in an embarrassing reversal of the spying scandal that blew up when it was revealed last year that America bugged Angela Merkel's mobile phone. Mrs Clinton was on a US government plane when German intelligence services overheard her call and, against their own internal protocol, stored it, intelligence sources told German media. The intercepted phone call took place in 2012 between Mrs Clinton and Kofi Annan, the...

BERLIN — German weekly Der Spiegel reports that the country's foreign intelligence agency eavesdropped on calls made by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his predecessor Hillary Clinton. Der Spiegel reported Saturday that the agency, known by its acronym BND, tapped a satellite phone conversation Kerry made in 2013. The magazine says the agency also recorded a conversation between Clinton and former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan a year earlier. Without naming its sources, Der Spiegel says the calls were collected accidentally and the three officials weren't directly targeted.

Diplomacy: Great leadership isn't necessarily about intelligence, expertise or background. It's more about wisdom and judgment. Based on this, Americans should be very concerned about Secretary of State John Kerry. As the world melts into chaos and threats to the U.S. homeland multiply, America's top foreign policy official seems bizarrely, even dangerously, fixated on ... global warming. In remarks at the East-West Center in Honolulu on Wednesday, Kerry repeated his claim that climate change is "the biggest challenge ... we face right now." To which we respond: Can he be serious? In recent days, we've seen the establishment of a...

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry paid a visit Wednesday to the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific, where he met the tiny nation’s leaders and commemorated the ferocious World War II battles fought on Guadalcanal. Kerry met with Solomon’s Prime Minister Gordon Lilo and Governor General Frank Kabui to discuss sustainable development, ocean preservation and how the islands’ 600,000 residents are coping with the effects of climate change. …

“When you get farmers, dentists and folks who have never fought before going up against a ruthless opposition in Assad, the notion that they were in a position to suddenly overturn not only Assad but also ruthless, highly trained jihadists if we just sent a few arms is a fantasy.” - Barack Obama to CBS on June 22 Editor's note: Obama reiterated the statement to Tom Friedman of The New York Times in an interview published on August 9. In one sentence, U.S. President Barack Obama disregarded the thousands of soldiers who defected from the Syrian Army since the uprising...

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton proposed that Qatar – the chief financier of Hamas – could play a key role in mediating peace between the Israelis and Palestinians. Clinton, during an interview with Charlie Rose, touted Qatar as a country that could play a constructive role in arbitrating peace between Hamas and Israel, which recently launched a full-scale ground incursion into Gaza in an attempt to cut off the terror group’s access to sophisticated weaponry. Qatar, which has served as Hamas’ chief financial lifeline, keeping the group afloat and facilitating its arms buildup, could convince Hamas to stop trying...

A court in Egypt has dissolved the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), the Muslim Brotherhood's political wing. The ruling will effectively prevent the banned Islamist movement from formally participating in parliamentary elections expected later this year. The government declared the Brotherhood a terrorist group in December.

Hamas states on Saturday that it would continue attacks on Israel, if Palestinian demands it put forward in indirect talks in Cairo were not met. Palestinian demands include lifting the siege, reopening the border crossings, and allowing construction material into the Gaza Strip. The Palestinians are also demanding free passage between the West Bank and Gaza Strip, freedom of fishing within 12 miles of the coast, reopening the Palestinian airport in the southern Gaza Strip, construction of a seaport and cancellation of buffer zones along the border with Israel. At the same time, Hamas spokesman Mushir al-Masri said the group...

Ron Paul, House representative of the 14th district of Texas, believes that US foreign policy must be reformed to avoid conflicts around the world. The interview was conducted outside the Foreign Relations Committee. Press TV: What is your opinion on the idea of the US blocking Iran's oil exports and preventing its gasoline imports from reaching the country (based on H. Con. Res. 362 previously sought by US congressmen)? Paul: I think it is an outrage I think it is a blockade. It is the use of force to stop the inflow of petroleum products and people and goods,...