Free Republic

Ultra-progressive California Governor Gavin Newsom is in Las Vegas ahead of Super Bowl and is spending his time in Sin City hobnobbing with billionaires and Tom Brady, as speculation mounts that Joe Biden will stand down. On Friday, Newsom, 56, was a surprise guest at Fanatics billionaire Michael Rubin’s hot 100 luncheon at LAVO – a swanky restaurant at the upscale Palazzo hotel. The restaurant, which bills itself as offering ‘authentic Italian flavors and unforgettable experiences’, specializes in seafood – including a lavish $225 ‘plateau grande’ that comes with an entire lobster and kaluga caviar. Other specialties include a $99...

Ultra-progressive California Governor Gavin Newsom is in Las Vegas ahead of Super Bowl and is spending his time in Sin City hobnobbing with billionaires and Tom Brady, as speculation mounts that Joe Biden will stand down. On Friday, Newsom, 56, was a surprise guest at Fanatics billionaire Michael Rubin’s hot 100 luncheon at LAVO – a swanky restaurant at the upscale Palazzo hotel. The restaurant, which bills itself as offering ‘authentic Italian flavors and unforgettable experiences’, specializes in seafood – including a lavish $225 ‘plateau grande’ that comes with an entire lobster and kaluga caviar.

He may want a Nobel Peace Prize, as might Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan or even Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. It is unlikely, but should the Norwegian Nobel Committee oblige, the Blinken prize would herald a humanitarian disaster, as did the Nobel Committee's award to Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed in 2019.The problems with Blinken's peace plan are huge.Democracies should not bully fellow democrats into conceding to terror in the face of aggression. Nor should the State Department dismantle democracies and force their submission to dictatorship. Most alarming, Blinken actively ignores Aliyev's abuses, even as Aliyev incites genocide and denies...

Iran's currency is in free-fall, falling almost 10% over the weekend, breaking through the psychologically important half-million mark to more than 600,000 rials to the dollar. The plunging currency led the Tehran bazaar to close, an event that preceded the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Just a few dozen miles across the border, Iraqi Kurds were watching developments closely, questioning how quickly the rial rate could fall below 1 million and the consequences.

I once asked a senior American official about why he accepted honoraria from the Mujahedin-e-Khalq, or the MKO, given the group’s cultlike nature and its lack of popularity inside Iran. His response: Even if the group lied about its support, they said the right things about democracy and regime change, and so he saw no harm in collecting the cash. The regime’s fall, he said, would be a moment of truth: Either the MKO would prove itself right, or its political Ponzi scheme would collapse. The problem with engaging in the MKO’s endorsement-for-cash scheme is the impact it has on...

The Mujahedin al Khalq, or MKO, is, after the Iranian regime itself, the most hated group inside Iran. It allied with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to enable the Islamic Revolution but, after a falling out, launched a terrorist campaign inside Iran. The MKO also cast its lot with Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Its leader, Maryam Rajavi, rules with an iron fist over the organization and insists upon the same head covering that Iranians risk their lives to shed. Far from supporting women’s rights, the group tells women whom they can marry and forcibly divorces them. In short, it is a cult

How the Situation in Ukraine Could Get Far More DangerousAfter days of a withering Ukrainian counteroffensive, the Russian defense ministry announced that it was withdrawing its forces from two areas in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region. In a video statement, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky quipped, “The Russian army in these days is demonstrating the best that it can do — showing its back.” Ukrainians celebrated, and rightly so. While Russian spokesmen said that Russian forces were “repositioning” ahead of a new offensive, reporters on the ground cast doubt on such pronouncements both because they mirror Russian statements as it abandoned its drive...

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's Islamist ambitions seem to be seeking an international role in post-U.S. Afghanistan in alliance with the Taliban, Qatar, Pakistan and Malaysia. The trouble is, Turkey, among the new sharia alliance in the making, is the only country with institutional ties to the Western world. Biden has weakened himself and his country so badly that the superpower was reduced to the point of being blackmailed by NATO's only Islamist member. Turkey's Defense Minister Hulusi Akar has made it clear: "If the U.S. is to be in the Middle East, it must cooperate with Turkey." Afghanistan is...

The rapid Taliban advance stranded several thousand Americans in Kabul and across Afghanistan. The US Embassy in Kabul has urged Americans first to shelter in place and then to make their way to the airport for evacuation. It warned, however, that it could not guarantee the safety of the routes to the airport. That may be sage advice: The Taliban have shut off access to the airport. Bold Afghans now share videos via social media of Taliban thugs using whips and pipes to beat men, women, and children who try to go to the airport. Administration officials like National Security...

The growing willingness by U.S. Big Tech to censor political debate highlights a hypocrisy that belies any notion that expelling conservative voices is an act of principle rather than something more cynical and sinister. President Donald Trump may have been intemperate, but violence linked to his Twitter account is more debatable. Certainly, he exacerbated America’s political polarization, but no more so than former Office of Management and Budget nominee Neera Tandren and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.). Political polarization is a problem and the tone of American political leaders and cable news pundits neither elucidate nor help, but censorship is not...

The problem with the strike is two-fold, however. First, he hit the wrong target. Despite Bidens’s efforts to emphasize proportionality, the airstrike was not proportional; rather, it was less. A U.S. Embassy or an airport where U.S. forces reside are not the equivalent of a dusty outpost used as a tea stop for militiamen traversing from Iraq into Syria. Nor are U.S. forces the equivalent of an Iranian-backed militia. A proportional response would more directly target Iranian interests or property. The danger is not Iranian escalation, but rather the normalization of rocket attacks on embassies or airports. Iranian authorities might...

Speculation about the possibility of a U.S attack on Iran has reached a fever pitch as President Donald Trump’s administration winds down. Far from signaling the inevitability of an attack, the partisan panic is a last hurrah for those opposed to Trump’s “maximum pressure” in favor of a more incentives-based outreach. Warnings of war are the gift that keeps on giving for a broad progressive array of organizations that fundraise off the scenario. They make for good press and national security clickbait, but there is little indication that Trump will attack Iran anytime soon.

America and the United Kingdom would be wise to let Egypt, France, and Greece take the lead in balancing a dangerous and resurgent Turkey. With Americans focused on the anarchy in Democrat-led cities, a cryptic tweet from French President Emmanuel Macron on July 20 went out relatively unnoticed. Macron tweeted he had a great discussion with “his friend” Donald Trump about Libya.Within hours, the Egyptian parliament declared they had voted unanimous support for Egyptian President Al-Sisi to send in Egyptian troops and armor in support of battered Eastern Libyan forces on their back foot due to Turkish intervention. Anyone keeping...

How does one say “Goodnight, Irene” in Greek? Or “Show Me the Way to Go Home”? Or, if neither of those classic festivity-enders does the trick, “Hit the Road, Jack”? In any case, the message needs to be sent: The party is over, and it is time for Greece to be shown the door, if the Greeks cannot find it themselves, and exit the eurozone. A Greek default appears to be imminent. The question is whether it is to be an orderly default or a chaotic one. At the moment, the odds are about even between those two possibilities. Prime...

There has never been any love lost between Turkey and Greece, but the danger of war between the two NATO members has not been this high since the Cyprus conflict more than forty-five years ago. In the past, Turkey and Greece have gone to the brink, but policies initiated by Turkish President Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan may very much push the two neighbors over the edge. reek and Turkish fighter jets engaged in mock dogfights this week over the Greek island of Kastellorizo, just a mile and a half from the Turkish coast, causing tourists to flee. Meanwhile, there is a...

In an indication of their growing estrangement with the Bush administration, neoconservatives are slamming the White House for failing to stop what they describe as an antisemitic campaign to marginalize them being conducted by the CIA and the State Department. This view was outlined in a memo circulating among neoconservative foreign policy analysts in Washington. Obtained by the Forward, the memo criticizes the White House for not refuting press reports on the FBI's investigation of Pentagon analyst Lawrence Franklin that suggest wrongdoing on the part of Jewish officials at the Defense Department. "If there is any truth to any of...

On Nov. 6, the U.S. Embassy in Ankara posted a notice that “The Department [of State] has authorized rewards for information leading to the identification or location of the senior Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) members: Murat Karayilan (up to USD $5 million), Cemil Bayik (up to USD $4 million), and Duran Kalkan (up to USD $3 million).” Such bounties are not uncommon when it comes to master terrorists. In years past, the U.S. government, for example, issued bounties for Al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden, Islamic State head Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and Boko Haram head Abubakar Shekau.But the three men...

CHESTER, Pa. (CBS) — Incarcerated rapper Meek Mill is getting big-time support in his fight for justice. The hip-hop artist is receiving a high profile visit in prison as he awaits a bail ruling from Pennsylvania’s highest court. New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft and Philadelphia 76ers co-owner Michael Rubin entered the doors at the medium-security state prison in Chester on Tuesday afternoon.

It’s been 15 years since President George W. Bush made the controversial decision to invade Iraq to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Alas, while Iraq has taken great strides forward, many of the pundits and policymakers not only continue to treat Iraq and Iraqis as a partisan football, but perpetuate false myths about its run-up and aftermath. Here are 12: 1. Sanctions killed 1 million Iraqis (and 500,000 children). False. Where did this claim come from? Saddam Hussein’s government. Beginning in the mid-1990s, Saddam’s government claimed that United Nations sanctions resulted in more than 1 million deaths. Baghdad refused to...

Michael Rubin, academic and former staff advisor for Iran and Iraq at the Pentagon, spoke to ANF English service on the inclusion of one of Erdoğan’s former ministers, Zafer Çağlayan, in the case file of Reza Zarrab, its influence on Zarrab’s case and Washington-Ankara relations, and Erdoğan’s planned visit to the U.S. in mid-September. Rubin remarked that the arrest warrant issued for Zafer Çağlayan could be a sign that Zarrab is talking to prosecutors and giving evidence. He said: “That's Erdogan's nightmare, because if Zarrab is talking, then Zarrab is also likely talking about Erdogan's dealings. And the thing with...