Free Republic

In the face of difficult circumstances, Russia, understanding the mindset of its “former” foes, made the brilliant decision to join the West through economic and diplomatic “cooperation.” This convergence strategy gave the outward appearance of a liberalizing Russia, but consistent with its historical adeptness at subversion and subterfuge, proved a clever way to rebuild, gain leverage over and embed itself within its enemies. Russia opened itself to trade to raise capital and procure technology that it could use to exploit its natural resources, rebuild its military and enrich Vladimir Putin and his cronies. In so doing, Russia developed energy pipelines...

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Tuesday that countries behind the fall in global oil prices would regret their decision and warned that Saudi Arabia and Kuwait would suffer alongside Iran from the price drop. "Those that have planned to decrease the prices against other countries will regret this decision," Rouhani said in a speech broadcast on state television as oil plunged to near six year lows on international markets. [O/R] "If Iran suffers from the drop in oil prices, know that other oil-producing countries such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait will suffer more than Iran," he added. Oil prices...

Members of the Boko Haram Muslim sect strapped bombs on three girls - aged 10 years - that detonated in two towns in northern Nigeria. At least 2 dozen innocents are dead in two days. At least five persons were killed on January 11 in a marketplace in Potiskum, a town in northern Nigeria. The victims were killed when explosive vests worn by two 10-year-old girls were detonated by Muslim terrorists associated with Boko Haram – a sect associated with the Al-Qaeda terrorist network that seeks to overthrow Nigeria’s multi-ethnic secular government and impose Islamic law. This was the second...

Portia Crowe January 12, 2015Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the eccentric Saudi billionaire once labeled the "Arabian Warren Buffett," predicted that oil would never again reach $100 a barrel. "The price of oil above $100 is artificial," he said. "It's not correct." That's in an interview with Maria Bartiromo for USA Today, in which the business magnate blamed oversupply and weak demand for the recent drop in oil prices. He also predicted hard times ahead for America's shale-oil and gas industries. "No one knows for sure what price is the breaking point for shale," he said. "Wells have a higher production...

"You better believe it is gonna go down more," Alwaleed bin Talal said.Saudi royal prince Alwaleed bin Talal says in a new interview that the days of $100-a-barrel oil are a thing of the past, as oil prices continue to drop around the globe. Asked by USA Today if prices, recently below $50 a barrel, would continue to plunge, Talal answered: “If supply stays where it is, and demand remains weak, you better believe it is gonna go down more. But if some supply is taken off the market, and there’s some growth in demand, prices may go up. But...

At the beginning of the year, Noah wrote what turned out to be a tragically prescient post about “that other Islamic State” which has been running roughshod over Christians and random civilians in Africa. Speaking of Boko Haram, Noah warned of the following: Recently, the group has adopted a troubling shift in tactics. Boko Haram has pivoted from primarily terrorizing the local population to executing coordinated, military-style raids on Nigerian outposts and using civilian suicide bombers to target populated areas.This campaign is making headway. During that same period, while the eyes of the world were turning more toward Europe...

DAKAR, Senegal — A girl perhaps no more than 10 years old detonated powerful explosives concealed under her veil at a crowded northern Nigeria market on Saturday, killing as many as 20 people and wounding many more. The blast inflicted devastating damage on shoppers at the Monday Market in Maiduguri, the shopping hub in a city that is at the heart of the Boko Haram insurgency. The explosion, witnessed by dozens of people, represented a new tactic in the Islamists’ campaign with their decision to use perhaps their youngest-ever suicide bomber. The terrorist group has increasingly employed women as suicide...

Boko Haram militants opened fire on northern Nigerian villages, leaving bodies scattered everywhere and as many as 2,000 people feared dead, officials said.

Hundreds of bodies – too many to count – remain strewn in the bush in Nigeria from an Islamic extremist attack that Amnesty International described as the “deadliest massacre” in the history of Boko Haram. . . District head Baba Abba Hassan said most victims are children, women and elderly people who could not run fast enough when insurgents drove into Baga, firing rocket-propelled grenades and assault rifles on town residents. An Amnesty International statement said there are reports the town was razed and as many as 2,000 people killed.

A bomb strapped to a girl aged around 10 years old exploded in a busy market place in the Nigerian city of Maiduguri on Saturday, killing at least 16 people and injuring more than 20, security sources said. "The explosive devices were wrapped around her body and the girl looked no more than 10 years old," a police source said. Maiduguri, the capital of northern Borno state, lies in the heartland of an insurgency by Islamist militant group Boko Haram, and is often hit by bomb attacks

By Joel Leyden Israel News AgencyJerusalem — January 9, 2015 … Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with French Ambassador to Israel Patrick Maisonnave and made the following remarks at the start of their meeting: “I wish to send from this place our deepest condolences to President François Hollande, the bereaved families and the people of France. We grieve with our French brothers and sisters. We reaffirm our commitment to work together to defeat the enemies of the democratic values we all cherish. I know that you’re going from here to France, and I want you to take with you...

Jeremy Bender and Armin Rosen January 9, 2015The jihadist group Boko Haram has pulled off perhaps the deadliest attack in its ongoing five-year long insurgency in northern Nigeria. Boko Haram, extremists opposed to western-style education and secular governance in Nigeria, carried out a multi-day attack in the northeast of Nigeria, focusing on the town of Baga. According to Musa Alhaji Bukar, a senior government official who spoke to the BBC, Baga, which once had a population of about 10,000 people, is now "virtually non-existent." The multi-day rampage focused on Baga and the surrounding towns and villages. The militants razed an...

More than 2,000 people are feared dead after Boko Haram destroyed “10 to 20” communities in Nigeria’s rural northeast, according to a senator from the region. “These towns are just gone, burned down,” said Ahmed Zanna. “The whole area is covered in bodies.” The radical Islamic group razed the town of Baga along with several others over the past five days. The 2,000 are unofficially unaccounted for.

[1]On Tuesday the Palestinians tried to get the UN Security Council to adopt a draft resolution to shrink Israel down to indefensible borders.They failed to get the nine votes from the 15-member council that they needed. Even if they had, the U.S. had promised to veto the resolution. But the Palestinians would have succeeded in painting Israel as a country almost friendless, hanging by the thread of U.S. support.The draft resolution demanded that Israel and the Palestinians wrap up all their disputes and reach an agreement within one year; that a Palestinian state be set up along Israel’s 1967...

A suicide bomber blew himself up outside an evangelist church in northeast Nigeria on Thursday, injuring several people, witnesses and a rescue worker said. "There was an explosion outside the ECWA church this morning. A suicide bomber who was restrained from getting into the church blew himself up," said Abubakar Yakubu, who heads the Nigeria Red Cross in Gombe. "Luckily no one was killed but some people were mildly injured." A witness said the man arrived during the church service and refused to park his motorcycle outside a security barrier set up by church volunteers. "He insisted on riding through...

The Palestinian Authority’s (PA) representative to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) criticized Nigeria on Wednesday over its abstention during a UN vote on Palestinian statehood on Tuesday. In a statement quoted by the Ma’an news agency, the representative Muhannad al-Akluk, said Nigeria’s move was a "big disappointment", adding that voting against “Palestine” despite being a member of the OIC was a "clear contradiction." He also claimed that Nigeria’s abstention violated numerous resolutions passed at the Islamic organization's summits. The PA’s resolution calling for Israel to withdraw from Judea and Samaria by 2017 was defeated in the Security Council when...

Christians and Churches Attacked in the WestPosted By Raymond Ibrahim On December 26, 2014 @ 12:17 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 4 Comments Reprinted from GatestoneInstitute.org. “You have a cross on… Do you know what we do to people like you?” — Muslim in Denmark.Muslim Fulani gunmen forced their way into the church, cut [the pastor], his wife and a daughter with a machete, and then tied the hands and feet of the three of them before setting the building on fire… We only found the charred remains of the three of them in the morning. I heard them shouting...

The heritage of centuries has been wiped out in little more than a year. Eventually the need to wipe out all traces of unbelief becomes obsessive. At one time, for instance, Egyptian law demanded that any house found to contain a copy of The Apology of al-Kindi (a book containing a polemical dialogue between a Muslim and a Christian) would be demolished along with 40 houses around it. Ethics were defined by what Allah said was good or evil in Sharia law. The Islamic State's behaviour is solidly rooted in Islamic ideology, law and practice. It is only when this...

All politics are local, except for oil politics. The Russians think these low oil prices are an American-Saudi conspiracy. American commentators believe that the Saudis have driven down prices to punish North Dakota’s shale oil revolution and drive its high-cost producers out of the game. In Canada, the paranoia in Calgary is that the Saudis and other Gulf oil producers want to drive the oil sands out of business. But what are the Saudis up to and are they powerful enough to control prices? This week the Saudi minister blamed low prices on oversupply from North America. But that is...

A 13-year-old says her father gave her to Boko Haram extremists and that she was arrested after refusing to explode a suicide bomb. ... The girl told a news conference Wednesday night that she saw many people being buried alive at the Boko Haram camp where her father took her in Bauchi state, east of Kano.