Free Republic

In a joint statement from the YPG and the Autonomous Administration in Afrin, it was promised that ‘the resistance in Afrin will continue until every inch of Afrin is liberated, and the people of Afrin will return their villages’. The Kurdish led administration also claimed that they have asked civilians to leave in order to avoid atrocities now that the conflict has reached a new stage. “We would like to declare that our war against the Turkish occupation and the Takfiri forces calling themselves the Free Army has entered a new stage, the transition from direct confrontation war to hit-and-run...

Is THIS a warning? In the past few days I have begun to sense a dangerous and dark new intolerance in the air, which I have never experiences before. An unbidden instinct tells me to be careful what I say or write, in case it ends badly for me. How badly? That is the trouble. I am genuinely unsure. I have been to too many countries where free speech is dangerous. But I have always assumed that there was no real risk here. Now, several nasty trends have come together. The treatment of Jeremy Corbyn, both by politicians and many...

(Kenny Everett holding giant fingers at :46) ....Lets bomb Russia....

Russian Politics & Diplomacy World Business & Economy Military & Defense Science & Space Society & Culture Sport Press Review Presidential election kicks off in Russia Russian Politics & Diplomacy March 17, 23:34 UTC+3 Residents of the country’s easternmost regions - Kamchatka and Chukotka - are the first to cast their votes Share © Sergey Malgavko/TASS MOSCOW, March 17. /TASS/. Russia’s presidential election has begun in the Far East. Residents of the country’s easternmost regions - Kamchatka and Chukotka - are the first to cast their votes. Eighty-five Russian regions cover eleven time zones. While it is still Saturday night...

Trump=Stalin. Well, it does make for a nice change of pace from Trump=Hitler . . . On Joy Reid’s show today, MSNBC analyst Malcolm Nance accused President Trump of using KGB tactics in the firing of Andrew McCabe and related moves. Said Nance: “[Trump’s move] comes out of an older playbook, the KGB’s playbook. . . . Donald Trump is literally playing by the Russian playbook on this.” Get the rest of the story and view the video here.

Exiled critic of Vladimir Putin Nikolai Glushkov was murdered and then strung up to make it look like he committed suicide, senior sources claim. The 68-year-old was found dead by his daughter, Natalia, at his suburban home in New Malden, south London on Monday night - just eight days after the nerve agent attack on spy Sergei Skripal. Mr Glushkov was one of the last surviving members of an ill-fated circle of Russian exiles - led by Putin's enemy Boris Berezovsky - who was also found dead five years ago.

Russia is to expel 23 British diplomats amid tensions over the nerve agent attack on a former spy and his daughter in the UK. The Russian foreign ministry said staff from the UK's Moscow embassy would be expelled within a week. It also said it would close the British Council in Russia, which promotes cultural ties between the nations, and the British Consulate in St. Petersburg. The move comes in response to Britain's decision to expel 23 Russian diplomats.........

DEIR EZ-ZOR, Syria — Standing on a windswept mound, Brig. Gen. Jonathan Braga pointed to the spot just a mile away from where Russian mercenaries and fighters loyal to the Syrian government fired at his soldiers. "Those artillery rounds could have landed and killed Americans, and that's why we continue to prepare our defenses," said Braga, the director of operations for the U.S.-led anti-Islamic State coalition. U.S. troops who came under fire from Russian mercenaries prepare for more attacks Only steps away sits a sprawling oil and gas refinery that American forces captured from ISIS last year and that is...

British police launched a murder investigation Friday after an autopsy revealed that a Russian exile who was critical of Vladimir Putin was strangled in his home. Nikolay Glushkov, whose body was found Monday, died as a result of “compression to the neck,” London's Metropolitan Police said in a statement. Glushkov's death was a eerie echo of his friend Boris Berezovsky, an exiled Russian oligarch and an outspoken critic of Putin who was found in 2013 with a rope around his neck — and whose death was initially a suspected suicide. It was reclassified as unexplained.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is "overwhelmingly likely" to have ordered the nerve agent attack on an ex-spy and his daughter, Boris Johnson has said. The foreign secretary said "our quarrel is with Putin's Kremlin, and with his decision" over the Salisbury incident. Russia denies involvement and said the accusations against Mr Putin were "shocking and unforgivable". Meanwhile, the head of Nato told the BBC that Russia has underestimated the "resolve and unity" of the UK's allies. Speaking during a visit to a west London military museum with the Polish foreign minister, Mr Johnson said the UK's "quarrel is with Putin's...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia said on Tuesday it had information that the United States planned to bomb the government quarter in Damascus on an invented pretext, and said it would respond militarily if it felt Russian lives were threatened by such an attack. Valery Gerasimov, head of Russia’s General Staff, said Moscow had information that rebels in the enclave of eastern Ghouta were planning to fake a chemical weapons attack against civilians and blame it on the Syrian army. He said the United States intended to use the fake attack as a pretext to bomb the government quarter in nearby...

...Isikoff and Corn suggest, without saying so explicitly, that the available circumstantial evidence makes the "golden showers" story very unlikely. Reconstructing Trump's time in Moscow for the 2013 Miss Universe Pageant, Isikoff and Corn report that Trump stayed just one night in Moscow. (Trump did in fact stay in the Ritz Carlton presidential suite where Obama had been a few years earlier.) After arriving in Moscow, Trump attended a brief meeting at the hotel and then left for a day of meetings elsewhere. That night, an "exhausted" Trump went to a party at which he agreed to take part in...

President Donald Trump sent a clear message to European allies and senior administration officials Tuesday when he fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson:  the President remains steadfast on implementing his strategy to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons, even if it means dismantling the 2015 Iran nuclear deal established by President Obama, sources told this reporter.Trump, who ‘begrudgingly’ recertified the Iran deal January, will not re-certify in May if Germany, France or Great Britain back down from the conditions the administration set in place at the beginning of the year to hold Tehran accountable for its nuclear program, a White House official...

The White House says it "stands in solidarity" with "its closest ally" the UK and supports its decision to expel 23 Russian diplomats. PM Theresa May said the diplomats would be expelled after Moscow refused to explain how a Russian-made nerve agent was used on a former spy in the UK. Moscow continues to deny any involvement in the attack.

Thousands of Gazans are planning to march towards Israel in what has been dubbed the “March of the Return” to begin on March 30. Ahmad al-Mudallal, a senior member of the Islamic Jihad terrorist group, described the demonstrations as a popular "referendum" that will demonstrate the adherence of the "Palestinian people" to the “right of return” and the resistance to the "plots" against the Palestinians. In an interview with the Hamas newspaper Felesteen, Mudallal said that the “Palestinian people” will go out to the borders and from there send a message to the world about the need to lift the...

U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley tells a Security Council meeting that "the U.S. believes Russia is responsible for the attack on two people in the United Kingdom using a military grade nerve agent." She also urges Russia to account for its actions. Video at link above

William D. Campbell fights back against The Hill and Democratic accusations Informant William D. Campbell was recently interviewed by FBI agents from the Little Rock, Arkansas field office former FBI informant who spent more than six years undercover gathering information on the Russian energy and uranium market was recently interviewed by FBI agents from the Little Rock, Arkansas field office as part of an ongoing bureau investigation into the Clinton Foundation, according to Victoria Toensing, the attorney representing the informant. Toensing disclosed the information in a letter asking for a retraction to The Hill’s article published Thursday, which was based...

TurkeyÂ’s ill-advised war in SyriaÂ’s Afrin enclave has further exposed how the Islamist regime of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his nationalist partners are mobilizing ChinaÂ’s Muslims, especially the Uyghurs, for their proxy battles to advance political and religious goals. The clandestine web of networks that was set up by TurkeyÂ’s National Intelligence Organization (MÄ°T) among Uyghurs and other Muslim groups from Central Asian countries involves not only transporting and facilitating jihadist fighters from ChinaÂ’s Xinxiang region, some of the fiercest and most battle-hardened militants who can only be compared to RussianÂ’s Chechens on the field, but also mobilization of...

Putin enemy found dead in London eight days after Skripal poisoning, as counter-terror police launch investigation ounter-terrorism police have opened an investigation into the “unexplained” death on British soil of an arch enemy of Vladimir Putin, just eight days after the nerve gas assassination attempt on a Russian double agent. Nikolai Glushkov, 68, the right-hand man of the deceased oligarch Boris Berezovsky, Mr Putin’s one-time fiercest rival, was found dead at his London home on Monday. A Russian media source said Glushkov, the former boss of the state airline Aeroflot, who said he feared he was on a Kremlin hit-list,...

So here’s where we are now. On Friday President Trump abruptly fired his Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, forcing him to cut short a trip to Africa. https://twitter.com/jaketapper/status/973550099585478657/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fhurryupharry.org%2F2018%2F03%2F13%2Ftrump-fires-tillerson%2F https://twitter.com/AP/status/973592726787756032?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fhurryupharry.org%2F2018%2F03%2F13%2Ftrump-fires-tillerson%2F Although Tillerson and Trump publicly disagreed on many things, I found this particularly interesting: On the flight from Nigeria, Tillerson appeared to break with the White House in his assessment of the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain. He singled out Russia as responsible for the attack, echoing the finger-pointing of the British government. “It came from Russia,” Tillerson said, according to the Associated Press. “I cannot understand why...