Free Republic

With rising unilateralism challenging its very existence, the United Nations convenes its annual meeting of world leaders Monday and will try once more to tackle problems together as a community of nations, addressing threats ranging from Mideast conflicts to the effects of global warming — and also encouraging the glimmer of hope over the nuclear standoff in North Korea. This year, 133 world leaders have signed up to attend the General Assembly session, a significant increase from last year’s 114. Secretary-General António Guterres called the expected large turnout “eloquent proof of the confidence of the international community in the United...

U.S. President Donald Trump will fail in his confrontation with Iran, just like Iraq's Saddam Hussein, Iranian President Hassan Rohani said on Saturday, referring to the war between the two Middle Eastern powers and vowing that Tehran will not abandon its missiles. Tensions have ramped up between Iran and the United States after Trump withdrew from a landmark multilateral nuclear deal in May and reimposed sanctions on the Islamic Republic last month.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Saturday criticized Russia for its failure to cooperate with the U.S. on the world stage despite overtures by President Donald Trump to “develop a relationship” with the Kremlin. “They have not proven helpful in the Ukraine, in Syria,” Pompeo said on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” in an interview set to air Sunday. The State Department last week imposed sanctions on China’s Equipment Development Department for its purchase of Russian combat aircraft and surface-to-air missile equipment. On Saturday, Pompeo pointed to those economic penalties as evidence of the Trump administration’s efforts to “push back...

Connections between the Kremlin and international terrorism extend back for decades. The KGB helped develop modern terrorism. It provided weapons to terrorist groups, including Hezbollah, helped devise aircraft hijackings during the 1960s, and promoted the concept of suicide bombings against both military and civilian targets. According to KGB defectors, the FSB successor has continued to sponsor terrorists such as Ayman al-Zawahiri, who trained in Russia in the 1990s before joining Osama bin Laden. During its proxy attack on Ukraine, Moscow supplied the missile system to separatists who shot down a Malaysian Airlines jet, killing nearly 300 civilians. The West has...

Democratic Rep. Beto O'Rourke of Texas took a verbal swing at his Republican rival, Sen. Ted Cruz, and his ties with President Donald Trump, during a debate on Friday, in the final weeks of a heated and closely watched midterm election in the state. Speaking at an auditorium at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, O'Rourke contrasted Cruz's recent conciliatory statements about Trump, and the harsh criticism Cruz had for Trump when they were both candidates in the 2016 Republican primary....

Ilya Zabezhinsky, an Orthodox commentator from the Northern capital [of St. Petersburg], says that the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate by its promotion of the Kremlin’s agenda of “a Russian world” has failed in its Christian mission to the peoples of the former USSR and been reduced to a small national church of the Russian Federation. Under Patriarch Kirill and President Vladimir Putin, the writer says, the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate has become “the ideological department of the powers that be of the Russian Federation and essentially ceased to be the Russian Orthodox Church. Instead,...

In his new book “Fear,” Bob Woodward recounts that in April 2017, after President Trump saw images of dead Syrian children with their mouths foaming from a sarin attack, he called Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and issued an order: Get me a plan for a military strike to take out Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. “Let’s f------ ing kill him!” Trump told Mattis, according to the book. “Let’s go in. Let’s kill the f---ing lot of them.” Mattis, Woodward writes, assured the president that “he would get right on it.” But as soon as Mattis hung up the phone, he told...

On an October afternoon before the 2016 election, a huge banner was unfurled from the Manhattan Bridge in New York City: Vladimir V. Putin against a Russian-flag background, and the unlikely word “Peacemaker” below. It was a daredevil happy birthday to the Russian president, who was turning 64. In November, shortly after Donald J. Trump eked out a victory that Moscow had worked to assist, an even bigger banner appeared, this time on the Arlington Memorial Bridge in Washington: the face of President Barack Obama and “Goodbye Murderer” in big red letters. Police never identified who had hung the banners,...

Another associate of political operative Roger Stone met Friday with a federal grand jury convened to hear testimony in special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian meddling, appearing at the U.S. District Court House in Washington, D.C., a source with direct knowledge tells ABC News. Stone is a longtime and close ally of President Donald Trump who has been under increasing scrutiny from the special counsel investigation. Jerome Corsi, who until recently served as the Washington, D.C., bureau chief for the controversial far-right news outlet Infowars, is one of at least 11 individuals associated with Stone who have been contacted...

An Israeli veteran of the 1948 War for Independence dissects the revisionist myth of Palestinian innocence To back up its demands for full repatriation to Israel of Arab refugees and their descendants, the Palestinian leadership has—for over fifty years—busily spun the story of their "Naqba," their catastrophic flight from Palestine during 1947-48, in all the media available to them. This version of events—replete with Jewish brutality and Arab victimization—is a lie whose time has come, one now almost universally believed by Gentile and Jew alike. It has become the latest Blood Libel against the People of the Book; and like...

History is recorded daily, whether we like it or not. History isn't what happened, but the stories of what happened and the lessons these stories include. Iran is deteriorating faster than we thought, almost to the point of no return. The Iranian people are aware that after 40 years of complete devastation by the rulers of the Islamic regime, they no longer want the Islamic Republic. In an interview with the Associated Press, Reza Pahlavi remarked, "We all know that regime change is the ultimate formula." Mr. Pahlavi is a harsh critic of the clerical rulers who have dominated Iran...

WASHINGTON—President Trump postponed the declassification and release of sensitive documents related to the investigation into his campaign’s links to Russian election interference, saying the matter would go to the Justice Department’s internal watchdog for further investigation. In a Friday morning tweet, Mr. Trump said the inspector general of the Justice Department would “review these documents on an expedited basis,” backing away from a previously announced plan to make public a secret surveillance warrant and the text messages of top law-enforcement officials. “I met with the DOJ concerning the declassification of various UNREDACTED documents. They agreed to release them but stated...

"The president and I agree that since the beginning of this year, Russian-Chinese relations have been showing dynamic growth," Xi said. He announced that ties with his "close friend" Putin had "entered a new era of rapid development and are reaching a higher level." It was the third Xi-Putin meeting in four months, and the first time the Chinese president had attended the event in Vladivostok, which started in 2015 and encourages foreign investment. The growing rapport between the two countries has accelerated under President Donald Trump, whose policies have put greater pressure on both countries, according to Alexander Gabuev, a senior...

The US has imposed sanctions on the Chinese military over its purchasing of Russian military jets and surface-to-air missiles. It says such purchases contravene US sanctions on Moscow introduced over Russian actions in Ukraine and alleged interference in US politics. China recently bought 10 Russian Sukhoi Su-35 fighter jets and S-400 missiles. Beijing has not joined in the sanctions imposed on Moscow by the US and its Western allies since 2014. Its forces took part in giant Russian war games held earlier this month.

President Trump spoke at a campaign rally for the midterm elections in Las Vegas last night, urging everyone there to vote in November saying: "America is winning again, because we are putting America first again". Trump urged votes for Republicans saying: "We need to have more Republicans in office."...... There was a restitution hearing in Las Vegas yesterday in connection with the Bunkerville Standoff case for Todd Engel, convicted in May 2017 and sentenced to 14 years in prison. Engel came to the defense of the Bundy Ranch in Nevada in April 2014..... The latest from the lawyer for the...

The U.S. military Tuesday said it supported a plan to establish a demilitarized zone in northern Syria that would separate rebels in their last stronghold from advancing government forces. The agreement to create a buffer zone was worked out Monday in a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan held in Sochi, Russia. Russia’s defense minister said that under the agreement, Syria would refrain from launching an offensive on Idlib Province, the last major rebel stronghold.

The trilateral summit in Tehran between the presidents of Turkey, Iran and Russia was one of the most unusual parades of international diplomacy yet. It was televised live. Let’s remember the scenes: All who watched it saw how Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan blundered and how Russian President Vladimir Putin ridiculed him. Then it was a rare — if not unique — case of international diplomacy where a trilateral partnership considered detrimental to the interests of the West displayed signs of failure on a burning international issue.What has had the West — the transatlantic security system — worried for some time is NATO-member Turkey’s partnership...

All of this diplomatic traffic is about the impending Syrian military operation into the Idlib province of Syria where around three million are living. The Syrian army, backed by Russia, is aiming to eliminate the jihadist terrorists, which have been controlling the province since early 2017. Turkey has 12 military outposts around Idlib, as part of a three-way agreement with Russia and Iran. Turkey has three main concerns: First, a large-scale operation without distinguishing civilians from terrorists can create a huge catastrophe. Second, it can kick another influx from Syria towards Turkey, complicating the already difficult refugee problem in the...

A group of pro-Erdoğan Turkish lawyers has applied to the Adana Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office for the arrest of members of the US military at İncirlik Airbase in Adana for their alleged cooperation with the Gülen movement, according to a report by the Cumhuriyet daily on Friday. According to the report, lawyers working for the the Association for Social Justice and Aid (Toplumsal Adalet ve Yardımlaşma Derneği in Turkish, or TAY-DER), a front NGO that was set up on June 15, 2016 and formally registered a month later with the support of senior government officials, including some in the judiciary...

The Israeli army has stated that all intelligence on the Russian aircraft downed in Latakia on Monday will be shared with Moscow. The Israeli army statement said when the Syrian air defense systems fired the missiles that downed the Russian aircraft, Israeli Air Force had already returned to Israeli air field. The Israeli army argued that the incident had been caused by the Syrian air defense systems’ “extensive and inaccurate” fire. The statement said, “The Syrian anti-air batteries fired indiscriminately and from what we understand, did not bother to ensure that no Russian planes were in the air.” The Israeli...