Free Republic

The Syrian government is willing to negotiate a political solution with what it calls the "real opposition," a reference to non-armed groups, a senior government official told CNN in an exclusive interview Thursday. "We want to end this conflict yesterday," Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad said from his office in Damascus. "The Syrian government is ready to be a major party in negotiations that will lead to a settlement that will meet and satisfy the needs and the aspirations of the Syrian people." Syria has been locked in a civil war since 2011. The regime of President Bashar al-Assad...

Did the U.S. Just Bomb Civilians in Syria? A Syrian monitor group says planes from the U.S.-led coalition killed civilians, including five children, in an airstrike near Aleppo this week. According to a Syrian monitor group, warplanes believed to be part of the U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition bombed and killed 18 people in the Idlib province town of Atmeh on Tuesday night, close to the Turkish border. Eight of the alleged fatalities were civilians, including women and children—among them, five young sisters and a three-person family of internally displaced persons. The remaining ten were said to be fighters belonging to the...

...In Iraq Isis has the advantage of local allies: Sunni Arabs disenfranchised by Maliki and his Iranian backers. In Syria Isis lacks a popular base, and its principal enabler has been the Assad regime. Unless Isis sees something it wants that Assad has – an oil field, a weapons-rich military base, or a town filled with priceless antiquities – it and the regime pursue a live-and-let-live arrangement. Each tries instead to eliminate alternatives to itself and the other. Each, for its own reasons, wishes to be one of the two last political entities standing in Syria. For Assad, facing Isis...

Hackers from Syria and Iran are on the prowl to hold a neighborhood or city's gasoline supply up for ransom, or, worse, cause it to spill and explode, with Washington being high on the target list, according to a new report. The report, issued over the weekend by a group of digital security sleuths, found that a number of groups, including the notorious Syrian Electronic Army — known for hacking news groups — are looking for soft targets they can take control of easily through the Internet, and use to cause a variety of mayhem. The report shows that retail...

Jeb Bush, laying out his strategy to combat ISIS on Tuesday, called for establishing a no-fly zone over Syria, defeating President Bashar al-Assad's regime, and embedding U.S. troops with Iraqi forces, all the while expanding U.S. engagement across the globe.

Invasion of Europe news…. Dubi, North Bohemia, Aug 8 (ČTK) — Several hundred people from the Czech Republic and Germany protested against the arrival of refugees at the former customs building on the Czech-German border crossing Cinovec-Zinnwald today, Mayor Petr Pipal has told journalists. ... The Saxon town of Altenberg wants to accommodate the refugees in the former customs building. The capacity of the facility will be 110 places, while some 80 refugees from Syria, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan are to be placed there. ... We are told the refugees will be allowed to leave the center for “walks” during...

Ms. Dehabey, resettlement coordinator for US Together in Toledo, is also the primary facilitator for their adjustment to the area. The organization has been quietly and steadily resettling refugees in the Toledo area for a little more than a year, the only agency in the Toledo area doing so. The refugee community is a small but growing regional population, Ms. Dehabey said. She has placed 11 families in the Toledo area, including two before US Together opened its Toledo office in May, 2014. ... Ms. Dehabey opens an average of one case a month, she said, though arrivals can be...

The U.S.-Turkey coalition appears already in trouble, even before American F-16s take to the Syrian skies out of Turkey to fly anti-ISIS missions. The Turkish military allegedly only gave Americans ten minutes to leave the site of an imminent airstrike on alleged PKK territory in Iraq.“We were outraged,” a military source told Fox News of the airstrike. “A Turkish officer came into the CAOC, and announced that the strike would begin in 10 minutes and he needed all allied jets flying above Iraq to move south of Mosul immediately,” he added. American soldiers barely had time to clear the target...

Thousands of displaced Arab refugees, including a large number of Christians and Yazidis, are continuing to flee Iraq following the Islamic State's mass execution of around 2,000 Iraqis in the city of Nineveh — followed by a series of car bombs in Baghdad on Monday — resulting in dozens of causalities, according to Reuters.It's been one year since the Islamic State began its reign of terror in the Sinjar and Tal Afar districts of northern Iraq's Nineveh Province, which has included a hate-fueled campaign to wipe out Christians and Yazidis as well as other religious communities."Islamic State has unleashed untold...

Germany is again agitating for other European countries to take what they believe to be their ‘fair’ share of refugees coming to the continent with a stark warning that failing to do so could see the collapse of the EU.Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel made the remarks on Monday, reiterating the frequently made claim that some nations take a heavier than necessary burden, and others have an unarguable responsibility to get involved. Conveniently ignoring the fact that right-wing nation Hungary takes the highest number of migrants per capita in Europe, Gabriel said: “Germany, Sweden, and Austria take on most of the...

Archbishop Warda said: “All the statements (by U.S. government and media) have not condemned strongly what damage it is doing. What they are saying is just ‘This is not the true Islam. This is violating the picture of Islam.’ The issue for them is the image of Islam, but none of these statements speak about the victims, about what has been done to the victims, they are not even mentioned. And that is one of the questions our people have.”Indeed so. But most of his coreligionists in the U.S. don’t dare press this point, for to do so would harm...

A car bomb attack at a police station has killed four people and injured up to 10 people, while the city's U.S. consulate has also come under fire, news agencies have reported. Reuters, quoting Turkey's Dogan news agency, reported that at a police station in the Istanbul neighborhood had been rocked by a blast early on Monday morning. The agency, quoting the Istanbul's governor's office, added that three attackers and a police officer had been killed in an exchange of gunfire following the explosion. Istanbul police headquarters confirmed to Dogan that three police officers and seven civilians were wounded in...

A HERO SAS sniper gunned down a knife-wielding Islamic State (ISIS) maniac just as he was trying to brutally behead a father and his young son. The brave British marksman saved the terrified eight-year-old and his father after taking out the crazed jihadi with a head shot from 1,000 metres away. The special forces crack shot then killed two other members of the hated terror group, who were also taking part in the sick planned execution. ISIS militants had decreed that the little boy and his father must die after branding them "infidels" because they refused to denounce their faith....

Feminists have a lot to complain about. They post sexy pictures online to protest Silicon Valley "discrimination" against women, they think office temperatures are biased against women, they hold parades to demand the right to be called "sluts," they demand written consent for sex, they complain that women can't negotiate salaries, that movies feature too few 50-year-old women, and so on. These seem like really big issues, perhaps, until you see what is happening in the Middle East. ISIS fanatics have executed 19 women for refusing to have sex with its fighters, a Kurdish official has said. They were put...

Former DIA director: Obama White House made “willful decision” to support Al-Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood in Syria. Mehdi Hasan is a highly suspect analyst and Foreign Policy Journal appears to be a pro-jihad paleocon publication, and Al Jazeera is certainly a pro-jihad propaganda outlet. All that is noted, but if this transcript is accurate, former DIA director Michael Flynn is confirming that the Obama Administration knowingly decided to support al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, and directly enabled the rise of the Islamic State. And given the Obama Administration’s general stance toward the global jihad and Islamic supremacism, what...

Senior defense officials told NBC News that the F-16 Falcons stationed at Turkey's Incirlik base will begin air patrols "within a few days." The U.S. started launching airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq just a little more than a year ago and armed drones at Incirlik have already been conducting airstrikes against ISIS and al Nusra forces in Syria. But manned aircraft fighting ISIS have previously been flown from the Persian Gulf — hundreds of miles away from ISIS targets in Syria. Incirlik is just a little more than 100 miles from the Syrian border.

JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israel intensified its crackdown on Jewish extremists Sunday, imprisoning two high-profile ultranationalist Israelis for six months without charge and arresting additional suspects in West Bank settlement outposts, security authorities said. The crackdown comes after a deadly July 31 firebomb attack on a Palestinian home in the West Bank that killed an 18-month-old boy and his father and severely wounded his mother and brother. Authorities called the arson attack an act of "Jewish terrorism," and Israel's Security Cabinet approved the use of harsh measures to combat the trend, including administrative detention, which allows suspects to be held for...

Russian and Saudi officials to meet over Middle East issues -- just after news surfaces of a secret meeting between Russia, Iran. Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir will visit Moscow on Tuesday to discuss Syria conflict and the Islamic State group with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign ministry said Saturday. The two ministers last met in Qatar on August 3 when Lavrov, Jubeir and US Secretary of State John Kerry held a three-way meeting, with the situation in Syria topping the agenda. The ministers will continue "a discussion on ways to resolve the crisis in Syria," the...

Hamas continues to lead daily protests against the intention of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), to cut its services in light of a deficit of more than $100 million. Suheil al-Hindi, Chairman of the Arab Teachers Union of UNRWA, which is affiliated with Hamas, warned the UNRWA against a delay in the start of the upcoming school year, stressing that education is a "red line" and that interfering with it could lead to a "disruption of the peace." In a statement Friday, ​​Hamas warned that cuts in UNRWA services is a move that will...

Gaza-based terrorists fired three rockets towards southern Israel on Thursday evening, all three of which exploded in Gaza. There were no sirens in the Gaza Belt area, but some locals reported hearing explosions. A similar incident occurred on Saturday night, when two rockets that were fired from Gaza exploded on the Palestinian side of the border fence. Saturday’s rocket fire came a day after Hamas called for all able-bodied Arabs to attack IDF soldiers and "settlers" as "legitimate targets" after an Arab infant was killed in an arson attack in the village of Duma in Samaria.