Free Republic

Zeynep Tufekci and Jeremy Howard played a decisive role in shifting CDC guidance and ushering in mask mandates across America. Zeynep’s role in the COVID story goes far deeper than most realize. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeynep_Tufekci But alas, the pro-mask establishment responded with a trump card of their own: a New York Times op-ed by sociologist Zeynep Tufekci, Here’s Why the Science Is Clear That Masks Work, highlighting a statement of clarification from Cochrane’s editor-in-chief, Karla Soares-Weiser, that the review’s conclusion had been “open to misinterpretation, for which we apologize.” This new trump card was a disaster for mask opponents—the proverbial queen of...

The Turk's a jerk.Get rid of him.President Donald John Trump's endorsement of Dr. Mehmet Oz was a bewildering move that now is a national security threat. No one less than Mike Pompeo said so, and with good reason because Oz voted in the last election in Turkey!Pompeo told reporters, "Maybe it’s all innocent, [or] maybe it’s all straight up, but we and the people of Pennsylvania and the Americans who he will be representing as one of the 100 members of the United States Senate voting on important national security matters need to understand the scope and depth of his...

Dr. Mehmet Oz, the celebrity doctor running as a Republican in Pennsylvania’s 2022 U.S. Senate race, is accused of being a hypocrite after a reportedly lavish “$250,000-a-head fundraiser with [a] Clinton friend and Epstein associate” when he has attacked his most prominent opponent David McCormick for “taking money from [Democrats].”

Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2009/April/09-nsd-408.html Two Additional Defendants Sentenced for Conspiring to Kill U.S. Soldiers WASHINGTON – The remaining two men convicted of plotting to kill members of the U.S. military during an armed attack on a military base were sentenced today to federal prison terms of life for one defendant and 33 years for the other for conspiring to kill members of the U.S. military, Ralph J. Marra Jr., Acting U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey; David Kris, Assistant Attorney General for National Security; and Janice K. Fedarcyk, Special Agent in Charge of the...

Christopher Wray will spearhead Dems’ offensive against Trump supporters in the wake of January 6. “We have not to date seen any evidence of anarchist violent extremists or people subscribed to Antifa in connection with the sixth. That doesn’t mean we’re not looking, and we’ll continue to look, but at the moment we have not seen that.” That was FBI boss Christopher Wray testifying to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday. Wray claimed the FBI doesn’t care about ideology, but he left more than a reasonable doubt about how hard the FBI had been looking. According to a January 13...

The conversation at a London bar in September 2016 took a strange turn when the woman sitting across from George Papadopoulos, a Trump campaign adviser, asked a direct question: Was the Trump campaign working with Russia? The woman had set up the meeting to discuss foreign policy issues. But she was actually a government investigator posing as a research assistant, according to people familiar with the operation. The F.B.I. sent her to London as part of the counterintelligence inquiry

Repression against civilians continues in occupied Afrin. In Afrin where massacre, plunder and torture have been committed systematically since its occupation by the Turkish state and allied jihadist mercenaries, civilians continue to be the target of occupation forces. According to latest reports, the Turkish state has started to give Turkish ID cards to the civilians in Afrin as part of its attempts to change the population structure in the region. The Turkish state had previously changed the ID cards of Kurdish civilians in Rajo and other districts of Afrin.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s refusal to meet with US National Security Advisor John Bolton has become the latest episode of what are now periodic US-Turkey tensions over the Syrian Kurds. Erdoğan declared that he would not “accept or swallow” Bolton’s earlier comments that Turkey should provide security guarantees for Syrian Kurds as a precondition for US troops’ withdrawal from northern Syria. This has obviously become unsure as the withdrawal of these troops has actually begun. The “non-paper” that Bolton delivered to the Turkish presidential office included the statement that “the United States opposes any mistreatment of opposition forces who...

TurkeyÂ’s Supreme Electoral Council (YSK) has ruled that a Kurdish candidate for the Turkish presidency cannot phone in to a talk programme from jail, opposition newspaper Cumhuriyet said . Selahattin DemirtaÅŸ was planning to use his weekly right to a 10-minute phone call to call in to Fox TV and take part in its election programme Leaders on Fox. However, his request was rejected on the basis that this was an internal Justice Ministry decision the YSK could not interfere with, even if it might affect the ongoing election. DemirtaÅŸ has been in pretrial detention since November 2016, and if...

s Trump won primary after primary in 2016, a rattled John Brennan started claiming to colleagues at the CIA that Estonia’s intelligence agency had alerted him to an intercepted phone call suggesting Putin was pouring money into the Trump campaign. The tip was bogus, but Brennan bit on it with opportunistic relish. Out of Brennan’s alarmist chatter about the bogus tip came an extraordinary leak to the BBC: that Brennan had used it, along with later half-baked tips from British intelligence, as the justification to form a multi-agency spy operation (given the Orwellian designation of an “inter-agency taskforce”) on the...

Shortened title. Full title: FBI Informant Stefan Halper Accused Of Making ‘False’ And ‘Absurd’ Allegations About Russian Infiltration At Cambridge FBI informant Stefan Halper said Russians infiltrated the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar He flagged interactions between a Russian researcher and Mike Flynn People involved called Halper’s claims “false” and “absurd” The FBI informant who made contact with members of the Trump campaign has made allegations of Russian spy infiltration at the University of Cambridge that people involved in the matters have called “false” and “absurd.” A Russian academic who worked at Cambridge with the informant, Stefan Halper, said he made “false...

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu met with Mike Pompeo, his US counterpart, in Brussels last week on the sidelines of a NATO ministerial gathering in the hope of opening a new and more positive chapter in Turkish-US ties. There was little to suggest, however, that Cavusoglu’s first contact with the new secretary of state resulted in major breakthroughs with regard to the many problems besetting Turkish-American ties. To the contrary, the readout of the meeting from the US side, and the remarks by Cavusoglu after the meeting, showed that differences remain, even if they are being contained as a result...

The worst anti-Semitic hate crime of 2018 took place outside a restaurant in Cincinnati, Ohio. Izmir Koch, an Ahiska Turkish migrant who had already been in trouble with the law, allegedly demanded to know if there were any Jews around. A man who been at the restaurant replied that he was Jewish. Izmir punched him in the head, and then kicked him while he lay on the ground. The victim, who wasn’t actually Jewish, suffered bruised ribs and a fractured eye socket. Now a federal grand jury has indicted Izmir for committing a hate crime. The violent assault was the...

The Greek air force has intercepted a Turkish military drone that violated Greece’s national airspace in the southeastern Aegean, Kathimerini has learned. The Turkish Anka unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV ANKA) twice entered Greek airspace above the Dodecanese island of Rhodes, at an altitude of 19,000-20,000 feet on Thursday. The drone was intercepted by Greek F-16 fighter jets that took off from Kasteli air base on Crete. On Thursday, Greek and Turkish fighter jets engaged in two dogfights over the Aegean, after the Turkish jets violated Greek airspace 16 times in the northeast, central and southeastern Aegean.

A U.S.-Turkish business conference set to be held at Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., next month has been postponed in order to “facilitate greater attendance” for the annual conclave.The decision comes amid thawing diplomatic and business relations between the American and Turkish governments.The conference, hosted by the American-Turkish Council (ATC) and Turkish-American Business Council (TAIK), was scheduled for the end of April. Ahval, a news outlet that covers Turkish politics, reported on Monday that the conference was being postponed because of attendance issues. Ahval’s sources said that some major American defense companies have decided to end their sponsorship of the...

The Turkish army has attacked Siftekê and Ziravê villages of Kobane Tuesday evening. The invading Turkish army has attacked Siftekê and Ziravê villages of Kobane soon after Newroz fire was lit Tuesday evening. Turkish soldiers rained bullets as they attacked both villages with gunfire and DShK-fire.

The subject head of the document, carried under the words, “Special Importance,” read: “Regarding Senator Kennedy’s request to the General Secretary of the Communist Party Y. V. Andropov.” According to the memo, Senator Kennedy was “very troubled” by U.S.-Soviet relations, which Kennedy attributed not to the murderous tyrant running the USSR but to President Reagan. The problem was Reagan’s “belligerence,” said the memo, and made worse by Reagan’s stubbornness. “According to Kennedy,” reported Chebrikov, “the current threat is due to the President’s refusal to engage any modification to his politics.” That refusal, said the memo, was exacerbated by Reagan’s political...

Turkish troops have crossed the border into Southern Kurdistan. Clashes that erupted upon the response of guerrillas continue. Turkish troops moving in Çukurca district of Hakkari have crossed the border into Southern Kurdistan last night. During clashes that erupted upon the response of guerrillas, 14 soldiers have been killed. Clashes and Turkish airstrikes continue in several locations. ANF reporters on the ground provided the following details: Turkish fighter jets started to shell Çukurca borderline at 20:00 Friday evening. Turkish troops started to move and crossed the border following the aerial strikes. Heavy clashes erupted between guerrillas and Turkish soldiers that...

As part of a witch-hunt targeting people linked to the faith-based Gülen movement, 154,694 individuals have been detained and 50,136 have been jailed since a failed coup attempt on July 15 in Turkey, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported on Sunday. According to the report, based on Justice Ministry sources, 2,431 judges and prosecutors, 104 Supreme Court of Appeals members, 41 Council of State members, two Constitutional Court members, three Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors members, 6,982 military personnel including 167 generals, 8,816 police officers, 23 governors, 72 deputy governors, 112 district governors and 31,550 civilians and state workers...

A passenger reportedly tried to force his way into the cockpit of the Honolulu-bound flight from Los Angeles The US military on Friday scrambled two Air Force fighter jets to escort an American Airlines flight into Honolulu international airport after a disturbance was reported on board, a Pacific Command spokesman said. Neither the military nor American Airlines immediately disclosed the nature of the disturbance, but local news media reported that a passenger had tried to force his way into the cockpit of the Honolulu-bound flight from Los Angeles. HawaiiNewsNow said an airline crew member and an off-duty Honolulu police officer...