Free Republic

Tomorrow, you can hardly have failed to notice, marks the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, the document famously issued by King John at Runnymede on June 15, 1215. Most people are understandably a little hazy about the charter’s contents (it runs to 63 clauses and over 4,000 words). But they are aware that it was a “good thing” – a significant step in the direction of the liberties we enjoy today.

RIGA, Latvia — In a significant move to deter possible Russian aggression in Europe, the Pentagon is poised to store battle tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and other heavy weapons for as many as 5,000 American troops in several Baltic and Eastern European countries, American and allied officials say. The proposal, if approved, would represent the first time since the end of the Cold War that the United States has stationed heavy military equipment in the newer NATO member nations in Eastern Europe that had once been part of the Soviet sphere of influence. Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the war...

MI6 has pulled its spies out of 'hostile countries' and America's intelligence agencies are on high alert after Russia and China cracked encrypted files leaked by fugitive whistleblower Edward Snowden. The top-secret documents contain information that could lead to the identification of British and American spies, according to senior officials in Downing Street, the Home Office and the security services. A senior Home Office official accused Snowden - the former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor responsible for the biggest confidential information leak in US history - of having 'blood on his hands' after they gained access to over one million...

BRUSSELS/ATHENS (Reuters) - Talks on breaking a deadlock between Greece and its international creditors broke up in failure on Sunday, with European leaders venting their frustration as Athens stumbled closer toward a debt default that threatens its future in the euro. With Athens insisting it would never give in to demands from the EU and IMF for pension and wage cuts, the European Commission declared that the negotiations in Brussels, also involving the European Central Bank, had not succeeded.

Why Is The EU Forcing European Nations To Adopt 'Bail-In' Legislation by the End of the Summer? Are they expecting something to happen? As you will read about below, the European Union says that any nation within the EU that does not enact "bail-in" legislation within the next two months will face legal action. The countries that are being threatened in this manner include Italy and France. If you fast forward two months from this moment, that puts us in early August. So clearly the European Union wants everything to be squared away by the end of the summer. Is...

The most anticipated papal letter for decades will be published in five languages on Thursday. It will call for an end to the ‘tyrannical’ exploitation of nature by mankind. Could it lead to a step-change in the battle against global warming?Pope Francis will call for an ethical and economic revolution to prevent catastrophic climate change and growing inequality in a letter to the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics on Thursday. In an unprecedented encyclical on the subject of the environment, the pontiff is expected to argue that humanity’s exploitation of the planet’s resources has crossed the Earth’s natural boundaries, and that...

Britain has pulled out agents from live operations in "hostile countries" after Russia and China cracked top-secret information contained in files leaked by former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, the Sunday Times reported. Security service MI6, which operates overseas and is tasked with defending British interests, has removed agents from certain countries, the newspaper said, citing unnamed officials at the office of British Prime Minister David Cameron, the Home Office (interior ministry) and security services. SNIP Russia and China have both managed to crack encrypted documents which contain details of secret intelligence techniques that could allow British and...

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has warned European Union leaders that violence from Islamic extremists could escalate if the EU rejects Turkey as a member... Turkey signed the association agreement for EU membership in 1963 and it is expected that a two-day EU summit this week will finally decide to begin formal membership talks, probably in the second half of next year... Taking Turkey’s 69 million, mainly Muslim, population into the Union is widely disputed... In Germany, leader of the Christian Social Union Edmund Stoiber told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that his party in government would do what it...

Political elites and super-bureaucrats are worried. It’s becoming harder to control consensus reality. A history stitched together by lies and cover-ups, political assassinations, slight-of-hand false flag deceptions, secret societies, dual loyalties and stolen fortunes – this has been the exclusive privilege of organized crime and the ruling elite for centuries. Putting aside history’s ‘big ticket’ items though, the real reason for this authoritarian trend is much more fundamental. By knocking out their intellectual competition, political elites and their media moguls hope to minimalize, and thus eliminate any alternative analysis and opinion by applying the completely open-ended and arbitrary label of...

he anti-Israel Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement has been the focus of fierce debate over its calls to boycott the State of Israel. Its critics claim it is motivated by pure anti-Semitism - noting that only the Jewish state faces such a campaign, and not serial human rights violators such as Iran, North Korea, Sudan and others. BDS supporters, on the other hand, claim they are motivated by concern for human rights, and that the singling out of the world's only Jewish country is a mere coincidence. So, who's right? To find out, Jewish activist Ami Horowitz decided to...

Picture with humorous caption From Zionist sharks to Mossad vultures; for anti-Zionists, where Israel is concerned conspiracy theories are always in-vogue - no matter how outlandish or just plain nuts they sound. Vying for this year's best Israel-related conspiracy theory is an Islamist activist in the UK, who claims he has been the victim of a most dastardly of Zionist deeds. According to Asghar Bukhari, founder of the extremist Muslim Public Affairs Committee (MPAC), Zionists broke into his house last night and stole... his shoe. No kidding. Text of tweet

Here is a live map of different war zones. You can zoom in or out just like on Google Maps. Hover over different icons and more. Check out how close ISIS is to Baghdad. Yikes!

After all those straight white men, we are overdue a woman in the Oval Office. More than one, in fact … Two things happened the past week that got me thinking about representation – about the importance of seeing ourselves outside of ourselves. The first thing was Hillary Clinton announcing her bid for the 2016 presidency. The second thing was NRA president Wayne LaPierre declaring, in regard to Obama and Clinton, that: “Eight years of one demographically symbolic president is enough.” As far as Hillary goes, she has already been think-pieced to death (a journalist friend suggested I title this...

It is hard to describe just how bad things are for the Republican Party. Each day it looks more and more like the Bates Motel from Alfred Hitchcock’s classic film Psycho. More precisely, the GOP is actually most like the central character who owns the motel: Norman Bates and his alter ego, “Mother,” a.k.a. Norma. Norman appears to be a polite, sincere young man, if strongly dominated by Mother. But so what if he’s idiosyncratic, even eccentric, with a mother fixation? As a private individual, he has the right to be odd. Mother, meanwhile, wants absolute control over her son....

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton promised on Saturday to fight for ordinary Americans who have been left behind as the economy recovers, appealing to working families at the first major rally of her 2016 White House campaign. Speaking on New York's Roosevelt Island, within sight of Manhattan's skyscrapers, Clinton promised would "make the economy work for everyday Americans, not just those at the top" if elected president. The gathering of several thousand people cheered as Clinton said working people are asking why wealth is reserved for chief executives and hedge fund managers. "You have to wonder, when...

(Reuters) - Appealing to working families in her first major campaign speech, U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said on Saturday she would rewrite the U.S. tax code if she is elected so that it rewards hard work, and not quick equities trades or money stashed away overseas. She also pledged to establish a national infrastructure bank financed by bonds, an idea championed by President Barack Obama, a fellow Democrat.

The prospect that the pope, from his perch at the pinnacle of the Catholic church, will exhort humanity to act on climate change as a moral imperative is a direct threat to a core belief of US conservatives. And conservatives – anxious to hang on to their flock – are lashing out.

'Seventy five years after the sinking of the Lancastria - Britain's worst maritime disaster in history - why is the tragedy largely forgotten? And what do those touched by the catastrophe want now? "The trouble with the story of the Lancastria is it doesn't fit with the grand narrative of that period - the miraculous evacuation of Dunkirk, and the Battle of Britain," reflects Mark Hirst. "No amount of spin can turn the story of the Lancastria into something triumphant." Mark - a former broadcast journalist and co-founder of the Lancastria Association of Scotland - has studied the life of...

https://twitter.com/zerohedge/status/609341858045497344 https://twitter.com/TraderStef/status/609355146842275840 https://twitter.com/JAFF3/status/609343992803774464 https://twitter.com/russian_market/status/609341880623591424 The bank runs (and capital controls) begin. Macedonia Central Bank Governor Bogov states: *GREEK BANKS IN MACEDONIA CAN’T WITHDRAW CASH: BOGOV*MACEDONIAN BANKS PROTECTED IN CASE OF GREXIT: BOGOV How long before the rest of Europe follows suit and a bank holiday is declared Monday to "Cyprus" depositors? He further added: *MACEDONIAN CENTRAL BANK SEES MAJOR RISKS FROM POLITICAL CRISIS http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-06-12/macedonia-central-bank-blocks-greek-bank-withdrawals-case-grexit Macedonia Central Bank blocks Greek bank withdrawals FXStreet (Córdoba) - Macedonian Central Bank's Governor Dimitar Bogov has stated that Greek banks are not able to withdraw cash. According to Bogov, this withdrawal halt is protection against...

When I met Rachel Dolezal, I found it easy to accept her description of her ethnicity. Along with BBC correspondent Jonny Dymond, I talked to Dolezal in 2011 in a coffee shop in Spokane, Washington, while producing a BBC World Service documentary on a surge in extremist militia activity in America. She told us that she was of mixed racial heritage but that she primarily identified with her black ancestors. She matter-of-factly listed the abuse she says she received at the hands of racists, including threats, break-ins, and nooses being left at her workplace. At no time during our hour-long...