Free Republic

Obama will have left behind a superhighway littered with abandoned allies, broken promises and disdain. President Barak Obama will have only a few months left in the White House. Meanwhile, the Israeli government is waiting to hear if Obama will OK a new military package that would send billions to Israel in aid. This is exacerbated by the anxiety surrounding a possible UN vote on the status of a Palestinian state. November 2016 is the deadline posed on the United Nations regarding recognition, and the threat that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas would exercise “other options” if his demands were not...

Divine message? Natural disaster declared, Louvre artwork evacuated as River Seine hits 1982 record - same day as French initiative talks. In an ironic twist of fate, the same Friday that the international conference of the French initiative to force peace talks on Israel was launched in Paris, floodwaters in the capital city reached peak levels in what has been declared as a natural disaster. The River Seine in Paris is set to reach six meters (19 feet) above its normal levels on Friday, causing the prestigious Louvre and Orsay museums to close as staff anxiously rushes to move famous...

Israeli-Palestinian Peace Prospects Why the solution must be regional in nature. May 9, 2016 Joseph Puder    The Jerusalem Post reported (4/28/2016) that “Jerusalem Rejects French Peace Initiative.” It was a reaction to France’s recent announcement that “it would hold an international summit in Paris on May 30 (2016) to discuss the parameters of a peace deal (between Israel and the Palestinians-JP). The summit would include 30 countries and international organizations, including a number of Arab nations, and the Mideast Quartet of the US, Russia, the EU, and the UN, but not Israel or the Palestinian Authority.” Israel’s Prime...

Pushing the 2002 Arab Initiative whilst ignoring the 2004 Bush-Congress Initiative is destined to become an exercise in futility and certain failure The announcement by French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault that France will host a meeting of ministers from 20 countries in Paris on May 30 to try and relaunch the Israel-Palestinian peace process seems to be yet another flight of fancy that is destined to end up where the Oslo Accords and the Bush Roadmap presently find themselves after decades of fruitless negotiations. Who those 20 countries are that will attend such a meeting will make fascinating reading.

CAIRO — The Arab League labelled Shiite Muslim Hizbollah a terrorist organisation on Friday, Egyptian state media said, as tensions rise between Sunni and Shiite powers across the Middle East. Sectarian wars are raging in Syria, Yemen and Iraq, and the League has become a forum for the mostly Sunni Arab countries, led by Saudi Arabia, to air their grievances with Shiite power Iran, the major backer of Hizbollah and other Shiite groups in the region. "The Arab League foreign minister's committee has decided on Friday to consider Hizbollah a terrorist organisation," said a statement from the Arab League carried...

UNITED NATIONS — UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has invited Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia to a meeting this month of the Middle East Quartet seeking a diplomatic solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The foreign ministers of the three Arab countries will join their counterparts from Russia, the United States and EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini for the talks on September 30, the UN spokesman said Friday. The secretary general of the Arab League will also attend the meeting on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly gathering of world leaders. The invitation follows a decision by the Quartet in...

NBC, MSNBC AND NEWS SERVICES RAMALLAH, West Bank, March 29 — Israeli tanks surrounded Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s headquarters in the West Bank early Friday as the Israeli cabinet met in an all-night session to debate a military strike designed to drive him into exile. The attack came only hours after Arafat made a last-ditch promise to work for “an immediate cease-fire” with Israel and after Palestinian security forces began arresting militants in the West Bank. NBC NEWS correspondent Dana Lewis, reporting from Ramallah, said he could hear heavy machine-gun fire and blasts similar to tank rounds. Some of the...

German firms expect exports to Britain to tumble five percent next year in the wake of the Britain’s vote to quit the EU, an industry survey showed on Thursday. The German Chambers of Commerce and Industry (DIHK) also revised its projection for 2016 to a one-percent drop rather than five percent growth. The figures were based on a survey of 5,600 businesses that export to Britain following the June 23 referendum in which 52 percent of Britons voted to leave the EU. Britain is currently Germany’s third-largest export market, buying up €89 billion of goods in 2015. …

On the morning of July 7, 2005, bombs are detonated in three crowded London subways and one bus during the peak of the city’s rush hour. The synchronized suicide bombings, which were thought to be the work of al-Qaida, killed 56 people including the bombers and injured another 700. It was the largest attack on Great Britain since World War II. No warning was given. --SNIP-- Of the four suicide bombers, three were born in Great Britain and one in Jamaica. Three lived in or near Leeds in West Yorkshire; one resided in Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire.

Theresa May and Andrea Leadsom will battle it out for the Conservative leadership after Michael Gove was eliminated from the contest in the second round of voting.

A senior commander in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) recently threatened Israel, saying the ground is ready for the annihilation of “the Zionist regime”. The comments by IRGC Deputy Commander Hossein Salami were made at a sermon in Tehran this past Friday prior to prayers marking Al-Quds Day. He also declared that Iran has over 100,000 missiles waiting in Lebanon alone and that tens of thousands of other missiles were placed throughout the Muslim world in order to wipe "the accursed black dot" – that is Israel – from the map of the world. Salami also threatened Kurdish leaders...

Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble said Wednesday he opposes a race of competitive tax cuts in Europe after Britain indicated it may slash corporate tax. “We have no intention to start some sort of ‘race to the bottom’,” said Schäuble about plans by Britain’s finance minister George Osborne to slash corporation tax to avoid a business exodus after the June 23 Brexit vote. […] “We’re not opposed to fiscal competition,” he said, but it has to be “fair”, he added. …

Jamming to some classic Farage.

The consistent theme from my travels so far in Europe– the UK, Scandinavia, Lithuania– has been noticeably higher prices. Shockingly so, in some instances. London, where I spent a rather pleasant and rare sunny weekend with friends and colleagues, has gone from being ‘stupid’ pricey, to just plain absurd. Tube prices, taxi fares, food prices, restaurant bills, train fares… it all keeps going up. And to cap it all off, the British government’s VAT increases have ensured that absolutely everyone is paying a little bit more. Here in Lithuania, the buzz around town is the spiraling gasoline prices, which have...

Let’s be clear. The global economy is not working for the majority of people in our country and the world. This is an economic model developed by the economic elite to benefit the economic elite. We need real change... We need a president who will vigorously support international cooperation that brings the people of the world closer together, reduces hypernationalism and decreases the possibility of war. We also need a president who respects the democratic rights of the people, and who will fight for an economy that protects the interests of working people, not just Wall Street, the drug companies...

Sen. Bernie Sanders is arguing that “the global economy is not working for the majority of people in our country and the world.” Sanders, who hasn’t yet abandoned his presidential campaign, writes in a New York Times op-ed Wednesday that Republican Donald Trump “could benefit from the same forces” that led Britain to vote to leave the European Union. He says that any political advantage flowing to Trump from this market-moving vote “should sound an alarm for the Democratic Party.” …

Three years into the tenure of Hassan Rouhani who himself and many in the West promised to be a “moderate” and “reformist” poised to bring about change in Iran, we have only witnessed an unprecedented spike in human rights violations, including horrendous public floggings and especially executions. Overt 2,400 executions in the past three years is the report card Iran and Rouhani carry, with Amnesty International and many other international human rights organizations registering Iran sent nearly 1,000 people to the gallows in 2015 alone. Various religious minorities, including Arabs, Baha’is, Christians, Jews and others have also been targeted...

Breaking: Boris Johnson: I'm not standing as Tory leader

Boris Johnson’s surprising announcement on Thursday that he would not seek the leadership of the British Conservative Party — and by extension, succeed David Cameron as prime minister — leaves five candidates for the job. In a series of votes, Conservative members of Parliament will whittle down the list to two finalists, and the party’s roughly 150,000 members will choose between them. The process is expected to be completed by Sept. 9. The Conservative Party, which won a majority in Parliament last year, has a five-year mandate that lasts until 2020. But given the turmoil after voters decided that Britain...

Voters will have to wait before migration can begin to be cut despite Britain deciding to leave the European Union, Theresa May has warned. The Home Secretary, who is the front-runner in the Conservative leadership election, promises to reform the EU’s rules on “free movement” of people, which currently allow an unlimited number of migrants to move to the UK to live and work. However, she stops short of promising to abolish free movement altogether, warning that it will “take time” before the numbers of immigrants come down. The issue of cutting migration is one of the critical battlegrounds in...