Free Republic

Global Reset Soon? Let's recap the anomalies in the the last 24 hours. 1) Pope calls for one world government. 2) Chinese stock trading halted. 3) U.S. stock exchange halted. 4) Banks closed in Greece. 5) US mint suspends sale of American Eagle coins. 6) United Airlines flights grounded. 7) Web sites like Wall Street Journal (financial web site) and Zerohedge (financial web site) shut down. 8) Possible Cyber Attack? Feel free to add to the list. Can we connect the dots, or is this just a coincidence?

Latinos are one of the fastest growing groups in the Muslim religion. The Pew Research Center says about six percent of American Muslims are Latino. And women make up a little more than half of the new converts -- the people who have changed their religion to Islam. On a recent Friday, men listened to their imam at Masjid Miami Gardens in Miami, Florida. This clergyman spoke about forgiveness. On the upper level of the Gardens, the women watch through glass. They hear the imam through a monitoring system. This is the world that Greisa Torres entered four years ago....

HAVANA/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States and Cuba are set to announce the restoration of diplomatic relations on Wednesday, the result of a two-year courtship between former Cold War rivals who severed ties in 1961. The chief of the U.S. interests section in Havana will report to Cuban foreign ministry around 9 a.m. (0900 ET) to deliver a letter from U.S. President Barack Obama to Cuban President Raul Castro. Obama will then speak at 11 a.m. (1100 ET) from the White House's ceremonial Rose Garden. It was unknown whether Castro would reciprocate with comments of his own. Following 18 months...

The data for these numbers has been gathered from two sources.  From 1945 to 1987, the data was taken from "Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America" by Gary Kleck, Table 2.1.   The methodology used by Kleck was applied to  the figures obtained from the ATF for later years.  The number shown is the cumulative addition of domestic manufacture plus imports minus exports.  This does not count guns shipped to the U.S. military.   The figures are rounded to the nearest million. Kleck attributes the 1945 - 1968 numbers to Newton and Zimring, which includes the calculation of the 1945...

Something is coming. I don’t know what. But we must be ready. Here’s the key question: Is America heading towards a terrible implosion or a great awakening? I feel a tremendous sense of urgency about this column. The United States is hurtling towards severe trouble, and the events of the past few months — and what may be coming over the next few months — grieves me a great deal. Something is coming. I don’t know what. But we all must be ready in every possible way. Consider where we are in the summer of 2015: •Violence is exploding in...

.S.-majority-owned multinational enterprises employed 1,106,700 in Mexico in 2012 (the latest year on record), according to data released by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, but Mexican-majority owned enterprises employed only 68,800 in the United States that year. That means that U.S.-controlled multinationals employed 1,037,900 more people in Mexico than Mexican-controlled multinationals employed in the United States. Put another way, multinational enterprises that had a majority U.S. ownership employed 16 times as many people in Mexico as Mexican-controlled multinationals employed in the United States. Forty-nine percent of the jobs--546,500 of 1,106,700--that U.S.-controlled multinationals maintained in Mexico in 2012 were in...

Defense officials confirm the official public Army website has been hacked by unknown intruders demanding the U.S. stop training rebel fighters inside Syria. Unlike the massive hack into Office of Personnel Management records, the officials stress the website contains no official classified information or private personal data of any Amy personnel, military or civilian. The messages reportedly proclaimed "YOU'VE BEEN HACKED" and added "YOUR COMMANDERS ADMIT THEY ARE TRAINING THE PEOPLE THEY HAVE SENT YOU TO DIE FIGHTING." It's not clear yet whether the Army or the hackers shut down the website. The officials say the website is for general...

Video Link Here

As the bloc’s 12 oil ministers meet in Vienna, the march of Isil jihadists in the Middle East is putting Iran and Saudi Arabia on a collision course with explosive consequences Thick black smoke rising from the Baiji oil refinery could be seen as a dirty smudge on the horizon as far away as Baghdad after fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) set fire to the enormous processing plant just over 100 miles north of the capital last week. The decision to torch the refinery, which once produced around a third of Iraq’s domestic fuel...

Now, with Beijing set to enforce what is effectively a no-fly zone over its new sovereign ‘territory’ we bring you the following graphic from WSJ which shows that when it comes to sheer size, China’s air force and Navy are beyond compare. China’s promise to beef up its naval capabilities to prevent further “meddling” and “provocative actions” by rivals in the South China Sea is a daunting prospect for most of its neighbors, which already view Beijing’s fast-improving armed forces with trepidation... As a recent Pentagon review of China’s military modernization drive noted, “China is investing in capabilities designed to...

China's forces will no longer be limited to defence of the nation's territory but will project its military power further beyond its borders at sea and more assertively in the air in order to safeguard its maritime possessions, the white paper states. While the air force will shift focus from "territorial air defence" to both offence and defence, the Chinese army will increase its global mobility and its artillery will improve its "medium and long-range precision strikes", it said

At the top of the list is Raleigh, North Carolina. The city’s residents earn a median base salary of $50,000, higher than many of the cities on this list, while median home values remain a relatively modest $198,400. Chamberlain notes that the factors that put Raleigh at the top of the list can be a model for other metros. The city has long been attractive to major companies like IBM and Cisco. But now, Raleigh is gaining popularity among technology companies as well, who value the pipeline of talent provided by the city’s location among several major universities in the...

Storage withdrawals and falling rig count have been the main sources of hope that U.S. tight oil production will fall and that oil prices will rebound. That hope is fading as it is now clear that recent withdrawals from U.S. crude oil storage are because of price, not falling supply, and that the drop in rig count has stalled. Figure 1 below shows the relationship between U.S. crude oil storage inventory and WTI price. The thinking around recent withdrawals from storage is that this reflects depleting supply. The data, however, reflects that traders were storing crude oil during the price...

A Chinese state-owned newspaper said on Monday that "war is inevitable" between China and the United States over the South China Sea unless Washington stops demanding Beijing halt the building of artificial islands in the disputed waterway. The Global Times, an influential nationalist tabloid owned by the ruling Communist Party's official newspaper the People's Daily, said in an editorial that China was determined to finish its construction work, calling it the country's "most important bottom line".

The easiest way to pay a debt of gratitude is with respect and commemoration. On Memorial Day, remember to pause for a minute of silent honor at 3 PM, local time. Memorial Day is still officially known as Decoration Day. It is a day to remember those who have died in all of our wars.

From the first sudden, and quite dramatic, appearance of the fanatical Islamic group known as ISIS which was largely unheard of until a year ago, on the world's stage and which promptly replaced the worn out and tired al Qaeda as the world's terrorist bogeyman, we suggested that the "straight to beheading YouTube clip" purpose behind the Saudi Arabia-funded Islamic State was a simple one: use the Jihadists as the vehicle of choice to achieve a political goal: depose of Syria's president Assad, who for years has stood in the way of a critical Qatari natural gas pipeline, one which...

A 2010 Pentagon directive on military support to civilian authorities details what critics say is a troubling policy that envisions the Obama administration’s potential use of military force against Americans. The directive contains noncontroversial provisions on support to civilian fire and emergency services, special events and the domestic use of the Army Corps of Engineers. The troubling aspect of the directive outlines presidential authority ........

NEW LONDON, Conn. (Reuters) - Rising seas and thawing permafrost caused by warmer global temperatures threaten U.S. military bases and will change the way the U.S. armed services defend the country, President Barack Obama said on Wednesday. In a commencement address at the United States Coast Guard Academy, Obama underscored the risks to national security posed by climate change, one of his top priorities for action in his remaining 19 months in office. "The threat of a changing climate cuts to the very core of your service," Obama told the 224 graduating cadets, who studied the impacts of global warming...

FOX News confirmed today that the US ran guns from Benghazi to Syria before the attack on the US consulate on September 11, 2012. The US Ambassador to Libya and three others were killed in the terrorist attack. The Obama administration was running weapons to Syria. benghazi guns syria FOX News reported Monday that the US was sending guns to Banias and Borj Islam, Syria before the Benghazi terrorist attack. US Intelligence agencies were fully aware that weapons were moving from the terrorist stronghold in Libya to Syria before the attack that killed four Americans… September 16, 2012 DIA Memo...

The United States is “expediting” shipments of weapons to fight the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in light of recent gains by the terror group. Vice President Joe Biden told Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-abaci on Friday the U.S. will rush the weapons to Iraq to help them try to hold the city of Ramadi, CNN reported Friday night. ISIS raised its flag over Ramadi on Friday after capturing the city’s provincial government building and police headquarters, CNN said. The shipment reportedly includes AT-4 shoulder-held rockets and ammunition.