Free Republic

IMF paper warns of 'savings tax' and mass write-offs as West's debt hits 200-year high ... Debt burdens in developed nations have become extreme by any historical measure and will require a wave of haircuts, warns IMF paper. The paper said policy elites in the West are still clinging to the illusion that rich countries can chip away at their debts with a blend of austerity cuts and growth. – UK Telegraph Dominant Social Theme: The West is out of control and only taxes can save it. Free-Market Analysis: The UK Telegraph has discovered that the IMF wants to inflict...

Last October, a well-known Portland antifa militant was killed under mysterious circumstances after leaving a pub popular with far-left extremists. Sean Daniel Kealiher, 23, was killed near the Cider Riot pub after being hit by a car that had been fired upon with live rounds. His friends dragged his body away and did not call the police. Kealiher’s death immediately rippled throughout Portland and beyond, leading both the far-left and even establishment Democrat leaders to mourn publicly. A GoFundMe for his funeral raised thousands. And while he was lionized in the press as a murdered “anti-fascist activist” and even called...

Obama bundler Jodie Evans, far left, protests in Yemen with al Qaeda tied group al Karama, June 17, 2013. Photo via al Karama. Obama bundler Jodie Evans and Code Pink, the leftist group she co-leads, have been found to be working with a group whose leaders have recently been declared terrorists and al Qaeda supporters by the Treasury Department. This is not the first time the Democratic Party allied group has been caught in bed with terrorists. As this writer has reported over the years, Code Pink works with terrorists, state sponsors of terrorists, the Democratic Party and President Barack...

There’s no way in hell they shouldn’t tell all’.. The FBI is closing the book on the agency’s “corrupt” handling of James “Whitey” Bulger — forever. The feds are refusing to make any further installments of Bulger’s case file public, saying the records are “investigative” and no longer subject to the Freedom of Information Act. “The records responsive to your request are law enforcement records; there is a pending or prospective law enforcement proceeding relevant to these responsive records, and release of the information could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings. Therefore, your request is being administratively closed,”...

The father of a Chechen man shot to death by authorities in Florida while being questioned in the Boston Marathon bombing investigation has written to President Barack Obama asking for help finding out what happened. Abdulbaki Todashev wrote in a letter released Monday that son Ibragim Todashev knew dead marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, through boxing but had no connection to the bombing or any other crime. He said his son voluntarily went to an FBI office in Orlando to speak with agents four times before they showed up at his apartment on May 22....

U.S. relations with China were steady in December 2013 when then-Vice President Joe Biden stepped off Air Force Two in Beijing with a seemingly unremarkable companion: his son Hunter. Days later, Shanghai authorities approved the formation of an investment boutique, underwritten by Chinese government money, that named Hunter Biden as a director and later cut him an ownership share at a discounted price. Roughly four months afterward, he began earning up to $1 million annually for sitting on a corporate board in Ukraine, a country his father paid special attention to as vice president. Hunter Biden would go on to...

Li Xueren/Xinhua via APAs more and more information comes to light about Hunter Biden, so do many of the questionable business dealings in which Hunter had engaged. While Burisma has made headlines for the last several years, recently much more has been revealed about Hunter’s engagement in Chinese business dealings – and they’re infinitely more troubling than anything having to do with Ukraine or Burisma. Prior to his tagging along on the Big Guy’s trip to China in December 2013, Hunter Biden and his associates Devon Archer, James Bulger, and Michael Lin had held numerous meetings with executives from Bohai...

A mysterious Russian satellite with a shady mission has broken apart in Earth's orbit, creating a hazardous cloud of debris zipping around the planet and menacing other satellites, US Space Force announced. The 18th Space Defense Squadron said on Twitter Monday that it had confirmed a satellite called Kosmos 2499 had broken apart into 85 pieces. Previous collisions and satellite break-ups have created far larger and more hazardous debris fields than this. But the pieces of Kosmos 2499 are orbiting at an altitude of about 745 miles — so high that they'll probably be there for a century or longer...

Sean Brian Townsend is an independent researcher in the field of information and computer security, a member and the spokesman of the Ukrainian Cyber Alliance. He explains how Kaspersky Lab and the FSB hacked and leaked the secret NSA tools under the guise of The Shadow Brokers hacker group. These leaks became the origin of WannaCry, NotPetya, and BadRabbit ransomware attacks. The editors of InformNapalm may not share the opinions of the authors in the [opinion] section, and does not alter the original style of the articles. Antivirus software – myths and reality The activities of antivirus (AV) companies are...

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today it received records from the U.S. Secret Service showing that, for the first five and a half years of the Obama administration, Hunter Biden traveled extensively while receiving a Secret Service protective detail. During the time period of the records provided, Hunter Biden, son of then-Vice President Joe Biden, took 411 separate domestic and international flights, including to 29 different foreign countries. He visited China five times. Judicial Watch’s February 7, 2020, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request sought: Records reflecting the dates and locations of travel, international and domestic, for Hunter Biden...

(Reuters) - A kind of rock that often contains diamonds has been found in Antarctica for the first time, hinting at mineral riches in the vast, icy continent where mining is banned.

NDIANAPOLIS, December 9, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Medical authorities in Indiana have asked an abortionist who violated a state law designed to catch child molesters to appear in person before renewing his license to practice. Dr. Ulrich George Klopfer must explain to the Indiana Medical Licensing Board why he failed to report performing two abortions on girls under the age of 14 in a timely manner, as required by law. Having sex with a minor 13 or younger is prosecuted as a felony, and abortionists must report performing abortions on young girls to the Department of Child Services and the Indiana...

A high-ranking official from Turkey’s second-largest state-owned bank was arrested in New York City March 27. On the orders of the acting US attorney for the Southern District of New York, Joon H. Kim, FBI agents arrested Mehmet Hakan Atilla, Halkbank’s vice president for international banking, for violating the US-led sanctions against Iran. The press release from Kim’s office accused Atilla with participating “in a years-long scheme to violate American sanctions laws by helping Reza Zarrab, a major gold trader, use U.S. financial institutions to engage in prohibited financial transactions that illegally funneled millions of dollars to Iran.” Zarrab, a Turkish citizen...

The Associated Press was "highly irresponsible" in publishing a story detailing American Robert Levinson's ties to the CIA, White House press secretary Jay Carney said Friday. The AP's story, held for years at the request of government officials, traces Levinson's work with the CIA before he went missing in Iran more than six years ago and "very likely puts that person in greater danger," Carney said,

Secretary of State John Kerry, speaking exclusively to ABC’s Martha Raddatz for “This Week,” insisted that the United States had not abandoned former FBI agent Robert Levinson—the 65-year-old American who went missing in Iran seven years ago—and said he was personally involved in the effort to locate him. This week, Levinson’s family said he was working for a rogue CIA operation when he disappeared and accused the government of betraying him. Kerry rejected this narrative in his interview with Raddatz. …

An American man who disappeared in Iran more than six years ago had been working for the CIA in what U.S. intelligence officials describe as a rogue operation that led to a major shake-up in the spy agency. Robert Levinson, a retired FBI agent, traveled to the Iranian island of Kish in March 2007 to investigate corruption at a time when he was discussing the renewal of a CIA contract he had held for several years. He also inquired about getting re­imbursed for the Iran trip by the agency before he departed, according to former and current U.S. intelligence officials....

Turkish autocrat Recep Tayyip Erdogan is coming to Washington, DC, on May 16 loaded for bear.  He has an ambitious agenda and apparently feels he can achieve it all because he holds “trump” cards against the President of the United States. Erdogan and his proxies have publicly said they want to convince the United States to jettison its budding alliance with the Syrian Democratic Union (PYD) and its armed wing, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the Kurdish group that has become the tip of the spear in the fight against ISIS in Syria. On this point, they will encounter resistance...

Nuclear Option: The first spoil of Harry Reid's shredding of the Senate's historic filibuster rules has been confirmed to the D.C. Circuit. Patricia Millett is another radical activist masquerading as judge. As chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1990, now-Vice President Joseph Biden threw a fit after it was clear David Souter was going to be confirmed to the Supreme Court, warning the first Bush administration that no more "stealth" nominees would be getting through. Liberals threw an even bigger fit the next year when Clarence Thomas told Biden's committee he had no "personal opinion on the outcome in...

[Caption:] U.S. Senator John McCain, center, speaks as Democratic Senator from the state of Connecticut, Chris Murphy, second left, and Opposition leader Oleh Tyahnybok [All Ukrainian Union "Svoboda" leader], stand around him during a Pro-European Union rally in Independence Square in Kiev, Ukraine, Sunday, Dec. 15, 2013. Sen. John McCain (R. Ariz.) advocated for sending arms to Ukraine Tuesday [link at URL] on Fox News. McCain acknowledged the arms would not likely enable Ukraine to defeat the Russians in open war, but emphasized it could improve the Ukrainian military's morale and ensure that the Russians would have "a real fight...

N.Korea Threatens S.Korean Marines with 'Annihilation' In this video grab from MBC, North Korean propaganda leaflets are found on Baeknyeong Island in the West Sea on Monday. North Korea on Monday floated hundreds of propaganda leaflets into South Korea threatening the "annihilation" of the 6th Marine Brigade on Baeknyeong Island, the Joint Chiefs of Staff said. The burst of belligerence comes less than a week after the execution of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s uncle Jang Song-taek, who was seen as a moderate. The previous day, the North Korean propaganda website, Uriminzokkiri also threatened to "mercilessly throw a battering ram"...