Free Republic

When Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in 2002, it generated considerable debate between those who saw its success as a potentially liberalizing force and critics who feared it would ultimately bring the end of Turkish democracy. Depending on who you spoke to, the AKP was poised to turn Turkey into either Sweden or Iran; to finally realize Ataturk’s vision of making the country modern and Western or permanently destroy it.Today, a decade and a half later, the future of Turkish democracy certainly looks grim. With President Recep Tayyip Erdogan now leading a heavy-handed campaign to further...

Secretary of State John Kerry said this morning that the Obama administration is "open" to considering the extradition of a Poconos scholar accused by the Turkish regime of being behind Friday's coup attempt.Kerry said on NBC's Meet the Press that the U.S. has asked President Recep Tayyip Erdogan not to become more authoritarian in response to the coup.Hurriyet Daily News reported that Erdogan has detained some 6,000 soldiers, judges and prosecutors in less than 48 hours. They're being charged with “membership of an armed terrorist organization” and “attempting to overthrow the government of the Turkish Republic using force and violence...

Antony Blinken represents neither the beginning nor the end of the info ops run to convince voters the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation. Revisiting the contemporaneous coverage of the laptop story in light of last week’s revelations about Blinken reveals the scandal extends far beyond the Biden campaign and involves government agents. Last week, news broke that a former top CIA official, Michael Morell, testified as part of a House Judiciary Committee investigation that Blinken, now-secretary of state and then-Biden campaign senior adviser, had contacted Morell to discuss the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story. Blinken and Morell...

The trial in Sweden of Hamid Noury, an agent of the Iranian regime, ended on May 5th. The prosecutor told the court that there was plenty of evidence to show that Hamid Noury committed the crimes he had been charged with and she asked for him to be sentenced to life imprisonment. The verdict is expected later. The court case in Stockholm has been a direct embarrassment to Iran’s executioner president, Ebrahim Raisi, dubbed ‘The Butcher of Tehran’ for his hands-on role in the killing of thousands of political prisoners, including teenagers and even pregnant women, during a notorious massacre...

For the second time in less than a month, senior Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard officers have been killed in a suspected Israeli airstrike in Damascus, Syria. Iran's unofficial Mehr news agency said, "The Revolutionary Guards' Syria intel chief, his deputy, and two other Guards members were martyred in the attack on Syria by Israel." Updated reports say that five IRGC officers, plus some of their Syrian counterparts, were killed in the attack. The icons are already circulating. The intelligence chief, Sadegh Omidzadeh, was a close associate of Brigadier General Sayyed Reza Mousavi, the IRGC commander in Syria, who, along with...

Last week, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) apprehended a would-be "transgender" shooter who wanted to mass murder "transphobes." However, the FBI didn't swiftly nab the gunman until discovering months later that the "indigenous" suspect, a self-described "Nazi dominatrix," was posting racist, antisemitic content on social media vilifying blacks, Jews, and immigrants. The few media outlets that did cover the arrest also opted to focus on the Nazi flag-waving suspect's white nationalist ideology and downplay his "trans"-fueled bloodlust. Both The Oregonian and CourtWatch referred to the "transgender" as an "Oregon woman." Elizabeth Ballesteros West, formerly Francisco Frank Paramo, of Cottage...

Newly emerged video footage shows the spine-tingling moment Utah authorities rescued two little girls who were stuffed inside blue water barrels at the site of a bizarre doomsday cult led by their pedophile dads. Police found the confused girls, just 7 and 4, in December 2017 as they shivered inside 50-gallon barrels on sparse property used by the Knights of the Crystal Blade, bodycam footage obtained by the Explore With Us YouTube channel shows. There was also a loaded gun on the ground next to the pair, photos from the scene in Lund show. “I don’t have pants on!” one...

Rumors are swirling that the recent firings of top Italian spies were related to Obama and a plot to set up candidate and President Trump in a Hillary email scandal. Earlier this month Italian Prime Minister Conte asked for the resignations of four top intelligence officials after his call with President Donald Trump. And now another Internet Sleuth has uncovered some shocking news related to the recent removal of these top Italian intelligence ministers from their positions as top spies in the government. The story begins in January 2017 when Computer World wrote about alleged crimes committed by Italian Giulio...

On Wednesday, Judge Loretta Preska confirmed the release of the initial names from Jeffrey Epstein’s extensive client list, comprising over 150 individuals. Concurrently, a collection of previously sealed documents was made public. Following the release, the Court Listener website experienced a crash due to the overwhelming public interest. ** The Gateway Pundit posted the collection of files released by the New York judge here. However, The Gateway Pundit managed to secure a backup of this crucial information. Three individuals, known in the court documents as Doe 105, Doe 107, and Doe 110, have made appeals. Documents related to Does 105,...

A judge unsealed identities of anonymous "John Does" in Ghislaine Maxwell litigation. Several names were of Jeffrey Epstein victims, not powerful associates. One, a subject of "intense media coverage," was allowed to remain anonymous and pursue an appeal. A judge agreed to make public the names of several "John Does" who tried to keep their identities secret in the long-running litigation between Jeffrey Epstein's associate Ghislaine Maxwell and Virginia Giuffre, an Epstein victim. One of them, however — identified as "John Doe 183" in court filings — will remain anonymous despite being the subject of "intense media coverage" and was...

Billionaire LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman put $100,000 into an experiment that adopted Russia-inspired political disinformation tactics on Facebook during last year's special Senate race in Alabama, The New York Times reports. Hoffman did not immediately comment on the report. One of his partners told the Times that Hoffman does not “micromanage” the political projects he funds, and may not have been aware of the project’s tactics. During the 2017 special Senate race in Alabama, the project’s organizers created a fake Facebook page designed to attract conservative Republican voters. Once they had built an audience, the page criticized Republican candidate Roy...

a prominent FBI official, Charles McGonigal, was sentenced to a prison stint. He was convicted of conspiracy and bribery involving a Russian oligarch who is known for being an extremely close associate of Vladamir Putin. While this is being widely reported on today there is a very notable omission seen from the various major news outlets covering this sentencing. To set the stage correctly we need to flash back briefly over what we have been told over the past seven or so years. With the rise of Donald Trump in Republican circles, one of the earliest complaints leveled against him...

A few people have started looking at the connections behind Mark Zaid, the attorney for CIA “whistleblower” Eric Ciaramella. What is starting to emerge is evidence of what CTH outlined yesterday; the current impeachment process is part of a coup continuum, and everything around the whistleblower is part of a long-ago planned and pre-constructed operation. Two strong examples are very poignant: Mark S. Zaid @MarkSZaidEsq "It's very scary. We will get rid of him, and this country is strong enough to survive even him and his supporters. We have to" 9:45 PM · Jul 1, 2017 AND Mark S. Zaid...

President Joe Biden has “legalized corruption” by placing more than 15 former WestExec members in key places within his administration, the Intercept revealed Wednesday. “It’s a remarkable march through the revolving door” for the more than 15 former WestExec members to be selected for such powerful positions, “especially for a firm that only launched in 2017” according to the report. “WestExec’s consultants are so connected and pedigreed that they often hold down multiple jobs, appointments, and titles,” the Intercept wrote. *** The notable individuals who previously worked at WestExec are as follows: Jen Psaki, White House press secretary Tony Blinken,...

In 2018 — nearly two years before the start of the global coronavirus pandemic — U.S. officials in China sent warnings to Washington expressing safety concerns over a Wuhan facility's research into coronaviruses in horseshoe bats, adding weight to the theory that the novel virus originated in a lab and not at a Wuhan wet market. The news broke in a report Wednesday by Josh Rogin of the Washington Post, who said that he obtained access to the first of two diplomatic cables sent from State Department officials who had visited the Wuhan Institute of Virology in January and March...

I’ve seen a lot of this material before but never in such detail and concentration. This lengthy article walks though the behind the scenes machinations which led to the creation and publication of a scientific paper designed to dismiss the lab leak theory. That paper was then cited by Dr. Fauci and others as proof that COVID-19 had a natural origin (but Fauci didn’t reveal he had helped organize the effort to write the paper). What we’ve known for some time is that the academics who were recruited for this task had significant doubts about it. Again, you’ve probably seen...

Pelosi, Schiff, and Biden have politicized a career intelligence community position by demanding the removal of a national security professional.Hours after President Joe Biden delivered his inaugural address promising to bring unity and healing to the country, his administration began a politically charged attack on a highly respected, newly appointed career intelligence official over fears he would be insufficiently loyal to Democratic partisans. The attempted purge has thus far followed the playbook publicly laid out by top Democrats and their left-wing media enablers. In a stunning violation of precedent, Biden’s National Security Agency (NSA) placed General Counsel Michael J. Ellis...

A whistleblower has come forward with an explosive new trove of documents, rivaling or exceeding the Twitter Files and Facebook Files in scale and importance. They describe the activities of an “anti-disinformation” group called the Cyber Threat Intelligence League, or CTIL, that officially began as the volunteer project of data scientists and defense and intelligence veterans but whose tactics over time appear to have been absorbed into multiple official projects, including those of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The CTI League documents offer the missing link answers to key questions not addressed in the Twitter Files and Facebook Files....

It was a sinister attack that erupted after a simple road rage row. An innocent victim who was caught up in the crossfire; left with his hand severed by an axe amid the horror. The violence exploded on the Newbold Estate in Rochdale in 2017, where organised crime gang 'Adam' had a firm hold - wreaking havoc on the streets and instilling fear in the many innocent civilians living there. The victim, 18-year-old tree surgeon Cameron Brooksbank, was among his other colleagues who were set upon by the mob and attacked as he tried to diffuse the escalating volatility. The...

Consensus at meeting: Remove Stephen Foster statue Among the more two dozen people who spoke Wednesday evening before the city’s Art Commission Wednesday, most wanted the Stephen Foster statue along the Oakland stretch of Forbes Avenue to be taken down or moved somewhere less visible. But few speakers were as hostile as Billy Hileman. “You should melt the metal part down and recoup a little bit of [money],” said the educator and veteran activist during the hour-long hearing. “And then maybe make gravel out of the pedestal.” That drew laughter from a crowd of more than 60, but Mr. Hileman...