Free Republic

An unprecedented rise in food and energy costs compounded by the climate crisis is resulting in a perfect storm for civil unrest in more than 100 countries, according to newly released analysis. Popular anger at cost-of-living crises has seen the Sri Lankan government toppled, protests in Argentina and rising discontent in Europe. The report, produced by risk analysis firm Verisk Maplecroft, warns that political turmoil in the next 12 months is set to increase, with over 80 percent of countries experiencing inflation above six percent and the prospect of repressive measures being used to quell dissent likely. Countries in the...

Monday’s vote came a year to the day after the president sacked the government and suspended parliament in a dramatic blow to the only democracy to have emerged from the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings. For some Tunisians, his moves sparked fears of a return to autocracy, but they were welcomed by others, fed up with high inflation and unemployment, political corruption and a system they felt had brought few improvements. His opponents say the moves aimed to install an autocracy more than a decade after the fall of dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, but his supporters say they were...

Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi called for allowing Christians and Jews to perform pilgrimage to Mecca, Islam's holiest place. Speaking following prayers with the presidents of Mali, Sierra Leone, Niger, Mauritania and Senegal on the occasion of the Prophet Mohammed's birthday in Timbuktu, Mali, late on Monday, Qadhafi said "Mecca should be a meeting point to all people except heretics and impure". He said that Christians and Jews are not heretics or impure and "believe in God" and should be allowed to go to pilgrimage in Mecca. Qadhafi challenged Muslim religious leaders to allow US President George W. Bush to enter...

Libyan leader says Eid al-Adha holiday opportunity to bring three main monotheistic religions closer together Roee Nahmias Published: 12.31.06, 15:13 Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi called to “allow Jews and Christians to visit Mecca and circle the Kaaba (cubical building surrounded by the Sacred Mosque).” These days Muslims all around the world are marking Eid al-Adha, the most important Islamic holiday. Some three million people have made the pilgrimage to Mecca. Gaddafi believes the holiday offers a great opportunity to bring the three main monotheistic religions closer together. “Everyone has the right to stand atop Mount Arafat and circle the Kaaba,”...

Since the outbreak of the Hezbollah-Israeli conflict, Pat Buchanan and other paleoconservatives have made themselves true exponents of populism: the Jew-baiting, conspiracy-driven demagoguery of 1890s agrarians. In two columns, posted at WorldNetDaily this week, Buchanan accused President Bush of being a puppet of nefarious Jewish warmongers. Outlets of the Hate America Right – especially Paul Craig Roberts and LewRockwell.com – have joined him, and then some. Nothing sets Buchanan’s imagination racing like a Bush-backed Israeli war. On Tuesday, Pat asked, “Who is whispering in his ear?” His answer: bloodthirsty Hebrews. That Tel Aviv is maneuvering us to fight its wars...

A female political pundit has been heavily criticised for suggesting Lara Logan should have seen her sex attack coming - and for calling the Egyptians who were protesting for democracy 'animals'. Debbie Schlussel posted a picture of Miss Logan on her blog, under the headline: 'Islam Fan Lara Logan Gets a Taste of Islam', before adding 'How fitting that Lara Logan was “liberated” by Muslims in Liberation Square while she was gushing over the other part of the “liberation".' It comes as an American academic, Nir Rosen, yesterday resigned from his post at New York University after calling Miss Logan...

More Print The White House yesterday demanded the Egyptian government round up and bring to justice the thugs who brutalized CBS foreign correspondent Lara Logan in Cairo's main square. "We believe that those responsible for these acts need to be held accountable," White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said of the prolonged beating and sexual assault on Logan by members of a 200-strong mob. And a State Department spokeswoman said the United States expects an "investigation and accountability for anyone involved in violence during the demonstrations." "We've raised it publicly and privately," spokeswoman Leslie Phillips said. The call for justice...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A White House official says President Barack Obama has spoken with CBS reporter Lara Logan in the wake of the network's announcement that she was brutally attacked in Egypt. The official, who declined to give details on Wednesday's call, spoke on condition of anonymity to disclose the private conversation.

America, in these halcyon days of Old Joe Biden’s foundering regime, is in free fall, and the whole world knows it. As PJM’s inimitable Stephen Green put it recently, “The alleged American president’s response to the Ukraine War has been so detrimental to America’s own interests that everyone sees him as weak. Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that two of the Middle East’s richest petrostates wouldn’t even take Biden’s call,” that is, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The reasons for the unprecedented snub are clear: the Saudis and the UAE know that Biden is not a...

With commodity costs hitting daily record highs, and food prices far surpassing levels seen in the historic 2011 as a result of the collapse of Russian and Ukrainian food exports…… and Russia’s upcoming fertilizer trade ban… … an ever louder question on the lips of geopolitical strategists is when, not if, global protests over food will re-emerge and begin toppling unstable – or perhaps stable – governments across the world in a rerun of the Arab Spring revolutions of 2011 when widespread public outrage started as a result of surging food prices.Iraqis demonstrate to denounce rising prices of basic food...

The Jewish state’s dream of warm peace with its Arab neighbors has eluded it for more than 72 years. In September 2020, President Donald Trump helped engineer the Abraham Accords between Israel, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates. The very treaty signing on the White House lawn projected human warmth, and signaled a warm peace. Subsequently, Sudan and Morocco joined the normalization of relations with Israel. It is true that peace, as opposed to war, came much earlier than September 2020. Israel signed a peace treaty with Egypt in 1979 and with Jordan in 1994. These peace treaties, however,...

Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir, the world’s only sitting leader wanted on genocide charges, is expected to win a landslide victory in elections this week, extending a 25-year reign in which the country has endured multiple insurgencies and the secession of the oil-rich south. Despite Sudan’s seemingly perpetual unrest, al-Bashir survived the 2011 Arab Spring. His ruling party dominates the parliament and local councils, and the massive security apparatus has left the once-vibrant opposition a husk of its former self. Al-Bashir has ruled the country since taking power in a 1989 coup, but billboards across Khartoum showing him in traditional robes...

Yamina leader Naftali Bennett agreed to forming a coalition government with Yesh Atid head Yair Lapid, N12 reported. The two sides agreed that Bennett will serve first as prime minister until September 2023, when Lapid will take over until November 2025, according to N12. The swearing-in ceremony is expected to take place in 10 days, following an announcement of the new government either on Saturday night or Sunday.

Congress notified that CIA inspector general has received allegations from fund-raiser Imaad Zuberi, including targeting of U.S. lawmakers and misuse of news organization for spy operation. Imaad Zuberi, a major Democratic fundraiser facing 12 years in prison, has filed an extraordinary complaint with the CIA's chief watchdog alleging he witnessed "flagrant problems, abuses, violations of law" while working as an asset for U.S. intelligence, according to documents and interviews. Zuberi, of Los Angeles, recently hired the CIA's retired acting general counsel Robert J. Eatinger Jr. to review his case and help to appeal his conviction on a plea deal with...

An Egyptian court sentenced Mahmoud Ezzat, the former acting leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, to life in prison on Thursday, months after he was detained in a Cairo apartment. Security forces arrested Ezzat last August in a raid in Cairo's Fifth Settlement district, the latest blow to a movement that has been the target of a crackdown since it was forced from power in 2013. Ezzat was sentenced on charges of inciting violence and supplying firearms during clashes outside the Brotherhood's headquarters between its supporters and opponents in 2013, a judicial source said. Other senior Brotherhood members have been sentenced...

In a televised statement, a spokesman for the rebel group, Brig. Gen. Yahya Sarea, said ballistic missiles and drones hit the oil giant’s facilities in Ras Tanura, a major port on Saudi Arabia’s Persian Gulf coast and one of its largest refineries, and military positions in nearby Dammam. Saudi state media later confirmed the Ras Tanura attack, quoting an unnamed Energy Ministry official saying that one petroleum tank farm was attacked Sunday morning. The official said shrapnel from a ballistic missile fell near Aramco’s residential area in Dhahran, which hosts thousands of employees and their families, but there were no...

President Joe Biden on Thursday ended US support for Saudi Arabia's devastating war in Yemen and dramatically increased the welcome to refugees, ushering in a major reset in American foreign policy. In his first major speech on foreign affairs as president, Biden also froze former president Donald Trump's plans to redeploy troops from Germany and vowed a tough approach against what he described as a rising authoritarian threat from China and Russia.

President Joe Biden's administration is moving to revoke the designation of Yemen's Houthis as a terrorist group, citing the need to mitigate one of the world's worst humanitarian disasters.President Donald Trump's administration had branded the Iranian-backed Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization, a move that limited the provision of aid to the beleaguered Yemeni people, who have suffered under a yearslong civil war and famine.A senior State Department official confirmed the move Friday after members of Congress were notified of the administration’s plans. The official, who wasn't authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, said the removal...

President Biden announced Thursday that the U.S. will no longer support offensive military operations led by Saudi Arabia in Yemen, reversing a policy started by the Obama administration and continued by the Trump administration... The administration also named a veteran diplomat, Tim Lenderking, as special envoy for Yemen to pursue a diplomatic solution to the war... What began as an internal power struggle quickly became a proxy war between Iran and Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which are battling for regional dominance.

The Protests were Organized for one Specific Purpose – Dead Cops In December 2012, a respected Egyptian news magazine named six Obama administration officials who were in fact agents of the international terrorist organization, the Muslim Brotherhood. They claimed that these individuals had helped change the White House “from a position hostile to Islamic groups and organizations in the world to the largest and most important supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood.” One of these alleged agents was Imam Mohamed Magid, a Koranic scholar from Sudan. In the Obama administration, Magid was appointed to the Department of Homeland Security’s Countering Violence...