Free Republic

  Question: How can a candidate for president raise US$23-million in three months--only slightly less than John McCain and Rudy Giuliani combined--and still register barely above zero in polls of members of his own party? That is the sad story of Mitt Romney, the movie-star handsome former governor of Massachusetts. Romney registers a dismal fourth in Republican opinion polls. Yesterday's LAT/Bloomberg poll put him at 8% approval among Republicans. A year ago, Romney looked like an emerging Republic star. He had rescued Massachusetts from a large budget deficit without raising taxes. And he had engineered a state-wide health insurance...

FRANCE was helping prop up a psychotic dictator with its trenchant opposition to an American-led war on Iraq, government backbencher Cameron Thompson said tonight. France, along with Russia, Germany and China, helped sink a new resolution in the United Nations Security Council which would have paved the way for a UN-backed war in Iraq. Instead, France was pushing for UN arms inspectors to be given more time to scour Iraq for weapons of mass destruction. French President Jacques Chirac today condemned plans by the US, Britain and Australia to launch a unilateral strike to disarm Iraq, warning the decision ran...

Hamas chief Khaled Mashaal said Wednesday that a truce with Israel is finished and his group's militants can resume fighting following an Israeli tank attack that killed 18 Palestinians... "The truce (with Israel) ended at the end of 2005," Mashaal said. "The armed struggle is free to resume, and the resistance is dictated by local circumstances." The truce formally ended last year but had remained in effect.

BRUSSELS - A recent documentary "Questions à la Une" acts as whistleblower against the progression of the Belgian extreme right. French-speaking Belgian TV and radio organisation RTBF recently broadcast a worrisome documentary on the growing popularity of the extreme-right party, the Vlaams Belang, in the Flemish part of the country. A popularity, according to La Libre Belgique, that may bring the Vlaams Belang to victory and which is grossly underestimated in French-speaking Belgium. Christophe Deborsu's documentary is well structured. The investigation starts with an anecdote surrounding a street name and ends with the Vlaams Belang's highly effective campaign strategy. The...

PARIS - Al-Qaida has for the first time announced a union with an Algerian insurgent group that has designated France as an enemy, saying they will act together against French and American interests.

Nicolas Sarkozy is campaigning hard to be the next president of France on the jogging trails of Central Park and in the corridors of the White House. On a four-day trip to the United States, the 51-year-old minister of the interior, France’s leading presidential hopeful on the right, pinned the Legion of Honor on the police commissioner of New York, honored firefighters in Midtown Manhattan for their losses on 9/11 and signed hundreds of copies of his new best-selling book on France’s future. He told Jewish leaders of his love of Israel, American business leaders of his love of free...

President Chirac was accused yesterday of manoeuvring his former legal adviser into a key judicial post to avoid being tried on corruption charges after leaving office and losing immunity from prosecution... Chirac's critics believe that M Le Mesle, 55, will do everything in his power to block action, given his close relations with the head of state... With only the slenderest hope of re-election next year, M Chirac faces prosecution in connection with a series of scandals dating from his time as the Mayor of Paris between 1977 and 1995. Three have resulted in court cases. In 2004 Alain Juppé,...

During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union embarked on the most massive military buildups in history. Part of President Reagan's strategy for winning was to entice the Soviets into a competition it could never even hope to win. A communist economy by its very nature is ill-equipped to compete with a free-market, capitalist system whether it's foreign trade or weapons technology. And so, slowly the Soviet economy became a basket case due to the communists desire to exceed America in an enormously expensive arms race. After the Cold War, with the Soviet threat gone and with...

As the deadline set by the UN approaches, the US is pushing for swift sanctions against Iran for its lack of compliance with the international committee's demand to stop its nuclear enrichment program, American officials said Monday. Iran is expected to provide its response to the European incentive package on Tuesday, but the US is looking ahead to the UN deadline set August 31. Sources in Washington speculated that the Iranian response to the incentive package would not be conclusive, yet would include no sign of willingness to stop the uranium enrichment process. US President George W. Bush said Monday...

The Kremlin warned Monday of possible retaliation against the United States for sanctions imposed on two major companies in the Russian defense industry. "We cannot rule out certain negative consequences for bilateral relations" between Russia and the United States, presidential administration spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday. "This was an unfriendly act toward Russia, and it was not done in a spirit of cooperation." Rosoboronexport chief Sergei Chemezov suggested Monday that a proposed deal for U.S. companies to deliver up to $1 billion in Russian military hardware to Afghanistan and Iraq could be jeopardized by the sanctions, Interfax reported. Meanwhile in...

Russia could also refuse to take part in joint military exercises with the United States and use the sanctions as an excuse to increase exports of military hardware to regimes hostile to the United States, said Leonid Ivashov, vice president of the Academy on Geopolitical Affairs and former head of the Defense Ministry's main directorate for military cooperation. "We can use these sanctions to expand our presence in the arms market by exploiting anti-American feeling in many countries around the world," Ivashov told Interfax on Monda

The French foreign minister, whose government is positioning itself to play a leading part in Mideast peace efforts, has described Iran as a respected country that plays a stabilizing role in the region. Philippe Douste-Blazy told a news conference in Beirut Monday that Iran was "a great country, a great people and a great civilization which is respected and which plays a stabilizing role in the region." Hours later, the Frenchmen met with his Iranian counterpart, Manouchehr Mottaki, at the Iranian Embassy. Tehran's mission in the Lebanese capital has been a key channel for Iran's support for Hizballah, and last...

Top News Story Bad news for US on Iran at the G8 Summit. Amir Taheri, Arab News explains why the US is unlikely to getting help on Iran at next month's G8 Summit in Russia.   Khomeini's Grandson requests US military action in Iran. The Telegraph reported that the grandson of Ayatollah Khomeini, the inspiration of Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution, has broken a three-year silence to back the United States military to overthrow the country's clerical regime.   Iran prepares to respond to thePerm-5 proposal. The Washington Post reported that Iran's foreign minister said the government likely would suggest...

Top News Story Ahmadinejad again calls for an independent investigation of the Holocaust. Yahoo News reported that Iran's president said that the six-nation incentive package aimed at getting his country to halt uranium enrichment was a "step forward" but also repeated assertions that the Nazi Holocaust was unproven, saying it should be independently investigated.Khaleej Times Online reported British Prime Minister Tony Blair sees no need for an inquiry into the Holocaust.   US and Russia expect an answer from Iran on the Perm-5 proposal. Yahoo News reported that while US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Iran had made...

Top News Story US Senate votes down Iran Freedom and Support Act and passes weaker version. DoctorZin reported that the Iran Freedom Support Act was to be voted on in the Senate Thursday.Eli Lake, The NY Sun reported that faced with legislation that would force America to take a harder line on Iran, Secretary of State Rice worked closely yesterday with a key Senate Democrat to kill the Iran Freedom and Support Act.   Iran threatens to develop a "nuclear defense." The Jerusalem Post reported that Iran's defense minister vowed his country would "use nuclear defense as a potential"...

Top News Story Shiite Iraq's attacked Iranian Consulate in Basra. Yahoo News reported that about 500 followers of a Shiite cleric attacked the Iranian consulate in the southern Iraqi city of Basra on Wednesday, throwing stones and setting fire to a building in the diplomatic complex. Photos.   Iran no longer wants talks on Iraq with US. IranMania reported that Iran is no longer interested in direct talks with the United States over the situation in Iraq.   Iran claims no deadline was given to reply to the Perm-5. IranMania reported that Iran insisted it has not been given...

Top News Story Secret nuclear enrichment plants exposed. Kenneth R. Timmerman, News Max reported that new evidence is emerging that Iran has built a secret plant, located some 20 kilometers to the northeast of Tehran near the Lashgarak dam, which houses a clandestine centrifuge uranium enrichment plant, where Iran is making nuclear weapons material.   What are Russia and China up to? Yahoo News reported that China and Russia have again refused to join with other big powers in threatening sanctions over Iran's nuclear program.The Financial Times reported that a central Asian summit of the Shanghai Co-operation Organization which...

Top News Story A roundup of reports on the women’s demonstration in Tehran today. Photos. Iran Press News provided a detailed report on the Islamic Regime's attack and assault attendants of the peaceful Women's March. Among those present at the march were academics, well-known human and women's rights activists, student leaders, and members of the greater Tehran bus drivers union. Photos.Radio Free Europe reported on the Women’s March and eyewitnesses claimed there were maybe as many security forces as protesters.SMCCDI reported that Islamist female agents named by most Iranians as "Black Crows" (due to their black veils), used of...

Top News Story RFE Iran's top nuclear negotiator has urged Muslim countries to "choose the path" of nuclear development. Ali Larijani was speaking to reporters after arriving in Egypt for talks to discuss the controversy over Iran's nuclear program. In Tehran, Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki said Iran will make its own offer in response to a Western incentives package aimed at persuading Tehran to suspend uranium enrichment. Mottaki added that Tehran's offer could be a variation of the proposal made by Europe, the United States, China, and Russia, or an entirely new package. Western powers have given Iran several...

Top News Story Major demonstrations on Iran expected in the next few days. Protests expected Sunday in Germany against Ahmadinejad during World Cup Games. The Observer reported that Iran's Football team will be met with a series of protests across Germany during their World Cup campaign as anger mounts against the country's viciously anti-Semitic President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.Spiegel Online reported that in Bavaria, where Iran is set to play its first match in Nuremberg on Sunday, the state's interior minister has expressed concerns that Iranian intelligence agents may seek to stage what he described as a "provocative action" aimed at...