Free Republic

"Treaties are like roses and young girls. They last while they last." So said President Charles De Gaulle, who in 1966 ordered NATO to vacate its Paris headquarters and get out of France. NATO this year celebrates a major birthday. The young girl of 1966 is no longer young. The alliance is 70 years old. And under this aging NATO today, the U.S. is committed to treat an attack on any one of 28 nations from Estonia to Montenegro to Romania to Albania as an attack on the United States. The time is ripe for a strategic review of these...

... The more lasting damage will derive from the shoddy, humiliating way Mr. Trump treated the secretary and his generals on such a core military issue as deployments in Syria. Jim Mattis is not some neoconservative bent on staying in Syria for years. He is less hawkish on Syria and Iran than national security adviser John Bolton or Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Yet in deciding to withdraw all U.S. troops from Syria, Mr. Trump acted on his own impulses with little more than cursory consultation with his military advisers. Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,...

Further evidence was revealed in Turkey earlier this month accentuating the long-held ambitions of the corrupt President Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan to steer the Muslim world, or Ummah as it is called in religious discourse, into sort of a caliph-like leadership position. Away from the spotlight, his close advisors convened a gathering in Istanbul of Islamists from various countries to cultivate and promote the idea of an Islamic union to be spearheaded by the Turkish president as early as 2023. Not surprisingly the Muslim BrotherhoodÂ’s international network has been tapped as the main conveyer for fulfilling the Turkish leaderÂ’s dreams of...

People die. Every day. It’s our lot. Some deaths attract more attention than others. Sometimes for good reasons. Sometimes for nefarious and dishonest ones. The largest metropolitan U.S. cities see deadly violence every weekend. And those run by the Democratic Party for the last several decades are especially prone to it. Recently, Baltimore witnessed seven murders in less than 24 hours. How much coverage does the Washington Post or CNN give those murders? In fact, New York City made headlines this week for having had the first homicide-free weekend in 25 years. This was news because it is so anomalous....

A song for Tommy Robinson about the tyrannical laws being enforced in the UK.

A Germany correspondent for Turkish pro-government newspaper Sabah has tweeted that the June election should represent the end of the Turkish republic and the beginning of a caliphate, left-nationalist OdaTV said . “95 years ago Atatürk got rid of both the Ottoman state and the caliphate with the words ‘Gentlemen, tomorrow we announce a republic’,” Martin Lejeune said on Twitter. “On June 24, the Kemalist republic will be gotten rid of, and with Allah’s blessing when the time comes the caliphate will again be born in Turkey. May Allah protect Muslims.”

It should be noted that the odious Wolfgang Schäuble, the finance minister in the current GroKo government, is a leader of the Christian Democrat Party, and thus an ostensible “conservative”. His attitude isn’t discernibly different from that of a Social Democrat, or a Green: “We invited the Muslims in. They’re here now. You must defer to them. There isn’t a damned thing you can do about it — get used to it.” As Fjordman said (and it can’t be repeated too often): “The European Union is the principal motor behind the Islamization of Europe. It is formally surrendering an entire...

Palestinians hang a burning puppet bearing the portrait of US President Donald Trump, during a mock trial for him and Vice President Mike Pence in the Aida refugee camp in the West Bank city of Bethlehem.

“I just found the book that strike fear in the heart of Donald Trump,” Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Min.), Deputy Chair of the Democratic National Committee, tweeted on Wednesday, and attached his selfie holding up a copy of “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook,” by Mark Bray. This is worrisome, especially should the anticipated Democratic “wave” materialize in November, 2018. Because, even as reflected through Bray’s book, Antifa in the US are self-appointed gangs on the hunt for their natural enemies—whomever they decide they are—and, like a gang, they have no problem using violence. A senior DNC official must not advocate these tactics....

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres is warning that Iran may be defying a U.N. call to halt ballistic missile development even as it complies with the nuclear treaty with six world powers. He says in a report to the Security Council that the United Nations is investigating Iran’s possible transfer of ballistic missiles to Houthi Shiite rebels in Yemen that may have been used in launches aimed at Saudi Arabia. He says several other launches have also been brought to his attention. …

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday called for calm and told Muslims protesting US President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem to act in a democratic and lawful fashion. However, Erdogan also called Israel an "occupying state that usurped Palestinians' lands since 1967 with no regard to law or morality," and claimed Jerusalem was ...

Turkey currently holds the chairmanship of the OIC. The recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital and the moving of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem -- expected to be announced by President Donald Trump later Wednesday -- would be a "grave mistake" against international agreements, Kalin warned. "Jerusalem is our honour, Jerusalem is our common cause, Jerusalem is our red line," he added, urging the Trump administration to "return from this grave mistake immediately". Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag said the expected US move risked igniting a "fire" in the Middle East and will prove a "great disaster"....

British police have been slammed for using public resources to produce a 12-minute video promoting Islam in the UK.“Muslims have a long, shared history with Britain. It stretches back over a thousand years,” claims Hafez Abdusammad Mulla of the Al-Imdaad Foundation at the opening of the “educational” film. Released by Lincolnshire Police on YouTube for Hate Crime Awareness Week, the video is ostensibly designed to fight “hate crime” and seeks to show Islam and Islamic culture in an attractive light.“Islam is all about virtues and values of charity, doing noble deeds, helping those less fortunate than you,” claims Mac Chishty, a police...

The former S leader Håkan Juholt is now making sharp criticism of the social development in Sweden, which he believes is heading for a dictatorship. He himself has moved to Iceland and does not intend to set foot in Sweden again for several years.

The Israeli government missed the point of Palestinian anger directed at metal detectors placed at entrances to the Temple Mount and, having misdiagnosed the situation, made a decision that failed to resolve the crisis and has only made it worse. At least, that’s what many of the Muslim protesters in the streets of Jerusalem’s Old City have been saying since the metal detectors were removed early Tuesday morning. Israel thought it was making a concession by removing the detectors, which were installed after three Arab Israelis carried out a shooting attack at the Temple Mount, killing two policemen with weapons...

[Editor’s Note: Below is Thomas Joscelyn’s testimony before the House Homeland Security Committee’s Task Force on Denying Terrorists Entry into the United States. The hearing is titled, “The Terrorist Diaspora: After the Fall of the Caliphate.” A version with footnotes will also be posted.] Chairman Gallagher, Ranking Member Watson Coleman, and other distinguished Committee Members, thank you for inviting me to testify today concerning foreign fighters and the threat some of them pose to the U.S. and Europe. The fall of Mosul and the likely fall of Raqqa won’t be the end of the Islamic State. The group has already...

The German government urged Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday to respect its request that he not address Turks living in Germany when he attends this week’s Hamburg summit of the world’s 20 largest economies.Ties between Berlin and Ankara have soured over the past year due to disagreements on a range of political and security issues, including Turkey’s jailing of a German-Turkish journalist and its refusal to let German lawmakers visit German troops at a Turkish air base.Erdogan was also infuriated by what he called “Nazi era tactics” when some local German authorities, citing security concerns, barred Turkish politicians...

A global intelligence and data firm, IHS Markit, said the Islamic State lost more than 60 percent of its territory and 80 percent of its revenue since the terrorist group declared its "caliphate" in Iraq and Syria back in 2014.

Court in Germany authorizes group of self-appointed Sharia police to continue enforcing Islamic law in city of Wuppertal. A court in Germany has authorized a group of self-appointed Sharia police to continue enforcing Islamic law in the city of Wuppertal. The law they were cleared of vioilating outlaws uniforms that are threatening, such as those of Hitler's brownshirts. The issue has been brewing ever since 2014, when German politicians reacted strongly to reports of young Salafists conducting nightly "Sharia police" patrols in the city, ordering people to stop various activities, according to the International Business Times. The men were photographed...

You’ve probably seen the video of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi announcing the creation of his caliphate in 2014. He made that announcement in an 850-year-old mosque known as the Grand al-Nuri Mosque in Mosul. Thursday, Iraqi troops recaptured the mosque, or what is left of it, and the Prime Minister declared the caliphate was over. From Reuters: “The return of al-Nuri Mosque and al-Hadba minaret to the fold of the nation marks the end of the Daesh state of falsehood,” Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said in a statement, referring to the hardline Sunni Mulsim group by an Arabic...