Free Republic

Democratic presidential contender claims Islam is peaceful despite recent honor killingsHOUSTON (ChurchMilitant.com) - Bernie Sanders is praising Islam while blaming President Trump for stirring up "hate." The socialist, Democratic presidential candidate, along with pro-LGBT, pro-abortion, self-styled Catholic Julian Castro, made stops in Houston, Texas, on Aug. 31 to gain support from a Muslim community with links to terrorism. The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), an organization founded by members of the Muslim Brotherhood and links to Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas, held its 56th convention and featured the two contenders for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. Sanders received applause from...

Iran is using advanced centrifuges banned under the 2015 nuclear deal to enrich uranium faster and well past limits set in the deal. Behrouz Kamalvandi, spokesman for Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, unveiled the Islamic country’s newest capabilities in a press conference on Saturday, according to the Associated Press. Kamalvandi addressed reporters while standing in front of 20 IR-6 centrifuges and 20 IR-4 centrifuges. "Under current circumstances, the Islamic Republic of Iran is capable of increasing its enriched uranium stockpile as well as its enrichment levels and that is not just limited to 20%," Kamalvandi said. "We are capable inside the...

Moscow, August 20, Interfax - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has asked Russia to help train Russian language teachers for Syria, according to the State Duma's liaison with the Syrian parliament Dmitry Sablin. "Al-Assad said at a meeting on Tuesday that broader studies of the Russian language in Syria will accomplish an important task of diverting Syrians from Western culture," Sablin told the press over the phone on Tuesday after he met with the Syrian chief of state. "In the words of al-Assad, the problem of Arab countries is that half of them are influenced by extremist ideas, and the other...

Yemeni separatists have taken control of the strategic city of Aden after days of fighting with forces backing the internationally recognized government. A spokesperson for the Southern Transitional Council (STC) told CNN the group took over the city including its presidential palace, port and airport. Aden has been the seat of the Saudi-backed government since Houthi fighters took over Sanaa in 2014. "We are not inside the presidential compound, which is on an island, but we have secured its entrances and exits," Nizar Haytham, the STC spokesperson, told CNN. CNN wasn't able to verify the claims. However, the interior minister...

Iran’s focus on building a powerful ballistic missile arsenal, which the Americans, Saudis and Israelis, among others, see as a major threat, has its origins in the 1980-88 war with Iraq in which major cities were subjected to merciless missile and air strikes in which thousands of civilians were killed or wounded. The so-called War of the Cities involved five periods of systematic and intense bombardments with missiles, aircraft and even long-range artillery from February 1984, when Saddam Hussein ordered indiscriminate attacks on 11 Iranian cities, through February 1987. The objective was to inflict large civilian casualties to demoralise the...

Five years on, Mikael Skillt still doesn't know exactly what made him leave his construction job and his girlfriend to fight in the war in Ukraine. “I’ve done tons of soul-searching, and the more I think about it, the less I know why I came,” the 43-year-old told VICE News. But an undeniable part of the draw was that Ukrainian ultranationalists, many with barely disguised neo-Nazi or white supremacist views, had been a driving force in the revolution. Skillt, at the time a notorious Swedish neo-Nazi with a 20-year history in the extreme-right scene, felt compelled to join their fight....

Israeli warplanes bombed Iranian-linked targets in Iraq and Syria in July, the Arabic-language Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper reported Tuesday, quoting Western diplomatic sources. The sources told the London-based newspaper that on July 19, Israel carried out an attack on the base of an Iran-linked paramilitary group in the northern Salahuddin province of Iraq. Reports initially said that the attack was carried out by a drone and and led to the deaths of an unconfirmed number of Iranian Revolutionary Guard fighters. According to the Saudi news channel Al-Arabiya, the base housed Iranian-made ballistic missiles hidden in food refrigeration trucks. Israeli officials, including...

Once again proving what a joke the United Nations is, the organization’s Economic and Social Council voted this week to condemn Israel as the only country in the world that violates women’s rights. Even more laughable is that among the 54 nations that sit on the council are Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Iran, China, and Pakistan.The United States and Canada voted against the resolution, “Economic and social repercussions of the Israeli occupation on the living conditions of the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and the Arab population in the occupied Syrian Golan," while nine countries abstained:...

By: Hassan.Mahmoudi Forty years have passed since the overthrow of the Shah of Iran and the Ayatollahs grasping power in 1979. Since then, hundreds of policymakers, scholars, and practitioners have attempted to challenge the Ayatollahs in very different ways. US President Obama throughout his 8-year term in office advocated continuing an already discredited appeasement policy towards the Iranian regime, in 2015, together with the EU, signing the JCPOA, ‘nuclear deal’ with Iran and releasing billions of dollars in sanctions relief, paving the way for the regime to become much more aggressive with malign activities and interventions throughout the region, and,...

Iran is slowly taking off its gloves and has dropped its mask in the widening confrontation with Western countries and Israel. After the United Kingdom (UK) seized an Iranian tanker with oil bound for Syria on July 4, the Iranians embarked on a piracy campaign against British and other vessels in the Persian Gulf. The tanker, Grace 1, was carrying 2.1 million barrels of oil when it was detained by British Marines and will stay in Gibraltar for another month, a court in the British colony decided last Friday. Iran called the British action an “act of piracy” and again...

July 12, 2019 Clip No. 7351 Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah: We Have Enough Missiles to Send Israel Back to the Stone Age; Iran Would Be the First to Attack Israel If War Breaks Out Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah said in a July 12, 2019 interview on Al-Manar TV (Lebanon) that Hizbullah can target and strike any part of Israel, including Eilat, and that all of northern Israel is within range of Hizbullah's weapons. Pointing at a map of Israel, he turned his attention to Israel's coast, where he said most of Israel's population lives. He said Hizbullah can strike all...

A defiant Turkey said it was considering “alternatives” to US fighter jets, including Russian models or making its own, a day after Washington suspended it from a programme to build and deploy advanced warplanes. The US punished Turkey for its purchase of a Russian air defence system by pushing it out of a long-term programme to upgrade Nato forces with F-35 advanced fighter jets. The Kremlin quickly attempted to exploit the disagreement, which has already drawn Ankara closer to Moscow, offering to sell Turkey Russian fighter planes. Ismail Demir, head of Turkey’s defence industries, responded that “all kinds of options...

A company expects to make available soon in the United States a tracked wildland fire suppression vehicle featuring a turbine aided nozzle/mist blower and a 1,300-gallon water tank that can be refilled by helicopter. “The first demonstrator chassis is ready in Reno, Nevada at Powerbully now and waiting for the turbine to be shipped from Italy by air freight,” Nicholas Davis, CEO of Arcus Fire said. “It will be doing a week-long demo program at Reno during late October. The second demonstrator is also ready for the turbine in Montreal at Prinoth. It will have an HKD Blue turbine on...

As these lines are written, Jordanian rebels are marching towards the king's palace in downtown Amman. These protests have been regular since February and aren't major...yet. Nonetheless, the protesters, and the public in general, are unprecedently angry with the king. Calling him by name, they chant obscenities against him and his family, not to mention scream the word "Irhal," which means "step down" in Arabic. Meanwhile, the country has been engulfed in unrest and violence. Jordanian are hungry and angry, and the king is out of touch. The status quo was described best by a former senior Jordanian diplomat and...

WASHINGTON (AP) — With Iranian military threats in mind, the United States is sending American forces, including fighter aircraft, air defense missiles and likely more than 500 troops, to a Saudi air base that became a hub of American air power in the Middle East in the 1990s but was abandoned by Washington after it toppled Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein in 2003. The Saudi Foreign Ministry announced the basing agreement Friday without mentioning details.

U.S. President Donald J. Trump backed the United Kingdom after Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps seized a British-flagged tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, saying the Islamic Republic is in “big trouble”. “Iran is showing their true colours,” President Trump told reporters outside the White House, adding: “Iran is in big trouble.”The President’s relationship with British government ministers and prominent opposition politicians, such as hard-left Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and London mayor Sadiq Khan, has often been strained, as they have rushed to commentate negatively on his administration in hopes of winning the approval of left-liberal activists and media commentators.Nevertheless, the American leader’s attitude to his...

USS Boxer Downs Iranian Drone in ‘Defensive Action’ By: Sam LaGrone July 18, 2019 4:00 PM • Updated: July 19, 2019 6:29 AM This post has been updated with additional details on the downing of the Iranian drone. Amphibious warship USS Boxer (LHD-4) took down an Iranian drone that U.S. officials say threatened the ship as it entered the Persian Gulf on Thursday. At about 10 a.m. local time, Boxer was transiting Strait of Hormuz when an Iranian fixed-wing drone approached the ship, a defense official told USNI News. “A fixed-wing unmanned aerial system (UAS) approached Boxer and closed within...

The U.S. military shot down an Iranian drone threatening U.S. ships in the Strait of Hormuz. The United States took action on Thursday amid escalating tensions with the Middle East country. President Trump announced the event at a press conference soon after it happened. Iran has not yet responded. "[The USS Boxer] took defensive action against an Iranian drone," Trump said. "It was threatening the ship and the ship's crew. The drone was immediately destroyed."

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday said that the bond that has been established between Israel and Arab countries over the Iranian nuclear issue is encouraging. In an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, Pompeo also noted that the US sanctions on Iran are working despite some having predicted they would not. Asked about the relationship that has been established between the US, Israel, the Jordanians, Egyptians, the Saudis, the Emirates, and others, the Secretary of State replied, “That’s something that’s really very – frankly, very encouraging. The framework that had set the Middle East for so many...

Great expectations characterised 1989...The Gorbachev era brought about a frenzy of change, and people witnessed incredible events on a weekly basis: they snatched up newspapers, hung on every word broadcast on TV, and with every passing day they felt more alive and free. By the mid-1990s, nostalgia for the Soviet period started to creep in. The greyness of the Brezhnev era, with its endless queues and empty shops, started to be recalled as a peaceful, prosperous time. And gradually something that had seemed impossible during perestroika, became real: Stalin’s shadow loomed large again. Vladimir Putin’s rise to power came accompanied...