Free Republic

Iran is facing a total intelligence breakdown. With another explosion on Thursday night, reportedly at an Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps facility, the question is not only how anyone has pulled off up to seven attacks in around two weeks, but how has the Islamic Republic repeatedly failed to stop them. From 2010-2013, the regime succeeded in cracking a CIA cell and eliminated many CIA operatives. Even when the US and Israel, according to foreign reports, breached Iran's security for its nuclear program with the Stuxnet virus in 2009-2010, they had to use assets of Dutch intelligence. In general, Iranian...

Vatican silent as verdict triggers geopolitical tremorsISTANBUL (ChurchMilitant.com) - In a historic verdict, Turkey's top court has returned the world's greatest Byzantine basilica to its previous status as a mosque after it abolished President Atatürk's 1934 decision to turn Hagia Sophia into a museum. Turkey's highest administrative court, the Council of State, reached a unanimous verdict declaring that president Kemal Atatürk's cabinet had no right to turn Hagia Sophia into a museum as part of his secularist reforms and has rendered the decision unlawful. The court is expected to deliver its judgment Friday, but Turkish journalist Mehmet Ardıç, a close...

A wooden sculpture of first lady Melania Trump near her hometown in Slovenia was set on fire the night of July 4, according to the artist who commissioned the piece. Brad Downey, a Berlin-based American artist, told Reuters the wooden sculpture near Trump’s hometown of Sevnica was torched. “I want to know why they did it,” Downey told Reuters. He told the newswire the sculpture was removed as soon as police informed him on July 5 of the incident. Downey reportedly said he filed a police report and that he would like to interview the people behind the incident, if...

'No absolute religious freedom since Henry VIII' LONDON (ChurchMilitant.com) - Protestant England never enjoyed absolute religious freedom since Henry VIII broke with Rome, a top evangelical leader is conceding, as 25 Christian leaders — including a Catholic theologian — challenge the churches' lockdown as a breach of the Magna Carta. Church leaders who have launched a judicial review of the lockdown are contending that the state criminalized Sunday worship for the first time in centuries — despite the government allowing churches to reopen July 4 under strict guidelines. Churches should never have been shut in the first place and "this...

‘It is extremely concerning that there may now be some further delay in allowing the return to public worship,’ wrote Father Michael J. Kane, pastor of St. Augustine’s Catholic Church in Coatbridge. ‘It is deeply distressing that Catholics cannot receive the Sacraments.’COATBRIDGE, Scotland, July 7, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) ― A Catholic priest has published an objection to the Scottish government’s continuing ban on public church services. Father Michael J. Kane is the pastor of St. Augustine’s Catholic Church in Coatbridge, a town about 10 miles east of Glasgow. In a June 26 open letter to Member of Scottish Parliament (MSP) Fulton...

A federal judge cast doubt on Bayer AG ’s proposal to neatly resolve all future lawsuits over the safety of its Roundup weedkiller, potentially snagging the German company’s attempts to move past the massive liability. Bayer said recently it would pay up to $10.9 billion to settle tens of thousands of current Roundup cases and create a system for handling future cases. The deal came after three juries in recent years awarded large verdicts to plaintiffs alleging Roundup caused non-Hodgkin lymphoma, spooking investors. U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria in San Francisco, who must approve the class action, said Monday he...

A "Danish" imam named Abu Bilal Ismail has caused a sensation after a series of hidden-camera videos aired on TV2. In his capacity as an imam at the Grimhøj Mosque, Mr. Ismail called for the stoning of adulterers, the killing of apostates, and other violent policies. If he were not a member of a protected culture-enriching minority, he would surely have been prosecuted for his publicly-expressed sentiments. Below is the first in a series of videos of the Indiscreet Imam. Many thanks to PEGIDA DK for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:

Watch and learn.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) on Wednesday blamed Russia’s annexation of Crimea on Republicans, though the invasion took place on President Barack Obama's watch. Pelosi slammed President Donald Trump and Republicans for their alleged inability to face Russian aggression—and tied them to President Barack Obama’s appeasement of Moscow. "You just described, not only for the president, but the Republicans in Congress, dereliction of duty," Pelosi told MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace. "Undermining our own elections, undermining our commitment to NATO, giving away the store, the base, in Syria. The list goes on and on. Ignoring the annexation of Crimea,...

The Greek air force has intercepted a Turkish military drone that violated Greece’s national airspace in the southeastern Aegean, Kathimerini has learned. The Turkish Anka unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV ANKA) twice entered Greek airspace above the Dodecanese island of Rhodes, at an altitude of 19,000-20,000 feet on Thursday. The drone was intercepted by Greek F-16 fighter jets that took off from Kasteli air base on Crete. On Thursday, Greek and Turkish fighter jets engaged in two dogfights over the Aegean, after the Turkish jets violated Greek airspace 16 times in the northeast, central and southeastern Aegean.

Senators aim to limit Trump's ability to remove troops from Germany BY JORDAIN CARNEY - 06/29/20 03:19 PM EDT A bipartisan group of senators is trying to place limits on President Trump's ability to remove troops from Germany unless the administration is able to meet a slew of requirements. The proposal, spearheaded by Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), would prohibit the administration from reducing the number of active-duty troops in Germany below 34,500 unless the Pentagon can certify to Congress that it is in the national security interest of the United States and would not negatively undermine European alliances or NATO....

In 2008, as the Obama administration prepared to take control in Washington, retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey offered a list of bold predictions for the coming five years. Some of them bore out: The economy performed well globally despite the Great Recession, relations with Russia became more hostile without devolving into outright dysfunction, and the United States withdrew from Iraq right at the 36-month mark, which McCaffrey specified. Other predictions, such as a North Korean collapse, improved prospects for success in Afghanistan following a massive commitment of resources, and a nuclear breakout for Iran, never occurred.A year later, geopolitical analyst...

MADRID (Reuters) - Spanish virologists have found traces of the novel coronavirus in a sample of Barcelona waste water collected in March 2019, nine months before the COVID-19 disease was identified in China, the University of Barcelona said on Friday. The discovery of virus genome presence so early in Spain, if confirmed, would imply the disease may have appeared much earlier than the scientific community thought. The University of Barcelona team, who had been testing waste water since mid-April this year to identify potential new outbreaks, decided to also run tests on older samples. They first found the virus was...

It seems counter-intuitive, but China is increasingly a concern for the commander of U.S. Naval Forces in Europe and Africa and NATO's Allied Joint Force Command. Navy Adm. James G. Foggo told the participants of a webinar sponsored by the International Institute of Strategic Studies that China is actively working in Europe and Africa to subvert the international rules-based infrastructure that has maintained peace since the end of World War II. China's whole-of-government approach has expanded out of the Indo-Pacific into the Arctic, Europe and Africa. In this region China is conducting unsafe intercepts of aircraft and ships, he said....

Former French President Nicholas Sarkozy has spoken out in defence of his country’s Jewish population as he was honoured for protecting France’s Jews at a dinner in central London on Sunday night. The Conference of European Rabbis presented the politician, who is expected run for a second term in office in 2017, with an award in honour of his efforts to support French Jewry as interior minister and later president. He said: “We do not want French Jews to leave France because they are afraid. We want them to be comfortable to wear a kippah. We must stand up to...

He added, "the world needs Russia."

A French appeals court ruled Thursday that former president Nicolas Sarkozy should stand trial on charges of illicit financing of his failed 2012 presidential campaign. Sarkozy, 63, will appeal the decision before the Cour de Cassation, France’s court of final appeal, his lawyers said Thursday. It is one of several legal inquiries which have dogged the rightwing politician since he left office. In upholding last year’s decision by a judge to put Sarkozy on trial, the appeals court in Paris rejected arguments from his legal team seeking to avoid a potentially embarrassing public ordeal of a trial as well as...

Nicolas Sarkozy, who is fighting to regain the presidency that he lost to François Hollande in 2012, has finally come out of the closet as a climate skeptic. Speaking in front of business leaders, Sarkozy, a candidate for Les Republicains party primary in November, told them that man alone was not to blame for climate change. “Climate has been changing for four billion years,” the former president said according to AFP. “Sahara has become a desert; it isn’t because of industry. You need to be as arrogant as men are to believe we changed the climate.” …

French presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy has proposed that Europe apply a carbon tax on American imports if Donald Trump pulls the United States out of the Paris climate pact. More than 100 countries have ratified the Paris global emissions deal, which was inked in December after marathon talks to cap greenhouse gases that cause global warming. “Donald Trump has said — we’ll see if he keeps this promise — that he won’t respect the conclusions of the Paris climate agreement,” Sarkozy said late Sunday on the TF1 television channel. “Well, I will demand that Europe put in place a carbon...

Footage shows yobs pelting cops with rocks as a German police union boss said that "young people with a migrant background" were among those arrested. The riots on Saturday night began in reaction to the arrest of a white German 17-year-old for drugs offences - prompting hundreds of people to start attacking the police in "solidarity" with the teen. Videos from the scene even show rioters attacking paramedics who had been called to the scene, which local media described as a "battlefield". At least 40 shops had been ransacked while 19 police officers were injured in the night of horrific...