Free Republic

In March, State Department veteran and former adviser to Barack Obama, Frederic Hof, bid farewell to public life with a stunning admission. Amid a confession regarding his failure to prevent the expansion of the Syrian civil war into a regional crisis, Hof laid the blame for that all-consuming conflict (as well as a notable uptick in Russian aggression) at the feet of Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. The administration sacrificed Syrian civilians and American credibility for the mistaken notion that Iran required appeasement in Syria as the price for a nuclear agreement,” Hof wrote. Today, with 500,000 dead, millions...

The United States' commitment to global development does not look good compared with that of other wealthy countries — and it's likely to get worse. According to an annual index released Tuesday by the Center for Global Development that ranks 27 of the world's wealthiest countries, the U.S. scored dead last on foreign aid contributions and quality — despite being the largest donor in dollar amount. That's because in 2017, it allocated a mere 0.18 percent of its gross national income for development assistance. That is well short of the 0.7 percent that wealthy countries have committed to strive for...

Russia has blamed Israel for the downing of one of its military planes in Syria and threatened "retaliation." An Ilyushin IL-20 aircraft was shot down by Syrian air defense missiles in what has been called a "friendly fire" incident. The Russian defense ministry has claimed that Israeli jets were attacking nearby targets and purposely "used the Russian plane as a cover, exposing it to fire from Syrian air defenses."

There is Breaking News from Syria overnight with 15 Russian servicemen dead after their plane was shot down by Syrian air defenses during a sudden Israeli air attack. Russia's Defense Ministry says 4 Israeli F-16's used the larger Russian IL-20 plane as a decoy for their attack on the northern Syrian city of Latakia. Russia says it reserves the right to an "adequate response".... US UN Ambassador Nikki Haley is in a knot accusing Russia of "cheating" on North Korea sanctions. Haley spoke at the UN Security Council yesterday..... South Korea's President Moon Jae In arrived in North Korea today...

"The ministry specified that 'the mark of the IL-20 went off the radars disappeared during the attack of four Israeli F-16 on Syrian targets in the province of Latakia" Russian News Agency Tass at 732 PM Eastern Time US

ISTANBUL (REUTERS) - President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has defended his decision to accept a luxury plane from Qatar at a time of economic hardship, saying it was a gift, not a purchase, and that it had been donated to the Turkish state, not to him personally. State broadcaster TRT Haber said last week the Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani had given Mr Erdogan the aircraft, which Turkish media said was a Boeing 747, sparking criticism from Turkey's opposition. A lawmaker from the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), Mr Sezgin Tanrikulu, had expressed concern that the aircraft...

Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh has been accused of sexual assault. The alleged victim had contacted Democratic members of Congress months ago anonymously with Democrats revealing the matter after Kavanaugh's nomination hearings ended.... In Sochi, Russia today President Vladimir Putin is meeting the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to discuss Syria..... Over the weekend a Russian general said that militants have moved canisters of chlorine into a village in Idlib in preparation for a false flag chemical attack that would be used to justify an attack on Syria by the US and allied nations..... Israel's Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman...

"Idlib miltiants have delivered canisters with chlorine to the village of Bsanqul, where they are preparing to stage a chemical attack, the Russian Defense Ministry says" "Southfront"-9/16/2018 The Russians have again warned about plans by Al-Qaeda forces in Syria to stage a false flag chemical attack to justify military action by the US and allied nations. The latest warning came Saturday from Lt. Gen. Vladimir Savchenko of the Russian Center for Reconciliation. Savchenko said that jihadists from the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) have delivered chlorine canisters to the village of Bsanqul in Idlib Province. The Russian military warning comes ahead...

Are we on the brink of a new war?... They will go to war without waiting for the facts to be checked, and without recalling Parliament..... he was asked about plans-now being openly discussed at high levels in Washington-for a devastating attack on Damascus. This will be in response to a supposed atrocity that has yet to take place but about which the Americans openly say they already have evidence-probably an alleged poison gas attack, in which we will see heartbreaking but unverified film of dead or dying children, from propaganda sources, and claims of multiple deaths from untraceable 'eyewitnesses'........

The Trump administration has made clear that its top priority in the Middle East is to thwart Iran’s nuclear and regional ambitions. So why is it so reluctant to lift a finger against Tehran’s most audacious gambit in Syria? That gambit is the reconquest, by Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and his Iranian and Russian allies, of Idlib Province, the last major rebel holdout in western Syria and home to about three million people. A humanitarian catastrophe is expected to follow, entailing mass casualties and another tidal wave of refugees.

President Trump reportedly wanted to immediately and publicly acknowledge that U.S.-led forces engaged Russian mercenaries in Syria earlier this year, killing hundreds of them, but senior National Security Council staff, led then by H.R. McMaster, intervened, saying it would be unnecessarily antagonizing to Moscow. The president is said to have wanted White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to immediately acknowledged and “take credit” for fending off the Russian mercenaries.

Hypocrisy appears to be the leading trait we can expect from high-ranking UN officials such as the High Commissioner for Human Rights. Sadly, Ms. Bachelet is no exception The new United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet has unfortunately continued the one-sided anti-Israel narrative that her anti-Semitic predecessor, Prince Zeid Raad Al Hussein, propagated whenever he got a chance. In her first speech to the UN Human Rights Council on September 10, 2018, Ms. Bachelet blamed Israel’s so-called “blockade” and its alleged “excessive use of force” for all the problems suffered by the Palestinians in Hamas-run Gaza. “Prospects...

Qamishli (Syria) (AFP) - Kurdish fighters in northern Syria detained an alleged Italian member of the Islamic State group as he was trying to flee across the border to Turkey, they said Thursday. The People's Protection Units (YPG) have captured several foreign IS fighters since the jihadists' so-called caliphate collapsed nearly a year ago. "On August 27, a mercenary called Semir Bogana was captured as a result of a special operation conducted by our Anti-Terror Units, when he was trying to flee to Turkey," said the YPG. It said Bogana -- an Italian citizen known also as Abu Hureyre al-Muhajir...

The Turkish Supreme Court rejected a request from one of the religious groups. They had asked for the historical museum of Hagia Sophia to be transformed into a mosque. According to the Anatolian agency reporting the news on Thursday, the Court dismissed the case because of errors made in the written request. The basilica of Hagia Sophia was transformed into a mosque during the fall of Constantinople in 1453, then into a museum in 1935. According to Turkish law, worship is prohibited in museums.

Bucking--not backing - Trump is a sure-fire recipe for committing political suicide President Trump has created a veritable diplomatic tsunami affecting the political fortunes of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), Hamas and Jordan - with his decision to cease all future donations to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) - currently US$360million per annum and comprising about 30% of UNRWA’s budget. The numbers of UNRWA-registered Palestinian Arab refugees in Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza have been increasing in leaps and bounds annually because they include all the descendants of those Palestinian Arabs caught up in the 1948...

Syrian school textbooks repeatedly accuse Israel of stealing lands in order to "fabricate Arab-Syrian history", and make no mention of Hezbollah or the Holocaust, according to a new study that provides information about school curriculum in Syria in the wake of the Syrian civil war. Marcus Sheff, commented on the textbook: "While Syrian children witness the civil war raging around them, their textbooks give no explanation for this war. There is no hope that Syria will moderate its traditional Ba'athist hostility towards Israel even after the end of this terrible civil war." One of the most serious accusations against Israel,...

Secret KGB documents reveal just how deeply involved the Soviet Union was in the spilling of Israeli blood. The Russian spy agency provided Palestinian terror organizations with funds, training and arms, running agents like 'Krotov' - aka Mahmoud Abbas, 'Aref' - or Yasser Arafat, and 'Nationalist,' who was behind several plane hijackings long before 9/11. The genesis of the KGB’s developing ties with Palestinian terror organizations can be traced back to the end of the 1960s. The two most important KGB recruitments from the PLO during the second half of the 1970s were of people who still play a major...

On the morning of September 8, a number of missiles were launched against the headquarters of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) and the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI) in the town of Koya, 300km north of Iraq’s capital, Baghdad. Reports indicate that 13 people were killed while many more were injured, some in critical condition. On the same day, three young Kurd political prisoners, Ramin Hossein Panahi, and Loghman and Zaniar Moradi were executed in Karaj’s Rajaie Shahr Prison. The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps took responsibility for the missile attack, and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani thanked the...

Turkey is reinforcing its military posts inside Syria's rebel-held province of Idlib, Turkish and Syrian rebels sources say, seeking to deter a government offensive which it says would unleash a humanitarian disaster on its border. President Tayyip Erdogan has warned that an assault by the army and its Russian and Iran-backed allies on Idlib, home to around 3 million people, will uproot hundreds of thousands in one of Syria's last rebel strongholds. Already hosting 3.5 million Syrians - the world's biggest refugee population - Turkey says it cannot absorb more victims of the war and has accused the West of...

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan appointed himself chairman of Turkey’s sovereign Wealth Fund and his-son-in law and Treasury and Finance Minister Berat Albayrak as his deputy chairman, Turkish media reports said on Wednesday. According to a decree published in the Official Gazette, Zafer Sönmez, head of Turkey and Africa for Malaysia’s government investment vehicle Khazanah Nasional Bhd, was named as the Wealth Fund’s new general manager. Treasury and Finance Minister Albayrak will also sit on the board, The overhaul comes two years after the Wealth Fund was formed to try and capitalize on state assets and put a lid on...