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Dr. Serkan Gölge, a NASA scientist who was sentenced to seven years, six months in prison in February due to his alleged links to the Gülen movement, has said he has been unlawfully kept behind bars for two years, which he says shows he is being held hostage by the Turkish government, the t24 news website reported on Tuesday. A dual citizen of the US and Turkey, Gölge, 38, was detained as part of an investigation into the Gülen movement, which the government accuses of masterminding a coup attempt on July 15, 2016, on July 23, 2016. He was arrested...

The Palestinians have been playing the long con with the "right of return" issue, which was always more of a fantasy than reality. They conned the UN for years about the number of "refugees," when in fact, the vast majority of Palestinians in refugee camps have no "right" to return to anything. Many were urged to leave by Arab leaders in 1948, others were abroad and never lived in Israel. the number of individuals considered Palestinian refugees today is a matter of intense debate. UNRWA, classifies Palestinian refugees as those who left Israel in 1948; those who left the West...

Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Executive Committee Member Hanan Ashrawi blasted the United States on Friday, after the State Department announced it would cut $200 million in bilateral assistance to the Palestinian Authority (PA). "The U.S. administration is demonstrating the use of cheap blackmail as a political tool. The Palestinian people and leadership will not be intimidated and will not succumb to coercion. The rights of the Palestinian people are not for sale,” she said in a statement. “There is no glory in constantly bullying and punishing a people under occupation. The U.S. administration has already demonstrated meanness of spirit in...

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has declared Germany “is a nation of immigrants and will remain so”, asserting: “There are no half or whole Germans, no biological or ‘new’ Germans”. Speaking at Berlin’s Bellevue Palace, where a small group of people with Turkish heritage had been invited to share their views on immigration, integration, and xenophobia in Europe, the German president strongly denounced “exclusion of and discrimination against people with foreign roots”. “A permanent suspicion of immigrants, no matter how long they have lived in Germany, is not only harmful for the individuals involved but it is a cause of shame...

Istanbul police have broken up the 700th weekly vigil by Turkish mothers demanding accountability for disappearances of relatives since the 1980s. Tear gas was fired and dozens were detained while defying a protest ban. Police dispersed a group known as "Saturday Mothers" as it headed for Istanbul's Galatasaray Square, prompting Human Rights Watch (HRW) to describe Saturday's incident as "cruel treatment of families seeking justice for state crimes."One of those briefly held by police was an 82-year-old mother, Emine Ocak (pictured above), whose son Hasan disappeared in 1995 after being taken into custody, then aged 30.Read more: Turkey's silent 'Standing Man'...

Iran awaiting European guarantees on the sale of Iranian oil and banking relations, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Saturday, according to the Iranian Students’ News Agency (ISNA). […] “We are still waiting for Europe to take action on the sale of Iranian oil and the preservation of banking channels,” the Iranian foreign minister said. Zarif also defended the European Union’s decision on Thursday to provide €18 million ($21 million) in aid to Iran to offset the impact of U.S. sanctions, part of efforts to salvage the 2015 deal to limit Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. […] The top U.S. envoy...

A Palestinian Authority refugee receives a budget four times larger than a Syrian, Iraqi or African refugee, according to a study conducted by the Abba Eban Institute for Diplomacy at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) in Herzliya, ahead of Sunday's visit to Israel by United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Yediot Ahronot reported on Sunday. At the end of last week, the UN Refugee Agency (UNRWA), which deals only with Palestinians, released its annual financial report, which in 2016 generated an average of $246 for each of the 5.3 million Palestinians it defines as a refugee, while the United Nations High Commissioner...

In yet another showing of blatant antisemitism, the United Nations Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, declared last Friday that the Gaza Palestinians, who have been violently attempting to infiltrate the Israeli border to "kill the Jews" and "burn the Jews," are the victims and in need of armed security. This mind-boggling defense of terrorists is of no surprise to those of us who follow UN politics. Earlier this summer when the US walked out on the UN Human Rights Council, Nikki Haily issued a statement on the decision, calling the Council a protector of "the world’s worst human rights abusers" with a "chronic...

SAN FRANCISCO — Pete Roberts of Nottingham, England, was one of the many risk-takers who threw their savings into cryptocurrencies when prices were going through the roof last winter. Now, eight months later, the $23,000 he invested in several digital tokens is worth about $4,000, and he is clearheaded about what happened. "I got too caught up in the fear of missing out and trying to make a quick buck," he said this week. "The losses have pretty much left me financially ruined." Mr. Roberts, 28, has a lot of company. After the latest round of big price drops, many...

The Trump administration late Friday announced that it had cut $200 million in U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority until it can ensure this American taxpayer money will not be used to fund terrorism, according to U.S. officials who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon.The announcement follows the recent passage of the Taylor Force Act in Congress, a bill aimed at providing greater oversight over how U.S. taxpayer dollars fund the Palestinians. The PA has for years been accused of using aid dollars to pay accused terrorists and their families annual salaries.President Donald Trump directed his administration to freeze $200...

In high contrast to nearly every other non-U.S. country, Israel passed a law on Monday that would expand the number of citizens eligible for firearms ownership licenses. As justification for the new policy, Israel’s Security Minister Gilad Erdan cited increased protection from “lone wolf” terrorist attacks. “Many civilians saved lives during terror attacks and in an era of ‘lone terrorism.’ The more skilled civilians carrying weapons, the greater the chance of thwarting attacks without casualties and reducing the number of casualties,” Erdan said, according to the Jerusalem Post. Previously, Israel operated under a system similar to the “good cause” scheme...

As the Trump administration tightens sanctions against Iran and Russia, and as the imposition of tariffs against China as a means of negotiating a more favorable trade arrangement continue, all three nations are moving away from the U.S. dollar primarily when it comes to oil sales, as a way of circumventing the punitive measures. “There is a common understanding that we need to move towards the use of national currencies in our settlements. There is a need for this, as well as the wish of the parties,” Russian Energy Minister Aleksandr Novak said earlier this month when discussing the move....

Russia is "stuck" in Syria and looking for others to fund its post-war reconstruction, US National Security Adviser John Bolton said, describing this as an opportunity for Washington to press for Iranian forces to quit the civil war-wracked country. Bolton said that Russian President Vladimir Putin had told the United States that Moscow could not compel the Iranians to leave Syria. "But he also told us that his interest and Iran's were not exactly the same. So we're obviously going to talk to him about what role they can play," said Bolton, who meets his Russian counterpart, Nikolai Patrushev, in...

A growing number of Russians are reportedly requesting asylum in Israel, where officials say they are gaming the system to obtain work permits. Russia provided the biggest number of immigrants last year under Israel’s repatriation program. “We have noticed a new phenomenon of Russians, who arrive mainly for economic reasons, seeking asylum that worries us and sets off warning lights,” the Israeli Population and Immigration Authority’s Yossi Edelstein was quoted as saying Tuesday. “The wage gaps are enormous and motivate people to come work in Israel,” the authority’s head of enforcement said. The number of Russian citizens who have been...

In the early 1960s, archaeologist James Mellaart uncovered a mural at Çatalhöyük, the world's largest and best-preserved Neolithic site, which he interpreted to represent a volcanic eruption. Fifty years later, scientific tests done on pumice at the nearby volcano Hasan Dag confirm that there was, in fact, an eruption between 9,500 and 8,400 years ago -- a timespan including the era that the mural was likely painted. ...In an Archaeology Odyssey article, Michael Balter, author of The Goddess and the Bull, wrote: "One painting, he [Mellart] thought, seemed to represent a town plan of the Neolithic village, with an erupting...

In an Orwellian nightmare, Eren Erdem, a former MP, journalist and the author of 9 books, who has courageously dedicated his career to exposing and condemning terrorist organizations, is now being accused of "aiding terrorists". The real terrorists he has condemned, however, remain free. Erdem is paying the price for telling the truth in Turkey. He has risked his life to stop ISIS and help save lives. Now is the time for human rights activists and the media to defend him. "Where are the police forces? I identified 10.000 addresses [of ISIS members] in these documents of investigations conducted...

The more you dig into the this whole Robert Mueller witch hunt the more corruption you find with basically everyone involved. The guy who actually appointed Robert Mueller to conduct his tax payer funded witch hunt with Clinton lackeys is married to a Clinton attorney. The Russians couldn’t have set this up any better. I’m sure Lisa Barsoomian is a top notch attorney. She did get to where she is today because of name recognition. I mean if Billy BJ Clinton used her as an attorney, how could you argue her credentials? At least Rosenstein married well.

An international team of researchers from Tel Aviv University, the Israel Antiquities Authority and Harvard University has discovered that waves of migration from Anatolia and the Zagros mountains (today's Turkey and Iran) to the Levant helped develop the Chalcolithic culture that existed in Israel's Upper Galilee region some 6,500 years ago. The study is one of the largest ancient DNA studies ever conducted in Israel and for the first time sheds light on the origins of the Chalcolithic culture in the Levant, approximately 6,000-7,000 years ago... The team unearthed dozens of burials in the natural stalactite cave that is 17...

“Jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam”.John Brennan John Brennan is all over the news, playing the victim for having his security clearance pulled. It's obvious from his record that he should have never had any access to classified information considering his toxic and radical views. After Helsinki, Brennan accused President Trump of treason. He's since doubled down on the accusation. But if you want to see treason, look at his own past comments. As I discuss in today's article on Twitter's censoring of David Horowitz when he tried to discuss Brennan's record and Islamic anti-Semitism.

Several weeks ago, an article in the Hebrew-language Yediot Achronot revealed that, according to Palestinian sources, Hamas and Islamic Jihad have received more than $100 million per year over the last few years from Iran. That represents a substantial fraction of the cash that President Barack Obama put on pallets and flew to Tehran shortly before he left office. Today it was announced that two Iranians had been indicted for spying in the United States for the Iranian government. What were they looking at? Missile bases? Nuclear reactors? Grand Central Station? No. They were indicted for taking pictures of “Israeli...