Free Republic

Turkey just can't seem to help itself when it comes to escalations in the Mid-East. First, Erdogan intentionally reignited the conflict between Ankara and the PKK in an effort to scare the public into nullifying a democratic election outcome. Then, the Turks shot down a Russian warplane near the Syrian border. Finally, in what very well might be an effort to protect Islamic State oil smuggling routes, Erdogan sent 150 troops and two dozen tanks to Bashiqa, just northeast of Mosul in a move that has infuriated Baghdad. We discussed the troop deployment at length on Saturday in "Did Turkey...

Russia's Sergey Lavrov is not one foreign minister known to mince his words. Just earlier today, 24 hours after a Russian plane was brought down by the country whose president three years ago said "a short-term border violation can never be a pretext for an attack", had this to say: "We have serious doubts this was an unintended incident and believe this is a planned provocation" by Turkey. But even that was tame compared to what Lavrov said to his Turkish counterparty Mevlut Cavusoglu earlier today during a phone call between the two (Lavrov who was supposed to travel to...

In a somewhat depressing show of the farce that is Europe's immigration policy, local media reports "apocalyptic scenes" on the northern Greek border where "economic migrants" who are not entitled to leave Greece's provisional camps are fighting with 'refugees' who are entitled to leave, and head into other European nations. Petrol bombs and stones flew through the air, fists, kicks and wrestling on the ground as migrants hindered refugees from entering Macedonia (FYROM). People have injured, trampled and faint, among them many babies as some migrants tried to pass together with the refugees and were apparently hindered with stun grenades...

The year 2015 is coming to an end and we’ve seen a lot this year. Not only did we see a much stronger dollar, the gold price also weakened despite the dire economic situation in, well, everywhere in the world, terrorist attacks and additional tensions between a NATO member and Russia. Additionally, the Federal Reserve seems to be on track to increase the interest rate before the end of this year. In fact, as you can see on the next chart, gold has now almost reached a 6 year low, but two important indicators are indicating the yellow metal might...

For the better part of a year, Turkey remained on the sidelines in the "fight" against ISIS. Then, on July 20, a powerful explosion ripped through the town of Suruc. 33 people were killed including a number of Socialist Party of the Oppressed (ESP) and Socialist Youth Associations Federation (SGDF) members who planned to assist in the rebuilding of Kobani. The attack was promptly attributed to Islamic State who took "credit" for the tragedy the next day. To be sure, the attack came at a rather convenient time for President Tayyip Erdogan. A little over a month earlier, the ruling...

The latest poll following the attacks in Paris, by Fox News, shows Donald Trump moving ahead of Democrat-front-runner Hillary Clinton (in a head-to-head match up if the election were held today), but it is the turmoiling below the surface of the GOP nominations that is garnering most headlines. After a week or two of hope for GOP leadership, as Ben Carson appeared to catch up to Trump, the retired neurosurgon's lies and weakness on foreign policy ("he clearly has no idea what he's talking about," as one Iowa GOP insider noted), have sent his poll numbers reeling... and Cruz surging....

Wednesday brought a veritable smorgasbord of "new" information about the Russian passenger jet which fell out of the sky above the Sinai Peninsula last weekend. First there was an audio recording from ISIS' Egyptian affiliate reiterating that they did indeed “down” the plane. Next, the ISIS home office in Raqqa (or Langley or Hollywood) released a video of five guys sitting in the front yard congratulating their Egyptian “brothers” on the accomplishment. Then the UK grounded air traffic from Sharm el-Sheikh noting that the plane "may well" have had an "explosive device" on board. Finally, US media lit up with...

Wednesday brought a veritable smorgasbord of “new” information about the Russian passenger jet which fell out of the sky above the Sinai Peninsula last weekend. First there was an audio recording from ISIS’ Egyptian affiliate reiterating that they did indeed “down” the plane. Next, the ISIS home office in Raqqa (or Langley or Hollywood) released a video of five guys sitting in the front yard congratulating their Egyptian “brothers” on the accomplishment.

Late on Friday there was a surprising announcement by the Federal Aviation Administration according to which night-time flights to and from Los Angeles International (LAX) would avoid flying over the Pacific Ocean to the west of the airport, the second busiest in the US.(snip)...thousands of reports from Los Angeles and San Diego flooded social networks with reports of a mysterious bright light in the sky that sent Californians into panic. The San Diego Union-Tribune said police were inundated with calls "reporting everything from a flare to a comet to a nuclear bomb". The newspaper said the light was seen as...

In a time where college students are offended by pretty much everything, The Federalist Papers reports that one professor at UNC-Wilmington decided to cut through the rhetoric and let his students know that they aren't the special snowflakes liberals and their parents would have them believe. His epic class introduction has gone viral, and for good reason: this is the most common sense lecture to come out of any college in a long time.

A week before The EPA disastrously leaked millions of gallons of toxic waste into The Animas River in Colorado, this letter to the editor was published in The Silverton Standard & The Miner local newspaper, authored by a retired geologist detailing verbatim, how EPA would foul the Animas River on purpose in order to secure superfund money...

Late in September, we brought you "US Readies Battle Plans For Baltic War With Russia" in which we described a series of thought experiments undertaken by The Pentagon in an effort to determine what the likely outcome would be should something go horribly "wrong" on the way to landing the US in a shooting war with Russia in the Balkans. The results of those thought experiments were not encouraging.

Submitted by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,What you are about to see is more evidence that the growth of poverty in the United States is wildly out of control.  It turns out that there is a tremendous amount of suffering in “the wealthiest nation on the planet”, and it is getting worse with each passing year.  During this election season, politicians of all stripes are running around telling all of us how great we are, but is that really true? As you will see below, poverty is reaching unprecedented levels in this country, and the middle class is...

In an interview with Spanish newspapers that was published October 31st, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon condemned U.S. President Barack Obama’s demand that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad be removed from office, and Moon said: “The future of Assad must be determined by the Syrian people.” The U.N. Secretary General is here implicitly blaming all of this - lots of blood and misery - on U.S. President Obama, and on the “many Western countries” who ally with him and have joined with him in demanding regime-change in Syria. The position of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has been, and is, to the...

There is a potential black swan event taking place in Turkey on Sunday and no one seems to care. That is, the media isn’t devoting nearly enough coverage to Turkish elections considering the impact the outcome will invariably have on the situation in Syria, on the fate of the lira, and on the Pentagons strategy with regard to embedding spec ops with the YPG. As a reminder, Turkey held elections back in June and the outcome did not please President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. AKP lost its absolute majority in parliament thanks in no small part to a relatively strong showing...

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-10-31/islamic-state-claims-responsibility-russian-airplane-crash

One point we’ve been particularly keen on driving home since the beginning of Russian airstrikes in Syria is that The Kremlin’s move to step in on behalf of Bashar al-Assad along with Vladimir Putin’s open “invitation” to Washington with regard to joining forces in the fight against terrorism effectively let the cat out of the proverbial bag. That is, it simply wasn’t possible for the US to explain why the Pentagon refused to partner with the Russians without admitting that i) the government views Assad, Russia, and Iran as a greater threat than ISIS, and ii) Washington and its regional...

Hungarian PM Viktor Orban isn’t exactly pro-migrant. In fact, he’s gone out of his way to let Europe know that when it comes to accommodating the hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers fleeing the war-torn Mid-East, Budapest isn’t interested. Here's what happened when refugees dared to test Orban's resolve when it comes to defending the country's newly constructed, razor wire anti-migrant fence: As we’ve documented extensively, Hungary’s move to close off its borders with Croatia and Serbia has triggered a veritable Balkan border battle wherein no one can quite figure out the best way to divert hundreds of thousands of...

Update: CHINA SUMMONS U.S. AMBASSADOR OVER SOUTH CHINA SEA PATROL: CCTVWell, the USS Lassen sailed within 12-nautical miles of Subi Reef and surprisingly, World War III did not break out overnight. (USS Lassen)(Subi reef)Nine months of tension between Washington and Beijing over the latter’s land reclamation efforts in The South China Sea culminated on Monday with President Obama’s decision to send a guided missile destroyer to China’s man-made military outposts on a “freedom of navigation” exercise. As we put it on Monday evening: "The ball is now squarely in China's court. The question now is whether Beijing will back down...

It would have been bad enough for Washington if Moscow had simply intervened in Syria and left it to the media to speculate and report on the progress made by Iranian ground troops operating under the cover of Russian airstrikes. But subtlety isn’t really Putin’s style and besides, the conflict in Syria represents a once in a lifetime opportunity to lay bare the West’s deplorable strategy of funding and arming extremists on the way to destabilizing recalcitrant regimes. ... We are of course not attempting to trivialize the death of Joshua Wheeler by writing this off as some kind of...