Free Republic

Frame grab shows Russian fighter-bomber dropping bomb over Syria. The skies over Syria are dangerously crowded these days with the US, Russia, and the Assad regime all bombing various actors on vaguely opposite sides of the country's multidimensional conflict. In both Iraq and Syria, the reality of overlapping aerial operations among countries with little geopolitical fondness toward one another has already led to claims that British aircraft have been authorized to engage Russian aircraft over Iraq if threatened. The British government denied these reports, but they still underscore the possibility of confrontation between allied and Russian military aircraft. Several presidential...

October 17, 2015 is the centenary of the birth of Arthur Miller, one of the literary left’s shining lights and righteous crusaders against some of liberals’ worst demons: Joe McCarthy, “HUAC,” and, more generally, anti-communism. Yes, anti-communism. As often noted by Harvard’s Richard Pipes and the Hoover Institution’s Robert Conquest, few things have animated liberal animus quite like anti-communism. It’s not that liberals have been pro-communist so much as they are anti-anti-communist. They dislike anti-communists more than they dislike communists. Their preferred demon isn’t Joe Stalin but Joe McCarthy. As James Burnham, the great ex-communist, put it, “for the left,...

By Frosty Wooldridge “Tolerance and apathy are the last virtues of a dying society,” said French historian-philosopher Voltaire. Within the next 24 months, John Kerry and Congress, abetted by Barack Obama, expect to import 200,000 Syrian Muslim refugees into our country. That’s on top of the usual 1,000,000 (million) legal refugee immigrants expected to land on our shores in 2016 and another 1,000,000 (million) more in 2017. That’s on top of the 100,000,000 (million) total legal immigrant refugees projected to land on our shores within 30 years.  (Source: US Population Projections by Fogel/Martin; PEW Research Center) Ironically, you won’t hear a...

t a sprawling camp in the German town of Celle, refugees wearing thick sweaters sit around a heater smoking cigarettes as rain beats down on the cramped white tent that has become their home. Some of them are ill and worried it will snow. "The weather is so cold that I can't even leave the tent," said Taher, a 25-year-old Syrian farmer. Sitting on his camp bed surrounded by wet washing that hangs limply from tent poles, he reaches for a box of cough medicine. With the approach of winter, authorities are scrambling to find warm places to stay for...

More than a quarter of a million people have been killed in Syria's brutal conflict since it began with anti-government protests over four years ago, a monitoring group said Friday. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it has documented the deaths of 250,124 people, including at least 74,426 civilians. The civilian toll includes 12,517 children and 8,062 women.

Turkey has brushed off the offer of EU membership in exchange for halting the refugee influx as “bribery”, hours after European leaders sought to buy the country’s co-operation at a price of £2 billion. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the man Europe hopes can hold back a vast new wave of migrants, ridiculed an offer of visas, cash and a fresh chapter of accession talks drawn up by European leaders last night. If Brussels wants his co-operation, nothing less than full EU membership will do, the president said, adding that the offer did not appear to be “sincere”. “The West and Europe's...

Saturday's attack in the Turkish capital is as close to Turkey's 9/11 as the country has gotten. Twin bombings in downtown Ankara, across from the city's busy central train station and only minutes from key government buildings, killed at least 95 people and injured hundreds more. It is, in short, the worst terror attack in the country's history. The massacre is saddening and shocking, all the more so because it runs counter to the perception of Turkey as relatively stable and peaceful. Although it borders the tumultuous Middle East, Turkey has a vibrant economy, a large middle class and democratic...

SEVEN thousand jihadi fighters from Russia and the former Soviet east are fighting for Islamic State (ISIS) in Syria, President Vladimir Putin has revealed, as Moscow continues its bombing campaign on the twisted terror group.

"The US and its allies would like to see Russia’s military operations in Syria go horribly wrong as Russia’s success heralds a crushing defeat for Western regime-change machinations. It would also signal the balance of power shifting away from US hegemony. . . . From the outset of Russia’s aerial bombing campaign against terror groups in Syria, beginning on September 30, Washington and its Western allies have sought all possible ways of discrediting and derailing the intervention. US President Obama poured scorn saying “it was doomed to fail,” while Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron labeled the Russian move as “a...

The leader of an al Qaeda-linked group allegedly bent on attacking the West has been killed in an airstrike by the U.S.-led coalition in Syria, U.S. officials said Sunday. Sanafi al-Nasr, a Saudi citizen whose real name is Abdul Mohsen Adballah Ibrahim al Charekh, was the highest-ranking member of the Khorasan Group -- a collection of veteran al Qaeda jihadis which had moved into Syria, the Pentagon said in a statement. He was killed in an airstrike in northwest Syria on Thursday, the statement said. Nasr, who was once al Qaeda's chief financial officer and had been designated a Specially...

"Russia plans to carry out up to 300 aerial missions over Syria every day and intends to build a new runway to accommodate its warplane, it has been claimed. This shocking escalation comes as Syrian troops advance on rebel areas in the province of Aleppo, backed up by Russian jets that have been bombing Syria for more than two weeks. Images taken only today show the destruction caused by Russia's planes in the strategically important village of Al-Hader, just south of Aleppo city, which activists claim is the next target in Syria's ground offensive. . . . [Medvedev] claims that...

Vladimir Putin has proposed setting up a NATO-style joint task force of post-Soviet states to secure the borders of Central Asia amid fears of Taliban “spillover” from Afghanistan. A fresh sign of the Russian president’s new military assertiveness, the deployment raises the possibility of Russian and allied troops being deployed along Tajikistan’s 800-mile border with Afghanistan, and Moscow tightening its influence of governments in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. It comes a day after Barack Obama said American troops would stay in Afghanistan for at least two more years—itself a tacit admission that the Afghan government is unable to tackle the...

The United States is in decline. While not all major shocks to the system will be devastating, when the right one comes along, the outcome may be dramatic. Not all explosives are the same. We all know you have to be careful with dynamite. Best to handle it gently and not smoke while you’re around it. Semtex is different. You can drop it. You can throw it. You can put it in the fire. Nothing will happen. Nothing until you put the right detonator in it, that is. To me, the US – and most of the supposedly free West...

The government has defended its move to gradually phase out tax breaks on electric cars as a way to make things fairer for car owners, but the maker of Denmark’s most popular electric model has slammed the plan as anti-competitive and a death knell for the industry. A political agreement reached on Friday afternoon will see tax breaks on electric cars phased out over the next five years. As a result, the costs of some popular electric models will skyrocket. The hardest hit will be the luxury model Tesla S P85D, which will more than double in price from 875,000...

Vladimir Putin has the United States’ foreign policy establishment swooning. One columnist admires the “decisiveness” that has put him “in the driver’s seat” in the Middle East. A veteran diplomat notes gravely, “It’s the lowest ebb since World War II for U.S. influence and engagement in the region.” A sober-minded pundit declares, “Not since the end of the Cold War a quarter-century ago has Russia been as assertive or Washington as acquiescent.”

The host of the Jacki Daily show has had an impressive career in energy, law, and politics. Most recently, Jacki served as General Counsel to an engineering firm specializing in energy, national security and environmental cleanup. Previously, she served many years as legal counsel on Capitol Hill to the Chairman of the Subcommittee on the Constitution and the former Ranking Member of the Commercial and Administrative Law Subcommittee, advising on the oversight of federal agencies. Prior to her career in Washington, she worked as a corporate litigator, and as an Assistant Vice President for a national bank. She entered...

Earlier this month, Shia militiamen in Iraq dropped off an American-supplied Abrams tank at a US-supported repair facility where workers were surprised to find an attached Russian machine gun plus Iranian ammo, Defense News has learned. The MIA1 main battle tank — one of 146 frontline tanks the US sold to Baghdad — was transported through the Green Zone to a US-supported Iraqi service facility at al-Muthanna that was established as part of the Pentagon’s Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program. The tank was equipped with a Russian .50-caliber machine gun and Iranian-stamped 12.75-mm ammunition, according to a source at the...

onald Trump is right: America’s leaders are stupid. They’re nothing but a bunch of losers. Well, at least when it comes to Afghanistan and Pakistan. That’s the only conclusion to be reached following two big developments this week. The first was President Barack Obama’s announcement that the United States will decelerate its military drawdown from Afghanistan. Instead of preserving only a small force of about 1,000 troops, the new plan will station 9,800 in the country until 2016 and 5,500 into 2017. Their mission will be limited to training Afghan forces and supporting counterterrorism operations. This will help promote, in...

The American media has been providing evidence since 2013, that the so-called Free Syrian Army and The Al-Nusra Front, are one and the same organization. Here is a Washington Times article from 2013: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/sep/30/al-nusra-front-free-syrian-army-seize-border-cross/ Al-Nusra Front, as the Washington Times makes clear, is the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda Have Al Qaeda now become the "moderates"? The so-called Syrian moderates belong to a movement that has killed more Americans than ISIS (Remember 911?) ISIS used to be the Iraqi branch of Al Qaeda, before they re-organized themselves into a new movement - ISIL/ISIS Both the Al-Nusra Front and ISIS want...

Presidential candidate Donald Trump set off another political firestorm Friday after implying that President George W. Bush was to blame for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, drawing the ire of his Republican rivals.