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Arming the Syrian rebels would be “pressing weapons into the hands of maniacs and Al-Qaeda thugs,” London’s mayor has warned. His is the latest call in a wave of rhetoric urging the UK prime minister not to provide the Syrian rebels with weapons. Writing for British publication The Telegraph, Boris Johnson wrote that the UK must not use Syria as “an arena for muscle flexing.” “We can’t use Syria as an arena for geopolitical point-scoring or muscle-flexing, and we won’t get a ceasefire by pressing weapons into the hands of maniacs,” wrote Johnson. He joins a number of prominent British...

Iran will deploy 4,000 Revolutionary Guards to Syria to bolster Damascus against a mostly Sunni-led insurgency, media reported. Meanwhile, US F-16s and Patriots will stay in Jordan – speculatively, to help establish a no-fly zone to aid Syrian rebels. The deployment of the first several-thousand strong military contingent was reported by The Independent on Sunday who quoted Iranian sources tied to the state’s security apparatus. The sources said the move signals Iran’s intention to drastically step up its efforts to preserve the government of President Bashar Assad. The Islamic Republic’s heightened military commitment could reportedly extend to the opening up...

Syria calls U.S. charge of chemical weapons use 'lies' The Syrian government Friday called White House allegations that it has used chemical weapons in the country's civil war "full of lies," according to state media reports. Syria's Foreign Ministry instead blamed such attacks on "terrorist" groups, the term it uses to refer to the opposition.

The Syrian rebels are “cannibals” and should not be given arms, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Sunday. "I think you will not deny that one does not really need to support the people who not only kill their enemies, but open up their bodies, eat their intestines, in front of the public and cameras," Putin said at a joint press conference in London with British Prime Minister David Cameron. Putin was referring to video footage posted on the Internet last month of a rebel fighter eating the heart of a government soldier. "Is it them who you want to...

(CNN) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin questioned Sunday whether his country's supplying of arms to Syria's government was any worse than putting weapons in the hands of rebels who have mutilated bodies, referencing a widely circulated video that purports to show a rebel fighter eating what appears to be the heart of a dead Syrian soldier. Putin's comments signaled clear disapproval of a U.S. plan to increase military support to Syrian rebels, and they came just one day before he was to meet with U.S. President Barack Obama for talks at the Group of Eight summit in Northern Ireland, where...

That buildup has been going on for some time. For the past two years, the government opposition in Syria has been getting aid from the U.S., which has smuggled surface-to-air missiles and other heavy weaponry into Syria through Turkey. Along with arms, the U.S. has supplied fighters for the conflict, drawing mainly from al-Qaida-linked militias in Libya and elsewhere. This operation was at the root of the attack in Benghazi, Libya, that killed the ambassador and three other Americans. The Obama Administration has been working to cover up the facts about Benghazi not just because of the glaring incompetence of...

As a long-time FReeper and supporter of Governor Palin, I was very excited when she was chosen by McCain as VP, electrified by her nomination speech in St. Paul, disappointed when McCain/Palin lost the election, and depressed wehen she declined to run for President in 2012. It is my belief that Governor Palin is a true conservative Republican in the tradition of Calvin Coolidge, Robert Taft, Barry Goldwater, and of course Ronald Reagan. There is no other person in the Republican Party or conservative movement who can fire up grassroots supporters and help conservatives get elected to office. However -...

Chemical weapons experts voiced skepticism Friday about U.S. claims that the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad had used the nerve agent sarin against rebels on at least four occasions this spring, saying that while the use of such a weapon is always possible, they’ve yet to see the telltale signs of a sarin gas attack, despite months of scrutiny. “It’s not unlike Sherlock Holmes and the dog that didn’t bark,” said Jean Pascal Zanders, a leading expert on chemical weapons who until recently was a senior research fellow at the European Union’s Institute for Security Studies. “It’s not just...

More details of a massacre in Homs late last month have emerged following the global outcry of a massacre in Deir el-Zour yesterday. The massacre, carried out by Free Syrian Army militants reportedly targeted men, women and children in the Christian village of al-Duwayr/Douar close to the city of Homs and the border with Lebanon. The incident received little media attention, having occurred at the same time as thousands of Syrian troops converged on the insurgent-occupied town of al-Qusayr. According to sources, around 350 heavily armed militants entered the village, broke into homes and assembled residents in the main square...

In a further sign that Syria’s civil war is increasingly becoming a theater of battle between Shi’ite and Sunni extremists – under the respective flags of Hezbollah and al-Qaeda – a group of Sunni radicals in Egypt is citing the Syrian situation in its appeal to Sunnis everywhere to support a jihad against Shi’ites. Twenty Egyptian Salafists including Mohammed al-Zawahiri, the brother of al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri, urged Sunnis to target Hezbollah and others involved in the fighting in the Syrian town of al-Qusair (al-Qusayr)... thousands of Shi’ite fighters from Hezbollah, Iran and Iraq have been involved in the fighting...

More details of a massacre in Homs late last month have emerged following the global outcry of a massacre in Deir el-Zour yesterday.The massacre, carried out by Free Syrian Army militants reportedly targeted men, women and children in the Christian village of al-Duwayr/Douar close to the city of Homs and the border with Lebanon. The incident received little media attention, having occurred at the same time as thousands of Syrian troops converged on the insurgent-occupied town of al-Qusayr.According to sources, around 350 heavily armed militants entered the village, broke into homes and assembled residents in the main square of...

In a brutal killing spree this week, Western-backed Sunni rebel forces have massacred dozens of Shia Muslim villagers in Syria. Western-backed Syrian Rebels Massacre Shia Villagers The New American 13 June 2013 Less than a month after a spokesman for the Western-backed "Free Syrian Army" threatened in a television interview to exterminate Shia Muslims across the nation, dozens of Shia villagers in Syria were massacred by Sunni rebel forces this week, according to international news reports citing government officials and opposition fighters. Analysts said the brutal killing spree, segments of which were recorded on video and posted online, illustrated...

Signs are growing that stretches of Iraq and Syria are morphing into a single battlefield for militants, exacerbating Iraq’s slide into renewed deadly chaos a year and a half after U.S. troops pulled out. Iraqi border posts along the Syrian frontier are coming under attack, and Syrian truck drivers have been singled out and shot inside Iraq. Syrian soldiers earlier this year sought refuge across the border, only to be massacred by al-Qaida. Combat-hardened Iraqi fighters, meanwhile, are crisscrossing the frontier. Al-Qaida-linked Sunni militants are cooperating with hard-line Islamists among the Syrian rebels, while Iraqi Shiite fighters are joining militiamen...

Syrian rebels in the city of Aleppo have executed a teenaged boy, believed to be either 14 or 15, for insulting the Prophet Mohammed in front of his family. The boy has been identified as Mohammed Qatta. The rebels heard his comment (“Even if Mohammed comes back to life, I won’t,”), kidnapped him, beat him, put him on trial, convicted him and shot him.

Islamists said to execute 15-year-old Syrian boy for heresy AMMAN (Reuters) - Members of an al Qaeda-linked Islamist group in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo executed a 15-year-old boy in front of his parents on Sunday as punishment for what the group regarded as a heretical comment, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Mohammad Qataa was shot in the face and neck a day after being seized, said the pro-opposition monitoring group, which is based in Britain and uses a network of observers across Syria. "The Observatory cannot ignore these crimes, which only serve the enemies of the...

7 June 2013 Beirut (AsiaNews) - The battle between rebels and army for al-Qusair left the town in ruin, now reduced to a pile of rubble. Of the 30,000 residents, including some 3,000 Christians, who lived there before the start of the Civil War, only 500 are left. Images broadcast by the BBC show deserted streets, most residential and public buildings destroyed by mortar fire, or turned into weapons depots by anti-Assad militias, who occupied the town for over a year. The siege did not spare mosques and churches that for centuries stood side by side, an example of peaceful...

Before it was plunged into battle some 18 months ago, it was a thriving border city of 30,000 set in lush groves of olives and apricots. Now, local officials tell us, only about 500 people still live in a place that lies in utter ruin.... Down a desolate street, a battered Church of St Elias symbolises how many Syrians of many faiths once lived here together. This Christian place of worship has not just been destroyed, it's been desecrated by the fighting. Its marble floor is now carpeted in rubble and broken glass. Religious icons are defaced, prayer books burnt,...

The longer a prime minister remains in 10 Downing Street, the more likely he or she is to go mad. Sir Peter Tapsell, father of the Commons, said that Syria was now enduring what is “fundamentally a religious war between the Shia and the Sunni, which has raged within Islam for 1,300 years”. Mr Cameron would not accept this point. “When I see the official Syrian opposition,” he replied, “I do not see purely a religious grouping; I see a group of people who have declared that they are in favour of democracy, human rights and a future for minorities,...

<p>DAMASCUS, After the Syrian army of Bashar al-Assad's semi Shite, Alawites and some visiting Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah crunched Sunni resistance at al-Qussair... Sunni Muslim thugs pillaged Hatla Shiite villagers (killing men, women, children, dogs, cats, and whatever else Shittes) burning out their homes.. "All atrocities committed in the Shiite town were carried out on sectarian basis"</p>

Portland State University College Republicans screened the film “Obsession” this week at a campus event. The film focuses radical Islam’s fascination and war with western civilization. During the screening a large contingent of socialists and Muslims stormed into the room and interrupted the show. The Islamo-leftists intimidate and shout down the College Republicans, effectively bullying them out of their own campus event. Then the videographer was escorted out of the public event.

Father Gabriele Amorth is an old school priest. The octogenarian told The London Times this week that, since he was ordained way back in 1954, he has cast out some 160,000 demons. I believe that gives Father Gabriele some authority on the devil. So when he told the Times, “Practicing yoga brings evil,” he got my attention. I’ve long considered yoga a benign form of exercise, no more harmful than, say, aerobics or Pilates or, the apparent latest craze, Zumba. But after doing some research, I’m inclined to agree with Father Gabriele, the exorcist. While yoga indeed has a physical...

Russia’s FSB has foiled a terror attack in Moscow as they managed to kill two and detain one of the militants planning it, the National Anti-Terrorism Committee said. The three men are “Russian citizens, arrived from Afghani-Pakistani region, where they have been trained,” the committee said. All three are said to practice Islam. Some reports suggest that the militants underwent training in Pakistan's Northern Waziristan, however, it is unknown which group they belong to. According to Russian special services, Waziristan is a hotbed of Taliban extremism. "There are also training camps for terrorists who come from all over the world....

... The footage shows the commander, his face covered in a black balaclava, shooting each prisoner in the back of the head as they kneeled, blindfolded and lined up in a row in the sand. "The sharia court for the eastern region in Deir al-Zor has sentenced to death these apostate soldiers that committed massacres against our brothers and families in Syria," the executioner said on the video. Islamist militants with black flags shouted "God is great" as each man was shot. The executioner returned to some victims, firing more bullets into them to make sure they were dead. Videos...

Syrian troops crushed armed insurgent groups on Saturday at the southern edge of the capital. According to a Syrian military source, as a result of the anti-terrorist operations, the Deraa-Damascus highway, which leads to the border with Jordan, has been completely cleared of terrorist and insurgent forces, Voice of Russia Reported.The Army, reports the SANA news agency, has engaged in a successful offensive in the southern direction.“In the area of ​​Khirbet Gazzalya the army encircled and destroyed large patches of armed extremists who terrorized citizens, and engaged in sabotage and looting,� said the agency.The army also liberated Jassem on the...

Al-Hamad, who is Wahhabi (extremist Sunni) and harbors a sectarian hatred for Alawite and Shiite Muslims, said he has another gruesome video of his killing a government soldier from the Alawite faith. “Hopefully we will slaughter all of them [Alawites]. ... Human Rights Watch (HRW), which validated the video, released a report on May 13 identifying al-Hamad as a well-known commander responsible for the recent cross-border shelling of a Shi‘ite Lebanese village that killed two. The organization called on the U.N. Security Council to refer the Syria situation to the International Criminal Court to ensure accountability for all war crimes...

Just got this in email tonight, and thought I'd pass it on to my fellow Texans. There's an important vote coming up on Wednesday, 8 May in the Texas Senate regarding smart meters. This is a call to contact your state Senator regarding this important vote. The email: To my Friends in Texas – I’m going to just ask you to trust me! Most of you on this list know that I’m not into “radical” stuff – and many know that although I have passed along a little info opposing Smart Meters in the past, it has definitely not been...

Iceland just elected the parties which plunged them into crisis only five years ago. Is it casino capitalism all over again, or just a slap in the face of the EU? In terms of redemptive electoral stories, the return of the Independence Party in Iceland is quite significant, albeit that they will come back to government with only a few percentage points more votes than they polled at their nadir in the depths of the Icelandic crisis in 2009. However the biggest winner was Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson, the leader of the Progressive Party, who propelled his party to hold 19 seats...

The Magnitsky law and the black-list is a mistake and will damage Russian-US relations despite the recent 'reset' policy, Aleksey Pushkov, head of foreign affairs committee of Russian State Duma, told RT. Obama is hostage to Congress, yet he will feel the negative effects of the law, Pushkov believes. RT: How big of a blow is this spat for relations between Russia and the United States? Aleksey Pushkov: I think it is quite a blow. The Magnitsky Law when adopted by the US Congress and signed by the US president - it was already a blow. And we warned the...

My post, Add Boston Marathon Bombing to pile of Failed Eliminationist Narratives, seems to have gotten the attention of Dave Neiwart of Crooks and Liars, the developer of the Eliminationist Narrative.Neiwart responds with Right-Wingers Use Boston Bombing to Paper Over Their Own Extremist Terror.I’ll deal with the breadth of Neiwart’s post later, but I do quickly want to note that Neiwart continues to push the claim that Jared Lougher, who shot Gabby Giffords and killed several others, was right-wing.Almost everyone else, even in the left-blogosphere, has given up on that claim.  Loughner was a lunatic living in a nether world...

WASHINGTON -- CNN's John King says he is embarrassed after wrongly reporting last week that a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings was arrested, calling the mistake a "double kick in the head" because he's a Boston native. "When you do something like this, it's embarrassing," King, the network's chief national correspondent, told WTOP on Tuesday. "The one thing you have to do is look straight in the camera and say, 'We were wrong.'"

The conclusion reached by DEBKAfile’s counterterrorism and intelligence sources is that the brothers were double agents, hired by US and Saudi intelligence to penetrate the Wahhabi jihadist networks which, helped by Saudi financial institutions, had spread across the restive Russian Caucasian. Instead, the two former Chechens betrayed their mission and went secretly over to the radical Islamist networks.

What a beautiful racket the left has going. Those of us who dare not be liberal are literally paying, through our tax dollars, for NPR to smear us like this: (VIDEO-AT-LINK) Partial transcript: "The thinking, as we have been reporting, is that this is a domestic, extremist attack and officials are leaning that way largely because of the timing of the attack. April is a big month for anti-government and right-wing individuals. There's the Columbine anniversary, there's Hitler's birthday, there's the Oklahoma City bombing, the assault on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco."(continued)

We know we’re not famous actors who earn a living playing make-believe, but would it be OK if just for today we pretended all of this righteous outrage was inspired by the Kermit Gosnell trial?

As we now move into the official Political Aftermath period of the Boston bombing — the period that will determine the long-term legislative fallout of the atrocity — the dynamics of privilege will undoubtedly influence the nation’s collective reaction to the attacks. That’s because privilege tends to determine: 1) which groups are — and are not — collectively denigrated or targeted for the unlawful actions of individuals; and 2) how big and politically game-changing the overall reaction ends up being. This has been most obvious in the context of recent mass shootings. In those awful episodes, a religious or ethnic...

In explaining why President Obama didn't call the Boston bombings a "terrorist attack," former adviser David Axelrod said, "I'm sure what was going through the president's mind is -- we really don't know who did this -- it was tax day": "The word has taken on a different meaning since 9/11," Axelrod said of the phrase "terrorist attack." "You use those words and it means something very specific in people's mind. And I'm sure what was going through the president's mind is -- we really don't know who did this -- it was tax day. Was it someone who was...

A renowned expert on world terrorism says the deadly blasts that rocked Boston have all the earmarks of a domestic attack — not unlike Timothy McVeigh’s 1995 truck-bomb explosion in Oklahoma City. “It’s interesting the timing of this event,’’ Dr. Harvey Kushner told Newsmax TV’s “The Steve Malzberg Show. “It’s Patriot’s Day, Tax Day. It’s a holiday in Boston and we’re coming up on what was the Oklahoma City bombing April 19th, and also the Battle of Lexington, which started the American Revolution. “A lot of domestic terrorist organizations used to key in on that date, April 19. And Boston...

CNN apparently has "expert" guests issuing red herrings about the "possibility that the perpetrator of the latest atrocity "could be a right wing extremist". Of course, all decent and informed people expect these underhanded organizations and their despicable members to exploit this tragedy, just like every other tragedy - for the advancement of their leftist political gain. (video analyzing probability of this terror being perpetrated by leftists and/or their Muslim partners with whom 100% of the Democrat's sympathies lie.)

CAIR Claims Victory Over AP Stylebook’s Restrictions on Word 'Islamist' April 5, 2013 By Elizabeth Harrington (CNSNews.com) – The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) praised the Associated Press (AP) for revising its stylebook to forbid the use of the word “Islamist,” if it is used to describe Islamic militants or extremists. In a press release on Friday, CAIR said revising the term is a "step in the right direction,” and that they helped influence the AP’s decision. “Late last year, the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) approached AP about modifying the reference, which had been added to its influential...

So I just noticed today that a few of my "Facebook friends" more like 2 people I haven't spoken to in twenty years, had those stupid gay marriage red equality signs up. I defriended them all, anyone else have the same thing happen?

WASHINGTON — An unusual and widely felt 5.6-magnitude quake in Oklahoma in 2011 was probably caused when oil drilling waste was pushed deep underground, a team of university and federal scientists concluded.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) today introduced a budget he says will balance the budget in five years with $2.3 trillion in tax cuts. Paul’s “Platform to Revitalize America” brings spending below the historical average of 19.1 percent of GDP in the first year and spends $9.6 trillion less over the next 10 years based on the current Congressional Budget Office baseline. It achieves a $17 billion surplus in FY2018 and reforms entitlement programs — Medicare recipients, for example, would receive the same healthcare plan as members of Congress. It replenishes $126 billion to the Defense Department stripped in sequestration and...

When Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) filibustered for nearly 13 hours two weeks ago, he had the American people on his side. A new Gallup poll shows a huge majority of Americans — 79 percent — supported Paul’s position that drone strikes should not be used on American soil against Americans suspected of terrorism. Just 13 percent say it would be okay. Americans also don’t support drone strikes against any suspected terrorist on American soil (25 percent support, 66 percent oppose) or against U.S. citizens suspected of terrorism abroad (41 percent support, 52 percent support). In fact, the only circumstance under...

A Syrian Army source gives the first account of what is believed to have been a chemical attack - and it could mean that one of the West's biggest fears is about to come true. Whatever happened last week in the town of Khan al-Assal, west of Aleppo, it achieved something extraordinary in the Syrian civil war: unity among Washington, Moscow and Damascus. All welcomed the rapid decision by Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary-general, to investigate an alleged chemical attack that reportedly killed 26, including Syrian soldiers. Unusually, the request for that investigation came from the Syrian regime, which...

In 2014, all EU countries will hold parliamentary elections that may be won by the opponents of European integration. Recent EU measures to stabilize the situation in Cyprus showed that the foundations of the ideology of the Western world based on the Catholic and Protestant faiths have been undermined. The West is trying to explain its hurried decisions with the pressure from the Russian Federation. After the summit in Brussels approved a plan of Cyprus "rescue" (by providing a tranche of 10 billion euros in exchange for the withdrawal of 10 percent of all deposits in the country), it became...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE March 18, 2013 Contact: HHS Press Office (202) 690-6343 Affordable Care Act extended free preventive care to 71 million Americans with private health insurance Health Care Law’s third anniversary sees health costs slowing down, more value for consumersHealth and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced today that about 71 million Americans in private health insurance plans received coverage for at least one free preventive health care service, such as a mammogram or flu shot, in 2011 and 2012 because of the Affordable Care Act. The new data was released in a report from HHS today.Additionally, an...

As most of you have read or seen by now, a journalist and NBC/MSNBC media consultant named William “Bill” Arkin has created quite a stir by viciously insulting American soldiers in Iraq. He wrote at his Washington Post blog, “Early Warning: William M. Arkin on National and Homeland Security” column (1/30/07), that “… this NBC (Nightly News) report is just an ugly reminder of the price we pay for a mercenary - oops sorry, volunteer force that thinks it is doing the dirty work” re Iraq. The “report,” according to Arkin, featured “a number of soldiers (who) expressed frustration with...

As the national debate on gun violence continues and Americans search for answers to curb the current onslaught some people claim the mental health situation is the key issue to address--not new gun legislation. But does this sentiment stand up to closer scrutiny, or, is it just a convenient excuse being used by the NRA and others to kill legislation designed to restrict assault weapons? Since the murders of 27 people—including 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary, and the gunman's own mother at home, in Newtown, Connecticut, politicians on Capitol Hill have been forced to address the...

Donald Voigt, chief scientist at the WAIS Divide Camp, examines an ice core.A team of U.S. ice-coring scientists and engineers in Antarctica, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), have recovered from the ice sheet a record of past climate and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that extends back 68,000 years. Retrieved from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS), the ice containing the record is known as the WAIS Divide ice core. The cylinders of ice that make up the core contain uniquely detailed information on past environmental conditions such as the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases, surface air temperature,...

Experts manufacture whatever facts an activist, politician, or bureaucrat needs."Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts," the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) famously quipped. But when it comes to social and environmental problems nowadays, nearly everyone thinks he is entitled to his own facts, and an army of experts is on hand to manufacture and promote the carefully curated truths they require. The Progressive Era dream of empowering nonpartisan experts to solve social, economic, and environmental problems has failed spectacularly. What happened?Breakthrough Institute founders Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger grapple with this question in...

Twitchy.com has been all over the story of NBC’s latest… I was about to say “latest ethical lapse,” but that would imply they have any ethics to begin with. Let’s just call it the latest example of NBC lying so egregiously, even a few other liberal media outlets are calling them out on it. Twitchy deserves our thanks for catching the lie and presenting the truth. And now the cover-up begins at NBC. Erik Wemple at WaPo has the latest: MSNBC is reviewing its portrayal of the testimony of Neil Heslin, the father of a Sandy Hook victim, at a...