Free Republic

An ancient fortress unknown to Bulgarian and international archaeology has been discovered in the thick and almost subtropical forests along the Ropotamo River in Southeast Bulgaria, the National Museum of History in Sofia has announced. The discovery has been made by Dr. Ivan Hristov, Deputy Director of the National Museum of History, who has also been excavating several other archaeological sites along Bulgaria's Southern Black Sea coast, including the Talaskara Fortress on Cape Chervenka (Chrisosotira). The previously unknown fortress, which appears to have been inhabited by Ancient Thracians, has been found in "the jungle of the Ropotamo" River, in the...

Former US Presidential candidate and publisher of Forbes Magazine, Steve Forbes, used the platform of his magazine to pen an open letter to the prime minister and finance minister of Greece, Alexis Tsipras and Yanis Varoufakis. The full text of his letter appears below. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Dear Prime Minister Tsipras and Finance Minister Varoufakis: You may have won a four-month reprieve of sorts from your creditors, but your situation is desperate, and everyone knows it, most particularly Europe’s paymasters, the Germans. As you just painfully learned, your ability to blackmail your creditors is a fraction of what it once was. Businesses,...

Turkish forces are reportedly forcing refugees fleeing the chaos of the Middle East to turn back from the border with Bulgaria. According to reports, as many as 600 refugees, including women and children, are being forced to return to their camps in Turkey now. One refugee told media that the Yazidis left their camp because conditions are unbearable. “All that matters now is to move on, we don’t even care where we go,” one female refugee said. “We are dying daily, and I can’t stand it anymore.”

The Yezidis are now on the move. This has been secretly planned for months. What we now have is a potentially mass exodus from ISIS-controlled Iraq. They have reason to believe that Bulgaria will grant them asylum. However, Turkey, which they must enter and exit on their way to Bulgaria, is giving them trouble. According to my informant Ghulie Khalaf, “There have been clashes between the refugees and the Turkish police. Ten buses are on their way but there are seventeen more buses to be packed but the Turkish guards are stopping them at the border. We want media attention.”

End austerity: it’s cheating us all; Jobs not Trident; No cuts; Defy Tory rule; Cut war not welfare; Stop fracking; a Living Wage for mothers; and, The Pope gets it, why can’t you? With the slogans emblazoned on banners, posters and flags, anti-austerity marchers shouted slogans, sang, and beat drums, as they walked through London in what is being called the biggest protest march that the city has seen. The ‘End Austerity Now’ demonstration saw participation by an estimated crowd of between 70,000 and 250,000, all coming together to protest against cuts imposed due to austerity, the threats to the...

Why Is The EU Forcing European Nations To Adopt 'Bail-In' Legislation by the End of the Summer? Are they expecting something to happen? As you will read about below, the European Union says that any nation within the EU that does not enact "bail-in" legislation within the next two months will face legal action. The countries that are being threatened in this manner include Italy and France. If you fast forward two months from this moment, that puts us in early August. So clearly the European Union wants everything to be squared away by the end of the summer. Is...

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has warned European Union leaders that violence from Islamic extremists could escalate if the EU rejects Turkey as a member... Turkey signed the association agreement for EU membership in 1963 and it is expected that a two-day EU summit this week will finally decide to begin formal membership talks, probably in the second half of next year... Taking Turkey’s 69 million, mainly Muslim, population into the Union is widely disputed... In Germany, leader of the Christian Social Union Edmund Stoiber told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that his party in government would do what it...

https://twitter.com/zerohedge/status/609341858045497344 https://twitter.com/TraderStef/status/609355146842275840 https://twitter.com/JAFF3/status/609343992803774464 https://twitter.com/russian_market/status/609341880623591424 The bank runs (and capital controls) begin. Macedonia Central Bank Governor Bogov states: *GREEK BANKS IN MACEDONIA CAN’T WITHDRAW CASH: BOGOV*MACEDONIAN BANKS PROTECTED IN CASE OF GREXIT: BOGOV How long before the rest of Europe follows suit and a bank holiday is declared Monday to "Cyprus" depositors? He further added: *MACEDONIAN CENTRAL BANK SEES MAJOR RISKS FROM POLITICAL CRISIS http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-06-12/macedonia-central-bank-blocks-greek-bank-withdrawals-case-grexit Macedonia Central Bank blocks Greek bank withdrawals FXStreet (Córdoba) - Macedonian Central Bank's Governor Dimitar Bogov has stated that Greek banks are not able to withdraw cash. According to Bogov, this withdrawal halt is protection against...

One is the plight of Greece, with the nation's leftist government and its creditors engaged in the latest round of brinksmanship over its debt. Greece is running out of cash, but international creditors are refusing to release bailout money unless the government makes concessions. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, elected on a platform of fighting back against European-imposed austerity, has refused to budge. Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, had expected to have a proposal from Tsipras several days ago, but he was "visibly angry," according to The Guardian... A Greek exit would pose a challenge to a beleaguered...

Soviet Communism, the dark tyranny that controlled nearly 40 nations and was responsible for the deaths of an estimated 100 million victims during the 20th century, suddenly collapsed 20 years ago without a shot being fired. In just two years--from 1989 to 1991--the Berlin Wall fell, the Soviet Union disintegrated, and Marxism- Leninism was dumped unceremoniously on the ash heap of history. There was dancing in the street and champagne toasts on top of the Brandenburg Gate. For 40 years, the United States and the West had been following a policy of containment, détente, accommodation. Ronald Reagan decided it was...

(Aug 2, 2012) POLISH officials have unveiled a statue of former President Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II, honouring two men widely credited in this Eastern European country with helping to topple communism 23 years ago. The statue was unveiled in Gdansk, the birthplace of Lech Walesa's Solidarity movement, in the presence of about 120 former Solidarity activists, many of whom were imprisoned in the 1980s for their roles in organising or taking part in strikes against the communist regime. The bronze statue, erected in the lush seaside President Ronald Reagan Park, is a slightly larger-than-life rendering of the...

The ship had a cargo hold filled with ceramic jars, some -- and perhaps all -- of them filled with salt fish. It probably left from a seaport in what is now Turkey and sailed northwest through the Black Sea to the Crimea to pick up its load. Then, for unknown reasons, it sank in 275 feet of water off the present-day Bulgarian coast, coming softly to rest on a carpet of mud. Last week, archaeologists announced they had found the long-lost vessel. Sunk sometime between 490 B.C. and 280 B.C., it is the oldest wreck ever found in the...

<p>SOFIA, Bulgaria -- Could it be that Noah's Ark lies well-preserved somewhere in the inky depths of the Black Sea? A U.S.-Bulgarian scientific expedition is combing the Black Sea for traces of a lost civilization -- a mission that could shed more light on the controversial timing and site of the biblical Great Flood.</p>

The United Nations will explore options with Israel's new government for a return to negotiations on creating a Palestinian state within a reasonable timeframe, the body’s new envoy said Tuesday, according to AFP. Nickolay Mladenov, the UN special Middle East coordinator, told the Security Council that "the coming period will be critical to the future of the peace process." Peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) have been comatose since a major American push for a final deal ended in failure in April 2014. UN efforts to revive the peace process were effectively on hold in recent months...

21:05 - 03.08.2004Bulgarian Archaeologists Find 3,000 Year-old Pictograms, Say May Be Thracian Script SOFIA (bnn)- Archaeologists exploring remains of a Bronze Age fortress in southern Bulgaria said Tuesday they found traces of primitive scripture supposed to have been used by Thracian tribes that once lived in that area. The pictograms, painted on 3, 000 year-old ceramic utensils, were found near the ancient Perperikon fortress, some 300 kilometers (186 miles) southeast of Sofia, archaeological team leader Nikolay Ovcharov told state TV. He said the discovery could back a still unconfirmed hypothesis that the Thracians, had a script of their own. The...

An Ancient Thracian bronze artifact in the shape of a stork's head described as "the oldest children's toy in Europe" has been identified by Bulgarian archaeologists among archaeological items found by local residents in the area of the southern town of Zlatograd in the Rhodope Mountains. The Thracian toy is made of bronze mixed with some silver, and is dated to the Late Bronze age, about 1500-1200 BC, the period of Ancient Troy and the Civilization of Mycenae. It consists of a tripod holding what appears to be a stork's head which can move and "drink water"; it weighs 30...

The Bulgarian Orthodox Church’s governing body, the Holy Synod, has decided to include a blessing for Simeon Saxe-Coburg as “His Majesty Simeon II, Tsar of the Bulgarians” in public and private worship. The proposal was made to the Holy Synod by Nikolai, Metropolitan of Plovdiv. Born in 1937, Saxe-Coburg became king of Bulgaria in 1943 after the sudden death of his father, Boris III. Because he was a minor, there was a regency of three. On the communist takeover in Bulgaria at the end of World War 2, a “People’s Court” process was initiated which led to thousands of deaths,...

Reports claimed the government was prepared to reduce at least three different VAT rates to one, and limit exemptions. Prime minister Alexis Tsipras had opposed the move, claiming that the change would hit poorer people. The country will also press-on with privatisations it had also previously vowed to block, according to reports. However, Syriza has said that demands by creditors to reverse an increase in the minimum wage and cut pensions remain "red lines" that the leftist leadership is unwilling to cross... Mr Sakellaridis said that failure to reach an "honest compromise" with creditors would most likely lead to a...

Turkey, via their Deputy Prime Minister, is putting the word out on the street that it is open to a restoration of ties with Israel, even acknowledging that it is NOT Turkey’s place to criticize the recent Israeli election: snip Wow. The admitted refusal to criticize Israel over the election is definitely a change of pace for Turkey. I mean, when has Erdogan ever missed an opportunity to openly bash Israel? He was just ripping Netanyahu in January for just showing up to the Paris march against ‘radical Islam’, accusing him of killing 2500 Palestinians in the war last year....