Free Republic

An estimated 80% of the two-story French Embassy in the suburban al-Andlus neighborhood of Tripoli was destroyed by a car bomb on the morning of April 23. The massive blast also damaged four neighboring houses. Remarkably, only two French gendarmes were injured in the 7 AM attack, which seemed designed to avoid mass casualties amongst the hundreds of Libyans who assemble outside the embassy later in the morning to seek French visas. No group has claimed responsibility, though the Interior Ministry and Foreign Ministry have both typically blamed Qaddafi loyalists rather than radical Islamists for the bombing (Le Monde, April...

The World Gold Council has advised Italy to deploy its 2,000 tonnes of gold to break free of EMU austerity dictates. By using the reserves – the world's fourth largest – to collateralise the first chunk of any losses for bondholders, Italy could raise €400bn or so on the capital markets and determine its own future for a while. Italy did this in 1974 when it borrowed $2bn from the Bundesbank, using gold as collateral. Portugal did the same thing to borrow $1bn from the BIS in the 1975-1977, and India used its gold to borrow from Japan in 1991....

The UK Independence Party has achieved its best showing at the polls yet by winning almost 150 seats in the council elections. Nigel Farage, the party’s leader, was jubilant after it emerged that one in four voters supported Ukip in the elections in 35 councils in England and Wales. The rise of the party cost the Conservatives three local authorities, although Ukip did not win control of any councils. The party was even second in the South Shields by-election in the north east of England, where the Tories were third and the Liberal Democrats a distant seventh. By late on...

The eurozone is one shock away from a Japan-style deflation crisis after a key measure of prices fell to the lowest since the launch of the single currency. The region’s core inflation rate – which strips out food and energy – fell to 1pc in March. This is far below expectations and leaves monetary union with a diminishing safety buffer. “The eurozone is tracking the experience in Japan in mid-1990s. there is a very high risk of a slide into deflation,” said Lars Christensen, a monetary theorist at Danske Bank. While eurozone core inflation was slightly lower in the aftermath...

The Franco-German axis that has driven EU affairs ever since Schuman and Adenauer in the early 1950s is collapsing before our eyes. This was inevitable. Their interests have become incompatible under monetary union. The currency that was supposed to bind them is turning them into enemies, as this newspaper long warned. The latest argument gaining traction – advanced by Prof Bernd Lücke and the German eurosceptic party AfD among others – is that the only way to save the Franco-German relationship and therefore the EU is to break up the euro before it does more damage. Interesting twist. In the...

Gazprom’s chief spokesman, Sergei Kupryanov, has announced plans to vastly increase Russia’s pipeline capacities for gas export to Europe, far above Gazprom’s existing supply commitments or possibilities. Along with this, the spokesman informed the well-respected East European Gas Analysis consultancy based in the United States that Gazprom envisages using only pipelines in which it has at least 50-percent ownership to carry out Gazprom’s exports to Europe (East European Gas Analysis via www.naturalgaseurope.com, accessed April 16). President Vladimir Putin and his government are driving these pipeline projects politically. With the recent completion of the Nord Stream One and Two pipelines to...

The Tsarnaev brothers, Tamerlan, 26 years old, and 19-year-old Jokhar, have been accused of carrying out the bombing at the Boston Marathon on Monday, April 15. Tamerlan has died from injuries sustained from a shootout with police on Friday, April 19. While, as of the publication of this article, the younger brother, Jokhar, is still at large. The Tsarnaev family used to reside in Kyrgyzstan. They probably ended up in Kyrgyzstan after mass deportation of Chechens from the North Caucasus in 1944. Today, there are approximately 20,000 ethnic Chechens still residing in Kyrgyzstan. Shortly before the onset of the second...

China is moving tanks and armored vehicles closer to the North Korean border in response to increasing military threats from Pyongyang. People’s Liberation Army troop and tank movements were reported in Daqing, Heilongjiang, and in Shenyang and Dandong, Liaoning. They include the 190th Mechanized Infantry Brigade based in Benxi, Liaoning. Large numbers of fighter jets were also reported above Fucheng, Hebei and Zhangwu and Changchun, Liaoning. The Washington Times reports that one of China’s Russian-made Su-27 jets crashed on March 31 in Rongcheng, Shandong – across the Yellow Sea from Korea.

China is massively under-reporting its overseas fishing catch according to a study by Canada’s University of British Columbia. From 2000 to 2011, Beijing reported an average overseas catch of 368,000 tons a year to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization. According to the report, however, the average catch for 2000-11 was actually 4.6 million tons a year – more than 12 times the reported figure. Of that total, 2.9 million tons of fish a year came from West Africa. “The unreported catch is crippling the artisanal fisheries that help to feed West African populations. It shows the extent of the...

After months of fierce negotiations prior to President Xi Jinping’s Moscow visit (March 22-24) China and Russian signed an agreement on supplying 24 Russian Su-35 fighter jets to China and for the joint construction of four Lada-class diesel submarines. The purchases are China’s most significant from Russia in the past 10 years, the Interfax news agency reports, and are intended to provide a basis for future bilateral military cooperation. [Editor’s Note: Su-35 is Russia’s most advanced 4th generation multipurpose fighter jet. The Lada-class submarine specializes in anti-submarine defense and conducting independent missions against enemy subs and ships in coastal, narrow...

Iran has reportedly been training pro-government Syrian militia groups at a secret base inside Iranian borders. It is allegedly an “open secret” within the Syrian government that the Iranians are helping train at least 50,000 militiamen, although both governments have denied the allegations. A member of one of the pro-Assad militias said of the training that “it’s the same course Hezbollah operatives normally do…the course teaches you the important elements of guerrilla warfare, like several different ways to carry a rifle and shoot, and the best methods to prepare against surprise attacks.” Irregular militia groups have recently played a prominent...

The facts in the public domain do not justify the sharp fall in the gold price over the past two trading days. At the time of writing, the price per 1oz is $1363, down over $200 since Friday's open. The scale of the sell-off was the worst in 30 years, with the volatility index standing at the highest level in its history. John Kemp at Reuters has calculated that based on a normal distribution, you would expect to see movements like Monday's only once in every 500 million trading days, or two million years. The news which would justify such...

Commodity prices have been falling since September, culminating in a rout over the past two weeks. That is a classic warning for the global economy. It is becoming ever clearer that the roaring boom in global equities since last summer has priced in an economic recovery that does not in fact exist. The International Monetary Fund has had to nurse down its global growth forecasts yet again. We are still stuck in an old-fashioned trade depression, with pervasive over-capacity in manufacturing plant and a record global savings rate of 25pc of GDP. German car sales fell 17pc in March. That...

First they purloin the savings and bank deposits in Laiki and the Bank of Cyprus, including the working funds of the University of Cyprus, and thousands of small firms hanging on by their fingertips. Then they seize three quarters of the country’s gold reserves, making it ever harder for Cyprus to extricate itself from EMU at a later date. The people of Cyprus first learned about this from a Reuters leak of the working documents for the Eurogroup meeting on Friday. It is tucked away in clause 29. "Sale of excess gold reserves: The Cypriot authorities have committed to sell...

Europe is falling dangerously far behind the US in productivity growth and is blighted by crippling energy costs, the pan-EU industry federation has warned. “Europe doesn’t have an energy policy. It has a climate policy,” said Markus Beyrer, head of BusinessEurope. Mr Beyrer said the US is running away with the shale energy revolution, leaving Europe’s companies in the dust. Spot gas prices are now four to five times higher in Europe, with grim implications for the chemical industry. “Shale gas is a game-changer and we need to have a discussion based on the evidence, not based on risks,” Mr...

Last week the Chinese Foreign Ministry all but confirmed that it plans to sell its longtime ally Pakistan a new 1,000-megawatt nuclear reactor. The deal, reportedly signed in February, is a cause for concern in Washington. Though nominally a U.S. ally, Pakistan already has the world's fastest-growing nuclear-weapons arsenal and one of the world's worst nuclear-proliferation records. It is a country perpetually under threat from religious fanaticism, political instability and economic mismanagement. The sale also poses a serious threat to the legitimacy of the international nuclear regulatory regime. Since 1974, the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), a 46-member body, has been...

The Bank of Japan has launched the most daring monetary experiment of modern times, aiming to double the money base within two years to overpower deflation and catapult the economy out of slump. The blast of money is expected to reignite the yen “carry trade” and flood global markets with up to $2 trillion (£1.3 trillion) of pent-up savings, giving the entire world a shot in the arm. The BoJ’s new team under governor Haruhiko Kuroda voted 8:1 for a double dose of “quantitative and qualitative monetary easing”, vowing to inject stimulus for “as long as it takes” to break...

Readers of the Daily Telegraph were right all along. Quantitative easing will never be reversed. It is not liquidity management as claimed so vehemently at the outset. It really is the same as printing money. Columbia Professor Michael Woodford, the world's most closely followed monetary theorist, says it is time to come clean and state openly that bond purchases are forever, and the sooner people understand this the better. "All this talk of exit strategies is deeply negative," he told a London Business School seminar on the merits of Helicopter money, or "overt monetary financing". He said the Bank of...

On March 17, the Iranian navy launched a new Jamaran-2 destroyer in the Caspian Sea. The Iranian establishment, including President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iranian Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi and Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces Hassan Firuzabadi, attended the ceremony. This destroyer was developed and constructed domestically by Iranian experts and specialists. Earlier, a Jamaran-1 destroyer was launched in the Persian Gulf. The 1,420-ton destroyer, which is part of the 16th fleet of Iranian warships, is equipped with modern radars and electronic warfare capabilities. The Jamaran-2 has a top speed of up to 30 knots and a helipad. The destroyer...

Eurozone unemployment reached a record 12pc in February and looks certain to ratchet higher as fiscal cuts deepen and manufacturing continues to struggle, raising the spectre of social explosion across southern Europe. A total of 19m people were out of work in the 17-member bloc in February, the European Union’s statistics office said on Tuesday, a rise of 1.77m on the same month last year. Greece was the worst affected, with unemployment at 26.4pc, but Spain remains the hardest hit of the large economies with a jobless rate of 26.3pc. Youth unemployment is above 60pc across large parts of the...

<p>The punishment regime imposed on Cyprus is a trick against everybody involved in this squalid saga, against the Cypriot people and the German people, against savers and creditors. All are being deceived.</p>

President Obama's first journey to Israel as president comes amid earth-shattering change in Middle East, much of it for the worse. The Arab Spring, which once raised hopes of freedom and dignity, has diverged onto the dark path of Islamist authoritarian rule. In Syria, tens of thousands of people have died in a bitter civil war that might have recently seen its first use of chemical weapons. And Iran continues its march toward nuclear weapons capability, heedless of international condemnation. Obama's effort to seek peace between Palestinians and Israelis is in tatters. That's why the White House has been lowering...

The United States effectively cancelled the elements of a Europe-based missile defense system, a bone of contention between the U.S. and Russia for several years. The White House maintains that “the missile defense decisions...were in no way about Russia,” but rather the result of shuffling resources to counter the renewed nuclear threat from North Korea. Privately, several officials acknowledged that there may be “side benefits that accrue with Russia.” The New York Times reports that the system was cited numerous times by the Kremlin as a “major obstacle” to bilateral cooperation on nuclear arms reductions and other issues. Most recently,...

Savings accounts in Spain, Italy and other European countries will be raided if needed to preserve Europe's single currency by propping up failing banks, a senior eurozone official has announced. The new policy will alarm hundreds of thousands of British expatriates who live and have transferred their savings, proceeds from house sales and other assets to eurozone bank accounts in countries such as France, Spain and Italy. The euro fell on global markets after Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Dutch chairman of the eurozone, announced that the heavy losses inflicted on depositors in Cyprus would be the template for future banking crises...

Dmitry Medvedev gave a taste of Moscow’s displeasure over the Cyprus rescue plan on Monday when he said “the stealing of what has already been stolen continues”. Meeting deputies at his residence outside the city, Russia’s Prime Minister said there was a need to “understand what this story turns into in the long run, what the consequences for the international financial and monetary system will be - and thus, for our own interests as well.” Mr Medvedev prefaced his comments by addressing Deputy Prime Minister, Igor Shuvalov, with the words: “Let us, Igor Ivanovich, talk about what’s happening with Cyprus....

Japanese scientists have found vast reserves of rare earth metals on the Pacific seabed that can be mined cheaply, a discovery that may break the Chinese monopoly on a crucial raw material needed in hi-tech industries and advanced weapons systems. "We have found deposits that are just two to four meters from the seabed surface at higher concentrations than anybody ever thought existed, and it won't cost much at all to extract," said professor Yasuhiro Kato from Tokyo University, the leader of the team. While America, Australia, and other countries have begun to crank up production of the seventeen rare...

<p>Japan's national ideology is pacifist, and this is written into Article 9 of its constitution, which states that "the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes."</p>

<p>Rebel forces in the Central African Republic said Saturday that they had entered the capital Bangui and called on the army not to fight them and for the country's president to leave.</p>

India remains Russia’s biggest customer for arms sales and technology transfers. It still receives about 70 percent of its defense imports from Russia and accounts for between 30–40 percent of Russia’s defense exports. Nevertheless, not all is well in this relationship. Multiple examples of shoddy Russian quality and maintenance, including the Gorshkov aircraft carrier that is supposed to be retrofitted for India, the INS Chakra nuclear power submarine, the R-77 air-to-air missile, as well as the superior competitiveness of many Western (and Israeli) systems on price and quality have led to a series of embarrassing losses to competitors in major...

The extensive and ever-proliferating literature on terrorism since 2001 remains overwhelmingly West-centric in character. Much less is written or known about terrorist threats in areas where the West is not engaged, such as the Russian North Caucasus region. Neither has Russia been able or willing to publish a threat assessment or strategic document relating to how it sees and deals with the terrorist threat. Until now, its assessments, though mentioning terrorism, have all been subordinated to the notion of a big conventional and potentially nuclear war incited by the West or (though never identified as such) by China. However, that...

<p>The Cypriot financial system stands on the edge of collapse as local banks on Wednesday remained closed and the European authorities warned they could begin withdrawing support for the country within days.</p>

The appearance of a detachment of Russian Cossacks in Moldova’s Autonomous Territorial Unit of Gagauzia has not only unsettled some residents there but also spotlights Moscow’s efforts to use the Christian Turkic Gagauz people—alongside Transnistria—against the Moldovan government in Chisinau. The Cossacks’ presence incites a dangerous game that could lead to the breakup of this small Eastern European country and spark serious internal conflicts that the Russian government would likely move to exploit. Gagauzia, Moldova Two weeks ago, ethnic Russian Cossacks appeared in Gagauzia. They have sought formal recognition as a public organization from the republic’s justice ministry, named several...

Jérôme Cahuzac, France's budget minister, has resigned after being placed under formal investigation for tax fraud and money laundering. Mr Cahuzac, a cabinet heavyweight, had been tasked with fighting tax evasion. He is now under investigation for holding a secret Swiss bank account. The resignation is an embarrassment and a blow to President François Hollande as his government seeks to redraft deficit reduction plans to maintain fiscal credibility with France's euro zone partners. Mr Cahuzac was responsible for making drastic government spending cuts. He had repeatedly dismissed as "crazy" a report in December by French investigative news website Mediapart that...

One's first reflex is to gasp at the stupidity of the EU policy elites, but truth is that most EU officials handling the Cyprus crisis know perfectly well that their masters have just set the slow fuse on a powder keg – and they can only pray that it is slow. The decision to expropriate Cypriot savers – even the poorest – was imposed by Germany, Holland, Finland, Austria, and Slovakia, whose only care at this stage is to assuage bail-out fatigue at home and avoid their own political crises. This latest debacle has caught me on the hop, literally,...

Key parties signed coalition agreements with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday, clearing the way for him to inform President Shimon Peres that a new government has been formed, a statement from his office said. "The prime minister welcomes the coalition agreements that have been signed between the Likud and Yisrael Beitenu (on one side) and the Yesh Atid party and the Jewish Home," the statement said. "On Saturday evening, the prime minister will inform President Shimon Peres that he has completed the task" of forming a government.

Hundreds of Egyptians demonstrated in Cairo on Friday to press for the army to assume power in a country plagued by unrest and instability two years after a revolution which toppled president Hosni Mubarak. The protest was held in eastern Cairo in response to a call by retired army officers and groups opposed to the Muslim Brotherhood, the party of President Mohamed Morsi. "The army must return" to power and "Down with the power of the guide," they chanted, referring to the Brotherhood's spiritual guide Mohamed Badie, as they waved portraits of General Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, the armed forces chief....

The US Central Intelligence Agency is collecting information on Islamic radicals in Syria for possible lethal drone strikes against them at a later stage, The Los Angeles Times reported. Citing unnamed current and former US officials, the newspaper said President Barack Obama had not authorized any drone missile strikes in Syria yet, and none were under consideration. However CIA's Counterterrorism Center, which runs drone programs targeting militants in Pakistan and Yemen, had recently shifted several targeting officers to improve intelligence gathering on militants in Syria. The targeting officers have formed a unit with colleagues who were tracking Al-Qaeda operatives in...

Sergei Shoigu, a former long-time emergency situations minister (MChS) and a former Moscow region governor is a well-known and popular figure in Russia—according to recent independent Leveda-Tsentr polls, he is at present more popular than Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. Last November, President Vladimir Putin sacked the highly disliked Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov, replacing him with Shoigu, whose popularity has been growing ever since; Serdyukov continues to be discredited by a high-profile investigation of alleged mass misappropriations in the defense ministry under his watch. Today, Shoigu seems to be second in popularity only to Putin himself, though, according to Leveda-Tsentr director...

Germany and France will clash at a Brussels summit over the European Union's austerity policies today as official figures showed that unemployment was accelerating in the eurozone. Anti-austerity protesters gather in Brussels ahead of an EU summit on Thursday EU leaders are meeting at a regular European Council to discuss how growth can be balanced with the fiscal austerity measures taken to tackle the eurozone debt crisis. Jose Manuel Barroso, the European Commission President, admitted that while the EU had made progress, in tackling the sovereign debt crisis that had threatened the euro, the situation in some countries had reached...

Russia and Ukraine are close to reaching an agreement on the clearance of Black Sea Fleet (BSF) vessel movements outside their bases, the Ukrainian website zn.ua reported on March 2, citing sources familiar with the talks. The sources said that Russia no longer objects to a provision that all BSF movements will have to be cleared with the Ukrainian authorities; earlier, Russia insisted that simply notifying Ukraine about the movements of BSF units outside their bases would suffice. However, understanding is yet to be reached on procedures for emergencies. Moscow believes a notification should be sufficient for emergency situation, while...

New and disturbing details are emerging about the efforts of Hezbollah to monitor and target Jewish citizens in cities across the world. Hossam Yaakoub, a Lebanese-born Swedish citizen arrested in Cyprus last July for spying on Israeli tourists has given new details on Hezbollah’s global operations at his trial in February. Yaakoub, identified by police as a Hezbollah operative, told authorities he was “just collecting information about the Jews. This is what my organization is doing, everywhere in the world.” Yaakoub admitted that Hezbollah “wanted to have Cyprus as a base” and that he was searching for restaurants catering to...

Entering the second year of his third presidency, President Vladimir Putin has shown uncharacteristically scant interest to foreign policy matters perhaps suspecting that Western “partners” are sponsoring Russia’s opposition movement and that neighboring post-Soviet leaders and even Chinese “friends” are losing confidence in his leadership. He keeps Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev on a short leash—having him perform investor-courting functions—so that some more important government tasks are delegated to the newly-appointed Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. Last week (March 5), Shoigu paid an alliance-reviving visit to Vietnam and finalized a deal on selling and servicing submarines, as well as negotiated a provisional...

Beginning on June 1, Russians will no longer be permitted to smoke in public areas such as airports, metro stations, and in workplaces, in accordance with a new smoking ban. By next summer, reports the BBC, smoking will further be banned on long-distance ships and trains, as well as in hotels, restaurants, bars, cafes, and shops, and additional restrictions will be placed on tobacco advertisements. The current smoking rate in Russia ranks among the highest in the world, with more than 4 in 10 Russians considered smokers. Unsurprisingly, public support for the new law remains low, despite the widespread approval...

Political revolt against the euro construct has spread to Germany. A new party led by economists, jurists, and Christian Democrat rebels will kick off this week, calling for the break-up of monetary union before it can do any more damage. "An end to this euro," is the first line on the webpage of Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). "The introduction of the euro has proved to be a fatal mistake, that threatens the welfare of us all. The old parties are used up. They stubbornly refuse to admit their mistakes." They propose German withdrawl from EMU and return to the D-Mark,...

Georgia’s parliamentary elections on October 1, 2012, have ushered in, not merely a rotation of government, but a change of regime, from President Mikheil Saakashvili’s United National Movement (UNM) to billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili’s Georgian Dream. The latter won an indisputable mandate in the narrow terms of “electoral democracy.” While Ivanishvili has taken over the government, Saakashvili is serving out his final presidential term until October, with rapidly diminishing powers of office. Five months after the elections, Georgia’s socio-economic modernization, institution-building and Euro-Atlantic integration processes are variously slowing down, grinding to a halt or being reversed. Georgian Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili...

Anti-euro political parties in Europe in recent years have so far tended to be either well to the right of center or, as evidenced by the recent vote in Italy, anything but staid. But in Germany, change may be afoot. A new party is forming this spring, intent on abandoning European efforts to prop up the common currency. And its founders are a collection of some of the country's top economists and academics. Named Alternative für Deutschland (Alternative for Germany), the group has a clear goal: "the dissolution of the euro in favor of national currencies or smaller currency...

China's trade figures released this morning are shocking. They tell us that China is still flooding the world with excess goods, and is once again a net drain on global demand. As you may have seen, Chinese exports surged 22pc in February. Imports fell 15pc. This is exactly what pessimists feared. For all the talk of a great shift by China away from export-led growth to internal demand, the reality is that the Politburo is still propping up the same old system, still shovelling subsidies to loss-making firms and state behemoths to keeps factories open. Investment is still 49pc of...

China’s DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM) is no longer merely an aspiration. Beijing has successfully developed, partially tested and deployed in small numbers the world’s first weapons system capable of targeting the last relatively uncontested U.S. airfield in the Asia-Pacific from long-range, land-based mobile launchers. This airfield is a moving aircraft carrier strike group (CSG), which the Second Artillery, China’s strategic missile force, now has the capability to at least attempt to disable with the DF-21D in the event of conflict. With the ASBM having progressed this far, and representing the vanguard of a broad range of potent asymmetric systems,...

German chancellor Angela Merkel is not endorsing an expansion of gay rights, even though members of her Christian Democratic party are. Merkel is under pressure to take a stand after German's high court ruled that gays should be allowed to adopt their partner's adopted children; previously they could only adopt their partner's biological children. There was momentum among some in Merkel's party to introduce new laws that would equalize tax laws for same-sex couples — some believed Merkel and her peers were hoping to broaden the party's base among more liberal voters — but social conservatives among the Christian Democrats...

Ireland has done everything demanded by the EU’s creditor powers, and seemingly survived. It has endured a fiscal squeeze of 16pc of GDP. It has stabilized the colossal debts left from taking on the gambling losses of Anglo Irish Bank at EU behest, that is to say from shielding German, British, Dutch and Belgian lenders from systemic contagion at a critical moment. It has clawed its way back to market credibility, issuing bonds at respectable rates. “Our last issue of routine 3-month treasury bills was at 0.26pc, not quite what Germany gets but very low,” said finance minister Michael Noonan....