Free Republic

MOSCOW/WASHINGTON, Nov 23 (Reuters) - Russia's defence minister on Tuesday accused U.S. bombers of rehearsing a nuclear strike on Russia from two different directions earlier this month and complained that the planes had come within 20 km (12.4 miles) of the Russian border. But the Pentagon said its drills were announced publicly at the time and adhered to international protocols. Moscow's accusation comes at a time of high tension with Washington over Ukraine, with U.S. officials voicing concerns about a possible Russian attack on its southern neighbour - a suggestion the Kremlin has dismissed as false. Moscow has in turn...

European lawmakers have voted to declare an EU-wide climate emergency, in a symbolic move aimed at increasing pressure on the incoming European Commission to take a stronger stance on climate change. The climate declaration was passed on Thursday in Strasbourg during a European Parliament (EP) debate on the upcoming United Nations’ COP25 climate summit that kicks off December 2 in Madrid. In a statement on Twitter after the vote, EU lawmakers urged the European Commission “to fully ensure all relevant legislative and budgetary proposals are fully aligned” with the 1.5-degree-Celsius target limit on global warming. The resolution calls on the...

Europe’s Tolerance for Terrorists The outrage in Amsterdam continues. December 22, 2017 Daniel Greenfield Saleh Ali was one of 64,000 Syrian refugees living in the Netherlands. The vast majority, like Ali, are young men. And the largest number of these migrants spend their days idling in Amsterdam. On Thursday morning, Saleh Ali took a walk to trendy Amstelveenseweg while wearing a keffiyah and waving a terrorist PLO flag. He stopped in front of a Jewish restaurant, shouted “Allahu Akbar” and began smashing the windows. The Amsterdam police stood by and watched quizzically until he was done. Then when he entered...

European finance ministers are worried. They say the United States' big tax reform bill contains measures that would unfairly disadvantage European business and contravene global fair-taxation rules. Are they right? Last week, the finance ministers of Europe's five biggest economies — Germany, France, the UK, Spain and Italy — wrote an anxious letter to their American colleague, US Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin, and copied it to all senior Republican politicians in the Congress and Senate. The letter's thrust: The draft US tax bill, if passed as written a week ago, would represent a break with global fair-taxation rules as applied...

During the Bretton Woods Conference, in 1944, Lord Halifax is said to have “whispered to Lord Keynes: ‘It’s true: they have the money bags but we have all the brains.’” By “they,” Halifax meant the Americans.His frustration with the American mind—often prosaic and anti-intellectual—during the critical Bretton-Woods negotiations seems as valid today. As odious as Britain’s elites are; boy, are they cleverer than ours. Take the impromptu interview, on June 28, which Richard Quest, CNN’s imported British broadcast journalist, conducted with Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party.Farage had emerged exhilarated from the coven that is the European Parliament,...

It might seem logical that triumph for David Cameron’s traditionally Euro-skeptic Tories would boost the likelihood of Britain splitting from the European Union in a referendum the prime minister has promised to call by 2017. But things are rarely so simple in European politics. Victory has given Cameron his best chance yet to push through enough reform within the EU to avoid “Brexit.” And the poor showing of the UK Independence Party—whose iconic leader Nigel Farage resigned after failing to win his seat—greatly frees up the British leader to seek a compromise with his EU counterparts. Cameron’s Conservatives also represent...

Germans are more supportive of how the EU is run than any other member state, but experts tell The Local that may only last as long as the economic good times. Among Germans, 69 percent told Gallup pollsters that they “approve” of the EU leadership's job performance in 2014. That was well above the average approval rating of 49 percent across all member states, while just three other countries—Ireland, Belgium and Luxembourg—topped 60 percent approval. “[The results] might be an indication that some Germans now start to identify leadership within the European Union with their own government and with the...

Why a Belgian Chef Is Joining ISIS: 'Fighting Against Americans' BY AMMAR CHEIKH OMAR After two years of fighting alongside al Qaeda-backed militants in Syria, Abu Saif thought he was done with jihad and ready to return to his “normal” life as a chef in Belgium. But everything changed when Sunni militants swept through northern Iraq and brought their brand of holy war to a global audience. The 31-year-old cut ties with his old fighting force and put in with the rival Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), setting out for the militants’ stronghold of Raqqa and then, he...