Free Republic

Turkish Jews are leaving the country due to growing anti-Semitism, exacerbated by the Islamist AKP government's antagonism towards Israel and Jews. So says Nesim Güveniş, deputy chairman the Association of Turkish Jews in Israel. Speaking to Turkey's Hurriyet Daily Güveniş claimed that young Jews are particularly keen to leave, hundreds of whom have already moved to the US and Europe in recent years. The infamous Mavi Marmara incident and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's decision to storm out of a televised interview with Israeli President Shimon Peres were all contributing factors to the growing sense of unease among Turkey's...

As I write, the city of Maaloula in Syria has become a ghost town after being briefly occupied by members of the al Qaeda–linked jihadist group al-Nusra Front. Conflicting reports claim that al-Nusra fighters have desecrated churches and statues in what may be one of the oldest Christian cities in the world, a place where residents still speak Aramaic, the language presumably spoken by Jesus. Sadly, the experience of Maaloula’s residents is becoming all too common in the Middle East, where examples of brutality against Christians have been mounting in recent weeks. In Egypt, the coup against President Mohamed Morsi...

“Looks like Obamacare is more “on track” than “train wreck,” gloated the experts on Barack Obama’s Think Progress website as they reported the Master’s healthcare scheme was literally forcing America’s insurers to lower their premiums. (1) The glad tidings arose back in May after Oregon providers Providence Health Plan and Family Care Health requested premium rate reductions from the state-run ObamaCare exchange. (Actually, the state just gets to PAY for the exchange. It’s RUN by Kathleen Sebelius at HHS.) Naturally this was big news for Affordable Care Act fans. After all, what could be better than private insurers wanting permission...

Hannah Gastonguay, holding her baby Rahab, is followed by her husband Sean and the couple's 3-year-old daughter Ardith, as they disembark in the port city of San Antonio, Chile, Friday, Aug. 9, 2013. The northern Arizona family was lost at sea for weeks in an ill-fated attempt to leave the U.S. over what they consider government interference in religion. But just weeks into their journey the Gastonguays hit a series of storms that damaged their small boat, leaving them adrift for weeks. They were eventually picked up by a Venezuelan fishing vessel, transferred to a Japanese cargo ship and taken...

Capital city of nearby country becomes haven for converts—even though denied refugee status. The New York Times sheds fresh light on the challenges faced by Afghan Christians seeking religious freedom, spotlighting the growth of a refugee church in India's capital city, New Delhi. As the Times observes in a report worth reading, more than 200 Christian converts from Muslim backgrounds have fled to New Delhi, seeking refuge from the Taliban and from political backlash after television coverage resulted in one Afghan politician's urging the government to execute converts in 2010. As CT noted in July 2010, the Afghan government also...

(CNN) – For Southern Baptist pastor Tim Reed, it was Scripture versus the Scouts. “God’s word explicitly says homosexuality is a choice, a sin,” said Reed, pastor of First Baptist Church of Gravel Ridge in Jacksonville, Arkansas. So when the Boy Scouts of America voted to lift its ban on openly gay youths on May 24, Reed said the church had no choice but to cut its charter with Troop 542. “It’s not a hate thing here,” Reed told CNN affiliate Fox 16. “It’s a moral stance we must take as a Southern Baptist church.” Southern Baptist leaders say Reed...

Caked in dust and full of turn-of-the century treasures, this Paris apartment is like going back in time. Having lain untouched for seven decades the abandoned home was discovered three years ago after its owner died aged 91. The woman who owned the flat, a Mrs De Florian, had fled for the south of France before the outbreak of the Second World War. She never returned and in the 70 years since, it looks like no-one had set foot inside.

(JNS.org) A small Massachusetts town has become a growing refuge for Egyptian Christians fleeing persecution in their homeland. Milford, located approximately 40 miles from Boston, has been drawing increasing numbers of Christians from Egypt, bolstering an existing community of Egyptians who settled in the area in the 1980s and founded St. Mark’s Church in nearby Natick, Mass. “Milford is one of the most famous cities that has a lot of Egyptians,” Maged Saad told the Boston Globe. “It is just by luck. We have no experience in USA, but we just asked one friend. He is here also.” As a...

Per rules, AP stories cannot be posted. Rundown is that the lack of payments from insurers and Medicare is causing doctors to leave the island and leaving residents in a serious situation where there are not enough doctors to provide services.

A federal court is scheduled on Monday to sentence a Mennonite pastor who was convicted of helping a Lesbian-turned-Christian woman to flee the country with her daughter after her former partner was awarded custody of the girl. Kenneth L. Miller of Stuarts Draft, Va., will appear before Burlington, Vt., Judge William Sessions on Monday afternoon, and faces up to three years in prison, according to The Associated Press. Prosecutors want Miller to be sentenced to two-and-a-half or three years in prison – the maximum sentence for his conviction in abetting international parental kidnapping. "Because of his brazen intervention, a child...

The Muslim ethnic cleansing of Christians in Syria has begun .... Christians in Syria Fleeing Country as Crisis Reaches 'Unprecedented Levels of Horror' CP World, February 2, 2013 The Hindus have suffered untold horror at the hands of jihadists. Here's an article about the crisis in Syria from a Hindu point of view. Mideast fears Syria crisis spillover, Madav Nalapat, Sunday Guardian, Kuwait City | 2nd Feb 2013 (thanks to Tom) ..... here are multiplying reports of the foreign fighters "marrying" unwilling Syrian women for short periods of time, or otherwise treating them as war trophies, reports thus far ignored...

Visit any Coptic church in the United States and you immediately recognize the newcomers. You see it in their eyes, hear it in their broken English, sense it in how they cling to the church in search of the familiar. They have come here escaping a place they used to call home, where their ancestors had lived for centuries. Waves of Copts have come here from Egypt before, to escape Gamal Abdel Nasser's nationalizations or the growing Islamist tide. Their country's transformation wasn't sudden, but every year brought more public Islamization. As the veil spread, Coptic women felt increasingly different,...

The United States military has secretly sent a task force of more than 150 planners and other specialists to Jordan to help the armed forces there handle a flood of Syrian refugees, prepare for the possibility that Syria will lose control of its chemical weapons and be positioned should the turmoil in Syria expand into a wider conflict. The task force, which has been led by a senior American officer, is based at a Jordanian military training center built into an old rock quarry north of Amman. It is now largely focused on helping Jordanians handle the estimated 180,000 Syrian...

The State Department has officially removed all government personnel from the Libyan city of Benghazi, closing the consulate building and possibly ending any chance of an on-site investigation of the attack there. Although it has been three weeks since the assault there that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other embassy employees, the FBI has still not been able to visit the compound, set up any operations in the city, or even interview any witnesses who were present during the terrorist attack.

Due to high taxes, burdensome regulations, lack of public sector reforms, and a lackluster job climate, more people have left California than come to the state since 2005, according to a comprehensive study by the Manhattan Institute released on Tuesday, suggesting California is no longer “perceived by most Americans as the land where dreams come true.” In the report, titled “The Great California Exodus: A Closer Look," Tom Gray and Robert Scardamalia found Californians have fled to states like Texas, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, Idaho, South Carolina, and Georgia because those states have a better economic climate with less taxes and...

Staff at a Coney Island school where the principal barred kids from belting out “God Bless the USA” are singing a new tune: “Take This Job and Shove It.” In a mass exodus, 25 employees — or 40 percent of the staff, including 11 of 28 classroom teachers, aides, secretaries and custodians — have fled PS 90, the Edna Cohen School, over the year, insiders tallied. Most found jobs in other schools; some retired. Others are trying to escape a “toxic building,” they said. Principal Greta Hawkins caused an uproar in June when she axed the rousing Lee Greenwood anthem...

Another Arab dictatorship looks ready to collapse, and this one might have the biggest impact of them all. The embattled Bashar Assad regime in Syria lost its Prime Minister overnight, as Riyad al-Hijab fled to Jordan and announced his defection: SyriaÂ’s prime minister defected to Jordan on Monday, according to news reports, becoming the most senior official yet to quit the embattled government of President Bashar al-Assad.A statement read on the al-Jazeera Arabic news channel that was described as coming from Prime Minister Riyad al-Hijab said he had resigned to protest his governmentÂ’s harsh tactics as it escalates its efforts...

On Saturday, Carbonite CEO David Friend released a statement on his company’s website declaring that Carbonite had decided to “withdraw” advertising from Rush Limbaugh’s radio show in the wake of his controversial remarks involving Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke because it will “ultimately contribute to a more civilized public discourse”: Even though Mr. Limbaugh has now issued an apology, we have nonetheless decided to withdraw our advertising from his show. We hope that our action, along with the other advertisers who have already withdrawn their ads, will ultimately contribute to a more civilized public discourse. However, it hasn’t done much...

The Sacramento Bee website is reporting that the number of top-income taxpayers in California has declined by a third. In an article in its Capitol Alert section, the Bee says that those Californians with $500,000 and up taxable incomes have declined from almost 150,000 in 2007 to slightly under 100,000 in 2009. The article also notes that the 100,000, representing just over a half percent of the 14.6 million returns, accounted for 18.8 percent of total income reported, but paid 32 percent of all income taxes in 2009. If Governor Jerry Brown wonders where a whole bunch of those making...

You’re Gonna Need MORE Than Gold… By Simon Black 08/22/11 Everyday more and more people are waking up to the idea that they MUST own gold if they want to protect their assets from an out of control government. Owning gold is a great first step, but as history tells us, responsible people can and should do more before it’s too late… History paints a bleak picture of the decline of Rome. Once warring consuls Antony, Lepidus, and Octavian were finished duking it out with each other in 31 BC, any semblance of the original Roman republic was gone forever....