Free Republic

There has been a just degree of criticism directed towards the Guardian over the results of their readers’ poll on the Nobel Peace Prize in which 76% of respondents chose Hassan Rouhani from a list (compiled by their journalists) which included the brave Pakistani girl – shot by the Taliban for advocating on behalf of girls’ education – named Malala Yousafzai. (see charts at website) Rouhani was nominated by Saeed Kamali-Dehghan, who has served as one of the paper’s chief promoters of the lie that the new Iranian president is a “moderate” despite Rouhani’s involvement in terror attacks abroad and...

The Ministry of Defense's weapons development administration (Mafat) is targeting a global market worth $2 billion annually. The Ministry of Defense's Administration for the Development of Weapons and Technological Infrastructure (Mafat) has set the next challenge for Israel's defense industry: do for unmanned submarines what it did for unmanned aerial warfare. If the defense industry moves quickly and purposefully in identifying this emerging market, and offers a well-functioning unmanned submarine, it could be riding the right wave in a decade from now: Mafat aeronautics division director Dr. Yuval Cohen estimates that the market will be worth $2 billion a year...

US defence firms eye $10.8bn UAE, Saudi sales Defence firms in the US are looking to sell military hardware worth $10.8bn to the UAE and Saudi Arabia. The Defence Security Cooperation Agency said it has notified Congress of the possible foreign military sales to the Gulf countries, with Boeing and Raytheon named as suppliers. The proposal includes the first US sales to Middle East allies of new Raytheon and Boeing weapons that can be launched at a distance from Saudi F-15 and UAE F-16 fighters. The Boeing Expanded-Response Standoff Land Attack Missile and Raytheon Joint Standoff Weapon give those nations...

Military authorities here worry about intelligence reports that North Korea is developing a new ground-to-ship ballistic missile with a range of 300 km which would be impossible to intercept with current weapons. "The North is developing a new ground-to-ship ballistic missile with a range of 200-300 km, an improved version of the KN-02 ground-to-ground ballistic missile," whose range is 140 km, a military source said Friday. "We're trying to verify the report." The North already has surface-to-ship cruise missiles like the KN-01 with a range of 160 km and the Silkworm missile with a range of 100 km. But ballistic...

SEOUL, Oct. 16 (Yonhap) -- The South Korean Navy has made a request to build three more Aegis destroyers to bolster defense against its Asian neighbors and North Korea amid increasing military tension due to territorial disputes, a military source said Wednesday. South Korea currently operates three 7,600-ton Aegis warships, but the Navy has sought to increase its fleet to cope with rising regional tension in light of Pyongyang's third nuclear test conducted earlier this year and ongoing territorial disputes between China and Japan. "The Navy made a request for three additional Aegis ships to the Joint Chiefs of Staff...

Tbilisi (AFP) - French authorities have detained a former Georgian defence minister wanted in his homeland on corruption charges, a police source said Tuesday. Davit Kezerashvili, a close ally of outgoing president Mikheil Saakashvili, was detained Monday at the Nice airport just before 1:00pm (1100 GMT), as he was trying to board a flight to Tirana, the capital of Albania, the police source said. "He was stopped by border police during an identity check. The police realised that he was the target of an international arrest warrant," the source said. Kezerashvili will now face an extradition hearing to determine whether...

video 1:16:09 Interesting debate in which the conservatives are now trying to convince UKIP and Nigel Farage to take a dive in the next election while dangling the carrot of alliance later on. Nigel will have none of it. Great response from him. Tea Party is in a similar (yet not as strong) position as UKIP. We should study what is happening with UKIP very closely.

Iranian leaders are doing everything they can to display their country’s Jewish population as satisfied, even if they have to resort to fakery to do so, according to Iranian Affairs expert Menashe Amir. Amir, who was born and raised in Tehran and now lives in Israel, explained that Iran’s leaders believe that showing Jewish support will help their image. … Iranian Jews suffer from discrimination as do all religious minorities in Shiite Muslim states like Iran, he said. The problems they face include, in some cases, a lack of access to medicine, he said. …

Abdellah Taia, the only openly homosexual Moroccan writer, was in Venice to present his debut film, “Salvation Army”, adapted from his autobiographical novel about growing up gay in Morocco. FRANCE 24 sat down with Taia for an interview. By Jon FROSCH (text) In an edition of the Venice Film Festival notable for the prevalence of works grappling with global and societal woes (unemployment, terrorism, pollution, war), perhaps no film has blended the personal and the political as strikingly as Abdellah Taia’s “L’Armée du salut” (“Salvation Army”). A promising directorial debut presented in the independent “Critics’ Week” category on Wednesday, the...

Women's rights have advanced across the world, and legislation is catching up with the times. In most modern countries, gender equality has been codified into the system. But not everywhere. Unfortunately, some retrograde legislation against women persists — and some laws are just downright incomprehensible. 1) Driving in Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia's long-standing driving ban hit headlines recently, after conservative Saudi cleric Sheikh Saleh al-Lohaidan announced that driving "harms women's ovaries" on a popular news site. "If a woman drives a car, not out of pure necessity, that could have negative physiological impacts as functional and physiological medical studies show...

"The big Kerry arm." That's how some of his Senate staff used to describe John Kerry's approach to negotiation. It's reminiscent of what Lyndon Baines Johnson used to do to his Senate colleagues: a little light physical pressure to drive home a point. You can bet that at some point over the weekend the six-foot-four Kerry, who landed in Kabul on an unannounced visit Friday, applied that big arm to the shoulders of the diminutive Hamid Karzai, the often combative and erratic president of Afghanistan, whom Kerry knows well and with whom no one else in the U.S. government seems...

Estimating casualties of war is a difficult science. Exact counts are nearly impossible to achieve, especially in areas where violent conflict continues long after the last of foreign troops have withdrawn. Determining a death toll for Iraqi civilians during the eight-year U.S.-led occupation has proven especially challenging. Multiple attempts by different organizations have covered only a few years of the war, and the resulting tallies range from as low as just over 100,000 to as high as 600,000. The latest estimates, detailed in a study published Tuesday in the journal PLOS Medicine, come from an investigation into the total number...

GDANSK, October 15, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) - On Sunday, thousands of Poles joyfully marched for life and family with multi-colored banners and flags through the streets of the city where the Solidarity movement was founded. This was the fourth March for Life and Family to take place in Poland. Each year it is co-organized by Human Life International - Poland. The march began at the symbolic monument to the Shipyard Workers victims of communism, which displays three crosses with crucified anchors. Some of the marchers carried long strips of cloth on which was inscribed the full text of the Vatican document,...

Huge numbers of goats, cows and even camels will be slaughtered in Pakistani on Wednesday homes to mark the Islamic holy day of Eid al-Adha. The sacrificial offering of around 6m animals will allow families to fulfil a religious duty, guarantee some much appreciated meat handouts to the poor and provide nearly half of the annual requirement of the country's leather industry. It will also generate an extraordinary cash windfall for some of Pakistan's most dangerous militant groups. Thinly disguised front organisations have been gearing up to compete against each other and legitimate charities to collect as many animal skins...

Argument: Hillary Clinton’s security staff get into a row with a traffic warden whilst waiting for her in London. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton attended an event in London on Saturday. Parking her car in a bay on St. James’ Square, Clinton was required to pay the same £3.30 per hour fee that everyone else is required to pay for the privilege to park there. She did not. When the traffic warden tried to issue a parking ticket the Secret Service agents went nuts. But, waving their arms and flashing their badges didn’t impress the traffic marshal. He...

A group of Syrian clerics have issued a ruling - or fatwa - allowing people living in besieged suburbs of Damascus to eat meat that is normally forbidden. In a video, the Muslim clerics said people could eat cats, dogs and donkeys to stave off hunger. The fatwa comes amid reports of starvation in the besieged, rebel-held Damascus suburb of Muadhamiya. Aid agencies have urged the government to allow humanitarian supplies to the area, where many residents are trapped. Hundreds of civilians, some carried on stretchers, were able to flee Muadhamiya at the weekend following a temporary ceasefire. 'Absurd situation'...

Defense: The firing of two nuclear commanders in a week adds to a body count that suggests we have either the most corrupt and incompetent general staff in history or our military is being reshaped for other purposes. The Obama administration, which has fired no one over scandals such as its Fast and Furious Mexican gun-running operation, its criminal negligence in the terrorist attack on our Benghazi diplomatic mission, or the use of the IRS to target and intimidate political foes, seems to have a curious obsession lately about ethics and competence in the U.S. military. Last week the Air...

After a year of traveling, I had planned a last, short trip. I was going to take the train from Montreal to New Orleans. The travels I had been undertaking earlier this year had brought me to places that were meant to form the background of my second novel... First, he saw my Sri Lankan stamp. The customs officer raised his eyebrows. "Sri Lanka, what were you doing over there?" "Surfing. Traveling. My best friend lives there. He is an architect." The officer flipped on, seemingly satisfied. Secondly, he found my stamps from Singapore and Malaysia. "What were you doing...

HONG KONG - Perhaps the only people who have managed to find a silver lining in the ongoing US government shutdown are Chinese intellectuals. Of course, Americans view the impasse as a sign of political dysfunction. But to many Chinese commentators, it also reveals certain strengths. Since the shutdown began nine days ago, Chinese social media have been full of wistful, almost admiring remarks about how the shutdown could only happen in a democratic country with a resilient economy and responsive political representation. "The government's closed - is this bad?" wrote Chen Zhiwu, a user on China's Twitter-like Sina Weibo....

France's National Assembly on Tuesday voted for a revamp of the country's debt-ridden pension system amid protest marches in Paris and other cities over the controversial measure. The reforms will raise the pay-in period for pension contributions, meaning employees will need to work longer to be eligible for full pensions. Protestors in Paris marched to the National Assembly under a banner calling for "the creation of jobs, retirement at 60 and salary increases."

On July 8, 2013, the pro-PRC Chinese-language newspaper, Wenweipo, published an article titled “????50????????? (Six Wars China Is Sure to Fight In the Next 50 Years)�. The anticipated six wars are all irredentist in purpose – the reclaiming of what the Chinese believe to be national territories lost since Imperial China was defeated by the Brits in the Opium War of 1840-42. That defeat, in the view of Chinese nationalists, began China’s “Hundred Years of Humiliation.� Below is the English translation of the article, from a Hong Kong blog, Midnight Express 2046. (The year 2046 is an allusion to what this blog believes will be the last year...

WASHINGTON — The former Army captain who received the Medal of Honor on Tuesday has asked to return to active duty in the Army, a rare move by an officer who has lived to wear the military's highest award. Two U.S. officials tell The Associated Press that William D. Swenson has submitted a formal request to the Army and officials are working with him to allow his return. Swenson was awarded the Medal of Honor by President Barack Obama in the White House Tuesday afternoon for risking his life to recover bodies and save fellow troops during a lengthy battle...

European Union officials on Tuesday approved the creation of a centralized banking supervisor, marking another step in the 28-country bloc’s long quest to stabilize its financial system. Finance ministers at a meeting in Luxembourg cleared the final legal hurdle to the establishment of the new banking supervisor, which will be operated by the European Central Bank and directly oversee the bloc’s 130 biggest banks.“Now we will start hiring supervisors, rent buildings and start the coming (bank) stress test,” ECB executive board member Joerg Asmussen said. The so-called single supervisory mechanism will be based with the ECB in Frankfurt, Germany, and...

ROME (CNN) - The Italian branch of schismatic Catholic sect with a history of anti-Semitism has agreed to hold a funeral for a convicted Nazi war criminal, despite protests from Jewish groups and the local mayor. -snip- But the conservative Society of St. Pius X, whose leaders were excommunicated from the Catholic Church in 1988 for ordaining their own bishops without Vatican approval, agreed Tuesday to hold funeral rites for Priebke. -snip- The society also said that it "reaffirms our repudiation to any form of anti-semitism and racial hatred." But the Society of St. Pius X has a long history...

The brutal, Al Qaeda-linked group rebels invited into Syria to help topple President Bashir Assad has virtually taken over northern Syria, raising fears that its brand of indiscriminate terror could spill into neighboring Turkey, where some 300 U.S. soldiers are based to protect Turkish airspace from Syrian missile attacks.

“In 1934 a high-ranking member of the Communist Party, Sergei Kirov, was assassinated,” Cornell historian Holly Case wrote in The Chronicle Review. “His death, likely orchestrated by Stalin himself, was used to initiate a mass persecution that would result in over a million imprisoned and hundreds of thousands killed.” “Actually, she’s a bit off on the casualty count,” we observed. ... “The late Alexander Yakovlev, the lifelong Soviet apparatchik who in the 1980s became the chief reformer and close aide to Mikhail Gorbachev, and who, in the post-Soviet 1990s, was tasked with the grisly assignment of trying to total the...

"Forced marriage is probably the last form of slavery in the UK." — Nazir Afzal, Chief Crown Prosecutor for Northwest England. More than a dozen Muslim clerics at some of the biggest mosques in Britain have been caught on camera agreeing to marry off girls as young as 14. Undercover reporters filming a documentary about the prevalence of forced and underage marriage in Britain for the television program ITV Exposure secretly recorded 18 Muslim imams agreeing to perform an Islamic marriage, known as a nikah, between a 14-year-old girl and an older man. Campaigners against forced marriage -- which is...

Marine General Joseph Dunford arrived in Afghanistan and assumed command of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and United States Forces – Afghanistan on 10 February 2013. After a prolonged thirteen years of American involvement in Afghanistan, General Dunford will oversee the withdrawal of US combat forces from Afghanistan scheduled for the end of 2014 in adherence to President Obama’s withdrawal order. General Dunford described the current Afghan situation in his Commander ISAF Afghanistan Update, summer 2013 report. He remarked on the 13 year culmination of ISAF efforts that led to the momentous milestone achieved as the Afghanistan National Security...

Bashar al-Assad, the president of Syria, has joked that he deserved to win the Nobel Peace Prize after it was awarded to the international weapons watchdog currently destroying his regime's massive chemical arsenal. The prize, which was given to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) on Friday, "should have been mine," he said. The remark, which the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar quoted, was made "jokingly" during a recent meeting with visitors at the presidential palace, the newspaper said. However, it might be viewed as inappropriate when uttered by a president whose civil war has already cost more than...

Canada’s Conservatives, after nearly eight years of power, have become the country’s Establishment Party. Traditionally viewed as a collection of misfits who couldn’t keep power once they achieved it — and who stabbed each other in the back during opposition — the Tories are now a political powerhouse. But can they win a fourth-straight election, in 2015? The last time a Conservative prime minister did that was in 1891, under Sir John A. Macdonald. Expect Wednesday’s throne speech to be focused on this goal.

Consumer advocates and aid organizations say the breaking point has already been reached. Today, more than 300,000 households a year are seeing their power shut off because of unpaid bills. Caritas and other charity groups call it "energy poverty." Lawmakers, on the other hand, have largely ignored the phenomenon. In the concluding legislative period, the government and opposition argued passionately over a €5 increase in payments to the long-term unemployed. But no one paid much attention to the fact that those welfare recipients would subsequently see the extra €5 wiped out by higher electricity bills. It is only gradually becoming...

The offer to advise on a film about his own life was too irresistible for a retired Somali pirate. Mohammed Abdi Hassan, also known as Big Mouth, was detained at Brussels international airport on Saturday after a sting operation in which undercover agents persuaded him that they wanted to make a documentary about his acts of piracy. He is now in custody over his alleged involvement in the hijacking of a Belgian ship in 2009.

The political standoff in Washington has spawned frustration and growing worries in China, which remains the largest holder of U.S. government debt, as the clock ticks down to a possible U.S. debt default this week. The crisis shows that China and the rest of the world should start to “de-Americanize,” according to a strongly worded commentary from the Xinhua News Agency, China’s leading government-controlled news outlet. “The world is still crawling its way out of an economic disaster thanks to the voracious Wall Street elites,” the commentary said. “Such alarming days when the destinies of others are in the hands...

Meet the newest mascot at Fukushima Industries. This cute, winged egg is the perfect face for a company that manufactures the kind of industrial refrigerators, blast chillers, freezers and refrigerated showcases that you might find in a restaurant or a supermarket. The name they chose for this little egghead, though, probably needed a bit more work… The image below reads: “Hi! Nice to meet you! I’m–” Now wait just one second, can we really post this on such a family-friendly website?? That’s right, the new face of Fukushima Industries is named “Fukuppy,” which sounds just like the nickname you’d give...

TOKYO: A typhoon, described as the "strongest in 10 years," was closing in on Japan Tuesday, on a path that will take it towards the precarious Fukushima nuclear power plant. Typhoon Wipha, packing winds of nearly 200 kilometres (125 miles) per hour near its centre and bringing heavy rains, was in the Pacific south of Japan on Tuesday evening and moving north at 35 kilometres per hour, the Japan Meteorological Agency said. It was forecast to reach an area off the Tokyo metropolitan area by early Wednesday and later in the day would be off the coast of Fukushima where...

FAISALABAD, Oct 8: Traders subjected two robbers to severe torture, leaving one of them dead, after a vendor was shot dead during a robbery bid at a jewellery shop at Mamunkanjan on Tuesday. Two robbers entered the shop owned by Shahid in Purana Dakhana Bazaar, Mamunkanjan. As the shop owner put up resistance, the panicked outlaws opened indiscriminate fire. A bullet hit Tanveer Ali, a vendor present outside the shop, who died on the spot. The traders retaliated the fire and forced the robbers to flee the market. They gave a chase to outlaws and finally nabbed them. The furious...

EVRAZ North America announces that due to subdued market demand and the high volume of imports, it will suspend operations at its steel mill in Claymont, Delaware. Over the next two months, about 375 employees will complete processing and shipping of existing products and prepare the mill for idling. EVRAZ will consider restarting the operations as soon as the market conditions improve. All of the mill's employees, with the exception of a small crew who will remain to maintain the site, have been issued Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN). EVRAZ Claymont makes steel plate and custom plate products for...

Greenpeace, the world’s biggest and most battle-hardened environmental campaigning organisation, is in a state of shock. Last week, Russian investigators said that they had found ‘narcotic substances’ on board Arctic Sunrise, the Greenpeace vessel they seized after its crew had used it in an attempt to storm an oil rig of the state-controlled firm Gazprom. They added that the drugs included poppy straw, an ingredient for opiates. You would think that Greenpeace might be proud to have been identified as scrupulously organic in its drug use; but its spokesman denounced the Russians’ claim as a ‘smear, pure and simple’. Of...

Washington, Oct 14: They came from Las Vegas, Nevada, and Corpus Christi, Texas, from all over the country to the nation’s capital, heeding a call for a “million vets march” to protest the Government shutdown. In the end, it wasn’t million of veterans but perhaps several hundred. And it drew far-right Republicans such as former Alaska governor Sarah Palin and Senator Ted Cruz, the man credited with engineering the shutdown. But for Freddie Olivarez, 69, a military veteran who drove 2,400 km with his family from Corpus Christi to make his point, it was important to be there. Sitting in...

Nothing says “patriot” like waving around the Battle Flag of the Confederacy in front of the White House.I’m still trying to wrap my head around this scene: Yesterday, in Washington, a group of angry white people—it was billed as the “Million Vet March” but numbered in the hundreds, maybe the thousands, and who knows how many were actual veterans—led by Tea Party-aligned Texas senator Ted Cruz and former half-term Alaska governor Sarah Palin, marched on the Lincoln and World War II memorials, tearing down the barricades and demanding that President Obama reopen these sites, which, of course, are closed because...

Nothing Secretary of State John Kerry does should surprise anyone anymore. But in praising Islamic Malaysia as a "multi-faith" model as something of a benchmark for balancing cultural diversity, he shows his true colors. He is a traitor to the United States just like his boss. Malaysia is nothing more than an Sunni Islamic fundamentalist country, where only those who belong to the recognized Islamic sect are not punished. Malaysia is no different than any other Islamic nation. ... Bibles are a direct threat to the Islamic faith and must be destroyed. Too, Hindu temples have been destroyed, and even...

As Russia prepares to mark 70 years since the Sobibor revolt, one Jewish officer finally finds his rightful place as the hero of the story. ------ Russia was set to mark Monday the 70th anniversary of a revolt at the Sobibor death camp led by a Red Army officer, the biggest and most successful prisoner escape under the Nazi regime. Ahead of the anniversary, President Vladimir Putin ordered the defense ministry to come up with a plan to "immortalise the memory of heroes who raised a revolt" at the extermination camp in occupied Poland on October 14, 1943. The order...

He's due to stand trial over whether he helped plan and conduct surveillance for the bombings of U.S. embassies in AfricaA Libyan who has been held and interrogated for a week aboard a U.S. warship is now in New York awaiting trial on terrorism charges, U.S. officials said Monday. The al-Qaida suspect, known as Abu Anas al-Libi, has been under federal indictment in New York for more than a decade. He's due to stand trial over whether he helped plan and conduct surveillance for the bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998. Two U.S. officials said he arrived in...

On his radio show Monday morning, Bill Press took on this weekend’s Million Vet March by denouncing the participants as “idiots” who’ve been used by “right-wing organizations” to protest against their own best interests. Ultimately, he said, they shouldn’t be following people like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), they should be expressing public odium towards him. “Absolutely drives me crazy,” Press said of Sunday’s protest activities. “Here’s what wrong with it,” he continued, “Those three idiots leading the protests, but they’re not the dumbest ones. The dumbest ones there are the idiots that are protesting. These are people, they call them...

MOSCOW, October 14 (RIA Novosti) – A Russian military delegation about to visit Brazil will offer joint development of a fifth-generation combat aircraft “of the type” of its own most newest fighter to Brazilian defense officials, a member of the delegation told RIA Novosti Monday. The proposal appears to be in support of an unsolicited offer by Russia’s combat aircraft maker Sukhoi of its Su-35 fighter, that has been struck off Brazil’s shortlist for its air force’s F-X2 tender for the purchase of 36 fighter jets worth $4 billion. Russia is still hoping to sell the Su-35s or similar aircraft...

The sharp deterioration of the public finances in many countries has revived interest in a "capital levy" -- a one off tax on private wealth -- as an exceptional measure to restore debt sustainability. The appeal is that such a tax, if it is implemented before avoidance is possible and there is a belief that it will never be repeated, does not distort behavior (and may be seen by some as fair). There have been illustrious supporters, including Pigou, Ricardo, Schumpeter, and, until he changed his mind - Keynes. The conditions for success are strong, but also need to be...

As U.S. politicians of both political parties are still shuffling back and forth between the White House and the Capitol Hill without striking a viable deal to bring normality to the body politic they brag about, it is perhaps a good time for the befuddled world to start considering building a de-Americanized world. Emerging from the bloodshed of the Second World War as the world's most powerful nation, the United States has since then been trying to build a global empire by imposing a postwar world order, fueling recovery in Europe, and encouraging regime-change in nations that it deems hardly...

A European Parliament report seen by Spiegel estimates that 3,600 international organized crime organizations operate within the EU. The damage done to European economies by organized crime totals hundreds of billions of euros according to a European Parliament special committee investigating crime, money laundering and corruption. The CRIM committee estimates that around 880,000 slave laborers live in the EU, of whom 270,000 are victims of sexual exploitation. Human trafficking alone generates profits of around €25 billion, while the illegal trade in human organs and wild animals makes for a further estimated profit of between €18 and €26 billion annually. …

Brussels (AFP) - Belgium has arrested a notorious Somali pirate chief after luring him to Brussels on promises of shooting a documentary movie about his life on the high seas, prosecutors said Monday. Federal prosecutor Johan Delmulle said Mohamed Abdi Hassan, better known as "Afweyne" or "Big Mouth", was being held in the Belgian city of Bruges after being detained at Brussels airport Saturday when he stepped off a flight from Nairobi. Afweyne and his powerful accomplice, Mohamed Aden "Tiiceey", the former governor of Somalia's self-proclaimed Himan and Heeb statelet, were facing charges of kidnapping, piracy and organised crime, the...

As plans for a mega-port on Kenya's northern-most coast begin to take shape, new concerns are emerging that the project could damage already-strained relations between Sudan and South Sudan. Kenya's $25.5bn Lamu Port and New Transport Corridor Development to Southern Sudan and Ethiopia (LAPSSET) includes the construction of a 32-berth port, three international airports, and a 1,500km railway line. A new oil refinery, in nearby Bargoni, and an oil pipeline are also planned. The pipeline would run to Kenya's Eastern Province before splitting, with one branch running to South Sudan's capital, Juba, and another through Moyale in the north to...