Free Republic

France’s campaign in Mali exposes Europe’s unpreparedness for 21st-century war. WITH WELL-ARMED radical Islamist insurgents closing in last winter on Mali’s capital, Bamako, French President François Hollande suddenly decided to defend Western civilization. Plunging in the polls as the most unpopular French president since the Fifth Republic was founded in 1958, he just might have had ulterior motives; diverting hostile public opinion at home with a military escapade abroad is a tried and true tactic for floundering chiefs of state. Be that as it may, French troops, mainly Foreign Legion, began deploying to Mali in Operation Serval on January 11....

Great Britain on Monday sent warships to the Mediterranean and weighed legal action against Spain in a territorial dispute over the Gibraltar peninsula, as Madrid threatened to join with Argentina in a U.N. effort to strip Britain of the last remnants of its empire. In London, Ministry of Defense officials told the BBC that the Royal Navy deployments are part of a long-planned military exercise and not connected to the three-centuries old dispute over the Gibraltar enclave. The feud between the European allies has erupted anew in recent weeks amid Spanish protests over an effort to create an artificial reef...

Ahmed Moussa, a prominent Egyptian television personality on the Tahrir TV channel as well as a former officer in Egyptian State Security Intelligence (SSI), went public on July 30 with a remarkable piece of information. Moussa said, addressing U.S. ambassador Anne Patterson (in absentia) on his show: Ambassador Stevens was killed in Benghazi, and you know who killed him, the U.S. administration knows who killed him, and you know how he was killed and it was a major strike against the U.S. administration, and all of you. The assassin is now present at Rabia Al-Adawiya [mosque protest] His name is,...

Iraqi Kurdistan is ready to defend Kurds living in Syria if it is found that they are being threatened by al Qaeda-linked fighters involved in the Syrian civil war, the president of the well-armed autonomous region said. In a letter posted online on Saturday, Masoud Barzani said he had directed Kurdish representatives to go to neighboring Syria to investigate news reports that the "terrorists of al Qaeda are attacking the civilian population and slaughtering innocent Kurdish women and children." His statement was a further sign of how Syria's two-year conflict is spilling over its borders and aggravating sectarian tensions in...

Brig. Gen. Hossein Dehghan, nominated to be defense minister by Iran’s new president Hassan Rouhani, was a commander in Lebanon overseeing Hezbollah operations during the time of the 1983 bombing of the US Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon. According to a report by Brig. Gen. (ret.) Dr. Shimon Shapira, a senior research associate at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Dehghan was sent to Lebanon and served as a commander of the training corps of the Revolutionary Guard in Syria and Lebanon. He joined the Revolutionary Guard after they were formed in 1979 and spent his entire military career there....

A U.S. human rights group on Monday delivered a petition with more than 100,000 signatures urging that this year’s Nobel Peace Prize go to Pfc. Bradley Manning, who was convicted on espionage charges last month for leaking hundreds of thousands of classified documents to WikiLeaks. Norman Solomon, the co-founder of RootsAction, delivered the petition in Oslo, Norway, on Monday to the research director of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, which awards the Nobel Prizes. Solomon said that Manning should receive the prize for exposing government secrecy and wrongdoing in the Iraq War. He argued that the Nobel committee’s selection of Manning...

As a precondition for "peace" talks with the Palestinians that will produce nothing, President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry demanded that Israel's government release over 100 long-term convicted terrorists and murderers, many imprisoned for vicious crimes committed long before either intifada. The "Elder of Ziyon" blog has compiled a list of those to be released--and their victims. Here is a sample: Atiyeh Salem Musa: killed Isaac (Aizek) Rotenberg, 67, Holocaust survivor, 1994 Isaac Rotenberg was born to Natan and Miriam Rotenberg in Poland on 15 March 1927. A selektzia was held in his city following the outbreak...

Following in the well-worn footsteps of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his Blueprint for Federal Action on Illegal Guns, this week the Council on Foreign Relations released a memo urging the Obama administration to disregard the will of the American people and Congress and unilaterally enact a series of gun controls. Entitled, A Strategy to Reduce Gun Trafficking and Violence in the Americas, and written by CFR Senior Fellow for Latin American Studies, Julia F. Sweig, the memo pins the ills of Central and South America on U.S. gun owners and urges the president to curb our rights to...

On August 12, Joe DiGenova, attorney for one of the Benghazi whistleblowers, told Washington D.C.'s WMAL that one of the reasons people have remained tight-lipped about Benghazi is because 400 U.S. missiles were "diverted to Libya" and ended up being stolen and falling into "the hands of some very ugly people." DiGenova represents Benghazi whistleblower Mark Thompson. He told WMAL that he "does not know whether [the missiles] were at the annex, but it is clear the annex was somehow involved in the distribution of those missiles." He claimed his information "comes from a former intelligence official who stayed in...

The dispute over the Falkland Islands may get a boost at the UN, thanks to Spain’s designs on Gibraltar. According to the Spanish newspaper El Pais and reported in the Telegraph, Spain’s foreign minister has traveled to Argentina to discuss the possibility of both countries supporting each other’s territorial ambitions at the expense of the UK — and self-determination: Spanish foreign minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo will use a trip to Buenos Aires next month to raise the possibility of forging a joint diplomatic offensive with the South American country over the disputed territories, sources told Spain’s El Pais newspaper.Spain’s foreign...

An Army officer writing in a prestigious journal says the services should not overemphasize physical strength when deciding whether a woman qualifies for direct ground combat. Col. Ellen Haring, on the staff of the U.S. Army War College, says commanders need to downplay obstacle courses and judge a service member’s ability to stay calm and think quickly. The Pentagon has lifted its ban on women serving in the infantry, tanks and special operations, and the branches are examining all their physical standards in preparation for introducing women into these units in 2015. Some military analysts fear the Pentagon will discard...

Eighteen of the 19 U.S. embassies and consulates reopened Sunday after being shut down for a week across the Islamic world because of a terrorist threat. Even as the diplomatic posts inched toward normal operations, and as Muslims celebrated the end of the holy month of Ramadan, questions lingered about how pressing the danger had been and whether the threat had yet passed.

The president of Iraqi Kurdistan vowed Saturday to defend the large Kurdish population across the border in neighboring Syria from al-Qaida-linked fighters. The comments from Massoud Barzani follow weeks of clashes in predominantly Kurdish parts of northeastern Syrian near the Iraqi border between Kurdish militias and Islamic extremist rebel factions that have killed dozens on both sides. The fighting in the oil-rich region has emerged as yet another layer in Syria's increasingly complex and bloody civil war. In a statement posted on the Kurdistan Regional Government's official website, Barzani called for a delegation to visit Kurdish areas in Syria to...

BEIJING: The launch of INS Vikrant has raised hackles in China, with Chinese defence experts saying the aircraft carrier would have great significance for India as it would allow the Indian Navy to wade into the Pacific Ocean - which Beijing considers as its backyard. "This bears great significance to Indian Navy. It makes India only the fifth country after the US, Russia, Britain and France to have such capabilities," senior captain Zhang Junshe, vice-president of China's Naval Research Institute, told the state-run CCTV on Monday. The Indian Navy will have lead over China as it will have two aircraft...

Gen. Mark Welsh, the chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force, has completed a secret visit to Israel, where was the guest of the Commander of the Israel Air Force, Maj.-Gen. Amir Eshel. snip The officials discussed a number of topics including mutual security challenges in light of the regional security situation. Welsh and Eshel also discussed plans to further strengthen the cooperation between the U.S. Air Force and the Israel Air Force, according to the IDF. The meeting, which reportedly was kept secret at the request of the United States, comes in advance of a scheduled visit by...

Governor Palin via Facebook: John McCain is right about Obama completely underestimating Putin’s intensions and autocratic unwillingness to put people before his political power. As Senator McCain noted today: “The president comparing [Putin] to a kid in the back of a classroom, I think, is very indicative of the president’s lack of appreciation of who Vladimir Putin is. He’s an old KGB colonel that has no illusions about our relationship, does not care about a relationship with the United States, continues to oppress his people, continues to act in an autocratic fashion.” Senator McCain is also right in his assessment...

President Cristina Fernandez failed the first electoral test of her second term Sunday as her party’s candidates trailed opponents across Argentina’s most populous provinces in congressional primaries. If the voting pattern repeated in October’s elections, she could lose control of congress during the final two years of her rule. With 52 per cent of the vote counted in the suburbs around Argentina’s capital, Sergio Massa’s Renewal Front was leading the president’s hand-picked candidate, Martin Insaurralde, by 34 per cent to 29 per cent. Massa invited people from across Argentina’s polarised political landscape to join him in a new movement that...

- FrontPage Magazine - http://frontpagemag.com - The Death of the U.S.-Egypt AlliancePosted By Joseph Klein On August 12, 2013 @ 12:41 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 5 Comments President Obama’s misguided attempt to bend Egyptian political affairs in the Muslim Brotherhood’s favor is unravelling the carefully nurtured military and economic alliance between the United States and Egypt, which has served for decades to stabilize that vital part of the Middle East.First, after throwing former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak under the bus, the Obama administration did everything it could to portray the Muslim Brotherhood as a worthy organization committed to democratic...

The worst has finally happened. It took much longer than expected -- nearly two thousand days -- but Barack Obama's foreign policy has finally collapsed, leaving Americans to gape slack-jawed at the smoking ruins. Obama has undermined American influence and honor in ways that will be very difficult to repair. Writing in the Moscow Times, Russian attorney Vladimir Berezansky plays the funeral dirge. He calls Russia's granting of asylum to Edward Snowden a "Suez moment." By this he means that China and Russia have effectively burst the bubble of American power in the same way that the U.S. burst the...

US AMBASSADOR to Australia John Berry has married his long-term partner of 17 years in a private same-sex ceremony in Washington D.C. The 54-year-old former head of the Office of Personnel Management - which oversees the US public service - is the first openly gay US ambassador to serve in a Group of 20 nation and the highest ranking openly gay man in United States history. In a short statement, Mr Berry confirmed the nuptials, telling news.com.au, "John Berry and Curtis Yee, partners of 17 years, were formally married on Saturday August 10, at St Margaret's Episcopal Church in Washington...

This was not the headline that the Center for Disease Control’s National Center for Health Statistics gave its recent release of provisional fertility data for 2012. However, if you compare the most recent CDC data with Rosstat data on Russian births you see that, for the first time in a very long time, in 2012 Russia’s birth rate actually exceeded that of the United States. This is, to put it mildly, a significant reversal from the not too distant past when the US had a birth rate that was as much as 75% higher than Russia’s. As you can see,...

Prez brings home bacon in midst of Chicago corruption probeA no-bid contract to assess a $48 million Kenyan youth program has been awarded to the University of Chicago, where President Barack Obama taught constitutional law for 12 years. This discovery coincides with the federal embezzlement indictment of Quinshaunta R. Golden, former key aide to Eric E. Whitaker, the one-time U. of C. Medical Center executive vice president and former colleague of Michelle Obama.

SNIPPET: "Mullah Krekar, the Norway-based Islamic extremist, is under investigation by German police for seeking to establish a Europe-wide terror network, Sweden's Expo magazine has reported.   The Germans have asked Sweden to interrogate a 28-year-old man from Västerås, who was in contact with Krekar in 2010.    "The German police have requested that we interrogate him, and they want it done in a court of law," Prosecutor Ronnie Jakobsson told the magazine.    Although the man is not suspected of any crime, German police believe that he has information about an Islamist terror network they suspect Krekar and another...

Warships well worth protecting NOTHING quite prepares you for the sheer scale of an Air Warfare Destroyer. To appreciate it properly, you have to see it out of the water. I spent a morning this week clambering around the first of the navy's three AWDs. It's being built in Adelaide by ASC in collaboration with several other companies. It was pouring with rain and everywhere on the ship was wet. The AWD is just too big to be built indoors. Like all modern warships, it is full of kilometres of working cables and narrow, awkward corridors. I've been on big...

Nearly a month after Egypt underwent a truly embarrassing, if mostly for the US department of state, coup and days after international "mediator" US Deputy Secretary of State William Burns left Cairo, having made no headway in finding a compromise between the army-installed government and supporters of deposed Islamist president Mohammed Morsi, it appears that the catalyst to push the already unstable social situation into a state of borderline civil war, is about to be unleashed following a Reuters report that "Egyptian police are expected to start taking action early on Monday against supporters of deposed President Mohamed Mursi...

THE second week of the federal campaign is under way, with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd facing accusations that he cheated in last night's debate by referring to notes. Opposition Leader Tony Abbott goes into the second week of the campaign in a promising position, with most commentators declaring him the stronger performer in the debate and the latest Newspoll, published in The Australian today, showing he has narrowed Mr Rudd's lead as preferred Prime Minister from 14 points to nine points.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State John Kerry's trip to Colombia and Brazil this week builds on efforts to deepen relations with Latin America, but he can expect a curt reception from the two U.S. allies after reports that an American spy program widely targeted data in emails and telephone calls across the region. On Kerry's first visit to South America as the Obama administration's chief diplomat, the disclosures by National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden could chill talks on trade and energy, and even discussions about the Oct. 23 state dinner that President Barack Obama is hosting for Brazil's...

Senator John McCain says Putin doesn't prioritize US-Russia relationship adding that summit's cancellation merely 'symbolic. President Barack Obama faced calls Sunday to pursue a more hawkish line on Russia, with an influential Republican foreign policy voice suggesting the US leader lacked sufficient insight over Vladimir Putin's intentions. Arizona senator and former White House candidate John McCain suggested that comments made by Obama following the cancellation of a meeting with the Russian president did not go far enough to address a series of grievances Washington has with Moscow, including the handling of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Obama spoke on Friday of...

About 1,000 people have besieged the American Military Base in Sicily demanding America get out with its huge antenna there. The protest began claiming this spy satellite is harmful to the health of the people. The police were called in to intervene had had to tear gas the protesters. Several 100 demonstrators stormed a U.S. military base in Sicily as the protest began to broaden in its grievances. The United States is being seen increasingly as causing the global economic depression thanks to the New York Banks who everyone is calling the “Untouchables” outside the USA. This has been brewing...

Egyptian police are expected to start taking action early on Monday against supporters of ousted President Mohamed Mursi who are gathered in crowded protest camps in Cairo, security and government sources said, a move which could trigger more bloodshed. The sites are the main flashpoints in the confrontation between the army, which toppled Mursi last month, and supporters who demand his reinstatement. Western and Arab mediators and some senior Egyptian government officials have been trying to persuade the army to avoid using force against the protesters, who at times can number as much as tens of thousands. "State security troops...

<p>A loophole is allowing hundreds of immigrants across the Mexico border in to the United States.</p> <p>Immigrants are being taught to use "key words and phrases" to be allowed to enter and stay in the country.</p> <p>Just this past Monday, Border Patrol agents say about 200 people came through the Otay Crossing claiming a quote: "credible fear" of the drug cartels.</p>

A popular Egyptian belly dancer is getting political and shaking her hips in defiance to President Obama's engagement in her homeland. Sama El Masry struts her stuff in a music video and blasts the President for supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, instead of the more secular freedom fighters. Sama El Masry struts her stuff in a music video and blasts the President for supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, instead of the more secular freedom fighters. Singing in Arabic, with English subtitles, in her diddy she claims Obama has supported terrorists and the footage includes a picture of Obama's face superimposed on the...

Author G. K. Chesterton, best known for his Father Brown stories, has been put on the path to sainthood – with the blessing of the Pope. Just days before he was elected Pope in March, the then Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, wrote to a Chesterton society in Argentina approving the wording of a private prayer calling for his canonisation. The Pontiff is said to be a fan of the author, one of whose most admired books was a life of St Francis of Assisi – whose name the Pope adopted.

Tensions are rising in Japan over radioactive water leaking into the Pacific Ocean from Japan's crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, a breach that has defied the plant operator's effort to gain control. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Wednesday called the matter “an urgent issue” and ordered the government to step in and help in the clean-up, following an admission by Tokyo Electric Power Company that water is seeping past an underground barrier it attempted to create in the soil. The head of a Nuclear Regulatory Authority task force told Reuters the situation was an "emergency."

Parts of Northern Europe have had a bit better luck than some other sectors across the pond during the economic troubles of the past decade, but they still have had to deal with the legacy of welfare states and costly entitlement programs. Earlier this year, Mary Katharine looked at Sweden’s attempts to deal with rising debt and costly entitlements, while Erika covered some steps being taken in Denmark to deal with their long term financial issues arising from the same core issues. This sense of realism and worry about the future seems to be spreading across the region, and John...

The entertainment industry is giving full voice to their criticism of the Russian anti-gay statute. They've singled out Russia because the 2014 Winter Olympics are going to be held in the city of Sochi and gay fans of the games don't want to be arrested simply for exhibiting what in Russia is politically incorrect behavior. The International Olympic Committee wants assurances from the Russian government but Moscow is standing firm, saying that the law must be respected. Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko insisted Thursday that Olympic athletes would have to respect the laws of the country during the Sochi Games....

One of the idiocies passed off for decades among Western historians is bemoaning the Crusades as evil. The Islamic world -- the Ummah -- has disseminated this imaginary charge against the West, and like fools, we have absorbed Arab lies and taken the blame to heart. But the most superficial reading of Western history should put that canard to rest. Shortly before he died in June 632 AD, Mohammed ordered Muslims to prepare to wage war against the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire. Upon his death, Mohammed's successor, Abu Bakr, planned to fulfill those instructions. Plans were also made to conquer...

Alaska fishermen and fish consumers shouldn't be concerned about the new disclosures of radioactive water leaking into the Pacific Ocean near the site of the hobbled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan.

The Mexican law student was surprised by how easy it was to get into Iran two years ago. By merely asking questions about Islam at a party, he managed to pique the interest of Iran’s top diplomat in Mexico. Months later, he had a plane ticket and a scholarship to a mysterious school in Iran as a guest of the Islamic Republic. Next came the start of classes and a second surprise: There were dozens of others just like him.

A previously undisclosed site advertised by Iran as a launching pad for its space program could be used for testing ballistic missiles, according to a London-based weapons research publication. The publication IHS Jane’s analyzed satellite imagery and concluded that the site, located 220 miles east of Tehran near the Caspian Sea, was developed in the last three years to be one of three launching sites for Iran’s space program, the New York Times reports: The Jane’s report was likely to be viewed with concern by Western officials and Israel. They have expressed suspicions that Iran’s ballistic missile development is part...

William P. Clark, a former national security adviser to President Ronald Reagan and Interior secretary, has died after a battle with Parkinson’s disease. He was 81. Clark, a former California Supreme Court judge, became one of Reagan’s most trusted confidants, serving as deputy secretary of state (1981-1982), national security adviser (1982-1983), and Interior secretary (1983-1985)... Added Faith Whittlesey, former Reagan adviser and ambassador to Switzerland: “Bill Clark was Ronald Reagan’s best friend and was the great unsung hero of the Cold War. He faithfully and effectively carried out Ronald Reagan’s policies within the government in the face of constant opposition...

In the wake of the chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat’s angry letter to US Secretary of State John Kerry about Israel’s new settlement building amid the resumption of peace talks, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent his own letter to Kerry over the weekend, lambasting the Palestinians for failing to curb incitement against Israel. Netanyahu wrote to Kerry that leading Palestinian Authority officials were calling for Israel’s destruction even after peace talks resumed on July 31 in Washington — the first major effort since negotiations broke down in 2008. Incitement and peace don’t go together,” Netanyahu wrote, explaining that new generations...

(Reuters) - Inquiries into the bloody assault on an Algerian gas plant are uncovering increasing evidence of contacts between the assailants and the jihadis involved in killing the U.S. ambassador to Libya nearly a year ago.The extent of the contacts between the militants is still unclear and nobody is sure there was a direct link between the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and the carnage at In Amenas, where 39 foreign hostages were killed in January.But the findings, according to three sources with separate knowledge of U.S. investigations, shed some light on the connections between Al Qaeda affiliates...

(Reuters) - Local officials and residents in Yemen's southern Lahj Province said a drone destroyed a vehicle travelling on a mountain road late on Saturday evening killing its two occupants and bringing to 15 the death toll from four strikes in three days.

A wave of bomb attacks hit Iraq over the weekend, as people celebrated the Eid al-Fitr festival marking the end of Ramadan, with more than 60 reported dead. The BBC reported that 11 bombs targeted both Shiite and Sunni areas of the capital, Baghdad, hitting cafes, markets and restaurants in at least nine different districts. A bomb also killed at least 10 people in Tuz Khurmato, north of the capital. This Ramadan in Iraq is thought to have been one of the deadliest in years, with more than 670 people killed. Most of the violence in the past six months...

Ted Koppel Writes the Dumbest Op-Ed About Terrorism You Can Imagine August 10, 2013 By Daniel Greenfield When you saw the name “Ted Koppel�, your first reaction was probably to wonder if he was still alive. The answer is, yes. He is.Your second reaction was probably to wonder if he was still the same smug boring media personality reciting liberal truisms at the speed of a snail.The answer also yes.And for some reason the Wall Street Journal gave Ted Koppel editorial space to write one of those “The only real danger from terrorism is if we hit terrorists too hard�...

In a cascade of mutual recriminations over the past three days, President Mansour and his prime minister, Hazem Biblawi, described two senior American senators, sent as emissaries of President Barak Obama, as “delusional” and “liars.” The two senators arrived with demands to release all Muslim Brotherhood leaders being held under arrest and to integrate the party into the new revolutionary government. Otherwise, they warned, the Obama administration will cutoff all financial and military aid to Egypt. Spokesmen for both the presidency and the prime minister immediately took umbrage, joined by an array of press commentators, who accused the two Americans,...

Putin talks NSA, Syria, Iran, and Drones in Exclusive Video

Having declared an end to the War on Terror, the US president no longer has any clear idea of his country's global role The West can no longer rely on American leadership in the world. For the remaining duration of the Obama administration, Washington’s judgment and effectiveness in foreign policy cannot be trusted. It is quite an achievement for the one remaining superpower to appear as ineffectual and wrong-footed as the United States has managed to do in the past week. But there it is. The president’s global strategy in his second term was based on two resounding premises. First,...

Some older Samsung Electronics Co. mobile devices face a sales and import ban in the United States after a U.S. trade panel ruled for Apple Inc. in a high-profile patent infringement case. The U.S. International Trade Commission on Friday ruled that South Korea's Samsung infringes on portions of two Apple Inc patents on digital mobile devices, covering the detection of headphone jacks and operation of touchscreens. The decision is likely to inflame passions in the long-running dispute and could spark a rebuke from South Korea. The panel moved to prohibit Samsung from importing, selling and distributing devices in the United...