Free Republic

The Islamic State announced its arrival in Libya in brutal fashion this week with the slaying of an American contractor in a suicide attack on a Tripoli hotel, an act that will make it harder for Washington to continue ignoring the conflict and chaos raging in this North African country. Until now the United States and the European Great Powers have been content to look the other way as Libya had descended into violence and anarchy. Four years ago, NATO bombed the rebels to victory in their war against Muammar Qadhafi, then packed its bags and left the country to...

Greece's government will not cooperate with the EU and IMF mission bankrolling the country and will not seek an extension to the bailout program, its finance minister said on Friday. Jeroen Dijsselbloem, head of the euro zone finance ministers' group who is in Athens for talks with the new government, said the two sides would decide what would happen next before the program ends on Feb. 28.

Greece's new nationalist defense minister prompted Greece's perennial rival Turkey to scramble jets on Friday, just days after he took office, by flying over uninhabited islets off the Turkish coast that nearly triggered a war in 1996. Turkish fighter jets entered Greek airspace and were intercepted by Greek jets as Defence Minister Panos Kammenos and military chiefs flew by helicopter to the islet of Imia to drop wreaths in memory of three Greek officers killed nearby in a helicopter crash 19 years ago, the Greek Defence Ministry said. Kammenos heads the small, right-wing, Eurosceptical Independent Greeks party, and the episode...

Isreali officials told Channel 10 on Friday that they are convinced the Obama administration has already agreed to most of Iran’s demands in the P5+1 negotiations over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program. According to unnamed officials, Washington “has given the Iranians 80 percent of what they want” out of the negotiations, Channel 10 is reporting.

The African Union’s rotating post of chairman has gone to Robert Mugabe. Zimbabwe’s veteran president enjoys respect across the continent, but faces travel bans from both the US and EU for harassing opponents. Mugabe assumed the largely ceremonial role on Friday at an African Union (AU) summit in Addis Ababa as it leaders and UN chief Ban Ki-moon called for global action against Boko Haram in Nigeria. […] Western nations accuse Mugabe, a former guerrilla leader who fought against white-minority rule in former British-ruled Rhodesia, of crushing political dissent and ruining Zimbabwe’s rural-based economy. For many in Africa, however, he...

Thursday criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his upcoming speech before the US Congress that was arranged without the knowledge of US President Barack Obama. Speaking at a memorial ceremony for former prime minister Ariel Sharon in the Negev, Peres said, "Bibi [Netanyahu] can make speeches at any place or date, but when the President of the United States asks him not to come before elections, he must respect that request." Peres also addressed the tension between Israel and Hezbollah after an attack that killed two IDF soldiers on Wednesday, saying that "both sides understand that there is no choice...

Arms Buildup: A senior weapons developer tells Congress that Beijing's massive defense buildup, emphasizing precision-guided and other advanced weapons, has placed the U.S. and its shrinking military at serious risk. 'I am very concerned about the increasing risk of loss of U.S. military technological superiority," Frank Kendall, deputy undersecretary for acquisition, said Wednesday. "We're at risk, and the situation is getting worse." He was testifying before the House Armed Services Committee at a hearing on the subject of defense and technological change. The Chinese were paying attention to U.S. military dominance in the early 1990s after we won the arms...

WASHINGTON — When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses a joint session of Congress in March, it is unclear whether everybody invited will actually show up. Democrats have criticized House Speaker John Boehner for circumventing the administration when he invited Netanyahu to speak, and the White House has already said Obama will not meet with him when he’s here. BuzzFeed News asked several Senate Democrats whether they planned on skipping the speech or not. Most said they either hadn’t thought about it or they hadn’t decided. But there were no hard answers in the negative. Only one senator definitively said...

WARSAW — Piotr Szczepaniak, an apartment manager here, had just finished work, checking faucets and making sure rents were paid. After making himself a coffee, he logged on to a Polish social network and noticed that someone had posted the current exchange rate of the Swiss franc. “I was frozen,” he said, seeing that the franc’s value had soared that day. Like hundreds of thousands of other Eastern Europeans, Mr. Szczepaniak, 46, is paying off a mortgage he took out in francs, instead of his local currency, the zloty. In an instant, his monthly payment rose by more than 20...

Muslim persecution of Christians is at a high tide — and there are grave fears of more sectarian bloodletting as millions of people in Nigeria, which is half Muslim and half Christian, vote for their national leaders next month. These religious atrocities cry out for media attention and political awareness, said Raymond Ibrahim, author of the monthly report “Muslim Persecution of Christians,” which has chronicled attacks on Christians in dozens of countries since July 2011. Mainstream media rarely cover attacks on Christians, even though they happen “all around the Islamic world,” Mr. Ibrahim said Tuesday.

On January 29, a female protester at a Council on Islamic-American Relations (CAIR) event in Texas grabbed the mic and screamed, “Islam will never dominate the United States.” The incident took place in Austin, Texas, during the 11th Texas Muslim Capitol Day. In a video posted by The Texas Tribune, the woman can be seen grabbing the mic and denouncing the “false prophet Muhammed.” And even as Muslim organizers by the podium asked for help in silencing her, the woman continued: “Islam will never dominate the United States. And by the grace of God, it will not dominate Texas.”

The European Union’s counterterrorism chief says member states need to have common laws against Europeans traveling to Syria and Iraq to join jihadist groups. […] Gilles de Kerchove told reporters in Riga on Friday that “it’s important to have the same definition of what is it when you go abroad for training purposes to fight.” …

UNITED NATIONS – Giving President Obama fast-track authority to conclude an international trade agreement is like playing Russian roulette with six bullets in the chamber, says one of America’s leading gun rights organizations. Gun Owners of America is blasting a congressional proposal that empowers Obama to unilaterally negotiate international agreements as “a ‘bait and switch’ scheme that could seriously impact the Second Amendment.” House and Senate committees are currently preparing to hand Obama so-called “fast-track” trade promotion authority. It would enable the president to unilaterally negotiate the TransPacific Partnership, a trade and global governance agreement with the U.S. and 11...

ISLAMABAD – A bomb blast ripped through a Shiite mosque in southern Pakistan as worshippers gathered for Friday prayers, killing at least 56 people and wounding dozens more, in the deadliest act of anti-Shiite violence in two years. The attack compounds Pakistan's security challenge to contain a surge in militancy following last month's killing of 150 people, mostly children, at a Peshawar school. The militant Sunni group Jundullah claimed responsibility for Friday's bombing in the city of Shikarpur in Sindh province, 310 miles north of the port city of Karachi. [...]

What Is the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP)? The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a secretive, multinational trade agreement that threatens to extend restrictive intellectual property (IP) laws across the globe and rewrite international rules on its enforcement. The main problems are two-fold: (1) Intellectual Property Chapter: Leaked draft texts of the agreement show that the IP chapter would have extensive negative ramifications for users’ freedom of speech, right to privacy and due process, and hinder peoples' abilities to innovate. (2) Lack of Transparency: The entire process has shut out multi-stakeholder participation and is shrouded in secrecy.

Raúl Castro knows a sucker when he sees one. Having watched Barack Obama, the world’s worst negotiator, hand concession after concession to the mullahs of Iran, he is going for a big score in the current negotiations over resumption of diplomatic relations, at President Obama’s initiative. Far from being grateful that he has been handed huge plums, he is making ridiculous demands. (And given Obama’s track record, you can’t call them unrealistic.) Alastair Jamieson reports for NBC News: Cuban President Raul Castro has demanded that the United States hand back its Guantanamo Bay military base - an apparent bargaining tool...

Boko Haram jihadists have reportedly closed in on the Nigerian city of Maiduguri, which has an estimated population of two million, along with another 200,000 who are currently taking refuge within its borders. Residents have said that the Boko Haram terrorists warned them that they are readying “a big grave” for Maiduguri’s residents and that “there will be no mercy.” A local resident told the CBC regarding Boko Haram, “They kept saying they were chasing us so that we can all run into the big grave they are preparing for us in Maiduguri.”

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has agreed to testify before the House Select Committee investigating the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, CNN reports. Rep. Elijah Cummings, the panel’s Democratic ranking member, told CNN Tuesday that Clinton had agreed to testify before the committee late last year. “The chairman asked me back in September to inquire as to whether Secretary Clinton would testify,” Cummings said. “She immediately said she would and that she wanted to come in December, but if December did not work, she would come in January. She said, ‘I’ll do it,...

Haider Eid, an associate professor at al-Aqsa University in the Gaza Strip, who also has a blog with Al Jazeera, pre-recorded his remarks to the Modern Language Association (MLA) convention in Vancouver, Canada. Eid apologized for not being able to attend the convention:“Unfortunately, I have not been able to leave Gaza” for at least eight conferences. He even remarked that he “had to think twice about participating in your extremely important panel” at the MLA, which had less than a dozen people in the audience. He then blasted Israel, “Gaza has been under a medieval siege by apartheid Israel since...

The leader of Pakistani politico-religious party Jamaat-e Islami is claiming that the Western "extremist standpoint" on the freedom of news organizations to publish "blasphemous caricatures" of Islam's prophet Muhammad will ultimately lead to World War III. In addressing the thousands in attendance at a Friday protest over the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, which publicized cartoons portraying Muhammad, the influential chief of the Jamaat-e Islami party, Sirajul Haq, demanded that the United Nations make laws designed to prevent the media and others from mocking religious personalities. Haq explained that the West's leniency and tolerance in dealing with those who mock...