Free Republic

...the pillar sat in British Museum for 150 years until Irving Finkel, a curator in the Middle East department, deciphered the Sumerian cuneiform writing on the cylinder this year. As it turns out, the object, now on view in an exhibit called "No Man's Land," was erected to establish a border between the warring city states of Lagash and Umma, located in present-day southern Iraq. According to the museum, the two cities were disputing over a fertile area called Gu'edina or the 'Edge of the Plain.' Around 2400 B.C. Enmetena, king of Lagash, had the pillar erected to stake his...

TEHRAN, Iran – The website of Iran's Revolutionary Guard is reporting that a general who fought in Syria and Iraq has allegedly accidentally killed himself while cleaning a gun. Gen. Ghodratollah Mansouri allegedly shot himself in the head by accident while cleaning his pistol, according to the Sunday report. The report added that Mansouri was veteran of the 1980s Iran-Iraq war and a "defender of the shrine," a reference to Iranians who fight against the extremist Islamic State (ISIS) group in Syria and Iraq. Since 2014, Mansouri was a regional commander of the Guard's ground forces in the northeastern city...

Qatar will leave the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries as of next month, its energy minister told media today, adding that the decision was part of a long-term strategy for growing its international presence on energy markets with a focus on gas. Qatar is the world’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas, but it has Australia breathing down its neck as well as emerging competition from the United States and other, smaller, producers. “Qatar has decided to withdraw its membership from OPEC effective January 2019 and this decision was communicated to OPEC this morning,” Saad al-Kaabi said, as quoted by...

Qatar will withdraw from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), Qatar's Energy Minister Saad Sherida al-Kaabi announced on Monday. The decision to quit the bloc of 15 oil-producing countries that account for almost half of the world's oil production was confirmed by Qatar Petroleum, the country's state oil company.

Saudi Arabia has not only called the end of Russia’s prominence as a global oil behemoth, but anticipates that Russia’s oil exports “will have declined heavily if not disappeared” within the next 19 years, Mohammed bin Salman said in a recent interview with Bloomberg. When asked whether Russia and Saudi Arabia had made a backroom deal to increase oil production, MbS was more tight-lipped, saying only that Saudi Arabia was “ready to supply any demand and any disappearing from Iran.” With Russia out of the game, Saudi Arabia would have plenty of oil demand to service, according to MbS. MbS...

Many U.S. producers say they can turn a profit at $50 a barrel and even as low as $30 in the Permian’s most productive regions. Yet most OPEC members need prices ranging between $70 and $90 per barrel to balance their budgets. The cartel scaled back output in 2016, but shale producers roared back as prices recovered. *** Barack Obama, hilariously, is now claiming credit for the shale boom. “You know that whole suddenly America’s like the biggest oil producer . . . that was me, people,” he said last month at Rice University. But drilling leases on federal land...

President Donald Trump is joined by legislators and Archbishop Bashar Warda of Erbil-Kurdistan, Iraq, left, as he signs H.R. 390-Iraq and Syria Genocide Relief and Accountability Act of 2018 Tuesday, Dec. 11, 2018 in the Oval Office of the White House. | Photo: White House | Shealah Craighead)Religious leaders and human rights activists are rejoicing after President Donald Trump signed a bill that supporters say will “boost” efforts to help Christians and other religious minorities victimized by the Islamic State’s genocide in Iraq and Syria.Surrounded by religious leaders and respected religious freedom advocates, Trump signed on Tuesday the Iraq...

WASHINGTON, DC – President Donald Trump signed a law on Tuesday combatting genocide of Christians in the Middle East, legislation supported by the Knights of Columbus and a broad array of faith-based organizations. Christians are being systematically wiped out in Syria and Iraq, along with other religious minorities in parts of the Middle East. Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) and former Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) spearheaded the passage of H.R. 390, the Iraq and Syria Genocide Relief and Accountability Act of 2018, which the president signed in an Oval Office ceremony. Both congressmen stood with the president as he signed the...

OSLO (AFP) - Yazidi activist Nadia Murad, a survivor of sex slavery by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), implored the global community to help free hundreds of women and girls still held by the militants in her Nobel acceptance speech on Monday (Dec 10), saying the world must protect her people. "The protection of the Yazidis and all vulnerable communities around the world is the responsibility of the international community," Ms Murad told the ceremony in Oslo.The 25-year-old shares the Nobel Peace Prize with Congolese doctor Denis Mukwege, who has spent more than two decades treating appalling...

ERBIL — US Special Representative for Syria Engagement James Jeffrey urged other countries to share a larger burden in facilitating the conditions for peace in Syria, while floating the idea of the United Nations enforcing a no-fly zone for parts of Syria. "Remember we were present not in northern Iraq but over northern Iraq in Operation Northern Watch for 13 years. That can be a UN force," he said on Tuesday, referring to the joint US-UK-Turkey no-fly zone in the late 1990s that protected Kurdish areas from the air force of Saddam Hussein. Jeffrey briefed reporters in Washington, D.C., after...

Peter Kassig delivering supplies for Syrian refugees. (AP Photo/Courtesy of Kassig Family) __________________________________________________________________ A senior leader of the ISIS terrorist group, Abu al Umarayn, was killed in a drone strike in Syria on Dec. 2, the U.S.-led coalition has told Fox News Pentagon correspondent Lucas Tomlinson. Al Umarayn had been involved in the killing of former U.S. Army ranger Peter Kassig. Coalition spokesperson Col. Sean Ryan told Fox News, “Al Umarayn had given indications of posing an imminent threat to Coalition Forces and he was involved in the killing of American Citizen and former U.S. Army Ranger, Peter Kassig. “He...

Turkish government intelligence has determined Mevlut Mert Altintas, 22 – the police officer who recently assassinated Russian Ambassador Andrey Karlov while the ambassador was giving a speech to open an art gallery in Ankara – was a member of the Gulen organization, which claimed to be the same group that staged an unsuccessful coup in Turkey in July.... ....the Clinton Foundation was engaged in a pay-to-play scheme to obtain Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s support for the Obama administration decision to give asylum to Fetullah Gulen, a Turkish Muslim imam the Erdogan government holds responsible for the attempted coup July...

TEHRAN, Iran — A magnitude 6.3 earthquake struck western Iran near its border with Iraq on Sunday night, injuring more than 500 people and sending fearful residents running into the streets, authorities said.

Volume 7, No. 3 - September 2003 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE COLD WAR'S LONGEST COVER-UP: HOW AND WHY THE USSR INSTIGATED THE 1967 WAR By Isabella Ginor The Soviet warning to Egypt about supposed Israeli troop concentrations on the Syrian border in May 1967 has long been considered a blunder that precipitated a war which the USSR neither desired nor expected. New evidence from Soviet and other Warsaw Pact documents, as well as memoirs of contemporary actors, contradicts this accepted theory. The author demonstrates that this warning was deliberate disinformation, part of a plan approved at the highest level of Soviet leadership...

"The country of Iran, as an example, is responsible for a bloody proxy war against Saudi Arabia in Yemen, trying to destabilize Iraq's fragile attempt at democracy, supporting the terror group Hezbollah, propping up dictator Bashar Assad in Syria (who has killed millions of his own citizens) and much more....." From the first full paragraph of President Trump's statement supporting Saudi Arabia under the heading "America First!" 11/20/2018 "Is President Trump about to replicate President Bush's folly?" Columnist Pat Buchanan It is patently obvious that President Trump has made Iran into the nasty guy just like all the nasty characters...

WASHINGTON DC (Kurdistan24) – Amb. Kenneth Ward strongly criticized Iran and Russia on Thursday for maintaining chemical weapons programs, in violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention to which they are both signatories. Ward, the US Permanent Representative to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), addressing that organization, cited Iran and Russia for their own chemical weapons programs. He also criticized their support for Damascus, which, he said, is “enabling Syria’s chemical weapons use by shielding the Assad regime from consequences in international fora.” Turning to Iran, Ward explained that the US “has had longstanding concerns that [it]...

Hillary Clinton popped back into the news cycle on Thanksgiving in the worst possible way, after the Guardian quoted her as saying, basically, that Europe needs to get harsher on migrants and refugees or else people like Donald Trump will keep winning elections. Just to reiterate this is a bad and terrible stance that only some kind of ultra-warped center-think could come up with. The interview took place before the midterms, according to the Guardian, and was published as part of the paper’s new “The New Populism” series, which might explain why they decided to drop the quotes on Thanksgiving...

Former Indiana Congressman Lee Hamilton (D) and former CENTCOM Commander Anthony Zinni told the Inter Press Service that they were paid to appear at recent events supporting the MEK, an Iranian opposition group currently considered a terrorist organization by the State Department. Hamilton and Zinni are among the many big time former government officials and military leaders who have appeared at recent pro-MEK events sponsored by a group called Executive Action, LLC. (The events true organizers remain unclear, Executive Action's CEO Neil Livingstone would only tell TPM they included Iranian American groups.) Speakers at the events have portrayed the MEK...

On Veterans Day, it is important for those who have never served to take a moment to understand the solitary world of a vet. Millions of vets are and have been successful in all endeavors. They are doctors, lawyers, business people and a thousand other professions. Not all have PTSD; not all are the troubled, brooding, street corner homeless guy, although they exist and need help desperately. No matter how successful a vet might be materially, more often than not, vets are often alone, mentally and spiritually each day and for the rest of their lives. Vets’ stories are all...

Full title: State Department lawyers removing references to ISIS 'genocide' against Christians, other religious minorities The State Department's top lawyers are systematically removing the word "genocide" to describe the Islamic State's mass slaughter of Christians, Yazidis, and other ethnic minorities in Iraq and Syria from speeches before they are delivered and other official documents, according to human rights activists and attorneys familiar with the policies. Additionally, Democratic senators are delaying confirmation of Mark Green, Trump's pick to head the U.S. Agency for International Development who has broad bipartisan support. These efforts guarantee that Obama-era policies that worked to exclude Iraq's...