Free Republic

With rising unilateralism challenging its very existence, the United Nations convenes its annual meeting of world leaders Monday and will try once more to tackle problems together as a community of nations, addressing threats ranging from Mideast conflicts to the effects of global warming — and also encouraging the glimmer of hope over the nuclear standoff in North Korea. This year, 133 world leaders have signed up to attend the General Assembly session, a significant increase from last year’s 114. Secretary-General António Guterres called the expected large turnout “eloquent proof of the confidence of the international community in the United...

U.S. President Donald Trump will fail in his confrontation with Iran, just like Iraq's Saddam Hussein, Iranian President Hassan Rohani said on Saturday, referring to the war between the two Middle Eastern powers and vowing that Tehran will not abandon its missiles. Tensions have ramped up between Iran and the United States after Trump withdrew from a landmark multilateral nuclear deal in May and reimposed sanctions on the Islamic Republic last month.

Connections between the Kremlin and international terrorism extend back for decades. The KGB helped develop modern terrorism. It provided weapons to terrorist groups, including Hezbollah, helped devise aircraft hijackings during the 1960s, and promoted the concept of suicide bombings against both military and civilian targets. According to KGB defectors, the FSB successor has continued to sponsor terrorists such as Ayman al-Zawahiri, who trained in Russia in the 1990s before joining Osama bin Laden. During its proxy attack on Ukraine, Moscow supplied the missile system to separatists who shot down a Malaysian Airlines jet, killing nearly 300 civilians. The West has...

TEHRAN, Iran — Gunmen attacked an annual Iranian military parade Saturday in the country's oil-rich southwest, killing at least 24 people, including eight members of the country's elite Revolutionary Guard, and wounding 53 others, local media reported. Iran's state-run IRNA news agency cited "knowledgeable sources" without elaborating. It said gunmen were dressed in Guard uniforms and targeted a riser where military and police commanders were sitting. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the assault in Ahvaz, which saw gunfire spray into a crowd of marching Guardsmen, bystanders and government officials watching from a nearby riser. However, Iran faced a bloody...

Gunmen fired on a military parade in southwestern Iran on Saturday, killing 25 people, almost half of them members of the Revolutionary Guards, state news agencies reported, in one of the worst attacks ever on the elite force. State television said the assault, which wounded more than 60 people, targeted a stand where Iranian officials had gathered in the city of Ahvaz to watch an annual event marking the start of the Islamic Republic’s 1980-88 war with Iraq. An Iranian ethnic Arab opposition movement called the Ahvaz National Resistance, which seeks a separate state in oil-rich Khuzestan province, claimed responsibility...

An Israeli veteran of the 1948 War for Independence dissects the revisionist myth of Palestinian innocence To back up its demands for full repatriation to Israel of Arab refugees and their descendants, the Palestinian leadership has—for over fifty years—busily spun the story of their "Naqba," their catastrophic flight from Palestine during 1947-48, in all the media available to them. This version of events—replete with Jewish brutality and Arab victimization—is a lie whose time has come, one now almost universally believed by Gentile and Jew alike. It has become the latest Blood Libel against the People of the Book; and like...

The U.S. military Tuesday said it supported a plan to establish a demilitarized zone in northern Syria that would separate rebels in their last stronghold from advancing government forces. The agreement to create a buffer zone was worked out Monday in a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan held in Sochi, Russia. Russia’s defense minister said that under the agreement, Syria would refrain from launching an offensive on Idlib Province, the last major rebel stronghold.

All of this diplomatic traffic is about the impending Syrian military operation into the Idlib province of Syria where around three million are living. The Syrian army, backed by Russia, is aiming to eliminate the jihadist terrorists, which have been controlling the province since early 2017. Turkey has 12 military outposts around Idlib, as part of a three-way agreement with Russia and Iran. Turkey has three main concerns: First, a large-scale operation without distinguishing civilians from terrorists can create a huge catastrophe. Second, it can kick another influx from Syria towards Turkey, complicating the already difficult refugee problem in the...

In a telegram earlier Monday, Putin had "stressed that the results of the vote fully speak of Recep Tayyip Erdogan's great political authority..." © Provided by AFP In a telegram earlier Monday, Putin had "stressed that the results of the vote fully speak of Recep Tayyip Erdogan's great political authority..." Russian strongman Vladimir Putin on Monday congratulated Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on his re-election triumph in a phone call, after saying the result showed the Turkish leader's "great political authority" and mass support. On the call Putin and Erdogan confirmed their interest in "deepening partnership ties between the two...

Marine Le Pen, the leader of the French far right has been left shocked and furious after a court ordered her to be examined by a psychiatrist to determine if she "is capable of understanding remarks and answering questions". *snip* The unusual summoning is in relation to Le Pen having tweeted out gruesome propaganda images from terror group Isis that showed the bodies of people having been executed by the so-called Islamic State.

"Militants and activists of the White Helmets continue fabricating the sham scenes that will feature the alleged use of chemical weapons inside the Idlib zone of de-escalation. The filming of these fakes are already taken place in some Syrian districts. Notably, the organizers forced the Syrians abducted previously in Idlib and Aleppo Governates to take part in the filming." Russian UN Ambassador Vasily Nebanzya at UN Security Council 9/18/2018 Russia is moving forward with Turkey to clear out a buffer zone in the Idlib region by October 15th. But the Russians also say jihadists are planning a fake attack using...

Putin’s dialing down of the rhetoric is an effort to mask his intentions. He — Russia — still has the same foreign policy interests in Syria as he did before the plane was shot down, and those aren’t going to change anytime soon. When journalists asked him about the much more hostile statement of his Defense Ministry, which also vowed a retaliatory response, Putin stated clearly that it was “fully coordinated” with him (of course it was). He defined what ‘retaliatory’ meant. “The retaliatory measures will be directed above all to boosting the security of military men and installations in...

In March, State Department veteran and former adviser to Barack Obama, Frederic Hof, bid farewell to public life with a stunning admission. Amid a confession regarding his failure to prevent the expansion of the Syrian civil war into a regional crisis, Hof laid the blame for that all-consuming conflict (as well as a notable uptick in Russian aggression) at the feet of Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. The administration sacrificed Syrian civilians and American credibility for the mistaken notion that Iran required appeasement in Syria as the price for a nuclear agreement,” Hof wrote. Today, with 500,000 dead, millions...

The United States' commitment to global development does not look good compared with that of other wealthy countries — and it's likely to get worse. According to an annual index released Tuesday by the Center for Global Development that ranks 27 of the world's wealthiest countries, the U.S. scored dead last on foreign aid contributions and quality — despite being the largest donor in dollar amount. That's because in 2017, it allocated a mere 0.18 percent of its gross national income for development assistance. That is well short of the 0.7 percent that wealthy countries have committed to strive for...

Russia has blamed Israel for the downing of one of its military planes in Syria and threatened "retaliation." An Ilyushin IL-20 aircraft was shot down by Syrian air defense missiles in what has been called a "friendly fire" incident. The Russian defense ministry has claimed that Israeli jets were attacking nearby targets and purposely "used the Russian plane as a cover, exposing it to fire from Syrian air defenses."

"Idlib miltiants have delivered canisters with chlorine to the village of Bsanqul, where they are preparing to stage a chemical attack, the Russian Defense Ministry says" "Southfront"-9/16/2018 The Russians have again warned about plans by Al-Qaeda forces in Syria to stage a false flag chemical attack to justify military action by the US and allied nations. The latest warning came Saturday from Lt. Gen. Vladimir Savchenko of the Russian Center for Reconciliation. Savchenko said that jihadists from the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) have delivered chlorine canisters to the village of Bsanqul in Idlib Province. The Russian military warning comes ahead...

Hypocrisy appears to be the leading trait we can expect from high-ranking UN officials such as the High Commissioner for Human Rights. Sadly, Ms. Bachelet is no exception The new United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet has unfortunately continued the one-sided anti-Israel narrative that her anti-Semitic predecessor, Prince Zeid Raad Al Hussein, propagated whenever he got a chance. In her first speech to the UN Human Rights Council on September 10, 2018, Ms. Bachelet blamed Israel’s so-called “blockade” and its alleged “excessive use of force” for all the problems suffered by the Palestinians in Hamas-run Gaza. “Prospects...

Qamishli (Syria) (AFP) - Kurdish fighters in northern Syria detained an alleged Italian member of the Islamic State group as he was trying to flee across the border to Turkey, they said Thursday. The People's Protection Units (YPG) have captured several foreign IS fighters since the jihadists' so-called caliphate collapsed nearly a year ago. "On August 27, a mercenary called Semir Bogana was captured as a result of a special operation conducted by our Anti-Terror Units, when he was trying to flee to Turkey," said the YPG. It said Bogana -- an Italian citizen known also as Abu Hureyre al-Muhajir...

Syrian school textbooks repeatedly accuse Israel of stealing lands in order to "fabricate Arab-Syrian history", and make no mention of Hezbollah or the Holocaust, according to a new study that provides information about school curriculum in Syria in the wake of the Syrian civil war. Marcus Sheff, commented on the textbook: "While Syrian children witness the civil war raging around them, their textbooks give no explanation for this war. There is no hope that Syria will moderate its traditional Ba'athist hostility towards Israel even after the end of this terrible civil war." One of the most serious accusations against Israel,...

Bucking--not backing - Trump is a sure-fire recipe for committing political suicide President Trump has created a veritable diplomatic tsunami affecting the political fortunes of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), Hamas and Jordan - with his decision to cease all future donations to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) - currently US$360million per annum and comprising about 30% of UNRWA’s budget. The numbers of UNRWA-registered Palestinian Arab refugees in Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza have been increasing in leaps and bounds annually because they include all the descendants of those Palestinian Arabs caught up in the 1948...