Free Republic

Sensational reports of Russian government spies hacking into the Democrat party’s computers weren’t the usual anti-Moscow smear job. Republican presidential contender Donald Trump also took a hit in the double whammy. The abrasive business tycoon may have a popular following among grass roots voters, but he has managed to garner powerful enemies within the American establishment. Not least large sections of the corporate news media, the military and foreign policy arms of US government.

Quoting unnamed administration officials, CNN host Jake Tapper revealed that the White House is “concerned” that Russia could invade South and East Ukraine “possibly as soon as this weekend.” He said that, in spite of Russia’s assurances that the large numbers of troops and military equipment amassed along the Ukrainian border are there merely for training exercises, the White House believes that Moscow could be planning a broader incursion into Ukraine. “There is now real apprehension that Vladimir Putin could push even further into Ukraine, perhaps as soon as this weekend,” Tapper said. He quoted anonymous administration officials who are...

Finian Cunningham, a British freelance journalist working on international affairs, spoke to Sputnik in an exclusive interview saying that the US move is not aimed to counter ISIL, but rather restrict Russia’s air operations against the jihadist group. “It would be a complete violation of the international law if the US sends its troops into Syria no matter what number of troops,” Cunningham said. Talking about the real purpose of this mission he said, “I am very skeptical about it just like the yearlong air campaign that the US led coalition has allegedly been running to defeat ISIL. That was...

British officials have made an unseemly leap to speculate on a terrorist plot in the Russian airliner crash over Sinai last weekend. And Russia has understandably reacted furiously to the speculation, saying that it is too early to make such an assessment when crash investigators have not even compiled, let alone evaluated, evidence. American officials, including President Barack Obama, are also now echoing the British claims of a bomb on the plane. The question is: why the haste? ........................... Cameron and Obama are evidently being fed intelligence assessments of a bomb being stowed in the airplane's hold by terrorists. But...

"The US and its allies would like to see Russia’s military operations in Syria go horribly wrong as Russia’s success heralds a crushing defeat for Western regime-change machinations. It would also signal the balance of power shifting away from US hegemony. . . . From the outset of Russia’s aerial bombing campaign against terror groups in Syria, beginning on September 30, Washington and its Western allies have sought all possible ways of discrediting and derailing the intervention. US President Obama poured scorn saying “it was doomed to fail,” while Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron labeled the Russian move as “a...

Last fall, amid concerns that the Iran deal would result in a financial windfall for Iran’s proxy terror organization, Hezbollah, Congress passed the Hezbollah International Financing Prevention Act. It mandated new, stringent sanctions against banks and other financial institutions doing business with Hezbollah.The bill passed unanimously in both the Senate and the House, leaving President Obama little choice but to sign it into law on December 18.Though less in the spotlight recently than the Islamic State, Lebanese-based Hezbollah has killed more Americans than any terror organization except al-Qaeda; has a vast global reach encompassing Europe, Africa, and Central and South...

A Preoccupied Western Media Fails to Appreciate the Historic Revival of Ties Between Russia and Israel Putin Netanyahu.JPG The recent meeting in Moscow between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin marks a milestone in the continuing rapproachment between Israel and Russia. The growing engagement between these former bitter adversaries has attracted limited attention in the Western media, obsessed as it is with Israeli-Palestinian issues. In its prior embodiment as the Soviet Union, the Russian government armed and abetted Israel's enemies and had a central role in the worldwide campaign to delegitimize the Jewish state. Ironically, while...

Russia is not ruling out using its veto power at the United Nations Security Council to thwart anti-Israel resolutions, an unnamed Israeli diplomatic official involved in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s trip to Moscow last week told the Israeli news site nrg. However, the official did qualify his statement, saying that the chances of Russia wielding its veto power in such a manner were very low. The official noted that the high level of respect Russian President Vladmir Putin demonstrated toward Netanyahu and his traveling entourage last week was unprecedented and indicated Russia’s deep desire to bolster its relationship with Israel....

Tens of thousands of Russian dual nationals are being effectively stripped of their Russian citizenship via a quiet policy of Russian consulates worldwide refusing to renew their passports. Under new regulations the consulates are enforcing, anyone seeking to renew a passport who was not registered as living in Russia on February 6, 1992, will be rejected, even if his or her passport had been renewed on previous occasions. It is unclear just how many people this new policy will affect. But it will certainly apply to thousands of Jews who emigrated from Russia after July 1, 1991 — the date...

In 2001 a group of Castroite spies in south Florida known as the Wasp Network were convicted of charges ranging from espionage to conspiracy to commit murder (of U.S. citizens.) They were sentenced to terms ranging from 15 years to two life sentences. According to the FBI’s affidavit, the charges against these KGB-trained Communist spies included: • Compiling the names, home addresses, and medical files of the U.S. Southern Command’s top officers and that of hundreds of officers stationed at Boca Chica Naval Station in Key West.• Infiltrating the headquarters of the U.S. Southern Command.This past April, on Obama’s orders,...

In his weekly lesson, which is broadcast on the Jordanian Yarmouk TV channel, Professor Ahmad Nofal of the University of Jordan said that the Holocaust happened because of the "treachery" of the Jews and that "most of Hitler's ministers who perpetrated the Holocaust were Jews." Citing Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy, he said that the number of Jews killed had been 600,000, and not six million. "They added a zero," he said. Nofal further claimed: "We, the Palestinian people, are the victims of your Nazism... Your Holocaust lasted six months, but ours has been going on for 68 years."

The Israeli Left has a serious flag problem. Well, a problem with the Israeli flag to be precise. The one with the six-pointed blue star. Not the ISIS flag. The Left intensely dislikes people who wave Israeli flags, although I think it would be okay with those radical anti-Trump protesters waving Mexican and Iranian flags. At the Israeli Left's own rallies, like one widely reported recently, one sees oodles of Stalinist red flags, lots of PLO flags, and sometimes one may see Hamas flags, but no Israeli flags. In a few famous cases, the Left's contempt for the flag goes...

Russian Prime Minister Dmitriy Medvedev has whipped up a storm on Russian social media for an off-the-cuff comment he made to a Russian pensioner last month. Medvedev was caught on camera telling an elderly woman in Crimea, a region annexed by Russia from Ukraine in spring 2014, that there was "no money left" in Russia's budget when he was asked why the state pension of 8,000 Russian rubles a month (around $125 a month) was not higher given the rising cost of living. "There just isn't any money now. When we find money, we'll make the adjustment," Medvedev replied to...

He is the head of the snake. There will be the usual roundups after Wednesday's bloodshed in Tel Aviv - four dead, more wounded from the hands of Palestinian Arab terrorists. Two men are said to be responsible for this act of savagery against innocent civilians enjoying a day at the Sarona Market in the heart of town. This was Israel's mistake. The mistake was to grant respectability to a group of thugs. They were captured. They are in custody and Israel's law enforcement and security services are in the process of finding out who they are, where they came...

ISTANBUL // Turkish police detained four people in a hunt for the perpetrators of a car bombing in central Istanbul on Tuesday that killed seven police and four civilians. The third deadly attack in Turkey’s biggest city in six months targeted a bus transporting anti-riot police in Beyazit district, close to many of the city’s top tourist sites, said Istanbul governor Vasip Sahin. Thirty-six people were wounded, three of them seriously, he added. The four suspects were taken to police headquarters in Istanbul for interrogation, the state-run Anatolia news agency said, without providing further information. There was no early claim...

Have the Obama White House, the U.S. State Department, and part of the Washington media, press, and TV been engaged in a vast left-wing conspiracy to lie to and deceive the American public about the nuclear deal with Iran? One might think so, since no U.S. official or politician has been held responsible for the tangle of lies, attempt at censorship, and linguistic equivocations on the issue. The great Machiavelli observed that "occasionally, words must veil the facts. But let this happen in a way that no one become aware of it." This seems to have been the objective of...

As of June 1st, Ghost Squad Hackers – the same group leading #OpIcarus – have launched a series of coordinated attacks against leading members of the corporate mainstream media. Giving credit where credit is due, Tec.mic and Softpedia were the first to report the operation. But their reports only tell a portion of the whole story, we will explain why in a moment. Broadly speaking, the goal of the #OpSilence is to attack all the corrupt major news networks that mislead and censor information from the general public. More specifically, the news agencies who conceal the crimes of Israel, while...

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump stated that he sees Israel as the victim in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and he would “100%” come to its defense if it was attacked in an interview broadcast on Monday’s “Hannity” on the Fox News Channel.

A Palestinian-American activist asserted earlier this month that the United States and Israel share a common legacy of ethnic cleansing as the foundational basis of the two nations in a video posted to the online news outlet The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI). In the clip Osama Abu Irshaid, the National Director of American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), claims that the "Zionists" have co-opted the "racist" narrative of the founding of America to mirror that of the establishment of the State of Israel in order to convince Americans that the two peoples have a similar history. "We came to...

A smuggling network has managed to sneak illegal immigrants from Middle East terrorism hotbeds straight to the doorstep of the U.S., including helping one Afghan man authorities say was part of an attack plot in North America. Immigration officials have identified at least a dozen Middle Eastern men smuggled into the Western Hemisphere by a Brazilian-based network that connected them with Mexicans who guided them up to the U.S. border, according to internal government documents reviewed by The Washington Times. Those smuggled included Palestinians, Pakistanis and the Afghan man who Homeland Security officials said had family ties to the Taliban...