Free Republic

With a media blitz, the Islamic State has set its sights on Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula as the next shot at expanding its empire and establishing a base from which to attack neighboring Israel.

Cautionary tale: When socialism is instituted democratically, it’s a good indication that your days of making decisions democratically may be numbered With Venezuela spinning out of control, it’s said that U.S. officials fear a military coup. We ought to ask “Why?” Democracy on the brain can be a dangerous condition. George W. Bush pursued his unwise “nation-building” policies under the assumption that, as he put it, “democracies don’t go to war with each other.” (Note: technically we’re speaking of “republics,” not democracies.) So WWI was the “war to end all wars,” and now there’s the political system to end all...

Venezuela arrests business owner because he somehow managed to acquire enough toilet paper to properly stock his employees’ bathrooms According to this article from the Atlantic, in Venezuela, a labor union at a private business has a clause in its contract which says that the bathrooms must always have toilet paper. I agree with the union on this.Since price controls caused a shortage of toilet paper, the only way the employer could get enough toilet paper was to illegally buy it on the black market for a price that was higher than the government controlled price.Now the government is accusing...

I'm praying that Venezuela can find a way back from this. And that the United States isn't dumb enough to go down the same road In case you haven’t heard, Venezuela went all in on feeling the Bern more than a decade ago. Socialism has been about as complete a disaster there as it’s possible for a thing to be. Just to give you one example: How does a country with more oil reserves than Saudi Arabia end up with a gas crisis? I’ll tell you how: A corrupt central-planning government mismanages its resources while making it impossible for anyone...

The Clinton Foundation, which has done a number of good works over the past 15 years, would appear to present an inherent conflict of interest should Mrs. Clinton become president, and possibly does even now with her as a candidate. Mrs. Clinton has suggested that if she is elected, the foundation — which collects contributions from wealthy interests, including foreign governments — would continue basically as is. “If Bill seeks to raise large sums of money from donors who also have an interest in U.S. policy, the public will rightly question whether the grants affected United States foreign policy,” said...

A school built in Gaza using German funds is educating their students on hatred and violence for Israel and providing children with military training At the end of March, a Hamas-affiliated news agency distributed a video showing a Palestinian teacher indoctrinating school children with hatred for Israel and support for an armed struggle against it. The teacher used the letters of the Arabic alphabet as a didactic tool to teach them "the fundamental Palestinian national principles" even before they learn to read. The video did not specify the name of the school; however, data collected by the Intelligence and Terrorism...

KINGSTON, Jamaica (JIS) – The President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro Moros, arrived in the island last night for a working visit. He was met on arrival at the Norman Manley International Airport in Kingston by Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, Senator Kamina Johnson Smith, among other dignitaries. Senator Johnson Smith said the visit is an important one, and is expecting fruitful talks from a bilateral meeting between President Maduro Moros and Prime Minister Andrew Holness today. The Venezuelan President is also expected to meet with Cabinet ministers.

Russian warplanes hit a key rebel supply route to Aleppo on Sunday in Moscow's first strikes on Syria's battleground second city since a February ceasefire, a monitoring group said. "The Russian and Syrian warplanes together carried out at least 40 air strikes on the Castello road," Syrian Observatory for Human Rights chief Rami Abdel Rahman said. "They are the heaviest air strikes there since February, and they are also the first confirmed Russian strikes since the truce began," Abdel Rahman said.(Snip)The Castello road is a key supply route for rebels leading north out of Aleppo.

The leftist American Jewish group J Street on Sunday issued a response to the revelation that it received more than half a million dollars to advocate for the Obama administration's controversial nuclear deal with Iran. The expose, revealed by Associated Press, noted that the Ploughshares Fund was named in an explosive New York Times profile of Obama aid Ben Rhodes, in which the President's chief propagandist listed the central groups responsible for creating an "echo chamber" in order to promote the deal. J Street was listed as receiving $576,000 to sell the deal, in a sum greater than that of...

Senior Hamas politburo official Mahmoud al-Zahar reignited the war of words between his terrorist organization and Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction, which have long been bitter rivals. Hamas and Fatah have remained violently divided despite the unity deal sealed by Abbas in April 2014 when he torpedoed the US-led peace talks. In recent days - even as Egypt is leading talks in Cairo to try and unify the Palestinian factions - al-Zahar upped the ante on Hamas-Fatah tensions by slamming Fatah founder and arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat for being a "coward" and fleeing a battle with Israel, before...

The plane is meant for detecting and tracking a number of aerial (fighter jets, bombers, ballistic and cruise missiles), ground (tank columns) and surface (above-water vessels) targets, informing command centers about the developments in the air and sea, and directing fighter and strike aviation. It can also serve as a command center itself. The A-50 plane is in essence a giant flying data processing center. It is literally stuffed with equipment which is operated by 10 men. The aircraft can also protect itself by means of electronic warfare. It has an aerial refueling system. The main feature of the aircraft...

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President Maduro Deliberately Causes Shortages to Cow Venezuelan Citizens into Submission Even with the collapse of the price of oil, Venezuela’s total export revenue this year will yield a similar amount to Peru’s total exports. Peru and Venezuela have the same population, and the world knows there are no food lines in Peru and no one is dying for lack of medicines in that country. Unfortunately, most reporting by the international press on Venezuela’s current crisis, while mentioning the Chavista regime’s mismanagement and corruption, also places the blame on the economic crisis that befell the country after oil prices collapsed...

They have a socialist paradise in Venezuela! People there receive "according to their needs". But you'd better not need much in Venezuela Lest you find your self buried under weeds. Oooooooooohhhhh! They're cooking cats on every corner in Caracas. In Maracaibo they make a meal of mud. Palmasolans put pepper on their pooches. Hugo Chavez sure turned out to be a dud! The professors in their classes in the US Tell their students that socialism is great. But I don't think they'd be asking for seconds If Spot and Mittens were cooked and on their plate! Oooooooooohhhhh! They're cooking cats...

It has become the fact in American political talking points, even Mr. Trump insists that what is going on in the Middle East today is the result of the President Bush’s 2003 policy in Iraq that opened the doors to chaos and the creation of ISIS. No one, however, is going back to search for the root causes of the events in today’s complicated and problematic Middle East. The facts are, notwithstanding the forever continuing Palestinian/Israeli war, that the Middle East was kept relatively peaceful and political Islam and its terrorism was kept under control in a secular Iran until...

A Fake Museum for a Fake Palestine The Palestinian Museum is as empty as its soul. May 20, 2016 Daniel Greenfield    Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam. 150 years ago, Mark Twain visited Muslim-occupied Israel and wrote of “unpeopled deserts” and “mounds of barrenness,” of “forlorn” and “untenanted” cities. Palestine is “desolate,” he concluded. “One may ride ten miles hereabouts and not see ten human beings.” The same is true of the Palestinian Museum which opened with much fanfare and one slight problem. While admission is free,...

TEL AVIV – A group that advocates a nuclear-free world and was identified earlier this month by the White House as central in helping to market the Iran nuclear deal to the news media has funded National Public Radio since 2005, an Associated Press investigation has revealed. Think tanks funded by the Ploughshares Fund include the Arms Control Association, Brookings Institution, and the Atlantic Council, the AP reported. Unmentioned by the AP is that the Ploughshares Fund is financed by billionaire GEORGE SOROS' OPEN SOCIETY INSTITUTE. The involvement of Ploughshares in selling the Iran agreement to the public was revealed...

General Odierno Says ISIS was AvoidableGen. Raymond Odierno said he believes the Islamic State’s creation was avoidable during an interview on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. Host Joe Scarborough asked Odierno, who commanded the Multi-National Forces in Iraq for about two years, if ISIS and the current state of Iraq were avoidable when the United States ended formal combat operations there. “Did it ever have to begin? Was ISIS avoidable?” Scarborough asked. “I think it is, and I’m not one for revisionist history,” Odierno said. “Actually, I was, on 1 September 2010, that’s when I gave up command in Iraq and that...

The American military is warning residents of ISIS’s Syrian capital to leave the city—suggesting that an offensive on Raqqa was imminent, two Pentagon officials told the Daily Beast. In the past day, residents of Raqqa have posted photos of the warnings on Twitter, saying they were airdropped on leaflets by the U.S.-led coalition. The defense officials were the first to confirm that the coalition had indeed issued the warnings.

Top Donald Trump advisor Stephen Miller spoke with CNN’s Brooke Baldwin today about Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy. stephen miller hillary Stephen Miller pointed out the obvious: “Honestly, I feel bad for Bernie Sanders supporters and I’ll tell you why. Thanks to super delegates, the Democratic party is on the verge of nominating the most pro-war, pro-Wall Street lawmaker in the modern history of the Democratic Party… Hillary Clinton’s platform is, I want to start wars in the Middle East and then import all the refugees into the United States and other countries without knowing who they are. That’s a recipe...