Free Republic

When a trainload of tanks, guns, and other military hardware supposedly seized from the Syrian battlefields pulled up at Kursk railway station on a cloudy afternoon this week, a jubilant crowd was there to greet it. An orchestra belted out Soviet war songs. A state-funded paramilitary youth movement performed a dance for world peace. A World War II veteran in battered shoes lauded Russia's armed forces. And officials in slick suits delivered the obligatory praise for the president and commander in chief, Vladimir Putin. "The next generation must understand that the enemy is not far away," said Acting Regional Governor...

"I would like to sincerely apologise for not being able to continue my service and for all my shortcomings during my service," he wrote on Instagram on Monday night. On Tuesday morning, he urged fellow diplomats not to follow his lead and suggested that he had resigned because he felt he had been sidelined. "I hope my resignation will act as a spur for the foreign ministry to regain its proper statutory role in the conduct of foreign affairs," he said. He was also quoted by the centrist newspaper Jomhuri Eslami as saying in an interview that political infighting was...

Palestinians uproot trees planted in memory of Jewish girl brutally murdered by jihadist The attack on 19-year-old Ori Ansbacher was so brutal that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the murder “shocking brutality,” and it has been described by many as one of “the most horrific murders Israel has ever seen.” After being raped, she was murdered because she was Jewish, and the jihadist who did it, 29-year-old Hebron resident Arafat Irfayia, was captured in a mosque after DNA evidence led Israeli authorities there. Palestinian Minister of Religious Affairs Yusuf Ida’is was so incensed that Israeli authorities dared to enter a...

(BREAKING NEWS: Pakistan is saying it shot down two Indian jets in its airspace in Kashmir today. Pakistan says it bombed open ground but did not bomb six military targets it identified in the region. Pakistani Prime Minister Imram Khan says "We shot down two of their Migs. The pilots are with us". Khan has asked for dialogue with India.... A Saudi Arabian man, accused off the hit and run death of a 15-year-old in Oregon, is unlikely to face justice in the US. Abdulrahman Sameer Noorah was bailed out of jail in Oregon and surrendered his passport, but was...

DEIR AL-ZOR PROVINCE, Syria (Reuters) - Having joined Islamic State in Syria four years ago, the Algerian woman only abandoned the jihadists’ last scrap of besieged territory when her daughter was shot in the leg... (snip) Adnan Afrin, an SDF official, said the civilian convoys from Baghouz have included a growing number of surrendering militants. They are searched for bombs and mines before being allowed to go any further, he said. The SDF estimates about 30,000 people have left Baghouz. It aims to eliminate or force the surrender of remaining fighters, who, according to the SDF, have dug defensive tunnels....

SAS troops have found the severed heads of 50 sex slaves in ISIS rat tunnels in scenes they described as “like Apocalypse Now”. The discovery was made as British forces helped in the assault of the final ISIS stronghold in Baghuz. Also among the heads were jihadis apparently executed by their commanders over allegations of spying. The Mail on Sunday reported the heads were found in dustbins within a network of tunnels that the terrorist fighters retreated in order to make their last stand in the country. More than 100 jihadis were killed during the battle while only two British...

In what could be interpreted as Turkish reaction to President Trump's decision to keep US troops in Syria after saying they would be withdrawn back in December, the Turkish Interior Minister says his government will reveal the links between Kurdish groups considered terrorists by Turkeu and American generals..... Hundreds of suspected Islamic State fighters have been turned over to Iraqi authorities by Kurdish forces operating in eastern Syria...... President Trump tweeted Sunday evening that sufficient progress has been made in trade talks with China to delay tariff increases.... The talks between Afghanistan's Taliban and the United States resumed today in...

Good Morning. At the top of the Newsdump. The total number of US soldiers remaining in Syria was increased to 400 on Friday. After the initial announcement by the White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders Thursday, the media was told 200. But on Friday the number was increased in the information parcelled out to the media..... Two were killed and other wounded Friday when forces loyal to Nicolas Maduro opened fire on civilians trying to keep the border with Brazil open after he ordered it shut down to prevent humanitarian aid coming across. Interim President Juan Guaido made it across...

Jew hater “Jihad” Jenny Tonge has posted the following on Facebook: It links to this article on Middle East Monitor. Let’s first start with the image. It shows Jewish Holocaust victims, not palestinians. What makes the inclusion of this fake image here even more duplicitous is the fact it is not the image Facebook automatically includes when you post this story: In other words, it looks like Tonge deliberately replaced the automatically chosen image with this fake one. But now to the story itself. Israeli Jewish journalist Asaf Shalev, who lives in California, has said that Israel had been hiding...

AL-HOUL CAMP, Syria - An American-born ISIS bride told NBC News Friday that she anticipates "no problem" in returning to the U.S. despite the Trump administration insisting that won't be allowed. Hoda Muthana, 24, left the U.S. to join the Islamic State in Syria in 2014. She is now staying in a refugee camp with her 18-month-old son after fleeing the remnants of the caliphate. President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he told Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to refuse her entry. Pompeo told NBC's "Today" on Thursday that Muthana is not a citizen and will not be admitted to...

Good Morning. From the White House backtracking on the planned withdrawal of US troops from Syria. "A small peacekeeping force of about 200 will remain in Syria for a period of time" The direct quote from White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders.... In Israel three political groupings have come together Telem, Israel Resilience ad Yesh Atid to oppose Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud Party. Their united political movement is dubbed "Blue and White", Cacol Lavan in Hebrew...... In the UK this week a new political group forming.... Tomorrow in France Week 15 of the Yellow Vests protests.... Venezuela closing its...

For the past seven years, in the northeast wedge of Syria abutting Turkey, Iraq and Islamic State, a band of zealous Kurds have built an unrecognized state called Rojava and tried to keep it from being overrun. Rojava is governed like a 1980s Berkeley dorm discussion whose participants have acquired automatic weapons. They are anarcho-leftist, environmentally conscious, secular, socialist and radically devoted to equality of the sexes. One manifestation of this last commitment is a coed guerrilla force, including male and female snipers (féministes fatales, if you will) who have been picking off the male jihadists of Islamic State with...

BEIRUT, Feb 17 (Reuters) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad warned on Sunday the United States would not protect those depending on it, in reference to Kurdish fighters who control much of the north. "We say to those groups who are betting on the Americans, the Americans will not protect you," he said without naming them. "The Americans will put you in their pockets so you can be tools in the barter, and they have started with (it)." U.S. President Donald Trump declared in December he would pull troops from Syria, raising more questions over the fate of Washington's Kurdish allies...

The president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, called the self-declared interim president and opposition leader Juan Guaido "a CIA agent who serves the interests of the United States and the Zionists" in an interview with the Hezbollah-affiliated Lebanese media outlet, al-Mayadeen... Maduro denied that there are Hezbollah operatives acting in Venezuela. And he accused the United States for trying seize the wealth and oil of Venezuela... The United States, European countries and other world leaders maintain that Maduro's re-election last year was fraudulent and have recognized Guaido as the country's interim leader, as has Israel. The country's military remains loyal to...

An American woman captured by Kurdish forces after fleeing the last pocket of land controlled by Islamic State says she “deeply regrets” travelling to Syria to join the terror group and has pleaded to be allowed to return to her family in Alabama. Once one of Isis’s most prominent online agitators who took to social media to call for the blood of Americans to be spilled, Hoda Muthana, 24, claims to have made a “big mistake” when she left the US four years ago and says she was brainwashed into doing so online... “We were basically in the time of...

This weekend marks the three month anniversary of the Yellow Vests protests in France and nationwide protests are planned today with a special protest in Paris tomorrow...... "California will see you in court" is the response from Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom to President Trump's emergency declaration to erect a barrier on the US-Mexico border..... Former Massachusetts Governor William Weld wants to challenge President Trump in 2020. Weld forming an exploratory committee for a candidacy that would oppose the President for the GOP nomination.... Five are dead in a workplace shooting incident in Aurora, Illinois..... General Joseph Votel, commander of US...

Reza Pahlavi, the exiled former crown prince of Iran, said in an interview with RFE/RL's Radio Farda that he thinks "we are really close to the fall of the [Iranian] regime." He added that the current situation in Iran is similar to how it was in 1979 when his father left Iran amid violent turmoil and went into exile. That upheaval ended centuries of monarchy in Iran and led to the formation of the Islamic Republic of Iran with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini at its head. "The atmosphere [in Iran] seems to be close to a flash point," he said...

one of the great things about the internet is that we can hear from an actual expert in destructive testing of gas cylinders in a controversy where condition of gas cylinder is of critical importance. Not just from NGOs and neocon think tanks. Dan Rather's downfall came because (as I recall) a typewriter specialist was able to recognize that fonts in forged document were not available in 1970s. An expert in relevant narrow topic observed detail that eluded the news reporters and think tanks. outing of Dan Rather was cool and one of first examples of outside eyes on establishment...

President Trump will take executive action invoking emergency powers to help secure the nation's southern border and sign the bill coming out of Congress that only provides limited funding for a border barrier. A figure of eight billion dollars in spending on a barrier...... From Syria a local media report that Russian military police in the area of the Kurdish city of Manbij are operating joint patrols with the Turkish military..... It was called a conference on "peace and security in the Middle East". Some 60 nations represented at the conference in Warsaw this but only two nations with high...

President Trump praising the work of Senator Richard Shelby, Republican of Alabama, in reaching a deal for funding a barrier on the nation's southern border..... He was arrested in Mexico just over two years ago, escaped from prison there twice, then extradited to the United States last year and now Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman found guilty of ten federal charges in New York Tuesday..... The leader of the "New Right" Party in Israel, Naftali Bennett, says that religious Israelis are used by Benjamin Netanyahu at election time, but then he abandons them afterwards..... The messaging and the message from Prime...