Free Republic

The missing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi has caused world leaders to focus on not only the role Saudi Arabia may have played in his disappearance but also its role in the Yemeni civil war. The missing Saudi journalist (a U.S. resident) is apparently the victim of a political assassination of the sort that occurs much too frequently throughout the Middle East and the world, e.g., Iran, Pakistan, Russia, China, et al. No journalists should be subjected to threats of intimidation or threats on their life, much less murder for expressing political opposition. Saudi Arabia must be required to make a...

Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman (Yisrael Beytenu) on Saturday said that Israel will not provide fuel or gas to Gaza if conflicts continue. Liberman halted the transfer of fuel to Gaza on Friday, after several Gaza terrorists who detonated a bomb on the Israel-Gaza border fence and attacked an IDF position inside Israel. "As long as the violence in Gaza - including sending incendiary balloons and burning tires opposite Israeli towns - does not cease completely, we will not renew the provision of fuels and gas to Gaza," Liberman tweeted. Earlier on Saturday, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said that conflict...

President Donald Trump has said the US will inflict "severe punishment" on Saudi Arabia if the kingdom is found to be responsible for the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. He said he would be "very upset and angry if that were the case", but ruled out halting big military contracts. Mr. Khashoggi, a critic of the Saudi government, vanished on October 2 after visiting its consulate in Istanbul...…

Violence on Friday included incident where four Palestinians were shot dead after breaching security fence Israeli forces have shot dead six Palestinians, including four in a single incident, in one of the deadliest days in months of mass protests along the security fence separating Gaza and Israel, Gaza’s health ministry said. The ministry said four were killed in one location, where the Israeli military said it opened fire on Palestinians who breached the fence and approached an army post. No Israeli troops were harmed, the army added. At least 140 Palestinians were wounded by live bullets, the ministry said. The...

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s threat to remove any mayors chosen in local elections next March deemed to be “contaminated by terrorism” is a rejection of democracy and an attempt to scare voters away from the main pro-Kurdish party, one of its members of parliament said. Turkish authorities stepped up pressure on the pro-Kurdish opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) following the breakdown of a ceasefire with Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) militants in July 2015. The government says the HDP is, in effect, the political wing of the PKK. The crackdown gained momentum after a failed coup a year later that...

WASHINGTON DC (Kurdistan 24) – Syria’s Kurds “have been great partners,” US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Wednesday evening in Washington DC, as he addressed a conference of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA.)Pompeo affirmed that the Kurds would be party to negotiations over Syria’s political future.“We are now driving,” he said, stressing that last word, “to make sure that they have a seat at the table.”Pompeo is the most senior US official to affirm a long-term commitment to Syria’s Kurds.Previously, Amb. James Jeffrey, who was appointed Pompeo’s Representative for Syria Engagement in late August,...

As far as liberal emotionalism is concerned, America is illegitimate unless they, leftists, are in charge Day by day, the concept of fairmindedness is being drowned out by surging self-righteousness. The democrat driven kangaroo court that tried to condemn Brett Kavanaugh on the uncorroborated testimony of a woman, who has since been credibly tied to FBI deep state assets, was enough to give pause in assessing the veracity of her charges. At least it was to senators who hadn’t fully succumbed to the minority party’s coercion and sanctimonious chest-thumping. They didn’t buy the guilt by accusation.

WOW! Sammi found this at the FMSO database of the newly released Iraq Regime documents. It details Iraqi efforts to monitor a U.N. inspection team, break into their personal briefcases (actually says it was complained about but not that they did it), and hide Russian and Turkish scientists. As usual, the parentheses are the translators. (PDF)CMPC-2003-000776Mr. General Director of the Office of National Supervision Subject: Visit of the IAEA team A team of the IAEA did a SURPRISE (translator’s emphasis) visit today, on the 15th of December 2002, to 1) Oumm Al Maarek Company (Mother of all battles Company) 2)...

Was Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi murdered inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, and then his body cut up with a bone saw and flown to Riyadh in Gulfstream jets owned by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman? So contend the Turks, who have video from the consulate, photos of 15 Saudi agents who flew into Istanbul that day, Oct. 2, and the identity numbers of the planes. Supporting the thesis of either a murder in the consulate or a "rendition," a kidnaping gone horribly bad, is a Post story that U.S. intel intercepted Saudi planning, ordered by the prince, to...

Syrian rebel fighters have pulled the last of their heavy weapons from front-line positions in Idlib Province, meeting the deadline for a truce negotiated by Russia and Turkey — and possibly sparing the civilian population from a bloody government offensive. It was a rare act of unity for the ordinarily fractious rebel forces, who on Monday drove trucks carrying a tank, artillery and missile batteries out of their base in this small town, as a small group of international journalists looked on. “We are now standing in the demilitarized zone,” said Saif al-Raad, a spokesman for the National Liberation Front,...

Regardless of what you may think of the death penalty, and Oct. 10's World Day against the Death Penalty, it's a very real awfulness for 2,320 brave death row prisoners in Iran. For this occasion, they issued a statement: – While 176 prisoners were executed during the first half of 2018 – While we are among the thousands of prisoners across Iran awaiting our death, and like Zaniar Moradi, who wrote before his death: "Nine years have passed. Nine years in which I languished in prison while being sentenced to the inhumane death sentence. In recent years, these brave death...

Xelil Åžirvan, a commander of a group of Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, told Sputnik that a US military base had been detected near the town of Al-Qa'im in northwest Iraq on the border with Syria. "According to our data, the United States has set up a new military base in the strategically important region of Al-Qa'im in Anbar province on the Iraqi-Syrian border. Americans are building up their military presence in the region, which is why Iraqi government forces have sent more military reinforcements to Al-Qa'im to boost border protection," he said. A spokesperson for the Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish-led...

Oil prices cooled off in recent days as fears of an acute shortage of supply stemming from sanctions on Iran started to subside. At least two companies in India have lined up oil shipments for November, the month that sanctions on Iran take effect. The 9 million barrels of oil secured for next month translate into nearly 300,000 bpd of supply. Meanwhile, other reports suggest that the U.S. is softening its zero tolerance approach to sanctions, and could issue waivers to some importers who make significant reductions but struggle to cut imports to zero. Taken together, the oil market is...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his cabinet on Sunday that he is preparing for a military solution to the violence on the country’s southern border. “If the reality of civil distress in Gaza is diminished, that is desirable, but that is not certain to happen, and so we are preparing militarily,” Netanyahu said in the cabinet meeting. “That is not an empty statement.” The prime minister’s remarks come after the Defense Ministry ordered IDF troops to send reinforcements to the region on Thursday in preparation for a possible escalation.

The United States on Monday asked judges at the International Court of Justice to throw out a claim by Iran to recover $1.75 billion (€1.5 billion) in national bank assets seized by U.S. courts. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2016 that the assets must be turned over to American families of victims of the 1983 bombing of a U.S. Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, among others. The hearings at the tribunal were separate from Iran’s claim relating to current U.S. sanctions against Tehran. Iran’s claim in both cases is based on a 1955 Amity Treaty, which was signed 24...

On Monday Oct 8.2018 , merchants in several Iranian cities went on strike and refused to open for business in an extension of ongoing protests against the regime of Tehran. The strike, which was preplanned and widely distributed across social media channels, is in protest to increasing prices and high inflation rates. The protest movement comprises 25 of Iran’s major cities Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the Iranian Resistance, commended the brave bazaar merchants and shopkeepers in Tehran and dozens of other Iranian cities who are on strike against the mullahs' corrupt regime. She said that the bazaar strike, coming...

A sprawling mansion on the Upper East Side has been frozen as part of a hard-core battle between the US government and Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, The Post has learned. US officials say Deripaska, an aluminum billionaire, is close both with Russian mob leaders and Russian President Vladimir Putin — and that he is on the sanctions list because he is allegedly involved in murder, money-laundering, bribery and racketeering. Deripaska also had President Trump’s ex-campaign manager Paul Manafort — who has been convicted of crimes including money-laundering and who is cooperating with US special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe —...

Iraqi social media star and model Tara Fares has been shot dead in Baghdad….The former Miss Baghdad, and first runner-up for Miss Iraq, was killed on Thursday after gunmen opened fire on her Tara was a Christian and “famous for her bold clothing and posts on social media.” Those attributes sealed her fate, along with that of other women in her country who fly in the face of the Sharia, such as the human rights activist, Suaad al-Ali, who “was shot and killed in an outdoor market by an unknown gunman” two days before. Last month, “two well-known women in...

Despite the United States recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December and relocating its embassy from Tel Aviv in May, Americans born in Jerusalem are still unable to list “Jerusalem, Israel” on U.S. passports. “The president has made clear that the specific boundaries of Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem remain subject to final-status negotiations between the [Israelis and the Palestinians],” a State Department spokesperson told JNS. “We have not changed our practice regarding place of birth on passports or Consular Reports of Birth Abroad at this time.”

Russia Derangement Syndrome: Syria Edition by David Archibald 6 August 2018 The road to hell is paved with good intentions. So it has been with US involvement in Syria. To provide a context to that involvement, let’s start part way through the story with the self-immolation of a Tunisian vegetable vendor on December 17, 2011, driven to despair by harassment from petty officials. That spark set off the Arab Spring. A number of Arab regimes changed; some remained resilient. That wasn’t good enough for David Cameron and Nicholas Sarkozy, the then leaders of the UK and France respectively. Their armed...