Free Republic

On Friday, Prime Minister Leo Varadkar made a commitment to take strong action against individuals with racist views who engaged in violent confrontations with riot police. He described this as a pivotal moment for a country that was ill-prepared to tackle the increasing hostility toward immigrants within its working-class communities.The previous night's riots, driven by anti-immigration sentiments, were sparked by an Algerian man stabbing three, one critically, young children and an adult caregiver outside a school in central Dublin. (snip)The Irish public television, RTE, conducted a poll which found that only 19% of the Irish public were in support of...

The Taoiseach has told farmers that climate change is the biggest threat facing Ireland today and it is not clear what type of agriculture we will have in 20, 30 or 40 years time. Speaking at the AGM of the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association (ICMSA), Leo Varadkar said the climate is getting warmer and drier, and in order to rise to the climate challenge, openness to significant change will be needed. He said farming income can be protected with other things like forestry and carbon farming. He said the agri-sector will not be asked to take a disproportionate part...

Preying On Young Boys | Pakistan's Hidden Predators (Full Documentary) In towns and cities across Pakistan, tens of thousands of vulnerable young boys have become the victims of paedophile predators who seem to have nothing to fear from the law. It’s an open secret that few acknowledge publicly and even fewer want to do anything about. In a society where women are hidden from view and young girls deemed untouchable, the bus stations, truck stops and alleyways have become the hunting ground for perverted men to prey on the innocent. In one survey alone, 95% of truck drivers admitted having...

A daring and touching portrait of four kids chasing freedom and friendship through the art of drag. As an art form, drag has always been about breaking down barriers, exploring new territory and daring to do the unexpected. And now, a new type of queen is emerging on the scene: she’s fierce, she’s living in a time of unprecedented access to queer culture and she’s younger than ever before. She’s a drag kid, and she’s a long way from the era of the queens who took part in the Stonewall riots nearly 50 years ago. Stephan, Nemis, Bracken and Jason...

Americans rescued Shah Mahmood Selab from Afghanistan last year as Old Joe Biden’s woke, distracted military was botching our withdrawal from that country. Other Americans then helped him settle in Las Cruces, N.M., and start a new life. But it looks as if Selab brought a bit too much of Afghanistan with him: he has been charged, according to a report in The Blaze on Saturday, with “a child sex crime and violent assault of a 12-year-old boy in New Mexico.”American authorities could have and should have seen this coming as that kind of behavior is rampant and taken for...

BREAKING: The U.S.-backed Afghan government in Kabul has engaged in a "policy or practice" that allows government officials to rape & molest little boys inside "government compounds" w impunity, according to new Pentagon IG report. The practice is called bacha bazi or "boy play"

ANKENY, Iowa (AP) — Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg said Saturday the Oval Office requires a wartime veteran, a niche he occupies exclusively among top-tier candidates in his party’s race for the 2020 nomination. During an interview on Iowa PBS in suburban Des Moines, Buttigieg was asked if there’s value in a president who had faced hostile fire. Buttigieg, a Naval intelligence officer in Afghanistan in 2014, noted he had been present for rocket attacks while stationed at Bagram Airfield, and later faced potential danger as an armed driver in Kabul. Another presidential candidate, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, served...

The Left's love affair with Islam has long been exposed. The Red-Green Alliance is usually seen in geopolitical terms, with each side vying to gain ultimate power. But forgive me if I might become confused with the hideous practice of bacha bazi practiced in Afghanistan with the leftist promotion of alleged fluid genders. Both exploit children, the most vulnerable in society. Bacha bazi refers to "boy play" and is a slang term in Afghanistan for a wide variety of activities involving sexual relations between older men and younger adolescent men or boys. It often includes sexual slavery and child prostitution....

Democratic 2020 presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg, in an interview that aired Sunday, said President Trump had slandered American troops by considering pardoning servicemen accused of war crimes -- and said the proposal threatened to undermine the country’s “legal and moral” foundations. “When you serve, you are agreeing to serve the Constitution and uphold the law and, frankly, his idea that being sent to fight makes you automatically into some kind of war criminal is a slander against veterans that could come only from somebody who never served,” the South Bend, Ind., mayor said on ABC News’ “This Week.” Buttigieg, an...

In his last phone call home, Lance Cpl. Gregory Buckley Jr. told his father what was troubling him: From his bunk in southern Afghanistan, he could hear Afghan police officers sexually abusing boys they had brought to the base. “At night we can hear them screaming, but we’re not allowed to do anything about it,” the Marine’s father, Gregory Buckley Sr., recalled his son telling him before he was shot to death at the base in 2012. He urged his son to tell his superiors. “My son said that his officers told him to look the other way because it’s...

“The full extent of child sexual assault committed by Afghan security forces may never be known.” After 15 years of failure and undefined missions in Afghanistan, this administration claimed to finally have discovered an innovative idea. Let’s invest even more American lives in propping up the Afghan security forces, they suggested, as if we weren’t doing that for the past 15 years. But who are the Afghan forces, and how are they really distinguishable from the Taliban, or at least enough to justify the human and capital cost of a deeper investment? A new inspector general report paints a grim...

U.S. National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster told reporters that President Donald Trump’s administration will win in Afghanistan by allowing the country to “be Afghanistan” rather than trying to “create a state in the U.S. image.” “Winning in Afghanistan is really aimed at allowing Afghanistan to be Afghanistan. As the president said, not to nation-build, not to create a state in the U.S. image,” said Gen. McMaster when asked about President Trump’s newly unveiled strategy to end the nearly 16-year-old ear in the country. For years, Afghanistan has been plagued by various persistent problems, including a deadly heroin production and addiction...

What are we in Afghanistan for, if not to stand for our own values and the principles of human rights? Instead, U.S. officials are aiding and abetting the destruction of these boys’ lives — and all too often sacrificing the lives of our own troops. This is beyond shameful. “Those are the ones brought near in the Gardens of Pleasure, a company of the former peoples and a few of the later peoples, on thrones woven, reclining on them, facing each other. There will circulate among them young boys made eternal with vessels, pitchers and a cup from a flowing...

Mohammed is approached by a middle-aged man wearing greasy beige pants, a blue shirt and a blue baseball cap. Although the man speaks Greek, the 17-year-old boy from Afghanistan knows exactly what he wants. "No," Mohammad repeatedly says in English, his voice cracking and his eyes filling with tears. But the man keeps pushing. "Come with me. I will give you food, pay you." The man only stops when he realizes he is being watched. He then grudgingly walks away and sits down on a nearby bench. From there, he starts scouring the field again, searching for another boy. It...

Quivering with quiet rage, Shirin holds a photo of his teenage brother-in-law, who now lives as the plaything of policemen, just one victim of a hidden epidemic of kidnappings of young boys for institutionalised sexual slavery in Afghanistan. Shirin is among 13 families AFP traced and interviewed across three Afghan provinces who said their children were taken for the pervasive practice of "bacha bazi", or paedophilic exploitation, in Western-backed security forces. Their testimonies shine a rare spotlight on the anguished, solitary struggles to free sons, nephews and cousins from a tradition of culturally-sanctioned enslavement and rape. Shirin recalled how his...

The Taliban are using child sex slaves to mount crippling insider attacks on police in southern Afghanistan, exploiting the pervasive practice of "bacha bazi" -- paedophilic boy play -- to infiltrate security ranks, multiple officials and survivors of such assaults told AFP. The ancient custom is prevalent across Afghanistan, but nowhere does it seem as entrenched as in the province of Uruzgan, where "bacha bereesh" -- or boys without beards -- widely become objects of lustful attraction for powerful police commanders. The Taliban over nearly two years have used them to mount a wave of Trojan Horse attacks -- at...

According to President Karzai, the Obama administration said that the Taliban are "not our enemies." If not them, who? United States Marines and soldiers like Marine Reserve Maj. Jason Brezler or Lance Cpl Greg Buckley (below)? It would seem so by the treacherous actions of the Obama administration. There's a stunning new development in the murder of Lance Cpl. Greg Buckley Jr. Atlas readers are long familiar with the horrible murder of Lance Cpl. Buckley. The murderer of this great American hero in one of a string of insider attacks was Aynoddin, the 19-year-old "tea boy" of Afghan District Police...

Rampant sexual abuse of children has long been a problem in Afghanistan, particularly among armed commanders who dominate much of the rural landscape and can bully the population. The practice is called bacha bazi, literally "boy play," and American soldiers and Marines have been instructed not to intervene — in some cases, not even when their Afghan allies have abused boys on military bases, according to interviews and court records. The policy has endured as American forces have recruited and organized Afghan militias to help hold territory against the Taliban. But soldiers and Marines have been increasingly troubled that instead...

American soldiers are being punished for blowing the whistle on the systematic rape and enslavement of young boys at the hands of brutal Afghan Muslim military officials. Honorable men in uniform risked their careers and lives to stop the abuse. Yet, the White House — which was busy tweeting about its new feminism-pandering “It’s On Us” campaign against an alleged college rape crisis based on debunked statistics — is AWOL on the actual pedophilia epidemic known as “bacha bazi.” On Thursday, Obama administration flacks went out of their way to downplay Afghan child rape as “abhorrent,” but “fundamentally” a local...

Reports claim possible sexual abuse by Afghan commanders The Defense Department is facing mounting criticism for its handling of child abuse allegations involving Afghan commanders, including revived claims that U.S. soldiers were instructed to look the other way when Afghan troops and officers were sexually abusing boys. As first reported by Fox News, the Army is under scrutiny for moving to kick out Green Beret Sgt. 1st Class Charles Martland, after he got in trouble for shoving an Afghan police commander accused of raping a boy. This was followed by The New York Times reporting Monday that American soldiers were...