Free Republic

(CNSNews.com) – In the closing minutes of the Iran nuclear negotiations in Vienna this week, Secretary of State John Kerry made a comment about having gone to war as a young man and not wanting to do so again, leaving everyone in the room, including the Iranians, with “tears in their eyes.” Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman, the lead U.S. negotiator in the talks, recounted the moment while addressing the annual Generation Prague Conference at the State Department on Wednesday. Sherman said that in the final plenary session, with the media out of the room, each of...

Donald Trump wants to say he’s sorry, according to a new radio ad (click here to listen) released by Trump supporters in West Palm Beach on Thursday, July 16. The ad hoc group of supporters, who have no official relationship with the Trump political campaign, told examiner.com during a telephone interview on Thursday, July 16 that they created the ‘sorry’ ad to draw attention to Donald Trump’s “unerring sense” of hot button issues. In the radio ad, a deep-voiced announcer intones, “Donald Trump wants to say he’s sorry.” With the audience set-up to think Trump is going to apologize for...

We are seeing the emergence of a dual power structure in Central Asia, with China as the dominant economic power and Russia as the big security player. Or, as Alexander Gabuev, senior associate and the chair of the Russia in the Asia-Pacific program at the Carnegie Moscow Center, told Foreign Policy: "China would be the bank and Russia would be the big gun." The confluence comes as Moscow shifts its attention toward Asia after being isolating by the West over the war in Ukraine. China, for its part, is seeking to find new countries it can export goods to as...

Masses are about to come to Me, Not out of catastrophe but willingly, Soon you shall see My spirit pouring out "FREE", A Mountain of Love, Pouring down from above, And all the Earth shall see, My love for all humanity, A Love so Alive and True! And it's headed right at you, So My question to you from Me? Is "ARE YOU" ready for what you are about to see?! ( (( ( MY GLORY ) )) ) Joel 2:28-32Amplified Bible (AMP) 28 And afterward I will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your...

Beijing (AFP) - China has begun building a 314-metre (1,030-ft) high dam which will be among the world's tallest, officials said, as the country massively expands hydropower. The Shuangjiankou dam on a tributary of China's mighty Yangtze river will be completed in 2022, the environmental ministry said on its website Tuesday. The facility, costing 36 billion yuan ($5.8 billion), will be higher than the world's current tallest dam, the 305-metre Jinping-1, also in China. China has been expanding its hydropower electricity generating capacity as it seeks to reach a goal of obtaining 20 per cent of its power from non-fossil...

In 2015, the human race will create about $75 trillion in economic output, well more than half of which will be the product of the three largest economies: those of the United States ($18 trillion), the European Union ($16 trillion), and China ($11 trillion). Two of those economies are in the midst of serious economic and political crises. The other is in the grip of something much more difficult to overcome: complacency. Europe is being convulsed by a debt crisis in which Greece is, for the moment, the lead player, but which very well may grow much more intense if...

Redemption is on its way for those lost and trodded upon as a doormat "Truly" KNOW I stand before you and I have become this for you. So now your declaration is "REDEEMED" for I AM your Redeemer from the lies of the enemy. Redemption is yours eternally just come to Me that I may heal your broken hearts for I AM your Hope and Healer . So now just come and drink from My Love for you are My creation and I love you for you Are My Beloved friend and I have already laid down My life for...

I love how events of the past few weeks have empowered the Obama policy team to proclaim to their mainstream media friends that Obama had his “Best Week Ever.” Sadly, our friends in Congress seem to be reading the White House press releases as well. As Congress engages for a few short weeks before the August “District Work Period,” it well behooves the Members and Senators to look beyond the ongoing media frenzy of last month’s Supreme Court rulings. Shift the discussion as they should point out to the President and his staff that the White House is idly standing...

More millionaires have left China over the past 14 years than any other country, according to a new study reporting where the wealthy choose to live. Asia Unhedged views this gold-plated exodus from China as another country’s gain. The report from New World Wealth, a company which provides information on the global wealth sector, lists the top eight countries that saw the most outflows and inflows of millionaires between 2000 and 2014. Out of the top 10 nations with the most millionaires, China came in fifth, with 608,500 millionaires in 2014. The US topped the list with 4.1 million. However,...

China will begin the trial on July 28 of a Korean-American missionary arrested last year over a non-profit school he ran near the sensitive border with North Korea, his lawyer said, in a case that sparked outcry from international Christian groups. A sprawling crackdown had forced hundreds of Christian missionaries out of China, most by having their visas refused, sources told Reuters last August. Supporters of Peter Hahn, the missionary, had said he was being targeted because of his Christian faith and because of the small vocational school he ran. Authorities have dropped three of the four charges against Hahn,...

As Chinese takeovers go, this one would be huge. Chinese state-owned firm Tsinghua Unigroup is preparing a $23 billion bid for U.S. chipmaker Micron, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday. If completed, the deal would be the biggest-ever Chinese takeover of a U.S. firm. The Journal said that Tsinghua Unigroup was prepared to pay $21 a share, or 20% more than their current price. A Micron spokesman told CNN that the company had not yet received an offer. Micron, based in Idaho, makes memory chips for computers and other electronics. Tsinghua Unigroup already has partnerships with U.S. firms Intel...

They could all be confronted. But by the Obama administration? The U.S. and its allies are faced with four major threats, and they are as diverse and yet as akin as the proverbial apocalyptic horsemen. Vladimir Putin has a tsarist idea that he can reclaim insidiously the periphery of the old Soviet Union — Georgia, Crimea, Ukraine, the Baltic states — on the principle of protecting Russian-speaking minorities in these breakaway republics. More practically, he feels that any security guarantees extended by the West to these entities are about as valid as an Obama red line or a Greek assurance...

It wasn’t long ago that hedge funds were preparing for one of the biggest openings into China in years. In November, foreign investors were for the first time able to buy and sell shares listed in the Shanghai market directly. It was a chance to ride the great China bull run. How times have changed. Over the last month, trillions of dollars of value were wiped from the domestic market as stocks plunged by more than a third. The Chinese government has stepped in, issuing a series of increasingly aggressive moves to prop up the market. Hedge funds are now...

The news from the IEA is not good. “World oil demand growth appears to have peaked in 1Q15 at 1.8 mb/d and will continue to ease throughout the rest of this year and into next as temporary support fades.” I don’t have great faith in forecasts but the data shows declining demand growth from late 2010 to the 2nd quarter of this year The weak global economy is the cause of low demand growth. The current debt crisis Greece and collapsing stock markets in China are the latest alarm signals.

The hack at the Office of Personnel Management shows what happens when lax security gets combined with organizations or governments getting too big. CNN has a pretty interesting rundown on how the hackers may have found a way to get into OPM servers. One way involves figuring out which agency hasn’t had their servers updated in some time. Let’s say there is a U.S. government agency — Agency X — that does not update its server operating system software patches. We don’t know which agency it is because the federal government doesn’t want to reveal everything it knows to...

Ghostwrites, dubious consultants and falsified applications are being used by many of the Chinese students who apply to enroll at U.S. universities, according to a new CNN report. A 21-year-old woman from Jiangsu Province told the publication how her parents paid three consultants $4,500 to fill out the application, write her personal essay and compose teacher recommendation letters. The reason: Her level of English wasn’t strong enough. “I did feel slightly guilty but all my friends did the same thing,” the woman said.

I have enormous respect for Victor Davis Hanson and read with great interest his account this week that people are fed up with liberal elites. Amid all this leftish high-fiving about court decisions and executive orders, we forget political and electoral reality. Barack Obama has done more to destroy liberal political power in the Congress and in the statehouses than any Democratic politician since the 1920s. His executive orders and neglect of enforcing existing law have green-lighted the executive power of the next Republican president in a way that Richard Nixon could hardly imagine. He has discredited the idea of...

A 45-year-old Chinese woman, Xu Ting, lives in a brown shingle house with a weedy driveway. She has been sued for counterfeiting by eight luxury brands, including Gucci and Louis Vuitton, and owes Chanel Inc. $6.9 million in damages. None of this has stopped her from becoming a legal permanent resident of the United States and achieving a comfortable suburban life. . . . . Xu Ting's legal troubles did not prevent her from getting a green card. In February 2014, she became a legal permanent resident by virtue of being married to someone with an advanced degree or "extraordinary...

The Office of Personnel Management is under fire again today after it was revealed hackers, allegedly Chinese, stole 21 million social security numbers during a massive data breach discovered last month (which officials originally said only impacted 4 million people). The social security numbers belong to Americans who have, or who currently are, working for the federal government. This new information comes on the heels of news hackers were able to obtain extremely sensitive information, including classified background check information that can be used for blackmail, belonging to tens of millions of government employees. More bad news: Here’s the kicker:...

Uighurs from China's Xinjiang are being given Turkish identity papers in Southeast Asia by Turkish diplomats and then taken to Turkey where some are sold to fight for groups like Islamic State as "cannon fodder", a senior Chinese official said. Beijing says the Turkic language-speaking Uighur minority are firstly Chinese nationals, and those who flee China should be returned to their home region in the far west of the country bordering central Asia. "Turkish embassies in Southeast Asia will give them proof of identity," Tong Bishan, division chief of the Ministry of Public Security's Criminal Investigation Department, told a small...