Free Republic

Most of the interviewees talk in the lugubrious tones of the defeated. We all know the story ends badly. But when it’s over, we aren’t told why we lost. The music is more memorable than the pictures, and the pictures are more compelling than the narration. We are deluged by sights and sounds but not enlightened as to cause and effect. The film casts the antiwar movement in a moderately favorable light. Are the protesters the real heroes here? What about the valiant US soldiers, 75 percent of whom were volunteers?

Kim Jong Un’s officials plucked teenage girls from North Korean schools to serve as the leader’s sex slaves, indulged in a gluttonous lifestyle while his people starved and ordered public executions that turned into horrific shows of violence, a North Korean defector revealed. Hee Yeon, who fled Pyongyang in 2015 and now lives in Seoul, told The Mirror about the years she spent living in constant fear of Kim Jong Un since the ruthless dictator took control of North Korea in 2011. “Despite our privilege we were scared. I saw terrible things in Pyongyang,” Hee Yeon said. In what heinous...

A former Soviet military officer credited with averting a possible nuclear disaster at the peak of the Cold War has died at the age of 77. Stanislav Petrov was on duty at a Russian nuclear early warning centre in 1983 when computers wrongly detected incoming missiles from the US. He took the decision that they were a false alarm and did not report them to his superiors. His actions, which came to light years later, possibly prevented nuclear war. Petrov died at his home in Moscow in May but his death has only now been made public. In an interview...

Many Americans’ moral vanity is expressed nowadays in their rage to disparage. They are incapable of measured judgments about past politics — about flawed historical figures who were forced by cascading circumstances to make difficult decisions on the basis of imperfect information. So, the nation now needs an example of how to calmly assess episodes fraught with passion and sorrow. An example arrives Sunday night. For ten nights on PBS, Ken Burns’s and Lynn Novick’s The Vietnam War, ten years in the making and 18 hours in length, tells the story of a war “begun in good faith by decent...

In a speech to the CLSA Investors’ Forum in Hong Kong on Tuesday, Breitbart Executive Chairman Steve Bannon stated that to avoid a trade war, China must cease its economic war on America. In a separate interview on Tuesday with David Martosko of The Daily Mail, Bannon mentioned President Trump’s planned visit to China in November to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping and attend economic summits. Bannon said Trump will seek common ground in a new trade relationship with China because “[t]here’s too much at stake to slip into a trade war right off the bat.” “I think...

How did India and China, nuclear-armed nations collectively home to 36 percent of the world’s people, go from conflict to camaraderie in less than a week? At the end of August, two months into the worst border standoff between the two countries in decades, there were whispers of war. But this week, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping joined Russia, South Africa and Brazil in declaring war on Pakistan-based terror groups. What just happened? Can it last? And should we trust it? For the moment, it appears Beijing’s aspirations to be a global leader in a...

I was one of the first American officials to arrive in Kabul at the end of 2001. The war that seemed to be ending back then is currently in its 16th year with no end in sight, and for those of us who were there at the beginning it now sometimes seems like it was a lifetime ago. President Barack Obama not so long ago referred to Afghanistan as the “necessary war.” But now it might be more appropriate to refer to it as a “forgotten war,” as President Donald Trump has sent a few thousand more soldiers to Kabul—while...

As U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War escalated after the passage of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1964, U.S. Army general William Westmoreland knew he would be simultaneously fighting two different types of enemies on the ground — the main battle force of the North Vietnamese Army and the guerilla insurgency of the Viet Cong in South Vietnam. Westmoreland, who served as commander of Military Assistance Command Vietnam in the early years of the war, considered the North Vietnamese Army the greater threat. However, he could not ignore the Viet Cong, a versatile and resilient fighting force guided by...

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) warned President Trump on Tuesday that only Congress can authorize a military strike on North Korea, as tensions with Pyongyang continue to escalate. “The American Civil Liberties Union strongly urges you to uphold the Constitution, and the fundamental principle of separation of powers, by recognizing the sole authority of Congress to declare war — and to refrain from the use of force against North Korea in the absence of explicit congressional authorization for the use of force,” the group wrote in a letter to Trump on Tuesday. “This drumbeat of threats over the past...

An open military conflict in Northern Asia would disrupt more than a third of global seaborne crude oil trade, Wood Mackenzie warned last week amid yet another escalation between North Korea, its neighbors, and the U.S. Such a conflict would cripple North Asia’s production and refining capacity, the consultancy said. Some 65 percent of Asia’s crude oil refining capacity is located in China, Japan, and South Korea, so the effects of an open war would be far-reaching and potentially long-lasting. The most pressing question, then, is how likely such an open conflict is.

The army and its allies had made rapid advances in recent days and pushed through Islamic State lines with the help of heavy artillery and Russian air strikes. The city has been cut off from government areas since 2013 after rebel groups rose up against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Islamic State then overran rebel positions and encircled the government enclave and the nearby air base in the city in 2014. During the long siege, high-altitude air drops supplied the city.

Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles are believed to carry a total of approximately 1,000 strategic nuclear warheads that can hit the US less than 30 minutes after being launched. Of this total, about 700 warheads are rated at 800 kilotons; that is, each has the explosive power of 800,000 tons of TNT. What follows is a description of the consequences of the detonation of a single such warhead over midtown Manhattan, in the heart of New York City. The initial fireball. The warhead would probably be detonated slightly more than a mile above the city, to maximize the damage created by...

The United States accused North Korea's trading partners on Monday of aiding its nuclear ambitions and said Pyongyang was "begging for war" after the North's powerful nuclear test on Sunday and signs that further missile launches were on the way. South Korea said it was talking to Washington about deploying aircraft carriers and strategic bombers to the Korean peninsula. U.S. President Donald Trump held calls with foreign leaders, including South Korean President Moon Jae-in and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and the White House declared that "all options to address the North Korean threat are on the table." Moon and Trump...

North Korea’s leader is “begging for war,” the U.S. ambassador said Monday at an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council, as members called for punishing the country with even stronger sanctions for its powerful nuclear test. Ambassador Nikki Haley said the U.S. would look at countries doing business with the North and planned to circulate a resolution this week with the goal of getting it approved Sept. 11. “Enough is enough. War is never something the United States wants. We don’t want it now. But our country’s patience is not unlimited,” Haley said. “The United States will look at...

When you leave the classroom or office and go into the world, you see at first its richness and confusions, the variety and tumult. Then, if you keep moving and do not quit looking, commonalties begin to emerge. National success is eccentric. But national failure is programmed and predictable. Spotting the future losers among the world's states becomes so easy it loses its entertainment value. In this world of multiple and simultaneous revolutions--in technology, information, social organization, biology, economics, and convenience--the rules of international competition have changed. There is a global marketplace and, increasingly, a global economy. While there is...

To understand the China ‘One-Belt / ‘One-World‘ economic trade strategy it becomes necessary to understand how structurally weak the Chinese economy was when created. People often talk about the ‘strength’ of China’s economic model; and indeed within a specific part of their economy -manufacturing- they do have economic strength. However, the underlying critical architecture of the Chinese economic model is structurally flawed and President Trump with his current economic team understand the weakness better than all international adversaries

Riding a motorized pony and strumming a cigar box ukulele, Dana Cory led a singalong to the tune of “If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands.” “You’re a Nazi and you’re fired, it’s your fault,” she sang. “You were spotted in a mob, now you lost your freaking job. You’re a Nazi and you’re fired, it’s your fault.” “All together now!” Ms. Cory, 48, shouted to a cheering crowd in San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood on Saturday. They were protesting a rally planned by far-right organizers about a mile away. “Dox a Nazi all day, every day,” she...

Advertisers are turning to gay couples and ethnic minorities to sell their products Advertisers are so worried about being accused of racism or homophobia they are shying away from using images of white people and straight couples. Marketing departments are even putting diversity above relevance to their target audience to avoid accusations of bigotry, a survey of 500 companies has found. A third of advertisers questioned said they had used fewer white models and heterosexual couples over the past year. More than a third of these said they were taking this approach to “prevent perceived discrimination”. The findings are likely...

What A Korean Agreement Could Look Like | George Friedman Interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWaNko3tYyw

President Donald Trump’s commitment to an indefinite war in Afghanistan Monday night received praise from rivals such as Republican South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, but left conservatives like Ann Coulter disappointed. Trump criticized the Afghanistan war before entering office. However, in his nation-wide address he said he will not give an end date for the conflict and wouldn’t talk about potential troop deployments. There are roughly 8,400 American service members in Afghanistan and it was widely reported Trump will deploy an additional 4,000 troops. Shortly after the speech, Sen. Graham said on Fox News, “I am very pleased with this...