Free Republic

Bolivian President Evo Morales met with German and Swiss officials in Bern, Switzerland, on December 14 to sign an agreement on building one of the largest infrastructure projects of the century—a coast-to-coast railroad across South America. The Central Bi-Oceanic Railway Corridor, or “Panama Canal on Railway Tracks,” will stretch from the Pacific coast of Peru, through Bolivia, and across Brazil to the Atlantic Ocean. The total length of the projected route is 2,333 miles. Paraguay, Argentina and Uruguay also plan to add connection routes to the corridor. Germany and Switzerland will assist in the ambitious project’s construction and will also...

JOHANNESBURG — Top leaders of South Africa’s governing party ordered President Jacob Zuma to step down on Tuesday, saying that his continued presence was eroding the “renewed hope” felt since the election of new party leaders in December. Ace Magashule, secretary general of the African National Congress, said that the party had not given Mr. Zuma a deadline to respond, but added that he was certain that the president would deliver a reply the next day. “Let’s leave it to President Jacob Zuma,” Mr. Magashule said at a news conference at party headquarters in Johannesburg. In a meeting with party...

Judge finds that Muslima arrested in New Mexico jihad compound has “mental disease,” unfit to stand trial DEC 1, 2019 9:00 AM BY ROBERT SPENCER Here we see the all-purpose “mental illness” deflection being used to aid a jihadi in evading responsibility for her crimes. It has happened many times before. What do you bet they all walk before this is over? Given the current political climate regarding jihad terrorism, this is quite possible, even likely. “Terrorism suspect hospitalized,” by John Miller, Taos News, October 24, 2019: A U.S. District Court judge in Albuquerque has ordered one of the five...

Donald Trump has a name for everything and everyone, from Crooked Hillary to Little Rocket Man, who for a time became his best friend. Will he call the next region-wide conflagration in the Middle East, when it breaks out, Obama’s War? If he hasn’t thought of that already, he should start considering it now. Because the catastrophic policies of our former president have emboldened the Islamic state of Iran and enabled it to threaten the United States and our allies militarily in ways never before possible. When Obama took office in January 2009, he inherited a strong U.S. military and...

Tapper served up an opportunity for Johnson to characterize Trump as a Russian stooge. He did the exact opposite. CNN talking head Jake Tapper gave former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson an opportunity this week to help the American media establishment advance its latest Trump-Russia smear. Johnson, whose time as prime minister and foreign secretary overlapped Trump's first four years in the White House, not only proved unwilling to cosign the narrative but highlighted President Donald Trump's historic efforts to keep Russia in check — something the Biden-Harris administration has alternatively had difficulty with. Johnson went on CNN to promote...

The Ministry of Defense confirmed that the Russian airbase Khemeymim in Syria before the New Year was subjected to mortar shelling. The saboteurs attacked from the de-escalation zone, and the air defense system could not protect the airmen. Mortar shelling On Thursday, January 4, the Ministry of Defense reported the death of two Russian servicemen during the shelling of the military base of Khmeimim near the New Year. "December 31, 2017 with the onset of the dark time, the airfield Khmeimim was subjected to a sudden mortar shelling of the mobile subversive group of militants. As a result of the...

The Department of Justice announced Thursday that it is creating a task force to take a fresh look at drug-trafficking and money-laundering operations linked to Hezbollah after an investigative report last month claimed that the Obama administration turned a blind eye to such activities to preserve the Iran nuclear deal. The task force, dubbed the Hezbollah Financing and Narcoterrorism Team (HFNT), will begin its work by reviewing investigations stemming from Project Cassandra, a campaign led by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) targeting the Lebanese terror group’s actions. According to a Politico report published last month, officials with the Obama Justice...

blah, blah, blah ... "The executive at Vkontakte, or VK, Russia’s equivalent to Facebook, emailed Donald Trump Jr. and social media director Dan Scavino in January and again in November of last year, offering to help promote Trump’s campaign to its nearly 100 million users, according to people familiar with the messages...." Looks like Nellie Ohr was looking for Russian Social Media Users in 2014:

Hunter Biden used Joe Biden's appearance at a Sandy Hook memorial service to arrange a meeting between his dad and his Chinese business partners, new texts reveal. The messages come from a fresh tranche of documents released by Congress on Wednesday, given to them by IRS agents who investigated the First Son. On December 12, 2017 Hunter wrote on the Chinese messaging app WeChat to Liu Yadong, a top executive at Chinese oil giant CEFC, to arrange a meeting with his father. 'Can you meet this evening early,' Hunter wrote. 'My father will be in New York also and he...

Ripple, or XRP, surged 89 percent Thursday to a record high of 89.2 cents and was last trading near 81 cents, giving it a market value of $31.6 billion, according to CoinMarketCap.

Nearly a year after the American public was informed that Joe Biden had classified documents at his home and think tank office, lawmakers in Congress have a pressing question: Was there anything in those memos valuable to his son Hunter’s overseas business clients? The issue catapulted to prominence recently when House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner, R-Ohio, showed up at the House Oversight Committee’s first impeachment inquiry hearing and said there was real reason to fear that Hunter Biden’s clients had an interest in the memos that Joe Biden improperly secreted away at his home and office. “Obviously, his son...

A left-wing think tank erroneously claiming to track Russian online activity was responsible for thousands of bogus stories asserting the nation’s influence in US politics, according to the latest batch of Twitter Files. The Hamilton 68 “dashboard” was the brainchild of former FBI special agent and MSNBC contributor Clint Watts and operated under the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a think tank founded in 2017 — shortly after former President Trump took office. The ASD Advisory Council included such figures as top Clinton ally John Podesta, Obama-era acting CIA Director Michael Morell, former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, and former...

Hunter Biden’s laptop hard drive likely holds the answer to House Republican questions over President Joe Biden’s son’s Chinese business deals, including his efforts to work out U.S. natural gas deals with a Chinese government-linked energy conglomerate. Rep. James Comer (R-KY), the ranking member on the House Oversight and Reform Committee, sent letters to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in May, June, and September and argued the Treasury Department continued to stonewall his efforts to get answers on Hunter Biden’s suspicious financial transactions linked to China and elsewhere. Comer's newest letter provided granular details about Hunter's efforts to work out deals...

Jake Sullivan Biden’s National Security Advisor Was At The Heart Of The Russiagate LiesWhen Will He Be Indicted?Recent filings by Special Counsel Durham have focused renewed attention on the Hillary Clinton campaign’s efforts to spy on the Trump campaign in 2016 and to spy on Trump and his associates. Justifiably, the new information suggests the possibility of eventual criminal action against Hillary Clinton herself. It also brings into focus the role of Jake Sullivan, Biden’s National Security Advisor, in the current administration. It is increasingly clear that Sullivan was at the very heart of the efforts to discredit Trump and...

Editor’s Note: Lawfare’s Board of Directors has published a post regarding this article and our editorial standards here. In the United States, the latest Iranian protests have sparked a kind of debate in which we argue fervently about whether the U.S. should tweet its support or just shut up. At the risk of making the Trump administration look moderate, I think we can choose between more than waving our hands and sitting on them. Remember, when the Iranian regime decided it didn’t like U.S. activities in Iraq, it found considerably more direct ways to express its disapproval. It just started...

Did the current administration “collude” with Russia? So far no evidence at all has emerged to support that hypothesis, but Politico’s Josh Meyer digs deep into another curious set of circumstances in the Obama White House and its own operations with a foreign power. Perhaps the media will start asking whether the previous administration colluded with Iran to let terrorists and drug dealers go free in order to score one of the worst deals ever in international relations. Before Barack Obama decided to pursue the nuclear deal with Iran, the DEA had a major operation called Project Cassandra. This operation...

The Sherman family’s private investigation into the shocking deaths of billionaire Apotex founder Barry Sherman and his wife Honey is revealing a very different story than the murder-suicide theory that has led headlines to date. A Star investigation reveals the details. It’s double murder, not murder-suicide. Barry and Honey Sherman were killed in what looks like a professional, contract killing. That’s the conclusion of a variety of experts who have been hired by the family to probe the case. Here’s the new information: There are markings on the Shermans’ wrists, an indication that at some point their hands were tied...

At the time of the deaths of Barry and Honey Sherman on December 15th, 2017, Mr. Sherman was in the process of being investigated by the Federal Government Lobbying Commission. At the centre of these investigations were events such as a Liberal party fundraiser Sherman hosted at his home in August, 2015. The guest of honour at the event was Justin Trudeau, who at this time was the Liberal candidate for prime minister. The legal issue at hand was whether or not Mr. Sherman had breached the Lobbyists’ Code of Conduct. At the time of the deaths, Barry Sherman was...

The US moratorium on gain-of-function experiments has been rescinded, but scientists are split over the benefits—and risks—of such studies. Talha Burki reports. On Dec 19, 2017, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced that they would resume funding gain-of-function experiments involving influenza, Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus, and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus. A moratorium had been in place since October, 2014. At the time, the NIH had stated that the moratorium “will be effective until a robust and broad deliberative process is completed that results in the adoption of a new US Government gain-of-function research policy”. This process...

From Jan. 8, 2018 (Bandy's made a career of this) In a bid to have President Donald Trump removed from office, the left is pushing the “diagnosis” of a Yale psychiatrist who has ruled him “unfit” to be president. However, Dr. Bandy X Lee’s own dirty little secret has just been exposed — and it’s bad news for her career. Yale Psychiatrist who 'Diagnosed' Trump Unfit Has Dirty Secret That's Just Been Exposed After giving her professional psychiatric diagnosis of President Donald Trump, rendering him mentally unfit for office, Yale psychiatrist Dr. Bandy X Lee’s prestigious career is in hot...