Free Republic

U.S. military forces conducted strikes on facilities used by Kataib Hezbollah and affiliated groups in Iraq, the U.S. Defense Ministry said in a statement on Monday. These strikes are a response to a series of strikes against U.S. personnel in Iraq and Syria by Iranian-sponsored militias, including an attack by Iran-affiliated Kataib Hezbollah and affiliated groups on Erbil Air Base earlier on Monday, which led to three injuries to U.S. personnel, the statement said.

President Joe Biden is pushing hard for more Ukraine money and resisting, at least so far, Republican efforts to put strong border security provisions into the aid bill. There are negotiations between the White House and Republicans on the border issue, but so far there has been no breakthrough. It looks more and more as if Biden will try and stonewall the Republicans and get his Ukraine money without strings. That helps explain why Biden has invited Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to Washington. Zelensky just attended the inauguration for Argentina’s new president, Javier Milei. His appearance in Argentina (where he...

Western pundits like to make fun of the supposedly “no limits” partnership between China and Russia. But if they really want to know what no limits means in a state-to-state relationship and how tremendous self-harm can result, they need to look no further than that between the United States and Israel. What Israel wants, Israel gets; and does not even have to ask first when it comes to emergency financial aid and weapons. As Israel bombs its way across the Gaza Strip and Jewish settlers commit murder to seize Palestinian land in the West Bank, the weapons they are using...

... The misunderstanding has historical, cultural and political roots but fundamentally it can be attributed to the universalist, Manichean (good vs evil) worldview of what Brown refers to as the Enlightenment West – and the projection of that attitude onto a civilization that doesn’t share the same history. “The distinctiveness of the intellectual and cultural history of inhabitants of the space now occupied by the People’s Republic of China is undeniable,” Brown writes. “In terms of language, modes of governance, economic behavior, and fundamental view about how the world operates and how society should be shaped, the Chinese tradition is...

A number of people have asked why does Socrates say that the United States will lose this war. One states: “The standalone American firepower without UK/ France, etc, itself is tremendous. How does Socrates say that America will lose the war? It may lose financially. The Chinese have the worst track record in any war.” Perhaps I should just say, cyclically – it’s just TIME. The Neocons are in charge of this war. They are trying conventionally for their constant goal of REGIME CHANGE. They are doing what Khrushchev had threatened Communism would win and we will bury you. This...

As congressional Republicans increasingly clamor for a ban on the popular video-sharing app TikTok, at least one is speaking out against the idea: Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky. In an op-ed for the Louisville Courier Journal, Paul argued that seeking a ban on TikTok was not just bad policy, but bad politics. "Congressional Republicans have come up with a national strategy to permanently lose elections for a generation," he wrote. According to TikTok, the app now has 150 million active monthly users in the United States.

Central European countries like Croatia, Hungary, and also recently Austria too are beginning to emerge as voices of reason in the West after their de facto New Cold War bloc’s proxy war on Russia through Ukraine over the past year failed to defeat that Great Power. They rightly realize how counterproductive this NATO-led campaign has been for their collective interests, ergo why they’re urging restraint and even an outright reversal of policy at this point in time. Croatian President Zoran Milanovic is unexpectedly giving Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban a run for his money when it comes to being the...

The United States is now publicly discussing the "containment" of China with its Asia-Pacific vassals. On January 8, the Financial Times reported that the supreme US Marine Corps commander for Japan gave very direct statements regarding Pentagon's China strategy. Lieutenant General James Bierman thinks there are "numerous parallels" between Ukraine and Taiwan and admits the US is preparing what he dubbed "a counter-China theater" by strengthening coordination with its regional satellite states. "The US and Japanese armed forces are rapidly integrating their command structure and scaling up combined operations as Washington DC and its Asian allies prepare for a possible...

US-listed Chinese microblogging platform Weibo is seeking to raise up to US$547 million in a share offer in Hong Kong, documents showed Monday (Nov 29), the latest China tech company to list closer to home as tensions with the United States rise. Several US-listed Chinese tech firms such as Alibaba have held initial public offerings in Hong Kong over the past two years as the United States has stepped up scrutiny of Chinese companies. Listing in Hong Kong is seen as a hedge against the risk of being removed from US exchanges and a way of accessing an investor base...

China has beat the U.S. to become the world’s richest nation, according to a new report. -- Key findings: Global net worth soared from $156 million in 2000 to $514 trillion in 2020, making the world wealthier than it was at any point in history. China accounted for nearly a third of the increase, the report from management consultancy firm McKinsey & Company stated. McKinsey analyzed the national balance sheets of 10 countries that represented 60% of the world’s income. Of these nations, China accounted for 50% of the growth in net worth, followed by the U.S. (22%) and Japan...

A few years ago, I found myself on the platform of a train station in Tanzania. There under the ubiquitous photograph of the country's then president were two fading portraits of two statesmen from an earlier time, Chairman Mao Zedong and Julius Nyerere, first president of independent Tanzania. These two political giants were the main architects of the Tanzania-Zambia Railway (TAZARA), which was completed in 1976. The Chinese-built railway allowed Zambia to circumvent apartheid South Africa and white minority ruled Rhodesia and export its copper out of the Tanzanian port of Dar es Salaam. The 1,860-kilometer-long railway remains an enduring...

So much research has been done we essentially know the majority of the background details. The SARS-CoV-2 virus commonly known as COVID-19 was made in a lab by scientists. The virus then went from a lab to the global population in late 2019/early 2020. The epicenter of the outbreak appears to be one of the labs working on the virus in Wuhan, China. Those essential big picture items are no longer debated; although the Chinese government do not agree for obvious reasons.

This is the full post, minus the photos and some formatting. If you don't know who Jimmy Lai is, how the NED is funded through the CIA, and what John Bolton is all about, this article is for you. Here, in this article, we look at the United States involvement with HK. We [1] study how the United States uses Hong Kong to exert pressure on China for trade and geopolitical advantage. We also [2] take a look at the various people “behind the scenes” that are pushing for American involvement, for their own personal gain. Finally, [3] we study...

The use of “technicals” by military forces to round up citizenry as part of genocide. This post looks into the role that (so called) “technicals” play in national upheavals. A “technical” is a pickup truck that has been modified into a mobile heavy weapons platform. These machines have been commonly used in just about every national conflict over the last two decades. Here, we look at the role that they have, and why there are used. As opposed to other vehicles constrained for other purposes. Summary A technical is a light improvised fighting vehicle, typically an open-backed civilian pickup truck...

Well, it’s been (almost) three solid years into the Donald Trump Presidency and not one treasonous criminal action has been punished. Not one. ZERO. Zilch. Na-da. Take for example when Hillary Clinton literally laughed out loud at a question about her email investigation — had to wipe her eyes, she laughed so hard. She laughed at us, at America, for being so clueless as to think she’d ever answer to our laws. And she’s still laughing, because she’s right: she’s untouchable. The consensus is that even though we know that the first email investigation was rigged by the FBI to...

Why are Americans so Angry? Face it. The U.S. government no longer belongs to the people and it no longer represents them. This causes a rage, an anger because Americans feel helpless. You see, there is absolutely nothing they can do about anything. Nothing. Americans are absolutely powerless, and the ballot box is simply a facade. One reason the American public is so passive relates to the fact many people live in a state of willful denial. To admit your country runs more like the Corleone family than some famed tome of Greek political-philosophy is a difficult step to take....