Free Republic

It's a culture thing. The current difficulties in Afghanistan have structural causes that are more serious than cyclical ones such as sanctions. The recent measures taken by the United Nations at the suggestion of the Biden administration may not be enough for a country that has been dependent on foreign aid for decades. Since the Taliban took control of Kabul last August, their regime has reduced the already limited freedoms available to Afghan citizens. On December 26, the Taliban's Ministry of Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice declared that women could not travel more than 45 miles without being...

"... About 1,450 children were evacuated without their parents, according to numbers from the Office of Refugee Resettlement obtained by CNN. Some of the children got separated from the their families as they were attempting to flee Afghanistan together, and some lost communication with their parents when the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul was bombed. The bombing also killed some of the children’s parents as well as 13 members of the American military. Out of the 1,450 children who came to the U.S. without their parents, most have been released to sponsors, who are sometimes the other family members...

Marine Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Scheller, who made waves after posting a video demanding accountability over the war in Afghanistan during the disastrous withdrawal in August, announced on Facebook right before Christmas he has been officially discharged from the Marine Corps, but that does not mean he'll be quiet. Scheller said he will be going on a media tour to explain why he did what he did and what experienced in the aftermath, starting with appearing on "Tucker Carlson Tonight" on January 4: "I was released from the Marine Corps today, Thursday, December 23rd, 2021. I am filled with mixed emotions....

,,,The large number, first reported by Reuters and updated in recent figures CNN obtained from the Office of Refugee Resettlement, reveals a devastating reality of the evacuations and their aftermath. "It's shocking...the idea that there are over 1,000 kids without their family right now, and that they're potentially feeling alone and feeling scared," says Dr. Sabrina Perrino, an Afghan American pediatrician in California who is hoping to become a foster parent to help. Many of the children tried to flee Afghanistan with their families but got separated in the chaos, advocates say. Some lost touch with their parents during the...

Even the far-left Daily Beast is now admitting that you can’t trust Joe Biden. Joe Biden is losing Democrats. Joe Biden had a credibility problem his whole life. He was known for telling tall tales and sniffing kids. His family has multiple financial ties with China. His son is a drug addict who left evidence of taking drugs, hanging out with hookers, and cutting deals with China and other countries. This was all recorded on his laptop. Anyone who trusted Joe Biden a year ago was a fool. Now even some of those fools are waking up. The Daily Beast...

"On Thursday, the Lt. Col. that criticized the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal and called for accountability in August was released from the Marine Corps. Former Marine Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller announced the news in a lengthy Facebook post, recapping the events over the last four months that led up to his discharge. I was released from the Marine Corps today, Thursday, December 23rd, 2021. I am filled with mixed emotions. I would like to sincerely thank the Marine Corps for forging me into a man," Scheller said. "And from the bottom of my heart, I'd like to thank all the Marines...

A U.S. intelligence report for the first time links China’s largest telecommunications company to Beijing’s KGB-like intelligence service and says the company recently received nearly a quarter-billion dollars from the Chinese government. The disclosures are a setback for Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd.’s efforts to break into the U.S. telecommunications market. The company has been blocked from doing so three times by the U.S. government because of concerns about its links to the Chinese government. The report by the CIA-based Open Source Center states that Huawei’s chairwoman, Sun Yafang, worked for the Ministry of State Security (MSS) Communications Department before joining...

Saudi Arabia has started building its own ballistic missiles with China's help at a top secret base, US intelligence and satellite images have revealed. It is the first time the Gulf state has managed to manufacture its own weapons of the class, though it has purchased ballistic missiles from China in the past. The development is likely to threaten the balance of power in the Middle East cold war between Saudi Arabia and Iran and could derail negotiations to revive Tehran's 2015 nuclear deal with the US. New satellite images dated between October 26 and November 6, 2021 show a...

The Biden administration is taking new actions in an attempt to facilitate humanitarian aid to people in Afghanistan, with the Department of Treasury allowing some financial transactions with the Taliban. "The United States is the largest single provider of humanitarian assistance in Afghanistan," Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Wally Adeyemo said in a statement Wednesday.... ...While the Treasury's new general licenses put certain conditions in place on transactions with the Taliban, critics warn that it could serve to legitimize and assist Taliban rule. House Foreign Affairs Committee ranking member Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, was critical of the move....

The UN Security Council on Wednesday unanimously adopted a US-proposed resolution to help humanitarian aid reach desperate Afghans, while seeking to keep funds out of Taliban hands. Advertising The resolution – a first step by the UN after months of wrangling over how to avert a humanitarian catastrophe amid economic meltdown in Afghanistan – was welcomed by the Islamists as a "good step." Since the Taliban swept back to power in August, billions of dollars in aid and assets have been frozen by the West in what the UN has described as an "unprecedented fiscal shock" to the aid-dependent Afghan...

Discourteous remarks about Afghanistan made by Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan at the recent Organization for Islamic Cooperation (OIC) meeting were an insult to the Afghan nation reeling from the Taliban takeover. In his remarks, Khan described the non-monolithic Taliban group as a predominately ethnic Pashtun movement, implicitly casting millions of Pashtuns as the Taliban’s adherents.... But perceptions matter.... ...To be sure, it is difficult to determine whether the Taliban will ever be able to run a non-ideological Afghan state. But by casting it as a Pashtun movement, Pakistan risks sparking Pashtun nationalism in more than 40 million Pashtuns who...

In a letter to both Yellen and President Biden, the group of lawmakers said that failure to relax international restrictions on Afghanistan’s banking system risks creating “economic pain and humanitarian collapse,” as fears mount that a crumbling economy will spur a new refugee and hunger crisis. The Biden administration in August froze the majority of the Afghan central government’s $9.4 billion in assets — most of which is held in U.S. bank accounts — after the Taliban took control of Kabul and the country. The Biden administration has said recognition, and release of funds, will not come until the Taliban...

President Joe Biden over the weekend touted the supply chain crisis and costly gas prices as 2021 accomplishments. Though 104 ships were waiting to port in Southern California, according to Marine Exchange, the White House announced it would include the number of ships waiting to dock as a 2021 accomplishment. The number of containers sitting on the docks at ports for over a week has been cut by half since the beginning of November, and store shelves are stocked for the holiday season,” the White House wrote. The number of ships delayed outside the ports has not been reported below...

The late-night comedy show took yet another surprising stance of late, criticizing the anti-fascist collective for its tactics. Occasionally, The Daily Show will surprise its (mostly left-wing) viewers by echoing the overheated rhetoric emanating from the right-wing echo chamber. This week, for example, the late-night comedy program defended Melania Trump’s decision to wear designer stiletto heels to tour the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Harvey in Houston, Texas. (Of course, the tony first couple ended up comforting a grand total of zero survivors, and the best evidence the White House could muster to back Trump’s assertion that he’d witnessed “first hand”...

Justice may be delayed, but it will not be denied,” is the strap-line of a video from China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs that now has millions of views from across the world. The startling speech in the clip attached (below) is part of a new Chinese Communist Party effort to undermine the United States on the world stage, taking advantage of an increasingly weak Biden regime. No such wild sabre-rattling came from China during the Trump administration. They didn’t dare. But with Biden and Harris at the helm for less than a year, the world is now witnessing a rush...

A large number of American citizens have been rescued from Afghanistan by a volunteer group after being abandoned by Democrat Joe Biden’s administration. 39 U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents were successfully evacuated Friday by the volunteer civilian group Project Dynamo. They arrived safely at New York City’s JFK airport on Saturday morning, according to the New York Post. Project Dynamo receives funding from Save Our Allies, which is affiliated with The Independence Fund. More than a dozen children, including an 11-month-old American citizen, were among the evacuees. “This is the first known major airlift rescue with American boots on...

One explanation may be her long fascination with Edith Wilson. She admired and apparently coveted the role that Mrs. Wilson filled after President Woodrow had a stroke. Many Biden watchers have long observed Jill Biden’s grasping obsession with becoming the First Lady. Throughout the campaign as Joe Biden’s failing mental abilities became more and more obvious, did she love him enough to end it? Oh no, not Jill. She continued on with her elder abuse. One explanation may be her long fascination with Edith Wilson. She admired and apparently coveted the role that Mrs. Wilson filled after President Woodrow had...

OANN reporter Jack Pesobiec has dropped a scoop from a highly reliable White House source that is quite chilling. Joe Biden, according to the sauce, was unsure about keeping the August 31 timetable for leaving Afghanistan. The Taliban “red-lined” it and told him he had to leave, but Joe could have escalated things and brought in the big guns and told the Taliban what was up… and that’s exactly what our European allies wanted him to do, because we couldn’t possibly get all of these innocent people out of Afghanistan in seven days. It’s simply not conceivable, and no one...

"After 13 service members died, this is what they have to say."

Beijing [China], December 17 (ANI): The US administration is concerned over China's increasing military capability near its border with India as it tries to expand its strategic alliance in the region, according to a report. The US Defense Department is newly concerned about China's further military build-up near the demarcation line across its Himalayan border with India after Beijing deployed long-range strategic bombers to the area last month in another apparent warning to New Delhi, according to Foreign Policy magazine. Further, the build-up along the Indian border fits the pattern of Chinese regional aggression witnessed in other parts of the...