Free Republic

Now that the lying machine that comprises the US and Western media has failed with the Russiagate propaganda, the machine has switched to Chinagate. https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/white-house/article235990528.html? The least trusted American Institution, other than the CIA, is the FBI. McClatchy news reports that the FBI has “expanded its task force on election security beyond examining Russian efforts ahead of the 2020 race to include intelligence activities by China, Iran and North Korea.” “A White House official told McClatchy that the National Security Council stands by its assessment made public in June that Beijing intends to influence the election to suit its interests.”...

Once upon a time, Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard traveled to Syria and met with the strongman President Bashar Assad. She considered her willingness to engage all sides of the country’s bloody civil war to be an important step toward peace. For this bold action, she was widely pilloried at the time and considered by some an authoritarian apologist or outright traitor. The claim was repeated again recently by the ever-so-mainstream California Sen. Kamala Harris, a fellow Democratic presidential hopeful. The attacks on Gabbard’s Syria record have been quite regular among Washington insiders, who considered the congresswoman foolish. But was she?...

BESIDES BEING BILLIONAIRES and spending much of their fortunes to promote pet causes, the leftist financier George Soros and the right-wing Koch brothers have little in common. They could be seen as polar opposites. Soros is an old-fashioned New Deal liberal. The Koch brothers are fire-breathing right-wingers who dream of cutting taxes and dismantling government. Now they have found something to agree on: the United States must end its “forever war” and adopt an entirely new foreign policy. In one of the most remarkable partnerships in modern American political history, Soros and Charles Koch, the more active of the two...

Donald Trump's formal recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, reversing some seven decades of American policy, is arguably the most unnecessary decision of his time in office and one that will have consequences lingering far past his tenure. The decision may yield some domestic political advantage among Jewish and evangelical Christian voters for the president, but at irrationally high expense globally. Jerusalem is where Israel's president presides, and where the parliament, supreme court, and most government ministries are located. In practical terms, it is the capital. However, unlike in nearly every other nation, the United States maintains its...

President Trump reportedly wanted to immediately and publicly acknowledge that U.S.-led forces engaged Russian mercenaries in Syria earlier this year, killing hundreds of them, but senior National Security Council staff, led then by H.R. McMaster, intervened, saying it would be unnecessarily antagonizing to Moscow. The president is said to have wanted White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to immediately acknowledged and “take credit” for fending off the Russian mercenaries.

America, if you don't stop all this obsession with Bubba's pee-pee and start focusing your short attention span onto Hillary's HEALTH and the question of who will be her Vice-presidential pick--you know, the person who will really rule you for eight more years?--then you've been dead so long, you don't even stink anymore. Franklin Delano Roosevelt's physical weakness due to polio was stifled in the press, but it was well know to the domestic ruling class and to hostile world leaders. Stalin was well aware of FDR's physical weakness, and whether or not Stalin used it to manipulate FDR, hundreds...

Pat Buchanan, the columnist, author, and until recently MSNBC's token right-winger, garnered a lot of sympathy when he was fired from his job at the left-leaning news network apparently because of a book he wrote. Too bad, as reported in the Daily Caller, Buchanan had to ruin things by articulating how obnoxious his views really are. In essence, he suggested that Israel with its 300 estimated nuclear weapons was a bigger threat to the United States than is Iran with its nuclear program on Russian television. Buchanan went on about how his favorite Jewish conspiracy, which he called the "neocons,"...

In a move that is certain to further escalate already stretched racial tensions in America's most cosmopolitan city, some 100 New York City buses will soon carry jarring anti-Islamic posters which feature photos of an ISIS beheading victim, his alleged executioner, Adolf Hitler, declare "Yesterday's moderate [Muslim] is today's headline" and proclaim "It's not Islamophobia, it's Islamorealism" as part of an "educational campaign." According to the NY Daily News, the ads, paid for by flame-throwing blogger Pamela Geller, at a cost of $100,000, are intended as an “education campaign” to warn of the “problem with jihad” and Islamic sharia law,...

The Kentucky senator is trying to tell us he’s not an isolationist. That dog won’t hunt.Rand Paul insists he’s not an “isolationist.” Writing this week in TIME, he says, “I look at the world, and consider war, realistically and constitutionally.”But in reality, the Kentucky senator has advanced a brand of neo-isolationism and appeasement that is as short-sighted as it mistaken. Despite his recent, and frantic efforts to recast himself as not completely ridiculous on national security issues, the truth is his record often puts him in league with Barack Obama—or even to the president’s left. Anyone who truly cares about...

Obama has made mistakes but so did Bush by invading. There's no good case for U.S. military intervention now. Though many claim the mantle of Ronald Reagan on foreign policy, too few look at how he really conducted it. The Iraq war is one of the best examples of where we went wrong because we ignored that.In 1984, Reagan's Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger developed the following criteria for war, primarily to avoid another Vietnam. His speech, "The Uses of Military Power," boils down to this: The United States should not commit forces to combat unless the vital national interests...

s a de-facto declaration of war. The measure, which was introduced several months ago by Senators Lindsey Graham, Bob Casey and Joe Lieberman, supports continuing to pressure Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment program. The resolution advocates using methods other than containment to stop Iran, including exerting economic and diplomatic pressure. Senate Joint Resolution 41 “rejects any United States policy that would rely on efforts to contain a nuclear weapons-capable Iran.” Senators expressed their fears regarding Iran’s nuclear capabilities. “We know that Iran would create access for terrorists – access for them – to these nuclear weapons, making the Middle...

WASHINGTON, September 6, 2014 — Rand Paul’s opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal sums up his analysis of how the menace of the Islamic State developed, and clearly declares that it must be dealt with: "The Islamic State represents a threat that should be taken seriously. But we should also recall how recent foreign-policy decisions have helped these extremists so that we don’t make the same mistake of potentially aiding our enemies again". The Christian Science Monitor wonders, “Has Rand Paul become a Hawk?” and outlines his pre-existing image: His relatively dovish foreign-policy views have long been seen as...

DRUDGE REPORT: PAPER: Foley video with Briton was staged, experts say... London hip-hop artist Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary key suspect in hunt for killer of American journalist James Foley News.com.au August 25, 2014 http://www.news.com.au/world/london-hiphop-artist-abdelmajed-abdel-bary-key-suspect-in-hunt-for-killer-of-american-journalist-james-foley/story-fndir2ev-1227034541900 THE beheading of American journalist, James Foley, at the hands of ISIS militants shocked the world but forensic experts have revealed the video was probably staged, with the murder happening off camera. The UK Times reported that an international forensic science company, which has worked for police forces across Britain, said there is no question Foley was beheaded but that camera trickery and post-production techniques look to...

Yesterday, a reader told me about a must-read article in the German financial newspaper Handelsblatt. Having no details other than it was a"must read" I failed to locate the article after attempting translations of the Handelsblatt home page. Zero Hedge did find the article, entitled "West on the Wrong Path". It turns out, there is a version of the editorial in German, English, and Russian. Citing parallels to WWI, author Gabor Steingart, publisher of Handelsblatt, Germany’s leading financial newspaper, blasts the Western response (especially US and German) response to the situation in Ukraine. "Small Price to Pay" vs. "West on...

Former Rep. Ron Paul said the law enforcement that swarmed around Boston in the days following the marathon bombings was scarier than the actual terrorist attack. “The Boston bombing provided the opportunity for the government to turn what should have been a police investigation into a military-style occupation of an American city,” he said on the Lew Rockwell website, Politico reported. “This unprecedented move should frighten us as much or more than the attack itself.” The terror attacks on April 15 in Boston killed three and injured 264. Mr. Paul, a former libertarian political candidate who served in Congress as...

A victory beyond the wildest dreams of Osama bin Laden is within reach of fighters from ISIL, a group of which he would likely approve regardless of what current Al Qaeda leadership says about the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. And it's all Obama's fault. “Iraqi troops battled to dislodge an al Qaeda splinter group from the city of Tikrit on Monday,” reports the Hindustan Times, “after its leader was declared caliph of a new Islamic state in lands seized this month across a swathe of Iraq and Syria.” The caliphate claims worldwide authority over all Muslims, and...

As ISIS, a group thought to consist of only a few thousand people led by a shadowy figurehead, defeats forces many times its size to capture a large part of Iraq, RT looks into what is ISIS, and how has it achieved its terrifying triumphs. Follow RT's LIVE UPDATES on ISIS offensive in Iraq So, what is ISIS? And is it even ISIS, or is it ISIL? The world’s most committed and fanatical radical organization has only recently gone by its current name, after the unrecognized Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) was proclaimed in April last year. Al-Sham...

With tear-gas flying in the streets of Turkey, Ukraine's civil-war raging in the south and east, US drones based in Japan to oversee the South China Sea, and Europe's extremist parties gaining significant traction, today we get one more piece of considerably worrisome geopolitical news that global stock markets must ignore. The Sunday Times reports that Israel is to deploy three submarines equipped with nuclear cruise missiles in the Persian Gulf that are meant to act as a deterrent, gather intelligence and potentially to land Mossad agents. Iran is not happy, warning that "anyone who wishes to do an evil...

"Rand Paul took, I think, a really wrong-headed step on the immigration issue last week. I mean, he’s not completely where Jeb is, but almost!"

Video in post of actual attack (mildly graphic). Posted by http://religiopoliticaltalk.com/