Free Republic

Russia’s unprovoked brutalization of Ukraine includes the likelihood of additional war crimes involving attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure, as Jim further detailed in today’s Jolt. (Jim notes, among other horribles, the deployment in urban areas of thermobaric multiple-rockets launchers, which Ukraine claims have been not merely deployed but used.)How hair-raising, then, that we must turn our attention to the fact that, even as Russia was marshaling its invasion forces, the Biden administration was relying on Russia as its principal intermediary in the negotiations with Iran. It’s doubly humiliating: The president and his envoy, appeasement aficionado Rob Malley, have turned...

The German chancellor has said stores, schools, and day care centers are to close in the run-up to Christmas until January 10. The new rules, agreed with Germany's 16 state leaders, will come into effect from Wednesday. On Sunday, Chancellor Angela Merkel announced that most stores would shut from Wednesday, along with schools and day care centers. The new restrictions will be in effect until at least January 10 to help tackle the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic, which threatens to overwhelm the country's health system. In a news conference that followed a meeting of federal and state leaders,...

When it comes to polling, like Jon Snow, I know nothing. I don’t know from statistics. I’m so innumerate that I’d have to phone a friend if you asked me what comes between 10 and 12. When it comes to crunching, I’ll choose potato chips over numbers every time. Plus, when it comes to politics, I’m hopeless: I predicted both that Donald Trump wouldn’t run for president and that Democratic voters would find Joe Biden’s creepy behavior around women disqualifying. Live and learn! Biden is way ahead. And he is certainly going to win. Right? I’m all about stories, not...

Earlier this year, we learned of the Chinese Communist Party’s intention to undertake its own, state-approved “translation” of the Bible. Evidently, the Christian Scriptures are not as amenable to CCP orthodoxy as the Politburo would like. According to the state-run Xinhua News Agency, the Party assembled a group of obedient and pliable “scholars” late last year and charged them with “making accurate and authoritative interpretations of classical doctrines to keep pace with the times.” In other words, the CCP plans to turn the Scriptures into another piece of regime propaganda by rewriting them beyond all recognition. We don’t yet have...

Groups of people have smashed shop windows, looted, and attacked police vehicles in central Stuttgart during hours of night-time disturbances. German police say more than a dozen police officers were hurt during the violence, in south-west Germany. Video clips on Twitter show people vandalising shops in the city centre and hurling big stones and other objects at police vehicles. Stuttgart police say the violence began after police checked a drugs incident. The situation escalated after a 17-year-old was questioned for an alleged drug offence, the city's police vice-president Thomas Berger told reporters. A group of between 100 and 200 people...

Since the United States and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) established diplomatic relations in 1979, United States policy toward the PRC was largely premised on a hope that deepening engagement would spur fundamental economic and political opening in the PRC and lead to its emergence as a constructive and responsible global stakeholder, with a more open society. More than 40 years later, it has become evident that this approach underestimated the will of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to constrain the scope of economic and political reform in China. Over the past two decades, reforms have slowed, stalled, or...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday announced the first steps in undoing the coronavirus lockdown in the coming weeks, with many shops allowed to open although schools must stay closed until May 4th. Shops up to 800 square metres (8611sq ft) will be allowed to reopen once they have "plans to maintain hygiene", Merkel said, while schools will gradually reopen with priority given to pupils about to take exams. Meanwhile, a ban on large public events will be upheld until August 31st to prevent possible mass transmissions of the virus.

The US drone strike on Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Quds Force unit, may have been a "target of opportunity" but it clearly had presidential authorization for longer than just last night. The US wants to send the signal that this is deliberate. But it is escalatory and brings the region to a new brink of chaos.

If there's a "blue wave" coming in 2018, someone may have forgotten to tell Oregon's voters. A Republican challenger has pulled even with blue state Oregon's Democratic incumbent governor, according to a new poll. The news comes as a surprise in a state that hasn’t seen a Republican governor since late 1980s, sparking fears of the end of Democratic Party’s total domination of the state. The poll indicates that Republican state Rep. Knute Buehler is waging a serious challenge to Gov. Kate Brown, a vocal critic of President Trump, with both candidates getting support from 45 percent of likely voters,...

Several people were injured in an apparent knife attack aboard a bus in northern Germany on Friday. More than 12 people were injured, at least two seriously, after the perpetrator got on the bus in Lubeck, about 44 miles northeast of Hamburg, local media reported. There were conflicting reports on the number of injured people and the severity of the injuries. Earlier, authorities tweeted about a "major police deployment in Luebeck." "We are examining the situation and will give more information later," police officials wrote. A witness told LN the bus was full of passengers when the suspected perpetrator dropped...

As a foreigner in China, you get used to hearing the retort “You don’t know China!” spat at you by locals. It’s usually a knee-jerk reaction to some uncomfortable modern issue or in defense of one of the many historical myths children in the mainland are taught as unshakeable facts about the world. But it’s also true. We don’t know China. Nor, however, do the Chinese — not even the government. We don’t know China because, in ways that have generally not been acknowledged, virtually every piece of information issued from or about the country is unreliable, partial, or distorted....

Annick Girardin, France’s overseas territory minister, arrived in Mayotte Monday following weeks of protests across the Indian Ocean archipelago. But few believe Girardin can solve the chronic problems confronting Mayotte’s residents. Rubber tyres and tree trunks block roads in these tiny Indian Ocean islands, traffic slows to a crawl and protestors have been taking to the streets over the past three weeks in the French territory of Mayotte. Situated in the Gulf of Mozambique, between Madagascar and the coast of southeastern Africa, Mayotte has sun, sands and is ringed by a coral reef rich in marine life, all of which...

“America First” is officially all grown up. President Donald Trump unveils his National Security Strategy (NSS) today in a big set-piece speech at the Reagan Center. There is a lively debate about the utility of these documents among experts and I am squarely on the side of those who argue that they provide an important window into the thinking of an administration. As I explain below, such windows may be especially important for this administration and so this is a document worth studying. Such deeper reflection may change my assessment, but I have a more-positive-than-expected reaction, however, as reflected in...

he U.S. Navy will relieve the commander of its 7th Fleet from duty after the fleet suffered its second deadly mishap in less than three months, a U.S. defense official confirmed to Fox News. An official statement from the Navy regarding the relief of Vice Adm. Joseph Aucoin was expected late Tuesday night. The decision was first reported by the Wall Street Journal. The 7th Fleet has been involved in three collisions since January, the last two of which have resulted in the deaths of 17 sailors.

Macron’s impressive win (now looking like 65.8/34.2) in the French presidential election was, I suspect, more than anything else a vote against Le Pen. Predictably enough, however, the usual suspects are claiming that it was a vote for ’Europe’ (by which they mean even deeper integration within the EU). Not really. That said, I have no doubt that Le Pen made an uphill struggle (her party is not, to put it mildly, without its baggage) even more difficult by her talk of quitting both the EU and the euro. The French may not love the EU, but that’s not the...

NOTE: The link is to the public statement on the Dr. Dao incident by United. Complementing that public statement, United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz emailed United MileagePlus members about that incident and what United intends to do in the future. It is posted for general information and comment. Dear Mr. XXXX, Each flight you take with us represents an important promise we make to you, our customer. It's not simply that we make sure you reach your destination safely and on time, but also that you will be treated with the highest level of service and the deepest sense of...

For 21 years, John Croft lived in his Alabama home virtually problem-free until last summer. “I’ve been a prisoner in my house,” he said. Croft, who is 79, says the burglaries began last June. Since then, he says his Center Point house has been broken into 13 times. The most recent case came around 1:15 Wednesday morning.

In this entire epic allegation of Russian collusion with the Trump campaign to influence or even swing the 2016 presidential election… how many on-the-record sources have we heard from? Last week, we noticed that “U.S. officials” could tell NBC News that the Yemen raid yielded no significant intelligence and “American officials” could tell the New York Times that computers and cellphones seized offered “insights into new types of hidden explosives the group is making and new training tactics for militants.” A difference in assessments that stark is hard to chalk that up to a mundane difference of opinion on the...

In his new book, the director of faith outreach for the [Obama] 2012 campaign paints an ugly picture of the administration’s cynicism. Conservatives will have a hard time finding a more like-minded guide to the decision-making inside the Obama White House than Michael Wear. Wear served in the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships during Obama’s first term, and then directed faith outreach for the president’s reelection campaign. His memoir of his time in the administration, Reclaiming Hope, is a spectacularly readable portrait of a unique niche in Obama-world to which many progressives grew hostile over time, representing...

For Fat Leonard, conning the U.S. Navy was a big piece of cake. The Navy allowed the worst corruption scandal in its history to fester for several years by dismissing a flood of evidence that the rotund Asian defense contractor was cheating the service out of millions of dollars and bribing officers with booze, sex and lavish dinners, newly released ­documents show. The Singapore-based contractor, Leonard Glenn Francis, found it especially easy to outwit the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), the renowned law enforcement agency that has inspired one of the longest-running cop shows on television. Starting in 2006, in...