Free Republic

A wide spread scale over the secret network used to move Iran's oil revenues around international sanctions has [received] criticism. Senior officials have discovered that [corrupt intermediaries] have misappropriated at least $1.6 billion, with some fleeing the country. The controversy has expose the unofficial network of so-called trusts: companies and intermediates entrusted with receiving and transferring oil revenues outside the international banking system. Speaking on state television on Sunday, the head of Iran's State Inspection Organization, Zabihollah Khodaeian, said one intermediart alone had failed to return $200 million in state funds before leaving the country. Khudaeian added that judicial authorities...

A California children’s charity funded by billionaire George Soros stands accused of sending cash which may have ended up in the hands of a Palestinian terrorist organization, according to a new report obtained by The Post. The Berkeley-based Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA) features Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters and activist academic Noam Chomsky on its advisory board and claims to provide humanitarian aid to children in the Middle East. It was founded by husband-and-wife activists Barbara Lubin and Howard Levine in 1988, but has strayed far from its original mission and has been tied to a US-designated terrorist group, the...

Each year, millions more graduates are thrust into China’s already saturated jobs market. The situation for this year’s cohort, flooding into an increasingly crowded pool of applicants fighting for an insufficient number of positions, is arguably the bleakest yet. The competition is intense, especially for jobs that offer weekends off and proper social insurance With more than 10 million Chinese students graduating each year since 2022, a figure that is only growing, it is the scale of the situation that is an exacerbating factor, with authorities tasked with finding meaningful work for the equivalent of a medium-sized European nation each...

The Chinese semiconductor industry faces a critical barrier in scaling up chip production, primarily due to the lack of lithography equipment in fabs. This limitation has confined firms like SMIC to a specific production volume and prevented them from scaling up significantly for several years now. Apart from developing in-house alternatives, it seems like Chinese engineers were actually keen to 'reverse engineer' ASML's DUV equipment, according to a report from The National Interest. Now, in the process of opening up the equipment, the individuals broke down the DUV machinery. This is actually interesting and hilarious at the same time. While...

This video explores **China’s recent development of a domestic Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machine** (0:00), a crucial piece of technology for advanced semiconductor manufacturing. Despite being long dominated by the Dutch company *ASML*, China has managed to build a working prototype by taking a different engineering approach to bypass technical hurdles. **Key takeaways:** * **Light Source Innovation:** Instead of just mirroring *ASML*'s method of hitting moving tin droplets with lasers, China is actively developing **Laser-Induced Discharge Plasma (LDP)** (2:40). While *ASML* moved away from this method years ago due to scalability issues, China is betting on modern advancements to make...

The Burmese people continue to suffer as the brutal civil war in Myanmar heads toward its sixth year. The conflict was recently brought home to America with China’s arrest of Min Zin, an American citizen who heads the Institute for Strategy and Policy (ISP)–Myanmar, located in Thailand. Beijing accused him of spying. China has increasingly close relations with the government in Naypyidaw, highlighted by the June visit to Beijing of Min Aung Hlaing, the commanding general who recently anointed himself Myanmar’s president. China helps Hlaing’s regime survive despite widespread popular opposition. For decades the borderlands of Myanmar have been aflame,...

Former CBS News investigative reporter Catherine Herridge, who also worked with Fox News, reviewed a batch of documents declassified by the Trump administration concerning Chinese election interference. President Trump spoke extensively about the vulnerabilities of our election system in a primetime address on July 16. The president outlined how Beijing has compromised the voter data of around 220 million Americans, paid U.S. reporters to spread anti-Trump propaganda, and cited numerous intelligence officials who kept the extent of the Chinese election meddling operation from him. Herridge appeared on NewsNation’s Katie Pavlich Tonight on July 25 to provide an update on this...

It’s notoriously difficult to prove vote fraud. But there are some huge red flags here. In President Trump’s prime time address on July 16, he revealed newly declassified evidence that (Mainland) China had spent a mint to acquire considerable election data for the 2020 election, including the full personal data sets on 220 million eligible and/or registered American voters. As many reporters point out, we don’t yet have all the data to tie up in a neat little bow proving how this data was used to commit vote fraud. That would require other, very different types of information. It’s notoriously...

The two ideologies doing battle against the modern West have a shared belief: It’s going to get a lot worse (often with their help) before it magically gets better. arx’s theory of immiseration and Twelver Shia eschatology share a common structural feature: both teach that history moves forward only through a period of necessary, progressive worsening, after which a total redemptive inversion suddenly occurs. Everything else follows from that single shared manifesto. “Redemptive inversion” is the common core. It means the existing order is not improved by degrees; it is completely reversed. Workers’ misery and Islam-defined injustice are inverted into...

It's been coming for a while, but this week, the once-conservative firebrand Tucker Carlson has doubled down on a version of reality that would make Iran's mullahs blush. Carlson used an appearance on the East Meets West with Olga and Tara podcast to unload on a provision in the fiscal year 2027 National Defense Authorization Act that would expand defense-technology cooperation between the United States and Israel. His verdict? Lawmakers who back the measure are acting against America's own interests, effectively merging our nations’ militaries.Carlson didn't stop at policy disagreement. He accused the Republican Party of handing the country's sovereignty...

Last week, while attending a policy conference, I was introduced to a fascinating new resource that every citizen should know about. The website, Follow Foreign Money, contains a searchable database of confirmed foreign nationals, foreign governments, and foreign-funded organizations that have provided money to U.S.-based nonprofit organizations involved in public policy and advocacy. According to the organization, some grants identify a specific purpose such as funding litigation, advocacy campaigns, or other policy initiatives, while others do not disclose exactly how the money is used. The site’s stated goal is to make these financial relationships easier for the public to examine....

The Army has warned that a House-approved defense measure aimed at restricting certain foreign-made components in commercial data centers built on War Department land could jeopardize more than $1.3 billion in planned private investment as the Pentagon expands its data center footprint. The provision, sponsored by Rep. Cory Mills, R-Fla., was added to the House Armed Services Committee's version of the fiscal 2027 National Defense Authorization Act before the bill passed the House this week. If enacted, the measure would bar companies leasing War Department land from installing or operating data center equipment containing certain printed circuit boards, advanced semiconductors,...

Nick Sortor@nicksortor·3h🚨 HOLY CRAP! ICE Director Todd Lyons just revealed ICE recently busted the largest gift card fraud scheme EVER — and that stolen money was being sent DIRECTLY BACK to military units in CHINAIt was being carried out by illegal Chinese men who were let in under BIDENAll military aged, of course.The scam is fairly simple: these Chinese fraudsters steal barcodes off gift cards from retail stores, place them back on the shelf, and when a shopper buys it, that money is IMMEDIATELY skimmed by CCP operatives who have the numbers in a databaseAnd the American consumer is left...

Alberta & Saskatchewan have chosen the United States as their most important partner in trade negotiations, as Mark Carney's government seeks to draw Canada closer to China.

President Donald Trump insisted Russia and China are “not participating” in the Iran war. The president made the declaration Friday in a Truth Social post. The post included Trump claimed he is doing “very big favors” for Chinese President Xi Jingping: "President Xi, at our recent meeting in Beijing, China, told me that he would not, under any circumstances, give or sell Weapons to the Islamic Republic of Iran — And that statement included Chinese Companies. Considering our relationship, I take him at his word and, besides, l am doing him very big favors, also. Likewise, President [Vladimir] Putin, despite...

Will President Trump's trade policies lay the foundation for a new Bretton Woods system, or will Beijing's economic model continue reshaping the global order? n this episode, Mike Steger examines the growing economic confrontation between the United States, Canada, Europe, and China, arguing that the real battle is not simply about tariffs, but between two competing visions of civilization. From China's strategy of dominating global manufacturing through subsidized exports to President Trump's effort to revive the American System and establish a new international economic order, Mike explains why the future of global development may hinge on rebuilding the principles that...

TranscriptJesse: Iran's sugar daddy, China, alligator arms. Crude purchases down 40%. Venezuela even worse. Big mistake by Beijing to build their energy supplies off sanctioned rogues now surrounded by Pistol Pete. Our Arab allies believe that Iran's about to tap. Their economy's in tatters and their currency's cratering. Yep, they're still shooting, but they can't keep up.Pete: Iran is at the weakest point militarily it has ever been in in the past decade. Certainly, maybe in 47 years, as they've gathered effectively a terror army. Still have capabilities, no doubt, but the amount of damage that we've done to them...

WASHINGTON — A powerful House panel subpoenaed three far-left nonprofits Wednesday as part of a sweeping review of Shanghai-based Marxist millionaire Neville Roy Singham’s network of subversive groups in the US. The House Ways and Means Committee is probing the path of $39 million disbursed from Singham to the People’s Forum, lefty media outlet BreakThrough News, and Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Fox News Digital first reported on the subpoenas. Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.) ripped the three groups for failing to cough up a “single responsive document” in response to the committee’s prior requests for information. Smith’s team is concerned...

The Trump v. Barbara ruling did not destroy President Trump's ability to limit birthright citizenship for birth tourists from China or other specific countries. Upon release of the Trump v. Barbara opinion overruling the President’s Executive Order blocking automatic citizenship to children born in the United States to illegal aliens and visiting tourists, President Trump congratulated President Xi and China on their “massive Birthright Citizenship WIN,” warning the ruling hands foreign nationals a golden ticket to U.S. passports for their children. Indeed, the ruling was disappointing. It leaves wide gaps for individuals, cartels, and hostile nations to exploit our laws...

More also have confidence in Xi than Trump, according to a survey in three dozen countriesGlobal views of the United States worsened last year as President Donald Trump’s second term began, though most people still had a more positive opinion of the U.S. than China. This year, that is no longer the case. Views of China have improved in recent years while opinions of the U.S. have worsened, to the point where China is now seen more positively than the U.S. in most of 36 countries surveyed.Confidence in these countries’ respective leaders to do the right thing regarding world affairs...