Free Republic

The World Economic Forum wasn’t simply the brainchild of Klaus Schwab, but was actually born out of a CIA-funded Harvard program headed by Henry Kissinger and pushed to fruition by John Kenneth Galbraith and the “real” Dr. Strangelove, Herman Kahn. This is the amazing story behind the real men who recruited Klaus Schwab, who helped him create the World Economic Forum, and who taught him to stop worrying and love the bomb.

The Atlantic last week hosted a conference titled “Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracy” at the University of Chicago, where I’m a student. Barack Obama, Amy Klobuchar, Anne Applebaum, Jeffrey Goldberg, Ben Smith, Brian Stelter, and other boldface names studded the program, alongside many lesser-known members of the prestige press. They would gather, as a news release put it, to explore “the organized spread of disinformation and strategies to respond to it.” The Atlantic gabfest was billed as a space for rigorous dialogue, where the light of truth would scatter the darkness of disinformation. But the dialogue and criticism, it...

President Biden, the former Senator from Delaware, addressed the Business Roundtable on Monday afternoon. "We're at an inflection point, I believe, in the world economy, not just the world economy, the world, that occurs every three or four generations," the president said. "[A general told me that] 60 million people died between 1900 and 1946 and since then we've established a liberal world order, and it hasn't happened in a long while."

President Biden on Monday confirmed that Russia launched a hypersonic missile in Ukraine over the weekend and said that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s may launch cyberattacks against the US and use chemical weapons in Ukraine next because his “back is against the wall.” Biden said Ukraine’s military is “wreaking havoc on the Russian military,” making Putin increasingly desperate in his nearly month-old invasion of Ukraine. “The more his back is against the wall, the greater the severity of the tactics he may employ,” Biden warned at a Business Roundtable event

A credible deterrent is designed to alter a potential aggressor’s calculations of risk and reward. Vladimir Putin determined that the potential cost of invading Ukraine was relatively low, and on Feb. 24 he attacked. It will be the job of historians to try to understand why deterrence failed. Deterrence involves two factors: capability and will. Capability means having the military strength to deliver intolerable damage to an adversary. Will is the determination to use that strength and deliver that damage. .....snip..... By signaling that the U.S. had no intention of using its capabilities, the Biden administration seriously weakened their deterrent...

With the eyes of the world on Vladimir Putin, questions are being asked about the Russian leader's state of mind after he announced the invasion of Ukraine in 'rambling, terrifying, apocalyptic' fashion. Rumours surrounding the Russian leader's health have been swirling for years, with repeated reports suggesting that he is suffering from cancer and Parkinson's disease. On top of that, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on both the President's physical and mental health can't be underestimated, and it's been suggested that brain fog as a result of Long Covid could be impairing his cognitive function. Although it's not clear...

Far-right extremists are attempting to incite an insurrection to hasten the downfall of what they see as a deeply corrupt U.S. government. Some could resort to deadly acts of terrorism.

In a recent Washington Post opinion piece, Robert Kagan presented a chilling, but disturbingly accurate, portrayal of American politics today and its dire portents given the deep political divisions and dysfunctional state of our institutions. A premise of his thesis is that “party loyalty has superseded [executive-legislative-judicial] branch loyalty … in the Trump era.” A more descriptive statement of the Republican side of the ominous national problem — Democratic extremists deserve at least equal blame — would be that loyalty to Donald Trump has superseded party loyalty. Trump has proved himself to be the ultimate embodiment of a “Republican in...

German trust in the EU seems to have collapsed during the COVID-19 pandemicAs Germany prepares for its federal elections in September, many are wondering what will come next. Under outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel, Germany has become an “indispensable nation” in Europe and within the broader rules-based international order. The consensus is that she will be succeeded by someone offering more of the same. Her own anointed successor as leader of the Christian Democratic Union, Armin Laschet, is indeed running on a continuity platform. And yet, as Merkel prepares to retire, there are signs that Germans are growing tired of their...

For years, Democrats and their cable news echo chamber conjured up and broadly disseminated the most lurid and patently ludicrous rumors about former President Donald Trump being a corrupted and (literally) compromised agent of Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin. Democratic talking heads ultimately tried in vain to distance themselves from this sordid oeuvre's most far-fetched talking points, such as the infamous "pee video kompromat" from the discredited Steele dossier. But for four years, Democrats' unquenchable obsession with the "Russiagate" hoax pervaded, distorted and sullied our politics. The irony is that Trump, on actual substantive merits, toed a very hawkish line...

Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), one of only 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach then-President Donald Trump this year, recently told the Atlantic why he remains committed to the party: “I’m a Republican because I’ve been a Republican far longer than Donald Trump has. He’s a Republican usurper.… I’m not going to let him take the party. So I will fight. I will fight like hell.” It is a decision I have not for a moment regretted, because the GOP has become even more of a horror show than I anticipated. As former House speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) notes in...

As of this recording, there have been 4.2 million confirmed cases of coronavirus in the US, and 147,000 deaths, for a case-fatality rate of 3.5%. If you were to rank the countries of the world with respect to case fatality rate you’d find the US doing ok – about on par with Germany, and Brazil. Way better than Italy, and worse than New Zealand and Australia, for instance. This is not to say we are containing the virus well, just that among those who get it, the chance of survival is about as good here as those other countries. But...

“Trust in Trump’s America is gone.” The coronavirus crisis has caused a dramatic deterioration in the European public perception of the US and left many believing the EU had become “irrelevant”, new polling finds. The new survey by the European Council for Foreign Relations (ECFR) says the pandemic has traumatized Europeans and left them “feeling alone and vulnerable”. The survey studied the views of Europeans towards the EU and notably its response to the coronavirus crisis and the results did not make for positive reading. “There is a powerful sense among citizens of almost all surveyed member states that their...

China placed 50 million people under quarantine in Wuhan Province in January. Since then, many liberal democracies have taken aggressive authoritarian measures of their own to fight the novel coronavirus. By mid-March, almost all Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries had implemented some combination of school, university, workplace, and public transportation closures; restrictions on public events; and limits on domestic and international travel. One country, however, stands out as an exception in the West. Rather than declare a lockdown or a state of emergency, Sweden asked its citizens to practice social distancing on a mostly voluntary basis. Swedish...

As Donald Trump abdicates U.S. leadership and dismantles the democratic international order, prospects for global cooperation look bleak. Fortunately, America is more than Washington and the United States is more than the federal government. Around the nation, governors are going global. In states both red and blue, they are engaging governments abroad, partnering with foreign provinces, and promoting cross-border trade and action on climate change. The White House may be in retreat, but statehouses are not about to turn their back on globalization. At the forefront of this activism is the National Governors Association (NGA), which begins its annual summer...

Under the guise of keeping America “competitive” in the looming high-tech future, the globalist Council on Foreign Relations is urging policymakers at all levels to dramatically expand the size and scope of government. The bloated welfare states in Sweden and Denmark are cited as examples of the “advantages” of massive government programs to take care for people. Without the sort of fundamental transformation of America envisioned by the CFR, the nation will supposedly be left behind in the emerging new paradigm, the organization claimed. Critics, though, blasted that idea. In its new report, dubbed “The Work Ahead: Machines, Skills, and...

There are many issues Democrats and Republicans disagree on, but elevating women in peace negotiations should certainly not be one of them. Just a few weeks ago, the United States under the Trump administration became the first country in the world with a Women, Peace and Security (WPS) comprehensive law (2017) and strategy (2019) bringing women to the negotiating table in global peace efforts. This is something to be widely celebrated. I have proudly worked with women across the aisle to train, support and empower women around the world — because ending poverty and violence against women, and increasing their...

A former Ukrainian prosecutor general is speaking out after Vice President Joe Biden forced him out of his job. Speaking to ABC News, former Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin said he has “no doubt” Biden wanted him gone to help protect Hunter Biden’s employer. At the time, Shokin was investigating Burisma Holdings while Biden’s son Hunter was on the board earning as much as $50,000 a month. “Biden was acting not like a U.S. vice president, but as an individual,” he said to ABC News, “like the individual interested in having me removed — having me gone so that I did...

RUSH: Here is Steve in Jefferson, Wisconsin. Great to have you. Hi. CALLER: In the history of the U.S., there’s been a handful of great men — and, Rush, you are in that handful. RUSH: Whew! CALLER: With Hillary losing, I believe that they’re gonna put a woman on the Democratic ticket, and I think that’s why some of them are still hanging in there. You know, you talked yesterday of a lot of them only having a zero likability, and I just believe that they’re gonna put a woman on the ticket. I just wondered what your thoughts were...

Stacey Abrams has really arrived. The former Minority Leader of the Georgia House of Representatives and the Democrat Party candidate in the 2018, hotly-contested Georgia gubernatorial election, Abrams scored a double anointing by major globalist groups during the month of May. First, on May 10, she was chosen to deliver the keynote address at the Council on Foreign Relations’ Seventh Annual Conference on Diversity in International Affairs. She received the royal rock star treatment during that conference, as the great and the good packed into “A Conversation With Stacey Abrams,” a Q&A session emceed by New York Times reporter and...