Free Republic

U.S. military forces conducted strikes on facilities used by Kataib Hezbollah and affiliated groups in Iraq, the U.S. Defense Ministry said in a statement on Monday. These strikes are a response to a series of strikes against U.S. personnel in Iraq and Syria by Iranian-sponsored militias, including an attack by Iran-affiliated Kataib Hezbollah and affiliated groups on Erbil Air Base earlier on Monday, which led to three injuries to U.S. personnel, the statement said.

The New Development Bank (NDB) established by the five-member BRICS group is offering loans in local currencies, part of its efforts to ditch the use of the U.S. dollar for world trade. NDB President Dilma Rousseff confirmed the move, adding that the financial institution plans to give 30 percent of loans in the local currencies of member nations. The NDB was established in 2014 by the BRICS group – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – to challenge the U.S.-dominated World Bank. Rousseff, who served as Brazil’s president from 2011 until her impeachment in 2016, took over the NDB’s...

China on Monday urged the U.S. "not to play with fire" on the Taiwan issue after the U.S. approved the potential sale of military-technical assistance to Taiwan worth an estimated $108 million. The U.S. Defense Security Cooperation Agency said in a statement on Friday that the State Department has made a determination approving a possible foreign military sale to the "Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States of Blanket Order Contractor Technical Assistance Support and related equipment." This will be the fifth arms sale to the Taiwan region since U.S. President Joe Biden took office in January...

China has been taking advantage of a 'data void' in order to flood social media platforms with Chinese-backed conspiracy theories regarding the origins of Covid-19, which in turn affects algorithmic results from popular search engines such as Google and Bing, according to the Washington Post, citing a Tuesday report by the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD).The Chinese posts have almost exclusively focused on a theory that Covid-19 was created in a lab at Fort Detrick, home to the US Army's Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) - which will ring a bell for anyone who read The Hot Zone,...

srael’s Embassy in China is protesting what it describes as “blatant anti-Semitism” on a program run by the overseas channel of state broadcaster CCTV discussing the ongoing violence in Gaza and elsewhere. In a tweet, the embassy said “we have hoped that the times of the ‘Jew’s controlling the world’ conspiracy theories were over, unfortunately anti-Semitism has shown its ugly face again.” […] On the Tuesday CGTN broadcast, host Zheng Junfeng questioned whether U.S. support for Israel was truly based on shared democratic values, saying “some people believe that U.S. pro-Israeli policy is traceable to the influence of wealthy Jews...

It is interesting anyway. Watch the difference in Covid totals, I am not saying any country wants to 'take the lead' in this category. But watch, nevertheless. India seems poised to, at least, challenge America, at this questionable total.

China Global Television Network (CGTN) has been identified as a “long-standing weapon in Beijing’s arsenal of repression” whose raison d’être is “to attack designated enemies of the Communist Party,” chiefly the U.S. Headquartered in Beijing, funded by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and controlled by the regime’s Publicity Department, the outlet is inundated with anti-U.S. and anti-Trump content. As a result, CGTN was forced to register with the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) in 2019. CGTN’s international disinformation campaign – which has resulted in airing forced confessions and deeply biased coverage of Hong Kong protests – aligns with President Xi...

A large Spanish-language radio station in Mexico will soon begin broadcasting in Chinese in a deal critics say will bring Beijing propaganda to Chinese Americans throughout Southern California. A Federal Communications Commission filing on the sale of radio station XEWW AM 690 radio near Tijuana reveals the buyer has ties to Phoenix Satellite Television US, a subsidiary of Hong Kong's pro-Beijing Phoenix TV. According to government sources, signs that Phoenix is involved in the purchase of the radio station prompted the Trump administration last week to begin an investigation into the national security implications of the sale. Phoenix TV has...