Free Republic

Alex Christoforou, Alexander Mercouris and guest Jeffery Sachs discuss Tucker Carlson's interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin.From the video: Jeffery Sachs: (Putin discusses) "a remarkable truth. The end of the Soviet Union did not at all end the US pressure and attacks on Russia. "And, I think this is the real lesson of this -- it wasn't actually anti-communism, it was anti-Russia. And, it goes back two centuries, I would say, to British Russophobia..a century before communism. "And the reason is Russia is big and powerful. And, in the British and US grand strategy, that, per se, is a threat,...

20,000 Boer Children Died in Concentration Camps, Boer War, 1899-1901. Very many victims of the February 1945 Dresden Firestorm were not German Citizens, They were Women and Children fleeing the Russians. These issues bear on the current conflicts. You can argue about "justification", but not about whether or not this happened. "Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts", asserted the late NY Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.) The first modern instance of targeting civilians as pawns of war, came during the Boer War, when the families of the very tough guerilla fighters from among the Boer...

The US Navy has assembled one of the greatest concentrations of power in the Eastern Mediterranean in 40 years. Any assumption that the large and growing US naval force in the region is simply there as a demonstration force, unlikely to be used, was dispelled on October 19 when the destroyer USS Carney shot down cruise missiles and drones in the northern Red Sea. The USN said the munitions had been launched from Yemen and were potentially aimed at Israel.

Iran and Saudi Arabia have said that the Israeli regime's crimes and the United States' green light for the atrocities stand to invite "destructive insecurity" for the occupying regime and its supporters. The remarks were made on Wednesday in the first phone call to take place between President Ebrahim Raeisi and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Mohammed Jamshidi, the Iranian chief executive's deputy chief of staff for political affairs, wrote on a message on X, formerly known as Twitter. "In the first phone call between Ayatollah Raisi & HRH Mohammed bin Salman, the 2 agreed on the need to...

In the early seventies Shiekh Ahmed Yassin started the Organization Mujama Al Islamiya which helped establish the Islamic University in Gaza, hospitals and schools. Just like the United States was funding the Taliban to fight in Afghanistan against the Soviets to bring down the communists so too was Israel selling Arms to Iran to fight their archenemy Iraq during the early eighties.Islamic fundamentalism was not seen as a threat to world peace, instead it was Marxists terrorists around the world who were seen as a threat so Muslim extremists were seen as natural allies against G-dless communists.

For reasons mysterious to the rational human mind, Fox News and the Republican National Committee decided to subject Americans to the most bizarre public spectacle in recent memory. It was stupid. It was strange. It was the second Republican presidential primary debate, which began with British-American Stuart Varney having a seizure while attempting to introduce his Univision cohost Ilia Calderón and concluded with Dana Perino asking the contestants who should be “voted off the island.” “Leading the charge, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis dismissed the question outright,” The Independent reported. “I’m not going to do that, with all due respect, we’re...

President Biden tops former President Trump by 5 points among registered voters in a 2024 hypothetical matchup, new polling shows.Asked who they’d back if Trump and Biden were their respective party’s nominees, 45 percent of registered voters said they’d cast their ballots for Biden, while 40 said the same for Trump, according to the survey from The Economist-YouGov. Seven percent said “other,” 4 percent weren’t sure and another 3 percent said they would not vote. The new results show Biden’s lead widened since last month, when the pollsters found him and Trump at 43 and 40 percent, respectively.

Well, there you have it. She is officially washed up. Her endorsing a liberal big gov't guy royally ticked me off and this is proof that she is powerless when going against conservative values.

Senator Cruz continues to capitalize on Dr. Ben Carson’s inexperience, gaining ground against Carson in Massachusetts. In October, Massachusetts polling data showed Trump with 48%, Carson with 14%, Rubio with 12%, and Cruz with only 5%. In one month, Trump has dropped to 32%, Rubio up to 18%, Cruz at 10%, and Carson dropping all the way to 5%. Now, this early polling in Massachusetts isn't a good gauge of anything in a vacuum, but considering what we're seeing in other polls, it appears that Senator Cruz is directly siphoning off votes from Carson. Obviously, Ted Cruz and Ben Carson...

Weeks of tough scrutiny are beginning to take a toll: Ben Carson appears to be fading in Iowa, and there are signs he may be hitting the wall in other early states. A CBS/YouGov poll released Sunday showed Carson slipping below 20 percent in Iowa and to third place behind Donald Trump and Ted Cruz — the first time he's had a rating of less than 20 percent in a major poll there since September. [SNIP] All of that suggests a challenging road ahead for the retired pediatric neurosurgeon, said Patrick Murray, the director of polling at Monmouth University, which...

Republican presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson doubled down on his previous language this morning, saying that al Qaeda was not an existential threat to the United States in 2001 and 2003. Today, he told ABC News that ISIS is more of a threat now than al Qaeda was in 2001 and 2003. "They weren’t nearly as developed as they are now -- at that point,” Carson said in response to an ABC News question. "That was my point. This is so much greater a threat than that was.” Carson also said the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001...

Dr. Ben Carson told supporters Sunday that he supports increased military involvement in Syria because ISIS is an existential threat to the United States, adding that al Qaeda — the group behind the 2001 September 11th attacks— was not. "A lot of Americans really think back to 2003, and they remember Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda," Carson explained at a Nevada rally. "They say, 'we never should have gone in there and destabilized it.' And they may be right about that." "But here's the problem, Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda at that time was not an existential threat to us....

Before my fellow conservatives jump immediately to defend Candidate Carson, I would ask that they read the following short column. Some years ago, I became aware of the extraordinary and remarkable career of Dr. Benjamin Carson via the 2009 movie "Gifted Hands" ,a film in which Cuba Gooding, Jr. portrayed the doctor. I even talked about him to my friend and colleague Laurie Roth who, subsequently, interviewed him on her Radio show. Dr. Carson seemed to be an honorable man, conservative and true to his word. However, since he officially began his campaign for the position of POTUS, something appears...

Wednesday at a press conference after his remarks at Liberty University, Republican presidential hopeful Dr. Ben Carson was asked about what he would do with the 11 million illegal immigrants already living in the Untied States. Carson said proposed a six-month registration period to register, then after that the case would be made on the legal status. -snip- Carson said, "When you look at farming industries, I've talked to farmers with multi-thousands acres farms and they say their business would collapse, I've talked to hotel owners and they say that they would have a very difficult time without them. That's...

Washington (CNN)GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson said Friday that he has better sources than the White House about the situation in Syria, sticking by his claim that China is involved in the fighting there. Carson previously said that the Chinese were involved in Syria in Tuesday's GOP debate, which the White House rejected. National Security Adviser Susan Rice said Thursday she has "not seen any evidence of Chinese military involvement in Syria" when asked about Carson's suggestions at a White House briefing. On Friday in South Carolina, Carson was pressed by CNN on whether he wanted to revise his earlier...

Republican Presidential candidate Ben Carson told Arizonans that if elected president, he would seal the entire U.S.-Mexico border with a double-fenced wall within a year of taking office. His statement came in response to a question asked during a live half-hour telephone town hall meeting: "How practically and quickly can we get a wall that's effective?" one man asked, adding with great emphasis that "time is not on our side." Carson paused for moment, as if considering the logistics of constructing a 2,000-mile wall, before answering: "I think it can be done in a less than a year," he replied...

Last night delivered another crushing defeat to the RNC’s plans to take out Donald Trump. Their Trump Killer du jour, Ben Carson flopped. Inflated push polls can get the RNC only so far in repairing the damage Carson’s uninspiring performance did last night. Although he did not shine as brightly as expected, Trump did well enough to flip pressure back on the RNC. Now, as we get closer to Iowa Caucuses, they must decide who their new “Trump Killer” is. Last night some unexpected contenders made great strides toward the top of the Republican field ; and not unexpectedly the...

Now that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has announced he will not seek the 2012 GOP presidential nomination, all of the Republican donors, elected officials, and party activists pining for a savior to jump into the race must face the reality that the field is set. They need to channel Stephen Stills: “If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with.” No doubt the fundraisers for Mitt Romney and Rick Perry are tying up the phone lines into New York’s financial district, wooing donors who had either been holding out for Christie or had used...

Romney continues to hold a slim lead with the backing of 22% of Republican and Republican-leaning registered voters. But three other candidates are in double digits - Perry at 17%, Herman Cain at 13%, and Ron Paul at 12%

There are some cultures in which telling self-serving lies about your own ancestors would be so shameful as to be inconceivable. Michele Bachmann's culture is apparently not one of these. Bachmann, who's flirting with a presidential run, was in the early-primary state of Iowa last week for the Rediscover God in America conference. Bachmann was born in Iowa, as she told the crowd. But she couldn't leave it at just being an ordinary Iowan: "I'm actually even more than just an Iowan," she told her audience. "I'm a seventh-generation Iowan. Our family goes back to the 1850s, to the first...