Free Republic

~So much for the G7. The war? Well, strange as it may seem on the 24/7 hamster wheel, my view hasn't changed since last week: I am in favour of Israel's victory over Iran - just as the region's Sunni monarchies are. However, I am opposed to any direct American participation because the United States is the most incompetent warmonger on the planet. If that comes as news, well, you haven't been paying attention - since VJ Day. Hilarious headline in today's Spectator: Why is the US so reluctant to fight Iran? Short answer: because it hasn't won anything that...

Is this a new war? Lindsey Graham, member of the Order of Prince Yaroslav the Wise, seems to think so and is panting like Jeffrey Toobin on a Zoom call: Game on. Officially, the US State Department does not share the enthusiasms of Yaroslav's wise guy: pic.twitter.com/oRy6E1DTQJ — Secretary Marco Rubio (@SecRubio) June 13, 2025 - although that might just be a bit of necessary head-fakery. Alternatively: On April 12th, Trump gave Iran a 60-day ultimatum to reach an agreement on its nuclear program. Today is day 61 — Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) June 13, 2025 Washington has also revealed that...

snip... That's the point to remember as you watch the "National Guard" of the so-called global hyperpower try to re-establish its sovereignty in Paramount, California. When I wrote the above at the dawn of the century, the city was 72 per cent Hispanic. Now it is 82.3 per cent. Over 36 per cent of the population is foreign-born. Which is not normal, outside of conquest in war or colonisation. As Democrats are wont to say when one proposes deporting an MS-13 rapist, "That's not who we are." Which at least appears to acknowledge that "who we are" is a topic...

Stewart’s smirk became the face of ‘smart liberalism,’ solidifying distrust in middle America and fostering a culture of ridicule and sanctimony.Jon Stewart is back at it again, playing the role of political chiropractor, desperately trying to realign the spine of a party he helped fracture. The New Yorker recently offered Democrats a fresh 2028 campaign slogan: “Overcome the stink.” It’s classic Stewart — sharp, crowd-pleasing, and seemingly wise. The kind of quip you’d see on a bumper sticker next to “Coexist.” And yet, the stench he’s gesturing at — the political decay, the public disillusionment, the loss of coherence on...

~Here's a cheery headline from the Russian press: Markov: an attack on Russia's strategic aviation is grounds for the use of nuclear weapons. That would be Sergey Markov, former advisor to Tsar Vlad, who admittedly is somewhat partial to nuke-rattling: in the early stages of the Ukraine war, he threatened to nuke the UK, for what reason I forget - the exciting new Islamic blasphemy laws? the paedo rape gangs? This time, however, Mr Markov was responding to the weekend's Ukrainian drone strike deep inside Russia. By "deep", I mean Siberia. Which supposedly took out forty of Putin's 120 strategic...

~From our regularly scheduled and faintly obnoxious "As I said twenty years ago" featurette. Me in The Daily Telegraph, December 20th 2005: These days, whenever something goofy turns up on the news, chances are it involves a fellow called Mohammed. A plane flies into the World Trade Centre? Mohammed Atta. A gunman shoots up the El Al counter at Los Angeles airport? Hesham Mohamed Hedayet. A sniper starts killing petrol station customers around Washington, DC? John Allen Muhammed. A guy fatally stabs a Dutch movie director? Mohammed Bouyeri. A terrorist slaughters dozens in Bali? Noordin Mohamed. A gang-rapist in Sydney?...

On Thursday afternoon, Judge Irving of the DC Superior Court ordered vexatious litigant Michael E. Mann to pay Mark's co-defendants Competitive Enterprise Institute and Rand Simberg $477,350.80 in attorney's fees - within thirty days. This is related to counts that were dismissed on Anti-SLAPP grounds half-way through the case - one was against CEI for republishing a National Review editorial critical of Mann deemed protected speech and the other against CEI and Rand for "intentional infliction of emotional distress". According to anti-slapp.org: SLAPPs are Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation. These damaging suits chill free speech and healthy debate by targeting...

I am so bored with being lied to. I am even bored with the new lies being told to cover the old lies: Now It Can Be Told!!! The Behind-the-Scenes Inside Story of How I Lied to You for the Last Half-Decade by Jake Tapper and Wossname. Exclusive Excerpt! The longtime granite-jawed Deputy Assistant Under-Counselor to the President for Running the Country peered thoughtfully through the Oval Office window to the vast city beyond before loosening his cocktail dress and kicking off his three-inch heels. I was stunned by the evident anguish on his face as he turned to me...

A STEYN I-TOLD-YOU-SO MOMENT: As I have written often, the consistent message from the permanent ruling class around the west is that nothing will be permitted to change on anything that matters. Of the two principal popular revolts of almost a decade ago - the Trump election and the Brexit vote - the jury is still out on Trump 47 (America's last chance), but Brexit is dead. A theme of my book The Prisoner of Windsor is that there is no Brexit. It never happened - or, perhaps more precisely, it was never permitted to happen. And so, as the...

Here is a quintet of random news stories from around the world: ~In America, the same people who spent four years loving the open-borders Biden regime and its legions of Haitian cat-eaters and MS-13 gangbangers have gone bananas over the arrival of fifty-nine white South Africans; ~In Britain, Sir Keir Starmer is pledging a super-butch crackdown on immigration lest the country become, in his words, "an island of strangers"; ~In Canada, an "edible crickets" farm that owes the sugar-daddy government over forty million bucks in unreimbursed federal start-up funding, has gone into receivership; ~In Turkey, a new study has found...

~A headline from Scotland's Daily Record: Three masked children held captive in 'house of horrors' since Covid pandemic So who was holding them captive? Well, that would be their German dad and American mom. Where was this house of horrors? In the couple's second home, in the Spanish town of Fitoria, on the outskirts of Oviedo, capital of the Principality of Asturias. It's a spacious property with commanding views over the metropolis [see picture above] in a neighbourhood where such agreeable accommodations can set you back a million euros. Nevertheless, a lady became concerned when she heard children's voices coming...

So in the end two-and-a-half years of Pierre Poilievre micro-gatekeeping the Tory party so as not to frighten the horses counted for less in Canadian politics than two-and-a-half hours of Tony Blair having dinner at Lady Rogers' agreeable Michelin-starred River Café in West London. Not a bad Dover sole, should Sir Tony ever invite you to join him so he can pitch you a stint as prime minister of New Zealand or the Netherlands. As to M Poilievre's micro-gatekeeping, here is a fine example of that from close to home: Two years ago the alleged "conservative" leader called the views...

~In a shrewd assessment of the current campaign Down Under, Paul Collits cites a certain "niche Canadian"": Mark Steyn says that we cannot vote our way out of the Western mess. The 2025 Australian election is living proof of the truth of his claim. Whoever wins here will inherit an unholy mess, and will not have the will to address it. Of course, he could be talking about next week's Canadian election or last month's German election. As we have noted, Fred Merz, the incoming chancellor in Berlin, has yet to take office but what Americans call the honeymoon is...

On Sunday Pope Francis publicly blessed the Easter crowds from the balcony of St Peter's Basilica and privately received the Vice President of the United States to give Mr Vance's children a gift of Kinder Eggs. Yes, really: those Kinder Eggs. The following morning, the Holy Father died at his residence in the Vatican. If the choice of Easter chocolate was a conscious jest on the part of the Pontiff, it was an excellent one, and a reminder that even in America chest-thumping about liberty will only take you so far. So I thank him for that. Other than his...

Nothing is static or "stable". Under the churn of the daily news cycle, the long-term trends advance remorselessly. Thus, if you are English or Irish, Swedish or German, the police are now on the other side. Here's a particularly extreme example of that from yours truly long ago, musing on the soi-disant "most wanted man in Europe": A few months after writing the above, I chanced to be in Molenbeek, which I knew well from my childhood (my mum was Belgian). I was checking out the story of Salah Abdeslam, who after taking part in the Bataclan atrocities in Paris...

The fifth annual Mark Steyn Cruise docked yesterday at Southampton (not my favourite port of call) and so, in consequence, I spent a few hours in what passes for the United Kingdom. It is a very weird land. For example, if a partially deaf man asks a "migrant" to "speak clearly", this act necessitates a visit from the British state. Meet our Brit Wanker Copper of the Day: British police tell an elderly man that it has been alleged that he told a migrant "speak English." They warn the elderly man that it could be perceived as a hate crime....

snip... ~This, for example, is an interesting development. From the Reinickendorf district of Berlin: Mann stürmt mit Machete in Bäckerei – und wird mit Baseballschlägern totgeprügelt Which means: Man storms into bakery with machete - and is beaten to death with baseball bats Who takes a baseball bat to a bakery? Well, as usual, the local media coverage is minimal and designed to obfuscate. The 38-year-old deceased had apparently been living in a homeless shelter and was a regular of the baker's who believed him to be Romanian. He entered the shop on the Residenzstraße bearing the increasingly popular Euro-accessory...

UPDATE: Yesterday afternoon (4/3) Judge Irving of the DC Superior Court denied Michael E. Mann's request to stay enforcement of the half million-dollar judgement he has been order to pay National Review: Here, Dr. Mann does not give any specifics as to his assets, net worth, or liquidity in support of his request.... Nor did the trial record establish the extent of Dr. Mann's assets, net worth, or liquidity at present: The only substantiated figures were drawn from Dr. Mann's W-2s from 2012 to 2017, showing an annual income of at most $198,877.40.... Dr. Mann's perfunctory and unsubstantiated assertions plainly...

The French have been here before. In 1804, First Consul Napoléon Bonaparte, the Emmanuel Macron of his day (a short guy married to an older woman), ordered the seizure of a perceived political threat to his regime, the Duc d'Enghien. When Joseph Fouché, Minister of Police, learned that M le Duc had been executed in a moat, he observed, "C'est pire qu'un crime, c'est un faute" - it's worse than a crime, it's a mistake. (The remark is often attributed to Talleyrand, but I incline to Fouché.) Yet the cynical police chief was wrong: two months later the First Consul...

Just for General Thoroughly Modern Milley, the beribboned buffoon from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, some snapshots of "white rage" - prefaced by a small news story for which there appears to be no detectable rage at all: ~A great and indefatigable friend of The Mark Steyn Show, Dr Clare Craig, notices that ten nurses who work on the fifth-floor maternity ward of Newton-Wellesley Hospital in Massachusetts have been diagnosed with brain tumours "over the last few years": 10 nurses who work on the same ward have brain tumours diagnosed. TEN. Occupational health say they've checked and there is no...