Free Republic

Elf Aquitaine, until its privatisation in 1994, was much more than a oil company - according to prosecutors at the trial of Elf's top managers. They claim the state-owned firm worked as an unofficial arm of France's murkiest diplomacy. The close relationship between Elf and French officials is well-documented, and goes back to the presidency of General Charles de Gaulle. As the company expanded into Africa in the 1960s and 1970s, Elf paid secret "commissions" to African officials with the blessing of French governments. By the 1980s Elf had operations in Gabon, Congo Brazzaville, Cameroon, Angola and Nigeria - which,...

Highly pathogenic avian influenza in Korea (Rep. of ~) Suspected outbreak (Disease never reported before in the Republic of Korea). Emergency report Information received on 12 Dec 2003 from Dr Chang-Seob Kim, Chief Veterinary Officer, Animal Health Division, Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF), Gwacheon: Date of the report: 12 Dec 2003. Date of initial detection of animal health incident: 11 Dec 2003. Outbreaks: Location Eumsung district, Chungcheong-buk province, in the central part of the country) No. of outbreaks: 1 farm [This is not good news, as recent outbreaks of Avian Influenza have been in the southeastern most part of...

California Democrat mayor just quit after admitting she was a Chinese communist agent. Eileen Wang, mayor of Arcadia, stepped down after striking a plea deal and admitting she acted as an illegal foreign agent for the Chinese government — spreading Beijing’s propaganda in the U.S. under their direction. She faces up to 10 years in federal prison. How many more are still in office? #ChinaSpy #CCP #California #Arcadia

WASHINGTON — The feds nabbed 11 suspects accused of operating a decade-long, multimillion-dollar marriage fraud scheme that resulted in around 1,000 sham weddings between primarily Chinese nationals and US citizens for the purpose of getting the Asians green cards. The “cottage industry” uncovered Wednesday charged foreign nationals up to $100,000 for each fake union, including submitting fraudulent applications to US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) on behalf of those seeking lawful permanent residency. The sham wedding ring used advertisements on social media platforms, held phony marraige ceremonies and even had both parties to the fake unions sign bizarre pre-nuptial agreements,...

The UK Ministry of Defense has discovered that the Royal Navy’s new fleet of spy drones, being operated by elements of the Royal Marines since March, have been secretly transmitting information from the drone’s primary camera to China, according to an investigation from The Telegraph. Components of the camera on the K3 Scout, a 27-foot-long multirole uncrewed surface vessel (drone boat) built by Kraken Technology in the United Kingdom, were produced in and secretly transmitting data to a device in China. An investigation into the drones revealed that the cameras were transmitting “heartbeat communications” – data to confirm they were...

Replacing the Cross with a Portrait of XiThe CCP is mandating the removal of thousands of crosses, icons, and sacramentals from Catholic churches and replacing them with portraits of former Chairman Mao Zedong and those of President Xi Jinping.While the Vatican is apparently counting the secret payoffs it receives from the Chinese Communist Party, the CCP is mandating the removal of thousands of crosses, icons, and sacramentals from Catholic churches and replacing them with portraits of former Chairman Mao Zedong and those of President Xi Jinping, which must be affixed above the pulpit and elsewhere. For example, in Anhui Province...

Eric Daugherty @EricLDaugh: 🚨 WTF!? The Chinese Communist Party has flown Democratic Socialists of AMERICA members to China, as DSA members take a "pledge" to the CCP. This is BETRAYAL. They should have to renounce their citizenship and never return!

A Chinese military scientist with ties to the United States reportedly filed a patent for a COVID-19 vaccine well before the disease was declared a global pandemic. Yusen Zhou, who worked for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), lodged the paperwork on behalf of the Chinese political party on February 24 2020, according to The Australian newspaper. That date was just five weeks after China first confirmed human transmission of the coronavirus.

Veteran investigative reporter Catherine Herridge reported during an appearance on NewsNation’s “Katie Pavlich Tonight,” that a senior member of former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s Director’s Initiatives Group, known as the DIG, described a pattern in which intelligence community officials acted on the belief that they needed to protect a globalist perspective by limiting certain information provided to policymakers, including President Donald Trump. Herridge’s comments came amid discussion of recently declassified federal documents related to intelligence assessments from 2020 concerning China’s election influence operations. Those records, which were released in connection with a primetime address by President Trump the...

A fascinating piece by Andrew Higgins and Alan Cullison recently appeared in The Wall Street Journal [July 2] with the title: “How a Secret, Failed Trip to Chechnya Turned Key Plotter’s Focus to America and bin Laden.” The key plotter in this case was 9/11 mastermind and bin Laden’s Egyptian lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahiri. The article’s title suggests that Zawahiri’s failure to settle in Chechnya (due to his “detention” by the KGB/FSB in 1996-97) led him to Afghanistan and an alliance with bin Laden. But according to ranking U.S. terrorism expert, Yossef Bodansky, Egyptian Jihad leader Zawahiri was preparing a massive...

A resurfaced video showing far-left Twitch streamer Hasan Piker praising Mao Zedong circulated online Sunday night after he addressed the College Democrats of America’s national convention Saturday in Washington, prompting criticism from Democratic activists, political commentators and other public figures.

The Great Nicobar Island is part of an archipelago that lies deep in the Indian Ocean. It's governed by India but is so distant that it takes a flight from the mainland and a 30-hour ferry ride to arrive. The upcoming Great Nicobar Project is set to transform this sleepy island into a bustling township over the next three decades. Once complete, the island will have a civilian and military airport, a transshipment port that caters to container ships, a power plant and a new town equipped to host a million tourists a year... In a press release in May,...

A new complaint requests that the federal government investigate the tax-exempt status of a left-wing nonprofit that has allegedly fomented violent riots. The Center to Advance Security in America (CASA) filed the complaint Tuesday morning with the IRS seeking an investigation into People’s Forum, Inc., a New York-based Nongovernmental Organization (NGO) linked to socialist megadonor Neville Roy Singham. CASA’s complaint alleges that People’s Forum routinely organizes and funds protests that engage in illegal activity. "People's Forum Inc. is the tax-exempt fiscal sponsor of many progressive and radical organizations, including the Venceremos Brigade, which engage in demonstrations often crossing the threshold...

Neville Roy Singham, the wealthy husband of the founder of the progressive nonprofit Code Pink and benefactor of far-left political causes, is under criminal investigation by a grand jury in the Southern District of New York, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the matter. The investigation began by looking into possible violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act and has since expanded into a criminal tax probe over whether money was unlawfully funneled through nonprofits he controls and whether he lied on the tax forms for those nonprofits, known as "990s," the sources said. The criminal investigation was first...

President Trump spoke to the nation last night about serious problems with American elections. You could watch the speech live on Fox News, Newsmax, C-SPAN, and PBS. ABC, NBC, and CNN refused to air the speech on their live broadcasts, while CBS and MSNBC managed to air just a little bit before abandoning it to spout their own opinions (including what they laughably call “fact checks”). That’s the state of America today. It was a good speech but ended (I thought) weakly. Had the networks (some of which still have a free gig on the public airways) run the speech,...

“The issue is never the issue. The issue is the revolution,” said the late David Horowitz, quoting a 1960s rebel. The Palestinian conflict, the climate, transgenderism, immigration, and abortion are all proximate causes for protests and now terrorism. But they are all also part of an amalgamated “omnicause” whose real purpose is to bring down the United States and the West. Following the assassination of Charlie Kirk and other recent tragedies that are rightly garnering worldwide attention, our leaders have finally woken up and are looking into who the perpetrators are and who organizes and finances them. After Kirk’s death,...

US Attorney Pirro @USAttyPirro·16h John Rogers spent years secretly funneling sensitive Federal Reserve information to Chinese spies, then looked investigators in the eye and lied about it. And when that wasn’t enough, he lied again under oath at trial. Federal Reserve employees entrusted with America’s most sensitive economic information cannot sell out their country and their colleagues for personal gain and then expect to hide behind a single word. U.S. Attorney DC @USAO_DC John Harold Rogers, 64, a former senior adviser for the Federal Reserve Board of Governors (FRB), was sentenced today in to 38 months in federal prison in...

Multiple sources have claimed that the Chinese government is suspiciously repositioning its military assets, signaling possible future activity around Taiwan. The reports come from the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, which tracks Chinese military might and defense systems. The China Airpower Tracker reportedly showed lines of typically retired Chinese fighter jets, which have drawn suspicion from experts. The J-6 fighter (also known as the Shenyang J-6) was first developed in the late 1950s. China retired the line of jets in the late 1990s, but now, experts say, China is retrofitting the old fighters to serve as unmanned craft and staging...

China is not just building replicas of US warships. Satellite images analysed by The Telegraph reveal it is also building models of fighter jets, naval bases and Taiwanese presidential buildings. Beijing has been using these models to test its ever-growing stockpile of long-range weapons and new AI systems as it prepares to take control of Taiwan – a top priority of Xi Jinping, the Chinese president.The accuracy of the replicas “signals a highly specific focus on potential adversaries rather than generic capability building”....SNIPChina’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has also built to-scale models of Taiwan’s presidential office and key government buildings...

The U.S. has deployed troops and anti-ship missiles into the northern Philippines as part of almost continuous, joint war drills throughout the country. One goal is to block the Bashi Channel and deny Chinese warships access to the Pacific Ocean if Beijing launches an attack on Taiwan. As a former Philippine military chief told Reuters: You can’t invade Taiwan if you don’t control the northern Philippines.BATANES, Philippines - Marilyn Hubalde still remembers the first time she heard the thunderous chop of military helicopters swooping over this northernmost outpost of the Philippines, less than 90 miles from Taiwan. It was April...