Free Republic

Do any of our fellow Freepers play strategy board games? My brother taught me to play Alexander when I was 12 and I've been playing games ever since. I mostly like Avalon Hill Games but also have some by GMT and SPI. It's also possible to play these via email and online through various platforms.

Minister Gantz to Journalists from Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE: “We have the strategic tools to face Iran. We are stronger than them. Our collaborations give us new strategies and options, and the Iranians understand that too; The best strategy for regional stability is peace" In a teleconference earlier this evening organized by the Arab Council for Regional Integration, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz joined journalists from outlets in Saudi Arabia, UAE and Bahrain, including Al-Roeya, Al-Ayam, Alarabiya, amongst others, for a first-ever conversation between an Israeli defense minister and journalists from the Gulf states. Asked about the basis...

The president's political aides have successfully demanded to review and, in some cases, modify weekly Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports on the coronavirus to better align scientific reports with Trump's upbeat messages, Politico reported. Michael Caputo,...spokesperson at the Department of Health and Human Services this spring, and his team have led the effort to review the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports...

Donald Trump has warned that if Joe Biden replaces him as president the suburbs will be flooded with low-income housing. He has backed supporters who have sometimes violently clashed with Black Lives Matter protesters across the country. The US president has even refrained from directly condemning the actions of a teenager charged with killing two protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin. And Trump has also called the BLM movement a “symbol of hate”. With such rhetoric, the president is taking a page or two out of the 1960s “southern strategy”: the playbook Republican politicians such as Richard Nixon and Barry Goldwater used...

Joe Biden’s campaign plans to double-down on its strategy in the final two months of the campaign, ramping up the argument that President Trump owns the coronavirus response and record-high unemployment facing the nation. During the all-important post Labor Day stretch, Biden plans to hit the road, as he has started to do in recent days, traveling to key swing states to hammer home those arguments. They also want to underscore a message casting Trump as a reprehensible president unfit to lead the country or command the troops, something Biden signaled at a press conference Friday. Biden campaign aides and...

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Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has pulled yet another publicity stunt by declaring racism a public health crisis last Wednesday. To address it, she created the “Black Leadership Advisory Council” tasked with a number of goals, including identifying policies that negatively affect black Michiganders. Additionally, all state employees will now be required to partake in implicit bias training to understand how their unconscious racism can affect others. This move is nothing more than virtue signaling to impress the public by using the latest newsworthy topics to grab their attention: racism and COVID-19. Whitmer is doing it not only to look good,...

“Come not between the dragon and his wrath,” King Lear enjoined, but this we must do to upend the wrath that has emanated from the most powerful foe America has faced. As terrible as the coronavirus crisis is, we must imagine a world ten or 20 years from now, in which the People’s Republic of China’s nominal gross domestic product is 50 percent larger than that of the United States.What power would an unconstrained China wield? What force of arms would they muster to intimidate and to control?If China’s actions in the coronavirus catastrophe offer any window into this...

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...

At some point in the near future it's my opinion that out covid-19 strategy should enter a new phase. The strategy's timetable would depend on an actual decrease in virus cases. The two facts that convince me that the virus will come under control is the successful use of drug combinations that drastically decrease mortality and the other is the approval of a 4 hour covid-19 test. International travel should remain restricted or shut down altogether. Those under 70 should be allowed to go back to work to get the economy running again. Those 70 and older should self-isolate. This...

Two recent letters to this newspaper have reminded readers of Richard Nixon’s actions during the Vietnam War: how he escalated the terrible conflict and expanded it into Cambodia and Laos before finally agreeing to the long overdue settlement that ended it. The year of 1968 was unforgettable to history. There were so many events happening then: the war in Vietnam, the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, the Tet Offensive, the riots after King’s murder, the unrest at the Democratic convention after Kennedy’s slaying where Humphrey took the nomination from Eugene McCarthy, the presidential campaign between...

**SNIP** “McConnell’s not going to do what you guys want him to do,” Tapper told Schiff. Schiff replied, “Well, McConnell, I think is, one success that this has already had is flushing out McConnell. Showing that he’s working in cahoots with the president, and he has made himself an active participant in the president’s cover-up. So, the American people needed to see that, and now they do.” Tapper interjected, “So, you’re never gonna get what you want, though. Isn’t that what you’re saying?” Schiff said that “wasn’t necessarily the case” and claimed that some Republican senators might reconsider their position...

Let me propose an alternative course for Pelosi. Apprise McConnell that she will forward the impeachment recommendation as soon as the Supreme Court rules on the three cases currently pending in the lower courts concerning the president's refusal to provide the documents and witnesses requested by the House Intelligence Committee and the tax returns requested by the Ways and Means Committee. The Supreme Court has already agreed to take the latter case. Chief Justice John Roberts can be urged to accelerate the schedule in all three cases, and report the verdicts prior to the customary end of the Supreme Court...

The impeachment proceedings against President Trump have fueled all manner of conjecture regarding the proper discharge of foreign policy, hidden motives behind both Trump’s phone call and the ensuing investigation, and everything from the dead-cat bounce of the Mueller Report to the Kurdish policy shift. But there are a number of questions that, while they should be asked, haven’t been. (Obligatory disclaimer: None of these questions are intended to either excuse or indict the actions of Trump, the impeachment-hearing participants, or anyone else.) 1. Why is the U.S. giving $400 million to Ukraine, anyway? It makes little sense. Europe is...

The British approach to its American colony in 1775 offers valuable lessons for historians and military professionals in the synthesis between the levels of wartime leadership and their effect on direct action at the tactical level. As such, it is worthwhile to reflect on the British experience in 1775, and how guidance from strategic and operational leaders had a dramatic impact on the opening stages of the conflict. A misalignment of desired objectives, a desire to exercise control down to the lowest echelon, and poorly executed direct leadership defined the British approach concerning the events surrounding Lexington and Concord on...

U.S. military officials are preparing to deploy thousands of troops to Saudi Arabia. During a Friday news conference, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said collected evidence shows Iran was responsible for attacks on Saudi oil facilities. 1,500 additional forces will be deployed to the region, including fighter squadrons and air defense systems. Iran’s state news agency announced the explosion of an oil tanker off the coast of Saudi Arabia on Friday morning. Two missiles reportedly struck a vessel that belongs to the National Iranian Oil Company. A video released on the same day reportedly shows U.S. military vehicles near the Syria-Turkey...

President Donald Trump has become irritated at an emerging impression his hawkish national security advisers are marching him closer to war with Iran despite his isolationist tendencies, according to people familiar with the matter. Instead, Trump is signaling his intent to speak with the Iranians as tensions rise in the Persian Gulf, and his national security team has taken steps they hope could facilitate a new diplomatic opening. The likelihood of such an opening appears slim. But Trump has raised concern with the heightened rhetoric, believing a large-scale military intervention with Iran would be devastating to him politically, people familiar...

Slowly but steadily they build up their economic, military, and technological superiority at our expense The Chinese Communist government does not have so much a strategy to translate its economic ascendance into global hegemony as several strategies. All of them are brilliantly insidious.On matters of trade, China is always flexible in responding to critics of its asymmetrical, 30-year mercantilism. In the initial stages of Westernization, China was exempted from criticism over serial copyright and patent infringement, dumping, and espionage. Western elites assumed that these improprieties were just speed bumps on the eventual Chinese freeway to liberalism. Supposedly the richer China...

So is it two offers and a declaration of emergency or three offers THEN a declaration of emergency? Or something else?

President Donald Trump late last week told the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria that he could have several months to pull 2,000 troops out of Syria, backtracking on his initial order for a full and rapid withdrawal within 30 days, The New York Times reports. The report came after Trump tweeted that “we’re slowly sending out troops back home.” U.S. officials told the Times the conversation between Trump and Lt. Gen. Paul J. LaCamera took place during the president’s surprise trip to Iraq.