Free Republic

Like most people in the western hemisphere, I woke on February 28 to an overwhelming rush of footage, reports, and rumors from the Middle East. The United States and Israel had launched a surprise attack on Iran overnight (after the markets closed for the weekend), and were pummeling the Iranians with massed air strikes. Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Hosseini Khamenei - a longtime fixture in regional politics - was dead, according to soon to be confirmed Israeli reports. A few hours later, Iran began retaliating with missile strikes on targets all around the region, including Israel, American bases, and the...

An attempt to OSINT the current state of affairsEnergy: The US is a net petroleum exporter. At $100+ Brent, US shale producers benefit. The US saves approximately $250 million per day compared to Asia and Europe on energy costs during the war. [CONFIRMED — Forbes, March 16]China hurt directly: China was purchasing ~90% of Iran’s sanctioned oil — ~1.7 million barrels/day at deeply discounted prices. That supply is now disrupted. China’s teapot refineries face acute shortages. A direct strategic blow to a US competitor.Taiwan deterrence signal: Chinese intelligence watched B-2s deliver GBU-57s against hardened targets successfully. The US capability to...

On March 6, 2026, Mark Levin described what may be an unprecedented moment in American history: a major political party actively undermining the military and the commander-in-chief during the onset of a military operation. With Operation Epic Fury targeting Iran’s nuclear facilities, ballistic missile programs, and the entire Islamist regime, Levin and guest Lee Smith laid out a damning case — with quotes, polling data, and roughly 50 years of Iranians killing Americans — that the Democrats’ war is focused on political power, not American interests. Unprecedented Political Sabotage? The Democrat Party’s immediate response to Operation Epic Fury is unique:...

AUTHOR’S NOTE I’m a civilian data analyst. I am not a former military officer, intelligence analyst, or defense policy professional. I did something stupid for this article: I pirated a lot of military texts, mirrored multiple websites such as CSIS, loaded my workstation with every bit of data that I could think of, and threw it at AI agents. This was for my own education as much as it was yours. For military strategy and doctrine, I have relied on credentialed professional analysts: CSIS, ISW, CEPA, the Institute for Science and International Security, CENTCOM and IDF public statements, and Gen....

A mysterious shortwave radio station began broadcasting strings of numbers in Farsi on the day Israel and the United States first struck Iran. It hasn't stopped since.Numbers stations, as they’re known, have been used by intelligence services since World War I to communicate with agents in the field, but have become increasingly rare in the digital age. With the Internet shut down by authorities in Iran, this Cold War relic has found new life. According to one group of aficionados that tracks these age-old spy tools, it’s the first new numbers station in years. A male voice in Farsi says,...

Khamenei should have learned from Maduro. He didn't. He's now in the past tense.President Trump promised the people of Iran the United States would help them overthrow the Islamic dictatorship, and on Saturday he delivered. A joint attack with Israel killed the ayatollah and 7 of his henchmen generals. The bombing continued. We added to the list of the unalive a few other generals and of course our old friend, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the original Holocaust Denier.The lightning swift initial victory calmed my nervousness about this turning into another Iraq. The reality is this will not turn into a wider war....

In three recent posts (one w/ video), Dr. Andrew Paquette lays out evidence of apparent current election rigging in the still-ongoing March 3 Republican Primary Election in Bexar County (San Antonio) TX. Links to posts: https://zarkfiles.substack.com/p/ghosts-of-the-alamo-busted-in-texas https://zarkfiles.substack.com/p/the-weston-alamo-algorithm-naked https://zarkfiles.substack.com/p/a-tiny-texas-addition

The company responsible for the technical backbone of the controversial CBP One app - responsible for the mass, streamlined entry of illegal aliens into the U.S. under Joe Biden - is foreign-owned with ties to the British government and U.S. employees donating to Democratic candidates. Given the sizable damage CBP One inflicted on the U.S., these conflicts of interest demonstrate a partisan bias and concerning foreign ties. ...

The ThinningNotes from Inside the VeneerMy kid came home from school the other day and told me the Epstein files are lunchroom conversation. Not among teachers (at least that they’re aware of), but among students in the hallways, between classes.What a crazy thing for a child to be talking about. I mean think about that - children casually discussing whether the people who run the world have been raping and trafficking other children.My son was telling me this the way he’d tell me about the all-star game and I’m standing in my kitchen trying to figure out what to even...

Anyone who has not watched "The Last Valley," starring Omar Shariff and a young Michael Caine, a vastly underrated film from 1971, should not miss it. The link below is to the first 12 minutes of the film on YouTube. [link in the source article] Here is another link to the complete film in higher resolution. It was recently uploaded and may not last long on YouTube. [link in the source article] This level of 30-Years-War savagery may be coming back to Europe. If you think Protestants vs Catholics got pretty nasty and ugly in the early 1600s, wait until...

USAID-funded “revolution consultants” training protesters how to topple governments and advance left-wing social causes are embedded across U.S. universities and training American activists how to carry out the same operations in the U.S.The Center for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies (CANVAS), headquartered in Serbia, openly markets its expertise in “building and running successful non-violent movements.” They aim to “engage with students as much as with activists.”CANVAS received funding from USAID, which has historically used these same protest tactics to topple regime across the world. The money came through the Civil Society Engagement Program in Georgia, a five-year program that started...

Must-See RFK Jr. Interview Explains It All. In a Heritage Foundation forum on Monday, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. explained without saying so why leftists hate him as they do. In laying out the accomplishments of his extraordinary first year, Kennedy attributed his success on several fronts to the man who selected him. Said Kennedy, “Trump understands the uses of power better than any president in history.” For years, as Kennedy explained, he has been troubled by the inarguable deterioration in the health of Americans, children in particular. Said Kennedy, “I prayed God would put me in a place where I...

Former DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has quietly taken a role as a Visiting Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, an institution long entangled with Chinese influence networks, foreign government funding, and open-borders activism.Previously led by former CIA Director William Burns, the think tank has whitewashed his historically awful tenure at DHS:“In that position, he led 260,000 employees to achieve transformational change in a diverse set of missions, including counterterrorism and physical security, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, trade and travel, immigration, and response to natural disasters. He has been lauded for his leadership skills, raising employee morale to historic heights...

BASF plant in Ludwigshafen, 1881.In its ‘Climate & Energy’ newsletter on Thursday, the Wall Street Journal’s report on Germany’s chemicals industry headlined ‘The Agonising Decline of One of Europe’s Core Industries’ reads less like an industry report than a forensic examination of an industrial autopsy. Once Europe’s formidable manufacturing powerhouse, Germany is now presiding over the steady dismantling of one of its most foundational industries – chemicals – under the combined weight of self-inflicted energy scarcity, climate moralism and geopolitical miscalculation. In Politico’s view, the auto sector has already assumed the role of Exhibit A in Germany’s economic self-harm. But...

Why white liberal millennials like Renee Good and Alex Pretti are the most demoralized and dangerous demographic in AmericaMillennial baizuos (Chinese term for white left) are growing old without growing wise. Their suicidal empathy is devolving into homicidal spite. They are the most demoralized and dangerous demographic in America that is radicalizing further during their midlife crisis. Renee Good and Alex Pretti were both 37 years old when they died. They put their bodies on the line for the Minneapolis theater kid communist insurrection. Walz, Frey, Ellison, Omar, BlueSky, and Signal group chats whipped them up with virtue signaling bukkake....

Organizations including the Chinese-American Planning Council and the Chinese Progressive Association — both of which have ties to the Chinese Communist Party’s overseas influence network — are among the signatories urging Congress to defund Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Border Patrol.Those groups joined more than 1,000 organizations in a coordinated letter demanding that lawmakers halt all funding for federal immigration enforcement agencies, a move that would effectively eliminate interior enforcement and deportation operations nationwide. The letter, organized by Amnesty International USA, does not call for reforms or oversight but for the removal of enforcement capacity itself.

Maybe the UN can sell Dictator Scouts cookies as we stop footing its bills. The BBC reported, “The United Nations is at risk of ‘imminent financial collapse’ due to member states not paying their fees, the body’s head has warned. “António Guterres said the UN faced a financial crisis which was ‘deepening, threatening program delivery,’ and that money could run out by July. “He wrote in a letter to all 193 member states that they had to honor their mandatory payments or overhaul the organisation’s financial rules to avoid collapse. “It comes after the UN’s largest contributor, the U.S., refused...

A frightened squid pumps out a cloud of ink as a distraction so it can zip away from danger. That’s a big part of what’s happening in Minnesota right now. The state’s Democratic political machine is reacting like a spooked squid to revelations that the machine and its clients are complicit in multi-billion-dollar frauds against the federal government. And the “ink” being squirted is the not-at-all spontaneous wave of riots erupting against federal authorities in Minneapolis. The surge came after series of exposés by independent journalist Nick Shirley exposed rampant childcare and Medicaid fraud in Minnesota, focusing public outrage on...

Soon after Eric Holder was confirmed as Barack Obama’s attorney general in February 2009 he gave a speech to his new employees in honor of Black History Month. It proved memorable. “Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot,” said Holder, “in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards.” In February 2023 Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams showed that not all white Americans were afraid to speak about race. On his podcast, “Real Coffee with Scott Adams,” the soft-spoken Adams delivered a droll, only...

President Trump IS the new world order now.Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One, “Colombia is very sick too, run by a sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States. And he is not going to be doing it very long, let me tell you.”He also said, “Mexico has to get their act together because they’re pouring through Mexico and we’re going to have to do something.”He also said, “Cuba looks like it is ready to fall.”But the best thing he said was “You know what Denmark did recently to boost up security on Greenland?...