Free Republic

[Make sure to read Daniel Greenfield’s contributions in Jamie Glazov’s new book: Barack Obama’s True Legacy: How He Transformed America.]After Biden’s withdrawal, the fighting ended in Afghanistan and moved into Europe.Even before the Taliban takeover, a massive traffic in migrants and drugs flowed over the ‘Balkan Route’ that took Afghans into Iran, Turkey and then Eastern Europe. One of the biggest holes in Europe’s armor was the former Yugoslavia, illegally invaded and partitioned by the Clinton administration, with a large Muslim population in Bosnia and heavy criminal organizations across the former republic that tie together the Russian mob, local gangs,...

Obama Used National Security to Spy on Americans Opposed to Islamic Terrorists Obamagate redefined opposition to Islamic terrorism as a national security threat. Mon Jun 8, 2020 Daniel Greenfield 55 Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism. We know when Obamagate ended, but we don’t know when the policy of spying on Americans began. The tangled roots of the domestic surveillance of political opponents by the NSA predate the alarmism about Russia. Tracing them back into the fetid swamp takes us not toward...

US President Donald Trump has been weighing the possibility of declaring victory against Iran without achieving a nuclear deal, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday, citing US officials. According to the officials, Trump privately floated the idea to his senior aides. If the US can keep Iran's nuclear program in check and traffic resumes in the Strait of Hormuz, then Trump would be more likely to extend the ceasefire "indefinitely," the officials told WSJ. In recent weeks, the president told senior aides privately that Tehran is "likely unable to revive its nuclear work," after Operation Midnight Hammer caused heavy...

Seeing Ukrainian dictator Volodymyr Zelenskyy at Senator Lindsey Graham’s funeral seemed fitting: Z-Man’s money-laundering operation in Kyiv was the proximate cause of Graham’s death. Had the senator not been working so hard to add to the butcher’s bill in Europe, he would still be alive today. Surely there is a lesson here for some people to see. I know there are plenty of pro-Ukraine cheerleaders who just cannot stomach any criticism of an ongoing military conflict that has now lasted longer than WWII. However, I have never seen this as anything other than a civil war that British, European, and...

Former Cuban President Raúl Castro has been indicted in connection to his alleged role in the 1996 downing of two planes operated by the Miami-based exile group Brothers to the Rescue. The indictment was unsealed on Wednesday. Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier and other officials are expected to make the announcement in Miami.

If you've been following coverage of the Trump administration's military action against Iran, you've probably noticed something: A lot of people are determined to convince you that the United States is losing. They're wrong. Even worse, many of them know they're wrong. Critics across the political spectrum — from Democrats to elements of the so-called horseshoe Right — are pushing narratives that paint the conflict as a disaster in the making. The goal is simple: Undermine public confidence and turn what is shaping up as a strategic success into a perceived failure. Three particular claims are circulating widely. All three...

The realization is hitting home for many people that the crises now hitting the United States are not simply one-off events. The infant formula outage, rising fuel prices, supply chain collapse, authoritarian censorship and now a wave of mass shootings over the weekend — they all point to the systemic collapse of western society as a whole. We are watching the downfall of western civilization as we know it. The rule of law is dead. Elections are rigged. Free speech is disallowed and a criminally corrupt government now runs an actual Ministry of Truth “disinformation” board. “Science” is a total...

So far, almost nobody in the west fully comprehends the Oreshnik weapon system just demonstrated by Russia. Hat tip to Ted Postol, Scott Ritter and Brian Berletic, the only 3 people I've found so far who fully understand this. I've done the math on the kinetic energy of the submunitions (using estimates for mass), and I've studied up on what's publicly known about these weapons so far. My conclusion? NATO is done. The west has no idea what just hit them. Russia's Oreshnik weapon system is checkmate for NATO and the USA. All U.S. aircraft carriers can be destroyed in...

“The magnitude of the national security crisis Joe Biden unleashed… cannot be overstated,” said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. A shocking new case out of Texas has intensified scrutiny of the Biden administration’s Operation Allies Welcome program, after authorities arrested an Afghan national who allegedly posted videos on TikTok claiming he was constructing a homemade bomb and naming the Fort Worth area as his target. Fox’s Kayleigh McEnany broke into programming with the news alert, delivering confirmation from the Department of Homeland Security: BREAKING: An Afghan national was arrested this week after posting a video of himself on TikTok...

The problem is Moscow doesn’t want peace in Ukraine, it wants Ukraine in pieces. Every time the White House offers an olive branch, the Kremlin torches it and commits more heinous war crimes. Washington floated a leaders’ summit in October, but Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov wiped his shoes with it, demanding Ukraine stop resisting and the West ignore kidnapped kids and beheaded prisoners. Well, Trump pulled the plug on Budapest, signaling he might punish the Kremlin, and a panicking Vladimir Putin dispatched Kirill Dmitriev with a “peace plan” so absurd it would shame a mid-level propagandist. To make sure...

A specialized United Nations team assessed that at least three key leaders in the Taliban's ruling government are “affiliated” or “associated” with the al Qaeda terrorist group in Afghanistan. The Taliban, which protected al Qaeda before and after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, rapidly took over Afghanistan amid a disastrous U.S. withdrawal in August 2021. The U.N. Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team said in its June report that “two provincial governors of the Taliban de facto administration,” Qari Ehsanullah Baryal and Hafiz Muhammad Agha Hakeem, “are affiliated with al-Qaeda.” The team added that “another Talib associated with al-Qaeda,” Tajmir...

President Donald Trump says the alleged shooter of two National Guard members in Washington, D.C., entered the United States from Afghanistan in 2021 and asks for Americans to pray for the victims.

South Korea’s ousted conservative President Yoon Suk Yeol faces more criminal charges on Monday as prosecutors allege that he flew drones over North Korea in a deliberate bid to stoke tensions and justify his plans to declare martial law. Yoon set off the most serious political crisis in South Korea’s recent history when he imposed martial law on Dec. 3, 2024 and sent troops to surround the National Assembly. He was later impeached and removed from office, and is in jail standing trial on charges including masterminding a rebellion. His successor and liberal rival, President Lee Jae Myung, approved legislation...

Marine's mom arrested at Pelosi's office By FREDERIC J. FROMMER, Associated Press Writer 53 minutes ago The mother of a Marine who tried to kill himself after two tours of duty in Iraq was arrested Monday while protesting the war outside the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (news, bio, voting record). Tina Richards of Salem, Ore., was charged with disorderly conduct, said Sgt. Kimberly Schneider, a U.S. Capitol Police spokeswoman. Schneider said Richards would be issued a citation and released. Drew Hammill, a spokesman for Pelosi, D-Calif., said Richards was with a group of 15 to 20 protesters when...

Last week marked the four-year anniversary of America's liberation of Iraq. In response to the longevity of the project, protests were held throughout the nation denouncing the war. From sea to shining sea, the protesters wielded signs with pictures of Che Guevara and anti-American slogans while disingenuously demanding that our troops be brought home immediately. The national coordinator of ANSWER, the coalition to Act Now to Stop War and End Racism, Brian Becker, told me in a phone interview that the protests were held as "an effort to reach the people of this county and as they have become more...

Through an extended weekend full of summitry, President Donald Trump revived the role of diplomacy in addressing the European conflict, making the first allied contact with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin since early in the Ukraine war. Trump rejected efforts by Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky and seven European leaders to escalate the endless proxy war against Russia. Despite his narcissistic peculiarities, the president made more progress toward peace in four days than President Joe Biden did in three years, though there is still great skepticism that the war will soon end.

More than a quarter century after being slapped with a fatwa fromIran calling for his murder over his book “The Satanic Verses”, Salman Rushdie says the world has learned the “wrong lessons” about freedom of expression. The British author, in an interview published Wednesday by the French news magazine L’Express, said his ordeal by religious fanatics determined to violently avenge what they construed as blasphemy should have served as a wake-up call to the world. Instead, after the September 11, 2001 attack on America and the massacre in Paris in January this year of cartoonists and staff at the Charlie...

World leaders either become known for quickly learning life’s lessons–or not. The latter category is largely a product of one’s personal lust for power intertwined with an ideology allowing it to flourish. But membership is at times encouraged by the former’s failure to appropriately discourage the latter’s aggressive behavior early on.Falling into the latter category is Iran’s mullahs. It has taken them nearly a half century to learn an important lesson, coming after testing two U.S. presidents—one weak, one strong—who served in two different centuries. That lesson employs a simple rule of thumb concerning who has a foreign policy backbone:...

Toll from Tehran’s terrorism and proxy attacks are a serious factors in Trump’s decision on whether to support or even join the Israeli war effort. Three years after 19 Americans died in a bombing at a Saudi Arabian apartment complex, then-President Bill Clinton sent a cable that told Iran’s president a secret that the 42nd president wasn’t even willing to tell the American public: U.S. intelligence had ample evidence that Tehran was behind the deadly Khobar Towers terror attack. “Message to President Khatami from President Clinton: The United States Government has received credible evidence that members of the Iranian Revolutionary...

Robert Ellsberg speaks on whistleblowing, truth-telling and the Pentagon Papers Oct 2, 2019 by Heidi Schlumpf JusticePolitics The autumn of 1969 has been on Robert Ellsberg's mind lately, as the 50th anniversary of a life-changing request from his father approaches. A half century ago, as a 13-year-old, Ellsberg agreed to help his dad photocopy documents from a government report he had worked on. Those documents, which came to be known as the Pentagon Papers, revealed the United States' role in the build-up to the Vietnam War and the lies told to the American public and to Congress about U.S. actions...