Free Republic

On Friday’s “CNN News Central,” Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) stated that President Joe Biden’s threat to withhold certain weapons from Israel took pressure off Hamas and in doing so made it less likely to get a ceasefire deal, which makes it harder to get aid into Gaza and free the hostages. Moskowitz said that while he has issues with the House bill to force Biden to transfer weapons to Israel, the bill won’t become law anyway, so those concerns aren’t hugely relevant, and “my main purpose for voting for the bill is what I said earlier when the President decided...

Venezuela has moved “substantial quantities of [military] personnel and equipment to the border with Guyana amid its territorial dispute over the Essequibo region. The update comes from the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington D.C., *** The think tank talks about an expansion of a military base on Anacoco Island in the area, with new roads and a bridge getting built in the past few months. A local airport is also being expanded, CSIS also said, citing satellite imagery and social media posts According to the report’s authors, the activity could be preparation for a “manufactured crisis” before...

“Russia launches a division sized recon in force operation 20 kilometers North of Ukraine's second largest city, Kharkiv.…”

For a long time, the US Army assumed the US Air Force would protect it from enemy aircraft. Which is why, in the 1990s, the Army shuttered many of its short-range air-defence, or SHORAD, units. This process only accelerated during the counterinsurgency campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, where the Army was fighting an enemy with no aircraft. By the time Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014, the Army was down to just 300 or so aging Avenger air-defence vehicles, each firing infrared-guided Stinger missiles out to a distance of three miles. This to protect a million troops, if you count active...

It turns out that a Gaza based al-Qaeda affiliated group known as Jaysh al-Ummah has joined Hamas in the jihad against Israel. On December 8, Jaysh al-Ummah published a statement saying that its fighters had been clashing with the IDF in the north of the Gaza Strip and in Sheikh Radwan in Gaza City:Al-Qaeda is currently fighting in Gaza as Jaysh al-Ummah on the side of Hamas against the Zionists. A Jaysh al-Ummah-Statement from 8. December, 2023, announcing to have repelled the ‘Israeli’ army in fighting in the north of the Gaza Strip and in Sheikh Radwan in Gaza-City. https://t.co/g3o29r8OJG...

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) continued to attack Hamas terrorists in Rafah and throughout Gaza on Monday, which was Israel’s independence day, despite continued international criticism and caution from the White House. In a statement, the IDF said: IDF troops continue their operations against terror targets in the area of eastern Rafah and on the Gazan side of the Rafah crossing. IDF troops eliminated several armed terrorist cells in close-quarters encounters on the Gazan side of the Rafah crossing. In eastern Rafah, IDF troops eliminated a number of terrorists and located weapons. An IAF aircraft struck a terrorist cell that...

Last week we supposedly got “good news” on Social Security and Medicare, because the trust funds are in slightly better shape than a year ago. But here’s the rest of the picture. Interest payments on the ballooning national debt have now for the first time exceeded every other individual item in the budget except Social Security. Debt interest through the first seven months of this fiscal year has just topped $500 billion, reports the U.S. Treasury — about $4,000 for every household in the country. Repeat: This is just the interest. Think of the national debt as an interest-only mortgage....

A top Biden official said Monday the U.S. does not believe Israel’s “total victory” over the militant group Hamas is “likely or possible.” Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell spoke about the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas during the NATO Youth Summit in Miami just days after the Biden administration paused certain arms shipments to Israel. “I think in some respects, we are struggling over what the theory of victory is. Sometimes when we listen closely to Israeli leaders, they talked about mostly the idea of some sort of sweeping victory on the battlefield, total victory,” Campbell said. “I...

A U.S. Army officer working at the Defense Intelligence Agency has resigned from the military citing his objection to Israel’s war in Gaza, according to an open letter he published online Monday saying he is distressed that his work has contributed to the deaths of Palestinian civilians.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Russia's defense minister reshuffle was a further indication of Russian President Vladimir Putin's "desperation to sustain" his invasion of Ukraine, U.S. State Department deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel said on Monday. Putin tapped a civilian economist as his surprise new defense minister on Sunday in an attempt to gird Russia for economic war by trying to better utilize the defense budget and harness greater innovation to win in Ukraine.

There have been some unsettling developments in the Gaza Strip this weekend, suggesting a situation that many analysts had previously warned us about. Israel has been portraying the assault on Rafah as essentially being the "last stand" for Hamas, where the IDF would take out the terrorist group's four remaining battalions of fighters. But yesterday, fighting broke out in Jabaliya and Gaza City in the northern part of the Strip that Israel had cleared months ago. The IDF was attacked in multiple locations. Some of the attackers may have been Hamas fighters that were missed in the original clearing efforts...

It looks like Joe Biden's betrayal of Israel is worse than we thought. According to a new report, Joe Biden has been withholding intelligence from Israel regarding the whereabouts of Hamas leaders and their underground command tunnels."The Biden administration, working urgently to stave off a full-scale Israeli invasion of Rafah, is offering Israel valuable assistance if it holds back, including sensitive intelligence to help the Israeli military pinpoint the location of Hamas leaders and find the group’s hidden tunnels, according to four people familiar with the U.S. offers," reports the Washington Post. President Biden and his senior aides have been...

Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that President Joe Biden was “squarely where the middle of the country is” on the Israel-Hamas war. Anchor Dana Bash said, “Do you think that when the president said what he said to Erin Burnett this week that what ended up happening is he tried to, I don’t want to take away from what he tried to do on policy, but just on the politics that it ended up kind of pleasing no one. Is that a potential problem, or do you think that is what he said...

A British toddler born with a genetic condition resulting in deafness can now hear in one ear thanks to a pioneering new gene therapy treatment. The case was reported at the American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy’s annual meeting which is taking place this week in Baltimore, MD. The girl—18-month-old Opal Sandy from Oxfordshire—received an experimental treatment for auditory neuropathy, a condition that results from a mutation in a gene called Biallelic otoferlin gene (OTOF), as part of an ongoing clinical trial. As the BBC reports, the mutation results in incorrect development of tiny hairs in the cochlea that...

he Venezuelan government called the military drills of two U.S. planes in Guyana a "provocation" and said the country has "become a new colony" of the North American country. "The Bolivarian Navy strongly rejects the reiterated provocations by the U.S. Southern Command and approved by the government of Guyana, which has become a new American Colony," said Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López. He added that the country's defense systems are "activated against any attempt to breach the Venezuelan geographical space."

Intelligence chiefs have warned ministers they fear Britain and other key Ukrainian allies are being targeted by Russian saboteurs following a series of suspicious incidents in recent months. These include a wave of fires at arms factories and military-related industrial sites in the West that are supplying Ukraine. There have also been attacks on computer systems, train derailments and even jamming of satellite signals for civil air flights. Last night, a senior British security source said Western intelligence agencies feared a spate of industrial fires were connected to Moscow, saying 'the b******s' were trying to set Europe alight. 'Lots of...

Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair, said military aid to Israel should continue, through the war conduct report released by the State Department on Friday “raised concerns.” Cardin’s remarks on transferring military aid to Israel are different than that of the White House, as President Biden withheld sending over some bombs to the U.S. ally last week and said earlier this week the U.S. would stop supplying weapons like artillery shells and bombs if the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) goes forward with a full-scale ground invasion of Rafah, the city in the south of the Gaza...

Hamas needs to be understood as a criminal organization with whom negotiations are absurd, and swift action against, is the only reasonable response. Reuters reports that “Hamas says it will not compromise further with Israel to win Gaza ceasefire.” It’s just another headline about the heirs of Yassir Arafat; we know better than to take the statement seriously. Hamas will keep talking as long as they can, for obvious reasons. The people engaged in negotiations, at least, if not their foot-soldiers, are safe while they’re at the negotiating table. But there’s a different question that ought to be inspired by...

Barry Sternlicht, a prominent figure in the real estate industry as the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Starwood Capital Group, has sounded the alarm regarding the precarious state of regional and community banks across the United States. His apprehension stems from the challenges faced by these institutions amid the current economic landscape characterized by higher interest rates, increasing vacancies, and inflationary pressures. Sternlicht’s concerns point to a potential wave of bank failures, with implications for the broader financial system.

The Biden administration tried to argue Thursday that if Israel launched an ambitious attack on Hamas in Rafah, that would strengthen Hamas, improve Hamas’s leverage in hostage negotiations, and build popular support for Hamas. Israel launched a limited operation in Rafah this week, near the Egyptian border, as it prepares to take on the final four Hamas battalions in a town that is viewed as the last stronghold of the terrorist organization in the Gaza Strip. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said that an Israeli military campaign in Rafah would “actually weaken … Israel’s security.” He also said that the...