Free Republic

Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that former President Donald Trump wanted to keep the U.S.-Mexico border a “mess.” Partial transcript as follows: MARGARET BRENNAN: You’re talking about the bill you helped author, and- and it was put up for a vote, which, they knew it was going to fail, it- this was about messaging. But, like, Senator Gary Peters, who’s trying to help Democrats defend the majority in the Senate, was on this program last week, and he said absolutely, the president should be talking about the border more. Why isn’t he? MURPHY: I...

Satellite imagery confirms a Russian strategic early warning radar site in the southwestern end of the country was substantially damaged in a reported Ukrainian drone attack earlier this week. This looks to be a first-of-its-kind attack on a site linked to Russia's general strategic defense. As such, it points to a new and worrisome dimension to the conflict, especially when it comes to the potential use of nuclear weapons.A satellite image taken on May 23 that The War Zone obtained from Planet Labs of the Armavir Radar Station in Russia's southwestern Krasnodar Krai shows significant debris around one of the...

The UK Ministry of Defence released a warning regarding the potential of anymore arrests coming soonVLADIMIR Putin is set to cause a sweeping storm within Russia by arresting dozens of military top brass, say sources close to the Kremlin. The despot is believed to be looking to pin his own failures to defeat Ukraine on a number of men as he looks to unleash his brutal Federal Security Service (FSB) agents to hunt them down. Five military officers have already been detained in recent weeks under Putin's watch. But sources close to the Kremlin and the Defense Ministry have sensationally...

The US has been outclassed by its rivals, such as Russia, in its capacity to remotely take out enemy weapons using jamming technology, according to former US military officials. Mike Nagata, a retired US Army lieutenant general who led special operations in the Middle East, said that the US is "still falling behind" in its electronic warfare capabilities, reported Defense One. Electronic warfare units, which use electronic signals to remotely scramble the GPS coordinates used to guide weapons, have played a key role in Russia's war in Ukraine. "The gap between where the United States should be and where we...

The chattering classes in the UK put on their outrage cap on Sunday while trotting out accusations of “racism” against Brexit leader Nigel Farage for warning that an increasing number of Muslims in the country “loathe” British values. Appearing on Sky News’s Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips, Mr Farage stated: “We have a growing number of young people in this country who do not subscribe to British values, in fact, loathe much of what we stand for. I think we see them on the streets of London every Saturday.”

ROME — Pope Francis received a group of some 30 “Palestinian and Ukrainian children” in the Vatican this weekend, the Vatican reported. The children came “predominantly from war zones,” mostly Palestine and Ukraine, and highlighted a new initiative of Pope Francis to engage children in the quest for peace, Vatican News said. Some of the children visiting the pope were missing limbs but were “happy for once to be in a place where they can marvel at a beautiful building rather than live in fear of bombs,” the Vatican related.

Hamas fired rockets at the Tel Aviv area on Sunday, marking the first time in four months that a barrage reached central Israel from Gaza, and emphasizing the importance of Israel’s fight against Hamas in its last stronghold. According to Cumta, an app that publishes warnings from Israel’s Red Alert system, the rockets targeted areas north and west of Tel Aviv, including Petah Tikva and Herzliya Pituach, one of the wealthiest communities in Israel.

Heavy seas tore four U.S. Army vessels from their moorings Saturday while they were trying to assist humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza. Two vessels are beached along Israel’s coast near Ashkelon while the other two are anchored on the beach near the temporary pier built and put in place by the U.S. military, U.S.Central Command announced. No U.S. personnel were injured by the stormy seas, CENTCOM said, while Israel Defense Forces are assisting in recovering the vessels, and the pier remains fully functional.

‘Maoré na Farantsa paka tcho!’, Emmanuel Macron declared five years ago campaigning in Mamoudzou, speaking the local language of Shimaoré in the capital city of Mayotte, a French-ruled archipelago-commune in the Indian Ocean. Translation: Mayotte and France, for ever, in life until death. The French president returned to the islands this week to play emperor but his empire looks like it’s falling apart. Even by the standard of Macron’s habitual wishful thinking, Mayotte is a disaster. Like much of the French empire – an empire that pretends not to be one – Macron indulges a fantasy that its remote colonies...

A man killed eight people and wounded one more with a knife in central China, state media reported on Friday (May 24), citing local authorities. The stabbing took place on Thursday morning in the city of Xiaogan in Hubei province, state broadcaster CCTV said. The 53-year-old attacker surnamed Lu had previously been treated for mental illness, it added. He is being held by police, who are investigating the attack.

The commander stepped over boxes stacked full of plastic drones and opened the lid on a new delivery. Inside lay the light-gray fins of a mini plane, the latest addition to his arsenal of crewless aerial vehicles for fighting the Russian army. The 33-year-old leader of what an internal report declared Ukrainian army’s best-performing drone unit, Senior Lt. Yuriy Fedorenko — popularly known by his call sign, Achilles — has been the main constraint on the Russian attempt to seize the strategic town of Chasiv Yar on Ukraine’s teetering eastern front. For months, his drone teams, part of the 92nd...

The Conservative Party has said it would bring back mandatory national service if it wins the general election. It said 18-year-olds would have a choice of either joining the military full-time, or volunteering one weekend every month carrying out a community service. The party is proposing a Royal Commission to consider the details but would plan for the first teenagers to take part in September 2025. The cost is expected to be around £2.5bn per year. Under the plans, young people could choose a full-time, 12-month placement in the armed forces or UK cyber defence, learning about logistics, cyber security,...

THE streets of Haiti's capital, now the world's most dangerous city, are strewn with human bodies reportedly being eaten by animals. Wild pigs and dogs are attacking people's loved ones because the area is too dangerous for their families to enter, retrieve the bodies and give them proper burials. A horrific gang war has been raging in the capital, Port-au-Prince, for months with more than 2,500 people killed so far. Now victims are being left to decay on the roads with some never seen again and others falling victim to the island's animals, the LA Times reports.

The US floating pier allegedly used to provide relief supplies to Gaza civilians has partially washed away, and two boats used to service it have been washed ashore. According to reports, the Army was temporarily relocating the floating pier to the Israeli port of Ashdod because of heavy wave action. During the move, a segment of the pier came free, and the boats sent to retrieve it went aground,The waves carried it to the Israeli shores of Ashdod.

On Friday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “America Reports,” Gilad Erdan, Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, blasted the U.N. as an enemy of “the values of America and the free world” that is used to “whitewash” the crimes of dictators and rogues and argued that unless there are fundamental reforms to the organization, the United States should give consideration to defunding the U.N.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) – Ukrainian forces have secured “combat control” of areas where Russian troops entered the northeastern Kharkiv region earlier this month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said. “Our soldiers have now managed to take combat control of the border area where the Russian occupiers entered,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address on Friday evening. Zelenskyy’s comments appeared to be at odds with those made by Russian officials.

Sen. Vance, freshman senator from Ohio, started the conference critiquing what he called the foreign policy consensus: “One of my favorite passages from the Bible is ‘by their fruits, you shall know them.’ What are the fruits of the last 40 years of American foreign policy? Of course, it's a disaster in Iraq. It's a disaster in Afghanistan and Syria. It's [a disaster] in Lebanon. On issue after issue after issue, somehow, the foreign policy consensus in this town seems to almost always be wrong.” He levied this critique against the current war in Ukraine as well, saying that his...

Video posted to social media shows masked soldier calling on Gallant to quit, warns troops will not obey orders if government doesn’t pursue ‘complete victory’ over Hamas The Israeli military said Saturday that it was opening a criminal probe into a video shared online showing a masked reservist threatening mutiny if the government doesn’t pursue what he defined as “complete victory” over Hamas. “The behavior in the video is a serious violation of IDF orders and IDF values, and constitutes a suspicion of criminal offenses,” the military said in response to a query on the matter. The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit...

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) -- A former CIA officer pleaded guilty in a federal courtroom in Honolulu on Friday to conspiring to gather and deliver national defense information for China. Alexander Yuk Ching Ma, 71, was arrested in 2020 https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/2020/08/17/former-cia-operative-arrested-honolulu-charged-with-helping-china-spy-us/ on charges of spying and selling state secrets to China. Prosecutors say Ma admitted that he and a relative provided Chinese intelligence officers with a “large volume of classified U.S. national defense” matierals at a Hong Kong hotel room. In exchange, they were handed $50,000 in cash. Ma worked for the CIA from 1982 to 1989. He subsequently served as a linguist...

Where did China get the idea to dominate specific sectors of the tech industry by pushing out US competitors? The plan, known as "Made in China 2025," was at least partly inspired by a 300-page book written for them by McKinsey and Company, an American strategy and management consulting firm. The Financial Times was the first to report on McKinsey's contribution to China's 13th five-year plan back in February.A McKinsey-led think-tank advised China to deepen co-operation between business and the military and push foreign companies out of sensitive industries as part of a project for the central government in 2015.The...