Free Republic

Over the past 24 hours, thousands of TikToks (at least) have been posted where people share how they just read Bin Laden’s infamous "Letter to America," in which he explained why he attacked the United States. The TikToks are from people of all ages, races, ethnicities, and backgrounds. Many of them say that reading the letter has opened their eyes, and they’ll never see geopolitical matters the same way again. Many of them — and I have watched a lot — say it has made them reevaluate their perspective on how what is often labeled as terrorism can be a...

Former President Donald Trump sits down with Tucker Carlson to discuss foreign policy and how the world has changed since he left office. ...

“It’s a year or two from now” and here’s what we see: explosions at Pearl Harbor and nearby Hickam Air Force Base, a drone attack at Naval Base San Diego, the collision of a Chinese-crewed fishing vessel with a US oil tanker departing Hawaii for the Western Pacific. Meanwhile, “the People’s Liberation Army is ashore on Taiwan in large numbers.” Its internet and other communications down, Taiwan is cut off from the world. The US government is caught flat-footed. The Marines never make it to Taiwan and US Navy ships on their way from Singapore, Guam and even West Coast...

NEW YORK – The US banking system is broken. That doesn’t portend more high-profile failures like Credit Suisse. The central banks will keep moribund institutions on life support. But the era of dollar-based reserves and floating exchange rates that began on August 15, 1971, when the US severed the link between the dollar and gold, is coming to an end. The pain will be transferred from the banks to the real economy, which will starve for credit. And the geopolitical consequences will be enormous. The seize-up of dollar credit will accelerate the shift to a multipolar reserve system, with advantage...

The question of who blew up the Nord Stream pipelines is likely to remain an unsolved mystery for some time.Even as new details surface from European investigators, one of the most intriguing clues to recently emerge comes not from official probes but via a 29-year-old open-source analyst based in Denmark. Oliver Alexander spent months analyzing data from the maritime Automatic Identification System, or AIS, from vessels that passed near the site of three out of the four pipeline ruptures shortly before the damage. He noticed that the Minerva Julie, a 600-foot Greek-flagged tanker, was headed east from Rotterdam when, on...

Zelensky pleads for US military aid, says if Biden acted sooner ‘there would not have been war’ Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky chided the Biden administration for not slapping sanctions on Russia’s Vladimir Putin sooner in an emotional, approximately hour-long Zoom call with 280 US senators and House members Saturday morning. “If you had started sanctions months ago, there would not have been war,” he said, Fox News reported. Zelensky thanked the US for the assistance it has already sent, and pleaded for additional American military aid for his besieged country, a Senate source said. Dozens of lawmakers unmuted themselves to...

I’ve written many times about the Chinese propaganda claiming the coronavirus originated in the United States. Today CNN Business reports on the American woman that many conspiracy theorists have dubbed patient zero. Her name is Maatje Benassi and she’s a U.S. Army reservist. She compares what is happening to her to cyber-bullying: Despite never having tested positive for the coronavirus or experienced symptoms, Benassi and her husband are now subjects of discussion on Chinese social media about the outbreak, including among accounts that are known drivers of large-scale coordinated activities by their followers.The claims have turned their lives upside...

Having brought us the global breakout of a killer coronavirus, China's Communist Party dictatorship is now fostering the insinuation that this virus originated not in China, but in America. Mind you, China's President Xi Jinping and his CCP flunkies have not so far adopted this Orwellian lie as the official line. But there's a growing blame-America stench now wafting from China's state propaganda mills. American authorities need to pay close attention, and do everything in their power to push back, as China's commissars begin bioengineering a narrative to blame this contagion on others. On Feb. 27, China's state-run China Global...

House lawmakers on Wednesday heard emotional testimony from a Guatemalan woman seeking asylum in the United States whose two-year-old daughter contracted a lung infection while at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Texas and died shortly after their release. Yazmin Juárez, who is suing the federal government over her daughter Mariee’s death, detailed for the House Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties the treatment she received from immigration officials at the detention center. She blamed improper medical care, “terrible and inadequate” living conditions and a culture of neglect at the migrant holding facilities along the border for...

From the University of Virginia and the annual Virginia Festival of the Book. A moderated (New York Times rep) forum at the theater on the downtown mall in Charlottesville. Here's the web announcement of the event: All of Our Rights: America’s Legacy of Inequality Share March 21, 2019 @ 8:00 p.m. - 9:30 p.m. Location The Paramount Theater 215 E Main Street Charlottesville, VA 22902 Register Now ($22 general / $11.50 students) Overview Carol Anderson (One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy), Michael Eric Dyson (What Truth Sounds Like: Robert F. Kennedy, James Baldwin, and Our...

The liberal media continues to lie on behalf of lazy bum teachers in the Massachusetts schools. The schools that have let down our children for decades and have made them into brainwashed zombies, underachieving socialists and have destroyed their desire to make any accomplishment, destroyed their self esteem and have made them into automatrons who believe what the media, pop culture and government says without question The biggest lie fed to the public is that question 2 would take money out of public schools and make them fail more. This is a lie... FACT: The funding of schools in...

Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro has a plan to “guarantee food supply, social justice, and democracy.” As with most of Maduro’s plans, it will accomplish none of those things. Vice News reports: “A new decree establishing that any employee in Venezuela can be effectively made to work in the country’s fields as a way to fight the current food crisis is unlawful and effectively amounts to forced labor,” Amnesty International said in a statement released on Thursday. President Nicolás Maduro signed a decree at the end of last week that gives powers to the labor ministry to order “all workers from...

Mexican authorities want to speak with U.S. actor Sean Penn and Latin television star Kate del Castillo, a Mexican law enforcement official told NBC News Sunday. The revelation came a day after Rolling Stone published a secret interview that Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman apparently gave to Penn while on the run. The official also said that investigators were able to learn details about Guzman's whereabouts by intercepting phone conversations between Penn, Del Castillo and the drug lord.

Sean Penn's "secret interview" inadvertently led authorities to arrest El Chapo despite security precautions. What pun name can you give him based on his role names, movie titles, girlfriend dramas or public statements?

When El Chapo was arrested (again) I didn’t pay all that much attention to the story. That’s not to say that it wasn’t important or that both Mexico and the DEA didn’t have a good reason to hunt him down, but it’s not the sort of thing that’s going to change the world in a substantive, positive way. When you take out a cartel kingpin like that there are plenty more ready and eager to take his place. Even if you could identify, locate and take out his entire army, all you’d manage to do would be to cause...

Well I didn’t win the Powerball drawing last night. And apparently you didn’t either. With no winners in Saturday night's record $949.8 million Powerball jackpot, the next jackpot could reach an estimated $1.3 billion, lottery officials said early Sunday. What would you do if you won $1.3 billion? And since we’re playing make believe, let’s pretend that you don’t have to first give half your winnings to the IRS. I’d buy new appliances and spend the rest buying the 2016 American presidential election. At least I think $1.3 billion would be enough to Make America Great Again (MAGA).Alternatively, if it...

It sounds like Sean Penn has given up guns for good. It was at his annual pre-Golden Globes gala for J/P HRO that he revealed that girlfriend Charlize Theron convinced him to have his collection of nearly 65 firearms turned into a sculpture by artist Jeff Koons and then auctioned off for the Haiti relief organization. Penn told me at this year's benefit on Saturday night that he's not missing the weapons. "I think guns are not something to be missed," he said.

The recapture of drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman took a surprise, Hollywood twist when a Mexican official said security forces located the whereabouts of the world's most-wanted trafficker thanks to a secret interview with U.S. actor Sean Penn. -snip- A Mexican federal law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not permitted to comment on the issue, told the Associated Press it was the Penn interview that led authorities to Guzman in a rural part of Durango state in October. -snip- There was no immediate response from Penn's representatives to the Mexican official's comments.

Actor Sean Penn's interview with drug boss Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman was one factor that led to Mexican security forces capturing the kingpin, a government source told Reuters. Mexico's government was aware of the October interview with the legendary boss of the Sinaloa drugs cartel and was closely monitoring Penn's movements, a second government source told the news agency. -snip- Penn also wrote that he was aware the Mexican government and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration likely knew of his movements.

Sean Penn's secret interview with Mexican drug lord Joaquin Guzman helped law enforcement authorities to locate El Chapo's whereabouts. A Mexican official insisting on anonymity said Saturday it was the Penn interview as well as the drug lord's contacts with other celebrities that initially led law enforcement to authorities to Guzman in a rural part of Durango state in October. At that time the official said they called off their raid because Guzman was was with two women and a child, according to the Associated Press. Officials in Mexico earlier in the day suggested it was the allure a potential...