Free Republic

If someone says, “Trust the science!” these days, it’s usually an effort to short-circuit debate over weighty policy issues. “Trust the science” has been deployed in the past five years to prevent debate over COVID school closures and mask mandates, over electric-car subsidies, and over sex changes for boys and girls. For my entire time in Washington, though, “trust the science” has been used to oppose a missile defense system for the United States. For my first 20 years as a journalist, I was told that a missile defense system simply cannot work and that anyone who disagreed was a...

Saudi Arabia has been left humiliated after being forced to scale back its multi-trillion-dollar plans for a 106-mile linear megacity in the desert to just over one per cent of its original length. The ambitious project, named the Line, forms part of the kingdom's lucrative Neom infrastructure project - which had been slated to cost up to $1.5trillion.

Former President Donald Trump has spoken recently with the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, according to a report. The phone conversation between the presumptive Republican nominee for president and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, reported by the New York Times, comes as the Biden administration pushes to normalize relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel. Normalizing relations between the Jewish state and a number of Muslim majority countries was one of Trump’s landmark foreign-policy achievements during his only term in office. It’s unclear exactly when the conversation between the 38-year-old de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia and the 77-year-old former president...

Washington -- US President Joe Biden has said that he is convinced that one of the reasons why Hamas launched a terrorist attack on Israel was because of the recent announcement during the G-20 Summit in New Delhi on the ambitious India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor that integrates the entire region with a network of railroad. Israel has launched a massive counter-offensive against Hamas after unprecedented attacks by the militant group on October 7 killed more than 1,400 people. Biden told reporters at a joint news conference with the visiting Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese that his analysis is based on...

Sam Bankman-Fried scheduled a number of high-profile meetings with political power-players a short time before his cryptocurrency exchange FTX collapsed. The former billionaire, 31, was set to sit down with former President Bill Clinton, New York Governor Kathy Hochul and Yasir Al Rumayyan, the head of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, shortly before his crypto empire came crashing down in November 2022. Evidence of the meetings was presented by prosecutors on Tuesday at Bankman-Fried's fraud trial in Manhattan. The former crypto whiz faces up to 115 years in prison for allegedly siphoning FTX client funds to prop up his hedge...

Screengrab from a video shot as revellers realize Hamas gunmen are attacking. Girls were raped beside the corpses of their friends. In 2021, we were part of a grassroots team which rescued 400 women from Afghanistan. We have all, together and separately, worked on a range of feminist issues including rape, sex trafficking, honor killing, child marriage, and forced veiling. Together with thousands of other women, we have signed countless petitions and resolutions calling for freedom, justice, and safety for women globally. We cannot understand the feminist silence about what is happening to civilian Israelis in general and to Israeli...

A major broadcaster in North America is reportedly instructing its journalists not to refer to Hamas attackers as "terrorists." ... Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, or CBC, which issued an internal memo over the weekend in the wake of Hamas' onslaught of killings and kidnappings in Israel, with more than 700 murdered and at least 2,300 wounded. ... written by CBC (Canadian Broadcast Corp) employee George Achi instructing reporters to: 1. not to mention Gaza has not been occupied since 2005. 2. not refer to Palestinian terrorists as terrorists.. ... do not describe 2005 as 'the end of the occupation' as Israel...

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) has said that his country was moving steadily closer to normalising relations with Israel, following similar moves from other Gulf countries, and amid a big push by the United States for a Saudi-Israeli deal. “Every day, we get closer,” the crown prince told US broadcaster Fox News, according to excerpts seen by Reuters of an interview scheduled to air later on Wednesday. The interview with the crown prince, widely known as MBS, came as US President Joe Biden’s administration presses ahead with an effort to broker historic ties between the two countries...

Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs said Monday that her administration would effectively kick a Saudi-owned alfalfa farm off a critical stretch of state land, a forceful step that speaks to the firestorm of controversy over foreign extraction of natural resources as well as deepening dilemmas over water scarcity as climate change dries out the West. The move will prevent the Saudi-owned company, Fondomonte Arizona, from pumping groundwater that could one day serve as backup for booming urban areas. Currently, the company uses the water to grow alfalfa to feed the kingdom’s dairy cows. Fondomonte came under fierce bipartisan criticism on the...

Bank of China (BOC), one of China's four biggest state-owned commercial banks, opened its first branch in Riyadh, capital of Saudi Arabia, which will further expand the use of the yuan in finance and trade. Experts noted that since the BRICS Summit, members of the bloc have been accelerating the use of local currency settlements in cross-border trade to reduce reliance on the US dollar. The Chinese currency is playing an increasingly important role in facilitating trade and improving efficiency among the BRICS countries, they said. According to an announcement published by the BOC on Wednesday, the bank opened the...

House Oversight Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) asked panel Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) to subpoena Jared Kushner to produce documents about money his investment firm has received from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies. In a Thursday letter to Comer on Thursday, Raskin referenced Comer’s recent public comments expressing skepticism about the post-Trump administration activities of Kushner, former President Trump’s son-in-law who was a top White House aide. Raskin asked him to join the Democrats’ probe into Kushner’s firm, Affinity Partners. Formed in 2021, it reportedly raised $2 billion from an investment fund led by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed...

With both the Biden Family Business scandal and Donald Trump indictments continuing to dominate the news cycles, daily, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) said on Thursday that former President Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor, Jared Kushner, “crossed the line of ethics” by accepting a $2 billion investment in his investment firm from the Saudi Arabian government.During an interview on CNN’s “The Lead with Jake Tapper,” Comer acknowledged a recent argument made by 2024 GOP presidential candidate Chris Christie, who claimed that the Trump family, along with Kushner, “has been involved in grifting for quite some time.” Christie said:Look,...

Iran’s oil exports have hit a five-year high in recent months as the country sells more to China and other countries, adding large volumes of discounted crude to a global energy market already struggling amid concerns over demand. The surge in Iran’s oil supply threatens to upend efforts by Saudi Arabia and other major crude producers to prop up prices by cutting output. Oil’s value has fallen by about a fifth since late last year on expectations of a slowing global economy and a glut of cheap Russian cargoes. It also shows how Iran is increasingly circumventing U.S. sanctions as...

Saudi Arabia has been making investments in various sports, spreading its influence and evolving the country, with the recently announced merger between LIV Golf and the PGA Tour being the latest example. The country's Public Investment Fund is the main driver behind LIV Golf, and the kingdom has faced accusations that it is attempting to improve its international image and reputation by funding the league — a tactic known as "sportswashing." ... Activists who oppose LIV and other investments have pointed to the country's history of human rights violations, particularly the 2018 murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. Saudi...

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes has announced the revocation of drilling permits for new deep-water wells on land leased to a Saudi-owned company, saying that their approval eight months ago was “unconscionable” because the state is on the verge of a water crisis. Fondomonte, which is owned by a major dairy company in Saudi Arabia, has been growing water-intensive alfalfa in Arizona for export in order to feed cows in the Middle East. It’s illegal to grow the crop in Saudi Arabia because it takes up too much water. But anyone who buys or leases land in Arizona can, after...

Saudi Arabia has reportedly invited Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi for an official state visit after the two sides agreed to restore ties in a peace deal brokered by China. Per the BBC, the invitation came in a letter from Saudi Arabia’s King Salman, but that has yet to be confirmed by Saudi officials. A senior Iranian official, Mohammad Jamshidi, tweeted about the invitation to visit the Saudi capital, Riyadh, saying Mr Raisi had welcomed it and "stressed Iran's readiness to expand co-operation". Separately, Iran's Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian told reporters that the two countries had agreed to hold a meeting...

Without last week’s Beijing-brokered deal, China would have had to rely on maritime routes under the control of the powerful US Navy to facilitate the forthcoming explosion in bilateral real-sector trade, but now everything can be conducted much more securely via the Iranian-transiting CCAWAEC. Looking forward, there’s also a theoretical possibility of Chinese energy investments in Iran connecting the Gulf to Central Asia and thenceforth to the People’s Republic, thus fully securing its strategic interests. That’s still a far way’s off, if it even happens at all that is, but it nevertheless can’t be ruled out. Saudi Arabia’s desire to...

Archrivals Iran and Saudi Arabia agreed Friday to restore diplomatic relations, a dramatic breakthrough brokered by China after years of soaring tensions between the Middle Eastern powerhouses. The deal, which will see the two leading oil producers reopen embassies in each other’s capitals, was sealed during a meeting in Beijing — a boost to China's efforts to rival the United States as a broker on the global stage. The agreement could put a damper on Israel's ongoing work to normalize relations with its Arab neighbors, and complicate U.S. and other Western powers' bid to contain Iran's nuclear ambitions. The Saudi-Iran...

Chinese President Xi Jinping signed a raft of deals with Saudi officials during a three-day visit to Riyadh as Beijing seeks to shore up its Covid-hit economy and as the Saudis, long-term US allies, push to diversify their economic and political alliances. The two countries reaffirmed the significance of stability in global oil markets and the Saudi role in that, a joint statement said on Friday, the third day of Xi's visit to the Gulf kingdom. "The People's Republic of China welcomed the Kingdom’s role as a supporter of the balance and stability in the world oil markets, and as...

The Biden administration just won one for the president and his new, fist-bumping pal, the leader of Saudi Arabia. The Washington Times reported on Wednesday that U.S. District Judge John Bates tossed a wrongful-death lawsuit filed against Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman over the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.