Free Republic

A new era for the Port of New York and New Jersey started this morning with the arrival of the largest ship to ever stop over on the East Coast.  The CMA CGM Theodore Roosevelt sailed under the newly-elevated Bayonne Bridge today on its maiden voyage to the United States, as locals gathered at Dennis P. Collins Park to watch the massive ship's arrive. Four times larger than the Statue of Liberty and the length of five football fields, the Theodore Roosevelt can carry more than 14,400 20-foot equivalent units (TEU). Owned by French shipping group CMA CGM, the ship made its...

.. At a security conference this week, the director of the C.I.A., Mike Pompeo, criticized The New York Times for a recent article about an officer who was tapped to run the agency’s Iran operations, a newsworthy promotion because it was an indication of the hard line against Iran that President Trump promised during his campaign. Mr. Pompeo said that the publication of the official’s name, Michael D’Andrea, was “unconscionable” and put his covert status in jeopardy. Mr. Pompeo’s comments led to a wider discussion about the publication of Mr. D’Andrea’s name, and some readers wrote to us to express...

There’s a chance Britain won’t leave the European Union, former Prime Minister Tony Blair said Saturday, arguing that stopping Brexit is “necessary” to avoid severe economic damage. In an article published by Blair’s Institute for Global Change, he wrote that EU leaders might be willing to “reform and meet us half way” to keep the U.K. in the bloc. He said that might include compromise on freedom of movement — a key EU principle that conflicts with Britain’s goal of placing limits on immigration. […] Blair also told Sky News that “every day is bringing us fresh evidence” of Brexit’s...

Canada’s foreign minister said Tuesday that the country must spend more on its military now that the U.S. is questioning its role of global leadership. Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland told Parliament that relying on the “the U.S. security umbrella would make us a client state.” She said Canada is committed to make a “substantial investment” in its military and said the defense minister would elaborate on that Wednesday. Freeland said Canadians will always be grateful for the outsized role the U.S. has played in the world and Canada will seek to persuade Washington that its continued leadership is in the...

Two Republican U.S. senators slammed Wednesday a law recently passed by Egypt’s president as “draconian” for imposing heavy restrictions and effectively banning the work of non-governmental organizations — the latest among measures cracking down on dissent in the country. Republican Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham urged President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi to bring the law on NGOs in line with international standards and the Egyptian constitution. “Congress should strengthen democratic benchmarks and human rights conditions on U.S. assistance for Egypt,” they said in a statement. […] The law has triggered wide international backlash and raised concerns over human rights conditions in...

Americans who have bought into this globalist agenda blindly and are trying to replace Americanism with Cultural Marxism and Islamo-fascism Western Europeans have been watching the vitriolic opposition to President Trump with great personal interest, wondering if Americans have lost their minds. Being the inveterate leftists that they are, even in the face of demographic suicide, they were rooting for a like-minded female socialist who vowed to turn the U.S. into the European basket case model of failed multiculturalism and diversity, flooding their countries with more and more Islamists in order to forever change the western culture into a Caliphate....

The Trump administration said Monday it was ending funding to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), long a target of conservatives over concerns that its work in China abets the communist authorities’ controversial population limitation programs. The administration’s first confirmed cut to a U.N. agency will cost the UNFPA $32.5 million. Its budget proposal for fiscal year 2018 calls for unspecified reductions to contributions to the U.N. budget, and further “seeks to reduce or end direct funding for international organizations whose missions do not substantially advance U.S. foreign policy interests, are duplicative, or are not well-managed.” The move comes as...

Monday marks the end of US President Donald Trump's first month in office. US mainstream media spared no efforts in satirizing and criticizing him. The latest Gallup poll released Saturday local time shows that Trump only had a 40 percent approval rating, 21 percentage points below the average rating for presidents in their first month in office. Trump said that "any negative poll is fake news," but analysts believe he does care about the results. Trump's first month in the Oval Office can only be described as bumpy. He is now losing his offensive momentum and is entering the stalemate...

Republican Sen. John McCain delivered a withering critique of President Donald Trump in a speech Friday that highlighted fractures within the GOP as the new administration struggles to overcome a chaotic start. Speaking in Germany at the Munich Security Conference, McCain didn’t mention the president’s name, according to the prepared text, while he lamented a shift in the United States and Europe away from the “universal values” that forged the Western alliance seven decades ago. McCain is the chairman of the Armed Services Committee. […] McCain, who has openly quarreled with the president, said “more and more of our fellow...

Billionaire investor George Soros said Thursday he views President-elect Donald Trump as an “impostor and con man and a would-be dictator” who will rattle financial markets. Soros, a big supporter of Hillary Clinton’s failed presidential campaign, said he is confident Trump will be checked by Congress and the Constitution. […] “I personally am convinced that (Trump) is going to fail,” Soros said. “Not because of people like me who would like him to fail, but because the ideas that guide him are inherently self-contradictory.” …

Vice President Joe Biden delivered an epic final speech Wednesday to the elites at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The gist of his speech was simple: At a time of "uncertainty" we must double down on the values that made Western democracies great, and not allow the "liberal world order" to be torn apart by destructive forces. Biden went after Russian President Vladimir Putin by name, saying he is using "every tool" in his power to whittle away the European project, and undermine Western democracies. Biden accused Putin of wanting to "roll back decades of progress." Biden said...

The first-ever U.N. independent expert selected to examine violence and discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people has vowed to forge ahead with wide-ranging investigations despite formidable opposition to his appointment in a U.N. vote. “This mandate will cover every country under the sun and under the moon,” Vitit Muntarbhorn said at a LGBT conference in Bangkok on Wednesday. “There can never be a political or legal vacuum in terms of protecting people.” This includes working with countries opposed to his appointment, Vitit said. “We also have to cover not only peace, but war,” he said, noting that members...

United Nations “human rights” boss Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein appears to be cracking up as he violently  and erratically lashes out at free markets, Western voters, GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, gun rights, the nation-state, British Brexit leader Nigel Farage (shown, right), Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders, Czech President Milos Zeman, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, and other targets of what appears to be his deep-seated hatred. He also blasted Western voters concerned about open borders and security for their alleged “natural prejudice.”The controversial UN rights chief, a prince in the Islamic dictatorship ruling over Jordan, even equated mainstream Western politicians he...

“The Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice has provided oversight and recommendations for improvement of police services in a number of cities with consent decrees. This is one of the most effective ways to reduce discrimination in law enforcement and it needs to be beefed up and increased to cover as many of the 18,000-plus local law enforcement jurisdictions.” That was United Nations Rapporteur Maina Kai on July 27, a representative of the U.N. Human Rights Council, who on the tail-end of touring the U.S., endorsed a little-known and yet highly controversial practice by the Justice Department to...

Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has asked the government to nominate him for the United Nations top job, the foreign minister said on Monday. Julie Bishop said Rudd wanted the government’s endorsement to succeed U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, whose second five-year term ends Dec. 31. That decision would be made by Australia’s next cabinet, which will be named Monday following July 2 elections. …

Germany should play a bigger role in world affairs, Chancellor Angela Merkel insisted on Wednesday. On the campaign trail for her Christian Democrats (CDU) party ahead of regional elections next week, Merkel refused pressure to take a more individual, domestic approach to Europe's migrant crisis. The country should not just spread its influence via, exports, the chancellor argued. "Rather, we will have to take on more responsibility in an open world for what happens outside our European borders," she said from a CDU rally in the town of Wittlich in Rhineland-Palatinate, one of three states about to hold parliamentary ballots....

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has "congratulated" Venezuela on winning a new three-year term on the U.N. Human Rights Council, the socialist government reported Wednesday. Venezuela's mission to the U.N. said Ban offered his congratulations during a meeting Tuesday with Venezuelan ambassador to the HRC Jorge Valero in Geneva, the Swiss city that is home to the U.N.'s top human rights body. Ban's reported congratulations came despite the fact that the ongoing election onto the HRC of countries with poor human rights records has long outraged human rights advocates and frustrated democratic governments. ...

American taxpayers will once again be liable for more than one-fifth of the United Nations' regular budget next year, as well as more than one-quarter of the much-larger peacekeeping budget - a total of approximately $2,957,000,000. The U.N. General Assembly just before Christmas approved a regular operating budget of $5.4 billion for the 2016-17 period. (That budget is calculated biannually.) Of the $2.7 billion earmarked for 2016, the U.S. will account for 22 percent, or $594 million. Of the separate peacekeeping budget - $8.27 billion for the year ending June 30 - the U.S. is liable for 28.5783 percent, or...

Over roughly the past 18 months, the following events have transfixed the nation. In July 2014, Eric Garner, an African American man reportedly selling loose cigarettes illegally, was choked to death by a New York City policeman. That August, a white police officer, Darren Wilson, shot and killed an African American teenager, Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Missouri. For close to two weeks, protesters battled police clad in military gear. Missouri's governor said the city looked like a war zone. In December, an African American man with a criminal record avenged Garner's and Brown's deaths by murdering two New York City...

The World Health Organisation (WHO) will publish a report on Monday on the dangers of eating processed meats. It is expected to list processed meat as a cancer-causing substance, while fresh red meat is also expected to be regarded as bad for health, the Daily Mail said. The classifications, by the WHO's International Agency for Research on Cancer, are believed to regard processed meat as "carcinogenic to humans", the highest of five possible rankings, shared with alcohol, asbestos, arsenic and cigarettes.