Free Republic

It's Memorial Day, and the forecast is for renewed mocking and derision regarding man-made climate change from the know-nothing, science-averse wing of the Republican Party. President Barack Obama's warning—issued during his commencement address at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy graduation ceremonies Wednesday—that climate change represents a national security threat seems certain to provoke that kind of stormy reaction.[SNIP]Among the Republicans running for president, climate change denial is the current mode of thinking for most....it's hard to see anyone in the crowd calling for military preparedness. Mostly, the candidates appear interested in sidestepping the topic (albeit in a disapproving manner)..The result...

Speaking at the United Nations World Education Forum in South Korea this week, UN chief Ban Ki Moon and UNESCO boss Irina Bokova declared that globalized schools around the world need to re-shape children’s values and create "sustainable" “global citizens.” The controversial summit, which outlined what the UN described as a “roadmap for global education” through 2030 in the “Incheon Declaration,” brought together over 100 national education ministers, swarms of UN bureaucrats, globalists, educators, and other “stakeholders” from every corner of the planet. And while the UN education forum passed virtually unnoticed in the U.S. establishment media, the implications of...

Between 2010 and 2013, Germany’s market for organic foods increased by one-fourth to almost €8 billion. Still, switching to organic cultivation remains a difficult process for farmers. While revenue from organic products has enjoyed an annual increase of 5-9% since 2011, the parallel increase in surface area over the past four years has only been 1-3%. Agriculture Minister Christian Schmidt hopes to change this. “We want a timetable for growth that allows domestic producers to benefit more from the boom,” he said on Tuesday (19 May) in Berlin. Organic must be strengthened, he said, with the help of the Future...

“We’re not a smart people,” says Ace, pointing to a similar but now outdated 2012 survey from Gallup.The actual number of gays is around four percent, as best anyone can tell. What’s your guesstimate, America?Fifty-three percent think gays compose at least 20 percent of the population. Huh. I don’t know what’s odder, the fact that this number has grown as the public’s paid more attention to gays over the past 13 years or the fact that guesstimates were already wildly inflated in 2002, before gay marriage had picked up national momentum. Logically, you would think the estimates would have...

May 21, 2015 The Central Intelligence Agency is shutting down a research program that offered classified data to scientists to examine the link between climate change and global security threats. A CIA spokesman confirmed that the agency had ended its MEDEA program, a 1990s-era intelligence program restarted in 2010 under President Obama. The collaboration gave scientists access to intelligence assets like satellite data to study climate change and inform on how its impacts could inflame conflicts. CIA spokesman Ryan Whaylen said "these projects have been completed and CIA will employ these research results and engage external experts as it continues...

ROME, May 19, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) -- Pope Francis has appointed radically liberal, pro-homosexual Dominican Father Timothy Radcliffe as a consultor for the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. The Holy Father made the appointment on Saturday, according to Vatican Radio. Father Radcliffe, an Englishman, author and speaker, was Master of the Dominican order from 1992 to 2001, and is an outspoken proponent of homosexuality. "We must accompany [gay people] as they discern what this means, letting our images be stretched open,” he said in a 2006 religious education lecture in Los Angeles. “This means watching 'Brokeback Mountain,' reading gay novels,...

WASHINGTON — President Obama called out climate change deniers in Congress for being weak on defense, saying it would be "dereliction of duty" for the United States to ignore the national security implications of rising global temperatures. Obama's convocation speech at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy Wednesday was his most forceful argument yet that climate change ranks alongside terrorism as a grave threat to America's future. "I know there are some folks back in Washington who refuse to admit that climate change is real," he told graduating cadets in New London, Conn. "Denying it or refusing to deal with it...

Some market watchers, such as Cornerstone Analytics (CA), have consistently stated that the underestimation of demand, coupled with over-estimation of supply, will mask the growing call on OPEC oil in the second half of this year. CA recently noted that global demand outstripped supply by some 4 million barrels in April . This comes in addition to the mounting evidence that the oil market, via rig count declines, slowing production growth, higher demand and huge API crude inventory declines, is starting to readjust. Be that as it may, Goldman Sachs (GS) seems to believe oil must fall to $45 by...

What happens when the public does not wish to live out the utopian dreams of its elite leaders?[snip] How, then, do politically correct planners force the people to think and act properly when they push back? Extra-legal executive orders can help a president bypass supposed troglodytes in Congress and among the public. Obama granted blanket amnesties, proposed rules that would lead to the closure of many coal plants and arbitrarily chose which health or labor statutes should be enforced and at what times. A filmmaker was even jailed on a trumped-up probation charge after making a video about Islam.....[snip] As...

President Obama just gave the commencement address to the graduating class of the Coast Guard academy.

The world is busy trying to achieve a global warming goal that some think we’re not on course to achieve, and that some scientists worry may not be enough to prevent some troubling scenarios — like significant sea level rise. That goal is limiting warming to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. But there’s another view, embraced by many countries (which tend not to be the big emitters), suggesting that a safer target involves limiting global warming to just 1.5 degrees C. Yet that target would be still tougher to achieve, finds a new paper in Nature Climate Change that...

President Obama in a speech on Wednesday cast climate change as a growing national security threat, accusing Republican skeptics of harming military readiness by denying its effects. Obama argued in his address to graduates at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy that rising sea levels and higher global temperatures endanger military bases and could force personnel to respond to conflicts around the world that are fueled by their effects. “Climate change constitutes a serious threat to global security, an immediate risk to our national security, and, make no mistake, it will impact how our military defends our country,” Obama told new...

The Clinton Foundation scandal continues to spread ever since the news broke that it did not disclose millions of dollars of donations from foreign governments and businessmen. It’s already infected ABC, as anchor George Stephanopoulos was forced to apologize for personal undisclosed donations to the foundation. He has yet to acknowledge or apologize for some of the other connections that have surfaced. But the connections don’t stop there, they extend to other prominent lefties and to a Spanish-language media outlet. Through its Too Small to Fail initiative, The Clinton Foundation is tied to Tom Steyer and the American Spanish language...

“Now we’re essentially all consuming very childish things – comic books, superheroes. Adults are watching this stuff, and taking it seriously! “It is a kind of dumbing down in a way, because it’s taking our focus away from real-world issues.” “Films used to be about challenging, emotional journeys or moral questions that might make you walk away and re-evaluate how you felt about... whatever. Now we’re walking out of the cinema really not thinking about anything, other than the fact that the Hulk had a fight with a robot.”

The New York Times has an article worth reading discussing EPA’s efforts to influence comments submitted to them by the public regarding the agency’s and Army Corps of Engineers’ proposal to redefine “Waters of the United States (WOTUS).” Notably, Gina McCarthy, administrator of EPA, went before a Senate committee earlier this year touting the fact that almost 90 percent of all comments submitted expressed support for the rule as proposed. It turns out that many of these comments were submitted as a result of an unprecedented outreach initiative, which is being led by a former Obama campaign staffer. Thunderclap (a...

Many Catholics and others were puzzled by the appearance of Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Professor Jeffrey Sachs and former Senator Tim Wirth as speakers or honored guests at a Vatican sponsored conference on global warming. All three have spent years actively undermining Church teaching on questions of abortion and UN-style family planning, which includes active population control.

Even Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) most ardent supporters would probably concede, albeit grudgingly, that he faces very long odds in the 2016 presidential race. So why run? Because there’s value in having a national platform for bold, progressive ideas that might otherwise be ignored. Bloomberg Politics reported yesterday, for example, on Sanders’ new plan to make public college tuition-free in the United States. The plan will provide tuition-free higher education to students at four-year colleges, the statement said, and is modeled after the way many European nations handle the costs of college. “Countries like Germany, Denmark, Sweden and many more...

Fossil fuel companies are benefitting from global subsidies of $5.3tn (£3.4tn) a year, equivalent to $10m every minute of every day, according to a startling new estimate by the International Monetary Fund. The IMF calls the revelation “shocking” and says the figure is an “extremely robust” estimate of the true cost of fossil fuels. The $5.3tn subsidy estimated for 2015 is greater than the total health spending of all the world’s governments. The vast sum is largely due to polluters not paying the costs imposed on governments by the burning of coal, oil and gas. These include the harm caused...

As leaders of state, including the Vatican, recognize the illegitimate claim of Palestinian statehood, there can be no peace as that claim is based wholly on the outright destruction of Israel, the Jews, and the subjugation of Christianity Abandoning his own constituents, Pope Francis has embraced the divisive, terror-backed Palestinian Authority with a treaty recognizing its (nonexistent) statehood and an open-armed welcome of Mahmoud Abbas, P.A. leader, as an “angel of peace.” With this action, the pope iced the cake of tumultuous Middle East politics by celebrating a condoner of ISIS that continues to persecute members of his own Catholic...

On Sunday, May 10, after church mass, a group of young Muslim immigrants interrupted a Catholic procession in honor of the Virgin Mary. They hurled verbal insults, shouts, and threats as the group passed in front of the Islamic Cultural Center in Conselice, a small town in lower Romagna.Approximately 100 Catholic Christians, including several small children, were preparing to receive their first Holy Communion, when Muslims from the Islamic Center began howling verbal abuses and threats at the passing procession.According to an eyewitness, “During the slow procession of the sacred image, some kids on the ground floor of the building...