Free Republic

A RECENT United Nations report says that nearly half a million Ukrainians have fled the country since April. The fact that families run from a war zone is heartbreaking but hardly unexpected. The disturbing part lies in the details — of the roughly 454,000 people who had fled Ukraine by the end of October, more than 387,000 went to Russia. Most of those who fled were Russian speakers from the east, but this still raises a sobering question: If this is a conflict between Ukraine and Russia, why did so many Ukrainians choose to cast their lot with the enemy?...

There has been no dearth of news stories, reports, and commentary over the past few months on the epidemic of racists, whether in law enforcement or the general population, either inflicting or attempting to inflict, punishment on African Americans for being African Americans. As noted here on Tuesday, “there are certain groups who are adamant that as superior human beings they have authority to mete out punishment for violations of their beliefs that are usually borne of religion.” Despite protections in the U.S. Constitution and federal and state laws, the past six years have seen an increase in religious fundamentalists...

Quick question for you gun aficionados.

Where, outside of a marginalized left, are today’s equivalent of the antebellum radical Republicans, “ready and willing to destroy” the coercive deportation regime? Where are the absolutists, who would brook no compromise, who would rather see the republic ripped apart than tolerate an immigration system that denies equal rights to millions upon millions of people; that brutalizes families, generates thousands upon thousands of desert deaths, and breeds sexual terror, be it on the journey here, in the factory and field, or in the closed quarters of the home, where women workers have limited protections and where fear trumps whatever slim...

AGBOR—THE number of people turning to dog meat (flesh and other palatable parts derived from dogs) for its undocumented health and spiritual benefits is snowballing, compelling sellers to open road side joints where they butcher and sell the meat, fresh or cooked. From Ibusa to Agbor, Ubuluku and Umunede in Delta State, you see men mostly in hidden or open kiosks demolishing plates of dog meat pepper soup, which they claim stands out from any other meats Dog meat joint Dogs butcher at work Dogs butcher at work As a group of people gathered round a giant size cooking pot...

St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson, officer safety is the number one issue, after two of his officers fired nine rounds into a shoplifter. Is a police officer's number one job really to protect himself and his partner? Really?

Thomas Miguel Guerra may be using the alias Ashton Chavez on dating sites A San Diego man accused of knowingly spreading HIV to unwitting partners is still active on the dating app Grindr and may be using an alias, an ex-boyfriend tells NBC 7. Thomas Miguel Guerra, 29, has pleaded not guilty to a misdemeanor charge in connection with what San Diego City Attorney officials say was an ongoing plan to knowingly spread HIV. An ex-boyfriend who spoke with NBC 7 shared a text message in which Guerra appeared to gloat about a person becoming HIV-positive. "Yay lol… Someone getting...

A group of women have been accused of hiding two stolen Rolex watches in their vaginas. Charmella Triggs, Bryanna Warren and Trinity Kennard, both 23, were detained by Las Vegas police after CCTV images reportedly showed them stuffing the expensive watches down their dresses. The three women had reportedly stolen the items worth £9,600 ($16,000) from two men at the Encore Hotel. According to police they lured the victims to a room and had sex with them before taking the Rolexes. The women were reportedly pursuit by one of the men who quickly stopped when one of them produced a...

SNIP “Morals don’t come into it,” Navai writes. “Lying in Tehran is about survival . . . when the truth is shared in Tehran, it is an act of extreme trust or absolute desperation.” SNIP

I have sometimes imagined that because of my time in prison I can understand what it is like to be black in the United States. I lived for nearly 25 years under conditions of control, viewed with suspicion and presumed dangerous. The law enforcement that ran the prisons were taught to view prisoners as an enemy, and that things could go wrong at any moment and they often responded with preemptive or excessive force. It was also a world full of black prisoners, who far outnumbered the other races, so I lived as a minority and sometimes suffered because...

In a recent column in the Philadelphia Inquirer, a German native discussed how his country has dealt with the guilt over the murder of six million Jews during the Holocaust. He provided a lesson all Americans should learn. Franziska Holzschuh is a reporter for the German daily newspaper Nurnberger Nachrichten and is on assignment with The Inquirer as part of the Arthur F. Burns Fellowship Program. His hometown is Nuremberg, where the initial laws singling out the Jews for persecution were passed and where the war crimes trials were held at the conclusion of World War II. Mr. Holzschuh said...

The VA Inspector has been investigating the deaths for months and has now shared draft of his findings with Top Officials. The new VA Secretary McDonald said: "It is important to note" that while the report documents deficiencies in quality and substantial delays in care, OIG was unable to conclusively assert that the absence of quality or care directly caused the death of any these victims. This May, the inspector found that 1,700 veterans, waiting for primary care appointments at the Phoenix VA, did not show up on the wait list. An additional 1,800 will have to wait at three...

Henry Rollins slams Robin Williams for committing suicide: 'How in the heck could you possibly do that to your children?' The hardcore rocker and spoken word artist doesn't mince his words when it comes to Williams' Aug. 11 suicide, suggesting that the 40,000 people who commit suicide each year in this country 'are 40,000 people who blew it.'Hardcore rocker Henry Rollins is being branded as a punk for criticizing Robin Williams in his weekly newspaper column. The former Black Flag frontman and self-proclaimed Williams fan slammed the late comic actor for committing suicide and "traumatizing" his three children in the...

More than ten thousand people have been killed in Kiev’s punitive operation in southeastern Ukraine since April, said a Ukrainian parliamentary group. The MPs addressed the president urging to declassify information on citizens killed. The Ukrainian parliamentary group “For peace and stability” said on Friday that the figure was given by volunteer groups working in the east of the country, ITAR-TASS reported. “We have estimated that just in the first two weeks of July nearly 2,500 Ukrainian soldiers were killed in the area of the ‘anti-terrorist operation’,” the group said in a statement in the Verhovnaya Rada (Ukraine’s parliament). “The...

Bergdahl, 28, "sent back" after years held by Suni Dominants. Obama agenda of the moment ordered Bergdahl's release from Haqqani in trade for five Taliban, some of the deadliest against U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

The federal government has awarded the University of California Los Angeles $193,989 in taxpayer funds to study skill-building as HIV prevention for male sex workers in Peru. The grant was issued by the National Institute of Mental Health, a part of the National Institutes of Health, and proposes “a pilot study for a group that has been neglected in the Peruvian HIV epidemic, namely male sex workers (fletes).” Men having sex with men in Peru have a “high burden of HIV” at 10 to 15 percent, compared to male sex workers, who have a 23 percent prevalence, researchers found. …

Russian President Vladimir Putin has urged his government to come up with countermeasures to Western sanctions imposed against Russia over the Ukrainian conflict. Putin stressed that Moscow’s response should be “cautious.” “Obviously we need to do it cautiously in order to support domestic manufacturers, but not hurt consumers,” he said on Tuesday. The president expects the government to present a response to the sanctions as soon as possible. Putin said that the political tools of pressure being used against the Russian economy are unacceptable, stressing that they go against international rules and norms. Putin’s comments come on the same day...

A Florida judge has denied an imprisoned sex offender's request that he be castrated at the expense of the state. The Ocala Star-Banner reports that the man is serving 10-year sentence after pleading no contest to second-degree felony sexual battery. In a hand-written motion, the 35-year-old inmate asked a circuit court judge to modify his sentence to include castration. The motion did not explain why the inmate wanted to be castrated. The court denied the motion saying it did not have jurisdiction in the case.

LuAyne Brown, who goes by the stage name Lulu, claims to be the world’s heaviest pole dancer, at 18 stone. While the 29-year-old mum-of-two from Maryland might be twice the size of her fellow female pole dancers, she reckons she boasts double the tricks. She’s got a whole repertoire of lifts, splits, knee-holds and spins in her arsenal and regularly competes on the pole dancing circuit. As she puts it, she’s got ‘it all in her locker’ and ‘there’s no move she can’t perform’. Go Lulu. She may be twice the size of other women but LuAyne Brown boasts double...

The Baltic Sea is not known for its flesh-stripping tropical fish, but this season, a close relative of the piranha reputed to have a fondness for nibbling on men's testicles has appeared in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad on the Baltic. A local fisher nabbed several South American pacu in a city pond and handed them over to marine biologists for identification, Interfax reported Friday. The pacu is a cousin of the omnivorous piranha. Unlike its fearsome relative, it mostly subsists on a pacific diet of nuts and algae, but last summer media dubbed the pacu the "ball cutter" when...