Free Republic

‘It is about Xi as the leader of the world’: Former detainees recount abuse in Chinese re-education centres Authorities in China’s far western Xinjiang province have made loyalty to President Xi Jinping a central part of an extensive political re-education campaign that requires detainees to swear allegiance to the Communist Party while forswearing a Muslim faith that they are told to repeat is “stupid.”Large numbers – researchers estimate the total in the hundreds of thousands – of people have been placed in Chinese facilities known as re-education centres, where they are forcibly indoctrinated. Many of those detained are Muslim Uyghurs...

The chairman of the Democratic National Party, Tom Perez, on Tuesday said socialist political candidates like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are the "future" of the party. Ocasio-Cortez, a self-described "democratic socialist" who defeated a top House Democrat in a recent primary election, symbolizes where the party is headed. The Obama-era Cabinet official said Ocasio-Cortez and Ben Jealous, a socialist running for governor in Maryland, are examples of "spectacular" candidates the party believes represents its future.

Multiple Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) leaders are openly endorsing communism on social media, indicating that the already far-left organization has taken a sharp left turn. DSA has seen its ranks swell from 8,000 to over 42,000 dues-paying members since President Donald Trump was elected. In November of 2017, 15 DSA members were elected in school board, city council, alderman and other local races across the country, joining 20 other DSA members already in office. The party got a major boost last Tuesday when DSA-endorsed candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ousted 10-term incumbent Rep. Joe Crowley in New York's 14th Congressional District.

Socialism, Marxism and Communism not only destroy nations, they kill the human soul. Civil society has staggered to the sickening stage where your life can now be totally ruined—not for what you said—but for what someone else said you said. Totally invented accusations against innocent parties, destructive ones that turn lives upside down, are free on Twitter and other hard core left social media, now a driving force of ‘communication’. Wishing people dead, threatening to kill the children of someone with whom you politically disagree, “F’ Donald Trump!” have become a social media norm.

1. The Destruction of the Aral Sea. 2. Famines in the Soviet Union, China, and North Korea. 3. The Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). 4. Soviet nuclear disasters and pollution. 5. Zimbabwe .6. Venezuela. These are just brief examples of the wonders of Marxism. Hopefully the eyes of younger generations will see this article, and reject what Marxism truly offers. Why Couldn't What Happened In Venezuela Happen Here?

Democratic Socialist Candidate’s Primary Win Revoked After All Her Votes Forcibly Redistributed June 29, 2018 NEW YORK, NY—Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was elated when reports broke that she had won the Democratic primary for her district, defeating long-term incumbent Rep. Joe Crowley Tuesday. But the democratic socialist was disappointed to discover that her win would be revoked by the DNC after all votes for her were confiscated and more equally distributed between the two candidates. Democrat officials quickly sent Ocasio-Cortez a bill for her vote earnings, which included a hefty tax on her 15,000+ votes, which would be dispensed more evenly between...

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democratic Socialists of America member who won a Democratic primary victory this week in New York's 14th Congressional District, failed to clearly explain democratic socialism on Friday. Ocasio-Cortez joined "The View" panel where Meghan McCain asked about her self-described Democratic socialist views. The candidate has been at the center of attention since her upset in Tuesday's primary against incumbent Rep. Joe Crowley (D., N.Y.), a 10-term congressman and member of the Democratic leadership in the House of Representatives. Ocasio-Cortez is known for being one of the most left-leaning candidates in the 2018 midterm elections. "You consider yourself...

Professor Ying Fuk-tsang, director of the divinity school at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, says that during the early years of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) some Christians became disappointed with church institutions. They thought God had taken away the power of Christianity to save humanity, so they joined the CCP as secret, or underground, members. He cited Yan Baohang, who was baptized when studying at the Fengtian (now Shenyang) Normal School and served as a trainee student secretary in the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA). He was later sent to the University of Edinburgh in Scotland for further...

How many times do we have to learn that socialism doesn't work, that, as Margaret Thatcher said, at some point you run out of "other people's money," that sooner or later all the teary idealism, the stirring strains of The Internationale, devolve into gulags and death squads? Wasn't the Soviet Union enough, Communist China, Cambodia, North Korea, Cuba, etc....? Now those death squads appear to have surfaced in Venezuela, the wealthiest country in Latin America before Hugo Chavez brought his brand of socialism to the then oil-rich nation. Venezuelan security forces have carried out hundreds of arbitrary killings under the...

Venezuela has begun to proactively shut-in oil production to cope with nearly replete terminal storage. This will further accelerate an output decline and bring them closer to 1 million barrels per day or even less. According to energy ministry official data communicated to Opec, Venezuela produced 1.533mn b/d of crude in May, up by 28,000 b/d from 1.505mn b/d in April. However, this May statistic was a lie. Average production cited by secondary sources published by Opec report Venezuela’s May output at 1.392mn b/d, down by 42,500 b/d from 1.434mn b/d in April. Argus estimates May production at around 1.45mn...

Jeremy Grantham, the longtime investor famous for calling the last two major bubbles in the market, is urging capitalists and "mainstream economists" to recognize the looming threat of climate change. "Capitalism and mainstream economics simply cannot deal with these problems. Mainstream economics largely ignore [them]," Grantham, who co-founded GMO in 1977, said Tuesday in an impassioned speech at the Morningstar Investment Conference in Chicago. "We deforest the land, we degrade our soils, we pollute and overuse our water and we treat air like an open sewer, and we do it all off the balance sheet." This negligence is due in...

Once a lofty concept, the term social justice has been hijacked and exploited by the political left to radically transform America and bully Americans into forfeiting many basic rights in deference to the left’s agenda. Intoning social justice has proven to be a sure-proof formula for silencing average Americans, thereby providing the left with endless societal victories. After all, who wants to be accused of standing in the way of social justice? Most of what passes today for social justice is actually the Marxist/Marcuse/Gramsci leftist playbook wrapped in appealing religious phraseology and platitudes, a framework for never-ceasing revolution and rebellion....

Marx believed that international free trade, or perhaps more accurately, Ricardian economic globalization, would pave the way for a glorious proletarian revolution. Specifically, Marx thought that free trade would increase wealth inequality and reduce wages for the majority of people, and that this tension inevitably would lead to conflict. While I hate to admit it, Marx is broadly right on this point. International free trade has indeed increased wealth inequality and reduced wages for the majority of Americans. In fact, the median American household was richer in the 1980s than today (better technology aside). Part of this is explained by...

Companies such as BlackRock, BP, ExxonMobil, and Equinor are expected to be represented at the gathering, which will likely take place on June 9 The conversation's focus will be aligned with Francis' 2015 "On Care For Our Common Home” encyclical, a papal document arguing climate change is caused by humans and that world leaders were not doing enough to mitigate it, sources told the news outlet. Addressing the issue of climate change is a priority for Francis. In addition to the encyclical, the pope warned in 2017 in the wake of hurricanes Harvey and Irma that history would judge the...

Pope Francis is hosting a gathering next week at the Vatican with executives of major oil producers and investment firms to talk about how the companies can address climate change, according to several people familiar with the event. Why it matters: It’s one of the most significant developments showing how corporations are working with other world leaders on climate change amid President Trump’s whole-scale retreat on the issue. Situational awareness: One year ago today, Trump announced his intention to withdraw America from the Paris climate deal, which now has support from every country except the United States. Three years ago,...

The Kerry-Kennedy-Haiti Connection By Cliff Kincaid March 26, 2004 It wasn't a big story when John Kerry said that he would have risked U.S. lives to maintain Marxist Jean-Bertrand Aristide in power in Haiti. And except for columnist Robert Novak, there hasn't been any discussion of why Kerry chose such a controversial course of action. Novak noted evidence of "Aristide's gold-plated U.S. connections." He explained, "He is close to Kerry's influential friends, the Kennedy family of Massachusetts, and is the unconditional favorite of the Congressional Black Caucus." Novak noted that Aristide spent millions on U.S. lobbyists and lawyers, and that,...

...reported opposition to song Howard Bryant’s latest long-winded essay about racial division in professional sports contains remarks from an anonymous “high-ranking Red Sox official” about his desire for the team to stop playing "God Bless America" at Fenway Park. “Recently a high-ranking Red Sox official told me — nearly 17 years after the towers fell — that he really doesn’t know why the team still plays ‘God Bless America,’ but he knows this: The team would ‘get killed’ publicly if it was the first team to stop doing it,” Bryant writes. Despite the “high-ranking official’s” opposition to “God Bless America,”...

From legal pot to guaranteed jobs, progressive ideas are drawing more attention from Democratic lawmakers — especially potential 2020 contenders. Freed from the constraints of power, Democrats are becoming a progressive ideas factory. On issues like health care, immigration, jobs, and crime, once-fringe policy proposals are gaining traction with lawmakers, activists, and wonks as they debate the party’s path out of its current wilderness. HEALTH CARE This is the biggest shift. Top-tier Democratic candidates around the country, including some in conservative-leaning districts, are running on a promise of universal access to Medicare. JOBS The hottest new topic in progressive circles...

Billionaire philanthropist George Soros has dropped at least $275,000 into district attorney races throughout Northern California, supporting candidates who advocate reduced incarceration and other criminal justice reforms. Such issues have long been a passion for Soros, who in past years has funded state ballot measures to legalize marijuana and weaken the “three strikes” sentencing law. He’s also tipped district attorney elections in other parts of the country - last year a Soros-backed political action committee helped clinch the win for civil rights attorney Larry Krasner in Philadelphia. This year, the liberal financier has funneled contributions into the California Justice &...

Expert panelists said at an event Tuesday that environmental degradation disproportionately affects communities of color, and that promoting racial diversity among environmental science researchers could help address the issue. The Environmentalists of Color Collective at UCLA hosted a forum on climate justice, featuring a panel of environmental justice advocates from Los Angeles. ECC aimed to raise awareness and start a dialogue about environmental racism, said Liliana Epps, a second-year gender studies student and member of ECC who helped host the event. Epps said environmental racism and injustice refer to disproportionate allocations of environmental resources. For example, pollutants tend to affect...