Free Republic

You may not have noticed but our sun has gone as blank as a cue ball. As in, it’s lost its spots. According to scientists, this unsettling phenomenon is a sign we are heading for a mini ice age. Meteorologist and renowned sun-watcher Paul Dorian raised the alarm in his latest report, which has sparked a mild panic about an impending “Game of Thrones”-style winter not seen since the 17th century. “For the second time this month, the sun has gone completely blank,” Dorian says. “The blank sun is a sign that the next solar minimum is approaching and there...

The European Union cannot rely on NATO to protect its member states from external threats and must develop a policy of collective defence that allows it to "act autonomously if and when necessary". EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini's Global Strategy document states that "as Europeans we must take greater responsibility for our security". The white paper, seen by Politico, adds: "While NATO exists to defend its members — most of which are European — from external attack, Europeans must be better equipped, trained and organised to contribute decisively to such collective efforts, as well as to act autonomously if...

The world’s richest nations have long been fueled by oil, coal and natural gas, but President Obama warned Friday that less affluent countries trying to take the same path will put the planet “under water.” In an interview with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Mr. Obama said he hoped social-media “connectivity” will help convince developing nations to eschew fossil fuels, which contribute to rising carbon-dioxide levels in the atmosphere but are also less expensive and more reliable than green energy alternatives. “In terms of the problems we have to solve, energy is a classic example, the issue of climate change,” Mr....

Exodus 9:7 And Pharaoh sent, and, behold, there was not one of the cattle of the Israelites dead. And the heart of Pharaoh was hardened, and he did not let the people go. Brexit is a major victory for the British people and a loss for Marxism. This is the biggest win against the global agenda since WWII and could be more far reaching than the war. At that time the Marxists were not as well established or accepted as they are now and only had a fraction of the power they do now in their capitals of London, Paris,...

Entitlements are “the realities of how people live now” and “necessities of a 21st century economy,” so “we’ve got to retool our system,” Pres. Obama declared Tuesday. Speaking at the White House Summit on the United State of Women, Obama said America has “got to retool our system,” because guaranteed benefits are a vital and immutable way of life …

At least one professor in America does not feel the Bern. University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Professor Jack Stauder says his political and ideological conversion away from socialism and Marxism occurred when he actually witnessed these systems in action. After traveling to more than 110 countries to pursue various forms of research, notably cultural anthropology, Stauder described his conversion from Marxism as a process of disillusionment. “I gradually became disenchanted with Marxism by visiting many of the countries that had tried to shape their societies to conform to its doctrines. I was disillusioned by the realities I saw in … socialist...

SYDNEY, Australia - Australian researchers say rising sea levels have wiped out a rodent that lived on a tiny outcrop in the Great Barrier Reef, in what they say is the first documented extinction of a mammal species due to human-caused climate change. The rodent was known to have lived only on Bramble Cay, a minuscule atoll in the northeast Torres Strait, between the Cape York Peninsula in the Australian state of Queensland and the southern shores of Papua New Guinea. The long-tailed, whiskered creature, called the Bramble Cay melomys, was considered the only mammal endemic to the Great Barrier...

GENEVA - The U.N. weather agency is warning of "fundamental change" afoot in the global climate and continued warming, accompanied recently by unusually high rainfall in parts of the US and Europe. The World Meteorological Organization was pointing Tuesday to data released by NASA a day earlier showing that this May was the hottest on record, and the Northern Hemisphere spring has been the hottest spring ever.

The Paris floods, that saw extreme rainfall swell the river Seine to its highest level in decades, were made almost twice as likely because of the manmade emissions driving global warming, scientists have found. As artworks in the Louvre were moved to safety and Paris's cobbled walkways were submerged, the French president, Francois Hollande, blamed the floods on climate change. Now a preliminary analysis by a group of scientists, including the Dutch weather agency and the University of Oxford, has concluded the risk of the flooding event in Paris was almost doubled - multiplied by a factor of 1.8 -...

Thine, O LORD is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty: for all that is in the heaven and in the earth is thine; thine is the kingdom, O LORD, and thou art exalted as head above all. 1 Chronicles 29:11 KJV The riots at the Trump rallies underlines the intolerance of thought by the cult of liberalism. This cult has been developed over the decades by the Three Pillars of Propaganda (academia, media and the DNC). These three work as one to destroy capitalism and progress their Marxist agenda throughout the masses....

A nine-year-old in Fresno, California, named Logan Autry was asked by school officials to remove his Donald Trump hat because it, in his words, “brings negative emotions to the other children who don’t like him.” The third-grader’s “Make America Great Again” hat is even autographed by the business mogul himself, so it makes sense that the child wore it three days in a row.

Hamburg, Germany — WE Germans can never escape the trauma of our recent history. That has rarely been clearer than today, as we look around our Continent and across the Atlantic. There are almost too many differences to mention between what happened in the 1930s over here and what is going on today. And it goes without saying that Donald J. Trump and Austria’s Norbert Hofer are not Adolf Hitler. Still, Germany’s slide into a popular embrace of authoritarianism in the 1930s offers a frame for understanding how liberal democracies can suddenly turn toward anti-liberalism. Setting aside debate about whether...

When Australia's most successful Olympian, Ian Thorpe, came out as gay in an interview with Sir Michael Parkinson in July 2014, he was inundated with messages of support. At the time, some posed the question: does this even count as news? Is homosexuality today not a simple biographical detail rather than a sensational scandal? And yet, it is significant that on the same night that Thorpe came out, Australian Rules Football commentator Brian Taylor used a homophobic slur on air, referring to Geelong player Harry Taylor as a "big poofter." The two events accentuated perfectly why it remains the case,...

Study forecasts global temperature increases of up to 9.5 degrees C. The unmitigated burning of Earth's remaining fossil fuels would cause global warming on a scale bigger than previously anticipated, according to a new study out of the University of Victoria. Katarzyna Tokarska, a PhD student at the university, is the lead author of a new paper titled "The climate response to five trillion tonnes of carbon". Previous modelling, including those used by the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, use projections that assume just two trillion tonnes of carbon would be released.

The Lee Amendment to defund President Obama’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) regulation failed in the Senate yesterday because not enough Republicans backed it. The Amendment was tabled by a vote of 60-37. Jeremy Carl aptly describes this vote as a defeat for conservatism, community control, and common sense. It is a victory, as Carl says, for turning the federal government into a National Zoning board, forcing high density housing on unwilling cities and towns, and letting bureaucrats decide the racial, ethnic and income balance of local communities.

A look at some of Britain's most left leaning citizens that promote extreme social justice and censorship.

Venezuela's opposition has urged the public to defy a state of emergency that President Nicolas Maduro decreed over a nation sapped by food shortages and a collapsing economy. Key points: Opposition-controlled parliament rejects the President's state of emergency decree The opposition leader asks army: are you "with the constitution or with Maduro" Polls show 70 per cent of the population wants a new government The opposition-controlled National Assembly rejected the decree in a vote, saying it "deepens the severe disruption of constitutional and democratic order that Venezuela is suffering through".

Right now, thousands of people are taking direct action as part of a global wave of protests against the biggest fossil fuel infrastructure projects across the world. With so many governments still dependent on a fossil fuel economy, they can't be relied upon to make the radical change required in the time we need to make it. It is unjust that corporations and governments can commit crimes against the planet and society without retribution. And if we really want climate justice, protest in the pursuit of this must be normalized. To overcome political barriers, we need to reclaim our power...

My understanding of gender has been both clarified and fortified by this project. Gender is an identity we are given or assume based on an antiquated societal structure which is then reinforced by that society. It is an idea which we take for fact. I suppose I have always felt somewhat awkward in my female gender because I identify with so many ‘male’ characteristics. I feel more comfortable now than before and embrace more wholly both sides without suspicion. The discussions I’ve had with Alison MacNeil have informed a lot of what I thought I knew about gender and identity....

Imagine if everyone was guaranteed healthcare and an income floor. People would still pursue their calling in life. In fact, they could do so more freely with more creativity and daring without the fear of not making ends meet. It would unleash the enormous creative potential that lays dormant within the hearts and minds of so many office workers, toiling away as their best ideas and dreams wither away.