Free Republic

The Democratic National Committee and members of Congress are turning to Hollywood for help with voter turnout and messaging ahead of the midterm elections and 2020 presidential campaign, quietly consulting with a group of actors, writers and producers here. DNC Chairman Tom Perez, several House members and other top elected officials have already met with the group, formed by members of the entertainment industry in the wake of the 2016 election, that participants liken to a TV writers’ room, complete with producers of such programs as “Veep.” The existence of the group and details of the meetings have not been...

The Evanston, Illinois Police Department held a gun turn-in on Saturday, offering $100 for any gun dropped off, no questions asked. People turning in guns had to identify themselves as being from a limited geographical area. They had to be residents of Skokie, Evanston, or the North side of Chicago. [ED: We have no idea why Evanston would make that a requirement] It’s interesting to note that ID has to be used to turn in guns to the police, but is forbidden as a requirement to cast a vote. The requirement for I.D. was no doubt due to Second...

Iranian officials, in a first, have admitted to facilitating the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the U.S. by secretly aiding the free travel of al Qaeda operatives who eventually went on to fly commercial airliners into the Twin Towers in New York City, according to new remarks from a senior Iranian official. Mohammad-Javad Larijani, an international affairs assistant in the Iran's judiciary, disclosed in Farsi-language remarks broadcast on Iran's state-controlled television that Iranian intelligence officials secretly helped provide the al Qaeda attackers with passage and gave them refuge in the Islamic Republic, according to an English translation published by Al Arabiya....

"Save my heroes from suicide." Prince Harry has raised serious concerns about the number of British soldiers committing suicide after returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. The Prince confided his fears about a recent surge in suspected suicides in a private letter to a decorated former war hero. His intervention comes as an investigation by The Mail on Sunday reveals veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are now taking their own lives at a faster rate than their comrades died on the battlefield. At least 12 veterans are feared to have killed themselves since the start of the year...

Iranian officials, in a first, have admitted to facilitating the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the U.S. by secretly aiding the free travel of al Qaeda operatives who eventually went on to fly commercial airliners into the Twin Towers in New York City, according to new remarks from a senior Iranian official. Mohammad-Javad Larijani, an international affairs assistant in the Iran's judiciary, disclosed in Farsi-language remarks broadcast on Iran's state-controlled television that Iranian intelligence officials secretly helped provide the al Qaeda attackers with passage and gave them refuge in the Islamic Republic, according to an English translation published by Al Arabiya.

The Council on Foreign Relations delivered an Orwellian presentation recently that unsurprisingly went unnoticed in the mainstream media, in which CFR’s Richard Stengel forwarded the notion that governments “have to” direct “propaganda” at their own domestic populations. The Council is recognized as one of the United States’ oldest and most establishment think tanks of the American power-elite, and it often sets the agenda on important policy questions—or, as former senior editor at the Washington Post, Richard Harwood, in a column entitled “Ruling Class Journalists,” approvingly described the Council as, “the nearest thing we have to a ruling establishment in...

“A dictatorship requires three things: a man, an idea, and a following ready to live for the man and the idea, and if necessary to die for them. If the man is lacking, it is hopeless; if the idea is lacking, it is impossible; if the following is missing, the dictatorship is only a bad joke.”Thus said Joseph Goebbels, the “Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda” for Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. To his list of three requirements for a dictatorship, I would add an obvious fourth (given his office, I’m surprised Goebbels didn’t mention it): propaganda. In order...

Scientists announced they are on the cusp of perfecting technology that would pull CO2 from the air and convert it into a fuel source. The tool could help humans reverse some of the effects of global warming and perhaps give our planet a second chance. In a study published Thursday in Joule, scientists at the Canadian company Carbon Engineering explained their CO2 extraction plans. The machine works by sucking air into cooling towers, the. Once inside the towers, the CO2 comes into contact with a liquid that captures the gas. Once captured, the CO2 would then be used as the...

The invasive and aggressive Asian tiger mosquito, capable of infecting people with rare diseases like the Zika virus and dengue fever, is now expected to spread through almost all of Connecticut by 2040, according to a new state report. The Council on Environmental Quality’s annual report also warns that “Infection rates of West Nile Virus and other mosquito-borne diseases are likely to rise as a warming climate creates more favorable habitats for mosquitoes.” “I don’t want to scare anyone,” said Armstrong, who was a co-author of a study published last year on the spread of Asian tiger mosquitoes in this...

When tropical cyclones slow, they drop far more rain, sparking even more devastating floods. Future climate change is expected to slow them still more. Tropical cyclones, including hurricanes and typhoons, are now crawling across the planet at a slower pace than they did decades ago, dragging out and amplifying their devastation, new research published Wednesday shows. At the same time, related research published just last month suggests that warming temperatures from climate change will slow storms more in the future. "Nothing good comes out of a slowing storm," says James Kossin, with the NOAA's Center for Weather and Climate, and...

On the surface, the show of people power in this former Soviet state has striking similarities to the ouster of pro-Russian leader Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine in 2014, or Eduard Shevardnadze in Georgia in 2003. There are differences, however, argues Moscow-based political analyst Karine Gevorgyan. “In Armenia, in particular, this situation is not linked with being oriented either to the West or to the East, like it was in Ukraine, but with being tired of inefficient, counterproductive power in government,” Gevorgyan told VOA in an interview. No Moscow puppet Anahit Shirinyan of the policy institute Chatham House agrees and says...

CNN appears to be on a mission to help Hamas destroy Israel. CNN has spent the past month actively assisting Hamas terrorists with media propaganda dissemination as the terrorists continue their attempt to overtake Israel. CNN headlines always point the finger at Israel as a culprit, and always shower Palestinian terrorists with white lies to bolster them. CNN stories are propagandizing art. A story about months of continuous attacks on Israeli border and infrastructure by terrorists and their recruits becomes a story of a nurse killed due to Israeli overreaction to what CNN described as “largely unarmed” “protests,” a regurgitation of Hamas...

The algorithms that Google uses to filter out "fake news" and ensure that its readers get the straight story ended up labeling the California Republican Party's ideology as "Nazism" in its "search results." This timely smear comes just a week ahead of the state's primary elections next Tuesday. Google CEO Pichai Sundararajan (alias: Sundar Pichai) explained the seeming "snafu" as "a logical end point for the algorithms we coded into our search engine. Historically, the ideologies of Nazism and Communism have been the most vociferous opponents of one another. Since the platform of the California Democratic Party is fundamentally indistinguishable...

In places closer to the equator that usually see only slight variations in temperature, the consequences of global warming are likely to be far more extreme. The outsize vulnerability of the world’s poorest people to damaging effects of climate change like droughts and floods is well established. It’s harder for people to overcome disasters in regions without the resources and infrastructure that are plentiful in wealthier parts of the world. Now, a new study published in Geophysical Research Letters adds insult to injury. By mapping economic and social development to climate models’ “signal-to-noise ratio” - which compares normal local temperature...

Climate change is hitting America as rain, and we’re making it worse. Two years ago, Ellicott City, Maryland, was hit by a debilitating flash flood that turned the town’s historic Main Street into a raging muddy river. Scientists said the July 2016 rainstorm was a once-in-a-thousand-year event. But on Sunday it happened again: 7 to 9 inches of rain fell in the area, 10 miles west of Baltimore, and another torrent swept cars and trees through town. It’s a reminder that heavy rain, rather than rising seas, may be the earliest severe consequence of climate change. We’ve prepared for it...

Nasa’s output of climate change information aimed at the public has dwindled under the Trump administration, with a former employee claiming “fear and anxiety” within the agency has led to an online retreat from the issue. Laura Tenenbaum, a former science communicator for Nasa, said she was warned off using the term “global warming” on social media and restricted in speaking to the media due to her focus on climate change. “Nasa’s talking point is that it’s business as usual, but that’s not true,” said Tenenbaum, who departed Nasa in October after a decade at the space agency. “They have...

Global warming could bring a serious problem for the two billion people on the planet who depend on one grain for their staple diet: less nutritious rice to sustain them. Scientists have found that rice grown at higher levels of carbon dioxide has an overall lower nutritional value. The grain contains lower levels of protein, and iron and zinc - metals vital for health in trace form - and also consistent declines in vitamin B. The people most likely to feel the consequences of reduced nutritional support - and these include impaired cognitive development, a feebler immune system, obesity and...

There may have been a real White House briefing with real White House officials, but The New York Times couldn't be trusted to accurately summarize what the White House official said. And it wasn't on a minor point. On the path to the June 12 summit with North Korea, journalists claimed President Donald Trump would not be willing to walk away from the negotiating table because he was too desperate for a win. The Washington Post’s David Nakamura wrote that “critics fear that a president determined to declare victory where his predecessors failed will allow his desire for a legacy-making...

... A new study published in Nature Scientific Reports suggests that there is a strong relationship between the quantity and duration of snow in a forest in Poland during the winter and the number of weasels wearing white the following winter. Clearly this is not a fashion decision on the part of the local weasel population. The scientists behind the study looked at two subspecies of the rather charmingly named “least weasel”, Mustela nivalis nivalis, which does change its colour in the winter, and Mustela nivalis vulgaris, which does not. When there is deep snow, weasels of both colours tend...

In the United States, the percentage of adults identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender has increased to 4.5 percent, according to a year-long survey, which also shows that the biggest increase has been among millennials. Gallup's daily tracking in 2017 has found that more than 11 million adults now identify as LGBT in the country, which is 4.5 percent of the population — up from 4.1 percent in 2016 and 3.5 percent in 2012. The increase is driven primarily by the millennials, meaning those born between 1980 and 1999, as those from this group who identify as LGBT rose...