Free Republic

Seabed circles ‘Whodunnit?’ solved by David Catchpoole 5-24-19 In 1995, divers off the coast of Japan discovered a circular structure about two metres (6 ft) in diameter carved in the seafloor sand. Consisting of multiple ridges symmetrically radiating out from a small patterned circle in the centre, more of these geometric seabed formations were soon discovered nearby. These ‘underwater crop circles’—as some dubbed them—mysteriously came and went, and “appeared to be the work of an underwater artist, carefully working with tools. … But who or what created them?”1

International communism is more powerful and unified today than it has been since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. And it’s coming for America. For several decades, the United States has based its foreign and defense policies on two wildly incorrect and dangerously false assumptions: Communism is dead. Even if “communism” isn’t quite dead, modern communism (and formerly communist nations) are hopelessly split and divided. Vietnam hates China; China hates Russia; North Korea hates everyone; Cuba loves everyone on the left, but is virtually broke. So is Venezuela. If we can keep them divided, we are safe. On...

Pakistan: a record number of honor killings hits a dozen in two weeks Pakistan has struck up a record number of honor killings in the space of two weeks. A dozen cases have been reported. That’s almost one a day. Islamic honor killings are often denied by Islamic supremacists. Take for example an article which is titled “There is no honor in honor killings” in Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper. Firstly, it is obvious that there is no honor in honor killings; however, there is no denying either that the practice is done precisely to ‘preserve’ the so-called honor of...

The wreck of the last slave ship ever to reach American shores has been found in a river delta near Mobile, Alabama, according to the state's historical commission. In 1860, on the eve of the American Civil War, the schooner Clotilda took aboard 110 individuals in West Africa and sailed across the Atlantic to deliver them to slaveowners in Mobile. After they were unloaded, the ship was burned outside of the port. The transatlantic slave trade had already been banned in the U.S. for decades, and at the time of the landing, importing African people for purposes of slavery was...

The number of skilled professionals committed to a career in South Africa is declining according to the 2019 PPS Graduate Professional Index (GPI) published on Wednesday (April 22). PPS, a mutual financial services company that focuses exclusively on graduate professionals, conducted an independent survey of 5,837 members at the beginning of 2019 to gauge their perceptions on a number of issues affecting their professions, both now and in the near future. Graduate professionals working across the accounting, dental, engineering, legal, medical, pharmaceutical and other sectors were polled, and the findings of the survey shed light on the state of South...

Police in San Jose on Thursday arrested a man in connection with vandalizing the San Jose Veterans Memorial earlier this month.

Academic postmodernism is no stranger to the idea that classical Enlightenment values such as reason, equal treatment, and individual agency should be cast aside for the sake of racial and sexual grievances. We should denounce reason and science as the legacy of “dead white men”—or so we are told. Western academia has become both ideologized and infantilized, perhaps not unlike a giant kindergarten ruled over by a class of partisan bureaucrats who employ increasingly Orwellian tactics: censorship, data falsification, morality policing, doublethink, doublespeak. There is one paradox central to American identity politics that not only runs afoul of Supreme Court...

A disturbing trend of open support for the Palestinian Marxist-Leninist terrorist group the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, or PFLP, has emerged on the political Left amid rising anti-Semitism that hides behind the label of anti-Zionism. On May 8, San Diego State University English professor Peter C. Herman observed that an email from SDSU's Women's Resource Center included the slogan "From the River to the Sea Palestine Will Be Free," and a photo of Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist Leila Khaled clutching an AK-47. Khaled is famous for hijacking two airliners in 1970. She and...

Switzerland has voted to impose a slate of new gun laws that align the country more closely with the European Union, state media reported on Sunday. The measures would, among other things, require special waivers to own semi-automatic weapons with detachable “high-capacity magazines,” and impose a serial number tracking system for key parts of some guns. Gun owners would have to register any such weapons not already registered within three years, and keep a registry of their gun collections. However, as Mike from “Bloke on the Range,” a popular Youtuber based in Switzerland, told GunsAmerica via email, the implementation of...

Heads are exploding all over the beltway, as the unraveling of the biggest political scandal in American history enters a new stage. Make no mistake, there is a plan and a timetable designed for maximum dramatic impact. President Trump finally has taken the long-awaited step to lift the cloak of classification and uncover the weaponization of the federal government’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies against his candidacy and then presidency. The timing is intriguing. Coincidentally or not, this happened shortly after doing battle with Nancy Pelosi in a news conference where, in the words of the Wall Street Journal’s Michael...

The American/China Chamber of Commerce found that 82 percent of American-owned manufacturers in China are suffering significant pain from Trump Trade War tariffs. ‘AmCham’ surveyed business conditions for its 900 member American-owned companies operating across China during the week of May 16-20, following President Trump’s announcement that he was raising tariffs on $200 billion U.S. imports from  China from 10 percent to 25 percent. The survey found that due to the U.S. action and the retaliatory Chinese response, American-owned companies in China reported that 52.1 percent were experiencing lower demand; 42.4 percent were experiencing higher manufacturing costs and 38.2...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Thursday granted Attorney General William Barr new powers to review and potentially release classified information related to the origins of the Russia investigation, a move aimed at accelerating Barr’s inquiry into whether U.S. officials improperly surveilled Trump’s 2016 campaign. Trump directed the intelligence community to “quickly and fully cooperate” with Barr’s probe. The directive marked an escalation in Trump’s efforts to “investigate the investigators,” as he continues to try to undermine the findings of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe amid mounting Democratic calls for impeachment proceedings. Press secretary Sarah Sanders said in a...

The “old, white men” problem has been rolling down crooked rails for a long time now, driven by progressive feminist radicals. In newsrooms in the 1990s, I regularly heard how a City Council or County Commission or group of Legislators were just a bunch of “old, white men” invariably from female reporters. “White males” have long been the target of the left and their media allies in the now fully formed and mainstreamed identity politics of diversity. And now the last element has been demonstrated clearly in no less a publication than the Wall Street Journal. WSJ Headline: “CEOs Under...

SpaceX has launched 60 little satellites, the first of thousands that founder Elon Musk plans to put in orbit for global internet coverage. The recycled Falcon rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, late Thursday. The first-stage booster landed on an ocean platform, as the tightly packed cluster of satellites continued upward. Musk said Friday all 60 flat-panel satellites were deployed and online a few hundred miles (kilometers) above Earth. Each satellite is 500 pounds (227 kilograms).

Democrat hopeful Pete Buttigieg removing Thomas Jefferson's memory from the public square and ending the practice of naming public events in his honor.  The legacy of Jefferson, he said, is "problematic."  "There's a lot to admire in his thinking and his philosophy," he said, "but then again if you plunge into his writings, especially his notes on the state of Virginia, you know that he knew slavery was wrong." It's a stunning display of his ignorance, certainly.  But interestingly, Buttigieg has unknowingly pinpointed precisely why Thomas Jefferson should be eternally revered by our society, which believes that enslaving other human beings is...

President Donald Trump's order to declassify documents explaining the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation is "all nonsense," Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), the chairman of the House intelligence committee, told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Thursday night. Nadler said there's no "basis" to examine the origins of the FBI's Trump-Russia investigation. He called it an "imaginary scandal."

The British Academy has warned that theology and religious studies could "disappear" from universities after a study found that the number of students taking the subjects has halved. An analysis by the British Academy found a staggering decline in the numbers of students enrolling on the courses in just six years, down from over 14,000 students in 2011/12 to 7,585 in 2017/18. The decline covers a whole spectrum of programmes, from undergraduates, to masters, doctorates, foundation courses and diplomas. "Theology and Religious Studies has been on a downward trend in both applications and enrolment of undergraduate students from 2012/13 onwards,"...

At Fort Monroe, in Virginia, Major General Benjamin Butler refuses to turn over three escaped slaves to Confederate Major John B. Cary, declaring them “Contraband of War.” The slaves, property of Colonel Charles K. Mallory, had escaped from a Confederate installation at Sewell’s Point, across Hampton Roads from Fort Monroe. The Colonel Mallory had leased these slaves to the Confederate Army to help construct an artillery battery at Sewell’s Point

If we think the Bible teaches universal salvation, we may arrive at a false sense of assurance by reasoning as follows: Everybody is saved. I am a body. Therefore, I am saved. Or, if we think salvation is gained by our own good works and we are further deluded into believing that we possess good works, we will have a false assurance of salvation. To have sound assurance, we must understand that our salvation rests on the merit of Christ alone, which is appropriated to us when we embrace Him by genuine faith. If we understand that, the remaining question...

LONDON (Reuters) - Fighting back tears, Theresa May said on Friday she would quit, setting up a contest that will install a new British prime minister who could pursue a cleaner break with the European Union.May’s departure deepens the Brexit crisis as a new leader, who should be in place by the end of July, is likely to want a more decisive split, raising the chances of a confrontation with the EU and potentially a snap parliamentary election. Her voice cracking with emotion, May, who endured crises and humiliation in her failed effort to find a compromise Brexit deal that...