Free Republic

The Army's new 'world beating' Challenger 3 tank will outgun anything in Putin's ranks, the Defence Secretary has said as he announced an £800million upgrade for Britain's armoured forces. The lucrative contract will see the military equipped with 148 of the 'most lethal' main battle tanks in Europe, complete with faster-travelling ammunition and unrivalled tracking systems, Ben Wallace said yesterday. The fleet of fully-digitised Challenger 3 tanks will be produced at the Rheinmetall BAE Systems Land (RBSL) plant at Telford in Shropshire and will replace the existing Challenger 2 vehicles which have been in service since 1998.

Historian and author Jon Meacham said Friday on MSNBC’s “The ReidOut” that America’s Founding Fathers wanted ideas like critical race theory and “The 1619 Project” to be part of the national conversation.

Preparation for Russia's extravagant annual victory day parade have been held in Moscow's Red Square on Friday ahead of the 76th anniversary of Nazi Germany's surrender and the end of the Second World War. The huge celebration is held every year on May 9, a day after Western Europe celebrates VE Day on May 8 due to the time difference between Russia and other Soviet Bloc countries, and Central European Time. Thousands of glamorous soldiers have been pictured during a dress rehearsal for Sunday's event, which will see the military demonstrate its might in Moscow's Red Square in front of...

What is the name of the police officer at the Minnesota show trial? His given name is Derek Chauvin, but the circumstances of this trial suggest that perhaps his last name may as well be Dreyfus. French officer Alfred Dreyfus was neither the first nor the last to suffer from the mass hysteria of the brainless crowd. He was eventually acquitted on appeal, but there is no guarantee that the same fate awaits this Minnesota police officer. What’s common to both the Chauvin and Dreyfus cases is that a phony press, high-ranking politicians, and well-brainwashed citizens played a decisive role...

The ancient Cambodian capital of Angkor Wat, had a staggering 900,000 inhabitants before it was abandoned in 1431, according to a new study. An international team, led by the University of British Columbia, examined three decades of data to create a demographic model of the Medieval city. Their model revealed that the capital of the long-gone Khmer Empire housed between 700,000 and 900,000 people during its zenith in the 13th century.

At the height of the French Terror, Maximillian Robespierre recommended that in the name of equality all church steeples be demolished. The reason? They towered over other buildings and thus signified conflict with the principles of equality. For the Left, destruction is always the means for achieving “equality.” The inexorable logic of leveling differentiations, be they institutional or in nature itself, has now reached the level of insanity. Today’s revolutionaries have taken the principle of destruction of hierarchies, including religious hierarchies, even further than the most ardent advocates of the Terror. In the name of liberty, equality, and fraternity, they...

It is so obvious that even before Christ brought me to Himself, I realized abortion advocates had arrogantly redefined “baby” to justify committing murder. Babies in the womb became “a clump of cells.” They obviously were dehumanizing the child to make his murder less onerous, more palatable. Indeed, once the child’s humanity was disestablished, it was a short step to defining abortion as something good, like extracting a decayed tooth or removing a wart. To do this necessarily required changing the meaning of the word that refers to what mothers carry in their wombs. Language is how we communicate. Words...

I was procrastinating again. . .which was not unusual for me. . .I could have written the book on procrastination. . . except I just could never get around to it. Mother’s Day was Sunday and this was Friday, so I had only a little time left to get my act together and get downtown to get my Mom a present. I was planning to meet my friends, Currie, Carpenter and Short after school; downtown at the soda fountain at Rexall’s Drugstore. That’s where we would have a round of cherry cokes before we headed off to the carnival that...

Once the Senate returns from its latest recess, the world’s greatest deliberative body will take up a Resolution of Disapproval under the Congressional Review Act for a Trump era rule which aided working class Americans in obtaining access to financial instruments. Progressives are so blinded by hatred for banking institutions, they are giving Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) a platform to rail against the industry and to advocate for further government intervention in the sector. For this attack on liberty and the working class to be successful, the Democrats only need one Republican to validate this effort...

"Backlash grows over woke CIA video--Former CIA officer Bryan Dean Wright on Tuesday told 'Fox & Friends' the agency had pushed 'woke propaganda.' "'What happens when you hire a bunch of folks who are wokesters going out into the world that is not woke?.. As an analyst, are they going to bring nuance to their analysis or are they going to bring any degree of unbiasedness to their job? Of course not. They’re activists now.'" [...]"Former secretary of state and director of the CIA Mike Pompeo said the U.S. couldn’t afford to risk national security to “appease some liberal, woke...

Join with fellow FREEPERS across the world to pray for AMERICA: For those in Authority in Government, Family, Military, Business, Agri-Business, Healthcare, Education, Churches, Technology, and the Media. I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone: for kings and all those in authority that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. (1 Timothy 2:1-2) Religion Forum threads labeled [Prayer] are closed to debate of any kind.HOW YOU LIVE YOUR LIFE IS A TESTIMONY OF WHAT YOU BELIEVE ABOUT GOD - Henry Blackaby

A federal court in the Northern District of California entered an order today authorizing the IRS to serve a John Doe summons on Payward Ventures Inc., and Subsidiaries d/b/a Kraken (Kraken) seeking information about U.S. taxpayers who conducted at least the equivalent of $20,000 in transactions in cryptocurrency during the years 2016 to 2020. The IRS is seeking the records of Americans who engaged in business with or through Kraken, a digital currency exchanger headquartered in San Francisco, California.“Gathering the information in the summons approved today is an important step to ensure cryptocurrency owners are following the tax laws,” said...

Pursuant to the Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy — which sounds like it could have only come straight out of either Hogwarts or the Politburo — Facebook’s “independent” Oversight Board has exiled Donald J. Trump from the realm of modern communication. Put another way, about 20 unelected former political leaders, journalists and human rights activists have suffocated the speech of a former president of the United States of America. But hey, what do politicians, not to mention journalists or human rights activists, know about the universal right of freedom of expression these days, anyway? So there you have it, America...

‎‎ As indirect talks between the representatives of the Iranian and ‎American regimes in Vienna to return to JCPOA and lift the sanctions ‎of former US President Trump continue behind closed doors, and ‎different news of an approaching agreement is leaked after each ‎round of talks, the burning question still remains to be answered: Will ‎reaching a new accord under the same 2015 agreement prevent the ‎regime from gaining access to the atomic bomb?‎ Apparently, Joe Biden's diplomatic apparatus is naively optimistic that ‎negotiations and reaching an agreement can prevent the mullahs from ‎gaining access to the atomic bomb. But...

Four Eastern European nationals have pleaded guilty to conspiring to engage in a Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organization (RICO) arising from their providing “bulletproof hosting” services between 2008 and 2015, which were used by cybercriminals to distribute malware and attack financial institutions and victims throughout the United States.According to court documents, Aleksandr Grichishkin, 34, and Andrei Skvortsov, 34, of Russia; Aleksandr Skorodumov, 33, of Lithuania; and Pavel Stassi, 30, of Estonia, were founders and/or members of a bulletproof hosting organization. The group rented Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, servers, and domains to cybercriminal clients, who used this technical infrastructure to disseminate malware...

Note: A copy of the indictment against Chauvin et al. can be viewed here and the two count indictment against Chauvin can be viewed here.WASHINGTON — A federal grand jury in Minneapolis, Minnesota, returned two indictments that were unsealed today. The first indictment charges former Minneapolis Police Department officers Derek Chauvin, 45; Tou Thao, 35; J. Alexander Kueng, 27; and Thomas Lane, 38, with federal civil rights crimes for their roles in the death of George Perry Floyd Jr.The three-count indictment alleges that all four defendants, while acting under color of law, willfully deprived Mr. Floyd of his constitutional rights,...

WASHINGTON – A federal jury convicted an Iranian citizen and a resident of the United Arab Emirates and Germany, for scheming to obtain military sensitive parts for Iran in violation of the Iranian Trade Embargo. These parts had dual-use military and civilian capability and could be used in systems such as nuclear weapons, missile guidance and development, secure tactical radio communications, offensive electronic warfare, military electronic countermeasures (radio jamming), and radar warning and surveillance systems.According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, Mehrdad Ansari, 39, of Iran, attempted to transship and transshipped cargo obtained from the U.S. by co-defendants...

An Illinois man pleaded guilty today to the theft of more than $115,000 in campaign funds from the McSally for Senate Campaign in 2018 and 2019.According to court documents, Anthony Barry, 33, of Yorkville, served as a deputy campaign manager and consultant for former U.S. Senator Martha McSally. Barry used his position in the campaign to fraudulently direct the campaign to make payments to him beyond what he was owed for his salary and had the fraudulently obtained funds deposited into his personal bank account.Barry pleaded guilty to an information charging him with one count of unlawful conversion of campaign...

The Labor Department's April employment report showed unemployment ticking up. This contradicted expert expectations that the Biden stimulus spending would generate a million more jobs. Only 266,000 jobs were created during the month. President Biden blamed former President Trump, saying that "the attack on the Capitol that he ordered his followers to carry out has made a lot of people too scared to take a job. They fear that a right-wing mob may swarm their place of employment and expose them to the same dangers that faced members of Congress on January 6th." Chamber of Commerce executive vice president and...

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) signed a bill Friday that will ban the teaching of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in the state’s public schools. CRT is a Marxist-based philosophy that embraces the concept that all social and cultural issues should be viewed through the lens of race and racial identity. Critics of CRT say its emphasis on identity politics creates greater division, rather than unity.