Free Republic

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia sent a pair of nuclear-capable long-range bombers to patrol the skies over Belarus on Saturday, a mission intended to underline close defense ties between the two allies amid tensions with the West. The Russian Defense Ministry said the two Tu-22M3 strategic strike bombers practiced “performing joint tasks with the Belarusian air force and air defense.” Su-30 fighter jets that Russia has supplied to Belarus escorted the bombers. Saturday’s four-hour patrol marked Russia’s third such mission in Belarus since last month... ...The Belarusian leader wouldn’t elaborate on what kind of Russian weapons Belarus would be willing to...

The 8th annual Islamic Arts Festival took place over the weekend in Spring, just thirty miles north of Houston, which is home to an estimated 200,000 Muslims. This year, over 6,000 people personally visited the event during its two-day run — over 1,000 of them were non-Muslims. Khawaja Azimuddin, a member of the Islamic Art Society’s board, said creating the festival eight years ago was a way to show American Muslims in a positive light. “The original thought behind organizing the festival was to promote something positive within the Muslim community in the country,” he said. “Quite often Americans hear...

Film producer Ali Akbar sparked the controversy by becoming Ramasimhan – the name he chose for himself. He said that Ramasimhan was a man who was killed when he stood close to his culture and therefore that name was appropriate for him. Following disgraceful reactions to the news of the death of General Bipin Rawat, Ali Akbar deactivated his Facebook account. He was also affected by the fact that no religious leader called out such reactions and decided to convert. He made his announcement through a new account. He also said that he would not force his daughters to change...

Two rockets were fired in the direction of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad on Saturday, with one of them shot down by the U.S. military and the other missing the embassy compound, Fox News has confirmed.... ...No group had yet claimed responsibility for the rocket fire, the report said. The incident came ahead of an end-of-year deadline set by Iranian-backed militias for the U.S. to withdraw its forces from Iraq, according to the Post. On Dec. 9, the top U.S. commander for the Middle East said the U.S. would keep the current 2,500 troops in Iraq for the foreseeable future...

January 2, in Hamtramck's centenary year, when Amer Ghalib will be inaugurated, along with an entirely Muslim city council. Hamtramck will become the first known city in the US with a government made up entirely of Muslims, according to the Muslim Public Affairs Council, which says it has no record of any other such administration. ...Mayor-elect Ghalib was born in Yemen and came to the United States alone as a young man, with a smattering of broken English and little else. He's now 42, works in the medical field and is studying to become a doctor. Hamtramck's heyday had apparently...

I Believe in Father Christmas.

"The song's Brainwashed by Tom MacDonald"

"A false witness shall not be unpunished, and he that speaketh lies shall not escape" (Proverbs 19:5 KJV).

"The New York Post reported, “Twitter workers made 561 contributions through Actblue, the Democratic Party-linked payments processor, vs. just eight through its Republican counterpart, WinRed.” Dan Gainor of the Media Research Center, the non-profit conservative watchdog group, told the Post, “The one percent shocks. They have somebody who actually gave to the GOP. I’m stunned.” ..."

"Nobody riffs on Eric Clapton — least of all bootleggers. As one widow just learned, Clapton doesn’t take too kindly to anyone profiting off of his music — not even just $11. The Cream guitarist has won a copyright infringement case against a woman in Germany who attempted to sell a burned copy of a Clapton concert recorded in the 1980s. DW reported that she copied the work from a CD purchased at a department store by her late husband in 1987. The 55-year-old woman from Ratingen was selling the ripped disc on eBay for €9.95, or about $11.25. Minus...

Fatih Yuksel is one of thousands of Turks rushing from one pharmacy to another in search of imported drugs that are disappearing as quickly as the lira is losing value.... ...Turks have been rattled by a currency collapse that accelerated when President Recep Tayyip Erdogan last month launched a self-declared "economic war of independence" that defies conventional market theory... ...Global supply chain bottlenecks caused by the coronavirus pandemic have resulted in jumps in the price of most raw materials, which make domestically produced medicine more expensive. Turkish drug suppliers are also angry with the government over delayed payments....

Hamtramck, Michigan (CNN)For decades, Hamtramck was known as Michigan's "Little Warsaw," a city of just two square miles of tightly-packed houses and factories, spitting distance from downtown Detroit. The Polish Cardinal Karol Wojtyla visited once, back in 1969, before he became Pope. A statue of Wojtyla, arms outstretched, still casts a shadow over what's now called Pope Park, where a huge mural of Polish folk dancers stretches almost an entire city block. In the 99 years since its incorporation, every mayor of Hamtramck has been Polish American. That ends January 2....

An investigational COVID-19 vaccine made by Novavax was found to be 90 percent effective at preventing COVID-19 illness, according to results from a Phase 3 clinical trial published on December 15, 2021, in the New England Journal of Medicine. The University of Maryland School of Medicine’s (UMSOM) Center for Vaccine Development and Global Health served as one of the trial sites, and Karen Kotloff, MD, Professor of Pediatrics at UMSOM, served as Co-Chair for the trial protocol. In the study, researchers recruited nearly 30,000 adult volunteers at 113 clinical sites in the United States and six sites in Mexico. Approximately...

BREAKING!!! Suspects in Homesh terror attack apprehended UPDATING Police Spokeswoman (Border Police): Following intelligence and operational activities of the General Security Service, the IDF and the Yamam Swat, an operation took place tonight in the village of Silat al-Haratia, during which four suspects were arrested in connection with the shooting attack in which the late Yehuda Dimentman was killed near the Homesh. As part of the detainees' field investigation, Amalach, the suspect who was used to carry out the attack, was arrested. The suspects were transferred for further GSS investigation. Security forces will continue to work to bring justice to...

The Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) on Saturday announced a six-day grace period beyond the Jan. 4 deadline for compliance with its COVID-19 vaccine mandate for private employers, saying that it would not issue citations to give employers more time to adjust.OSHA said in a Dec. 18 statement that it would not be issuing citations to businesses for noncompliance with any requirements of the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccine-or-test mandate for private companies employing 100 or more people until Jan. 10. It will also not issue any citations for noncompliance with the mandate’s testing requirements until Feb. 9.COVID-19 is the...

Three companies and Missouri’s attorney general are asking the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) to stay the Biden administration’s vaccine mandates for private businesses with 100 or more employees.Three companies—Phillips Manufacturing & Tower Company, Sixarp LLC, and Oberg Industries LLC—filed an emergency application (pdf) for an injunction on Friday, saying the Biden administration is pursuing unlimited federal executive power in the vaccine mandate for private businesses.“There is no dispute among the parties about the common desire to end the scourge of the COVID-19 pandemic,” reads the application. “The arguments advanced by the Executive Branch admit to no cognizable limits on federal...

Moloch is preparing for the end of his bacchanalia of child-killing.Last week, a clear majority of the Supreme Court signaled that it was finished dipping its hands into the blood of millions of legally slaughtered Americans (see Supreme Court Humiliates Biden, Refuses to Stop Texas Heartbeat Law, and Gorsuch and the Wise Latina Have a Public Spat). By leaving in place a Texas law that outlaws abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected, five justices essentially ruled that a state has the right to regulate abortion much as it can regulate tattooing and acupuncture.The assumption that the illegal Roe abortion...

How can it be said objectively any other way?Drug companies and the Biden administration continue to use America’s children as young as six months old as human guinea pigs by injecting them with COVID “vaccinations,” in response to which serious side effects have occurred on occasion, WHO partner Gavi reported, including a rare inflammatory disease, while potential other side effects remain unknown.That is not a hyperbolic statement.Now we learn that Pfizer and BioNTech again delayed releasing ongoing trial results of children ages 6 months to under 5 years old, after the companies found that the two-dose regimen didn’t generate a...

"Spider-Man: No Way Home is CRUSHING real box bffice records, not manufactured ones. Exposing the disaster that has been The M-She-U and woke Hollywood overall. Make a good film, without subverting or desecrating a popular character or characters and filling it full of identity politics and people will show up. However you feel about the film there is no doubt that the Hollywood Box office narrative from the past year was just that. A narrative."

Kentucky GOP Sen. Rand Paul lashed out at critics who called him a hypocrite for requesting federal funds when his state was devastated by tornadoes, but he has a lengthy history of opposing disaster-relief bills, The Washington Post reported. On Saturday, the morning after a storm created historic tornadoes, Paul wrote President Joe Biden a letter asking him to move "expeditiously to approve the appropriate resources for our state." The most damage and destruction hit Kentucky, with more than 70 people killed. "We should do all we can to help our Kentucky neighbors. God be with them — they are...