Free Republic

The Austrian government is hiring people to “hunt down vaccine refusers,” according to a report published by Blick.Yes, really.The burden for enforcing the fines unjabbed Austrians will have to pay as part of their punishment will fall to their employers, necessitating a new army of ‘inspectors’ to ensure that process is running smoothly.The city of Linz, which is home to 200,000 inhabitants, has a relatively low vaccination rate of 63 per cent.In response, “Linz now wants to hire people who are supposed to hunt down vaccine refusers,” reports Swiss news outlet Blick.The role of the inspectors will be to check...

Powerful bureaucrats sought to squash those who promoted alternatives to the government’s tyrannical coronavirus lockdown strategy.Outgoing National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins lamented that the Great Barrington Declaration was getting “a lot of attention”. “There needs to be a quick and devastating takedown of its premises,” the NIH Leader told his colleagues Lawrence Tabak, Cliff Lane and Anthony Fauci in an email from October, 2020.For those who are not familiar, the Great Barrington Declaration sought to end coronavirus lockdowns, opting for an approach they dubbed “Focused Protection,” which would aspire to achieve “herd immunity” while protecting the most vulnerable....

In the past few days, German politicians have declared messaging app Telegram a threat to democracy and a hotbed of radicalization. The latest round of attacks on free communication comes after weeks of protests in Germany against the COVID-19 measures. Protests have been mobilized via Telegram and other online community platforms. Since the beginning of December, the debate about the Telegram app has raged across the German media. Concurrent to the protests news stories – such as from the Tagesschau and Deutsche Welle – framed the platform as a hub for dangerous conspiracies, vaccine misinformation, and the driving force behind...

There’s no Christmas without panettone. Or so say 70 per cent of Italians, who admit they cannot fathom a festive season without their beloved sweet bread. Before its recent rise to fame in the US and the UK, the staple festive treat had adorned Italy’s kitchens for centuries and in a variety of forms. From honeyed bread in ancient Rome, or a simple loaf with sugar and raisins in the Middle Ages, to the present-day buttery version, packed with raisins and candied fruits. For some families, however, this Christmas stands to be somewhat bittersweet. In addition to the financial impact...

Beloved, just wanted to share this truly a sweet and great Christmas nativity movie musical with a total Jewish feel to it!! Not seeking to push Amazon but they don't make movies like this any more. It is especially great for children. Can't recommend it enough! This 45 minute movie is called; Promise: Birth of the Messiah. Check it out now on Prime Video! Enjoy and a Savior was born! The Kingdom of God is at hand! https://www.amazon.com/Promise-Birth-Messiah-Clara-Scott/dp/B08NJY36WH

Emergency Room Doctor: "I Am Blowing the Whistle" - "THE VACCINATED ARE DYING - AUSTRALIA"

In Joel and Ethan Coen’s “Inside Llewyn Davis,” Oscar Isaac’s folk musician is trying to make it on his own, without his longtime partner. He travels to Chicago to audition for Bud Grossman, who gives the damning judgment: People need time to get to know you, he says, "buy you as a solo act.” “The Tragedy of Macbeth,” Joel Coen’s first time directing without his brother, is going much better for him than it did for Llewyn. An intoxicatingly expressionist Shakespeare adaptation dense in fog and shadow, Coen's “Macbeth” is a solo debut from a filmmaker whose visual virtuosity has...

DENVER (AP) — Relatives, lawmakers and other supporters of a trucker sentenced to 110 years in prison after an explosive brake-failure accident that left four people dead rallied in Denver Wednesday to plead for clemency. Supporters of Rogel Aguilera-Mederos say the sentence is deeply unjust and truck drivers around the country have taken up his cause, using hashtags like #NoTrucksToColorado and #NoTrucksColorado. Speaking at the rally at the state Capitol, Leonard Martinez, one of the lawyers representing Aguilera-Mederos, said the injustice of such long sentences needs to be addressed, both by reforming sentencing laws but also looking at the actions...

A body positivity website has created free "Don't Weigh Me" cards for patients who find stepping on the scale at the doctor's office stressful. The cards, created by California-based More-Love.org, are available for free to individuals, excluding the cost of postage. There is also the option for businesses to purchase the cards, at $35 per 100 cards. The cards read: "Please don't weigh me unless it's (really) medically necessary," adding "If you really need my weight, please tell me why so that I can give you my informed consent," as shown in photographs on More-Love.org:

Explanation: Birds don't fly this high. Airplanes don't go this fast. The Statue of Liberty weighs less. No species other than human can even comprehend what is going on, nor could any human just a millennium ago. The launch of a rocket bound for space is an event that inspires awe and challenges description. Pictured here, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Kennedy Space Center, Florida earlier this month carrying the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE). IXPE is scheduled to observe high-energy objects such as neutron stars, black holes, and the centers of distant galaxies to better determine...

Pope Francis appeared to take a shot at Hungary on Wednesday, insisting “no country can exempt itself” from the obligation to take in migrants. On Tuesday, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán rejected a ruling by the European Union’s (EU) Court of Justice that his government had “failed to fulfil its obligations” to relax its immigration laws. “We will maintain the existing regime, even if the European court ordered us to change it,” Orbán said Tuesday in his end-of-year news conference. “The reality is that we have to stop the migrants at the borders,” he declared. “This can be solved by...

Gov. Tom Wolf on Wednesday vetoed legislation that would have required public schools to post online educational materials used in their classrooms. The legislation was billed as a way to give parents easier access to the curriculum being taught to their children but the governor and Democrats saw it as an unfunded mandate meant to intimidate educators and hurt students’ learning opportunities. “Under the guise of transparency, this legislation politicizes what is being taught in our public schools,” Wolf said in his veto message. The bill would have required school administrators to post and periodically update course syllabuses, course summaries,...

If so many container ships are stuck in the Pacific Ocean, waiting for weeks for a berth in Los Angeles or Long Beach, why not reschedule calls to another port? Why not make like Kurt Russell as Snake Plissken in the circa-1996 film and “Escape from LA”?It’s not that simple, given how much warehousing and transloading capacity is built around the Southern California gateway — and congestion is affecting every port in America. Even so, shippers and carriers are indeed moving to sidestep Los Angeles/Long Beach. In the ongoing battle for Asian imports between the West Coast and East Coast,...

Democratic Congresswoman Mary Gay Scanlon was the victim of a carjacking in Philadelphia's FDR Park on Wednesday afternoon. She had her car, purse, wallet and phone stolen but was not injured, her office confirmed.

In a Tuesday letter to Baker, Joint Committee on COVID-19 and Emergency Preparedness Co-chairs Sen. Jo Comerford of Northampton and Rep. William Driscoll of Milton expressed support for the National Guard call-up but expressed concerns about numerous issues based on testimony they received last week. (snip) Comerford and Driscoll also referenced COVID-19 spread in congregate care settings. “Given the spike in COVID cases within congregate care settings, it is imperative that the administration open quarantine and isolation shelters across the Commonwealth,” they wrote. “It is our understanding that there are critical, emergent capacity issues which threaten public health.”

A South African expert announced on Tuesday that the country had passed the peak of the fourth wave of Covid-19 infections. Associate Professor Marta Nunes added that although the number of infections remained high, hospitalisations were low. Scientists in South Africa first sounded the alarm about the Omicron variant less than a month ago. "Well I think it indicates that we have passed the peak of the fourth wave, so I think it was a short wave that, we predicted that when we start seeing really the huge amount of cases, so the, was a very steep increase from baseline...

The global pandemic should come to an end next year, according to officials at the World Health Organization. “2022 must be the end of the COVID-19 pandemic,” said WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, speaking Wednesday at the organization’s last planned briefing of the year on the coronavirus. Tedros said he believed the pandemic will end next year because, two years into the situation, “we know the virus very well and we have all the tools [to fight it]."

Monday's CME, which burst from the sun at 6:36 a.m. EST (1136 GMT), is expected to reach Earth on Thursday (Dec. 23). It stemmed from a powerful M1.9-class solar flare that erupted from a sunspot called Active Region 2908, according to Spaceweather.com. "The auroral oval is likely to be slightly enhanced at high latitudes from the 22nd to 24th due to coronal hole geomagnetic activity enhancement, and the chance of a weak coronal mass ejection arriving on the 23rd," the Met Office wrote on its website. According to the European Space Agency's (ESA) Space Weather Network, the sun has been...

New York Assembly Member Nick Perry (D-Flatbush 58) says he's formally withdraw Assembly Bill A416, which would have allowed New York's Governor to arrest and indefinitely imprison anyone suspected of being a public health risk. (snip) In the beginning of November, the Biden Administration nominated Nick Perry to be the US ambassador to Jamaica. Critics say Perry's bill would have proven to be a liability at Perry's impending Senate confirmation hearing.

Astronomers first learned about free-floating planets in the 1990s, but many unanswered questions remain, such as the conditions under which they form, their size and composition, and their relative abundance in the galaxy. This effectively doubles the total number of known free-floating planets—a sign that the total population of rogue planets in our galaxy is huge. The newly detected rogue planets were detected in nearly 20 years’ worth of astronomical data, including observations gathered by the European Southern Observatory, the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, the Subaru Telescope, and ESA’s Gaia satellite.