Free Republic

The United Arab Emirates (UAE)’s recent cancelation of its plan to buy 50 Lockheed F-35 fighter jets worth $23 billion from the United States showed that the close trading partnership between the UAE and China could be playing a role. The cancelation means that the UAE has chosen Huawei’s 5G technology over the F-35, which is used by the US as a “favor” to form military alliances with other countries. At the US request, the UAE previously agreed to halt the construction of a logistic port that is being built by China. But this time, strong US pressure has failed...

COVID-19 has ebbed and flowed. Originally, we were warned it could be a Black Death-style disaster; it turned out to be more like a very serious influenza season, with perhaps two or three times the mortality of a normal flu, mostly concentrated among the elderly—a nontrivial social cost, but still a manageable situation. At various times, it also appeared that we were out of the woods. The grim experience of New York in early 2020 was not repeated in most of the rest of the country. Rather, the initial wave came and went far less dramatically, with the vast majority...

About two and a half years ago, we told readers China was panic hoarding food, which was several months before the virus pandemic began to spread worldwide; Beijing has managed to stockpile more than half of the world's maize and other grains that have resulted in rapid food inflation and triggered famine in some countries. In August 2019, we asked the question: Does China believe that we are on the verge of a major global crisis? The communist Chinese government has always been very big into planning, and it appears that they have decided that now is the time to...

Places with highest daily reported cases per capita Seven-day average of daily new reported cases per 100,000 residents

Congratulations to Steve Bannon for becoming the most trusted media source in America today. On Tuesday, far-left Media Matters announced the winner for ‘misinformer of the year’. This year’s award goes to Steve Bannon. What this proves is that Steve Bannon is constantly over the target. And as our readers know, Steve Bannon has been the absolute best at sharing the truth and unparalleled at confronting the Marxist onslaught in America today. If Americans want the truth all they have to do is watch Steve Bannon’s War Room and read The Gateway Pundit. Media Matters, the brainchild of dark and...

<p>While the fear of getting fired has risen sharply among C-suite executives due to various disruptive forces buffeting their businesses, a mere 3 percent identified COVID-19 as their top worry, according to the CEO of management consultancy AlixPartners.</p><p>In a Dec. 27 interview with Yahoo Finance, AlixPartners CEO Simon Freakley previewed some of the topline findings of the forthcoming 2022 AlixPartners Disruption Index, which surveyed over 3,000 senior executives globally across multiple industries to find out what keeps them awake at night.</p>

"I hope you don't mind if I do this," he began. "The world is mourning Bishop Tutu, who just died the other day. Can I remind the world that although he did some good things, a lot of good things on apartheid, the man was a rampant anti-Semite and bigot?" Dershowitz went on to claim that Tutu had minimized the Holocaust and "compared Israel to Nazi Germany." Dershowitz told Newsweek his remarks stemmed from Tutu's "criticism of Jews." "He didn't talk about the Israel lobby, he talked about the Jewish lobby," Dershowitz said. "He minimized the suffering of Jews during...

If you spend too much time observing the way politicians speak, you'll pick up an almost perceptibly mechanical gear-shift in their heads when the brain-groove reminds them to reproduce an anecdote or talking point they have formulated so many times before. Occasionally the subconscious rebels against the alienating monotony with apologetic prefix clauses like, "That's why I like to say," or "I always tell the story that," but the pre-sets mostly override such human twitches to deliver the desired political result.So it was for President Joe Biden's counterproductive "pandemic of the unvaccinated" slogan, which the White House COVID-19 Response Team...

“[Christ] is . . . the first-born of all creation” (Colossians 1:15). Christ is the preeminent inheritor over all creation. Puritan minister Thomas Manton once said, “Heresies revolve as fashions, and in the course of a few years antiquated errors revive again, and that by their means who did not so much as know them by name.” He was right: false doctrines keep repeating themselves through the ages, only to reappear under different names. From the Arians of the early church to the Jehovah’s Witnesses of our own day, cultists have sought to deny our Lord’s deity. One of the...

News AnalysisThere is a growing belief among some Western analysts that increasingly closer relations between Beijing and Moscow—driven by economics or great-power politics—could eventually blossom into a military alliance.Most, however, are more doubtful that the countries will be able to build, in Joseph Nye’s words, “a serious partnership to challenge the West.”Alliances are based on mutual utility: each partner must be demonstrably useful to the other. And, frankly, Russia offers little advantage to China.In the first place, Russia is barely a great power, let alone a superpower. The most generous economic data give the country a GDP of around US$4.3...

STOCKTON, Mo. (KY3) - A special prosecutor filed eight new charges against a Stockton doctor wanted for sex crimes while associated with the Agape Boarding School. Dr. David Smock, 56, is on the run from law enforcement. KY3 News learned of eight new charges filed by a special prosecutor, including one count of sexual misconduct, five counts of statutory sodomy, one count of child molestation, and a count of child enticement. Smock also faces charges of second-degree statutory sodomy, third-degree child molestation of a child less than 14 years of age, and enticement or attempted enticement of a child less...

Washington Democrats hope to go easy on drive-by murderers in order to promote racial equity for criminals. It’s the latest light-on-crime scheme pushed under the guise of being anti-racist. House Bill 1692 lessens the criminal penalties for drive-by shootings. It prohibits using a drive-by shooting as a basis for elevating a first degree murder charge to an aggravated first degree murder. The bill is also retroactive, lessening punishment for those already found guilty in drive-by shooting cases. It even offers carve-outs to release felons from jail if they committed their violent act when they were under 21-years-old. The bill’s sponsors,...

A family being checked for vaccine passports in NYC. Credit: Cyn Clagar/Twitter video screenshot New York City is one of the most restrictive cities in the country with a vaccine passport imposed to allow people to enter many public places — including restaurants — since September.But some folks against the mandates have been trying to challenge that, entering restaurants without the passport and protesting. In response, the NYPD has been making arrests.Last night some people went to a Burger King to order food. They were refused service because they didn’t have vaccine passports and were arrested. Five were charged...

The last few days have certainly been noteworthy as far as the left’s views of COVID-19 are concerned. After almost two years of them calling people grandma killers and keeping a running tally of cases in the South, things are suddenly shifting.As RedState reported, the president himself admitted defeat on COVID, proclaiming that it cannot be solved with a federal response. Of course, that’s something the rest of us have been saying since the beginning, but I digress.Hilariously, some of Joe Biden’s supporters in the media are doing their best to explain away his statements.Biden's "this gets solved at a...

Before taking off for the holidays, the four long-standing hosts of “The View” had a message for executive producer BRIAN TETA: We’re tired of the rotating cast of Republican guest hosts.

Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople tested positive for the coronavirus during his regular diagnostic tests today. He is fully vaccinated and currently showing mild symptoms, reports Romfea. The Patriarch thanks all who have shown an interest in his health and urges all to get vaccinated. He also wishes all a blessed feast of the Nativity.

This young man took to his Twitter account and blog to confess he has become a cliché. Hari Raghavan spent years sneering at those exiting the State of California, but now admits he is making this move. Raghavan is a tech guy (big surprise), who is trampling the wilted rose of the Silicon Valley under his feet for the more lustrous waves of Silicon Beach.Watch out, new red state: another champagne liberal who contributed to the mess in their own state is coming to make their mark on yours.So, here we go. I’m moving out of the Bay Area.This is...

Driving a golf cart around his small and immaculate desert ranch, Ray Epps appears a man in his element. Cattle graze contentedly as he makes his rounds of the property he's transformed into a thriving wedding venue business, focusing on the location's rustic charm. However, the tranquil scene just outside Phoenix, Arizona, could not be in starker contrast to one in which he is also associated – the storming of the Capitol Building on January 6.

The Church has always addressed the whole world. It has become even more relevant in the modern world, losing its former limitations. Apostles used to preach about Christ in Greek, which at the time was the language of international communication. Nowadays, such a language is English. Thus, there is no reason why the Russian Orthodox Church should not speak this language as well. Therefore, an English-language training program for foreign students has been developed on the basis of the already existing and successfully operating Russian-language online platform of the Moscow Theological Academy. The one-year curriculum includes the main theological and...

Archbishop Carlos Castillo Mattasoglio of Lima, Peru, has yet to clarify remarks he made in a pre-Christmas Mass that contradict the teaching of the Catholic Church about Jesus’ death. The Catechism of the Catholic Church affirms that Jesus is “the true priest” whose death is “a redemptive sacrifice.” Speaking on Dec. 19, however, Castillo stated that Jesus died as “a layman,” and did so without offering a "sacrifice." "And Jesus doesn’t die offering the sacrifice of a holocaust, Jesus dies as a murdered layman, to which He decides not to respond with vengeance and who accepts the cross to give...