Free Republic

The 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing is meant to showcase world-class athletes. Instead, the world is getting a sickening glimpse into the inner workings of the Chinese Communist Party and its efforts to paper over whatever reflects poorly on the regime. It’s difficult for China to hide its sins while under the white-hot spotlight brought on by the games, and that includes the mysterious recent disappearance and reappearance of the three-time Olympic Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai. On Nov. 2, Peng used a social media post to accuse vice-premier of the Chinese Communist Party, Zhang Gaoli, of forcing her to...

When It Comes to Marxism, Bad Ideas Don’t Get Better with Age It is time for the God and country loving, flag-waving, baseball playing, hot dog and apple pie eating, and Chevrolet driving crowd to get off their blessed assurance and get a little more involved.Bad ideas don’t get better with age, even when we have the “intellectually gifted” repeating them loudly and more frequently. Let’s take the monstrosity of Marxism, for example. When I was in my formative years in the early to mid-1980s, most normal folks would have politely laughed at anyone professing to follow anything from the...

Documents obtained by NATIONAL FILE show that the University of Pennsylvania, which hosts and funds Joe Biden’s think tank called the Penn Biden Center, directly profits from the sale of Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna Coronavirus vaccines. The University gets more money if more vaccines are sold. The University of Pennsylvania also gets “milestone payments” when the Biden administration’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approves a Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which represents a massive conflict of interest for Biden. .... NATIONAL FILE’s source explained to us that “UPenn earns massive payments (actual terms confidential, likely in the billions)” from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines. .......

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul is planning to lift the Empire State's mask mandate this week - what the NYT described as a "watershed moment" in New York's struggle against COVID - a decision that follows a similar move by NJ Gov. Phil Murphy made earlier this week. According to an NYT preview of Hochul's decision (which she confirmed in an announcement released just before noon, in New York) the governor "was not swayed" by similar moves made by neighboring Democrat-controlled states (*cough* New Jersey *cough*) and is basing her decision "purely on the latest data and consultations with public...

Meta suggests it may have to shut down Facebook and Instagram in the European Union (EU) if it’s no longer able to transfer data across the Atlantic between Europe and the US. While the suggestion appears to just be posturing, some top politicians in Europe seem almost hilariously unphased by the proposition. Meta’s suggestion was quietly mentioned in the company’s annual report to the US Securities and Exchange Commission last week. The remarks regard new EU legalization currently being drawn up that would require data processing service providers to set up safeguards against illegal data transfers to non-EU governments. “If...

Twisting the truth is our current Federal Government’s modus operandi. Look no further than White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki’s latest political gymnastics when she claimed, “We’ve not been pro-lockdown – most of the lockdowns actually happened under the previous President.”While technically true (most actual lockdowns happened in America under Trump), the reality is that Biden praised pro-lockdown governors like Andrew Cuomo of NY, deified lockdown advocate Anthony Fauci as “America’s scientist,” and insisted throughout his 2020 campaign that lockdowns were necessary.While our government officials may struggle with cognitive dissonance, Americans are taking notice as their trust in the federal...

NEW - Pelosi to Republicans: "Take back your party from this cult." Clip...

It's no secret that the Biden administration has failed to address the illegal immigration crisis along the U.S.-Mexico border, and at every turn has taken what seems to be the worst action available to them. Rather than addressing the border crisis, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) changed their mission statement on Wednesday to seemingly institutionalize Joe Biden's open-borders agenda by removing mention of "lawful immigration," "protecting Americans," or "securing the homeland." As of today, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has a new mission statement. Under Biden, USCIS removed mention of "lawful immigration," "protecting Americans," or "securing the homeland" and...

Alarmed that the recent Supreme Court overruling of President Biden's vaccine mandate "could unleash a monster wave of covid that will decimate the world's piopulation," T-Mobile proclaimed its own mandate. In a memo addressed to everyone alive, the Company announced that every employee, every vendor of components for our products, and every consumer of our services must be vaccinated by April 2, 2022." "Those not in compliance will be appropriately sanctioned," the memo added. "Disobedient employees will be fired, Vendors' contracts will be cancelled. Customers' cell phone service will be terminated." CEO Michael Sievert explained, "I was having nightmares that...

They’re back for the McCloskeys. The St. Louis couple came into prominence during the riotous and fiery “Summer of Love” of 2020 when a BLM mob broke a gate down to get into a secure neighborhood to hunt down the mayor. Mark and Patricia McCloskey, both attorneys, saw the mob break down the gate, armed themselves, and came out to their front yard to keep the mob away from their home. The mob stayed peaceful. The couple has been considered public enemy number one ever since that June 28, 2020 incident. The McCloskey’s biggest offense appears to be timing and...

In order to go from 'zero' to 'hero' very rapidly and give Canadians a good shot at acquired immunity, Trudeau should: > Acknowledge the good intention of the truckers' protest, > Apologize to the nation for his dereliction of duty on the whole issue of VAXX Passports, > Declare an end to all COVID mandates and > Empower the Canadian health services to explore and use all tested and promoted therapeutic treatments (HCQ, Ivermectin*, zinc, vitamins C, D, and E, etc). *The Nobel Prize version, not the 'horse paste' version, of course (sarc) His next step would be to retire...

In a January 28 interview with the Russian media about the Ukraine crisis, Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said, “if it depends on the Russian Federation, there will not be a war.” He also suggested that there were “kernels of rationality” in the formal responses to Russia’s demands that the United States and NATO had delivered a few days earlier. To some Western commentators, Lavrov’s comments were a hopeful sign that the Kremlin had achieved its intermediate aims and might be shifting course. According to this analysis, Russian President Vladimir Putin had the West exactly where he wanted it:...

Rep. Cedrick Frazier (D-MN) is giving single-payer health care advocates new hope in Minnesota after California’s $400 billion single-payer bill died in early February. Although Frazier’s bill has not yet been scored by Minnesota fiscal analysts, assuming California’s $10,000 per-person cost, and $163 billion tax increase were cast proportionally across 5.7 million Minnesotans, it would create a $23.2 billion per year tax increase and more than double Minnesota’s entire budget. And that’s only part of the problem.Frazier’s proposal would replace private health insurance in Minnesota with an unelected board to “cover all necessary care, including dental, vision and hearing, mental...

Activists are promoting the idea that pedophilia is a sexual identity that should be destigmatized, not an activity. Media outlets are amplifying activists’ efforts to redefine and destigmatize pedophilia. Some commentators see a relationship between this effort and the push to indoctrinate children about LGBTQ issues. Media outlets have provided a microphone to activists who want to destigmatize pedophilia and redefine it as a sexual identity separate from any criminal activity. At the same time that activists push for a respectable place in society for pedophiles — who are called minor attracted people — some conservative commentators and concerned parents...

The Department of Homeland Security issued a bulletin on Tuesday that sounds precisely like a prelude to a totalitarian crackdown on political dissent from the preferred narratives of the Biden regime and the Deep State. Read the opening of the summary:The United States remains in a heightened threat environment fueled by several factors, including an online environment filled with false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories, and other forms of mis- dis- and mal-information (MDM) introduced and/or amplified by foreign and domestic threat actors. These threat actors seek to exacerbate societal friction to sow discord and undermine public trust in...

Microlensing strikes again. Astronomers have been using the technique to detect everything from rogue planets to the most distant star ever seen. Now, astronomers have officially found another elusive object that has long been theorized, and that Universe Today first reported on back in 2009 but has never directly detected – a rogue black hole. That detection comes at the end of a 6-year observational campaign, with dozens of authors collaborating on a paper recently published in arXiv (meaning it has not yet been peer-reviewed). Those six years of painstakingly gathered data all started back in 2011, when a star...

HOW THE NATION OF UKRAINE RANKS: 1st in Europe in proven recoverable reserves of uranium ores; 2nd place in Europe and 10th place in the world in terms of titanium ore reserves; 2nd place in the world in terms of explored reserves of manganese ores (2.3 billion tons, or 12% of the world's reserves); 2nd largest iron ore reserves in the world (30 billion tons); 2nd place in Europe in terms of mercury ore reserves; 3rd place in Europe (13th place in the world) in shale gas reserves (22 trillion cubic meters) 4th in the world by the total value...

The new McDonald’s menu hacks do not actually feature any new items you can order on the menu. Instead, they are permission slips for you to become fast food Ozymandias, building carb-laden meat monuments to hedonism. Look, ye mighty, and despair as these works crumble in your hands because you basically just smashed three cheap sandwiches together -- all because travelers from an antique land called TikTok said it was cool. To be clear, you get absolutely nothing special if you try to order these items on the menu. If you order a Surf +Turf, all that’s going to happen...

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canadians say they are concerned political strife in the United States will undermine security and economic growth at home, according to a new poll, as an anti-vaccine mandate protest praised by former U.S. President Donald Trump gripped the capital and affected the border. The anxiety captured in the Angus Reid Institute survey provides a backdrop to protests across the country, at the international border, and especially in Ottawa. The Ottawa protest, now in its 13th day, has been marred by the appearance of hateful symbols, like the Confederate flag, associated with the aggressive populism embraced by Trump...

Someone really should do something about all the racism on college campuses. ... Take the recent Southern Illinois University Edwardsville incident, in which a black female student discovered sticky notes scrawled with racist messages on her dormitory door. A racist sent the student racist text messages and someone even sent racially insensitive death threats. Horrible. ... The perpetrator, it turns out, is also the victim.