Free Republic

What’s going on in the mind of Vladimir Putin? Why did he choose this moment to invade? The conditions are perfect right now for Putin and tyrants around the world to expand their power and territory. Who among the Western leaders has the moral authority to demand that tyrants like Vladimir Putin resist their dictatorial urges? For the past two plus years of the pandemic, Putin observed Western leaders repeatedly lying to their people. When they weren’t outright lying, they were hiding the data. As they pushed mask and jab mandates, Western politicians hid data on their efficacy or lack...

Fueling suspicion that SARS-CoV-2 originated in a lab in China, researchers have discovered a tiny piece of DNA in the virus that matches the genetic sequence patented by Moderna three years before the pandemic began. The odds of Moderna's sequence occurring naturally are about one in 3 trillion, according to the researchers. The code was discovered in SARS-CoV-2's unique furin cleavage site, the part of the virus that binds to human cells, allowing it to cause infection, London's MailOnline reported. Many scientists have been saying for some time that the furin cleavage structure could not have developed naturally. In the...

In the 1970s – when we had another dogma-driven nonentity in the White House -- we used to say a neo-con is a liberal who was just mugged. Today, we are all being mugged -- literally and figuratively -- by the feckless policies of a semi-sentient, septuagenarian who’s taking a wrecking ball to the economy, the culture and national security before he builds back whatever.Mugged at the pump – The price of gasoline has risen roughly $1.00-a-gallon since Biden took office. It’s expected to reach $4.00-a-gallon sometime this spring. In 2020, we were energy independent for the first time...

The American people were manipulated and turned against each other to hide government mismanagement, while many died unnecessary deaths due to suppression of early treatment options. Countless workers had to choose between losing their jobs or being coerced into accepting a medical treatment – Covid vaccination – they preferred to refuse. Businesses were disrupted, closed, and harmed, and the fabric of American society was deeply scarred.

<p>Love is in the air for Amy Schneider and "fiancée" Genevieve. Schneider, who won hearts after becoming the second all-time winner on "Jeopardy!", revealed the happy news Thursday on Twitter by sharing a photo of her and Genevieve's hands side-by-side, both with an engagement ring."I have an announcement: Genevieve is no longer my girlfriend... she's my fiancée!!! I couldn't be happier or more proud to spend my life with the very best person in the entire world," Schneider gushed Her Instagram post revealed more details about the proposal. "She said yes! Well, actually I said yes, but then I wanted to propose too, so she said yes as well lol," Schneider shared.</p>

The Centers For Disease Control and Prevention is being accused of “scientific fraud” after it admitted that it has been withholding “large portions” of COVID-19 data from the public, including the efficacy of booster shots. The New York Times revealed in a bombshell report on Sunday that, according to agency sources, the CDC has only published a small sample of the data it has been collecting due to fears that certain information could lead to vaccine hesitancy. Kristen Nordlund, a CDC spokeswoman, told the Times that the reason for the ongoing lack of transparency is “because basically, at the end...

Hacking group Anonymous has declared 'cyber war' against Vladimir Putin's government after he mounted a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The elusive computer experts issued the stark announcement on their Twitter account on Thursday evening. They said shortly before 10pm: 'The Anonymous collective is officially in cyber war against the Russian government.' Around 30 minutes later, they announced that they had taken down the website of the Kremlin-backed TV channel RT, which broadcasts in Britain and has been heavily criticised for its coverage. When MailOnline attempted to access the site this morning, it was still inaccessible and only displayed an error...

For those trying to keep up with the fast-moving events in Ukraine, it may be helpful to consider some lessons of history. Mistakes made in the past week, added onto developments covering the last two or three centuries, have left the United States and its European allies -- in particular the largest of them, Germany -- unable to prevent President Vladimir Putin's Russia from absorbing an as yet undetermined part of a theoretically independent Ukraine. One lesson of history is contained in the aphorism, "If you set out to take Vienna, take Vienna." It's attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte, who in...

Guy Reffitt has been in jail since he was arrested by the FBI nearly 14 months ago. Reffitt, like dozens of Americans who protested the unlawful election of Joe Biden, isn’t in jail because he was convicted of a crime. Neither is Reffitt in jail because he has a criminal record—he does not—or a history of threatening his Bonham, Texas neighbors or community. Instead, Reffitt has languished behind bars for more than a year because Joe Biden’s Justice Department asked a federal judge to keep him detained awaiting trial for his participation in the Capitol protest on January 6, 2021....

One of Amazon’s guiding leadership principles is to “earn trust.” If Amazon Web Services (AWS) customers took that motto to heart, they would be searching for a new cloud provider. Between its continued security breaches and its sleazy practice of locking customers into exorbitant bills, all that AWS has earned is the expectation that it will cost its clients dearly in both data and dollars. Last month, a cloud security company uncovered two critical vulnerabilities in AWS’s system that went undetected by the cloud provider. These vulnerabilities placed AWS customers at serious risk for a dangerously long period of time....

I'm pretty sure that this has been posted already. Some really interesting facts about Ukraine natural resources. How the independent, sovereign, democratic 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...

Ukraine Government Is Handing Out Guns To Citizens, What Happened to Gun Control? Ukraine Citizens Guns:https://www.mrcolionnoir.com/go/uscca/ I've had countless conversations with people who swear the idea that anyone would fight back with guns against a tyrannical government is ridiculous. The government in Ukraine is not only telling its citizens to buy guns and carry them, they're saying we will give you guns so that you can fight back against what they consider to be a tyrannical government. It's time to wake up people. You'll never be progressive enough to outrun reality.

Over 1,200 have already been arrested across the country. It takes a certain kind of bravery to protest in President Vladimir Putin's Russia, especially on the day he sends his country to war. I watched hundreds of people on a bitterly cold evening in Moscow on Thursday, as they marched against what the government here describes as a "special military operation" in Ukraine. Over 1,200 have already been arrested in more than 50 towns and cities across the country for publicly opposing the attack. Most of them were young. Kids who, in another country, would have bright, happy futures. A...

Inspector of the Army Lt. Gen. Alfons Mais described the army as "standing bare" and said it would be limited in its capabilities should it be asked to assist in a NATO mission in a post he shared on his LinkedIn profile, Stripes.com reported. But Mais claimed in the post that the army would be limited in its capabilities to assist in a NATO mission: "The options we can offer policymakers to support the Alliance are extremely limited." According to the report, Mais appealed to his government to do more to boost its combat readiness in 2014, following the Russian...

"One small thing to be thankful for is that DJT is not in the White House as the Ukraine crisis unfolds. He'd side with Russia," tweeted Francis Fukuyama, author of "The End of History and the Last Man." The headline on Eugene Robinson's Washington Post column reads, "With Biden standing firm, Putin must wonder: Where's Trump when I need him?" You could find similar sentiment from foreign-policy experts strewn across social media. Surely, even former President Donald Trump's most passionate antagonists must be slightly curious as to why Russian President Vladimir Putin, the real villain of this tale, didn't move...

Hacker collective Anonymous has disabled several Russian government websites including the state-controlled "Russia Today" news service. Hackers identifying with the Anonymous collective announced they had launched cyber operations that briefly took down RT.com, as well as the websites of the Kremlin, the Russian government and the Russian defence ministry websites. RT.com confirmed the attack took place, saying it slowed some websites down while taking others offline for "extended periods of time". RT's coverage of the situation in Ukraine has been overwhelmingly from a pro-Russian perspective, showing fireworks and cheerful celebrations in the newly occupied territories. In the UK, MPs have...

When Russia's Vladimir Putin demanded that the U.S. rule out Ukraine as a future member of the NATO alliance, the U.S. archly replied: NATO has an open-door policy. Any nation, including Ukraine, may apply for membership and be admitted. We're not changing that. In the Bucharest declaration of 2008, NATO had put Ukraine and Georgia, ever farther east in the Caucasus, on a path to membership in NATO and coverage under Article 5 of the treaty, which declares that an attack on any one member is an attack on all. Unable to get a satisfactory answer to his demand, Putin...

They are not 'Liberal', they are tyrannical. They are not 'Progressive', they are destructive. They are not 'Democrats', they are socialists. They are not for 'peasants', 'workers', 'national liberation', or lately, for the 'environment' or for 'equity'. They are in for power. Power for power's sake. And deceit is their most formidable tool. Evil facades. And most of us fall for their deceit by calling them for what they want to be called. We help them hide their insidiousness. We are complicit when we continue calling them by their chosen labels: 'Liberal', 'Progressive', 'Democrat', 'Environmentalist', 'labor leader', 'non-binary', and on...

COVID has unchained leftists, who are now openly insisting that freedom is fundamentally evil. Beverley McLachlin, former chief justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, recently wrote an opinion piece in which she said of those in the Canadian truckers Freedom Convoy: “Freedom, misconstrued as a license to do and say whatever one wants, is dangerous.” The erstwhile jurist stated, “Let’s not allow the freedoms we cherish to become ugly freedoms.” She added, "Freedom without limits slides imperceptibly into freedom to say and do what you want about people who don’t look like you or talk like you.” Huh? The...

In February 2014, Russian kingpin Vladimir Putin invaded and subsequently annexed the Crimean Peninsula, which had been under Ukrainian jurisdiction. The timing was no accident, coming as it did only a handful of months after then-President Barack Obama reneged upon his own chemical weapons "red line" for Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, effectively leaving the resolution of the then-nascent chemical weapons crisis in Putin's hands. Putin, like a shark smelling blood, sensed weakness and acted accordingly. To this day, Crimea remains under de facto Russian control. It is not exactly a mystery what motivates Putin's actions on the geopolitical chessboard. He...