Free Republic

The highest oil prices since the 2008 financial crisis are dealing a heavy blow to the global economy, slowing Europe’s pandemic recovery to a near stall and complicating the fight against inflation in the United States. China, the world’s largest oil importer, will probably strain to reach this year’s economic growth target, while developing countries in North Africa and the Middle East confront the danger of social unrest over rising energy and food costs, economists said. The interruption of Russian oil shipments, including the U.S. import ban that President Biden announced Tuesday, represents one of the largest supply disruptions since...

WOW! Tbilisi, Georgia. 🇺🇦 (28 Feb 2022) Thousands of Georgians rallied in Tbilisi for a fifth consecutive day on Monday to express their solidarity with Ukraine and denounce the Russian invasion. Protesters packed Tbilisi's central streets to call for the Georgian government to join sanctions against Russia. Prime Minister Irakli Gharibashvili has said it is against Georgia's national interest to impose sanctions against Russia. "I feel that it is our moral responsibility to come out on the streets and express our solidarity with our Ukrainian brothers and sisters who are fighting with bear hands against Russian aggression," said Lekso Khubulava,...

STORY AT-A-GLANCEThe U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has stopped mandatory hospital reporting of COVID-19 deaths and the CDC is hiding data about the effectiveness of the booster shots in people aged 18 to 64, or those least likely to benefit from the shotThe New York Post notes the FDA overruled an expert advisory committee and the CDC overruled their own experts to promote the booster to all age groups. Scientists must use Israeli data, which show little to no difference in those boosted or not boosted until people are over age 65The CDC justifies not releasing the...

Finding out which high-ranking politicians and government officials were in on the Whitmer “kidnapping” caper just became a major part of a growing scandal. For months, defense attorneys representing the men accused of conspiring to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020 have built a convincing case of FBI entrapment, filing dozens of motions in federal court detailing how the government concocted the plot with at least a dozen FBI undercover agents and informants. But District Court Judge Robert Jonker wanted to delay presenting that trove of evidence at trial for as long as possible. Days before jurors took their...

On December 20th, Hillary Clinton Operative and Attorney Marc Elias tweeted out a shocking Un-American plan to use the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution to prevent conservative Republican stalwarts from running in the 2022 elections. Elias suggested banning Republicans for being “insurrectionists.” And anyone who confronts the regime should be labeled an “insurrectionist.” China does this same thing in Hong Kong.

Seoul (AFP) – North Korea has been using satellite subterfuge to test parts of a so-called "monster" missile, analysts say, as it gears up for a sanctions-shattering launch ahead of a key domestic anniversary. Pyongyang has conducted a record nine weapons tests so far this year, in what experts see as an effort to work through a laundry list of strategic weapons set out by leader Kim Jong Un. One top priority is an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that can carry multiple warheads -- the Hwasong-17, dubbed a "monster missile" and first unveiled at a parade in October 2020. It...

Ukraine may be a place where Western governments outsourced other activities that were too dangerous or too illegal to conduct at home. or a long time, Western companies have conducted much of their “dirty work” in other countries. Places like Mexico, Nigeria, and China have been popular because they are comparatively lax on worker safety, environmental protection, and transparency. Older readers may recall how Shell’s oil exploration in Nigeria and the conditions of the maquiladoras in Juarez used to be a common complaint of leftist activists, but you don’t hear much about “sweatshops” anymore. Private companies know that the United...

What was the need for all that happened in the period since mid-December when Russia transmitted to Washington its demands for security guarantees? This question will haunt US President Joe Biden long after he retires from public life. The foreign-policy legacy of his presidency and the reputation of this much-vaunted 80-year-old politician with a half-century’s record in public life, much of it supposedly in the domain of American foreign policy, are in tatters – irreparable. News has appeared that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has conceded that he is willing to concede to the Russian demand that his country will not...

Doing some research to see if anyone has heard about the True Patriot Network. I received an email regarding this network but can't decipher how it came to me. Any feedback on this would be appreciated. I'm looking to leave Facebook even though I haven't had problems except for hackers.

...“I just want to tell you that we are watching what's happening in Ukraine every single day from around the world,” Trudeau said. “And we are all standing with you and we all want this to be over as (soon) as possible. And to get your country back and to support your brave husbands and brothers and friends who are staying back to make sure that Vladimir Putin doesn't win. But you need to know that the West will be there for you as well.” With Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland serving as his translator, Trudeau listened as some of...

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Anti-vaxxers around the world are seizing on the premature death of Australia cricket star Shane Warne, trying to falsely link his death of a suspected heart attack at age 52 to the COVID vaccine. Within hours of the news breaking on Friday afternoon of the legendary cricketer’s shock death while on holiday in Thailand, people on Telegram groups focused on coronavirus conspiracy theories were claiming his death was linked to the COVID-19 vaccine. “Warne is just the latest corpse on the pile of vaccinated people dead from heart attacks,” read one typical post on a Telegram group associated with a...

When I was growing up during the late fifties and early sixties, there were lots of news stories about politics, war, crime, even an occasional article about a new dance craze. Juvenile delinquency was in its embryonic stage, with crime stories about teenagers with switchblade knives and membership in small neighborhood groups who wore apparel signifying what gangs they belonged to. There weren't any semi-automatic weapons available, so gang members might construct homemade pistols, known as "zip guns," which were made with rubber bands wrapped around a wooden frame, with a coat hanger or a car aerial attached. The rubber...

The Kremlin's invasion has now entered its 16th day and Russian forces continue to struggle to make real progress toward their objectives on the ground in Ukraine. In addition to turning to increasingly more brutal siege tactics in efforts to secure a number of important cities, which is causing a growing number of civilian casualties, Russian authorities look to be stepping up their disinformation campaign. Today, among other things, the Russian Ministry of Defense made a wholly unsubstantiated and outright bizarre claim that the U.S. government is somehow training birds infected with or otherwise carrying biological weapons to fly from...

Handloggers is the biography of Alaskan pioneer W. H. (Handlogger) Jackson and his wife Ruth Jackson, nee Ruth Johnstone. 251 pages, 1974, softcover. Jackson moved into Alaska about 1917-18, prospecting, handlogging, and trapping. He was born about 1883-84 in California when the fastest transport was a steam engine train. Most of his travels before 1920 were on foot, horseback, or by steamship. He married in 1927 and died in 1970. During his long outdoors career, he developed an outstanding reputation for skill and fair dealing. On page 225, Handlogger writes of the unprovoked black bear attack he foiled with a...

As Russia intensifies its assault on Ukraine, it is getting a helping hand from China in spreading inflammatory and unsubstantiated claims that the U.S. is financing biological weapons labs in Ukraine. The U.S. has been quick to refute Russia’s conspiracy theory, and the United Nations has said it has received no information that would back up the claim, but that hasn’t stopped it from proliferating. “This Russian military operation has uncovered the secret of the U.S. labs in Ukraine, and this is not something that can be dealt with in a perfunctory manner,” ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said Thursday.

Joe Biden may indeed be incompetent, stupid, and even demented. But he's a tool in implementing a far more malevolent and insidious agenda. This Biden regime is actually Obama’s third term, and the agenda being implemented is to bring about the "fundamental transformation" of America that Obama promised; it's all about the destruction of our economy and our system of government, the destruction of America as we know it. It’s the Cloward-Piven Strategy, and it's now on steroids. It's the roadmap for how to overload and break the system, and to break and eventually eliminate the middle class (and all...

China on Friday ordered a lockdown of the 9 million residents of the northeastern city of Changchun amid a new spike in COVID-19 cases in the area attributed to the highly contagious omicron variant. Residents are required to remain home, with one family member permitted to venture out to buy food and other necessities every two days. All residents must undergo three rounds of mass testing, while non-essential businesses have been closed and transport links suspended. The latest lockdowns, which also include Yucheng with 500,000 people in the eastern province of Shandong, show China is sticking to the draconian approach...

Holden Thorp is a very clever fellow. With a PhD in chemistry from Caltech and after some business ventures and a spell teaching at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he ascended to the chancellorship of the university in 2007 at the young age of 43. He resigned in 2013 amid allegations of widespread academic fraud in the Chapel Hill Department of African and Afro-American studies. Undeterred, Thorp went on to become provost at Washington University in St. Louis. In 2019 he became Editor-in-Chief of Science, one of the two premier general-science journals (the other is Nature, published...

The unprovoked Russian invasion of Ukraine has exposed the folly, peril and incoherence of 21st Century Globalism. Unlike the economic globalism of the 19th and early 20th centuries that focused on the concept of free trade of goods for goods, this iteration can be characterized by allegiance to irrational environmentalism and the creation of elitist global institutions determined to mold mankind and impose regimentation on countries and their populations to ostensibly “save the planet.” The operational underpinning of 21st Century Globalism is the extortion and intimidation of nations throughout the planet to acquiesce to radical “green” policies whose true objective...