Free Republic

ideo showing the true size of Russia compared to Africa has gone viral on TikTok as social media users learn about the misrepresentation of scale on many world maps. First posted in late February, the video had gained around 8.5 million views as of March 14 with just under 400,000 likes. In the video, footage of an interactive map shows an outline of Russia, which at first appears to dominate a huge section of the map. However, as the outline is dragged down towards the continent of Africa and the equator, Russia begins to shrink. By the time the outline...

A credible deterrent is designed to alter a potential aggressor’s calculations of risk and reward. Vladimir Putin determined that the potential cost of invading Ukraine was relatively low, and on Feb. 24 he attacked. It will be the job of historians to try to understand why deterrence failed. Deterrence involves two factors: capability and will. Capability means having the military strength to deliver intolerable damage to an adversary. Will is the determination to use that strength and deliver that damage. .....snip..... By signaling that the U.S. had no intention of using its capabilities, the Biden administration seriously weakened their deterrent...

Most of the world thinks that when Old Joe Biden indulges in his habit of leaning forward and dropping his voice to a whisper in the middle of a speech, he doesn’t appear persuasive but just weird and creepy. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-School of Leftist Indoctrination), however, has apparently been attending the Joe Biden School of Rhetorical Tricks, as she took to Instagram on Friday to whisper a “secret” to her followers: capitalism is bad, socialism is good. It doesn’t sound any truer whispered than it does spoken out loud.“Let me tell you a secret,” the renowned intellectual Congresswoman whispered....

A detailed list of the destroyed and captured vehicles and equipment of both sides can be seen below. This list is constantly updated as additional footage becomes available.

Authorities in Odesa accused Russian forces of carrying out a strike on residential buildings in the outskirts of the Ukrainian city early on Monday, the first such attack on the Black Sea port city. The city council said there were no casualties although the strike caused a fire.

The Ukrainian people are making great sacrifices fighting against Russia’s war machine, and their resistance is helping the free world. As NATO’s leaders meet this week in Brussels, now is the time for the alliance to repay this fortitude by escalating support for Kyiv. “Ukrainian forces have defeated the initial Russian campaign of this war. That campaign aimed to conduct airborne and mechanized operations to seize Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, and other major Ukrainian cities to force a change of government in Ukraine,” concludes the Washington-based Institute for the Study War (ISW) in a Saturday analysis. “Russian forces continue to make...

LONDON (Reuters) - Russia said on Monday it had used high-precision long-range rockets on a shopping centre which the Russian military said was being used as a weapons store by Ukrainian forces.Shelling hit a Kyiv shopping centre late on Sunday, killing at least eight people, wrecking nearby buildings and leaving smoking piles of rubble and the twisted wreckage of burned-out cars spread over several hundred metres."The areas near the shopping centre were used as a large base for storing rocket munitions and for reloading multiple rocket launchers," Defence Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov told reporters."High-precision long-range weapons on the night of...

VIDEOIt was just announced that this will be the final season of the "Maury" Show hosted by Maury Povich. This is certainly a sad time since it marks the loss of one of the great cultural landmarks of our era. Maury Povich, you ARE the father of our great cultural heritage! Your reruns will live eternally in our hearts forever.

Since Russia invaded Ukraine, thousands of Americans and other foreign nationals have signed up to fight for Ukraine, answering a call to action by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Now, as the conflict enters its fourth week, a growing number of foreign volunteers are flowing into the capital, signing contracts and receiving weapons and combat training before getting deployed to one of the numerous front lines of the war.They have been compared to the 32,000 foreigners, mostly Americans and Europeans, many of them equally unprepared, who joined the republican forces in Spain’s 1936-39 civil war. That conflict became a losing battle...

Jane Campion's The Power of the Dog battles King Richard, West Side Story and more at this year's Academy Awards. The winners are anyone's guess, so here are mine... And the winner is... The 2022 Academy Awards will honor the best films of the year on March 27. The Power of The Dog has already swept a number of awards ceremonies, earning prestigious gongs for Benedict Cumberbatch, Netflix and writer-director Jane Campion. Maybe Campion will follow Chloe Zhao's success with Nomadland last year, but the Netflix film faces fierce competition from King Richard, West Side Story and Dune -- not...

Jerry Smith, the athletic director at St. Thomas Aquinas, received one of the cruelest phone calls of his life at 11:30 Thursday morning. Brian Meeney, head football coach at his school and a man who’d long regarded Smith as somewhat of a father figure, died this morning at the age of 46. As Meeney’s brother told Smith, it was the result of a massive heart attack en route to school. No arrangements have yet been announced. Meeney, who had a particular knack for reviving flagging programs, guided St. Thomas to an undefeated regular season this past fall and an overall...

Sharing a locker room with transgender swimmer Lia Thomas has become a point of contention for some of her University of Pennsylvania teammates, who feel uncomfortable changing in the private space with someone undergoing gender transition, the DailyMail.com can reveal. 'It's definitely awkward because Lia still has male body parts and is still attracted to women,' one swimmer on the team told DailyMail.com in an exclusive interview. Lia has told her teammates that she dates women. While Lia covers herself with a towel sometimes, there’s a decent amount of nudity, the swimmer said. She and others have had a glimpse...

Earlier this month, on International Women's Day, President Joe Biden announced he will request $2.6 billion for foreign assistance programs to promote "gender equality" abroad. A week before that, during his State of the Union address, he pleaded with Congress to pass the Equality Act—a piece of legislation he vowed to enshrine as law within his first 100 days in office. The bill would, among other things, create federal protections against discrimination based on the concept of gender identity. It passed the House of Representatives last year, but is currently pending approval of the Senate. Biden had already established the...

There’s been a shift in Washington. The talk is no longer about sanctions on Moscow but how best to escalate U.S. involvement in the war. The day after Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky addressed Congress, the American press was understandably filled with paeans to his courage and leadership, his clarity of purpose and firm resolve in the face of mortal danger. As Bari Weiss noted in a thoughtful response to the speech, Zelensky knows what he’s fighting for, and he stands as an inspiring counterexample of things we hope for in our own political leaders, but do not have. But there...

A number of Ukrainian refugee women taken in by multicultural Sweden still fear for their safety, after at least two separate groups of men tried to gain access to their living quarters. Having escaped Vladimir Putin’s ongoing invasion of their country, a number of Ukrainian refugee women are still living in progressive Sweden. In one example recorded by local media, a woman described the fears she and her associates had after at least two different groups of men tried to gain access to the living quarters of a number of Ukrainian refugee women. She reported one instance of a group...

Ukraine is holding its own: On Day 23 of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Russian advance has largely stopped on all fronts. More than three weeks into the invasion and stiff Ukrainian resistance and the seemingly never-ending Russian supply issues have prevented Russian forces from achieving their primary objectives. Over the past week, the Russian advance was stalling, a result of extremely poor logistical arrangements and stiff Ukrainian resistance. But in the last 24 hours, there has been almost no progress at all. “[The] Ukrainians are putting a lot of effort into defending Kyiv as you would expect them...

The 11-year investigation into the disappearance of British tot Madeleine McCann is set to end later this year, according to reports. Operation Grange, the British taxpayer-funded probe launched four years after Madeleine’s 2007 disappearance from her family’s vacation rental in Portugal, will be shut down by London’s Metropolitan Police when funding runs out this fall, the Sun reported Saturday. “There are currently no plans to take the inquiry further,” a source close to the matter told the outlet. “The end of the road for Operation Grange is now in sight. The team’s work is expected to be completed by autumn.”...

Folks, we are in a world of trouble. America has faced tough odds before. America beats impossible odds all the time. We are resilient and relentless. We are a nation of people who believe nothing is impossible. So, never count us out. There is always hope. But make no mistake, we are now in the fight of our lives. The odds may be worse than we have ever faced. Our nation is being destroyed from within. America is hanging by a thread. The attacks are relentless and ominous. The nation is divided like never before. You’d have to go back...

The current backlash against Critical Race Theory in K–12 schools has been mischaracterized as an attempt to ban teaching about slavery. Actually, the proper teaching of the history of slavery undermines CRT. Few other topics, when deeply understood, reveal the moral and economic evolution of Western civilization more than does the topic of slavery and the West's crushing of it.Students need to know that slavery has been nearly universal. Slavery can be found throughout the world and in every era, including in Africa, well before the Europeans ever attached themselves to this already well established system practiced on members of...

A 50-year-old man has died after he collapsed during a 5,000m walk event at Singapore Athletics' (SA) All Comers Meet 2 on Saturday morning (March 19). The Straits Times understands he dropped to the ground within the first kilometre of his event, which began at 8am. First aiders from the medical providers stationed at the Home of Athletics in Kallang rushed to the man's aid, before ambulance and paramedics arrived shortly after. They sent the man to Tan Tock Seng Hospital, where he died.