Free Republic

With popular support for pandemic measures such as lockdowns and masks declining, the world's leaders are losing the opportunity to accelerate the globalist agenda, said former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark in a panel with billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates and others a the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland. Clark, who more recently was the administrator of the United Nations Development Program, acknowledged that "people are over COVID" and the political and popular support for anti-pandemic measures is "waning." The solution, she said, is to give global entities such as the World Health Organization more power.

[Caption] It’s a tightrope walk for the grouping at a time when US-China trade war has reached a peak. After having a bitter experience with Putin, Biden may need to maintain more restraint, simply to avoid another catastrophe in the Indo-Pacific The May 24 face-to-face meeting of the Quad leaders is considered very crucial against the backdrop of the ongoing Ukraine war. All the four heads of the Governments -- Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, US president Joe Biden, Japan Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese -- came together on a platform to display strength and...

In recent days, out-homosexual Tim Miller wrote a piece at the increasingly odd website known as The Bulwark. Miller was writing about the ongoing Sussmann trial where special prosecutor John Durham is making the case that the Hillary Clinton campaign played a direct role in various hoaxes that enveloped our country and the presidency of Donald J. Trump. Without getting too deep in the weeds, former Clinton adviser Robby Mook testified that Hillary approved the spreading of various lies about a computer connection between the Trump campaign and something called the Alfa Bank in Moscow. This was misinformation peddled by...

Once upon a time, a man decided to prove, ONCE AND FOR ALL, that all those based polls showing support for people like Elon Musk and ideas like free speech are actually just the work of neo-Nazi trolls that want to uphold the bastion of white supremacy. In his quest, this Occupy Democrats writer decided to pit the left's darling, AOC, against Dogelord Supreme Elon Musk to show that communism can be cool too. https://twitter.com/davidmweissman/status/1530315156911271938

Sixth Week of Easter John 16:23b-28 Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus gives us this assurance about answered prayer: “Amen, amen, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in my name he will give you. If God cannot change, what is the point of asking him for anything? And if God is omniscient, what is the point of telling him what you need? The same Jesus who told us to ask and ask again also informed us that God “knows what you need before you ask him.” One way to shed light on this problem is to refer to...

“If you can’t imagine how anyone could hold the view you are attacking, you just don’t understand it yet.” — Philosopher Anthony Weston in A Rulebook for Arguments I may be libertarian, but I understand my friends on the political left. One reason most of us libertarians and conservatives can “speak liberal” is because we generally are willing to grant that our left-leaning friends have good intentions. Conservatives think liberals are often wrong, but not that it’s dancing with the devil to listen to them – or to try to understand them. Many liberals, though, have trouble comprehending conservatives. In...

The war in Ukraine is a trompe l’oeil. Behind the appearances of the unity of NATO and its consolidation by new members, several big players run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. In reality, all those who are not blinded by their own propaganda know that their side is going to lose and is already planning other enemies on other battlefields. Washington is making the best of a bad situation and using Russian pressure to close ranks. On the front of the stage, Nato assures that it has been strengthened by “Putin’s madness”. Ukraine, powerfully armed by the...

The more that comes out about the botched police response in Uvalde, Texas, the worse it looks for the local cops. It turns out that while UPD officers waited for a key or some such nonsense, an off-duty Border Patrol tactical agent drove 40 miles from having lunch to storm the school and neutralize the social misfit killer. Not only did the Border Patrol agent not get to finish his lunch, he needed staples to close a grazing bullet wound to his head.

Congressional candidate Rebecca Parson (D-Wash) is campaigning on a promise to legalize breaking into unoccupied homes as a means to address the homeless problem. She urges her supporters to "not wait until the legislation I vow to champion—the Housing for All Bill—is enacted, but to help accelerate the process by breaking into and occupying vacant properties now." "There is no good reason for allowing owners who have other places to live to hoard unneeded residential space," Parson said. "As I see it, a person without a home has more right to occupy these houses than the so-called owner. It's a...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Friday that while Ukraine was not eager to have a dialogue with Russian President Vladimir Putin, his country has to face the reality that communication will likely be needed to end the war. "There are things to discuss with the Russian leader. I'm not telling you that to me our people are eager to talk to him, but we have to face the realities of what we are living through," he said in an address. "What do we want from this meeting … We want our lives back ... We want to reclaim the life...

Former President Donald Trump lost his bid Friday to halt New York Attorney General Letitia James’ investigation into his business dealings. A federal judge dismissed Mr. Trump’s case where the 45th president had argued for an injunction against Ms. James’ civil investigation, claiming the Democratic attorney general has been a partisan political opponent of his for years. Mr. Trump claimed she was violating his constitutional rights by targeting him over his political views, but the judge didn’t agree. “The fact that Defendant’s public statements reflect personal and/or political animus toward Plaintiffs is not, in and of itself, sufficient,” wrote Judge...

Dramatic new images from the Uvalde, Texas school massacre show cops pulling scared children from the windows of the building while a crazed gunman is still locked inside. Photos show crying girls and boys in full sprint, running from Robb Elementary School on Tuesday as officers point them across a grassy patch to safety. Local cops and US Customs and Border Protection agents are seen in the images, helping open a window to help kids with visible looks of terror on their faces. The new images are the latest to emerge outside of the school as questions swirl about law...

Just something funny for a Saturday... Putin dies and goes to hell, but after a while, he is given a day off for good behavior. So he goes to Moscow, enters a bar, orders a drink, and asks the bartender: -Is Crimea ours? -Yes, it is. -And the Donbas? -Also ours. -And Kyiv? -We got that too. Satisfied, Putin drinks, and asks: -Thanks, how much do I owe you? -5 euros.

On Friday’s “PBS NewsHour,” New York Times columnist David Brooks said it’s possible to persuade some people by rephrasing gun control as “gun regulation. Like, we have driving regulation, we have cars, and we regulate the cars.” And stated that there are things like raising the age limit to buy a gun from 18 to 21, background checks, red flag laws, and having unique codes for firearms like the password on a phone “that can be done that are just normal, because we do them for cars.” Brooks stated, “I think there is the possibility of changing the way we...

The Department of the Navy this week released its strategy for how it will deal with climate change and proceed toward the government’s goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. “Climate change is one of the most destabilizing forces of our time, exacerbating other national security concerns and posing serious readiness challenges,” Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro said in the introduction to the 32-page report. “Our naval and amphibious forces are in the crosshairs of the climate crisis and this strategy provides the framework to empower us to meaningfully reduce the threat of climate change.” Setting the department on...

Explanation: In 185 AD, Chinese astronomers recorded the appearance of a new star in the Nanmen asterism. That part of the sky is identified with Alpha and Beta Centauri on modern star charts. The new star was visible for months and is thought to be the earliest recorded supernova. This deep image shows emission nebula RCW 86, understood to be the remnant of that stellar explosion. The narrowband data trace gas ionized by the still expanding shock wave. Space-based images indicate an abundance of the element iron and lack of a neutron star or pulsar in the remnant, suggesting that...

China has clinched another security deal in the south Pacific, this time with Samoa. The deal was signed during a visit to Samoa by China's Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, who is on an eight-nation tour of the region. Samoan Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Fiame Naomi Mata'afa met with Mr Wang on Saturday in Samoa's capital, Apia, with both sides reaffirming commitment to win-win cooperation. It comes after the security deal Beijing sealed with Solomon Islands last month, which could see Chinese military personnel based there, or the establishment of a Chinese military installation. Australia's Foreign Minister, Penny Wong, has...

A former U.S. Army reservist described by prosecutors as a Nazi sympathizer was convicted Friday of storming the U.S. Capitol to obstruct Congress from certifying President Joe Biden's 2020 electoral victory. Timothy Hale-Cusanelli, who worked a security contractor at a Navy base when he joined the pro-Trump mob on Jan. 6, was also convicted of disorderly conduct and other misdemeanors. Hale-Cussanelli took the stand in his defense and claimed he didn't know that Congress met at the Capitol building. "I know this sounds idiotic, but I'm from New Jersey," Hale-Cusanelli said, according to WUSA-TV. "In all my studies, I didn't...

The San Francisco tech startup that helped popularize a push for a four-day workweek in Silicon Valley, is now laying workers off. As first reported by the New York Times, Bolt, the payment services startup with offices near San Francisco’s Union Square, laid off around 250 of its around 900 employees Wednesday in a move to “secure our financial position, extend our runway, and reach profitability with the money we have already raised” amid industrywide financial challenges, according to a letter to staff. A Bolt spokesperson confirmed to SFGATE Thursday that "approximately a third of the company" was laid off.

Paul A. Szypula @bubblebathgirl 46m · Uvalde Police Chief Peter Arredondo — who prevented law enforcement from entering the school — is reportedly a Democrat who donated to Beto O’Rourke.