Free Republic

Add one more critical shortage to the world's swollen list. Countries for months have been hoarding fertilizer - and now they are weaponizing it, making sales in return for geopolitical favors. Last July, China's National Development and Reform Commission stopped major companies from exporting fertilizer. In September, Beijing imposed a prohibition on exports of phosphates, a primary fertilizer ingredient, until at least the middle of this year. In October, Chinese officials added inspection requirements to aid enforcement of the bans. The moves were a reaction to rising prices in China and elsewhere. China's fertilizer bans created shortages. The country's traditional...

Pope Francis calls for ‘zero tolerance’ on sex abuse, is silent on his own permissivenessPope Francis has a 'confusing' record with regard to sex abuse, including protecting prominent abuser prelates like Theodore McCarrick and Bishop Zanchetta.VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — Pope Francis has stated that there must be “zero tolerance” to sexual abuse within the Catholic Church but remained silent on his own record regarding the protection and cover-up of abuser clerics.Speaking to Reuters on July 2, in an interview released July 8, Pope Francis stated that “we have to fight against every single case.”“As a priest, I have to help...

Russian and Ukrainian diplomats held four rounds of talks to try to resolve the crisis in February and March, but stopped meeting after Kiev pulled out of negotiations as US and European officials announced that the conflict must be decided on the battlefield, and sent tens of billions of dollars-worth of military hardware and economic aid to Kiev. The United States and its European allies are conducting “secret consultations” aimed at ending the Ukrainian crisis, Germany’s Welt newspaper has indicated. In an commentary published Friday, former US ambassador to Germany John Kornblum and German journalist Rudiger Lentz claimed that the...

Marine engineer George Johnson Armstrong on this date in 1941 was hanged at Wandsworth Prison … attaining an unenviable distinction as the first of five Britons executed under the Treachery Act of 1940. One of the very first laws enacted by the incoming wartime government of Winston Churchill as the Wehrmacht overran France, the Treachery Act anticipated two potential difficulties in punishing various forms of aid that folk might thereafter attempt to extend to the Third Reich. We’ll let all about those difficulties: if we rely upon the Treason Act — the main Act, as I have said, is an...

Awesome Homily on the Good Samaritan Gospel... The Bishop says it all... 15 min. YouTube Video link below...Christ Can Heal Us

To adapt what Stalin said of the Pope, how many divisions does the Supreme Court have? That seems to be the implicit slogan of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who on Thursday ignored the High Court’s recent ruling with a proposed rule requiring states to reduce CO2 emissions on highways—that is, banish gas-powered vehicles. In West Virginia v. EPA, the Court ruled that regulatory agencies can’t impose costly new regulations without a clear direction from Congress. The feds had interpreted an obscure corner of the Clean Air Act to impose costly climate rules on power plants. Now the Federal Highway Administration...

President Donald J. Trump won a majority of the vote in Maricopa County during the 2020 presidential election, according to a new report from Jovan Pulitzer. “There is sufficient and irrefutable evidence of pervasive voter fraud and widespread election fraud in Maricopa County, Arizona,” Pulitzer said Monday while presenting his findings to local legislators and political candidates in Scottsdale, Arizona. Although Joe Biden was originally reported to have won the most votes in Maricopa County, Pulitzer asserted, “59 percent of the votes, when adjusted by removing the predetermined outcome and revealing the true vote, is found to have been the...

Some states are rolling out new inflation relief stimulus for their residents in the form of either checks or tax rebates. Critics of this measure are arguing that giving people free money will only keep inflation higher for longer. One such state is California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom just announced that some 23 million of its 39 million inhabitants will receive checks of up to $1,050 as part of a $17 billion “inflation relief” spending package. This package includes rental assistance, suspension of the state sales tax on diesel and funding to help people pay for past-due utility bills. (Related:...

The jobs report and minutes from the Federal Reserve’s June meeting were the economic highlights of the week, but they are, respectively, a lagging indicator and old news. This column instead digs into the auto market, where there is an underappreciated ticking time bomb. Lucky Lopez is a car dealer who has been in the business for about 20 years. In recent meetings with bankers, where he bids on repossessed vehicles before they go to auction, he has noticed some common characteristics of the defaulted loans. Most of the loans on recently repossessed cars originated during 2020 and 2021, whereas...

Food and other consumer goods are no longer making their way from point A to point B in the United States, which faces crippling supply chain bottlenecks that threaten to cause mass starvation. The latest complaint comes from the livestock industry, which says it is just days away from an animal feed crisis if rail lines fail to get their act together, and quickly. According to reports, many feed users in California and other southwestern states are having to pay $3 more than the CBOT (Chicago Board of Trade) price to secure grain shipments by truck as rail bottlenecks are...

President Biden has said he plans to run for a second term, but his age has become an uncomfortable issue for him and his party. WASHINGTON — When President Biden leaves Tuesday night for a four-day swing through the Middle East, he will presumably be more rested than he would have been had he followed the original plan. The trip was initially tacked onto another journey last month to Europe, which would have made for an arduous 10-day overseas trek until it became clear to Mr. Biden’s team that such extended travel might be unnecessarily taxing for a 79-year-old president,...

Surprisingly objective and revealing review of the life of Hunter Biden and the family of which he is a part, from an entirely unexpected source.

"It's been nearly four years since 28-year-old Richard "Bebo" Russell, a Horizon Ground service agent with no pilot experience, successfully stole the plane and flew it around Puget Sound before crashing to his death." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IY0EUs_8Ubo

The Manhattan bodega worker held on a murder charge after an altercation with an ex-convict was freed Thursday thanks to reduced bail. Jose Alba’s family posted the lowered sum with help from his boss following a court hearing, the New York Post reported Thursday. The report continued: Alba, 61, was sent to Rikers Island on a whopping $250,000 bail — half of what prosecutors with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office had requested at his arraignment Saturday night, claiming the worker was a flight risk because of a planned trip to the Dominican Republic next week. Under state law, Alba...

A gas pipeline explosion in Texas on July 7 was followed by a gas plant explosion in Oklahoma on July 9. Two incidents do not necessarily make a trend, but it’s conspicuous that they are happening now as natural gas prices are already set to rise dramatically ahead of winter. Is this an attack by the powers-that-be, whether it’s the globalists with the “Liberal World Order” or the climate change maniacs acting as eco-terrorists? We already know our food infrastructure is under attack with dozens of food processing plants mysteriously having “industrial accidents” in recent months. We were among the...

A top Air Force official is warning that China is now getting its hands on new military equipment “five to six times” faster than the U.S., a report says. Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition Maj. Gen. Cameron Holt made the remark during a speech in San Diego in June, according to The Drive. “In purchasing power parity, they spend about one dollar to our 20 dollars to get to the same capability,” Holt was quoted as saying. “We are going to lose if we can’t figure out how to drop the cost and increase the speed...

Uptake of COVID-19 vaccines has been low so far in young children, with a small fraction of those newly eligible for a vaccine receiving one, according to new data. In a pair of moves in June, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) made the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines available to children from 6 months to 5 years of age, and recommended virtually every child in the age group get vaccinated. But parents have been hesitant to get their child a vaccine, according to the newly released data. Just 1.3...

One hundred forty-three days.That is how long Brittney Griner has been behind bars in Russia. That is how long she has been stuck in the middle of a high-stakes staredown between the United States and Russia at exactly the wrong time, ......The seven-time All-Star center for the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury pleaded guilty Thursday, admitting wrongdoing. In so many words, Griner and her lawyer said her troubles began with a mistake: She was readying quickly for her flight to Russia in February and inadvertently packed the smoking cartridges with the small amounts of hashish oil — less than a single gram,...

Joe Biden called for more protests by pro-abortion activists in comments made to reporters Sunday during a bike ride at Rehoboth Beach while he is on yet another vacation weekend in Delaware Reporter, “Do you have a, do you have a message Mr. President for women who were protesting outside the White House yesterday?” Biden, “Yes. Keep protesting. Because, keep making your point. It’s critically important. We can do a lot of things to accommodate the rights of women in the mean time. But fundamentally the only thing that’s gonna change this if we have a national law that reinstates...

As you may have heard, some hackers on the website 4 Chan claimed to have hacked Hunter's iPhone, and it seems they have delivered. Here's a summary of what has been found so far. Hunter communicated regularly with someone named “Pedo Pete” on his phone.” Most on 4 Chan believe this is Joe. Some phone chat conversations include with "Mom and Pedo Pete" Proof of joint accounts for HB and Joe. Hunter had a number of guns– something illegal for a felon. Most disturbing image. Hunter is next to a tied young asian child with a bag over her face...