Free Republic

As frustration boils over in China over its strict COVID-19 policy, Singaporean Ye Jiayi who’s based in Shanghai holds hope that things will improve.“Did you hear? About what happened last night,” my friend asked me as we walked out of a spin class in the heart of downtown Shanghai’s Jing’an district on Sunday (Nov 27). “What do you mean? I saw some friends sending pictures and videos in our WeChat group but I haven’t looked at them yet,” I responded. The Xintiandi area where we were headed for a post-spin brunch was uncharacteristically quiet. I spotted more security than usual...

Chinese authorities have begun inquiries into some of the people who gathered at weekend protests against COVID-19 curbs, three people who were at the Beijing demonstrations told Reuters, as police remained out in numbers on the city's streets. In one case, a caller identifying as a police officer in the Chinese capital asked the protester to show up at a police station on Tuesday to deliver a written record of their activities on Sunday (Nov 27) night. In another, a student was contacted by their college and asked if they had been in the area where events took place and...

ONCUPINAR: Turkey’s army needs just a few days to be ready for a ground incursion into northern Syria and such a decision may come at a cabinet meeting on Monday, Turkish officials said, as Turkish forces bombarded a Kurdish militia across the border. Howitzers fired daily from Turkey have struck Kurdish YPG targets for a week, while warplanes have carried out air strikes. The escalation comes after a deadly bomb attack in Istanbul two weeks ago that Ankara blamed on the YPG militia. The YPG has denied involvement in the bombing and has responded at times to the cross-border attacks...

The performer’s vivacious life takes the stage as part of the new Smithsonian exhibition, “Entertainment Nation”Performer and entertainer Celia Light remembers watching the reality competition television show RuPaul’s Drag Race while still a senior in high school. She knew then what she was meant to be. But before Light even put on drag makeup and couture for the first time, she knew she needed a stage name. “I wanted to name myself after someone I’m connected to, after someone I feel has had a really positive impact on my life,” Light says. That person was the Cuban American singer Celia...

More photographs from an axed Balenciaga campaign are being questioned today over the prominence of a book which celebrates a Belgian artist whose work includes depictions of castrated toddlers. Two photos from the brand's now canceled Spring '23 ad campaign feature French actress Isabelle Huppert posing in a Manhattan office with a stack of books behind her. Among the books is one that celebrates the Belgian painter Michael Borremans. Borremans' work is varied but frequently features children. His 2017/2018 series, Fire from the Sun, shows a group of toddlers, some of them with blood staining their skin, in sinister composition....

Prayers up. FR is funded solely by contributions made by the liberty loving patriots who love and use it. We are beholden to no political party. No advertisers, no outsiders, no sugar daddies, no corporate string pullers. Definitely no government subsidies or tax breaks. No 501c or other IRS non-profit status. This means no commercial ads. No annoying pop-ups. No ad tracking. No mail campaigns. No spam. No third-parties -- not even the IRS -- trying to control what we do or say. We are self-funded, fiercely independent and enjoy our freedom to speak plainly in the support of God,...

Rep. Donald McEachin, a Democrat representing Virginia’s Fourth Congressional District since 2017, died Monday night after a battle with colorectal cancer, according to his office. He was 61. Eachin’s chief of staff, Tara Rountree, said in a statement the congressman had been experiencing “secondary effects of his colorectal cancer from 2013.” “We are all devastated at the passing of our boss and friend, Congressman Donald McEachin,” Rountree said. “Valiantly, for years now, we have watched him fight and triumph over the secondary effects of his colorectal cancer from 2013.” “Tonight, he lost that battle, and the people of Virginia’s Fourth...

Sen. Susan Collins (Maine), a prominent centrist Republican, said Monday that former President Trump should not have had a meal or a meeting with Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist organizer and podcaster. “I condemn white supremacy and antisemitism. The president should never have had a meal or even a meeting with Nick Fuentes,” Collins told reporters when asked about a dinner Trump had with Fuentes and Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, at Mar-a-Lago before Thanksgiving. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) reported that Fuentes and his followers support closing U.S. borders to immigrants and oppose feminism and LGBTQ rights...

Those gaps in the border wall are personal to Jim Chilton, whose grazing lands cover 5 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona and who sees exactly what pours through the holes. People in camouflage walk through his lands with the assurance that they are not likely to be caught.... ... Mr. Chilton said Border Patrol agents have told him that one-fifth of the people crossing his ranch tote drugs....

Democratic-allied groups have unleashed an aggressive opposition research operation to dig up unflattering accusations against House Republicans investigating President Biden, his family and his administration. The effort, designed to discredit and distract from the congressional investigations targeting Mr. Biden, was launched Monday ,,, ...Mr. Brock said his group will have a massive bank account to wage this operation until the next election cycle. He told NBC News that Facts First would likely have a $10 million budget over a two-year period....

Chinese protesters are using blank sheets of A4 paper to express their fury over Covid-19 restrictions.... ...Images and videos circulated online showed students at universities in cities including Nanjing and Beijing holding up blank sheets of paper in silent protest, a tactic used in part to evade censorship or arrest.... ..."The white paper represent everything we want to say but cannot say," said Johnny, 26, who took part in one of the Liangma River gatherings.... ...By Sunday morning, the hashtag "white paper exercise" was blocked on Weibo...

[H/T ymani cricket] Have you seen President Trump's powerful 4 minute video message? Don't miss it!A NATION IN DECLINEQ is the result of the sacrifices and commitment of countless patriots to win back our captured country from the Deep State and achieve the transformation President Trump promised in this campaign video. President Trump has said the awakening of the public is key to this transformation.Q describes this awakening as follows: "The Great Awakening ('Freedom of Thought’), was designed and created not only as a backchannel to the public (away from the longstanding 'mind’ control of the corrupt & heavily biased...

America has increasingly defined itself as a land that lives by fictions. One of the most pervasive lies insists that Americans support same-sex marriage by ever-increasing margins. But occasionally, one of the media’s myths runs into a contradictory reality that people know is true in their bones.The belief that married people should not have sex with anyone except their spouse comes as close to a universally accepted truth as this country can muster. That sets public support for same-sex marriage on a collision course with itself.In a world of changing mores, public revulsion of cheating has remained a constant for...

Canadian banks are receiving backlash from investors for their continued investments in fossil fuels.All Canadian banks were revealed to have increased their exposure to fossil fuels between 2020 and 2021, by between 25 percent - TD and BMO - and 132 percent for CIBC.The report is the latest example of investor pressure on financial institutions to reduce their lending to fossil fuel companies.An investor group has criticized Canadian lenders for investing heavily in fossil fuels despite the Paris Agreement, noting that all of the largest Canadian banks still need to be ready for net zero.In a report titled Net Zero...

They voted themselves in a couple of gems, these New York City folks did. Between actually electing Kathy Hochul to continue her reign of incoherence and incompetence, coupled with their already in-situ fashion plate, empty-suit city chief executive, Big Apple dwellers might as well save time and just beat themselves up.Emboldened by the election of state and local politicians, a NYC Council bill that had seemed doomed to ashes is experiencing a Phoenix-like rebirth. To his eternal shame, New York City mayor Eric Adams has signaled he is willing to sign it.What is Mayor Adams willing to sign? THIS abomination.A...

I reported previously about the effort Alyssa Milano made to do a group think and attack Elon Musk. She claimed that she’d given back her Tesla (whatever that means) and gotten a Volkswagen electric vehicle to rebuke Musk. Musk laughed at her in response, given that she was buying a vehicle from a company founded by real Nazis to be anti-Musk. It was particularly funny given that she’d previously been swooning all over him before the leftist edict that he was “bad.” She even had him as one of the top four people she’d like to have dinner with, along...

"Sam Brinton is on leave from DOE, and Dr. Kim Petry is performing the duties of Deputy Assistant Secretary of Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition," a DOE spokesperson said. A Biden administration employee – and one of the federal government’s first gender non-binary officials – has been accused of stealing a travelor’s luggage from the Minneapolis airport in September. Sam Brinton, the deputy assistant secretary for spent fuel and waste disposition at the DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy, was charged with felony theft after allegedly snatching a Vera Bradley suitcase reportedly worth $2,325 from baggage claim at the Minneapolis St....

You might think an official rebuke of Pfizer's CEO for misleading the public on the benefits of its COVID vaccine would be big news, especially given the full-court press by vaccine absolutists to compel people to receive the shots, but even with a Google search, I have not yet seen any U.S. media coverage of a startling rebuke delivered to Pfizer CEO Dr. Albert Bourla by a panel convened by the U.K. Prescription Medicines Code of Practice Authority (PMCPA). The criticism followed remarks he made in a December 2021 interview with the BBC. The following account is derived from an...

A recent report by CriticalRace.org found that 58 of the top 100 medical schools in the United States force mandatory student training or assignments related to critical race theory, Fox News Digital reported. CriticalRace.org is a project by the Legal Insurrection Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting free speech, that has been monitoring critical race theory coursework and training found on college campuses across the nation. The report found that 58 top medical schools promote the controversial idea that racism is systemic in the United States. Specifically, mandatory department training was found at 14 schools, school-wide training at 31, and...

Even the mainstream media admits there were “widespread glitches” with Arizona voting machines on Election Day this year. But for some reason official don’t seem concerned. How different from reports last year that the Federal Trade Commission was investigating McDonalds over breakdowns in ice cream machines. See, for example, this NPR article: “Feds Are Reportedly Looking Into Why McDonald's Ice-Cream Machines Are Always Busted”. https://www.npr.org/2021/09/02/1033715465/mcdonalds-ice-cream-machines-mcflurries-ftc-investigation Double-scoop standard, anyone?