Free Republic

...Witnessing how Shenzhen had become a showcase for affluence, he wrote a letter in 2002 to the Commercial Press, one of Hong Kong's biggest publishers, to pitch his book called "Treatise on the '66 Movement" ― a memoir about his young adulthood during the Cultural Revolution. He later said he handwrote the letter while being under the illusion of Shenzhen's reforms and was mistaken that there was greater room for political speech than the rest of China. "I believe that the Commercial Press in Hong Kong is a free publishing house," Wu said, reciting a part of his letter. He...

Critics say it’s a hate-filled agenda that will lead to fear, division, violence, discrimination, and a weakened FL. Gov. Ron DeSantis has unveiled an anti-immigration agenda that would deny jobs, education, and possibly health care for hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants who call Florida home. If the governor gets his way with the state Legislature — as is likely — all private employers would have to screen potential hires against the dodgy E-Verify database maintained by the federal government. Undocumented immigrants would lose the ability to pay in-state tuition at Florida colleges and universities. That would undo 2014 legislation...

The Arizona Senate and House Elections Committees yesterday heard testimony and presentations from multiple individuals regarding election anomalies and potential fraud in Arizona’s elections over many years. During the meeting, legislators considered a presentation by Jacqueline Breger, which, if true, exposed absolutely bombshell information regarding massive corruption and collusion between American politicians, appointed government officials, and the Sinaloa Cartels. The money laundering and racketeering scheme allegedly uses fraudulent mortgages, real estate transactions, and insurance claims in Maricopa County to hide money made through cartel human trafficking, drug trafficking, and bribery of elected officials, and to rig elections, intimidate, or murder...

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the woods... Hannah Hoekstra as Elsa in Cocaine Bear, directed by Elizabeth Banks. Universal Cocaine Bear! There's a bear! It does a ton of cocaine! Movies! Cocaaaaaiine Beeeeaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrr! That's it, that's the review! Want more than that? I'm not sure this movie has much more to offer, but seeing as it's in theaters now I'll give it a shot. Astonishingly, this gory comedy-horror flick about a bear that does cocaine is based on a true story. This probably leaves you with a ton of questions: When and where --...

Who threatens our friend Taiwan, every single day? And not only Taiwan, but any other country in the South China Sea, who fishes or drills or does anything else that nations normally do in their own territorial waters? You know who. Who has over a million people in prison camps just because they happen to have been born into an ethnic minority, known as the Uyghurs, and uses these prisoners for the internationally-banned practice of slave labor, from backbreaking hours harvesting crops to miserable lives in textile sweatshops? You know who. Who has warped the concept of capitalism, designing an...

Explanation: Planetary nebula Jones-Emberson 1 is the death shroud of a dying Sun-like star. It lies some 1,600 light-years from Earth toward the sharp-eyed constellation Lynx. About 4 light-years across, the expanding remnant of the dying star's atmosphere was shrugged off into interstellar space, as the star's central supply of hydrogen and then helium for fusion was finally depleted after billions of years. Visible near the center of the planetary nebula is what remains of the stellar core, a blue-hot white dwarf star. Also known as PK 164 +31.1, the nebula is faint and very difficult to glimpse at a...

Marriage vows usually go something like this: “...to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until death do us part.” In addition to this specific vow — sporadically made before God and only kept 50% of the time — there’s the more fundamental understanding that marriage is a partnership in which both members look out for each other’s best interest. In simple terms, for example, a loving spouse would be expected to support their partner through emotional hardship, work-related stress, or...

Billions of dollars are accumulating in Moscow beyond the reach of its foreign owners. Stock dividends, interest payments on bonds and anything else that Western investors didn’t sell before the war — it’s all part of the pile of money that’s been trapped by sanctions. The accounts are remnants of what’s left of Russia’s ties to the world of international finance, and another marker of its growing isolation. As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine begins a second year and anti-war demonstrations take place this week, questions remain about what will happen to the cash stuck in Moscow.

Two Pakistani brothers held by the United States at Guantanamo Bay detention facility for two decades were freed and returned home on Friday to be reunited with their families, officials said. Pakistan arrested Abdul and Mohammed Rabbani on suspicion of links to al-Qaida in 2002 in Karachi, the country’s southern port and largest city. That same year, Ramzi Binalshibh, a top al-Qaida leader, was arrested by Pakistan’s spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence on a tip from the CIA. The Rabbanis’ releases come months after a 75-year-old Pakistani, Saifullah Paracha, was freed from Guantanamo. The Foreign Ministry later Friday released a statement...

After numerous apologies over four decades, it’s time to let Hanoi Jane Fonda off the hook for Vietnam. The Oscar-winning actress apologized for being used as propaganda for North Vietnam when we were still fighting North Vietnam. I will tell you right now that half the problems in this country stem from refusals to accept apologies. All of America’s manufactured racial problems come down to a group of leftists (of all colors) who refuse to forgive and move on when it comes to slavery and Jim Crow. It’s not enough that hundreds of thousands of white Americans died to settle...

“Rust,” the Western film that halted production after the fatal shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on set in October 2021, will resume filming this spring at the Yellowstone Film Ranch in Livingston, said co-executive producer Carter Boehm on Wednesday.

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — U.S. first lady Jill Biden gave one of the clearest indications yet that President Joe Biden will run for a second term, telling The Associated Press in an exclusive interview on Friday that there’s “pretty much” nothing left to do but figure out the time and place for the announcement. “How many times does he have to say it for you to believe it?” the first lady said in Nairobi, the second and final stop of her five-day trip to Africa. She added, “He says he’s not done. He’s not finished what he’s started. And that’s...

<p>Thomas Lee, inventor of the LBO shoots himself in his office. For a lot of people who used to work for good companies bankrupted by Lee, there is at least poetic justice.</p><p>Thief and a coward. Well, bye.</p><p>"Lee is credited with being one of the first financiers to purchase companies with money borrowed against the business being bought — what is now called a leveraged buyout."</p>

PolitiFact admitted that former President Donald Trump’s deregulation of an Obama-era rule didn’t have any impact on the Ohio train disaster, despite the media blather insinuating the contrary. The leftist fact-checker conceded Feb. 17 that even if the 2015 Obama-era regulation “requiring high-hazard cargo trains to be equipped with electronically controlled pneumatic brakes by 2023” was still in effect, it wouldn’t have made a difference in preventing the Ohio train disaster. “[The rule] would not have applied to the Norfolk Southern train that derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, because it was not categorized as a high-hazard cargo train,” PolitiFact wrote....

These days, to my surprise, people want to talk to me about evil. In a Substack essay last year, and in my book The Bodies of Others, I raised a question about existential, metaphysical darkness. I concluded that I had looked at the events of the past two and a half years using all of my classical education, my critical thinking skills, my knowledge of Western and global history and politics; and that, using these tools, I could not explain the years 2020-present. I could not explain the way the Western world simply switched, from being based at least overtly...

The discovery could challenge our theories of how gas giants like Jupiter form. A dark planet passes in front of a bright red star. Artist's conception of a large gas giant planet orbiting a small red dwarf star called TOI-5205. (Image credit: Katherine Cain, courtesy of the Carnegie Institution for Science) Astronomers have discovered an unusual planetary system consisting of a Jupiter-sized planet orbiting a tiny star that is only four times the size of the solar system gas giant. This "forbidden" configuration of a massive planet orbiting a relatively tiny star could challenge theories of how gas giant planets...

A White House staffer is finding himself in hot water after inadvertently sending out a tweet that could be a massive embarrassment for the Biden administration. On Friday, deputy press secretary Andrew Bates tweeted a video of Karine Jean-Pierre’s response to the criticism that Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg has received for his slow response to the train disaster in Ohio. But it turns out that Bates did not pay much attention to the tweet that he sent out. If he had, he would have noticed that the video he tweeted came from journalist Greg Price, who at the time...

People who used marijuana daily were found to be about one-third more likely to develop coronary artery disease (CAD) compared with people who have never used the drug, according to a study presented at the American College of Cardiology's Annual Scientific Session Together With the World Congress of Cardiology. As cannabis becomes legal in an increasing number of U.S. states, this study is among the largest and most comprehensive to date to examine the potential long-term cardiovascular implications of using the drug. CAD is the most common form of heart disease and occurs when the arteries that supply blood to...

Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon has suspended the attorney who prosecuted a 26-year-old trans child molester who was accused of identifying as a woman only after DNA evidence linked her to a cold case crime, according to law enforcement sources. Shea Sanna, who had been the lead prosecutor for part of the case, is accused of misgendering and "deadnaming" the convicted child molester Hannah Tubbs, who is now accused of beating a man to death in the woods with a rock in Kern County. Sanna has argued in the past that jailhouse phone calls show Tubbs, now 27, was...

My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell says he plans to sue Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) for providing Fox News host Tucker Carlson with exclusive access to footage from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Lindell told Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast on Thursday that his streaming platform Lindell-TV plans to sue McCarthy, claiming the Speaker violated the First Amendment’s freedom of the press provision and the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. The Trump ally said Lindell-TV is “injured by not having access” to the tapes and that the Speaker’s decision represented discrimination. “We’re not gonna sit back and let...