Free Republic

In the more traditional, more oral culture of Indonesia, very poor peasant farmers can still have a better family and working life than most Westerners. To what extent can we restore what we have lost?

CHICAGO — Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot lost her bid for re-election Tuesday, ending her historic run as the city’s first Black woman and first openly gay person to serve in the position. The Democratic incumbent failed to gain enough votes in the nine-person race to move on to an April 4 runoff election, according to projections by The Associated Press. Paul Vallas, a former CEO of Chicago schools, will face Brandon Johnson, a Cook County commissioner endorsed by the Chicago Teachers Union. Ideologically, the choice between Vallas and Johnson is stark. Vallas ran as a moderate law-and-order candidate, while Johnson...

A row has erupted between Dublin City Council and the Archdiocese of Dublin over the listing of a number of churches and parish halls, currently in active use, for residential development. Source: The Tablet. The archdiocese has contested the designation of the 32 properties as residential zoned land, which means they are liable for a new vacant buildings tax if they are not developed for housing. At the weekend, Dublin Archbishop Dermot Farrell decried the council’s zoning of the 24 churches and eight parish halls for housing as “an extraordinary attack on the Catholic faith”. He said the churches are...

The “largest Satanic gathering in history” is set to take place in Boston, Massachusetts this spring and will require attendees to wear masks and be vaccinated against COVID-19. The controversial convention, dubbed “SatanCon 2023,” is scheduled to take place on April 28-30 and will be hosted by The Satanic Temple in commemoration of the organization’s 10 year anniversary. According to local reports, SatanCon 2023 is themed after an ancient springtime German holiday known as “Witches Night” or “Hexennacht.” Tickets for the “weekend of blasphemy and remembrance” have reportedly all been sold out.

At least 26 people were killed and more than 85 injured when two trains collided in northern Greece, the Greek Fire Service said Wednesday. Images on Greece’s state-owned public broadcaster ERT showed smoke pouring out of toppled train cars and long lines of rescue vehicles next to them. The images also showed rescue workers with torches searching carriages for survivors. Greek Fire Service spokesman Vassilis Varthakogiannis said in a televised briefing that a passenger train carrying more than 350 people had collided with a freight train on Tuesday evening, shortly before midnight local time, in the area of Tempi, central...

Hungary has some of the strongest laws against LGBT propaganda in the West and bans dissemination of pro-homosexual content in schools and media.BUDAPEST (LifeSiteNews) — Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán delivered a State of the Nation address on February 18 in which he doubled down on his government’s commitment to protect children from “gender propaganda” which he linked to “pedophilia.” After spending much of the speech talking about the economic situation of Hungary and the difficult situation the Ukraine-Russia conflict has created for his country, Orbán ended his speech with a salvo against “a rainbow of words” that he called...

Rome Newsroom, Feb 27, 2023 / 05:50 am The Vatican announced Saturday that Pope Francis will visit Hungary for the second time, from April 28-30. According to the Feb. 27 announcement, the three-day papal trip to Budapest will include meetings with Hungary President Katalin Novák, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a private visit with children at the Blessed László Batthyány-Strattmann Institute, and meetings with poor people and migrants, young people, clergy, academics, and members of the Society of Jesus. Pope Francis returns to the central European country after a short visit in 2021 for the 52nd International Eucharistic Congress. The pope...

...the Starlink 6-1 launch culminated in the 100th consecutively successful landing of a Falcon rocket booster. As a result, SpaceX’s landing reliability now rivals the launch reliability of some of the most reliable rockets ever flown. Falcon 9 booster B1076 touched down on one of SpaceX’s three drone ships, marking the rocket family’s 100th consecutively successful landing. Starlink 6-1 was also the Falcon family’s 183rd consecutively successful launch, as a Falcon landing failure has never prevented the completion of a mission’s primary objective.

After the western alliance previously swore that NATO would not put any member NATO state on the doorstep of Russia, a promise that was weak and viewed by many as false – ultimately influencing the decision by Russia, NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg said today that Ukraine will be joining NATO as soon as the conflict is concluded. Now, given that statement, why would Russia even fathom entering any type of peaceful resolution to the conflict. In essence, Stoltenberg has just turned the conflict in Ukraine into a zero-sum issue for Russia. The only way Russia can keep NATO away...

A new survey found that 75% of workers now experience the Sunday scaries. Here’s why.The cloud of dread hanging over you on Sunday evening; the wave of anxious anticipation you feel ahead of a new week; the cold sweat you get thinking about Monday. These feelings have a name: the “Sunday scaries.” According to recent data from LinkedIn and Headspace, the so-called “Sunday scaries” are getting worse, supposedly stemming from growing economic uncertainty, financial stress, and employment concerns. LinkedIn surveyed 2,000 U.S. workers and found that 75% experience Sunday scaries. And while it may seem like workers have long-dreaded the...

Dem megadonors Bill Gates and Laurene Powell Jobs see green energy investments flooded with taxpayer cash ... Joe Biden's taxpayer-funded push to build a "clean energy economy" is benefiting the left's most prominent billionaire megadonors, including Bill Gates and Laurene Powell Jobs,.. Biden's Energy Department has in the last two months announced nearly $3 billion in loans to two electric battery companies, Redwood Materials and Ioneer, which are backed by seed funding from Gates, Jobs, and other left-wing billionaires. Now those billionaires, who have poured millions into the effort to win Democrats power in Washington, are likely set to see...

BREAKING: A record 36% of U.S. adults now have more credit card debt than savings. This is up from 27% in 2022 and 21% in 2021. Credit card debt jumped $130 billion in 2022, the biggest increase in history, to $986 billion. We are "fighting" inflation with credit card debt. Credit card debt is up 15% over the last YEAR and 7% over the last QUARTER. "High rates and inflation" are to blame, according to the New York Fed. Worst part? Rates are still rising and inflation just increased for the first time since October 2022. How can this end...

[Catholic Caucus] Persecution accelerating in dioceses across the United States due to false obedienceTraditional Catholics Discern the Signs of the Times …the Church has always had the duty of scrutinizing the signs of the times and of interpreting them in the light of the Gospel. Thus, in language intelligible to each generation, she can respond to the perennial questions which men ask about this present life and the life to come, and about the relationship of the one to the other. We must therefore recognize and understand the world in which we live, its explanations, its longings, and its often...

Russia has never been a technological superpower. The downsizing of the scientific budgets in the 1990s killed much of what was left of Soviet tech potential centered around closed scientific towns. Subsequent attempts to spur government-induced innovation, in particular under former President Dimitri Medvedev — a young Western-looking technocrat who’s now the chief Russian hawk — failed. Top-down tech ventures such as Rusnano and Skolkovo Center ended up as Potemkin villages, incapable of producing a fraction of the R&D output of American, European, or Chinese scientific clusters. ...But these diversions mask a broader collapse of Russian imports. Even though Russia’s...

House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement Chairman Tom McClintock (R-CA) have launched an inquiry into the illegal alien MS-13 Gang member accused of murdering 20-year-old Kayla Hamilton last year.Last month, the Aberdeen Police Department in Aberdeen, Maryland, arrested and charged a 17-year-old illegal alien MS-13 gang member from El Salvador with murder, accusing him of strangling to death and then raping Hamilton in her residence in July 2022.The illegal alien suspect, according to a former Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official, had been released from the border into the United States interior...

Flight LogFlight 46 Sol 717 Date Feb. 25, 2023 Horizontal Distance 445 m ~1,460 ft Max. Altitude 12 m ~39 ft Max. Groundspeed 5.30 m/s ~11.9 mph Duration 135.9 seconds Route of Flight From Airfield Eta To Airfield ThetaFlights 46 (as of 2/25/23)Distance Flown 10,104 meters (~33,151 ft)Highest Altitude 14 meters (~46 ft)Fastest Ground Speed 6 m/s (13.4 mph)Flight Time ~79.4 minutes (4,765 seconds)

CHICAGO — Paul Vallas is poised to advance to the April runoff for mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson is in the lead for the second runoff slot to take him on — and incumbent Mayor Lori Lightfoot appears headed for defeat, according to preliminary results in the first round of voting. With 84 percent of precincts reporting, Vallas had secured about 35 percent of the vote, followed by Johnson with 20 percent and Lightfoot with 16 percent.

ATLANTA — Atlanta police have charged a teenager accused of going on a violent weekend crime spree that targeted numerous victims across the city. Police told Channel 2′s Michael Seiden that the 16-year-old boy committed three armed robberies, a carjacking, and broke into two vehicles in a span of two hours on February 25. Investigators charged the teen with multiple counts of armed robbery and entering auto. When officers arrested the teen, they recovered more than $13,000, two firearms, and the stolen pickup truck used in the crimes. As of Tuesday, he remained in jail, investigators confirmed. The crime spree...

President Biden wrongly claimed Tuesday that he slashed the national debt by $1.7 trillion — despite increasing it by about $3.84 trillion over his first two years in office. The 80-year-old president made the error — apparently as a result of confusing the terms “debt” and “deficit” — while bashing House Republicans as irresponsible for demanding spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt ceiling later this year. “You know you hear ads with the big-spending Joe Biden?” Biden said during a speech in Virginia Beach, Va. “In two years, I reduced the debt $1.7 billion — $1.7 billion. “It’s...

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