Free Republic

On July 4, 1941, a thirteen-year-old Jewish boy named Ephraim Sternschuss began his diary in the Nazi-occupied Zloczow, Poland, with these lines: Mother knows nothing about Father’s murder. I won’t be the one to tell. But I have to express what I’m feeling … I’ll write down all the details so when I’m old I’ll remember my youth and this World War, even though I’m not sure I’ll live through it. I’m writing while lying on my back. I can’t move my legs. Mother says I’m in shock. Maybe I am. Maybe I’m so anxious because I can’t tell her...

Use of menopausal hormone therapy is associated with an increased rate of dementia and Alzheimer's disease, suggests a large study. An increase was seen in long term users of menopausal hormone therapy, but also in short term users around the age of menopause (55 years or younger) as is currently recommended. Menopausal hormone therapy (widely known as HRT) is used to relieve common menopausal symptoms such as hot flushes and night sweats. Treatments include tablets containing estrogen only, or a combination of estrogen and progestogen, as well as skin patches, gels and creams. The effect of short term use of...

Back during the 2020 election and the “Summer of Love” BLM riots, a group of Proud Boys was seen tearing down a Black Lives Matter sign outside of a predominantly Black church in Washington. Arrests were made, though not of the rioters, of course. And a lawsuit was brought against the group. Now a Superior Court judge in Washington has ordered the group to pay more than a million dollars in reparations. Since the entire thing was caught on video, there is little doubt as to who was responsible, but this case raises a couple of immediate and obvious questions....

Affirmative action in admissions is over and as I pointed out here, the progressive left is basically freaking out about what will happen next. What we’ve seen in California, which outlawed affirmative action in 1996, is that the percentage of black and Hispanic students are likely to drop until schools adopt legal ways to make up for the advantage affirmative action was giving these students. The Washington Post has a story up today looking at how schools might do that. [emphasis added]“Expect a shock,” said Michael V. Drake, president of the University of California, who is in position to know....

Whether hormone therapy (HT) can be linked to an increased risk of gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) has been debated for years. A new systematic review and meta-analysis attempts to resolve the controversy, suggesting that there is a significant association between ever or current HT use and GERD. GERD is one of the most common conditions in gastroenterology practice. Its global prevalence has been estimated at nearly 14%. Common symptoms include heartburn, dysphagia (difficulty swallowing), and chest pain. Anatomical abnormalities, such as hiatal hernia and obesity, have been identified as risk factors. Estrogen increases stomach acid production and is associated with...

The targeted beating took place on Thursday night, which marked the third night of rioting that has rocked France since the police shooting of 17-year-old French-Algerian Nahel M., who was well-known to the police for his lengthy criminal history. ... Police sources have confirmed that the shocking viral video of a man laying unconscious on the ground after being beaten by Muslim rioters was an off-duty French police officer. He was one of two off-duty officers severely wounded by the mob. In the video, one man is heard saying to the unconscious off-duty officer: “You’re knocked out on the ground,...

Large parts of the United States are currently being plagued by dense clouds of smoke that are causing air quality alerts to be issued. A lot of people are walking around wearing masks, making it look like we’re back in the days of the pandemic. As you’ve likely already heard, the smoke is blowing down from Canada, where there are now more than 500 wildfires raging, with 262 of them being listed as “out of control” by the Canadian government. But despite volunteer firefighters from ten countries having deployed to Canada to help, the majority of those fires aren’t being...

One of the first polls on the Supreme Court’s decision Thursday to forbid racial preference in college admissions is out, and unsurprisingly, to anyone who is not embalmed in Critical Race Theory, most approve.A majority of Americans approve of the Supreme Court ruling restricting the use of race as a factor in college admissions, though the country is more divided on other high-profile rulings and increasingly viewing the court as driven more by politics than the law, according to a new ABC News/Ipsos poll conducted using Ipsos’ KnowledgePanel.On Thursday, the Supreme Court set new limits on affirmative action programs in...

Obesity increases with aging. Methionine restriction affects lipid metabolism and can prevent obesity in mice. In a new study, researchers observed C57BL/6 mice double their body weight from 4 to 48 weeks of age and become obese. The team then evaluated the efficacy of oral administration of recombinant-methioninase (rMETase)-producing E. coli (E. coli JM109-rMETase) or a methionine-deficient diet to reverse old-age-induced obesity in C57BL/6 mice. "In the present study we tested a low-methionine diet to reverse old-age-induced obesity. [...] E. coli JM109-rMETase was also tested in the present study to reverse old-age-induced obesity," state the researchers. Fifteen C57BL/6 male mice...

Bud Light's sales woes cause bottling plants to close. (Credit: WRAL News)The hits keep coming for Bud Light and its parent company Anheuser-Busch after their disastrous marketing partnership with transgender TikTok personality Dylan Mulvaney. Sales of the beer fell off a cliff, A-B has lost billions in market value, and Modelo has taken over as the number one brew in ‘Merica.There’s a human cost as well, as glass bottling company The Ardagh Group was forced to cut production and lay off nearly 650 employees due to lack of demand. The company didn’t directly tie the controversy to its decisions, but...

A series of explosive devices and a “Molotov cocktail-style object” detonated outside three northeast Washington D.C. businesses early Sunday morning, causing no deaths or injuries but leaving the city on edge. There was some damage to the buildings, with broken windows and debris.The suspect has not been caught as of this writing, and the police are asking for assistance:Police in Washington, D.C., are seeking the public’s help locating the suspects behind attacks against a bank, a retail outlet and grocery store damaged with explosive devices within 15 minutes early Sunday morning.Three stores in northeast D.C. reported damage, according to a...

Last Thursday, an "Ask Amy" advice column published by the Chicago about "very politically progressive" overly sensitive and entitled liberals so absurd that people were asking if it was even real. There's no indication it's parody, though, and it just goes to show you how crazy the left can be. In this specific instance, it happens to be about a bride and her mother who disinvited the bride's uncle, and yet the mother wrote in because they still wanted the wedding gift from said uncle. Amy Dickinson, who does the advice column, put the mother in her place, though she...

Many of us are finding it difficult to discern who is a sinner and who is an evil doer. A look at Scripture can help us understand better: “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). In other words, every individual person has done something wrong and not lived up to God's perfect moral standard. Sin is in the nature of every individual; we’re born in it (Psalm 51:5).But I can’t remember any verse in the Bible that says that we are all evildoers. Evil is much deeper and more terrible than sin. Even though...

The pharmaceutical industry in general, along with its specific claims regarding the safety or efficacy of any given product, is not to be trusted.I previously reported on bombshell evidence that the clinical research groups that Pfizer contracted with committed fraud during its COVID-19 mRNA shot trials, which included improperly de-blinding patients, falsifying records, using insufficiently trained staff, etc.Then there was the Project Veritas expose that showed a Pfizer director of research on a Grindr date bragging about how the corporation is deliberately engineering new COVID strains so as to develop a new “vaccine” (which is not actually a conventional vaccine)....

Aspartame, one of the most common artificial sweeteners — found in everything from diet sodas to cough drops to other pharmaceuticals — may soon be marked as a carcinogen (cancer-causing agent) by the world’s preeminent public health body.Via Reuters:One of the world’s most common artificial sweeteners is set to be declared a possible carcinogen next month by a leading global health body, according to two sources with knowledge of the process, pitting it against the food industry and regulators.Aspartame, used in products from Coca-Cola diet sodas to Mars’ Extra chewing gum and some Snapple drinks, will be listed in July...

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has approved a British biotech firm’s application to release 2.4 million genetically altered mosquitoes into the wild as an “experimental pesticide product.”Via NBC News:The experimental public health effort, which still requires final approval from state regulators, follows the 2021 release of 144,000 genetically modified mosquitoes in the Florida Keys by British biotech firm Oxitec.Oxitec said its genetically modified male, and thus non-biting, mosquitoes “find and mate with invasive female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, mediating a reduction of the target population as the female offspring of these encounters cannot survive,” thus reducing the overall population…Oxitec’s mosquito release...

A meme popular among American pundits claims that China’s economy is doomed by a slowly declining population. More important than the aggregate Chinese population is the technically proficient Chinese population. That has grown 20-fold, or by 2,000%, in the past 40 years. Other Asian countries, notably South Korea, previously achieved record-shattering productivity gains with similar enhancement of skills. We’ve heard this argument before, applied to the Asian Tigers. The doomsayers had their heyday just before East Asia’s growth went vertical. Perhaps the worst economic prediction in recorded history was Paul Krugman’s 1994 assertion that the Asian economic miracle was a...

“Ponzi Scheme” is a term that was coined about 100 years ago. It was named after an Italian immigrant, Charles Ponzi, who realized he could get investors by promising large returns for undefined, high-yield investments. His endeavor needed to make just enough money to keep attracting new investors, whose money, after Ponzi’s cut, was used to pay some of the earlier investors. In our modern day, Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme resulted in losses in the billions of dollars when the stock market tanked during the Great Recession. Selling the Deal Americans are just beginning to see the tip of the...

British Banks are to be told by the Treasury that they must protect free speech amid an escalating row over the blacklisting of customers who hold controversial views. Jeremy Hunt, the Chancellor, is understood to be “deeply concerned” that overzealous lenders are closing down accounts because they disagree with customers’ opinions and has asked City minister Andrew Griffith to investigate the issue. Whitehall sources said that results of a consultation on the subject will be published within weeks, after it was launched earlier this year in the wake of PayPal blocking the accounts of free speech groups. The controversy flared...

SHOCK: RFK Jr Reveals REAL Killer of His Father, Thane Eugene Cesar, Lockheed Martin/CIA Operative (8 MIN VIDEO)