Free Republic

According to scores of social media accounts reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF), the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is teaching the kiddies how to handle firearms and fight like soldiers in boot camps all across China this summer. The boot camps reportedly feature training for both boys and girls…involving a wide variety of ‘toy’ weapons, including knives, grenades, rifles, and shoulder-fired missiles. Moreover, the children are required to adopt military behavior-- such as saluting-- according to the schools’ social media posts. Government documents note that the militarization of even extremely young Chinese is occurring subsequent to a 2019...

Peru has declared a “national health emergency” as cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome continue to soar out of control. Over the weekend the government of Peru declared a 90-day health emergency as a result of an “unusual increase” in cases of the rare Covid vaccine-induced disorder. Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) is a rare disease where the body’s immune system attacks part of the nervous system. Peru is not alone, however, as cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome have been spiking around the world following the introduction of the mRNA Covid shots. Additionally, researchers advise that older individuals who received the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV)...

The recreations of the battles of Austerlitz and Waterloo, among others, look peerless...It is a stereotype to suggest that all a male viewer wants to watch at his local cinema is bloodshed. Yet there is going to be an enormous amount of that on offer during the rest of 2023 (although Oppenheimer, bizarrely, is promising extended scenes of nudity and sex from its stars Florence Pugh and Cillian Murphy instead; whatever floats your boat). The return of such maestros as David Fincher, Martin Scorsese and Scott to cinemas is welcome — even if all their pictures had to be funded...

(The Hill) – A Texas kayaking company has sued Gov. Greg Abbott (R) over his plan to install floating barriers in the middle of the Rio Grande River that would prevent people from being able to swim across it. Jessie Fuentes, owner of Epi’s Canoe & Kayak Team, filed a suit in Austin, Texas on Friday to stop the state from placing the buoys which he claimed would prevent him from giving tours on the river and cause his company “imminent and irreparable harm.” The buoy construction near Eagle Pass, Texas, has already forced Fuentes to cancel a number of...

11 July 2023 Saint Benedict, Abbot on Tuesday of week 14 in Ordinary TimeSt. Benedict's Church, Nebraska City, NebraskaReadings at MassLiturgical Colour: White. Year: A(I).Readings for the feriaReadings for the memorialThese are the readings for the feriaFirst readingGenesis 32:23-33 ©Jacob wrestles with GodJacob rose, and taking his two wives and his two slave-girls and his eleven children he crossed the ford of the Jabbok. He took them and sent them across the stream and sent all his possessions over too. And Jacob was left alone. And there was one that wrestled with him until daybreak who, seeing that he could...

Russia is taking 'appropriate' measures in response to the possible accession of Sweden and Ukraine to NATO, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said today. Lavrov said Russia would protect its own 'legitimate security interests' as world leaders met in Vilnius, Lithuania for the first day of a NATO summit. The summit is expected to send a 'positive' message about Ukraine's hopes of one day joining the alliance, as Sweden makes progress after months of deliberation. However, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called for immediate action, saying it was 'unprecedented and absurd' not to have a timetable in place. NATO membership can...

f there is any substance to a campaign to suppress the box office, the film’s distributors have the potential for a humongous lawsuit, probably involving triple damages. We have received multiple emails from people saying that theaters are telling patrons that air-conditioning is broken in the auditoriums showing the hit movie Sound of Freedom, and offering another movie or a refund. Many people fear a campaign is underway to suppress the box office totals for the film, which exposes the sex trafficking of children. The box office success of SoF is particularly embarrassing for Disney, whose ridiculously expensive Indiana Jones...

Australia announced Monday it will deploy an E-7A Wedgetail surveillance aircraft to help ensure the uninterrupted flow of military and humanitarian aid into Ukraine. The Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) asset will be based in Germany. The early warning and control asset will help protect multinational logistics hubs but won’t enter the war-torn nation’s airspace. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the deployment will include up to 100 crew and support personnel from Australia, adding to previous contributions to the war zone from Canberra including lethal munitions, weaponry, and fighting vehicles.

(snip) Those who know history know that the Democrat party has always been the party of racism, white supremacy, and bigotry. They are just very good at, with the aid of a complicit media, casting that dark specter upon others. And now they are seeking to use this same tactic in shifting blame for violence with firearms. Last week on Independence Day, a deranged cross-dressing biological black male, I will not use their name, decided to gun down innocent people in Philadelphia. It was comical to witness the leftist media avoid, at all costs, describing the shooter since it did...

Lance Armstrong set off a firestorm when he said he thought transgender athletes should compete in their own category on Monday's episode of Stars On Mars. The conversation on the subject of transgender athletes happened when Lance, 51, started telling UFC fighter Ronda Rousey, 36, that he did a podcast last month and that the podcaster wanted to ask him about transgender athletes in sports. .....

Pray For The Peace of JerusalemLuke 20 The Resurrection and Marriage 27 Some of the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus with a question. 28 “Teacher,” they said, “Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife but no children, the man must marry the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. 29 Now there were seven brothers. The first one married a woman and died childless. 30 The second 31 and then the third married her, and in the same way the seven died, leaving no children. 32 Finally,...

When Judge Terry Doughty issued an injunction in Missouri v. Biden that banned the government from “specifically flagging content or posts on social-media platforms and/or forwarding such to social-media companies urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner for removal, deletion, suppression”, all hell broke loose. Evelyn Douek, a Stanford law professor, formerly of the Knight First Amendment Institute, warned that preventing the government from colluding with corporations to censor citizens would have a “chilling effect on communication between the government and platforms.” In traditional free speech jurisprudence, ‘chilling effects’ were inflicted by the government, but Douek is worried that...

Here in New York, we proceed giddily along shutting down our functioning and reliable mostly-fossil-fuel based electricity-generating system, in anticipation of an imminent future of clean and free “renewables.” After all, our Climate Act (officially, the “Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act of 2019”) has decreed that we must do so. A Climate Action Council — created by the statute and packed with politically-appointed climate activists with next-to-no expertise in how the energy system works — cooks up “Scoping Plans” that direct the little people to go out and create an entirely new energy system on a politically-determined timetable. And...

WASHINGTON — The Navy has published the final draft of its environmental impact statement assessing how it should go about dismantling the former aircraft carrier Enterprise (CVN-65), a process that will likely set decades-long precedents for future nuclear-powered ships. Environmental impact statements, as the name implies, are lengthy documents that outline the dangers to the ecosystem that disposing of decades-old nuclear reactors can pose, as well as identify one of several courses of action with which the Navy prefers to move forward. Due to the numerous state and federal agencies that must weigh in, as well as considering the general...

Technical topics, of any sort at all, are generally subject to serious distortion when they hit the level of public discussion. There are many reasons for this – ideology, click-lust, and the sheer inability of the average journo school grad to adequately wrap his head around whatever concept is under consideration. There’s no end of examples: Just think of the garbage written about global warming or COVID. The latest of these topics is Artificial Intelligence (AI). Commentary on AI has exploded across the media sphere since the release of ChatGPT, an AI app purportedly capable of learning how to produce...

"This is contained in Scripture: 'Behold I lay in Zion a choice stone, a precious corner stone, and he who believes in Him shall not be disappointed'" (1 Pet. 2:6). Christ is the fulfillment of all Messianic promises, and in Him you are eternally secure. First Peter 2:6 is a paraphrase of Isaiah 28:16, which says, "Thus says the Lord God, 'Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a tested stone, a costly cornerstone for the foundation, firmly placed. He who believes in it will not be disturbed.'" Isaiah was speaking of the Messiah—the coming Christ of God. Peter,...

TOKYO -- China's dominant position in refining and processing raw materials is making the nation a strong competitor in the global fight for mining assets, the International Energy Agency said on Tuesday, as governments and companies rush to diversify supply chains for critical minerals and stably meet demand for key clean technologies including renewables and electric vehicle batteries. "As the world's largest metal refining hub, China heavily relies on imports for large volumes of raw materials, often from a small number of sources," the IEA's Critical Minerals Market Review 2023 report said. The world's second-largest economy is the top producer...

The German government has finalized a 700-million-euro ($770.28 million) military aid package for Ukraine, the defense ministry said on Tuesday, the first day of a NATO summit in Vilnius. The package includes two Patriot launchers from Bundeswehr stock, 40 additional Marder infantry fighting vehicles, 25 additional 1 A5 main battle tanks, as well as five Bergepanzer 2 tanks, the ministry said. It includes an additional 20,000 rounds of artillery ammunition and 5,000 rounds of 155 mm smoke ammunition, the ministry added. The package “serves Ukraine’s priorities: air defense, tanks, artillery ... with it, we are making an important contribution to...

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody on Monday called on Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to appear before the Statewide Council on Human Trafficking to account for how Meta is being used to facilitate human trafficking and sex exploitation. Moody did so while announcing what she described as the “stunning” and “disturbing” findings of a statewide investigation that found that Meta platforms are being used more than any other social media platforms by human traffickers to commit crimes. It appears to be the first statewide inquiry and request of its kind. According to the state’s recent investigation, over half of all reported...

JAKARTA -- Foreign ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and partner countries are gathering in Jakarta for a series of meetings, with the situation in Myanmar high on the agenda as the prolonged crisis divides ASEAN and continues to cause concern globally. "We have no choice but to show that ASEAN can navigate the regional and global dynamics and continue to instill the paradigm of collaboration," Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi said at the beginning of the ASEAN foreign ministers' meeting on Tuesday, saying the task now comes "amidst more complex challenges." Indonesia, this year's chair, expects the...