Free Republic

With no significant breakthrough after six weeks, it is worth asking whether Ukraine’s counter-offensive can ever succeed, for it certainly doesn’t look to be succeeding now. (clip) The question to be asked is: are the Ukrainians prepared – militarily, politically, financially – to carry out months and potentially years of these (frontal assault) attacks to penetrate 1914-18 style defensive belts of tank traps, barbed wire, minefields, bunkers and trench lines? The UK Ministry of Defence has described these Russian fortifications as “some of the most extensive systems of military defensive works seen anywhere in the world”. (clip) Ukraine is already...

FUKUSHIMA—— About 2,000 peaches which were ready for picking have been stolen from an orchard in Date, Fukushima Prefecture, police said Friday. According to police and the orchard owner, a man in his 70s, the peaches were stolen sometime between late Wednesday afternoon and 8 a.m. Thursday, Kyodo News reported. The peaches, which were stolen from 30 trees, are valued at about 650,000 yen. They included the highly sought-after Akatsuki variety. Police have stepped up patrols in several prefectures in the past few years following a spate of fruit thefts. Fukushima is the second largest peach-growing prefecture after Yamanashi. August...

Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison allegedly paid herself millions of dollars in a single bonus payment despite knowing about massive holes in FTX’s finances. Months before FTX filed for bankruptcy, she allegedly moved the money between various accounts until it landed in her own. Crypto exchange FTX spectacularly imploded late last year, dragging Alameda Research, its affiliate trading firm, down with it. Alameda itself was losing huge amounts of money thanks to high-risk bets, with FTX accused of secretly redirecting its users’ funds to its sister firm to help plug its losses. Legal proceedings launched in the wake of FTX’s...

Angel Studios’ anti-people trafficking movie, “Sound of Freedom,” has earned nearly seven times its original budget after only two weeks at the box office.Image from the "Sound of Freedom" movie which was released on July 4, 2023. (Courtesy of Angel Studios)Shedding a light on a dark, shadowy world—especially child sex trafficking—the film’s commercial success comes years after its production, surviving a corporate merger, the COVID-19 pandemic, and reports of several screenings gone awry.The picture owes a lot to two men who wanted everyone to see it—the producer and co-star Eduardo Verastagui and president of Goya Foods, Bob Unanue.Opening on July...

Thousands of young illegal immigrants with tuberculosis were released from U.S. government custody across one year, officials have revealed in a new report. The illegal immigrants, all under 18 years of age, were released to family members or other responsible adults despite having latent tuberculosis infection, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said in a recent disclosure.The dates of each release were not clear. HHS officials notified state officials from June 1, 2022, to May 31, 2023, of the tuberculosis-positive youth over a web-based system operated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Aurora...

Join with fellow FREEPERS to pray for AMERICA: For those in Authority in Government, Family, Military, Business, Agribusiness; Healthcare, Education, End of Sex Trafficking, Churches, and the Media. This is the confidence we have in approaching GOD: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. (1 John 5:14)Forum threads labeled [Prayer] are closed to debate of any kind.

Does “Made in America” Still Matter to Consumers?Do American citizens care where their products come from? Well, it depends on who you ask.Over the past few decades, the importance of “Made in America”—labels on products indicating production was done in the U.S.—has ebbed and flowed. As China has grown into the United States’ economic rival and geopolitical adversary, the distinction between American-made and Chinese-made has resurfaced, even as some products have been mislabeled or locally produced but Chinese-owned.How do people currently feel? This chart uses survey responses from May 2023 out of Morning Consult, in which a representative sample of...

Jason Aldean TRIGGERS The View After His Song HITS NUMBER 1

To paraphrase an old saying, there are polls, damned polls, and hypothetical click-bait. To which category should we assign a Quinnipiac poll that reports 47% of American voters willing to consider a third-party presidential candidate in 2024? Especially when nearly as many voters of a specific party affiliation indicate openness to the idea?Door Number 3, perhaps, but even so, this can’t help but make Joe Manchin feel tingly all over (via PJ Media):With the 2024 presidential race potentially pitting a current and former president against each other and more than a dozen other candidates officially seeking their party’s presidential nomination,...

The first time I heard the controversial social media personality Andrew Tate speak on women, Western society, and masculinity, I immediately thought that he was a radical Islamic extremist. A defector from the Taliban, perhaps? Over the next few months I would hear Tate make outlandish remarks such as, “Women should shut the f**k up, have kids, sit at home, be quiet and make coffee.” And more: speaking of women in general, Tate said, “If I have a degree of responsibility over her, then I must have a degree of authority… You can’t be responsible for a dog if it...

Is the juice worth the squeeze? Apparently, Stanford’s DEI Dean Tirien Steinbach has decided it’s not. Back in March she helped students berate Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan. Yesterday she announced she was resigning.A Stanford Law School diversity official resigned Thursday after being suspended in March for aligning with student hecklers who shouted down a former President Donald Trump appointed judge trying to give a talk.Tirien Steinbach, the law school’s associate dean for diversity, equity and inclusion, made national news when she was recorded on video March 9 telling federal appeals court Judge Stuart Duncan that his work had “caused harm”...

The CDC said the COVID vaccines were perfectly safe for pregnant women. They lied and they continue to lie to the American people. Here's the proof and you can verify it yourself. Executive summary.. The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) is the official US government database for reporting adverse events following vaccination. It is the “gold standard” for detecting safety signals. All Americans who have an adverse event following vaccination are encouraged by the US government to report it to VAERS. The VAERS data clearly shows that the COVID vaccines are the most dangerous vaccines of all time. There...

Sammy Roth is an energy & environment reporter for the LA Times. Last week he asked a serious question on Twitter: Would it really be so bad if we had occasional blackouts as the cost of transitioning away from fossil fuels sooner?Serious question for energy/climate people… How bad would it be if growing levels of solar on the grid — and continued gas-plant closures — resulted in occasional, relatively limited power outages on hot evenings? Assuming that only lasted a few years?— Sammy Roth (@Sammy_Roth) July 14, 2023I’m not an energy writer for a major newspaper but this immediately strikes...

Northwestern University academics have stirred controversy by labeling student responses to a gender survey as evidence of 'fascism' and 'white supremacy'. The assertion came after students humorously claimed to identify as 'Apache attack helicopters,' in reference to a longstanding internet meme used to deride the concept of non-binary gender identities. The researchers, also affiliated with Oregon State University, conducted the online questionnaire to study experiences of transgender undergraduates in engineering and computer science fields. Their findings, summarized in a paper titled 'Attack Helicopters and White Supremacy: Interesting Malicious Responses to an Online Questionnaire about Transgender Undergraduate Engineering and Computer Science...

Rendition of planned American Heartland theme park in Oklahoma. (Credit: American Heartland) As we’ve reported, the Walt Disney Company has dug itself into a hole with its woke offerings, declining theme-park experience, and altogether avoidable feud with the state of Florida and Governor Ron DeSantis.Read: Disney Collapses Under Its Own Woke Weight and Iger Is Looking to SellThe company’s stock has dropped almost 20 percent in the last six months, and in May, its market value plummeted by a cool $16 billion. But theme parks are the second most profitable part of their income—trailing only media and entertainment—so they...

July 21 (UPI) -- The Biden administration announced Friday that to make sure the country is more prepared for the next pandemic, it is setting up an Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy within the White House. "This will be a permanent office in the Executive Office of the President (EOP) charged with leading, coordinating, and implementing actions related to preparedness for, and response to, known and unknown biological threats or pathogens that could lead to a pandemic or to significant public health-related disruptions in the United States," the White House said in a statement. The new office will...

Donna Hansbrough, 68, was punched in the face multiple times while attempting to stop shoplifters from stealing over $2,000 worth of merchandise from Lowe's. The home improvement company then fired Hansbrough for violating their policy.WSAV reported Takyah Berry, Joseph Berry, and Jarmar Lawton allegedly went inside Lowe's and loaded multiple items into different shopping carts. Police say they would then exit the store without paying for the merchandise. Hansbrough grabbed onto the shopping cart belonging to the female suspect, Takyah:Police say that Hansbrough never made physical contact with any of the thieves, only grabbing the cart. According to the sheriff’s...

Former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro made loosening the nation’s restrictive gun control laws one of his administration’s top priorities, much to the chagrin of anti-gun advocates who warned that the country’s already sky-high homicide rates would get even worse if average citizens could keep and (in some cases) carry a firearm for self-defense. As it turns out, the opposite has happened, with homicide rates declining to the lowest level in more than a decade, and now the Associated Press reports that “experts are puzzled” by the fact that more guns hasn’t resulted in more crime. "About 47,500 people were slain...

It says a lot about the modern Democrat Party that its prominent figures like Rep. Eric Swalwell (California representative) and Beto O’Rourke (perpetually unemployed) would actually support and pose for a photo with Stacie Laughton when he was running for a seat in the New Hampshire state house.For the uninitiated, Laughton has the distinction of being the first transgender person elected to a state legislature. More importantly, he was charged in connection with the sexual exploitation of children, specifically by receiving and talking about explicit photos of children possibly as young as 3 years old. Laughton allegedly obtained the photos...

CEO of Company that Wants to Scan Your Irises: ‘World ID’ Is Coming ‘Whether You Like It or Not’ FROM BREIRBART NEWS: Worldcoin was co-founded by Sam Altman, who is also the CEO of OpenAI, the company behind the controversial large language model ChatGPT. The AI mogul previously stated his hopes for the technology to “break capitalism” by enabling the more efficient allocation of resources. Previous investors in Worldcoin include disgraced Crypto kingpin Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX. The company uses technology that scans the irises of people around the world, data which is then use...