Free Republic

A week or so before Maike Hohnen took the fishing trip that would change his life, he drove past a building site and spotted a sign that read “Free”. Nearby, on a patch of grass, were a hundred or so plastic buckets. Instinctively, Hohnen pulled over, grabbed eight or nine of them, and threw them in the back of his pick-up truck. “When I got home I put a couple in my boat,” he says. “I thought to myself, these will come in handy one day.”

The White House says pro-Palestinian protesters are wrong to chant “Genocide Joe” at President Biden over his support of Israel — pointing out that the Jewish state is not trying to “wipe the Palestinian people off the map” with its invasion of the Gaza Strip. The phrase is “inappropriate” to describe Israel’s Biden-backed war against the Hamas terror group, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters Monday. Thousands of anti-Israel demonstrators in New York City and DC have chanted “Genocide Joe!” and “Genocide Joe has gotta go!” — with activists even writing the nickname next to red painted handprints...

BEREHOVE, Ukraine -- Some 1,500 kilometers west of the front line in Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, in a mountainous region that borders four EU countries, lies a red-roofed town whose several thousand ethnic Hungarian residents have acquired an outsized role in the standoff between Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and the European Union over whether Ukraine's membership talks should go forward. Berehove, just 7 kilometers from the Hungarian border, is the population hub for Ukraine's ethnic Hungarian minority of roughly 100,000 people. The street signs are written in both languages, Hungarian flags fly alongside Ukrainian and EU flags on...

The CIA was created after World War II to prevent another Pearl Harbor attack, writes Charles S. Faddis, a former CIA operations officer and Middle East station chief. Faddis believes the agency “no longer works,” an easy case to make but not exactly news. Al Qaeda was well known but “we had not a single source inside that organization capable of warning us of the 9/11 attacks that would kill almost 3,000 Americans.” It took a decade to take out bin Laden, and one doubts it went down as portrayed in Zero Dark Thirty. As with 9/11 “we received no...

@visegrad24: Al-Jazeera reporter interviews a wounded elderly man at a Gaza hospital about how he got hurt. His answer? “Why is Hamas hiding among us civilians? Why don’t they go to hell and hide there instead?" The reporters quickly ends the interview…. Nov 14, 2023 https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1724534188097851587 WATCH: Gaza resident criticizes Hamas on Al Jazeera, reporter turns away and ignores him. By Maariv Online, Jerusalem Post Staff. Published: November 15, 2023https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-773289

In a historic turn, China’s rise as an economic superpower is reversing. The biggest global story of the past half century may be over. ... Its share of the global economy rose nearly tenfold from below 2 per cent in 1990 to 18.4 per cent in 2021. No nation had ever risen so far, so fast. Then the reversal began. In 2022, China’s share of the world economy shrank a bit. This year it will shrink more significantly, to 17 per cent. That two-year drop of 1.4 per cent is the largest since the 1960s. These numbers are in “nominal”...

The comedian is publicly defending his wife of 10 years, Nia Renée Hill, after she was caught flipping off former president Donald Trump at the Ultimate Fighting Championship 295 match. “I love my wife,” Burr, 55, remarked of the incident on the Rich Eisen Show. “You know where you stand with her.” Trump, said to be a big fan of the American mixed martial arts competition, entered Madison Square Garden in New York City Saturday night alongside UFC president Dana White, Tucker Carlson, Kid Rock and son Don Jr. As the crowd cheered, Trump approached his ringside seat in front...

Ben Brody says his life was going fine. He had just finished college, stayed out of trouble, and was prepping for law school. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, Elon Musk used his considerable social media clout to amplify an online mob’s misguided rants accusing the 22-year-old from California of being an undercover agent in a neo-Nazi group. The claim, Brody told CNN, was as bizarre as it was baseless. But the fact he bore a vague resemblance to a person allegedly in the group, that he was Jewish, and, that he once stated in a college fraternity profile posted online...

New US House Speaker Mike Johnson struck a blow for liberty and justice last week when he finally authorized the release of all the tapes from the January 6, 2021 “insurrection.”We were told by no less than President Biden himself that this was the “worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.”The FBI was unleashed by the Biden Administration to hunt down hundreds of participants in this “insurrection” and lock them up in the gulag where they awaited trial in torturous conditions – many in solitary confinement.A Congressional Committee was set up under then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi to “get to...

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has revealed that some Americans who were eligible to receive pandemic-era stimulus checks didn't apply for them—and that there's a way they can still claim the money.Internal Revenue Service (IRS) building in Washington, on Oct. 16, 2023. (Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times)The IRS said in a Nov. 17 announcement that, according to its records, some eligible individuals and families didn't end up collecting economic impact payments—also known as stimulus payments or stimulus checks—that were issued in 2020 and 2021.Those who missed out can still collect the money. The way to do so is through the "recovery...

New rules to make it easier for consumers to request repairs for goods will be voted on by the European Parliament. The legislation seeks to introduce a “right to repair”, in order to reduce unnecessary waste. It will require producers and sellers of goods to prioritize the repair of an item during its guarantee period, when it is cheaper or equal to the cost of replacement. After that time, consumers will also still have a right to request the repair of certain products. However, this does not extend to items like cars or batteries. Items such as washing machines, vacuum...

I am an avid reader of the UK newspaper The Telegraph. My wife turned me on to it and we got a subscription a few years ago and don’t blink at paying the price, whatever it is. The reason? It is both a reliable source of news, including US news and lacks the left-wing bias of The New York Times or the Washington Post without being a tabloid. It is a respectable broadsheet, leaning a bit right but hardly ideologically predictable. It is one of my go-to sources.A great example of how The Telegraph covers stories that get ignored or...

Revelation 17, coming into focusRevelation 17:1 And there came one of the seven angels which had the seven vials, and talked with me, saying unto me, Come hither; I will shew unto thee the judgment of the great whore that sits upon many waters:2 With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication. 3 So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven...

Well, this will work out well for the residents of New York City. Eric Adams, the Mayor of New York City, is having trouble paying for the feeding, housing, and coddling of the illegal migrants who have flooded his city thanks to Joe Biden’s open borders. Adams was elected to clean up the city and to address the crime epidemic after the disastrous reign of Bill DeBlasio. His election was a bit of rebellion against the soft-on-crime policies that were undermining the advances made during the pre-DeBlasio mayoralties of Giuliani and Bloomberg to make the city livable for the middle...

The Eighth US Circuit Court of Appeals ruling against private lawsuits seeking to redraw federal and state legislative districts more favorable to Democrats... A group affiliated with Iran claiming responsibility for the latest drone strike on the US Ain-al-Asad air base in Iraq... We're learning more tonight about Ray Epps and the activities of two undercover Washington DC police officers on January 6th... The latest opinion poll in the Netherlands ahead of Wednesday's election with rising support for Geert Wilders Party of Freedom (PVV)... Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu received warnings about Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas taking action against Israel......

New data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show COVID-19 cases are again rising in some parts of the country. The CDC’s map indicates that several states are experiencing a “substantial increase” in cases (more than 20%), including Texas , New Mexico, Kansas, and Nebraska, which saw a 57.3% spike from the previous week. The local surges in COVID are a reminder that although the pandemic is over for many of us mentally, the virus continues to take its toll. Throughout September and October, more than a hundred Americans died every day from COVID on average, according to...

Elon Musk's social media platform X has sued a left-leaning pressure group that accused the site of allowing antisemitic posts next to advertising. X's lawsuit alleges that Media Matters for America "manipulated" data in an attempt to "destroy" the platform formerly known as Twitter. Firms including Apple, Disney, IBM and Comcast have paused adverts on X since the watchdog released its analysis. After Mr Musk threatened the lawsuit, Media Matters called him a bully. The advocacy group said last week that ads had appeared on X alongside posts supporting Nazism, such as Hitler quotes and Holocaust denial. Separately, Mr Musk...

At the risk of sounding like the old man complaining about kids these days with their rap hop music and their fancy iDroid phones and yelling at them to get off my lawn, we must discuss this concept they have invented called "Personality Hires." Apparently, Gen Z has decided that a skillset isn't the most important thing you need in the workplace because morale and smiles are more important than all that efficiency nonsense, right? Well, that's what they're saying on social media, anyway.Corporate workers are discovering whether or not they're "personality hires" as the term has gained steam on...

Exerpt. Maybe they'll "accidentally" send them to Detroit (it's just across the river).

The governor of Oklahoma has been blocked by YouTube after posting a video in support of legalizing cockfighting. Republican Kevin Stitt threw his weight behind the blood sport with a filmed message to a rally and fundraiser for the state's gamefowl commission last week. 'Oklahomans like yourselves remain dedicated to the spirit of competition and comradery that runs deep in our communities,' he said in the clip that's still live on Vimeo. He added that while he couldn't attend the rally on November 12, the Republican would 'cheer them on from the sidelines.' YouTube has since flagged and taken down...