Free Republic

Victoria Cross recipient Ben Roberts-Smith has declared that Anzac Day is so “sacred” that his prosecution for war crime-related murder won’t stop him attending the public commemorations on Saturday. In a move that threatens to overshadow the 111th anniversary of the Gallipoli landings, a day of solemn remembrance for Australians, Mr Roberts-Smith will front an Anzac Day event in Queensland and defy reported calls by some of his supporters to boycott the annual services and marches. This follows intervention by the doyen of Australia’s four living VC holders, Vietnam War hero Keith Payne, to back the former SAS operator’s right...

Video Transcript and SummarySummary of the video/transcript:This is an on-the-ground investigative-style video by a conservative-leaning content creator (likely Angela Rose or similar) visiting 326 Cedar Avenue in Minneapolis' Cedar-Riverside neighborhood (a heavily Somali/East African area). The creator accuses Rep. Ilhan Omar of attempting to direct $1.46 million (later reduced to $1.03 million) in federal taxpayer funds via a DOJ earmark to Generation Hope MN, a nonprofit described as a substance abuse/addiction recovery clinic for the East African community.Main allegations:The listed address (326 Cedar Ave) is primarily a Sagal Restaurant (Somali food: rice, meat, goat kidneys/liver, etc.), not a medical or...

After he applied to his 599th job, John Burg stopped counting. Burg was laid off as a contractor for the U.S. Agency for International Development in January 2025, after a decades-long career that took him to Thailand, Kosovo and El Salvador. He was one of more than 300,000 federal workers and contractors whose jobs were eliminated by the Department of Government Efficiency. One year, one massive spreadsheet of job leads and only a handful of interviews later, Burg has returned to the job he had in college, doing carpentry jobs for his Takoma Park neighborhood, just outside of Washington. “A...

FR CANTEEN MISSION STATEMENT Showing support and boosting the morale of our military and our allied military and the family members of the above.Honoring those who have served before. FReeper Canteen Just Hangin' Cafe Come on in, we're open Need a place just to hang out? This is it. We serve coffee, tea,or maybe a tall brew? Topped off with great conversation and music. No worries in the FReeper Canteen Just Hangin' Cafe. Grab a glass and start a conversation. You never know who you might meet in the Cafe. Glad you could join us. Enjoy your stay. Our...

Iran's 'moderate' mask falls completely off as the IRGC takes the wheel. Risk trades are diving on a report from N12 about Ghalibaf leaving the negotiating team. N12 is the digital news brand of Keshet 12, an Israeli free-to-air television channelIf anyone in the market was still holding out hope for a diplomatic off-ramp in the Middle East, it might be time to worry.We just got a pair of headlines out of Iran that paint a very stark picture of where things are heading, and it’s not toward de-escalation.First, Iranian President Pezeshkian took to X to completely torpedo the idea...

The Salt Lake City Tribune is reporting that an openly lesbian city council member running for Congress has been accused by four women of making "unwanted sexual advances."Lopez Chavez says that "nothing inappropriate" happened between her and three other women, while the alleged contact with the fourth woman never occurred."Victoria Petro, who is Lopez Chavez’s fellow City Council member; Maggie Regier, who worked on Stan Penfold’s mayoral campaign in 2019; Hoang Nguyen, who is now a state representative; and Jen Plumb, now a state senator, described their allegations in interviews with The Salt Lake Tribune," reports the newspaper. The incidents...

Food for thought. Iran Is Not Winning. It Is Unraveling. The prevailing narrative on Iran has it almost perfectly reversed. We are told that Tehran is winning a war of wills in the Gulf and that Donald Trump is gambling recklessly with the world’s most sensitive chokepoint. In reality, Iran is not consolidating strength; it is managing decline. And Trump’s play on the Strait of Hormuz has quietly forced energy markets to reprice security—tilting the balance decisively toward the Americas, and away from Europe, Asia and China. The Islamic Republic no longer resembles a confident revolutionary project. With the old...

President Donald Trump has pushed to bring the war with Iran to a speedy end: He stepped up bombing raids. He threatened to wipe out infrastructure. He has attempted diplomacy and ordered a naval blockade. But Tehran is in no rush to cut a deal. Despite the assassinations of its leaders and the damage to an array of military sites, Iran’s regime seems to have benefitted politically from the attacks started by the U.S. and Israel, according to a Western diplomat with knowledge of the conflict and five Western officials, all with knowledge of intelligence assessments on Iran. The regime...

California has licensed at least 17,000 Commercial Drivers' Licenses to illegal aliens, and was forced to revoke them at the risk of losing their federal funding for transportation. The current candidates for governor in California think that's racist, as is requiring truck drivers to speak English and be able to read and understand road signs. Welcome to California, where people live in tents on the sidewalk, poop in the street, rot from drug abuse, and are used as an excuse to fund a multi-billion-dollar NGO complex that can't tell the government where all that money went. MODERATOR: “Should language proficiency...

A job listing, first unearthed by Yellowhammer News on Thursday, reveals the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) was hit with an 11-count indictment amid an ongoing search for a new CEO. According to the listing, the nonprofit is willing to pay up to $525,000 per year for a new top executive to lead the SPLC into its “Next Chapter.” Though only posted to the third-party job listing website, Daybook, on Wednesday, the listing has been available on a job board maintained by the headhunting firm, Korn Ferry, since December 19, 2025. According to the listing, the next CEO of the...

Guests visiting the Disneyland Resort in recent months may have noticed new facial recognition technology at the entrances to Disneyland and Disney California Adventure, though guests don’t have to use the system if they choose not to, according to company guidelines. Disney says the technology is designed to streamline guest entry. The system captures an image of a guest’s face at the gate and compares it to the image taken when the ticket or pass was first used. Both images are converted into numerical values to verify a match. ... Traditional entrance lanes remain available. Guests who opt out of...

Virginia’s redistricting referendum, which could net Democrats a 10-1 House seat advantage, is spurring Republican legislation that would expand the borders of Washington, D.C., and cost the state Democratic voters. Georgia Republican Rep. Rich McCormick said Thursday he introduced the Make DC Square Again Act, a bill that would undo the 19th century return of the southwestern part of the district to the state of Virginia, known as retrocession. “The Make DC Square Again Act restores the original ten-mile-square District and ends the artificial advantage Virginia Democrats have recently gained from all the federal bureaucrats moving into Virginia,” McCormick said...

While the idea sounds like a technothriller plot, it’s actually a mix of public business strategy and some very real intelligence-community roots. It wasn't so much a "sneak" way to map the world as it was an open—if often overlooked—part of Niantic’s business model. Here’s the breakdown of how the game connects to global mapping: ### 1. The CIA Connection (The Roots) The theory that Pokémon GO is a front for the CIA stems from the background of Niantic’s CEO, **John Hanke**. * **Keyhole Inc.:** Before Niantic, Hanke founded Keyhole Inc., a geospatial data company. * **In-Q-Tel:** Keyhole was funded...

For centuries, skeptics have dismissed the account of Noah's Ark as allegory--an ancient story meant to convey moral truth rather than historical reality. But today, high in the rugged terrain of eastern Mount Ararat, a growing body of evidence is once again challenging that assumption. What was once the domain of speculation is now being probed by ground-penetrating radar, soil chemistry, and emerging technology. And the results, while still debated, are difficult to ignore. At the center of renewed interest is the so-called Durupinar formation, a boat-shaped geological structure first identified in 1959. For decades, it has fascinated researchers due...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is vowing to crack down on foreign tech companies’ exploitation of U.S. artificial intelligence models, singling out China at a time that country is narrowing the gap with the U.S. in the AI race.In a Thursday memo, Michael Kratsios, the president’s chief science and technology adviser, accused foreign entities “principally based in China” of engaging in deliberate, industrial-scale campaigns to “distill,” or extract capabilities from, leading AI systems made in the U.S. and “exploiting American expertise and innovation.”The administration, Kratsios wrote, will work with American AI companies to identify such activities, build defenses and...

On Monday, the Superior Court of Fulton County filed notice of a hearing for a challenge to the candidacy of Brad Raffensperger for Governor on the Republican primary ballot, due to the Republican party voting to reject his candidacy last year at the Georgia GOP Convention. If successful, this challenge could disqualify Raffensperger from the Republican primary ballot. [snip] “This is not a partisan issue; it is an issue of election integrity,” said Jake Medoff, attorney for Wysong and James. “The Georgia Republican Party has the right to decide who will represent it as a candidate, and that process should...

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz shrugged off the fraud scandal in his state during an interview on Jimmy Kimmel’s show on Wednesday, and said it was an excuse by Republicans to demonize the immigrant community. “Mixed into all this is this — these multiple cases of benefits fraud that were happening,” Kimmel said. “Now, I want to ask you: Did it take an extraordinarily long time for you to know that that was happening? Is that just something that has been spread?” Walz said no and turned it back on President Donald Trump, saying, “It happens in other states. We were...

Another city is choosing to fly the old Minnesota state flag in what appears to be a growing trend. Elk River is the latest city to opt for the 1983 design in the flag debate. It follows the cities of Champlin, Zumbrota, Plainview and others in reverting to the old state symbol that was originally adopted in 1957. Elk River Mayor John Dietz said over 1,000 Elk River residents weighed in and about 75% of responses were in favor of the old flag. "I have been on the city council for 32 years, 16 as a council member and 16...

It was more than it was Kraken-ed up to be. An octopus the size of the Hollywood Sign might seem like a monster from Greek mythology. However, new fossil evidence reveals that massive “kraken”-like cephalopods ruled the seas during the Cretaceous period, possibly preying on massive sea reptiles and other so-called apex predators, per a study published Thursday in the American Association for the Advancement of Science. This massive mollusk “had among the largest body sizes of all organisms in the Cretaceous oceans,” wrote the researchers, who hailed from Hokkaido University. Indeed, at 62-feet-long, this colossal octopus could grow up...

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (WMC) - Law enforcement is investigating after the skeletal remains of three children were discovered in a wooded area of Hickory Hill. The FBI and TBI are assisting the Memphis Police Department with the investigation, which is underway in the area of Ridgeway Road and Winchester Road.