Free Republic

Venezuela's new petroleum minister sees her South American home not as a dilapidated former oil giant, but as an emerging energy economy ripe for U.S. and foreign investments in new oil and gas exploration, both onshore and offshore. Paula Henao, who took over as the hydrocarbons minister in March after the forced U.S. removal of former leader Nicolás Maduro, told an overflowing Houston energy audience on Wednesday that Venezuela is much more than just its famed heavy-grade crude oil. There are more than 916 exploration opportunities awaiting foreign investment, she said, including natural gas and other untapped oil basins. She...

New York Democrats have driven one of the state’s major donors into the arms of Republicans... billionaire James Dolan, owner of the NBA champion New York Knicks, has spearheaded an effort to pour millions of dollars into Republican Bruce Blakeman’s gubernatorial campaign. In 2022, Dolan backed Blakeman’s opponent, Democrat Gov. Kathy Hochul. Now, in conjunction with his company and with family members, Dolan has given so much money to pro-Blakeman committees and super PACs that he stands as New York state’s single largest GOP donor. New York Conservative Party Chair Jerry Kassar offered one explanation for the billionaire’s apparent shift....

The reactor was produced under President Trump’s 2025 nuclear reactor plan. It was designed by Australian Bobby Gallagher and his team in Houston. It can produce one megawatt of power, at a cost of 15 cents per kilowatt hour, for five years before refueling is required. The entire reactor can fit on the bed of a Ford F150 pickup. More importantly, it can be manufactured in a factory, fits into one 20-foot shipping container, uses the existing conventional supply chain, and requires no exotic custom-made components.

Florida is doing what no blue-state classroom dares: forcing students to confront the actual body count of communism instead of romanticizing it. Starting this fall, every public school student from sixth grade onward will receive mandatory instruction on the history and evils of communism under standards signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis. The curriculum covers the Soviet Union, the Chinese Communist Revolution, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, and the recent capture of Nicolás Maduro. It details the mass deaths under Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and Castro, the failure of collectivism, and the superiority of free enterprise and private property....

Nolan’s Odyssey is a massive boon to those who care about literature and the written word. Book versions of Homer’s epic poem have been selling like hotcakes in the wake of the film’s release. Just days after the film premiered, translations of the story had reached Nos. 4, 8, and 49 on Amazon’s bestsellers list, with a translation of the Iliad at No. 61. Nolan’s film “boosted sales” of the book enough to net a sales increase of 76% “across all editions,” including both text and audio versions of the tale, as Spotify revealed that listens to the audiobook on...

Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey has officially done what seemed almost impossible. The epic has overtaken Deadpool & Wolverine to become the highest-grossing R-rated Hollywood film of all time, with its worldwide box-office collection reaching a staggering $1.35 billion. The Odyssey opened in theatres on July 17 and collected around $123.5 million domestically during its opening weekend. Since then, the film has continued to add to its worldwide total, eventually crossing the $1.35 billion mark. Its current haul includes roughly $516 million from North America and more than $835 million internationally. The nearly three-hour adaptation of Homer’s ancient Greek poem has...

Spent nuclear fuel could become easier to recycle with a high-speed chemical separation system being developed by Argonne National Laboratory, SHINE and Case Western Reserve University. The partners are working to adapt Argonne’s Packed Centrifugal Equipment for Radiochemical Separation, or PaCERS, for SHINE’s planned nuclear fuel recycling process. The technology uses rapid rotation to create centrifugal forces far stronger than normal gravity, helping separate radioactive materials more efficiently. Unlike conventional approaches that can require large amounts of solvent and multiple processing stages, PaCERS is designed as a high-throughput, lower-solvent system. The goal is to make the chemical separation steps involved...

***** Tunes For Our Troops ~ The Freeper Canteen Music Dedication Presents: Remembering Toby Keith *****~ Support The Artists You Hear Throughout The Canteen ! ~ ***** Warning: Not all music may be appropriate for children! Please click with caution. Thank you! Tunes For The Troops This music is provided for the entertainment of our Troops, Veterans, Allies & their families! Enjoy the variety of musical selections that the Canteen DJs provide throughout the thread. Please ping any DJ with your requests for the Troops! All music is removed on Monday.Thanks to all the DJs for their time &...

“. . . it’s subversion and nothing about it is accidental. it’s a well worn playbook to use the democratic institutions of a high trust state to destroy a civilization.” —El Gato Malo on Substack An eerie quiet masks the panic rising among the many players in the long-running train of crimes carried out under color-of-law against the people of the this country that goes roughly under the clunky name of The Grand Conspiracy. What is Joe DiGenova up to, exactly, in the Southern District of Florida, with its several grand juries grinding away? Indictments will fly, for sure, but...

….Ted Chiang, in the article titled "Why A.I. isn't going to make art," noted that "Using ChatGPT to complete assignments is like bringing a forklift into the weight room; you will never improve your cognitive fitness that way." And at least two recent research studies seem to confirm Chiang's point. The first study—published in a peer reviewed journal—is titled "ChatGPT as a cognitive crutch." The author Andre Barcaui conducted a randomized controlled trial of ChatGPT's impact on knowledge retention among undergraduate students. Participants were randomly assigned to an AI assisted study group and a traditional study group and knowledge retention...

Victor Marx, the Republican nominee for governor, took the spotlight Wednesday during the opening day of the Colorado Water Congress, laying out how he says the state should approach its water future. Marx told the standing-room-only audience in Steamboat Springs that he holds water rights himself, giving him a personal stake in Colorado’s water challenges. His proposed fix? More storage. “We can’t make it snow, we can’t make it rain, but we can decide whether we’re prepared for when the water comes,” he said. “So, I believe we should store water in good years. Wet years. Lord, please send it.”...

A retired Russian spy general who ran a company supplying secure communications to Vladimir Putin’s Defence and Interior ministries has been found dead in Moscow. Major-General Igor Laptev’s body was discovered in his study at his apartment on Verkhnyaya Krasnoselskaya Street on August 20. The 83-year-old had a gunshot wound to the head, according to reports in Russia. As reported by pro-Kremlin newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets, it was claimed that the decorated former KGB and FSB officer had taken his own life. A possible motive has not been disclosed, nor is it clear whether a note was left. Details are also...

More than half of the illegal migrants disembarked in Italy by NGO vessels since Giorgia Meloni came to power were brought there by German organisations. Of the 42,338 people that entered Italy via NGO operations since October 2022, 22,513—just over 53%—arrived aboard vessels linked to German organisations. If organisations of other nationalities operating German-flagged ships are included, the figure rises to around 27,000. Italy received 157,651 people by sea in 2023, 66,617 in 2024, and 66,316 in 2025. Vessels operated by these types of organisations—some of which have been accused of people trafficking—accounted for approximately 8% of all arrivals in...

On Friday’s CNN This Morning, contributor Lulu Garcia-Navarro, formerly of NPR, offered a very cynical assessment of the first couple’s private life. Discussing Melania Trump’s first public appearance in more than a month, Garcia-Navarro declared the marriage “very transactional” and claimed that Melania fails to fulfill the “traditional” First Lady role. Who made her the Melania expert? Would she like someone publicly judging her marriage as a sham? Get the rest of the story and view the video here.

Sal Grover and Kirralee Smith, both recently fined ($100k and $95k) for misgendering men imposing on womens spaces, have received death threats from a range of transactivist organisations. Sal Grover, a single Mum, has pulled out. I don't blame her one bit. It is sickening that women exercising free speech in this country are subject to this bull sh*t. Kirralee has decided to proceed and both are Warriors. Let Women Speak events in Australia require (and tbf, receive) considerable police presence in order to defend these (usually middle-aged) women from the "be kind" crowd, who have in the past been...

I live in New York, which is a very expensive city, so I have become somewhat desensitized to paying stupid amounts of money for normal things. I don’t regularly experience sticker shock because, to some extent, I live inside the sticker shock. But lately, even I have been losing the plot. A few months ago, I paid $35 for tortellini at a restaurant and received four pieces of tortellini. I recently saw supermarket strawberries listed for $15. The other day I was shopping for a trash can and discovered that a distressing percentage of them cost more than $100. And...

A missing US Attorney found dead in an office at a federal building in San Diego killed himself, the California Post has learned. Local police discovered Acting US Attorney Andrew Haden, 48, dead inside an office at the Edward J. Schwartz Federal Building Wednesday. Sources familiar with the case told The Post that Haden hanged himself.

Kentucky middle school parents are furious over instructional packets teachers assigned their kids that were filled with AI slop like misspelled state names and a faulty table of elements, according to a report. The packet, handed out on the first day of class at Farnsley Middle School in Louisville, featured a US geography map with jaw-dropping flubs like Kentucky being mislabeled “Venecky” and Louisiana as “Lookoong,” according to local news station WDRB. “Mom, did you know that we live in Venecky?” Stacey Morris said her son joked to her on the drive home after his first day. She didn’t know...

A hearing on the merits of a recall petition filed against Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson is scheduled for Aug. 31 in King County Superior Court as a new poll showed a majority of voters want her to leave office. The 9 a.m hearing before Judge Patrick Oishi was scheduled Wednesday after the King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office reviewed the petition by a North Seattle couple, Melinda Jacobson and Dale Osterud, and forwarded it to the Superior Court. The Prosecuting Attorney's Office review is the first step in the review process.

Alaska’s first two ranked-choice elections were embarrassments, marked by complexity, confusion and delay. But, oh, for the good old days of mere humiliation. This year operatives finally cracked the many devious ways the system can be outright gamed. Alaska is now the poster child for dirty-pool politics. Alaskans won’t know until the end of August which “final four” candidates for each office will be on their ranked-choice November ballot after this week’s jungle primary. Residents will need that time to recover from the trauma of a monthslong campaign in which they were not valued as “we the people,” but duped...