Free Republic

Welcome to the weekend. Back in the 1970's there were radio stations like KIIS in Los Angeles and WMGK in Philadelphia playing softer sounds called "soft rock" or "adult contemporary". Here are some songs in that take us back to that kind of sound... Are You An 'Abolitionist'? The Latest Vandalism From Portland "Direct Action" in downtown Portland last night... The United Kingdom is a dying nation. Peter Hitchens has urged young people to leave the country because it has no future but Mr. Hitchens does draw on his own father and his military service in the Royal Navy to...

A panel of International Criminal Court judges says the court's jurisdiction extends to territories Israel took over following the 1967 Six Day War. The decision clears the way for the court's chief prosecutor to launch a war crimes probe against Israel... Fox Business Network abruptly ending "Lou Dobbs Tonight with the final shows airing this evening... Figures from the British National Health Service show that 95.8 percent of those who "died in hospitals in England and have tested positive for COVID-19" has pre-existing conditions... The US military deploying to help with mass vaccination... Minnesota Governor Tim Walz activating the National...

Dutch police on the attack with water cannon to shut down coronavirus lockdown protesters in Amsterdam and Eindhoven today. Tear gas also used used against the E Eindhoven protesters. Demonstrations banned under the coronavirus lockdown in the Netherlands... The police attack on protesters in Amsterdam included dogs and mounted police. 100 detained there... A coronavirus testing center in one Dutch town torched Saturday night... Clashes in Israel today as police cracked down on Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods to enforce the coronavirus lockdown. Injuries and arrests as residents fought police with stones... In Denmark the Prime Minister burned in effigy as protesters...

The 44-year-old activist is well known nationally for his reports on the corruption that has flourished under President Vladimir Putin’s government. His wide support puts the Kremlin in a strategic bind — risking more protests and criticism from the West if it keeps him in custody but apparently unwilling to back down by letting him go free. Protests erupted in dozens of cities [90] across Russia on Saturday to demand the release of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, the Kremlin’s most prominent foe. Police arrested more than 3,000 people, some of whom took to the streets in temperatures as frigid as...

Day 314 Of The Dictatorship Of COVID-19, Day 314 Of America And The World Held Hostage The Joe Biden version of DC 19 ramping up... The Trump version of tyranny came before that the buck passed to Mike Pence (White House Task Force) who passed it to Deborah Birx on down to the governors and when the governors imposed the tyranny Donald Trump and the Republican-Conservative political machine "pinned the tail on the donkey" blaming Democrat governors for the restrictions and ignoring the Republican governors from Mike DeWine on who were tyrants... The suppression of free speech in full swing...

A major effort underway in Russia where its now Saturday to launch street protests across the country in the coming hours... Comment Well here we go the street protest route to disrupt governments considered enemies and the US is clearly involved... There are lower numbers in the US and around the world for COVID-19 this Friday compared to last Friday... The British Prime Minister Boris Johnson spreading a fearful message regarding the new COVID-19 variation... "This was a violent act of revenge by police" That's the way a massive Israeli police operation Thursday night in the Orthodox Jewish city of...

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) on Tuesday called for the imposition of sanctions on Russia following the arrest of political opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who was detained following his return to Moscow over the weekend. “The corruption and lawlessness of the Putin regime continues to be on full display for the world to see. The detention of Navalny is yet another shameless attempt by Putin to silence the Russian people’s fight for freedom and democracy,” Romney tweeted Tuesday. “The U.S must hold him accountable.”

Fear or "armed protest" at state capitols across the country did not materialize in any significant numbers... "Be wise as serpent and innocent as a dove...Sorry FBI we're not going to be your crisis actors today" That message sent out by People's Rights Washington early this morning via Telegram with the belief that the FBI was ultimately behind today's call for "armed protests"... "Far-right extremists" said to be upset with President Trump over his calls for peace following the January 6th incident at the US Capitol... The Federal Communications Commission out today with an "enforcement advisory" about the use of...

Political elites worldwide have criticized big tech companies for banning President Donald Trump from their social media platforms. At present, the president has been banned from Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Snapchat, Reddit, and Instagram. Twitter permanently removed Trump’s account, saying that his recent posts were in violation of the “Glorification of Violence Policy.” German Chancellor Angela Merkel called Twitter’s ban on Trump “problematic,” and said that freedom of opinion is an essential right of “elementary significance,” her spokesperson, Steffen Siebert, said on Jan 11. “This fundamental right can be intervened in, but according to the law and within the framework defined...

Merry Christmas A doctor in Boston says he developed a severe allergic reaction after receiving the Moderna coronavirus vaccine... South Africa is rejecting the assertion of British Health Secretary Matt Hancock that a new variant of COVID-19 is more transmissible or more dangerous... The Centers for Disease Control says the US will require all airline passengers from the UK to test negative for COVID-19... Public opinion in Israel is souring on the notion of a lockdown as the country prepares to enter a third national shutdown... On Christmas Eve the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected an effort by President...

Thanks to the Kremlin, U.S. President Donald Trump may soon see one of his dearest wishes come true. Nord Stream 2, a nearly completed project that would pipe natural gas from Russia under the Baltic Sea to Germany, has thus far withstood major diplomatic assaults from the United States. But now, with the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, there is growing pressure on German Chancellor Angela Merkel to kill the $11 billion scheme. Construction on Nord Stream 2 began in 2018, after Germany granted planning permission for its end point in the northeastern German town of Lubmin. It...

A plane carrying Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, who is in a coma after a suspected poisoning, touched down early Saturday in Berlin, where he will be treated in the German capital's main hospital. Navalny's spokeswoman and a representative of the NGO that arranged the flight confirmed that the plane had landed. "Navalny is in Berlin," Jaka Bizilj, of the German organization Cinema For Peace, told The Associated Press. Navalny, a 44-year-old politician and corruption investigator who is one of Russian President Vladimir Putin's fiercest critics, was admitted to an intensive care unit in the Siberian city of Omsk on Thursday....

Alexei Navalny, the man seen as one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s top critics in the country, was allegedly poisoned during a flight from Siberia to Moscow and has since been hospitalized. The 44-year-old is said to be in a coma and on a ventilator in a hospital intensive care unit after falling ill on a flight back to Moscow from Tomsk, a city in Siberia.

Alexei Navalny, Russia's most outspoken critic of President Vladimir Putin, is fighting for his life in a hospital, and his spokeswoman says she believes Navalny was poisoned as he was flying from Siberia back to Moscow. Navalny is unconscious and on a ventilator, spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh, who had been traveling with the opposition leader, said via Twitter. Navalny drank some tea at the airport in Tomsk, Yarmysh said, and he began feeling unwell shortly after his commercial flight took off. His deteriorating condition prompted the plane's pilots to make an emergency landing at Omsk, some 550 miles away. A doctor...

Vladimir Putin is heading for victory in a referendum that could extend his rule until 2036 as Russia enters its final day of voting today. The Kremlin strongman would normally reach his term limit in 2024, but voters are set to back a plan to reset his tally to zero and allow him to run for two more terms. The package of constitutional changes would also increase Putin's powers to dissolve parliament and expand his influence over courts and prosecutors.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russians opened the door to Vladimir Putin staying in power until 2036 by voting overwhelmingly for constitutional changes that will allow him to run again for president twice, but critics said the outcome was falsified on an industrial scale. Official results published on Thursday, after 100% of ballots had been counted, showed that the former KGB officer who has ruled Russia for more than two decades as president or prime minister had easily won the right to run for two more six-year terms after the current one ends in 2024. That means Putin, 67, could rule until...

MOSCOW — In a sign of new limits on Facebook’s ability to serve as a platform for political opposition movements, Russian users appear to have been blocked from accessing a page calling for a protest in support of a prominent dissident. In 2011, Facebook was hailed by opposition movements during the Arab Spring and in Russia as a powerful new tool to spread information beyond the control of repressive governments. That may no longer be the case, at least not in Russia. Russian Internet regulators said Saturday that they had sent Facebook a “demand” that it block access to a...

A Russian opposition politician has announced on Twitter that he is requesting political asylum in the United Kingdom after being subjected to house searches by the police earlier this year. […] (Vladimir) Ashurkov is the right-hand man of top Russian opposition leader and anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny, who has been under house arrest since February. …