Free Republic

There Is Already A Schism: Two Religions In One Church There is already a practical, but not yet formal schism in the Church, said Italian historian Professor Roberto de Mattei.Talking at the January 18 "Acies Ordinata" presser in Munich (English video here), De Mattei stated that "there are two different religions within the same Church."He distinguished between the religion of the German bishops around Cardinal Marx on one side, and the Catholic religion on the other side.De Mattei stressed that Francis has also to decide whether he wants to be the Vicar of Christ or "the head of the German-Amazonic...

There are now over 100 million Amazon Prime members. Therefore, a lot of trucks are needed to get those good from here to there and from there to here. I'm seeing more and more of them out on the roadways. I bought a book from them in 1995 when they were just a small outfit. It was the 1994 edition of PASSPORT TO WORLD BAND RADIO.

Home security company Ring has fired employees for watching in on customers’ videos, according to a new letter from parent company Amazon. “Over the last four years, Ring has received four complaints or inquiries regarding a team member’s access to Ring video data,” wrote Brian Huseman, a vice president for public policy at Amazon, in the letter penned earlier this week to five U.S. senators. “Although each of the individuals involved in these incidents was authorized to view video data, the attempted access to that data exceeded what was necessary for their job functions,” Huseman went on. “In each instance,...

FORT WORTH, Texas — Pier 1 Imports is closing nearly half its 942 stores as it struggles to draw consumers and compete online. The home decor company said Monday it is closing up to 450 stores and will also shutter distribution centers. It didn't say where the store closures would occur, but it operates stores in the U.S. and Canada. Pier 1 also plans layoffs at its corporate headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas. There are seven Pier 1 locations in the Pittsburgh area. We’re working to find out if any of those are on the closure list. The company didn’t...

The latest word from Iraq is that there's been another airstrike early Saturday.... But the story from the Iraqi group targeted is that its leaders were not killed in the attack..... "The assassination of an Iraqi military commander in an official post is an aggression against the country of Iraq, its state, its government and its people" The words of the Prime Minister of Iraq Adil Abdul Mahdi in describing the early Friday morning drone strike near Baghdad International Airport that killed Iranian Quds Force commander Qaesm Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, commander of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Units.... The situation...

In corporate media, conservative women are simply presumed to be bigoted, or stupid, or who cares, as long as it’s an opportunity to trivialize them. Washington Post columnist Petula Dvorak is confused. In October 2019 she visited a “Women for Trump” rally in our nation’s capital, trying to figure out why these women support President Trump. Attendants were hesitant to answer Dvorak, particularly when she identified herself as a WaPo employee.“The women on the Capitol lawn approving of him, for the most part, didn’t want to talk to me,” she acknowledged. Those who did answered with vagaries, like one woman...

The Washington Post had eyes rolling on Twitter Thursday over a headline about the death of Iranian Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani in a U.S. airstrike. “Breaking news: Airstrike at Baghdad airport kills Iran’s most revered military leader, Qasem Soleimani, Iraqi state television reports,” the WaPo headline read. While some brushed off the headline, believing it was in reference to how Iraqi state television reported the situation, just two paragraphs into the story the same language is used by the story’s writers. "Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper said the Pentagon had taken 'decisive defensive action' against Soleimani, the revered military figure who...

Some Amazon third-party sellers sell second-hand products as new on the site—some even claim to sell products they found while digging through garbage dumpsters. The Wall Street Journal set out to test their claims by setting up an Amazon storefront and gathering some trash.

Amazon is one step closer to implementing its creepy, futuristic flesh-and-blood payment system. The e-tailing giant’s engineers on Thursday filed a patent application for a device that can scan a human hand — without ever touching it — as a way to ring up a store purchase. As The Post exclusively reported in September, the device is being developed by Amazon engineers under the code name “Orville” for a future rollout at the Amazon-owned Whole Foods supermarket chain. Employees at Amazon’s New York offices have been serving as guinea pigs for the biometric technology, using it at a handful of...

Catholic Traditionalism Booming in Latin America Pachamama triggers liturgical backlash ROME (ChurchMilitant) - The rise of Catholic traditionalism in Latin America, rooted in the Latin Mass, is rapidly reversing the long march of progressivism and Protestantism. "We see that traditionally oriented churches and seminaries are increasingly full, especially with young people, while those of progressive orientation, increasingly empty," Juan Migel Montes, director of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP), Rome, told Church Militant.  "Catholic traditionalism is back in fashion," an upbeat Montes said. "This explains the defeat the Left is suffering in ballot boxes everywhere as the social, political and cultural realities linked...

Super Saturday (Dec. 21) was expected to be a bigger sales day this year than Black Friday and it did not disappoint. Bloomberg reports it was the biggest single day in US retail history: Holiday shopping set records over the weekend, with Super Saturday sales reaching $34.4 billion, the biggest single day in U.S. retail history, according to Customer Growth Partners.“Paced by the ‘Big Four’ mega-retailers — Walmart, Amazon, Costco and Target — Super Saturday was boosted by the best traffic our team has seen in years,” said Craig Johnson, president of the retail research firm…While foot traffic was...

Holiday shopping set records over the weekend, with Super Saturday sales reaching $34.4 billion, the biggest single day in U.S. retail history, according to Customer Growth Partners. “Paced by the ‘Big Four’ mega-retailers -- Walmart, Amazon, Costco and Target -- Super Saturday was boosted by the best traffic our team has seen in years,” said Craig Johnson, president of the retail research firm. Job growth and fatter wallets, along with stronger household finances, have put consumers in a buying mood this season, Johnson said. And more of them are shopping online. As retailers offer improved web platforms, online spending so...

There's only so many boxes that can be delivered in a day. Warehouse space is nearly full, with vacancy near an all-time low. Streets are crammed with delivery vans blocking traffic. City curbs are increasingly a turf war between delivery drivers and everyone else. Even grocery store aisles can feel crowded — at least, when staff for delivery services are scouring the shelves. Americans are demanding more deliveries, and as a result, many of the things needed for delivery are becoming scarce. And with many companies pushing to meet that demand, industry experts say the U.S. faces a problem —...

(excerpt) You don’t usually mention issues like climate change on the show, did you feel that you had to address it this time around? JC: Well, [Hammond and May] were dragging along the bottom [of the river], in the mud. We can’t say everything is perfectly all right because it obviously isn’t, but our job is not to run around, have school strikes, sail to America on a carbon-fibre yacht that cost £15 million, or shout at people which achieves absolutely f**k all. Our job is to simply say, there it is and move on. We’re just entertainers.

It seems like there’s no shortage of alphabet soup in the diet of media consumption during [current year]. The buffet of pop-culture offerings seems to be dwindling down heteronormative standards in place of trying to adhere to the whims of the Twitter hordes and Portland-esque propaganda puppets who want all things Rainbow Reich controlling media, politics, and society in general. This became evident with Amazon’s Christmas ad, which decided to fall lock-step in sync with [current year] trends. The ad is a minute and a half long, and it was originally published back on November 3rd, 2019 over on Amazon’s...

Amazon signed a deal to lease more than 335,000 square feet of space in Manhattan’s new Hudson Yards neighborhood, office realty group SL Green Realty announced Monday. The Wall Street Journal first reported the deal on Friday. The deal comes less than a year since Amazon announced on Valentine’s Day it would halt plans to build its new headquarters in the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens, New York. Amazon and lawmakers who brokered the deal behind closed doors faced pushback from local activists and city council leaders who criticized the nearly $3 billion in performance-based incentives offered to the...

Introducing #Aisha (aka "Halalexa"), thew new #Sharia-compliant, fully Halal edition of Alexa! The ONLY version of the #Amazon Echo Muhammad would approve of! Just in time for Christmas (which is forbidden, BTW). RUN TIME: APPROX. 6 MIN. ***PLEASE NOTE, THIS IS NOT A REAL PRODUCT AND THIS VIDEO IS A SATIRICAL COMMERCIAL, FOR PARODY PURPOSES ONLY!

New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ran a victory lap after Amazon announced that they were purchasing office space in New York City without any of the subsidies that were offered in the previous deal. Last year, Ocasio-Cortez expressed outrage when Amazon announced it would split its new headquarters, HQ2, between New York City and northern Virginia. She was frustrated that New York officials had promised the corporation tax breaks to entice them to choose their state for the new campus. “Amazon is a billion-dollar company. The idea that it will receive hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks at...

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., was slammed on Friday night over what critics say is a "misleading" tweet touting a new report about Amazon bringing jobs to New York City. Last summer, Ocasio-Cortez waged war against Amazon after the retail giant struck a deal with the state of New York to open a second headquarters in New York City, which would have brought 25,000 jobs to the city, in exchange for $3 billion in state and local subsidies. Ultimately, Amazon backed out of the deal. However, it was reported Friday that Amazon was leasing a 335,000-square-foot office space in Manhattan that...

France is threatening a “strong European riposte” if the Trump administration follows through on a proposal to hit French cheese, Champagne, handbags and other products with tariffs — of up to 100%. The U.S. Trade Representative proposed the tariffs on $2.4 billion in goods Monday in retaliation for a French tax on global tech giants including Google, Amazon and Facebook. “I’m not in love with those (tech) companies, but they’re our companies,” Trump said Tuesday ahead of a sure-to-be-tense meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron in London. The move is likely to increase trade tensions between the U.S. and Europe....