Free Republic

The keynote speaker of the World Economic Forum’s 2024 annual conference in Davos was Ursula von der Leyen, European Commission President. She stated the top global risk for the EU is disinformation and misinformation, declaring disinformation destroys trust and limits the ability to “tackle the big global challenges.” In plain English, trust can only be restored by censoring inconvenient facts and evidence. Below is a short clip (1:39) highlighting her disinformation sermon. The top risk in the WEF’s 2024 Global Risk Report is disinformation. If not controlled, societies will be polarized, elections will be disrupted, and there will be mistrust...

There's certain royals that mostly need no introduction regardless of who you're talking to - from King Charles to Prince Harry and Kate Middleton. However, other princes and princess across Europe are just as interesting, glamorous and charming as their better-known counterparts. For instance, Prince Sébastien of Luxembourg, 30, has recently been hailed as one of the most eligible people in Britain, according to Tatler.

(There's no link in the header to a search for "C-Span Populism"; I will put it in a comment in HTML.) As a populist, I learned that elites do have a legitimate interest in avoiding being overwhelmed by the numerically superior common people. But in what I would remark as this highly, technologically "articulated" world (everything like a linked and hinged part in a vastly enormous machine), elites have the unfair advantage of having the power to permanently rig the game. More important to me than Plato's 5 political classes (in the notes below) is the several traditional occupational classes...

The U.K.’s Ministry of Defence is developing twin shotgun-toting drones that are able to fly inside buildings, as well as identify prospective targets using machine vision. The six-rotor drone so far exists in a prototype version called i9. It will primarily be used for indoors conflicts in which it could prove dangerous to send live personnel. These settings expose personnel to significant danger and unexpected lethal force. However, while the drone could potentially have various autonomous features, the weapons themselves will be remote-controlled by a soldier responsible for firing them. The MoD told Digital Trends that the U.K. has no...

The love child of the former king of Belgium is seeking the same rights and titles as her father's legitimate children via the courts. Delphine Boël, 52, is the child of the former Belgian King Albert II. The ex-royal admitted he was her father in January of this year after he had fought the paternity claim for over a decade.

The calls to remove Donald Trump from office began before Donald Trump assumed office. They’ve wanted him gone from pre-day one and remain determined to run him off Pennsylvania Avenue by hook, crook, or any other means necessary. If not for firing James Comey, then go to Michael Flynn. If that peters out there’s Stormy and Avenatti. No traction? Russian collusion. Didn’t get him? Ukraine’s up next. The effort to oust Trump has been nonstop for three years and shows no signs of slowing.Why? Why is the inside-the-beltway permanent political class so determined to send Trump packing? Because he’s...

The other day, I was listening to Heather MacDonald speaking about homelessness during an appearance on City Journal’s Ten Blocks podcast. She was describing a visit to San Francisco, and it all sounded so familiar. Before I get to Heather’s riff on the homeless, I want to do a little riff of my own about the homeless and others in America’s underclass. As long-time readers know, I actually have a conduit to the homeless and the underclass. A very dear childhood friend of mine has made life choices that see her living amongst them. When I visit her, I meet...

European Union: A Massive Expansion of Top-down Powers by Soeren Kern July 23, 2019 at 5:00 am https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14584/eu-top-down-powers An examination of von der Leyen's main policy proposals reveals that she is calling for a massive expansion of top-down powers of the European Commission. Her proposals would substantially increase the role of Brussels in virtually all aspects of economic and social life in Europe — all at the expense of national sovereignty. Von der Leyen warned that Brussels would overrule EU member states opposed to her tax overhaul... She called for a comprehensive "European Rule of Law Mechanism" to ensure the...

(Skip) The primary threat to this nation is not Donald Trump nor his supporters but an evolving autocratic oligarchy made up of the hierarchy of American Left, which includes elements of the political class, the mainstream media, the education establishment and, most recently, the titans of Silicon Valley. (Skip) The common mindset of all those determined to seize power in perpetuity, either by force of arms or the ballot box, is a profound contempt for the dignity and sanctity of human life. (Skip) Additionally, over the past 90 years virtually all potential oligarchs or tyrants have utilized the following six...

Twenty Democrat candidates in the "debates"... and every one of them brazenly and openly hostile to ALL I value! My Faith, my country, my family, my freedom, my labor, my property... A new “Leftism” has emerged this 21st Century… top-down (pretends to be "grassroots") and owned and controlled by Big Tech, media, Hollywood and hedge-fund billionaires, the richest among us! This new “Leftism” is totalitarian and allows no dissent... any questioning, much less opposition to be crushed in their vice of censorship, de-platforming and intimidation! Its cyber mob "Brownshirts" ready to attack, silence and “lynch” any who dare offend! The...

Throughout his career, the only real hiccup that Joe Biden’s big government agenda has ever encountered is Donald Trump’s election in 2016. That wasn’t supposed to happen. If Hillary was going to lose, it was supposed to be an establishment GOP politician like Jeb Bush. Under the rule of a Clinton or Bush revival, the White House would have been occupied by the kind of person Biden and his backers could work with -- somebody who agreed on all the important stuff, like cheap Chinese goods and cheap illegal immigrant labor. That’s the ideology of the globalist elite, which doesn’t...

An institute whose experts have occupied key positions on EU and UN regulatory panels is, in reality, an industry lobby group that masquerades as a scientific health charity, according to a peer-reviewed study. The Washington-based, International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI), describes its mission as "pursuing objectivity, clarity and reproducibility, to benefit the public good.

This week, the Met Gala took place in New York City. The event has always been a showpiece for celebrities seeking to make a splash, from Rihanna in her Pope costume to Katy Perry dressed as a chandelier. This year’s event was designed in homage to Susan Sontag’s 1964 essay “Notes on Camp.” According to Sontag, “camp” is the “love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration.” In reality, camp according to Sontag is something else: a deliberate attempt to tear down boundaries. “Camp taste,” Sontag wrote, “turns its back on the good-bad axis of ordinary aesthetic judgment.” “[H]igh culture,”...

America doesn’t have a classic aristocracy. But, does it have an order set above the people? In Chapter IX of The Prince, Niccolo’ Machiavelli paused for a moment from advising kings who clawed their way to the crown through crimes and violence. Instead, in the constitutional principality, citizens elect one of their fellows to the kingship. Mentally replace the words aristocracy/nobility with Deep State when reading Chapter IX, and this lesson is as pertinent today as it was in the early 16th century. In the constitutional principality, Machiavelli observed that one of two groups of citizens make the new prince:...

Noah Millman wrote a marvelously honest piece for "The Week" last week about the pay-to-play college admissions scandal. He acknowledges what many have known for a long time: First, that admission to the most elite schools is not purely based upon merit. Second, that education as good as -- and often better than -- that at the Ivies and other top-tier institutions can be obtained elsewhere. What parents are really after, Millman says, is status. This has become more important than the education itself, or even connections, which the children of these grasping, bribing parents frankly already have. Millman makes...

A teenage aristocrat who died from a drugs overdose was working as a prostitute before her sordid death, her boyfriend has claimed. Lady Beth Douglas, 18 – the youngest child of David Douglas, the 12th Marquess of Queensberry – died after injecting heroin for the first time in March. Her boyfriend Jenan Karagoli, 21, alleged she had been working as a prostitute and earning money by taking part in online sex videos. She had also been selling her underwear online for £30 a time.

THE heir to Blenheim Palace was reportedly told to 'upskirt Melania' as he live streamed President Trump's visit to his home. Aristocrat George Spencer-Churchill, 25, filmed the historic event on his phone and posted the clips online. But friends of George, who is a distant relative of Winston Churchill, are said to have made a series of ill-judged comments about the First Lady and her husband. The heir to Blenheim Palace, where the lavish event was being held, showed off images from the black-tie dinner in Oxfordshire on Thursday night. Made In Chelsea star Charlie Mills is said to have...

I was reading a short story by the author known as O. Henry and at the end of the story aristocracy versus hash there is the following an ending sentence stating ""Ten minutes later the slate in the Blue Ruin saloon bore two additional characters: 10." Out of which I cannot figure out any plausible meaning. would anybody know the meaning of that phrase?

One of the most commonly observed natural phenomena around us is that of turbulence. We experience turbulence everywhere that we see fluid flow – in the air which airplanes pass through, in the wakes of boats traveling in the water, in the rising of smoke and the movement of clouds, and many other everyday things. Yet, for all of its commonness, turbulence is still little understood and is difficult to control or predict. Turbulence is a chaotic phenomenon, in the “chaos theory” sense of the term. Most commonly, a chaotic system is one which exhibits the property of sensitivity to...

The Electoral College remains in place over two centuries after the framers of the Constitution empowered it to select presidents. Though occasionally maligned, this system of electing a chief executive has been incredibly successful for the American people. Many modern voters might be surprised to learn that when they step into a ballot box to select their candidate for president, they actually are casting a vote for fellow Americans called electors. These electors, appointed by the states, are pledged to support the presidential candidate the voters have supported. The Electoral College holds its vote the Monday after the second Wednesday...