Free Republic

OAKLAND, Calif. (KGO) -- Protesters are causing major traffic issues across the Bay Area, including in Oakland and on the Golden Gate Bridge, as part of a worldwide economic blockade in solidarity with Palestine. The first protest Monday morning happened on northbound I-880 in Oakland at 5th Ave., where Protesters brought barrels filled with concrete onto the highway and chained themselves to the barrels. Law enforcement had to cut through the barrels before they could arrest the protesters. Only one lane has been opened. Southbound I-880 has also closed as hundreds of protesters made their way onto the highway with...

They're gonna blockade ports and shut things down all over the world. Great production values.

SAN DIEGO (Border Report) — Several migrant advocates in Baja California are calling for mass border crossings and blockades at ports of entry from San Diego to Brownsville, Texas to put pressure on the U.S. to allow more asylum-seekers into the country in the coming months. The groups are threatening to have large groups of migrants “hop the border fence,” on Feb. 2, one organizer told reporters in Tijuana earlier this week. “If we don’t have a resolution by Feb. 2, we’re going to convene blockades from Tijuana all the way to Matamoros,” said Sergio Tamai, director of the Ángeles...

It has been revealed that Seattle law enforcement personnel had been ordered to allow anti-Israel demonstrators to seize control of a major bridge during rush hour traffic on Thursday evening. In addition, the United States Coast Guard had reportedly agreed to hold boat traffic ahead of the demonstration. The activists shut down the drawbridge for more than 3 hours, which caused significant traffic delays with miles-long backups.

LAX Airport Police setting up a blockade up ahead as protesters approach the front of LAX from the ramp.

Grain thunders into rail cars and trucks zip around a storage facility in central Ukraine, a place that growing numbers of companies turned to as they struggled to export their food to people facing hunger around the world. Now, more of the grain is getting unloaded from overcrammed silos and heading to ports on the Black Sea, set to traverse a fledgling shipping corridor launched after Russia pulled out of a U.N.-brokered agreement this summer that allowed food to flow safely from Ukraine during the war. “It was tight, but we kept working … we sought how to accept every...

Speaking at the Grain from Ukraine conference in Kyiv on Saturday, Nov. 25, President Volodymyr Zelensky revealed that partner countries have committed to transferring warships to Ukraine to enhance the safety of vessels navigating the critical "grain corridor" in the Black Sea. Zelensky hailed the establishment and operation of the "grain corridor" as one of the notable achievements of the year. "We have reached agreements with our partners and will provide sea escorts to ensure the safety of ships," explained President Zelensky during the conference. He emphasized that specific agreements for receiving the warships have already been made, making it...

Approximately 1,000 boats will gather in Turkey on Wednesday before heading toward Gaza in an attempt to break the Israeli blockade and disrupt maritime trade coming into Israel during the war with Hamas, in an apparent repeat of similar attempts from over a decade ago. In an interview with Turkish news website Haber7, Volkan Okçu, one of the organizers of the protest, indicated the boats will carry 4,500 people from 40 countries, “including anti-Zionist Jews.” Among the 1,000 vessels would be 313 boats filled with Russian activists, and 104 filled with Spanish activists, he said. Only 12 Turkish vessels will...

These aren’t your ordinary anti-capitalist climate crusaders. Extinction Rebellion, the radical environmentalists who tried to blockade traffic to counterculture festival Burning Man on Sunday - only to be rammed aside by tribal police - are funded by some of the biggest names in Hollywood, along with an heir to the Getty fortune and outdoor retailer Patagonia. The group calls itself part of a “decentralized, international and politically non-partisan movement” demanding climate action - and until now has largely stuck to causing disruption in Europe. Under its banner, protesters have superglued themselves to the Speaker’s chair in the British parliament, blockaded...

Ukraine said it had carried out a sea drone attack on a Russian naval base, as dramatic videos appeared to show a damaged Russian warship listing heavily in the Black Sea early Friday. Social media images showed the ship being towed near the Novorossiysk naval base, despite earlier claims by the Russian defense ministry that the attack had been repelled. A Ukrainian source told CNN that a sea drone with 450 kilograms of TNT had attacked the ship and claimed there were about 100 Russian servicemen aboard. “A big navy ship Olenogorsky Gornyak was hit,” the source told CNN. “As...

An Israeli merchant ship that embarked from the Port of Ashdod Monday became the first vessel to openly defy Russia’s blockade of the Black Sea since they pulled out of a deal with Ukraine allowing the country to export grain from its ports in mid-July, Ukrainian news outlet Militarnyi reported on Monday. Israeli vessel Ams1 seemingly ignored Russian threats and entered the Ukrainian branch of the Danube Monday afternoon, according to Ukrainian reports. It crossed the Black Sea on a direct route from Ashdod Port while the American aircraft P8 Poseidon provided aerial security, the reports added. Ams1 was followed...

A video capturing a disturbing incident in the Black Sea, where a Russian military vessel was seen menacing a civilian ship, was shared by the State Border Guard Service on Telegram on July 28.“Russian military ships continue to act aggressively and audaciously in the waters of the Black Sea, violating all norms of international maritime law,” the post stated.The video captures a conversation between the Russian ship and the civilian vessel while the latter was passing a Ukrainian seaport. Initially, the Russians inquire about the nationality of the people onboard, followed by questions about the cargo and the presence of...

The lawmaker warned a blockade would be damaging for the US. and world economy, noting some of America’s largest tech firms rely on Taiwan for 90% of their semiconductor chips — and that China would control the supply. “We would be in a world of hurt and China would be the most dominant economic and military force on the planet,” he said. US relations with Beijing went into a big chill after China flew spy balloons in American airspace. Classified documents allegedly leaked by Massachusetts Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira further reveal US intelligence officials were aware of as many...

‘If they want to bully and put ships around Taiwan, they very much can do that,’ said Vice Adm. Karl Thomas China’s armed forces are capable of blockading Taiwan, a senior U.S. Navy official said, pointing to the size of the country’s navy, which is the world’s largest and growing at a rapid pace. “They have a very large navy, and if they want to bully and put ships around Taiwan, they very much can do that,” Vice Adm. Karl Thomas, commander of the U.S. Seventh Fleet, said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.

Following an official visit of U.S. Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan, relations between the island state known as the Republic of China and its direct neighbor, the People's Republic of China, have cooled considerably.Apart from an increasing number of military exercises off the coast of Taiwan stoking fears of an escalation of the long-running conflict, the People's Republic also has, to a certain extent, halted trade with Taiwan.While an import ban on certain Taiwanese fruits and fish is unlikely to become a source of global tensions, China's export stop on sand, a resource essential for...

Over the weekend, Russia also destroyed a major Ukrainian grain export terminal in Mykolaiv (southern Ukraine). Russia’s attack on Ukraine’s grain infrastructure came after last week saying it was open to allowing grain exports via “humanitarian corridors” from Ukrainian ports has heightened global supply concerns. Tensions between Russia and the West are escalating as Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that Moscow would strike new targets if the U.S. supplied long-range missiles to Ukraine, according to Russian state media. The news comes as Russia attacked Kyiv this weekend. The airstrikes followed days after the U.S. announced $700 million in aid to...

Day 92. Today, we discuss the latest updates from the war as The Telegraph's Roland Oliphant calls in, live, from the Donbas. Plus, a look at the ongoing economic impact of the conflict with Louis Ashworth.

The United Kingdom supports a proposal by Lithuania to recruit an international fleet of naval warships to break the Russian blockade of Ukraine which is preventing the export of huge amounts of grain to the rest of the world. Millions of tons of grain are stuck inside Ukraine and without it, levels of world hunger are considered highly likely to rise and may even trigger another migrant crisis. Such is the background to the suggestion by Lithuania that a so-called “coalition of the willing” of warships outside the structures of NATO,/B> could work together on getting food out of Ukraine’s...

More than a hundred million dollars worth of Mexican produce is stuck at the U.S.-Mexico border due to a trucker blockade on the Mexican side over Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s new border search policy, according to Bloomberg. The disruption could leave some US supermarkets without produce ahead of Easter weekend. Abbott’s controversial truck-inspection program ignited discontent with Mexican truckers who shut down the Reynosa International Bridge, one of the busiest trade crossings in the Rio Grande Valley and handles a large volume of fresh produce, four days ago. The Washington Examiner reports the bridge was forced to reopen Thursday after...

On Monday’s broadcast of CNN’s “At This Hour,” Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI) said that we have to look at the people who were behind the recent blockade of the Ambassador Bridge between the United States and Canada and look at what their motives were for doing the blockade, and that she believes that “they’re people trying to divide us, trying to really attack the foundations of our democracy.”