Free Republic

The Trumpites next door to our pandemic getaway just plowed our driveway without being asked and did a great job. How am I going to resist demands for unity in the face of this act of aggressive niceness? Of course, on some level, I realize I owe them thanks — but how much thanks? These neighbors are staunch partisans of blue lives, and there aren’t a lot of anything other than white lives in the neighborhood. This is also kind of weird. Back in the city, people don’t sweep other people’s walkways for nothing. So when I accept generosity from...

Fifty-one percent of liberals and 45 percent of Democrats told a pollster that too few of their fellow Americans are willing to fill construction, technology, hospitality, and other service jobs, regardless of pay. From June 23 to June 28, Rasmussen asked its panel of 1,500 likely voters: People say immigrants fill construction, technology, hospitality and other service jobs that Americans don’t want. Are there Americans who would take those jobs if pay and working conditions were improved or are there just not enough Americans willing to do that kind of work? Most Americans recognized that their fellow citizens would work...

Today, the U.S. Embassy in Russia displays the LGBTI Pride Flag. The LGBTI flag was created by American artist and activist Gilbert Baker and was first raised as a symbol of hope and diversity on June 25, 1978, during the Gay Freedom Day parade in San Francisco. June is Pride Month and we celebrate that everyone deserves to live a life free from hatred, prejudice, and persecution. As Ambassador Sullivan has said, “LGBTI rights are human rights. And human rights are universal. It’s as simple as that.”

Repairing the engine, replacing the oil cooler, intercooler and rear shock absorber plus other minor miscellanea came out to an astronomical sum. The only official Land Rover dealer in all of Mongolia, a company by the name of Wagner, charged me five times the cost of the tools needed to assemble the engine. This was no mistake: the owner of a Land Rover vehicle is expected to not only pay but to significantly overpay for things he doesn’t even need. They just forget to mention that in the ads.... (click the links:Part 1Part 2 for more)

A blog entry intended for the Russian readers by a Russian mum who moved to the USA's Harvard from Russia with her husband and two children. The people who're interested in cultural differences might like this text. Translated from Russian. *** When we came to the USA I immediately took notice that the US children were very different from ours and that wasn’t just about that there were some black children. It was about their behavior, speaking and almost everything. My children, in turn, became objects of curiosity for my new American female friends and the school teachers. They took...

The Bell was able to find and speak with Vladimir Uglev, one of the scientists who was involved in developing the nerve agent referred to as “Novichok”. According to British authorities, a nerve agent from the “Novichok” series was used to poison former Rusian intelligence agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia. Vladimir Uglev, formerly a scientist with Volsk branch of GOSNIIOKHT (“State Scientific-Research Institute for Organic Chemistry and Technology”), which developed and tested production of new lethal substances since 1972, spoke for the first time about his work as early as the 1990s. He left the institute in 1994...

Number of Russians condemning abortion has risen threefold The majority also disapproves adulteries and same-sex relationships The share of people who consider abortions unacceptable has risen from 12% to 35% in the recent 20 years. Also the number of people opposing adulteries and same-sex relationships has risen considerably. Men are notably more indulgent than women, especially concerning sex outside marriage. These are the results by the sociologists of the Levada Centre. Experts suggest that means that the traditional family values have become more popular. A national poll by the Levada Centre held in the late December 2017 revealed that most...

...Late last year Fernando received news he had dreaded for months: he and 23 of his classmates had been kicked out of college. The headline run by weekly magazine CartaCapital — “White Students Expelled from University for Defrauding Affirmative Action System”. But the headline clashes with how Fernando sees himself. He identifies as "pardo", or brown: a mixed-race person with black ancestry. For Brazil’s black activists, however, the breach of the country’s unofficial color-blindness has also been accompanied by suspicion over race fraud: people taking advantage of affirmative action policies never meant for them in the first place. “These spots...

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden [...] described Russia [...] as the biggest threat to the international [u]liberal[/u] order and said Washington must work with Europe to stand up to Vladimir Putin. [...] Biden called Article 5 of the NATO treaty, which states that an attack on one member of the transatlantic military alliance is considered an attack on all, a "sacred obligation". [...] "Defending the liberal international order requires that we resist the forces of European disintegration and maintain our longstanding insistence on a Europe, whole, free and peaceful," said Biden. "It means fighting for the European Union, one of...

The Russian Defense Ministry says its troops have found mass graves in Aleppo with bodies showing signs of torture and mutilation. In Aleppo, Christians celebrated Christmas for the first time in four years with the country's largest city now under full control of government forces. Christians, one of the largest religious minorities at about 10 percent of Syria's pre-war 23 million-strong population, have tried to stay on the sidelines of the conflict. However, the opposition's increasingly outspoken Islamism has kept many leaning toward Assad's government.

A hacking group linked to the Russian government and high-profile cyber attacks against Democrats likely used a malware implant on Android devices to track and target Ukrainian artillery units from late 2014 through 2016. The malware was able to retrieve communications and some locational data from infected devices, intelligence that would have likely been used to strike against the artillery in support of pro-Russian separatists fighting in eastern Ukraine. The malware used to track Ukrainian artillery units was a variant of the kind used to hack into the Democratic National Committee. [a nice multi-use malware, almost like the Swiss knife]...

A fake video purported to show war ravaged Aleppo days after government forces retook control has led authorities to a group of filmmakers who have been arrested for the ruse in a demolition site in Port Said. Two children an eight-year-old girl, and a 12-year-old boy appeared in the footage. The group confessed to making the video with the intention of distributing it on social media. The filmmaker, his assistants and the parents of two children were detained after officers passing by the site spotted a child covered in what was later revealed to be red paint.

First Deputy Head of the Main Operations Department at the Russian General Staff Lieutenant General Viktor Poznikhir said on Thursday: The militants have been driven out of 105 city quarters with a total area of 78.5 square kilometers during the whole operation. Over 900 terrorists have been killed, dozens pieces of heavy weapons and other military equipment have been destroyed. More than 3,000 militants have left Aleppo of their own free will, and more than half of them have been pardoned and released. A total of 108,076 civilians, including 47,183 children, were evacuated via humanitarian corridors to the city’s safe...

Syrian state TV showed footage of ambulances and a long line of green buses leaving eastern Aleppo. BBC producer Riam Dalati says the first convoy has now arrived at a "handover point" in rebel-held areas to the west. Russia's defence ministry has said buses are taking the injured, civilians and rebel fighters to the neighbouring province of Idlib, most of which is controlled by a powerful rebel alliance that includes the jihadist group Jabhat Fateh al-Sham. The chief of the Russian military's General Staff, Gen Valery Gerasimov, told a news briefing: "A humanitarian corridor has been created for the evacuation...

DAMASCUS, December 7. /TASS/. About 3,000 militants surrendered and were granted safe passage in the town of Khan al-Sheikh [Khan al-Shih in other sources] on the outskirts of the Syrian capital Damascus, a TASS correspondent reported from the scene. The militants and their families boarded 52 buses that will transport them to the Idlib province. "After long and difficult negotiations, a ceasefire agreement with the militants was reached. The talks were very tense and required a lot of moral effort," a spokesman for Russia’s reconciliation center in Syria, Col. Alexei Leshchenko said. The militants handed over more than 500 guns,...

Syrian government forces and allied militias captured Aleppo's centrally located al-Shaar neighborhood from rebels on Tuesday. Rebels withdrew from al-Shaar under heavy bombardment by pro-government forces to the Marjeh and Maadi neighborhoods, said local media activist Mahmoud Raslan to The Associated Press. "Morale has hit rock bottom," he said from inside the city's rebel-held enclave. The SANA state news agency said the government captured the entire neighborhood as well as the neighborhoods of al-Qatarji and Karm al-Dada. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group also reported the gains. Rebels and pro-government forces fought street-to-street in the city's southern...

The Su-33 aircraft skidded off the runway while landing on the Admiral Kuznetsov aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean, Russian news agencies reported on Monday citing a statement from the Russian defence ministry. The pilot ejected from the plane and is safe, the defence ministry was quoted as saying. A statement from the ministry, said: "While landing after completing a combat task in the Syrian sky, a Su-33 fighter jet skidded off the dock because the cable of the stopping device broke. "The pilot ejected and was immediately brought aboard the Admiral Kuznetsov heavy aircraft carrier by rescuers. "His life is...

Russia's military has said Syrian government troops have seized more than 52 percent of the opposition-held east of Aleppo. An official from the rebel group, Jabha Shamiya, confirmed some of the government's advances to Reuters, saying the troops were now approaching Aleppo's Old City. On Saturday foreign minister Sergei Lavrov called on all rebel fighters "without exception" to lay down their arms and agree to leave the city. Lavrov said Kerry had made proposals on Friday that were more "in line with" what Moscow has been suggesting and said that Russia was ready to send negotiators immediately to Geneva to...

Turkey’s military operation in Syria is not against any country or person but terror groups in general, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said, in contrast to earlier remarks that Turkey’s objective was to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad following. “The aim of the Euphrates Shield Operation is no country or person but only terror organizations. No one should doubt this issue that we have uttered over and over, and no one should comment on it in another fashion or try to [misrepresent its meaning],” Erdogan said at a 30th gathering with village chiefs at the Presidential Palace in Ankara on...