Free Republic

The United Nations has significantly adjusted Palestinian casualty figures for the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip, halving the number of women and children previously reported killed. While more than 9,500 women and 14,500 children were reported among the fatalities by the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on May 6, two days later that number was revised significantly downward. Today, under 5,000 women and 8,000 children are now officially listed by the UN as casualties. David Adesnik, director of research at the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), told the National Post he suspects the...

Panama is on the verge of a dramatic change to its immigration policy that could reverberate from the dense Darien jungle to the U.S. border. President-elect José Raúl Mulino says he will shut down a migration route used by more than 500,000 people last year. Until now, Panama has helped speedily bus the migrants across its territory so they can continue their journey north. Whether Mulino is able to reduce migration through a sparsely populated region with little government presence remains to be seen, experts say. "Panama and our Darien are not a transit route. It is our border," Mulino...

Arcane tax rules based on carbonation levels are flattening the growth of America's craft cider industry. America's tax code is notoriously convoluted, but the complexity really sparkles when it comes to the federal government's approach to alcohol taxation. Wine, beer, and liquor are all subject to varying tax rates based on intricate calculations, but the so-called "bubble tax" for hard cider is the star of this regulatory circus. Unbeknownst to most Americans, the tax rate for alcoholic cider is based on, among other things, the amount of carbonation the drink contains. Yes, America technically already has a carbon tax and...

EXCLUSIVE — The Athens Neighborhood Health Center, Indiana Health Centers, and Mariposa Community Health Center collectively sit on over $58 million in assets and receive regular checks from the federal government. As federally qualified health centers registered as tax-exempt nonprofit organizations in Georgia, Indiana, and Arizona, respectively, they cater to low-income patients benefiting from Medicaid and Medicare. The FQHCs, along with their counterparts, are set for a windfall thanks to President Joe Biden earlier this year freeing up $4.4 billion for them, the most substantial annual funding increase in a decade. The taxpayer-backed health centers, however, also have something else...

~In recent days, I've had requests to write another apocalyptic bestseller so I can do my tedious "As I said ten years ago..." shtick on a whole bunch of other subjects a decade hence. But I'm not sure I have it in me. At this stage, unless you're less sentient than an earthworm, if you don't get what's happening, it's because you choose not to get it. As millions do. Headline from my old paper, The Daily Telegraph: Sales of new petrol motorcycles set to be banned from 2040 This is the priority of a supposedly "conservative" government. But don't...

Deep in the heart of China's karst landscapes, scientists have discovered immense sinkholes that appear to contain ancient forests that are teeming with life, according to the Debrief. These sinkholes are known as karst tiankengs — and they appear to be a hotbed of genetic diversity and home to endangered species like the Manglietia aromatica. A recent study was published in the March issue of Forests, which appeared to provide evidence that these sinkholes have conserved long lost DNA. In the introduction to the study, researchers stated: "China has the most extensive distribution of karst terrain globally, covering an area...

Anti-Israel protesters at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) in Cleveland, Ohio, tried to stand guard over a wall they had vandalized, and when they refused to stand down, the contractor hired to repaint the wall simply painted over them. The wall had been covered with red handprints and what CWRU President Eric Kaler referred to in a letter as “threatening, intimidating and antisemitic” language. Another wall was also painted by protesters, Kaler noted, saying that the language on that wall was “less threatening but still intimidating to some in our community.” In that same letter, he announced the university’s plans...

It goes without saying that every war film (and a few other besides) that Hollywood made during World War Two was a propaganda film. Nobody would mistake Destination Tokyo (1943) as anything but propaganda, made by Warners, arguably the most jingoistic of the Hollywood studios, and at the moment when the tide of battle finally seemed to be turning in the Allies' favour – after the Soviet triumph at Stalingrad and the defeat of Rommel in North Africa, the Dambuster raid and the withdrawal of German U-boats from the North Atlantic. The film looks back at the first months of...

Some of the anti-Israel protests taking place at U.S. college campuses, including the recent demonstrations at Columbia University, have been supported by organizations that traveled to communist Cuba to receive resistance training, an ADN investigation has uncovered. ADN’s investigation coincides with a recent Sunday report published by the New York Post that revealed a radical NYC based organization known as The People’s Forum familiarized anti-Israel activists with Black Lives Matter protest techniques just hours before they stormed Hamilton Hall at Columbia University, and that the group was incited by Manolo De Los Santos–a radical activist organizer with deep ties to...

There's been another internal email leak from a Pfizer ‘whistleblower’ to top off the testimony from Pfizer reps to Senator Malcolm Roberts at a recent Senate hearing in Australia. I tend to be more persuaded by the latter, but confirmations are always valuable. Click on the photo below to hear the Pfizer reps admit to this, and interestingly, what they say is almost verbatim what is written in the ‘internal email’. Pfizer undertook to import a batch of vaccines specifically for the employee vaccination program. Theroux and Hewitt - Pfizer reps. (Forgive me if the names are mis-spelled.) Here’s a...

Argentina has historically been a country of failed governments, economic collapses, and debt defaults. Yet incredibly there are signs that – against all the odds – the bold, free market reforms of its libertarian President Javier Milei are beginning to work. With inflation falling, interest rates coming down, and the peso on fire in one market, Milei is already proving the global Left-wing economic establishment – addicted to bigger government and endless deficits – wrong. Indeed, it may provide a template for other countries to escape from zero growth. First, what’s changed in the country: inflation has fallen to 11pc...

Unions are said to be having a moment. The story goes something like this: Helped by a presidential administration that touts itself as the "most pro-union in history," labor unions—after decades of decline—are winning big victories against anti-union corporations and extracting impressive concessions for their workers. But is it all true? There has certainly been a lot of union activity. Last year we witnessed a significant increase in strikes and threats of strikes. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the country lost 16.6 million labor days to work stoppages last year. You have to go all the way back...

Better not read this post out loud to anyone—federal labor regulators might not like it. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) stretched its speech-policing powers to new highs last week when an in-house administrative judge ruled that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy had violated federal labor law by expressing anti-unionization views during several televised interviews in recent years. Specifically, Judge Brian Gee dinged Jassy for suggesting that Amazon employees might be "better off" without a union and the layers of bureaucracy that come with it. Jassy made those comments during an appearance on CNBC in 2022—during a segment in which he...

A pair of top House Republicans are demanding the Department of Justice (DOJ) open up a criminal probe into former Trump attorney Michael Cohen for allegedly lying to Congress. On Wednesday, the GOP chairmen of the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland calling on federal law enforcement to examine Cohen’s 2019 testimony to Congress as evidence of perjury. Lawmakers first made the criminal referral on Feb. 28, 2019. “Cohen’s testimony is now the basis for a politically motivated prosecution of a former president and current declared candidate for that office,” wrote James Comer,...

What are the ramifications and true reality of breaching the dams of the pacific northwest (PNW)? Please begin with our previous articles on this topic, found here, here, and here. In this installment we bring you information on the debate regarding the salmon and steelhead populations. The paper seen below was written by retired Idaho Department of Fish and Game Fish Culturist, Fish Hatchery Superintendent, Fish Hatchery Manager, and Fish Hatchery Complex Supervisor Jerry McGehee on January 2, 2024. It is entitled More Pieces of the Puzzle to the Life Cycle of Idaho Salmon and Steelhead. McGehee’s ten-page paper explains...

In Malmö, the twenty-year-old Israeli Eurovision contestant, Eden Golan, sits as a prisoner in her hotel room and requires a police helicopter and over a hundred officers to get her safely to the competition venue: BREAKING: 100+ Swedish policemen are transporting the Israeli singer Eden Golan to Malmo Arena in a very long convoy of police cars A police helicopter is flying above the convoy Eden is competing in the Eurovision Song Contest tonight in a city infamous for its antisemitism pic.twitter.com/oHXTq7ZPP3 — Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) May 9, 2024 Miss Golan is actually younger than the diminutive Greta Thunberg howling...

The encrypted-messaging service Signal is the application of choice for dissenters around the world. The app has been downloaded by more than 100 million users and boasts high-profile endorsements from NSA leaker Edward Snowden and serial entrepreneur Elon Musk. Signal has created the perception that its users, including political dissidents, can communicate with one another without fear of government interception or persecution. But the insider history of Signal raises questions about the app’s origins and its relationship with government—in particular, with the American intelligence apparatus. Such a relationship would be troubling, given how much we have learned, in recent years,...

Pennsylvania parents are demanding answers after a “queer witch” was brought into the school to speak to 14-year-olds about dating violence and survey the children on sexual topics. The controversy began last year when parents at the Unionville-Chadds Ford School District in Chester County found out that Deni Tobin, a “genderqueer” woman who uses male pronouns, spoke to high school students about dating. Tobin is a “practitioner astrologer and rune reader” with an organization called Prana House, where Tobin regularly hosts meetups for “queer witches.” After she was brought to Unionville High School to give a talk on “safe dating,”...

Over the past several decades, America’s culture has been transformed at a pace that is absolutely breathtaking. When I was growing up, I was convinced that I believed in a shared set of national values that most other Americans also embraced. But in our day and age those values have been discarded and now people that see the world the way that I do are clearly not in the majority any longer. I know that a lot of people out there may not want to hear that our national values have been turned upside down, but it is the truth....

In a court order Tuesday, a U.S. District judge rejected the Biden State Department’s attempts to dismiss a censorship lawsuit brought by The Daily Wire, The Federalist, and the State of Texas. The Daily Wire lawsuit, filed jointly by the New Civil Liberties Alliance with The Federalist and Texas in December of 2023 to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, alleges that the U.S. State Department is engaging with and promoting censorship technology designed to bankrupt domestic media outlets with disfavored political opinions. The lawsuit, which also names Secretary of State Antony Blinken and five other...