Free Republic

North Korea is executing schoolchildren for watching South Korean TV shows and listening to K-Pop, including Netflix’s hit series “Squid Game,” according to Amnesty International. Escapees told the human rights group that teenagers and even middle school students have been publicly executed, sent to labor camps or subjected to brutal public humiliations for consuming foreign media banned by the regime. The accounts are based on 25 in-depth interviews conducted in 2025 with North Koreans who fled the country between 2012 and 2020, the organization said. Most were between ages 15 and 25 when they escaped. One interviewee said people, including...

Let's see how things are going in the communist utopia of New York, a month after Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani was sworn in as mayor. Nearly two weeks after a massive winter storm hit the Big Apple, mountains of garbage line the still snow-covered streets (but not around Gracie Mansion, of course), and at least a dozen homeless people have frozen to death after Mamdani refused to force them into warming shelters despite the bitter cold. There were also blackouts, which is great when it's freezing outside.Oh, and the number of antisemitic incidents in the city has skyrocketed, and Mamdani...

Taiwan will use a range of joint intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance methods, as well as intelligence-sharing, to "grasp" China's possible intentions, says its defence minister.Taiwan is monitoring what it called "abnormal" changes to China's military leadership after its most senior general was put under investigation, and will not lower its guard as the threat level remains high, the defence minister said on Monday (Jan 26). China announced on Saturday that Zhang Youxia, second-in-command under President Xi Jinping as vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission, and another senior officer, Liu Zhenli, were under investigation ⁠for suspected serious violations of discipline and...

GENEVA, Jan 30 (Reuters) - The U.N. chief has told states that the organisation is at risk of "imminent financial collapse", citing unpaid fees and a budget rule that forces the global body to return unspent money, according to a letter seen by Reuters on Friday. "The crisis is deepening, threatening programme delivery and risking financial collapse. And the situation will deteriorate further in the near future." The U.N. is facing a cash crisis as the world body's largest contributor - the United States - has slashed voluntary funding to U.N. agencies and refused to make mandatory payments to the...

The Most Socialist System in America Is the One Feeding Us—and It’s FailingAmerica loves to debate socialism. We argue about universal healthcare, guaranteed income, student loan forgiveness, and government dependency. We pride ourselves on our rugged independence and belief in free markets. We warn that socialism destroys innovation, freedom, and personal responsibility. But here’s the uncomfortable truth most Americans never stop to consider: the most centrally planned, government-dependent, subsidy-driven system in the United States isn’t medicine, housing, or energy—it’s food.Our food system is not a free market. It is not capitalism in any recognizable form. It is a government-engineered economy...

The United States officially left the World Health Organization on Thursday after a year of warnings that doing so would hurt public health in the U.S. and globally, saying its decision reflected failures in the U.N. health agency’s management of the COVID-19 pandemic. President Donald Trump gave notice that the U.S. would quit the organization on the first day of his presidency in 2025, via an executive order. According to a press release from the U.S. Health and State Departments, the U.S. will only work with the WHO in a limited fashion in order to effectuate the withdrawal. […] The...

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — President Donald Trump on Sunday fired off another warning to the government of Cuba as the close ally of Venezuela braces for potential widespread unrest after Nicolás Maduro was deposed as Venezuela’s leader.Cuba, a major beneficiary of Venezuelan oil, has now been cut off from those shipments as U.S. forces continue to seize tankers in an effort to control the production, refining and global distribution of the country’s oil products.Trump said on social media that Cuba long lived off Venezuelan oil and money and had offered security in return, “BUT NOT ANYMORE!”“THERE WILL BE...

State officials are preparing to take the land and legacy of a farmer for the crime of water “violations.” “The state wants people to think I’m an outlaw,” says Bob Greiff. “They don’t want people to know the true story.”(Photo by Ray Aguirre)The government is preparing to take the private land and legacy of an 85-year-old farmer for the crime of irrigation. Why? He watered his crops without regulatory approval. “I didn’t use a drop past my legal rights, but because I put it on the wrong field, I’m a criminal and the state wants to take everything I have,”...

How Does Society Readjust its Direction in Case of Deviation from its Law? "If an instrument of governing is dictatorial, as in political systems in the world today, the society's vigilance towards deviation from law will have only one way to gain readjustment. That is violence, which means revolution against the instrument of governing. This violence or revolution, even if it is an expression of the feeling of the society against deviation, is not carried out by the whole society. It is undertaken only by those who have the initiative and boldness to proclaim the will of the society." The...

Zohran Mamdani repeatedly told people who he was during both the NYC mayoral primary race and the general election campaign season, whether it was on the subject of the Israel-Hamas war, 9/11, his soft-on-crime stances, his desire for "free" stuff for New Yorkers - which of course would be paid for by the "rich," or his race-based approach to "solving" the city's housing crisis.And on other issues, past tweets and videos dug up by internet sleuths gave us an even more complete picture of the man who eventually was elected mayor of the Big Apple, with perhaps the most revealing...

The mother of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s new renters’ rights honcho — who has come under fire for dubbing homeownership “a weapon of white supremacy” — is a professor at a prestigious college and has a $1.6 million home. Office of Tenant Protection Director Cea Weaver’s mom, Celia Applegate, teaches German studies at Vanderbilt University and owns a pricey classic Craftsman home just south of the main strip in Nashville, Tennessee. Appelgate bought the property with her partner, David Blackbourn, during July 2012 for $814,000 and real estate websites now list the pad’s value at more than $1.6 million, records show....

"Lindsey Graham: You just wait for Cuba. Their days are numbered." ...

0:36 VIDEO AT LINK. PRIVATE PROPERTY ESSENTIALLY NO LONGER EXIST IN NYC...................

Nicaragua’s communist dictator Daniel Ortega ordered the house arrest of his younger brother, Humberto Ortega, on Tuesday after the younger Ortega questioned how the Sandinista regime would survive without Daniel. Humberto Ortega, 77, is a retired military official who accompanied his brother during the Sandinista revolution and served as a crucial military figure, aiding Daniel Ortega in ruling Nicaragua during the 1980s. He issued his remarks on Sunday in an interview with the Argentine news outlet Infobae. Infobae published an interview with the younger Ortega in which he described his relationship with his brother as “complicated.” Daniel Ortega has accused...

Early Saturday morning, details emerged of a U.S. military operation in Venezuela that effected the successful capture and extradition of Venezuela’s illegitimate president, Nicolás Maduro, to the United States. Delta Force operators executed a daring mission in Caracas while combat pilots led the effort to destroy key military installations on the ground. The narcoterrorist Maduro will no longer wield power over the Venezuelan people or serve as a conduit for America’s enemies to poison Americans and wage hybrid warfare against the United States. Maduro was blindfolded aboard the USS Iwo Jima as he began his journey toward becoming a criminal...

In New York, officials elected in November take office on January 1. And thus, on New Year’s Day 2026, we had the inauguration of our new Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Can you feel the excitement? For myself, not so much. The best I can say is that this too shall pass. Hopefully without too much destruction in the meantime, but we have no assurance of that. And yet it seems that plenty of people really do feel excitement. I’m not making this up. For example, here is the big piece on the inauguration from the New York Times. Excerpt: The message...

Dearborn Heights Fundraiser And Poetry Night For Palestine, Organized With Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM): This American Empire Must Fall; People Here Are Willing To Fight And Put Their Lives On The Line To Bring Western Empires Down. April 16, 2025 Palestinians | Special Dispatch No. 11929 An attendee at a fundraiser for Middle East Children’s Alliance and poetry night held at the Newora Café in Dearborn Heights stated that while the people of Gaza have achieved victory, the people in the United States have not done enough. He emphasized that change must come, saying, "This American empire has been hurting...

Russia is offering stark criticism of the U.S. military attack on Venezuela, which resulted in the capture of President Nicolas Maduro. In response, Russia called for a full meeting of the United Nations Security Council. “This morning, the United States carried out an act of armed aggression against Venezuela. This causes deep concern and condemnation,” Russia said in a statement from its Foreign Ministry. “The pretexts cited to justify such actions are unfounded. Ideologized hostility has prevailed over practical pragmatism and over a willingness to build relations based on trust and predictability,” Russian officials wrote, nearly five years into the...

ussian President Vladimir Putin’s envoy told New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani that his collectivist method of governing has been “done before,” saying the new leader is “doing a solid job steering the U.S. toward Communism.”Kirill Dmitriev, chief executive officer of Russia’s $10 billion RDIF investment fund and the Kremlin’s investment envoy to America, emerged as a “key player” in negotiations on Moscow’s war in Ukraine, the Associated Press reported in November. He took to X on Friday, the day after Mamdani’s inauguration, to share takes that garnered attention from Americans.“We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the...

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