Free Republic

An explosive new study claims that Chinese scientists created COVID-19 in a Wuhan lab, then tried to cover their tracks by reverse-engineering versions of the virus to make it look like it evolved naturally from bats. The paper's authors, British Professor Angus Dalgleish and Norwegian scientist Dr. Birger Sørensen, wrote that they have had 'prima facie evidence of retro-engineering in China' for a year - but were ignored by academics and major journals. Dalgleish is a professor of oncology at St George's University, London, and is best known for his breakthrough creating the first working 'HIV vaccine', to treat diagnosed...

EXCLUSIVE: COVID-19 originated in a Wuhan laboratory not as a bioweapon, but as part of China's effort to demonstrate that its efforts to identify and combat viruses are equal to or greater than the capabilities of the United States, multiple sources who have been briefed on the details of early actions by China's government and seen relevant materials tell Fox News. This may be the "costliest government coverup of all time," one of the sources said. The sources believe the initial transmission of the virus was bat-to-human, and that "patient zero" worked at the laboratory, then went into the population...

FEMINIST CELEB: We need ‘Euthanasia Vans’ to drive around and get rid of all the old people Katie Hopkins suggests that we create “euthanasia vans” that drives door-to-door and kills off the elderly. “We just have far too many old people,” the feminist says. “It’s ridiculous to be living in a country where we can put dogs to sleep but not people.” According to Hopkins, this can be carried out stylistically, you know, with a flair. “Euthanasia vans — just like ice-cream vans — that would come to your home,” Hopkins says “It would all be perfectly charming. They might...

Iraq's 'Exorcist' temple falls into Isis jihadist hands Ancient pre-Christian temple in northern Iraq featured in film The Exorcist at risk of destruction by Isis jihadists An ancient temple made famous in the film The Exorcist has fallen into the hands of the Islamic militants who have taken over northern Iraq, the Telegraph has learnt. The pre-Christian worship complex at Hatra, a vast network of 200-ft high sun-god temples that is a Unesco world heritage site, features in the opening sequence of the 1973 horror classic. But it now lies in the territory claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq...

One weekday morning in April 2004, a Libyan girl named Soraya was accorded one of her nation’s highest honors: Col. Moammar Khadafy was visiting her school, and Soraya alone had been chosen to present him with a bouquet. “You can’t imagine the excitement,” she recalled. “To see Khadafy in person . . . His face had been known to me since I was born.” Soraya was ushered into a makeshift dressing room, where she changed into traditional garb for the Libyan woman: red pants and tunic, small hat. “My heart was beating a hundred miles a minute,” Soraya said. She...

East Germany's secret police sold citizens to western pharmaceutical companies to use as human guinea pigs in drug trials • Tens of thousands tested with experimental drugs not approved in the West • One study of a drug for heart conditions saw six out of 17 patients die • Sinister practice exposed in disturbing new Germany documentary Former Communist East Germany secretly sold its citizens to western pharmaceutical companies to use as human guinea pigs in drug trials. Tens of thousands of sick people in the former German Democratic Republic were treated with medicines not approved in the West to...

Salafists destroy ancient Morocco carvings: NGO RABAT — Stone carvings in Morocco's High Atlas mountains dating back more than 8,000 years and depicting the sun as a pagan divinity have been destroyed by Salafists, a local rights group said on Wednesday. "These stone carvings of the sun are more than 8,000 years old. They were destroyed several days ago," Aboubakr Anghir, a member of the Amazigh (Berber) League for Human Rights, told AFP. "One of the carvings, called 'the plaque of the sun,' predates the arrival of the Phoenicians in Morocco," Anghir said. "It lies in a well-known archaeological site...

Naked images of Pharoahs are heresy, says Salafist leader Abdel Moneim El-Shahat uses TV appearance to condemn Egypt's Pharaonic heritage, reiterates criticism of Naguib Mahfouz and Alaa Al-Aswany The newly discovered tomb that belonged to Rudj-ka, a priest who headed the mortuary cult of the pharaoh Khafre, at the site of the Giza Pyramids in Cairo (Photo: AP) Images of naked Pharaohs on Egypt’s temples are tantamount to heresy, prominent Salafist Abdel Moneim El-Shahat said on Wednesday. El-Shahat, who failed to win an independent seat for the Nour Party in recent parliamentary elections, had previously called Egypt’s Pharaonic heritage “rotten.”...

Guy Bechor reports that Egypt is in the process of destroying all remnants of its ancient, non-Muslim cultures. It was barely mentioned in the Israeli and global media, but the following event pertains to the whole of Western civilization: Last Saturday, violent groups of Islamic-Salafi radicals burned the famous scientific institute established by Napoleon in Egypt after its first encounter with the West. Some historians consider it the start of modern times in the Middle East. The site, L’Institut d’Egypte, held some 200,000 original and rare books, exhibits, maps, archeological findings and studies from Egypt and the entire Middle East,...

DEARBORN, Mich. -- The Arab American National Museum in Dearborn could land a sculpture of veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas. ~snipMcElhinney sculpted a clay version of a Thomas bust.

OVER the weekend, photographic proof emerged that the Russians used mur derous Chechen mercenaries to do their dirtiest dirty work in Georgia: The ragtag unit in question is so vicious that, last April, Chechnya's Russian-installed "president" demanded it be disbanded. War snaps taken by Russian photojournalist Arkady Babchenko have been circulating among intelligence personnel. The shots reveal far more to the West than Babchenko realized. Amid photos of the horrors of war, grateful South Ossetians and triumphant Russian troops, one series leapt out at me as a former intel officer: Bearded irregulars riding atop Russian-built armored vehicles (old BMPs, for...

More than 130 Georgian civilians are being held captive by South Ossetian authorities in the regional capital, Tskhinvali, after being rounded up and herded into a single room in the interior ministry headquarters here, the Guardian has learned. The prisoners, who were plucked off the streets according to their nationality soon after hostilities broke out 10 days ago, are being kept indefinitely in the hope of exchanging them for Ossetian civilians allegedly abducted by Georgian soldiers during the conflict. One interior ministry official confirmed the plan, saying: "We hope there will be an exchange soon." The 131 "hostages" are being...

“The soldiers told us they had an order from Putin - leave or be killed.” Manana Dioshvili showed no emotion as she described how Russian troops forced her to flee her home. Her former neighbours nodded in agreement, huddled together in a kindergarten whose windows had been blown out by a Russian bomb. “That's how they explained themselves to us,” she recalled of the moment they fled the ethnic Georgian village of Kurta, near the capital of South Ossetia, Tskhinvali. “They said, ‘Putin has given us an order that everyone must be either shot or forced to leave'. They told...

AS the Russian Dark Lord's shadow falls across the shires of freedom once again, the response from the West has been confused, belated and inadequate: fear eclipsed courage; ignorance masqueraded as wisdom; and, in "Old Europe," greed vanquished justice. Russia won. Diplomacy failed. No state or alliance will reverse the decision. When President Bush spoke out strongly on Friday, Moscow ignored him: Words mean nothing to Prime Minister Putin, a man who regards all compromise as weakness. Instead of backing down, Russia suggested that Poland might become a nuclear target for agreeing to host our defensive missile system. Georgia will...

What began as a skirmish has become a tragedy of global importance. As Russian soldiers brought a campaign of vicious reprisals to civilians, Georgia endured a nightmare. But those ten days also shook the world: Vladimir Putin has revealed his ambition to extend Moscow's power and challenge the military dominance of Europe and the US It began when five men stole into the rustic village of Tkviavi. With its plum trees, walnut groves and vines, Tkviavi was one of a jigsaw of picturesque villages beneath the hulking mountains of central Georgia. Up the road was Tskhinvali - the grim Soviet-style...

Statement of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Georgia On 16 August 2008 at approximately 4 p.m. local time, armed gangs of the Abkhazian separatist regime together with units of the Russian regular army shifted the administrative border of the Autonomous Republic of Abkhazia towards the Enguri River. This caused the villages of the Zugdidi region Ganmukhuri and Khurcha, villages of the Tsalenjikha region Fakhulani, Tchale, Mujava and Fotskho-Etseri, as well as territory of the Enguri Hydro Power Plant and adjacent villages of Phichori, Otobaia, Nabakevi, Tagiloni, Chuburkhinji, Dikhazurga and Saberio to fall under the occupation of the Russian...

GEORGIAN health minister Alexander Kvitashvili said 182 people, including 67 civilians, had been confirmed dead in the conflict with Russia. Mr Kvitashvili said at a press briefing the conflict had also left 479 wounded so far, 157 of them civilians. He said his number of dead and wounded included people only in areas controlled by Georgia, and there was evidence of mutilation of bodies. "We're getting bodies mutilated, eyes gouged, arms severed," he said.

DOZENS of haggard Georgian captives were marched through the rebel city of South Ossetia today as separatists called on Tbilisi to recover the rotting corpses of its soldiers. The mostly elderly men - apparently all civilians - walked with their heads bowed and their hands behind their backs, escorted by armed guards. Locals stopped to take pictures on their mobile phones. Some pointed and laughed as the detainees marched through Tskhinvali. One woman said: "Those are the prisoners? But they're just old men!" Seventeen of the men were brought to the courtyard of the separatist territory's defence ministry to sweep...

Is the defendant's dock at the International Criminal Court reserved for leaders of small and poor countries that defy the West? Not if Rwanda has its way. It wants to charge some of France's most celebrated leaders of the 1990s as collaborators in genocide. Last week the government of Rwanda issued a damning 500-page report documenting France's participation in the 1994 Rwandan genocide. This marks a remarkable turnaround in the deeply politicized world of human rights reporting. Usually, such reporting takes the form of governments or human rights groups based in the West condemning poor countries for having political or...

Rwanda said top French politicians should "answer for their actions" as it named them in a report accusing France of arming and advising extremists in the 1994 genocide. The two-year investigation said France helped the extremists who carried out the genocide and even took part in some of the killings. It named François Mitterand, France's late former president, and former prime minister Dominique de Villepin among 33 military and political leaders.