Free Republic

On May 16 the world will mark the UN International Day of Living Together in Peace. It is a rallying call for people to listen respectfully to others and promote tolerance and understanding. Perhaps someone should tell tech entrepreneurs Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. The online platforms they head up – Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X – have become synonymous with fake news, hate speech, misinformation and other online harms. Social media has been widely blamed for destabilising democracies and fomenting civil unrest in Europe and North America. In July 2023, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, proposed restricting access to online platforms...

On Monday, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters that federal agencies such as the FBI and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) restarted discussions with Big Tech platforms. According to NextGov/FCW, this coordination will focus on “removing disinformation on their sites as the November presidential election nears.” Warner claimed these talks resumed in March, around the same time oral arguments in Murthy v. Missouri — which centers on the feds’ censorship efforts — were heard before the U.S. Supreme Court. When pressed on the validity of Warner’s remarks, an FBI representative confirmed to...

The Trudeau regime has introduced an Orwellian new law called the Online Harms Bill C-63, which will give police the power to retroactively search the Internet for ‘hate speech’ violations and arrest offenders, even if the offence occurred before the law existed. This new bill is aimed at safeguarding the masses from so-called “hate speech.”

Increasing numbers of worried Americans have been wondering over the last few years whether progressive Democrats have succeeded in creating a police state in America. From the Russia Hoax to the revelations of the Twitter Files release, to the coordinated attempts to quash scandalous and true Biden family stories, to the blatant display of dual justice, they’ve seen that the cabal of one political party, with its power bases in the government and the sycophant media, has succeeded in limiting or destroying political opponents while eliminating individual rights. Just how bad is it? Has that cabal suspended our American Constitution...

The Irish state is now at war with its own people as clashes grow between police and Irish citizens who are protesting against unchecked migrants being forced into their communities.

A “heckler’s veto” refers to when someone disagrees with a speaker’s message and manages to trigger events that silence the speaker. Judge Juan Merchan’s gag order on former President Donald Trump in his hush money case and the sanctions he imposed for Trump’s alleged violation of that order are an outrageous form of that veto.Merchan slapped Trump with thousands of dollars in sanctions and even threatened him with incarceration for future violations.In fact, both the order and the sanctions are wildly unconstitutional.While the former president is on trial, with headlines blaring minute-by-minute attacks on the leading presidential candidate’s character and...

Ukraine’s American-backed fight against Russia is being waged not only in the blood-soaked trenches of the Donbas region but also on what military planners call the cognitive battlefield — to win hearts and minds.A sprawling constellation of media outlets organized with substantial funding and direction from the U.S. government has not just worked to counter Russian propaganda but has supported strong censorship laws and shutdowns of dissident outlets, disseminated disinformation of its own, and sought to silence critics of the war, including many American citizens.Economist Jeffrey Sachs, commentator Tucker Carlson, journalist Glenn Greenwald, and University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer...

Jack Poso 🇺🇸 @JackPosobiec BREAKING: Trump found in contempt of court for 9 gag order violations

Judge Juan Merchan fined former President Donald Trump $9,000 Tuesday and held him in contempt for violating his gag order, warning he may impose jail time for future violations. Merchan ordered Trump to remove the offending posts by 2:15 pm Tuesday and to pay the fine by May 3. He rejected Trump’s defense that he was simply engaging in political speech by responding to attacks by witnesses like Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels, writing that the Court is “keenly aware of, and protective of, Defendant’s First Amendment rights, particularly given his candidacy for the office of President of the United...

ive West Virginia middle school students who protested a trans athlete's participation in a shot put competition have been banned from future competitions. Becky Pepper-Jackson, 13, competed in the Harris County Middle School Track and Field Championship on April 18, two days after a federal appeals court ruled West Virginia’s transgender sports ban violates the teen's right under Title IX. Five girls from Lincoln Middle School stepped up to the circle for their turn, then refused to throw the ball. West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey has filed a lawsuit against the Harrison County Board of Education on the student's...

Canada has fallen. It’s become the North Korea of the West, and it’s getting worse every single day. This new bill they’ve introduced is the cherry on their tyrannical sundae. It’s called the Online Harms Bill C-63, and it would make even Stalin blush. As a matter of fact, tyrannical dictator Kim Jong-Un would look at this bill and feel an instant rush of communist inadequacy. With this new bill, Justin Trudeau is fueling those online rumors that his real father is actually communist dirtbag Fidel Castro. This new bill is supposedly aimed at safeguarding the masses from online “hate...

Tennessee and Kentucky can continue to ban gender-affirming care for young transgender people while legal challenges against those state laws proceed, federal appeals judges ruled. In a 2-1 decision by a 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel late Thursday, the majority wrote that elected lawmakers made “precise cost-benefit decisions” in instituting the bans and “did not trigger any reason for judges to second-guess them.” The laws were passed by Republican majorities in both states. “Prohibiting citizens and legislatures from offering their perspectives on high-stakes medical policies, in which compassion for the child points in both directions, is not something...

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said Thursday his state “will not comply” with recently unveiled changes to Title IX by the Biden administration. “Florida rejects [President Biden’s] attempt to rewrite Title IX,” DeSantis said in a video posted to the social platform X. “We will not comply, and we will fight back.” “We are not gonna let Joe Biden try to inject men into women’s activities,” DeSantis continued. “We are not gonna let Joe Biden undermine the rights of parents, and we are not gonna let Joe Biden abuse his constitutional authority to try to impose these policies on us...

Communist societies have a long history of imprisoning political dissidents in psychiatric wards. One of the more insidious features of Marxism’s manipulation of language is its stigmatization of opposing points of view as some form of mental disorder. Opposition to “gay marriage” is said to be a “sign” of homophobia. Distrusting Islamic terrorists who celebrate 9/11 and shout, “Death to America,” is a “symptom” of Islamophobia. Wanting the federal government to secure our borders and enforce existing immigration law “reveals” underlying xenophobia. Not wanting biological men to force their way into ladies’ locker-rooms and showers suggests that a person “suffers”...

The Color Revolution is restless. Beginning in the former Soviet republics in the early 2000s, it moved along the coast of North Africa with the so-called Arab Spring in the 2010s, and, into the current decade, has spread further. The ostensible purpose of Color Revolutions—named after the Rose Revolution, Orange Revolution, and Tulip Revolution in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan, respectively—is to replace authoritarian regimes with Western liberal democracies. American and European intelligence services are often heavily involved in these revolutions, with ambitions not only to spread modern ideologies but also to undermine geopolitical opponents. The West’s favored methods of supporting...

The following letter by Bill Donohue is in response to the Inspector General’s report on the FBI probe of Catholics: April 24, 2024 Hon. Jim Jordan Chairman House Committee on the Judiciary 2056 Rayburn House Office Building Washington, D.C. 20515-3504 Dear Chairman Jordan: After issuing a news release on April 19, the day after news stories broke on the FBI’s internal probe of Analysts involved in the investigation of Catholics, I had a chance to read Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on this issue. While he satisfied some of our concerns, serious issues remain. Horowitz begins by noting that the...

Despite being slapped down by the U.S. Court of Appeals for ordering a Jan. 6 probationer’s computer use be monitored for so-called “disinformation,” a senior federal judge in Washington D.C. appears ready to reimpose the restriction on Daniel Goodwyn of Corinth, Texas. Senior U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton ordered Mr. Goodwyn to “show cause” for why the computer monitoring provision should not be reimposed. Judge Walton set a June 4 hearing date on the issue in Washington.

NEW: Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger says that Wikipedia has been ideologically corrupted, raises the possibility that Katherine Maher collaborated with U.S. intelligence, and says that, if NPR were committed to truth, it would fire her "right away."https://city-journal.org/article/wikipedia-co-founder-shocked-by-npr-chief-katherine-maherApr 18, 2024 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ransomnote: Christopher Rufo's related posts about Katherine Maher:@realchrisrufo | Katherine Maher says that she abandoned a "free and open" internet as the mission of Wikipedia, because those principles recapitulated a "white male Westernized construct" 4/18/2024, 6:34:17 PM · by ransomnote · 38 repliesX ^ | 4/18/2024 | Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ @realchrisrufo, Katherine MaherNPR's Katherine Maher: "the number one challenge" in...

ransomnote: I confess I kept the unattractive image of her below even though I could have retaken the screenshot to get a 'fair and balanced' image of her, but she's against all that because it supports the 'White Male' canon...so her pic is below as is. Video is less than 2 minutes in length.https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1780929268949614848Apr 18, 2024 TRANSCRIPT BEGINS~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Katherine Maher: I started by talking about the idea of free and open information as some of our founding principles 'Free and open source' coming from the idea of the open source community .Well, I have come to the opinion and the...

Our mainstream press has abandoned its sentinel post, leaving America vulnerable as we move toward the most important election in generations. No one was particularly surprised when Vladmir Putin recently won reelection by a landslide. The near universal reaction could be characterized by a roll of the eyes and a sighed “what do you expect, it’s Russia.” We’ve seen this before, after all -- it is his fifth term -- but there is something new in its significance for us. What’s changed is the newly fragile condition of our own democracy, making the Moscow “election” emphatically relevant to America. Many...