Free Republic

GENEVA (Reuters) - Pollution by states and companies is contributing to more deaths globally than COVID-19, a U.N. environmental report published on Tuesday said, calling for "immediate and ambitious action" to ban some toxic chemicals. The report said pollution from pesticides, plastics and electronic waste is causing widespread human rights violations and at least 9 million premature deaths a year, and that the issue is largely being overlooked. "Current approaches to managing the risks posed by pollution and toxic substances are clearly failing, resulting in widespread violations of the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment," the report's author,...

NEW YORK (AP) — The Associated Press said Tuesday that it is assigning more than two dozen journalists across the world to cover climate issues, in the news organization’s largest single expansion paid for through philanthropic grants. The announcement illustrates how philanthropy has swiftly become an important new funding source for journalism — at the AP and elsewhere — at a time when the industry’s financial outlook has been otherwise bleak. The AP’s new team, with journalists based in Africa, Brazil, India and the United States, will focus on climate change’s impact on agriculture, migration, urban planning, the economy, culture...

What is “the Great Reset”? The Great Reset is a massively funded, desperately ambitious, internationally coordinated project led by some of the biggest multinational corporations and financial players on the planet and carried out by cooperating state bodies and NGOs. Its soul is a combination of early 20th century science fiction, idyllic Soviet posters, the obsessiveness of a deranged accountant with a gambling addiction—and an upgraded, digital version of “Manifest Destiny.” The mathematical reason for the Great Reset is that thanks to technology, the planet has gotten small, and the infinite expansion economic model is bust—but obviously, the super wealthy...

Recently, one of your number, an economics professor at Oxford, had this to say: “At Davos a few years ago, the Edelman survey showed us the good news is that the elites across the world trust each other more and more. So we can come together and design and do beautiful things together. The bad news is that, in every single country they were polling, the majority of people trusted their elite less. So we can lead, but if people aren’t following, we’re not going to get to where we want to go.” Where to begin unpacking this stunning example...

.... One would think that by now all these anti-woke conservatives and moderate liberals would have learned at least some of the bitter lessons from the last decade about how political power and cultural change actually work, but I guess not. They could have taken note of all the fundamental factors driving this ideological belief system, all of which had to be painstakingly uncovered, layer by layer, even as it swept through every institution. But they have not. (Like, do they even read the pages and pages of erudite Substack anthropology on the topic? No?) They could have recognized by...

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) was caught maskless at a Washington, D.C. cocktail bar Friday night, just hours before pulling out of Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe's door-knocking campaign scheduled for the following morning, in her latest violation of COVID-19 policies. Video obtained by The Washington Free Beacon shows Whitmer maskless in the standing-room-only section of the crowded bar at the Hotel Washington. A hotel employee told the news outlet that bar guests must wear face coverings when not actively eating or drinking, neither of which Whitmer was doing. Several people congregating near her, however, were wearing masks. The...

In a 2010 essay for The American Spectator, the late, great intellectual Angelo Codevilla wrote a rare essay that was, in retrospect, so prescient as to be outright eerie. Titled "America's Ruling Class" and deploying "class"-based phraseology historically more at home in some corners of the political left than on the postwar political right, Codevilla set his sights squarely on his eponymous target. "Today's ruling class, from Boston to San Diego, was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits," he wrote. "Whether formally...

It is now apparent to anyone with eyes that war was declared on the free people of the earth long ago. Really, you could trace it back to Satan and his fallen angels making war on Michael and his good angels, Satan getting his a– handed to him, and being unceremoniously tossed out of Heaven. And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the...

The maskless Met Gala once again proves that the science is clear. Masks only stop us, you and I, the little people, from spreading the coronavirus. However, America’s cherished left-wing elites are so unique and beautiful that the virus dare not spread through them. What other explanation could there be for the serial mask violations at the 2021 Met Gala? Obviously, the China Flu understands that someone who can afford the $35,000 ticket to attend this ritzy event is untouchable. The rules at the Met are clear, also with respect to social distancing: “Currently, all attendees at The Met Gala...

Enlist in your local Cajun Navy, the American refugees are coming.Watching the dumpster fire Joe Biden and his team lit with U.S. dollars and materiel in Afghanistan is demoralizing. Realizing we’re facing at least three more years of such catastrophic ineptitude, even if Biden is nominally replaced, is almost too much to absorb.Just eight months to the regime of “normalcy,” we’ve seen millions of unknowns crossing our southern border unchecked and child-raping third-world terrorists chasing off U.S. helicopters in Afghanistan. These are not accidents; these are man-made catastrophes. They are the direct result of our elites’ corruption and of American...

The KC Fed Jackson Hole conference is a US policy makers’ Davos, an uber-elite US location. You would think that the KC Fed would hold their conference in Kansas City or Omaha, Nebraska as a show of support for the working men and women. But nooooo. They have to hold it where Liz Cheney (GOPe, WYO) lives. And other elites have expensive vacation homes. (Bloomberg) — When U.S. Federal Reserve officials head to their annual mountain retreat next week to talk economic inequality, they’ll be sitting in the country’s wealthiest county. Jackson Hole, a rural community near the majestic Grand...

One rule for us, another for them.. While British holidaymakers continue to face uncertainty and headaches over returning from foreign vacations, UN globalists arriving for a climate conference in Scotland won’t face the same COVID-19 restrictions. For months, Brits have been hesitant to travel due to onerous quarantine rules which enforce self-isolation upon return from different destinations. This was exacerbated by the government constantly changing which countries were on the green, amber, amber-plus and red lists – leaving many holidaymakers in limbo stranded abroad. UK citizens returning home from red list countries, many of which are located in Asia, Africa,...

The Martha’s Vineyard Airport reported a major jam-up of private jet traffic over the weekend, much of it stemming from President Barack Obama’s 60th birthday bash, held Saturday. Airport manager Geoffrey Freeman said private jets crowded the tarmac at the small airport all weekend, draining fuel supplies and straining staff. “Traffic was very increased, due to the party,” Mr. Freeman said. “Thankfully it wasn’t the fully-fledged party that it was originally planned as, because it would have put us way beyond our capacity, both for fuel and for parking spacing.” The large private party at the Obama home in Edgartown...

Oh, that wasn’t embarrassing at all – a couple days after our glorious FBI, fresh from failing to stop several mass murderers it knew about decided to ask the American people to narc on their family members, the Cuban people took to the streets to protest just this type of commie garbage. Great timing. This is the kind of quality work that has led to our ace Inspector Erskines having no idea what the Maddow-loving leftist with the list of Republicans and a rifle was doing at that softball field. Now, it’s not just the FBI encouraging kids to turn-in...

Thomas Sowell is an icon. And, now, he has a biographer. While Sowell himself has written, by my count, 43 books, Jason Riley’s 2021 Maverick seems remarkably to be the first-ever major press biography of the heterodox African-American giant. Riley’s book sums up most of the key themes of Sowell’s thought, including the Anointed and Constrained visions of human behavior, the fact that the plain existence of racism does not explain most differences in group performance, and the idea of quantitative culturalism as an alternative to both “critical race theory” and genetic determinism. Sowell’s biographer also sums up two factual...

Among the chief characteristics of the people running America’s institutions are arrogance and a dogged unwillingness to be held accountable. Both have lately been on prominent display at Yale University. Yale is a nonprofit corporation and a very wealthy one ... The disgrace was that, even before the election result was announced, the Yale board met in secret and abolished the petition process. Apparently, even the possibility that an outsider might challenge the insiders’ choices was intolerable... a small group now controls a multibillion-dollar corporation, with no real accountability. ... the governing body of Yale University is a law unto...

Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.

Vaccine virtue-signaling — three words you probably did not know could exist in connection with one another until a pandemic swept the globe — is so very tiresome.In the novel “White Noise” by Don DeLillo, a scene outlines what is called “The Most Photographed Barn in America.” Tourists flock to a mundane barn in a meadow, no different from any other. They stand there among the flashing of cameras, unable to even see the barn among the crowd, tucked into a social phenomenon. If we determine this to be like anything in the real world, those in attendance will soon...

And so Operation White Trash was born. With a straight face, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told the gathered press that the Biden administration was going to spend a few billion dollars to convince people in high-risk communities to get vaccinated. “Often, people think of that as just Black and brown communities,” she explained. But, “that is also conservative communities, white evangelicals.” She was just getting started. “You know, an example is Dr. Collins participated in The 700 Club.” ”We’ve run PSAs on The Deadliest Catch. We’re engaged with NASCAR and Country Music TV.” “We’re looking for a range...