Free Republic

The outrageous prices at the grocery store and gas stations – the highest ever recorded and increasing at rates too fast to calculate with precision – are yet more collateral damage from the initial lockdowns two years ago. The story unfolds over two years but the line of causality is direct. Apparently it’s going to get much worse. I wonder if at some point, no one will remember how this all began. Maybe everyone has already forgotten. I asked a friend: do you think people understand the relationship between the March 2020 lockdowns and the wild price increases two years...

A federal prosecutor admitted in court papers that three D.C. Metropolitan Police Department undercover officers acted as provocateurs at the northwest steps of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The admission came in a March 24 filing before U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras that seeks to keep video footage shot by the officers under court seal. Prosecutors accused the case defendant—William Pope of Topeka, Kansas—of an “illegitimate” attempt to unmask the video as part of his alleged strategy to try the case in the news media. Pope filed a motion to remove the court seal on Feb. 21. “The...

COVID-19 has left lasting imprints on everyone. Some lived in fear for three long years of contracting a COVID-19 infection, others lost their jobs as they resisted vaccine mandates, and many reported symptoms of long COVID or suffered vaccine injuries. People are now looking back on the COVID-19 pandemic as a poorly managed public health crisis—and as we learn to live with the ever-mutating virus, it’s time to reflect on decisions made during the pandemic and their resulting consequences. The Epoch Times presents how COVID changed the way people think about health. 1. Declining Trust in Vaccinations Vaccines, once seen...

The following is a continuation of 10 Ways COVID Changed How People Think About Health–Part 1 6. Citizen Researchers The lack of information on COVID-19 and data on vaccine safety and efficacy has left the public with questions. A survey in October 2021 showed that 3 in 4 Americans (76 percent) leave their doctor’s appointment on a negative note, feeling confused about their health or dissatisfied with the answers. Though this survey was on general health, respondents were surveyed during the pandemic. Many studies highlighted the importance of transparency and trust in COVID-19 messaging (1, 2). Yet studies criticizing the...

The private consortium that reported election "misinformation" to tech platforms during the 2020 election season, in "consultation" with federal agencies, targeted several news organizations in its dragnet. Websites for Just the News, New York Post, Fox News, Washington Examiner, Washington Times, Epoch Times and Breitbart were identified among the 20 "most prominent domains across election integrity incidents" that were cited in tweets flagged by the Election Integrity Partnership and its collaborators. The Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the State Department, and liberal groups such as the Democratic National Committee, also flagged purported misinformation through the consortium.

The Washington D.C. police officer who beat a Minnesota woman with a metal baton at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, is a 19-year veteran with a history of use-of-force complaints. Victoria C. White, of Minnesota, was struck nearly 40 times in a four-minute span in the Lower West Terrace tunnel leading into the U.S. Capitol, security video footage showed. The officer who delivered most of the blows was identified in new court filings as Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) commander Jason Bagshaw, 45. “The tunnel CCTV footage shows that over an almost two-minute span running from approximately 4:07:00 to...

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Twitter on July 28 imposed a blockade on all content from The Epoch Times without explanation, raising further concerns about freedom of speech on the platform and drawing ire from three U.S. senators. The platform enforced a warning on all links from The Epoch Times. A click on a link directs users to a page titled “Warning: this link may be unsafe,” which prompts users to return to the previous page. “The link you are trying to access has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially spammy or unsafe,” the warning stated, citing Twitter’s URL policy.

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem on Jan. 21 announced two bills that would ban almost all abortions in the state, with one seeking to ban abortions in which a fetal heartbeat is detectable, and the other seeking to ban telemedicine abortions.“Every human life is unique and beautiful from the moment it is conceived. Every life is worthy of our protection, worthy of the right to live,” Noem, a Republican, said in a statement. “These bills will ensure that both unborn children and their mothers are protected in South Dakota.”The governor for weeks previewed the heartbeat bill, which received an enthusiastic...

A federal judge in Missouri has issued a temporary hold on the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for federal contractors in 10 U.S. states while litigation plays out.“We just beat the Biden Administration in court again,” Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt announced on Twitter late Monday. “This afternoon, we obtained a preliminary injunction against the vaccine mandate on federal contractors, halting enforcement of that mandate in Missouri and the other states in our coalition.”The preliminary injunction, issued by U.S. Magistrate Judge David Noce, applies to Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming. Schmitt...

CommentaryAs I write this, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is committing cultural genocide in Tibet. Chinese leader Xi Jinping has demanded a “new modern socialist” Tibet, as well as the “sinicization” of the Tibetan people.To ensure mass compliance, the CCP has implemented a string of new policies in the supposedly autonomous region. In Tibet, banned activities and practices now include visiting temples and the use of rosary beads, or any other religious objects.According to the Policy Research Group (POREG), Beijing “has appointed special agents in each office and community to report on Tibetan cadres and officials who break these laws.”...

The Epoch Times techies are telling the newsroom that Xfinity is blocking customers from opening the news web site, as well as the backend editing functions. Any Instapundit readers encountering this problem? If you are, please call Xfinity and RAISE HOLY HELL! Update (from Steve): For what it’s worth, I’m on Xfinity and can’t get Epoch Times to load. But it loads just fine on cellular when I turn my phone’s wifi off.

CommentaryInflation is about to hit China at a very inopportune time.Inflation and specters of a U.S. Federal Reserve interest rate hike could present a double whammy on China’s economy as it struggles to come out of COVID-19 lockdowns.Official National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) data showed Chinese factory-gate prices, or the cost at which wholesalers purchase from factories, increased 13.5 percent in October compared to a year ago. This is the fastest rise in China’s producer price index (PPI) since 1996. The index tracks purely the price of goods at “factory gates” and doesn’t include transportation or logistics costs, which are...

All of the problems that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is facing today come from fundamental structural factors that can’t be resolved. This is its biggest crisis.Western countries also encounter issues, but under their democratic form of government, there are solutions. Whether it is fast or slow, deep or shallow, democracies can mitigate conflicts and ultimately redress the balance. However, the CCP’s problems require rectification to bring order out of chaos.Rigidly adhering to communism is the CCP’s major structural problem. As proven by history, communism is wishful thinking. The disintegration of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the communist...

YouTube Video: Recent mass shootings have once again put guns at the center of national debate, and President Joe Biden has announced new executive orders on gun control. At the center of the discussion is a question: do gun control measures prevent crime or do they actually do the opposite? To understand what the data says, I decided to sit down with John Lott, who has studied the impact of gun control measures for decades. He’s the founder of the Crime Prevention Research Center, and author of a number of books on guns and gun control, including most recently, “Gun...

The suppressive climate in Hong Kong cultivated by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)—under which attackers can rampage the printing press of one of the city’s independent newspapers with impunity—is what Beijing hopes to foist onto the West, according to Guo Jun, director of the Hong Kong edition of The Epoch Times. Once hailed for its democratic freedoms, Hong Kong has seen a steady rollback of its autonomy since the former British colony reverted to Chinese rule in 1997. Over the past year, Beijing imposed sweeping laws to criminalize vaguely defined acts of secession, subversion, and foreign collusion, while instituting electoral...

Four intruders barged into the printing plant of the Hong Kong edition of The Epoch Times in the early hours of April 12, damaging computers and printing equipment in an attack believed to be the latest effort by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to silence the news outlet. In an attack on the same facility in November 2019, four masked men set fire to two printing presses; the perpetrators are still at large. Cheryl Ng, a spokeswoman for the Hong Kong edition, said the intrusion was characteristic of the CCP and had the aim of silencing an independent outlet from...

Major League Baseball had extended and expanded its contract with a Chinese telecommunications giant shortly before boycotting the state of Georgia over the league’s disagreement with the election reforms recently enacted by the Peach State’s democratically elected governor and legislature.Chinese state media reported on April 1 that the MLB will continue to be aired on the streaming platform operated by Chinese tech giant Tencent, which has significant ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Tencent is of the Chinese companies that had temporarily dropped NBA games as a form of censorship after former Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey spoke...

The Epoch Times is no stranger to censorship from China, but the publication has recently been forced to grapple with censorship here in the United States. Founded in 2000 by Chinese immigrants to the United States who hoped to expose the truth of their birth country’s repressions, the paper quickly grew in popularity. The publication’s website now receives nine million unique visitors and 30 million page-views per month. The Epoch Times has been a consistent voice for freedom, and has helped inform the world of the human rights atrocities in China. The newspaper has seen firsthand the consequences of pursuing...

“Gone with the Wind” star Olivia de Haviland, who also won an Academy Award for her role in another film, died at 104, according to her publicist, Lisa Goldberg. Goldberg told TheWrap that she died at her home in Paris, France, of natural causes. The longtime actress, who was born in 1916 in imperial Japan to British parents, played Melanie Hamilton Wilkes in “Gone with the Wind,” who had a conflict with Scarlett O’Hara, played by Vivien Leigh. She also appeared in films such as “The Adventures of Robin Hood,” and won Oscars for her performances in “To Each His...