Free Republic

Introduced from South America, mathenge was intended to halt desertification, but now three-quarters of the country is at risk of invasion by the invasive tree For his entire life, John Lmakato has lived in Lerata, a village nestled at the foot of Mount Ololokwe in northern Kenya’s Samburu county. “This used to be a treeless land. Grass covered every inch of the rangelands, and livestock roamed freely,” he says. Lmakato’s livestock used to roam freely in search of pasture, but three years ago he lost 193 cattle after they wandered into a conservation area in Laikipia – known for the...

One of former President Joe Biden’s senior aides admitted in a new book that the 82-year-old couldn’t grasp the back and forth of debate and would fall asleep by the pool while they prepped for his showdown with Trump, according to a book excerpt. Top Biden aide Ron Klain, who helped the former president with debate prep, was “half-seriously” wondering if Biden believed he was the president of NATO rather than the president of the United States, according to the excerpt of Chris Whipple’s new book published by The Guardian. While they prepped, Klain reportedly told Whipple that the then...

The far-right leader Tommy Robinson has been charged under the Terrorism Act and is being held in custody before a planned march of his supporters amid fears of a repeat of violence that erupted when he was imprisoned in 2018. Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, handed himself in to Folkestone police station on Friday afternoon where he was charged with failing to provide the pin to his mobile phone under schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act. He was bailed to appear in court next month, Kent police said. He was then remanded in custody under a high court...

Donald Trump has ignited alarm among his critics after telling a crowd of supporters that they won’t “have to vote again” if they return him to the presidency in November’s election. “Christians, get out and vote! Just this time – you won’t have to do it any more,” the Republican former president said on Friday night at a rally hosted in West Palm Beach, Florida, by the far-right advocacy group Turning Point Action. “You know what? It’ll be fixed! It’ll be fine. You won’t have to vote any more, my beautiful Christians.” At that point, with a slight shake of...

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. On Wednesday night, Joe Biden basked in the pageantry of a state dinner – white-jacketed violinists, golden chandeliers dotted with pink roses, a vivid wall display of 3D paper flowers. But soon after toasting the Australian prime minister in a pavilion on the White House south lawn, the US president had to step away to be briefed on a deadly mass shooting in Maine. The presence of Lloyd Austin, the defense secretary, and Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, was a reminder of another, even darker shadow. Even as Biden and guests...

After a Norfolk, Virginia, police officer was fired for donating $25 to Kyle Rittenhouse’s legal defense fund when a hacker-connected group gave “breached” data about anonymous donations to the media, the Christian crowdfunding site that processed his donation is now collecting donations for him. Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDOS), which the Department of Homeland Security deemed a “criminal hacker group,” obtained the email addresses of anonymous donors to various crowdfunding campaigns on the site GiveSendGo, an alternative to GoFundMe that allows people to send prayers or money to people. The Guardian, a British newspaper, used the data to dox rank-and-file...

The latest brilliant plan to curtail Isis in the Middle East? Give more weapons to current members of al-Qaida. The Daily Beast reported that former CIA director David Petraeus, still somehow entrenched in the DC Beltway power circles despite leaking highly classified secrets, is now advocating arming members of the al-Nusra Front in Syria, an offshoot of al-Qaida and a designated terrorist organization. Could there be a more dangerous and crazy idea?

North Carolina’s voter identification law, which has been described as the most sweeping attack on African American electoral rights since the Jim Crow era, is being challenged in a legal hearing that opens on Monday. Civil rights lawyers and activists are gathering in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, for the start of the legal challenge that is expected to last all week. They will be seeking to persuade a federal district judge to impose a preliminary injunction against key aspects of HB 589, the voting law enacted by state Republicans last August. Lawyers for the North Carolina branch of the NAACP and...

A British Catholic journalist has said she was astonished when major world news outlets mistook an Vatican April Fool’s report she wrote for a genuine news story. The Guardian, which this week won a Pulitzer Prize for its reporting of Edward Snowden’s National Security Agency leaks, was one of the organisations that reported the hoax story that the Vatican employed a hawk called Sylvia to protect the doves periodically released by the Pope. Other outlets to reproduce the story include Agence France-Presse and the Washington Times.

We already knew he was racist and homophobic. Now it emerges that he thinks girls should marry at 15 or 16. Know what? If you had told me, a month ago, that the Christian Right would have a strong reaction to a bearded religious zealot in a headscarf urging men to take child brides, I'd have believed that. And I would have believed that the man's family would go on Fox News to defend him, but I would have assumed they were doing it from a bunker somewhere, with voice filters and behind a screen … not in the studio...

Just lately (noticeably since the US election result) there seems to be an awful lot of anti-British sentiment on here (there always was a little but I put that down to a handful of xenophobic kiddies) What I would like to know is do most Freepers now share the low opinion that some (many) on here seem to have of our nation or is it just a small (but very vocal) minority of morons? I've enjoyed this forum (for the relatively short time that I've contributed) and have always liked Americans in general, but I now find myself reconsidering my...

· You will recall that the Diary's very own brand new conspiracy theory (which held that Kerry's tanking presidential campaign was a deliberate Democratic feint aimed at giving Hillary Clinton a clear run in 2008) was rather anticipated by those crazy rightwing nerds at freerepublic.com, who had already posted several threads to that effect before we could bestir ourselves to come up with a username and password. In fact, much of the internet-friendly hard right seems to believe that Hillary is working diligently for a Bush victory by supplying the Kerry campaign with forged documents. You have to get up...

Private Jessica Lynch became an icon of the war, and the story of her capture by the Iraqis and her rescue by US special forces became one of the great patriotic moments of the conflict. But her story is one of the most stunning pieces of news management ever conceived. Private Lynch, a 19-year-old army clerk from Palestine, West Virginia, was captured when her company took a wrong turning just outside Nasiriya and was ambushed. Nine of her comrades were killed and Private Lynch was taken to the local hospital, which at the time was swarming with Fedayeen. Eight days...