Free Republic

In 2019, on a trip to the Bahamas with my mom and sister, my flight turned into an uncomfortable ordeal. My seat belt wasn’t long enough to fasten, and a fellow passenger's visceral reaction added to my discomfort. I repeatedly asked the flight attendant for a seat belt extender and was ignored until takeoff, leaving me feeling disregarded and disrespected.And this wasn’t the first time I’ve dealt with this particular kind of travel stress. I went to Paris in 2014, and found the city cramped and unwelcoming. Narrow staircases, tiny chairs, and compact showers were just the beginning. Throughout my...

Gruesome details about Australia’s military were revealed after a public inquiry on child sex abuse discovered how recruits were forced to rape one another as part of a sick initiation practice. The abuse went unnoticed for decades. The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse has received no fewer than 111 reports of incidents of sexual abuse carried out against navy cadets as young as 15 in the 1960s right through to the 1980s. The harrowing ordeals involved instructions to rape each other, as well as carry out other, equally brutal attacks. Two institutions accounted for over 50...