Free Republic

Palestine protesters used powerful lasers to write the words of an infamous antisemitic message on the Elizabeth Tower, best known worldwide as the Big Ben clock at Britain’s Parliament. Messages including “From the river to the sea, Palestina will be free” were projected onto the side of the Elizabeth Tower during a large Palestine protest in Westminster’s Parliament Square on Wednesday night. As the demonstration roared outside, Parliament faced problems of its own, as conflicting left-wing party attempts to vote on a resolution in favour of a Gaza ceasefire saw a major break with convention potentially permanently damaging the authority...

I'm not saying I was ever primed to go for a dip in the Antarctic seas. I'm just saying that now I'm definitelynot going there: Scientists trawling on board a research vessel off the coast of Antarctica have caught a new undersea creature — one with 20 arms and a distinctive body, shaped a little bit like a strawberry. ... Although similar to other invertebrate ocean animals, like starfish and sea cucumbers, feather stars are distinct both in their 'large' size and 'otherworldly appearance' when swimming, the researchers said. The sheer horrific insanity of this thing is just something to...

Jeremiah Ellison, a Minneapolis city council member and the son of Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, expressed support for antifa after President Trump threatened to designate the group as a terrorist organization. "I hereby declare, officially, my support for ANTIFA," Ellison tweeted on Sunday. "Unless someone can prove to me ANTIFA is behind the burning of black and immigrant owned businesses in my ward, I’ll keep focusing on stopping the white power terrorist THE ARE ACTUALLY ATTACKING US!"

D.C.'s initiatives focus on improving how the District, businesses and residents manage what rats love: all that delicious trash. WASHINGTON — Warmer winters apparently have been great for D.C.’s rat community, and District officials hope to change that. Mayor Muriel Bowser outlined initiatives Thursday to reduce the rat population, which is believed to have increased in the last few years. According to officials, the number of rodent-abatement requests increased last year by 65 percent — from 2,300 in 2015 to more than 3,500 in 2016. D.C.’s initiatives focus on improving how the District, businesses and residents manage what rats love:...

Like so many other pieces in the European mosaic, Belgium has an idiosyncratic relationship with faith. It is both historically devout and heavily secular in its present-day practices. Its ancient cities are cradles of Christian art and learning, and Catholicism is in many ways the country's raison d'etre. When it was created in 1830, the kingdom offered a political home to Catholic Dutch-speakers who preferred to unite with French-speaking co-religionists than with Protestants with whom they had a common tongue. Faith had trumped language. But as Christianity's role has waned, so too has Belgium's ability to hold together the two...

One of the great champions of the black community is Father Michael Pfleger, head pastor at the Saint Sabina Church on the southside of Chicago. Father Pfleger often works with another man for whom I have tremendous respect: Min. Louis Farrakhan of The Nation of Islam. Together, these two men provide beacons of hope for black families everywhere, while much of the Chicago elite simply tap dance around the most persistent problems in the African American community. One matter that Pfleger has addressed consistently is the need to get guns off the streets that are being used to murder so...

It needs to be noted that Arabs had been making the pilgrimage to Mecca-to the enormous granite Ka'aba, the old shrine at the center of the city-for hundreds, possibly thousands of years, before Islam to pay tribute to these 360 gods represented inside the Ka'aba's walls. Muhammad destroyed all but two -- that of the Virgin Mary, and that of Christ. However, even those representations would eventually be banned under Islam's subsequent prohibition of images. This prohibition was not endorsed by the Prophet. Controversies have exploded over images depicting the Prophet Muhammad, namely his depiction as a turbaned terrorist in...

Last week, second-graders from San Francisco's private all-boys Town School strolled through the Castro, the city's world-renowned gay district where a huge rainbow flag flies gloriously above Harvey Milk Plaza. The group of about four dozen boys, ages 7 and 8, was led by a reputable local historian who regularly leads walking tours of the Castro (and who asked to remain anonymous in this story). The guide walked the boys by Pink Triangle Memorial Park, where 15 granite pylons rise above the ground in remembrance of the estimated 15,000 gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgenders who were persecuted, imprisoned and killed...

In a loud voice, looney-toons style, "DON'T BURN THAT KORAN... THER'LL BE HELL TO PAY!" Oh really... some thoughts on that... When the senator from Utah proclaimed, "This war is lost", did any military general spout off, "hey this kind of talk could get our soldiers killed"? When John Kerry claimed "our soldiers were terrorizing women and children in the dead of night", did any military spokesman speak with any concern, that this kind of talk may increase the dangers for our military. When John Mertha said our marines murdered in cold blood, did any military brass denounce his claim...

The US has sent a team of nuclear physicists to help BP plug the "catastrophic" flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico from its leaking Deepwater Horizon well, as the Obama administration becomes frustrated with the oil giant's inability to control the situation. The five-man team – which includes a man who helped develop the first hydrogen bomb in the 1950s – is the brainchild of Steven Chu, President Obama's Energy Secretary. He has charged the men with finding solutions to stop the flow of oil. President Obama yesterday promised a "relentless" effort to resolve the problem as he...

Ariel Sharon pauses at the gate of life and death. Is there such a thing as Sharonism that will outlast him? Do leaders make history, or are they made by the flow of events? No one in Israeli politics seemed less like the blunt general than Shimon Peres, dove for all seasons. Yet when Mr. Sharon formed his new centrist party, Kadima, to fight the upcoming election, Mr. Peres joined it—because he and Mr. Sharon had a friendship that was old as dirt. Chalk that up to the personal. With Mr. Sharon out of the picture, where will Mr. Peres—and...