Free Republic

Inside a newly-shutdown Chinese hospital deemed the latest COVID-19 outbreak hotspot, overworked nurses started a shouting match with doctors demanding basic measures of protection.In some Chinese universities, students broke down in tears after some were sealed inside their dorms without access to water or toilets.Elsewhere in some rental apartments, tenants were shocked to learn that they had to pack up within hours because what they considered their home would be converted into quarantine facilities.Over the past week, scenes of exasperation have emerged in various parts of China as officials battled against the “stealth omicron” variant that has fueled the country’s...

Sir Thomas More (1478-1535) was a great jurist and counselor to the notorious King Henry VIII, who was beheaded because of his insistence that the Catholic Church was his supreme religious authority, and not King Henry. . . . More earned a prominent place in the history of world literature because of his classic work, Utopia. In this work, More imagines the ideal society, one that is perfectly just and fair. Indeed, More coined the word "utopia," which has become part of our everyday parlance. . . . the philosopher John Stuart Mill, preferred the term "dystopia." It is Mills'...

BRADFORD – Readers at UnionLeader.com expressed outrage yesterday that the federal government had rounded up and euthanized 21 Canada geese on Lake Todd on June 23, in a response to at least two property owners' concerns. For seven years, the geese -- considered the largest, most common water birds -- have been fouling lawns and beaches along the 50-acre pond, which straddles the Bradford and Newbury town line. Federal officials said two property owners paid for the round up, gassing and killing of the now-flightless geese and their goslings. Their bodies were frozen and will be chopped up and fed...

Outcry in Germany as anti-Semitic film sells out By Tony Paterson in Berlin (Filed: 26/02/2006) A virulently anti-Semitic film about the Iraq war has provoked a storm of protest in Germany after it sold out to cheering audiences from the country's 2.5 million-strong Turkish community. Valley of the Wolves, by the Turkish director Serdan Akar, shows crazed American GIs massacring innocent guests at a wedding party and scenes in which a Jewish surgeon removes organs from Iraqi prisoners in a style reminiscent of the Nazi death camp doctor Joseph Mengele. US soldiers storm a wedding party in a scene from...

SHANGHAI, China – A Chinese official has called for tougher birth control in the western region home to a Muslim ethnic group, saying population growth is hindering the area's economic development. The proposal by Nur Bakri, a deputy Communist Party secretary in the Xinjiang region, was criticized by an activist who said it could lead to further human rights violations against the Muslim Uighur ethnic group. Bakri said in a speech this week that population control efforts focused on Uighur-majority farming and herding areas would redouble over the next five years. “The results of economic development will be canceled out...

Outcry as Mugabe minister calls South Africans 'barbaric' By Basildon Peta, Southern Africa Correspondent 20 January 2003 Relations between Zimbabwe and its main regional backer, South Africa, have deteriorated sharply after President Robert Mugabe's chief spin doctor described South Africans as "filthy, recklessly uncouth and barbaric". Jonathan Moyo, Zimbabwe's Information Minister, delivered his unprecedented attack after the South African Sunday Times newspaper exposed a two-week spending spree by the minister in Johannesburg while the majority of Zimbabweans are facing starvation and unable to find the most basic commodities. The story in last week's paper infuriated Mr Moyo who, in his...