Free Republic

One in five national governments tried to intimidate or kill exiles in recent years. A Russian defector is assassinated in Spain. The Chinese government offers bounties for dissidents who take refuge in foreign countries. The Canadian government fingers Indian officials for murdering a Sikh activist in British Columbia. What do these incidents have in common? They represent acts of "transnational repression," a form of authoritarianism that reaches across national frontiers and has becoming disturbingly common in recent years. Repression Without Borders"More than 20 percent of the world's national governments have reached beyond their borders since 2014 to forcibly silence exiled...

Synopsis: Vladimir Solovyov is the #1 talk show host on Russia 1 state television. He claims to be friends with Boris Nadezhdin who today submitted the required signatures to run against Putin as President of Russia. Solovyov predicts that Boris Nadezhdin will be poisoned or imprisoned to prevent him from posing a political threat to Supreme Leader Putin.

Globalists Gather in Davos To Chart Course For New World Order Agenda in 2023: Elon Musk Blasts WEF: ‘Unelected World Government the People Never Asked For and Don’t Want The World Economic Forum should control the World: Elon Musk Survey Yes 14% No 86% A Davos speaker explicitly outlined the World Economic Forum’s agenda when he stated that the goal was to create a “new world order.” The remarks were made during the annual elitist confab yesterday January 19th, 2023 by Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, Pakistan’s Minister of Foreign Affairs. “Here at WEF…there’s a lot of discussion about what the new...

Arguing that "blood is thicker than water," China's Ambassador to the United States Xie Feng called upon "fellow compatriots and Chinese students to serve the motherland. Your support, involvement and contribution would be most valuable. A China marching toward modernity is a boon to the Chinese people and to countries across the world." After years of repression of dissenters, enslavement of minorities, and theft of intellectual property rights, only 15% of Americans hold a favorable view of the Chinese nation. The Ambassador called this unfavorable view "myopic and ill-informed. The American government has also been quite active in repressing dissent...

Russia detained at least 20,467 people for political reasons in 2022, according to end-of-year statistics published last week by OVD-Info, one of Russia’s leading independent human rights watchdogs. At least 19,478 of those were detained for speaking out against Russia’s invasion of neighboring Ukraine. Other detentions occured at ecological and workers’ rights protests and protests against a November law banning “LGBT propaganda.” Women accounted for nearly 45% of all those detained for expressing an anti-war position, according to the watchdog. Russia passed a total of 22 new repressive laws in 2022, and there were just 29 days of the year...

The states with the most restrictive gun laws are repressing the exercise of Second Amendment rights. How much damage are they doing? In the 2022 Bruen decision, released by the Supreme Court on June 22, the court named six states and the District of Columbia as polities where the governments were violating the rights of their residents to keep and bear arms.Those states were California, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Maryland, New York, New Jersey, and the District of Columbia.There are reasonably good measures to compare those states to the rest of the country, where laws restricting the sale, ownership, and carry of...

In a move bound to undermine Ukraine's claim that it is fighting for freedom, Minister of Justice Denys Leontiyovych Maliuska has banned the Opposition Platform — For Life Party, seized its assets, money and property. The Party's leader Viktor Medvedchuk has been under house arrest since May. Ukrainians who engage in dissent are also being rounded up and arrested by armed men from the Ukraine Security Service. Last month President Zelensky signed legislation that authorized courts to order the seizure of assets belonging to any person that challenged the government's policy on the Russian invasion. There is no right to...

“‘Whoever forces you to go one mile, go with him two’” (Matthew 5:41). The concept of liberty is much cherished in the United States and other democratic nations. The Declaration of Independence famously speaks of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Patrick Henry of Virginia used the bold oratory, “Give me liberty or give me death!” These sentiments were derived from biblical principles, although sometimes altered from those ancient origins. God’s intention from the beginning was for mankind created in His image to live in perfect liberty, both spiritually and physically. But the Fall ruined this ideal and introduced...

Those who most flamboyantly proclaim that they are fighting fascists continue to embrace and wield the defining weapons of despotism. When it comes to distant and adversarial countries, we are taught to recognize tyranny through the use of telltale tactics of repression. Dissent from orthodoxies is censored. Protests against the state are outlawed. Dissenters are harshly punished with no due process. Long prison terms are doled out for political transgressions rather than crimes of violence. Journalists are treated as criminals and spies. Opposition to the policies of political leaders are recast as crimes against the state. When a government that...

Protests are proliferating around Canada in a way that Justin Trudeau and his Cabinet never expected. In fact, none of the political class had any idea that that they were coming. Everyone was totally taken by surprises; for the federal government, taken aback, it got worse. The Cabinet Ministers were disoriented, not believing what they were seeing and likely expecting that it would go away. But it didn't. Turning to their leader, who overnight became proverbially beleaguered, they could not come up with any solution that might save them from humiliation.

This is for all of you who have recently been wondering, “What the hell is going on down there?”, in the nation within the map above. The rumours you may have heard, along with many news reports, have recently portrayed the situation here as being dire and dark, without hope, describing a nation goose-stepping into totalitarianism. Those rumours, those reports, are basically correct.(snip) I will attempt to give a rather brief summary in point form of the situation as it currently is within this ‘MyTake’, because to do otherwise, to attempt to go into detail, would entail writing a book....

Rowan Atkinson (Mr Bean, Blackadder) speaks in favor of the UK movement in favor of free(er) speech / less repression by authorities in the UK. An actor / writer of renown sarcasm and biting wit, this 9 year old speech is still quite effective and pertinent! It is a JOY to listen to but a burden when considering how much it has fallen upon deaf ears, there and here! Background: In 2003, the UK Parliament passed a 'communications law' that criminalized, in Section Five, ‘insulting words or behaviour. (Brit spelling). This "Reform Section Five" movement, kicked off in 2012, got...

Australia has decided to lockdown the inhabitants of Sydney to try to protect them from the delta variant of COVID. The lockdown rules include a mask mandate, even for outdoor places. Only one person per household is permitted to leave their home per day to get groceries or medicine. People are allowed to go to school or work only if they cannot work and study from home. People may go outdoors to exercise but are not allowed to travel more than six miles. Enforcing the lockdown is proving stressful. Too many people object that the 24-hour surveillance, threats, and harassment...

Joseph Bolanos was a pillar of his community. President of his Upper West Side block association for the past 23 years, he looked out for his neighbors during the pandemic. He dropped off masks and kept extra heaters in his rent-controlled apartment for seniors. He raised morale with a weekly street dance to show his support for essential workers. A Red Cross volunteer after the 9/11 attacks, the 69-year-old security consultant once received a police commendation for heroism after saving a woman from being mugged. Unmarried, and caring for his 94-year-old mother, he was a well-loved character in the quiet...

This week the governors of Texas and Mississippi relaxed restrictions that have been harming commerce in their states. Statewide mask mandates were cancelled and capacity restraints on businesses were removed. President Biden called these governors "Neanderthals for daring to break the nation's unified front against this disease." Dr Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) echoed Biden's anger. "Right now we are at a critical nexus in the pandemic," she warned. "Granted, this is the 83rd critical nexus we have faced since the pandemic started. Each time we urged that we all hold the line...

Naomi Wolf, a former adviser to President Bill Clinton during his 1996 reelection campaign sees the government response to the COVID pandemic turning America into a totalitarian society. "All across America governors declared emergencies and then proceeded to exert dictatorial control," she asserted. "They told people to stay home. They ordered businesses to close. They encouraged neighbors to spy on each other. These are the kind of rotten policies that dictators have used throughout history to destroy free societies." "We have even reached the stage where a corrupt alliance of big tech and government is censoring views that question the...

A leaked document revealed that some Chinese politicians, billionaires, and criminals obtained Cypriot passports by investing over $2 million in the country.In fact, Chinese people from different social classes are trying to flee China. Besides immigration through family or work visas, wealthy Chinese have invested their money abroad, while ordinary Chinese or those with less financial resources take the illegal route.The U.S. Migration Policy Institute reported on Jan.15 that 2.5 million mainland Chinese immigrated to the United States legally in 2018.Meanwhile, more and more mainland Chinese immigrated to Canada, Japan, Australia, South Korea, Singapore, European countries, and many developing...

When Sebastian Arcos and family members tried to travel from Cuba to the United States, authorities stopped them in what turned out to be a sting operation to arrest one of his uncles, who had advocated and fought for Fidel Castro’s revolution more than 20 years earlier. That was Dec. 31, 1981, and for trying to leave the island nation, Arcos was jailed for a year. His uncle spent seven years in jail. His father, also a political supporter of the communist revolution and like many other citizens soured on the broken promises of democracy, was imprisoned for six years....

The Hungarian government has warned that Christians and Christianity are increasingly being driven out of public life in Europe, as well as being persecuted around the world more viciously than any other religious minority. “Some years ago, at the Brussels City Hall, it was decided not to set a Christmas tree, and in Santa Monica, California, a ban on nativity screening was made on the grounds of world neutrality,” said Tristan Azbej, the Hungarian state secretary with particular responsibility for the Hungary Helps programme which extends aid to Christian minorities globally, in comments reported by the Hungarian press. “Meanwhile, in...

Welcome to Captive Nations Week. Never heard of it? You’re not alone. Yet this usually-forgotten, federally mandated occasion — now in its 60th year — is worth resurrecting in the 21st century. Congress created Captive Nations Week in 1959, making the third week in July a time to show Americans’ solidarity with the nations dominated by communism. The original law listed 22 captive nations, most of which had substantial communities of citizens in major American cities. After the law’s passage, these communities began to hold parades and rallies every year, from Miami to New York to Los Angeles to Chicago...