Free Republic

Sri Lanka is posed to decriminalize homosexuality. The Dolawatta bill presently in Sri Lanka’s parliament seeks to change the country’s penal code to create rights even for children as young as 16 years old to privately and publicly express behavior related homosexuality, such as grossly unnatural carnal intercourse.This change in law, as with the attempts to legalize the killing of the unborn through abortion, are driven by Western governments and their representatives in the United Nations, specifically the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the UN Human Rights Council (HRC).This bill, once enacted, will allow...

Sri Lanka marked 75 years of independence Saturday in bankruptcy, with many citizens somber, reflective and disappointed rather than feeling festive. President Ranil Wickremesinghe said in a televised speech, "We have reached the point of destruction." He added that everyone in the country was to blame for the nation's woes, from politicians to regular citizens as the country had long been divided by race, religion and region since the nation's inception. Sri Lanka faces its worst financial crisis since it declared independence from Britain in 1948. A severe shortage of dollars has added to inflation woes, a drop in the...

A horrifying video shows Austin tech entrepreneur Rajan 'Raj' Moonesinghe being shot dead by local police as he inspected the perimeter of his home for an intruder with a rifle in his hands. Moonesinghe, 33, a successful tech entrepreneur who had moved to the area about five years ago, was killed on the front porch of his home in a wealthy South Austin neighborhood on November 15. As he lay dying, he said the words: 'It wasn't me.' At around 12.30am, Moonesinghe told a neighbor that someone was in his house and he was going to call 911, the WSJ...

Despite months of enormous and widespread protests from Dutch farmers, the Dutch government will be confiscating 3,000 farms and closing them down in the interests of complying with EU environmental rules to decrease nitrogen emissions by 50% by 2030.Of course, this means 3,000 farms' worth of food production will be eliminated. The Netherlands is the world's second-largest exporter of agricultural products and provides vegetables for much of Western Europe. Over half of Dutch land is used for agriculture, and that doesn't count 24,000 acres' worth of crops growing in greenhouses. What does the Dutch government think will happen to the...

“Let them eat cake,” famously attributed to Marie Antoinette by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, has become universal shorthand for a monarch’s total disregard for her famished citizens stealing and wreaking havoc in the streets to survive. World leaders are making the same faux pas this week at their opulent stay in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, for COP27, the United Nations’ climate change conference. While they eat the best food in the world and enjoy luxurious tourism opportunities, they will leave the conference telling billions of people that the only way to combat the “climate crisis” is to stop eating meat, stop production...

These people just overthrew their globalist tyrant government. Beautiful vocals....

Ukraine's recapture of the city of Izyum has brought multiple allegations of atrocities under Russian occupation. Among the accounts emerging is that of a group of Sri Lankans held captive for months. Here, they tell their story. "We thought we would never get out alive," says Dilujan Paththinajakan. Dilujan was one of seven Sri Lankans captured by Russian forces in May. The group had just set out on a huge walk to safety from their homes in Kupiansk, north-eastern Ukraine, to the relative safety of Kharkiv, some 120km (75 miles) away. But at the first checkpoint they came across, they...

An unprecedented rise in food and energy costs compounded by the climate crisis is resulting in a perfect storm for civil unrest in more than 100 countries, according to newly released analysis. Popular anger at cost-of-living crises has seen the Sri Lankan government toppled, protests in Argentina and rising discontent in Europe. The report, produced by risk analysis firm Verisk Maplecroft, warns that political turmoil in the next 12 months is set to increase, with over 80 percent of countries experiencing inflation above six percent and the prospect of repressive measures being used to quell dissent likely. Countries in the...

COLOMBO/LONDON (Reuters) - A team from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will meet Sri Lanka's president on Wednesday for talks to finalise a bailout package, including restructuring debt of about $29 billion, amid the nation's worst financial crisis in more than seven decades. The country's most severe financial crisis since independence from Britain in 1948 stemmed from the combined impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and economic mismanagement, stoking unprecedented protests. For months the population of 22 million has struggled with soaring inflation, economic contraction and a severe shortage of essential items of food, fuel and medicine caused by a record...

The people in this northern Myanmar forest have lost a way of life that goes back generations. But if they complain, they, too, face the threat of death. This forest is the source of several key metallic elements known as rare earths, often called the vitamins of the modern world. Rare earths now reach into the lives of almost everyone on the planet, turning up in everything from hard drives and cellphones to elevators and trains. They are especially vital to the fast-growing field of green energy, feeding wind turbines and electric car engines. And they end up in the...

Farmers around the globe are feeling unfairly targeted and unfortunately, they are right. From the Netherlands to Ireland to Canada, nations are increasingly targeting their respective agriculture sectors under the banner of climate change. Going after farmers could not come at a worse time as the war in Ukraine has triggered an international food shortage, which one United Nations official recently stated is “threatening global hunger on an unprecedented scale.” For example, the Netherlands, while a relatively small country, is the second-largest agricultural exporter in the world, the largest exporter of meat among all EU nations, and the third...

South Asia Debt Woes Evoke Fears of Another 1997-Style Crisis(Bloomberg - link only)

Colombo (AFP) – Sri Lanka issued an urgent appeal on Monday to tackle rapidly spreading malnutrition among children as its economic crisis leaves nine out of 10 people dependent on state handouts. The bankrupt state, grappling with Sri Lanka's worst economic crisis since independence, was unable to sustain welfare. Sri Lanka's inflation was officially measured at 60.8 percent in July, but private economists say it is well over 100 percent and second only to Zimbabwe. The country ran out of foreign exchange to finance even essential imports late last year and Colombo defaulted on its $51 billion foreign debt in...

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ignored cries of anger and desperation from farmers and provincial officials last weekend by pressing ahead with a climate change agenda that will dramatically reduce Canada’s use of fertilizer — the same ruinous strategy that drove Dutch farmers into revolt and destroyed the agriculture of Sri Lanka.The Toronto Sun reported on a dismaying Friday meeting of federal and provincial ministers, in which the latter could not convince the Trudeau administration to show any “flexibility” in its emissions targets, not even with a global food crisis on the horizon:Several provincial governments, and organizations representing farmers have...

Earlier this month, the people of Sri Lanka showed the world what real insurrection looks like. The reason: they’re starving. The cause: disastrous farming policies enforced by that country’s government, ostensibly to counter “climate change.” President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s ban on chemical fertilizer has brought biblical famine to the land, with food prices soaring 80% and more. Protestors swarmed Colombo, stormed the presidential palace and torched the prime minister’s residence. If only the madness was confined to Sri Lanka. Rajapaksa wants to replace far superior synthetic fertilizer with manure and return to “all natural organic” farming. But he is far from...

-- Sri Lanka borrowed heavily to plug budget shortfalls and trade deficits, but also squandered huge sums on ill-considered infrastructure projects -- Many of these projects now gather dust in the home of the powerful Rajapaksa clan, which used billions in Chinese loans in a failed effort to transform the area An airport without planes, a revolving restaurant with no diners, a debt-laden seaport – Sri Lanka’s economic crisis has been exacerbated by Chinese-funded projects that stand as neglected monuments to government extravagance. The South Asian island nation borrowed heavily to plug years of budget shortfalls and trade deficits, but...

Sri Lanka recently chose to ban fertilizers made from fossil fuel. Anyone who’s not an idiot could have predicted the results.Pretty much every country that participates in the modern, global economy is far better off today than in the recent past. More people have been lifted out of third world poverty in the past 70 years than in the all of the thousands of previous years combined. The only countries that remain in third world poverty are the luddites who choose to reject the modern world. I support using modern technology to give a first world standard of living to...

Riots, famines, societal collapse, and cultural invasion — the globalist agenda has created the perfect storm for national instability. For a year, the Biden administration told Americans inflation wasn’t real. Then it was “transitory.” Then it was “sticky.” Then inflation was miraculously “real” but perfectly expected as a result of Covid-19 workplace lockdowns. Then it was an unfortunate but “necessary cost” for patriotic Americans to pay in defense of Ukraine against Russian aggression. Now inflation has risen to an annual rate of 9.1 percent, the highest in more than 40 years. Tucker Carlson has been outlining how Joe Biden’s Green...

Canadian Ottawa Freedom Convoy organizer Tamara Lich ordered jailed until July 25th... 10 of the 26 active players on the Kansas City Royals baseball team missing a series in Toronto against the Blue Jays this weekend. Those 10 players banned from Canada because they haven't received the COVID shots... The Food and Drug Administration approving the Novavax COVID shot for use in the United States... In Canada a Sikh man acquitted for terrorist attacks that killed 331 people in 1985 was shot and killed today... Dutch Farmers "Seek Asylum" At Migrant Center In Latest Protest... Seven days in jail on...

Over the weekend, a mass of angry Sri Lankan citizens swarmed the presidential palace over an absolute economic collapse in the country, forcing the nation’s prime minister to resign and leading to more civil unrest.There has been a lot of talk over the country’s struggles, but ultimately a lot of the blame comes down to western environmental activism taking hold of the country’s policies and encouraging Sri Lanka to switch how it grows its own food. This has led to smaller crop yields, a massive increase in importing food, and plenty of angry citizens.The problem in Sri Lanka comes from...