Free Republic

Russia could be sliding into dictatorship as Germany did soon after World War I, Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves has warned. "There is a mentality of being stabbed in the back that reminds me of the Weimar Republic," Mr Ilves told Russia's Moscow Times newspaper. The Weimar Republic is the name given to the German state in 1919-1933 - before Adolf Hitler's rise to power. Estonia-Russia ties have been tense since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Last year, Tallinn and Moscow had an all-out row over the relocation of a Soviet-era war memorial in the Estonian capital. Amnesty report...

Responding to Russia’s bullying of Estonia (see EDM, April 27, May 1, 3) the U.S. White House has invited Estonian President Toomas Ilves to meet with U.S. President George W. Bush on June 25 in Washington. The invitation itself, and the announcement’s timing in May, is the strongest demonstration of support for Estonia against Russia’s escalating threats since April 26. Estonia’s presidential office as well as the ambassador to the United States, Juri Luik, remarked that the invitation validates Estonia’s policy choices: democracy and freedom as Western values at home, participation in NATO-led peacekeeping missions, and assistance to countries in...

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to live in a truly Orwellian society where there is absolutely no freedom of speech, absolutely no freedom of religion and absolutely no freedom of the press? You may think that the rules that you are currently living under are bad, but the country that I am about to discuss exercises total control over the population. In this nation, you can only choose a haircut off a pre-approved list, and smiling on the wrong day can literally get you sent to a prison camp. Unfortunately, once you are sent to a...

Moscow’s occupying authorities in the southern Ukrainian city of Melitopol said Saturday they had brought back a statue of Lenin, seven years after it was taken down following Kyiv’s pro-EU revolution. The Moscow-installed head of the Zaporizhzhia region, Vladimir Rogov, posted a photograph of workers in the city reinstating the tribute to the Bolshevik leader. “After seven years the statue of Vladimir Lenin has returned to its place in Melitopol,” he said, adding that city authorities had taken it down in 2015. Ukraine dismantled Lenin statues across the country after its 2014 revolution overthrew a Moscow-backed regime as part of...

Moscow legislators backtracked on claims that they are considering the return of a monument honoring the founder of the Soviet secret police to the center of the city. The city parliament made no plans concerning the return of the statue of Felix "Iron Felix" Dzerzhinsky, legislature speaker Vladimir Platonov said on Ekho Moskvy radio Saturday. City lawmakers have no right to pitch such initiatives anyway and can only rule on their funding, said Platonov, a member of the ruling United Russia party. Fellow city lawmaker Andrei Metelsky said earlier Saturday that the Dzerzhinsky statue was a historical landmark and could...

The City of San Francisco, where Vice President Kamala Harris started her political career, is set to evaluate roughly 100 monuments to determine whether they should be removed or replaced. The San Francisco Chronicle reported: San Francisco is about to embark on evaluating its nearly 100 statues and monuments to figure out which ones no longer represent the city’s values and should be removed from view, relocated or re-interpreted with explanatory plaques. The debate over the city’s monuments began in 2018 with the removal of the “Early Days” sculpture from the Pioneer Monument in the Civic Center because it represented...

Four in ten Democrats agree with removing statues of George Washington as some leftist cities consider doing so, a Rasmussen Reports survey released Thursday found. While the survey found 77 percent of Democrats expressing at least a somewhat favorable view of the country’s first president and Revolutionary War hero, 40 percent at least somewhat approve of removing public monuments of the figure. Of those, 21 percent of Democrats “strongly” approve. However, 53 percent at least somewhat disapprove of doing so.

Ross Hetrick, president of the Thaddeus Stevens Society, assists sculptor Alex Paul Loza, as they unveil the new Thaddeus Stevens statue in front of the Adams County Courthouse, Saturday, April 2, 2022, in Gettysburg.

Attendees at the Oct. 4 ‘Free Palestine’ march were more focused on repeating anti-Israel slogans than helping liberate Gazans from Hamas.It usually takes 10 minutes, 15 at most, to get downtown from southeast D.C. On Saturday, it took over an hour. Traffic was at a standstill, and the metro was overflowing as protesters descended upon the nation’s capital to attend the People’s Forum “Free Palestine” march.The largest “pro-Palestine” protest in American history was centralized at Freedom Plaza — just a block away from the White House — but spilled into the surrounding areas as thousands of protesters splintered off into...

The Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) filed a lawsuit against the Manhattan District Attorney‘s office on Thurday over the earlier seizure of a headless bronze statue, estimated to be worth $20 million. The museum stated in its lawsuit that it “does not question that the New York district attorney sometimes gets it right and returns true stolen items to foreign nations. Based on the evidence adduced thus far and the opinions of experts available to the museum, this is not one of those times.” The court filing says the CMA lawfully purchased the “Draped Male Figure” for $1.85 million from...

The tourist was caught breaking Roman statues in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. On Thursday, a Jewish American tourist was arrested by Israeli police after he was caught throwing works of art on the floor at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. The 40-year-old suspect defaced two ancient Roman statues from the 2nd century AD. After questioning, Israeli police say the suspect considered the statues "to be idolatrous and contrary to the Torah." The man's lawyer Nick Kaufman denied his client as a religious fanatic and instead said the tourist was suffering from a mental disorder that psychiatrists have labelled the...

New York City is considering a measure that would essentially remove statues of Founding Fathers such as George Washington, all while facing a migrant crisis costing taxpayers billions. According to a list found in New York City’s council agenda for Tuesday, September 19, officials will consider a bill that would:

Denver, Colo., May 26, 2023 / 13:15 pm Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco said Thursday that prosecutors’ decision to reduce the charge against activists who destroyed a parish’s statue of a saint from felony to misdemeanor sends the signal that attacks against the Catholic Church can continue with impunity. “It is clear to me that this course of action would not have been taken with anyone else. In fact, if the same kind of offense had been committed against another religious congregation or group, it would almost certainly have been prosecuted as a hate crime,” Cordileone said. Cordileone’s statement...

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A man who drove the car that helped pull down the statue of a Civil War hero and abolitionist outside of the Wisconsin state Capitol during a night of protests in 2020 has been sentenced to six months in jail. The statue of Hans Christian Heg was toppled and beheaded during a protest in downtown Madison in June 2020 against police brutality. Protests began a month earlier over the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police and flared up again that June after Madison police arrested a Black activist. Kelsey D. Nelson, 33, was sentenced for...

Germany and Nigeria are set to venture into an agreement to pave way for the return of centuries-old sculptures known as the Benin Bronzes that were taken from Africa in the 19th century and displayed in German museums and elsewhere.Governments and museums in Europe and North America have increasingly sought to resolve ownership disputes over objects looted during colonial times. A British colonial expedition stole the bas-relief Bronzes along with many other treasures in 1897 from the royal palace of the Kingdom of Benin, in what's now southern Nigeria. The Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, an authority that oversees many of...

The transgender daughter of House Minority Whip Katherine Clark, D-Mass, was sentenced to just one year of probation Wednesday after reaching a deal with a Boston court concerning a number of charges she faced stemming from her role in a violent protest in January. Riley Dowell was arrested by Boston police during the protest after allegedly spray-painting a monument and assaulting a police officer. She was ultimately charged with assault and battery on a police officer, vandalizing property, tagging property, vandalizing a historic marker/monument, and resisting arrest. According to local Fox affiliate WFXT, Dowell, who was 23 at the time...

Welsh Government advice says statues of “old white men” such as Trafalgar hero Admiral Nelson may need to be removed or even destroyed to create the “right historical narrative” in an increasingly multicultural society. In its current form, the studiously woke guidance, which should be finalised by the end of March, laments the fact that “powerful, older, able-bodied white men” are often depicted in public statues and memorials and that this may be “offensive” to Britain’s increasingly diverse population, according to The Telegraph.

The bust was modeled from life just before Lincoln’s assassination in April 1865. It was created by American sculptor Vinnie Ream, the first woman to be granted a federal commission by the United States, according to the university’s website. It was purchased and donated to the campus by Ezra Cornell, founder of the university. Its scheduled return to public viewing comes amid concerns over its removal among some Cornell donors and alumni. The public was first alerted of its removal by an article in The College Fix in late June 2022. The Fix was told of the situation by Cornell...

CHICAGO — Two years ago, as the city of Chicago reeled from a bloody battle between police officers and protesters over a prominent statue of Christopher Columbus, Mayor Lori Lightfoot launched an ambitious review of public monuments she said would be “a racial healing and historical reckoning project.” This week, the Chicago Monuments Project finally released its long-delayed report recommending a series of new public memorials across the city and the removal of several statues that the commission flagged for honoring white supremacy or disrespecting Indigenous peoples. Whether Lightfoot will follow the committee’s recommendations remains to be seen, however, as...

- A statue to famed abolitionist David Livingstone was identified as 'problematic.' - The statue was among several monuments highlighted in a Glasgow report. - Glasgow City Council commissioned the report to help it take note of monuments in the Scottish city which has associations with the slave trade. A monument to a famous abolitionist could be removed due to an alleged connection to the slave trade. A statue to David Livingstone, the anti-slavery missionary and explorer, in Glasgow was identified in a 119-page report identifying a series of sites in Glasgow with links to slavery. The monument was...