Free Republic

Seattle Public Libraries (SPL) is reporting $434,000 in damage over the last 18 months, citing an increase in loitering, vandalism, and homeless encampments surrounding several of their branches. SPL laid out the most recent data in a memo to Seattle City Councilmember Debora Juarez. That includes reports of $170,000 in damage to the Central library branch on Fourth Avenue, in the form of seven shattered window panels damaged by a pellet gun. Other damage to that branch included one instance where an uninsured motorist ran into the building on its Madison Street side, breaking four large window panes and bending...

UNC-Chapel Hill officials canceled classes Tuesday after police investigated multiple reports of suicide since the start of classes this fall. “We are in the middle of a mental health crisis, both on our campus and across our nation, and we are aware that college-aged students carry an increased risk of suicide,” UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz said in a statement. “This crisis has directly impacted members of our community – especially with the passing of two students on campus in the past month.”

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is canceling classes on Tuesday to "acknowledge and reflect on the seriousness of mental health illness" after two recent deaths on campus, officials announced Sunday. The move comes after UNC Police investigated two suicides over the weekend, WRAL-TV reported. "We are in the middle of a mental health crisis, both on our campus and across our nation, and we are aware that college-aged students carry an increased risk of suicide," Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz wrote to students in a letter Sunday. "This crisis has directly impacted members of our community - especially with...

Three soldiers at an army base in New York are suspected to have died by suicide within just 48 hours, with one of them being among the last of the troops to leave Afghanistan just one month ago. Pfc. Tyler Thomas, 21, Spc. Sika Tapueluelu, 26, and Staff Sgt. Angel Green, 24, assigned to the 10th Mountain Division, all died within two days of each other in mid-September at Fort Drum army base in New York. Staff Sgt. Green, Green, an infantryman assigned to 4th Battalion, 31st Infantry Regiment (The Polar Bears), 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, was...

German politics misses the point when it comes to anti-Semitism. Journalist Lennart Pfahler is convinced of this. As he writes in the early edition of the newspaper “Welt am Sonntag” ( September 26), Muslim anti-Semitism is still taboo in Germany. Whoever names it must fear being called a “right-winger” or a “fig leaf” if they are Muslim themselves. This is a “criminal failure of discourse”: “Apart from the police crime statistics, which have been blatantly misleading for years and which automatically classify alleged anti-Semitic crimes as ‘right-wing’ motivated if they cannot be attributed to anything else, there is little to...

Pope: World Migrants' Day, welcoming without prejudice and without fearPope Francis marked the World day for Migrants and Refugees, at the Angelus in St Peter's Square with several thousand people including many migrants groups and associations."Don't close the doors to hope". "The Holy Spirit does not want closures; he wants openness, welcoming communities where there is room for everyone". "Every closure, in fact, keeps at a distance those who do not think like us. This - we know - is the root of so many great evils in history: of the absolutism that has often generated dictatorships and so much...

An apparently suicidal man jumped off the roof of a Yonkers apartment building on Monday night and landed on a person below — resulting in both of their deaths, police said. The shocking scene unfolded at the Cromwell Towers on Locust Hill Avenue as a "distraught" 25-year-old leaped off the building and onto a 61-year-old man on the parking garage roof, cops said. NEBRASKA BAR OWNER CHARGED WITH SHOOTING AND KILLING PROTESTER TAKES HIS OWN LIFE Both men died at the scene. An apparently suicidal man jumped off the roof of a Yonkers apartment building on Monday, Sept. 20, 2021...

“There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life.” – Frank ZappaGood grief California, as an entity you really are as stupid as we make you out to be. If your track record weren’t so bad I’d entertain the concept that the only way your citizens decided to retain Governor Swell-head was due to voter fraud and Dominion machines. But given that you’ve consistently voted yourselves into fiscal, energy, environmental and moral collapse it’s fairly easy to believe that you did so, once again, on your own.So thanks for proving that hate is...

In Australia some figures suggest that the suicide rate has doubled because of lockdowns but precise information is hard to get. It's such a taboo. More women are dying of breast cancer. Other cancers are not being treated. If over focus on Covid means other diseases don't get attention, will that cause more deaths than Covid? "Death and Lockdowns | City Journal" https://www.city-journal.org/death-and-lockdowns The point is why don't we know how many people lockdowns kill? Emotionally, economically and in other ways? As POTUS 45 said, " Don't let the virus dominate you."

August saw the highest number of Australians apply to leave the country over the past year. According to figures from the Australian Border Force (ABF), 37,979 applications were received from individuals hoping to leave the country, with 14,900 of those looking to be overseas for three months or more. A large portion of the applications—12,347—were rejected. Australia is one of the few countries in the world that require residents to apply for permission before leaving the country. The latest figures (pdf) reveal that since January—when the ABF received 20,976 applications—Australians have continued looking for opportunities to leave the country. “There...

"An Afghanistan war veteran who ran for Congress last year died of an apparent suicide on Tuesday, it was reported. Kyle Van De Water, who ran as a Republican against incumbent Rep. Antonio Delgado, D-N.Y., was found dead in Poughkeepsie Rural Cemetery, the Mid Hudson News reported. Poughkeepsie Police discovered Van De Water's body after responding to a report of a "man down" at the cemetery. Police sources told the News that the death was being investigated as a likely suicide. In July Van De Water announced plans to challenge Delgado again in 2022, but he suddenly pulled out of...

While Johnny Mandel sang “suicide is painless,” it is apparently also ethical. Duquesne University Psychology professor Derek Hook is under fire this week after arguing in class that white people may find that the ethical option for the dismantling of white culture is suicide. As will likely come as little surprise to many on this blog, I oppose calls for Hook’s termination as a matter of academic freedom. In a class to Baltimore-based American Association for Psychoanalysis in Clinical Social Work in June available on Twitter, Hook used a quote by South African philosophy professor, Terblanche Delport, that “White people...

The culture of fear Surrounding Covid is destroying society in Australia. Hospitals are seeing more and more children committing self harm. The federal treasurer Josh Frydenburg has talked of this as a shadow pandemic. ("NSW COVID: Mental health crisis as self-harm presentations surge during lockdown" https://amp.smh.com.au/national/nsw/more-than-40-nsw-children-and-teenagers-rushed-to-hospital-for-self-harm-every-day-20210827-p58mg7.html) When governments imprison people in their own homes ..... God Bless Governor De Santis Freedom works ......... It isn't easy ........

The death of a former child star whose body was found near his university campus has been ruled a suicide, according to local reports. Matthew Mindler, 19, disappeared on Tuesday near the Millersville University campus, according to Lancaster Online. Search teams located his body in a wooded area on Saturday morning. Mindler co-starred in the 2011 film ‘Our Idiot Brother’ alongside Paul Rudd, according to his acting profile on IMDB. Other acting credits included a role in the soap opera ‘As The World Turns’ and a 2016 TV movie titled ‘Chad: An American Boy.’ Mindler was reported missing to campus...

The death toll in Thursday’s terrorist attack in Kabul, Afghanistan, rose overnight, and more than 200 people are now believed dead from a suicide bombing near Hamid Karzai International Airport, where many were desperately trying to escape the country on final evacuation flights. Although the Pentagon initially said there were two explosions, they walked back the claim Friday afternoon and said it was only one. “The death toll in a pair of suicide bombings that rocked Kabul yesterday has now risen to nearly 200 on Friday as evacuation flights remain ongoing,” Fox News reported early Friday. “169 Afghans were killed...

An American mom trapped in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan is worried she'll never see her kids again and in hiding with family members and Afghan allies – unable to reach Kabul's U.S.-held airport for a chance at an evacuation, she said Saturday. "I really have given up hope, given up on the hope of going to the airport," the woman, whose identity is being withheld due to concerns for her safety, told Fox News. "It’s just not possible to make it through all those people." She said there are as many as 20 Taliban checkpoints between her and the airport – and...

A California light-rail employee who survived a mass shooting in May when a colleague killed nine co-workers has died by apparent suicide, police and agency officials said. Henry Gonzales, a paint and body worker for the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority, was discovered dead by police in San Jose early Monday. His death is being investigated as suicide, KTVU reported. Gonzales, a married father of four and a 10-year VTA veteran, was in one of the buildings at the San Jose rail yard when fellow employee Samuel Cassidy, 57, gunned down nine of his colleagues on May 26 before shooting...

Retweet from: Bills Folly @2centsfrmBill · Aug 3 #BackTheBlue Quote Tweet: Special Agent Yesi @yesisworld · Aug 3: 4 police officers committed suicide. No one is talking about, no investigation. How is that possible?

In the West suicide takes three to four times more male than female lives. Is feminism a factor? Will opening up discussion of this difficult topic help address the problem or should it remain taboo? I believe that freedom of speech works. But it isn't easy. A culture of silence and self-censorship surrounds difficult topics in Australia. So I turn to Free Republic to hear what other people who love freedom have to say .......

Two more Washington, D.C., police officers died by suicide in the months after defending the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 riot by Trump supporters, bringing the grim tally of such deaths to four. One of those cops, 43-year-old Gunther Hashida, was found dead at his home last Thursday, according to a spokeswoman for the Metropolitan (D.C.) Police Department. Hashida, joined the MPD in May 2003, and most recently was assigned to the emergency response team within the Special Operations Division. Hours later, the MPD confirmed that another officer from the same department, Kyle deFreytag, died by suicide, and was...