Free Republic

The Twitter Files gave us a window into how government agencies, civil society, and tech companies work together to censor social media users. Now, key nations are attempting to enshrine this coordination into law explicitly. Around the world, politicians have either just passed or are on the cusp of passing sweeping new laws, which would allow governments to censor ordinary citizens on social media and other Internet platforms. Under the guise of preventing “harm” and holding large tech companies accountable, several countries are establishing a vast and interlinked censorship apparatus, a new investigation by Public finds. Politicians, NGOs, and their...

Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Friday that “mega-billionaires” like Bill Gates are using climate change to implement “totalitarian controls on society.” “Climate issues and pollution issues are being exploited by, you know, the World Economic Forum and Bill Gates and all of these big, you know, mega-billionaires, the same way that COVID was exploited, to use it as an excuse to clamp down top-down totalitarian controls on society,” Kennedy told Talk show host Kim Iversen. The World Economic Forum took place in January, with many world leaders and top business executives arriving at Davos, Switzerland, for panel...

Increasingly during these strange times, we watch foreshadows of past prophecy spread across our nation. I say “strange times,” because things are taking place that are antithetical to all we have embraced as a constitutionally secured republic founded on Judeo-Christian principles. By “shadows of past prophecy,” I’m referring to there being nothing new under the sun, as written by the writer of Ecclesiastes. The clouds of wickedness that plagued generations of antiquity as reported by God’s prophets now are a metastasizing sin-stain shadow of evil spreading across America. Particularly, I believe we can look at Daniel’s time in Babylon and...

According to pro-Trump commentators, a twisted judicial system, a weaponized Department of Justice, and a media witch hunt have all targeted their hero obsessively. These forces have focused on our 45th president in a way they would not likely do to anyone else. If another chief executive or presidential candidate were in the picture, they say, the persecution would not be conducted with the same ruthlessness or intensity. I respectfully disagree. A similarly vicious attack could and would be unleashed against any Republican politician whom those in power decided to take down. Victor Davis Hanson is correct that what the...

Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., asked during a meeting about the bailout of Silicon Valley Bank whether social media could be censored to prevent misinformation going out that could lead to a bank run, according to reports. Michael Shellenberger, an independent journalist who reports on the Twitter files and has contributed to Fox News reported that Kelly asked the Federal Reserve, Treasury Department and Federal Deposit and Insurance Corp (FDIC) about censorship measures during the meeting on Sunday. Republican House members on the call confirmed with Shellenberger’s publication, Public on Substack, that a Democratic senator asked about censoring social media companies,...

Missouri Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey and 19 other attorneys general joined Catholic Bishops protesting religious profiling in a leaked Federal Bureau of Investigation memo. Last week, an FBI internal memorandum dated Jan. 23, was published by Undercover DC, an investigative journalism organization. It mentioned Virginia Catholics, specifically traditional Catholics, some of whom are not in full communion with the Roman Catholic Church, according to information from the Catholic Diocese of Richmond. The attorneys general seven-page letter of complaint was addressed to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray. The letter states the FBI memo “identifies ‘radical-traditionalist...

To create and sustain a "free world," citizens actually have to be willing to stand up to their governments. Senator Lindsey Graham desperately wants more money and weapons for Ukraine. Recently standing in Kyiv alongside two (other?) Democrat senators — one who repeatedly lied about his service in Vietnam and another who repeatedly lied about President Trump being a Russian spy — Graham demanded American tanks on the ground immediately. "World order is at stake!" he declared. Something serious must be at stake over there; having thrown over a hundred billion dollars to a nation that was known universally as...

Modernists like to manipulate words, often “spinning” them into meanings that appear simple but are relatively obscure. For example, consider the modern misuse of the terms like “accompaniment,” “social justice,” or even “woke.” Such is not the case with the architectural style known as “brutalism.” The Architecture of Despair Merriam-Webster defines brutal using the words cold, harsh, severe, unpleasant and lacking sensitivity. A bit further down the page, it refers to brutalism as “a style in art and especially architecture using exaggeration and distortion to create its effect (as of massiveness or power).” While many might not be familiar with...

A recent report published by MIT Technology Review revealed the Amazon-owned iRobot Roomba devices cleaning the floors of houses across the world are also capturing private images from within the homes. Some images of people on the toilet and in other uncomfortable and private scenarios were shared online to private Facebook and Discord groups by Venezuelan software contractors in 2020. The author of the MIT article, Eileen Guo, posted to Twitter about the findings, writing, “I investigated the origins of 15 video stills taken from inside homes by robot vacuums and shared to social media—some featuring humans in VERY candid...

We live in the age of surveillance. Cameras (attached to facial recognition systems), satellites, street sensors, license plate readers, drones, credit cards, computers, phones, televisions, “smart” devices, and other technologies watch every move we make. Corporations use this avalanche of data to make money. But does it work? Not always. According to Business Insider, Amazon is on track to lose $10 billion dollars on its Alexa division this year. That’s billion… with a “B.” Amazon is big, but the loss of that kind of money still hurts. According to Macrotrends, “Amazon net income for the twelve months ending September 30,...

The HSE’s Chief Operations Officer has warned that Ireland is dealing with a “triple wave of viruses” as new advice is issued to the public. Listing the issues at hand, Damien McCallion said that there are 600 people are in the hospital with COVID, 300 patients have the flu and 250 children are in hospital with respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). Speaking to RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, he described the situations as a “unique position that we have never had before”. He went on to say that having all three illnesses spiking at the same time means the healthcare system is under...

The Twitter accounts of CNN's Donie O'Sullivan, The New York Times' Ryan Mac, The Washington Post's Drew Harwell and others were abruptly suspended by Elon Musk this week. "To be thrown off the platform with no warning or explanation is the worst kind of censorship," O'Sullivan complained. "This never would have happened under the previous ownership." Musk challenged the assertion that the suspensions were unfair and unexplained. "The reason these individuals had their accounts temporarily suspended is that they were using Twitter to dox me," Musk tweeted. "Any account doxxing real-time location info of anyone will be suspended because it...

One by one, they go to start their business day only to find a baffling message from their payments app informing them: “You can no longer do business with PayPal.”There is little or no explanation. They have somehow offended the sensibilities of someone somewhere deep inside the bureaucracy. They are simply told via an email from PayPal’s Risk and Compliance Department that, after an internal review, “we decided to permanently limit your account as there was a change in your business model or your business model was considered risky.”In case there is any doubt, the email adds: “You’ll not be...

The European Union reached an agreement Tuesday to ban the import of products including coffee, cocoa and soy in cases where they are deemed to contribute to deforestation. The draft law, which aims to ensure "deforestation-free supply chains" for the 27-nation EU, was hailed by environmental groups as "groundbreaking". It requires companies importing into the EU to guarantee products are not produced on land that suffered deforestation after December 31, 2020, and that they comply with all laws of the source country. The scope encompasses palm oil, cattle, soy, coffee, cocoa, timber and rubber as well as derived products such...

Supervisors in San Francisco voted Tuesday to give city police the ability to use potentially lethal, remote-controlled robots in emergency situations — following an emotionally charged debate that reflected divisions on the politically liberal board over support for law enforcement. The vote was 8-3, with the majority agreeing to grant police the option despite strong objections from civil liberties and other police oversight groups. Opponents said the authority would lead to the further militarization of a police force already too aggressive with poor and minority communities. Supervisor Connie Chan, a member of the committee that forwarded the proposal to the...

Tufts research school has diagnosed museum curation with a bad case of white supremacy, and it’s offering a post-graduate cure.

The Democrats and their media accomplices keep telling us the Republicans are the fascists and autocrats hungry for power. But just the opposite is true. The Democrats themselves made it clear during the pandemic that they are the party of authoritarianism. In the spring of 2020, this country went into a lockdown. As Jeffrey Tucker of the Brownstone Institute has noted, government officials canceled public worship services, segregated the large cities, abolished in-person education, foisted masks on all the kids, destroyed millions of businesses, and censored speech “so that we could barely discover facts.” They shut down concerts, imposed limits...

Thinking about all of the things that have happened since Trump ran for President and won, secured positive results and then we went through this ferocious backlash from leftists liberals with violence, property destruction, looting and killing and then extreme promotion of sexual perversion of all kinds, it is becoming obvious that the "...finger of God...." is involved in all of this and the nation is on the edge of collapse. It makes absolutely no sense that Biden and Harris "won" the Presidential election. Statistically, it is impossible and no rehash of the evidence is going to be presented here....

Intel officials told VICE World News Hadi Matar had been in contact with members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. .. The 24-year-old man accused of stabbing author Salman Rushdie had been in direct contact with members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on social media, European and Middle Eastern intelligence officials told VICE World News. Hadi Matar has been charged with attempted murder after Rushdie, 75, was repeatedly stabbed on stage ahead of a speaking event in Chautauqua, New York, on Friday. On Sunday, Rushdie’s son Zafar Rushdie said his father was in a critical condition and had sustained “life-changing” injuries...

Russian President Vladimir Putin asserted earlier today that the “globalist” world order is “totalitarian” and is “holding back creative pursuit.” Putin made the comments during a forum in Moscow. The notorious leader claimed that the west had only achieved its global preeminence due to the historic plunder of other nations and had no moral right to enforce a unipolar model on the planet. “The model of the total dominance of the so-called ‘golden billion’ is unjust. Why should this ‘golden billion’ among the planet’s population dominate others, impose its own rules of conduct?” Putin asked. “Based on the illusion of...