Free Republic

The raids constituted a horrific, shameful episode in American history, one of the lowest moments for liberty since King George III quartered troops in private homes. Friday, January 3, 2020 Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons | Public Domain (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en) Lawrence W. Reed Lawrence W. Reed Politics History Woodrow Wilson First Amendment Communism World War I Police State Exactly a hundred years ago this morning—on January 3, 1920—Americans woke up to discover just how little their own government regarded the cherished Bill of Rights. During the night, some 4,000 of their fellow citizens were rounded up and jailed for what amounted, in...

By the first week of March 1915, food supplies inside the besieged fortress of Przemyśl were almost exhausted. Most of the horses that could be spared had been eaten. Bran, sawdust and bone meal were used to eke out the dwindling stock of flour. Cats were nowhere to be seen – they too had been eaten. A middle-sized dog fetched 20 crowns, if its owner could be persuaded to part with it. Even mice were being traded. The hospital was filled to overflowing with collapsing people. As one of the doctors tending them observed, the most shocking thing about the...

Inside a small brick building in downtown Austin, these are some of the comments in a guest book at a new exhibit called "War Remains," an interactive virtual reality taste of World War I: “I have been trying to imagine this all my life — I finally have.” “I have never been in combat and I am more certain than ever that I don’t want to be. What an amazing and terrifying experience.” The experience is based upon research into different battlefields in the First World War, explains legendary war storyteller Dan Carlin, a podcaster renowned for his Hardcore History...

Full TITLE: "Teenage history fanatic, 18, discovers a First World War bomb near his home in France - only for it to blow up, leaving him without a finger and riddled with 50 pieces of shrapnel" Treasure hunter Paul Aiden was hunting for coins in a forest near his home in Metz, France, earlier this month when his metal detector started going off. Thinking he had struck gold, the 18-year-old began digging through the dense undergrowth before a massive explosion sent him flying backwards. Woodworker Mr Aiden admitted that by the time he realised he had struck on a WWI...

Rifles and flag used in the Picnic Train Attack by Muslims in Broken Hill Australia, 1 January, 1915 One of the lesser known, but informative actions of the First World War, was an attack, by Muslims, on a picnic train of unarmed civilians in Australia. The attack killed four civilians. A quick response by police, soldiers and civilians killed the two attackers after they took up a defensive position on a nearby hill top at Broken Hill, in New South Wales. At the start of the First World War, the Ottoman Empire had not chosen sides. Blunders by the...

It is not too far-fetched to say that Christian Europe officially died on June 28, 1914. On that day, the heir to the imperial throne of Austria-Hungary and his wife were gunned down on the streets of Sarajevo. In modern parlance, we would call the assassin, 19 year-old Serbian radical Gavrilo Princip, a terrorist. His act would lead directly to the outbreak of the Great War a little over a month later. Following is an article that appeared in The Outlook, an important New York-based political and social journal, from a week after the assassinations. It is notable that the...

There's something attractive in the party names in the Supreme Court's decision on the relationship between government and religion: American Legion v. American Humanist Association. Both organizations, the veterans group formed after World War I and the secular humanist group founded the year this nation entered World War II, want to tell you how American they are. And they are locked in the longstanding debate over the meaning of the first clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion," it reads, "or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Note...

I've noticed some discussion over this in various places and figured a genius freeper might have the answer, or at least enjoy speculating.

============================================================ Although the idea might sound ridiculous at first, concrete ships have played an important role in naval warfare. When shortages of timber and steel threatened the supply of ships, using concrete provided a solution. Concrete ships use ferrocement in place of wood and some of the steel that is usually required. Ferrocement is made from mortar or plaster which is applied over a finely woven metal mesh. The mesh is usually made of iron (Latin: Ferrum) which gives it its name. Early models One of the earliest concrete boats was seen at the Paris Exhibition of 1855. Designed by...

"The most thrilling part of the coloring process is when suddenly the person looks back at you as if he’s alive" - Olga Shirnina “My heart yearned to be there, in the boiling caldron of war, to be baptized in its fire and scorched in its lava” – Maria Bochkareva, commander of the Russian Women’s death battalion in her 1919 autobiography Yashka, My Life as Peasant, Officer and Exile.  Maria Bochkareva Color can bring the past to the present, giving black and white images a spritz of life. We’ve seen color photos of the Russian Empire in Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii’s...

Judicial Watch Sues for Coup Documents Hillary Clinton has Russia Collusion Problem DC Mayor Gives Open Borders Group 100,000 Tax Dollars Judicial Watch Stands Up for the Cross in the Supreme Court Judicial Watch Sues for Coup Documents Andrew McCabe, the former deputy director of the FBI, fired after being accused of lying by the DOJ Inspector General, is having his day, boasting of what is effectively a coup attempt against President Trump. We’d like to know more about that, and we have filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Justice for all...

Looks like an amazing film. Just saw the preview on TV.

Was there ever a more consequential war than World War I? As a result of the bickering petty politics of Europe's inbred monarchs, we got communism and the Soviet empire from it, for one. We got 37 million deaths, millions and millions of bright people, a death toll so high that it skewed the demographics of nations such as France. We got grotesque forms of warfare – trench warfare, chemical warfare, and Howitzers, shell shock, tanks, and huge civilian death tolls. We also got the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian empire – Europe's first truly internationalist empire of tolerance and melting...

2014 Christmas ad from Sainsbury’s – Christmas is for sharing. Made in partnership with The Royal British Legion, it commemorates the extraordinary events of Christmas Day, 1914, when the guns fell silent and two armies met in no-man’s land, sharing gifts – and even playing football together. The chocolate bar featured in the ad is on sale now at Sainsbury’s. All profits will go to The Royal British Legion and will benefit the armed forces and their families, past and present. Click for beautiful video.

It seemed like things were going to quiet down in Gaza last week with the delivery of 15 million dollars in cash from Qatar in multiple suitcases. The "payoff" money was designed to pacify Gaza and help calm things down between Israel and the militant group Hamas which has maintained steady pressure on Israel with everything from occasional rocket barrages to constant incendiary kites to mass protests at the border fences forcing Israeli snipers to open fire. But suddenly on Sunday night all hell broke loose. IDF soliders were operating inside Gaza using civilian vehicles backed by air support, tanks...

Andrew Robertshaw, 58, built the 60ft trench with 30 volunteers in a field behind his former home in Surrey Spent a month shifting 200 tons of earth to build dugout, which features officers' mess and soldiers' quarters Hopes to teach people more about the horrific living conditions endured by British troops during the Great War The historian said that films and TV shows often offer a simplistic and inaccurate view of life on the front line Hosts open days and educational visits to the trench, which was designed based on war time diary descriptions

As firearms go, the M1917 Enfield was not the handsomest ever issued to a U.S. Soldier. It’s true that no one ever guaranteed our guys were going to get good-looking guns, but that is exactly what happened at several points in history. The M1 Carbine—World War II’s “War Baby”—was a gun that just about everyone felt was a good one. The Colt Peacemaker of 1873 had a wonderful set of contours that evolved into the classic cowboy six-shooter. But the gun at hand was a military service rifle that wasn’t just good, but rather very good. Against its contemporaries—Mauser, Lee-Enfield,...

PARIS — President Donald Trump’s decision to cancel his visit to an American military cemetery outside of Paris threatened to overshadow his trip here, as government officials, historians and fellow Republicans hammered him for more than 24 hours for that move. “President@realDonaldTrump a no-show because of raindrops? Those veterans the president didn’t bother to honor fought in the rain, in the mud, in the snow — & many died in trenches for the cause of freedom. Rain didn’t stop them & it shouldn’t have stopped an American president,” wrote former Secretary of State John Kerry, a veteran of the Vietnam...

Alexander Solzhenitsyn had once asked why, in 1914, a Europe "bursting with health and abundance" had "fallen into a rage of self-mutilation"; and the Russian writer offered the same explanation as he did for all the disasters of the early 20th century: man had "forgotten God". Anyone will agree that there was a decline in the importance of religion during and after the first world war. Theocratically-based regimes, notably the Russian and Ottoman empires, were replaced by secular ones. In western Europe, Protestant and Catholic clergy struggled to explain the seemingly senseless horrors of the war to their flock. It...

US President Donald Trump was forced to cancel his attendance on Saturday at a commemoration in France for US soldiers and marines killed in World War I because rain made it impossible to arrange transport. “[The attendance of the president and first lady] has been canceled due to scheduling and logistical difficulties caused by the weather,” the White House said according to Reuters, adding that Chief of Staff John Kelly, who is a former general, went instead. While the president was scheduled to attend the ceremony at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in Belleau, rain and low clouds prevented his helicopter...