Free Republic

WASHINGTON – Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had sharp words Friday for pro-Palestine protesters who blame Israel for prompting the horrific Oct. 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel. “This is no time for neutrality or for false equivalence, or for excuses for the inexcusable,” Austin told reporters in Tel Aviv. “There is never any justification for terrorism, and that’s especially true after this rampage by Hamas.”

Cigarette smoking is overwhelmingly the main cause of lung cancer, yet only a minority of smokers develop the disease. A study led by scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and published online on April 11, 2022, in Nature Genetics suggests that some smokers may have robust mechanisms that protect them from lung cancer by limiting mutations. The findings could help identify those smokers who face an increased risk for the disease and therefore warrant especially close monitoring. “This may prove to be an important step toward the prevention and early detection of lung cancer risk and away from the...

Satellite images which show dead bodies lining the streets of Bucha weeks ago appear to have debunked Russian claims that they were placed there after their troops left the Ukrainian commuter town. Authorities in Ukraine said the bodies of at least 410 civilians have been found in areas outside of Kyiv - specifically in the town of Bucha - after last week's withdrawal of Russian troops. Horrific images show many civilians with bound hands, close-range gunshot wounds and signs of torture. A growing number of world leaders have voiced outrage and called for tougher sanctions against Moscow. Russian Foreign Minister...

With the disintegration of the Soviet Union, everyone breathed easier. Russian communists tacitly, and in some cases openly, acknowledged that Reagan was right about the "evil empire." Religious extreme Marxism followed dinosaurs into extinction. Over a dozen countries emerged from behind the Iron Curtain. With his attack on Ukraine, Putin shows himself as a species of dinosaur. He believes that Russia, with a GDP smaller than those of California and Texas, is a world power that deserves special spheres of influence. He believes that Russia's nuclear arsenal allows him to claim a more aggressive role than that of a normal...

Former Vice President Mike Pence is set to deliver a speech Friday night that will call out Russian President Vladimir Putin as well as those who have suggested that NATO’s expansion played a role in his invasion of Ukraine.

It is a common these days to hear folks opine about how the glories of ancient science were snuffed out ignominiously by triumphalist, fanatical Christians sometime in the Dark Ages. Normally, specific instances of this destruction are not called out, save for the case of Hypatia of Alexandria who has been elevated by modern audiences to a sort of proto-feminist demi-goddess of science for her slaying at the hands of a Christian mob. Yet, for those who maintain the trope that Christianity was responsible for the destruction of centuries of amazing scientific advancements wrought by Greco-Roman civilization, please allow me...

I took a look at the fatuous "The Work Begins" propaganda piece published on YouTube by the Biden regime. The comments in general are hilarious and decidedly not in Biden's favor. However...We have a committed, dyed in the wool apologist for communist slaughter and atrocities in the person of one 'Ed Peck' who airily dismisses the jaw-dropping death toll performed by totalitarian collectivists over the last century or so. Here's a partial account of the response-reply thread:Replying to @Ed Peck I'm having trouble hearing you over the groans of the ghosts of the hundreds of millions slaughtered in the name...

. “If you were of the opinion that the United States wasn’t nearly as bad as Nazi Germany, how wrong you are,” proclaims sports commentator Jemele Hill (pictured above), citing Caste, a “masterpiece” of a book by Isabel Wilkerson. Quickly challenged, Hill pushed back that Nazi Germany “learned their systems of genocide by watching America,” and the Nazis “borrowed significantly from American racial laws,” which is why “some Nazi scholars were in America studying racial terror in the South.” A somewhat different perspective might emerge from a black person who actually lived in Nazi Germany and the United States. Consider,...

This Article Explains Why Apple Makes iPhones In China And Why The U.S. Is Screwed Henry Blodget | Jan. 22, 2012, 5:30 AM | 3,191 | The manufacturing processes of Apple and other electronics companies have come into sharp focus of late, with the revelation of more details about what life is like for the Chinese workers who make the world's gadgets. When one reads about these working conditions--12-16 hour shifts, pay of ~$1 per hour or less, dormitories with 15 beds in 12x12 rooms--the obvious assumption is that it's all about money: Greedy manufacturers want to make bigger profits,...

(CNN) Chinese TV personality Jing Boran has something on his ear that authorities don't want you to see. In the latest episode of the popular Chinese reality TV show "I, Actor," the young star's face is digitally altered to blur out his earrings. Jing, who held lead roles in Chinese box office hits "Monster Hunt" and "Time Raiders," is not the only victim of the alleged "earring ban." Images circulating on Weibo, China's version of Twitter, show several other young male stars with blurred circles on their ears. It's unclear if Chinese regulators have issued a specific directive barring men...

(CNSNews.com) - The spending deal that President Donald Trump cut last week with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.)--and that was passed by a Republican-controlled Congress—breaks one of Trump’s unambiguous campaign promises: It funds Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider. Fiscal 2017 will end on Sept. 30 and the spending law Trump signed Friday will essentially continue federal funding from that date through Dec. 8 at the same levels and for the same purposes as the legislation currently funding the governmen That means both Planned Parenthood’s Title X and Medicaid funding can...

First bursting into the headlines when they shut down far-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos in February at the University of California at Berkeley, antifascists again captivated the public imagination by battling the fascists assembled at the “Unite the Right” white power rally in Charlottesville. But what is antifa? Where did it come from? Militant anti-fascist or “antifa” (pronounced ANtifa) is a radical pan-leftist politics of social revolution applied to fighting the far right. Its adherents are predominantly communists, socialists and anarchists who reject turning to the police or the state to halt the advance of white supremacy. Instead they advocate popular...

I found this to be a very good explanation of the left's apologetic attitude toward acts of terrorism. Stockholm syndrome.

Despite a rush of headlines claiming Pope Francis is softening the Church's stance on contraception. A closer look at his recent remarks could suggest otherwise. During an in-flight press conference on his way back from Mexico, Pope Francis was asked by a reporter about the threat of Zika virus in many Latin American countries. Noting that the virus may be linked to birth defects when transmitted from a pregnant woman to her unborn baby, the reporter asked the Holy Father about proposals involving "abortion, or else avoiding pregnancy" in areas where Zika virus is prevalent. The Pope responded by emphatically...

Why These 66 Books? Have you ever looked at your Bible and wondered, “Why do we regard these 66 books, and no others, as comprising the inspired Word of God?”That is a critically important question, since there are many today who would deny that these 66 books truly make up the complete canon of Scripture.The Roman Catholic Church, for example, claims that the Apocryphal books which were written during the inter-testamental period (between the Old and New Testaments) ought to be included in the Bible. Cult groups like the Mormons want to add their own books to the Bible—things like the Book of Mormon, The Doctrines and Covenants,...

Armed Muslim terrorists slew a dozen unarmed members of the editorial staff of the satirical paper Charlie Hebdo in a raid on the paper's Paris office this week. Though the gunman proclaimed these murders as retribution for the paper's mockery of Islamic extremism, leading liberal luminaries have reassured everyone that the attack had nothing to do with "real" Islam. The New York Times dismissed a female survivor's recounting of being spared and advised to convert and obey the Quran as "unreliable testimony. Given the traumatic circumstances these witnesses couldn't be expected to clearly remember events." The NYT's editors contrasted "the...

Has the West lost its soul or be able to overcome the deplorable liberal cancer that lobotomizes intelligent people, creates endless line of apologists, capitulators, seditionists Brother Rachid, the son of a Moroccan imam, has posted a video called “A Message to President Obama From a Former Muslim” in which he attempts to give the President a crash course in Islamic studies. He begins by telling the president that he is wrong when he said that ISIL speaks for no religion. The former Muslim-turned-Christian further explains that terrorism begins in the schools and Mosques and must be cut off at...

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Museum of Tolerance has acquired a 1937 letter written by Bertrand Russell in which the Nobel Prize-winning philosopher says if the Nazi army invades his native England the British should invite Adolf Hitler to dinner rather than fight. ... “The fact of the matter is he had all the credentials. He probably was Britain’s greatest philosopher and won the Nobel Prize for literature after all,” Hier said. “But he didn’t understand a basic concept: that the idea that you allow evil to flourish under these conditions, that if we act nice to Hitler, serve him...

U.S. employers hired the fewest workers in nearly three years in December, but the setback was likely to be temporary amid signs that unusually cold weather may have had an impact. The surprisingly weak job growth figures reported by the Labor Department on Friday, however, could cause some discomfort at the Federal Reserve, which last month announced plans to scale back its massive monetary stimulus program. Nonfarm payrolls rose only 74,000 in December, the smallest increase since January 2011 and well short of the 200,000 jobs or so that most economists had expected.

The Foundation for Apologetic Information & Research (FAIR) is bringing its annual FAIR Mormon Conference to Provo on Thursday and Friday. The organization, whose mission is to discuss and defend criticisms against The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, used to hold its annual conference in Sandy, but chose the Utah Valley Convention Center this year because of a growing audience. FAIR has seen increased interest recently, both within the church and from outsiders, as the Internet increases access to -- and questions about -- the entirety of church history. Daniel Peterson, an Arabic professor at Brigham Young University...