Free Republic

China's Communist Party is intensifying covert influence operations in the United States that include funding Washington think tanks and coercing Chinese Americans, according to a congressional commission report. The influence operations are conducted by the United Front Work Department, a Central Committee organ that employs tens of thousands of operatives who seek to use both overt and covert operations to promote Communist Party policies. The Party's United Front strategy includes paying several Washington think tanks with the goal influencing their actions and adopting positions that support Beijing's policies. "The [Chinese Communist Party] has sought to influence academic discourse on China...

On August 12, 2017, a free speech rally arrived in Charlottesville to stop the removal of the statue commemorating Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Then a group of Neo-Nazis, white knights, alt-right trolls, white nationalists, and other white supremacists showed up. They wanted to protect the statue, albeit for different reasons. Then to counter-protest the white (not “Right”) supremacists, the violent left-wing Antifa hordes with their Black Bloc goons crashed the protest, and all hell broke loose. With protesters fighting to pulverize or protect the statue of a general who had headed one side of the American Civil War, another civil...

WASHINGTON -- A former Michigan state legislator is poised to become the first Muslim woman elected to Congress after emerging on top of a crowded Democratic primary Tuesday night to fill the seat vacated by Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.). Conyers, the sixth-longest serving member of Congress given his election in 1965, resigned in December due to sexual harassment and his use of taxpayer money to settle a harassment claim. His western Detroit district is all but a lock for Dems, as Republicans didn't put forth a candidate. Rashida Tlaib, a Palestinian-American and socialist Dem in the mold of Sen. Bernie...

To curb the effects of climate change, the Paris Agreement calls for limiting the rising temperature only 2 degrees Celsius, but a new study recommends even less. Scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences studied how the weather may change if humans are able to limit climate change. The study found that by changing the goal from 2 degrees to 1.5 degrees Celsius could prevent extreme precipitation events, such as abnormally high rain or snow that can lead to severe flooding, landslides and debris flows. "As the climate warms, both the mean state and the variability of extreme precipitation are...

On Sunday, a protest carried out by “Antifa” at Berkeley and members of the “alt-right” became violent, and vandalism ensued. A masked Antifa member “sucker-punched a detractor,” and other Antifa members smashed the windows at a recruiting office for the U.S. Marine Corps in Berkeley, California, Fox News reported. Filmmaker Ford Fischer posted a series of photos to Twitter depicting the vandalism carried out by Antifa, along with a video showing the act. Here is the video:https://twitter.com/FordFischer/status/1026255134886514689?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1026255134886514689&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Famericanmilitarynews.com%2F2018%2F08%2Fvideo-antifa-smashes-us-marines-recruiting-office-during-protest%2F

Some of you need to cease the denial and accept the harsh reality that the left hates you. It’s a fact, as much as the liberal gaslight gang and the conserva-sissy weakhearts deny it. You can tell that leftists hate you by the way that leftists tell you that they hate you.Take Sarah Jeong, please – hey, the New York Times was happy to get this bitter creep onboard because of her history of virulent racism. The Times saw her hate as a plus, not a negative, an asset, not a liability. You can’t draw any other conclusion – if you...

South African ruling African National Congress will push ahead with plans to amend the constitution to allow for the expropriation of land without compensation, President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Tuesday, a move likely to unnerve investors. The ANC had said in May it would “test the argument” that land redistribution without compensation is permitted under current laws, a plan that would have avoided the risky strategy of trying to change the constitution. The proposal was first adopted in December by the party. “It has become pertinently clear that our people want the constitution to be more explicit about expropriation of...

PORTLAND, Maine — A week ago, Maine Democrat Zak Ringelstein wasn't quite ready to consider himself a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, even if he appreciated the organization's values and endorsement in his bid to become a U.S. senator. Three days later, he told The Associated Press it was time to join up. He's now the only major-party Senate candidate in the nation to be a dues-paying democratic socialist. Ringelstein's leap is the latest evidence of a nationwide surge in the strength and popularity of an organization that, until recently, operated on the fringes of the liberal movement's...

The latest of a series of articles on Vatican-China talks* posted on the Vatican News site tackles the question of how the Holy See could recognize bishops who were ordained without Vatican approval, and thus subject to excommunication: The path to the legitimisation of the Chinese Bishops ordained without the mandate of the Pope is not and cannot be, then, a cold bureaucratic act; rather, it must be a journey of genuinely and profoundly ecclesial discernment, whereby particular cases are evaluated in order to determine whether the essential conditions exist, such that a given Bishop could be readmitted into full...

Responding to criticism from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, who has asked the Nicaraguan government to stop state violence and disarm pro-government groups, Mr Oquist accused the UN High Commissioner was guilty of inaccuracy. "This is based on nothing," Mr Oquist said. "It's based on local human rights sources, which have been partial for decades. These unproven generalizations are not helping the search for peace." When asked about the possibility that President Ortega will resign and hold elections, the minister responded: "... Why should the president resign?... Sandinistas also know how to put barricades on the street." Daniel Ortega...

Czech churches are up in arms against Communist Party plans to tax billions in compensation being paid by the state in return for assets, mostly land, seized by the Communists during their Cold War rule. Under a 2012 law and deals with the state, 17 religious denominations -- Christian and Jewish -- are entitled to recover assets worth up to 75 billion koruna (2.9 billion euros, $3.4 billion) seized by the atheist Communist regime after World War II.

Last picture of the Russian Royal Family before their martyrdom by the Bolsheviks. July 17, 2018, marks the centennial of the killing of the Russian royal family.On that date a hundred years ago, the last tsar of Russia, Nicholas II, his wife the tsarina Alexandra, their five children and four retainers, were ushered into a basement in the city of Yekaterinburg in the early hours of the morning, for an execution that would mark a turning point in history.The family, by all accounts pious and loving and known for personal works of charity, had suffered months of humiliation at...

<p>But promoting socialism, sky-high taxes, and open borders is probably not going to help them trounce the GOP in November. The activist base of the Democratic party is lurching left fast enough that everyone should pay attention. Activists matter because their turnout in low-turnout primaries and caucuses almost propelled leftist Bernie Sanders to victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016. Last month, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez unseated New York congressman Joe Crowley, the No. 4 ranking House Democrat in a low-turnout primary. She benefited from organizing support from the Democratic Socialists of America. Leftists have also upset establishment Democrats in statewide primaries for governor in Colorado and Maryland.</p>

Pope responds to an attack by Sandinista troops against the nuncio and bishops in Nicaragua - Edit: the Church is no stranger to hostility from the Communist Sandanista regime. And none of the news stories I see are covering the Communism angle and the apparent end of the romance. Managua (kath.net) On Monday, in Nicaragua, in an attack by pro-government thugs on the Cardinal of Managua, the apostolic nuncio and several bishops, including Managua suffragan bishop Silvio Baez, were injured. Demonstrators against dictator Ortega and his wife's government, who were attacked by Sandinista paramilitary groups, retreated to the Basilica of...

For fifteen years the writer Varlam Shalamov was imprisoned in the Gulag for participating in “counter-revolutionary Trotskyist activities.” He endured six of those years enslaved in the gold mines of Kolyma, one of the coldest and most hostile places on earth. While he was awaiting sentencing, one of his short stories was published in a journal called Literary Contemporary. He was released in 1951, and from 1954 to 1973 he worked on Kolyma Stories, a masterpiece of Soviet dissident writing that has been newly translated into English and published by New York Review Books Classics this week. Shalamov claimed not...

In the week and a half since Sarah Huckabee Sanders was refused service while dining in Virginia, pundits have debated the propriety of that act in tedious detail. It’s a subject that won’t go away. Even in Vancouver, B.C. a restaurant manager was fired the past weekend for refusing to serve a Trump supporter wearing a MAGA hat. In both cases, the restaurant’s decisions and the resulting reactions reflect a growing gulf between political factions that increasingly see themselves as belonging to separate societies. But, even amidst the labored dispute about whether the Virginia restaurant should have rebuked Sanders, there...

Interrupting meals 'just the beginning' of resistance to RepublicansA writer for the popular progressive news website Splinter is warning supporters of President Trump that if they have a problem with the heckling of administration officials in public places, they haven’t seen anything yet. “Do you think that being asked to leave a restaurant, or having your meal interrupted, or being called by the public is bad? My fascism-enabling friends, this is only the beginning,” writes Splinter senior writer Hamilton Nolan. “This is what happens when citizens decide en masse that their political system is corrupt, racist, and unresponsive,” says Nolan....

Managua (AFP) – One evening as she watched some local kids play outside in her Managua neighborhood, Nicaraguan Mireya Alegria was shocked to see police, motorcycles and a white van carrying hooded men speed past. “They started firing,” she says. It was the moment she decided enough was enough. Now Alegria is one of the thousands of Nicaraguans desperately seeking to process migration documents and flee to neighboring Central American countries, as two months of anti-government dissent has triggered increasingly violent state repression. “Thousands of people come daily to do paperwork,” said Nubia Manzanares, a migration agent, adding that many...

MANAGUA: At least 121 people have been killed in a wave of protests since Apr 18 against President Daniel Ortega's government, Nicaragua's main human rights group said Tuesday (Jun 5), calling it a "human tragedy." The Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (CENIDH) said another 1,300 people have been wounded in the protests, which have met with a violent crackdown from the government. "This is now a massacre, a human tragedy where the goal is to exterminate all those young people who think differently than or are critical of the government," the group's executive secretary, Marlin Sierra, told AFP. "It amounts...

A New Jersey professor said Thursday that he “officially” “now hate[s] white people” in a Facebook post that was subsequently deleted. James Livingston, the Rutgers University history professor who made the remarks, proceeded to detail “little Caucasian a**holes” that annoyed him at a restaurant. “OK, officially, I now hate white people,” Livingston said. “I am a white people [sic], for God’s sake, but can we keep them — us — us out of my neighborhood? I just went to Harlem Shake on 124 and Lenox for a Classic burger to go, that would [be] my dinner, and the place is...