Free Republic

Half a century ago, George Orwell, writing on literary censorship, wrote that “unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban.” That dynamic now broadly extends to an opaque network of government agencies and self-proclaimed anti-misinformation groups that have repressed online speech. There’s no official ban on discussing the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines or criticizing American involvement in the Ukraine-Russia war, but editors and journalists have realized that writing on such topics can come at a cost. News publishers have been demonetized and shadow-banned for reporting dissenting views and the bureaucratic means...

DUBAI — For 30 years, with temperatures and sea levels rising, global negotiators have managed to discuss the health of the planet without addressing the root cause of the problem. In meeting after meeting, document after document, even in the landmark 2015 Paris agreement, one phrase has been conspicuously absent: any mention of fossil fuels. “This is really difficult stuff. We are talking about the future of humanity, the future of economic structures and geopolitics,” said Hana AlHashimi, the lead negotiator for the United Arab Emirates. U.S. climate envoy John F. Kerry has said that Washington supports language “requiring the...

On this date in 1938, 14 political prisoners of the Romanian Legionary movement were extrajudicially executed — including Corneliu Codreanu, one of the Romanian right’s leading spirits. The son of a Bukovina schoolteacher in what was then Austria-Hungary, Codreanu came to political maturity in the interwar heyday of Greater Romania. It was a moment of national aspiration — the Romanian state had never before grown so large — but it was abutted by the great threats of Germany and Russia, and haunted by nationalism, economic crisis, shaken political authority, and all the other spooks conjured by the first World War....

The White House has announced it plans to use a cold-war era law to ease supply chain issues that the administration argues are contributing to higher inflation – a key electoral challenge to Joe Biden’s re-election chances next year as polling consistently suggests voters are not buying his Bidenomics pitch. In a statement, the White House said Biden will use the Defense Production Act to improve the domestic manufacturing of medicines deemed crucial for national security and will convene the first meeting of the president’s supply chain resilience council to announce other measures tied to the production and shipment of...

President Biden invoked a Cold War-era law in a surprising move Friday to pour taxpayer funds into domestic manufacturing of electric heat pumps, an alternative to gas-powered residential furnaces. In a joint announcement with the White House, the Department of Energy (DOE) said the federal government would award a "historic" $169 million for nine projects across 15 sites nationwide in an effort to accelerate electric heat pump manufacturing. The significant level of funding was made possible after Biden utilized the 1950 Defense Production Act (DPA) to increase domestic production of green energy technologies. Under the actions announced Friday, the DOE...

Billionaire Warren Buffet believes he is special. He doesn't think he should be forced to inform the SEC when he is amassing shares in a stock because if people knew they might push up the price of additional shares. Everyone should pull out their violin. Sadly, the SEC, which is supposedly for transparency and equal administration of regulations, has allowed this nonsense, and in a sense, given him a huge kickback for almost thirty years by allowing him to amass bigger positions in secret. Here's a news item I found dating from 1997: Berkshire Trading Kept Secret Sec Grants Buffet...

The Nashville Police Department has suspended seven detectives in relation to the unauthorized leak of school shooter Audey Hale’s writings, according to a report. The officers were placed on administrative duty Wednesday as the agency attempts to pinpoint exactly how conservative commentator Steven Crowder obtained the explosive documents, according to NBC’s Nashville affiliate. Department spokesperson Don Aaron told the station “seven individuals are on administrative assignment to protect the integrity of the active, progressing investigation.” Aaron stressed the move was “absolutely not punitive” and said the suspended detectives would not be named at this time. Crowder said an unidentified party...

Federal Communications Commission Commissioner Brendan Carr is calling the Biden administration's "digital equity" plan for all internet services and infrastructure an "unlawful power grab." Biden’s plan hands the Administrative State effective control of all Internet services and infrastructure in the country. Never before, in the roughly 40-year history of the public Internet, has the FCC (or any federal agency for that matter) claimed this degree of control over it. Indeed, Biden’s plan calls for the FCC to apply a far-reaching set of government controls that the agency has not applied to any technology in the modern era, including Title II...

Dozens of famous bird species will lose their familiar names in the coming months and years as part of a nationwide effort to eliminate monikers “clouded by racism” and to diversify bird-watching. The American Ornithological Society, which is responsible for standardizing English bird names across the Americas, announced plans Wednesday to ditch any bird classifications derived from a person’s name, instead identifying them by their physical traits or their habitats. Although not all fowl named after people are linked to unsavory histories, the undertaking mainly aims to purge names connected to racism, misogyny and genocide, the AOS said. Birds with...

International Man: With nearly $10 trillion in assets under management (AUM), BlackRock is the world’s largest asset manager. The company exploded in size after the 2008 financial crisis, and that’s no coincidence. Central banks around the world have printed scores of trillions since then. A significant portion of that freshly created money eventually found its way into the stock market, specifically BlackRock’s exchange-traded funds (ETFs). BlackRock was also responsible for helping the Federal Reserve manage its massive debt portfolio after 2008. It’s another indication of BlackRock’s cozy relationship with the government. BlackRock is a good illustration of the Cantillon Effect—those...

Over the last few weeks, everyone (unfortunately) has become all too familiar with the Twitter account @StopAntisemites. Unfortunate simply because this account has been extremely busy, showing the world of all the antisemitism that has come out into the open after the Hamas terror attack on Israel. On Oct. 29 and 30, @StopAntisemites highlighted Kayla Goodwin, who recorded a video saying that she would not now nor would she ever condemn Hamas. @StopAntisemites then showed everyone some details about Goodwin, including a GoFundMe she started in 2022. Enter Twitchy favorite Ian McKelvey, who is known for deep-dive threads on topics...

Michigan State University (MSU) has issued an apology after an image of Adolf Hitler was displayed on the scoreboard at their football stadium. The University said that they are “deeply sorry” after a picture of Nazi Hitler was displayed during a pregame quiz at Spartan Stadium on Saturday.According to the university, the picture, which appeared following a question about Hitler’s birthplace, was part of a routine pregame trivia segment run by a third-party contractor.MSU Associate Athletic Director Matt Larson said in a written statement that the University has cut ties with the third-party sources and “will implement stronger screening and...

Oli London @OliLondonTV: Woman in Warsaw, Poland hold’s antisemitic poster ‘Keep The World Clean’ with an image of the Jewish Star of David in a trash can. She has been identified as Marie Andersen, a student at the Medical University of Warsaw. She has a history of posting extremely antisemitic content online. Source: @nexta_tv/ @visegrad24 3:17 PM · Oct 21, 2023 *

The Biden administration released a statement Thursday warning financial institutions against using a person’s immigration status in credit applications. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) released a joint statement telling financial institutions that while it is not illegal to consider a person’s immigration status in the decision on whether to lend money, an overreliance on it could run afoul of the law, according to the statement. The statement implicates the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA), which makes it illegal to discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex and more in...

The morning after the discovery of the enormous horrors revealed yesterday (Tuesday) in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, where Hamas terrorists massacred an unimaginable number of residents, many of the world's newspapers do not remain indifferent. Many leading media outlets in the US, the UK and more cover the atrocities extensively, and are amazed at the extent of the cruelty and violence demonstrated by the terrorists. NYT - Brutality of Hamas' attacks in Israel becomes apparent WP - Inside an Israeli Tmtown destroyed by Hamas Daily Telegraph - Hamas massacress babies and children Metro - '40 Babies Murdered by Hamas'. Kfar Aza...

Black Lives Matter, Chicago Celebrates Massacre Of Jews In Israel Posts Image Of Killer Paragliders 10/11/2023 5:37 AM PT Black Lives Matter came under heavy fire after its Chicago chapter released an online image celebrating Hamas' slaughter of more than a thousand Israeli citizens, including babies. In a message posted on X, formerly Twitter, BLM proudly wrote, "I stand with Palestine," underneath a picture of someone paragliding with a Palestinian flag sticking up from its inflatable wing. The image was accompanied by the caption, "That is all that is it!" The despicable illustration is reminiscent of last Saturday's sneak attack...

Q to Tlaib re her Palestinian Islamofascists intruders of Oct.7.23 who raped girls after they shot them... Do they still get "virgins" at the XXX-Rated Islamic so called "paradise?" __ "They came to slaughter, to destroy. I know they kidnapped girls. They raped women even after killing them."

Amid all of the news and issues on the top of political minds, there is one non-versation that continues to dominate: Can Joe Biden do this again? I call it a “non-versation” because the folks wringing their hands the most about whether Biden is up to the task of winning in 2024 are people who, in many cases, have already endorsed him for re-election. A few even work directly for him — and are still having the same uneasy feeling… Ultimately, Democrats in Washington — in both the executive and the legislative branches — share the same concern voters have...

Liberals are constantly saying that fascism is a right-wing belief system, because that's how the university education system allocated it. We both know that's bs, because Mussolini and Gentile were quite clear that they were creating a socialist political system that has all the markings of left-wing socialism. When somebody says that fascism is right-wing, they are not defining it as right-wing objectively, but subjectively. Relative to themselves because they are to the left of fascism, making them communists or that thin sliver that sits between communism and fascism. However, it doesn't matter. What I realized is that they are...

Greg Kelly blasts Hillary Clinton for her comments towards MAGA supporters claiming they need to be "deprogrammed," weighs in on the 'fake news' bashing former President Donald Trump, and more on NEWSMAX.