Free Republic

Porn, spam and hate among the top reasons cited for blocking Facebook and Twitter users Canadian government departments have quietly blocked nearly 22,000 Facebook and Twitter users, with Global Affairs Canada accounting for nearly 20,000 of the blocked accounts, CBC News has learned. Moreover, nearly 1,500 posts — a combination of official messages and comments from readers — have been deleted from various government social media accounts since January 2016. However, there could be even more blocked accounts and deleted posts. In answer to questions tabled by Opposition MPs in the House of Commons, several departments said they don't keep...

New documents expose close ties between the Podesta Group and high-ranking Saudi officials recently arrested on corruption charges this past weekend. One America’s Kristian Rouz has more on the deals between key Clinton allies and ousted Saudi officials.

<p>An immigrant who had been shielded from deportation but was sent back to Mexico has been arrested for returning to the United States for the second time this year, authorities said Wednesday.</p> <p>Juan Manuel Montes, 23, was taken into custody near Calexico for illegally re-entering the United States late Monday night, the U.S. Border Patrol said in a statement.</p>

BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian troops and allied fighters encircled the last Islamic State-held town on Wednesday after linking up with Iraqi forces, pro-government media and a Syrian opposition monitoring group said. Al-Manar TV, the media arm of the Lebanese Hezbollah group, said troops have surrounded the eastern town of Boukamal, on the border with Iraq. The Central Military Media Center, an outlet affiliated with the Syrian military, said Syrian troops and allied fighters have begun entering the town. The two outlets said earlier that Syrian troops had linked up with Iraqi forces across the border. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for...

If things don't work out for Chris Cuomo at CNN, he can always get a gig writing anti-Trump propaganda for Kim Jong Un . . . On CNN this morning, the panel reveled in the latest anti-Trump slur from North Korea. Speaking of Trump, Kim Jong Un's state newspaper wrote of "filthy rhetoric spewing out of his snout like garbage." The ever-snide John Avlon praised "the quality of that propaganda writing. They've clearly hired a new propagandist. That is strong." Avlon later referred to President Trump as a "lunatic old man." Cuomo even offered his own services to Kim Jong...

In a move sure to annoy the academic left already hostile to him, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker signed an executive order effectively outlawing BDS in the state. "On October 30th, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker signed an anti-BDS measure, Executive Order 261, into law," the Louis D. Brandeis Center reports. "The Executive Order states that agencies may not 'execute a contract with a business entity if that entity is engaging in a boycott of Israel. Further, agencies shall reserve the right to terminate any contract with a business entity that engages in a boycott of Israel during the term of the...

<p>ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) -- The state of Alaska took a major step toward realizing a long-sought pipeline to move natural gas from the North Slope to Asia, siding with interests from China after major oil companies stepped back from the project.</p>

North Korea responded Wednesday to European concerns about being in the path of Pyongyang's potentially nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) by assuring the leader of Western military alliance NATO that such weapons were only intended for the U.S. NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said during an interview last week with Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun that "Europe has also entered the [North Korean] missile range, and NATO member states are already in danger." North Korea's ruling party-run Rodong Shinmun newspaper countered these claims, calling Stoltenberg's remarks "false and groundless" because, although European states are indeed in North Korea's missile range, Pyongyang has...

The Russian military announced on Oct. 30, 2017 that it will begin acquiring the Nerekhta — a ground-combat robot armed with a slew of remotely-operated weapons such as machine guns and rocket launchers. Col. Oleg Pomazuev, the head of the Russian Ministry of Defense’s Department of Innovation Research, said the Nerekhtas “managed to prove themselves well at the Alabino testing ground,” and that the robots exceeded manned combat vehicles “in a number of parameters.” The spartan-looking, mid-sized Nerekhta comes in three varieties — combat, transport and artillery reconnaissance – and can be equipped with a 12.7-millimeter or 7.62-millimeter machine...

The peak body for Muslims in Australia has agreed to repay $22m in misappropriated rent payments, loans, service fees and property to the largest Islamic school in Australia which amounts to about half the total by the school being tested in the NSW Supreme Court. The Australian Federation of Islamic Councils has agreed, without admission, to hand back almost $10m worth of payments once made by Malek Fahd Islamic School to the organisation and a property worth $12m at Beaumont Hills in Sydney which it purchased but which was done so under the name of AFIC. Orders were made by...

BEIJING: US President Donald Trump was treated to what he called a "beautiful" Chinese opera performance at the Forbidden City on Wednesday (Nov 8), as President Xi Jinping gave him a lavish welcome to Beijing. Xi prepared an extravagant "state visit-plus" for Trump, who has softened his strongly anti-China election-era rhetoric since their first meeting at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida in April. Despite disagreements over trade and North Korea, the two leaders and their wives were all smiles as they ambled through the former imperial palace, first built in the 15th century. First Lady Melania Trump stepped gracefully across...

Germany’s top court on Wednesday required parliament to legally recognize a “third gender” from birth, potentially making it the first European country to offer intersex people the option of identifying as neither male nor female. Current regulations on civil status are discriminatory against intersex people, the Federal Constitutional Court said, noting that the sexual identity of an individual is protected as a basic right. Legislators must by the end of 2018 pass a new regulation to offer a third gender option in birth registers, the court added, ruling in favour of an appeal brought by an intersex person. In the...

BRUSSELS Gov. Jerry Brown, arriving in Brussels after collegial events in Germany, sparred publicly with British politicians when confronted over his climate change record at the European Parliament on Wednesday. Steven Woolfe, a British politician on the parliament, was first to pierce the pleasantries, accusing Brown of supporting state intervention “at a huge scale” and spending and increasing taxes “like it’s going out of fashion.” Brown’s climate change policy, he argued isolates the state from much of the U.S. Woolfe dismissed California’s cap-and-trade carbon market a “tax-and-spend” policy. And he teased the governor as potentially being interested in joining the...

On Tuesday’s MSNBC Live, host Katy Tur and New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof turned what was supposed to be a hard news segment on the North Korean nuclear crisis into a conspiratorial mess when they seriously posited that President Trump might launch a nuclear war that would kill millions of Koreans just to boost his domestic poll numbers. The lead up to these baseless and dangerously idiotic musings came as Tur and Kristof discussed the NYT columnist’s latest opinion piece on the odds of a war between the U.S. and Kim Jong-un’s totalitarian regime: TUR: Your op-ed about North...

<p>There seems to be a general consensus in Washington that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s ongoing purge of princes and businessmen — including the wealthiest of them all, the business mogul and Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal — is motivated by his determination to consolidate his power, well before his father, King Salman, passes from the scene. He is in this regard a latter-day Adonijah, who had himself crowned king while his father King David was alive. And, like Adonijah, Mohammed bin Salman has made some very powerful enemies in the process. Unlike that Biblical figure, however, he has his father’s support and has taken care to arrest anyone who might threaten his drive to preeminence.</p>

In January, I wrote in these pages about the Democrats’ dossier on Donald Trump. Much of what seemed likely about it at the time has since been confirmed. No surprise there. Hillary Clinton has confessed. But what is surprising is the general lack of appreciation for the significance of this sordid episode. Democrats have elevated delusion to an art form by insisting the funding of the dossier is irrelevant, and that what really matters is its unverified and unverifiable allegations of collusion between President Trump and Russia. Alternatively, the White House has asserted that the dossier proves that it was...

PORTLAND, OR - A man who threw bodily fluid on women at grocery stores in the Portland area pleaded guilty to third-degree sex abuse charges. Manuel Banuelos-Alcala, 47, pleaded guilty on Oct. 30. He was returned to ICE custody and ordered to be deported from the U.S. He was arrested in May after police asked for the public’s help tracking down a suspect accused of throwing semen on women at grocery stores in southwest Portland. There were similar reports in Beaverton and Milwaukie, as well. Banuelos-Alcala was arrested when officers conducting a follow-up investigation at a Safeway store on Southwest...

OMAHA, Neb. - 6 News has learned an illegal immigrant set to be deported has now been accused of sexually assaulting Metro children. He's also accused of trying to intimidate his alleged victims from behind bars. Victor Garcia-Fuentes is already in custody at the Douglas County Jail on an Immigration and Customs Enforcement hold. Now he faces 4 counts of child sexual assault. Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine told 6 News: "3 of them are contact charges. 1 is a penetration charge. So these are very serious charges." Kleine said the children range in age from 5 to 12 years-old....

While the world tries to interpret Saudi Arabia's moves to clamp down on corruption and watches the kingdom accuse Iran of an "act of war," a former Reagan administration Pentagon official says Saudi Arabia is gearing up for the very real possibility of a "very, very bloody" war with Iran. Within the past several days, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is next in line to the Saudi throne, has ordered the arrests of many government officials, including 11 princes, on allegations of corruption. More recently, the crown prince accused Iran of an “act of war” after Iranian-backed Houthi...

The victim of an acid attack gave evidence from beyond the grave in a ground-breaking murder trial today -telling how his ex-girlfriend laughed before dousing him in a corrosive liquid. Mark Van Dongen, 29, was paralysed from the neck down, suffered extensive burns, had his left leg amputated and struggled to speak after the attack by Berlinah Wallace, 48, in Bristol. Prosecutors say that, despite the victim having later died at a euthanasia clinic in Belgium, the acid attack led directly to his death and have charged Wallace with murder. As part of the evidence in her highly-unusual trial today,...