Free Republic

International Man: In parts of California and other states, shoplifting under $950 has been de-facto decriminalized. The practical reality is that thieves can now walk into a store and steal whatever they can without fear of police intervening—as long as it’s under $950. The trend of de-facto legalization of shoplifting is spreading across the country. What is your take? Doug Casey: The rise in crime in general and the veritable legalization of shoplifting, in particular, are really just symptoms. The real problem is that the moral fabric of the US and many other Western countries are torn. There’s not much...

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...

While investments in renewable energy have doubled since 2010, power grid funding has remained ‘static.’.. Electricity grid capacity available in the world isn't keeping pace with the rapid growth of "clean energy" technologies, possibly putting governments' climate goals at risk, according to a recent report by the International Energy Agency (IEA). In order to achieve climate goals set by global governments, more than 80 million kilometers (49.7 million miles) of electric grids have to be added or refurbished by 2040, which is the “equivalent of the entire existing global grid,” according to the Oct. 17 IEA report. Even though “electrification...

The UN’s latest report on global hunger shows we are moving backwards. At least 828 million people went hungry one way or another on a daily basis last year. The prices of wheat and other crops have increased exponentially. People’s purchasing power is diminishing. We’re getting poorer, so we’re eating less. A war against farmers has emerged, threatening to push them off the land they’ve farmed for generations. Those in control of the land control the food supply and, along with it, the people. Much of this threat is cloaked under Agenda 2030, which they are attempting to impose across...

Do you feel as if everywhere you turn something else is pushing the United States closer to the brink? You’d be right. It’s by design. Called “the Cloward-Piven Strategy,” our nation is being thrust into the center of every kind of disaster, expeditiously, by whoever it actually is that is running the show. The ultimate process is to “speed-up the destruction of our economy by overwhelming it.” The goal is to foist us into an economic crisis leading to the collapse of the United States as well as capitalism. A two-class system will then rise out of the ashes –...

Jacinda Ardern may no longer be Prime Minister of New Zealand, but she was back at the United Nations continuing her call for international censorship. Ardern is now one of the leading anti-free speech figures in the world and continues to draw support from political and academic establishments. In her latest attack on free speech, Ardean declared free speech as a virtual weapon of war. She is demanding that the world join her in battling free speech as part of its own war against “misinformation” and “disinformation.” Her views, of course, were not only enthusiastically embraced by authoritarian countries, but...

By 2030, the European Union expects 80% of its citizens to opt for a digital passport.. For the first time, a nation is allowing travelers to cross its border with a digital passport on their smartphone instead of a physical passport. While the trial is happening in Finland, the European Union wants at least 80% of citizens in the 27-country bloc to be using a digital ID by 2030. The pilot program, which started at the end of August, is available only to Finnish citizens. It is running at Helsinki Airport as a partnership between Finnair, airport operator Finavia and...

California cities are losing local control as state-mandated housing to battle what officials call the state’s “housing crisis” sweeps the Golden State, experts say, with some afraid of losing their small-town feel. The state’s housing department requires local jurisdictions every eight years to plan for housing, including that which is deemed “affordable” sold at or below market rate, as part of what’s known as a Housing Element. Of concern to some is that squeezing in high-density affordable housing may not suit every city the same. Sebastopol—an apple farming town of 7,500 people in Northern California east of Santa Rosa—is just...

The mRNA pioneer's reluctant conclusion came during a speech at the recent 2023 White Coat Summit. In a speech at the 2023 White Coat Summit, Dr. Robert Malone asked the crucial question about the so-called COVID vaccines: “Why would a government wish to advance this technology?” His reluctant conclusion is that the novel mRNA injections have been developed by the CIA to assist in a global depopulation program – which has existed in the United States since the 1970s. Following the scientist .. Dr. Malone was one of the pioneers of the technology which led to the development of the...

Some energy industry groups are expressing concern that the White House will declare a COVID-19-like emergency—but for the climate instead. "They're leaning to that direction," U.S. Oil and Gas Association President Tim Stewart told Just the News in an article published on July 30. "If you grant the president's emergency powers to declare a climate emergency, it's just like COVID.” An emergency declaration on the climate could give the president “vast and unchecked authority to shut down everything from communications to infrastructure," said Mr. Stewart, who has been a critic of the Biden administration. Infrastructure around water and electricity could...

Central bank digital currencies are feverishly being developed all over the globe, and this is something that should deeply alarm all of us. For a moment, I would like for you to imagine a world where the government instantly knows whenever you buy or sell something. No transaction would ever be truly private, not even your most personal or embarrassing ones. In addition, your money would not be truly your own under such a system. Your access to the digital currency system would be a privilege which could potentially be suspended or revoked with the click of a mouse. All...

The Fed is becoming quite crafty when it comes to digital currency. They’re aware that it’s not popular, mainly because Americans are wary about handing control of their finances over to a government that could cut them off with a flick of a switch. So, in typical globalist fashion, they plan to “coax” you into using it by introducing the infrastructure as an option they know you’ll love. That’s precisely what they’re doing as we speak with this new FedNow program. This payment system, recently rolled out by the Federal Reserve, sets the foundation for the US government to essentially...

The new BLM rule introducing so-called conservation leasing will likely become the administration’s vehicle for locking up federal property. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is preparing to fundamentally reshape how public lands are managed without congressional approval. In March, the agency unveiled a sweeping proposal to establish a framework for “conservation leases” that places a newfound priority on preservation. The new Public Lands Rule presents a radical departure from the “multiple use mandate” Congress outlined for the agency in the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 (FLPMA). New Rules Are a ‘Game Changer’.. FLPMA requires federal lands...

Reality is more than just superficial appearances.. The progressive obsession with viewing human beings as blank slates is fundamentally flawed.. Many of us are familiar with the metaphor of the “cargo cult.” The term itself was coined by the famous physicist Richard Feynman... Briefly, the phenomenon of the cargo cult was observed in the South Pacific during World War II. Pacific Islanders would observe the Americans building runways and control towers... The islanders would build their own bamboo mockups... expecting that planes full of food and medicines would come to them as well... Ultimately, cargo cults rested on a form...

The World Economic Forum and United Nations are so concerned that the goals of Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development and the Great Reset (aka technocracy under a one-world beast system) are in jeopardy of not being fulfilled by the appointed date, that they have called for a summit in September to discuss how they can kickstart their stalled totalitarian agenda. The September 18-19 Summit in New York will “mark the beginning of a new phase of accelerated progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals,” according to the U.N. website. The WEF, founded in 1971 by German economist and engineer Klaus Schwab under...

Senators introduce bill to create digital identity for all Americans.. U.S. Senators Kyrsten Sinema, an independent of Arizona, and Cynthia Lummis, Republican of Wyoming, have introduced Senate Bill 884, also known as “the Improving Digital Identity Act of 2023.” The bill was introduced March 21 and ordered to proceed out of committee on March 29 without amendments and with a favorable recommendation. ... The bill’s text states: “The lack of an easy, affordable, reliable, and secure way for organizations, businesses, and government agencies to identify whether an individual is who they claim to be online creates an attack vector that...

The giant investment company's global influence on politics and economics is enormous. BlackRock is one of the most powerful organizations in the world, and its nefarious role in global economics and politics is becoming more apparent. The investment giant is pushing woke politics in the form of corporate social credit scores (ESG), which includes the dangerous “net zero” and LGBT agenda. BlackRock is also responsible for rigging the financial systems and has control over a significant portion of the world’s wealth. In order to fight back, we need to know what we are dealing with. In this article, we take...

Apart from the extreme limitations on personal freedom and travel, this means either a colder, hungrier population or massive depopulation. Two days ago I posted what I thought would be quite an innocuous twitter thread about the implications of the U.K. government’s target of “net zero” by 2050. Reminder of what ‘net zero’ really means. ... Key points: all airports except Heathrow, Belfast & Glasgow to close by 2030. NO FLYING at all by 2050. No new petrol/diesel cars by 2030; by 2050 road use restricted to 60% of today’s level. 2. Food, heating and energy restricted to 60% of...

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis wants to steamroll local zoning and land-use rules in favor of his own vision for planning and development across the entire state? Not so fast, say Colorado’s cities. Their opposition first popped up when their chief lobbyist at the Capitol, Kevin Bommer of the Colorado Municipal League, labeled Polis’ plan a “breathtaking power grab.” That was upon its unveiling a few weeks ago as Senate Bill 23-213. It was just the start of the push-back. As reported by Colorado Politics, the CEO of Colorado’s No. 2 city, Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers, turned up at the...

Last summer, we looked at the collapse of the power grid in South Africa. The country which previously had the most economically stable and prosperous government in sub-Saharan Africa suffered waves of unemployment and looting as its economy buckled under the strain. They’ve managed to put together some foreign aid to apply patchwork fixes since then, but there are still rolling blackouts taking place on a regular basis. This winter, however, the power grid problems are spreading in one of the more underreported stories of the year. Zimbabwe and Nigeria are now also experiencing near-total collapses of their power grids....