Free Republic

This wing man is not feeling the vegan movement. An anonymous man undoubtedly won the hearts of meat lovers everywhere after he trolled a vegan protest event with a giant bucket of KFC chicken wings. His finger-licking-good prank quickly went viral online, garnering mixed reactions from social media. [snip] But their protest failed to impress this chickenhead — who stood by in short-shorts, nonchalantly chomping on a cardboard container of KFC’s signature 11 herbs and spices recipe.

SENIOR Zanu PF politicians and members of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces have with the help of Canadian lobbyists Dickens & Madson turned Zimbabwe into a hub for trade in "blood" diamonds illegally brought into the country from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), it emerged this week. The Zimbabwe Independent has been told how gemstones from the DRC have been laundered to line the pockets of Zanu PF big-wigs. American international diamond buyer, John Marsischky, managing director of gemstones company Flashes of Color, revealed in an interview this week that Dickens & Madson, the company which last week claimed it ...

The CIA primarily leaks PR spin to the Washington Post. The FBI primarily leaks PR spin to the New York Times; and the State Dept. primarily leaks PR spin to CNN. This narrative distribution model is the one constant in an ever changing universe. Cue the audio visual… Obviously the prior Washington Post effort to conflate the Durham investigation with the Horowitz investigation didn’t get the desired result. As a consequence it only took a few days before the Washington Post was back at it (Matt Zapotosky and Devlin Barrett again) to try obfuscation 2.0; this time with Joseph Mifsud....

Separating fact from fiction in a farcical story! Were fossil dinosaur feathers really found near the South Pole? by Phil Robinson Published: 3 December 2019 (GMT+10) Dino-bird evolution frequently causes excitement on social media platforms so my attention was grabbed by a picture of a fully feathered dinosaur with a sensationalist National Geographic headline that read, “In a first, fossil dinosaur feathers found near the South Pole”.1 However, what had actually been found differed so significantly from the headline that words such as overreaching speculation and grandiose story-telling immediately came to mind. In what follows, I have broken down the...

Would-be defector Wang Liqiang seemed to confirm Australia’s worst fears of Chinese infiltration. The fresh-faced, bespectacled 27-year-old, dubbed the “first Chinese operative to ever blow his cover”, recounted alarming tales of espionage and political sabotage in Australia, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Wang recalled meeting with the head of a spy ring operating freely down under, coordinating a “cyber army” to manipulate public opinion during elections in Taiwan, working with a front company charged with infiltrating Hong Kong universities and media, and ordering the kidnapping of one of the five Hong Kong booksellers known to sell titles critical of the leadership...

Humans have good reason to fear comets, asteroids and other massive space objects. Now we’d like to add ‘mini-moons’ to the list of heavenly bodies we should be worried about. Scientists have claimed our planet was recently hit by one of these mysterious rocks, which exploded in a gigantic fireball. A mini-moon is an object which becomes entangled in Earth’s orbit as it’s zooming through space. It will either whirl around the planet harmlessly forever, zoom off back off on its journey through the solar system or, in the worst case, smash into our planet. ‘Objects gravitationally captured by the...

Things turned spicy on Channel 9 this morning during a heated debate about Australian tennis legend Margaret Court. The panel on Sports Sunday was discussing how Tennis Australia (TA) handled its announcement yesterday it had invited Court to attend the Australian Open as a special guest to mark the 50-year anniversary of her incredible 1970 Grand Slam, when she won all four majors. In the same statement yesterday, TA also delivered Court a stinging backhand by saying it does not agree with her views that gay marriage should not be legal, which have “hurt and demeaned many in our community”....

Darwin and Townsville are now considered more dangerous than poverty-stricken African capitals of Kenya and Zimbabwe Townsville and Darwin are considered more dangerous than African cities Darwin is Australia's worst crime-ridden city sitting at number 56 on world ranks Townsville was ranked 62nd in the world, in terms of crime rampant in the city Darwin is now considered more dangerous than several capital cities in Africa and South and Central America. A traveller-supplied database lists Darwin at 56th spot in the Numbeo Crime Rankings - ahead of Nairobi in Kenya, Guadalajara in Mexico, Bogota in Colombia and Brasilia in Brazil....

World-first technology to catch drivers using phones illegally is being introduced in NSW ahead of the rest of the country. Here are the mobile phone fines in each state. Drivers using a mobile phone illegally have a greater chance of getting caught from today, as NSW becomes the first place in the world to introduce mobile phone detection cameras – and other Australian states are poised to follow. A mix of 10 fixed and portable mobile phone detection cameras will be installed in NSW from today (1 December 2019); another 35 are planned over the next four years. During a...

Such objects circle the planet rather than plunge through the atmosphere and into the ground—at least for a time. It is believed most such objects do not circle the Earth for very long—they eventually succumb to gravity and crash through the atmosphere, or are instead flung back into space. As the researchers also note, to date only one such object has ever been recorded circling the Earth—an object named 2006 RH120 was spotted back in 2006 circling the planet—it did so for approximately 11 months before it escaped the Earth's gravity and made its way back into space. Also, only...

The Australian states and territories have agreed to make a continuous, ongoing amnesty for people to turn in and register guns that have previously not been registered. The continuous amnesty is expected to start in the second half of 2020. From pressreader.com: Gun owners will be able to hand in their weapons, no questions asked, from next year, when Australia launches a national continuous gun amnesty.  All states and territories agreed to the first-ever continuous amnesty yesterday at a meeting of police and emergency services ministers in Adelaide. Details of how the amnesty would proceed are still to be worked...

Shoppers got more than they bargained for when they discovered a giant python on top of an ATM. New South Wales woman Dianne Mancell was at a St. George Bank ATM in Lismore, In New South Wales, on Wednesday when she came face-to-face with the giant python. She took a photo of the snake as it rested on top of the ATM while a crowd of shoppers gathered to watch.

China’s state media on Wednesday released images it said were of a man who claims to be a Beijing-sponsored secret agent confessing to fraud, apparently in an attempt to discredit his assertion that he was involved in intelligence operations in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Australia. Chinese government mouthpiece Global Times uploaded screenshots from a court video in which William Wang Liqiang is allegedly making the confession in an October 2016 trial proceeding. Global Times is a tabloid under the auspices of the Chinese Communist Party’s People’s Daily, focusing on international issues. Wang has defected to Australia and applied for political...

Asia correspondent John Sparks hears allegations from a Triad gang-leader that the Hong Kong student protesters were infiltrated by agent provocateurs. Jimmy Lai, a predominant supporter of the movement, also says that it is time to retreat. WATCH VIDEO ON THE LINK

Wikipedia’s Anti-Israel Editors Unmasked Group launches effort to combat anti-Israel bias on internet's largest encyclopedia Adam Kredo - NOVEMBER 20, 2019 2:35 PM A pro-Israel organization has exposed the identities of top Wikipedia editors who use the online encyclopedia to promote anti-Israel bias and causes, a first-of-its-kind effort that is unmasking a global online network of Israel critics. The Israel Group, a nonprofit organization that combats anti-Israel bias, is set to launch next year a database that will expose the true identities of many leading Wikipedia editors who harbor anti-Israel bias and have implanted this viewpoint across the website through...

Sydney (AFP) - A Chinese spy has defected to Australia with a trove of intelligence on China's political interference operations in Hong Kong, Taiwan and elsewhere, according to a media report Saturday. The Nine network newspapers said the defector, named as Wang "William" Liqiang, had given Australia's counter-espionage agency the identities of China’s senior military intelligence officers in Hong Kong and provided details of how they funded and conducted operations in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Australia. Wang said he was personally involved in infiltration and disruption operations in all three territories, according to the report, published in Nine's The Age...

A Chinese spy has defected to Australia with a trove of intelligence on China’s political interference operations in Hong Kong, Taiwan and elsewhere, according to media reports. The Nine network newspapers said the defector, named as Wang “William” Liqiang, had given Australia’s counter-espionage agency the identities of China’s senior military intelligence officers in Hong Kong and provided details of how they funded and conducted operations in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Australia. Wang said he was personally involved in infiltration and disruption operations in all three territories, according to the report, published in Nine’s The Age and Sydney Morning Herald newspapers.

An apprentice chef has been found not guilty of murdering a home invader. Benjamin Batterham, 35, chased down a man who had broken into his Newcastle home in 2016 and held him until police arrived. The court heard he chased Ricky Slater, tackled him, put him in a chokehold and repeatedly punched him. Batterham was charged with murder following the Easter weekend burglary in March, 2016. On Wednesday, the jury found Batterham not guilty of murder and a lesser charge of manslaughter. Doctors testified that Slater had most likely died from a pre-existing heart condition and a large dose of...

Steve Bannon, Trump's former White House chief strategist, says he worked to remove alleged Ukraine whistleblower Eric Ciaramella from the National Security Council in 2017. Bannon added that he had worked to kick Ciaramella off the NSC during Trump’s first year in office. Bannon did not name Ciaramella, a career CIA analyst, but clearly referred to him. There was a story in the Washington Times yesterday that tied me to the efforts to get the — at least the gentleman who was named — out of the National Security Council,” Bannon said during a Vice interview with Liz Landers last...

Apple unveiled its iPhone 11 line up Sept. 10, rolling out three variants: the iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 Pro Max... Sales of the iPhone have been robust in the months of September and October, Bloomberg reported, citing internal calculations based on data released by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, or CAICT. CAICT is a unit of China's Technology Ministry. Apple reportedly sold 10 million iPhones in September and October, a 6% year-over-year increase. The CAICT report said Chinese domestic smartphone shipments came in at 34.6 million units in October, representing a 4.5% drop,...