Free Republic

Hollywood star Nicole Kidman has joined the ranks of the elite who are pushing humanity to stop eating steak and start eating bugs and insects. Filming a promotional video for Vanity Fair, Kidman attempts to convince the masses that insects such as hornworms, crickets and grasshoppers are delicious. Claiming that “eating micro-livestock” is her “hidden talent,” Kidman, whose father was an alleged member of a notorious international pedophile ring, declares that hornworms are “extraordinary” and crickets are “awesome… like nothing you’ve ever tasted.” Meanwhile, fried grasshoppers for dessert are “exquisite” according to the Hollywood star, who can barely suppress a...

The European Parliament on Wednesday voted not to block a proposed rule that would designate gas and nuclear power plants as “climate-friendly.” The rule will take effect unless 20 of the European Union’s (EU) 27 member states band together to stop it. The EU keeps a “taxonomy,” or rulebook, that designates which types of energy investment can be labeled “green.” The terminology is considered valuable for marketing purposes and to attract investors looking for climate-friendly projects. “Green” projects are also eligible for favorable government loans, and even outright government subsidies. The taxonomy is supposed to prevent “greenwashing,” loosely defined as...

Deeply divided top diplomats from the world’s richest and largest developing nations failed to find common ground Friday over Russia’s war in Ukraine and how to deal with its global impacts, leaving prospects for future cooperation in the forum uncertain. Although they were present in the same room at the same time for the first time since the Ukraine war began, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov pointedly ignored each other. Lavrov walked out of the proceedings at least twice: once when his German counterpart Annalena Baerbock spoke at the opening session and again...

Cindy McCain said the Republican Party has lost its way and that her late husband, former Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), would be pushing back if he were still alive. “I don’t believe my husband would recognize it,” McCain said of the GOP on “MSNBC Reports” Thursday morning. “I do know one thing: He would be fighting like the dickens to pull it back together and bring it back to what it was during previous Republican administrations and previous administrations as well.” McCain now serves as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture in Rome. President Biden,...

What started in the Netherlands is spreading like wildfire across the European Union. Farmers in Italy. Germany and Poland have come out in the streets as well. They are not just protesting European Union policies that will crush farmers. They are increasingly talking in terms of fighting the entire globalist agenda and the policies pushed by the World Economic Forum. Farmers in Italy are now calling for their supporters to descend on Rome and take their protests there. The government in Rome is already on shaky ground and working hard to maintain an unstable coalition government. This may well cause...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has posted images Thursday of him meeting U.S. Senators Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal in Kyiv, saying that his country continues to "count on the support of Congress" for weaponry in its fight against Russia.

BRUSSELS – The European Union's parliament on Thursday overwhelmingly condemned the end of constitutional protections for abortion in the United States and called for such safeguards to be enshrined in the EU's fundamental rights charter. In a 324-155 vote with 38 abstentions, European Parliament lawmakers adopted a resolution that crystalized the anger seen in many of the EU's 27 member countries since the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its ruling on June 24. “It teaches us a lesson: Women’s and girls’ human rights can never be taken for granted, and we must always fight to defend them,” Swedish politician Helene...

European Commission boss Jean-Claude Juncker has changed the rules governing the political activity of European Union Commissioners, allowing them to actively campaign in the upcoming EU Parliament elections. Formerly the EU Commission, an unelected body which acts as the bloc’s executive and is the sole initiator of EU-level laws, was regarded as technocratic rather than overtly political, and not supposed to take partisan political stances of its own volition — at least in theory. But the new rules will allow the Commission to campaign with, endorse, and support candidates and parties ahead of the European Parliament elections set to be...

Preparations are underway for the grand opening of the new United States embassy to Israel in Jerusalem. While the President won’t be able to attend as he prepares for his summit with North Korea, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump have arrived to do the honors along with a number of other delegates. But not everyone is quite so thrilled with this development, particularly in some parts of the European Union. They were preparing to put forward a resolution condemning the embassy move, delivering a statement which was explicitly designed to “embarrass and isolate the Trump administration” ahead of the ceremony....

BRUSSELS: EU chiefs on Friday told Britain to start negotiations to quit the bloc "as soon as possible", after outgoing Prime Minister David Cameron said he would leave the negotiations to his successor. "We now expect the United Kingdom government to give effect to this decision of the British people as soon as possible, however painful that process may be," said a joint statement after Britons voted for a Brexit . "Any delay would unnecessarily prolong uncertainty." The statement was issued by EU president Donald Tusk, European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker, EU Parliament leader Martin Schulz and Dutch premier Mark...

I once shared a car to the airport with a French MEP, a member of the Front National (FN). He spoke that very correct French which, across the Channel, serves in place of accent as a social signifier. He casually mentioned that the Holocaust couldn’t have happened, at least not on the scale claimed: the volume of the ovens, he creepily explained, was insufficient. The European Parliament has always had its fair share of extremists, eccentrics and outright, drooling loons. With the FN then polling at 6 per cent, there seemed no need to treat any of its MEPs seriously,...

Most Americans have little to no understanding of the European Union. Founded under tripartite coal and steel trade negotiations, many viewed the EU as a free trade agreement that promotes liberty. Others see it as the European version of the United States. This fundamental misunderstanding has led American Presidents from George HW Bush to his son, to all of the current major candidates for president to support the EU, and in the case of President George W Bush to push for its expansion into Turkey. Whatever the EU began as, it most certainly is not a free market anything. The...

US President George W. Bush recently gave a speech in which he stated that the US would attempt to cap all Greenhouse Gas Emissions by the year 2025. A cynic observing recent US emissions trends may be tempted to opine. “That’s easy for him to say.” EPA data on US Greenhouse Gas emissions follows below.In 2006, total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions were 7,054.2 teragrams of carbon dioxide equivalents (Tg CO2 Eq.).1 Overall, total U.S. emissions have risen by 14.7 percent from 1990 to 2006, while the U.S. gross domestic product has increased by 59 percent over the same period (BEA...

Few substances on Earth are stranger. It shines like a mirror, conducts electricity and is as much of a metal as copper or iron. ~~~snip~~~ And now Brussels is banning it. Of course, not even the European Commission has the power to ban a chemical element, but what they have done is forbidden its use in traditionally made scientific instruments on health and safety and environmental grounds. Britain's traditional barometer makers now face closure, effectively bringing to an end more than 350 years of a unique craft. Mercury thermometers - every mother's godsend - are similarly under threat. ~~~snip~~~

Two weeks ago, European Commissioner of Competition Neelie Kroes arrived in the United States on a mission of economic cooperation. Increasingly, however, that cooperation is hard to find, especially for American firms doing business in Europe. More often than not, the European vision of cooperation is capitulation, with American companies forced to accept onerous conditions or else abandon the European marketplace altogether. Recent history provides a clear view of Europe's "not so competitive" competition policy. Apple recently ran into a buzzsaw in France over iTunes, and other European nations smell blood in the water. The European Union has blocked the...

Asia Rising Donald Rumsfeld infamously made a distinction between Old Europe and New Europe. He has been scored ever since for his sweeping and impolitic language, but he wasn't sweeping enough: In geopolitical terms, all of Europe is old, the world's most tourist-friendly museum piece. For the future of high-stakes U.S. diplomacy and of great-power politics, look no further than Chinese President Hu Jintao's visit to the U.S. It is Asia that should occupy an outsized place in our strategic thinking, and it is Europe that should be the relative afterthought, not the other way around. The media and foreign-policy...

1. Report: China Selling Prisoners' Body Parts Chinese doctors are "harvesting" kidneys, corneas and other organs from live concentration camp inmates and selling them for up to $100,000 apiece. That's the shocking report from a former employee at Liaoning Provincial Thrombosis Hospital of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine, where the organ removal has allegedly been taking place. In an interview with The Epoch Times, the ex-employee said the Sujiatun Concentration Camp in Shenyang City is part of the hospital and since 2001 has secretly detained approximately 6,000 Falun Gong practitioners - none of whom has left the camp alive. "The...

Still reeling from the collapse of its constitution, the EU's most senior Eurocrats yesterday promised to tour member states, including Britain, to ask citizens for their vision of its future.Aides pledged that the 25-nation tour would not be complete without the commissioners involved meeting their fiercest critics face to face, including British Euro-sceptics. The European tour will be led by Jose Manuel Barroso The progress through national capitals will begin this autumn, and will be led by Jose Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, and Margot Wallstrom, the vice-president for communications. They will be accompanied by a shifting...

My favourite headline last week was in the International Herald Tribune: "EU leaders and voters see paths diverge." Traditionally in free societies, when the paths of the leaders and the voters "diverge", it's the leaders who depart the scene. But apparently in the EU this is too vulgar and "Anglo-Saxon", and so the great permanent Eurocracy decided instead to offer up Euro-variations on Bertolt Brecht's jest about the need to elect a new people. Whatever the rejection of the European constitution means, it certainly doesn't mean the rejection of the European constitution. "I really believe the French and Dutch did...

A greater number of voters believe a referendum on the EU constitution should go ahead in the Republic despite its rejection by the French and Dutch people, but more would vote to reject than ratify it, according to the latest Irish Times/TNS mrbi opinion poll, writes Mark Brennock, Chief Political Correspondent. Some 45 per cent believe the referendum should go ahead, 34 per cent that it should not and 21 per cent don't know or have no opinion. Should the referendum proceed, 35 per cent would vote to reject the constitution, 30 per cent to accept it, while 35 per...