Free Republic

If it ain’t broke, break it. This is Joe Biden’s guiding principle. He took President Donald J. Trump’s much-tighter southern border and ripped it as wide open as a gutted trout’s belly. Biden turned Trump’s energy independence into begging Iran and Venezuela to pump more oil. He also devolved Trump’s peace in the Middle East into a five-front Arab war on Israel and let the Houthi terrorists convert the Red Sea into a shooting gallery. And for his next trick, Biden wants to impersonate a Latin autocrat. On December 7, a date that shall live in infamy, Biden’s Commerce Department...

Fans of the television series The Great British Bake Off have long marveled at the skill contestants show during the dreaded "technical challenge" — for which they are given a basket with all the ingredients needed to make a highly unusual dish but a set of instructions that are often as vague as, "Bake until ready." Now a team of scientists at a pharmaceutical startup in South Africa is essentially confronting the same type of test — except the stakes are life and death. The World Health Organization has hired the company, called Afrigen Biologics and Vaccines, as part of...

The New York Times reports that "Pfizer Reaps Hundreds of Millions in Profits From Covid Vaccine." The pharma giant Pfizer earned revenues of $3.5 billion in the first three months of 2021, estimated to generate around $900 billion in profits. All the company had to do was create a safe drug that effectively alleviated the threat of the most deadly virus we've faced in over a century -- one responsible for hundreds of thousands of American deaths and a cost of trillions in economic damage -- and then manufacture and dispense hundreds of millions of doses in the shortest span...

Having no inside information, the trend appears that conservative networks are under assault. Now is a good time to have a plan B. This is an alert to Ham operators, shortwave and low-power FM broadcasts. Frequency and contact info needs to be made available where possible. If you have a web site and/or podcast, please make your ip address available in case of domain blockage. Any sensitive and/or peronal isnfo you wish to keep should be copied to local hardware. (get a min 2TB drive to backup everything). This is not a drill or 'the sky is falling'. Do not...

While a decision in Google v. Oracle isn’t expected for a few months, the justices’ pointed questioning at the Big Tech giant indicates Google broke the law to get ahead. Michael J. PappasBy Michael J. Pappas OCTOBER 14, 2020 The Supreme Court heard oral arguments for Google v. Oracle on Oct. 7. The case involves several legal issues, all of which boil down to one principal question: Did Google cheat and steal its way to the top? 

While a decision on the case isn’t expected for a few months, the justices’ pointed questioning at the Big Tech giant points to...

President Trump said last month that talks for a phase 2 trade agreement with China were on the back burner

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and other federal agencies have failed to prevent China from openly recruiting American scientific experts in exchange for payment and perks. This, according to Judicial Watch. The Judicial Watch story relies on a report published by the Senate Homeland Security Committee. According to Judicial Watch, “This report exposes how American taxpayer funded research has contributed to China’s global rise over the last 20 years.” The U.S. Senate report says the U.S. taxpayers spend over $150 billion a year on scientific research. Most of the federal agencies conducting this research have been impacted by the...

Between a professor of economics at a prestigious university and President Trump, who should you trust to choose his words carefully, check his sources and quote reliable figures? The answer might surprise you. Case in point: George Mason University Professor Donald Boudreaux’s recent op-ed “Chinese IP ‘theft’ doesn’t justify Trump’s tariffs” (July 20, TribLIVE). Notice the word “theft” in quotes? That’s because Boudreaux believes that Trump is exaggerating the case for tariffs by exaggerating the extent of Chinese “theft.” According to Boudreaux, “the extent of such theft is overblown” because “Much of this ‘theft’ is in fact in-kind taxation. Beijing...

As President Donald Trump says his administration is moving closer to a trade deal with China, one of the major sticking points has been China’s disregard of intellectual property protections and claims dating back years about rampant Chinese theft of corporate trade secrets. The allegations are not hyperbole. One in five North American-based corporations on the CNBC Global CFO Council says Chinese companies have stolen their intellectual property within the last year. In all, 7 of the 23 companies surveyed say that Chinese firms have stolen from them over the past decade. As the Trump administration works on a trade...

A database containing records of tens of millions of users of various dating apps has been found publicly accessible, according to a researcher who says it remains unclear who amassed the data. In a blog Wednesday, security researcher Jeremiah Fowler said he discovered the database and that it was not protected by so much as a password. The 42.5 million records, which appeared to belong to multiple apps, were stored on a U.S.-based server and largely contained the IP addresses and location data of American users. The apps to which the data belongs include Cougardating, Christiansfinder, Mingler, Fwbs (friends with...

When federal prosecutors finally managed to put mobster Al Capone behind bars, it wasn't for murder or bootlegging, but tax evasion. Fast forward several decades and government lawyers in Southern California say a similarly novel tactic could be the key to taking down the Mongols, a notorious motorcycle club that has long been targeted by authorities for killings and drug trafficking. Instead of tax returns, the court battle this time will be won or lost in the decidedly unexciting trenches of trademark and forfeiture law. If the government prevails in a racketeering case in Orange County against the group's leadership,...

The EU declares war on the World Wide Web. An explanation of Article 13 and what it portends for the future of the Internet.

It now appears that Donald Trump's intention regarding the North American Free Trade Agreement is to mend it, not end it. That's good news, because the trade deal has been a stunning economic success for Canada, Mexico and the United States. Freer trade has meant steady increases in the volume of trade, greater competitiveness and lower prices. But as Trump's negotiators craft a NAFTA 2.0 deal, some things need to be fixed to assure America's continued commanding heights in technology and innovation. Intellectual property rights -- patents, copyrights and so on -- need to be better safeguarded. There have...

China says its bullet train technology was stolen, days after US trade probe move Officials urged to do more to protect intellectual property in commentary published two days after US announcement PUBLISHED : Thursday, 17 August, 2017, 8:32am UPDATED : Thursday, 17 August, 2017, 8:32am Beijing has apparently hit back at US plans to investigate intellectual property violations by China, with officials urged to do more to protect bullet train technology from theft. The call came in a commentary published in the official Procuratorial Daily on Wednesday, two days after it was announced that US President Donald Trump would authorise...

Trump orders probe of China's intellectual property practices WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump on Monday authorized an inquiry into China's alleged theft of intellectual property in the first direct trade measure by his administration against Beijing, but one that is unlikely to prompt near-term change. Trump broke from his 17-day vacation in New Jersey to sign the memo in the White House at a time of heightened tensions between Washington and Beijing over North Korea's nuclear ambitions. The investigation is likely to cast a shadow over relations with China, the largest U.S. trading partner, just as Trump is asking...

A new Gallup poll out this morning, September 24, 2014, found that 58% of Americans strongly want a third political party choice in the candidates because the two older parties "do such a poor job" representing the people. This number is little changed from a Gallup poll asking the same question in 2007. The third largest political party is the Libertarian Party, yet its candidates face unfair hurdles of ballot access and media exclusion. Many states in the nation purposely raise the bar for Libertarian Party candidates to have their name printed on the ballot alongside the Republican and Democratic...

  Home / Breaking News / USTR Report: Chinese Government Creates Friction for Global Trade Dan Ritter Google+ Twitter | More Articles December 29, 2013 Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/timokl/ China’s economic development depends as much on international diplomacy as it does on domestic investment and political reform. According to state-run news agency Xinhua, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said earlier this month that one of China’s top economic priorities for 2014 will be economic diplomacy, conducted with the goal of capitalizing on opportunities to grow both the domestic and global economy.It’s hard to understate the increasingly important role that China plays in...

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) - The National Security Agency has been collecting the telephone records of millions of U.S. customers of Verizon under a top secret court order, according to a report in Britain's Guardian newspaper.</p> <p>The order was granted by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on April 25 and is good until July 19, the newspaper reported Wednesday. The order requires Verizon, one of the nation's largest telecommunications companies, on an "ongoing, daily basis" to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the U.S. and between the U.S. and other countries.</p>

... Senator Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and who was a primary sponsor of the 2011 law, said he backs the president’s effort to suppress patent trolls. “The United States patent system is vital for our economic growth, job creation, and technological advance,” Mr. Leahy said in a statement. “Unfortunately, misuse of low-quality patents through patent trolling has tarnished the system’s image.” ...

A new study led by Dennis Blair, who served as President Barack Obama’s first director of national intelligence, and former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman, who served as U.S. ambassador to China from 2009 through 2011 found that the US loses billions in intellectual property to Chinese hackers every year. The report found that an estimated 2.1 million American jobs were lost due to intellectual theft. The report recommends corporations hire what amount to full-time IT security guards who patrol their networks — assisted by automated systems that scan for software behaving strangely, a telltale sign of malware — looking for...