Free Republic

Excavations at the city, famous for its pre-Columbian mounds, challenge the idea that residents destroyed the city through wood clearing. A thousand years ago, a city rose on the banks of the Mississippi River, near what eventually became the city of St. Louis. Sprawling over miles of rich farms, public plazas and earthen mounds, the city — known today as Cahokia — was a thriving hub of immigrants, lavish feasting and religious ceremony. At its peak in the 1100s, Cahokia housed 20,000 people, greater than contemporaneous Paris. By 1350, Cahokia had largely been abandoned, and why people left the city...

Democratic presidential candidate, former Rep. Beto O'Rourke (Tex) sought to stake out a middle ground vs. more radical opponents by offering what he dubbed "a Budget Green New Deal" with a price tag of only $5 trillion vs. the $93 trillion over ten years cost estimate of the American Action Forum. "The key to cost-effectively achieving the desired results is to focus on the minimal public sector outlays required to simply outlaw all fossil fuels and police the enforcement of this rule," O'Rourke explained. "Others have gone astray by trying to calculate the huge private sector costs in terms of...

The first reported case of a person with measles in the recent Memphis outbreak, which now numbers seven confirmed cases, was at a local mosque on April 15, according to the Shelby County Health Department. “The first public place where there was a public exposure potentially [to measles] was the Masjid Al-Noor Mosque on April 15,” Dr. Alisa Haushalter, Director of the Shelby County Health Department, tells Breitbart News.“The mosque is one location we know that individuals who were infectious were during their infectious period, but that’s not necessarily where the first case occurred. I don’t want you to draw...

An E. coli epidemic in Seattle and Kansas City and 19 other states? TB in New York and Manassas, Virginia? Leprosy in New Hampshire? Dengue Fever in Laredo? What's going on here? If you think data about illegal alien crime is hidden from public, just try to find information on the contagious diseases brought across our borders by illegal aliens from nearly 100 countries. If we survey the anecdotal and sporadic official data of the past fifteen years, there is no doubt we are being invaded daily by dangerous diseases.

When I got to the neighbor's house for Christmas dinner today, the neighbor was out, looking after the cattle, but his wife was in the kitchen, sitting at the table, going through a large bag of transparent tan-colored pharmaceutical bottles, taking out their contents and carefully putting a pill each into different compartments of two plastic boxes (which looked as if fishing-tackle boxes). Auntie had arrived under the cover of darkness the previous night, but was still sleeping. I looked at a couple of bottles, paid for by the hard-pressed taxpayers of Missouri, but being unfamiliar with pharmaceutical drugs, saw...

January 10, 2010 Mexican drug gangs worship Saint Death As bloody feuds grip the traffickers, many are turning to a grim icon. Tony Allen-Mills reports from Ciudad Juarez Tony Allen-Mills in Ciudad Juarez /snip First, her head had been crudely hacked off — a trademark cartel warning to rivals. Second, her torso bore a distinctive tattoo of a cackling skeleton dressed in suggestive female clothing. Police recognised it at once as Santa Muerte — best translated as Saint Death, a macabre feminine icon who has replaced the Virgin Mary as an improbable source of unholy comfort to Mexico’s legions of...

A very Merry Christmas to decent and civilized people all over the world, but stockings full of coal and sticks to the primitives who almost, but didn't quite, cut it in 2009. The voting for TOP PRIMITIVE OF 2009 didn't seem to go hardly the way I had predicted, but then and again, I've never had much success as a predictor, especially in elections. When looking at the list of the nearly-wons among the primitives, one is reminded that in the 1700s in England (or perhaps it was during the 1800s in France), that an admiral (in England; or perhaps...

I've been working on the top stories about Skins's island for 2009, with that scheduled for release some time the week of December 20-26, when it's a slow day here because of the Christmas holiday. However, there's something else that's needed, for the following week, the week of December 27-January 2, when it's a slow day here because of the New Year's holiday. Nominations now being solicited for the TOP PRIMITIVES OF 2009 nominations close at midnight (central time; 11:00 p.m. mountain time) December 11, 2009 The number of top primitives will be limited only by the number of nominations...

Say hello to the honorable mention DUmmies of 2008 It is getting to be that time of year to reveal the Top 10 DUmmies of 2008. I’d like to say a huge thank you to all who voted. This year’s voting completely blew away each of the past few years. As evidenced by the results, it was extremely difficult to make the Top 10. There were simply so many competitors. Thankfully, we’ve been able to pare down the list to determine the cream of the DUmmy crop for 2008. This thread will reveal those who just missed the Top 10....

There's an untranslatable word in German, weltschmerz, which describes many primitives to a tee; not all of them, but primitives such as Doug's ex-wife, Pedro Picasso, Oscar Wilde (the "Cyrano" primitive), the grazing primitive (the "jgraz" primitive), the Bostonian Drunkard, the packing mama primitive (the "Pachamama" primitive), the skumbag primitive, the kaput primitive (the "kpete" primitive), the Swanson's TV dinner primitive (the "DavidSwanson" primitive), the carpetbagging maternal ancestress (the "Raven" primitive), &c., &c., &c. The closest one can come to weltschmerz is "a gloomy, romanticized world-weary sadness, experienced most often by privileged youth." Of course, youth left these primitives some...

Tongan's do wardance during hakka VIDEO

PARIS, Oct 21, 2006 (AFP) - The agency in charge of Paris-region hospitals on Saturday confirmed that the husband of a Muslim woman examined by a male gynecologist had physically attacked the doctor, but refused to confirm allegations that the assault was motivated by religious extremism. The AP-HP hospital agency said it had taken legal proceedings against the husband for an incident that occurred on the night of September 8 in the emergency service of an unnamed Paris hospital. However the agency refused to endorse a statement by the professional association of French gynecologists and obstetricians, who described the assault...

We've deluded ourselves into believing in the myth of the noble and peaceful primitive Nicholas Wade's Before The Dawn is one of those books full of eye-catching details. For example, did you know the Inuit have the largest brains of any modern humans? Something to do with the cold climate. Presumably, if this global warming hooey ever takes off, their brains will be shrinking with the ice caps. But the passage that really stopped me short was this: "Both Keeley and LeBlanc believe that for a variety of reasons anthropologists and their fellow archaeologists have seriously underreported the prevalence of...

I have no doubt that the Danish cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad have caused real offense to many Muslims. I'm glad my newspaper didn't publish them. But there is something in the worldwide Muslim reaction to these cartoons that is excessive, and suggests that something else is at work in this story. It's time we talked about it…. [T]his explosion of Muslim rage is not just about some Western insult. It's also about an Eastern failure. It is about the failure of many Muslim countries to build economies that prepare young people for modernity — and all the insult, humiliation...

The nomads drive their animals hundreds of miles to find food Niger's nomadic groups are facing extreme hardship as a result of the food crisis, says a report by international charity Oxfam.Nomads surveyed by the charity said that up to 70% of their livestock had died because of a lack of fodder. Livestock are essential to the nomadic way of life and "targeted assistance" will be needed to help them, it says. Nomads such as the Tuareg and Fulani make up about 20% of Niger's 12.9 million population. "For Niger's nomads, the situation is desperate. To these people, losing...

The administration in India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands has threatened legal action against media personnel who take photographs of aboriginals. Chief secretary VV Bhatt said some journalists had entered reserves without permission, harassing natives and taking illegal photographs. He said some natives had been offered money or food to pose for cameras. Meanwhile, the general who headed the relief operation in the islands has now left, saying the worst is over. More than 10,000 people were killed by the tsunami in India, with more than 5,500 missing presumed dead. Nearly all of the missing are from the Andaman and Nicobar...