Free Republic

Note: This article may contain commentary reflecting the author's opinion. Sir Michael Caine, the 89-year-old internationally renowned actor, has, according to reports, soundly denounced the characterization of his 1964 break-out film ‘Zulu’ as a “key text” for “white nationalists” and “supremacists,” by the UK government, according to The Daily Mail. .....

Sir Michael Caine has responded to the claim that his 1964 film Zulu incites the far-right, calling it “XXXXXXXX”. Earlier this year, the film was cited as a “key text” for “white nationalists/supremacists” during a review into the government’s counter-terrorism programme Prevent. Speaking to The Spectator, Caine revealed he got the part of arrogant, inexperienced Lieutenant Gonville Bromhead in Zulu after playing “a cockney bloke in the West End in a play called Next Time I’ll Sing To You.” “An American director who was in the audience saw me and gave me a part in the film Zulu as a...

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre lashed out at Republican Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee Friday over a bill he signed into law this week restricting drag shows on public property, in the presence of children, or near schools in the state. Jean-Pierre, who is openly gay, questioned what impact the bill would have on the lives of Americans, and claimed people were more concerned about issues like the economy and healthcare. "The American people are focused on so many issues. We just talked about economy, we just talked about inflation, we're talking about safer communities and schools, and good healthcare...

Wrong administration. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre mistakenly referred to President Biden as “President Obama” off the top of her Thursday briefing. Jean-Pierre’s slip came as she announced that the president had nominated former MasterCard CEO Ajay Banga to lead the World Bank. “So today, as you all saw just an hour or so ago, President Obama announced that — um, pardon me, President Biden!” Kean-Pierre quickly corrected herself amid gasps and laughter from the White House press corps. “Whoa! Ahem, that is news,” she said. “I know, I know. We’re going back, not forwards. We got to go...

Zulu is the sort of film that it's become imprudent, even inadvisable, to write about. Nearly six decades since it was released, its subject matter – a battle between white colonial troops and an African army – would certainly never be attempted by a filmmaker today, and certainly not in the same manner as it was in 1964, which it's worth remembering is as far away from us today as the Civil War was from the first stirrings of the Roaring Twenties. (These temporal comparisons are facile, to be sure, though we've certainly seen as radical a social transformation in...

Right now, the fight for control of Ukraine is taking place in the skies above Kyiv and in the streets of Mariupol. However while the conflict between Russian and Ukrainian forces in the sky and on the land has ground to a stalemate, Vladimir Putin and his virtual war machine dedicated to sowing disinformation are decidedly losing the information war. The Russian invasion of Ukraine marks the first major conflict in Europe to take place in the age of social media, an online space that Vladimir Putin has spent decades working to dominate. Over the years, Putin has carefully constructed...

Before long we’ll be moving the clocks back an hour yet again (or at least most of us will), but that’s not what this story is about. There’s a new proposal that doesn’t seek to eliminate Daylight Savings Time but instead would eliminate time zones all across the United States and the rest of the world as well. And it comes to us from no less of an august source than Johns Hopkins. Now that I’ve picked my jaw up off the floor, let’s see what this is all about. Here are two of their professors discussing the idea on...

University of Cape Town (UCT) vice-chancellor Mamokgethi Phakeng has congratulated a student on his honours project in which he ended his acknowledgements with the phrase‚ “ONE SETTLER‚ ONE BULLET!!” Phakeng tweeted on Tuesday evening: “Congratulations dear son on completing this paper! I would like to study it at some stage. In the meantime‚ let me be kliye [sic]: I am proud of you! Way more than you can imagine! Welldone! [sic]” Congratulations dear son on completing this paper! I would like to study it at some stage. In the meantime, let me be kliye: i am proud of you! Way...

The king of the Zulu tribe has formed an unlikely alliance with a right-wing Afrikaner lobby group to fight the South African government’s plans to take land from white owners without compensation. King Goodwill Zwelithini said that his motivation in working with “the Boers” was their shared concern for the country’s food security, which he feared would be threatened if President Ramaphosa pressed ahead with his controversial expropriation plans.

The Obamas were spotted just outside DC Saturday night at a Beyonce and Jay-Z concert dancing to a song called “Ni**as in Paris.”

A tiny bunch of left-wing loons with no lives, shrivelled penises, and the collective IQ of a pickled herring is trying to ban a screening of the classic 60s movie Zulu at an armed forces fund-raising event in Kent. Before I go on can I absolutely stress that while it has been widely reported – eg here and here – this is NOT a news story? The only reason I am writing about it is because it’s an excuse to say what a marvellous film Zulu is: one of those character-building experiences that every boy should have on his route...

In response to a request by Lone Palm, to whom I always listen.

At a place called Isandlwana, a British force, consisting of 1,000 soldiers of the 24th Foot, (2nd Warwickshire Regiment), and 300 native troops was attacked by 20,0000 Zulu warriors. The Zulu force, armed mostly with spears and cowhide shields, overran the British positions and killed all but a handful of the defenders. It was the worst defeat in the history of the British Army by a native army. Later that afternoon, 5,000 Zulu warriors attacked a small British force at a river crossing called Rorke’s Drift. Here, 130 soldiers of Co. B, 2nd Bat. 24th Foot, repelled numerous attacks by...

South African Zulu King Invokes Fight Against AIDS, Drought, in Plea to ANC Government to Retain Close Israel Ties Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithinii during the unveiling of a memorial to the Battle of Isandlwana, in which a Zulu force clashed with invading British soldiers in 1879. Photo: JN / JDP / Reuters. The king of South Africa’s Zulu nation has urged the country’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) to retain close ties with Israel, following last month’s vote by the ANC at its national conference to downgrade the South African Embassy in Tel Aviv to a “liaison office.” King Goodwill...

A STREET vendor from Mozambique, Emmanuel Sithole, lay begging for his life in a gutter as four men beat him and stabbed him in the heart with a long knife. Images of his murder have shaken South Africa, already reeling from a wave of attacks on foreigners, mostly poor migrants from the rest of Africa. Soldiers were deployed on April 21st to Alexandra, a Johannesburg township, and other flashpoints to quell the violence, though only after seven people had been killed. Thousands of fearful foreigners, many from Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, have sought refuge in makeshift camps. Others have returned...

Wales Online Campaign to improve Rorke's Drift hero's grave Pte James Owen, played by Ivor Emmanuel in Zulu was laid to rest in Swansea, now plans are underway to re-dedicate his grave Image is from clip of the 1964 movie Zulu Private Owen, Ivor Emmanuel (left) with Lieutenant John Chard, Stanley Baker in the classic film Zulu June 29, 2014 06:00 By Robin Turner His role in the battle of Rorke’s Drift was immortalised in the 1964 movie Zulu, yet James Owen’s grave is marked with just a few rotten pieces of wood bearing his name. Now a campaign...

South Africa's president Jacob Zuma has told how he used to practise witchcraft against white people. Speaking in his native Zulu language at a pre-election rally in the country's rural north, he told a crowd of his voodoo past. 'I used to practise witchcraft around here, bewitching the Boers during apartheid', Zuma reportedly said.

This week, January 22-23 marks the 134th anniversary of the Battle of Rorke's Drift in Natal Province, South Africa. Everyone knows the story of the small company of Welsh troops from the 24th Regiment of Foot who held off a force of up to 4,000 Zulu warriors who outnumbered them twenty to one. I plan to celebrate the occasion tomorrow by viewing the classic movie of the siege starring Stanley Baker and Michael Caine, made fifty years ago. It looks like there won't be anything else worth watching on TV that day anyway.

Jacob Zuma, the South African president, has issued a ringing endorsement of traditional courts, saying that problems should be resolved “the African way, not the white man’s way”. Mr Zuma, a proud Zulu who himself subscribes to traditional practices such as polygamy, said that those living in rural communities in South Africa found the traditional justice system a better way of resolving their disputes. “Prisons are done by people who cannot resolve problems,” he was quoted as saying by South Africa’s Times newspaper. “Let us solve African problems the African way, not the white man’s way. Let us not be...