Free Republic

MIREBALAIS, Haiti – The barefoot farmer oversees three teenage workers as they attack weeds with spades in a sunbaked field of peanut plants, a vital cash crop often grown on Haiti's marginal farmland. If he's lucky, Francois Merilus will reap a meager harvest amid a lengthy drought that has shriveled yields and worsened Haiti's chronic hunger. Now the subsistence farmer is dismayed by what he believes could be the latest challenge to his ability to eke out a living: free peanuts arriving from the U.S. as humanitarian aid. "Foreign peanuts can only make things harder for us," said Merilus, whose...

Textbooks in Pakistan that are used to teach about 41 million children, negatively portray religious minorities such as Christians and Hindus, referring to them as "nefarious, violent, and tyrannical by nature." (Reuters/Kham)Third-grade level students attend class at the Mashal Model School on the outskirts of Islamabad, Pakistan. "Pakistan's public school textbooks contain deeply troubling content that portrays non-Muslim citizens as outsiders, unpatriotic, and inferior; are filled with errors; and present widely-disputed historical 'facts' as settled history," said Robert George in a press release. George is the chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). A study done by...

After the last presidential nomination cycle, where Mitt Romney had to struggle a bit to get the nomination, GOP leaders decided to make it easier for one of their own to get the nomination. They figured that a GOP insider, bankrolled with big money from the Chamber of Commerce and other like-thinking crony capitalists who want illegal immigration and business opportunities with Iran, could, with proper funding, get 35% or 40% of the vote in Republican primaries. Therefore, GOP insiders thought that increasing the number of states who award delegates based on "winner take all" – where the largest vote-getter,...

Rut Roh – A “Refugee Relief Supply” cargo container arrives In Greece devoid of “Refugee Relief Supplies”… Watch the video to see what the “aid for Syrian refugees” was: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xn-UCR5p0y0#t=10

A week ago, City Journal published “Crazy Like a Visionary,” [1] a review essay I had written about Ashlee Vance’s new biography of Elon Musk [2], the man behind Tesla Motors, SpaceX, SolarCity, and sundry other starry-eyed, high-tech enterprises.As I explained in the essay, my interest in “Green energy” and interplanetary space travel is minimal at best — or, to be more accurate, I am indifferent to space travel. I like it here on terra firma, thanks very much, and I am positively hostile to the Green Lobby, which is full of cynical opportunists like Al Gore, who have...

Washington: US secretary of state John Kerry shakes hands with Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif before their meeting at the State Department in Washington. (Reuters Photo) The US has decided to discontinue monetary support to Pakistan under a military plan for not doing enough to counter terrorism, according to media reports in Pakistan. But there was no announcement or confirmation of it in the US defense secretary Ash Carter told reporters on Thursday: "That hasn't come to me yet, quite honestly." Also, the White House has once again said it has no announcements about President Barack Obama meeting Prime Minister...

Earlier this month, I spent two days in Guatemala meeting with Central American leaders about our mutual efforts to tackle one of the most significant and urgent challenges facing the Western Hemisphere: bringing stability to this impoverished and violent region. The president and I are determined to address conditions in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras and help these countries on their path to economic prosperity. To that end, we requested $1 billion in next year’s budget to help Central America’s leaders make the difficult reforms and investments required to put the region on a more stable and sustainable path.

A veteran State Department diplomat and longtime Pakistan expert is under federal investigation as part of a counterintelligence probe and has had her security clearances withdrawn, according to U.S. officials. The FBI searched the Northwest Washington home of Robin L. Raphel last month, and her State Department office was also examined and sealed, officials said. Raphel, a fixture in Washington’s diplomatic and think-tank circles, was placed on administrative leave last month, and her contract with the State Department was allowed to expire this week. Two U.S. officials described the investigation as a counterintelligence matter, which typically involves allegations of spying...

Running out of funds and ideas, colleges want more public funding to help keep them afloat. During a recent panel discussion at the liberal think tank Center for American Progress, speakers praised President Barack Obama’s higher education push for performance-based pay and incentives for colleges and universities. Ted Mitchell, , U.S. Department of Education undersecretary, complained about today’s higher education funding environment, telling the audience, “There has been systematic disinvestment by states throughout the Great Recession in higher education,” adding that it “really does disadvantage students” from low-income neighborhoods and backgrounds. He felt the state governments, by not funding state...

Guatemalan President Otto Perez says the recent influx of illegal immigration to the US from Central American nations is America’s fault. “Look, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvadore are veritable cesspools,” Perez admitted. “Who wouldn’t want to leave? Compare this to welfare obtainable in the United States if you are poor and you have a strong motivation to try to get there. With President Obama’s open border policies its practically an invitation to make the arduous journey north.” As an alternative to mass migration, Perez suggested that “more generous foreign aid to our counties in the south could dampen the need for...

Israel Vs. EbolaBy Joel Leyden Israel News AgencyJerusalem, Israel — October 12, 2014 … Part of the following was communicated by the Israel Prime Minister’s Office to the Israel News Agency. Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, this morning held a discussion on the spread of the Ebola virus, in continuation of a similar discussion held last Monday, 6 October. At today’s meeting in Jerusalem it was decided to emphasize the questioning of travelers arriving in Israel from Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, who are most at risk. The questioning will be implemented at air, land and sea entry points into...

Of course, we're pretending that the money will go to rebuild homes and businesses. But everyone above the age 5 knows what the money is really buying. From Reuters: Out of this conference must come not just money but a renewed commitment from everybody to work for peace that meets the aspirations of all, for Israelis, for Palestinians for all people of this region," Kerry told the conference. "And I promise you the full commitment of President Obama, myself and the United States to try to do that," he said. At the conference Kerry also announced an additional $212 million...

Likud Central Committee Chairman Danny Danon on Monday weighed in on the spat between Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama's administration, warning that Israel cannot be bought. The falling out focuses on a construction project to build 2,610 new homes in the Jewish Jerusalem neighborhood of Givat Hamatos, which while slated for construction since 2012 was only given final approval last week, opening the path for bids sometime in the future. "President Obama is mistaken if he thinks American military aid, which is given for reasons of American strategic interests, buys him the right to dictate to...

The United Nations (UN) and Palestinian Authority (PA) on Tuesday called for international donors to supply $550 million to the Hamas terror enclave of Gaza, despite the fact that Hamas has already restarted construction on its terror tunnels to attack Israel. The appeal seeks to repair damage caused in the 50-day Operation Protective Edge, which started in July after Hamas launched a rocket war on the Jewish state. "The scope of damage and devastation is unprecedented in the Gaza Strip," said UN Humanitarian Coordinator James Rawley in a statement, reports AFP. "The crisis is far from over." Rawley and PA...

-Kiev Says Crossing of Russian Trucks Without Red Cross Violates Agreement Ukraine charged Russia with violating its borders by driving dozens of trucks into the rebel-held east of the country on Friday, a sharp escalation in tensions after an extended standoff over a large convoy believed to be carrying humanitarian aid that Moscow dispatched last week. Russia's foreign ministry said it sent in the trucks unilaterally because Kiev was deliberately halting the delivery. But Ukrainian officials said trucks had entered Ukraine without being accompanied by the International Committee of the Red Cross, violating a previous agreement. They charged that Russian...

Ministry of Defense of Poland will provide humanitarian aid deliveries to the military in the zone of ATO. This is stated in a message on the website of the Ministry of defence of Poland. "Next week the city will be delivered the first batch of planned almost 320 tons of Polish aid»,-said in a statement. The Ukrainian military will, in particular, food, mattresses and blankets. In the Polish Office stressed that the assistance will be provided on the basis of the Protocol signed between the defense ministries of the two countries. "

Red Cross officials entered eastern Ukraine on Wednesday to smooth the planned delivery of relief supplies aboard a Russian aid convoy, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said. The convoy has been stuck at the Russia-Ukraine border for nearly a week due to Ukrainian concerns it could serve as a Trojan horse to infiltrate military supplies to pro-Russian separatists in the area. Moscow says the mission is purely humanitarian in support of civilians trapped by the conflict. "An advance ICRC team crossed into eastern Ukraine this morning, having received security guarantees from groups controlling the territory for this...

According to Kofi Annan, “right up to March 1994 reports were still being written by international development agencies, praising Rwanda as an unusual success story.” This was also the view of the aid worker Peter Uvin who writes in his book Aiding Violence that the country “was usually seen as a model of development in Africa, with good performance on most indicators of development.” Development aid poured in from most western countries. Hundreds of millions of pounds worth of “development” was followed by 6 weeks of genocide with a rate of death that exceeded that of the Nazi extermination camps....

The Guardian's Moscow correspondent, Shaun Walker, and The Telegraph's Roland Oliphant tweeted today that a column of armored personnel carriers (ACPs) and other Russian military vehicles have crossed over the Ukrainian border. Vladimir Putin's government is sending a convoy of unmarked white trucks to Ukraine, and military vehicles started traveling alongside a supposed Russian aid convoy earlier on Thursday. Most of the fleet of more than 262 vehicles, including about 200 trucks carrying aid, stopped 15 miles from the border of Ukraine's rebel-held eastern region of Luhansk. If these reports are correct, a separate military convoy has apparently continued into...

Russia’s Foreign Ministry on Thursday called for an immediate ceasefire in violence-torn eastern Ukraine to ensure the safe delivery of humanitarian aid to civilian population suffering amid armed clashes between Kiev-led forces and independence supporters. "It is necessary to guarantee the security of the upcoming humanitarian mission," the ministry said in a statement. "We urge the warring sides at this crucial junction to show the political will to alleviate the suffering of the population of the affected region," the statement said. Russia has sent a convoy of 280 trucks carrying some 2,000 metric tons of humanitarian aid to southeastern Ukraine,...