Free Republic

Journalists from three major newspapers that endorsed John McCain have been booted from Barack Obama's campaign plane for the final leg of the presidential race. The Washington Times reported Friday that it was notified of the Obama campaign's decision Thursday evening -- even though the paper has covered Obama from the start. Executive Editor John Solomon told FOXNews.com that the Obama campaign said it didn't have enough seats on the plane, but "I don't think the explanation makes sense to us." "We've been traveling since 2007 with him. ... We're a relevant newspaper -- every day we break news," Solomon...

Loving The Dictators In a recent article ["The dictators are back ... and we don’t care", The Times (London), April 27, 2008] Robert Kagan bemoans the rise of authoritarian governments in Russia and China, among other venues. His reaction is natural — and typical of the post-Soviet generation. With the victory of the Western Allies over the USSR's Communist empire in World War III (aka the "cold war"), liberal democracy über alles was the watchword of the day. Papa Francis Fukuyama told us that we were at the "end of history", didn't he? Surely, the evil idea of authoritarian rule...

The most important new forces in global business are aggressive, wealthy, and entrepreneurial. But they aren't corporations: they're authoritarian governments. IT WAS THE biggest corporate deal in the history of sub-Saharan Africa: Last October, a foreign firm spent nearly $6 billion for a chunk of Standard Bank, the South African company that has long dominated finance on the continent. more stories like this US: Olympic host China lacks freedoms Asian markets mixed China vows to control inflation China premier promises to cut pollution Wen says Olympics key for development Yet the foreign suitor was not Citigroup, or UBS, or some...

Today's global liberal democratic order faces a significant challenge from the rise of nondemocratic great powers - the West's old Cold War rivals, China and Russia, now operating under "authoritarian capitalist" rather than Communist regimes. The category is not new - authoritarian capitalist great powers played a leading role in the international system up until 1945. But they have been largely absent since then.

Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez and former Mets star Keith Hernandez - both chipped in to elect Rudy Giuliani, who had $11M socked away in the bank...... (plus) Yankees owner George Steinbrenner ....former "Frasier" star Kelsey Grammer, "Wedding Singer" funnyman Adam Sandler, "Dancing with the Stars" twirler John O'Hurley and actor Ben Stein......dressmaker Vera Wang, who designed Judith Giuliani's gown for their 2003 nuptials; "Sopranos" producer Brad Grey; financiers Carl Icahn, Charles Schwab and John Wren; sex expert Dr. Judy Kuriansky; diet guru Jenny Craig; and authors Mary Higgins Clark and Nelson DeMille. Islanders boss Charles Wang ....and a string of...

Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned on the direct orders of the Kremlin because of his biting mockery of President Putin, according to a former Soviet spy now living in Britain. Oleg Gordievsky, the most senior KGB agent to defect to Britain, said that the attempt to kill Mr Litvinenko had been state-sponsored. It was carried out by a Russian friend and former colleague who had been recruited secretly in prison by the FSB, the successor to the KGB. The Italian who allegedly put poison in Mr Litvinenko’s sushi “had nothing to do with it”. “Of course it is state-sponsored. He...

AgapePress) - A second member of the Resolutions Committee for the upcoming Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Greensboro, North Carolina, says the denomination needs to consider developing a plan to remove its children from America's public schools. The SBC Resolutions Committee will meet Thursday to begin poring over resolutions that have been submitted for consideration next week. Among them is a proposal authored by Dr. Bruce Shortt and Executive Committee member Roger Moran that calls on the denomination to develop an "exit strategy" from public schools. While second-year committee member Ida South of Mathiston, Mississippi, would not comment on the...

Close your eyes and say it out loud: "G-8." Let the two syllables run across your tongue again: "gee-eight." What images drift into your brain?If you are like most Americans, I suspect that this simple psychological experiment will produce something like, "stuffy statesmen, boring meeting, prepackaged conclusions." Or maybe, "screaming protesters, riot police, prepackaged slogans." Or even, "turn the page and read something else."~SNIP~Perhaps you think it ridiculous to sound so apocalyptic about a meeting that most Americans find too boring to read about. But don't listen to me, listen to Andrei Illarionov, an economic adviser to Putin before he...

In a recent visit to China, the former American Secretary of State Henry Kissinger asked his guide to arrange a meeting with” my old friend Jiang Zemin.” The guide responded with a dismissive gesture: That person is no longer available. “That person”, of course, had been China’s President for a decade, before being eased out of office in one of those mysterious palace coups that the country has experienced since the 1970s.

U.S. Report Says Russia Is Not a Reliable Partner By George Gedda The Associated Press WASHINGTON -- Russia's emergence as an increasingly authoritarian state could impair U.S.-Russian ability to cooperate on key international security issues, according to an analysis by a major U.S. foreign policy organization released on Sunday. Continuation of Russia's drift away from democratic norms under President Vladimir Putin "will make it harder for the two sides to find common ground and harder to cooperate even when they do," said the report, which was issued by the Council on Foreign Relations. It warned that some critical problems cannot...

On January 25, after the interrogation of leaders of the Crimean youth organization “Breakthrough” Alexei Dobychin and Alexander Dubrovsky by the Ukrainian Security Service that lasted for seven hours, journalists from the Russian NTV TV-channel were supposed to interview them, but the touch with the newsgroup was suddenly lost. As a REGNUM correspondent was told by NTV representative in Crimea Anna Konyukova, her colleagues where in constant contact with her, but suddenly cellular phones of Alexander Yakovenko and Sergey Polyansky were switched off. Last time when they communicated, they were heading towards the building of the Ukrainian Special Service to...

Our Ukraine Bloc led by President Viktor Yushchenko proposed to introduce direct presidential rule in Ukraine by the end of the parliamentary elections. As a statement made by the bloc says, “under the threat of a national catastrophe we call to introduce direct presidential rule until the elections to the Supreme Rada are held, which are to be carried out fairly and transparently in accordance with the Ukrainian Constitution in March 2006.” Ukrainian Justice Ministry Sergey Golovaty has already reacted to the initiative: “The Constitution prohibits such a measure.” As the same time, Golovaty expressed his confidence that Yushchenko would...

Leader of the Ukrainian Regions’ Party Viktor Yanukovich declared on January 10, he was ready to head the government again. According to him, he could made the decision after a discussion with member of the Supreme Rada, reports NTV. As REGNUM earlier reported, the Ukrainian parliament dismissed the government led by Yuri Yekhanurov. He was ordered to continue fulfilling his duties until a new Cabinet of Ministers is formed. Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko plans to appeal the decision in the Constitutional Court. He either did not ruled out a possibility of dissolving the parliament because of “its unconstitutional decision.”

HILLARY CLINTONSTAHLclinton agitprop machine censors truth about hillary   by Mia T, 6.27.05     All propaganda has to be popular and has to adapt its spiritual level to the perception of the least intelligent of those towards whom it intends to direct itself. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampfjackboot thugs     Biography lends to death a new terror.................................................................... Oscar Wilde.................................................................................Upstaged, clinton Recycles Tired Canard, Tries New Revisionist Tack.....................     Hypocrisy abounds in this Age of Clinton, a Postmodern Oz rife with constitutional deconstruction and semantic subversion, a virtual surreality polymarked by presidential alleles peccantly misplaced or, in the...

Talk With Putin Will Test Bush's Inaugural Pledges Sun Feb 20,12:12 AM ET Politics - washingtonpost.com By Peter Baker, Washington Post Staff Writer The last time they sat down, President Bush (news - web sites) politely asked President Vladimir Putin (news - web sites) about Russia's retreat from democracy. Putin, according to U.S. officials, responded with a testy tirade on Russian history, filibustering for so long that Bush, left with an extended list of other issues to cover in a short private lunch, let the matter go without challenging the former KGB colonel. Three months later, Bush will meet Putin...

Zurab Zhvania is dead. What caused this tragedy is not completely clear. However, the most important question that remains unanswered is how Zhvania's death will affect the line-up of the Georgian leadership and the country's policy in general. It is no secret that Zhvania acted as a brake on President Saakashvili's radicalism. For example, Vyacheslav Igrunov, the director of the Moscow-based International Institute for Humanitarian and Political Studies, believes that Mr. Zvania, who was an extremely strong politician, disapproved of the "cavalry charge" policy in relation to South Ossetia. "Saakashvili and Zhvania disagreed on many issues," the expert says. "The...

There's abundant evidence for the need of it. The old one-dimensional categories of 'right' and 'left' , established for the seating arrangement of the French National Assembly of 1789, are overly simplistic for today's complex political landscape. For example, who are the 'conservatives' in today's Russia? Are they the unreconstructed Stalinists, or the reformers who have adopted the right-wing views of conservatives like Margaret Thatcher ? On the standard left-right scale, how do you distinguish leftists like Stalin and Gandhi? It's not sufficient to say that Stalin was simply more left than Gandhi. There are fundamental political differences between them...

AFTER ZEL MILLER'S SPEECH AT THE CONVENTION, HE HAD SEVERAL INTERVIEWS. ONE OF THESE WAS WITH CHRIS MATTHEWS HOST OF MSNBC'S "HARDBALL". MR. MILLER HAD STATED IN HIS SPEECH THAT JOHN KERRY WOULD USE "SPITBALLS" AS WEAPONS IN THE "WAR ON TERROR". MR. MATTHEWS QUESTIONED MILLER'S USE OF THE TERM AND ASKED MR. MILLER IF HE TRULY BELIEVED MR. KERRY WOULD USE "SPITBALLS" AS WEAPONS. MR. MILLER INFORMED MR. MATTHEWS THAT HE WAS USING A METAPHOR. FURTHER QUESTIONING AND SOFT PROBING OF MR. MILLER'S SPEECH RESULTED IN AN UNBELIEVABLY ANGRY RANT BY MR. MILLER. MR. MILLER WENT TO THE POINT...

WASHINGTON, June 20 (UPI) -- The commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks has received new information indicating that a senior officer in an elite unit of the security services of deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein may have been a member of al-Qaida involved in the planning of the suicide hijackings, panel members said Sunday. John F. Lehman, a Reagan-era GOP defense official told NBC's "Meet the Press" that documents captured in Iraq "indicate that there is at least one officer of Saddam's Fedayeen, a lieutenant colonel, who was a very prominent member of al Qaida." Lehman said that...

The Sacred Muslim Practice of Beheading By Andrew G. Bostom FrontPageMagazine.com | May 13, 2004 Reactions to the grotesque jihadist decapitation of yet another "infidel Jew," Mr. Berg, make clear that our intelligentsia are either dangerously uninformed, or simply unwilling to come to terms with this ugly reality: such murders are consistent with sacred jihad practices, as well as Islamic attitudes towards all non-Muslim infidels, in particular, Jews, which date back to the 7th century, and the Prophet Muhammad's own example. According to Muhammad’s sacralized biography by Ibn Ishaq, Muhammad himself sanctioned the massacre of the Qurayza, a vanquished Jewish tribe....