Free Republic

Liberal without even Trying From the times of the Great Depression through the 1950’s, some people were known as those who were just “passing through” town. During that time, one could pass through a town anonymously. Those days are gone. With fingerprint, information, a certifiable form of identification, a social security number, a speck of DNA or a face recognition photograph authorities have the ability to know everything there is to know about an individual. That individual had better have their legal ducks in a row before passing anywhere. This is but a tiny fragment of an example of those...

Bolivia's richest province votes for autonomy By Jeremy McDermott, Latin America Correspondent Last Updated: 4:55PM BST 05/05/2008 South America's poorest nation is threatened with partition after the country's richest province voted for autonomy, threatening the rule of President Evo Morales, the first indigenous Indian president and close ally of Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. Residents of Santa Cruz province celebrate the referendum result In the rich eastern province Santa Cruz, 86 per cent of voters opted for greater autonomy, with another three provinces preparing their own votes next month. Between them the four provinces account for 80 per cent of Bolivia's...

SANTA CRUZ, Bolivia - Bolivia's largest state voted amid scattered violence Sunday on a measure seeking greater political and economic autonomy from the government of leftist President Evo Morales, who called the vote unconstitutional. As polls closed Sunday, exit surveys showed the autonomy referendum drawing as much as 85 percent support, though they were conducted by local news media sympathetic to the cause. No margin of error was available. Minor clashes across Santa Cruz state injured at least 25 people during the politically charged vote, which sought to separate the state's freewheeling capitalism and mixed-blood heritage from Morales' vision of...

A Poem Fit for Our Times – ‘Me and My Friends’ Special to LifeSiteNews.com by Dr. John B. Shea, October 3, 2007 'Me and My Friends' For me and my friends To follow the trends Is simply a matter of choice Autonomy rules That all but poor fools Speak loud and speak clear with one voice Some talk of abortion With warning and caution But science has shown very well That it's safe and its normal That it's healthy and moral And that it sends no one to hell Some say that to toke Or to drink or to smoke...

Euthanasia Video, Turning the Tide, Incredibly Well Received September 10, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Turning the Tide, the powerful DVD on euthanasia and assisted suicide, has been incredibly well received. The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition has sold more than 700 copies of Turning the Tide since its release in April and Turning the Tide has received positive reviews from people across Canada and the US. Turning the Tide is produced by the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition and Salt and Light media foundation. Turning the Tide was designed to change the way secular society perceives the issues of euthanasia and assisted suicide. Secular society views the...

Not every Bolivian likes to be under the thumb of Hugo Chavez’s minime, Evo Morales. Residents of the eastern province, Santa Cruz, which is full of industrious immigrants and enterprising native-indigenous Bolivians who’ve moved there, want instead to have autonomy. They hate communism and want freedom.

Uighurs to Declare War against Chinese Government (Uighur Jihad against China)/begin my translationUighurs to Declare War against Chinese Government09/30/05 The members of 'East Turkestan Liberation Organization(ETLO)' making the declaration via a video (from BBC) 'East Turkestan Liberation Organization(ETLO)', a radical Uighur organization, declared publicly war against Chinese government for the first time, via videotaped statements, BBC reported on Sept. 30th (in its Chinese edition.)According to BBC, 'East Turkestan Information Center' located in Munich, Germany, provided the link to the web site containing this video(made by Tianshan branch of ETLO), and apparently it was announced via overseas Wanwei free server, fhreactor.com.In...

Iranian authorities have admitted that a series of explosions at oil wells around the province of Khuzestan were an attempt to sabotage oil production. Khuzestan is the centre of the Ahwazi Arab homeland and produces around 80-90 per cent of the country's oil output, representing up to 10-12 per cent of OPEC's total output. Iran is the world's fourth biggest crude producer with output capacity of around 4.2 million barrels per day. It exports 2.5 million barrels of oil per day - the equivalent of a fifth of the US's net oil imports - most of which originate from Khuzestan....

ARMAVIR, Russia – This week, the Federal Registration Department for Krasnodarsk Region approved the mandate and code of a newly-formed Jewish National Cultural Autonomy, initiated by the Jewish community of Armavir to represent the greater interests of Jewish communities existing in the Kuban Region of Russia. In an initiative overseen by the Chief Rabbi of Krasnodar, Shneur Segal, this move was fully supported by the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia, to which the Armavir Jewish community is a member. According to the Chairman of the Jewish community of Armavir, the main goal of this National Cultural Autonomy is to...

Tax Wars Edward Hudgins ehudgins@objectivistcenter.org As we rush to meet the April 15 deadline to file our tax returns, many fail to realize those 1040 forms do more than just make us all personally poorer. The tax code is a principal instrument that creates and sustains the politicized, partisan, uncivil, contentious conflict society so many bemoan. Why can't we all just get along? Here's why. Taxes are meant to pay for the legitimate functions of government, and America's Founders were clear that those functions were to protect the lives, liberty and property of the citizens and otherwise to let us...

WOMEN IN MINISTRY: A BIBLICAL VISION by Sharon Clark Pearson Wesleyan theological tradition historically has held a “high view” of Scripture; that is a part of the ethos of our community. In a church tradi­tion (with its community) that claims the integrity and authority of Scrip­ture, questions of practice are taken seriously. The question of whether God ordains and blesses women in the practice of ministry (both in func­tion and in office) is crucial to women because their personal and rela­tional lives and their participation in the church have been defined and regulated by the interpretation of Scripture (as the...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

I seldom use the words, “moral imperative,” and, when I do, they carry behind them an urgent necessity for rational individuals to respond to an imminent threat to the inalienable rights of man. In this Presidential election, however, I see a clear moral imperative to defeat the power grab of a man who would endanger the sacred liberties of every man dwelling in America, but especially of the most autonomous and industrious among us. I shall enumerate, in brief, a horrid threefold menace that a would-be Kerry administration poses to our freedoms across the board. - Kerry’s national health insurance...

This is a very important issue to know about and is a follow up of this post from the ends of 2003: Letter from Chinese Ambassador to all U.S. House of Representatives Members about Taiwan Below are three news articles on the subject, from China Post, Taipei Times and Washington Times. China Post March 14, 2004 HEADLINE: PRC TRIES TO INFLUENCE U.S. CONGRESS' STANCE ON TAIWAN China's embassy in Washington D.C. has sent an e-mail to U.S. Senate aides urging them to dissuade members of Congress from supporting Taiwan's upcoming referendum, according to a report in Friday's Washington Times newspaper....

Israeli and Palestinian security officials are expressing growing concern as the West Bank and the Gaza Strip descend into armed anarchy. Both sides are warning that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan for unilateral withdrawal from Gaza will result in the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) taking over what is left of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in Gaza. After three-and-a-half years of conflict, in which the PA security organisations were severely damaged by Israel Defence Force (IDF) operations, armed gangs are taking control of the cities: gunfights between militants are waged daily, extortion and kidnapping are widespread and clan feuds are...

<p>GENEVA — The United States, backed by the European Union, Japan and Canada, has turned back a bid by developing nations to place the Internet under the control of the United Nations or its member governments.</p> <p>But governments, the private sector and others will be asked to establish a mechanism under U.N. auspices to study the governance of the Internet and make recommendations by 2005.</p>

The Dalai Lama is willing to return to Tibet if China allows him to go back to his homeland without preconditions, the exiled spiritual leader told the Guardian newspaper in an interview published on Friday. ``I'm hopeful to visit Tibet, to see my old place with my own eyes, and try to cool down the situation,'' he said. ``You ask under what circumstance? China should give me the green light without preconditions.'' The Dalai Lama fled Tibet for India in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule. He was speaking in Dharamsala, northern India, on the eve of a...

America's cities and towns will soon fill with parades, fireworks, and barbecues. They will be celebrating the Fourth of July, the 227th birthday of America. But one hopes that—on this second post-September 11 Independence Day—the speeches will contain fewer bromides and more attention to exactly what is being celebrated. The Fourth of July is Independence Day, but America's leaders and intellectuals have been trying to move us further and further away from the meaning of Independence Day, away from the philosophy that created this country. What we hear from politicians, intellectuals, and the media is that independence is passé, that...

Recently I have had the privilege of embarking upon a guided tour of one of Illinois Tool Works’ 600 mini-companies, a strap manufacturing plant near the company’s headquarters in Glenview, Illinois. Signode Strap, a product invented within a firm owned by ITW, is the most prevalent of its sort in the market. It is furnished of entirely recyclable materials (pop bottle remnants) into gargantuan plastic sheets that are conveyed through rollers at phenomenal temperatures of over 300 degrees Fahrenheit. I was able to observe the plastic rolled into colossal coils, then unwound again to be sliced into uniform strips, while...

Some folks think that because I drive a little 4WD vehicle I do not care about good transportation. That is not exactly true, of course. Within the past couple weeks, I have ridden in two greatly different styled electric vehicles. However, I was also in an older GTO and a Plymouth Roadrunner -- both muscle-cars with four on the floor and duel quads. Fact is, I grew up drag racing. Today, I am more interested in other things. For instance, a couple years ago I reported a little about my visit with a Jeep Commander all electric fuel cell vehicle.(1)...

India ready to discuss Kashmiri autonomy By Maseeh Rahman in Delhi 16 July 2002 The first clear sign that Delhi is working on a new political gameplan for Kashmir came yesterday when the territory's chief minister announced that the Indian government had agreed to discuss autonomy. The move came two days after 27 Hindus were killed in a Kashmir shanty town by Islamic militants masquerading as holy men, in an attack that raised new fears of a war between India and Pakistan over the disputed territory. Until 1953, Kashmir enjoyed autonomy in all areas except for defence, finance and communications....