Free Republic

Meticulous ancient notetakers have given archaeologists a glimpse of what life was like 3,000 years ago in the Assyrian Empire, which controlled much of the region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf. Clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform, an ancient script once common in the Middle East, were unearthed in summer 2009 in an ancient palace in present-day southeastern Turkey... A team led by University of Akron archaeologist Timothy Matney has been excavating the massive mud brick palace, once inhabited by the governor of the empire's Tushhan Province, for more than a decade. The palace is located in Ziyaret...

Russian President... Medvedev has invited his Iranian counterpart to participate in an upcoming Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit....Iran...has been seeking to join the 9-year-old international organization since 2008....the SCO aims to act as a counterweight to NATO's influence in Eurasia and to oppose US interference in Central Asia by developing regional security cooperation between its member states -

Jack Cafferty is a CNN commentator who has always held the most radical liberal views on CNN. I suppose the fan base he has is there to combat MSNBC's radical bias that draws in the liberal crowd. Today, he was on CNN, quoting various articles that all seem to agree on one thing: America is a super power that is soon to lose its super power status. They also agree that America is an empire that may soon need to withdraw its troops from around the world.

ALBANY - Caroline Kennedy's interest in the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Hillary Clinton could reignite tensions between two political powerhouse families: the Kennedys and Cuomos, political insiders say. Kennedy's cousin is the ex-wife of Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who is considered a front-runner for Gov. Paterson's appointment to replace Clinton. The sudden interest by Caroline Kennedy, daughter of the late President John F. Kennedy and niece to the late Robert F. Kennedy, who once held the seat, throws a titillating wrench into the works, insiders say. "It's awkward," said one well-known Democrat. "If she's serious, there could be...

(IsraelNN.com) Empire Kosher Poultry announced on Sunday that it will increase its output of kosher chicken more than 100,000 birds or 50%, as of November 24, according to Yeshiva World News. The announcement follows recent reports of a widespread shortage of kosher poultry. It's the second increase in production for Empire this year, the previous, smaller one also addressing concerns about reduced supply conditions in the marketplace. Empire also announced that starting November 24, it will reduce the price of fresh chicken cutlets (skinless and boneless chicken breast) by at least 10%.

The wicked thing that I believe is now happening in Africa. Out of desperation, much of the continent is selling itself into a new era of corruption and virtual slavery as China seeks to buy up all the metals, minerals and oil she can lay her hands on: copper for electric and telephone cables, cobalt for mobile phones and jet engines - the basic raw materials of modern life. It is crude rapacity, but to Africans and many of their leaders it is better than the alternative, which is slow starvation. China offers both rulers and the ruled in Africa...

PETER HITCHENS: How China has created a new slave empire in AfricaBy PETER HITCHENS Last updated at 12:00 PM on 28th September 2008 I think I am probably going to die any minute now. An inflamed, deceived mob of about 50 desperate men are crowding round the car, some trying to turn it over, others beating at it with large rocks, all yelling insults and curses. They have just started to smash the windows. Next, they will pull us out and, well, let's not think about that ... I am trying not to meet their eyes, but they are staring...

Russia’s Restless Muslim Republics By Uwe Klussmann Although Russia is celebrating the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, it still has its own problems in the region as its Muslim republics are drifting toward a partisan war. Last Monday, an eerie funeral procession passed through the center of Nazran in the Russian republic of Ingushetia. Hundreds of people silently crowded around the coffin of Magomed Yevloyev. The 37-year-old lawyer and founder of a Web site ( www.ingushetiya.ru) that was critical of the government was killed in police custody. The authorities said that he was shot in a police car “inadvertently”...

Perhaps it is time they went back to this again, more accurate.

Barack Obama is EMBARRASSED of America because..

America has become an empire. Everyone says so. This is a surprise to most Americans, since few imagined that they were building such a thing. But, as historians such as Walter Nugent and Robert Kagan have recently taught us, Americans have been at this imperialist expansionism for quite some time — really since the beginning of the republic. How else to explain that the United States has gone from a handful of agrarian colonies to a world-spanning colossus in the space of only a few centuries? As you read this, American military might is deployed across the planet. The U.S....

America’s longing for an empire has a long history NEARLY 50 years ago, when William Appleman Williams, one of the 20th century’s most important historians of diplomacy, drew attention to America’s persistent search for an empire, he was denounced for being pro-communist. To challenge deeply held beliefs about American innocence was shocking enough. To contradict cold-war propaganda was worse. Recently, however, such ideological conformism has been disappearing. It has become acceptable to speak of empire, both among those who defend American foreign policy and those who condemn it. “If people want to say we’re an imperial power—fine,” says William Kristol,...

MOSCOW -- The Byzantine Empire fell in 1453. But you wouldn't know it in Russia, where Vladimir V. Putin has been behaving as though the 15th century never ended, as though he is the direct descendant of the Byzantine kings and Moscow remains the "Third Rome" it declared itself to be in 1472. Just like the leaders of Byzantium centuries ago, Putin and his supporters talk about Russia today as if it were a divinely ordained power, destined to withstand the decay and destruction of the West. The "double eagle" emblem, originally adopted in Russia about the time of the...

Following are excerpts from an interview with Lebanese Sunni cleric Sheik Muhammad Abu Al-Qat', which aired on Al-Manar TV on May 10, 2008: Sheik Muhammad Abu Al-Qat': Today, on May 10, 2008, at 22:50 – through Al-Manar TV – let me bring good tidings to the Muslims: Allah willing, the American empire will very soon collapse. They object to any talk about the destruction of the state of Israel. Interviewer: And they are celebrating its 60th anniversary... Sheik Muhammad Abu Al-Qat': That's not the issue. We say that Allah willing, within 10 to 12 years, America will collapse. This won't...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - An individual is not entitled to parachute off New York City landmarks, including the Empire State Building, no matter how extensive his training, a New York appeals court ruled on Tuesday. The ruling reversed a 2007 decision, which said that stuntman and former Discovery Channel host Jebb Corliss, 31, did not put people at risk when attempting to parachute from the Empire State Building's 86th floor observatory floor in 2006. In overturning that decision, the four-judge panel ruled that an accidental misstep or a faulty parachute could have put bystanders and security professionals at risk. "Even...

The following is a conclusion of a long article by a philosopher Lee Harris where he is deconstructing a frequently heard lately charge of "blowback" to US actions in the world (i.e. that 9/11 was a "blowback" for the United States' foreign policy toward the Muslim world over the past half century or so, going back to the CIA engineered coup in 1953 that ousted Iranian leader Mossadegh, and that  "we had it coming" as a response to "American imperialism") ...This conclusion, however, poses a radical dilemma. A libertarian can plausibly argue that politicians should not interfere with domestic affairs,...

LWF Publication Develops Theological Insights to Resist the Domination of Empire Today SAN DIEGO, California, USA/GENEVA, 5 December 2007 (LWI) - The venue and host of their meeting was strategic—a downtown congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) surrounded by corporate high-rise buildings that symbolize *empire, but gathering, around a meal prepared by a formerly homeless person who currently feeds the poor, elderly and those without shelter. The group comprising seven authors of a recently published book of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) gathered on 16 November at the First Lutheran Church in San Diego, California’s second largest...

Just call us “leader of the free world.” The United States is getting tagged as an “empire” from all quarters. Indeed, it’s been a century since the notion of an American empire got such wide circulation, and back then Washington truly had designs on such expansion. (Google “Spanish-American War” if you’re interested.) The empire charge has long been a staple of the political extremes. It’s even bubbled up in the presidential race. Lefty Rep. Dennis Kucinich insists that we must abandon “the ambitions of empire.” Hyper-libertarian Rep. Ron Paul says we could afford health care if we weren’t running...

Anti-war presidential candidate Ron Paul says his campaign is about "restoring the vanishing American dream." And he is criticizing what he calls "the cartel controlling the banking and monetary system" in the United States. Fresh off his third-quarter fundraising surprise of $5 million, Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul says the libertarian "revolution" he has started is growing across America. Paul told conservative activists at the "Defending the American Dream Summit" in Washington, DC, that the conference would be more aptly called the "Defending the Vanishing American Dream Summit." The Texas congressman said his Republican rivals often talk about a "flat...

The ethnic origins of General David Petraeus are apparently Dutch, which is a shame because there’s something sonorously classical about the family name of the commander of the US forces in Iraq. When you discover that his father was christened Sixtus, the fantasy really takes flight. Somewhere in the recesses of the brain, where memory mingles hazily with imagination, I fancy I can recall toiling through a schoolboy Latin textbook that documented the progress of one Petraeus Sixtus as he triumphantly extended the imperium romanum across some dusty plain in Asia Minor. The fantasy is not wholly inapt, of course....