Free Republic

Bay: Anyone else have a sinking feeling about North Korea? Austin Bay, CREATORS SYNDICATE Published: 5:55 p.m. Friday, May 28, 2010 In a 1945 essay titled "Funny, But Not Vulgar," George Orwell argued that "A thing is funny when ... it upsets the established order." Toward the end of the essay, Orwell added: "To be funny, indeed, you have got to be serious." /snip Kim can't handle real sunshine — the truth. In the 60 years since the Korean War began, South Korea has decisively defeated North Korea in the social and economic spheres. Only in military terms, in the...

The stage was set at West Point last night and the backdrop was the Corps of Cadets, who served as props for the President's speech. It was not a proud moment. I saw all those young men and women, who are chosen and a part of the top ten percent of the greatest minds of their generation, and I wept. To use them as props seemed to me to serve as the worst insult ever offered by a leader of a nation. Yet, as I pondered the speech, the audience, their circumspect behavior, and the fatigue that washed over many...

Administration Outlines Afghan War Endgame Official: U.S. troops will start leaving region 'well before' end of first term NBC News and news services WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama plans to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan over six months, an accelerated timetable — with an endgame built in — that would have the first Marines there as early as Christmas, a senior administration official told The Associated Press. U.S. troops are expected to start leaving the region 'well before' the end of Obama's first term, the AP reported Tuesday. A senior government official told NBC contributor Col. Jack Jacobs that...

The age when unmanned robots will replace soldiers on the battlefield is not far off, said Kim Soo-hyun, a professor of mechanical engineering at the Korea Advanced Institute for Science and Technology, in a seminar hosted by the Army on Wednesday.

In wake of Muslim riots at Temple Mount, leading rabbis, rightists call on Israel 'not to capitulate to Palestinian violence.' Feiglin: Direct link between Jerusalem unrest, Goldstone Report Efrat Weiss In a move that may heighten tensions in the capital, the Organization for Human Rights on the Temple Mount (OHRTM) called for Jews to visit the east Jerusalem compound, which houses the al-Aqsa Mosque.

iRobot's flesh-like ChemBot will freak you out, but it also could save your life someday. The ChemBot might look like something out of a bad dream, but it's actually a multimillion dollar military project. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the U.S. Army Research Office contracted iRobot, creator of vacuum-robot Roomba, to design the soft, flexible, mechanical ooze last year. This video might be a little technical at first, but if you skip to the 2 minute mark you can see the results of iRobot's work thus far.

FORT HOOD — Under a searing sun, breathing clouds of dirt and gulping metallic-tasting water, some of the nation’s best defense geeks tried to impress the infantrymen and tankers of the U.S. Army. They converged on a remote part of Fort Hood last week with robots that responded to voices, giant trucks that didn’t need a driver, three-dimensional light and range detectors, unmanned track vehicles with machine guns, all of it for an event billed as Texas’ — certainly the Army’s — first Robotics Rodeo.

Robots in the sky and on the ground are transforming warfare, and the US military is rushing to recruit the new warriors that never sleep and never bleed.

~snip~ Palin ended 2008 with a striking run of personal successes in high-profile popularity polls. According to a poll by Gallup she was the second most admired woman of the year, after Hillary Clinton. Time magazine chose her as the world’s fourth most influential person, behind Barack Obama, Henry Paulson of the US Treasury and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France. Last week she triumphed in an annual poll, commissioned by a property website, as the person Americans would most like to have as their neighbour. She finished ahead of Oprah Winfrey, the television chat show queen, and Michael Phelps, the...

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates has told US troops in Iraq that their mission there is in its "endgame".

WASHINGTON, Sept. 23, 2008 – Amid an 80-percent drop in violence and with further withdrawals of U.S. forces in sight, the coalition in Iraq has reached the “endgame,” Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said here today. “I believe we have now entered that endgame – and our decisions today and in the months ahead will be critical to regional stability and our national security interests for years to come,” he told the Senate Armed Service Committee during a hearing on Iraq and Afghanistan. Highlighting success in Iraq are reductions in U.S. casualties and overall violence, and the handover of...

THE US is now in the "end game" in Iraq but must move cautiously in drawing down its forces there despite a growing insurgency in Afghanistan, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates says. Mr Gates' top military adviser, Admiral Michael Mullen, said he was not convinced that "we're winning it" in Afghanistan and warned that "frankly, we're running out of time". Admiral Mullen said he had ordered the military to draw up a new strategy that encompasses insurgent safe havens in Pakistan. But Mr Gates said President George W. Bush's decision to draw down only 8000 of the 146,000 troops from...

To understand anything, we have to know its history. To understand who stole our culture, we need to take a look at the history of "political correctness." Early Marxist theory Before World War I, Marxist theory said that if Europe ever erupted in war, the working classes in every European country would rise in revolt, overthrow their governments and create a new Communist Europe. But when war broke out in the summer of 1914, that didn't happen. Instead, the workers in every European country lined up by the millions to fight their country's enemies. Finally, in 1917, a Communist revolution...

via translation - Sadr threat of an "open war" if the attacks against him are continuing NAJAF (Iraq) - The head radical anti-American Moqtada Sadr threatened Saturday to launch "an open war" if the operations of American and Iraqi forces against his movement continued, in a statement signed by him and published in Najaf (south of Baghdad). "I give a final warning, and I gave my word to the Iraqi government to choose the path of peace and stop the violence against its own people, if it is a government of destruction," the young religious leader. "If it does not...

Advisers to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton today began plotting a ground game, advertising budgets and a confidence-brimming outreach strategy in hopes of both scoring a big victory in April’s Pennsylvania primary and accumulating enough superdelegates over time to even the nomination fight against Senator Barack Obama. Mr. Obama, who had 11 straight primary and caucus victories in February, has enjoyed momentum lately in picking off superdelegates, the party leaders who have a vote in the nomination. Mrs. Clinton and her advisers now believe that with her victories in Texas and Ohio last night, she can convince superdelegates to stand with...

http://youtube.com/watch?v=y3TX-KWhnYU In a surprising public admission, Gen. Jack Keane, the Army's second in command during the US invasion of Iraq, tells FRONTLINE about his own failure to plan for an insurgency, and how White House rhetoric about "defeating the insurgents" never lined up with the Army's mission. In "Endgame," FRONTLINE talks with key military strategists and top administration figures about the events leading up to the "surge" of US troops and the likelihood of its success. Coming on air Tuesday, June 19 at 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings) On December 19, 2006, President George W. Bush said for...

A young bull moose last seen late this week trapped on a steep, sandy bluff above Knik Arm is apparently in its endgame, according to authorities and those who've seen it. The moose has been stranded halfway up a 200-foot bluff for almost a week. Either it will find a way off, says a state biologist, or it will weaken from dehydration and hunger and likely tumble to the rocky beach below, probably dying in the fall. The bluff is roughly across from Elmendorf Air Force Base, about halfway between Goose Bay and Point MacKenzie, according to those who've seen...

HOUR 3 9pm 2005-04-27 ALL NEW! DR. MASSEY AND SISTER JO'S SEARCH FOR THE MIRACLE CHILD TAKES THEM TO ROME -- Dr. Richard Massey (Bill Pullman) and Sister Jo (Natascha McElhone) travel to Italy to speak with the mother of the miracle child who believes that shadowy figures attempted to take the baby from her. In the meantime, a mysterious seductress leads Massey's stepson Hawk (Mark Rendall) away from the protection of his bodyguard and into the grasp of Satanists, Ogden (guest star Fred Durst, "Limp Bizkit") and Tulia (Caryn Green). And, imprisoned Satanist Isaiah Haden (Michael Massee) attempts to...

HOUR 2 TRUE OR FALSE PROPHECIES- In the second hour of NBC's event series "Revelations," astrophysicist Dr. Richard Massey (Bill Pullman) and Sister Josepha (Natascha McElhone) are led deeper into a whirlwind of events that may signal the End of Days. With Satanist Isaiah Haden (Michael Massee) safely in prison, Dr. Massey attempts to return to his old life, only to be pulled out of it once more when he is asked to reconsider the possible source of messages that are transmitted by a young girl languishing in a coma that could be coming from his slain daughter, Lucy. Massey...

HOUR 1 - Series Premiere 9pm 2005-04-13 ALL NEW! COULD THE END OF DAYS BE NEAR? -- From executive producer Gavin Polone ("Panic Room") and writer/creator David Seltzer ("The Omen") comes "Revelations," a six-hour event series starring Bill Pullman ("Independence Day") as Harvard professor Dr. Richard Massey, an astrophysicist who is certain that all worldly events can be explained by Science. In the series premiere, Dr. Massey is dealing with the tragic murder of his 12-year-old daughter by a maniacal murderer, Isaiah Haden (Michael Massee, "24"), who was captured and imprisoned. After a strange course of events, Massey is challenged...