Free Republic

Freedom is out of fashion at Ground Zero. Once hailed as a beacon of rebirth in the aftermath of Sept. 11, the Freedom Tower has been stripped of its patriotic name -- which has been swapped out for the more marketable "One World Trade Center," Port Authority officials conceded yesterday. More than seven years after the terror attacks and amid an effort to market the tower to international tenants, sentiment gave way to practicality. "As we market the building we will ensure that the building is presented in the best possible way," said PA Chairman Anthony Coscia. "One World Trade...

Surprise and even shock were among the reactions to my recent column about how elite members of the World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davos, Switzerland, were considering a proposal for a new global television network to usher in a state of "global governance." It sounded authoritarian, even totalitarian, to some. Here are more of the troubling details. The media proposal, which was included in "The Global Agenda 2009" report, is to create "a new global network" with "the capacity to connect the world, bridging cultures and peoples, and telling us who we are and what we mean to each...

Video of her speech Valerie Jarrett: 'America Stands Ready to Lead Again' "In the 21st century our security is shared," says Valerie Jarrett, top adviser to President Barack Obama. She outlines steps the new administration is taking to establish peace in the Middle East, eradicate global poverty, and fight climate change. ~~~ Video - Valerie B. Jarrett: The New US Agenda"

Barack Obama sought to close the deal with American voters yesterday as he heralded the dawn of a new politics that will heal divisions, appeal to “our better angels” and restore a sense of “higher purpose”. His speech in Canton, Ohio, was designed to frame the final days of an often bitterly fought presidential contest around the uplifting themes he had emphasised at the outset of his campaign. While he was at pains to tell supporters that they cannot afford to “let up for one day, one minute or one second”, Mr Obama told an exultant crowd: “In one...

Tuesday, November 23, 2004 Peace and Patriotism While out shopping, I saw some people on a corner waving huge peace flags and holding signs. They said things like "Bush Lied about WMD" and "Bring Them Home NOW." It was an interesting mix of people-- spreading from age 40 to 70 or so, men and women. So I stopped to talk. The guy who organized it had lost a brother in Vietnam. He pulled out a picture showing his mother and brother in front of a Christmas tree a few days before he shipped out, and the last time they saw...

He is reading "The Post-American World" -- "This is not a book about the decline of America, but rather about the rise of everyone else." So begins Fareed Zakaria's important new work on the era we are now entering. Following on the success of his best-selling The Future of Freedom, Zakaria describes with equal prescience a world in which the United States will no longer dominate the global economy, orchestrate geopolitics, or overwhelm cultures. He sees the "rise of the rest"—the growth of countries like China, India, Brazil, Russia, and many others—as the great story of our time, and one...

If that is what the senator thought he was doing, he still has a lot to learn about both foreign policy and the views of the American people. Although well received in the Tiergarten, the Obama speech actually reveals an even more naive view of the world than we had previously been treated to in the United States. In addition, although most of the speech was substantively as content-free as his other campaign pronouncements, when substance did slip in, it was truly radical, from an American perspective.

Ryan Alberti had a pretty good idea what to expect when he signed up for the Web class jointly taught by Eckhart Tolle and Oprah Winfrey. He’d already listened to a CD of Tolle reading his books “The Power of Now” and “Stillness Speaks” and liked his simple, gentle way of speaking. “I think he’s really a genuine guy that has an ability to translate some spiritual things in a very down-to-earth way,” Alberti said. Alberti doesn’t watch Winfrey’s daily TV show, but his wife is a big fan and tells him about it. “Even though I haven’t seen (the...

Blair to teach 'faith and globalisation' at Yale University JAMES TAPSFIELD TONY Blair is to further his interest in religion by teaching classes on "faith and globalisation" at the prestigious Yale University in an initiative linked to the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, due to be launched later this year. Academics at Yale School of Management and Divinity are working with Mr Blair to finalise details of the course. A source close to the former prime minister said he was "delighted" to be taking on the new challenge. The Connecticut university's president, Richard Levin, said staff were "honoured" Mr Blair would...

Megapastor Rick Warren's Damascus Road experience (Megapastor Rick Warren admits he's in CFR) Posted: November 20, 200 1:00 a.m. Eastern WASHINGTON – Rick Warren, the superstar mega-church pastor and bestselling author of ''The Purpose Driven Life,'' had a Damascus Road experience last week – and like Saul of Tarsus, one of the after-effects appears to be blindness. Warren went to Syria and could find no persecution of Christians. He could find no persecution of Jews. He could find no evidence of extremism. He could find no evidence of the sponsorship of terrorism. Despite the temporary loss of vision that prevented...

There are relatively few individuals today who would not take offence to being called a fascist. This was not always so; for before and during the 1930’s even though Western liberal societies in general rejected philosophies of fascism, the term had nowhere near the stigma that it does today, and many were drawn to the concept. One individual who embraced the ideas of both fascism and liberalism was HG Wells. Before Hitler and Mussolini brought infamy to the term fascism, Wells referred to himself as a “liberal fascist“ and put forward a theory of revolutionary praxis centered around a concept...

The Bush administration's winning streak in getting Congress to go along with trade agreements may be in trouble, particularly if Democrats make the gains predicted for them in November's election. It took anguished debate and an uncomfortably close vote in July for Congress to pass a trade agreement with Oman, an Arabian Sea nation of 3 million people. For President Bush's team, which views free trade as a means to promote prosperity and democracy around the world, it was not a good sign. Critics of the administration's trade agenda saw the 221-205 House vote in late July to approve the...

The events in Yugoslavia leading up to the NATO operations against the Serbian people in 1999 and the events which followed should be taken into consideration as a possible precursor for future actions taken against other nations and in particular, Israel. Although every situation is unique unto itself, there are patterns, models, and precedents that may indicate the direction and even to some extent outcomes. While responses and actions may differ, by looking at past events we can understand established mindsets that will determine future actions as well as results. In 1995, Militant Islamic Albanians organized into the Kosovo Liberation...

To those familiar with the events in Yugoslavia in recent years and the NATO operations against the Serbian people, those events should be taken into consideration as a possible model for future actions against other nations and in particular, Israel. Recently in an article entitled “EU will use NATO to take Israel” by Emanuel A. Winston - a researcher for the Freeman Center for Strategic Studies; he laid out a case scenario in which such action could take place. While parts of the article seemed unrealistic for the moment the basic premises raised concern that at a later date if...

The War for the WorldThroughout history there have been many wars in diverse places and as knowledge increased the inventions of man made them deadlier, so deadly that in this modern age of advanced technologies war has become unthinkable - almost. The last century also brought many wars and conflicts including World War I. Referred to as “The Great War” it was to be “the war to end all wars” or as the French would say; “la der des der“(the last of the last). But time has a way of resetting itself and history of replaying itself. It would be...

Hint: Not the American people! Recent legislative actions in Washington, D.C., raise the question of just who the U.S. Senate is working for. It obviously is not the American people who voted the Senators into office. A bill to permanently repeal the Death Tax was voted down 57-41 in a motion to invoke cloture. Sixty votes were needed to let the bill advance. There are enough Senators, 57, in favor of repealing the Death Tax. A minority of Senators, 41, were able to block the legislation from proceeding to a vote. The Death Tax penalizes people who are hardworking and...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States should set a May 15 deadline for Iraqis to form a unity government and then plan to withdraw its troops by year's end, Democratic Senator and former presidential candidate John Kerry said in commentary published in The New York Times. "If Iraqis aren't willing to build a unity government in the five months since the election, they're probably not willing to build one at all. The civil war will only get worse, and we will have no choice anyway but to leave," Kerry said. Joining a growing chorus criticizing the US-led occupation of Iraq,...

"Globalisation" has become one of the great buzzwords of modern times. Microsoft's Bill Gates is amongst those who say the world is 'flatter' It came to the fore during the 1990s, and the impact of globalisation looks set to play a prominent part in shaping our world during the first decades of this new century.  To see the advocates of globalisation at work and play there is no better vantage point than the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.  Its members have probably all read columnist Tom Friedman's best-seller, The World Is Flat: A Brief...

The Council on Foreign Relations And the Trilateral Commission ________________________ The two organizations that run the United States by Melvin Sickler _________ ____ there are two groups of elite men and women in particular that most American people do not know about, but which are a clear threat and danger to the freedom of the American people. These are the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and the Trilateral Commission. Right now the United States is completely under the control of those who run these two organizations (David Rockefeller in particular). It is therefore important to understand these organizations if we...

Chairmen Lugar and Coleman, Members of the Committee. I appreciate the invitation to testify before your Committee. You asked me to place the issue of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative within the context of North American cooperation and border control and to relate it to the recent report by an Independent Task Force on the Future of North America sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. The Chairs and Vice Chairs of the three nation, 31-person Task Force were John F. Manley and Tom d’Aquino of Canada, Pedro Aspe and Andres Rozental of Mexico, and William F....