Free Republic

A series of events over the past few months have made me consider the logic of third world politics. I am not talking about killing people or imprisoning detractors. That is what happens in places like Cuba, China and Iran. What I am thinking about is the prosecution of the prior ruling party by the new ruling party.

Bill and Melinda Gates will make a personal appeal to Washington officials Tuesday, asking them to continue funding global health initiatives despite the recession and to commit to nearly halve the number of child deaths worldwide by 2025...The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is the largest private foundation in the world. But Gates said that even with its great wealth, the fund is focused on being a catalyst for much larger government-funded projects..."We have put about $11.9 billion in global health since the inception of this," she said..."Our money is tiny." The U.S. government's annual contribution to global health initiatives...

LOS ANGELES — The chickens have come home to roost for Los Angeles city dwellers who keep roosters. The City Council on Tuesday passed an ordinance that — with few exceptions — allows only one rooster per property. It was spurred by complaints over noise and hygiene and concerns over illegal cockfighting. Janice Hahn, who authored the bill, says it will give residents of her district some peace and quiet.

What makes an economy tick? What makes it grow? In 1890, Japan's average income was only somewhat higher than Mexico's and lower than Argentina's. Yet a century later -- despite the devastation left by World War II -- Japan's average income was nearly three times as great as Mexico's, more than twice as great as Argentina's and only modestly lower than that of the United States. From the late 19th century to the end of the 20th, Japan's economy managed to grow twice as fast as Britain's. How does a nation do that? Japan is not alone. In the early...

The logic of her article runs like this: The 2001 and 2009 Durban Conferences were principally aimed at delivering social justice for the African ancestors of slaves shipped off to America and other racist white nations. But Israel, the U.S. government and the world’s right-wing media instead focused on the shrill anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic rhetoric and intimidation that characterized the lead-up to the conference and the parallel NGO sessions. As a result, the Bush (and then Obama) administrations got the excuse they secretly coveted to distance themselves from the Durban process, and much of the rest of the world followed...

The Girl from 'Impeenema' A TV ad campaign in Brazil urges folks to urinate in the shower to conserve water ... and save the rain forests. No matter how long we stay in or what kind of showerhead we use, we all have unique shower routines and rituals, some more complex than others. The Brazilian environmental group SOS Mata Altantica, via a cute, kid-oriented TV ad campaign called "Xixi no Banho," suggests that citizens add one more task to their soaping-up, shampooing, conditioning and shaving routines — peeing. The group believes that by adding a yellow stream to the morning's...

Barack Obama's Science Czar,John P. Holdren, has already been embroiled in much controversy for being a co-author of a book which advocates enforced population controls like forced sterilization. Since his appointment he said that he has never endorsed forced sterilization. That is not the only radical theory of the President's science guy. Holdren is a globalist who endorses surrender of US sovereignty" to a comprehensive Planetary Regime that would control all the world's resources, direct global redistribution of wealth, oversee the "de-development" of the West, control a World Army and taxation regime, and enforce world population limits. He has castigated...

Globalism: Four emerging economies met in Russia Tuesday to seek an alternative to the dollar. It's futile. But it shows how Washington's spending binge harms the world's prospects.The Bush administration took a lot of flack for its supposed "unilateralism" in global affairs. But there's a new breed of go-it-alone "unilateralism" in the unrestrained U.S. fiscal spending that's causing trading partners to worry about the value of their dollar assets. It's hitting Brazil, Russia, India and China in the pocketbook as they fret about the value of their $2.8 trillion in dollar holdings, about 42% of the world's total. So it's...

Remember all those polls during the Presidential Campaign, how Europe desperately wanted Barack Obama to win. How the European leadership fawned over Obama when he made his summer tour tour around the world? One of the President's campaign promises was that he was going to "repair" our relationship with Europe (as if they needed to be repaired). Ever since he was inaugurated, President Obama has done his best to diss our allies in Europe. There was that famous "non joint press conference" when Gordon Brown came to visit, refusing Nicolas Sarkozy offer to share a meal when Obama was a...

NEW YORK — If the United States and every wealthy country in the world were to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to zero tomorrow and there were no change in the developing world, “the crisis would still overtake us,” said Al Gore, the former vice president of the United States, at a forum in New York City last week. Whether or not that is precisely true, the implication almost certainly is. Little progress can be made in addressing the global climate crisis, after all, unless common cause is found between rich countries, who created the problem in becoming so, and poorer...

Two Britons die on Bali after drinking wine laced with methanol The artist Rose Johnson, who died after drinking the arak wine on Bali Anne Barrowclough in Sydney, Sian Powell in Bangkok Two Britons have died in agony after drinking rice wine laced with methanol in a mass poisoning on the Indonesian island of Bali. Alan Colen, 59, suffered a painful, drawn-out death on Saturday after buying an adulterated bottle of local wine, known as arak. Mr Colen, who had lived on the holiday island for 13 years, bought the wine from a roadside stall hear his home in Canggu,...

In a brilliant account of medieval Europe, William Manchester provided a glimpse in A World Only Lit By Fire of how nearly six centuries of what is known as the Dark Ages engulfed a continent. Rome, as the proud city of the ancient world, was not simply overwhelmed by the swarming hordes of barbarians from the east, but a civilization long in the making swiftly was ruined. It was undone from within by a population that lost its sense of purpose while forgetting its history, and a ruling elite corrupted by self indulgence beyond repair. The West, as was ancient...

Mumbai: Under the cover of darkness, the world's cheapest car arrived in Mumbai yesterday. Aditya Anand reports on the buzz surrounding the unveiling of the most-awaited car of the year this evening. 12.30 am, Sunday: Under the cover of darkness in the dead of night, when Mumbai's incessant traffic had slowed down, and pedestrians were few, seven gleaming cars purred their way into the rolling grounds at the Parsi Gymkhana, Marine Drive. The world's cheapest car, the Tata Nano, had finally arrived in the city for its unveiling today, with a security guard in each vehicle. The cars reached the...

Obama and the Democrat party have begun taking initiatives on the environment. Their plan? Set up an energy tax to discourage people from heating their homes and driving all in the name of the unproven science of climate change. Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and other top Democrats are calling for environmental legislation against power plants that produce greenhouse gas, gasoline, heating oil and other essentials with a carbon tax on so called greenhouse emissions. In addition, there would be a cap on greenhouse emissions. The administration and Democrats have also admitted that they aim is to discourage greenhouse emissions by...

Removing All Doubt Obama Would Cede Southwest to Mexico American Patrol Report -- December 19 "We are all Americans, whether you are legalized or not" Anyone who still doubts that Barack Obama is determined to grant de-facto amnesty to millions of illegal aliens should explain to the rest of us why he picked Hilda Solis to be Secretary of Labor. A long-time supporter of la Reconquista, the Mexican takeover of the American Southwest, Solis is also a leader in the movement to silence Americans who speaks out against the invasion, specifically Lou Dobbs, Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly. At a...

Next week, Burger King kicks off a major ad campaign that involves a unique twist on the tried-and-true marketing technique of taste testing. The campaign is already generating controversy. One ad, set to begin airing Monday, features images of villagers in traditional garb choosing the Whopper over the Big Mac. A Transylvanian woman, an Inuit tribesman from the Icelandic tundra and others point and, in their native tongues, declare their preference for Burger King's flagship product. Burger King says it was trying to find "Whopper Virgins," which is also the name of its campaign. "We wanted to see how the...

Where I come from in West Africa, we have a saying: "A fool at 40 is a fool forever", and most African countries have now been independent for over 40 years.

G-20 says state spending can ease crisis, backs emerging economies' bid for role in talks Economic officials from 20 leading nations called Sunday for increased government spending to boost the troubled global economy and said developing countries deserve a prominent role in talks to overhaul the world financial system. Finance ministers and central bank presidents from the Group of 20, which includes wealthy and developing nations, agreed the world must work together to address the current crisis. But they approved no specific plans ahead of a meeting of G-20 heads of state set for Washington next week. Ministers urged governments...

World finance chiefs aimed to forge a consensus Sunday on boosting the role of emerging nations and crafting a new system to help a struggling global economy. The Group of 20 gathering of finance ministers and central bank governors wrap up a meeting in Sao Paulo that seeks to lay the groundwork for next week's Washington summit on the deepening economic crisis. World Bank President Robert Zoellick, who is part of the discussions, said a new financial architecture will take time but that all countries see the need for a coordinated response to the economic troubles. "All of us know...

-snip- I was in Washington DC the night of the election. America’s beautiful capital has a sad secret. It is perhaps the most racially divided city in the world, with 15th Street – which runs due north from the White House – the unofficial frontier between black and white. But, like so much of America, it also now has a new division, and one which is in many ways much more important. I had attended an election-night party in a smart and liberal white area, but was staying the night less than a mile away on the edge of a...

The International Monetary Fund may soon lack the money to bail out an ever growing list of countries crumbling across Eastern Europe, Latin America, Africa, and parts of Asia, raising concerns that it will have to tap taxpayers in Western countries for a capital infusion or resort to the nuclear option of printing its own money. The Fund is already close to committing a quarter of its $200bn (£130bn) reserve chest, with a loans to Iceland ($2bn), Ukraine ($16.5bn), and talks underway with Pakistan ($14.5bn), Hungary ($10bn), as well as Belarus and Serbia. Neil Schering, emerging market strategist at Capital...

By Gemma Meyer (Gemma Meyer is the pseudonym of a South African journalist. She and her husband, a former conservative member of parliament, still reside in South Africa.) People used to say that South Africa was 20 years behind the rest of the Western world. Television, for example, came late to South Africa (but so did pornography and the gay rights movement). Today, however, South Africa may be the grim model of the future Western world, for events in America reveal trends chillingly similar to those that destroyed our country. America's structures are Western. Your Congress, your lobbying groups, your...

Why isn't a Bill Gates or a Steve Jobs born in Honduras? I mean, why is it that creative people don't emerge in the Third World, capable of developing innovative products and building companies that market those products, create jobs, generate large profits and influence decisively the fate of this planet? What we know about human intelligence and character features is that they're disseminated more or less equitably. The Finns who created Nokia and live in an opulent paradise in northern Europe are no more intelligent than the Dominicans or the Ecuadoreans who are crushed by poverty. On the other...

Presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama (D-Ill.) chided those who say he has no significant legislative accomplishments by pointing out that his Global Poverty Act (Senate Bill 2433) has already been passed by the House of Representatives and is now in the U.S. Senate. “This bill exemplifies the message of change I bring to the world,” Obama said. “It commits this country to an unconditional worldwide war on poverty.” If enacted, the legislation would commit the United States to spend over $800 billion to alleviate worldwide poverty. This amounts to more than $7,000 for every taxpayer in America. The funds would...

<p>The Peruvian village of Compone lies 11,000 ft. above sea level in El Valle Sagrado de los Incas, the Sacred Valley of the Incas. Flat but ringed by mountains, the tallest capped year-round in snow and ice, the valley is graced with a mild climate and mineral-rich soil that for centuries has produced what the Incas called sara—corn.</p>

PACHUCA, MEXICO - THREE suspects confessed to strangling and cutting into pieces a woman and her three-month old daughter because they feared they were witches, police in this central Mexican town said on Tuesday. Pachuca police spokesman Ms Norberto Munoz said the remains of the woman and her infant were found 'with signs of having been strangled, quartered and burned.' The three female suspects - who police have not named - were arrested 'and declared that they committed the crime to stop supposed acts of witchcraft of the mother and her daughter,' Ms Munoz said. The remains of the victims...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Nothing personal, Sen. Obama, but our re-election comes first. Barack Obama, for all his attention and primary successes, does not go over so well in a fair number of Democratic lawmakers' home districts. So it seems there is little chance that some will endorse him for president.

Poorer people living in developing countries care more about the environment than those living in more prosperous countries, a global survey has revealed. They feel more responsible for man-made problems, live a greener lifestyle and are prepared to do more to reduce their own impact on the environment. It is the better-off consumers living more comfortably in developed western countries who are the worst environmental offenders, the survey found. They lead the least sustainable lifestyles because they live in bigger houses, have more cars and consume more goods and food. The United States was identified as the biggest culprit for...

Governments across the developing world are scrambling to boost farm imports and restrict exports in an attempt to forestall rising food prices and social unrest. Saudi Arabia cut import taxes across a range of food products on Tuesday, slashing its wheat tariff from 25 per cent to zero and reducing tariffs on poultry, dairy produce and vegetable oils. On Monday, India scrapped tariffs on edible oil and maize and banned exports of all rice except the high-value basmati variety, while Vietnam, the world’s third biggest rice exporter, said it would cut rice exports by 11 per cent this year. The...

JAKARTA (Reuters) - A small group of Indonesians in their late 40s who attended the same elementary school in central Jakarta recently gathered for a reunion and to pledge their support for an absent former classmate -- Barack Obama. Obama's late mother came to Indonesia with her young son in the late 1960s to join her second husband knowing next to nothing about the huge, developing Southeast Asian nation. While her son left after four years to study in Hawaii, for the Kansas-born mother of the Democratic Party presidential hopeful the relationship with Indonesia was to grow into a lifetime...

New Deals in the Developing World ECONOMIC ACTIVITY between Africa and Asia is booming like never before. Business between the two continents is not new: India's trade with Africa's eastern and southern regions dates back to at least the days of the Silk Road, and China has been involved on the continent since it started investing there, mostly in infrastructure, during the postcolonial era. But today, partly as a result of accelerating commerce between developing countries throughout the world, the scale and pace of trade and investment flows between Africa and India and China are exceptional. (Throughout, Africa is used...

A Harvard biology professor’s fascination with seafloor microbes has led to the development of a revolutionary, low-cost power system consuming garbage, compost, and other waste that could provide light for the developing world. Assistant Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology Peter Girguis has developed a fuel cell run by the natural activity of anaerobic microbes. The cells can be manufactured for just a few U.S. dollars, putting them within reach of many of the world’s poor who today do not have access to electricity. Though the power output is relatively low, Girguis said it should be sufficient to run low-energy...

Urban peripheries in Third World countries have become war zones where states attempt to maintain order based on the establishment of a sort of "sanitary cordon" to keep the poor isolated from "normal" society. "Army sources confirmed that techniques employed in the occupation of the Morro da Providéncia favela [slum] are the ones Brazilian soldiers use in the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Haiti" (Dantas 2007). This admission by Brazilian armed forces largely explains the interest of Lula da Silva's government in keeping that country's troops on the Caribbean island: to test, in the poor neighborhoods of Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince,...

SANTIAGO, Chile -- It might be argued that a country ceases to be underdeveloped when its citizens shift their anger from other people's wealth to the quality of the services their own wealth is paying for. Chile is perhaps the world's best example. For the past two years, President Michelle Bachelet has faced a national malaise that has manifested itself in violent student protests, strikes affecting copper mining and the forestry industry, and the gradual unraveling of the coalition that has governed since 1990. I recently asked Bachelet and former President Ricardo Lagos what was happening. Their answers were instructive....

Sometimes to understand one’s own era you have to immerse yourself in another. I pick up my copy of Paul Edmonds’ Peacocks and Pagodas as an example. This — though you’ve probably never heard of it — seems the best-regarded book ever written on the people and society of Burma. You may know it as Myanmar. What could be more esoteric, and yet profoundly revealing, about much broader issues? My copy is a first edition from 1924 and in its long life and travels it once belonged to T.N. Jayavelu, Antiquarian Bookseller of Choolai, Madras, India. But now it resides...

Economic Redistribution Ahead Bethany Stotts, January 31, 2008 .....“The United States is committed to strengthening our energy security and confronting global climate change. And the best way to meet these goals is for America to continue leading the way toward the development of cleaner and more energy-efficient technology,” said President Bush. However, groups such as the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) view such technology-promoting initiatives quite differently. OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría told the United Nations Bali Climate Conference this December that while “cutting emissions and fostering low-carbon activities will require investments in research and development of new technologies,”...

If you haven't done so already, meet the Nano, possibly the most significant new car of the decade. Small, cute, and snub-nosed, it fits four people and a duffel bag, has a single windshield wiper, travels at 60 mph, and it's all yours for the princely sum of $2,500, roughly the same price as the DVD system in your neighbor's Lexus and about half the price of the cheapest cars on the market today. Even better, at least for the philosophically minded, the Nano comes with its own moral conundrum: What happens when the laudable, currently fashionable movement to improve...

ANAND, India - Every night in this quiet western Indian city, 15 pregnant women prepare for sleep in the spacious house they share, ascending the stairs in a procession of ballooned bellies, to bedrooms that become a landscape of soft hills. A team of maids, cooks and doctors looks after the women, whose pregnancies would be unusual anywhere else but are common here. The young mothers of Anand, a place famous for its milk, are pregnant with the children of infertile couples from around the world. The small clinic at Kaival Hospital matches infertile couples with local women, cares for...

Well, I dunno. It seems to me a certain humility is appropriate when offering advice to Islamabad. Gen. Musharraf is – as George S. Kaufman remarked when the Germans invaded Russia – shooting without a script. But that's because he presides over a country that defies the neatness of scripted narratives. In the days after 9/11, George W. Bush told the world that you're either with us or against us. Musharraf said he was with us, which was jolly decent of him considering that 99.9999 percent of his people are against us. In the teeth of that glum reality, he's...

“In 1996, the UN declared that 70 countries, aid recipients all, were poorer than in 1980. An incredible 43 were worse off than in 1970.” Experience has consistently shown that simply providing money to Third World countries will not buy political stability, spur social progress and eliminate poverty, yet this strategy continues to influence charitable efforts aimed at helping the impoverished people residing in these areas. It may sound cruel, but there are many valid reasons to stop the billions of dollars in aid given to poor countries. Often, it ends up in the hands of officials who repress their...

Beneath the bustling “infinite corridor” linking buildings at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, just past a boiler room, an assemblage of tinkerers from 16 countries welded, stitched and hammered, working on rough-hewn inventions aimed at saving the world, one village at a time. (snip) This summer, it played host to a four-week International Development Design Summit to identify problems, cobble together prototype solutions and winnow the results to see which might work in the real world. (snip) The summit (www.iddsummit.org) was the brainchild mainly of Amy Smith, a lecturer at M.I.T. who received her master’s there in 1995 and in...

China, this year for the first time, has dislodged the United States from its long reign as the main engine of global economic growth, with its more than 11 percent growth eclipsing sputtering U.S. growth of about 2 percent, according to the International Monetary Fund's 2007 projections released yesterday. China's growth, which has been fueled by booming domestic building and commercial development, as well as soaring exports, has accelerated even as U.S. growth dropped to 0.7 percent in the first quarter under the weight of a profound housing recession. China is expected to drive a hearty 5.2 percent expansion of...

FEW people in Africa would get to see Al Gore and his troupe of rock-star ecologists strutting their stuff last weekend - because most have neither television nor electricity. That's just as well, because they would be aghast at LiveEarth's bizarre message. In Africa, we have much more serious things to worry about than climate change. Indeed, if they achieve their objective, the concerts will have done harm to the people of Africa. Britain's former Secretary of State for the Environment, David Miliband, recently said that the rest of the world cannot aspire to the UK's standard of living because:...

Somewhere in the dark recesses of their souls, an increasing number of Americans fear the eventuality of an ultimate confrontation with Mexico over the disputed territories, formerly known as the Southwestern United States. But visions of the affair as a horde of brass-buttoned soldiers, marching on San Jacinto with bayoneted muskets to retake it, are woefully mistaken. Were that the case, the overt threat would be obvious and recognizable. America could certainly rally and respond with sufficient force to decisively win the battle. But no such events are taking place. In their stead, a much less dramatic scenario promises far...

Mexican soldiers jailed in killings ASSOCIATED PRESS June 6, 2007 MEXICO CITY – Nineteen Mexican soldiers have been sent to a military prison after troops allegedly killed two women and three children whose vehicle didn't stop at an army checkpoint, the Defense Ministry said yesterday. Advertisement The family was traveling to a funeral in a van Friday when it was ordered to stop at a checkpoint near the village of La Joya in Sinaloa state, local media said. When the van failed to stop, soldiers reportedly opened fire. Police identified the dead as Alicia Esparza Parra, 17; Griselda Galaviz Barraza,...

When Thomas Jefferson said that “people get the government they deserve,” it was more than just a clever turn of phrase. It also was not an isolated insight but a timeless truth, one expressed by many. William Cowper said, “When was public virtue to be found when private was not?” Benjamin Franklin stated, “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.” Truth be known, I could probably fill a book with the words of wise ones who have spoken in kind. But, you know, I understand this...

......Ted Kennedy waited until the last minute to make the draft bill public....most senators will be in the dark when they debate it.....the text now circulating is astonishing. Just when it is becoming clear that overwhelming majorities of Americans - of all parties and all races - say they want stronger enforcement of our laws, the bill would take the country full speed in the opposite direction....legalizing most of the 12-20M illegal aliens via a new "Z visa." Each would pay $3,000 - only slightly more than the going rate to be smuggled into America......provisions buried in the fine print...

A P1-billion fund has been earmarked for the development of the biofuel industry, using jatropha (tubang bakod) as a fuel source. Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Romulo Neri said a draft administrative order for this purpose is now under review by the Office of the Government Corporate Counsel before it is sent to President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo for her approval. Neri explained that jatropha-based fuel can replace $1.75 billion worth of diesel import. The country imports $7 billion worth of oil products each year. The Philippine National Oil Company Petrochemicals Corp. and the National Development Co. will each contribute P500 million to...

CALIFORNIAPer capita income in state is expected to sink over 20 yearsGrowth in poorly educated population is blamed in study Californians' per capita income will drop 11 percent over the first two decades of this century unless the state closes the educational gap of its expanding Latino population, a nonpartisan research center forecast in a report released today. Latinos are the fastest-growing segment of the state's population and work force, and among the least-educated, said the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education. According to 2000 census figures, in the 25-to-64 age group, 52 percent of Latinos lacked a...

President Bush urged the Senate Tuesday to act on the 1982 United Nations Law of the Sea Convention during this session of Congress and won swift backing from two influential Republican senators. Republican Sens. Richard G. Lugar of Indiana and Ted Stevens of Alaska echoed Bush’s call for ratification of the accord (Treaty Doc 103-39), which the Foreign Relations Committee approved unanimously in February 2004, under Lugar’s chairmanship. The Bush administration supported the treaty, but the accord never reached the Senate floor due to opposition from conservatives concerned it would surrender U.S. sovereignty. Current Foreign Relations Chairman Joseph R. Biden...