Free Republic

In an interesting interview [link at URL] to the New York Review of Books, George Soros shared his ideas on many topics including Europe, Russia and the Ukranian crisis. He also presented his new book [link at URL] The tragedy of the European Union: Disintegration or Revival? Whether one agrees or disagrees with Soro's interpretations and arguments, it is hard to deny that the interview is extremely insightful and gives a lot of food for thought. I offer a discussion of the part of the interview devoted to Ukraine. George Soros emphasized the necessity of a large-scale technical and financial...

Cliven Bundy, can a cowboy defeat the Marxists? In the end, there is only one reason why the Bundy ranch was besieged. President Obama had to have taken the lead. He knew it was going on and he sanctioned it. Beyond oil, solar, and Chinese Communists with money, lurks Obama’s Agenda. InfoWars has found a smoking gun in the case of embattled rancher Cliven Bundy. A lucrative contract – which will benefit Harry Reid and his son Rory Reid – specifically mentions the need to rid the land of Cliven Bundy. In addition, Natural News pointed out that the BLM...

The United Nations’ World Food Program failed to carry out sufficient inspections of food distribution sites in North Korea to ensure that supplies went to the country’s suffering people rather than the dictatorial communist regime, according to the U.N. agency’s own internal watchdog. ... Moreover, even WFP’s knowledge of what aid supplies it has received from abroad are based on the say-so of a regime-run company that the watchdog says may be lying about the amount of work it does, overcharging the U.N. for the work—and in any case is doing it without a contract, which keeps the relationship legally...

The United States and Canada are far more integrated than most people think. In fact, a merger between the two countries isn't just desirable—it's inevitable. We share more than just the world's longest border. We share the same values, lifestyles and aspirations. Our societies and economies are becoming similar in significant ways.

The White House announced today that it would refuse to issue a visa to Hamid Aboutalebi, the Iranian envoy to the United Nations, over his connection to the 1979 hostage crisis in Tehran. Aboutalebi belonged to the “student group” who seized Americans from the US embassy despite having diplomatic immunity, and the Iranian government held them captive for 444 days:

"The Bureau of Land Management has just cashed in with $1.27 million in oil and gas leases in Nevada. This was just reported two weeks ago in ShaleReporter.com, which states: U.S. Bureau of Land Management geologist Lorenzo Trimble tells the Las Vegas Review-Journal the Elko County oil and gas leases sold Tuesday for $1.27 million to six different companies. The auction took place in Reno. The leases are near where Houston-based Noble Energy Inc. wants to drill for oil and natural gas on 40,000 acres of public and private land near the town of Wells. The Review-Journal reports the project...

By SHIREE BUNDY COX: I have had people ask me to explain my dad’s stance on this BLM fight. Here it is in as simple of terms as I can explain it. There is so much to it, but here it is in a nut shell. My great grandpa bought the rights to the Bunkerville allotment back in 1887 around there. Then he sold them to my grandpa who then turned them over to my dad in 1972. These men bought and paid for their rights to the range and also built waters, fences and roads to assure the survival...

The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports that two militia members from Montana and one from Utah have arrived at Cliven Bundy’s ranch. “We need to be the barrier between the oppressed and the tyrants,” Ryan Payne of the West Mountain Rangers told the Review-Journal. “Expect to see a band of soldiers.” Payne said that militias from New Hampshire, Texas and Florida are likely to join and stand with Bundy and stay at his ranch. “They all tell me they are in the process of mobilizing as we speak,” Payne told the Review-Journal, adding that hundreds of militia members are expected. The...

The U.S. has already signaled that Iran's UN envoy pick is a no-go - and for VERY good reason. At the same time we are being entangled in these disputes; we do so and are to some degree continuing this because the UN is on U.S. grounds. The statement "get the U.S. out of the UN and the UN out of the U.S." has been oft-repeated...so here is a possible solution - with one caveat. The UN is moved to neutral territory (if at all possible), so we don't have to shell out a significant chunk for its operating expenses....

When academia practices real diversity, one wonders how long it can continue. It usually doesn’t, unfortunately. Right now there is a crack in the Ivory Curtain in the person of Manuel Suarez-Mier, economist in residence at the School of International Service at American University. To call him politically incorrect would be an understatement. We mean that as a compliment. “I contend that any organization that has to use the word democratic as an adjective is anything but,” Suarez Mier said at a conference in Chicago co-sponsored by the Atlas Network and the Illinois Policy Institute. “Think about it: The Democratic...

And we’re back. This week marks the 47th Session of the Commission on Population and Development (CPD) and on this cloudy, breezy Manhattan day, delegates from around the globe have gathered at UN Headquarters to discuss and debate policies and strategies to better serve the populations of the world. Or one would hope. At last year’s CPD, I watched and listened as the most radical elements within the international abortion industry and lobby hijacked the proceedings in an attempt to yet again push the wants of the first world over the needs of the developing one. proabort39When in the ensuing...

Dozens of armed federal officers are preparing for a showdown with a Nevada cattle rancher regarded by some as an outlaw and a hero by others.

In a recent interview with the Tampa Bay Times at the U.S. Capitol, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said that potential 2016 presidential candidate Jeb. Bush (R) is “the smartest guy I know on education.” McCain reportedly told the Times that he spoke with the former Florida governor a couple weeks ago about education policy. Despite labeling Jeb Bush the most astute person he knows when it comes to education, McCain deflected when asked if Bush’s support for the Common Core could be an issue. “What he did for education in Florida … that’s a clear record of success,” he stated....

The mainstream media are in full cry for the U.S. Senate to ratify the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Watch out. When the United Nations starts talking about rights, the truth about what it’s really up to is often carefully concealed. There are always plenty of people in Washington happy to go along with these charades, but the supporters of the CRPD are taking willful blindness to new heights. Last December, Senator Bob Corker, the Republican leader on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, announced that he was unable to support CRPD because it threatens U.S....

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush discussing immigration reform on Fox News this Sunday: "I'm going to say this and it will be on tape, and so be it. The way I look at this is someone who comes to our country because they couldn't come legally, they come to our country because their family's dad who loves their children was worried that their children didn't have food on the table, and they wanted to make sure their family was intact. And they crossed the border because they had no other means to work to be able to provide for their...

Obama Budget Supersizes U.S. Funding for UN, Global Military 04 April 2014 At a time of unprecedented federal spending and soaring deficits, the president is asking Congress to drastically increase funding for the scandal-plagued United Nations. ...

(CNSNews.com) – Defunding United Nations agencies that admit “Palestine” is not in the interests of the U.S., Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power argued Wednesday, because doing so constitutes a “double win” for the Palestinians. Not only do they score by gaining admission to a U.N. body, she told the House Appropriations’ subcommittee responsible for foreign operations, they also benefit by having U.S. influence in that body reduced, making way for the likes of Russia, China and Cuba to take the lead. Power was arguing for lawmakers to support a waiver to provisions in U.S. law that prohibit funding for...

When U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power testifies before a House Appropriations subcommittee on Wednesday, the panel will consider a budget request for international organizations that is 33 percent bigger than last year’s, including a 43 percent hike in U.S. contributions to peacekeeping missions. […] As it has done for the past two years, the administration is asking Congress to waive legislative provisions making it unlawful for the U.S. to fund U.N. agencies that admit “Palestine.” …

Eighteen countries, including five of the world’s leading arms exporters, ratified a landmark treaty regulating the multibillion-dollar global arms trade on Wednesday, giving a significant boost to the campaign for the treaty’s entry into force. […] Five of the world’s top 10 arms exporters—Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain—turned in their ratification documents at the ceremony. The other 13 were Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, El Salvador, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Latvia, Malta, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. Among the hold-outs is the United States, the world’s largest weapons exporter. The Obama administration has signed the treaty but there is strong resistance in...

The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, their foremost and super-cereal authoritative body on the matter, released phase two of their four-part report they compile every so often to make recommendations to policymakers the world over about how much the world is warming and what to do about it. As Jeff already noted this morning, this latest issue is replete with dire warnings about food security and declining crop yields, economic shocks, drought and water supplies, regional conflicts and war, and etcetera. So, in a nutshell, the same type of catastrophic warnings that progressive environmentalists have been prophesying for...