Free Republic

FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED DEC. 6, 1999 THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz Finally blowing the whistle on dumbed-down 'math.' What do you do if your middle-school students' math scores are falling, and you've got to put a better face on things? Why, teach them something else -- something much easier, like playing with blocks or cutting out pictures -- and simply (start ital)call(end ital) it math. Yes, our educators should remain open to new methods for putting across hard-to-grasp, abstract concepts. But in the end, they still have to make sure the child can count, do ...

Have you ever noticed that Alan Keyes and Marvin the Martian sound alike? Those stentorian, pear-shaped, apocalyptic declarations? Marvin is the little alien with the Roman helmet and big tennis shoes in Bugs Bunny cartoons who wants to blow up the earth, kaboom! Mr. Keyes warns of a "howling moral void." Mr. Martian warns of a void. "Brace yourself for immediate disintegration," the alien booms. The wily wabbit always foils Marvin by sneaking off with his Uranium Pew-36 Explosive Space Modulator. That makes the Martian "very angry, very angry indeed." Candidate Keyes is usually very angry as well, and also ...

For a man who prides himself on his mastery of the language, Limbaugh’s all too frequent use of the phrase “stupid idiot” is becoming irritating, to say the least. Does he mean to suggest that either term could mean less than the other? Is he suggesting that being “stupid” is not also being an “idiot”; or that perhaps in some way known only to himself, “idiots” may be something other than “stupid”? Or is redundancy only repugnant when it is one of his antagonists who employs it? Besides, so free a use of that insult decries a character that is ...

Downtown reopens for business By Robert T. Nelson and Brier Dudley, Seattle Times staff reporters Now that WTO is over, downtown merchants are hoping local residents will dust off their credit cards, take off the protective headgear and shop till they drop. And not from rubber bullets. Protesters may have scored big time with all the news coverage about their international-trade concerns. But it was a bad week for downtown Seattle in terms of retail sales. About the only thing that would have hurt The Bon Marche more than the World Trade Organization's meeting in Seattle is if the conference ...

WTO talks collapse; no accord reached By Stephen Dunphy, Seattle Times business columnist In a startling turn of events, the World Trade Organization said late last night that it was unable to bridge differences among its member nations and would leave Seattle without a declaration to start a new round of global trade talks. The failure to get agreement on a new round is an embarrassment to President Clinton and a victory, at least briefly, for the the protesters who marched in the street for the past four days opposing the WTO's environmental and labor policies and calling for the ...

Let the Healing Begin: Merchants Aim to Take Back Seattle Downtown By Jonathan Dube ABCNEWS.com S E A T T L E, Dec. 3 — The battle in Seattle is over. After days of protesters blocking streets, anarchists vandalizing downtown and riot police hurling tear gas, the Emerald City is slowly returning to normal. Citizens are literally picking up the pieces of their city — broken glass, torn-down street signs, burned Dumpsters. Most downtown businesses have reopened, though clerks still outnumber customers. Boards on storefront windows are being taken down and new glass panes installed. City workers are scrubbing away ...

SEATTLE -- President Clinton's effort to shape an ambitious agenda to liberalize trade and broaden the mandate of the World Trade Organization collapsed here Friday night, after a rebellion by developing countries and deadlock among America's biggest trading partners forced the administration to all but abandon one of its major foreign policy goals for the end of Clinton's presidency. The collapse of the talks ended a tumultuous week of riots on the streets of Seattle, the arrest of more than 600 protesters, and bitter infighting among 135 nations. They could not agree even on whether to discuss workers' rights and ...

REPUBLICATS AND THIRD WAVE MARXISM THE THIRD WAVE PART VI By: Steve Farrell If ever there was a person suffering under the delusion that there really was a nickels difference between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, Newt Gingrich’s surfing in Alvin Toffler’s Third Wave, and his application of the same as the launching pad of 21st Century Republicanism, should have been the wake up call to stack the sandbags, vacate the beach heads, and run for the hills. Mr. Gingrich told his fellow Congressmen, in his Republican Revolution Victory Speech in November of 1994, that “The Third ...

After Seattle A Washington Post Editorial Sunday, December 5, 1999; Page B06 THE COLLAPSE of trade talks in Seattle was not, as one unelected protest organizer claimed, a glorious triumph of democracy. It was not, as various labor spokesmen suggested, a victory for working people, who would have benefited from the prosperity that trade liberalization promises. Nor is the lesson of this failure quite as simple as some free traders say. However tempting it is to blame Bill Clinton's timidity on trade for this setback, the truth is more complicated. Mr. Clinton's critics will doubtless portray the Seattle breakdown as ...

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia—Hundreds of ethnic Albanian citizens in Kosovo arrested for serious crimes, including murder, assault and rape, have been set free without an indictment or a trial because the province still lacks a functioning criminal justice system six months after NATO forces arrived, according to United Nations documents. In many cases, the suspects are quietly let go within two to three days of their detention by the few judges serving here, the documents show. More than 40 percent of all those arrested are released, according to one study. In addition, a number of other suspects have been held by NATO ...

REPUBLICATS AND THIRD WAVE MARXISM THE THIRD WAVE PART VI By: Steve Farrell If ever there was a person suffering under the delusion that there really was a nickels difference between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, Newt Gingrich’s surfing in Alvin Toffler’s Third Wave, and his application of the same as the launching pad of 21st Century Republicanism, should have been the wake up call to stack the sandbags, vacate the beach heads, and run for the hills. Mr. Gingrich told his fellow Congressmen, in his Republican Revolution Victory Speech in November of 1994, that “The Third ...

WASHINGTON -- On Jan. 7, Paul Cellucci was sworn in for his first full four-year term as governor of Massachusetts. Twenty-four hours earlier, he had held his first fund-raiser for the 2002 campaign. For Governor Cellucci, as for many of his counterparts in state houses across the country, there is no off-year when it comes to political fund-raising. The "permanent campaign" that has become a fixture of races for the presidency and the Senate has now descended upon the 50 state capitals. Gov. Jim Hodges of South Carolina amassed a political treasury of more than $800,000 for the 2002 campaign ...

Sometimes it's easy to forget that John McCain is running for the White House as a Republican. At a town hall meeting in Exeter, N.H., the GOP senator from Arizona heaped praise on no fewer than three Democratic presidents: John F. Kennedy, Harry S. Truman and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Only in the waning minutes of the forum did McCain--while again citing JFK and FDR--get around to mentioning Ronald Reagan and his "personal hero," Theodore Roosevelt. McCain praised Truman both for his crack about needing a "one-armed economist" (so there would be no on-the-other-hand argument) and for intervening against North Korea ...

After WTO Chaos, Seattle Struggles to Repair Damage By Rene Sanchez Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, December 5, 1999; Page A31 SEATTLE, Dec. 4—The protests and street clashes that rocked this usually serene capital in the Pacific Northwest this week have left wounds that city leaders and residents say will not heal soon. The mayor, the police chief and the prestigious civic panel that spent two years luring the World Trade Organization and its 3,000 delegates to meet here are under fire, at once wearily defending their decisions and apologizing for the round-the-clock havoc that even spread into residential neighborhoods. ...

Today in Columbia, South Carolina, seven Freepers were unearthed in the vicinity of a local Pizza Hut. To everyone's amazement, these elusive nocturnal net crawlers bearing strange names like DrNo and AlligatorEyes had strikingly human-like faces! After getting past the initial shock of having to communicate verbally instead of in black and white text, we settled into several interesting discussions. AlligatorEyes brought with him an antique 5th grade Reader published in 1870-something. Amazing that over 100 years ago they were teaching fifth graders wild and crazy ideas like juror responsibility and the duty of magistrates and (gasp) the Constitution. Talk ...

When Negotiators' Reach Far Exceeds Their Grasp: Complexity, Diversity Humbled WTO By Steven Pearlstein Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, December 5, 1999; Page A01 SEATTLE, Dec. 4—The collapse of negotiations at the World Trade Organization meeting here Friday night stunned political and business leaders who had argued they were so crucial to expanding trade and boosting living standards around the world that they were simply too important to fail. Although several officials said they expected to try again early next year, the high-profile failure of delegates to set an agenda for another multi-year round of negotiations underscored how difficult it ...

THE WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION: PROCESSES AND RULINGS* Co-Authors: Jerry Mander, IFG Acting Director and Debi Barker, IFG Deputy Director *This summary document is excerpted from the IFG publication, Invisible Government—The World Trade Organization: Global Government For The New Millennium? The World Trade Organization (WTO) is the primary rule-making regime of the globalization process. In only five years of existence the WTO has become one of the most powerful and secretive international bodies on earth. The central operating principle of the WTO is that global commercial interests supersede all others. Obstacles to the smooth operation and rapid expansion of global corporate ...

A secret shared: British agents fear Nato's military operations, such as this year's air strikes in Serbia, left, could be jeopardised if GCHQ, right, shares intelligence under plans drawn up by Chirac and Schröder Europe plans its own spy agency Stephen Grey, Brussels TONY BLAIR is under pressure from European leaders to support the creation of a "federalised" EU intelligence service to help manage world crises. The move, proposed by Gerhard Schröder, the German chancellor, and President Jacques Chirac of France, is seen as the first step towards the creation of Europe's own spy agency, based in Brussels. Both ...

Washington -- Former independent counsel Kenneth Starr said Friday that President Clinton has yet to show remorse for deceiving the court in the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal. ''In some way, through some manifestation of genuine sorrow and acceptance of responsibility, the president should get himself right with the law,'' Starr said. The former federal appeals judge, speaking to reporters, cited mistakes on both sides of his tumultuous five-year probe that led to Clinton's impeachment. Starr predicted that ''history would take a much more benign look'' at the blot on Clinton's record if the president would ''simply come to terms ...

FBI agents are accustomed to tough interrogations. But usually it's the agents asking the questions. Now the tables have been turned. For the past few weeks, current and former FBI officials have been summoned to St. Louis to be grilled by investigators working for John Danforth, the special counsel appointed to find out what happened to the Branch Davidians near Waco, Texas, in 1993. "They didn't use a rubber hose, and there were no bright lights in your eyes," said Danny Coulson, a former FBI commander who was questioned last month. "They asked real hard questions and insisted that ...