Free Republic

In 32 years of reporting on international affairs, I have never seen Britain and the United States more separated from each other: not during the terrible last years of the Vietnam War, not during President Reagan's Iran-Contra dealings or his espousal of the crackpot Star Wars system.The way George W Bush's administration deals with the outside world is affecting even the most traditionally pro-American elements in British society.On two occasions last week I met senior civil servants from government departments in London who would normally be regarded as the natural bedrock of support for the Atlantic Alliance. In both cases...

ST. THOMAS, Ontario June 29 — A judge has lifted a ban on publishing details of the trial involving the right of social workers to remove children from their parents. The so-called spanking trial involves a fundamentalist Christian family whose parents citing biblical teachings regularly discipline their seven children with belts, sticks, electric cords, clothes hangars and a broken metal fly swatter.Social workers, backed by police, removed the children from the family home a year ago, setting off a case that attracted widespread attention due to video footage of the crying, struggling children being taken away.A few weeks later, the...

TORONTO - - Jean Chrétien remains Prime Minister, but he has lost the Liberal Party. Lose the party and, sooner or later, he'll lose the country's top job. That equation now faces Mr. Chrétien. The party wants him gone. He wants to stay. Something has to give. Mr. Chrétien would lose a leadership review vote taken today, and lose it badly. Nowhere in the party outside the cabinet does he command a majority. Leave the shadow of the Peace Tower, the world dominated by the Prime Minister's formidable array of powers, and senior Liberals, even those sympathetic to him, offer...

Galatians 3:1"'O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you that you should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified?'" Christians are often portrayed as foolish and superstitious. Various writers and commentators talk about Christianity as an outdated, pre-scientific faith. Creationism has often been called pseudo or false science. But is it true that Christians are more given to superstition and pseudo-science than others in society? A study which carefully analyzed figures gathered by the U.S. Census Bureau shows that accusations that conservative, Bible-believing Christians are more prone toward superstition are completely...

JERUSALEM, June 29 (AFP) - Israeli security forces have seized 236 stolen cars in the West Bank this month, army radio said Saturday. They also arrested 40 Palestinians suspected of stealing cars, it said, adding the cars were seized in the towns of Ramallah, Bethlehem and Hebron. The army last week raided the West Bank villages of Beit Jala and Dohar, near Bethlehem, and seized more than 60 stolen cars, Palestinian security sources had said. Stolen Israeli cars have often been used for driving Palestinian attackers to their targets inside Israel because they attract less attention than Palestinian-registered cars. Israeli...

When I interviewed Dr Henry Kissinger during his trip to London in April, the former American Secretary of State said that President Bush and his colleagues needed what he described as a clear "concept" in their strategy for the Middle East. "I do not think they have yet settled on what the precise concept is," he added, in that wry, unmistakable baritone.Perhaps the President's speech on Israel and the Palestinian Authority last week will have answered Dr Kissinger's implicit question. The "concept" is simply this: the Palestinians can have a viable state, as far as America is concerned, but they...

HEBRON, West Bank, Jun 29, 2002 (The Canadian Press via COMTEX) -- The grandfather of a Palestinian baby who was photographed in a suicide bomber's costume - replete with fake explosives, ammunition belt and red Hamas headband - said Saturday that the disguise was a joke. Initially denying the baby in the photograph - which was splashed across the front pages of Israeli newspapers and international television networks - was his grandson, Redwan Abu Turki finally admitted he was related to the child. "This picture was at a rally at the university. The picture was taken just for the...

Senior officials in the Prime Minister's office have launched an astonishing attack on America's handling of the hunt for Osama bin Laden and al-Qa'eda fugitives.They have told The Telegraph that troops carrying out house-to-house searches in the remote tribal areas of Pakistan along the Afghanistan border were "blundering" with a "march-in-shooting" approach. The US action was "backfiring", increasing support for terrorism and making it harder for bin Laden and his henchmen to be caught."The Americans think they and the Pakistanis can just march in shooting", said an official closely involved in the direction of the war."They don't understand the sensitivities....

MOUNT HOOD - Seismologists are keeping a very close watch on Mount Hood today after at least two moderate earthquakes rattled the area. At 7:36 a.m. an earthquake with a magnitude of 4.5 shook the Mount Hood area. So far there are no reports of damage or injuries. Bill Steele of the University of Washington's Pacific Northwest Seismographic Network said the quake was centered about three miles south of the summit of Mount Hood and was about four miles deep. It was the strongest quake in the area in recent decades, he said, and had been followed by hundreds of...

On Sept. 16, five days after the devastating terrorist attack against the U.S. that killed more than 3,000 people, witnesses say something very strange occurred at the Liberty Bell. It was in the afternoon when, according to a witness, a female tourist noticed two men she thought were Arabs sitting in a white sedan parked at Sixth Street across from the Liberty Bell. They seemed to be acting suspiciously. She pulled two Independence Park rangers aside and said, according to a witness and a source who was privy to a security discussion, "I know I may be paranoid, but there...

Yasser Arafat, according to a news report, is prepared to accept a Middle East peace plan put forward by former US President Bill Clinton in December 2000. According to the plan, the Palestinians would set up a state in 95 percent of the West Bank and all of Gaza and would gain sovereignty over Arab quarters in Jerusalem and a hotly disputed holy site. Clinton had presented the plan after a July summit meeting between Arafat and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak broke down without an agreement. The question right now is not how the Israelis are going to...

TEHRAN -- Iran has recently stopped allowing tankers carrying smuggled Iraqi oil to dodge international monitoring ships in the Persian Gulf by staying inside Iran's territorial waters, the DPA quoted the Pentagon as saying on Thursday. The loss of the Iranian safe haven has led smugglers to change tactics, loading the oil from the large tankers onto smaller vessels in hopes of evading U.S. navy ships trying to enforce United Nations sanctions against Iraq, said General Richard Myers, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff. On Tuesday, Iran accepted Bush's offer of humanitarian assistance to victims of Saturday's earthquake...

TEHRAN - German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer has said that the enforcement of Islamic law, or the Sharia, is not acceptable in Afghanistan, according to some reports from Berlin. Speaking at the Bundestag, or German Parliament, on Friday night, the German foreign minister claimed that Islamic law disregards human rights, and that it is not in line with the principles accepted by Germany. Thus, he said, Germany cannot agree to the return of Islamic law in Afghanistan. Fischer said the enforcement of Islamic law in Afghanistan is unacceptable despite the fact that the Loya Jirga delegates, during their recent seven-day...

A man in China flying for the first time in his life tried to open the plane's door because he wanted to spit.He made his move just after the China Southern Airlines plane took off from Shenzhen.Members of the flight crew found him trying to open the emergency door.He'd already managed to open an inner cover plate and a passenger was trying to restrain him.The Straits Times says he told the crew he wanted to spit. He was arrested when the plane landed in Shanghai.A stewardess says she explained the safety procedures to him individually before take-off.Copyright © 2002 Ananova...

The Republicans of the Fifth Congressional District of Iowa held their special convention today to select their nominee for Congress.There were four candidates in the primary that was held June 4 but Iowa law says that if not any candidate gets 35% of the vote, the delegates to the District Convention select the candidate.Conservative, State Senator, Steve King got the most votes in the primary but only got 31% of the vote.Senator King was the victor today at the convention.This is very good news for conservatives as Steve is perceived to be among the most conservative of the four candidates....

According to this web site, the movie is "based upon the true story of the USSR's first nuclear ballistic submarine, K-19, which on June 4th, 1961, while sailing in the North Alantic, discovered that the cooling system of the reactor had failed, leading to a possible nuclear meltdown. 20 sailors died in the effort of radiation poisoning, but the leak was fixed, disaster averted." Oops. K-19 was not the USSR's first nuclear ballistic submarine. It was one of a number of the NATO-code "Hotel class" subs. Both the "Juliet" and "Golf" classes preceeded the Hotel. It gets worse. "Premise: The...

Run!" The shout came from the back of our little group, from a colleague who had spotted an Israeli army jeep prowling around the corner. So, one more time, we ran - dragging our camera equipment, breathing hard under our bullet proof vests. The only cover in sight was the long grass in the back garden of a man once dubbed "the face of terror" by Time magazine. We buzzed on the intercom, and we were welcomed into the home of Bassam Abu Sharif - to talk and to hide. The violence of his past is carved into his flesh...

The Kuwaiti daily al-Seyassah on Friday quoted a Palestinian diplomatic source in Abdu Dhabi as saying that Palestinian Authority information and culture official Yasser Abd Rabbu has achieved one of his closest steps towards leading the Palestinian people in succession of Yasser Arafat after the US President George Bush launched the "count down" process to alienate him from the Presidency of the Palestinian Authority. The source disclosed that Abd Rabbu's shares increased with the Americans and the Europeans in a sudden way following Bush's speech, but Sharon and his aides prefer the chairman of the Palestinian protective security department in...

THE Roman Catholic Church is threatening to excommunicate a group of women who plan to be ordained as Catholic priests on Sunday, according to Austrian bishops. A dozen women from Austria, Germany and the United States plan to be ordained by an unnamed bishop in a private ceremony which breaks the Church law that "the sacrament can only be administered by a baptised man". "Women make up half of all Christians. If this ordination does not effectively conform to the laws of the Church, it goes against tradition and not against faith," said Christine Mayr-Lumetzberger, a former nun who is...