Free Republic

Hamas is losing its grip on the Gaza Strip and is struggling to assert its authority even in areas outside Israeli control. Sources in Hamas and other terrorist organizations in Gaza acknowledge that Hamas can no longer control large parts of the territory, the Saudi newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat reported. According to the report, Israel currently controls about 67% of the Gaza Strip, but Hamas also lacks full control of the remaining territory beyond the Yellow Line. One Palestinian Arab source estimated that Hamas effectively controls only 17% to 20% of the entire Strip. Despite these difficulties, Hamas continues to try...

Harvard economist Benjamin Friedman's book, 'Religion and the Rise of Capitalism,' provides an illuminating, if not always convincing, examination of how theology influenced modern economic thought.“One of the fundamental elements of the spirit of modern capitalism,” German sociologist Max Weber wrote in his landmark 1905 book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, “of rational conduct on the basis of the idea of the calling, was born from the spirit of Christian asceticism.”Weber attributed the free-market success so prevalent amongst Protestant societies to its origins in Calvinist predestinarian theology: believers could never know for sure whether they had been...

Nearly 300 years ago, two great alliances collided on the Great Plains in a battle that changed the course of American history. But until now, no physical evidence of the storied conflict had ever been found. In the summer of 1720, where the Platte River meets the Loup in eastern Nebraska, Spanish soldiers, New Mexican settlers and their Pueblo and Apache allies clashed with warriors from the Pawnee and Oto nations of the Plains. In a daybreak raid, the Pawnee and the Oto — possibly with the support of French traders — routed the Spanish, killing their commander, Don Pedro...