Free Republic

The American right wing is very fond of characterizing the European Union as "a monstrous and intrusive socialist superstate." While I am not a fan of the EU, and suspect it is a step towards world government, the fact is that the EU government has yet to evolve into a monster. The budget of the EU government is only $80 billion – less than 5% of the budget of the US federal government. Some member states do have high taxes (and some have low), but that is up to them, not the EU. The EU has not yet, like the ...

Were all the crimes against humanity committed during World War II the work of Hitler's underlings? That was certainly the impression created by the fact that only Germans were brought to trial at Nüremburg. Alas! It is a false impression. We all now know that in the terrible struggle waged between the Red Army and the German Wehrmacht, the Russians displayed their fair share of insensate inhumanity. What is less widely recognized -- because the truth, until only recently, has been deliberately suppressed -- is that the Western democracies were responsible for the most senseless single act of mass murder ...

Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic says he will call ex-US leader Bill Clinton and other Western politicians to testify at his trial for war crimes at The Hague. On the second day of his defence case, he has repeated his allegation that Nato is itself guilty of crimes against humanity. Mr Milosevic, who is conducting his own defence, said he also wanted to question Germany's former Chancellor Helmut Kohl, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel. Mr Milosevic is allowed to call whoever he likes as a witness. ...

A newlywed husband in southern India has stitched his lips together after his wife ordered him to stop swearing during sex. His wife said she was sick of his habit and told him to shut up. She says he looked like a monkey when she found him and wonders if she's married the right man. Rudrappa Mugalkod, a 32-year old farmer from Karnataka's Kilabanur village, took the action when his wife Satyabhama complained after they'd had sex, the Patrike newspaper reports. The paper says she asked him to "shut up" before rolling over in bed and going to sleep. Her ...

SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC has told the international war crimes tribunal that Nato and the West had fabricated an "ocean of lies" to back the 1999 war on Yugoslavia. He opened his defence this morning by showing a video discussing the 1999 massacre of ethnic Albanians in Racak, which triggered the Nato air war on Yugoslavia. "This is just an atom of truth in the ocean of lies and the product of propaganda and the use of global media as a means of war against my country," he said after the showing. The video, some of it taken from German television, showed ...

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba -- Some of the detainees at this American base are not Muslim but Christian, U.S. military officials say, describing inmates as members of a "global community" who in some cases may be sympathetic to groups other than the Taliban or al-Qaida. "I personally did not expect . . . some of the nations that are represented in Camp X-Ray," Lt. Col. Bill Costello, a spokesman for the joint task force in charge of the detention camp, said Tuesday. Since the first prisoners arrived from Afghanistan just over a month ago, the number of nationalities represented ...

I feel vaguely ashamed to write the sentence that follows, but here goes. I have come to feel a sneaking sympathy for Slobodan Milosevic. I know, I know - you don't have to tell me. The man is wicked and cynical, almost beyond belief. He bears the largest share of the responsibility for a series of "small" wars that killed more than 200,000 people and traumatised millions more. If he died tomorrow, I wouldn't care. It was surely a pity for humanity that he was ever born. Yet still, as he is led into the dock at The Hague this ...

A leading Swiss newspaper is to fine journalists for bad spelling or grammar in an attempt to persuade sloppy writers to reform their ways. Le Temps plans to fine journalists nearly three dollars for each mistake - whether it is an incorrectly spelled place name, a badly constructed sentence or missing punctuation. "We are a quality newspaper, and our readers get annoyed when we make mistakes - which we do too often," deputy chief editor Jean-Jacques Roth told BBC News Online. "This isn't about policing the staff, but making clear that spelling is important." The measures are to be ...

Rail authorities in China are to clamp down on passengers with smelly feet. Under new guidelines offenders on long train journeys will be asked to clean their feet and be given new slippers. If they refuse they will be told to put their shoes back on. It's not known if they will face any further punishment. The South China Morning Post quotes a rail official telling the Shanghai Morning Post: "Train passengers often create an odour disturbance when they take off their shoes." The newspaper adds rail attendants "will discretely approach the offending passenger and, in a whisper, ask him ...

The United Arab Emirates has staged its first camel beauty contest. The National Consultative Council in Abu Dhabi organised the contest to show the nation's love for the animal. The pageant offered the equivalent of £19,000 prize money. Categories included best adult, best under-two-year-old and best stud. The Khaleej Times quotes National Consultative Council spokesman Faraj bin Hamouda as saying the camel is the best companion his countrymen have. He also said the country's young people need to value camels more.

Muhammad Ali is Irish, according to new genealogical evidence. Researchers at the County Clare Heritage Centre in the south west of Ireland have unearthed documentation to show one of Ali's great grandfathers came from the county town of Ennis. It seems Abe Grady, born around 160 years ago in County Clare, emigrated to the United States in the 1860s. He settled in Kentucky and later married an African-American woman. Their son also married an African-American and one of the daughters of that union was Ali's mother, named Odessa Lee Grady. She married Cassius Clay, senior, and they settled in Louisville, ...

Name one black man whom you can call an animal without being prosecuted for inciting racial hatred; or one Muslim whom you can call mad without being had up before the religious-intolerance inquisition; and how about one New Yorker whom you can call a cowardly, violent thug without being branded anti-American? Answers: Mike Tyson, Mike Tyson and Mike Tyson. Even before the latest fracas at the press conference with Lennox Lewis, Tyson had been turned into a caricature bogeyman for our times, a pantomime villain who seems to embody the unacceptable. In the ring he has a record for biting ...

Every year millions of people suffer from a mysterious syndrome. Patients gradually lose their ability to regenerate body tissue, their muscles waste and their skin loses elasticity. They become infertile, and most report a reduced sex-drive. Orthopaedic disorders and progressive damage to the sense organs and central nervous system are also common. This syndrome is closely related to disorders such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, cancer and cardiovascular disease. It is called ageing. Until recently, the thought that there might ever be a cure for ageing seemed preposterous. Growing older and more decrepit appeared to be an inevitable and necessary part of ...

Whatever the outcome of the trial of Slobodan Milosevic, which begins on 12 February and may last for several years, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia has already condemned itself. For it is difficult to imagine a more perfect paradigm of injustice than the sequence of events which has led to the proceedings that get underway next week. Let us leave aside for a moment the manner in which Milosevic was brought to The Hague. His transfer there in exchange for the promise of millions of dollars in aid, and in direct defiance of a ruling by the ...

Robert Nozick, the Harvard philosopher who died last month, was more important than you would have guessed from the small ripple his demise generated in the obituary columns. True, he wrote only one book which has any chance of lasting: Anarchy, State and Utopia. But what a book! To me, as to many others, it was a revelation. Here was a work that uses all the latest gadgetry of analytical philosophy, yet, unlike all the other books of analytical philosophy, is not just intelligible, but is actually readable, even enjoyable. There is a swagger about its style and a confidence ...

The obituaries appeared last weekend of one of the most remarkable actors ever to appear on film: Harold Russell. Only a few will remember his name, though many more will remember his performance. He was one of the three returning second world war veterans around whom William Wyler’s epic 1946 film, The Best Years of Our Lives, was based. Fredric March and Dana Andrews, straight from central casting, played a soldier and an airman respectively. Russell played a sailor who had lost both hands in combat and who was returning home to two great uncertainties: would he fit into a ...

Following is an excerpt from a document filed in federal District Court by lawyers for John Walker Lindh to support their motion that he be released from jail pending his trial on charges of conspiring with Al Qaeda to kill Americans: In early November 2001, troops of the State of Afghanistan defending a battle line against Northern Alliance advances in the Takhar region retreated toward Kunduz. Mr. Lindh walked without rest for about two days, covering approximately 50 miles through mountainous terrain before arriving in Kunduz. Upon arrival, he was exhausted, severely dehydrated and in physical and psychological shock that ...

The Japanese space agency may build a traditional tea room aboard its section of the International Space Station. Senior staff at Nasda are looking into the idea but say no final decision has been made. Academics in Tokyo are working on the plans which could help crews relax during tours of duty. The spiritual Japanese tea ceremony is a formal yet relaxing way of making and serving green tea for honoured guests. It usually takes place in a special room with few decorations - a space station version would also have to fit inside a confined area. Japan is in ...

A Pennsylvania supermarket has apologised for advertising a sale on fried chicken in honour of Black History Month. Giant Food Stores customer Lance Sellers brought the advert to the attention of the manager of the store in Union Deposit east of Harrisburg. Paula Diane Harris, president of the Greater Harrisburg Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, said the sign reinforces racist stereotypes. "Not all African-Americans eat fried chicken, greens and chitlins. We like salad, roast beef, low-fat chicken, just like everybody else," she said. The sign read: "In honor of Black History Month, we at ...

Today Congress will be presented with $48 billion in defense spending increases. Rather than rewarding the bloated and inefficient Defense Department and its greedy defense contractors with such an excessive increase, the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) urges Congress to implement the follow cutbacks: --Eliminate the Marine's V-22 Osprey: $26 Billion. Grounded after a series of crashes that killed 30 Marines, the V-22's woes are widely known. Even the Pentagon's head cheerleader for weapons-buying, Acquisitions Chief Edward "Pete" Aldridge, has expressed serious doubts about the V-22 and considered cutting the program, some say. "I personally still have some doubts," he ...