Free Republic

WASHINGTON - John F. Kennedy's personal pollster came to Canada with an assumed name, the blessing of the president and a secret objective: help defeat the Diefenbaker Tories. Canadians might be surprised by the extent to which political events in this country were shaped by the charismatic U.S. leader, famously assassinated 50 years ago this week. Helping to elect the Pearson Liberals, for starters, who would go on to introduce a new national flag, expand the welfare state and create medicare, the old-age pension system, and the royal commission on bilingualism. The Liberals got tactical support, with state-of-the-art polling. Diplomatic...

...is an expert and respected field Agent with a broad and deep knowledge of the colonies. I, on the other hand, have made my way from Ireland with just a little quantitative training—I placed several hundred rungs below the Senior Wrangler during my time at Cambridge—and I am presently employed as a junior analytical scribe at ye olde National Security Administration. Sorry, I mean the Royal Security Administration. And I should emphasize again that I know nothing of current affairs in the colonies. However, our current Eighteenth Century beta of PRISM has been used to collect and analyze information on...

KITCHENER — A Kitchener father is upset that police arrested him at his children’s’ school Wednesday, hauled him down to the station and strip-searched him, all because his four-year-old daughter drew a picture of a gun at school. “I’m picking up my kids and then, next thing you know, I’m locked up,” Jessie Sansone, 26, said Thursday. “I was in shock. This is completely insane. My daughter drew a gun on a piece of paper at school.” The school principal, police and child welfare officials, however, all stand by their actions. They said they had to investigate to determine whether...

Twelve times the guy ran for President - twelve times he failed. Maybe they could dig him up! Just kidding. An Eisenhower would be fine with me, however. Isn't there anybody out there? Anybody?

Kosovo's prime minister is the head of a "mafia-like" Albanian group responsible for smuggling weapons, drugs and human organs through eastern Europe, according to a Council of Europe inquiry report on organised crime. Hashim Thaçi is identified as "the boss" of a network that began operating criminal rackets in the run-up to the 1999 Kosovo war, and has held powerful sway over the country's government since. The report of the two-year inquiry, which cites FBI and other intelligence sources, has been obtained by the Guardian. It names Thaçi as having over the last decade exerted "violent control" over the heroin...

"....These are the few contenders among the many pretenders that I personally consider to have real stories in REE space: •Avalon Rare Metals (AVL.T) •Dacha Strategic Metals (DSM.V) •Hudson Resources (HUD.V) •Great Western Minerals (GWG.V) •Matamec Exploration (MAT.V) •Medallion Resources (MDL.V) •Molycorp (MCP.NYSE) •Neo-Material Technologies (NEM.T) •Quest Rare Minerals (QRM.V) •Rare Element Resources (REE.AMEX) •Rare Earth Metals (RA.V) •Stans Energy (RUU.V) •Tasman Metals (TSM.V) •UCore Uranium (UCU.V) What I have noticed over the past month is when MCP goes green on my screen, the “Cream of the Crop” (AVL, QRM, REE, and TSM) is mean and green, too. The same...

Canada’s spy agency is pulling out all the stops to block the release of decades-old intelligence on socialist icon Tommy Douglas. In an affidavit filed in Federal Court, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service argues that full disclosure of the file on Douglas could endanger the lives of confidential informants and jeopardize the agency’s ability to conduct secret surveillance. Indeed, CSIS suggests its very raison d’être would be imperilled by releasing the information compiled on the one-time Saskatchewan premier and federal NDP leader, widely revered as the father of medicare....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzJSyjCtcjQ

"...Idolatry attracts both wings of American politics: the right tends to confound the United States of America with the City of God, while the left makes an object of worship out of its utopian imagination..."

....Dalio: Let's call it a "D-process," which is different than a recession, and the only reason that people really don't understand this process is because it happens rarely. Everybody should, at this point, try to understand the depression process by reading about the Great Depression or the Latin American debt crisis or the Japanese experience so that it becomes part of their frame of reference. Most people didn't live through any of those experiences, and what they have gotten used to is the recession dynamic, and so they are quick to presume the recession dynamic. It is very clear to...

A federal Green party candidate in Vancouver-Kingsway is standing behind a controversial editorial he wrote more than four years ago in which he describes the falling of the World Trade Center twin towers as "beautiful.".... "When I saw the first tower cascade down into that enormous plume of dust and paper, there was a little voice inside me that said, 'Yeah!' When the second tower came down the same way, that little voice said, 'Beautiful!' When the visage of the Pentagon appeared on the TV with a gaping and smoking hole in its side, that little voice had nearly taken...

Monday We are out the back of the sprawling presidential compound, having a relaxed afternoon braai. With three US dollars’ worth of Zimbabwe currency on the fire, the flames have been burning for four hours. And the British say I have harmed this country? “Why do my people no longer love me?” I demand. “What more can I give to them?” I am attended by a team of recent graduates from the University of Zimbabwe. They were given the choice of working for me or going to jail. They are all extremely loyal....

....So here I am. And let me note that on Feb. 7, 2003, I wrote in this space: "Here's my plan for post-war Iraq: Saddam Hussein's head on a post, and a 'Good Luck' card for the populace." I even cited a long-forgotten Texas governor who ran for president in 2000 saying nation-building is not a suitable U.S. foreign-policy goal. It's not much help that if I were you I wouldn't start from here, since my time machine is broken and so is yours. But possibly I still give better advice than those hawks who, in 2003, imagined Iraq was...

Wars are won by destroying the enemy's will to fight. A nation is never really beaten until it sells its women. The French sold their women to the German occupiers in 1940, and the Germans and Japanese sold their women to the Americans after World War II. The women of the former Soviet Union are still selling themselves in huge numbers. Hundreds of thousands of female Ukrainian "tourists" entered Germany after the then-foreign minister Joschka Fischer loosened visa standards in 1999. That helps explain why Ukraine has the world's fastest rate of population decline. On a smaller scale, trafficking in...

....It is almost surreal now to read about the elemental hatred of Jews in the Spanish Inquisition, 19th-century Russian pogroms or the Holocaust. Yet here we are revisiting the old horrors of the savage past. Beheading? As we saw with Nick Berg and Daniel Pearl, our Neanderthal enemies in the Middle East have resurrected that ancient barbarity — and married it with 21st-century technology to beam the resulting gore instantaneously onto our computer screens. Xerxes and Attila, who stuck their victims' heads on poles for public display, would've been thrilled by such a gruesome show. Who would have thought centuries...

I've obtained a significant section of the NDP draft policy document. I'm told that it was available on the NDP website briefly before it was pulled. As mentioned, this document was largely assembled by local NDP EDAs. A lot of the document is troubling. As we know, the NDP is no supporter of the Canadian mission in Afghanistan. In fact, in one of its policy proposals, the Peterborough NDP EDA doesn't mince words: "BE IT RESOLVED that Canada remove its troops from Afghanistan." -- Peterborough NDP Other Electoral District Associations voice their opposition to the Afghan mission with a bit...

We all know the basic alternatives that form the familiar "spectrum" of American politics and culture. If a young person is turned off by religion or attracted by the achievements of science, and he wants to embrace a secular outlook, he is told--by both sides of the debate--that his place is with the collectivists and social subjectivists of the left. On the other hand, if he admires the free market and wants America to have a bold, independent national defense, then he is told--again, by both sides--that his natural home is with the religious right. But what if all of...

Breakpoint: What went Wrong By George Friedman On May 23, we published a Geopolitical Intelligence Report titled "Break Point." In that article, we wrote: "It is now nearly Memorial Day. The violence in Iraq will surge, but by July 4 there either will be clear signs that the Sunnis are controlling the insurgency -- or there won't. If they are controlling the insurgency, the United States will begin withdrawing troops in earnest. If they are not controlling the insurgency, the United States will begin withdrawing troops in earnest. Regardless of whether the [political settlement] holds, the U.S. war in Iraq...

The increasing potency of marijuana -- spurred on by hydroponic growers in places such as B.C. -- means the world should no longer consider pot a "soft" drug, according to a report released Monday by the United Nations. "Today, the harmful characteristics of cannabis are no longer that different from those of other plant-based drugs such as cocaine and heroin," Antonio Maria Costa, director of the UN's Office on Drugs and Crimes, said in a written statement. Each year, the UN produces a World Drug Report that surveys drug production and consumption worldwide. While this year's report covers everything from...

Stephen Harper's conservatism is new to Canadian politics. It is really a neo-conservative, social conservative government which, unlike any other Tory government, has peculiar rules it plays by. Above anything else, Harper believes that the state is inherently evil and cannot be trusted with anything. In Harper's Tory land, the state has no role to play in climate change or controlling long guns, and has no right to intervene in the economy. He loathes Keynesian economics, and believes the ideal state is by definition a non-socialist society. To Harper, socialism is Friedrich Hayek's "Road To Serfdom" totalitarianism. Any government action...