Free Republic

Suppose that you noticed the following worldwide trend: In country after country, tyrants were being ousted and replaced by armed gangs. You would hardly consider that a victory for human liberty. After all, a gang's power to violate individual rights is no more constrained than a tyrant's. Suppose, then, that you noticed editorialists and columnists in the West welcoming this global shift in governance as a gain for freedom. You might wonder why. Unfortunately, these scenarios are not hypothetical. Around the world, unchecked power is being transferred from the one or the few to the many, while Western commentators are...

Iraq will temporarily likely be ruled directly by the US Army. However I don't expect any form of Democracy or Republic to ever be feasible there. When America hands over control to whoever there will be the problems of Iranian back Shia fundamentalist secession movements to the East PKK Kurdish nationalist/marxist( sounds like a contradion I know) in the North. An independent likely marxist Kurdish state would alienate the Turks forever. Saudi Wahabbi subversion of the local Sunnis combined with a resurgent radical Arab nationalist( and if the new regime is Democratic that will be the two party system, afthe...

Federal agents raided a Boston-area computer software firm looking for evidence that the company, which does business with key government agencies including the FBI, the U.S. House of Representatives, the Federal Aviation Administration, the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Naval Air Systems, has links to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist network. Ptech CEO Oussama Ziade The Quincy, Mass., firm, Ptech, makes software and is allegedly secretly owned by Qassin al-Kadi, one of 12 Saudi businessmen accused of funneling millions of dollars to al-Qaida. U.S. government investigators told ABC News there are fears al-Qaida may have had access to some...

December 3, 2002 Time is the ultimate resource in every kind of combat. When you have enough of it, time is a healer. When it's run out, time is an executioner. The accomplished fighter strives to maximize his employment of time and deny it to his opponent. He doesn't strike-and-observe; he keeps striking until his opponent is definitely defeated, rather than pausing to assess the impact of his previous blow. If you ever get a chance to observe an expert at hand-to-hand combat in action, you'll see what I mean. Currently, the American Left is on the ropes. In the...

ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey's powerful military, suspicious of the Islamist roots of a party that swept to power in Sunday's elections, said on Friday it was committed to protecting the country from the dangers of radical Islam. The military, among the most trusted institutions in Turkey, views itself as the guardian of the secular principles of the state set up by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in 1923. The army has carried out three coups since 1960 and as recently as 1997 it led a campaign to ease from power a government led by Islamists. "The Turkish Armed Forces are as determined...

LONDON (AP) - The goofy plasticine man and his long-suffering canine sidekick are back. After a break of six years, Wallace and Gromit have returned in a series of 10 short animated films, entitled "Cracking Contraptions," the first of which the British Broadcasting Corp. said could be downloaded from its Web site Tuesday. The remaining shorts in the series will be broadcast on BBC television later in the year, the BBC said. They are the first original Wallace and Gromit productions since "A Close Shave" in 1995. "Wallace and Gromit are like family to me," said creator Nick Park, who...

Mobile/PDA | Print Edition | Text Version VOLUME 38 ISSUE 32 4 SEPTEMBER 2002 Front Page News   Previous Issue Archives ST. LOUIS PARK, MN—After months of procrastination, Sara Lister, 13, decided Monday that it is "finally time" to sit her parents down so they can discuss sex with her. Above: Sara Lister. "I really can't put it off any longer," Lister said. "It's time my parents and I had 'The Talk.' I know it seems kind of soon to be doing it when they're only in their late 30s, but I'd rather get it over with now than...

August 28, 2002 Few wars are free of a last surge by the eventual loser. In such a surge, he appears to reverse the current of the conflict, throw the eventual winner on the defensive, and come near to victory. After hostilities have ceased, the winner usually claims that the outcome was never in doubt, but this retroactive optimism is seldom substantiated by the facts. Several ideological wars of our time appear headed for happy endings, and perhaps quite soon. With voucher programs and homeschooling showing such superior results, the educrats are everywhere on the defensive, even in locales that...

A brilliant friend of mine, Mark LaRochelle of the National Journalism Center, once said, "The Left lives in a world entirely without second-order effects." I'm used to incisive, illuminating statements from Mark. He makes quite a lot of them. And, as a fellow amateur of economics, I could both understand what he said and see the justice of it. Left-wingers always seem to ignore the way the laws and programs they propose will change people's incentives, and therefore, change their subsequent behavior. Any time you hear a leftist propose raising the tax rates to increase government revenue, you see it...

Democracy: The God That Failed by Hans-Hermann Hoppe (Transaction Publishers, 2001, Xxiv + 304 pages) Classical liberals view the state with suspicion; indeed some, of whom Murray Rothbard and Hans Hoppe are examples, wish to do away with it altogether. However convincing the arguments for private-property anarchism, we now live in a world of states. Given this fact, what kind of state is best? If, as Albert Jay Nock famously said, the state is our enemy, which regime threatens us least? Many have looked to democracy, but Professor Hoppe dissents. In his view, democracy has led to the increase in...

Folks, you must, must, must read the Roll Call story about how House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt wants to worsen the market crisis, and talk down the economy. You must listen the audio link below to hear how Gephardt prays for more economic bad news so the Democratic Party can win in November. Roll Call reports that he thinks he could pick up as many as 40 House seats if these scandals "can be kept on the political radar screen until November." They're going to make millions of Americans suffer, lose their jobs, and watch their life savings wither so...

Congress has no business meddling in the private sector. Democrat Senator Paul Sarbanes said that on Meet the Press, and Alan Greenspan echoed it again on Tuesday. Regardless, Congress is still going to do it. And do you know why? I hate to say this, folks, but there's a demand for it by the American people. The American people have been buffaloed for the last fifty years. The American people think the government should make business operate right. The American people are demanding that government do something, or enough of them are, to the extent that the Senate is voting...

TEL AVIV, ISRAEL— His nerves shot, Tel Aviv bus driver Yehuda Ben-Zvi said Monday that he wants a "really big" raise. "I'm sorry, but 20 lousy sheqels an hour to drive a bus in this country just doesn't cut it," said Ben-Zvi, 44, nervously scanning each person boarding his bus. "If they don't up me to at least 100 [sheqels] an hour, I'm outta here." Added Ben-Zvi: "Shit, it's not like I've got some deep commitment to providing public transportation. People can walk."

The left-leaning European Union commissioned a study on the effects of globalization and the results are in. But I'll bet you won't hear those results from the EU, or from the assorted radicals, socialists, and kook-pots that comprise the anti-globalization movement. The study found that with the lifting of trade barriers and lower tariffs - think lower taxes when you hear that - the world has experienced economic growth. While critics of globalization complain that poor nations are being hurt, the opposite has occurred. The report found, "The proportion of the world's population in absolute poverty is now lower than...

My friends, remember this: the federal government continues to waste tens of billions of dollars each and every year. The federal government continues to pollute the Potomac River. Federal employees started the most devastating forest fires ever in New Mexico, Colorado and Arizona. One of those idiots was a part-timer whose job was putting out fires, so to make work for himself, he started one. Jeez! Yet nobody investigates the federal government! These people lose tens of trillions of dollars. They lie to the American people about the phony Social Security trust fund and the financial condition of Medicare and...

What distinguishes our country from the majority of the world? It's not complicated. We celebrate and cherish liberty and freedom, and that includes free speech and free enterprise. In order for liberty to thrive, there have to be certain rules by which we all play, and that's what the Constitution does. It lays out where the power of the federal government begins and ends. Now folks, it's time we get something straight in this country. When I see the United States Senate vote 97 to zero on a so-called corporate reform bill that has, as its real purpose, the further...

FBI gave up infiltrating Al Quaida 'because food was too bad', agency claims Undercover agents in Al Quaida could not endure exotic diet WASHINGTON - New reports seen by herdofsheep reveal that FBI agents who were infiltrating Al Quaida cells in the US before 9/11 gave up because the food, consisting of a diet of curry and tropical fruits, was "too goddamned bad" and was demoralising field agents. "They were like - wow, how long do we have to eat shit like this for, man," said one source, close to mission control within the FBI. Reports from agents, who passed...

MARS, Wednesday: Martian beauty queen Xzyryryyl Sclblcb, has lashed out angrily at what she described as the deep and persistent prejudice that mars the Miss Universe Competition. Speaking at an intergalactic press conference, Miss Sclblcbl criticised the anthropocentric focus of the popular beauty pageant. “All of the contestants have consistently been human. The judges are human. And quite frankly, I think it’s outrageously arrogant to claim that a few Earthling women from different geopolitical areas of that pissy planet represent the entire Universe.” Since the outburst, glamour queens from several other planets have also spoken out in support of her...

SYDNEY, Tuesday: A corporate affairs manager from a leading Sydney company yesterday delivered a moving presentation at his mother’s funeral, utilising the many features of Microsoft’s PowerPoint software."On message": mourners were impressed by the eulogy’s sensitive use of concise summary data in an easy-to-absorb format" Before a packed congregation of relatives and friends, the senior executive paid tribute to his mother through a series of bullet points, graphic charts and bold-font mission statements. He spoke lovingly of his mother’s varied passions and interests, represented clearly by an animated pie graph. The eulogy also included estimated projections showing where his mother...

News of interest rate cuts used to send shockwaves through the financial community. After January's rate reduction, brokerage houses and investment groups threw a ticker tape parade down Wall Street, complete with clowns and strippers. But after eleven cuts in the past twelve months, the slow-acting efforts to bolster the economy have very little news value, especially quarter point shifts like the one we saw today. None of it looked like news until the final numbers were clear. The Federal Reserve lowered the already negligible short-term prime interest rate to below zero for the first time in the central...