Free Republic

Could Islam one day become the established church of Britain? Might English women adopt the headscarves and enveloping robes of their Asian sisters, as the call to prayer rises and falls across the slate roofs of rainswept industrial cities? The idea is not as impossible, as bizarre or distant as you might think. An astonishing Channel 4 programme last week - The Last White Kids -- showed two English children who live in an entirely Muslim district becoming enthusiastic attenders at the local mosque, wrapping themselves in Islamic draperies and learning the Koran. Amie Gallagher, nine, and her sister Ashlene,...

Conservatives should support the State of Israel on principle, just as the globalist Left seeks to defeat Zionism on principle. The legions of political correctness would usually approve of a state founded as the result of a classic “national liberation” struggle against a classic “colonial oppressor” and ought to endorse a country so profoundly secular in so many of its institutions and so dominated by social-democratic political and cultural thinking. Especially, they should be enthusiastic about a nation whose whole reason for existence is profoundly anti-racist. But they don’t and they aren’t. The Left will readily forgive Irish Republicans for...

Oxford University Press gets the prize for the year's snappiest book title: "God?'' As the subtitle explains, this is "A Debate Between a Christian and an Atheist'' about whether God exists, one of humanity's great questions. The book doesn't assess any old deity but the Bible's unique, all-loving and all-powerful God. This ancient question became quite current with two recent opinion pieces in The New York Times. In one, Tufts University's Daniel Dennett caustically championed those like himself who don't believe in "ghosts or elves or the Easter Bunny – or God.'' Dennett said atheists are "the moral backbone of...

<p>The San Francisco jeans giant announced this week it is closing its remaining five manufacturing plants in North America, with plans to make all their jeans overseas. Hallelujah.</p> <p>Sure, a few thousand more jobs will be lost on our continent, but let's not lose sight of the larger picture. Corporate health is the key to this nation's economic recovery. And what's healthier than cheap labor?</p>

Think the rodents you've seen in movies are scary? Scientists who've analyzed the fossilized remains of an extinct South American relative of guinea pigs say that the ancient bruisers were as large as bison. HIDE THE CHEESE. A bison-size rodent, Phoberomys pattersoni, grazed on aquatic grasses and roamed the riverbanks of ancient Venezuela about 8 million years ago.C.L. Cain/Science Researchers first described Phoberomys pattersoni in 1980 but until recently had only bone fragments and isolated teeth to study. Despite that limitation, scientists suspected that the animals were huge, says Marcelo R. Sánchez-Villagra, a paleontologist at the University of Tübingen in...

NEW YORK -- In the past few years, companies considering offshore outsourcing for some of their IT work have typically looked to India for services. But that is slowly changing, as several relative newcomers, including Nepal, the Dominican Republic and Grenada, are now working to persuade companies from the U.S. and other countries to send their business overseas. At the annual TechXNY/PC Expo show here at the Jacob Javits Convention Center, outsourcing companies from all over the world gathered this week for OutsourceWorld, being held as part of TechXNY, to show what they can do for customers. Bhavana Rana, managing...

<p>Washington -- Despite signs the U.S. economy is gathering a strong head of steam, the number of payroll jobs fell by another 93,000 last month, bringing the total job loss since January to almost 600,000, the Labor Department reported Friday.</p>

Veteran IBM-watchers know how testing it is to read one of the company's financial statements. In the early days of the cold war, Churchill described the Soviet Union as "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma". But compared to earnings releases from companies such as Apple and Sun - who provide terse and lucid declarations - you can be forgiven for thinking of IBM's announcements as a cloud wrapped in a fog containing a temporary heat-haze. However, this much is clear: IBM has shed 15,000 jobs in the past quarter: 1400 from the microelectronics division and a staggering...

HOUSTON – Sen. Sam Brownback (R) of Kansas admits his accent is about as flat as the prairie outside his family farm. That is why, perhaps, he often receives quizzical looks when working on his latest Capitol Hill assignment: speaking Spanish. "I do butcher a number of words," he says. "A Kansas Midwestern accent doesn't always have the easiest time with some of these rapid Spanish phrases." With Congress in recess, Senator Brownback and a spate of GOP leaders are spending free time printing vocabulary on flashcards and muttering in the backseats of cars, conjugating verbs in low mumbles. The...

Last night, at the precise moment that a bomb tore apart the bus en route from the Old City of Jerusalem, PA Prime Minister Abu Mazen was meeting with the heads of the Islamic Jihad -- the same Islamic Jihad that claimed direct responsibility for that very bus bombing. Abu Mazen's spokespeople were open and candid about what took place in the meeting. Abu Mazen was not asking the Islamic Jihad to disarm. Abu Mazen, according to his spokesman, was "asking the Islamic Jihad to join the unified command of the Palestinian Authority." And yet the rationale for dealing with...

According to the news agencies, Idi Amin, a.k.a. "Big Daddy" or, more formally "His Excellency President for Life Field Marshal Al Hadj Doctor Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular" has died on August 15. Amin's name was synonymous with tyranny during his presidency of Uganda, from 1971-79. Amin's career took him from illiterate national boxing champion to chief of staff, "doctor" to military dictator, mass murderer to chairman of the Organization of African...

After pondering the tea leaves, I'm now convinced that the unthinkable can and might happen: Hillary! will be the next president, not in 2008 but in 2004. History may be repeating itself, albeit in a slightly modified form. George W. Bush seems to be repeating the mistakes of of his father, George H.W. Bush. (1) The war in Iraq is devolving into a protracted, ugly guerilla conflict that will see mounting US casualties and declining troop moral over the next six months. Saddam and his sons are alive and seem to be directing the effort which will pick up momentum...

Our elite legal culture says that traditional morality must not form the basis of law. But it is perfectly fine, according to our judicial overlords, if modern immorality forms the basis of law. Similarly, they say traditional religion must not enter the government square. But modern irreligion can parade through it and they raise no objections. How many acts of self-mutilation can the Founding Fathers' body politic endure? The blows come almost daily. The press reported on Wednesday that a federal appeals court is demanding that a 5,280-pound monument to the Ten Commandments be ripped from the rotunda of the...

Vladimir Bukovsky is a former leading Soviet dissident who spent twelve years in Soviet prisons, labor camps and psychiatric hospitals for his fight for freedom. His works include To Build a Castle and Judgement in Moscow. I recently spoke with Mr. Bukovsky about the unfinished Cold War, how Russia aided Saddam, what we should expect in the War on Terror -- and how we can win it.. Q: Welcome Vladimir, it is a great honour to speak with you. Thank you for your time. Let’s begin with the issue of how Putin's Russia aided Saddam before as well as during...

Isaac Yeffet is the former director of global security at El Al Israel Airlines, whose record on security and passenger screening is unsurpassed. At El Al, Yeffet was responsible for formulating the airline's total security system, developing passenger-profiling and -screening programs and training security personnel. Yeffet is also a former senior intelligence director for the Israeli Secret Service, where he oversaw security for all Israeli embassies, consulates and delegations worldwide. Now president of Yeffet Security Consultants Inc., a New York-based firm that specializes in airline security, Yeffet is fighting an uphill battle to convince anybody who will listen, especially members...

And again, and again. This time a teenager strapped bombs to herself and blew herself up in a marketplace killing five shoppers and wounding fifty. So the Palestinian fanatics continue to send their own youth to certain death in order to randomly kill Jews. Their purpose? To destroy the latest "peace process." The point they are making is one that the world should heed: There can be no peace with people who want to kill you. The only peace process that will work is one that dismantles the Palestine Authority and puts an occupation force in the West Bank. The...

Mark Steyn says America has no place in a body whose Human Rights Commission is headed by Colonel Gaddafi Earlier this week, on NBC’s Today Show, Katie Couric, America’s favourite wake-up gal, saluted the fallen heroes of the Columbia: ‘They were an airborne United Nations — men, women, an African-American, an Indian woman, an Israeli....’ Steady on, Katie. They were six Americans plus an Israeli. And, if they had been an ‘airborne United Nations’, for one thing the Zionist usurper wouldn’t have been on board: the UN is divided into regional voting blocs and, Israel being in a region comprised...

Next to me during the preview screening of “The Two Towers” was a teenage boy with prosthetic Hobbit ears. Sitting on my bookshelf is a copy of “The Lord of the Rings,” bookmarked at page 128. It is considerably easier to cross Fangorn Forest than the gulf between Tolkien cultists and those of us who abandoned the quest, put off by its epic struggle between the rousing and the grindingly dull. Hark! The red sun rises: blood has been spilled this night. “Grindingly dull” forsooth! Ring a ding dillo, or whatever. Before you notch an arrow into your mighty quiver,...

What would be the best way to convert lots of Americans to Islam? Forget print, go to film. Put together a handsome documentary with an original musical score that presents Islam's prophet Muhammad in the most glowing manner, indeed, as a model of perfection. Round up Muslim and non-Muslim enthusiasts to endorse the nobility and truth of his message. Splice in vignettes of winsome American Muslims testifying to the justice and beauty of their Islamic faith. Then get the U.S. taxpayer to help pay for it. Show it at prime time on the most high-minded TV network. Oh, and screen...

<p>MUHAMMAD: LEGACY OF A PROPHET: Documentary. Directed and produced by Michael Schwarz. Created and produced by Michael Wolfe and Alexander Kronemer. 9 p.m. Wednesday on KQED.</p> <p>In the past year, he has been called a "man of war" by Jerry Falwell, "a robber" by evangelist Pat Robertson and "demon-possessed" and "the first Muslim terrorist" by other extremist critics. The Islamic prophet Muhammad has become a target in a post-Sept. 11, 2001, world where people are looking for easy answers to explain a religion that is followed by 1.2 billion people. "Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet," which PBS (including KQED-TV) is airing on Wednesday night at 9 p.m., will be a revelation for anyone not familiar with the life of a man who brought monotheism to Mecca 1,400 years ago and changed the course of human history.</p>