Free Republic

Linguist and political activist Noam Chomsky criticizes right-wing media outlets, which he describes as delivering a message of paranoia and economic populism comparable to Nazis during the Weimar Republic. "There were people with real grievances," says Chomsky. "The Nazis gave them an answer."

President Bush did not come to this oasis city of beige hills, lush green plantations and ancient ruins on his visit to the Palestinian Authority on Thursday. Given the apparent antipathy of the local population, it is probably just as well. “It would be much better if he didn’t visit our land at all,” said Bashar Fadl Ahmed, 34, an orthopedic surgeon who was shopping in the town square early this week, echoing sentiments expressed by many here. “He won’t achieve anything. He is trying to do something in his last year, but where was he before?” Jericho, a relatively...

Win or Lose, Kerry Voters Are Smarter Than Bush Voters NEW YORK--Democratic hand wringing is surrealy out of hand. No one is criticizing the morally incongruous Kerry for running against a war he voted for while insisting that he would have voted for it again. Party leaders have yet to consider that NAFTA, signed into law under Clinton, may have cost them high-unemployment Ohio. No, Indiana Senator Evan Bayh, darling of the "centrist" Democratic Leadership Council, blames something else: the perception "in the heartland" that Democrats are a "bicoastal cultural elite that is condescending at best and contemptuous at worst...

A leading philosopher, who has been compared to Bertrand Russell and Jean-Paul Sartre and praised by Noam Chomsky, says Palestinian "terrorism" is a moral response to Israeli ethnic cleansing. Ted Honderich, a professor of philosophy at University College London, plans to take the same message to the Edinburgh International Book Fair on Thursday, where tickets to hear his speech have already sold out. The philosopher plans to begin his talk at the Opus Theatre with a close look at definitions of terrorism, particularly when it applies to Palestine and the expansion of Israel outside its 1967 borders. He concludes it...

HARD ROCK VS. CHOMSKY: Here's a delightful interview with rock star, John Schaffer, of the heavy metal group, Iced Earth, by a young Chomsky-reading Canadian leftist for the online magazine, Brave Words and Brass Knuckles. Money quote: BW&BK: "This next question is controversial so I'm letting you know before we proceed. Some political analysts have articulated the view that what happened on September 11 was justified due to America's presence in the Middle East, specifically Saudi Arabia. Some political analysts view it as retaliation for what the US has done in the Middle East in the past. As a Canadian,...