Free Republic

When a new book came out, the great C. S. Lewis would first seek out an old one on the same subject. That’s good advice for embattled Americans. In fact, two old books address what is happening today with rare perception. Regent College Publishing has reissued The Green Stick and The Infernal Grove, the two volumes of Chronicles of Wasted Time by Malcolm Muggeridge. Paul Johnson called it one of the great autobiographies of our time, which might be an understatement. Wisdom and wit leap off the pages, and there’s even a news hook: Russia has invaded Ukraine and that...

The Strand Bookstore, a New York City icon home to 2.5 million books and 92 years of storefront history, was commemorated by the city and chosen as a historic city landmark this week. Nancy Bass Wyden, the store's third-generation owner, isn't taking it as a compliment. "Some people have congratulated me and I said, 'No, this is no congratulations. This is a punishment,' " Bass Wyden tells NPR's Scott Simon. Bass Wyden feels that the designation is counterproductive. "We don't need the city to come in and just put red tape and bureaucracy and take control over decision-makings of the...

Russia reacted seriously to yesterday's Knesset bill to recognize the Ukrainian genocide in the 1930's advanced by Druze MK Akram Hasson (Kulanu) and marking the Holodomor ("to kill by starvation"), the mass famine in Ukraine between 1932-3 in which millions were killed. The Russian Embassy reacted by saying the bill "sadly distorts history". Meanwhile, the Russians are applying additional pressure on the media. Yesterday, Russian Deputy Ambassador to Israel Leonid Frolov spoke with Galei Tzahal's Michael Hauser Tov. Frolov was asked whether this law intensifies sensitivities while security coordination between Jerusalem and Moscow regarding Iran and Syria is at its...

The Government of Cojedes state took over as proimised the British owned cattle ranch Hato El Charcote. The Goveror stil claims they are respecing private property, but "it is not absolute" whatever that means. You can read more about it here, here and here. The people at the bottom are not part of the intervention, they are the invaders of the ranch, who are protesting because the Government apparently is not going to give them the intervened land, but it will be handed over to 28 cooperatives of farmers.

I remember our daily food always coming from a long, long line at the end of which was a loaf of bread, a liter of milk, a stick of butter, a bottle of murky cooking oil, or a kilo of bones with traces of meat and fat on them. [...] If we wanted to eat, we learned at a very young age that we had to stand in long lines every day, often in bitter cold at 4 a.m. in hopes that the store would not run out of bread or milk by the time we made it to the...

MANAGUA, Nicaragua — The classical definition of a hero is a person who puts himself at risk for the benefit of others. That certainly describes Adolfo Calero, who died June 2 at the age of 80. The obituaries of this remarkable man hardly do justice to his courage, perseverance, faithfulness and humility. Here is the Adolfo Calero I knew, admired and called a friend for nearly three decades: A graduate of Holy Cross High School in New Orleans and the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind., he was a devout Roman Catholic and educated to be a...

China’s Worst Self-Inflicted Environmental Disaster: The Campaign to Wipe Out the Common Sparrow Back in the 1950s, China was going through its Great Leap Forward, an effort to transform China from a largely agrarian nation to a thriving industrial Marxist powerhouse. These sweeping (and often brutal) reforms, touched virtually every facet of Chinese life — and as one particular episode in China's history points out, the animal kingdom was also far from immune. In 1958, China ordered the extermination of several pests, including sparrows — an ill-fated campaign that eventually led to catastrophe. The Four Pests campaign Chinese leader Mao...

In previous articles I brought up how liberals want the state to control the worlds food supply. Liberals believe that the private sector should not have a say in growing distributing and selling food. The state along with one world communist government should only have a say in those matters. Of course any student of history can see where that has lead, from food shortages and blights in the middle ages thanks to feudalism to hundreds of millions dying under communist made food shortages in Ukraine and China. Farms and grocery stores are not the only things liberals want to...

By these days Ukrainians are remembering the deliberate extermination decided by J.STALIN of millions of ukrainians(about 6 millions...)by hunger. By those DANGEROUS times where PUTIN ,still grabing the power in Russia and praising STALIN legacy,is threatening UKRAINE i am wondering if OBA-MAO knows something about that history and widely about general History. As thIS POTUS, who pretends to change USA and ...the world ,seems to consider todays Russia as a friendly and reliable country UKRAINE still considers RUSSIA as a threat

...44 percent of HIV patients being treated by the National Health Service were not residents of the United Kingdom but were from southern Africa. In essence, a huge number of AIDS patients in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Swaziland and Lesotho have decided to outsource their health care needs to British taxpayers. Similar trends will manifest themselves here in nothing flat... ...governmentalization of health care is the fastest way to a permanent left-of-center political culture -- one in which elections are always fought on the left's issues and on the left's terms and in which "conservative" parties no longer talk...

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI prayed for the victims of the 1932-33 "Great Famine" that left millions dead in Ukraine and other parts of the Soviet Union. In an apparent reference to the Soviet policies of collectivization and food confiscation that provoked the famine, the pope condemned ideologically based governmental actions that violate basic human rights. He made the remarks at a noon blessing at the Vatican Nov. 23, at a time when many Ukrainians were commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Holodomor, or "death by hunger," the name given to the famine that occurred in the Soviet...

The first time Bono and Madonna got together to save Africa, the unintended consequence was the death of perhaps as many as 100,000 people. That's aid expert David Rieff's conclusion in the July 2005 issue of the resolutely liberal American Prospect magazine regarding the end result of Live Aid in 1985. Billed as "The Greatest Show on Earth," Live Aid was a multivenue rock concert held on July 13, l985, in London and Philadelphia in order to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia. With an estimated 1.5 billion viewers watching the live broadcast in 100 countries, the event reportedly...

"We do not have anything to communicate to the British Embassy. The only territories deemed a part of such country are its diplomatic premises and consulates" - Alexis Ortiz, Solicitor General