Free Republic

PARIS: OPEC could avoid lowering its production quota this year if crude prices remain at their current level, the cartel's president Edmund Daukoru said here Friday. "If prices remain at this level, I don't see a cut," he said during an oil conference. Asked what the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries could do to prevent prices from shooting up over $70 a barrel, he said: "We do know how to do best and that is to build new production capacities."

Fresh off a trademark skirmish with a local web site, Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) is taking on a bigger target: Al Gore and his Internet television network, Current TV. A suit filed in U.S. District Court in Minnesota claims that Current TV LLC, based in San Francisco, is interfering with the trademark of MPR's mold-breaking music station the Current -- broadcast locally on 89.3 and 88.7 FM, but also transmitted via the internet -- causing confusion among potential consumers. MPR estimates that 37 percent of the Current's listeners are from outside Minnesota, including many abroad, said communications director Jennifer Syltie...

TAORMINA, Italy, Feb. 10, 2006 – The challenges facing NATO today bring to mind words spoken by Dwight D. Eisenhower in his last televised address to the nation as president 45 years ago, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said here today. The secretary took part in two days of informal meetings with his NATO counterparts, as well as meetings of the NATO-Russia Council and the alliance's Mediterranean Dialogue countries. In his farewell address on Jan. 17, 1961, Eisenhower spoke of the threat posed by the Soviet Union. "As we think about the important role that NATO can play in the...

Six months into Al Gore's experiment to turn twentysomethings into TV news junkies, the former vice president's San Francisco-based cable channel -- Current TV -- appears to have hit a snag. Prospective viewers, even those who've heard of the youth-oriented news and information channel, are having a hard time finding it on cable systems, either because cable providers aren't carrying Current or because they've relegated it to more expensive -- and therefore less purchased -- cable packages. In San Francisco, home to Current's headquarters in refurbished digs across King Street from SBC Park, Comcast offers Current on its Channel 125....

Current Bird Flu Outbreak In Turkey Started In Mid-November, Not Mid-December Article Date: 14 Jan 2006 - 4am (UK) According to the World Health Organisation, the current outbreak of avian flu in Turkey started at least three weeks before it was officially reported. So far there have been 18 confirmed human cases, of which 3 have died (all siblings). Turkish officials had said the outbreak started in the middle of December. However, according to Huseyin Sungur, a veterinary surgeon who works for the Turkish government, the outbreak was affecting birds at least three weeks before. Had this delay not happened...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 14, 2005 – Elementary school students at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Va., got a combined current events and history lesson Dec. 13 from the wife of Vice President Dick Cheney. Lynne Cheney spoke to students at W.W. Burrows Elementary School about the election taking place in Iraq on Dec. 15. "What's happening is that the people in Iraq are going to vote for, what is in essence, their Congress, their national assembly," Cheney said. "It's a turning point, one of those things that when you're a grown-up, you will look in your history books and you will see...

Asking forgiveness in advance for this droll vanity. Every time I hear John Kerry talk about the atrocities and tortures in Vietnam (now Iraq), I wonder about electrocuting someone with a telephone. Can this really be done? Or is Kerry inventing again?

Sept. 28, 2005— A supernova blast 41,000 years ago started a deadly chain of events that led to the extinction of mammoths and other animals in North America, according to two scientists. If their supernova theory gains acceptance, it could explain why dozens of species on the continent became extinct 13,000 years ago. Mammoths and mastodons, both relatives of today's elephants, mysteriously died out then, as did giant ground sloths, a large-horned bison, a huge species of armadillo, saber-toothed cats, and many other animals and plants. Richard Firestone, a nuclear scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National...

Dr. Paul Ash Insist on Parental Shackels 10/20/05 | Christopher T. Sims Posted on 10/20/2005 10:42:29 AM PDT by Voxster The following is an email I sent to Dr. Paul Ash this dealing with his Lexington, MA schoolboard refusing notification to parents of elementary school children as they teach “tolerance” for homosexuality. I am deeply concerned about this issue- ( I’ve found the old “role reversal” technique to sometimes be effective.) Mr. Ash, I've recently been informed of the "battle" taking place in your school district over which you preside. It must be difficult fielding the calls, requests for interviews,...

WASHINGTON (Army News Service, October 12, 2005) – “Our two armies stand shoulder-to-shoulder in the war on terror.” This was one of the messages given by one of the United Kingdom’s most senior military officers in a presentation titled “A Coalition Perspective on Current Operations.” Gen. Sir Richard Dannatt, the commander-in-chief, Land Command, British Army, presented the first of four 2005 Kermit Roosevelt Lectures in the United States to a large Pentagon audience Oct. 11. His lecture tour continues with talks at the U.S. Military Academy, the U.S. Army War College and the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College....

In the 1990s, liberal icon Thomas Frank’s journal, The Baffler, released a collection called Commodify Your Dissent. This compiled some of the strongest pieces from the crankily idiosyncratic quarterly, all revolving around the theme that there are pop-culture hucksters queuing up to profit from the well-worn paths of youth deviance. Considered en masse, the collection held that the youth would be better off creating subcultures that couldn’t be defined in a pat way, in order to escape corporate shaping of their desires. Times have changed. Thomas Frank has become part of the liberal establishment he once decried. Meanwhile, that liberal...

Ever have a teacher who tried way too hard to be "down" with the kids? Who never knew that he was using out-of-date lingo or patronizing the intelligence of the people he wanted to befriend? If you have a masochistic desire to spend hours with that kind of person, you could tune into Current TV, a new cable channel that debuted in 20 million homes nationwide Monday. (In South Florida, Current is available on DirecTV.) For a channel that is supposed to be aimed squarely at 18- to 34-year-olds and reflect their views and concerns, Current (whose chairman is Al...

Invasion of the Pod PeopleCurrent TV is youth culture as imagined by Al Gore.Like the memory of Al Gore's presence on the political scene, his just-launched new cable venture, Current TV, feels strangely stranded in the '90s. It's as '90s as a Tracy Chapman ballad, as '90s as the debate over political correctness, as '90s as an asymmetrical bob. Watching the network for hours at a stretch, as I've been doing the past few days to research this piece, you start to get an odd, airless feeling. To quote a song that's being advertised in endless rotation on the network...

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. - Former Vice President Al Gore, co-founder of a new television channel launching next month, said he's shunning politics - and so is his media venture. "I consider myself a recovering politician. I'm on step nine," Gore told a meeting Monday of the Television Critics Association. The 2004 Democratic candidate for president was asked if he was concerned the 24-hour news and information channel, called Current, would be perceived as having a political slant. It's scheduled to launch Aug. 1. "I think the reality of the network will speak for itself. It's not intended to be partisan...

Nikola Tesla: Unsung genius or raving loony? The history of technology is populated with a marvellous cast of characters. On the one hand you have the colourful, hard-working inventors like Thomas Edison who slaved away morning, noon and night to produce many of the wonders that we take for granted such as the incandescent light, the telephone, and the garlic peeler. On the other you have the moonbat crazies who show up at the patent office with a cardboard box stuffed with wires and a torch battery claiming that they've made contact with John Kerry's charisma. And then there is...

If members of this present generation had been present at the writing and signing of the Declaration of Independence, one cannot help but wonder how they would have behaved and what they would have said or written. “Liberals” would most certainly have voiced not just concerns, but opposition to the “Declaration” because it might lead to war. They would have taken issue with the enumeration of grievances, because their enumeration would likely offend the “crown.” In fact, a declaration of independence would most certainly lead to heavy-handed retaliation, destruction of property, and killing of innocent civilians to put the down...

When Al Gore said he was out to take on Fox News with his new cable network, we thought for sure he'd be lining up the likes of Teddy Kennedy, Howard Dean, John Kerry and their ilk for 24 hours of non-stop "Hate America First" programming. No so fast. Broadcasting & Cable magazine reports that after buying the small cable news channel Newsworld International, Gore may be taking a completely different tack. Gore has hired David A. Neuman to be president of programming for his network, now called the Current Network. The magazine says Neuman has laid out a less...

This week I watched a CNN interview on television. I didn’t catch the names, but we had a host, someone for the Patriot act, and someone against. The host betrayed their position by their facial expressions and body language alone. When the person against the Patriot Act made a comment, he smiled and nodded his head. When the person for spoke, he made a face like he had just gotten a whiff of a restaurant’s dumpster, and waved his hand like he was trying to fan away the flies. So obviously he was against renewing the provisions in the Patriot...

Lately, I’ve been receiving quite a few messages from liberals who accuse me of over generalizing them as socialists, traitors, and any number of other things. This isn’t precisely what I believe, so I’ve been motivated to an attempt at clarifying the issue. When I write about liberal Democrats, it’s usually safe to assume I’m not referring to all of them. Generally, the proletariat class of the Democratic Party genuinely believes in socialism and harbors no malicious intent. What I am referring to, rather, is the elitist class that powers the Democrats’ movement in America. To gain the respect of...

I find it hard to say this as a conservative, but the current Republican position on judicial filibusters is not in the long-term best interest of either the party, or our nation. And, unfortunately, our conservative leaders and pundits are demonstrating an almost incomprehensible myopia by advocating a procedural change that would prevent such a practice in the future. With those sentiments out of the closet, I can foresee e-mail messages flooding my inbox in much the same way as Obi-Wan Kenobi felt a shift in the force when Princess Leia’s home planet of Alderaan was destroyed by the Empire’s...