Free Republic

PETER HITCHENS: How China has created a new slave empire in AfricaBy PETER HITCHENS Last updated at 12:00 PM on 28th September 2008 I think I am probably going to die any minute now. An inflamed, deceived mob of about 50 desperate men are crowding round the car, some trying to turn it over, others beating at it with large rocks, all yelling insults and curses. They have just started to smash the windows. Next, they will pull us out and, well, let's not think about that ... I am trying not to meet their eyes, but they are staring...

Russia’s Restless Muslim Republics By Uwe Klussmann Although Russia is celebrating the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, it still has its own problems in the region as its Muslim republics are drifting toward a partisan war. Last Monday, an eerie funeral procession passed through the center of Nazran in the Russian republic of Ingushetia. Hundreds of people silently crowded around the coffin of Magomed Yevloyev. The 37-year-old lawyer and founder of a Web site ( www.ingushetiya.ru) that was critical of the government was killed in police custody. The authorities said that he was shot in a police car “inadvertently”...

Perhaps it is time they went back to this again, more accurate.

Barack Obama is EMBARRASSED of America because..

America has become an empire. Everyone says so. This is a surprise to most Americans, since few imagined that they were building such a thing. But, as historians such as Walter Nugent and Robert Kagan have recently taught us, Americans have been at this imperialist expansionism for quite some time — really since the beginning of the republic. How else to explain that the United States has gone from a handful of agrarian colonies to a world-spanning colossus in the space of only a few centuries? As you read this, American military might is deployed across the planet. The U.S....

America’s longing for an empire has a long history NEARLY 50 years ago, when William Appleman Williams, one of the 20th century’s most important historians of diplomacy, drew attention to America’s persistent search for an empire, he was denounced for being pro-communist. To challenge deeply held beliefs about American innocence was shocking enough. To contradict cold-war propaganda was worse. Recently, however, such ideological conformism has been disappearing. It has become acceptable to speak of empire, both among those who defend American foreign policy and those who condemn it. “If people want to say we’re an imperial power—fine,” says William Kristol,...

MOSCOW -- The Byzantine Empire fell in 1453. But you wouldn't know it in Russia, where Vladimir V. Putin has been behaving as though the 15th century never ended, as though he is the direct descendant of the Byzantine kings and Moscow remains the "Third Rome" it declared itself to be in 1472. Just like the leaders of Byzantium centuries ago, Putin and his supporters talk about Russia today as if it were a divinely ordained power, destined to withstand the decay and destruction of the West. The "double eagle" emblem, originally adopted in Russia about the time of the...

Following are excerpts from an interview with Lebanese Sunni cleric Sheik Muhammad Abu Al-Qat', which aired on Al-Manar TV on May 10, 2008: Sheik Muhammad Abu Al-Qat': Today, on May 10, 2008, at 22:50 – through Al-Manar TV – let me bring good tidings to the Muslims: Allah willing, the American empire will very soon collapse. They object to any talk about the destruction of the state of Israel. Interviewer: And they are celebrating its 60th anniversary... Sheik Muhammad Abu Al-Qat': That's not the issue. We say that Allah willing, within 10 to 12 years, America will collapse. This won't...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - An individual is not entitled to parachute off New York City landmarks, including the Empire State Building, no matter how extensive his training, a New York appeals court ruled on Tuesday. The ruling reversed a 2007 decision, which said that stuntman and former Discovery Channel host Jebb Corliss, 31, did not put people at risk when attempting to parachute from the Empire State Building's 86th floor observatory floor in 2006. In overturning that decision, the four-judge panel ruled that an accidental misstep or a faulty parachute could have put bystanders and security professionals at risk. "Even...

The following is a conclusion of a long article by a philosopher Lee Harris where he is deconstructing a frequently heard lately charge of "blowback" to US actions in the world (i.e. that 9/11 was a "blowback" for the United States' foreign policy toward the Muslim world over the past half century or so, going back to the CIA engineered coup in 1953 that ousted Iranian leader Mossadegh, and that  "we had it coming" as a response to "American imperialism") ...This conclusion, however, poses a radical dilemma. A libertarian can plausibly argue that politicians should not interfere with domestic affairs,...

LWF Publication Develops Theological Insights to Resist the Domination of Empire Today SAN DIEGO, California, USA/GENEVA, 5 December 2007 (LWI) - The venue and host of their meeting was strategic—a downtown congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) surrounded by corporate high-rise buildings that symbolize *empire, but gathering, around a meal prepared by a formerly homeless person who currently feeds the poor, elderly and those without shelter. The group comprising seven authors of a recently published book of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) gathered on 16 November at the First Lutheran Church in San Diego, California’s second largest...

Just call us “leader of the free world.” The United States is getting tagged as an “empire” from all quarters. Indeed, it’s been a century since the notion of an American empire got such wide circulation, and back then Washington truly had designs on such expansion. (Google “Spanish-American War” if you’re interested.) The empire charge has long been a staple of the political extremes. It’s even bubbled up in the presidential race. Lefty Rep. Dennis Kucinich insists that we must abandon “the ambitions of empire.” Hyper-libertarian Rep. Ron Paul says we could afford health care if we weren’t running...

Anti-war presidential candidate Ron Paul says his campaign is about "restoring the vanishing American dream." And he is criticizing what he calls "the cartel controlling the banking and monetary system" in the United States. Fresh off his third-quarter fundraising surprise of $5 million, Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul says the libertarian "revolution" he has started is growing across America. Paul told conservative activists at the "Defending the American Dream Summit" in Washington, DC, that the conference would be more aptly called the "Defending the Vanishing American Dream Summit." The Texas congressman said his Republican rivals often talk about a "flat...

The ethnic origins of General David Petraeus are apparently Dutch, which is a shame because there’s something sonorously classical about the family name of the commander of the US forces in Iraq. When you discover that his father was christened Sixtus, the fantasy really takes flight. Somewhere in the recesses of the brain, where memory mingles hazily with imagination, I fancy I can recall toiling through a schoolboy Latin textbook that documented the progress of one Petraeus Sixtus as he triumphantly extended the imperium romanum across some dusty plain in Asia Minor. The fantasy is not wholly inapt, of course....

The drive-by media never ceases to amaze with their inability to notice world events, much less understand the global maneuvers in the War on Terror. Ever since Secretary of Defense Gates told Vladimir Putin to butt out concerning his bid to muck up the US - European Missile Defense Shield, several developments have shown how he has been forced to scramble to maintain at least a minimum level of influence over world events. Putin is an excellent practitioner of the bluff and bluster school of foreign policy, even as he struggles by "putting fingers in the dykes" of his dissolving...

It comes right down to freedom. They want to go back to small government. Not smaller government. Small government as it was originally intended. And that is what really unites most of our support. The word ‘freedom’ is a short-hand way of explaining Paul’s platform. Paul supports a drastically reduced federal government- the elimination of the IRS, he believes state’s should be left to regulate abortion and marriage policies. He questions many international organizations and agreements, such as the World Trade Organization, NAFTA and the country’s membership to the United Nations.

Hamas creating 'empire of darkness' By Carolynne Wheeler in Jerusalem Last Updated: 2:16am BST 21/06/2007 The Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, last night described the Hamas militant group now controlling Gaza as "murderous terrorists" intent on creating an "empire of darkness and injustice". Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas said the separation of Gaza from the West Bank was a threat to hopes for a Palestinian state "There is no dialogue to be initiated with those murderers," Mr Abbas said in his first public addressed since Hamas gunmen seized control of the Gaza Strip last week. His uncharacteristically fiery speech raised concerns...

How 'Mad' King George's heirs put the Empire together one piece at a time By Caroline Davies Last Updated: 2:37am GMT 23/03/2007 Kew Palace slotted an important piece of its royal history back into place yesterday when it unveiled a cabinet of jigsaw maps used to teach King George III's children. This jigsaw map of Scotland is one of many used to teach geography to King George III's children The mahogany cabinet houses a collection of dissected maps – precursors of the jigsaw puzzle – and was a main feature in the nursery at Kew, the King's main home, in...

We are losing our wars in the Muslim world because our vision of history is at odds with reality. This is a well-established condition of successful societies, a condition that inevitably grows more worrisome with time and continuing success. In fact, what empires have most in common is how their sacred narratives come to rule their strategic behavior - and rule it badly. In America’s case, our war narrative works against us to promote our deepest fear: the end of modernity. A nation’s evolving storyline gives concrete form to an accumulation of success and translates this into an assurance of...

He should be up in about 5 minutes. He's written a book about a possible civil war between the right and left.