Free Republic

If adopted, ideas being considered by a Seattle housing committee would be devastating to the city’s appeal, KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson said. Get rid of single-family zoning in Seattle. That’s the big message in a draft report being worked on by Mayor Ed Murray’s housing committee, obtained by The Seattle Times. According to a draft letter, the city needs to move away from the idea that all families can live in their own home on a piece of land, the Times reports. “Today, as Seattle expands rapidly and experiences massive economic and population growth, we are held back by policies...

...Merkel, the German chancellor, has used her New Year’s Eve address to launch a scathing attack on the country’s growing anti-Muslim protests, calling its leaders racists who are driven by hatred. In a televised message due to be broadcast tonight, Mrs Merkel urged Germans to turn their backs on demonstrations that have seen up to 17,000 people gather each Monday in the eastern city of Dresden to protest against the “Islamisation of the West”. Speaking to those considering joining the protests, she said: “Do not follow those who have called the rallies. Because all too often they have prejudice, coldness,...

As Vladimir Putin’s tanks begin to roll forth from Russia like Sauron’s legions from Mordor, a pair of American villains is working hard to undermine our resolve against the greatest threat from Europe to American values and power, and indeed to world peace, since Adolf Hitler.Evgeny Feldman, a photographer for the maverick Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, recently visited a book store in Moscow and tweeted [1] a photograph from amongst its shelves. Among volumes on one topical shelf such as The Crimes of the U.S.A. and The Third World War and Forward to Victory, in which authors offered bloodthirsty...

On a busy street in central Moscow, a well-dressed man stands yelling at the crowd: "Don't you understand? There will be a war!" All around him, people walk by, wholly uninterested. It's a hot summer's day, they're enjoying the sun. Save for a couple of tourists taking pictures, no-one pays much attention at all. The friend of a friend who saw this, posted the news on Facebook. Someone responded with a cartoon of Homer Simpson holding a sign that says "The End is Near". There are people here who are genuinely concerned about the direction Russia is heading under Vladimir...

.....and here’s the irony in Obama’s case — have the traditional white man’s view of that same Arab world — to wit, Arabs are crazy and primitive. (Yes, this is racist. And, in Obama’s case, undoubtedly leavened with a soupçon of anti-imperialist payback.) Ergo, pressure can only be put on Israel. This is not unique to the Obama administration. As was reported in the Jerusalem Post Monday:

US Vice President Joe Biden is visiting Germany this week in an effort to strengthen trans-Atlantic ties. Global politics have come to a standstill in recent years, with the United States unwilling to show leadership and Europe and other major powers unable to fill the vacuum. … You would think it were high time for Obama to jump back into the saddle before he gets reduced to a lame-duck status. But no matter how many blinding smiles the notoriously perky Biden flashes in Berlin and Munich, this is probably too much to expect. Of course, this gives rise to the...

Countries throughout the world should embrace globalization and explore new ideas on how to overcome challenges including security, poverty and environmental damage, Mikhail Gorbachev told more than 1,000 people at the University of Texas-Pan American on Tuesday. “Everything will hinge on how we use globalization,” he said through an interpreter. The Nobel laureate and former Soviet leader’s speech began the university’s Distinguished Speakers series for the 2007-08 school year. Gorbachev, who led the Soviet Union from 1985 until its collapse in 1991, has visited various places throughout the United States in the past couple of weeks, including New Orleans, where...

A Chinese national and a US citizen have been charged with conspiring to steal sensitive microchip designs capable of use in military technology, justice officials said Wednesday. The US Attorney's office in northern California said Lee Lan and Ge Yuefei had been indicted on multiple charges of conspiracy to commit economic espionage and to steal trade secrets. Lee, 42, a US citizen, and Ge, 34, a Chinese national, had sought to steal secrets from their employer, NetLogics Microsystems, and from the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation, a statement said. The two men had set up a company for the purpose of...

Tombstone at the eye of Minuteman storm TOMBSTONE - A Minuteman volunteer roams the streets in this town, the Colt .45 on his hip as much for show as anything. His shirt is stenciled, "Undocumented Border Patrol Agent." At any given moment, reporters descend on him for interviews with an actual Minuteman Project volunteer. He doesn't mind; he's proud of what he's doing, he says. Protesters in Tucson gather pots and pans to bang in protest of today's 1,000-strong Minuteman Project, a protest of the current state of border enforcement, in a "show of solidarity" with the illegal entrants who...

© 2005 WorldNetDaily.com Kofi Annan's long-awaited reform report, "In Larger Freedom: Towards Development, Security and Human Rights for All," is a laundry list of changes designed to strengthen the United Nations' grasp on global governance. Virtually every recommendation in Annan's report is a regurgitation of recommendations first advanced a decade ago by the U.N.-Funded Commission on Global Governance. When the Commission on Global Governance's final report, "Our Global Neighborhood," was released in 1995, it went almost unnoticed outside the U.N. activist community. The dramatic changes the report recommends, however, have been bubbling up through the U.N. ever since. The U.N.'s...

Calgary filmmaker Garth Pritchard admits to being confused -- and angry. He has rejected Slobodan Milosevic's attempt to use him as a witness at his war crimes trial, but Pritchard says The Hague now wants him as a witness -- but not against Milosevic. Instead they want him as a witness for atrocities and human rights abuses committed by Croats when they overran the centre of Knin, capital of Serbian-occupied Krajina, which Croatia attacked and conquered in 1995. "I don't get it," says Pritchard. "Film footage I shot for the National Film Board around 1995 was turned over to prosecutors...

Thursday, July 1, 2004 Could your kids be given to 'gay' parents? Posted: July 1, 2004 1:00 a.m. Eastern By Stephen Baskerville © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com In the debate over gay marriage, strikingly little attention has been paid to the impact on children. Some question the wisdom of having children raised by two homosexuals, but the best they can seem to argue is that serious flaws vitiate the literature defending it. Almost no attention has been devoted to what may be the more serious political question of who will supply the children of gay "parents," since obviously they cannot produce children...

LifeSite, April 7, 2003 (LifeSiteNews.com) - National Geographic's Kids magazine has just sent its young readers a special issue titled 'Save the Earth'. An 11 page section of the edition, headlined 'Save the Planet', discusses '5 Big Problems Facing the Earth'. The 'Alert missions' given to the young readers in 5 brief articles are global warming, pollution, declining biodiversity, overpopulation, and habitat destruction. The Global Warming article warns many scientists predict that "temperatures may continue to rise by as much as ten degrees Fahrenheit over the next hundred years" and that "heat is melting glaciers and polar ice sheets, which...