Free Republic

For nearly five decades the left has been trying to impose a socialist and confiscatory land reform on Brazil. From the beginning, the so-called Catholic left, and particularly the National Conference of Brazilian Bishops (CNBB), has been the leading proponents and the most important driving force of that policy. With strong links to this Catholic left, the government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva made land reform one of its main goals. For this purpose it designated Miguel Rossetto from the Workers Party's most radical wing as the Minister of Land Reform. The party also gave the government posts...

U.S. President Donald Trump cut aid to South Africa last week due to what he described as “unjust racial discrimination” against Afrikaners over the country’s land reform law. Trump also cited South Africa’s International Court of Justice genocide case against Israel. An anti-South Africa stance was predicted to be a key feature of a second Trump administration’s foreign policy given Pretoria’s friendly relations with Russia and China, but few would have foreseen an executive order awarding refugee status to Afrikaners—the white South Africans descended mainly from Dutch settlers who dominated the country’s politics and led the apartheid regime from 1948...

Elon Musk has hit out at the Labour government over its plans to hit some farmers with inheritance tax as those from the agriculture industry plan huge protests. Chancellor Rachel Reeves unveiled the new policy in the Budget, meaning that from 2026, inheritance tax relief for business and for agricultural assets will be capped at £1million. Many farmers are furious as this could see them hit with a huge tax bill when their farms are passed down to family members, even risking putting them out of business. But Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has defended the policy, saying he is...

President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team has prepared executive orders and proclamations that would withdraw the US from the Paris climate agreement and open up western lands for drilling and mining, according to a report. Trump’s energy and environment transition team – tasked with drafting these actions – includes his former Department of the Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and former Environmental Protection Agency administrator Andrew Wheeler, the New York Times reported on Friday. Trump, 78, pulled the US out of the Paris accord early in his first term, arguing that it was ineffective because it allows countries to voluntarily restrain their...

....Chinese officials are seizing on opportunities to forge ties with mayors and other local American leaders, the kinds of connections that give Beijing leverage against an increasingly hostile government in Washington.

Government officials are investigating a mysterious company that has bought around 55,000 acres of dry farmland around a USAF base in California. Travis Air Force base, northeast of San Francisco, houses large transport aircraft used for refueling smaller planes and sending aid and munitions around the world. Starting in 2018, a company called Flannery Associates LLC has spent around $800million buying swathes of land around the base, leaving local, state and federal officials flummoxed as to who they are and what they want with it. An attorney representing Flannery told The Wall Street Journal the company is controlled by US...

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said in his annual shareholder letter Tuesday that the government may need to seize private property to advance clean energy initiatives. Dimon discussed the need to quickly begin investing in solar projects and other green initiatives and suggested that the government should use eminent domain to seize property for those projects. “At the same time, permitting reforms are desperately needed to allow investment to be done in any kind of timely way. We may even need to evoke [sic] eminent domain – we simply are not getting the adequate investments fast enough for grid, solar,...

In his bid to win the position of Director-General for the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was playing a nice technocrat. At every venue and opportunity, he presents himself as a humble, smiley and caring and humanitarian who loses sleep over the state of world health. But his 12-page campaign CV never mentions his most important experience that made it possible for him to climb the ladder of power within the tyrannical regime oppressing and misruling Ethiopia. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, as well as being the first WHO director without a medical degree, also has a somewhat political...

United States President Trump may be embattled at home, where he faces an impeachment inquiry and high-stakes diplomatic crises, but right-wing activists are planning a pro-Trump rally this week anyway – in Pretoria. Willie Jordaan, the attorney who leads the Patriots for Minorities movement in South Africa, announced his plans on Monday to host a Trump 2020 support rally at the U.S. Embassy building this Thursday morning. Jordaan condemned the “ridiculous and unfounded” impeachment process in the politically tense U.S. and praised Trump for “keeping an eye on South Africa.” “We would like to thank you for your continued support...

Early in September, international news was awash with the claim that 87 elephants had been “killed by poachers” in Botswana. The story originated from the NGO Elephants Without Borders, which received massive publicity – and presumably donations – as a result. Even the beleaguered UK Prime Minister tweeted the story, while a petition calling for wildlife guards to be re-armed surpassed 150,000 signatures. I know a little of Botswana. A few years ago, I was declared “public enemy number one”, threatened by a government spokesman on television, and banned from the country. This was because Survival International was instrumental in...

Today marked an important moment as President Donald Trump made much-needed changes to sweeping land use designations made under previous administrations. The Trump administration listened to the combined voices of individual citizens, tribal members, small communities, and elected officials from the county, state, and federal levels. In doing so, Trump has responded to Utahns’ calls by dramatically reducing the size of both the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments, which had a combined land mass larger than the state of Connecticut. This is a good step forward in reforming a law that has too easily been abused to drown...

LONDON — The rest of the planet bears a warning for President Trump’s plan to lean heavily on private business in conjuring a trillion dollars’ worth of American infrastructure: Handing profit-making companies responsibility for public works can produce trouble. In India, politically connected firms have captured contracts on the strength of relationships with officialdom, yielding defective engineering at bloated prices. When Britain handed control to private companies to upgrade London’s subway system more than a decade ago, the result was substandard, budget-busting work, prompting the government to step back in. Canada has suffered a string of excessive costs on public...

Every US state has a motto. Some are interesting, like “Live Free of Die,” in New Hampshire, and some are sadly truthful, like, “Our Government is Vampiric” in Massachusetts. Just kidding. It’s more along the lines of “We’ll Tax You to Death,” or something like that. Anyway, some, like the motto for the 49th state, Alaska, are very upbeat and offer a sense of adventure. In Alaska, politicians tell us to look, “North, to The Future.” But, a shocking move by the federal government might inspire Alaskans to change their motto to, “Our Land Is Being Stolen By The Feds!”...

Russia formally staked its claim Tuesday to a large portion of the Arctic Ocean that includes the North Pole, even planting a flag on the floor of the ocean below the area to exercise its control. If the United Nations committee that arbitrates sea boundaries accepts Russia’s claim, the waters will be subject to Moscow’s oversight on economic matters, including fishing and oil and gas drilling, though Russia will not have full sovereignty. Under a 1982 United Nations convention, the Law of the Sea, a nation may claim an exclusive economic zone over the continental shelf abutting its shores. If...

Gina McCarthy, President Obama’s choice to replace Lisa Jackson at the Environmental Protection Agency, has been chastised for having lied to Congress, in claiming that EPA did not use “dangerous manmade climate change” to justify new 54.5 mpg standards for cars and light trucks. She’s also been implicated in the agency’s practice of using fake emails to hide questionable dealings and activities. These issues highlight attitudes toward ethics, law and public policy that prevail at EPA and too many other government agencies. However, that attention should not distract from other important matters. Ms. McCarthy may be the worst of the...

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is making a play for the West in the 2016 race by touting his opposition to the federal government’s expansive land holdings. Cruz’s disdain for federal land control is resonating with Westerners whose lives are impacted by land managers, and could help him win over conservatives in Nevada, one of the early nominating states in the presidential contest. “This is an issue he’s been focused on for quite some time, and it’s one that plays extremely well with the conservative base in the western part of the United States,” said Ford O’Connell, a GOP strategist who...

(Reuters) - Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei controls a business empire worth around $95 billion - a sum exceeding the value of his oil-rich nation's current annual petroleum exports - a six-month Reuters investigation shows. The little-known organization, called Setad, is one of the keys to the Iranian leader's enduring power and now holds stakes in nearly every sector of Iranian industry, including finance, oil, telecommunications, the production of birth-control pills and even ostrich farming. Setad has built its empire on the systematic seizure of thousands of properties belonging to ordinary Iranians - members of religious minorities, Shi'ite Muslims,...

Invasion biology theorists, Government land grabs and Agenda 21, the UN-sponsored Wildlands Project, Reserve and Corridor System Homeowners along the coast, beware! Anti-exotic advocates (invasion biology theorists), aka nativists, are in control at State Parks and the California Coastal Commission. They also control the National Park Service. They’re implementing Agenda 21’s land- grab goals by tearing out sand dune-stabilizing non-native grass proven by a 1960s USDA study to be the only sand stabilizer capable of withstanding heavy tourist abuse that destroyed most of Northern California’s native grass and foliage beginning in the mid-20th century. This grass removal in Point Reyes,...

Speaker Mop & Glo made headlines for her call to investigate opponents of the Ground Zero mosque, but there was something else about her remarks that should have raised your hackles: “There is no question there is a concerted effort to make this a political issue by some. And I join those who have called for looking into how is this opposition to the mosque being funded,” she said. “How is this being ginned up that here we are talking about Treasure Island, something we’ve been working on for decades, something of great interest to our community as we...

President Obama’s record of lawlessness is prodigious. There is the assumption of a power to rule by presidential decree — unilaterally amending ObamaCare provisions, immigration statutes, and other enactments in flagrant disregard of Congress’s constitutional power to write the laws. There is rampant fraud on the American people — think: “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan, period,” just for a start. In the Benghazi massacre, we see the arc of administration malfeasance: In the absence of congressional authorization, the president instigated an unprovoked and ultimately disastrous war in Libya, empowering virulently anti-American...