Free Republic

SNIPPET: "Within 24 hours of the leak of the Afghanistan assessment to The Washington Post, General Stanley McChrystal's team fired its second shot across the bow of the Obama administration. According to McClatchy, military officers close to General McChrystal said he is prepared to resign if he isn't given sufficient resources (read troops) to implement a change in direction in Afghanistan: Adding to the frustration, according to officials in Kabul and Washington, are White House and Pentagon directives made over the last six weeks that Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, not submit his request...

Note: Photos included. Quote: New Shabaab al-Mujahideen Video: "At Your Service, O' Osama" (featuring Abu Mansour al-Amriki) By Evan Kohlmann The Shabaab al-Mujahideen Movement in Somalia has released a new propaganda video titled, "Labayk Ya Osama", or "At Your Service, O' Osama." The video includes footage of the "Abu Suleim" training camp in southern Somalia and new scenes of "Abu Mansour the American" (a.k.a. Omar Hammami).

Liberal Professor Mr. Tugan-Baranovsky is on the war path against socialism. This time he has approached the question, not from the political and economic angle, but from that of an abstract discussion on equality (perhaps the professor thought such an abstract discussion more suitable for the religious and philosophical gatherings which he has addressed?). "If we take socialism, not as an economic theory, but as a living ideal," Mr. Tugan declared, "then, undoubtedly, it is associated with the ideal of equality, but equality is a concept . . . that cannot be deduced from experience and reason." This is the...

Published: Proletarskaya Pravda No. 19, January 1, 1914 This is the battle-cry of the class-conscious American workers. They say: We have only one political question be fore us, and that is the question of the workers’ earnings and their working day. To Russian workers it may at first sight seem very strange and puzzling to have all social and political questions reduced to a single one. But in the United States of America, the most advanced country in the world, which has almost complete political liberty, where democratic institutions are most developed, and where tremendous progress has been made in...

Novy Ekonomist (No. 21 for 1913), a journal published by Mr. P. Migulin, with the Octobrists and Cadets jointly collaborating, carries an interesting note about income tax in the United States. The bill exempts from taxation all incomes up to 4,000 dollars (8,000 rubles). Taxation is envisaged at the rate of one per cent on all incomes exceeding 4,000 dollars, two per cent on all incomes exceeding 20,000 dollars and so on, with slight increases in the percentage as incomes increase. Thus the plan is for a progressive income tax, but with an exceedingly slow rate of progression, so that...

My Op-ed in The Australian By Leah Farrall, Australia I have an op-ed piece out in today’s edition of The Australian called “Detentions come back to bite” It’s about Guantanamo blowback now having very real strategic consequences: the formation of a new strategy to kidnap civilians in Afghanistan in order to secure the release of prisoners taken by America. Sally Neighbour has a front page piece derived from my op-ed here “Afghan foreigner kidnap order by al Qaeda leader Mustafa Hamid”. I haven’t seen the broadsheet yet, so I’m not sure if the photos I provided of Hamid are on...

But, what's interesting is to see the parallels between what this paper finds and how it stacks up to how ethnic Koreans are perceived or how Koreans are expected to be in the United States. Considering that China too is a very diverse, multiethnic country and that, at least on paper, the Chinese have a similar definition of identity as that of the United States, I'd like to argue that it can be shown that the expectations or beliefs that Americans may hold towards Korean-Americans can indeed be validated. We can show by seeing if these same expectations can be...

Glenn Beck/Scott Baker - Obama Connections, Part 1 of 2 Part 2

SNIPPET: "Do we arrest potential terrorists too early and allow them to plead to lesser charges? Or do we wait and risk an attack?" SNIPPET: "The case raises important questions about how domestic terrorism should be fought. Should law enforcement wait until a threat becomes “imminent” before acting? If not, then at what point should law enforcement intervene given that much of a plot’s details may remain unknown? It also raises important questions about just how much faith law enforcement can place in the cooperation of some Muslim clerics in terrorism-related cases." SNIPPET: "In either case, this means that law...

Video and Photo included. RevolutionMuslim.com: “Wahhabi to Have You Visit Us” SNIPPET: "The title of this post is a quote from Yousef al-Khattab at his wittiest. Here’s another favorite photo of Yousef." SNIPPET: "Here is a video from 4 September 09 of Yousef ‘preaching’ a ‘Ramadan’ message in NYC. This is radicalization in its rawest form. You’ll see people sitting down on the stairs across listening, then one will get up and grab a CD that has recorded lectures from Abdullah Faisal (RM.com’s spiritual advisor – and a firebreathing cleric in the UK who was amain inspiration of Jermaine Lindsay,...

From a speech in March of 1918(Lenin’s appearance was greeted with a prolonged standing ovation. The “Internationale” was sung.) In his speech Lenin, in a clear and popular form, explained the essential features and basic points of the Soviet Constitution. The Soviets were the highest form of democratic government by the people. The Soviets were not something invented out of one’s head, they were the product of living reality. They appeared and developed for the first time in history in our backward country, but objectively they should become the form of government by the working people all over the world....

Note: Photos included. SNIPPET: "Basically he’s saying if Germany pulls out of Afghanistan, al Qaeda will turn a blind eye to Germany and not attack it, which he intimates it will do soon otherwise."

I was killing some rare free time this morning with a little trip around Archive org. With the recreation of al-Ekhlaas and a growing number of issues animating the jihobbist these days (Palestine, "revisions," Somalia, etc), expect Archive to remain the preeminent jihad media hosting site.

Note: See comments after the blog entry. Chinese researchers show how the PRC “owns” the U.S. Power Grid I had a head-slapping “What the F” moment when I read the New Scientist story “How to Short-Circuit the U.S. Power Grid“. Let’s start with the fact that the military strategy of the PRC ever since the U.S. speedily won the first Iraq war has been to find ways to mitigate our technological superiority by attacking its most vulnerable point - the network. That includes, as the Wall Street Journal so sensationally reminded us, the U.S. power grid. How fast do you...

CBO compares the potential cost and performance of MDA’s proposed European system with the cost and performance of three other options for deploying missile defenses in Europe... * Defense of Europe. All of the alternatives CBO considered would provide defense of most of Europe roughly equivalent to the defense provided by MDA’s proposal against most types of ballistic missiles that Iran is thought to have developed or could develop in the future... * Extended Defense of the United States. MDA’s proposed system would complement the coverage already available from U.S.-based interceptors by providing redundant defense from a third interceptor site...

First published in 1930 in the second and third editions of V. I. Lenin’s Collected Works, Vol. XVI. Published according to the manuscript. Our Ministry of Public (forgive the expression) “Education” boasts inordinately of the particularly rapid growth of its expenditure. In the explanatory note to the 1913 budget by the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance we find a summary of the estimates of the Ministry of Public (so-called) Education for the post-revolutionary years. These estimates have increased from 46,000,000 rubles in 1907 to 137,000,000 in 1913. A tremendous growth—almost trebled in something like six years! But our...

From a Pravda No. 21, March 26, 1913 The question of the “oil hunger”, the inordinate increase in the price of oil and the criminal conspiracy of the oil magnates for the purpose of fleecing the consumer, has aroused quite legitimate interest and quite understandable indignation in the Duma, and to a still greater degree out side the Duma. The duel between the Minister of Commerce and Industry, who in a faintly disguised form defended the oil kings of the syndicate, and Mr. Markov the Second, who furiously and ardently expressed the hurt feelings of the noble feudal landowners—this duel...

An update on the health care debacle in America. As I mentioned before, America already does have universal health care in states such as Massachusetts, California and Maine and that just like its overseas counterparts, was a failure. Another example of this failure was brought to my attention recently. A friend of mine from Portland Maine told me of how a homeless man with Maine care was denied payment of medical bills. Turns out this was because the bills were made very early on. Matter of fact he did not know he had those bills until recently. They were supposed...

Jenny Hatch working the Food Basics Booth at our Stake Preparedness Fair One of my main goals with this blog has been to encourage families to use whole foods on a day to day basis. Since september is national preparedness month and many people are storing food for the first time, I thought I would share a round up of my videos and blog posts, carefully prepared to help the novice cook use whole foods. At the end of this post are a couple of links to government web sites where all you ever wanted to know about preparedness is...

This article talks about what happens when you sweat. You are about to do something really big -- maybe ­a job interview, a presentation, a first date or your wedding -- and you notice that your palms and underarms are sweating. Perhaps, you've just completed an aerobic workout and your whole body is drenched in sweat. How can such different activities have the same effect on your body? What is sweat and why do we make it? Perspiration, or sweat, is your body's way of cooling itself, whether that extra heat comes from hardworking muscles or from overstimulated nerves. In...