Free Republic

Saudi king offers solutions By Claude Salhani December 12, 2005 JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia. At 85 years of age, Saudi King Abdullah remains a man full of political ambitions. After only recently succeeding his long-ailing brother, Fahd, as king, Abdullah now is running for the job of leader of the Arab and Islamic world. Vowing to fight the endemic terrorism plaguing parts of the Islamic world, and which shook the kingdom two years ago when homegrown terrorists unleashed nationwide violence, the Saudi king decided action was far better than inaction. In fact, Abdullah adopted the project of another king, also named...

"In my view, climate change is the most severe problem that we are facing today - more serious even than the threat of terrorism." - David A. King, Chief Scientific Advisor to the British Government, Feb. 2004. I must admit that I'm glad this spring-like warm spell has come about this week to relieve us of last week's sudden drop in temperature. What most people don't realize, however, is that we should consider ourselves lucky to have felt those cruel and nasty temperatures. Seven of the 10 hottest years in the 20th century were in the 1990s, and temperatures are...

(This op-ed by Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, appeared August 1 in the Financial Times and is in the public domain. There are no republication restrictions.) (begin byliner) There Can Be No Moderate Solutions To Extremism By Donald Rumsfeld Last month Britain was twice attacked by an enemy that takes advantage of the openness of free societies to kill and terrorise from within. Shortly after the July 7 massacre, one American, summarising the sentiments of his countrymen, wrote to the British embassy in Washington: "Anyone who would attack London must not know history. The people who did this will...

Terror Sanitized After the terror attacks in London, a few TV commentators said they would go after those in the media who want to sanitize terrorism. Such bravado may be admirable, but it is a bravado that does not recognize how terrorism has already been sanitized. The leaders of Western democracies have sanitized terrorism because they cannot publicly admit they are helpless to prevent more attacks. Most analysts who study the so-called war on terror could have told you a year ago that there would be a terrorist attack targeting the London subway. Likewise, there are those who will tell...

Will the 21st century be another "American Century" or will it be the first "Asian Century"? A peaceful - for now - struggle has been joined. For the past few weeks Americans have been focused on news from the Vatican. And for the past few years the bulk of "foreign news" has concerned the Middle East. But in the Far East three huge fuses are burning. First, the prime minister of China, Wen Jiabao, traveled to India and declared that the two countries would be the "two pagodas" of economic might in the coming hundred years - the "Asian Century,"...

I believe I may be the only person in America who isn’t for or against President Bush’s proposal to save Social Security. Unlike everybody else who seems positive that it is either brilliant and benevolent or stupid and evil, I really don’t have an opinion. As a result, I’m highly suspicious of everyone who claims to have a real handle on the pluses and minuses of his proposal. I mean, facts are facts, and an awful lot of you watch “The Fear Factor” and voted for Kerry and Edwards. Why on earth would I believe you when it’s about something...

The President is looking for solutions to Social Security shortfalls in the future of the existing program. Democrats are looking to extend the time until action is taken so that they can regain the issue as theirs, instead of the Republican Party, which has taken the platform from them. I have a simple solution for the shortfall under the present suggested program of supplementing the program with individual investment programs in the stock market. Since the objection is that there will be a negative intake of monies at about 20 years from the start of such a program and will...

Prepared to spend the next many months reading about reforming Social Security? Of course not. And you don't have to. Just read the next 975 words of this column and you will know all you need to know. In fact, you will be able to fix Social Security yourself in the time it takes to recite this sentence: "Drop the wage indexing formula." As anybody who has been breathing during the last decade knows, Social Security is heading for disaster. Boomers are going to start retiring, and paying for their benefits will slurp up all the payroll taxes coming into...

There have been many books written which chronicle the crisis in the Church over the past 40 years; many excellent works by Atila Sinke Guimarães, Romano Amerio, Father Ralph Wiltgen, Father James F. Wathen, Michael Davies, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, Father Nicholas Gruner, Father Paul Kramer, Fathers Dominic and Francisco Radecki, and many other books that have explained the Traditional Catholic movement from their particular perspective. However, until now there has not been a compendium gathering the tents of the various tribes of Tradition that so clearly explains the trials and tribulations of Traditional Catholics as Griff L. Ruby's "The Resurrection...

"Hold the form of sound words, which thou hast heard of me in faith, and in the love which is in Christ Jesus. Keep the good thing committed to thy trust by the Holy Ghost, Who dwelleth in us." St. Paul, Second Letter to Timothy, 1: 13-14 Last month, in our May issue, we wrote in this space that the "old Mass" could and should be "restored" throughout the world - a position some our readers appreciated. Now we would like to carry our thought a step further. We believe not only that the "old Mass" should be restored, but...

The Law of the Conservation of Problems We have all used a number of laws describing the nature of the Universe, the nature of Man, and the nature of Society to make sense out of what we experience in everyday life. The Law of Unintended Consequences describes how any given decision can create results that were not in the original plans, even if the decision produced the desired results. The Law of Diminishing Returns describes how actions can produce lessened returns over time. The model I am proposing can explain a lot about the complexity and stress of modern life....

Democrats in the United States Senate have put forward a new theory: The American people should know how a federal judge is going to rule on a particular legal question even before he or she sees that particular case. After picking my jaw up off the floor, and pondering the question for a while, it struck me: why do we even need judges, if we already know how they're going to rule on an issue beforehand? We could just create Federal Judicial Software® to remove the burden from our over-taxed federal legal system. Plug the case into the computer, and...

IS OZZY TO BE PITIED OR SCORNED? J. Grant Swank, Jr., POB 1984, Windham ME 04062 Pastor, New Hope Church, Windham ME Ozzy’s English boyhood was poor—father worked nights in a steel plant, mother worked days at a car plant. No money, no auto, meager food. He claims as a child he had one pair of shoes, no underpants, trousers and one jacket. At the base of his bed was a bucket for urinating in. There were no clean sheets on his bed, overcoats used as sheets when all else failed. Dad beat on Ozzy, chiefly for the boy’s attempts...

In a brilliant and troubling essay in Spectator, Theodore Dalrymple, chronicler of Life at the Bottom, a fine study of the underclass in England, kicks off an excursion into the deepest reaches of moral and political economy with this stunning first paragraph. If freedom entails responsibility, a fair proportion of mankind would prefer servitude; for it is far, far better to receive three meals a day and be told what to do than to take the consequences of one's own self-destructive choices. It is, moreover, a truth universally unacknowledged that freedom without understanding of what to do with it is...

Our old friends, Jim and Dorothy, baptized their new baby the other day, and my family was thrilled to be invited. The ceremony took place at St. Michael's Church, a gorgeous edifice on North Cleveland. My boys don't get to Catholic churches much, for obvious reasons. In fact, the only previous time they've been in one was at Jim and Dorothy's wedding--you know friends are in a special zone of niceness when they invite your boisterous toddlers to their Big Day. The boys were too small, then, to process their lovely though--to an outsider--somewhat eerie and rococo surroundings. Not anymore....

If you want to shut up an entire room full of anti-war left-wingers, just ask them what to do about the global terrorist network, or more specifically, Iraq. Actually, this SHOULD shut them up. But instead you'll be treated to long, nonsensical diatribes about how this is about oil, imperialism, hegemony, why we should give more aid to the poor, the Kyoto treaty, 'Noam Chomsky says', Florida in the 2000 Presidential election, the 'cycle of violence', Israel, how brave they are for being against the war, dissent is patriotism, civilian casualties, how America is cowardly for bombing instead of using...

Not long after Pennsylvania officials announced last spring that Edison Schools Inc. was their choice to run 20 of this city's worst-performing schools, a representative of the firm came to Gillespie Middle School to sell skeptical teachers on the promise of the nation's largest for-profit public school manager. Once the Edison model took hold, the representative assured staff members at the 77-year-old North Philadelphia school, there would be new books for the children, fresh paint on the building and new computers for teachers and pupils. The students, he added, would quietly walk the halls with their arms calmly folded behind...

A couple years ago, due to missing phone calls, while I was on the internet, I got a second phone line. I need to cut back on expenses now. So, what are the options? Software? Hardware?I'm especially interested in your personal experiences with the various solutions. Costs?

My Side of the Story Solutions for the 21st Century By Ken Goodall (As printed in The Exeter News-Letter on Tuesday April 16th, 2002) On an Internet news message board a poster named Morpheus stated that "There are no solutions for the major dilemmas confronting humans in the twenty-first century. You clearly disagree with that statement, so prove me wrong" Along with this statement he included a list of problems. In this column I have tried to address those problems. What are your solutions for poverty? First off I'd suggest that the person get a job. I know that sounds...

Read enough newspapers, watch enough television and listen to enough advocates -- official and otherwise -- and the solution to the violence in the Middle East becomes crystal clear...