Free Republic

The NAFTA marketplace unrestrained in the pursuit of cheap labor has driven an increasing volume of manufacturing off-shore to Communist China, where slave prison camps offer a cost of labor that is hard to beat. Chinese made goods ranging from electronics to toys and clothes are daily sold in mass marketing retailers such as Wal-Mart, Home Depot, K-Mart, Target, Lowes, and dozens of other U.S. corporations. Cheap goods from Communist China increasingly line the shelves of the NAFTA marketplace under marquee product trade names that bear no relationship to the Chinese slave labor that manufactured, produced, or otherwise assembled the...

Cheney has simultaneously expanded the power of the vice presidency and reduced its accountability. Because his health made him the first veep since ancient Alben Barkley (under Harry Truman) with no realistic chance of moving up, he felt he could change the rules. Fears of terrorism made his decision to go to an "undisclosed location" understandable, but he has taken secrecy about his whereabouts to inexplicable lengths. News organizations went along with this partly to save money by not sending reporters to cover his trips. They rationalized it by explaining that Cheney never said anything to reporters anyway.

If you thought Hurricane Katrina was a once-in-a-lifetime fluke, think again. Concerned environmentalists say that unless the United States gets real about the threat of global warming, African Americans and other people of color can expect a repeat of disasters like Katrina. “When you look at the trends and put them all together, it’s undisputable that the sea levels are rising,” says Ansje Miller, director of the Environmental Justice and Climate Change Initiative (EJCC). “Warmer seas mean more intense hurricanes…. You’re going to have intense flooding like we have never seen before. Katrina is really the hurricane of the future.”

Fifty years of bizarre names and tactical voting, and all along the song contest has been an ironic metaphorTONIGHT IS the 50th Eurovision Song Contest, the moment when Europe, for a few precious hours, will speak the same language. And what a strange language it is. Who can forget Diggi-loo, Diggi-ley, the Swedish song that won in 1984, or Ringe-Dinge-Ding, the Dutch entry in 1967, that was followed in 1975 by the even more powerfully evocative Ding A Dong? Lulu made the greatest British contribution to the Eurovision lexicon with Boom Bang-a-Bang in 1969, but every country has contributed something:...

HK is land of the free February 24, 2005 Two shooting incidents within a month have Asia's world city in an uproar. Gun violence rarely occurs here. New York, America's world city, had 3,286 major felonies last year just in its subway system. In the United States easy availability of guns encourages crime and makes murder an almost expected accompaniment of mugging or rape. No American, taking armed robbers for granted, would have resisted handing over his watch as did the businessman Sunday. In America innocent children and adults get killed or wounded by stray bullets in every major city...