Free Republic

<p>Pollsters report rising antiericanism worldwide. The United States, they imply, squandered global sympathy after the September 11 terrorist attacks through its arrogant unilateralism.</p> <p>In truth, there was never any sympathy to squander. Anti-Americanism was already entrenched in the world's psyche a backlash against a nation that comes bearing modernism to those who want it but who also fear and despise it.</p>

Despite strong lobbying from the Vatican and representatives of the Orthodox Church in Europe, the preamble of the draft treaty establishing the Constitution for Europe - produced by the European Convention in June - has resisted any reference to Christianity. France along with Turkey are the main countries contending such a reference. "France is a lay state and as such she does not have a habit of calling for insertions of a religious nature into constitutional texts", the French President told reporters at a visit in Quintos de Moro where he met Spanish Prime Minister, José Maria Aznar. "The lay...

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) - A Saudi drug trafficker was beheaded Sunday, a Ministry of Interior statement said. Dhaher bin Thamer al-Shimry was convicted of smuggling marijuana into the kingdom, the statement said. Al-Shimry was beheaded in the eastern province of Hafr al-Baten, bringing the number of beheadings in the kingdom this year to 41, most of them drug traffickers. At least 49 people were beheaded last year. This conservative Gulf country follows a strict interpretation of Islam under which people convicted of drug trafficking, murder, rape and armed robbery are executed. Beheadings are carried out with a sword in...

<p>Too many observers look at Iraq as if it were a boxing match. Invasion-one up for the West, well at least for the United States and Britain. Sabotage an oil pipeline-one down for the West. And so it will go on. Only one thing is clear: In the cold, searching light of history, each of these incidents that absorb us will not even rank as footnotes.</p>

Confirmed Speakers include Dean, Kucinich and Gephardt. Great Freeping opportunity. Many terrorist appeasers will congregate here. AAI's National Leadership ConferenceVOTE 2004: An Agenda for Peace and Justice October 17-19, 2003 Holiday Inn-Fairlane, Dearborn, Michigan Program OutlineTHIS REPRESENTS A GREAT FREEPING OPPORTUNITY Friday, October 17     10:00 Registration opens     12:00-2:00 Lunch Forum: Shaping the Ethnic Agenda in 2004     2:30-3:45 Opening plenary: Building a Peace Constituency in 2004     4:00-4:45 Concurrent Breakout Sessions (1) Reaching Arab Americans: census data, voter lists and other tools to identify/reach your local community(2) Mobilizing Arab American voters and volunteers...

MLK Rally marked by Bush, Ashcroft bashing & absence of US flags; Speaker Praises Mugabe The rally on the US Capitol today to mark the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech was broadcast live on C-SPAN. The event was attended by Democratic presidential contenders Howard Dean, Carol Moseley Braun and Al Sharpton. The following are my personal observations, facts hidden from you by puff-pieces appearing on the wire services. The most stunning aspect of this rally was the almost complete, seemingly choreographed absence of the Old Glory throughout the vast crowd, estimated by organizers...

Special Dispatch Series - No. 551 August 12, 2003 No.551 Liberal Arab Columnist: 'Why do Arabs Hate the West, Especially the U.S.?' In an article titled "Why Do Arabs Hate the West, Especially the U.S.," Zuheir Abdallah, columnist for the London-based Arabic daily Al-Hayat, blames Arab fascism and Islamism for failing to achieve any accomplishments for the Arab world since 1948, leading to its backwardness today. The following are excerpts from the article: [1] Arabs Should Remember They Invaded and Occupied Europe Before The Crusades"Most Arabs hate the West, especially the U.S., for many reasons; some date back to...

ZAMBOANGA CITY — A Chinese-Filipino businesswoman kidnapped by suspected Abu Sayyaf members escaped after almost four months in captivity, the military said yesterday. Marine products trader Gertrudes Tan, 50, eluded her captors in a coastal village in Maimbung, Sulu last Monday night, said Lt. Gen. Roy Kyamko, chief of the Armed Forces’ Southern Command. Kyamko said Tan drifted into the sea using a small plastic jug as float until fishermen found her at about 2:30 a.m. the following day. The fishermen brought her to the Maimbung town proper where she took a passenger jeepney that brought her to the capital...

Transgender rights advance in Penn. and San Diego Tue Jul 29, 8:37 PM ET Add Community - Planet Out to My Yahoo! Gay.com / PlanetOut.com Network SUMMARY: Advocates for transgender rights hailed two developments on Monday that extended nondiscrimination protections for transgender people in Pennsylvania and San Diego. Advocates for transgender rights hailed two developments on Monday that extended nondiscrimination protections for transgender people in Pennsylvania and San Diego. In Pennsylvania, Gov. Ed Rendell signed an executive order that bars discrimination among state employees based on "gender identity or expression." Rendell, a Democrat, called the order "an important step...

Calif. Senate OKs transgender protections Fri Jul 25, 8:11 PM ET Add Community - Planet Out to My Yahoo! Ellen Maremont Silver, Gay.com / PlanetOut.com Network SUMMARY: The California Senate passed a groundbreaking bill on Thursday that makes it illegal to discriminate against transgender people in housing and employment. The California Senate passed a groundbreaking bill on Thursday that makes it illegal to discriminate against transgender people in housing and employment. AB 196 adds "gender identity or expression" to sex and other characteristics that are already protected by the state's Fair Employment and Housing Act. The bill, passed by...

Britain to Allow Transsexuals to Marry By Michael Holden LONDON (Reuters) - Britain unveiled plans for a new law on Friday which would allow transsexuals to marry under their adopted sex, ending a long dispute over their legal status. The proposals were given a cautious welcome by campaigners who have been fighting on behalf of Britain's 5,000 transsexuals for over 30 years for a change in the law. However some church groups said they would undermine conventional relationships and family life. "The draft bill will ensure that transsexual people can take up all their fundamental rights including the right to...

California same-sex couples get tax break Randol White, Gay.com / PlanetOut.com Network Thursday, July 10, 2003 / 04:20 PM SUMMARY: The state of California will soon give registered domestic partners the same tax break on property transfers as married couples. The state of California will soon give registered domestic partners the same tax break on property transfers as married couples. California's elected tax board passed the proposed tax rule change on Wednesday with a 3-2 vote that followed party lines. The revision will take effect in two months, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. The State Board of Equalization's openly...

WASHINGTON – Consider: In Manchester, England, a radical Muslim who does not even speak English has been elected to the city council, where he needs an interpreter. Consider: According to the German media, secret Shari'a courts appear to be meting out "justice" in Italy. In that country's north a man known to Muslims as a sex fiend recently showed up with a hand missing. It had obviously been amputated as punishment. Italian doctors report treating Muslim women who had evidently been lashed. Consider: In France about 70,000 young women, chiefly Muslim, are being subjected to forced marriages every year, according...

Editor's note: WorldNetDaily brings readers exclusive, up-to-the-minute global intelligence news and analysis from Geostrategy-Direct, a new online newsletter edited by veteran journalist Robert Morton and featuring the "Backgrounder" column compiled by Bill Gertz. Geostrategy-Direct is a subscription-based service produced by the publishers of WorldTribune.com, a free news service frequently linked by the editors of WorldNetDaily. For those with a benign view of Iran's nuclear program, consider this: Saudi Arabia is already thinking nuclear, reports intelligence newsletter Geostrategy-Direct. The Saudi royal family is alarmed by the prospect of its next-door neighbor having a nuclear bomb, U.S. intelligence analysts say. The Saudis...

The new Imam of the Grand Mosque of Rome, the largest in Europe, called for the "victory of Islamic fighters in Palestine, Chechnya and other areas of the world" in his sermon last Friday. He called for Allah's help in "the destruction of the homes and destruction of the enemies of Islam", for their "annihilation", and "the victory everywhere of the Nation of Islam." In a report by Magdi Allam, the Italian columnist of Egyptian origin who writes regularly about the Arab and Muslim world for the national daily La Repubblica, 32-year-old Imam Abdel-Samie Mahmoud Ibrahim Moussa is quoted as...

Demographics is destiny. Never in recorded history have prosperous and peaceful nations chosen to disappear from the face of the earth. Yet that is what the Europeans have chosen to do. Back in 1348 Europe suffered the Black Death, a combination of bubonic plague and likely a form of mad cow disease, observes American Enterprise Institute scholar Ben Wattenberg. "The plague reduced the estimated European population by about a third. In the next 50 years, Europe's population will relive - in slow motion - that plague demography, losing about a fifth of its population by 2050 and more as the...

<p>VICTOR DAVIS HANSON leads a double life. A fifth-generation raisin farmer in California's fertile Central Valley, Hanson is also a historian of ancient Greece, a lyrical defender of American agrarianism, and a prolific contributor to conservative opinion magazines. His columns so caught the fancy of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney that he has enjoyed audiences with both. It's hard to say which is stranger: that a raisin farmer should exert such influence, or that a classics scholar should.</p>

What's behind Europe's and especially France's weird behavior, opposing the United States and Britain, and siding with Iraq and the Arab world before the war? What's behind Europe's full tilt toward the Palestinians? France, as opposed to the over 40 other countries - what President Bush called 'the coalition' - did everything it could to stop the US disarming Iraq of its Weapons of Mass Destruction and it's liberation from Saddam Hussein's dictatorship. They've also been Europe's stalwart supporter of 'Palestine' even before Britain's Tony Blair climbed aboard. The simple explanation is that France used the Iraq war issue in...

The "renowned Palestinian intellectual" vents his anti-American and anti-Semitic views. The following critique was written for the University of Washington community by faculty members Edward Alexander (Professor of English), Nikolai Popov (Senior Lecturer in English), and Marc Lange (Professor of Philosophy), in anticipation of a lecture on their campus by Professor Edward Said. As professor of English at Columbia University, Said has been a bitter critic of the State of Israel and has had a major influence on the anti-Israel movement at American universities. If enormous influence in the academic world is a reliable indicator of intellectual distinction, then Edward...

<p>Today, the United States is governed by a junta of war criminals who took power through a kind of coup. That coup may have been preceded by (dubious) elections: but we should never forget that Hitler was also an elected politician. In this analogy, 9/11 fulfils the function of the "burning of the Reichstag", allowing the junta to grant its police force powers similar to those of the Gestapo. They have their own Mein Kampf -- the National Security Strategy --, their own mass associations -- the patriot organisations -- and their own preachers. It is vital that we have the courage to tell these truths, and stop masking them behind phrases such as "our American friends" that have by now become quite meaningless.</p>