Free Republic

Palestinian negotiators privately agreed that only 10, 000 refugees and their families – out of a total refugee population exceeding 5 million – could return to Israel as part of a peace settlement, leaked confidential documents reveal. PLO leaders also accepted Israel's demand to define itself as an explicitly Jewish state, in sharp contrast to their public position. The latest disclosures from thousands of pages of secret Palestinian records of more than a decade of failed peace talks, obtained by al-Jazeera TV... The latest documents to be released reveal: • The-then Israeli foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, repeatedly pressed in 2007-08...

The Guardian, which used to be a liberal British newspaper, has become the full-fledged Pravda of the British hard Left, especially when it comes to its one-sided bashing of Israel. Like Pravda, it will not publish alternative points of view, even when the alternative point of view seeks to correct willful mis-statements of fact. It's gotten to the point where a reader simply cannot trust the credibility of the reporting. Two recent incidents, in as many months, regarding total distortions of my own writing simply serve to illustrate a much larger problem. I have heard similar stories from others. Most...

Bush doctrine on terror fails to convince public · Poll shows rising anxiety in both US and Europe· Iran now seen as country posing the gravest threat Ewen MacAskill, diplomatic editor Thursday September 7, 2006 The Guardian (UK) The Bush administration's claim that Americans are now safer from terrorism has been undermined by a poll yesterday showing a significant jump in the number of Americans and Europeans concerned about Islamist extremism and other global threats. The survey, published days before the fifth anniversary of 9/11, is at odds with a Bush administration document on terrorism on Tuesday that insisted: "America...

When Dick Cheney shot his friend it was a bizarre accident. But his handling of the event has wounded the Bush administration and infuriated the press. When the second most powerful man in America shoots his friend in the face, is it news? Apparently not to vice-president Dick Cheney, who waited 18 hours before disclosing to the public that he had sprayed his hunting companion, Harry Whittington, a 78-year-old Texas lawyer, with as many as 200 pieces of bird shot. The extraordinary nature of the incident, and Cheney's initial refusal to own up to it, dominated newspaper headlines and late-night...

The latest children's favourite to be given the Hollywood treatment, CS Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia has been dismissed as sexist, racist, Christian propaganda. Alison Lurie on the fairytale that has divided children and adults alike Most enormously successful children's books, like Harry Potter, become successful films within a few years of their publication. But there is one odd exception: CS Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe has taken 55 years to reach the screen. Or maybe it is not so odd. On first reading, this story and the six other Chronicles of Narnia that followed it seem simple,...

... I first drew Bush as a monkey after his installation by the Supreme Court, exactly five years ago. It was by accident. I was trying to depict him as a spiritual heir to Ronald Reagan, another useless chump whose most celebrated movie hit was Bedtime For Bonzo in which he starred with a chimp. So Bush became a chimp before I ever realised how closely he resembles our hairy forebears. [...] Drawing him as a monkey, however, worked a treat. His four hands enabled him to get up to all sorts of interesting tricks, and also somehow fitted his...

Aslan the lion shakes his mighty mane and roars out across Narnia and eternity. Christ is risen! However, not many British children these days will get the message. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe opens this week to take up the mantle left by The Lord of the Rings. CS Lewis's seven children's books, The Chronicles of Narnia, will be with us now and for many Christmases to come. .... US born-agains are using the movie. .... children may puzzle over the lion and ask embarrassing questions. .... The sins of this "son of Adam" can only be redeemed...

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Resistance is the first step towards Iraqi independence This is the classic initial stage of guerrilla warfare against a colonial occupation Tariq Ali Monday November 3, 2003 The Guardian Some weeks ago, Pentagon inmates were invited to a special in-house showing of an old movie. It was the Battle of Algiers, Gillo Pontecorvo's anti-colonial classic, initially banned in France. One assumes the purpose of the screening was purely educative. The French won that battle, but lost the war. At least the Pentagon understands that the resistance in Iraq is following a familiar anti-colonial pattern. In the movie, they would...