Free Republic

By contrast, the implosion of Wall Street, followed by Paulson's escalating series of multibillion-dollar rescues, has fired up populist sentiments that were already building in American politics, promising to reshape legislative battles over everything from tax and trade policies to federal regulation. Union leaders like the AFL-CIO's John Sweeney suddenly sound as if they're in the mainstream of public opinion with statements like this: "One thing is certain. No one - no politician, no investment banker, no television commentator, no economist - should be able to say again with a straight face that here in the United States we just...

A moratorium on the opening of new fast food restaurants in one of the poorest areas of Los Angeles moved one step closer to reality on Tuesday in a measure aimed at countering obesity.A Los Angeles city council planning committee unanimously approved a one-year ban, which could be extended for a further year, on new fast food outlets in a 32-square-mile (82-sq-km) area of Los Angeles.

Barack Obama told a group of Florida donors Friday night that Republicans will try to make voters afraid of him, and suggested they would use his race to scare up votes for John McCain. Apparently girding for a nasty general election fight, the Illinois senator has in recent days predicted that independent GOP groups are waiting in the wings to attack him, and said his presumptive GOP rival is already “fear-mongering” when it comes to foreign policy. But his comments Friday night in Jacksonville, Fla., seemed to reflect elevated concerns that his campaign to be the first black president would...

Ideologies: Once in a while the truth accidentally tumbles out on global warming activists' real agenda. That's exactly what happened at the U.N., when Bolivia's leader called for ending capitalism to save the planet. Delivering the keynote address at the United Nations forum on Indigenous People on Monday, Bolivia's President Evo Morales told the adoring crowd that "if we want to save our planet earth, to save life, to save mankind, we have a duty to put an end to the capitalist system."Morales elaborated on that by calling for an end to "unbridled industrial development, extraction of natural resources, excessive...

School bans Santa from wearing red - because it reminds pupils of Coca-ColaLast updated at 16:37pm on 21st November 2007Santa Claus is being forced to wear a green suit when visiting a school this year, after teachers decided the traditional red outfit would remind pupils of Coca-Cola.  Education chiefs have also banned the annual Christmas grotto - favouring an eastern European version of the festive season instead. Staff at the Steiner School in Brighton, East Sussex, claim the red-suited Santa is a symbol of "modern commercialism" and reminds children of Coca-Cola adverts. Scroll down for more... Father Christmas and...

Smashing capitalism by Barbara Ehrenreich Somewhere in the Hamptons a high-roller is cursing his cleaning lady and shaking his fists at the lawn guys. The American poor, who are usually tactful enough to remain invisible to the multi-millionaire class, suddenly leaped onto the scene and started smashing the global financial system. Incredibly enough, this may be the first case in history in which the downtrodden manage to bring down an unfair economic system without going to the trouble of a revolution. First they stopped paying their mortgages, a move in which they were joined by many financially stretched middle class...

RALEIGH - The living arrangement has a name, The Mayview Collective, which conjures '60s-era images of backyard chickens and overgrown vegetable patches. Living in a duplex with three bedrooms on each side, members of the Collective kick in $325 per month toward rent, utilities and a reserve fund for household expenses. Not long ago, they bought a vacuum cleaner. The back side of the home includes a kitchen where volunteers cook meals for the homeless and a space where more volunteers help people fix their bicycles. Within walking distance of Cameron Village, the people who live here carry a different...

These were gathered by one of our local (Bay Area) talk-show hosts. These people are certifiable. "We already have too much economic growth in the United States. Economic growth in rich countries like ours is the disease, not the cure." Paul Elrich, Stanford University biologist and Advisor to Albert Gore "I think if we don't overthrow capitalism, we don't have a chance of saving the world ecologically. I think it is possible to have an ecological society under socialism. I don't think it's possible under capitalism." Judi Barri of Earth First! "Capitalism is a cancer in the biosphere." Dave Foreman,...

A particularly troubling aspect of the news coverage of the gruesome massacre at Virginia Tech is the fact that no one seems to hate the killer, Cheo Seung-Hui. Indeed, he is not even referred to as a killer or a murderer. Cheo is invariably described as a gunman or a shooter. A gunman implies someone who goes to a local gun range a few times a month, and a shooter connotes someone who pops off a couple of rounds in the woods with friends. It conveys nothing of the monstrous nature of Cheo's crimes, the cold-blooded and deliberate slaughter of...

Look at the video and pictures, the video of his ranting and vocalized madness, look at the pictures of him posing with his weapons. Who else does this? Suicide Bombers. This was a planned terrorist attack plain and simple.

ehudgins@atlassociety.org  April 11, 2007 -- I love opera! Thus recently at the Kennedy Center I saw Die Walküre, the second installment of Richard Wagner's monumental four-part cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen, about gods and goddesses, giants and dwarfs, and mortal human heroes. The music, singing and acting were superb. But the program notes seemed like Al Gore channeling Karl Marx.  Consider "dramaturg" Cori Ellison's description (bold in the original) of the opera's themes. First, nature:  "The despoiling of nature through greed and ambition begins even before the stage action does, with Wotan sacrificing his own eye to drink from the...

Meat has become a rare commodity in Venezuelan supermarkets. Government price controls have driven all but the least palatable scraps, like chicken feet, from the marketplace. President Hugo Chavez blamed the food supply problems on unscrupulous capitalists. “These greedy pigs insist they must make a profit if they are to be able to serve their customers,” Chavez said. “They defy my decree that need must take precedence over profit. Their pleas that they cannot afford to take the losses will not turn me away from my determination to bring socialism to my country.” “We will confiscate every business, we will...

Dear Friend, It's time to end our country's dependence on foreign oil. Unstable prices at the pump are a burden for families. Our dependence props up extremist regimes that threaten our national security. And the threat to our environment from burning fossil fuels is very real. Solving this crisis will take genuine leadership. Hillary has proposed a plan to help end the cycle of dependence: put some of the oil industry's windfall profits into a fund that would help develop practical new sources of renewable energy. Although it's a simple idea that can have a big impact, that's apparently the...

Artifact: A Chilling Tale of Global Warming Katherine Mangu-Ward | February 2007 Print Edition The United Nations has ventured into children’s publishing with a scary story about a small boy who loses a dogsled race because of global warming. In November the odd little picture book cum policy brief, Tore and the Town on Thin Ice, made the rounds at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Kenya.The night after he loses the race by falling through a weak place in the ice, Tore has a dream in which he sees the Inuit goddess Sedna, who warns him that “rich...

NAIROBI, Kenya - More than 80,000 people gathered for an annual anti-capitalist conference in Kenya's capital on Saturday, marching on Nairobi's largest slum to protest global policies they say hurt the poor. The World Social Forum will be a chance to showcase "Africa and her unbroken history of struggle against foreign domination, colonialism and neocolonialism," according to a statement on the event Web site. To begin the forum, thousands of protesters marched from Kenya's sprawling Kibera slum to downtown Nairobi. About a third of Nairobi's total population, at least 700,000 people, is crammed into a single square mile in Kibera,...

It's become a TV ritual: Every year in mid-January, around the time of Martin Luther King's birthday, we get perfunctory network news reports about "the slain civil rights leader." The remarkable thing about this annual review of King's life is that several years — his last years — are totally missing, as if flushed down a memory hole. What TV viewers see is a closed loop of familiar file footage: King battling desegregation in Birmingham (1963); reciting his dream of racial harmony at the rally in Washington (1963); marching for voting rights in Selma, Alabama (1965); and finally, lying dead...

TRANSCRIPT OF THE PRIME MINISTER THE HON JOHN HOWARD MP ADDRESS TO THE QUADRANT MAGAZINE 50TH ANNIVERSARY DINNER, FOUR SEASONS HOTEL, SYDNEY Thank you very much Paddy McGuinness, Chief Justice, Justices, Your Eminence, Your Grace, my Parliamentary colleagues and ladies and gentlemen. I’m finally succumbing to Peter Garrett’s advice and its great to embrace an evening of culture and poetry and all of that after overdosing on my Philistine sporting pursuits over the weekend in almost the four corners of the Earth, from one side of the country to the other. But it really is an enormous pleasure for Janette...

Socialism is best because under socialism. No one has to worry about being poor or starving to death. No one is poor, unemployed, discriminated, everyone is equal reguardless or race or creed. Today such ideas are condemned as evil. Any attempt to protest against slavery and genocide and human rights violations are met with the cries of COMMUNISM! By the religious right and then they conjure up stories about Stalin, Gulags, tortue, police state etc. So therefore we must stick with the current system of sweat shop slavery, poverty and racism while rich people who already have all they will...

Fat is not a feminist issue, as Susie Orbach once claimed. Fat is a class issue. Rich, educated people are not fat; you see almost no children in private schools who are overweight. Fatness and obesity are directly related to lower education and lower incomes. What is sad is that at a time when this country is richer than ever and ought to have better schools than ever, we have far more fat people than ever — a dangerous explosion of flab. Last week the Department of Health issued a report grimly called Forecasting Obesity to 2010 and its findings...

The history of the United States is a tale of constant oppression— a story of a checkered past where political leaders and economic moguls continually acted in their own self-interest… or so many left-leaning history authors would prefer modern Americans to believe. American history has been hijacked by the left wing, where the mistakes of America’s past such as slavery, disenfranchisement, and class warfare are overemphasized, while Franklin D. Roosevelt is simultaneously glorified as the savior of the twentieth century with his New Deal policies. While most textbooks of that nature may cast American history in a bad light and...

Wal-Mart's Right Wing War Room Leads Misguided Attacks on Democrats 8/16/2006 2:50:00 PM To: National Desk Contact: Chris Kofinis of WakeUpWalMart.com, 202-486-6422 DES MOINES, Iowa, Aug. 16 /U.S. Newswire/ -- As prepared for delivery, these are the remarks by Paul Blank, campaign director for WakeUpWalMart.com for today's press conference in Des Moines, Iowa regarding Wal-Mart's attacks on Democrats who participate in the 2006 Change Wal-Mart, Change America national bus tour: "Yesterday, Wal-Mart, the second largest corporation in America behind Exxon, a company with $11.2 billion in after tax profits, launched an unprecedented and misguided attack against some of the great...

Klein slams Al Gore interview on oil sands JIM MACDONALD Canadian Press EDMONTON — Alberta Premier Ralph Klein has criticized former U.S. vice-president Al Gore for comments he made in a magazine interview in which he attacked the massive oil-sands industry in northern Alberta. Mr. Gore told an interviewer in the latest issue of Rolling Stone that oil-sands processing is a huge waste of energy and creates an eyesore on the landscape of Western Canada. “For every barrel of oil they extract there, they have to use enough natural gas to heat a family's home for four days,” Mr. Gore...

MEXICO CITY - Mexican immigrants and their U.S. boycott were on the minds and lips of tens of thousands of unionized workers and leftist protesters who marched Monday through the heart of Mexico City. "Immigrant brothers, we are with you," chanted a cohort of street merchants arriving for a midday protest that began in front of the heavily guarded U.S. Embassy and coursed for several miles to the sprawling central plaza downtown. "Open the borders." But while support for the U.S. boycott ran wide among the marchers here, it didn't seem very deep nationwide. Despite calls for a boycott of...

Jay Bennish is a teacher who collects paychecks for teaching Colorado high school students about geography. Here is a sample from one of Bennish’s classes: “Do you see how this economic system [capitalism] is at odds with humanity? At odds with caring and compassion? It is at odds with human rights. Anytime you have a system that’s designed to procure profit, when profit is the bottom motive, money, that means money is going to become more important potentially than what? Safety, human lives, etcetera.” According to Tustin Amole, Public Information Officer for the Cherry Creek School District, the above statement...

NEW YORK Columnist Ann Coulter made a provocative remark Friday about "Doonesbury" creator Garry Trudeau and editorial cartoonist Ted Rall. Trudeau is shrugging it off, but Rall is considering a lawsuit. Coulter reportedly said Friday at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C.: "Iran is soliciting cartoons on the Holocaust. So far, only Ted Rall, Garry Trudeau, and The New York Times have made submissions."

The nation's largest telephone and cable companies are crafting an alarming set of strategies that would transform the free, open and nondiscriminatory Internet of today to a privately run and branded service that would charge a fee for virtually everything we do online. Verizon, Comcast, Bell South and other communications giants are developing strategies that would track and store information on our every move in cyberspace in a vast data-collection and marketing system, the scope of which could rival the National Security Agency. According to white papers now being circulated in the cable, telephone and telecommunications industries, those with the...

CARACAS, Venezuela — The World Social Forum started as an alternative to the market-friendly World Economic Forum, but now there's an alternative to the alternative. Annoyed by all the focus on Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, some anti-globalization activists have split from the World Social Forum to hold their own "Alternative Social Forum" in the Venezuelan capital. Disgruntled activists complain the ubiquitous red T-shirts of Chavez's party and rows of promotional booths are everywhere at the main event, stifling debate and undermining the forum's capacity to act as a catalyst for social change. "The World Social Forum was born as an...

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is hosting one of the world’s largest anti-globalization, anti-war events starting tomorrow – and the timing couldn’t be better. Leftist leaders are increasingly popular across Latin America, while Chavez’s own “revolution� for the poor has become an inspiration for like-minded activists everywhere from Canada to Chile. Organisers predict as many as 100,000 people will attend the World Social Forum this week in Caracas, including campaigners against US-style free trade, environmentalists, Indian leaders and human rights activists. Their views span a wide spectrum, but most participants appear united by strong opposition to the US government and the...

Wal-Mart has made a documentary extolling its own virtues in an effort to counter a damning Robert Greenwald film. Greenwald's Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, was released Tuesday, and opens in cinemas in New York and Los Angeles on Nov. 4. Poster for Robert Greenwald's movie, highly critical of Wal-Mart. Made on a shoestring budget of $1.8 million, it will get limited release in theatres, but in the current age of popular documentaries, Greenwald hopes it will become a cult hit like Michael Moore's critique of General Motors, Roger and Me. In The High Cost of Low Price...

That's what one hears as the giant retailer sops up the vitality from middle-class families, local communities, and the national economy . This happens in three different but related ways. First, there's the clobbering of Main Street: Wal-Mart moves in on the edges of towns, and the much smaller downtown merchants, unable to match its prices, soon go under. Second, there's the miserable wage and benefits package offered by Sam Walton's creation. And third, there's Wal-Mart's purchasing strategy, which seems to be about buying American-made products only as a last resort -- to the point that today Wal-Mart, by itself,...

If Americans had to be described with one word, there's a good chance it would be 'fat'. Americans, we are constantly told, are the fattest people on the planet. Obesity is rife. Compared with other nations the Americans are not just big, but super-size. Yet this obsession with obese Americans is about more than body fat. Certainly there is a debate to be had about the extent to which obesity is a problem in America - a discussion best left to medical experts. But a close examination of the popular genre on obesity reveals it is about more than consumption...

San Francisco police clashed Friday night in the city's Mission District with anarchists who broke windows and sent one officer to the hospital with a head injury. The anarchists were protesting the G-8 summit meeting in Scotland. Police arrested three protesters, said police officer Maria Oropeza. Billed as the "West Coast Anti-Capitalist Convergence and March against the G8," the protest drew anarchists who used sticks, poles and skateboards to break windows of a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant and a Wells Fargo Bank. Protesters also overturned news boxes at several intersections along Valencia Street to prevent police from driving up those...

Rewriting Germany's Nazi Past - A Society in Moral DeclineManfred Gerstenfeld The German postwar governments have made great efforts to reeducate the population. In recent years, however, there are increasing signs of shifts in German attitudes toward rewriting its past. Some of these involve the sanitizing of history, while others are reflected in an increasing lack of sensitivity among society's elites as well as the mainstream toward the use of concepts and semantics from the Hitler period. Franz Muentefering, chairman of the German Socialist party, compared certain foreign investors to damaging insects. The weekly Stern listed seven "locust firms";...

Germany's New War: the Blitzkrieg against Capitalism As Germans across the country danced in the streets to hail Joseph Ratzinger's elevation to the papal throne, businessmen amongst them felt the cold blast of governmental disapprobation. Last Thursday Herr Müntefering, the leader of Germany's ruling SPD party, rounded on capitalists and pronounced them to be the enemies of democracy and full employment. Yesterday Frau Vogt, the Deputy Chairman of the ruling SPD party, suggested the logical next step: a boycott: "Consumers have the power to avoid the products of companies who make people redundant on a big scale," she said. Boycotts...

Franco Aleman, of Barcepundit.com, provides us shocking suggestive evidence that the massive fire which destroyed a thirty-two story skyscraper in Madrid may have been the result of foul play. A videotaper caught what appears to be people with flashlights on lower floors of the building as the fire burned above. While far from conclusive evidence, this would be consistent with arsonists doing their work. The building housed the biggest accounting firm in Spain and a prestigeous law firm, so it might be a target for anti-capitalist thugs.

LONDON (AFP) - The European Union (news - web sites) could consider legislation to regulate the junk food industry so as to tackle the continent's increasing obesity problem, the EU's health commissioner said. AFP/File Photo While urgent action was needed, self-regulation by the food industry was the best and quickest way to deal with the problem, health and consumer affairs commissioner Markos Kyprianou told the Financial Times. "The signs from the industry are very encouraging, very positive," he said in an interview with the London-based paper. "But if this doesn't produce satisfactory results, we will proceed to legislation." Such a...

In 1984, as all devoted readers of Conversations with Trentino know, John Kenneth Galbraith visited the Soviet Union and praised it for the prosperity he saw in its "exfoliating apartment houses" well stocked stores, and traffic-filled streets. Professor Galbraith took particular note of labor efficiency: he observed that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics used its manpower efficiently, unlike the US. Galbraith was then the grand panjandrum of economics, a professor of that dark science at Harvard, erstwhile president of the American Economic Association, a founding member of the ADA, and formerly US Ambassador to India. A card-carrying liberal in...

Saturday after Thanksgiving is the traditional day to purchase stamps for my annual Christmas card mailing... [snip] So, shortly before noon on that most recent post-turkey day, I sauntered into a neighborhood "U.S. Postal Store," [snip] and headed for the stamps-only section. I quickly found a packed wall of display racks offering a panoply of first-class postage devoted to the various elements of the year-end holiday season, specifically: 1) Christmas, featuring colorful, contemporary designs of Santa Claus with an array of inanimate, secular Yule symbols; 2) Kwanzaa, with not just one but two stamps promoting a totally fabricated "harvest holiday"...

Millions of human beings around the world are forcibly detained, their liberties removed by governmental authorities. Anyone who takes seriously the immediate potential for replacing capitalism with a world of real abundance and freedom knows already that the great majority of crimes are either crimes against property or involve the illegal trafficking of property — or are the likely direct result of living the restricted and stressful life of a wage-slave. While there are those who justify the existence of laws on moral and ideological grounds, the defenders of the status-quo must always argue their case referring to a swashbuckler’s...

HUNDREDPERCENTER For love of God & Country The Indoctrination of America's Youth by Malachy Joyce HundredPercenter By the time you complete reading the contents of this page, you will be shocked. HundredPercenter has taken an in depth look into New York State's regents examinations for Global history, U.S. history & Government, for the years 2000-04. Within the contents of the examinations, you will find incontrovertible evidence of a scary liberal bias, with many questions being anti-capitalist, anti-government, anti-chrisitan, and outright anti-american. The regent exams, which are publicly funded, are part and parcel of an attempt by the left in America...

Friends, I have never seen a head so far up a Presidential ass (pardon my Falluja) than the one I saw last night at the "news conference" given by George W. Bush. He's still talking about finding "weapons of mass destruction" -- this time on Saddam's "turkey farm." Turkey indeed. Clearly the White House believes there are enough idiots in the 17 swing states who will buy this. I think they are in for a rude awakening. I've been holed up for weeks in the editing room finishing my film ("Fahrenheit 911"). That's why you haven't heard from me lately....

It's about the trees, foe of logging says Activist charged in firebombings denies FBI's 'terrorist' label By ANDREW KRAMER THE ASSOCIATED PRESS VICTORIA, B.C. -- For 19 months, Tre Arrow was one of the most wanted fugitives in North America -- he was accused of firebombing logging and cement trucks in Oregon and having links to a group of radical environmentalists viewed as terrorists by the FBI. Now he's in the Vancouver Island Regional Correctional Centre, facing charges of trying to shoplift bolt cutters. He has begun a hunger strike to protest what he calls injustices in the U.S. legal...

The FBI's capture of a prominent figure in what it calls the nation's worst domestic terrorist threat may do little to slow the radical environmental movement known as the Earth Liberation Front, federal authorities acknowledge. The suspect, Tre Arrow, also known as Michael Scarpitti and numerous other pseudonyms, is a charismatic figure who has run for political office before running from the law after being accused as the ringleader in a pair of environmentally motivated arson attacks. "It's a very big capture for us," said Beth Anne Steele, spokeswoman for the Portland, Ore., office of the FBI. "[The suspect has]...

We were born at the end of World War II to a generation that had just won a war against pure evil. We were their hope for a brighter future. The forbearers of a new era. An era of peace and prosperity. An era of fun. We had hula-hoops, silly putty, slinkies and slip 'n slides. We ate Spaghetti-o's, Alphabits, TV dinners and Spam. We watched Ed Sullivan, I Love Lucy, The Flintstones and American Bandstand. We witnessed the first manned space flight and prayed for Apollo 13. We saw a man step onto the moon and suffered through the...

The Martha verdict appears quite popular with the political classes and the vaunted "man on the street," not to mention the nation's mainstream journalists.  The post-trial comments of one juror, Chappell Hartridge (Juror Number Eight), say it all: "Maybe this is a victory for the little guys who lose money thanks to these kinds of transactions. Maybe it's a message to the big wigs." Remember that this was not a trial about "insider trading."  The judge said so, the prosecutors said so, the pundits said so.  Even the New York Times declared that it was not an "insider trading" charge. ...

FLASH: Michael Moore to endorse Wesley Clark... Moore: 'He's an honest and decent man. I would like to see the General debate the deserter'...

So I was back in San Francisco on business a few weeks ago and headed to the Montgomery Street BART station to catch a train to take me away from the grime and madness of The City to the relatively more palatable grime and madness of the East Bay. Which is when I spotted them -- a couple of young men standing in front of the train station staircase. They were waving sings and carrying on and generally making a nuisance of themselves by trying to stand in front of rapidly fleeing passersby. They also were singing -- at the...

Letter from the fat turkey himeslf titled: Turkeys on the Moon... from Michael Moore

<p>Striding onstage in Berlin Sunday night, it didn't take long for U.S. polemicist Michael Moore to attack the U.S.-led war in Iraq. "There should be a rule," he quipped to rapturous laughter, "that you're not allowed to bomb another country unless you can find it on the map."</p>

...Take his deion of his fellow countrymen and their blind pursuit of the American Dream: "They are possibly the dumbest people on the planet... in thrall to conniving, thieving, smug pricks. "We Americans suffer from an enforced ignorance. We don't know about anything that's happening outside our country. Our stupidity is embarrassing. National Geographic produced a survey which showed that 60 per cent of 18-25 year olds don't know where Great Britain is on a map. And 92 per cent of us don't own a passport."