Free Republic

Marshall Goldman, a long-time student of Russia, says energy wealth and control over export pipelines have made Russia more powerful than at any time in its history. VOA's Barry Wood reports the Harvard University professor spoke at a forum Thursday in Washington. Professor Goldman told the Jamestown Foundation that Russia's post-cold war power is built on its oil and gas resources. He said both eastern and western Europe have become dependent on Russia for oil and gas and that alternative supplies are not available. The recent boom in oil and gas prices, said Professor Goldman, has greatly boosted Russia's economic...

/snip/ The decision was also seen as a sign of the pressure Chinese government regulations put on foreign companies to set up joint ventures, even when they may be reluctant to do so for fear of helping to turn their Chinese partners into global rivals. /snip/ Duncan Clark, the chairman of BDA China Ltd., a technology and media consulting firm in Beijing, said Chinese regulations requiring domestic control over companies engaged in many kinds of financial transactions had limited the ability of eBay’s payment mechanism. “The end game is who can control online payment,” he said. “They’ve had their hands...

Sen. Mark Dayton: (2:50:25 mark) “You’ve said, and I agree with you, that hindsight is 20/20, and we’ve all made judgments at the time that with hindsight can be legitimately questioned. Given what we know today about the absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, given the predicament that we’re in today, with that benefit of hindsight, would you say that invading Iraq was the right decision or the wrong decision?” Robert Gates: [long sigh] “Frankly Senator, I think that is a judgment that historians are going to have to make. I certainly supported the decision to go into...

/Snip/ While each country presents a somewhat different political profile, the common thread has been the breakdown of the political consensus around reform and liberalization. Governments are weak, institutions have become politicized, and corruption and nationalism are on the rise. Now the International Monetary Fund has raised a warning flag about a possible financial crisis in a region that has several of the characteristics of the Asian economies of the mid-1990. /snip/ The biggest problem is in Hungary, where things began to unravel this spring after the newly elected prime minister was overheard on tape telling party colleagues that he...

Just who was Mao Zedong? According to the English-language version of Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopedia, he was a victorious military and political leader who founded China's modern Communist state. He was also a man many saw as "a mass murderer, holding his leadership accountable for the deaths of tens of millions of innocent Chinese." Switch to Wikipedia in Chinese, and one discovers a very different man. There, Mao Zedong's reputation is unsullied by any mention of a death toll in the great purges of the 1950s and 1960s, or for what many historians call the greatest famine in human...

/snip/ The struggle for Lebanon has already started in its crucial political phase. The Islamic republic, acting through Hezbollah and its Maronite allies led by ex-General Michel Aoun, is trying to destroy Prime Minister Fouad Siniora's government through internal haemorrhage. The pro-Tehran coalition has already persuaded six ministers to resign from the Siniora cabinet. A seventh had resigned a few months ago, although his departure has not been officially approved. All that is needed is for one or two more ministers to quit for Siniora's cabinet to lose its quorum and thus be forced to step down. Such a development...

/snip/ MR. RUSSERT: But now, today, in ?06, do you share Senator McCain?s view that we should send in more American troops and either win the war or, quote/unquote, ?win the war? or withdraw? SEN. LIEBERMAN: Let me go back real briefly on Rumsfeld. I said in October of 2003 that I thought the president should bring in a new secretary of defense because our policy in Iraq was collapsing then and somebody had to be held accountable. When I made that statement, it was a time around?I think it was around Abu Ghraib, and I said ?This is the...

/snip/ the political drama in Connecticut isn't just among the candidates. It has to do with the future of the Democratic Party -- and that future affects everyone. What happened in this campaign was the materialization on August 8 of an ideological posse. Its mission was to punish a Democrat for the sin of backing President Bush in the Iraq war. Now it gets a little complicated because there are many Americans who oppose the war as it has evolved. /snip/ but that's not because he [George Bush] was wrong in going in. He was moved by a conviction that...

November 3, 2006 D.C. 9:20 p.m. There are a lot of questions about waterboarding. First of all, how to spell it — as one word or with a hyphen? It hit the news this week, but it has been in use since the Middle Ages, through World War II and Vietnam. Yet, despite its history, there are questions about waterboarding — What is it? Is it torture? And is it effective? Some U.S. personnel have been trained in waterboarding in order to resist it as a form of interrogation. One told me that it is the fear of pain and...

A former high-ranking Chinese technology specialist has defected and is seeking political asylum in the United States in order to promote democratic change in China. Jia Jia, until recently the head of the government-backed China Shanxi Science and Technology Experts Association in Shanxi, north-central China, said in a telephone interview from Hong Kong that he defected Oct. 23 during a visit to Taiwan because he opposes Chinese Communist Party rule. "China right now is not free," Mr. Jia said. "I left China because I want to make use of the democratic environment outside the country." Once China has taken steps...

Snip…TEHERAN STRATEGISTS, working on the assumption that Israel and the Islamic Republic will clash at some point, regard Lebanon and Syria as part of the Iranian glacis. It was to secure Lebanon and Syria as strategic assets that Teheran launched its plan for the "Fertile Crescent." The first phase of the plan consisted of an Iranian-sponsored campaign last year to cast suspicion on elements in the Syrian Ba'ath known for their opposition to Khomeinism. Hundreds of Ba'athist cadres, including senior figures, were retired or driven into exile. …snip… President Bashar Assad's purge of the party, the army and security services...

Is President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad about to face the first serious challenge to his strategy of turning Iran into the vanguard of a global opposition to the United States? The answer is yes. To meet that challenge Ahmadinejad may provoke a clash with the United States by heating things up in Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon before the end of the year. ...snip... Facing mounting problems at home, Ahmadinejad counts on foreign policy to put some wind back in his sails. This could come in a number of ways. ...snip Even a month ago, Ahmadinejad was riding the crest of his popularity...

Description: In "Because They Hate," Brigitte Gabriel argues that the U.S. is facing total destruction at the hands of Muslims. The author, a Christian survivor of the civil war between Lebanese Christians and Muslims in the 1970s, draws on her own experiences to support both the profiling of Muslims and the ban of what she calls "hate education" in Islamic institutions. Author Bio: Brigitte Gabriel is a journalist, producer and founder of American Congress for Truth, a non-profit organization (www.americancongressfortruth.com).

An Opportunity to Study Mars - October 06, 2006 This video compilation shows images from the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity's 32 months on Mars.

According to a recent Los Angeles Times article, Russia “has lost the equivalent of a city of 700,000 people every year since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.” …snip… If demographic trends hold steady, Russia’s population, which stands at 142 million today, will drop to 52 million by 2080. At that point, according to Sergei Mironov, the chairman of the upper house of the Dumas, the Russian parliament, “there will no longer be a great Russia . . . it will be torn apart piece by piece, and finally cease to exist.” …snip… Even more disturbing than the...

Snip… … I'm stationed slightly northwest of Baghdad in a mixed Sunni/Shia area. I'm a sergeant in the U.S. Army on a human intelligence collection team. I interact with Iraqis on a daily basis and I help put together the intel picture for our area of operations. I have contacts with friends, who are also in my job, in every area of operations in the Fourth Infantry Division footprint, and through our crosstalk I'd say I have a pretty damn good idea of what's going on in and around Baghdad on a micro and intermediary level. …snip… This breakneck pace...

snip...Since liberation, an estimated 45,000 Iraqis have been killed, largely because of insurgent and terrorist activities. Yet, there are few signs that a majority of Iraqis are prepared to raise the white flag of surrender. Several events in the past two weeks have highlighted the growing isolation of the jihadists and their Saddamite allies. One event is the creation of a tribal alliance, bringing together all Arab Sunni clans of western Iraq together in a united front to "chase Al Qaida out of Iraq". …snip… A second noteworthy event is the almost unanimous approval by the Iraqi National Assembly (parliament)...

Snip… A Concert of Democracies Neither America nor the world can wait forever for U.N. reform, no matter how desirable it is. The United States must take the lead and invest the time, energy, and resources to accomplish significant reform, on the principle of “mend it, don’t end it.” At the same time, however, we should work with our allies to develop a new global institution dedicated to the principles underpinning liberal democracy, both as a vehicle to spur and support the reform of the United Nations and other global institutions and as a possible alternative to them. This alternative...

With the midterm election around the corner, here's a wacky idea you won't often hear from our elected leaders: We should raise the tax on gasoline. Not quickly, but substantially. I would like to see Congress increase the gas tax by $1 per gallon, phased in gradually by 10 cents per year over the next decade. Campaign consultants aren't fond of this kind of proposal, but policy wonks keep pushing for it. Here's why:

snip…I pity the American (or European) consumer goods firm that thinks its next big growth leg is coming from hundreds of millions of Chinese consumers. I visited one reasonably upscale mall filled with name brands like Columbia, Nike, and Nautica, that was thronged with shoppers. Unfortunately, very few had bags--they all seemed to be there for the experience and the air conditioning rather than the products. By contrast, the commercial neighborhood I visited the next day--which had lots of small shops selling locally branded or knocked-off goods--was mobbed with people actually spending money (judging by how many had shopping bags)....