Free Republic

The mendacity that pollutes Middle Eastern discourse, or,: How to guarantee more violence http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | Whenever a massacre occurs in Israel, Palestinian spokesmen rush out to say: "Yes, this is terrible, but this is what happens when you have a people with no hope for an end to the occupation." Apologists in the West invariably echo this exculpation/explanation. Of all the mendacity that pollutes Middle Eastern discourse, this one is the worst. It assumes that the listener is not only stupid but amnestic. Two years ago at the Camp David summit, in the presence of the president of the...

Don't Do It, Mr. President: Palestinian State Under Present Circumstances Will Only Make Matters WorseFrontPageMagazine.com | June 21, 2002IF PRESS ACCOUNTS ARE TO BE BELIEVED, President Bush is determined to commit his administration to the recognition of a "provisional" Palestinian state as soon as there is a moment when its unveiling -- not to say its logic -- is not shattered by yet another murderous terrorist attack against Israeli civilians. On their face, these reports seem implausible. After all, in the months since September 11 in particular, President Bush has conveyed too clearly his appreciation of several principles that completely...

THE GREAT DISCONNECT: THE STILLED VOICE OF GRASSROOTS AMERICAby Murray Soupcoff The IconoclastJune 17, 2002If you need confirmation regarding the gaping disconnect between ordinary Americans and their supposedly more enlightened "betters" in the liberal media and the Democratic Party, then check out this plain-speaking Dick Morris column that appeared in theNew York Post a while back. To quote Mr. Morris: Rarely has there been more of a disjuncture between the real feelings of most Americans and the focus of the liberal mainstream media. While The New York Times is preoccupied with the "swirling" investigation into the warnings about 9/11...

(May 22, 2002 10:53 a.m. EDT) - Is it a coincidence that the national agony surrounding difficult questions about 9/11 breaks to the surface when the cleanup at ground zero has reached its conclusion? Be that as it may, we now have opened this Pandora's box. May America's strength of character carry us through. May the families of the dead bear with us. I believe we can get past the antics of the current Democratic leadership and of Hillary Rodham Clinton. We can get past the discombobulation at the White House. If there is culpability, it is shared by...

I’d like to know what each and every one of you, democRAT and some republicans alike, did to stem the flood of illegal terrorists into this country. I’d like to know which of you thought Janet Reno actually served the people rather than her handler, Hitlery. I’d like to know which of you made sure the issue was abuse of power, corruption of justice, perjury and treason instead of “just sex” when the Billy Goat in Chief and his Harpy-Nanny consort went about the business of recreating the country as they saw fit, to serve their own power-mad agenda. And...

Security is a State of Mindby SARTRE"Strappaddo Wrack " "Security is the chief enemy of mortals." -- William Shakespeare June 11, 2002 Look at the chart of the major Intelligence Community agencies. Your government provides links to each in order to share information about each organization. Missing from the FBI site is reference to the new role that President Bush is proposing for this Bureau. Internal Security sounds like a goal that citizens should eagerly support, but like any function that seems sensible, the devil is always in the details.Now we are presented with a fundamental change in the...

"The government and media for the past nine months have called this a war against terror... But terror is not the enemy," said Dobbs. "In the interests of clarity and honesty. The enemies in this war are radical Islamists who argue all non-believers in their faith must be killed. They are called Islamists. …Let us be clear. This is not a war against Muslims or Islam. It is a war against Islamists and all who support them." Without doubt, Dobbs will be forced to apologize for his comments. The veteran anchor might even be fired for his candid evaluation. The...

Commencement Address June 6th, 2002 Daniel Patrick Moynihan A while back it came as something of a start to find in The New Yorker a reference to an article I had written, and I quote, "In the middle of the last century." Yet persons my age have been thinking back to those times and how, in the end, things turned out so well and so badly. Millions of us returned from the assorted services to find the economic growth that had come with the Second World War had not ended with the peace. The Depression had not resumed. It...

Can Our Government Protect Us? June 3, 2002 by Tom Barrett, Editor@ConservativeTruth.orgA large percentage of Americans think our federal government can (and should) provide the citizenry with everything we need. They think the government should be a combination of Big Brother and Superman. They think the government can protect us from terrorism. I do not.It is impossible for the US government to protect us from all terrorist attacks. President Bush has told us that. Vice President Cheney has stated that there will be more terrorist attacks; it is only a question of whether it will be tomorrow, next month, or...

She surrenders to the second piece of pizza, then turns the subject to her favorite demon. Those who remember her radio show would recognize how her voice cracks slightly as it rises. "The left is in control of our political culture. They have thoroughly intimidated the media. As a gay woman, I'm pleased that Ellen had a TV show, but you'll absolutely never see a TV show about a woman who's an anti-abortion Christian. It will not happen, even though there are more of those people in the country than gay people." She pauses and chuckles. "Of course, I wouldn't...

California's ultra-left-wing senator, Barbara Boxer, insists that "Communism is dead" in Castro's Cuba. Boxer made these comments in late May at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing when Otto Reich, the assistant secretary of state for Latin America, testified. Boxer was arguing in favor of an amendment to the Trade Bill that would allow private U.S. financing of food sales to Cuba. Boxer told Reich she is unhappy with the Bush administration's hard-line policy with Cuba, and that she holds a different view after a recent trip to the enslaved island nation. While admitting that Castro had helped to spread...

Does anyone know whatever happened to newscorridor.com? It's on my short list of places to visit everyday, but for the last few weeks (or so), I get denied access to any http://www.newscorridor.com/ page that I attempt to browse (HTTP Error 403 - Forbidden). I've searched in Usenet, but can find no trace of current information on this site.

In the Sixties and Seventies the Financial Times commentator C Gordon Tether would entertain readers with the proceedings of the Hetheringstoke Academy for Central Bankers. It was a fictional establishment, but the reports of the imaginary goings on had a ring of truth about them - so much so that a Japanese reader wrote to the FT for the address of the great institution, no doubt thinking it could plausibly be situated somewhere between Heathrow and Basingstoke. One of Tether's themes was the language central bankers resort to in their perennial quest to combine meaning with discretion. I am reminded...

What if Ted Kennedy told Fox News tomorrow that he had changed his mind and had decided to become a tea-sipping, tax-cutting Republican? You'd be shocked. Then suppose a week later Strom Thurmond jumped up to a microphone and said (from under his saucy new Ché beret) that he, too, had had a change of heart. He'd decided he wanted to live out his days as a pro-Castro liberal. Well, there'd be chaos. "What in blazes is happening to America?" you might wonder. This is how I'm beginning to feel about the amalgamated conundrums known as the U.S. economy. The...

Digital ToolsLinux Gets FriendlierStephen Manes, 06.10.02, 12:00 AM ET Installing Linux on PCs was once an exercise in nonstop profanity. Now it works--mostly. Since its introduction as a free operating system in 1991, the Linux variant of Unix has become such a popular way to run servers that a business has grown up around supplying, supporting and charging for it. Even IBM has gotten into the act. Now, frustrated by a monopoly whose innovation in the face of slower growth amounts to finding more efficient ways of extracting money from captive customers, users are beginning to wonder whether Linux could...

Americans are increasingly mystified by the European Union--and no wonder. It purports to be an alternative center of economic and political authority to the United States, to challenge the U.S.' title as sole superpower, and certainly there is an undertone of anti-Americanism in many of its pronouncements. Yet most of the EU's actions tend to promote European weakness rather than strength. EU regulations insist that workers, with their 35-hour workweek, do less and less, yet the cost of employing them rises steadily. Welfare provisions paid by corporations now exceed nominal wages. As a result unemployment is high throughout the EU...

Both the Republican and Democratic parties have been accelerating the timetable for the presidential nominating process. In 1996 and 2000 nominees were known by early March, even though the conventions did not take place until late summer and the general election until November. Now the Demo-crats are front-loading the system even more: In 2004 both the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary will be held in January, with other state contests coming fast and furious in early February. By Valentine's Day the contest will be over. Why the rush? Why deprive most of the country of a chance to...

Incredibly, Congress is considering raising the current deposit insurance ceiling for banks from $100,000 to $130,000 for individual bank deposits and to $260,000 for certain types of retirement accounts. This move should be stopped. The last time Washington hiked the limit (in 1980, from $40,000 to $100,000), it helped fuel the catastrophic savings and loan collapse. A mini-industry grew from brokers who sold high-yielding bank CDs. Customers did not care about these institutions' financial soundness; after all, Uncle Sam was guaranteeing the deposits. These banks, particularly the S&Ls, went on a lending binge. Small banks say they need higher insurance...

The U.S. Senate is playing games with international trade that could have devastating consequences. President Bush is trying to get authority from Congress to negotiate major trade agreements. So-called fast-track authority means that an agreement is voted either up or down in Congress--no amendments are permitted. Our trading partners would not make politically difficult concessions if they knew Congress could gut any American reciprocal concessions. Yet the Senate recently passed a "killer" provision that would allow Congress to play special-interest games with U.S. trade pacts. If this becomes law, the movement to ease trade barriers, pursued since World War II,...

When I self search for my comments, I am only seeing one page of my most recent comments. I don't see anyway to find my older comments on this site. How can I do that?