Free Republic

The worriers like to complain that we don't make anything anymore. America is being hollowed out. Soon we're going to be left doing one another's laundry. Boy, will be poor then. At the heart of this concern is the belief that manufacturing is the key to an economy's success. You have to make stuff. You can't just move it around or sell it. A nation of services is a poor nation. In fact, there is no gold-medal industry that is the key to economic prosperity. In 1900, agriculture employed 40% of the American work force. America was pretty prosperous in...

No serious American newspaper would commission images of Jesus that were solely designed to offend Christians. And if one did, the reaction would be swift and certain. Politicians would take to the floors of Congress and call down thunder on the malefactors. Some Christians would react with fury and boycotts and flaming e-mails that couldn't be printed in a family newspaper; others would react with sadness, prayer and earnest letters to the editor. There would be mayhem, though it is unlikely that semiautomatic weapons would be brandished in the streets. Fortunately, it's not likely to happen, because good newspapers are...

The Bush formula for drying up terrorism is pretty basic: Democracy equals freedom equals a satisfied populace. Transform the Middle East, and the incentive for terrorists to wage war against their governments or those that support them evaporates. But developments in Iraq and elsewhere in the region show the formula to be far more complex, starting with the very first component: democracy.

It was such a disgraceful performance by the Bush White House that it is painful to be reminded of it on television: the most credible figure in the Administration, Secretary of State Colin Powel, was trotted out at the UN in February 2003 to present a pile of official legerdemain--based on shoddy intelligence--that provided the WMD rationale for the imminent invasion of Iraq. Has anyone been held accountable?

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The United States must close Guantanamo prison, where its treatment of some 500 terrorism suspects encourages hatred toward the West and bolsters Muslim membership of the al Qaeda network, a new report concludes. The Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) commissioned the report from its human rights representative, Belgian senate president Anne-Marie Lizin, and will vote next week whether to accept its findings. "A generation of young Muslims, fed on the images of Abu Ghraib, of the treatment reserved for the Guantanamo detainees and rumors about profanation of the Koran, will have filled the al Qaeda ranks and those...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. forces have captured a man described as a senior commander of a militant group linked to al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Iraqi government said on Wednesday. It said in a statement the 33-year-old Iraqi, whom it named only as Abu Marwan, was a leader of the hitherto unknown Abu Talha group, affiliated to the Jordanian militant whom Osama bin Laden

Mention any topic touching on international trade and you are sure to provoke multiple discussions, ranging from child labor to parity in workplace safety, and including catchy terms like "dumping," "outsourcing," and "brain drain." It seems as if many of our best and brightest scholars are devoting their precious talents to enumerating all of the horrible ills that will beset humanity if we do not act immediately to combat each and every development in the global economy.

Japan is considering taxing all cash and savings in an effort to force its people to spend their money or lose it, according to Shukan Gendai, a leading Japanese newsweekly. The plan, as outlined in the magazine, calls for an annual tax of 3% to 5% on all savings and time deposits in the country. The aim of the move is to force Japanese savers to either buy consumer goods or put their money in stock, bonds or real estate to avoid what in effect would become a steep negative interest rate on their savings.

As China inches toward freeing its giant economy from state control, the government in Beijing has tightly held the nation's currency, the yuan, at a relatively weak exchange rate, giving a major advantage to Chinese exporters. But now a long-simmering controversy over that policy is heating up. Treasury Secretary John W. Snow suggested this week that Beijing may allow the yuan to rise, and he made it clear that he wants to see that happen. In doing so, he added his voice to those of American manufacturers, Japanese government officials and others who contend that the exchange rate for the...

Alitalia Hijacker Arrested - Italy TV says

The ACT team took a single skin cell from the ear of an adult cow. This was fused with a donated cow egg which had been stripped of its own genetic material. The scientists then used a jolt of electricity to stimulate the fused cell to become an embryo. The embryo was rich in stem cells that have the potential to become a wide range of body tissues. Some of these stem cells were then subjected to secret chemical treatments to turn them into fully mature kidney cells. They were nurtured on a biodegradable kidney-shaped scaffold designed by a team ...

David Ricardo and Comparative Advantage The Theory of Comparative Advantage David Ricardo, working in the early part of the 19th century, realised that absolute advantage was a limited case of a more general theory. Consider Table 1. It can be seen that Portugal can produce both wheat and wine more cheaply than England (ie it has an absolute advantage in both commodities). What David Ricardo saw was that it could still be mutually beneficial for both countries to specialise and trade.