Free Republic

The U.S.- Mexico Social Security Totalization Agreement ...an agreement signed between the Bush administration and the Mexican government in 2004 that would funnel billions of U.S. Social Security funds to Mexican citizens. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has already warned that as a result of this agreement, the number of unauthorized Mexican workers and family members eligible for social benefits will likely increase. The Social Security Administration itself warns that Social Security is within decades of bankruptcy - yet they seem to have no problem making agreements that hasten its demise...

Excerpt - LITTLE ROCK — Former president Bill Clinton said Monday that he remembered the moment he realized he made the shift from a world leader to a philanthropist. "One day I was shaving in my house up in New York and Ilooked at myself in the mirror, and I thought, 'My God, I've become an NGO (non-government organization),'" Clinton told a crowd of 300 people gathered at his presidential libary in downtown Little Rock. ~ snip ~ "My climate-change initiative is being funded by Barbra Streisand and Rupert Murdoch," Clinton said, delighted by the unlikely alliance between the actress...

Over the past decade, the expression public-private partnership has crept into our publiclexicon. What is a public-private partnership? What purposes were they supposedlycreated to serve? What, on the other hand, is free enterprise? Are the two compatible?In answering these questions we shall see that although advocates of public-privatepartnerships frequently speak of economic development, public-private partnershipsreally amount to economic control—they are just one of the key components of thecollectivist edifice being built up around the idea of sustainable development. Within theeconomic arena of sustainable development is the emergence of what we might call softfascism: a system that fits the dictionary definitions...

Vatican Officials Say Pro-abortion Efforts Violate International Pacts ROME, SEPT. 16, 2004 (Zenit.org).- A Vatican official appealed to governments to remind them of their duty to denounce U.N. agencies that go against international agreements by promoting abortion. The appeal by Cardinal Renato Martino, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, was supported by Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Holy See's permanent observer to the U.N. offices in Geneva. It took place after the presentation Wednesday of a report of the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA). Against numerous studies that point to a worrying "demographic winter," the UNFPA report continues to...

Setting the global strategic agendaBy Ehsan Ahrari Well into third year of his tenure, George W Bush has decidedly finished the internship phase of his presidency in the realm of foreign affairs. With a military victory in Iraq under his belt, he has started the process of setting the global agenda - which, inter alia, includes legitimizing his country's continued, and seemingly long-term, occupation of Iraq - among European and Arab countries. At least superficially, that is a near impossible mission; however, he is going after accomplishing it with a steely resolve. He seems to have made a good start...