Free Republic

Demonstrations in the wake of Iran's presidential election are a sign that country's dissidents want the U.S. to get involved in the disputed contest, Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.) asserted Monday. Bond, the ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, pushed back against President Obama's claim that the election is not a U.S. issue, and urged the administration to speak out more forcefully in favor of Iranian dissidents."We didn't have anything to do with this uprising; we're not trying to tell them who they should select," Bond said on CNBC Monday morning. "But when they have such obvious election fraud and...

The country's highest electoral authority, the Guardian Council, acknowledged on Monday that there were voting irregularities in 50 electoral districts, the most serious official admission so far of problems in the election. But the council insisted the problems do not affect the outcome of the vote. Earlier Monday, the elite Revolutionary Guard issued its sternest warning so far in the post-election crisis. It warned protesters to "be prepared for a resolution and revolutionary confrontation with the Guards, Basij and other security forces and disciplinary forces" if they continue their near-daily rallies. The Basij, a plainclothes militia under the command of...

Should the Green Revolution succeed in toppling the regime, it will be the greatest event since the collapse of the Soviet Union. It will prove to be a more decisive event than even the invasion of Iraq and will rival the attacks of September 11, 2001, in influencing the course of history. The stakes could not be higher. The regime could fall, resulting in the greatest victory in the war on terror to date, or the regime will survive, leaving behind tens of thousands of bloodied bodies, a discouraged population unlikely to take such risks again and bitter at the...

I knew about the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia in the glorious year 1989, when the Iron Curtain crumbled. I can even remember the Singing Revolution in Estonia about the same time. But this is something new: a Silent Revolution. The huge throng that marched through the Iranian capital last Monday spoke nary a word, Theirs was a silent vigil for a liberty not so much lost as never gained, from Shah to Ayatollah. Whenever someone in the crowd would shout a slogan, others hushed him. The organizers of the march had prepared signs that read only: SILENCE! Only the sound...

EC sits down with Ryan Mauro, National Security Researcher for the Christian Action Network, to discuss the rapidly changing events in Iran.

Shortly after the Second World War, a “Green Revolution” began to transform agriculture around the globe, allowing food production to keep pace with worldwide population growth. By means of irrigation, fertilizer, pesticides, and plant breeding, the Green Revolution increased world grain production by an astonishing 250 percent between 1950 and 1984, raising the calorie intake of the world’s poorest people and averting serious famines. The revolution’s benefits have tapered off, however, as the number of mouths to feed has grown ever larger and as conventional breeding of new plant varieties has produced diminishing returns. What’s needed is a new revolution....

A poor Iowa farm boy became one of humanity's greatest benefactors. --- Who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970? You may be forgiven for not remembering, given some of the prize's dubious recipients over the years (e.g., Yasser Arafat). Well, then: Who has saved perhaps more lives than anyone else in history? The answer to both questions is, of course, Norman Borlaug. Who? Norman Borlaug, 92, is the father of the "Green Revolution," the dramatic improvement in agricultural productivity that swept the globe in the 1960s. He is now the subject of an admiring biography by Leon Hesser... "The...

The past 50 years have been the most productive period in global agricultural history, leading to the greatest reduction in hunger the world has ever seen. The Green Revolution, as this period came to be known in the developing world, has kept more than one billion people from hunger, starvation, and even death. Many factors contributed to the Green Revolution. The doubling of the global area under irrigation was certainly important. But at the core was the development and application of new high-yielding, disease- and insect-resistant seeds, new products to restore soil fertility and control pests, and a succession of...

MOSCOW (AFP) - First there was a "rose" revolution, then an "orange" one, but while the "green" or Islamic revolt some see brewing in Uzbekistan may share a basic thirst for democracy, the outcome could be radically -- and tragically -- different, analysts said. ADVERTISEMENT The "people power" revolts in Georgia 18 months ago, then Ukraine last December caught the world's imagination. In both cases, huge, peaceful crowds forced the resignation of corrupt, vote-rigging governments. In came new, younger, Westward-looking leaders who vowed to put their ex-Soviet republics in the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Then in...

Four decades ago, scientific doomsayers painted a bleak picture of the future. They claimed the world would be wracked by famine because dwindling resources would not be enough to feed an exploding population. They said nothing could stave off the looming famine. Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb, predicted in the 1968 book that hundreds of millions of people would starve to death in the 1970s and ’80s. One man proved them wrong — Dr. Norman Borlaug. The Nobel Peace-Prize-winning agronomist, who turns 90 today, is the man behind the “Green Revolution” — the boom in crop productivity and...