Free Republic

Written June of 1916 We must now try to sum up, to draw together the threads of what has been said above on the subject of imperialism. Imperialism emerged as the development and direct continuation of the fundamental characteristics of capitalism in general. But capitalism only became capitalist imperialism at a definite and very high stage of its development, when certain of its fundamental characteristics began to change into their opposites, when the features of the epoch of transition from capitalism to a higher social and economic system had taken shape and revealed themselves in all spheres. Economically, the main...

Remember the good old days, when one only had to watch out for the Federal Government’s twisted interpretation of the commerce clause to justify tyranny? Well those days seem to be long gone. The Obama Administration has been employing an old tactic lately – what some might call an imperial threat – and they’re not doing it overseas, either. The state of Oklahoma is now the target of a direct challenge from US Attorney General Eric Holder, who is using the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as justification to violate Oklahoma’s sovereignty as affirmed by the Tenth Amendment to the...

Islam began in the 7th century AD. in what is today Saudi Arabia. During the nearly 1400 years since that time, Islamic campaigns of military conquest, occupation, and colonization of the Middle East, North Africa, Europe, and Asia occurred. This is principaly how Islam was spread throughout the Middle East, North Africa, and the Balkans: Imperialistic campaigns of military conquest. Occupation and colonization of conquered territory and countries. The subjigation of people under Islamic "occupation": In Nazi occupied Europe in World War II, Jews were forcibly made to distinguish themselves from the rest of the population with a cloth patch...

She is a Judge among lesser men and judges. Especially White men. When she finally is sitted among the seven men and the one White woman of the Supreme Court she alone will possess the greater wisdom of the Latina Female and all that her heritage and gender brings to bear upon American jurisprudence. When she consults with the Senate judicial leadership Democrats and Republicans mostly White men she will be the wisest person in the room and they will all bow to her like Barack Obama bowed to his Saudi King Abdullah. They will bow because she is the...

The reactionary left has descended upon waterboarding as its new case study in why conservatives are diabolical and without conscience. The sad reality is that conservatives are reacting in the rather conventional manner of going on the defensive. Conservatives need to fight back more vigorously against this community now willing to name even Harry Truman as a war criminal alongside President Bush, Condoleeza Rice, Vice President Cheney, and so many more good citizens. The reactionaries of the Left are celebrating their own unique sense of jingoism that has come to dominate their political community since Vietnam. In this distinct and...

Slouching Toward Columbine: Darwin's Tree of Death April 20, 2009 David Klinghoffer I've long been fascinated by the image of the Tree of Death, parallel to the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden and cryptically referred to in mystical texts explaining the Hebrew Bible: And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the Tree of Life also in the midst of the garden, and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (Genesis 2:9). Come and behold: as soon as night falls, the...

Jack Cafferty is a CNN commentator who has always held the most radical liberal views on CNN. I suppose the fan base he has is there to combat MSNBC's radical bias that draws in the liberal crowd. Today, he was on CNN, quoting various articles that all seem to agree on one thing: America is a super power that is soon to lose its super power status. They also agree that America is an empire that may soon need to withdraw its troops from around the world.

Islamic Imperialism: A History Sep. 22nd, 2008 at 9:08 AM When folk use the term imperialism nowadays, it is almost taken as read that one means Western imperialism. Yet, if we take Western civilisation to have arisen from the collapse of Classical civilisation, then, from the C7th to the C15th, Western civilisation was more likely to be the victim of imperialism than the perpetrator of it. Apart from the Reconquista (which was, after all, a re-conquest) and the (ultimately failed) Crusader states, for a thousand years—from the C7th to the C17th—Christendom was subject to waves of attacks and conquest...

Russia’s Restless Muslim Republics By Uwe Klussmann Although Russia is celebrating the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, it still has its own problems in the region as its Muslim republics are drifting toward a partisan war. Last Monday, an eerie funeral procession passed through the center of Nazran in the Russian republic of Ingushetia. Hundreds of people silently crowded around the coffin of Magomed Yevloyev. The 37-year-old lawyer and founder of a Web site ( www.ingushetiya.ru) that was critical of the government was killed in police custody. The authorities said that he was shot in a police car “inadvertently”...

[Moving banner headline] Russian convoy moves out of Gori and is on main road to capital Tbilisi - eyewitnesses.

The anthropologist Margaret Mead once observed that in the 1930s, when she was busy remaking the idea of culture, the notion of cultural diversity was to be found only in the 'vocabulary of a small and technical group of professional anthropologists'. Today, everyone and everything seems to have its own culture. From anorexia to zydeco, the American philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah has observed, there is little that we don't talk about as the product of some group's culture. In this age of globalisation many people fret about Western culture taking over the world. But the greatest Western export is not...

Presidential candidate Barack Obama says the United States should lead a campaign to postpone Zimbabwe’s planned runoff election for president and sponsor a fair one. Obama, the Democrats’ probable nominee, says U.S. and regional leaders should join to spread word that President Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwean government “is illegitimate and lacks any credibility.” The candidate says the runoff election scheduled Friday should be put off until it can be conducted “under a strong international monitoring presence and, to the extent possible, meaningful civil protection.” If that is impossible, Obama said Tuesday, “regional leaders backed by the international community should pursue an...

Of all the empires in history, the United States will go down as one of the most aggressive and least inspiring. After nearly 160 years of warfare and imperial conquest, US policy, and the war machine it marshalled, has left nothing in its tracks but death and destruction, with no lasting cultural value. Five years after the US invasion, Iraq lies in ruins. Divided, violent, depleted, unstable, rife with sectarian war, a hotbed of terrorism and with 20 per cent of its population killed, wounded, displaced or in asylum in neighbouring countries, Iraq bears no resemblance to its recent past....

THE cheque from the Saudi Government for $360,000 was enclosed in an envelope. It was a donation, a gift, a part payment to subsidise the construction of a building that would become Sydney's Muslim heartbeat: Lakemba mosque. "They said: 'Please, can you mention the tragedy of the Palestinian people and what's happened to them in your sermon?"' Shami tells Inquirer. "Which is really a very noble cause, a very noble cause, I couldn't see a negative in their request." The message Shami received from Riyadh brings into question the influence petro-dollars can have on their recipients... But the Saudi cash...

Groundhog Day Curriculum by: Malcolm A. Kline, February 01, 2008 Somewhat like the character Bill Murray plays in the film Groundhog Day, college administrators rarely achieve real reform in resolving the crises in higher education because they keep on doing the same thing over and over again. “In class, many students are ready to talk, but they want to talk about themselves or about large-scale public themes, independent of the books they are supposedly reading,” Robert Newman, Dean of the College of Humanities at the University of Utah notes in a U-Utah publication from last year. “They are happy to...

The view that support for human rights around the world is tantamount to imperialism is based on a series of misconceptions What - if anything - should we do about human rights abuses in other countries? This may prove to be one of the key moral and political questions of the 21st century, not just because of the abuses themselves, but because whatever answer we give hinges on our attitude to several of the most crucial issues in international relations today: national sovereignty, cultural differences, the rule of law, globalisation and "liberal intervention" (the new term for what many would...

The following is a conclusion of a long article by a philosopher Lee Harris where he is deconstructing a frequently heard lately charge of "blowback" to US actions in the world (i.e. that 9/11 was a "blowback" for the United States' foreign policy toward the Muslim world over the past half century or so, going back to the CIA engineered coup in 1953 that ousted Iranian leader Mossadegh, and that  "we had it coming" as a response to "American imperialism") ...This conclusion, however, poses a radical dilemma. A libertarian can plausibly argue that politicians should not interfere with domestic affairs,...

Imperialism: any instance of aggressive extension of authority. Empiricism: an iterative approach that argues for study of events through observation and the formulation of new policy based on lessons learned. Locke | Hume | Aristotle | Archimedes | Plato | JeffersonHow long should the American People wait before they start taking foreign policy matters into their own hands? Indeed they already have! There is a domestic backlash against an absurd narrative that claims “the United States is an empire”. The United States is definitely not an empire, but few Americans are willing to state the obvious. Even fewer are willing...

Those who claim that the United States has become a rapacious, arrogant, destructive, domineering and imperialistic power must somehow explain the continued independent existence of the nation of Canada. Alongside our allegedly land-hungry and bellicose empire, the Maple Leaf Republic has flourished for more than two centuries --- vast, under-populated, resource rich and virtually defenseless. Unlike our Mexican neighbors to the south, the Canadians presented no substantial cultural or linguistic differences to sour the prospect of swallowing the Great White North. On three different occasions, Americans attempted or considered a push to absorb all or part of Canada: in the...

MOSCOW - Former President Mikhail Gorbachev said Friday that the fall of the Soviet Union, which he helped bring about, ushered in an era of U.S. imperialism responsible for many of the world's gravest problems. Gorbachev is lauded in the West for ushering in democratic reforms but widely despised in Russia for paving the way to the economic free-for-all of the 1990s, which brought fabulous wealth for a well-connected few while plunging much of the country into humiliating poverty. He has since became a supporter of President Vladimir Putin's assertive foreign policy and resistance to American power — calling occasional...

MOSCOW (AFP) - President Vladimir Putin issued an acerbic warning Thursday to the United States, saying the recent test of a new Russian missile was a direct response to US actions and condemning "imperialism" in world affairs. "Our American partners have quit the ABM Treaty," Putin told reporters after meeting his Greek counterpart, referring to the landmark 1972 US-Soviet treaty limiting the missile defenses of the Cold War superpower foes. "We warned them then that we would come out with a response to maintain the strategic balance in the world. Yesterday we conducted a test of a new strategic ballistic...

The great Global Warming scare is only the latest eructation of European imperialism. Euro-imperialism used to be known as socialism. Before that, it was just called British or French imperialism, because those countries were very proud of it.

National Security: Russian strongman Vladimir Putin now wants the U.S. to take back its offer of a defense shield for Eastern Europe. Each day, it becomes clearer: Putin's reviving the Cold War. Putin last week said Russia might unilaterally abrogate its 1987 agreement with the U.S. on getting rid of intermediate- and short-range nuclear missiles. This is a dangerous and destabilizing move, the kind that could set off a new arms race. Why is he doing this now? The U.S. is in talks with Poland and the Czech Republic to build missile-defense bases in those countries. Both have a history...

I considered making Paul Krugman's column, "Helping the Poor, the British Way", my subject of this Christmas Day. I even had a snappy headline sussed out: "Let It Snow Socialism". But when it comes to using the message of the day to berate the United States, Krugman can't hold a Christmas candle to James Carroll of the Boston Globe. Krugman took a glancing shot: "It’s the season for charitable giving. And far too many Americans, particularly children, need that charity." Penny-ante pessimism, Paul. In contrast, in his column, Carroll - a former Roman Catholic priest - condemns the United...

Old Soviet anti-American and anti-NATO posters (during Vietnam war): http://doci.nnm.ru/smert_burzhuyam/19.09.2006/antiamerikanskie_plakaty_sssr/

Oh, yes, it was legitimate to remove the Indians for they didn’t use money, Locke’s benchmark for a commonweal united by a social contract. Nor did American Indians maximize production, which sinfully wasted what God had provided human kind. The point is not Locke’s quaint coin trick and Calvinist apologia for Indian-removal—that would have happened without his imprimatur—but rather the more historically interesting point that he ballasted parliamentary liberalism by assuming imperial control of exploitable resources of conquered overseas societies. Since Locke, Western societies have promised their discontented non-owning classes more and have looked covetously at their imperial holdings and...

WASHINGTON - After years of world leaders condemning America for overreaching its power, Americans elected their first Imperialist President. "We do everything we can to help the world, but we're still resented, they call us imperialist pigs," said DC cabbie Albert Shlutnick. "Now they'll see what imperialism is really like." Americans got a raw taste of its new leadership this morning at the first press briefing with President Hillshire in full form. The president opened the briefing with shocking news: "Good morning ladies and gentlemen, I would like to announce that Iran and North Korea no longer exist. Are there...

WASHINGTON - After years of world leaders condemning America for overreaching its power, Americans elected their first ever Imperialist President. "We do everything we can to help the world, but we're still resented, they call us imperialist pigs," said DC cabbie Albert Shlutnick. "Now they'll see what imperialism is really like." Americans got a raw taste of its new leadership this morning at the first press briefing with President Hillshire in full form. The president opened the briefing with astonishing news: "Good morning ladies and gentlemen, I would like to announce that Iran and North Korea no longer exist. Are...

How much do you know about the U.S.-Mexican War of 1846? http://www.mysanantonio.com/salife/stories/MYSA051606.01P.mxwar.1162a2d9.html http://tinyurl.com/jywhy Web Posted: 05/16/2006 12:00 AM CDT Elaine Ayala Express-News Staff Writer For many, knowledge about the U.S.-Mexican War of 1846-1848 runs from nonexistent to sparse. Funny, given that without that major U.S. conquest, we might be living in Mexico, not Texas. Americans' knowledge of that crucial period may be limited to the U.S. takeover or purchase (depending on your perspective) of what today is the Southwestern United States ranging from Texas to California. But like many historical events, things were a lot more complicated than that. The...

Professor Karsh demonstrates conclusively in this myth-busting book, the real "root cause" of Islamic jihad is the teachings and traditions of Islam itself. snip How Islam envisages a global political order in which all humankind will live under Muslim rule as either believers or subject communities (dhimmis) How, in order to achieve this goal, it is incumbent on all free, male, adult Muslims to carry out an uncompromising struggle (jihad) "in the path of Allah" Why, in the meantime, there can be no peace between Islam and the rest of the world -- only the temporary suspension of hostilities to...

One is moved by a quotation from the late Enzo Baldoni, the Italian freelance journalist and Red Cross volunteer who was murdered on video by the Jihadis in Iraq this week. "Some people think I am some sort of Rambo who loves strong emotions and watching people die. I am miles away from that. I am a convinced pacifist, and for that reason I am curious to understand what makes normal people brandish guns." Poor Baldoni, who survived previous adventures in East Timor and Colombia, had stopped appearing in the Milan weekly, Diario, and started appearing on Al Jazeera, as...

Dictators and strongmen enjoy basking in their own glory. Spain's Generalisimo Francisco Franco waved from balconies to arranged crowds. North Korea's Kim Jong-il once preferred to be called "Dear Leader." Uganda's Idi Amin loved to show off in race cars. Cuba's Fidel Castro turned olive-green fatigues and seven-hour speeches into trademarks. None managed to extend their charisma much beyond their borders. But Venezuela's authoritarian President Hugo Chavez seems to be making waves -- not only in South America, but also in the United States, throwing money around from his country's oil industry, which he controls. Here, his government reportedly pays...

The key issue at stake in the battle over the twelve Danish cartoons of the Muslim prophet Muhammad is this: Will the West stand up for its customs and mores, including freedom of speech, or will Muslims impose their way of life on the West? Ultimately, there is no compromise: Westerners will either retain their civilization, including the right to insult and blaspheme, or not.More specifically, will Westerners accede to a double standard by which Muslims are free to insult Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism, while Muhammad, Islam, and Muslims enjoy immunity from insults? Muslims routinely publish cartoons far more...

KIEV, December 24 (Itar-Tass) - Leader of united social democrats Viktor Medvedchuk called on the government led by Yuri Yekhanurov to resign. Medvedchuk told journalists on Saturday, “The Ukrainian government should resign. This will be a worthy response to increasing gas prices by Russia.” In his view, “not only politicians but also all Ukrainian people understand that the government led by Yuri Yekhanurov failed to settle gas disagreements with Russia.” On Friday, Yekhanurov instructed Naftogaz Ukrainy to draft an appeal to the Stockholm Court of Arbitration in connection with the conflict with Russia’s Gazprom gas giant. “I ask you to...

Lord Nelson could not possibly have foreseen it, even with his good eye, but his greatest naval victory, 200 years ago this week, played a massive role in the development of the world's most popular sport. The Battle of Trafalgar, on 21 October 1805, is usually remembered as a triumph over the French. It is often forgotten that Nelson also destroyed the Spanish fleet. "For Spain," writes naval historian Andrew Lambert, "Trafalgar would be the last hurrah of a once-great service, a glorious defeat." However glorious, the loss of its sea power effectively cost Spain its empire in the Americas....

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. Free Trade stands for almost everything wrong on the planet. As the Free Trade noose tightens, more revolutionary activity will occur until the strangling grip is broken completely or until the despotism of obscenely wealthy and criminal oligarchs feeding off an increasingly destitute and dehumanized world population wins its final triumph. Free Trade is a condition in which dominant industrial power (allied to overwhelming political and military power) arranges the trade of the world to its own advantage while claiming it is participating with equals in an equal exchange of goods...

Church of England bishops are calling for Christian leaders to apologize publicly, at a gathering attended by senior Muslims, for the war in Iraq. Acknowledging that the British government is unlikely to apologize for the "gravely mistaken" war, the bishops suggest that churches should do so by making a "public act of institutional repentance." They are not calling for a troop withdrawal now, however, saying the troops should remain until there is a secure Iraqi regime in place. In a 101-page document released Monday, a working group of four bishops examines ways in which the church -- England's officially established...

TEHRAN (IRNA) -- Outgoing Cuban Ambassador to Tehran Jose Ramon Rodriguez met here on Saturday with President Mahmud Ahmadinejad. Presidential Office Media Department said that Ahmadinejad called the Tehran- Havana ties excellent, brotherly and growing. Although the geographical distance between the two states is long but, their common and shared views and cooperation pertaining to international issues have been impetus for forging closer ties, he underlined. "Our relations with Cuba are strategic and deep-seated and our people follow the news on Cuba with great interest and are sensitive in developments in the region," Ahmadinejad said in the meeting. Rodriguez also...

GUEST COLUMNIST The president's basic vocabulary -- good and evil, war and victory -- has always made his liberal critics uncomfortable. But last week George W. Bush seemed to be speaking to members of his own administration when he made it crystal clear to the world that we're fighting a "war" against terrorism. It's not, as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has recently nuanced it, a "global struggle against violent extremism." It's a war -- plain and simple. Of course, wars are neither plain nor simple. They're messy and unpredictable affairs. But to his credit, the president seems to recognize --...

We are still on vacation. During these idle, brown days of late summer, we're determined to find some new thoughts. Our old thoughts have seemed a little worn...like an old pair of slippers. We think we should try on something new; but the old ones seem more comfortable than ever. Yesterday, we began a rumination based on a speech we gave in Vancouver last week. Today, we continue it... Our new thought is that you can tell where you are in a major investment cycle by looking at the attitudes and beliefs of investors. When they are very bullish, it...

For some reason, a portion of our country has adopted France as the standard bearer of "anti-imperialism" (or at least anti-US imperialism). France publicly positions itself similarly, trying to make itself the leader and counterweight to US "Imperialism". I will leave aside for now the argument as to whether the US's recent actions constitute "imperialism". I will instead focus on the French as a role model. The first thing that struck me was how long the French tried desperately to hold on to their colonial empire. Both the US and Great Britain either liberated or came to an acceptable living...

NOTE: This is a vastly expanded and updated version of a prior review from this group, which includes a host of quotes from those behind the film. It came via the group’s e-mail list, where the site itself appears to be down for the moment. WAR OF THE WORLDS: Steven Spielberg and H.G. Wells on Occupations, Empires, and "Current Relevance" Updated Final, SPOILERS New Republican Archive. Movie Reviews. July 11, 2005. (Contact: newrepublicanarchive@juno.com). War of the Worlds is not only a tense portrayal of the terror and horror of war, particularly for those on the losing side of a modern...

The French sociologist Emmanuel Todd was one of the few experts to predict the fall of the Soviet Union. Now he is predicting the fall of the United States of America. His book After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American Order (Columbia University Press, 2003) has been a bestseller in Europe. It plays into many Europeans' sentiments against the Iraq war and their belief that America has become an Evil Empire. (See "The Darth Vader fallacy," June 11.) But his book offers encouragement to America-phobes: Far from being an invincible hyperpower, according to Mr. Todd, the United States is...

  White South Africans say the name Pretoria is part of a proud history A long-running row over a move to rename the South African capital, Pretoria, is a reminder of the popular significance attached to city names - and the sensitivities that can be stirred by trying to change them.Pretoria was named after a settler and folk hero from the Afrikaner group, which went on to create the apartheid system. It is now expected to take the name Tshwane, after a black tribal leader who ruled long before white colonisation. The name also means "we are the same" in...

Harare PARAMILITARY UNITS armed with batons, riot shields, and tear gas patrolled main roads in Zimbabwe's capital last weekend as police warned they would not tolerate protests against their crackdown on street trading--the only livelihood for thousands of poor township dwellers.The police, under direct orders from Didymus Mutasa, the head of the secret police (Zimbabwe's Central Intelligence Organization), have brutally removed any competition to Chinese traders whose shops have sprung up around the capital over the past few years. Mutasa said law and order had to be preserved and Harare's Police Chief, Superintendent Oliver Mandipaka, said 9,653 people were arrested...

American Coalition for Filipino Veterans, Inc. MEDIA ADVISORY Contact: Eric Lachica or Ms. Maurese Owens CELL: 202 246-1998 or 703 606-8796 May 6 Noon Protest: Japan Ambassador's No Apology WASHINGTON, DC - Elderly Filipino American WWII veterans and family survivors will hold a news conference on Friday May 6 at NOON 12:15 PM outside the Japanese Embassy to protest the recent controversial Japanese government approval of junior high school textbooks "whitewashing" the atrocities committed by their military during WWII. The Japanese Embassy is located at 2520 Massachusetts Avenue NW ( 5 blocks north of DUPONT METRO) The veteran' group's goal...

MOSCOW (AP) - A legendary collection of gold objects from ancient Troy seized by Soviet troops in Berlin in 1945 should become Russian government property, a top Russian cultural official said in remarks published Saturday. But Anatoly Vilkov, deputy chief of the Russian agency that preserves the nation's cultural legacy, stopped short of ruling out the objects' return, as quoted by the newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets. The gold collection - excavated by amateur German archaeologist Hermann Schliemann - will be made federal property after it is inventoried, he said. It could be exhibited in Germany but only if its return is...

Nations, like men, have destinies. They choose to fulfill them or fail. Free Will, not fate, makes choices at every crossroads in life for men and nations alike. President George W. Bush stated the vision for the United States as “our generational commitment to the advance of freedom”. That vision may be part of a greater destiny for our Nation. America has a Munificent Destiny, if we, The People, choose it. America’s Munificent Destiny serves us for a century, perhaps longer. America’s Munificent Destiny is to use our phenomenal aggregation of wealth, power, technology and culture with pragmatic generosity. The...

In February 1899, British novelist and poet Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem entitled “The White Man’s Burden: The United States and The Philippine Islands.” In this poem, Kipling urged the U.S. to take up the “burden” of empire, as had Britain and other European nations. Published in the February, 1899 issue of McClure’s Magazine, the poem coincided with the beginning of the Philippine-American War and U.S. Senate ratification of the treaty that placed Puerto Rico, Guam, Cuba, and the Philippines under American control. Theodore Roosevelt, soon to become vice-president and then president, copied the poem and sent it to his...

The effort to spread standardised western democracy also suffers a fundamental paradox. A growing part of human life now occurs beyond the influence of voters - in transnational public and private entities that have no electorates. And electoral democracy cannot function effectively outside political units such as nation-states. The powerful states are therefore trying to spread a system that even they find inadequate to meet today's challenges. Europe proves the point. A body such as the European Union could develop into a powerful and effective structure precisely because it has no electorate other than a small number of member governments....