Free Republic

There they go again. The story is so old already. Arab militia or Arab army or Arab terrorist attacks non-Arab. Or was that Muslim fanatic attacks non-Muslim? This time, it's happening in Sudan. While we're sitting and talking, probably a few hundred more black Africans in Sudan have starved to death, or been brutally killed, raped, enslaved, or simply pushed off their land by 7th century Arab imperialist invaders, or more rightly "Arab settlers". Oh yes, that's right. "Arab settlers". Like the ones Saddam Hussein brought into Kurdistan - i.e., the Kurdish areas of northern Iraq - in the 1970s...

The battle for control of Judea and Samaria – and specifically Area C, which, according to the Oslo Accords, is under Israeli military and political control – may come down to a “horse race,” if the European Union decides to act on a policy paper that was published by Hebrew daily Yediot Achronot Thursday. According to the document, "Area C and Palestinian state building," the EU plans to encourage, and fund, Arab building and development in Area C, without bothering to seek Israeli approval for projects, and in violation of laws regarding zoning, security, and the environment. Under the Oslo...

Big Green has an unlikely new sales pitch to convince Congress to fund ever-expanding land grabs by the National Park Service -- save wildlife migration. A map overlay showing all the U.S. wildlife migration paths would blot out nearly half the nation -- a very clever diagram for empire-building bureaucrats. The obscure but well-heeled Wildlife Conservation Society (2010 assets $764 million) unveiled the idea last week in "Spectacular Migrations in the Western U.S.," a 45-page report on the purportedly urgent need for a widespread network of wildlife migration corridors to avert countless extinctions. The WCS is a consortium of zoos...

For the first time on record, the Chinese Communist party has lost all control, with the population of 20,000 in this southern fishing village now in open revolt. The last of Wukan’s dozen party officials fled on Monday after thousands of people blocked armed police from retaking the village, standing firm against tear gas and water cannons. Since then, the police have retreated to a roadblock, some three miles away, in order to prevent food and water from entering, and villagers from leaving. Wukan’s fishing fleet, its main source of income, has also been stopped from leaving harbour. The plan...

The UN plan referenced by Newt Gingrich is a real threat to private property and US sovereignty.“Agenda 21 proposes an array of actions which are intended to be implemented by every person on Earth…it calls for specific changes in the activities of all people… Effective execution of Agenda 21 will require a profound reorientation of all humans, unlike anything the world has ever experienced… ” - Agenda 21: The Earth Summit Strategy to Save Our Planet (Earthpress, 1993). Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich stated during a recent campaign event that the United Nations was seeking to create an “extraconstitutional control” over...

Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley is threatening to ram through a sweeping new land use plan that imposes an environmentalist agenda on the state’s sprawling rural populations — a move that could spark a tax revolt and mass exodus unless it is rewritten, county officials and state legislators told The Daily Caller on Monday. O’Malley has indicated that he intends to impose what some lawmakers are calling a draconian new environmentalist agenda, known as “Plan Maryland,” through executive order and regulation, rather than through the state legislature, even though his fellow Democrats dominate both chambers. Plan Maryland’s expensive new mandates for...

Crony capitalism thrives in Alaska, center stage held by the Alaska Native Corporations (ANC). From the pending shakedown of taxpayers through a wholesale land grab (S.730 and H.R.1408) to recent arrests of four people in one of the "most brazen federal contracting scandals in our nation's history," there seems to be no end to the scams, a consequence of an ANC system run amok. It's not enough that over $29 billion of taxpayer money has been transferred to the ANCs under the 8(a) minority no-bid federal contracting scheme. The state's seemingly permanent political class has recently orchestrated sister bills in...

(Riverside County, Calif. June 17, 2011) Pleading for help from their elected officials, more than 100 property owners rallied at the Riverside County Courthouse yesterday to expose how Native American tribes are infringing upon private property rights in their quest for more casino land. Homeowners protesting tribal actions at the event described how access to their land has been – or will be – cut off by actions of the Morongo Band of Mission Indians, the Soboba Tribe of Luiseno Indians, and the Colorado River Indian Tribes, and how their property has been vandalized. Using his own black-and-white land grab...

NEW ORLEANS — Four years after George W. Bush left the White House, some US Republicans are pinning their hopes on his successor as Texas governor to triumph over President Barack Obama in the 2012 election. Governor Rick Perry, who has openly flirted with running and said he will decide soon whether to throw his hat in the ring, was due Saturday to address delegates to an influential Republican Party gathering in this party city. Perry isn't on the Southern Republican Leadership Conference straw poll ballot, but some of the delegates here say they like what they have seen so...

US universities in Africa 'land grab' Institutions including Harvard and Vanderbilt reportedly use hedge funds to buy land in deals that may force farmers out Harvard and other major American universities are working through British hedge funds and European financial speculators to buy or lease vast areas of African farmland in deals, some of which may force many thousands of people off their land, according to a new study. Researchers say foreign investors are profiting from "land grabs" that often fail to deliver the promised benefits of jobs and economic development, and can lead to environmental and social problems in...

The Virginia General Assembly last week gave its first approval to a constitutional amendment restoring the sanctity of private property in the commonwealth. The measure was made necessary by the reckless 2005 Supreme Court decision Kelo v. New London, which gave towns and cities free rein to grab land for the use and benefit of well-connected developers. At issue is the power of eminent domain, under which landowners are forced to sell property to the government for public use. Over the years, the Supreme Court has expanded the scope of government takings by redefining “public use.” Originally, the term was...

SOUTHERN NEW MEXICANS TO RALLY TO KEEP GILA ROADS OPEN Congressman Steve Pearce Expected to Attend, Along With Hundreds of New Mexicans Las Cruces, NM (February 25, 2011) Hundreds of New Mexicans are expected to rally in Silver City on Saturday, March 5th against the U.S. Forest Service’s plans to close access roads inside the Gila Forest. The rally will take place starting at noon at the Silver City Convention Center. “This is the time to come together and say, ‘enough is enough’”, Congressman Steve Pearce told about 100 residents of Truth or Consequences Thursday night. “It is time for...

WASHINGTON – The next California wilderness fights will stretch from the desert to the Delta, in a dicey new political environment. This week, the state's two Democratic senators set the stage by introducing wilderness-related bills. Their prospects are unclear, but their ambitions are undeniable. "I've still got 1 million acres to go," Sen. Barbara Boxer said of her aspirations Wednesday.

SALT LAKE CITY — A clearly frustrated Gov. Gary Herbert was joined by other top Utah officials Friday, taking the head of the national Bureau of Land Management to task over a new order directing how "wild lands" designations are made. “The question is how many times are you going to inventory (public lands). When is enough enough?” Herbert asked Bob Abbey, who was in Utah to meet with members of governor's Balanced Resources Council. Utah Governor Gary R. Herbert speaks to Bob Abbey, Director of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, in the senate office building in Salt Lake...

Chinese troops in Bhutan raising concernBy UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL Published December 28, 2005 NEW DELHI -- The presence of Chinese soldiers in Bhutan has set off alarm bells in Thimphu and New Delhi.          Chinese soldiers are building roads and bridges deep inside Bhutan, The Hindustan Times newspaper said Wednesday. More than 200 Chinese troops crossed into Bhutan in mid-November.          "Relations between the two countries have been on the edge since then," said the report.          Bhutanese Foreign Minister Khandu Wangchuk took up the matter with Chinese authorities after the issue was raised in Bhutanese parliament.          "They (Chinese) told them (Bhutanese)...

The Interior Department reversed a Bush-era policy on wilderness on Thursday, restoring the authority of its Bureau of Land Management to identify and recommend new areas for protection. Green Since 2003, the department has excluded wilderness as a criterion it applies in managing federal lands for the public benefit. “The new Wild Lands policy affirms the B.L.M.’s authorities under the law — and our responsibility to the American people — to protect the wilderness characteristics of the lands we oversee,” the bureau’s director, Bob Abbey, said in a statement. Environmentalists welcomed the decision but questioned why it had taken nearly...

Environmentalists hate sprawl -- except when it comes to the size of their expansive pet legislation on Capitol Hill. In a last-ditch lame duck push, eco-lobbyists have been furiously pressuring Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., to pass a monstrous 327-page omnibus government lands bill crammed with more than 120 separate measures to lock up vast swaths of wilderness areas. Despite the time crunch, Senate Democrats in search of 60 votes are working behind the scenes to buy off green Republicans. House Democrats would then need a two-thirds majority to fast-track the bill to the White House before the GOP...

Omnibus Lands Vote, Hundreds of Bills In One, Call Senators Now! --- Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi have put together a massive bill with hundreds of Wilderness and land lock up bills inside that have not yet passed the Congress in 2010. --- Things are being done in secret. No bill number yet. Included will be all the Wilderness Bills, Billion Dollar LWCF Trust Fund, Corps and EPA Land and Water Jurisdiction Grab and many, many more.

The TSA isn’t the only one with grabby hands. I’ve been reporting on the stealth Obama land and ocean grabs for the past several months now — and there is another new, under-the-radar-screen development that deserves your attention. In August, I told you about the “Great Outdoors Initiative” to lock up more open spaces through executive order. This came on top on top of a separate, property-usurping initiative exposed by GOP Rep. Robert Bishop and Sen. Jim DeMint earlier this spring. According to an internal, 21-page Obama administration memo, 17 energy-rich areas in 11 states have been targeted as potential...

Gov. Bill Richardson has taken another step in his effort to protect sweeping grasslands on the Otero Mesa in southern New Mexico by urging President Barack Obama to designate 1.2 million acres of federal land a national monument. Richardson's move was welcomed by conservationists, but received a cool response from the Oil and Gas Association and Congressman-elect Steve Pearce. While the president could designate Otero Mesa a national monument by executive order and bypass congressional approval, New Mexico Sen. Jeff Bingaman prefers that a consensus around such a designation is developed before that step is taken, said spokeswoman Jude McCartin....

Agenda 21 – Sustainable Development In researching for this presentation, I was reminded about the movie teaser for “Jaws” – “Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water . . . . . “ Now I understand that all the progressive initiatives we are seeing now are all part of and preamble to the topic of my discussion: AGENDA 21 Definition of Sustainable Development: “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” Sustainable development focuses on limiting man’s use of...

The Battle of Juarez is showing signs that the good guys are not prevailing. The Juarez newspaper, El Diario de Juarez, has cried uncle in its mixed stance of reporting the progress of the war. In the front page editorial that appeared recently, the editor waved the white flag and asked the cartels publicly what they want from him. The murder of a photographer and another reporter in the recent past are hitting far too close to home for him to continue to be a brave purveyor of the truth. In a city ravaged by nearly 7,000 deaths since 2006...

H.R. 3534, a bill to give our land away to the U.N., passed by a narrow margin. On July 30, 2010, 207 Democrats and two Republicans voted in favor of the bill, and 39 Democrats and 154 Republicans voted against it. Among many things, this bill exemplifies that bipartisan support in Among Congress only exists with the Republicans. The other news is that it raises fuel taxes an estimated 5 cents per gallon on gasoline and diesel.

This week, “Fox & Friends,” Fox News Channel’s nationally broadcast morning show, interviewed Pacific Legal Foundation client Bob Slobe, a Sacramento businessman who is barred from using his own property because of oppressive and unjustified federal environmental regulations. The case is Yolo County Farm Bureau v. United States Fish and Wildlife Service. Watch the interview. http://tinyurl.com/23l9gjr Says PLF attorney Brandon Middleton: “California’s unemployment is the highest in decades, and Bob Slobe wants to put people to work, building an office structure on his Sacramento property. But thanks to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, he can’t. His land has been...

Executive Order--Stewardship of the Ocean, Our Coasts, and the Great Lakes By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered as follows: Section 1. Purpose. The ocean, our coasts, and the Great Lakes provide jobs, food, energy resources, ecological services, recreation, and tourism opportunities, and play critical roles in our Nation's transportation, economy, and trade, as well as the global mobility of our Armed Forces and the maintenance of international peace and security. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and resulting...

Neo-colonial rush for global farmland has gone exponential since the food scare of 2007-2008. Last week's long-delayed report by the World Bank suggests that purchases in developing countries rose to 45m hectares in 2009, a ten-fold jump from levels of the last decade. Two thirds have been in Africa, where institutions offer weak defence. As is by now well-known, sovereign wealth funds from the Mid-East, as well as state-entities from China, the Pacific Rim, and even India are trying to lock up chunks of the world's future food supply. Western agribusiness is trying to beat them to it. Western funds...

Don't you wonder what ELSE McCain has been up to since he bought his Arizona senate seat AGAIN????? Time will tell! (Yes..I said bought...about $75.00 per vote!) Sept. 7, 2010 - Twenty-three Senators gave their support to a deceptive bill S.B. 1689 that will, among other things, create an illegal immigration superhighway, remove access to natural resources, and strip ranchers of their grazing rights, all under the excuse of “preserving” wilderness. 23 voted to move S.B. 1689 to the floor including, McCain, Alexander, Landrieu, and Lincoln. Headline: Senators support illegal immigration super highway SB 1689 [snip]When New Mexico's Senators Jeff...

A proposal to vastly expand the acquisition boundary of the Cahaba River National Wildlife Refuge has provoked passionate objections from landowners who feel they haven't been adequately notified about the plan and fear the expansion proposal could force them into giving up their land. Julia Sosebee said she didn't find out about the proposal until this week and has no interest in selling land that has been in her family since before the Civil War. "We don't have a price anyone can pay me," she said. "You can't put a price on that." CRNWR Refuge manager Stephen Miller said the...

HALF MOON BAY -- Between budget losses and lawsuit payments, Half Moon Bay's financials have become so dire that if a local sales tax measure doesn't pass this November, officials say they may have to disincorporate. City leaders have been using the "D" word for a few weeks now as they try to persuade voters to pass Measure K, a one-cent sales tax increase that would help the city balance its budget with an extra infusion of $1.4 million per year for the next seven years. Dissolving Half Moon Bay -- handing the city's budget, operations and services to San...

Speaker Mop & Glo made headlines for her call to investigate opponents of the Ground Zero mosque, but there was something else about her remarks that should have raised your hackles: “There is no question there is a concerted effort to make this a political issue by some. And I join those who have called for looking into how is this opposition to the mosque being funded,” she said. “How is this being ginned up that here we are talking about Treasure Island, something we’ve been working on for decades, something of great interest to our community as we...

While most people have spent the last few days focused on the Ground Zero Mosque, the Obama administration has taken dramatic steps to further damage America’s energy production. In a report released Monday, the administration announced that all offshore drilling permits will now be subject to an environmental review and puts and an end to the 30 day decision process set forth in the National Environmental Policy Act. At first glance you would think that this is a logical decision in the wake of the BP oil spill. However, the report states that between 1971 and 1995 there have been...

What is the one natural resource we cannot live without? The answer is water. How do you feel about the government owning and/or controlling ALL of the water in the U.S.? The government wants your pond. And they will get it through numerous manipulative ways. Several times I have reported on the Obama land grabs. Today we learn of one more, and friends, we need to know the difference between "navigable waters" and the "waters of the United States." The culprits are the Great Outdoor Initiative, The Clean Water Act and the Land and Water conservation Fund. Congress has set...

SALT LAKE CITY — KSL 5 News has obtained a draft document that outlines a huge change in how the federal government wants to manage federal land in Utah, and one Utah congressman says it makes him furious.Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, whose office also just received the document, said he's angry because it would put virtually all land management power in the hands of the White House.-SNIP- "They have clearly been dragging their feet, and they don't want to let us know what they're trying to do," Bishop said. He is especially concerned about portions of the document that...

HELENA, Mont. — Recently released documents show the Obama administration was getting ideas from environmental groups about setting aside millions of acres in the West, drawing the ire of land users who said discussions were being developed behind their back. In the documents — most of which are e-mail messages — the environmental groups suggest various ways to protect land, such as by creating national monuments, buying private land or through conservation easements.

Africa: 'Land Rush' as Threats to Food Security Intensify Mae-Wan Ho 14 May 2010 analysis In the past three years, foreign governments and investment companies have been buying or leasing vast tracts of farmland in Africa and elsewhere for producing biofuels or food for their own use.[1] This 'land rush' was triggered by the demand for biofuels, and accelerated [2] with the financial and food crisis of 2007/8 (see [3] Financing World Hunger, SiS 46). Government policies promoting biofuels are based on the mistaken belief that fuels made from plants are 'carbon neutral', in that burning them would simply release...

A tightly held administration plan to consider designating up to millions of acres of land in the West as national monuments has Western Republicans up in arms.

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar was asked in a Feb. 26, 2010, letter from Western Caucus Chairman Rep. Rob Bishop, R-UT, and other representatives from western states for the missing pages from a leaked government memo that “contained detailed information about the administration’s plans to designate as many as 14 new national monuments and lock up as much as 13 million acres in states throughout the West.” Bishop and his colleagues asked Salazar to provide the missing pages by March 26, or a month after their letter went to the Interior chief. More than two months later and Bishop...

President Barack Obama launched a new initiative Friday to conserve cherished land and encourage more Americans to enjoy the outdoors. The president said the "America's Great Outdoors" program will involve a series of listening sessions throughout the nation to solicit an array of ideas. *snip* Obama is to receive a report by Nov. 15 outlining an action plan to both reconnect Americans to nature and enhance conservation efforts. Eight departments and the White House Office of Management and Budget are to work with the initiative to "identify existing resources," and to align policies to meet the initiative's goals.

US Interior Secretary Ken Salazar today suggested combining the Big Bend National Park in west Texas with the Monumento Natural del Rio Bravo across the river in Mexico, to form the Big Bend/Rio Bravo International Park. "The United States and Mexico are neighbors sharing a beautiful treasure," Salazar said today during a tour of the Big Bend. "Our two nations could and should engage in an even higher level of cooperation to conserve this remarkable area and its wildlife, while providing more opportunity for visitors to enjoy it." Actually, the idea of combining the two parks is not new...it was...

You'd think the Obama administration is busy enough controlling the banks, insurance companies and automakers, but thanks to whistleblowers at the Department of the Interior, we now learn they're planning to increase their control over energy-rich land in the West. A secret administration memo has surfaced revealing plans for the federal government to seize more than 10 million acres from Montana to New Mexico, halting job- creating activities like ranching, forestry, mining and energy development. Worse, this land grab would dry up tax revenue that's essential for funding schools, firehouses and community centers. President Obama could enact the plans in...

... But the word “secret,” especially when applied to the possible doings of far-away federal bureaucrats, is right up there with “monument” in its ability to unleash vitriol among Western conservatives. In 1996, President Bill Clinton created the 1.7 million-acre Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah with a surprise announcement that still resonates across the region as a symbol of government powers, or what critics call the abuse of those powers. The new Interior Department memorandum, people in both parties said, has reopened a wound from those days that never quite healed. “Given the lingering frustration felt by many...

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel received an earful from Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch on Friday, one day after a leaked administration memo indicated the president was considering naming two new national monuments in the state. Hatch's office said the senator called Emanuel to complain about the potential unilateral action and Emanuel promised to provide an official response after consulting with Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. "I made very clear to him that if the Administration goes down this road, it will meet absolute outrage and opposition from across the state and from me representing Utah in the United States...

More than a dozen pristine landscapes, wildlife habitats and scenic rivers in 11 Western states, some larger than Rhode Island and Delaware combined, are under consideration by the Obama administration to become America's newest National Monuments. According to internal Department of Interior documents leaked to a Utah congressman and obtained by Fox News, the mostly public lands include Arizona deserts, California mountains, Montana prairies, New Mexico forests, Washington islands and the Great Basins of Nevada and Colorado -- totaling more than 13 million acres. Sources say President Obama is likely to choose two or three sites from the list, depending...

Regulations: The Clean Water Act is being rewritten to give a government bureaucracy the power to regulate every body of water from the Mississippi River to a rain-flooded field. The first casualty may be American coal. With all the concern for the harm that cap-and-trade and regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant might do to the American economy and free markets, the Environmental Protection Agency is doing quite enough damage with an existing law on the books — the Clean Water Act. Congress plans to revise it to make it an even more powerful bludgeon against industry, energy producers and...

Orick CA: The Rural Cleansing of America (Joining The Ranks With Klamath Falls) Donald C. Amador - Blue Ribbon Coalition ORICK, CA. July 1, 2001 -- "It isn't about threatened and endangered species. It isn't about water for the fish. It's about control," Helen Franklin told a crowd of patriotic Americans gathered in protest of the National Park Service during an Independence Day rally in Orick, California. "Whoever controls food production and water usage in this country will control the people." Franklin, founder of United Coalitions for a Constitutional Government, added, "What has happened in Orick is not an isolated ...

Upwards of 40 percent of all land in the United States is already under some form of government control or ownership -- 800 million to 900 million acres out of America's total 2.2 billion acres. The government now appears poised to wield greater control over private property on a number of fronts. The battle over private property rights has intensified since 2005, when the Supreme Court ruled in the Kelo v. City of New London case that the government could take property from one group of private landowners and give it to another. Outraged over that ruling and a series...

An entire neighborhood was uprooted to make way for a big money development which will never be built!Want to know why people are mad at the nexus between big government and big money? The Famous 'Kelo House' Property Is Now A Vacant Lot By John Carney The Business Insider Law Review Nov. 10, 2009 What you are looking at above is a monument to government folly. It is the vacant lot where the home of Susette Kelo once stood. A decade ago, the town of New London, Connecticut claimed Kelo's house by right of eminent domain. The plan was to...

A group of red shirt-wearing Chavista thugs show up at a farm and seize the farm in the name of the government, under the pretext that the 103 hectare farm is “idle land” and that the law allows them to take it over for “food production.” The farmer protests politely, explaining that he’s been raising cattle on his farm for 23 years. He is rebuffed by another guy, who says, “this is not going to be a debate; this is a public act approved by the Venezuelan people. I’m governor and I’m here to ensure public order. There won’t be...

Politicians with ties to land developers are trying to force the Navy to hand over one of the most valuable pieces of property in the country for free. The House version of the 2010 Defense authorization bill scheduled for conference today contains language that would speed the transfer of Naval Station Treasure Island to the city of San Francisco at no cost.