Free Republic

The Kremlin promised entertainment.Western analysts feared Vladimir Putin would declare another war.But the Russian president’s more than two-hour-long address on Thursday delivered on neither expectation, though Putin presented Russians with a vision of the future that alternated between nuclear saber-rattling and grand social promises. ###Putin, who cut a relaxed figure, also called for the safeguarding of “traditional family values.”“We see what is happening in some countries where moral norms and family institutions are deliberately being destroyed, pushing entire peoples to extinction and degeneration,” he said. “We choose life.”

20,000 Boer Children Died in Concentration Camps, Boer War, 1899-1901. Very many victims of the February 1945 Dresden Firestorm were not German Citizens, They were Women and Children fleeing the Russians. These issues bear on the current conflicts. You can argue about "justification", but not about whether or not this happened. "Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts", asserted the late NY Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.) The first modern instance of targeting civilians as pawns of war, came during the Boer War, when the families of the very tough guerilla fighters from among the Boer...

Most Americans have to work to earn a living. But the rich are different: They get most of their income not from labor but from what they own — companies, stocks, real estate and the like. These income-generating assets are what economists call capital. And because capital is heavily concentrated among the rich, the U.S. government taxed earnings derived from capital at a higher rate than earnings made through labor for the entirety of the 20th century. But that’s no longer the case, according to economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman of the University of California at Berkeley. In their...

“We keep talking about the so call ‘White Helmets’ in the west as heroes, when the people of Aleppo didn’t even know them by this name. They told me those people in the pictures I showed them were DAESH.” “Good Morning to all the official members and attendees of this conference. My name is Carla Ortiz and I am a film maker. It is an honor to be in your presence and have few minutes to share my testimony. We all know of the horrific stories and war in Syria, But YET we have THE CHOICE TO TURN THE NEWS...

The Obama campaign apparently didn't look backwards into history when selecting its new campaign slogan, "Forward" — a word with a long and rich association with European Marxism. Many Communist and radical publications and entities throughout the 19th and 20th centuries had the name "Forward!" or its foreign cognates. Wikipedia has an entire section called "Forward (generic name of socialist publications)." "The name Forward carries a special meaning in socialist political terminology. It has been frequently used as a name for socialist, communist and other left-wing newspapers and publications," the online encyclopedia explains. The slogan "Forward!" reflected the conviction of...

According to one leading expert, the Dow could hit 50,000 by 2015 and 100,000 by 2020. Should you buy? Maybe. But then, another expert says the Dow could lose 90 percent of its value and close below 1,000 by year end. Oh my! Should you sell? What's a wise investor to do? A wise investor will ignore this nonsense. Wild market predictions aren't investment advice. They're grandstanding by newsletter writers and investment gurus trying to grab media attention. Sometimes I wonder if the self-proclaimed market experts who make these predictions do double duty as supermarket tabloid headline writers and come...

Beware the revisionists. It was bound to happen eventually, but here we are, less than two years after the U.S. faced its worst financial crisis in decades, and a steady stream of politicians routinely take to the airwaves to declare that the government overreacted with the $700 billion TARP plan and ripped off the taxpayer. That the incredible interventions by the Federal Reserve and the Treasury weren't necessary. That we should have taken our lumps and let the chips fall where they may. Yeah, right. Jimmy Dunne, senior managing principal at investment-banking firm Sandler O'Neill, summed up my feelings perfectly...

For more than 50 years, a Marxist cancer has been aggressively metastasizing in the American body politic. Marxism is feudalism with a new name. The Marxist goal is to reduce Americans to the status of serfs. Unbeknownst to conservatives until it was too late, the Marxist Left infiltrated and took over large trusts and foundations so they could gain access to the huge amounts of money that they needed to accomplish their goals. Through a deviously masterful and long-term program of propaganda and infiltration they have risen to dominate/control film, commercial television, public radio, public television, newspapers/magazines, the Internet, and...

[...] The current round of trade talks was launched in 2001 at Doha, Qatar, an authoritarian location conveniently off- limits to protesters. [...] The trade agenda has been set by business elites who would impose one economic model on the world -- the model of laissez-faire. This model rejects more than a century of Western history, during which democracies have relied on government regulation and social investment to temper the instability and income extremes of a pure market economy. The elite model would also coerce Third World countries to give up their successful development strategies, in which government helps local...

Is President Bush likely to see Al Gore's documentary about global warming? "Doubt it," Bush said coolly Monday. Bush has had bitter disagreements with Gore about the environment and other issues. Bush defeated Gore, then the Democratic vice president, in a disputed presidential election that was finally settled by the Supreme Court in 2000. Gore's documentary chronicles his efforts to bring greater attention to the dangers of climate change. "New technologies will change how we live and how we drive our cars which all will have the beneficial effect of improving the environment," Bush said. "And in my judgment we...

Thursday, January 02, 2003 Totalitarianism nears Without protest, Americans are giving up freedom By GLEN T. MARTIN    IN NAZI Germany at this time of year, people freely shopped in large department stores for gifts for family and friends. The streets were full of traffic. It was "business as usual" for most of the citizens. While in the colonial states conquered by the Nazis, and in the concentrations camps for Jews, gays and communists, life was a living nightmare of dehumanization and human-rights violations.     In the United States today, people freely shop in large department stores for gifts, and the...