Free Republic

President Yoweri Museveni said in a statement that Uganda must become financially independent of donor nations that provide about half its budget but which he said are partly to blame for many if its problems. Museveni has often hit out at donors for giving "unsolicited" advice, and says that by exporting their bountiful raw materials for processing in the West, African nations are the real donors. "The raw materials that we have been donating to the Western countries must be turned into final products," he said in the statement, saying there were international markets for Ugandan coffee, cotton, cereals, beef,...

Poachers kill 300 Zimbabwe elephants with cyanide • Cyanide has been used to kill 300 elephants in Zimbabwe's biggest nature reserve - three times the original estimate - as new photos show the scale of the slaughter Poachers in Zimbabwe have killed more than 300 elephants and countless other safari animals by cyanide poisoning, The Telegraph has learned. The full extent of the devastation wreaked in Hwange, the country's largest national park, has been revealed by legitimate hunters who discovered what conservationists say is the worst single massacre in southern Africa for 25 years. Pictures taken by the hunters, which...

A group dedicated to saving the planet by cutting runaway population increases is raising a new and shocking issue in Washington’s bitter fight over immigration reform: Most of the nation’s population growth is from immigrants, and they are consuming resources dangerously fast. According to Negative Population Growth Inc., 80 percent of the growth in U.S. population comes from immigration, legal, illegal and among American-born children of immigrants... ... "Our nation is already vastly overpopulated,” said Mann. “The evidence is all around us: Millions are out of work, schools and hospitals are overcrowded, our natural resources are dwindling, pollution is increasing,...

When the government owns the land and natural resources and controls production from same, it's called communism. The Founders intended Americans to enjoy their God-given liberty. The constitution was written to severely restrict government power and ensure freedom. The founders never intended for an all powerful central government to own the land or to control the means of production. They limited the central government to about 18 enumerated powers and left all others to the people and the states to decide locally. The United States was intended to be a free Republic governed at various levels by elected representatives, working...

One of our disagreements with President Barack Obama has to do with the usage of the natural resources we have in America. Many of us would like to see them better utilized. It is worthy to note that the desire to see this happen started long before Obama moved into the White House, or even before he came on the political scene. We have continually stated that we should develop all of our natural resources and do our best to move away, as much as possible, from using foreign sources of oil. With the amount of oil we have in...

“It is an outrage.” The source of Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s anger? The fact that the United States has yet to approve a treaty known as the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, which often goes by the acronym LOST. Panetta was speaking after the election. His ire about LOST’s status suggests that the Obama administration may well make this a second-term priority. It’s come close to being ratified by the U.S. Senate before -- it dates back to 1982, in fact. But LOST has never been able to gain enough supporters in the Senate. That could change,...

Courted by multinational companies and foreign heads of state over its rare minerals and potential oil resources, Greenland could win full independence from Denmark and join the European Union as a free state, according to one expert on the Arctic. Greenland’s leader Kuupik Kleist is boxing above his weight when it comes to foreign policy. Although the premier represents an autonomous island of just 57,000 people, within the last couple of months he has met with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, European Commission President José Manuel Barroso and representatives from the Chinese government. Greenland is a self-ruled territory in...

The head of the world's largest food producer believes high prices are due to the growing of crops for biofuels."The time of cheap food prices is over," says Nestle chairman Peter Brabeck-Letmathe. He is highly critical of the rise in the production of bio-diesel, saying this puts pressure on food supplies by using land and water that would otherwise be used to grow crops for human or animal consumption."If no food was used for fuel, the prices would come down again - that is very clear," he says. "We are now in a new world with a completely different level...

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — The Obama administration pressed Beijing on Thursday to accept a code of conduct for resolving territorial disputes in the resource-rich South China Sea, a difficult U.S. mediation effort that has faced resistance from the communist government. It has endeared the U.S., however, to once-hostile countries in Southeast Asia. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton met with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations' annual conference. Sitting across from each other at a long table in a grand hall with chandeliers, Clinton stressed the different ways Washington...

China's premier Wen Jiabao was in Iceland on Friday, beginning a tour of northern Europe that will focus on Chinese investment in a continent eager for funds and to trade with the rising world power. … That the prime minister of the world's most populous nation should stop first, however, on a remote island of just 320,000 has raised hopes for an injection of Chinese cash into an economy ravaged by the bursting of a financial bubble in 2008—but also suspicion of Beijing's hunger for natural resources. A Chinese developer is fighting a government decision last year to bar him...

Pittsburgh--(ENEWSPF)--October 14, 2011. Today, Texas Governor and Republican presidential hopeful Rick Perry unveiled his energy plan for America. The plan, if implemented, will poison our air and water with toxic pollutants like soot, smog, arsenic, cadmium, dioxin, lead, and formaldehyde. It would also undercut safeguards from mercury, which is a neurotoxin and is known to harm developing fetuses. “Rick Perry’s energy plan reads like a roadmap for making America’s kids sick,” said Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune. “Under this plan, we can expect to see much higher rates of asthma among children, and risk to pregnant women from mercury...

I remember taking a forestry class my freshman year of college. The curriculum, presented by a veteran instructor from the California Department of Forestry, covered several related topics that included ecology, biology, life cycles, wild-land fire control, conservation, and commerce based on those natural resources. I never heard the associate professor use the word "environment" or "environmentalist" during the course. Granted, it was years ago, and course outlines do change over time as new information on any given subject becomes available. But, the disconnect suggests the environmentalist movement is a recent concoction that has little basis in traditional resource management...

Texas Gov. Rick Perry is able to boast about job growth under his watch, noting that over 265,000 jobs, or nearly 37 percent of the jobs created nationwide since the summer of 2009, have been created in the Lone Star state. He credits this growth to a few simple conditions: low taxes, a regulatory climate that is fair and predictable, and a legal system that limits frivolous lawsuits. According to the Wall Street Journal, nearly one-fourth of the 70 companies that left California this year relocated to Texas. When new or relocating companies and investors survey the landscape and consider...

According to a recently released German study, the supposed "environmentally friendly" compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFL's), are reported to have "cancer causing chemicals" that are sent out when the light is switched on, reports London's Daily Telegraph: Their report advises that the bulbs should not be left on for extended periods, particularly near someone’s head, as they emit poisonous materials when switched on. Peter Braun, who carried out the tests at the Berlin's Alab Laboratory, said: “For such carcinogenic substances it is important they are kept as far away as possible from the human environment.”

In the early 1970s, America’s dependence on foreign oil was a little over 20 percent. Today, our dependence on foreign oil is over 65 percent. We have become more and more energy dependent because we have never had a serious energy independence strategy, and we still do not have one. Energy independence is within our grasp because we have plenty of energy natural resources. We have billions of barrels of oil, plenty of natural gas reserves, more coal than any other country in the world, lots of places we could build dams for hydroelectricity and some of the safest nuclear...

According to the Congressional Research Service, which nation has the largest energy reserves of all? Surprise! It is the United States. Peter C. Glover of the Energy Tribune writes: In case anyone missed it, let me repeat something that is of a magnitude of 10 on the scale of news-quakes for Joe Public USA: America's combined energy resources are, according to a new report from the Congressional Research Service (CSR), the largest on earth. They eclipse Saudi Arabia (3rd), China (4th) and Canada (6th) combined - and that's without including America's shale oil deposits and, in the future, the potentially...

Harrison Schmitt, a former NASA astronaut who was chosen by Gov. Susana Martinez to head up the state's Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department, has withdrawn his nomination after a squabble with the Senate Rules Committee over background checks.

Yang Jiechi's visit represents warming relations between the two countries after China distanced itself when a violent crackdown by President Robert Mugabe over disputed elections in 2008 soured the investment climate. But there have been suggestions in the local media that Mr Yang will not get a friendly reception from all quarters. A reported agreement that could see China hand over as much as $10 billion in loans in return for access to Zimbabwe's platinum and revenue from its diamond fields has caused a row among government officials, one of whom dismissed it as a "raw deal".

Russia and China have enjoyed a close but lopsided economic relationship since the mid-2000s. Beijing sees its giant neighbor to the west rather as little more than a source of energy and other commodities to feed China's rapidly growing economy. The results of recent meetings between senior Russian officials and China's premier Wen Jiabao suggest that the relationship is unlikely to change anytime soon. Oil, sweet oil During his November 24 talks with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, the Chinese premier announced that earlier in the day a total of 13 contracts were signed, worth $8.5 billion in total. Prime Minister...

Those who have seen the economy of the People’s Republic of China up close and personal do not have quite the rosy view of it that outsiders do. Hong Bing Yuan, “Chinese exile, novelist, philosopher and law professor,” shared his less-than-sanguine thoughts on the Dragon at Pepperdine. According to university officials, Yuan pointed out that: * “First, not everyone can participate in the marketplace, which increases the number of exports. If people domestically cannot participate in the economy, then there is more to sell to places like the United States; * “Second, China exploits their abundant source of cheap, poor...