Free Republic

My earlier prediction from September:Imam Rauf decided to pick a spot near Ground Zero so that there would be an outcry… and he’ll keep stringing this along until one day when he’ll do the “honorable” and “right thing”: announce that instead of an Islamic Community Center which promotes Interfaith Understanding, he’ll build an Interfaith Center devoted equally to all religions… and the crowds will cheer and people will actually be happy about an Interfaith Center… maybe for the first time ever...recent article from March 30:Two co-founders of the controversial plan to build an Islamic cultural center and mosque two blocks...

Rivers of ink have been spilt on the crisis that gripped the world’s financial system between 2007 and 2009. Wednesday’s huge release of data by the US Federal Reserve chronicles a similar story, but in numbers. A lot of numbers. The Fed’s release, prompted by an order from Congress, details more than 21,000 transactions that enabled US authorities to dole out $3,300 bn to banks and companies in the worst downturn since the Great Depression. The picture is one of a global financial system in desperate need of short-term funding.

The author, Fareed Zakaria, fortells was interviewed (emphasis added). "As Mr. Zakaria sees it, the “economic dysfunctions in America today” are the product not of “deep inefficiencies within the American economy,” but of specific government policies — which could be reformed “quickly and relatively easily” to put the country on a more stable footing. “A set of sensible reforms could be enacted tomorrow,” he says, “to trim wasteful spending and subsidies, increase savings, expand training in science and technology, secure pensions, create a workable immigration process and achieve significant efficiencies in the use of energy” — if only the current...

JAL said Tuesday that it will keep its partnership with AA in the Oneworld Alliance and it rejected an offer from rival Delta Air Lines Inc. Both U.S. carriers have been offering financial support to JAL for greater coordination on routes and ticket prices, as well as revenue sharing. JAL is Asia's second-largest carrier in terms of annual customers and destinations. "We respect that this was an important decision for JAL and the government of Japan, and we believe they have made the right choice for JAL's many stakeholders, for Japan's national interests and for consumers traveling between Japan and...

The World Health Organization (WHO) is considering a plan to ask governments to impose a global consumer tax on such things as Internet activity or everyday financial transactions like paying bills online. Such a scheme could raise "tens of billions of dollars" on behalf of the United Nations' public health arm from a broad base of consumers, which would then be used to transfer drug-making research, development and manufacturing capabilities, among other things, to the developing world. The multibillion-dollar "indirect consumer tax" is only one of a "suite of proposals" for financing the rapid transformation of the global medical industry...

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev pulls new world currency from his pocket Russia's President, Dmitry Medvedev, pulled the world's new currency from his pocket at the meeting of G8 leaders in the Italian city of Aquila. 4:38PM BST 10 Jul 2009 The future of the dollar was one of several subjects debated at the G8 summit Mr Medvedev, who has been seeking ways to displace the dollar as the world's dominant reserve currency, produced a sample coin of what he described as a 'united future world currency'. “Here it is,” Mr Medvedev said, according to Bloomberg. “You can see it and...

American military planes will soon be seen above Russia after a new transit agreement with the U.S. came into force. It allows America to airlift military equipment to Afghanistan via Russian airspace.

LONDON (AP) - President Barack Obama says the world is a lot more complicated than it was in 1944. That's when the countries that were victorious in World War II met to establish the financial architecture for the postwar era. Obama says negotiating is easy if it's just Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill in a room, talking over brandy. But he says that's not the world we live in now. Obama spoke at a news conference Thursday after a meeting in London of the world's 20 largest and developing economies. The countries were meeting to address the worst economic crisis...

An amazing set of photos from London. Monuments being boarded up, Ritz hotel boarded over. Capitalism isn't working Democracy is an illusion One currency One Country

London - Angry protestors shouting "shame on you" and "storm the banks" clashed with police outside the Bank of England during anti-globalization demonstrations in London Wednesday. Some 4,000 demonstrators converged on the central bank in the City of London, where windows of banks and offices were smashed. Police said 11 people had been arrested by lunchtime and riot police had been deployed. At one point, several hundred demonstrators attempted to break through barriers to reach the heavily-guarded and boarded-up central bank building. Windows at the Royal Bank of Scotland, which has been a key target for critics during the banking...

Freedom is out of fashion at Ground Zero. Once hailed as a beacon of rebirth in the aftermath of Sept. 11, the Freedom Tower has been stripped of its patriotic name -- which has been swapped out for the more marketable "One World Trade Center," Port Authority officials conceded yesterday. More than seven years after the terror attacks and amid an effort to market the tower to international tenants, sentiment gave way to practicality. "As we market the building we will ensure that the building is presented in the best possible way," said PA Chairman Anthony Coscia. "One World Trade...

Surprise and even shock were among the reactions to my recent column about how elite members of the World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davos, Switzerland, were considering a proposal for a new global television network to usher in a state of "global governance." It sounded authoritarian, even totalitarian, to some. Here are more of the troubling details. The media proposal, which was included in "The Global Agenda 2009" report, is to create "a new global network" with "the capacity to connect the world, bridging cultures and peoples, and telling us who we are and what we mean to each...

Video of her speech Valerie Jarrett: 'America Stands Ready to Lead Again' "In the 21st century our security is shared," says Valerie Jarrett, top adviser to President Barack Obama. She outlines steps the new administration is taking to establish peace in the Middle East, eradicate global poverty, and fight climate change. ~~~ Video - Valerie B. Jarrett: The New US Agenda"

Barack Obama sought to close the deal with American voters yesterday as he heralded the dawn of a new politics that will heal divisions, appeal to “our better angels” and restore a sense of “higher purpose”. His speech in Canton, Ohio, was designed to frame the final days of an often bitterly fought presidential contest around the uplifting themes he had emphasised at the outset of his campaign. While he was at pains to tell supporters that they cannot afford to “let up for one day, one minute or one second”, Mr Obama told an exultant crowd: “In one...

Tuesday, November 23, 2004 Peace and Patriotism While out shopping, I saw some people on a corner waving huge peace flags and holding signs. They said things like "Bush Lied about WMD" and "Bring Them Home NOW." It was an interesting mix of people-- spreading from age 40 to 70 or so, men and women. So I stopped to talk. The guy who organized it had lost a brother in Vietnam. He pulled out a picture showing his mother and brother in front of a Christmas tree a few days before he shipped out, and the last time they saw...

He is reading "The Post-American World" -- "This is not a book about the decline of America, but rather about the rise of everyone else." So begins Fareed Zakaria's important new work on the era we are now entering. Following on the success of his best-selling The Future of Freedom, Zakaria describes with equal prescience a world in which the United States will no longer dominate the global economy, orchestrate geopolitics, or overwhelm cultures. He sees the "rise of the rest"—the growth of countries like China, India, Brazil, Russia, and many others—as the great story of our time, and one...

If that is what the senator thought he was doing, he still has a lot to learn about both foreign policy and the views of the American people. Although well received in the Tiergarten, the Obama speech actually reveals an even more naive view of the world than we had previously been treated to in the United States. In addition, although most of the speech was substantively as content-free as his other campaign pronouncements, when substance did slip in, it was truly radical, from an American perspective.

Ryan Alberti had a pretty good idea what to expect when he signed up for the Web class jointly taught by Eckhart Tolle and Oprah Winfrey. He’d already listened to a CD of Tolle reading his books “The Power of Now” and “Stillness Speaks” and liked his simple, gentle way of speaking. “I think he’s really a genuine guy that has an ability to translate some spiritual things in a very down-to-earth way,” Alberti said. Alberti doesn’t watch Winfrey’s daily TV show, but his wife is a big fan and tells him about it. “Even though I haven’t seen (the...

Blair to teach 'faith and globalisation' at Yale University JAMES TAPSFIELD TONY Blair is to further his interest in religion by teaching classes on "faith and globalisation" at the prestigious Yale University in an initiative linked to the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, due to be launched later this year. Academics at Yale School of Management and Divinity are working with Mr Blair to finalise details of the course. A source close to the former prime minister said he was "delighted" to be taking on the new challenge. The Connecticut university's president, Richard Levin, said staff were "honoured" Mr Blair would...

Megapastor Rick Warren's Damascus Road experience (Megapastor Rick Warren admits he's in CFR) Posted: November 20, 200 1:00 a.m. Eastern WASHINGTON – Rick Warren, the superstar mega-church pastor and bestselling author of ''The Purpose Driven Life,'' had a Damascus Road experience last week – and like Saul of Tarsus, one of the after-effects appears to be blindness. Warren went to Syria and could find no persecution of Christians. He could find no persecution of Jews. He could find no evidence of extremism. He could find no evidence of the sponsorship of terrorism. Despite the temporary loss of vision that prevented...