Free Republic

...I then added that Pomerania had been historically disputed in all sort of wars, but that now, as the rest of Europe, was finally at peace. Instinctively realizing that this latter observation was the perfect leader of a thread for a nice political conversation, I quickly added that such current status of peace in Europe, and, relatively, in most of the world, was the result of America having become the most powerful nation on Earth ever. Bedazzled by my assertion, more in sheer disbelief than in amazement, he bluntly asked me why it was so. I rapidly quipped that wise...

Where do you suppose Barack Obama's first public speech was given? 1. Chamber of Commerce? 2. Woman's Club? 3. Jaycees? 4. Toastmasters? Sorry. None of the above. According to Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit, Barack Obama gave his first speech before an offshoot of the Students for Democratic Society (SDS) which had morphed into the Weather Underground. Barack Obama's first public speech was at an Occidental College event sponsored by the Students for a Democratic-Society a militantly leftist organization. 60's radical Tom Hayden played a pivotal role both as founder and as principal author of this student group's basic manifesto,...

The term “La Raza“, or “the Race” originated in a book titled “La Raza Cósmica,” written in 1929 by José Vasconcelos. The book’s title translates to “The Cosmic Race,” and was Vasconcelos’ attempt to explain “the ideology of a future ‘fifth race’ in the Americas; an agglomeration of all the races in the world with no respect to color or number to erect a new civilization: Universópolis.”

In our quest to discover the origins of names belonging to Kentucky Derby Presented by Yum! Brands (gr. I) contenders, we discovered a diamond mine, picked up some basketball lingo, learned Indonesian, and found out "What brown can do for us" (to slightly modify a line from a popular television ad). Here are the stories behind the names of a few runners going into this year’s first Saturday in May. Anak Nakal (Victory Gallop-Misk) is an Indonesian phrase meaning "mischevious child," owner Kassem Masri of Four Roses Thoroughbreds said. "He was a bad boy," Masri said. "But he's not anymore."...

New research suggests political freedom and geographic factors contribute significantly to causes of terrorism, challenging the common view that terrorism is rooted in poverty. "There is no significant relationship between a country's wealth and level of terrorism once other factors like the country's level of political freedom are taken into account," says Alberto Abadie, public policy professor at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. Abadie's review of the World Market Research Centre's Global Terrorism Index found no clear correlation between terrorism and poverty. Abadie's research was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The finding comes despite several international meetings...

Franco 'collaborated with Nazis' to prove Canary Islands were home to Aryan race By Fiona Govan in Madrid Last Updated: 7:12pm BST 11/04/2008 Spanish archaeologists collaborated with the Nazis in their attempts to prove the theory of Aryan supremacy and justify their claims of racial superiority over the Jews, according to a new book. Spain wanted to promote the idea that the Aryan race could be traced to the Canary Islands, amid claims they were all that remained of the lost continent of Atlantis. Archaeologists appointed by Franco were asked to look into claims the Canary Islands were the remains...

Archaeologists Find Evidence of Origin of Pacific Islanders By Heidi Chang Honolulu, Hawaii 31 March 2008 The origin of Pacific Islanders has been a mystery for years. Now archaeologists believe they have the answer. As Heidi Chang reports, they found it in China. The excavation of the Zishan site (Zhejiang Province) in 1996, where many artifacts from the Hemudu culture have been found China had a sea-faring civilization as long as 7000 years ago. Archaeologist Tianlong Jiao says, one day, these mariners sailed their canoes into the vastness of the Pacific Ocean, and stayed. He points out, "Most scientists, archaeologists,...

Upright Walking Began 6 Million Years Ago Newswise — A shape comparison of the most complete fossil femur (thigh bone) of one of the earliest known pre-humans, or hominins, with the femora of living apes, modern humans and other fossils, indicates the earliest form of bipedalism occurred at least six million years ago and persisted for at least four million years. William Jungers, Ph.D., of Stony Brook University, and Brian Richmond, Ph.D., of George Washington University, say their finding indicates that the fossil belongs to very early human ancestors, and that upright walking is one of the first human characteristics...

Origin Of Bipedalism Closely Tied To Environmental Changes Champaign - May 01, 2002 During the past 100 years, scientists have tossed around a great many hypotheses about the evolutionary route to bipedalism, to what inspired our prehuman ancestors to stand up straight and amble off on two feet. Now, after an extensive study of evolutionary, anatomical and fossil evidence, a team of paleoanthropologists has narrowed down the number of tenable hypotheses to explain bipedalism and our prehuman ancestors' method of navigating their world before they began walking upright. The hypothesis they found the most support for regarding the origin of...

Race: Barack Obama says black "anger is real, and to simply wish it away without understanding its roots only serves to widen the chasm." He's right. So let's examine these bitter roots.We saw last week just how real that anger is from the video clips of his preacher's shocking sermons. They jarred America's white majority, which had no idea the hostility in the black community was so fevered that it spews from pulpits by men of the cloth at America's largest black churches each Sunday. In his speech, Obama rationalized that "the history of racial injustice in this country" gives...

Heads up! Tomorrow night (February 26, 2008 at 9:00 PM), the History Channel will air a new segment of their Universe series that could be very interesting. It will try to address what was before the Big Bang. This is a subject I don't see anyway of discussing without raising religious beliefs.

Genetic study ties Siberians to people in Americas By Will Dunham Thu Feb 21, 5:08 PM ET WASHINGTON (Reuters) - People indigenous to Siberia have strong genetic links to native peoples in the Americas, according to a study further supporting the theory that humans first entered the Americas over a land bridge across the Bering Strait. Scientists at Stanford University in California combed through the genes of 938 people from 51 places, looking at 650,000 DNA locations in each person. The study, in the journal Science on Thursday, revealed similarities and differences among various populations. "This is the highest resolution...

Twenty-five German professors have signed a manifesto published in the Frankfurter Rundschau calling on Germany to stop giving Israel "preferential treatment," because, among other reasons, the country "helped" establish Israel by expelling Jews from Germany during the rule of the Third Reich. Approximately 160,000 Jews who were expelled from Nazi Germany ended up in Mandate-era Palestine and strengthened the Jewish presence here at the expense of the Arab population, they said.

Ôªø Home 2008 Election Results Election Info Weblogs Guestbook Email Forum News Wiki Links Site Info Store The Electoral College Excerpt from an original document located at Jackson County, MO Election Board In order to appreciate the reasons for the Electoral College, it is essential to understand its historical context and the problem that the Founding Fathers were trying to solve. They faced the difficult question of how to elect a president in a nation that: was composed of thirteen large and small States jealous of their own rights and powers and suspicious of any central national government contained only...

WASHINGTON — Conspiracy theorists take note: The myths surrounding one of America's oldest and most enduring national symbols are about to be debunked ... if you believe the government, that is. The keepers of the Great Seal of the United States, the emblem on the back of the US$1 bill, want you to know what it is not. It is not a sign that Freemasons run the country, it has nothing to do with the occult, and it does not contain clues to a fabulous hidden treasure. It is rather the nation's stamp of authority, sovereignty and power, gracing cash...

Feb. 13, 2006 — The familiar double-lobed heart symbol seen on Valentine's Day cards and candy was inspired by the shape of human female buttocks as seen from the rear, according to a professor of psychology who studied the origin, history and symbolism of the Feb.14 holiday. Galdino Pranzarone of Roanoke College in Salem, Va., told Discovery News that he analyzed "essential literary and speculative evidence from mythology and secondary sources," which led to his theory. He believes one rather obvious bit of evidence is that the heart symbol does not directly duplicate the heart human organ. "The twin lobes...

Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday, is the last hurrah before the Catholic season of Lent begins on Ash Wednesday. It also has links to the Christmas season through the period known as Carnival.Mardi Gras' Catholic Roots Mardi Gras, literally "Fat Tuesday," has grown in popularity in recent years as a raucous, sometimes hedonistic event. But its roots lie in the Christian calendar, as the "last hurrah" before Lent begins on Ash Wednesday. That's why the enormous party in New Orleans, for example, ends abruptly at midnight on Tuesday, with battalions of streetsweepers pushing the crowds out of the French...

The historical record provides compelling evidence that racism underlies gun control laws — and not in any subtle way. Throughout much of American history, gun control was openly stated as a method for keeping blacks and Hispanics “in their place,” and to quiet the racial fears of whites. This paper is intended to provide a brief summary of this unholy alliance of gun control and racism, and to suggest that gun control laws should be regarded as “suspect ideas,” analogous to the “suspect classifications” theory of discrimination already part of the American legal system. Racist arms laws predate the establishment...

The New Testament contains five different metaphors for the foundation of the Church (Matt. 16:18, 1 Cor. 3:11, Eph. 2:20, 1 Pet. 2:5–6, Rev. 21:14). One metaphor that has been disputed is Jesus Christ’s calling the apostle Peter "rock": "You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it" (Matt. 16:18). Some have tried to argue that Jesus did not mean that his Church would be built on Peter but on something else. Some argue that in this passage there is a minor difference between the Greek term...

How the Rockefellers Created Hillary By Kathy Miller | The Hillary Project Posted 23 hours, 41 minutes ago name By: Richard Poe Pity the Rockefellers. Try though they might, they never manage to get a Rockefeller elected president. Governors, senators and even a vice president have borne the Rockefeller name. Yet the presidency eludes them. And so they busy themselves playing kingmaker behind the scenes. Their latest project is Hillary Clinton. Last Thursday, the public interest group Judicial Watch published a memorandum which the Clinton Library was forced to release under the Freedom of Information Act. The 24-page memo shines...

An almost complete human skull fossil that could date back 100,000 years was unearthed in Henan last month, Chinese archaeologists announced yesterday... The Henan find was made after two years of excavation at the site in Xuchang. Archaeologists have worked on an area of 260 sq m, merely one-hundredth of the Paleolithic site... The fossil consisted of 16 pieces of the skull with protruding eyebrows and a small forehead. More astonishing than the completeness of the skull is that it still has a fossilized membrane on the inner side, so scientists can track the nerves of the Paleolithic ancestors... The...

Glenn Kimball -Ancient Texts- kimballcollege.com Expert in ancient manuscripts, Glenn Kimball will discuss new information on the history and origins of the Koran and ancient libraries. http://www.nhne.org/news/NewsArticlesArchive/tabid/400/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/4160/Default.aspx

'Darwin's Plantation' Breaks New Ground in Study of Subject Contact: Melany Ethridge, 972-267-1111 PETERSBURG, Kentucky, Jan. 15 /Christian Newswire/ -- Author Ken Ham and theologian Dr. A. Charles Ware take a groundbreaking look at one of the human race's greatest problems – racism – in "Darwin's Plantation: Evolution's Racist Roots." Along the way, they also tackle the questions of the origin of all the people groups, skin "color," and interracial marriage, Ham is the president of Answers in Genesis and the new Creation Museum, ministries that uphold the authority of the Bible from the very first verse. Ware is the...

So last night (Sunday, 12/30/07) I get ready in front of the T.V. at 8 p.m. with my son to watch the very much hyped documentary on the History Channel titled "How The Earth Was Made". Since my son is a first-grader and very much into science, his main interests include Earth and the entire Solar System. The two-hour documentary was fantastic, but it raised a key question in my mind and it made me, shall I say, more of a believer in God as Our Creator (not that I ever stopped 'believing', but I'm an open-minded person who believes...

Introduction: The Missing Link Why did the US support the separatist and terrorist so-called Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA, or UCK in Shqip), which sought to create an ethnically pure Albanian Kosovo based on ethnicity? Why did the US sponsor a criminal and illegal separatist movement that sought to ethnically cleanse non-Albanians and create an independent state of Kosova? Why was the US supporting and sponsoring the re-establishment of a fascist-Nazi Greater Albania that Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini had initially created? ... The recruitment of the former Nazi-fascist members of the Balli Kombetar by the CIA and MI6 in 1948...

Godfathers of subprimeEstablished in 1979 by Roland Arnall, Long Beach Savings grew rapidly after Wall Street opened the credit tap. It moved to Orange in 1991 and gave up its banking license in 1994, converting to a pure mortgage company.In 1997, Long Beach Savings split into privately-held Ameriquest and a publicly traded subsidiary, which sold for $350 million in 1999 to become the subprime arm of Washington Mutual Inc.Other companies were started by executives who learned the ropes at Long Beach Savings: ResMae Mortgage Corp. in Brea in 2001 and Encore Credit Corp. in Irvine in 2002.  Godfathers of subprimeEstablished...

The history of cosmology – the study of the Universe – for the last five hundred years is often portrayed as a clash between science on the one hand, and the cold hand of religious dogma on the other. Part of this is rooted in fact – the Catholic Church of the Counter-Reformation for instance was suspicious of intellectual innovation and experiment, with its harsher elements longing for the certainties of the age before Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation. The desire to make the Universe fit into a pre-ordained and orderly scheme that needed no correction reached its infamous,...

[This article is based on the book, 'Restoring the Original Bible' by Dr. Ernest L. Martin, ASK Publications, Portland, Oregon, 1994] Our Bibles Are Different You may be not be surprised to learn that the Bibles that the Christians use today (also in the past centuries) are not the same as the original Bible known to the Jewish world and to the early Christians. First, we use translations, not the original tongues (Hebrew and Greek); second, there are minor textual variations; and third, we do not have the original autographs.What should surprise you (unless you have read on Bible's...

Brainchild of the KGB As Ion Mihai Pacepa, onetime director of the Romanian espionage service (DIE), later explained, the PLO was conceived at a time when the KGB was creating “liberation front” organizations throughout the Third world. Others included the National Liberation Army of Bolivia, created in 1964 with help from Ernesto “Che” Guevara, and the National Liberation Army of Colombia, created in 1965 with help from Fidel Castro. But the PLO was the KGB’s most enduring achievement. In 1964, the first PLO Council, consisting of 422 Palestinian representatives handpicked by the KGB, approved the Soviet blueprint for a Palestinian...

The Origin of Nativity Scenes “... Mary gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the place where travelers lodged.” According to St Luke the Evangelist (2,7) Jesus was born in a stable or at least in a place where animals were kept. In fact the word presepio (Nativity Scene) comes from the Latin verb praesepire (to enclose, to hedge, to fence) and today it means manger or crib. The term is thought to have been used for the first time with...

Ancient beer pots point to origins of chocolate 22:00 12 November 2007 NewScientist.com news service Jeff Hecht Earlier long-necked pots would have been used for beer making. Chemical evidence in a pot such as this is seen as proof that beer brewing involved fermenting cacao (Illustration: PNAS/National Academy of Sciences) Chocolate was first produced by the ancients as a by-product of beer, suggests a new archaeological study. And evidence from drinking vessels left by the Mesoamericans who developed chocolate suggests that the source of chocolate, cacao, was first used 500 years earlier than thought. Mesoamericans – who flourished in central...

November 1, 2007Thus he made atonement for the dead that they might be freed from this sin.  ~2 Maccabees 12:46November 2nd marks the Commemoration of All Souls; the day in which the earthly faithful are called to pray for the faithful departed in Purgatory.  Often considered connected to Pagan or other ritualistic ceremonies, All Souls Day is, in fact, a practice with roots in the early Church where the names of the faithful departed would often be posted so that Church members could pray for each soul by name.All Souls Day follows on the heels of All Saints Day, November...

AIDS virus invaded U.S. from Haiti: study By Will Dunham 2 hours, 28 minutes ago The AIDS virus invaded the United States in about 1969 from Haiti, carried most likely by a single infected immigrant who set the stage for it to sweep the world in a tragic epidemic, scientists said on Monday. Michael Worobey, a University of Arizona evolutionary biologist, said the 1969 U.S. entry date is earlier than some experts had believed. The timeline laid out in the study led by Worobey indicates that HIV infections were occurring in the United States for roughly 12 years before AIDS...

In January 1955, Homer Jacobson, a chemistry professor at Brooklyn College, published a paper called “Information, Reproduction and the Origin of Life” in American Scientist, the journal of Sigma Xi, the scientific honor society. In it, Dr. Jacobson speculated on the chemical qualities of earth in Hadean time, billions of years ago when the planet was beginning to cool down to the point where, as Dr. Jacobson put it, “one could imagine a few hardy compounds could survive.”... Nobody paid much attention to the paper at the time, he said in a telephone interview from his home in Tarrytown, N.Y....

How old is the world? Most people would say: "Nobody knows." But the author of the book frequently described as the greatest history book ever written, said the world was created Oct. 23, 4004 B.C. – making it exactly 6,010 today. In the 1650s, an Anglican bishop named James Ussher published his "Annals of the World," subtitled, "The Origin of Time, and Continued to the Beginning of the Emperor Vespasian's Reign and the Total Destruction and Abolition of the Temple and Commonwealth of the Jews." First published in Latin, it consisted of more than 1,600 pages. The book, now published...

... Showing – not telling – is the point of “Evolution and Creation,” Hofmann's long-running seminar on one of science's hairiest debates: evolution vs. “intelligent design.” The first theory – which says that all life evolved from a common ancestor – is the scientific equivalent of the Magna Carta, a guiding principle that undergirds mainstream debate about the origins of man. The second theory, advanced by Christian academics and advocates, argues that life appears to have a purpose for which an intelligent creator – God – is the only possible explanation. Hofmann makes no bones about where he falls. “Intelligent...

A few months ago, the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins received an e-mail message from a producer at Rampant Films inviting him to be interviewed for a documentary called “Crossroads.”The film, with Ben Stein, the actor, economist and freelance columnist, as its host, is described on Rampant’s Web site as an examination of the intersection of science and religion. Dr. Dawkins was an obvious choice. An eminent scientist who teaches at Oxford Universityin England, he is also an outspoken atheist who has repeatedly likened religious faith to a mental defect.But now, Dr. Dawkins and other scientists who agreed to be interviewed...

Link Only: It turns out we may not be 'big-brained apes' after all - Researcher says Darwin's theory overstated the similarities between human, animal brains

Diamonds tell story of Earth's beginning By Roger Highfield, Science Editor Last Updated: 12:01am BST 22/08/2007 Diamonds really are forever, according to a study that has found tiny examples of the gems that date from near the birth of the Earth. Tiny diamonds discovered inside crystals of zircon Over four billion years old, the diamonds are the oldest identified fragments of the Earth’s crust and were discovered in the Jack Hills region of Western Australia, suggesting they were created only 300 million years after the planet itself was born from the dust and debris encircling our Sun some 4.5 billion...

Did life begin on comets? 18:17 17 August 2007 NewScientist.com news service Hazel Muir Clay particles seen in Comet Tempel 1 suggest comets once had warm, liquid interiors that could have spawned life, a controversial new study argues (Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UMD)Tools If you buy a lottery ticket this week, what are the odds that you'll win the grand prize then get struck by lightning as you pop open the champagne? Vanishingly small, but still much higher than the odds that life on Earth first evolved on our planet, according to an ardent proponent of the notion that life came from space....

Trying to fathom farming's origins Tuesday, August 14, 2007 3:22 AM By Bradley T. Lepper Tom Dillehay, an archaeologist with Vanderbilt University, and several colleagues announced last month in the journal Science that they had recovered remarkably early evidence for agriculture in South America. Working at several sites in the Nanchoc Valley of northern Peru, they found squash seeds that were more than 9,000 years old. This is nearly twice as old as previously reported farming evidence in the region. Dillehay and his co-authors point out that one of the most important aspects of this discovery is that "horticulture and...

For the first time, there are solid data to refute a popular theory that life came to the Earth aboard a comet, Rutgers researchers said Monday. Deteriorated DNA from microbes, frozen for millions of years in the Antarctic ice, shows that organisms could not have survived the bombardment of cosmic radiation during deep space travel from outside the solar system, said Paul Falkowski, a Rutgers biologist and oceanographer. "It's almost an impossibility for comets to seed other planets with life after they've been in space for millions of years," Falkowski said. That's because genetic material is severely damaged or destroyed...

Two hominid fossils discovered in Kenya are challenging a long-held view of human evolution. The broken upper jaw-bone and intact skull from humanlike creatures, or hominids, are described in Nature. Previously, the hominid Homo habilis was thought to have evolved into the more advanced Homo erectus, which evolved into us. Now, habilis and erectus are now thought to be sister species that overlapped in time. The new fossil evidence reveals an overlap of about 500,000 years during which Homo habilis and Homo erectus must have co-existed in the Turkana basin area, the region of East Africa where the fossils were...

WASHINGTON -- John Schindler believes that Al-Qaeda was shaped as a modern terrorist organization during the war in Bosnia. Schindler, author of a book on terrorism, told CNN Al-Qaeda members were invited to Bosnia by that country’s leadership, where they set up training camps operational from 1992 until 1995. He claims Osama Bin Laden exploited the war in Bosnia for his own interests, and says there was “a worrying level of support� for the Mujahedin on the part of the U.S. administration of that time. RFE reported that the book looks into the way in which the Clinton administration cooperated...

Before life emerged on earth, either a primitive kind of metabolism or an RNA-like duplicating machinery must have set the stage – so experts believe. But what preceded these pre-life steps? A pair of UCSF scientists has developed a model explaining how simple chemical and physical processes may have laid the foundation for life. Like all useful models, theirs can be tested, and they describe how this can be done. Their model is based on simple, well-known chemical and physical laws. The basic idea is that simple principles of chemical interactions allow for a kind of natural selection on a...

Contact: Dolores Piperno pipernod@si.edu 202-633-1912 Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute Smithsonian scientists connect climate change, origins of agriculture in Mexico Cores from Laguna Tuxpan in Mexico's Iguala Valley, provided evidence for maize and squash cultivation along its edges by ~8000 B.P. and for the major dry event between 1800 and... New charcoal and plant microfossil evidence from Mexico’s Central Balsas valley links a pivotal cultural shift, crop domestication in the New World, to local and regional environmental history. Agriculture in the Balsas valley originated and diversified during the warm, wet, postglacial period following the much cooler and drier climate in the...

ORANG-UTANS have been named as the world’s most intelligent animal in a study that places them above chimpanzees and gorillas, the species traditionally considered closest to humans. The study found that out of 25 species of primate, orang-utans had developed the greatest power to learn and to solve problems. The controversial findings challenge the widespread belief that chimpanzees are the closest to humans in brainpower. They also suggest that the ancestry of orang-utans and humans may be more closely entwined than had been thought. “It appears the orang-utan may possess a privileged status among human kindred,” said James Lee, the...

Skeleton holds key to origin of man By Roger Highfield, Science Editor Last Updated: 2:24am BST 03/04/2007 A skeleton of a possible hybrid between modern and more ancient humans has been found in China, which challenges the theory that modern man originated in Africa. Most experts believe that our ancestors emerged in Africa more than 150,000 years ago and then migrated around the world. However, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Prof Erik Trinkaus and colleagues provide details of a skeleton found in 2003 from Tianyuan Cave near Beijing. The skeleton is 42,000 to 38,500 years old,...

Native American populations share gene signature 00:01 14 February 2007 NewScientist.com news service Roxanne Khamsi A distinctive, repeating sequence of DNA found in people living at the eastern edge of Russia is also widespread among Native Americans, according to a new study. The finding lends support to the idea that Native Americans descended from a common founding population that lived near the Bering land bridge for some time. Kari Schroeder at the University of California in Davis, US, and colleagues sampled the genes from various populations around the globe, including two at the eastern edge of Siberia, 53 elsewhere in...

Source: Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council Date: February 8, 2007 Prehistoric Origins Of Stomach Ulcers Uncovered Science Daily — An international team of scientists has discovered that the ubiquitous bacteria that causes most painful stomach ulcers has been present in the human digestive system since modern man migrated from Africa over 60,000 years ago. The research, published online (7 February) by the journal Nature, not only furthers our understanding of a disease causing bacteria but also offers a new way to study the migration and diversification of early humans. A cell of H.pylori, a bacterial pathogen of the human...