Free Republic

June 28, 2008 Is Mugabe the real problem in Zimbabwe? We are deluding ourselves if we think that getting rid of one mad, old tyrant will stop the barbarism Matthew Parris In politics as in our personal lives, just six words comprise one of the commonest falsehoods around. Those six words are: “It can't go on like this.” But it can. I've come to the melancholy conclusion that in Zimbabwe it must. This weekend there will be voices in our Prime Minister's ear suggesting how in one bound he might cast off his dithering reputation. To help to broker the...

The clash of civilizations we're living through is widely seen as a battle between Islam and Christendom. I'm convinced it's more basic than that. The reason Iraq and Afghanistan remain unsettled battlefields isn't that our two civilizations can't agree on the nature of God. It's because we can't agree on the nature of man. In the West, we take it for granted that human beings are autonomous individuals. We decide for ourselves how we dress, where we work, whom we marry. Our political system is an atomized democracy, in which everyone is expected to vote according to their own idiosyncratic...

Setting priorities in keeping with your values is a daily task for us all. I may, for example, feel the need to spend two hours exercising every day. But if that conflicts with my family responsibilities, I have to consult an overall worldview, a scheme of values, to decide which imperative comes first. So it goes in public life no less than in private. The world Jewish community is united in few things, but a rough consensus has emerged that our greatest worry, our top priority in need of being addressed, is the threat posed by Muslim extremists. With some...

So, what did you learn in school today? Margaret Wente Toronto Globe and Mail Tuesday, June 12, 2007 Shortly after the shooting death of Jordan Manners, the 15-year-old Toronto student, eighth-grade students at nearby Oakdale Park Middle School were called to an assembly. The subject: relations with the police. It's a hot issue in that part of town. The community is in an uproar over the shooting and allegations are flying that police have been heavy-handed in their hunt for Jordan's killer. But the group invited by the school to address the students weren't interested in improving relations with...

I just finished a (long) article by David Ronfeldt called "IN SEARCH OF HOW SOCIETIES WORK; Tribes — The First and Forever Form" Here, I'll post the Abstract: The latest in a string of efforts to develop a theoretical framework about social evolution, based on how people develop their societies by using four forms of organization — tribes, hierarchical institutions, markets, and networks — this installment focuses on the tribal form. The tribal form was the first to emerge and mature, beginning thousands of years ago. Its main dynamic is kinship, which gives people a distinct sense of identity and...

September 11, 2006— In the five years since 9/11, much looking-back has been done. The problem is we haven't looked back far enough. To understand the nature of the enemy in the Middle East and to evaluate the prospects for democracy and peace, we need to extend our gaze not five years into the past, but five hundred and even five thousand. I've spent the last four years writing two books about Alexander the Great's campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, 331-327 B.C. What has struck me in the research is the dead-ringer parallels between that ancient East-West clash and the...

(IsraelNN.com) According to a poll commissioned by the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan research organization, 42% of Americans believe that the modern state of Israel is a gift to the Jewish people by God. 35% of Americans see Israel as the fulfillment of New Testament prophecy about Jesus and the End Times. The Pew organization reports that these numbers, collected in July 2006, are largely unchanged since 2003. In the southern United States, 56% believe that Israel was given to the Jewish people by God. 69% of White evangelical Protestants hold that belief, along with majorities of Black Protestants, as...

Confirming weeks of rumors, CBS has revealed the identities of the twenty castaways who will be competing in this fall's Survivor: Cook Islands and announced that the castaways will -- in what the show's producer and host both acknowledge to be a controversial move -- initially be organized into four tribes divided along ethnic lines (African-American, Asian-American, Hispanic and White.) "We're going to take some heat for it," Survivor executive producer Mark Burnett acknowledged to People about the segregated tribe decision that will no doubt give the thirteenth edition of the long-running reality series -- which will also include the...

Celebrate the 'Canadian achievement' John Geiger, National Post Published: Tuesday, July 11, 2006 When Australian Prime Minister John Howard visited Canada in May, commentators noted just how much Stephen Harper owed to him -- from his family-friendly platform of tax benefits to his determination to strengthen ties with the United States. During their talks, Harper also expressed interest in emulating the Australian approach to climate change outside Kyoto. But there is one policy area Harper and his government have yet to borrow and should, namely a Canadian version of Howard's concept of the "Australian Achievement." Howard used his Australia...

The debate about neonatal circumcision is over. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), neonatal circumcision is the result of ignorance, bad medical practice and American social and cultural pressure. Regarding the three most commonly cited justifications for neonatal circumcision (penile cancer, venereal disease and penile hygiene), the AAP now states that the benefits are negligible, which means that the majority of American men are walking around without foreskins for no good reason. Yet, the barbaric practice shows no sign of abating, and for this reason I plan to shed some light on the cultural dark spot of circumcision....

A question of loyalty George Jonas National Post Friday, March 10, 2006 As a footnote to Martin Collacott's outstanding report on Canada's refugee system, excerpted in these pages, I'll revisit a topic I've touched upon many times since the mid-1980s. It's a topic of increasing importance, I believe. Until recent times, the West has been spoiled by the loyalty of immigrants, even from hostile regions or cultures. During the First World War, with negligible exceptions, immigrants from enemy countries as well as their children remained loyal to Canada and the U.S. throughout the hostilities. During the Second World War,...

Ever wonder how to piss off an Iraqi? It's relatively simple. Just ask one, no sooner than you have been introduced: "So you're an Iraqi? How absolutely fascinating. Do tell: Are you a Kurd or a Sunni or a Shiite?" This will work every time, just as it's always so polite and so useful to ask a brown-skinned American if he or she is Chicano or, you know … Latina. If you fall into conversation with an Iraqi, you will soon enough find out what you want to know. Kurds are not shy about mentioning their nationhood, and followers of...

I’m generally an optimist, and it’s been my pleasure to be able to write mostly about the good and the noble things in our lives. But the events in the Gulf – of Mexico – have brought to a head a summer and a year that has been getting progressively uglier and more painful to watch. Who can not see the way the country has changed, not since 9/11, but before that – since the 2000 election? Who cannot feel the split, the division, that rips like a shredding sail on a broken mast, canvas tearing like the sound of...

Fascism in a Lei By Edward Hudgins ehudgins@objectivistcenter.org What could be friendlier or more welcoming place than Hawaii, America's 50th state? If S-147, the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act of 2005, introduced by that state's Democratic Sen. Daniel Akaka, is passed by the U.S. Congress, the ugly scourge of racism — the real, honest-to-badness type, not the name calling type that gets flung around too often — will rule those islands which, in the future, might cease to be part of the United States. The proposed legislation would divide Hawaiians into "natives" and all others. Anyone with a drop of...

With most of the nation distracted by the destruction of Hurricane Katrina and the first Supreme Court confirmation hearings in nearly a decade, the Senate may quietly approve a bill to recognize native Hawaiians as a new Indian tribe and establish a separate governing authority for people of their race within Hawaii. “This is the worst bill you’ve never heard of,” said John Fund, political analyst for the Wall Street Journal, speaking at the Heritage Foundation August 30. The bill would create an open-ended negotiation process between a proposed native-Hawaiian governing entity and the federal and state governments. The process...

Brock Chisolm, former Director of the (United Nations) World Health Organization, is quoted as saying, "To achieve world government, it is necessary to remove from the minds of men, their individualism, loyalty to family traditions, national patriotism and religious dogmas." [GWB quote of the day, 7/7/1999]. Remove from the minds of men? Doesn't that sound like mental conditioning? How does that square with the Alexander Downer/Tim Fischer version of globalism as freer markets? It doesn't, does it? Some years ago another hero of the globalist-Left, B.F.Skinner, in his book Beyond Freedom and Dignity, mounted a concerted attack on what he...

BOSTON (AP) - In this land of Kennedys, O'Neills, Fitzgeralds and Flynns, where shamrocks grace the jerseys of the basketball team, the Italians are taking over. With the ascendancy of Salvatore DiMasi to the speakership of the Massachusetts House last week, Italian-Americans hold the two top positions in the state Legislature for the first time in its 224-year history. "Finally," said Sheryl Iftikhar (maiden name Spataro), who works at a convenience store in DiMasi's lifelong home, the city's North End, a neighborhood where visitors can buy signs that read "Parking for Italians Only." DiMasi, who took over from Irishman Tom...

Initial reports of the looting of the Iraqi National Museum sparked a frenzy of outrage. Denied their desert quagmire, their civilian massacres, their oil-fire eco-disaster, and their inflamed "Arab street," leftists all but leaped at the opportunity to denounce our armed forces—with some even urging that our soldiers be prosecuted for war crimes for their alleged failure to prevent the looting. It turns out, though, that our troops were not standing "idly by" but were being fired at from the museum complex. And the number of missing artifacts—initially assumed to be in the thousands—is now thought to be closer to...

The majority of Africa’s economic and political lag behind the remainder of the world can be attributed to three key factors, the fomentation of strife and lack of preparation for independence on the part of certain Western powers, power-lusting governments that drain wealth from the nations into their own rulers’ accounts, and a prevalent tribalist/collectivist mindset within the populace that has frequently been evoked to bring about colossal tensions. Numerous Western powers performed scant actions to grant their African colonies the requisite experience with the democratic system, technological preparation, and overall enlightenment of the population to achieve genuine functionality at...

In 1947, upon India’s independence, the secularist government of Jawaharlal Nehru avowedly renounced the hierarchical rigidity of the caste system and embarked upon erasing its impositions off the face of India. However, instead of eliminating the power structures, the Indian government has half-inverted them, fueling mutually escalating antagonisms among members of upper and lower castes. While caste-consciousness and institutionalized discrimination have risen to a record high, the sociopolitical barriers to the ascent of aspiring individuals from lower castes remain firmly entrenched in rural India. If India were to receive a grade for its performance in fostering equality of opportunity and...

Guillaume Bonn for The New York Times Searching for a new African supermodel, Lyndsey McIntyre, right, traveled to a remote village in Kenya, where she had heard the girls were tall, slim and striking. BURA, Kenya — Lyndsey McIntyre, a scout for Elite Model Management, had visions of the supermodels Iman and Alek Wek in her head when she arrived in this remote village near the Somalia border, where she had heard the girls were tall, slim and striking. A new African supermodel was what she was after, someone with a breathtaking new look. The recruit had to be at...

Iraq will need coaxing towards democracy. It will be a long haul “THE nation of Iraq, with its proud heritage, abundant resources and skilled and educated people, is fully capable of moving toward democracy and living in freedom.” That was George Bush, in a speech on February 26th. His view of a sweeping and natural transformation, however, is not widely shared. Reconstructing Iraq will be “difficult, confusing and dangerous”, says the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. “It will be a very, very nasty affair,” agrees Joseph Wilson, an American diplomat who once served in Baghdad. Recent precedents for...

MULTAN, Pakistan (AP) - A Pakistani tribal council ordered an 18-year-old girl to be gang-raped in order to punish her family after her brother was seen walking with a girl from a higher class tribe, police said Tuesday. The private Human Rights Commission of Pakistan demanded that all those involved in the rape, which took place June 22 in the village of Meerwala in southern Punjab province, be punished.Police said the victim's father had filed criminal charges against the four men involved in the case. Police said they picked up eight relatives of the suspects to pressure the perpetrators into...

DOWA, Malawi - In February, when the food ran out, Ezlina Chambukira started selling her precious possessions one by one. First, her goat. Then an old umbrella. Then two metal plates and a battered pail. When she had nothing left, she started praying for a miracle. For the first time in a decade, severe hunger is sweeping across southern Africa. The United Nations says that two years of erratic weather - alternating droughts and floods - coupled with mismanagement of food supplies have left seven million people in six countries at risk of starvation. Here in this dusty village of...

SAN LEANDRO -- Abraham Lincoln may have to forfeit his solo holiday to Cesar Chavez on the San Leandro school calendar. Beginning next year, Lincoln's holiday may be dropped to honor labor leader Cesar Chavez on his birthday, March 31, pending school board approval. Several board members have already expressed support for the idea. The San Leandro Teachers Association voted last month to make the change; 65 percent were in favor. "The diversity of our community is growing, and it looks beautiful and we want to honor our Latino families," said Thomas Morse, political action chairman for the union. "And...