Free Republic

CARACAS, Venezuela — (AP) — Venezuela's Supreme Court, loyal to President Nicolás Maduro, on Tuesday ordered the takeover of two influential political parties opposed to the socialist government ahead of parliamentary elections expected this year. The court suspended and replaced the board of directors for the Justice First party a day after the same move against the Democratic Action, one of the nation's oldest and largest parties. It was part of a “necessary restructuring process,” the court said in rulings posted on Facebook. No legal action was taken, however, against Popular Will, the party of opposition leader Juan Guaidó, who...

Roberta McCain, the mother of the late Sen. John McCain, celebrated her 108th birthday on Friday. Her granddaughter, Meghan McCain, tweeted out the news. "Happy 108th Birthday to my nana Roberta. You are our matriarch," the conservative co-host of ABC's The View said. "Completely ageless, classic, lovely, strong, smart, sarcastic, irreverent and all things I love in this world. We are so grateful for you." McCain, 35, also shared the secret to her grandmother's long life on The View after host Sunny Hostin asked: "Have you ever asked her what her secret is to longevity?" "She said, 'A sense of...

That’s Maths: Mathematical concepts influenced the structure and style of many of Jorge Luis Borges’ short stories The world has been transformed by the internet. Google, founded just 20 years ago, is a major force in online information. The company name is a misspelt version of “googol”, the number one followed by one hundred zeros. This name echoes the vast quantities of information available through the search engines of the company. Long before the internet, the renowned Argentine writer, poet, translator and literary critic Jorge Luis Borges envisaged the universe as a vast information bank in the form of a...

Nothing is less material than money. . . . Money is abstract, I repeated, money is future time. It can be an evening in the suburbs, it can be the music of Brahms, it can be maps, it can be chess, it can be coffee, it can be the words of Epictetus teaching us to despise gold. Money is a Proteus more versatile than the one on the island of Pharos. —Jorge Luis Borges, “The Zahir” I fell in love with Jorge Luis Borges when I was a freshman in college. That year, full of hope and confusion, I left...

For an author who died five years ago without any recognition in the English-reading world, Chilean Roberto Bolaño is the unlikely new superstar on the global literary scene as the translation of his last magnum opus has left critics searching for superlatives.The 900-page, five-part, inexplicably titled “2666″, originally in Spanish, was published in English in the US in November and instantly recognised as a contemporary classic - the New York Times hailed it as “a landmark in what’s possible for the novel”. The book is out in Britain this week and reviewers are ecstatic. The Times and the Guardian had...

It is one thing to hate Greeks or Turks, for want of example, and quite a different thing to hate Jews. Likewise, to hate this country or that one is not akin to hating Israel. The faultless logic of a felon explains all. Asked why he robbed banks Willie Sutton explained, “That’s where the money is.” Well, Israel is where six million Jews are, and Iran is not the only power that, day and night, aches to wipe them off the face of the earth. Clearly there’s more to hating Israel than meets the eye. By “more” I mean a...

Mystery shrouds an old greeting card tucked away in a dog-eared copy of Plato’s Republic that belongs to Toronto’s Agincourt District Library. Handwritten in Spanish, the card is addressed from famed Argentinean author Jorge Luis Borges and it appears to carry his signature and a cartoon doodle. Borges’ works, including short story collection Ficciones, are considered literary classics. He died in 1986. UPDATE: Close friend says signature is BorgesLibrarian Louis Choquette discovered the card while flipping through the pages of a battered Plato book, he wrote in a Feb. 15 post for the Agincourt District Libraries blog. “I’m still in...

Swiss prostitute Griselidis Real will keep the company of theologist Jean Calvin and writer Jose Luis Borges in the afterlife Former Swiss prostitute and human rights activist Griselidis Real was buried next to theologist and religious reformist Jean Calvin at the famous royal cemetery in Geneva, media report on Tuesday. Griselidis Real died in 2005 and seeing how she gave up on her career of a prostitute, she became famous by establishing a charity institution in the 70s with which she helped male and female prostitutes. - Writer, painter and prostitute – is her epitaph and the decision on moving...

Jorge Luis Borges visited Israel twice. The first trip came at the invitation of Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. It was in recognition of his philo-Semitism, and, in particular, his positive views on Israel. Borges had been active in Casa Argentina en Israel-Tierra Santa, a project that sought to build an Argentine cultural center in Jerusalem. He also had been the first to write about Israel in the prestigious intellectual magazine Sur in 1958. In the 1970s, in an autobiographical essay published in The New Yorker, Borges stated:Early in 1969, invited by the Israeli government, I spent ten very exciting days...

Borges lifts article from Tacoma News Tribune Cold Hard Football Facts for March 4, 2007 Broadsheet Bully Ron Borges must want to get fired. How else do you explain the incredible similarities between his Sunday “Football Notes” column in the Boston Globe and a story written by Mike Sando and published in the News Tribune of Tacoma on Feb. 25? By Cold, Hard Football Facts publisher Kerry J. Byrne Broadsheet Bully Ron Borges is down for the count. Or at least he will be, once the editors of the Boston Globe get wind of this disaster. Simply note the incredible...