Free Republic

It’s getting stranger, I tell you. Riding the subway from Vienna Station to Franconia-Springfield, at every stop the woman driving the train said in an over-elocuted voice, “A-ten-tion, customers. This is a Metro Safety Tip. Pay attention to your surroundings. Look up from your newspapers and blackbirds [it sounded like, though nobody seemed to be carrying any sort of bird at all] every now and then. Report suspicious activity to Metro employees immediately.” Then—I can’t stand it: “Let’s be pre-pared, not scared.” Nobody paid the slightest attention to these motherish admonitions. I was glad, picturing the whole car peering at...

On Aug. 15, 1945, the day Japan stopped fighting in World War II, Tokyo looked like the blasted surface of the moon. Photos show a city reduced by massive U.S. airstrikes into charred expanses of rubble and concrete ruins. Arriving Allied troops were stunned by the extent of the devastation. Today, towering skyscrapers and gleaming neon signs stand where firebombs once fell. The scorched earth has sprouted bustling business districts. Tokyo has been reborn into a vibrant metropolitan area of 33 million inhabitants, and the nerve center of the world's second-largest economy. Japan overcame the war's physical devastation with spectacular...

IN Niger most of the 11 million people live on a dollar a day. Some 40% of children are underfed, and one out of four dies before turning five. And that’s when things are normal. Throw in a plague of locusts, and a familiar spectacle emerges: skeletal babies, distended bellies, people too famished to brush the flies from their faces. To the aid workers charged with saving the dying, the immediate challenge is to raise relief money and get supplies to the stricken areas. They leave it to the economists and politicians to come up with a lasting remedy. One...

IN Niger most of the 11 million people live on a dollar a day. Some 40% of children are underfed, and one out of four dies before turning five. And that’s when things are normal. Throw in a plague of locusts, and a familiar spectacle emerges: skeletal babies, distended bellies, people too famished to brush the flies from their faces. To the aid workers charged with saving the dying, the immediate challenge is to raise relief money and get supplies to the stricken areas. They leave it to the economists and politicians to come up with a lasting remedy. One...

eFormer - News that Moves

Leaders of European Union member states have been reeling from the double rejection of the proposed European Constitution by two of the six founding members, the Netherlands and France. Given a chance to express their opinion on “ever closer union,” for the first time in over a decade and ever, respectively, French and Dutch voters spurned the controversial text against the wishes of their countries’ political, media and commercial elite. The reasons for rejection were varied and contradictory, but at its roots was dissatisfaction with present economic conditions –foremost persistently high unemployment- and perceived indifference and arrogance with which national...

INTRODUCTION: Two things really struck us while working on this story. First, we're in the middle of the biggest population shift in more than 1000 years, as Muslim populations grow steadily in countries like Britain, France and yes, Australia. Secondly, the London bombers were home grown, seemingly ordinary Englishmen. Now, there's do doubt the vast majority of Muslims just want a peaceful life. But some don't. That's where the danger may lie. And that's why we've been into the suburbs of Paris and Amsterdam, Sydney and Melbourne listening to Muslims, seeing what they hold dear. STORY: SHEIKH KHALID YASIN: Our...

IHEU today attempted to call on the United Nations to condemn killing in the name of religion, but were prevented from doing so by the heavy-handed intervention of Islamic representatives. The IHEU call, at today's meeting of the UN Sub-Commission on Human Rights in Geneva, follows moves by Islamic clerics to legitimise the current wave of terror attacks. At this afternoon's meeting, IHEU representative David Littman attempted to deliver a prepared text in the joint names of three international NGOs: the Association for World Education, the Association of World Citizens, and IHEU, but was prevented from doing so by the...

To whatever extent the recent United Nations report on Zimbabwe calls attention to the brutalities of the country's tyrant, President Robert Mugabe, the U.N. has performed a service. But as far as the report translates into nothing more than a fresh bout of aid funneled via Mugabe's regime, this U.N. initiative will only compound the suffering in Zimbabwe--where the government's latest atrocity has been to "clean up" the cities by evicting hundreds of thousands of poor people, destroying their dwellings and leaving them jobless, homeless and hungry. In describing this scene, the U.N. report provides a wealth of horrifying detail,...

Nov. 9, 1989 and Sept. 11, 2001 each changed the modern world. The fall of the Berlin Wall marked the end of 75 years of communism, and the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks the beginning of what may be a similar period of global Islamic terrorism. But not all of Western civilization wants to fight this not so cold war. Turkey, fearing attacks by Muslim insurgents, ended its anti-terrorism efforts in 2003. Spain followed suit after the 2004 Madrid bombings. Then Hungary and the Netherlands also all but capitulated, even without any dramatic, world-attention grabbing, attacks on their soil....

COLUMBUS, Ohio--In 1970, Ohio had one of the lowest tax burdens in the Union--it now has one of the highest. As of 2005, the state's tax burden, as estimated by the Tax Foundation, is 35.8% higher than it was in 1970, the largest increase in the nation over this period. The next largest, 26.5% in Arkansas, was far smaller, and the average increase in the U.S. tax burden was just 3.1%. Over the past decade alone, Ohio's state and local government direct spending per $1,000 of personal income has risen 19.6%, by far the highest such spending growth in the...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The House voted by a wide margin Thursday night to renew expiring provisions of the USA Patriot Act, the collection of antiterrorism measures passed after the September 11, 2001, attacks. The final vote was 257-171. The bill makes permanent 14 of 16 provisions in the act set to expire next year and extends two others for another 10 years. Passage came with the specter of terrorism fresh in lawmakers' minds after another round of bombing incidents in London earlier in the day. (Full story) The Senate is considering its own reauthorization of the Patriot Act, and the...

With a view to establish and improve the socialist market economic system in China, enable the market to fully play its role in resource allocation as well as to put in place and further strengthen the managed floating exchange rate regime based on market supply and demand, the People's Bank of China, with authorization of the State Council, is hereby making the following announcements regarding reforming the RMB exchange rate regime: 1. Starting from July 21, 2005, China will reform the exchange rate regime by moving into a managed floating exchange rate regime based on market supply and demand with...

In a recent interview on CNBC with Ron Insana, one of the "old-timer" funds manager, Julian Robertson, predicted "utter global collapse" as a consequence of the bursting of the world-wide property bubble. Often called "Never Been Wrong Robertson", the former head of Tiger Management (once the largest hedge fund in the world), is extremely worried about the speculative bubble in real estate. Specifically, he is very worried about a world that is sustained by American consumer spending which is in turn 1/4 sustained by a property bubble. He predicts that 20 million people could lose their homes once the property...

1968: US Senator Edward Kennedy’s car drove off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts killing his 28-year-old companion Mary Jo Kopechne. Kennedy fled the scene of the accident and received a suspended sentence of two months and one year's probation.

There are many Americans tonight heavily burdened with guilt. Their sensibilities have been gouged, and they are feeling remorseful and ashamed for subjecting the citizens of London to the terrorism that they believe is a direct result of what they believe to be our foolish incursion into Iraq. In the high rise apartments of New York¹s upper west side, in the brownstones of Chicago¹s Hyde Park and the oceanfront mansions of Malibu, many Americans feel shamed by Al Qaeda¹s cowardly and senseless attack, and angry with George Bush for causing it, by his cowboy arrogance and his stupidity. And there...

A few days ago Henryk M. Broder wrote in Welt am Sonntag, "Europe -- your family name is appeasement." It's a phrase you can't get out of your head because it's so terribly true. Appeasement cost millions of Jews and non-Jews their lives as England and France, allies at the time, negotiated and hesitated too long before they noticed that Hitler had to be fought, not bound to agreements. Appeasement stabilized communism in the Soviet Union and East Germany in that part of Europe where inhuman, suppressive governments were glorified as the ideologically correct alternative to all other possibilities. Appeasement...

After watching the election and the political debates for the preceeding infitite, I came to realize a few things about the two candidates and their methods and the country as a whole. The most obvious being the opposing views between the coastal areas and the heart of the country. I believe that this is ultimately a result of the huge differences between the liberals and conservative core in this country. What amazes me most is the way the liberal elite tried, quite successfully I must say, to sway the election through 527 groups as well as the media. I believe...