FreeorDie.org http://freeordie.org True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence.- Roosevelt Fri, 05 Feb 2010 23:36:06 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 We are far from a secret underground movement http://freeordie.org/we-are-far-from-a-secret-underground-movement/ http://freeordie.org/we-are-far-from-a-secret-underground-movement/#comments Fri, 05 Feb 2010 23:36:06 +0000 Moe Bedard http://freeordie.org/?p=771 “The two things are very separate and I do not let them cross over. No mason has ever approached me and asked me to push things through for them. I wouldn’t be very happy if they did.

“The Freemasons is a charitable organisation and one which I get a lot of pleasure from being a member of. If however I was working as a councillor and was involved in any form of decision making on either a fellow mason, or the lodge, I would declare an interest and leave the room.

“Over the last ten years the Freemasons have become far more open. We are far from a secret underground movement.”

Read more from The Rye and Battle Observer

]]> http://freeordie.org/we-are-far-from-a-secret-underground-movement/feed/ 0 Pfeiffer of Dracut Installed as District Deputy Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Masons in Massachusetts http://freeordie.org/pfeiffer-of-dracut-installed-as-district-deputy-grand-master-of-the-grand-lodge-of-masons-in-massachusetts/ http://freeordie.org/pfeiffer-of-dracut-installed-as-district-deputy-grand-master-of-the-grand-lodge-of-masons-in-massachusetts/#comments Fri, 05 Feb 2010 23:31:26 +0000 Moe Bedard http://freeordie.org/?p=768 BOSTON — Kenneth W. Pfeiffer of Dracut was installed a District Deputy Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Masons in Massachusetts at the fraternity’s Boston headquarters and will preside over eight lodges in the 14th Masonic District for the year.

The 38,000 Freemasons and 232 lodges in the commonwealth are organized into 32 districts, each led by a district deputy grand master.

A Grand Lodge is the governing body that ensures the activities of the lodges and members comply with its constitutions and regulations; it also maintains the uniformity of the initiation ceremony candidates experience when they become members.

Read more from The Valley Dispatch

]]> http://freeordie.org/pfeiffer-of-dracut-installed-as-district-deputy-grand-master-of-the-grand-lodge-of-masons-in-massachusetts/feed/ 0 China’s premier called for a new economic world order http://freeordie.org/chinas-premier-called-for-a-new-economic-world-order/ http://freeordie.org/chinas-premier-called-for-a-new-economic-world-order/#comments Fri, 05 Feb 2010 23:22:57 +0000 Moe Bedard http://freeordie.org/?p=764 This year the Chinese foreign minister is one of the main participants at the Munich Security Conference, last year China’s premier called for a new economic world order at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Do you think Beijing has deliberately decided that it should use the forum of those big conferences for agenda-setting purposes?

It has outlined ist global agenda before. Hu Jintao delivered a speech to the UN General Assembly where he outlined what China believes to be the future of the world, the so-called harmonious world. So for some time now China has begun to make its own contributions on how the world should look in the future. It is trying to make a more cooperative and constructive contribution.

Read more from The Deutsche Welle

]]> http://freeordie.org/chinas-premier-called-for-a-new-economic-world-order/feed/ 0 India is an enormous power in the new world order http://freeordie.org/india-is-an-enormous-power-in-the-new-world-order/ http://freeordie.org/india-is-an-enormous-power-in-the-new-world-order/#comments Fri, 05 Feb 2010 23:17:58 +0000 Moe Bedard http://freeordie.org/?p=761 India is an enormous power in the new world order. It is Australia’s fourth-largest export market, our second-largest source of foreign students. We earn about $14 billion a year in education exports. And it is a central player in the geo-strategic equations of Asia and increasingly of the whole world.

The Rudd government has the ambition to transform the relationship into one which is in the front rank of Australia’s relations.

Given that India is the longest-standing democracy in Asia and because of our cultural and sporting links, this ought to be a realistic ambition. But the violence against Indians in Melbourne is rendering this impossible.

Read more from The Australian

]]> http://freeordie.org/india-is-an-enormous-power-in-the-new-world-order/feed/ 0 China One Child Policy to Stay http://freeordie.org/china-one-child-policy-to-stay/ http://freeordie.org/china-one-child-policy-to-stay/#comments Fri, 05 Feb 2010 23:12:02 +0000 Moe Bedard http://freeordie.org/?p=759 China’s one child policy will remain unaltered during the 12th Five Year Plan period (2011-2015), said a Chinese official, refuting rumors of a relaxation in the family planning measure, NFDaily.cn reported Friday.

The policy has been dogged with controversy recently in the country where the sizzling economy is increasingly laden by an aging population and foreseeable shortage of labor forces.

Read more from China Daily

]]> http://freeordie.org/china-one-child-policy-to-stay/feed/ 0 Dystopia emerged as a way to criticize the impossibility of the utopia http://freeordie.org/dystopia-emerged-as-a-way-to-criticize-the-impossibility-of-the-utopia/ http://freeordie.org/dystopia-emerged-as-a-way-to-criticize-the-impossibility-of-the-utopia/#comments Fri, 05 Feb 2010 02:31:14 +0000 Moe Bedard http://freeordie.org/?p=756 “You cannot have utopia in a society where you have humans because there is always somebody greedy, somebody who is immoral, who wants to dominate the world,” says University of Calgary English professor Ruby Ramraj. “Utopia is an idea, an imagined place, and really I don’t think you can find utopia on earth ever, no matter how many idealists we have, how many visionaries we have.”

As such, dystopia emerged as a way to criticize the impossibility of the utopia, presenting a darker, more plausible picture of world order.

“What you find here is that you have a society that is totally unequal. You have nightmare scenarios where one group is trying to dominate the other group,” says Ramraj. “There is war, there is violence, there is poverty, there is destruction. And you get this sort of fiction where it is the end of the world.”

Read more from The Gauntlet

]]> http://freeordie.org/dystopia-emerged-as-a-way-to-criticize-the-impossibility-of-the-utopia/feed/ 0 World leaders tackle the seemingly intractable problems of ushering in a new world order http://freeordie.org/world-leaders-tackle-the-seemingly-intractable-problems-of-ushering-in-a-new-world-order/ http://freeordie.org/world-leaders-tackle-the-seemingly-intractable-problems-of-ushering-in-a-new-world-order/#comments Fri, 05 Feb 2010 02:26:09 +0000 Moe Bedard http://freeordie.org/?p=752 Inside the National Prayer Breakfast – Clinton repeatedly addressed the importance of prayer and faith as world leaders tackle the seemingly intractable problems of ushering in a new world order where the oppressed, especially women and girls, appear to be losing ground in terms of respect, justice, and equality.  Speaking very sincerely, almost to the point of tears at times, Sec. Clinton quoted Methodist stalwart John Wesley: “Do all the good you can, to all the people you can, in all the ways you can.”
 
President Obama, introduced by Sen. Isakson as “the husband of the dynamic First Lady Michelle Obama,” agreed, saying to laughter and applause, “I thank God for being married to Michelle!”  In calling on all Americans to practice self-sacrifice for the common good, the President said, “the spirit of self-sacrifice is missing from day-to-day realities, especially political realities.”

Read more from Tri State Defender

]]> http://freeordie.org/world-leaders-tackle-the-seemingly-intractable-problems-of-ushering-in-a-new-world-order/feed/ 0 China mildly rejected the idea of American-Chinese joint management of the world http://freeordie.org/china-mildly-rejected-the-idea-of-american-chinese-joint-management-of-the-world/ http://freeordie.org/china-mildly-rejected-the-idea-of-american-chinese-joint-management-of-the-world/#comments Fri, 05 Feb 2010 01:40:37 +0000 Moe Bedard http://freeordie.org/?p=749 During Obama’s visit to Beijing last year, China mildly rejected the idea of American-Chinese joint management of the world that is popular with the Obama team. It does not matter what was said during the visit. The real reasons are important: Washington still believes that “joint management” means that it will play first fiddle and China only second. China will wait for America to get rid of this illusion, which shouldn’t take very long.

Or will it take a long time? It is important to analyze the reasons why the Obama team led the U.S. into a quarrel with a country relations with which it proclaimed a priority for the 21st century? Foreign Affairs magazine draws this conclusion: America cannot make a choice between the two powerful forces that have torn asunder its mentality and foreign policy since its inception. One force believed that America cannot be stable as long as “dictatorships,” that is countries different from America, exist in the world. The other believed that the force of example – of a prosperous America – will allow it to achieve everything it wants.

Read more from RIA

]]> http://freeordie.org/china-mildly-rejected-the-idea-of-american-chinese-joint-management-of-the-world/feed/ 0 Australia: Populate and we will perish http://freeordie.org/australia-populate-and-we-will-perish/ http://freeordie.org/australia-populate-and-we-will-perish/#comments Tue, 02 Feb 2010 02:25:02 +0000 Moe Bedard http://freeordie.org/?p=742 Excuse me? What about helping them with population control?

Why has it taken so long for this debate to take place? One reason is that the ethnic lobby brands anyone who questions immigration as racist. That won’t work with the type of people who are now entering the debate. People of the calibre of Dick Smith, Bob Carr and, if I may say so, yours truly can’t be so labelled.

More and more Australians are speaking out on this issue and they will not be silenced out of fear of being blackguarded by those afraid to seriously debate the issue.

The pundits suggest the federal election will be fought on the economy, climate change, health care and education. To that we can add population and immigration. It’s the big sleeper. Rudd and Tony Abbott take note. It will be a debate not about who comes to this country but how many.

Read more from the Australian

]]> http://freeordie.org/australia-populate-and-we-will-perish/feed/ 0 This is why China will not bury America http://freeordie.org/this-is-why-china-will-not-bury-america/ http://freeordie.org/this-is-why-china-will-not-bury-america/#comments Tue, 02 Feb 2010 02:20:17 +0000 Moe Bedard http://freeordie.org/?p=738 Meanwhile, China’s “golden moment” is slipping away, and fast: 2010 will mark the apogee of its working population’s size in relation to its pool of dependents (kids and retirees). Thanks to its one-child policy, China has shrunken its demographic inputs for the last 30 years, while the share of its elderly population held steady. But from here on out, far more elders will be disgorged from the working-age cohort than those replaced on the front end, meaning China’s worker-to-dependent ratio will fall — and keep falling through at least mid-century. By 2050, China will have more retirees than America will have people. As far as unfunded mandates go, that’s one King Kong-sized monster.

More generally, understand that China’s emerging economy is just coming upon its greatest stress test, otherwise known as the shift from extensive to intensive growth. When it comes to catching up to advanced economies by copying their well-worn developmental pathways, single-party states can — under the right conditions — most definitely outperform sloppy democracies.

Read more from the World Politics Review

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