Free Republic

Former German chancellor Helmut Kohl has died

BERLIN -- Thirty years ago this week, President Ronald Reagan stood at a lectern in what was then West Berlin, framed by the Brandenburg Gate behind him. Through a thick sheet of bulletproof glass, he gazed at the ugly concrete symbol of the Cold War, the Berlin Wall, and uttered the most famous words of his presidency to Mikhail Gorbachev, the leader of the Soviet empire. "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall," he said. This was no mere rhetorical flourish. He was passionately and morally offended by the "evil empire." The Wall Museum in Berlin celebrates the occasion with a...

BERLIN – Edward Snowden is increasingly unhappy with the situation in Russia, where he has lived for more than three years. President Vladimir Putin once welcomed the National Security Agency contractor for his propaganda value, but he may be wondering if it’s all been worth it. Snowden arrived in Moscow in June 2013. That was almost a year before the Crimea annexation, and Russia could still try to sell itself to radical leftists who admired Snowden as the lesser evil, compared with the Big Brother United States. Putin talked a lot about Snowden, showing obvious delight for thumbing his nose...

Sweden is changing. After a lengthy period of shrinking investment in its armed forces and a tactical shift from national defence to developing expeditionary capabilities, Stockholm's focus has reverted to protecting its population against invasion. The potential threat from Russia is evident in the roughly 400 quick reaction alert (QRA) sorties flown by the Swedish air force's Saab Gripens in each of the last three years. Moscow's fighters and bombers are routinely seen in international airspace over the Baltic Sea, and future additions to that nation's capabilities – such as the Sukhoi T-50 fighter and S-400 long-range surface-to-air-missile system –...

LIVING IN EAST Germany during the Cold War meant being watched. By your government. By your neighbors. And even, at times, by your own family. The East German secret police, one of the most intrusive and oppressive spying operations ever assembled, collected millions of files on people it suspected of being enemies of the state. The German Democratic Republic dissolved in 1990 with the fall of communism, but the documents assembled by the Ministry for State Security, or Stasi, remain. This massive archive includes 69 miles of shelved documents, 1.8 million images, and 30,300 video and audio recordings housed in...

A marble nine-foot monument of President Ronald Reagan is set to be unveiled May 10 in Bulgaria’s capital city of Sofia. The monument, which transpired with key input and advice from Young America’s Foundation and the Reagan Ranch, was erected in order to honor President Reagan’s critical contribution to the country’s liberation from communism. The ceremony honoring Ronald Reagan will take place at the entrance to Sofia’s famed South Park, one of the largest green spaces in the city. -snip “Ronald Reagan was not only committed to ensuring freedom in the US, but also to advancing freedom across the globe....

Young Leftists see themselves so diversely open-minded, yet their brains had fallen out a long time ago A bill narrowly passed the house in California, repealing part of the law enacted during the Cold War era in our country’s history when communists were really active and infiltrating our government, attempting to overthrow it. The bill proposed to eliminate the section which allowed the firing of public employees if they were members of the Communist Party. The bill now goes to the Senate and its author, Democrat Assemblyman Rob Bonta, hopes that it will pass.

Freedom From Truth: FFRF is beyond all reason by Daniel Clark “Our purpose is to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church,” At least that’s what Freedom From Religion Foundation Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor wrote in a thinly veiled threat to the Allegheny County Council, to dissuade it from installing a plaque in the county courthouse that says “In God We Trust.” That principle, like everything else the FFRF stands for, is a lie. If Gaylor and friends can point to anything in the U.S. Constitution that prohibits a Pittsburgh courthouse from acknowledging God, this particular resident...

Acclaimed Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, whose work focused on war atrocities and denounced anti-Semitism and tyrannical dictators, has died. He was 84... Yevtushenko gained notoriety in the former Soviet Union while in his 20s, with poetry denouncing Josef Stalin. He gained international acclaim as a young revolutionary with "Babi Yar," the unflinching 1961 poem that told of the slaughter of nearly 34,000 Jews by the Nazis and denounced the anti-Semitism that had spread throughout the Soviet Union... Until "Babi Yar" was published, the history of the massacre was shrouded in the fog of the Cold War...

"Everybody Wants A Little Peace" - Billy Gray's Hollywood Band Box Review

America is in the beginning stages of a new Cold War with Russia. And China. This time around, though, most of the Cold War will be fought along digital, technological lines, with each nation hacking the other for the purposes of espionage and sabotage. In the situation in which the American people and the incoming president find themselves, trusting the intelligence community has never mattered more. Unfortunately, trust must not only be needed; it must be earned. In that area, the intelligence community comes up short.As The New American has recently reported, the intelligence community’s inclusion of a spurious “dossier”...

If we're going to make Congress and all of America great again, we need to continue working to drain that swamp of entrenched politicians Cold war was a term that took up common usage beginning in 1950s America to describe the ongoing conflict between the U.S and the Soviet Union. While not engaged in direct military action, the two nations were diametrically opposed to each other diplomatically, in proxy wars and in economic matters. An attitude of war toward each other but restrained, in this case by mutual assured destruction if they came to blows. Now America is in a...

During the time of the founding fathers, America did not have a foreign policy that included having enemies. George Washington warned Americans against too much attachment to foreign nations and causes. Even when Jefferson waged war on North African Arab Muslim nations that kidnapped American sailors, he did not have a foreign enemies list. A foreign policy based on always having enemies is the product of the Cold War. Always having enemies is profitable for defense corporations.

Trump's USA may cooperate with Russia like never before, significantly altering global power equations. The invocation of the "foreign hand" to explain unexpected political developments is quite common in the [Indian] subcontinent. But the last place in the world to have a debate on the "foreign hand" is the United States. Usually, it is Washington that is accused of meddling in the internal affairs of other nations -- from promoting military coups to propping up friendly regimes and engineering regime changes. But right now, it is America that is debating the nature and extent of the Russian President Vladimir Putin's...

Earlier this week, 47 Republican senators published an open letter informing the leaders of Iran that any nuclear deal with the United States that failed to be approved by the Senate would likely expire in 2017, once President Barack Obama’s term ended. The letter enraged progressives, who immediately began accusing the senators of treason for having the audacity to publish basic constitutional facts about how treaties work. If these progressives want to know what actual treason looks like, they should consult liberal lion Ted Kennedy, who not only allegedly sent secret messages to the Soviets in the midst of the...

Back from vacation for the holidays and New Years, I've been watching some videos by Pastor Mark Dice from California, he has been doing fake petitions in universities and in Oceanside Beach which is located north of San Diego. These petitions include banning guns and having registered gun owners put in prisons or concentration camps. Also there are petitions making post birth abortions legal, making incest legal, making Karl Marx a candidate for the Democratic party or mandatory euthanasia for the elderly. The majority of of the signers are young naive liberals and marxists of course and your typical California...

The misreading of Russia’s geopolitical situation is especially sad because for the first time in many decades there is much to hope for in Moscow. Out of utopian misery has come the prospect of rebirth. It is as yet incipient. But I see great possibilities in it, in the many once-blighted churches now open and loved and full again, in the reappearance of symbols of pre-Bolshevik Russia, in the growth of a generation not stunted and pitted by poisoned air and food, nor twisted by Communist ethics. Many Russians will never recover from the cynicism they were taught, the mistrust,...

As we look back tomorrow at the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Soviet Union, an important question should be raised: could the USSR actually have won the Cold War? Or maybe a better question: at least survived? That was something we asked Professor Tom Nichols of the U.S. Naval War College and Harvard University back in 2014.

The second -- 21 century version -- Cold War has officially started, courtesy of China: IMAGE CNN explains: The images, released by the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, show anti-aircraft guns plus other weapons systems that would guard against cruise missiles sitting in hexagonal structures on the islands. China has already built military-length airstrips on three of these artificial islands, previous analysis by the AMTI, part of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), has shown. According to China, the weapons are purely meant for self-defense. Sadly for the red Chinese, nobody's willing to accept that explanation. China can...

Author of a masterful study on the CIA and the cultural Cold War, British historian Frances Stonor Saunders provided a detailed account for The Independent of the CIA’s covert role in sponsoring Abstract Expressionist painting in the United States. The CIA exploited this artistic movement as a showcase of freedom and free enterprise, and to counteract the influence that communist ideology still had for many intellectuals and artists in the West. For decades in art circles it was either a rumour or a joke, but now it is confirmed as a fact. The Central Intelligence Agency used American modern art...