Free Republic

T he head of the Russian Orthodox Church has awarded Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov with an order for "glory and honor." Patriarch Kirill gave the order to Zyuganov in Moscow on June 27, one day after the longtime communist leader celebrated his 70th birthday. Kirill said Zyuganov -- who in 2010 called for the re-Stalinization of Russia and has called the Soviet Union "the most humane state in human history" -- deserves the award as "one of the most famous Russian politicians who has expressed interest in the welfare of the nation and the protection of traditional moral values."...

That National Public Radio has nice things to say about socialism shouldn’t be surprising. After all, “Federal funding is essential to public radio's service to the American public,” explains NPR’s own website. “Elimination of federal funding would result in fewer programs, less journalism…and eventually the loss of public radio stations.” NPR’s brand of journalism came under fire most recently when Republican Senators Jim DeMint and Tom Coburn sponsored a bill in 2011 to defund the Corporation of Public Broadcasting. “Since 2001, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds programming for National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service, has received...

A blackout cut power to much of Venezuela on Friday, snarling traffic in the capital Caracas and other major cities as authorities scrambled to restore electricity after the outage, which twice interrupted a presidential broadcast. Pedestrians streamed into the streets of Caracas as the blackout shuttered the underground metro trains and left frustrated drivers honking in the chaos without stoplights. The OPEC nation has suffered an increasing number of power outages in recent years, which critics have attributed to low electricity tariffs and limited state investment following the 2007 nationalization of the power sector. Critics call the power problems a...

Hospitals across the country are struggling to deal with a shortage of one of their essential medical supplies. Manufacturers are rationing saline — a product used all over the hospital to clean wounds, mix medications and treat dehydration. Now drug companies say they won’t be able to catch up with demand until next year. ...“The Most Expensive Drug Shortage in History” The burden ultimately falls on hospitals, clinics, and dialysis centers to come up with their own workarounds. And all that staff time adds up. Hospitals spend $216 million a year on the labor costs of managing drug shortages, according...

<p>RussianFrom the middle of May to early of June 2014 the RUSSIAN FEDERATION undertook two large command-staff exercises testing the realization of a local nuclear attack. According to military experts there were never such dense and extensive testing scenarios of nuclear war even in the SOVIET UNION.</p>

The man who convened the meeting that buried the Soviet Union in 1991 has warned that it is being restored in his native Belarus and across the post-Soviet space. Stanislav Shushkevich – the politician who hosted the 1991 summit at which Belarus, Ukraine and Russia signed the USSR into obsolescence and paved the way for independence – said a mixture of despotic leaders, KGB-revivalism and Putin’s Ukraine interference all remind him of the worst of the Soviet Union. “What we see now is the restoration of Soviet order, in Belarus most of all,” Shushkevich said in his study in the modest central Minsk...

Venezuela, a country that takes great pride in its looks, is dealing with an issue that has the country in a major tizzy – shortages in beauty products. That means women and men so accustomed to looking their best are now having to do without shampoo, cosmetics and, hold your breath, even deodorant. The cash-strapped government has been dealing with all sorts of scarcities – from staples like milk to medical supplies – because the country has put controls on the purchase of hard currency. And while certain shortages have been more critical – like diapers and coffins – Venezuelans...

Media urge China to 'not interfere' in Iraq Many families have fled the ongoing violence in the Iraqi city of Mosul Media advise China to not interfere in Iraq, while criticising the US for "creating a mess" in the Middle East. President Barack Obama says the US will send 300 military advisers to Iraq to help fight Islamist-led insurgents. Sunni radical group Isis has taken control of several Iraqi cities and towns in the past few days, report say. Mr Obama said the US was prepared for "targeted and precise military action, if and when" required, but added that US...

Tens of thousands of Hong Kongers voted Friday in an unofficial referendum on democratic reform that has alarmed Beijing and sets the stage for a possible showdown with the government, with mass protests aimed at shutting down the Chinese capitalist enclave’s financial district. Tensions are boiling over in Hong Kong, which came back under Chinese control in 1997, over how to choose the city’s next leader. Since the end of British colonial rule, Hong Kong’s leaders have been picked by an elite pro-Beijing committee. Beijing has pledged to allow Hong Kongers to choose their own chief executive starting in 2017....

Ex-Rep. Joe Walsh ‘kicked off the air’ over racist terms on radio Fri, 06/20/2014 - 3:37am Mitch Dudek According to posts on former U.S. Rep. Joe Walsh’s Twitter account Thursday night, the conservative radio talk-show host was kicked off the air on WIND-AM (560) for using racial slurs while trying to have a discussion about racial slurs. In a series of tweets posted about 7 p.m., Walsh says: “Just got kicked off the air until further notice. Tried to have honest discussion about racist terms and management censored my language.” And: “I’m trying to have an honest, adult conversations about...

Barack Obama has integrated promotions of homosexuality and other alternative lifestyle choices into his policy and practice since his election, successfully promoting the “gay” lifestyle in the U.S. military and forbidding the enforcement of the federal law called the Defense of Marriage Act that supported traditional marriage. The extent of the reach of his actions perhaps was epitomized by last week’s announcement that the U.S. Embassy in Israel was flying a rainbow flag – representing homosexual activism – along with Old Glory. But now a coalition in Congress, made up exclusively of Democrats, wants to take the effort further and...

Benghazi’s biggest whistleblower just came forward. Her name is Cindy Lee Garcia and she has revealed that the producer of the video the Obama administration blamed for the Benghazi attacks admitted to her that he is a Muslim. This is a game changer. It means that the narrative we’ve been fed – that filmmaker Nakoula Basseley Nakoula was a Coptic Christian is not only false but also a blood libel against Christians. ... what Benghazi was all about. It was agitprop (agitation / propaganda to push communism), a vehicle to be used by the Obama administration to launch an all...

Four Russian strategic bombers triggered U.S. air defense systems while conducting practice bombing runs near Alaska this week, with two of the Tu-95 Bear H aircraft coming within 50 miles of the California coast, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (Norad) confirmed Wednesday.  “The last time we saw anything similar was two years ago on the Fourth of July,” Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, a Norad spokesman, told the Free Beacon. Davis said the latest Bear H incursions began Monday around 4:30 p.m. Pacific time when radar detected the four turbo-prop powered bombers approaching the U.S. air defense zone near the far...

It was called Operation Northwoods and it is no conspiracy theory. In order to justify a military attack on Fidel Castro in 1962, the highest military officials under John F. Kennedy considered generating fake terrorism in the United States and abroad as a pretext for war with Cuba as a part of “Operation Mongoose.” The Top Secret plan was endorsed by all of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and offered various scenarios that would build public support for a war against the Communist regime. Forty years later, the report was finally declassified.

The Los Angeles Unified School District wants to disprove the old saying that there's no free lunch. The district on Thursday said it will serve free lunches through summer to children and the disabled at 317 school campuses along with 105 parks and recreation centers. District Director of Food Services David Binkle says he expects the program to dish out 4.5 million meals.

How Little They've Learned: FPIC and Neo-Colonialism By Benjamin Wolinski There was a time when Western Europeans, armed with the technology and flush with the wealth of the Industrial Revolution, went to the nations of Asia, conquered them, and harnessed the resources of foreign lands for whatever purposes they chose. By the mid-20th Century, the nations of Asia had finally had enough of these imperialists and, one by one, sent the Europeans home. Now it's the 21st Century and Western Europeans, this time armed with the technology and flush with the wealth of the Information Technology Revolution, have returned to...

Saul Alinsky described in his book, Rules for Radicals, the eight levels of control necessary to create a socialist regime. Healthcare, welfare (food, housing, income), and education must be controlled by the state. Religion must be made irrelevant by removing it from government and schools. Guns must be confiscated in order to create a police state. Create as much poverty as possible. Poor people are easier to control. Explode national debt to unsustainable levels by out of control spending fueled by new and suffocating taxes that create more poverty. Use escalating class warfare rhetoric to fuel the division between “rich”...

Bernanke used to make $200,000 a year during his eight years as Chairman of the Federal Reserve. He can make that in a single hour now on the international speaking circuit. He left office in February. By March, he was making up to three stops a week around the world. Bernanke is walking a well-worn path of former policy makers who leave power. Former presidents, former cabinet officials and former members of Congress have all turned their experience in public service into millions.

China's vast censorship machine does its utmost to wipe the slightest reference to the Tiananmen crackdown from books, television and the Internet, scrubbing the issue from public discussion and even from the minds of its younger generation. In an example of George Orwell's "1984" dictum that "who controls the present controls the past", it reflects both the ruling Communist Party's immense power and its enduring sensitivity about its actions on June 3-4, 1989.

A quarter century after the (Tiananmen Square pro-democracy) movement’s suppression, China’s communist authorities oversee a raft of measures for muzzling dissent and preventing protests. They range from the sophisticated—extensive monitoring of online debate and control over media—to the relatively simple—routine harassment of government critics and maintenance of a massive domestic security force. The system has proven hugely successful: No major opposition movement has gotten even a hint of traction in the 25 years since Tiananmen. President and Communist Party leader Xi Jinping seems intent on ensuring things stay that way. […] Some degree of labor activism has been permitted, especially...