Free Republic

The US has suspended $3.5m (£2.1m) in military aid to Thailand and urged the country's army to restore civilian rule "immediately". Washington also urged tourists to cancel trips and halted non-essential visits by US government officials. The move came as former Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra spent her first night in military custody.

Ousted Thai leader Yingluck Shinawatra has appeared at a military facility in Bangkok, a day after the army took power in a coup. Ms Yingluck is one of more than 100 political figures summoned by the army. The army has banned 155 people, including some politicians, from leaving the country. On Thursday the military suspended the constitution, banned gatherings and detained politicians, saying order was needed after months of turmoil.

There can be no repeat of the 1990 attempted coup or anything “remotely close” to it once National Security Minister Gary Griffith is in charge. This minister said so as he dispelled rumours that a coup was set to take place yesterday (Thursday). Griffith said the rumours, which caused widespread panic throughout the country yesterday, stemmed from a prank phone call. He said the identity of the prank caller is being investigated. He called on citizens to me more “mature” and not fall prey to “rumours, propaganda, hearsay and sensationalism”. Griffith was speaking to members of the media following a...

Donetsk (Ukraine) (AFP) - A day after the people of Donetsk apparently voted overwhelmingly to split from Ukraine, an eerie calm reigned on the streets as people wondered what country they had woken up in. Unlike a similar referendum in the peninsula of Crimea, annexed by Russia in March, there were no wild celebrations, no sense of joy -- just slight confusion about the future and a lingering anger towards the leaders in Kiev. Taxi driver Dmytro Boyko told AFP as he waited to collect his daughter from school that many in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donetsk were "frightened...

The bloody crisis between the pro-Western two thirds of Ukraine and pro-Russian third of the country is about taxes. The recent $17 billion International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan required Ukraine on May 1st to raise taxes and increase natural gas prices by 50%. With about 58% of the Ukraine’s industry in the eastern zone and workers there making about 50% higher wages, the east is paying the majority of the tax increase. Although residential users will not feel pain from the natural gas price increase until fall, eastern heavy industry is feeling the pain immediately. With the corrupt west raising...

Kyiv sacks Luhansk police chief, sends replacement The acting chief of the Ukrainian presidential administration, Serhiy Pashynsky, has said that the Luhansk regional police chief has been sacked and replaced by a new one. "Yesterday, at the behest of the interim president, the head of the Luhansk interior directorate was dismissed and replaced by a new one, who has already traveled to his new workplace with a group of officers," he told reporters in Kyiv on Wednesday, without naming the new Luhansk police chief. "Police in Donetsk and Luhansk regions and towns are undergoing a full rotation, all volunteers ready...

A homemade bomb has exploded in the Donetsk region of Ukraine, killing one soldier and wounding another, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense said Monday. "When on duty, in the course of daily inspection of reinforcing obstacles, two contract soldiers of the armed forces of Ukraine were injured. According to preliminary information, the cause of injury was the explosion of an unknown improvised explosive device," the statement said. The wounded soldier, a junior sergeant, is in intensive care and military doctors have said he is expected to live, the ministry said, adding that the injured man was transported by helicopter to...

Self-defence forces have managed to repel an attack on a checkpoint in Soledar city in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region after unknown assailants landed in a helicopter and attacked in a blitz operation. Over a dozen of gunmen descended from the helicopter and launched an attack on a defense squad guarding a checkpoint near Soledar. As the unknown men attacked, the militia, most of them reportedly unarmed, was forced to retreat. Following the shootout, the attackers have retreated as well, taking one of the defenders hostage, the local self-defense force told RT’s correspondent Paula Slier who is at the scene. There...

If Kiev does not immediately stop military operations against popular protest, Russia will call for an urgent UNSC meeting and in the worst case scenario reserves the right to deploy armed forces to stop bloodshed, UN envoy Vitaly Churkin said. If the violence in the southeast of Ukraine doesn't stop, Russia will call a special session of the UN Security Council, Churkin said in an interview to Rossiya 1 channel. “If we will continue to see what we witnessed today, if the use of force against the protest movement in the east and south-east of Ukraine will continue, we will...

Conservatives have noticed that the Pentagon is firing officers left and right, with many leaving under an embarrassing cloud. The question they ask — and I don't know that anyone has an answer — is whether these firings are the legitimate and appropriate housecleaning that a sclerotic bureaucracy needs or whether they're a purge, with Obama's New Age, gender flexible, fighting optional military getting rid of people in command positions who actually think that the military's job is to wage war in America's defense.All I know is that the latest person being investigated as a predicate to an inevitable firing...

Russia has begun extensive military exercises on its Ukrainian border following the escalation of violence in eastern Ukraine. “The order to use force against civilians has already been given, and if this military machine is not stopped, the amount of casualties will only grow,” Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said during an official meeting in Moscow. “We are forced to react to the situation.” Shoigu said that the drills involve march and deployment exercises by forces in the southern and western military districts, and separate Air Force maneuvers. DETAILS TO FOLLOW

The situation around the city Sloviansk remains tense. Today Ukrainian army launched an operation to capture the city. Fighting broke out with the militia self-defense. The clashes have killed. According to recent figures, killed five members of the militia. Grouping Ukrainian military reinforced armor. And, as the correspondent of NTV governing combat vehicles for some reason people talk to each other in English. There are reports that the Ukrainian military detained a group of Russian and foreign journalists. In Slovyansk himself, meanwhile, drove six six armored personnel carriers , helicopter loitering in the sky. To complicate the promotion of military...

Over 2,000 coal miners in Lugansk region have been on strike for the second day running, demanding higher wages and refusing to accept a pay cut to fund the restoration of Kiev, which suffered damage during the coup that overthrew the government. Some 80 percent of miners from five coal mines belonging to "Krasnodonugol" enterprise in the city of Krasnodon have not shown up to work. The mines are all owned by one of Ukraine's richest man, Rinat Akhmetov of the mining and metallurgical "Metinvest" corporation. Angry miners are pressing for wage increases to match region's average pay, better social...

The US who invested $5 billion in "supporting democracy" in Ukraine was seeking for a more radical settlement of the Ukrainian crisis than the EU, which resulted in a regime change in the country, Russia’s UN envoy Vitaly Churkin said in an interview with "Rossiya 24" TV channel Tuesday, RIA Novosti reports. "I think that it is Americans who tried to conduct the most radical scenario. A compromise between [Ukraine's President] Yanukovych and the opposition didn't suit them, so, it seems to me, they made a conclusion that it’s time to compensate those $5 billion and to drive the situation...

Ukraine's Acting President Turchynov appears to be calling for an official break in the "truce" deal... -UKRAINE'S TURCHYNOV URGES RESTART OF ANTI-TERRORIST OPERATION -TURCHYNOV SAYS 'TERRORISTS' HOLDING EAST UKRAINE REGION HOSTAGE -TURCHYNOV SAYS EAST UKRAINE SEPARATISTS SUPPORTED BY RUSSIA So much for Joe Biden's peace-keeping salvation mission to Kiev...

Russia has "days, not weeks" to abide by an international accord aimed at stemming the crisis in Ukraine, the top U.S. diplomat in Kiev warned Monday as Vice President Joe Biden launched a high-profile show of support for the pro-Western Ukrainian government. Russia in turn accused authorities in Kiev of flagrantly violating the pact and declared their actions would not stand. Biden, the highest-ranking American official to visit Ukraine during its conflict with Russia, planned to meet with government officials in the capital of Kiev on Tuesday. The vice president also planned to announce new technical support to help the...

The Russian Foreign Minister says the US should take responsibility for those whom they put in power instead issuing ultimatums to Moscow. "Before giving us ultimatums, demanding that we fulfill demands within two or three days with the threat of sanctions, we would urgently call on our American partners to fully accept responsibility for those who they brought to power,” said Lavrov during a press conference with his colleague from Mozambique, Oldemiro Baloi. All attempts to isolate Russia will lead to a dead end because Russia is "a big, independent power that knows what it wants," he added (snip) Meanwhile,...

<p>The U.S. and Europe have been emphatic in their support of the new Ukrainian government – but a significant number of Washington's new bedfellows are members of what some experts class as extreme right-wing parties.</p> <p>When Sen. John McCain traveled to Kiev in December, he told the crowd of 200,000 on Independence Square: "The free world is with you, America is with you, I am with you."</p>

Ukraine: Globalists Hijack Crisis for More Money, Power for IMF 22 March 2014 here already are enough controversial issues involved in the Ukraine-Russia crisis that make any U.S. involvement in the matter questionable at best. And, as we have reported, multiple polls consistently have shown that Americans do not support further U.S. entanglement in the imbroglio. But the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee has approved legislation that not only supports the $1 billion aid package to Ukraine pledged by President Obama, but also hijacks the Ukraine crisis to sneak in “reforms” to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) backed by...

Make a guess and place you bets – we all know it’s on it way, the next crash is going to happen sooner or later, it's just a question of what the left will try to do to not waste another “serious crisis” Think about it – the Fed is Printing money.. .excuse me “Digitizing” – they can’t even go through the motion of spitting out worthless paper that diminishes our savings, they have to add insult to injury with that sort o chicanery Let’s face it, somewhere in the deep dark crevices of the leftist mind, they have their...