Free Republic

Perhaps we can try another once he's in Kiev... or Riga As previously noted here, thinking all at the table are negotiating in good-faith (when dealing with serially-dishonest former KGB agents who want to take things from you) is probably not a very good idea- when what we ought to be doing is arming the Ukrainians to the teeth and putting troops in Poland to exhibit (residual) NATO resolve. The Russians' completely ignoring the latest Minsk accord and continuing to slaughter Ukrainian citizens in the name of 'Novorossiya' without pause should be all the evidence any thinking person would need to...

About 500 protesters gathered at an anti-Islam demonstration in Prague on January 16. The demonstrators carried signs and banners with slogans like “Europe, wake up!” “Islam is evil,” and “Moderate Islam does not exist.” The organizers of the rally were from a group that calls itself “We Do Not Want Islam In The Czech Republic.” About 20 people attended a counterdemonstration against racism and xenophobia that was held nearby.

A former CIA officer was arrested on Thursday on charges of illegally disclosing national defense information about Iran to a New York Times reporter who wrote a book. The U.S. Justice Department said Jeffrey Sterling, 43, was charged with six counts of unauthorized disclosure of national defense information and one count of unlawfully keeping national defense information, mail fraud, unauthorized conveyance of government property and obstructing justice.

PRAGUE (AP) — Czech state-owned brewery Budejovicky Budvar, which has been fighting a long legal battle with U.S. beer giant Anheuser-Busch over the use of the "Budweiser" brand, says its overall output and exports reached record highs in 2014. Budejovicky Budvar NP says exports rose by 6 percent to reach 813,000 hectoliters (21.48 million gallons) of beer, the best result in 119 years. Budvar exported to 70 countries last year, five more than the previous year. Overall output reached 1.457 million hectoliters, up 2.5 percent from 2013. Profit figures from the brewery are due in April. Both Budvar and Anheuser-Busch...

Skiers trying to make their way to and from French Alps resorts were plunged into chaos on Saturday night as 15,000 cars were trapped on the roads and emergency overnight centres were set up to shelter trapped tourists. Across the Savoie region, thousands of people were trapped in their cars, snowed in their chalets or stranded at airports as long-awaited snow finally dumped on the Alps - several feet, in some places.

By ROB KENNEDY, Associated Press Writer BANGKOK, Thailand - A German statesman, a Czech supermodel and a Swedish Olympic ski champion were among the vacationers whose search for peace and sun in tropical southern Asia was shattered by the tsunamis that spared neither rich nor poor. AP Photo   Petra Nemcova — who appeared on the cover of 2003 Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue — was carried away with her boyfriend, the fashion photographer Simon Atlee, after a huge wave plowed into southern Thailand on Sunday. Nemcova's New York spokesman, Rob Shuter, said the model and her boyfriend had been vacationing...

There's only one real way to compare military strength, and thankfully the world hasn't had many opportunities lately. Despite the potential powder keg in the South China Sea, standoffs in Ukraine, and proxy wars throughout the Middle East, inter-state warfare between the world's military powers has been all but banished from the global scene (for the time being, at least). For a simpler evaluation of military power, we turned to the Global Firepower Index, a ranking of 106 nations based on more than 50 factors including overall military budget, available manpower, and the amount of equipment each country has in...

The chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee released new information on Thursday that he claims is evidence that the Bush administration misled the nation in the run-up to the war in Iraq. In a speech on the Senate floor, retiring Sen. Carl Levin, a Democrat, outlined a 2003 CIA cable that warns George W. Bush administration officials against making references to claims that Mohammad Atta — the man who led the Sept. 11 hijackers — met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in the Czech Republic before the Sept. 11, 2011, attacks. Levin claims Bush officials used the unconfirmed meeting...

<p>PRAGUE (AP) — The Czech Defense Ministry has signed a deal to deliver 14 military airplanes to the United States in an $11 million deal.</p>

Amongst the findings were shoes and photos hidden by Jewish prisoners of the Holocaust. PRAGUE - House owners rebuilding their attic in the Czech town of Terezinhave found photos, shoes and other possessions of Jews forced into a ghetto there under Nazi rule, a heritage project said on Thursday. Terezin (Theresienstadt), a fortress and garrison town built at the end of the 18th century, was used by the Nazis as a transit camp for Jews rounded up in Czechoslovakia and deported from elsewhere in Europe. They were held in the ghetto until they could be transported to camps farther east....

The Sedlec Ossuary in the Czech Republic looks very normal on the outside... (see pics at the link)

Representatives of Eurosceptic and far-right groups from Italy to Bulgaria gathered at the National Front party conference in Lyon at the weekend to warn France and Europe of a “neo-Ottoman” onslaught of Islam-preaching, benefit-stealing migrants. Digging through the history books, Heinz-Christian Strache, the head of Austria’s far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ), warned that “Arab armies plundered Lyon in 725 and are now busy doing the same in Iraq and Syria”. Strache went on to blast Europe’s mainstream parties for, among other things, stoking “mass immigration, ideological terror, gay marriage and gender theory”. The Austrian far-right leader was one of seven foreign...

PRAGUE (Reuters) - Czechs who helped bring about the "Velvet Revolution" that overthrew Kremlin-backed Communist rule are marking the 25th anniversary this week by accusing the country's present-day leaders of once again cosying up to Russia.

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Spanish intelligence has intercepted messages passed between jihadists online discussing the weaponisation of the deadly Ebola virus for use against the West, while a blackmailer in Prague has threatened to unleash the virus unless the Czech Republic pay him one million bitcoin, a volume of online currency worth over £200 million. The national secretary of state for security in giving evidence to the Spanish Senate revealed online jihad propagandists had issued an edict to followers to kill Westerners by any means possible. Some of the methods suggested included “deadly chemical products from laboratories”, “poisonous injections” and “Ebola as a poisonous...

PRAGUE, Czech Republic – Blackmailers are threatening to spread Ebola in the Czech Republic unless Prague pays them a million euros' worth of the virtual Bitcoin currency, police said Monday, October 27. An e-mail allegedly from the blackmailers claiming they had "biological material" from an infected patient in Liberia was published by the country's top commercial TV station, TV Nova, on Monday. "An unknown perpetrator or perpetrators are blackmailing this state, threatening to spread the Ebola virus," the country's deputy police chief Zdenek Laube told reporters. "From the very beginning these culprits have been seeking to spread panic, which is...

November 19. That's the date a bust of Vaclav Havel is to be dedicated in National Statuary Hall at this country's Capitol, and it's perfect timing -- for November 19 will also be the 25th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution he led and embodied in his native Czechoslovakia. Oh, the euphoria of those days when the Cold War was drawing to a close and the Soviet Union with it, and one after the other its captive nations were breaking their chains -- none more peacefully, successfully and triumphantly than the one this playwright turned dissident led in his little country....

he ban on imports of selected food products to Russia has led to a fall of purchasing prices of summer apples and vegetables in the Czech Republic, according to a poll carried out by ČTK. According to Agriculture Ministry spokesman Hynek Jordán, retail chains have made use of the situation and have cut purchasing prices of apples as well as processed products, such as apple juice, by at least 20 percent. Apples, for instance, are being sold for about one half of last year's price. “Poland started placing apples on the market for almost zero prices to get rid of...

After World War I the third rate minds who brought us the conflict to begin with came up with another stupid idea: They decided to divide up former German, Austrian and Turkish empires into separate countries, like Czechoslovakia, and create makeshifts, like the Danzig Corridor. Germany lost territory to Poland to create a land corridor to Danzig that gave Poland access to the sea.Never mind that it cleaved a country in two. It was these territorial wedges-- wedges that diced up ethnicity-- that Hitler used to gain legitimacy in the eyes of Germans. By cutting up countries in defiance of...

US drones fired on an Islamic extremist mortar position in northern Iraq on Tuesday to protect Kurdish forces battling to rescue a group of Yazidi civilian refugees, the military said. The so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil), the region's most powerful Sunni jihadist group, has driven thousands of members of the Yazidi minority from their homes and is besieging the refugees on an exposed mountain. Last week, the United States launched an air campaign to break the siege of Mount Sinjar, bring humanitarian relief to the Yazidis and support Kurdish troops protecting their capital Arbil. "US military...

The Infant of Prague Fr. William Saunders Q: My grandmother has always had a statue of Jesus as a child dressed up like a little king with a crown. She even has different outfits for him which are very elaborate. Can you tell me anything about this?From the description given in the question, the statue is one of the Infant of Prague. Devotion to the Holy Child Jesus is a long-standing tradition in our Catholic spirituality. The early Church Fathers, like St. Athanasius and St. Jerome, had a special devotion to the Holy Child Jesus. Some of the later great...