Free Republic

Paris (AFP) - Former US president Jimmy Carter said Tuesday the West should not impose sanctions that would hurt the Russian people over their leaders' actions in Ukraine. "So far, we have limited the sanctions to the leadership of Russia, and I think that is the proper approach," the Nobel peace laureate told AFP on the sidelines of a discussion in Paris on climate change. "I don't think we would go so far as to impose The statesman was taking part in a meeting with students as a member of The Elders group set up to promote human rights around...

U.S. Army paratroopers are arriving in Poland to begin a series of military exercises in four countries across Eastern Europe to bolster allies in the wake of Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula last month. Pentagon press secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby said Tuesday that the exercises will last about a month, and initially involve about 600 troops. An Army company of about 150 soldiers from the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team based in Vicenza, Italy, will start the exercises Wednesday in Poland. Additional Army companies will head to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and are expected to arrive by Monday...

Finmeccanica is proposing that the OTO Melara 76mm gun be configured onto the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship as part of an effort to improve the lethality and survivability of the shallow-water , multi-mission vessel. The naval artillery piece would replace the existing 57mm weapon now on board the LCS, per the existing proposal, said Eric Lindenbaum, vice president of Navy and Maritime programs for DRS Technologies. OTO Melara and DRS Technologies are both subsidiaries for the Italian defense company, Finmeccanica SpA. Amidst an ongoing effort to develop alternative proposals for a new small surface combatant, Navy officials are busy exploring...

German rapper turned Islamist militant killed in Syria suicide attack BEIRUT // A German former rapper who joined jihadists fighting in Syria has been killed in a suicide bombing carried out by rival fighters. Denis Mamadou Cuspert, who rapped under the name Deso Dogg but took on the name Abu Talha Al Almani in Syria, was reported to have been killed in a suicide attack on Sunday in an eastern province. He was a member of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and was reportedly killed in a double suicide bombing carried out by Al Nusra Front,...

WASHINGTON - Barack Obama is getting a number of critical report cards about his foreign and domestic policies lately -- signs that America is tiring of his presidency. Here at home, Janet Yellen, in her first monetary policy address as the head of the Federal Reserve Board, said the labor markets were still weak, and that it will likely take two years or more before the U.S. fully recovers from its recession. Ouch. If Yellen's forecast proves right, this means it will have taken Obama's administration nearly eight years to lift our economy out of its long and painful lethargy....

WASHINGTON — America’s diplomats and generals aren’t alone in watching the unfolding conflict between Russia and neighboring Ukraine. ... Ukraine is the world’s third-largest corn exporter and sixth-largest wheat exporter. Russia is the world’s fifth-biggest wheat exporter _ and a large buyer of U.S. corn and poultry products. ... “This is a region where we have been facing stiff competition from Ukraine,” said Thomas Sleight, the president and CEO of the U.S. Grains Council, which develops markets for U.S.-grown corn and sorghum. “Longer term, everyone is waiting to see what effect credit availability will have on Ukrainian farmers’ willingness to...

Illegal arms were shipped to Syrian rebels from Libya and this could be the reason Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton lied and claimed the attack on the consulate was the result of a video. Seymour Hirsch published an investigative report stating that there is an addendum to the Senate Intelligence Committee report which explains what the CIA was doing in Benghazi. Our government was shipping arms from Libya through Turkey to Syrian rebels before we realized they were al-Qaida. The reason the government lied was probably to conceal an illegal operation to arm Syrian rebels. Ambassador Stevens was the coordinator....

KIEV — Ukraine's acting president called for an anti-terrorist operation to be relaunched in the east of the country on Tuesday after the body of a local politician from his own party was found showing signs of torture.

- FrontPage Magazine - http://www.frontpagemag.com - Syrian Jihadis ‘Take Aim’ at Christian ToddlerPosted By Raymond Ibrahim On April 22, 2014 @ 12:30 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | No Comments According to Sham Times and other Arabic websites, jihadi social media networks posted the above picture of a child sitting on the ground while surrounded by armed men pointing their rifles at him.  The caption appearing with the picture, purportedly posted by a supporter of the Free Syrian Army, is “Our youngest hostage from among the hostile sects of Kessab.”Kessab is a predominantly Christian Armenian village in Syria near the Turkish border.  Earlier it...

- FrontPage Magazine - http://www.frontpagemag.com - The Left Renews Its Vows with MoscowPosted By William R. Hawkins On April 21, 2014 @ 12:35 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | No Comments There were many on the Left in the West who lamented the collapse of the Soviet Union as much as did Vladimir Putin. They saw the USSR as the main restraint on U.S. imperialism; helping to arm and support hostile Third World regimes and creating a zone of “peace� outside the reach of capitalism. The leftist view of the world did not change just because the Soviet empire disintegrated. Its...

Since he took over Crimea, President Vladimir Putin has seen his popularity soar and his opposition fall silent. So when the U.S. vice president told Russia to defuse tensions in Ukraine, Putin had few reasons to listen. But now Putin, with his approval rating at 80 percent, no longer appears willing to tolerate any criticism. Chillingly, Putin has begun to cast his critics as "national traitors," an intimation that anyone who opposes the Kremlin is serving the interests of the West. He has compared Russians who oppose his aggressive actions in Ukraine to the Bolsheviks, who took advantage of Russia's...

OTTAWA – The diplomatic chess game between Canada and Russia over the Ukraine crisis continued Tuesday, with the Kremlin ordering the expulsion of a senior Canadian diplomat stationed in Moscow. Russia ordered the removal of the first secretary at the Canadian embassy in retaliation for the expulsion of a Russian military attache from Ottawa earlier this month, said a Canadian government source, not authorized to speak on the record. The Harper government also called in the Russian ambassador for a diplomatic dressing-down last week as pro-Russian gunmen seized government buildings in several eastern Ukrainian cities following Russia’s annexation of the...

THE Abbott Government will purchase 72 advanced American-built stealth fighter jets to spearhead the nation’s defence for the next half century. The $12.4 billion through-life outlay, to be announced in Canberra today by the Prime Minister, is the biggest defence purchase in Australian history and includes every aspect of the system from hangars to missiles. The so-called “fifth generation” JF-35 Lightning Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) planes will be deployed in three operational squadrons and a training squadron based at RAAF Williamtown near Newcastle in NSW and RAAF Tindal near Katherine in the Northern Territory. About $1.6 billion will be spent...

Acting president orders new anti-terrorism operation after a local politician was found dead with signs of torture. Last updated: 22 Apr 2014 22:05 Ukraine's acting president has ordered a military operation against pro-Kremlin separatists in the east of the country, after the body of a local politician from his own party was found showing signs of torture. "I demand the resumption of effective counter-terrorism measures to protect Ukrainian citizens in the east from terrorism," Oleksandr Turchinov said on Tuesday, according to a statement from his other office as parliamentary speaker. Turchinov said that "brutally tortured" bodies had been found near...

KUALA LUMPUR: The probe into the mysterious disappearance of the Malaysian jet is now looking at the possibility that the plane may have landed somewhere as no debris has been found so far, a media report has said. A report in the New Strait Times quoting sources within the international team probing the disappearance said that among the areas it was revisiting was the possibility that the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 had landed elsewhere, instead of ending up in the southern Indian Ocean. "We may have to regroup soon to look into this possibility if no positive results come back...

Drivers in the U.S. are facing rising gasoline prices ahead of summer-vacation season, just as refiners here are shipping more gas to other countries. A new pipeline, built to release a glut of crude oil that was stuck in the middle of the country, is now feeding oil to refineries on the Gulf Coast that churn out gasoline and diesel. While these fuels still make their way to the Southeast and the East Coast, growing amounts are being sold to Mexico, the Netherlands, Brazil and other countries. The push into these markets has been spurred by the U.S. oil boom....

The Eurofighter Typhoon’s proposed conformal fuel tank (CFT) configuration has entered windtunnel testing in the UK, partner company BAE Systems has revealed. BAE says it is “currently assessing the aerodynamic characteristics of carrying two fuselage-mounted conformal fuel tanks on the Typhoon aircraft”, using a high-speed windtunnel at its Warton site in Lancashire. “This testing will help to accelerate the clearance process for such tanks to be integrated on to Typhoon, offering increased range and flexibility to the aircraft,” the company adds. BAE Systems A new configuration item for the Tranche 3 production standard Typhoon, the conformal structures would free up...

Ehud Ya’ari of Israel’s Channel 2 News reported on Tuesday night, that Egypt and Russia will be signing an unprecedented military agreement. In this agreement between Cairo and Moscow, Egypt will receive 24 of Russia’s advanced Mikoyan MiG-35 fighter jets, along with military and strategic advisers, as well as training for the Egyptian Air Force. The deal is worth $3 billion. It follows in the footsteps of a $2 billion arms deal that Egypt signed with Russia in February, and was primarily funded by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The deal itself has been in the works since...

Kerry: 'It was easier' in Cold War AFP 2 hours ago Washington (AFP) - Secretary of State John Kerry attested Tuesday to the massively complex challenges Washington faces in Ukraine, Russia, Iran and the Middle East, declaring "it was easier" during the Cold War. In a candid moment during a State Department speech, the top US diplomat said changing global power dynamics made a quaint memory of the early East-West stalemate, when American children would "crouch under our desks at school and practice" safety steps for a possible nuclear attack. "During the Cold War... it was easier than it is...

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...

The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has just completed a series of landmark reports that chronicle an update to the current state of consensus science on climate change. Its conclusion: On our current path, climate change could pose an irreversible, existential risk to civilization as we know it, but we can still fix it if we decide to work together. But in addition to the call for cooperation, the reports also shared an alarming new trend: Climate change is already destabilizing nations and leading to wars. That finding was highlighted in last week's premiere of Showtime's climate change docu-drama...

Bulgarian Foreign Minister Kristian Vigenin has pledged that Bulgaria will do everything within its power to implement the South Stream project. “Bulgaria and some other EU member states should not be the hostages of Ukraine’s instability,” Vigenin said in an exclusive interview with ITAR-TASS. “Therefore, the interests of European citizens, including Bulgarians, should come first. We will do everything within our power to have the South Stream project implemented,” Vigenin stressed.

One of the leaders of the far-right extremist organization Right Sector, Oleksandr Muzychko (also known as Sashko Bily) accidentally shot himself when offering resistance to police officers that were detaining him. Deputy Prosecutor General of Ukraine Alexei Baganets made this statement at a session of interim investigative commission of the Verkhovna Rada that was engaged in investigating the circumstances of Muzychko’s death. Muzychko’s body with gunshot wounds near the heart was found in the night on March 25 near Barmaki village not far from the city of Rivne. On the same day, the Interior Ministry stated that he was fatally...

The Baltic States are in talks to set up their own Russian-language television channel in a bid to counter the deluge of propaganda aimed at their ethnic Russian populations by Moscow-backed media, reports AFP. Numerous Russian-language media outlets already exist in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania but most emanate from Russia and toe its line on politics and history - sensitive issues in a region that endured half a century of illegal Soviet occupation. This month, Latvia and Lithuania each suspended the television channel Russia RTR for "inciting ethnic hatred." Vilnius had already taken two other stations off the air. The...

Ostrovsky's last two tweets, sent April 21, are about the "mayor" threatening to remove an Associated Press journalist from a press conference. He has not tweeted since Monday's press conference. His most recent video dispatch was posted April 20. "Sloviansk pro-Russia 'mayor' threatens to throw journalist out for "provocative" question about former mayor being held under guard," Ostrovsky last tweeted while covering the press conference. "Now he's not letting reporters leave the press conference: 'you'll go as you came in. In a group.' That's one way to guarantee coverage."

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...

Supporters of Vladimir Lenin flocked to Red Square on Tuesday to celebrate the 144th anniversary of the revolutionary's birthday. Support for the legacy of Bolshevik revolutionary Vladimir Lenin is on the rise, a poll published on the eve of the 144th anniversary of his birth showed. Asked what they thought about Lenin's contribution to Russian history, 38 percent of Russians said his influence had been "mostly positive." The survey, conducted by the independent Levada Center pollster and published Monday, showed a steady increase in Lenin's popularity since 2006, when only 29 percent rated his influence as mostly positive. The figure...

ALEX Salmond is on the brink of securing a historic victory in the referendum, according to an exclusive poll suggesting Yes Scotland needs a swing of just over 2 per cent to win independence. A landmark ICM survey for today’s Scotland on Sunday reveals a decline in the No vote from 46 per cent to 42 per cent over the past month. Over the same period, the Yes vote has remained steady at 39 per cent, resulting in a significant tightening of the gap between the two sides. When the 19 per cent “don’t knows” are excluded from the equation,...

The European Union must create an energy union to secure its supply and reduce its dependence on Russian gas, Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk has said. Tusk’s energy blueprint, set out in an article in the Financial Times on Tuesday (22 April), would establish a single European body that would buy gas for the whole 28-nation bloc. This would end a system that currently sees the different countries negotiate their own deal with energy giant Gazprom, the government-backed firm which dominates Russia’s gas market. Meanwhile, “solidarity mechanisms” between EU countries would kick into action if countries were threatened with being...

With literacy rates among high school graduates ever more of a mystery, educators are worried about…defense spending on education. Never mind that the Department of Defense is one of the few federal agencies experiencing funding cutbacks, anti-military teachers are worried about what is left of the Pentagon’s budget. “In 2010, the most recent year for which data are available, the Department of Defense (DoD) was administering more than a dozen different programs and spending close to $50 million on K-12 outreach targeting the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering, and math,” Seth Kershner writes in Rethinking Schools, “a nonprofit publisher...

Last week, Ukraine launched an anti-terror campaign to recapture the cities being occupied by pro-Russia protesters. So far, the campaign hasn't been going so well. On April 16, the second day of the campaign, Ukrainian military moving into Sloviansk — the focal point of the pro-Russia forces — and gave up their equipment. The armory was brought to the center of town where it has become a local amusement. Elsewhere, crowds of pro-Russia protesters stopped a column of Ukrainian troops in Kramatorsk and made them disarm. VICE News correspondent Simon Ostrovsky was on the scene as Ukrainian forces disarmed their...

Sen. John McCain was unimpressed with Vice President Joe Biden’s comments in Ukraine on Tuesday and the Arizona Republican suggested that the Obama administration was not backing up its tough talk against Russia. Speaking in Ukraine, the vice president said that “we call on Russia to stop supporting men hiding behind masks in unmarked uniforms sewing unrest in eastern Ukraine.” McCain, appearing on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Tuesday, responded to Biden’s remarks with a question: “Or else what?” “Or else what?” McCain repeated. “If they continue to do this, what will we do?” The Senate Armed Services Committee member has...

Paul A. Goble, considered the dean of American experts on the different nationalities of what Russia regards as its rightful space, warns that a small, newer NATO ally could be next. With a near-fully modernized strategic nuclear arsenal to give teeth to his iron will, Putin is using a low-cost, high-impact weapon against which the West has built no effective defense: political and economic subversion. The KGB excelled at political and economic subversion, and Putin built his career practicing both. Putin has turned Russia’s internal weaknesses into external strength. In presiding over the wholesale theft of the Russian economy, Putin...

Chinese couples who are unable to have children are turning to a surprising place for help these days: America. By hiring American surrogates, Chinese couples get around a ban on surrogacy in China, as well as the country's birth limits. It also guarantees their children something many wealthy Chinese want these days: a U.S. passport. Tony Jiang and his wife, Cherry, live in Shanghai and couldn't have children naturally. First, they turned to underground hospitals in China for surrogacy. It didn't go well. Jiang says one of the surrogates ran away. "It was almost Chinese New Year's break. She became...

As pro-Russian separatists [Putin front-men] in eastern Ukraine IGNORED the provisions of a cease-fire agreement requiring them to abandon their occupation of government buildings on Sunday, the country’s acting prime minister appeared in a taped television interview and admitted that the country’s military and security apparatus could NOT defend the country against a Russian incursion. “How can you STOP the…Russian Federation, which spent billions of dollars to modernize their military?” Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk asked host David Gregory on NBC’s Meet the Press. He contrasted the state of Russia’s military – some 40,000 members of which are currently massed along...

The fruitless search for the missing Malaysian Airlines jet might have to start all over again from scratch if no clues to its fate are found in coming days, it was claimed today. The international team searching the Indian Ocean for the Boeing 777 are now considering the seemingly impossible scenario of the aircraft having 'landed' somewhere, instead of crashing in the southern Indian Ocean.

UKIP leader Nigel Farage has defended a poster campaign claiming millions of Europeans are after British jobs as "a hard-hitting reflection of reality." The posters-with messages including a warning British workers are "hit hard by unlimited cheap labor"-come ahead of May's European elections. UKIP leader Nigel Farage will launch UKIP's campaign for the European and local elections later in Sheffield. Labour MP Mike Gapes attacked the UKIP posters as "racist".......... Tory Peer Lord Deben, after retweeting comments featuring pictures of the posters wrote: "UKIP stands for the worst in human beings: our prejudice, selfishness and fear." But UKIP's deputy leader...

US Vice-President Joe Biden has said Russia must "stop talking and start acting" to defuse the Ukraine crisis. He was speaking during a joint press conference in Kiev with interim Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk. Mr Biden warned Russia that further "provocative behaviour" would lead to "greater isolation" and urged Moscow to end its alleged support for pro-Russian militants in eastern Ukraine. Meanwhile, the funerals took place for three men shot on Sunday.

Remains from an indigenous Southeast Asian were buried with those of an Army Reserve pilot from the Vietnam War at Arlington National Cemetery, America’s shrine for its fallen heroes. According to internal POW/MIA documents, when the remains of Chief Warrant Officer 3 William Smith Jr. were turned over to investigators in Vietnam in 1999, a portion belonged to someone else.(snip) Laboratory anthropologist Gwen Guinan wrote in the internal memo that “subsequent to the shipment and the burial’’ it was discovered that a fragment of a leg bone that should have been separated from Smith’s remains “had been inadvertently included.’’ The...

No one wants to say so, but the Obama administration has backed the wrong horse in Ukraine, and the misguided wager is a big loss. It is hardly the president’s first failure on the foreign side, but it may prove the costliest of his many to date. For a while it was possible to pretend, just barely, that supporting the coup against Viktor Yanukovych, the elected president hounded into exile in February, would prove a sound judgment. Obama always came across as a welterweight in the ring with Vladimir Putin, simply not up to the Russian leader’s command of all...

It may come as an unwelcome surprise to conservatives, but America’s military has one of the only working models of collective living and social welfare the country has ever known.Every day before dawn, brave men and women of different races and backgrounds rise as one, united by a common cause. They march together in formation, kept in step by their voices joined in song. These workers leave their communal housing arrangements and go toil together “in the field.” While they are out doing their day’s labor, their young are cared for in subsidized childcare programs. If they hurt themselves on...

Vice President Joe Biden on Monday embarked on a mission to show U.S. support for Ukraine's embattled interim leaders as pro-Russia gunmen took over more government buildings in eastern Ukraine and the Kremlin's top diplomat blamed Washington for the mounting crisis. Biden was to meet Tuesday with acting Ukrainian President Oleksandr Turchynov and Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk, as well as civil society leaders in Kiev, the capital, before flying back to Washington. Although the White House said the vice president's visit was intended to underscore U.S. support for "national unity and a successful constitutional reform," the trip and other recent...

The City of Amsterdam fined hundreds of Jewish Holocaust survivors for failing to pay taxes while they were in hiding or in concentration camps. (snip) The city went after survivors as late as 1947, the report said. (snip) The documents about this taxation were discovered by Charlotte van den Berg, a 23-year-old university student.

After a tit-for-tat series of delays, the United States conducted an Open Skies Treaty intelligence flight over Russian territory on Monday, a State Department official said. The spy flight originally was scheduled for April 14 but was canceled by Russia after a U.S. team for the flight failed to arrive near Moscow on time and Moscow refused temporarily to reschedule it. A Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman also expressed anger on Monday over U.S. delays in certifying a new high-tech Russian aircraft to be used for spying missions over the United States

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...

TRANSLATION: "I am often asked - how should the West help us: the EU, NATO , USA, Canada? If I represented Ukraine in the negotiations and could influence the process, I would say this: If you want to help us - do not interfere with their money - invest in our own intelligence/ability. If the IMF and the World Bank really want to conduct economic reforms in Ukraine, they will not give us any "Stabilization" loans. Lending money from a rich country - hence encourages corruption and mismanagement. This means instead of bringing order it encourages cutting and theft. This...

Barack Obama waited nine months before replacing the last U.S. ambassador to Canada. The post was empty, and Obama just didn’t care. He doesn’t much like Stephen Harper – compare Obama’s icy body language towards Harper, to Obama’s deep bow when he met the Saudi king, or his high fives with the Hugo Chavez, the late ruler of Venezuela. Don’t feel singled out. That’s how Obama treats many of America’s traditional allies. He spied on German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cellphone. The White House's bust of Winston Churchill was returned to the United Kingdom when Obama became president. Get used to...

After the 9/11 attacks, tens of thousands of young men and women joined the military, heading for the rugged mountains of Afghanistan and dusty deserts of Iraq. Many of them now are officers in the Army with multiple combat deployments under their belts. But as the wars wind down and Pentagon budgets shrink, a lot of them are being told they have to leave. It's painful and frustrating. In quiet conversations at Fort Bragg in North Carolina and Fort Eustis in Virginia, captains talk about their new worries after 15-month deployments in which they battled insurgents and saw roadside bombs...

It was a dramatic and violent reversal to the usual order of events when notorious urban officials, called chengguan in Chinese, get into conflicts with street vendors and pedestrians.The crowd saw Mr. Huang being attacked, and decided to intervene. Online rumours then rapidly proliferated that “someone was beaten to death by chengguan,” which intensified public anger and drove more people to the scene.

North Korean Nuclear Site Steps up Activities ahead of Obama's South Korea Visit By Vasudevan Sridharan April 21, 2014 09:41 GMT North Korea is believed to have stepped up activities at the Punggye-ri nuclear test site ahead of US President Barack Obama's two-day visit to South Korea from 26 April. "The Punggye-ri nuclear test site has shown increased movement of vehicles and forces compared to the past. South Korean and US forces have been closely monitoring the latest development to detect signs of another test," a senior South Korean military official told Yonhap news agency. North Korea had earlier threatened...