Free Republic

There is no large Russian military presence in East Ukraine, head of EU intelligence, Commodore Georgij Alafuzoff, has said. The spy chief has dismissed multiple accusations from the West alleging Russian involvement in the unrest in the region. In an interview with Finnish national news broadcaster, Yle, Alafuzoff said the Russian military had nothing to do with the seizing of government buildings in eastern Ukraine. “In my opinion, it’s mostly people who live in the region who are not satisfied with the current state of affairs,” said Alafuzoff, referring to the situation in East Ukraine. He went on to say...

As Mein Kampf makes clear, Hitler sought to unite all the people of German speech and culture into one state, or Reich, preferably by peaceful negotiation, otherwise by war and conquest... Today’s drift toward war with Russia seems like a replay of the past. Putin is a Russian nationalist, who believes in a strong Stalinist state. His goal is to reverse the events of 1989–the end of the Soviet state and dissolution of its enormous empire... ...to wield against the various weak states that were part of the U.S.S.R... All have ethnic Russian minorities, who speak the language, boast of...

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer has signed a pro-life bill that the state’s pro-life groups were pressing for her to sign after approval by the state legislature. HB 2284 would make sure that abortion clinics are treated the same as other medical facilities by allowing for unannounced inspections. arizonalogoHere’s what Center for Arizona Policy President Cathi Herrod has to say about it in an email to LifeNews: “Arizona’s thriving pro-life movement has had another tremendous victory today as Governor Brewer has signed the Women’s Health Protection Act (HB 2284). This law ensures abortion clinics are subject to the same inspection standards...

Federal Fire Power: Instead of putting a lien on the property of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, the Bureau of Land Management surrounded his ranch with 200 armed agents. It's not the only agency with a private army. Back in 2008, candidate Barack Obama slipped a little-noticed line in a speech, proposing a national police force reporting straight to him. "We cannot continue to rely only on our military," he said. "We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded." As our military is slowly decimated by his policies and budget...

While distancing itself from the legal issues that prompted the Bureau of Land Management to round up Bunkerville rancher Cliven Bundy’s range cattle then release hundreds of them as the threat of violence loomed, the conservative Nevada Cattlemen’s Association issued a statement Wednesday that sympathizes with Bundy. “The situation in Nevada stands as an example (of) the federal agencies’ steady trend toward elevating environmental and wildlife issues over livestock grazing,” reads the statement from Ron Torell, the cattlemen’s group president. The statement adds that ranchers like Bundy, who graze livestock on multiple-use public lands, which include habitat for the threatened...

This Incredible New Footage Shows How Close Bundy Standoff Came To A Massacre The inside story of how one New Yorker may have kept the Bundy protestors from a bloody end Documentary filmmaker Dennis Michael Lynch was at the Bundy Ranch front line and has never seen that type of force at the border where drugs and people are routinely smuggled across.

Fox News toured the damage -- allegedly caused by the Bureau of Land Management -- which included holes in water tanks and destroyed water lines and fences. According to family friends, the bureau's hired "cowboys" also killed two prize bulls.

KRAMATORSK/SLAVIANSK, Ukraine (Reuters) - Separatists flew the Russian flag on armored vehicles taken from the Ukrainian army on Wednesday, humiliating a Kiev government operation to recapture eastern towns controlled by pro-Moscow partisans. Six armored personnel carriers were driven into the rebel-held town of Slaviansk to waves and shouts of "Russia! Russia!". It was not immediately clear whether they had been captured by rebels or handed over to them by Ukrainian deserters.

Lawmakers in Moldova's pro-Russian breakaway region of Transdniestr on Wednesday passed a resolution calling on Moscow and the United Nations to recognise its independence. Transdniestr, a strip of land bordering Ukraine, broke away from Romanian-speaking Moldova following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Some analysts suspect Russia is eyeing the territory, which consists mostly of Russian speakers, in the wake of last month's annexation of Crimea. The resolution adopted unanimously by Transdniestr's self-appointed parliament on Wednesday called on the international community to recognise the region as a "sovereign independent state". "According to the universally recognised norms of international...

Sending scores of armed agents along with helicopters and dogs to confront an elderly Nevada rancher over grazing fees may seem like overkill, but critics say it’s not inconsistent with the federal government’s recent approach to environmental enforcement. The simmering truce between the Bundys and the Bureau of Land Management comes after high-profile raids last year by armed federal agents on small-time gold miners in tiny Chicken, Alaska, and guitar makers at the Gibson Guitar facilities in Tennessee. That doesn’t include more subtle threats, such as recent efforts by the Obama administration to raise grazing fees or pressure permit holders...

How the Left, here and abroad, is trying to shut down debate — from Islam and Israel to global warming and gay marriage ... At Brandeis University, we are learning the hierarchy of the new multiculti caste system. .... In theory, Ayaan Hirsi Ali is everything the identity-group fetishists dig: female, atheist, black, immigrant. If conservative white males were to silence a secular women’s rights campaigner from Somalia, it would be proof of the Republican party’s ‘war on women’, or the encroaching Christian fundamentalist theocracy ... But when the snivelling white male who purports to be president of Brandeis (one...

Russia and Israel seem to have a growing affinity for each other. A few weeks ago, Israel abstained from a vote in the UN censuring Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported [link at URL] that this is a sore spot for the White House and a diplomatic novum on the world scene. A senior Israeli official said that Israel's absence from the United Nations vote was viewed around the world as an extremely irregular measure, a departure from a long-standing Israeli policy of voting with the United States in the UN. While the Americans viewed...

The Connecticut teen who has been in state custody for more than a year after her parents were accused of medical child abuse after disputing a diagnosis has apparently penned a note, giving a look into how she says she’s being treated. “They hurt me all the time push me all the time and more,” the purported note from Justina Pelletier says. It also says “[they] do not let me sleep vary [sic] much. “Hury [sic]!” Keith Mason, president of Personhood USA, a group helping lead the Free Justina Coalition, told TheBlaze that Justina gave the note to her parents...

Dozens of Ukrainian army defectors rode into the disputed eastern town of Slovyansk today on a column of armoured troop carriers bearing the Russian national flag. The defectors, including highly trained paratroopers. were said to have switched sides after being persuaded to defect by pro-Russian insurgents in nearby Kramatorsk, where they were part of a Ukrainian force that secured a military airfield yesterday. With Russian flags flying, the soldiers headed on a convoy of six troop carriers into Slovyansk, stopping first outside city hall, which has been occupied by pro-Russian protesters for several days, before entering the police station.

On this April 15, filers and accountants alike are finding a new array of taxes resulting from the president’s health care legislation. These include at least 20 ObamaCare-related tax increases totaling $409 billion over the next ten years, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation. The new taxes are especially irksome to ObamaCare opponents, because they are imposed by a law that passed on a straight party-line vote and are being enforced by an agency that some accuse of party favoritism. "I think it's rather unfortunate that the IRS has this huge role in the Affordable Care Act because it's...

15 April 2014 Last updated at 19:14 ET New York police disband Muslim 'eavesdropping' unit The New York Police Department has disbanded a secret programme designed to eavesdrop on Muslims to identify potential terrorism threats. The Demographics Unit had dispatched plainclothes detectives to listen to conversations and build files on places frequented by Muslims, US media say. The squad had been the subject of two federal lawsuits in the past, and drew ire from civil rights groups. It is also said to have sowed Muslim mistrust for law enforcement. "This reform is a critical step forward in easing tensions between...

The major news media, with the exception of Fox News, has been deafeningly quiet about the federal government’s thwarted raid last week on a Nevada rancher. Heavily-armed agents from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) descended upon Cliven Bundy’s ranch, seizing 389 of his 900 cattle. The BLM shut off access to federal lands, claiming he was illegally using them, and a no-fly zone was established for a 3-mile-square area around Bundy’s ranch. A sign was posted - unconstitutionally - limiting the First Amendment to a small designated area. The feds flew helicopters overhead to chase the cattle, knowing full...

The International Renaissance Foundation's mission is to foster an open, participatory, plaurlist society based on democratic values in Ukraine...

PRIMM, Nevada – As part of President Obama’s all-of-the-above approach to energy, today Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar “flipped the switch” on the Enbridge Silver State North solar project, the first large-scale solar energy facility on U.S. public lands to deliver power to American consumers. This milestone is in line with the administration’s broad commitment to expanding production of all sources of American made energy, including from renewable sources, such as wind and solar, which has doubled in the President’s first term, as well as domestic production of oil and gas resources, which have increased each year the President...

Despite much diplomatic effort, the situation in Ukraine worsens. A coordinated Russian campaign, including an invasion threat, special operations destabilization in eastern Ukraine patterned on the Crimea model, and warnings of gas cutoffs document ever more clearly Vladi­mir Putin’s aim to cripple the Ukrainian government and control much or even all of this strategically vital European country.