Free Republic

Following the strange story with the use of the military airfield in Iran's Hamadan, it has become clear that Russia should not trust Iran. The events of the recent years can only reinforce the impression. Russia and Iran have different approaches not only to Syria - Iran shows influence on Russia's relations with the United States. The talks between Russia, Turkey and Iran started in the Kazakh capital of Astana on January 23. The talks are of paramount importance for Russia, because they could become the first platform for establishing a dialogue with the new US administration. "We think it...

Syria enters 2017 in a state of diplomatic confusion. On December 30, a truce agreement brokered by Russia, Turkey, and Iran came into effect. It was endorsed by the UN Security Council on the following day and has been blessed by the United States, but war still rages in many areas of the country. Meanwhile, the gaze of the international community has turned to an unlikely location: Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, where Russia is trying to organize Syrian political negotiations backed by Turkey and Iran. The Astana meeting has been scheduled for January 23, before the resumption of the...

Euronews, the rolling news channel which was set up to provide a European counterpoint to the American news network CNN, has been reduced to a second-rate news service broadcasting “sponsored” propaganda programs for oppressive regimes, its journalists and unions say. Staff at the multi-language channel — which gets about a third of its funding in subsidies from the European Union — went on strike this week after workers backed a no-confidence motion against the station’s management. […] Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan are among a list of undemocratic regimes — where human rights abuses are widespread — which have paid...

A KIWI tourist says she was detained in Kazakhstan after immigration officials refused to believe New Zealand was a country, insisting it was actually a state of Australia. Chloe Phillips-Harris, 28, arrived at Kazakhstan’s Almaty Airport in May after being assured by the New Zealand embassy she would be able to enter the Central Asian country on her Kiwi passport. But officials at the airport told her she wouldn’t be able to enter the country without an Australian passport, the New Zealand Herald reported. “I landed in Kazakhstan on the last flight of the night, and I got to an...

*snip* The little-known Haiti Development Fund, an LLC incorporated in Delaware in August 2010, was created by the Clinton Foundation with an initial endowment of $20 million from shady Canadian mining mogul Frank Giustra and Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim. The Fund was supposed to supply desperately needed seed money to Haitian entrepreneurs after an earthquake devastated the country in January 2010. *snip* “This cries out for an audit or an investigation,” said Ken Boehm, chairman of the National Legal and Policy Center a Virginia-based watchdog group. “Its director was in bankruptcy and there’s almost nothing in the public record showing...

You are not exempt my children from the harvest just because your priorities collide with My kingdom Rules and regulations(that is The Harvest first) for it is all about Salvation of the lost now for my time has come and soon I shall be with you for a sweeping up of all My sheep. So for those too busy as Martha and have not chosen the best as Mary, Truly your reward shall be diminished from those that have forsaken all to tend my sheep in the pasture of light I have supplied(that is My spirit upon the earth) for...

Russia is not the country you think it is. Its economy is smaller than South Korea’s. Its people are poorer than Kazakhstan’s. It trails Finland in technology. And it has a smaller military budget than Saudi Arabia... ...Russia hosted the Olympics, punched Georgia in the nose, took back the Crimea, invaded Ukraine, flew bombers through NATO airspace, built military bases in the Arctic, and generally flexed and posed like an oiled, aged, but still buff, body builder. And we’ve been paying increasingly rapt attention, not noticing the geriatric walker hidden just off stage. A closer look is almost shocking. According...

Green cards, or Lawful Permanent Residency, puts immigrants on the path to citizenship and allows for lifetime residency, federal benefits, and work authorization. Included in the totals are refugees, who are required to apply for a green card after one year of residency in the U.S. Unlike other types of immigrants, refugees are immediately eligible for welfare benefits including Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), food stamps, and Medicaid Green Card Totals, FY09-FY14: Pakistan (102K), Iraq (102K), Bangladesh (90K), Iran (85K), Egypt (56K), Somalia (37K), Uzbekistan (30K), Turkey (26K), Morocco (25K), Jordan (25K), Albania (24K), Afghanistan (21K), Lebanon (20K), Yemen...

America’s uranium industry has been absolutely devastated by Department of Energy decisions and political maneuvering by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and individuals closely tied to her. ... in 1976, the uranium extraction industry employed 35,000 people. Today .. fewer than 500 people in this country are involved in it .. 20 percent of our electrical power is dependent on those 500 people, that’s every fifth light-bulb. We’re now producing enough uranium to power 4 or 5 of our nuclear reactors, that’s 94 dependent on foreign uranium. ... Since 2011, DOE has sold off roughly $1 billion of publicly-owned uranium...

The political and military environment in Kazakhstan is deteriorating due to the efforts of pro-Russian activists. The activities of pro-Russian movements in Kazakhstan indicate a tremendous growth of the threat to the acting authority, which emerged in the last 18 months. Currently, Kazakhstan is ready for the repeat of the “Crimean scenario”. It could be triggered by domestic problems in the Russian Federation or a sudden change in the state regime of Kazakhstan. Such threats to Kazakhastan are driven both by its citizens, who are coming home having obtained combat experience in Donbas region, and the increased activities of Cossack...

For decades, scientists have estimated that the Siberian unicorn - a long-extinct species of mammal that looked more like a rhino than a horse - died out some 350,000 years ago, but a beautifully preserved skull found in Kazakhstan has completely overturned that assumption. Turns out, these incredible creatures were still around as recently as 29,000 years ago. Before we talk about the latest discovery, yes, there was a very real 'unicorn' that roamed Earth tens of thousands of years ago, but it was nothing like the one found in your favourite children’s book. (Sorry - it’s a bummer for...

<p>WASHINGTON — After a bombing killed 19 U.S. airmen at a barracks in Saudi Arabia in 1996, the Clinton administration struck back by unmasking Iranian intelligence officers around the world, significantly disrupting Iranian-backed terrorism, according to a high-level U.S. official and a former top official who was serving at the time of the operation.</p>

Moscow and Tel Aviv are planning to sign a free trade agreement in the near future, Russian Deputy Agriculture Minister Sergey Levin told journalists on Friday. "Such decisions aim at maximizing cooperation between Russia and Israel in terms of agriculture and new technologies; creation of joint ventures, as well as the prospects of a free trade zone agreement which the government expects to sign with Israel as soon as possible," Levin said following Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich's meeting with Israeli businessmen. Israel's Minister of Agriculture Uri Ariel also expressed hopes the two countries would sign the agreement soon....

The European Space Agency says a new laser terminal has been launched into orbit as part of wider efforts to develop Europe's first optical communications network, a system able to monitor natural disasters and other catastrophes. The European Data Relay System terminal, launched Friday from Kazakhstan, was released from its host satellite Saturday morning. ...

As I walked into the department this bright brisk morning, coffee cheerily in hand, the live global seismogram display in the atrium caught my eye with an alarming event that had just happened during my bike ride into work. *gasp* that looks bad *gasp* that looks bad BIG earthquake, somewhere in the vicinity of Central/Southern Asia. Indeed, an earthquake deep (>200 km) beneath the Hindu Kush mountains of Afghanistan had shaken a huge swath of Central and South Asia. The great depth of the earthquake meant less extreme shaking at the epicenter (nobody lives closer than 212 km from the...

High in the skies over Kazakhstan, space-age technology has revealed an ancient mystery on the ground. Satellite pictures of a remote and treeless northern steppe reveal colossal earthworks — geometric figures of squares, crosses, lines and rings the size of several football fields, recognizable only from the air and the oldest estimated at 8,000 years old. The largest, near a Neolithic settlement, is a giant square of 101 raised mounds, its opposite corners connected by a diagonal cross, covering more terrain than the Great Pyramid of Cheops. Another is a kind of three-limbed swastika, its arms ending in zigzags bent...

Origin of the Celts - Caucasian, not European The Celts are Circaesir from Circaesya, who lived on the Sea of Grass in what is now west Kazakhstan until late in the second millennium B.C. They were by their own definition a linguistic group, but now they are a culture. Contrary to popular belief, they had nothing to do with European inhabitants known to archaeologists as the 'Beaker folk' and 'Battle Axe people'. The 'Urnfield people' farther east were Circaesir, and obviously related to the Celts. Their descendants integrated with Celts in central Europe. Tradition suggests that the Celts left the...

An Oxford University-led... research team... will be looking at a group of artefacts in excavations and museum collections that are traditionally described as ‘Celtic’ because of their use of spirals, circles, interlaced designs, or swirling representations of plants or animals. One main line of enquiry is the relationship between the central European Celts and their nomadic Eurasian neighbours (often referred to as Scythians or Sarmatians), who inhabited the European end of a grassland (steppe) corridor that stretched east towards Central Asia and China... Iron Age tombs frozen in the mountains of Siberia, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan have yielded Roman glass, Chinese...

As Europe seeks to diversify its sources of natural gas as an alternative to the politically sensitive Russian supply, a massive off-shore gas source in the Mediterranean is ready for exploration and drilling. There are game-changing stakes at play. Unfortunately, the Turkish leadership has threatened to use force to stop this from happening. Last October, Turkey sent the BARBAROS, its geophysics exploration ship, accompanied by naval vessels, into the Cypriot Exclusive Economic Zone waters. In November 2014, Turkish naval commander Admiral Bülent Bostanoğlu threatened the use of force against Greece, while speaking on board a Turkish naval corvette in Greek...

American Decline: Chinese forces head to Syria to join with Russia in filling Obama's power vacuum and purportedly fight the Islamic State. A false move involving NATO member Turkey could mean world war. Russian and Chinese military sources now confirm that Chinese warships are en route to the Middle East to get in on some of the action of humiliating the U.S. In just a week and a half, Moscow has upended the dynamics of power in the Mideast by taking on the role that President Obama relinquished: acting like a superpower in a regional conflict that has implications extending...