Free Republic

Russia wasn’t all bad for Ukraine. A 45% reduction in the price of natural gas and what was supposed to be an additional $15 billion in aid was a necessary “lifeline”, the International Monetary Fund’s Christine Lagarde said on Wednesday. Speakqing to PBS News Hour on April 2, IMF's Managing Director Lagarde said, “The economy of Ukraine was against the wall and heading for disaster. It’s an economy that needed reforms, that Ukraine needed profound transformation of its fiscal policy, monetary policy and on its policy on energy to mention just the key ones. Without the lifeline it was getting...

The coexistence of "Palestinian" Arabs and Moscow started from a lie, which will be ever-present in the propaganda of so-called Palestinian cause. As former American intelligence service’s expert James Hansen emphasized in his book, Soviets advertised “cause of Palestinian guerilla groups” using untruths about “the battles between the Israelis and Palestians”. In late 1968, publicity was apparent in the Soviet press over the cause of the Palestinian guerrilla groups. This publicity was coupled with exaggerated numbers of Israeli casualties and nonexistent battles between the Israelis and Palestinians.

There’s not a lot to like about Vladimir Putin: he’s autocratic, vain and runs a corrupt government. And he doesn’t give a fig for human rights. The repression in Chechnya, the jailing of the businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky and the Pussy Riot protestors, the murders of journalist Anna Politkovskaya and of Alexander Litvinenko, the former spy – all this happened on Putin’s watch. Who would not be on the side of the 100,000 people who turned out on Moscow’s streets last winter to protest against Putin’s election to a third term as president and to demand fair elections and an honest...

General George S. Patton was assassinated to silence his criticism of allied war leaders claims new book George S. Patton, America's greatest combat general of the Second World War, was assassinated after the conflict with the connivance of US leaders, according to a new book. By Tim Shipman in Washington 20 Dec 2008 The newly unearthed diaries of a colourful assassin for the wartime Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the CIA, reveal that American spy chiefs wanted Patton dead because he was threatening to expose allied collusion with the Russians that cost American lives. The death of...

Ukraine's Crimean parliament voted Monday to nationalize energy companies Ukrtransgaz and Chornomornaftohaz, according to a statement on the Parliament's website. A Crimean official said last week that the local authorities may sell the oil and gas company Chornomornaftohaz to a Russian firm "such as Gazprom" once the region assumes control of it. On Sunday, a Russia-backed referendum in Crimea demonstrated overwhelming support for joining the Russian federation. The US and its European allies are expected to announced sanctions against Russia on Monday after Crimea announced that just under 97% of voters in the region supported leaving Ukraine and becoming a...

Pro-Russian demonstrators in eastern Ukraine smashed their way into public buildings and burned Ukrainian-language books on Sunday in further protests following two deadly clashes in the region last week. Protests, some several thousand strong, spread to Russian-speaking southern districts as Ukraine's Crimean peninsula, under the control of the Russian military for two weeks, voted in a referendum on joining Russia. [...] In Kharkiv, Reuters Television footage showed pro-Russian activists scaling an iron gate, smashing a van and breaking into the offices of a Ukrainian cultural center. Two policemen stood nearby, examining the van. The footage then showed young men seizing...

Deposed president of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych is in a Moscow hospital after suffering a suspected heart attack, it was reported in Russia today. His condition was said to be 'grave', Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper, known as MK, has claimed, citing unofficial sources. Vladimir Putin dismissed a report earlier this week that Yanukovych had died from a heart attack in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don. On Tuesday, the Kremlin leader said his former ally was 'alive and healthy', and that he had met him several days earlier. However, Yanukovych has not been seen in public since giving a press conference in Russia...

On a presidential visit to Russia, Ronald Reagan had an unlikely encounter with a KGB agent posing as a tourist: future Russian president Vladimir Putin (pictured above with a camera around his neck). Iconic Photos (via Tabitha Hale of Rare) has the backstory for the photo:

Manifesto of free citizens of Ukraine and Russia We, Russians and Ukrainian have nothing to share except a desire to see each other to live in prosperous countries. Between us there are no linguistic, historical and territorial issues that politicians stirr up. We believe in a future in which Moscow and Kyiv are not usurped by Soviet dreamers, players with geopolitics or the usual fraudulent scams. We condemn any attempt of former KGB regain power in the sovereign nation-states. Free Ukrainians with their tragic example have shown, what is the price of freedom. They showed how to cleanse their land...

One of the many pressing stories that remains to be told from the Snowden archive is how western intelligence agencies are attempting to manipulate and control online discourse with extreme tactics of deception and reputation-destruction. It’s time to tell a chunk of that story, complete with the relevant documents. Over the last several weeks, I worked with NBC News to publish a series of articles about “dirty trick” tactics used by GCHQ’s previously secret unit, JTRIG (Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group). These were based on four classified GCHQ documents presented to the NSA and the other three partners in...

Ukraine’s leading political party has said that the international financier George Soros has been preparing a “Lybian scenario” for the country. ­The head of the Party of Regions parliamentary faction Aleksandr Yefremov said in a televised comment on Wednesday that he had information that George Soros had allocated funds for the overthrow of the Ukrainian political authorities. “I even have information that Soros has allocated certain funds in order to prepare a certain group of young boys here in Ukraine who could launch any existing projects based on the North Africa examples,” Yefremov said. He also added that he hoped...

<p>How long is is this going to go on before Republicans in Congress start treating it with the seriousness that it deserve?</p> <p>On Monday, Dr. Benjamin Carson, the former director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital, said he and his family were targeted by the IRS in retribution for comments critical of Barack Obama, Newsmax reported.</p>

Yesterday “TheBlaze” published an interview with Romanian Lt. Gen Ion Pacepa, a discussion which arose around the publishing of his work, “Disinformation: Former Spy Chief Reveals Secret Strategies for Undermining Freedom, Attacking Religion, and Promoting Terrorism.” Pacepa is a defector to the United States, but not just any run-of-the-mill defector. He is the highest-ranking Soviet intelligence officer to ever defect. He crossed over back in 1978 and was given political asylum by then President Jimmy Carter. He has made a practice since that time to write in defense of freedom while living his life under threat of assassination, hiding out...

NOTE: The following letter was sent via email this morning to Michael Lawlor (Some biographical details here and here. Mr. Lawlor is Connecticut Governor Dannell Malloy's hatchet man on the current tyrannical enforcement of that state's Intolerable Act. I will send him an official hard copy via snail mail today. “You can either surrender the weapon to us, destroy the weapon, or sell it to a federal firearms licensee. After that date (January 1) that hasn’t been declared or register is banned and if you get caught, you’re going to get arrested." -- Michael Lawlor. Mike.Lawlor@ct.gov Mike Lawlor Under Secretary,...

This is quite a good documentary of Putin that I ran across if anyone's interested. He, truly, is a VERY dangerous man. I know, myself, have admired his strong-arming on particular issues, but don't forget who he is and his background. The dissident at the end is crying that he knows that Communism has returned to Russia. Heartfelt. Putin has a definite stronghold on Europe through energy. IOW....."Who run BarterTown?"

Russia’s Foreign Minister has compared the way NSA obtains permission for its surveillance with the way Soviet people received sentences in Stalin-era courts. Sergey Lavrov said the judicial entities which gave permission for NSA surveillance reminded him of “troikas,” or extrajudicial bodies that existed in the Soviet Union during the Great Purge of 1937-38. They consisted of only three people who passed sentences very quickly, based on very scanty evidence. "Without any control, they just dropped their signatures on inquiries the NSA representatives brought them,” Lavrov said, while speaking Wednesday at Russia’s upper house of parliament, the Federation Council, Interfax...

MOSCOW—The space race may be over but Russia hopes the smartphone race has just begun. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev was among the first to receive a YotaPhone—the country’s first foray into the hyper-competitive smartphone market—and was told industry pace-setter Apple Inc. better watch its back. “Is Apple concerned about our smartphone?” he asked Sergey Chemezov, the head of Russia’s state-run defense corporation, Rostec, who gave him the phone on Wednesday hours after it hit the market. “Definitely,” Mr. Chemezov replied, according to a transcript of the exchange posted on the government’s website.....

It has been 50 years since President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and most of the world still wrongly believes that the culprit was the CIA, or the FBI, or the mafia, or right-wing American businessmen. It has been also 50 years since the Kremlin started an intense, worldwide disinformation operation, codenamed “Dragon,” aimed at diverting attention away from the KGB’s connection with Lee Harvey Oswald. Not unrelated are the facts that Oswald was an American Marine who defected to Moscow, returned to the United States three years later with a Russian wife, killed President Kennedy, and was arrested before...

Interesting interview of Yuri Bezmenov by G Edward Griffin. I am halfway through it and it is fascinating!

No matter how profound the issues or scandals, the current administration's MO has been to avoid substance in favor of the corrupt politics of spin and ignore, ignore and spin, a strategy that, history teaches, often succeeds in gaining the confidence of a majority of the people. . . until the piper shows up. However, as polls reveal, no amount of duplicitous White House propaganda or disregard for pursuing truth can prevent the public from perceiving this reality: With respect to his influence regarding Syria and the rest of the world an effete, dithering, anchorless, contradictory Barack Obama has been...