Free Republic

A Russian historian whose exposure of Soviet leader Josef Stalin's crimes angered state officials is due to begin enforced psychiatric testing this week amid fears he will be falsely declared insane, his lawyer said on Tuesday. Yuri Dmitriev, 61, is on trial in northwest Russia on charges brought by state prosecutors of involving his adopted daughter, then 11, in child pornography, of illegally possessing "the main elements of" a firearm, and of depravity involving a minor. Some of Russia's leading cultural figures say Dmitriev was framed because his focus on Stalin's crimes - he found a mass grave with up...

...However, the widespread use of the northeastern route in the Arctic Ocean for shipping will reduce the distance between Europe and the Far East by one-third. Moreover, the northwestern route in the Arctic Ocean will shorten the distance between Asia and North America by almost 20 percent, creating an alternative to the Panama Canal. The primary beneficiaries of these developments will be the countries with ports on the North Sea and the Baltic Sea – in particular, Russia. All this is part of a larger Russian scheme designed to challenge the global trade map as it is being drawn via...

Peter Jenkins was of the Watergate generation, a cynic who picked up his college diploma and a 75-pound backpack and set off, as he puts it, “to give this country one last chance.” Now more than five years and 4,750 miles later, he is a believer. “I have America in every cell of my body,” he exults, “and I could feel God everywhere.”.. By the time Jenkins reached the Mississippi he was no longer a vegetarian. A poor mountain man in Virginia, who offered Jenkins a lamb chop, had made him feel foolish about his no-meat diet. Once a “hyper...