Free Republic

What Obama is pursing in Iran and Cuba isn’t peace.....The list of countries designated by the United States as state sponsors of terrorism is a pretty exclusive club, a veritable Legion of Doom populated by the likes of North Korea and Syria. The Obama administration has, for reasons that seem to be mainly political, shown extraordinary solicitude toward two countries that were on the State Department’s list when he became president: Cuba and Iran. Cuba has been removed from the list — “Cuba meets the statutory criteria for rescission” was the State Department’s bloodless explanation — and John Kerry has...

Cash-strapped Venezuela is pushing for an emergency OPEC meeting and joint coordination with Russia to stem a tumble in oil prices, President Nicolas Maduro said on Tuesday night. "We're working towards a special OPEC meeting, in coming days we'll announce .... We're making contacts with OPEC governments," Maduro said during an hours-long televised broadcast. "We're evaluating the possibility that a very high ranking OPEC meeting be called, and that in coordination with the Russian Federation, President Vladimir Putin, we can advance in taking a series of actions to defend the oil market in the face of this latest fall," he...

Apparently all of that “anti-imperialist” rhetoric from Caracas was just a farce for public consumption. As Venezuela’s economy implodes amid skyrocketing inflation and crippling shortages of practically everything, Socialist strongman Nicolás Maduro (shown) has a new plan to prop up his imploding regime: annex two thirds of neighboring Guyana’s territory and almost one third of its population. The area eyed by Maduro’s autocracy is especially noteworthy now that potentially lucrative oil deposits have been discovered offshore. Unsurprisingly, a powerful alliance of the region’s socialist strongmen and their allies has sided with the regime in Venezuela. Talk of war is escalating....

No link....could not find it on site. But I just tuned in to the Miami Fox station.....they are running STATE DEPARTMENT INTERVIEWS with some vets who are going to be in Havana today for the flag raising dog and pony show in Cuba. The Obama worship runs deep.

The daughter of Hugo Chavez, the former president who once declared 'being rich is bad,' may be the wealthiest woman in Venezuela, according to evidence reportedly in the hands of Venezuelan media outlets. Maria Gabriela Chavez, 35, the late president's second-oldest daughter, holds assets in American and Andorran banks totaling almost $4.2billion, Diario las Americas reports. ... Others close to Chavez managed to build up great personal wealth that was kept outside the petrostate. Alejandro Andrade, who served as Venezuela’s treasury minister from 2007 to 2010 and was reportedly a close associate of Chavez, was discovered to have $11.2billion in...

"In defense of the homeland" is President Nicolas Maduro's renewed public speech, reframed in a manner to evoke patriotic emotions and divert the attention from the domestic emergency. Venezuela is suffering an economic meltdown with chronic food shortages and nearly 120% inflation (this year alone) fueling outbreaks of street violence. Companies operating there are facing increased political risks. After days of unrest and turmoil, with mobs looting supermarkets in search for living goods and food in several cities, the government has announced the expropriation of Nestlé distribution warehouses and depots, the country's biggest food company, as well PepsiCo, Cargill, and...

HyperinflationOver the years, we have repeatedly poked fun at the transformation of Venezuela into a "socialist utopia" - an economy in a state of terminal collapse, where the destruction of the currency (one black market Bolivar is now worth 107 times less than the official currency's exchange rate) and the resulting hyperinflation is only matched be barren wasteland that local stores have transformed into now that conventional supply chains are irreparably broken. Just this past Wednesday we showed a clip of what is currently taking place inside Venezuela supermarkets, noting that "the hyperinflationary collapse in Venezuela is reaching its terminal...

Daughter has been in missions in Central America for three years. She would like to bring home the fiancé for a visit. Says that it is impossible to obtain a visa, even for a short visit, from the US embassy. This is a man with assets and properties who of course will be returning to his country. Daughter says that even visitors who would be at conferences here in states are denies. Each application is a non refundable 200 and only can be applied once every six months, and she has seen people spend up to a thousand, trying to...

Venezuela's embattled government has taken the drastic step of forcing food producers to sell their produce to the state, in a bid to counter the ever-worsening shortages. Farmers and manufacturers who produce milk, pasta, oil, rice, sugar and flour have been told to supply between 30 per cent and 100 per cent of their products to the state stores. Shortages, rationing and queues outside supermarkets have become a way of life for Venezuelans, as their isolated country battles against rigid currency controls and a shortage of US dollars – making it difficult for Venezuelans to find imported goods.

On arrival in La Paz, Pope Francis was presented by Bolivian President Evo Morales with a wooden crucifix carved in the form of a hammer and sickle, the symbol of Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Fidel. Had Pope John Paul II been handed that crucifix, he might have cracked it over Evo’s head. For John Paul II had seen up close what communism did — to his country, his church and his people in 45 years of Bolshevik rule. On his arrival in the Nicaragua of Daniel Ortega in 1983, Pope John Paul castigated a priest-collaborator who dared to serve that...

We have met the enemy and he is in the White House. The last time a feeble leader of a fading nation came bearing “Peace in our time,” a pugnacious controversial right-winger retorted, “You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor, and you will have war.” That right-winger went on to lead the United Kingdom against Hitler. The latest worthless agreement with a murderous dictatorship is being brandished by John Kerry, a man who instinctively seeks out dishonor the way a pig roots for truffles. John Kerry betrayed his uniform and his nation so many times...

If the Greeks were to vote ‘No’ what would happen next? Well no one can say. But here is a quick thought on what I hope the Greek government might have been exploring if they are excluded from the euro. It’s just food for thought nothing more. They have to be prepared to have a currency that does not depend on Europe supplying Euros. So they will need another currency – hopefully their own. I think we can be sure no western company has been printing them. There are few such companies and there is, I think, no possibility that...

When Sergeant Major Michael Jarnevic finally retires from the Army on July 8, it will be the end of a career that began in 1973 when he enlisted as a Marine and was deployed to Vietnam. He is now nearing his 60th birthday and has spent three quarters of his life fighting for his country. In fact, Sgt Major Jarnevic appears to be the last Vietnam veteran on active duty in the whole of the Army. During his 42 years of service he has served in Honduras during the Contra wars in the 80s and Kuwait in the 90s during...

(Reuters) Vladimir Putin with Jose Maria Aznar, then Spain's prime minister, at Moncloa Palace on June 13, 2000. One of Russia's largest organized-crime syndicates allegedly operated out of Spain for more than a decade with the help of close allies of President Vladimir Putin, then the deputy mayor of St. Petersburg, Bloomberg reports. Prosecutors in Madrid have filed a 488-page petition to charge 27 people with money laundering and fraud in connection to the St. Petersburg-based Tambov crime syndicate's setting up shop in Spain in 1996. Vladislav Reznik, now the deputy head of the finance committee in Russia's lower house...

MOSCOW, June 16 (UPI) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin announced Tuesday Russia's nuclear arsenal would be would increase by 40 intercontinental ballistic missiles in 2015. Speaking at Army-2015 Expo, an international military trade show near Moscow, Putin said the new missiles could "overcome even the most technically advanced anti-missile defense systems," adding a new long-range early-warning radar "to monitor in the western direction" was also being prepared. It was a reference to plans by NATO to permanently place troops and heavy armaments in Poland, a Russian neighbor and former Warsaw Pact country. In reference to apparent plans to reinforce NATO's...

What has a Papal Encyclical calling on the world to end its use of fossil fuels and to pray to God for the success of the global “climate summit” in December got in common with the Greek euro crisis, the ominous rift between the West and Russia, and the shambles Europe is making over the desperation of African and Syrian refugees to find safety this side of the Mediterranean? They are all different aspects of the two greatest acts of political make-believe of our time, so all-pervasive that it is hard for us to grasp just how much effect they...

With a little help from her friendly Dad (Paul) Stella McCartney has made quite a name for herself as an ultra-chic fashion designer. This week she introduced her spring line on Manhattan’s Elizabeth Street with a Cuba-themed garden party where Fidel Castro and Che Guevara featured among the main props of the cheeky soiree.The Stalinist mass-murderers featured both as mannequins and as live costumed humans who walked around posing for pictures with the ultra-chic models and guests along with the delighted (and scrupulously vegetarian) hostess. In keeping with Stella Mc Cartney’s “anti-cruelty” beliefs the event featured strictly vegetarian foodstuffs. None...

Cuba, one of the Western Hemisphere’s least-wired countries, is poised to expand access to the Internet by introducing about three dozen Wi-Fi hot spots around the island and reducing the steep fees that Cubans pay to spend time online. .....“Their model was, ‘Nobody gets Internet,’ ” he said in a telephone interview. “Now their model is, ‘We’re going to bring prices down and expand access, but we are going to do it as a sovereign decision and at our own speed.’ ” Cuba’s Internet isolation is not the result of the United States’ five-decade economic embargo, Mr. Henken said, but...

<p>Everything in the path of the proposed trans-oceanic canal in Nicaragua would have to be relocated. Churches. Cemeteries. Stockyards.</p> <p>As many as 28,000 people scattered in villages and towns face the likelihood that their lands would be expropriated. The government pledges they will be better off, living in new settlements with a bit of cash in their pockets. But skepticism abounds. Ranchers are angry. They’ve held 44 marches and rallies in the past nine months. A few events have turned violent.</p>

The Republican field is crowded, which implies that primary voters have little information about where some of the candidates stand. That is particularly the case this season, with a few relatively unknown contenders who lack legislative experience or a long history of campaign contributions that would allow researchers to precisely identify where they stand on the liberal-to-conservative political dimension.However, one characteristic all candidates share is that they have active and popular Twitter accounts. And as I showed in an article published earlier this year in the journal Political Analysis — now freely available online as an Editors’ Choice article —...