Free Republic

Big news hit the front page of the New York Times on Saturday, in the form of a long article on China’s efforts to miniaturize its nuclear arsenal. The article, using the annual Pentagon report on Chinese military capabilities as its primary source, noted that the decision to tackle the technical problems associated with miniaturization suggest (but only suggest) a larger shift in nuclear weapons doctrine. As the Times article notes, China has long had the latent capacity to MIRV its nuclear missiles, a step that the United States, the Soviet Union, France, and the United Kingdom took long ago....

Family friend tells Vocativ that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s mother sent a distraught message after her son was given the death penalty. With her terrorist son sentenced to death, the mother of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev sent raging messages to his supporters saying the United States will burn “in the flames of an eternal and terrifying fire,” her close friend told Vocativ. “They think that they are killing us and they celebrate this, but we are the ones who will rejoice when Allah grants us the chance to behold them in the flames of an eternal and terrifying fire, an otherworldly...

Vladimir Putin Stars In Gala Hockey Match 16 May 2015 The Russian president scored eight goals for his team, as Tom Spender reports Russian President Vladimir Putin has taken to the ice aged 62 to score goal after goal in a gala hockey match with retired NHL players in Sochi. The famously macho leader scored eight goals - with a little help from stars like Pavel Bure and Valeri Kamensky - and his team won 18-6. Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev sat out the friendly in the stands. Mr Putin, better known for his love of judo, only recently took up...

Saudi Arabia will join the nuclear club by buying “off the shelf” atomic weapons from Pakistan, US officials told a London newspaper.

There is an illusion that the promised agreement with Iran regarding its nuclear program will push it toward moderation, as well as economic and political openness. What will probably happen is the complete opposite. The agreement will empower Tehran’s hawks, who are currently being marketed in Iran and who are bragging that most of the nuclear program has been accomplished and that the West has finally submitted and abandoned sanctions. During the past few months of international negotiations, Iran’s security fist tightened against state rivals, voicing the regime’s self-confidence. The Kurdish rebellion a week ago in the city of Mahabad,...

TBILISI, Georgia (AP) — About 600 U.S. and Georgian troops are conducting joint exercises aimed at training the armed forces of the former Soviet republic for participation in the NATO Response Force. Col. Michael Foster, commander of the U.S. 173rd Airborne Brigade, said the exercises are "an absolutely unique opportunity for us" and "the way we are going to be fighting in the future."

Iraqi state television is reporting the country's prime minister has ordered security forces not to abandon their positions in Anbar province to the Islamic State group. The order Sunday by Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi came as some Iraqi forces retreated from Ramadi, the provincial capital. It wasn't clear whether Iraq still maintained any control of the city, which the Islamic State group seized much of in recent days. Already Sunday, coordinated suicide bomb attacks targeted Iraqi forces in Ramadi. Some Iraqi forces apparently left behind their weapons and vehicles. Earlier, al-Abadi ordered Shiite militias to prepare for going into the...

The captured soldiers near area of Happiness Settlement Togliatti GRU Yesterday, during fierce fighting with the Russian DRG, imbued in the area of ​​the settlement Happiness, were captured two Russian servicemen - soldiers Togliatti GRU, the captain and the sergeant Armed Forces. Both were injured and the severity of injuries is currently unknown. Total losses from the attackers are specified, from the Ukrainian security forces killed two and three wounded. For information about these events on his page on facebook informed volunteer team InformNapalm Roman Burco: And also: Today, May 17, the headquarters of ATO also confirmed the Russian prisoners...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Foreign holdings of U.S. debt rose in March as China ramped up its purchases and displaced Japan as the leading owner of U.S. Treasury securities. The Treasury Department says overseas ownership of U.S. debt rose 2.1 percent in March to $6.18 trillion. That is below January's record of $6.22 trillion. China added $37.3 billion ... bringing its stockpile to $1.26 trillion... ahead of Japan, which added just $2.5 billion...to $1.23 trillion. ... The U.S. deficit topped $1 trillion from 2009 through 2012. Foreign governments...account for two-thirds of the foreign holdings...rose 1 percent from the previous month to...

China Retakes Top Spot as the Biggest Foreign Owner of U.S. Debt By IAN TALLEY It was a short-lived domination. After just a month of being the top holder of U.S. Treasury debt, Japan has once again been pushed into the No.2 slot as China bulked up on Uncle Sam’s bonds and notes. As we noted last month – and several times before that – Treasury’s data is a rough guesstimate. That makes it hard for analysts sifting through the obscure sheaves of digital data to glean anything but rough trends. It also makes it difficult to draw precise conclusions....

Jeb Bush began a talk the other day by addressing the issue of his brother George, noted architect of the Iraq war, and he did not shrink from the challenge. "I can't deny the fact that I love my family," announced Jeb. So if you suspected that the Bush Thanksgivings in Kennebunkport resemble "August: Osage County" -- with lots of screaming, sobbing and clawing -- you probably feel pretty silly right now. On a more pertinent question -- whether the war was a wise idea -- the answer is not so clear. The former governor of Florida first said that,...

WASHINGTON — A Twitter post recently caught the eye of Bill McKibben, the environmental advocate and godfather of the Keystone XL pipeline protests. It included an image from “The Simpsons” showing Homer and his family basking in mountains of cash in their living room, followed by a report on Hillary Rodham Clinton’s appearing at a fund-raiser with a lobbyist from the Keystone fight. Mr. McKibben’s environmental organization, 350.org, has been trying to raise awareness about the ties it sees between lobbyists for the oil pipeline and former aides to Mrs. Clinton. He promptly shared the post with his 150,000 Twitter...

http://media.salon.com/2015/05/hillary_warren_de_blasio.jpgEarlier this week, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, along with a gaggle of bored reporters and some boldfaced names in the progressive movement, unveiled a “Progressive Agenda to Combat Income Inequality.” Much like the media event that accompanied its unveiling, the agenda is supposed to be understood as a kind of 21st-century, liberal version of the storied “Contract with America,” the PR stunt that, as legend (erroneously) has it, rocketed Newt Gingrich and the Republican Party to power after the 1994 midterm elections. As my colleague Joan Walsh reported on Thursday, this backward-looking attempt to lay out a...

Russia has deployed hundreds of troops for drills in Central Asia with its ex-Soviet allies in a show of force as anxiety grows over a surge in fighting in neighbouring Afghanistan. Around 2,500 personnel from the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) are taking part in joint exercises due to run to Wednesday in Tajikistan. The move is seen as re-enforcing Moscow's role as the main guarantor of the fragile region's security after US troops leave Afghanistan. The Russian deployment of about 500 troops for the drills started last week, bolstered by soldiers from Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia and Belarus....

Ted Cruz is intellectually arrogant, like Ronald Reagan. The difference is that Reagan masked his arrogance with self-deprecating humor. Sen. Cruz does a Reagan impression that would do a nightclub comedian proud, but he doesn’t have Reagan’s easy and spontaneous humor. One doesn’t think of Reagan as arrogant, but he was in fact the most arrogant leader we have had since Lincoln. He ignored the whole of the foreign policy establishment in his conviction that America stood to win the Cold War and bring down Communism. Then as now, the foreign policy establishment resembled Jonathan Swift’s scientists on the floating...

The three Baltic states have written a letter to NATO asking for hundreds of soliders to be stationed in each country. They have expressed fears of possible aggression from Moscow. Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia announced on Thursday that they would petition NATO to permanently station troops throughout the Baltic region as Russia has done little to allay concerns that it may pose a threat to its three small neighbors. "Russia sees NATO as its main nemesis and this has put the Baltic countries on the front line, so to say," said Roland Murof, speaking for the Estonian defense ministry. "Hence,...

According to the Washington Post, Hillary Clinton told a group of her fundraisers that she will have a litmus test for her nominees to the Supreme Court (if she should win the presidency): they will have to agree with her that the 2010 Citizens United ruling must be overturned.  In that ruling the Supreme Court held that corporations have First Amendment rights to engage in political speech and to spend money on such speech.  In making her pledge, Mrs. Clinton follows Bernie Sanders, who is also running for president.If Republican critics of Mrs. Clinton wanted to be demagogues about it,...

Just under three years ago, Mohammed Morsi assumed office as Egypt’s first freely elected head of state, a milestone in the “Arab Spring” struggle for democracy. On Saturday, the same Egyptian state condemned him to die. A court in Cairo has sentenced the former president to death for conspiring with foreign militants during a prison escape in 2011. The ruling comes one month after Morsi received a separate 20-year sentence for inciting violence against protesters while in office. Egyptian authorities have detained Morsi since his overthrow in July 2013.

Even though Edward Snowden is in exile in Moscow, he's still hard at work — although he won't reveal what exactly he is working on quite yet because he believes in being judged on the results. Whatever he's working on, the former NSA contractor who exposed controversial US surveillance practices, says it's much tougher than his last gig. "The fact is I was getting paid an extraordinary amount of money for very little work with very little in the way of qualifications. That's changed significantly," Snowden said in an event at Stanford University on Friday, via teleconference from Moscow. "I...

A US appeals court has ruled that the NSA's dragnet of millions of Americans' phone calls is illegal, and Edward Snowden served as the catalyst for the decision. "Americans first learned about the telephone metadata program that appellants now challenge on June 5, 2013, when the British newspaper The Guardian published a FISC order leaked by former government contractor Edward Snowden," the court noted.