Free Republic

...But Democrats weren’t about to let facts get in the way of advancing their collusion narrative. The House Intelligence Committee released their cherry-picked examples of “Russian Facebook ads” in November. [....] The media didn’t let facts get in the way of fueling the collusion narrative, either. After receiving their marching orders from CNN, the media swung into action: This includes Vanity Fair, Natasha Bertrand at Business Insider, The Daily Mail, Fortune, The Hill, Reuters, and CNBC. Far-left sites like the Daily Kos, Vox, Salon, and Talking Points Memo joined the fray to falsely characterize all the ads as targeting swing...

"Heroes are not to be criticized..." The official Soviet narrative of the Second World War used the concept of heroism to imbue war commemoration with an obligation towards the State. Such a concept was designed to make subsequent generations feel inferior to their predecessors and obliged to give of their best. Today, the victory serves as the strongest connection between Soviet and modern Russian patriotism. The paper argues that the memory of the Siege of Leningrad (1941-1944) as treated in museums in St Petersburg today is an appropriation by present-day Russian propaganda of the Soviet narrative. Soviet memorial sites are...

Speaking at Stanford University after being introduced by former top diplomat Condoleezza Rice, Tillerson said the Trump administration was determined not to repeat President Barack Obama's "mistake" when he withdrew U.S. troops from Iraq in 2011. Republicans for years have argued the withdrawal created the opening for IS' rapid expansion.... Securing a successful U.N. peace process, getting Syrian President Bashar Assad to leave power, ridding Syria of Iran's influence and eradicating all weapons of mass destruction in the country.

WASHINGTON -- The FBI is investigating whether a top Russian banker with ties to the Kremlin illegally funneled money to the National Rifle Association to help Donald Trump win the presidency, two sources familiar with the matter have told McClatchy. FBI counterintelligence investigators have focused on the activities of Alexander Torshin, the deputy governor of Russia’s central bank who is known for his close relationships with both Russian President Vladimir Putin and the NRA, the sources said. It is illegal to use foreign money to influence federal elections. It’s unclear how long the Torshin inquiry has been ongoing, but the...

Facebook has said on Wednesday that it will broaden its investigation into whether Russia meddled in the 2016 referendum on Great Britain's membership in the European Union, The Wall Street Journal reports. The company made the announcement after a request from a "committee of U.K. lawmakers." One of those lawmakers is Damian Collins who said he welcomed Facebook's decision. "Facebook has a responsibility," he said. "They recognize the seriousness of the problem and that lots of people, Parliaments, and governments are really concerned about it." That sounds quite fascinating and all, but what The Wall Street Journal fails to mention...

The State Department has turned the page on Turkey for it no longer views Ankara as a reliable US partner. Many argue that Washington will abandon Syria’s Kurds in order to assuage Turkish anger. I doubt this. Washington expects more anti-US actions from Erdogan. Many in DC believe that Turkey’s rising Islamism, hardening dictatorship, and worsening anti-Israel rhetoric will only increase in the future. They do not hold out hope that Washington can reverse this trend.The US is increasingly falling back on support for Israel and Saudi Arabia. Trump has clearly set his course and reversed Obama’s effort to...

Number of Russians condemning abortion has risen threefold The majority also disapproves adulteries and same-sex relationships The share of people who consider abortions unacceptable has risen from 12% to 35% in the recent 20 years. Also the number of people opposing adulteries and same-sex relationships has risen considerably. Men are notably more indulgent than women, especially concerning sex outside marriage. These are the results by the sociologists of the Levada Centre. Experts suggest that means that the traditional family values have become more popular. A national poll by the Levada Centre held in the late December 2017 revealed that most...

A close friend, advisor and confidant of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was allegedly interviewed by the FBI in connection with the controversial dossier that was used ‘in part’ as evidence by the bureau to obtain a warrant to investigate members of President Trump’s campaign team, according to several sources who spoke to this reporter. Sidney Blumenthal, a former journalist and a close friend of Clinton, was interviewed by the FBI in 2016 regarding the dossier that alleged Trump colluded with Russia, the sources stated. Department of Justice officials, however, declined to comment on Blumenthal or the dossier. FBI officials declined...

Donald Trump has said that Russia is helping North Korea get supplies in violation of international sanctions and that Pyongyang is getting “closer every day” to being able to deliver a long-range missile to the United States. “Russia is not helping us at all with North Korea,” Trump said during an Oval Office interview with Reuters. “What China is helping us with, Russia is denting. In other words, Russia is making up for some of what China is doing.”

Despite the “rise and fall of the unipolar concert,” China and Russia’s balancing strategies have backfired: they are not leading to multipolarity, but are actually reinforcing unipolarity. The reason is that China and Russia’s balancing strategies have focused on regional “revisionism,” which has provoked powerful responses in East Asia and Europe to contain them. Russia’s balancing strategy has to a large extent proven to be counter-productive. Instead of preventing the expansion of NATO through a “divide and conquer” strategy, or driving a diplomatic wedge between the United States and Europe, Russian revisionism has united NATO...Perhaps most illustrative of all, a...

Putin has made the creation of a pro-Russian “alternative media ecosystem” to, in his words, smash “the Anglo-Saxon monopoly on the information stream” a top priority of his foreign policy. A significant prong of those operations is aimed at the American military community, and the Russian activity has ramped up in recent years as tensions have increased over sanctions, the annexation of Crimea and the expansion of NATO. In the 20th century, intelligence agencies looking to build ties with foreign soldiers might have gone through the trouble of sending agents out to watering holes near military bases, waiting for servicemen...

Surging shale production is poised to push U.S. oil output to more than 10 million barrels per day - toppling a record set in 1970 and crossing a threshold few could have imagined even a decade ago. And this new record, expected within days, likely won’t last long. The U.S. government forecasts that the nation’s production will climb to 11 million barrels a day by late 2019, a level that would rival Russia, the world’s top producer.

Sweden is preparing to issue a public information manual on what to do in the event of war, as debate in the country grows over how to deal with the threat from Russia. The brochure, due to be sent to 4.7m households, will inform the public how they can take part in “total defence” during a war and secure water, food and heating. The booklet with the working title If Crisis or War Comes will also give guidance on dealing with threats from cyber attacks, terrorism and climate change, the FT reported. Russia’s annexation of Crimea and military support for...

MOSCOW: Temperatures reached -67 degrees Celsius in the remote Yakutia region in Russia on Tuesday, the Associated Press reported. Pictures circulating on social media showed people posing with frozen eyelashes as temperatures reportedly fell to -50 degrees Celsius. Temperatures reached -67 degrees Celsius in Yakutia on Tuesday (Jan 16). A video posted on Twitter also showed a cup of boiling water solidifying after being poured out of a window. Blasting boiled water at -46.5C 😄 #Yakutsk pic.twitter.com/G6OdsSiIZ0 — Bolot Bochkarev (@yakutia) January 13, 2018 Residents in Yakutia are normally used to the freezing conditions, with students routinely going to school...

In an official statement on Friday, the Department of Justice announced the indictment of former Maryland executive Mark Lambert on “11 counts related to foreign bribery, fraud and money laundering scheme.” The indictment effectively tied Lambert to the Uranium One scandal because his alleged illicit activity involved JSC Techsnabexport (TENEX), an arm of Russia’s State Atomic Energy Corporation which now owns both TENEX and Uranium One. Despite the importance of the new indictment, the major three networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) had been dead silent.

The Justice Department's decision to give access to documents about FBI investigations to congressional Republicans risks exposing sensitive sources or material and poses a critical early test for bureau Director Christopher Wray, current and former U.S. law enforcement officials say. Some officials view the department as capitulating to a small group of Republicans who are intent on helping President Donald Trump undermine the integrity of the FBI and, by extension, Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into whether Trump or any of his associates helped Russia interfere in the 2016 election. It's the latest setback for a law enforcement agency that...

The sale of a substantial portion of US uranium reserves to a Russian company controlled by Vladimir Putin – who openly desires to control the world uranium market – never could have been approved by the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States (CFIUS), including then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and then-AG Eric Holder, if the dimensions of the scandal being investigated by the FBI and Justice Department had been known. That the scandal was hidden from the public is itself scandalous. Last Friday, an 11-count indictment was unsealed, naming: …a former DoD intelligence analyst

Muscovites witnessed one of the darkest months in history in December 2017 when they saw sunlight for just six or seven minutes, head of Russia’s Federal Service for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring Roman Vilfand said on Tuesday.

Today’s Campaign Update (Because The Campaign Never Ends) - A new HBO Film that fake-documents the last year of the Obama Administration will premier on Jan. 19. The Daily Caller reports this morning that the film contains a scene in which ex-UN Ambassador and serial unmasker Samantha Power hosts an Election Night “female empowerment” party for women diplomats from all over the world to celebrate the impending victory by the Pantsuit Princess. “I thought what an amazing night for them. I mean, that’s what America represents to the world, when a glass ceiling is shattered in our country, it creates...

The Executive Committee of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) suspended Russia from the Winter Olympics in the South Korean city of Pyeongchang. On December 17, the IOC prohibited the use of Russian national symbols at the Games. On January 16, 2018, it was reported that a special commission of the International Olympic Committee was going to consider a possibility to let Russian athletes use the flag of the Soviet Union during the Games in Pyeongchang. "These are proposals from certain officials, members of public chambers," Leonid Tyagachev, honorary president of the Russian Olympic Committee, told Pravda.Ru. "We have the final...