Free Republic

Shadow World:  Resurgent Russia, The Global New Left, and Radical Islam By Robert Chandler Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2008 622 pp., $29.95 The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 is viewed by the West as the end of the Cold War and the death knell for Communism. In reality, Communists continued to push for the same ultimate goal -- creating a socialist world order -- but their violent Marxist-Leninist revolutionary tactics were supplanted by an insidious cultural Marxism. Today, that push has evolved into a Moscow-led,  global strategic quadrangle consisting of Russia, China, Iran and a collection of Latin...

WASHINGTON – Senior military leaders took the exceptional step of briefing President Bush this week on a severe and widespread electronic attack on U.S. Defense Department computers that might have originated in Russia, posing unusual concern among commanders and potential implications for national security.

PORT OF LA GUAIRA, November 27 (Itar-Tass) -- Russia will continue military cooperation with Venezuela in order to preserve stability in the Caribbean, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Thursday. “We are grateful for the friendly attitude to the Russian Fleet and the Russian Armed Forces,” Medvedev told Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez during a visit to the Russian naval ship The Admiral Chabanenko. “The Russian-Venezuelan naval exercise is a measure that enhances stability in the region and the world over.”

The Russians have started the push that might come to shove and the heat has been turned up on Barack Obama. Because of the sagging price of oil, the Russians have to do something or watch their country slip into anarchy. They need a crisis to move oil prices back up and Cuba is a very handy place to ferment one. They are probing Obama for weakness with President Dmitry Medvedev’s just concluded four country visit to South America. He stopped in Peru and Brazil but his real targets were Venezuela and Guantanamo Cuba. In oil rich Venezuela Medvedev talked...

Russia to help Venezuela develop nuclear energy By CHRISTOPHER TOOTHAKER, Associated Press Writer Christopher Toothaker, Associated Press Writer 1 min ago LA GUAIRA, Venezuela – Russian President Dmitry Medvedev agreed to help start a nuclear energy program in Venezuela and said Moscow is willing to participate in a socialist trade bloc in Latin America led by President Hugo Chavez. Medvedev used his visit to Venezuela — the first by a Russian president — to extend Moscow's reach into Latin America and deepen trade and military ties. Chavez denied trying to provoke the United States, but he welcomed Russia's growing presence...

LIMA -- Chinese President Hu Jintao said Sunday that China and Russia should strengthen strategic coordination at a time when the global political and economic structures are undergoing the most profound changes since the end of the Cold War. Hu made the remarks at a meeting with his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev on the sidelines of the 16th Economic Leaders' Meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Lima, Peru. China and Russia should make concerted efforts to overcome the impact of the ongoing global financial crisis, maintain the sound momentum of their economic growth, and push ahead with...

Keep missile shield out of Poland, Czech Republic, Obama warned By Moscow correspondent Scott Bevan Posted 9 hours 26 minutes ago Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has warned the President-elect Barack Obama that Moscow will respond if he pushes on with plans for a missile defence system in Europe. Speaking at a human rights law conference in St Petersburg, Mr Putin has said the US plan for the missile defence shield is aimed at Russia's strategic potential. Russia can only give the project an adequate response, the Prime Minister added. Mr Putin has urged Mr Obama to drop the plan...

HAVANA — Russia's president visited old Cold War ally Cuba on Thursday after meeting with his nation's new friends in Latin America in a tour aimed at reviving relationships that have frayed since the Soviet Union's collapse. Dmitry Medvedev arrived in Havana from Venezuela, where he met with socialist President Hugo Chavez and agreed to help the oil-rich South American country start a nuclear energy program. Russian officials deny that Medvedev's trip to Latin America — traditionally considered in the U.S. sphere of influence — is meant to provoke the United States, but the voyage included meetings with Washington's staunchest...

MOSCOW: Russia on Wednesday successfully test-fired for the third time its new RS-24 intercontinental ballistic missile, designed to counter air defence systems like the controversial US missile shield. The missile was fired from the Plesetsk cosmodrome in north Russia and hit targets on the Kamchatka Peninsula that juts into the Pacific Ocean 6,000 kilometres to the east, Russian news agencies reported. "The targets that were set were reached. The tasks were fully carried out," the commander of Russia's strategic missile forces, Nikolai Solovtsov, was quoted as saying by Interfax. "The deployment of the RS-24 missiles, which have a detachable warhead,...

Georgian Foreign Minister Eka Tkeshelashvili said Wednesday that Russian forces were erecting a "Berlin Wall" as part of a campaign to cut off rebel regions from the rest of the country. Russia is trying to divide Abkhazia and South Ossetia from the rest of Georgia, she said in a speech to the International Institute for Strategic Studies think-tank in London. Tkeshelashvili said Russia was building a wall at Zugdidi, a city at the Abkhaz border. "Russia physically destroys physical links between the regions of Georgia," she said. "It is blowing up bridges in Gali region so that it is harder...

Poland, Georgia fates linked vs Russia--Kaczynski 26 Nov 2008 14:31:10 GMT Source: Reuters WARSAW, Nov 26 (Reuters) - Poland must stand firm with Georgia in its conflict with Russia because the two countries' fates are intertwined, the leader of Poland's main opposition party and twin brother of its president said on Wednesday. Jaroslaw Kaczynski was defending a decision by Polish President Lech Kaczynski to join Georgian leader Mikheil Saakashvili on a trip last Sunday to the de facto border between Georgia and breakaway South Ossetia, which is backed by Moscow. The two presidents' convoy came under fire in an incident...

Russian NO to Katyn massacre victims 25.11.2008 The Municipal Court in Moscow has dismissed a legal complaint filed by families of Polish officers murdered in Katyn in 1940 concerning the rehabilitation of the victims. Thus the October verdict of the lower Regional Court has been upheld. Russian lawyers representing the Katyn victims’ families have complained against proceedings of the Supreme Military Prosecutors Office which denied the rehabilitation of the murdered Polish officers on grounds of incomplete records contained in Russian military archives. Attorney Anna Stawicka said her clients would be filing the case with the European Human Rights Tribunal in...

"...It takes some doing to keep up with the financial meltdown that has been wrought in Russia by the misguided policies of the nation’s dictator, Vladimir Putin. At the end of the week, Reuters reported that the Putin regime had squandered a breathtaking $58 billion in September and October alone defending the value of the Russian ruble. Another $14 billion had been washed down the rathole of the regime’s efforts to bail out its corrupt and decrepit banking system, bringing the total to a stunning $72 billion before even considering the vast undisclosed amounts being spent to prop up the...

A disaster awaits us, one more devastating and detrimental to our existence than anything we have before encountered. While Obama sits in Chicago picking over the rancid carcass of the Clinton administration in hopes of finding another stooge to fill his cabinet, to our south a storm is brewing. The Russian Bear, now fully awakened from its decades long hibernation, is once again seeking to extend its influence and military might into the western hemisphere. The danger we face from the sinful alliance between the Russians and that criminal Chaves poses a threat not only to US hegemony in our...

On Nov. 6, in a long expository article, The New York Times informed us that, according to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Tbilisi had (a) initiated the hostilities and (b) done so with indiscriminate bombing of the South Ossetian capital without regard to civilian casualties--despite Georgian claims to the contrary. All sides consider the OSCE to be a highly dependable, impartial, monitoring body with long experience in the region. Whatever the BBC is pretending to report there, their subtext sneaks through loud and clear--Georgia invaded first. If Georgia invaded first, Russia was provoked, Russia could not...

Venezuela will keep buying weapons from Russia, China and Belarus in the next five years to build up “a sufficient force” to defend its oil reserves from countries like the United States, Operations Command chief Jesus Gonzalez said in an interview last week. “The enemies of Venezuela are all those who want to set up here. I don't doubt that the United States wants to come to look for oil. We have to be prepared: 'If you want peace, prepare for war,’'' said General Gonzalez, who oversees weapon procurement for the Venezuelan armed forces. Even with new president-elect Barack Obama,...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Despite objections by Russia, the outgoing head of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency urged President-elect Barack Obama on Wednesday to stick to the Bush administration's plans to place missile defenses in Eastern Europe. Dropping the planned installation of missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic "would severely hurt" U.S. ability to protect against Iran's growing missile force, said Lt. Gen. Henry Obering of the Air Force. It would also undermine U.S. leadership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which fears "an emerging threat from Iran that must be addressed," he told reporters in a teleconference. Obering,...

Moscow, Nov 12: Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has said Cuba is one of Russia's key partners in Latin America, while announcing a renewal of economic ties and the visit to Moscow next year of Cuban leader Raul Castro, EFE reported Wednesday. "Cuba has been and is one of our key partners in Latin America," Medvedev said after receiving Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque. Medvedev announced Russia's intention to increase its political and trade relations with Cuba, a country almost forgotten by the Kremlin in the decade after the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

MINSK, Belarus -- President Alexander Lukashenko is in talks with Moscow about placing in Belarus advanced Iskander missiles that could hit targets deep inside Europe. President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, left, who met Oct. 26 near Moscow with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev The talks raise the ante in the debate over a U.S. plan to deploy missile defense in Europe. They also complicate Western hopes for warmer ties with Belarus, which some in the U.S. and Europe hope could help to counterbalance an increasingly hostile Kremlin. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Lukashenko said that he would...

The Gathering Storm in the Caribbean   By Kathy ShaidleFrontPageMagazine.com | Thursday, November 13, 2008 Like Russian military invasions and a one-party government in Moscow, the Russo-Cuban alliance is one of those Cold War relics currently making a comeback. In sign of a reinvigorated alliance between the two former allies, the Kremlin announced on Tuesday that Cuban President Raul Castro will visit Russia in 2009. Castro’s Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, called the visit “another contribution to the development of ties” between Cuba and Russia. Those ties, he said, “are developing in a very dynamic way.”“Dynamic” is a fitting word...