Free Republic

ALMATY (Reuters) - NATO member Turkey signed up on Friday to became a "dialogue partner" of a security bloc dominated by China and Russia, and declared that its destiny is in Asia. "This is really a historic day for us," Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said in Kazakhstan's commercial capital Almaty after signing a memorandum of understanding with Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Secretary General Dmitry Mezentsev. "Now, with this choice, Turkey is declaring that our destiny is the same as the destiny of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) countries." China, Russia and four Central Asian nations - Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and...

After months of fierce negotiations prior to President Xi Jinping’s Moscow visit (March 22-24) China and Russian signed an agreement on supplying 24 Russian Su-35 fighter jets to China and for the joint construction of four Lada-class diesel submarines. The purchases are China’s most significant from Russia in the past 10 years, the Interfax news agency reports, and are intended to provide a basis for future bilateral military cooperation. [Editor’s Note: Su-35 is Russia’s most advanced 4th generation multipurpose fighter jet. The Lada-class submarine specializes in anti-submarine defense and conducting independent missions against enemy subs and ships in coastal, narrow...

... Griffin: I think you’re trying to tell us something… to this country. Bezmenov: Oh yes. I am trying to tell you that it has to be stopped, unless you want to end up in [a] gulag system, and enjoy all the advantages of socialist equality, working for free, catching fleas on your body, sleeping on planks of plywood, in Alaska this time, I guess. That’s where Americans will belong unless they will wake up, of course, and force their government to stop aiding Soviet fascism. ...

Three Numbers In the Soviet Union preparations begin for the fiftieth anniversary of the communist revolution; in particular, a large collective "book epic" is conceived. The idea has been talked about in the Secretariat of the Union of Soviet Writers with Fedin, Twardowski, Tikhonov, Surkov Gribachev, etc., and, of course, the idea will be implemented. Not even one "book epic", probably, will be created. We decided to offer the authors of this undertaking three numbers that will be useful for any "book epic." NUMBER ONE It is a question of human losses in the revolutionary transformation of Russia. Ninety-plus years...

China continued moving tanks and armored vehicles and flying flights near North Korea this week as part of a military buildup in the northeastern part of the country that U.S. officials say is related to the crisis with North Korea. The Obama administration, meanwhile, sought to play down the Chinese military buildup along the border with Beijing’s fraternal communist ally despite the growing danger of conflict following unprecedented threats by Pyongyang to attack the United States and South Korea with nuclear weapons. Officials said one key military unit involved in the mobilization is the 190th Mechanized Infantry Brigade based in...

Russia The mentality of Russian-Soviet leadership is much different than that of their Western counterparts. The Soviets are long range strategists and in spite of any surface changes in leadership, they always maintain continuity in their long-term goal and objective. American politicians, on the other hand, think and operate based on short-term goals. In general, American politicians are so obsessed with personnel career objectives that they don’t focus much of their concern on what might happen in the future after their term of office is over. In March 1994, just before his death, Richard Nixon said, "Those who suggest that...

Russian President Vladimir Putin has enlisted Hollywood action man Steven Seagal to help him promote a return to Soviet-era fitness. The unlikely pair opened a new martial arts center outside Moscow on Wednesday, reports Reuters, to kick off Putin’s attempt to bring back a mass physical training program first introduced in the 1930s under Joseph Stalin. The revival of the GTO system (an acronym in Russian which translates as “Ready for Work and Defense”) could bring major benefits to the country, said Putin, according to a transcript published on the Kremlin’s official website: ... “Putin and Seagal have long been...

Somewhere in the first half of Moscow on the Hudson, a bedraggled Robin Williams huddles on the luxurious first floor of Bloomingdale's clamoring in an unconvincing Russian accent that he wants to defect. Standing between him and a furious KGB officer is a minimum wage store security guard in a red blazer. The KGB officer hisses that he protests the defection the name of the Soviet Union. The security guard retorts that his own jurisdiction runs "from Style Boutique, through Denim Den, all the way up to Personal Fragrances." And the Soviet Union and the KGB have no jurisdiction in...

Have we waged the wrong war against North Korea? Then, can our new President Park Geun-hye redirect our strategy and finish that feral beast once and for all? These are complicated questions but the ghost of one “complicated simple” man may beg to answer from his grave: Ronald Reagan, the 40th president of the United States who is credited with giving the Soviet Union a final push toward the brink of collapse during his 1981-1989 reign.

Below is my translation of an interview I found very interesting with former Soviet dissident and political prisoner Vladimir Bukovsky by Alessandra Nucci, published in the December 2012 issue of the Italian periodical Radici Cristiane. What he says provides a very useful background to understand what lies behind the European Union project and its similarities with the Soviet Union, a subject on which Bukovsky has written a book. Vladimir Bukovsky, 70, is one of the most famous ex-political prisoners of the former Soviet Union. In total he spent twelve years of internment, including prisons, labour camps and psychiatric hospitals, before...

Ramón Mercader from Barcelona killed Trotsky with an ice axe in Mexico City. On 20th August 1940, the exiled Leon Trotsky was fatally wounded at his home in a suburb of Mexico City when an ice axe was driven into his skull. He cried out to his guards as they burst into his study, ‘Don’t kill him! He must talk.’ Despite struggling fiercely, and even managing to bite the hand of his assassin, Trotsky died the next day, and the man who wielded the murder weapon was sentenced to 20 years in prison. He insisted throughout his trial and his...

Moscow pundits gave a warm welcome to John Kerry on Tuesday, as U.S. senators were expected to confirm their veteran colleague as secretary of state. But they warned that U.S.-Russian relations were set for a potentially bumpy ride during President Barack Obama's second term, contrasting with the "reset" in relations that marked the first. Kerry, who has been Democratic senator for Massachusetts since 1985, ran for president in 2004, and has chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee since 2009, is widely seen as a preferred candidate for both Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and President Vladimir Putin. "He is a...

With dark shadows of uncertainty descending upon the hearts of so many at the conclusion of 2012, one can only hope 2013 will be a year of promise. But even in these dark days, miracles do still happen, especially when people are willing to roll up their sleeves for the cause of freedom. This present darkness has its roots in our nation's moral decline, and the further we get from our moral center, the worse off we are as a people -- and a nation. It has taken some time to get where we are today. Over the years, conservatives...

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has reiterated his stance against the legalization of keeping and bearing arms in Russia, following the US school shooting which claimed the lives of 20 children and six adults. “It’s a horrible tragedy, immeasurable pain. I totally agree with those who are against free arms circulation. This is my principled position,” Medvedev wrote on his Facebook page. The Russian Prime Minister expressed his condolences on the Friday tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut, adding that “this monstrous crime cannot be justified.” “Our thoughts are with the families of the killed children,” Medvedev said. Earlier in December, the head...

Putin has called for Communist leader Vladimir Lenin's body to be preserved in its mausoleum on Red Square, comparing the embalmed body of the founder of the Soviet state to the relics of saints. "Many are saying that having Lenin's Mausoleum runs counter to the tradition. But what runs counter to tradition?" Putin told a meeting with celebrities who campaigned for him in the March 2012 presidential election, according to the Kremlin website. "Just go to Kiev Pechersk Lavra or check out Pskov Monastery or Mount Athos. You'll see the relics of saints there." Putin cited almost word-for-word the present-day...

Russia’s Vladimir Putin has declared war on the Internet, and not just within his country’s own borders. Putin’s war may be coming soon to a laptop or smart phone near you. For years we’ve been told by Putin’s apologists that his moves against traditional media didn’t matter because it was impossible to strangle Russia’s feisty Internet. But for a KGB dictator, “impossible” is a meaningless term. Putin’s campaign consists of a three-part pincer movement, and now that he has essentially been made “president for life”, he is pursuing it with greatly renewed vigor. … Throughout Putin’s first twelve years in...

Revealed: How the U.S. planned to blow up the MOON with a nuclear bomb to win Cold War bragging rights over Soviet Union - Scientists were hoping for giant flash on the moon that would intimidate the Soviet Union - Aim of mission was to launch the nuke by 1959 - Plan was later scrapped due to possible danger to people on Earth It may sound like a plot straight out of a science fiction novel, but a U.S. mission to blow up the moon with a nuke was very real in the 1950s. At the height of the space...

The six contradictions of socialism in the United States of America: •America is capitalist and greedy – yet half of the population is subsidized. •Half of the population is subsidized – yet they think they are victims. •They think they are victims – yet their representatives run the government. •Their representatives run the government – yet the poor keep getting poorer. •The poor keep getting poorer – yet they have things that people in other countries only dream about. •They have things that people in other countries only dream about – yet they want America to be more like those...

The Weirdest Monuments Of The Communist Era That Are Still Standing After the fall of the Soviet Union, many Communist statues and sculptures were destroyed, while others were moved to statue parks or museums. But many of them remained in the same place for the last 20 years, while the former Soviet areas were transformed into modern countries. Here are thirteen of the most incredible ones. Click to enlarge images below. 1. Lenin's giant head, Ulan-Ude, Republic of Buryatia, Russia The 42 ton, 25 foot tall head of former Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin is standing in Ulan-Ude. Built in 1970,...

A woman throws icons away in a propaganda poster which states, "The Bright Light of Science Has Proven That There Is No God." Denver, Colo., Oct 19, 2012 / 05:43 pm (CNA).- Some 40 Soviet propaganda posters against Christianity will soon be displayed at Denver’s Catholic cathedral as part of an exhibit dedicated to religious liberty. “These posters remind us that societies can turn very deadly when you have a kind of radical secularism which manifests in an anti-Christian attitude … you see it in all its ugliness through the lens of these posters,� Father Doug Grandon told CNA...

Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev meets with President Obama at the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington in April 2010. (AP Photo/File) (CNSNews.com) – When American voters go to the polls next month, among those observing the election will be monitors from four countries judged by the veteran democracy watchdog Freedom House as “not free” and another six it regards as “partly free.”The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) observers will “assess these elections for compliance with international obligations and standards for democratic elections.”They will also look into voter-identification and other laws which critics have labeled “racially discriminatory.”In a...

President Vladimir Putin took a leading role in the latest tests of Russia's strategic nuclear arsenal, the most comprehensive since the 1991 Soviet collapse, the Kremlin said on Saturday. The exercises, held mostly on Friday, featured prominently in news reports on state television which seemed aimed to show Russians and the world that Putin is the hands-on chief of a resurgent power. Tests involving command systems and all three components of the nuclear "triad" - land and sea-launched long-range nuclear missiles and strategic bombers - were conducted "under the personal leadership of Vladimir Putin", the Kremlin said. An RS-12M Topol...

On October 28, 2012 Ukraine will hold their first democratic parliamentary elections since agreeing to new rules in November 2011, a significant achievement in reforming the electoral process. The current government has made headlines during the past year, including in the U.S., because it is going through a complicated reform process. Ukraine is a place where economic freedom and embrace of democracy are still the exceptions and not the rule, and the current government needs the support of the West. However, recent events could make it easy for the U.S. to take the wrong angle and accidentally push the country...

Man who volunteered for Auschwitz among war heroes Poland searching for in mass grave WARSAW, Poland - It could hardly have been a riskier mission: infiltrate Auschwitz to chronicle Nazi atrocities. Witold Pilecki survived nearly three years as an inmate in the death camp, managing to smuggle out word of executions before making a daring escape. But the Polish resistance hero was crushed by the post-war communist regime — tried on trumped-up charges and executed. Six decades on, Poland hopes Pilecki's remains will be identified among the entangled skeletons and shattered skulls of resistance fighters being excavated from a mass...

I’m a libertarian in part because I see a false choice offered by the political left and right: government control of the economy -- or government control of our personal lives. People on both sides think of themselves as freedom lovers. The left thinks government can lessen income inequality. The right thinks government can make Americans more virtuous. I say we’re best off if neither side attempts to advance its agenda via government. Let both argue about things like drug use and poverty, but let no one be coerced by government unless he steals or attacks someone. Beyond the small...

When a biographer sets out to understand a president, he naturally begins with mentors, the people who helped shape his character, career and worldview, notes author Paul Kengor. But when it comes to explaining Barack Obama, the establishment media has shown virtually no interest in delving into the life of the man the president himself held up as a guiding and affirming voice at every major point in his life.

Russia Test Fires new ICBM Friday, 08 June 2012 Russian military announced Thursday they have successfully test-fired a new version of the Topol-M series codenamed RS-12M. The rocket, an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), was fired from a military base in southeast Russia, Interfax news agency quoted military sources as saying. The missile hit its target in Kazakhstan republic in central Asia precisely. The new generation of the Topol-M family aims to counter the US-developed missile shield system being deployed in Western countries. It will be the mainstay of the Russian Strategic Missile Troops, according to the report.

Mo‘ynaq – Graveyard of Ships in the Desert Many have visited an abandoned city and wondered what catastrophic event could have caused such an exodus from a metropolis once so evidently thriving. Yet these cities are usually hundreds if not thousands of years old, the everyday clamor and cry of civilization just an echo. Visit Mo'ynaq in Uzbekistan, however, and you can see apocalypse right here, right now. The Soviet era sign still welcomes people to the city. Yet there are few visitors who stay more than a few hours. They all leave after they have done looking at what...

- FrontPage Magazine - http://frontpagemag.com - Russia Wants Obama Re-ElectedPosted By David Meir-Levi On May 11, 2012 @ 12:46 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | No Comments Well, now we know what the “hot mic” incident was all about. The Wall Street Journal’s “Moscow Raises Alarm over Missile-Defense Plan for Europe” (Friday, May 4, 2012), makes the connection.At an international conference on Thursday, May 3, organized at Russia’s initiative, the Russian delegates showed computer-generated images of a hypothetical Russian pre-emptive missile attack on segments of a missile defense shield and early warning system that the US and NATO want to put...

  This is just downright amazing and frankly I'm surprised this video slipped under the radar. Here, a man who was born and lived for decades in the Soviet Union successfully converts an Occupier to Capitalism, to understand Israel's side of the Middle East conflict, and to pro-American ideals all within a 15 minute time frame. He even thanks the man afterwards. Give props where they're due, at least the Occupier was willing to hear the man out without screaming in his face, unlike almost every single one of them.  The video was shot during the May Day protests in...

School children, businesses, clergy, politicians and even the United States military soon will honor the birthday of Vladimir Lenin, founder of the Soviet Union. Of course, they will call it "Earth Day."

The Obama Record: When Vladimir I. Lenin sought to remake Russian society into a "proletariats' paradise," he targeted three sectors for control: health care, banking and education. Sound familiar? Of these three, however, Lenin viewed socialized medicine as the "keystone" to building his socialist utopia. The Bolshevik leader told the Russian people everybody would be able to afford going to the doctor, not just the "greedy rich." He also claimed centralized control of the medical industry would "reduce costs" and end the "waste" from "unnecessary duplication and parallelism" in a competitive market. In 1918, the USSR became the first nation...

The American Spectator reports on I.F. Stone, charging as others have that he was an agent -- at least for a time -- of the Soviet Union: < SNIP> But we now know that Stone was not always so honest. At one time, he was a paid Soviet agent. In their latest work, published by Yale University Press, historians John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev conclude that Stone was a "Soviet spy." In an article excerpted from the book and published in the April 2009 online version of Commentary magazine, they wrote: "To put it plainly, from 1936...

Russia announces plans for zombie gun, prepare your bunkers Memories of the cold war have been raised from the dead this week with the confirmation from Russian officials they are testing an energy gun that would essentially turn people into zombies. The "psychotronic" gun would not only inflict pain but also attack the central nervous system leaving enemies scrambled. The weapon, which is said to use electromagnetic radiation, was announced by Russian defense minister Anatoly Serdyukov and was confirmed by Russian Prime Minister and President-elect Vladimir Putin. It has apparently in some form been tested for crowd control. If this...

President Obama just gave the world a glimpse into his future foreign policy plans this week, should he win a second term. On tap for Obama II: more faith in our adversaries, more betrayal of our traditional allies and more unilateral indulgence in nuclear abolition fantasies. Monday, President Obama told Russian President Medvedev that “This is my last election. After my election, I have more flexibility.” Medvedev responded that he would dutifully report that tidbit to Vladimir Putin back in the Kremlin. The men apparently did not realize their discussion was being caught by a live microphone. Given that the...

Gallery: Familiar-yet-alien Soviet arcade games While playing Centipede (don't judge) at my local mall in the '80s, it never occurred to me that somewhere behind the soon-to-fall Iron Curtain there would be some punk playing the Soviet version of arcade games as well. Hell yeah they were! Now, thanks to two nostalgic Muscovites who remembered their days of playing "Sea Battle," there is an entire museum full of these Soviet-era games. The story of the Museum of Soviet Arcade Machines is so cool we couldn't make this up if we tried. Let's talk about the games first. Soviet classics Sea...

Vladimir Putin, Russia’s current prime minister and future president, has shown a strong interest in Asian affairs. In his second term, Putin would undoubtedly like to maintain good ties with China, consolidate Moscow’s first-among-equals status in Central Asia, manage the regional repercussions of the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan, prevent a war or major crisis in the Koreas, and deepen Russia’s integration into East Asia’s more dynamic and prosperous economic networks. At the same time, Putin is eager to strengthen Russia’s position in Europe. It’s a big to-do list, but Russia has already succeeded in raising its profile in Asia...

For the past four years, Vladimir Putin, Russia’s prime minister, and his sidekick Dmitry Medvedev, who has the nominal post of president, have been engaged in a huge propaganda operation to fool Russians and the West. With much fanfare, they have pretended to reform their benighted land. Mr Medvedev denounced corruption, and they pretended to be friends with the West, particularly through a warming of their relations with the U.S. in 2009. But this has been a sham to conceal the truth: that Russia is shamefully misruled. The ruling former KGB regime has squandered tens of billions of pounds and...

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin warned against military intervention in Syria or an attack on Iran in scathing criticism of the West on Monday as he laid out his foreign policy priorities less than a week before Russia's presidential election.

Russia needs to launch a major military buildup to prepare for life in a dangerous world where international law is breaking down, the West feels free to intervene in sovereign countries, and rivals could invade Russia to seize its rich trove of natural resources, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has warned. In his fifth programmatic article detailing what he will do if he wins a new six-year presidential term in elections that are now less than two weeks off, Mr. Putin pledged, among other things, the biggest rearmament program in Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Over the next...

Putin Pledges 400 ICBMs for Russia in Ten Years Russia’s armed forces will receive over 400 modern intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), more than 100 military spacecraft and over 2,300 new tanks within the next ten years, Prime Minister and presidential candidate Vladimir Putin said. Earlier media voiced fears that by 2020, Russia’ ICBM arsenal could reduce by more than half as over 400 missiles would go beyond their maximum service life without timely replacement. “Within the next decade, the armed forces will receive more than 400 modern ground- and sea-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, eight ballistic missile submarines, about 20 general...

Within days of the defeat of Germany in World War II, Winston Churchill ordered his war cabinet to draw up contingency plans for an offensive against Stalin that would lead to ``the elimination of Russia'', according to top secret British documents. The resulting battle plan included the use of up to 100,000 German troops to back up half a million British and American soldiers attacking through northern Germany. It assumed that Stalin would invade Turkey, Greece, Norway and the oilfields of Iraq and Iran in retaliation and launch extensive sabotage operations in France and the Low Countries. A 29-page report, ...

In the thick of the Cold War, the Soviet Union built an immense vessel to carry their troops across the seas and into Western Europe. Equipped with nuclear warheads and able to blast across the sea at 340 mph, the Lun-class Ekranoplane; part plane, part boat, and part hovercraft — is a Ground Effect Vehicle (GEV). A GEV takes advantage of an aeronautical effect that allows it to lift off with an immense amount of weight, but limits its flight to 16 feet above the waves. Its altitude can never be greater than the length of the wings. Think of...

In the increasingly rough Republican campaign, no candidate has wrapped himself in the mantle of Ronald Reagan more often than Newt Gingrich. “I worked with President Reagan to change things in Washington,” “we helped defeat the Soviet empire,” and “I helped lead the effort to defeat Communism in the Congress” are typical claims by the former speaker of the House. The claims are misleading at best. In the Reagan years I was an assistant secretary of state — Mr. Gingrich voted with the president regularly, but equally often spewed insulting rhetoric at Reagan, his top aides, and his policies to...

It appears that Barack Obama has again ignored the rule of law by signing a defense appropriations bill that prohibits him sharing vital United States leading-edge strategic US missile technology with Russia, yet he has told both houses of Congress that he plans to share the US missile technology anyway. Why is this important? Because it goes light-years beyond partisan politics and into an area where our national defense will be put at unreasonable risk. It is believed that the Russians will pass this technology onto China, Iran and North Korea. I find it bitterly ironic that this president pushes...

Last weekend’s massive protest in Moscow’s Prospekt Sakharova will result in a new Soviet-style Russia not an Arab Spring-like revolution. The West had better beware because the Russian bear is coming out of hibernation. Twenty years ago this month the Soviet Union crumbled and from those ashes rose a promising Russian democratic republic. But Soviet-era corruption reared its ugly head in Russia’s December 4th parliamentary elections. That corruption sparked numerous protests, calls for new elections and earned Russia’s prime minister an accusatory message from a U.S. senator. Senator John McCain​ (R-AZ) tweeted Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin a satirical message....

In happier times Russian university students could expect a bright future as part of the country’s elite. Instead the country is experiencing a serious brain drain as graduates head abroad, and many other young people dream of doing so: 40 percent, according to one survey. It is of serious concern to the authorities in the run-up to parliamentary elections on December 4. One first year maths student at Moscow State University said if she continued her studies she would probably go abroad, because she did not believe the government was putting enough money into science development. The loss of more...

As prime minister for the past four years, Vladimir Putin never really went away. But his looming reincarnation as the all-powerful, executive president of Russia – the country's "paramount leader" in Chinese parlance – poses a stark challenge for which the US, Britain and other beleaguered western powers seem ill-prepared. As president, potentially until 2024, Putin has one overriding objective: the creation of a third, post-tsarist, post-Soviet Russian empire.

Russia has turned on a new incoming missile early warning system in its westernmost region in response to US plans for a missile shield in Europe. President Dmitry Medvedev ordered the system to be activated on a visit to the radar unit in Kaliningrad, a Baltic region bordering EU countries. The unit is equipped with the new Voronezh-DM radar system. Mr Medvedev has warned Russian missiles could be deployed on the EU's borders if the shield is installed. Washington wants an anti-missile shield ready by 2020, arguing that it is necessary to provide protection from the potential missile threat posed...

It’s All about Local Politics in 2012 By Norma Zager “All politics is local.” Tip O‘Neill The year of the 2012 election has officially begun. I am drawn to the quote from the former Speaker of the House. I take “local” to mean pertaining to self-interest. Now, we in America will be forced to decide what is in our best interests. To stay on our current path or head in a new direction that will lead to a more prosperous and stronger America. Of course there are those whom would argue the point with me rather voraciously. For what is...