Free Republic

The United States is scrutinizing developments in Poland, the U.S. trade czar said on Sunday when asked if Washington was concerned about the European Union's rule of law inquiry into Poland and Standard and Poor's cut to Warsaw's credit rating. "As a fellow democracy we do follow developments here very closely," U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman told reporters during his visit to Google Campus in Warsaw. "We certainly do follow it. As a democracy, we want to make sure that Poland's democracy continues to address the issues."

It’s official: the blizzard of ‘16 is historic. Like so many other things in the age of Obama.Of course history isn’t what it used to be. Historical revisionism, also known as “negationism” and  “historiography” in the old USSR, makes it easier to get your message out. For example, who could forget BHO’s “bio-bombing” of presidential history: In a June 28, 1985 speech Reagan called for a fairer tax code, one where a multi-millionaire did not have a lower tax rate than his secretary. Today, President Obama is calling for the same with the Buffett Rule. – Reason.com Butt as long...

Welcome to the first workday of 2016 and maybe the first day of World War III.The last two World Wars started when a couple of countries got into it and everyone else began to choose up sides.Over the weekend, the Saudi Arabian government executed 47 people including one senior Shiite cleric who had been an outspoken opponent of the Saudi rulers.  The Iranians immediately set fire to the Saudi Embassy in Tehran.  The Saudis immediately emptied its embassy of diplomats, cut off diplomatic ties, and ordered the Iranian mission out of Riyadh within 48 hours. As a reminder, the royal family...

What is it about worn-out socialist "worker paradises" like the old Soviet Union and Cuba that bring out the romantic in American radical politicians? After Vermont senator Bernie Sanders announced his run for president, Britain’s Guardian newspaper pawed through old archives in his home town of Burlington, Vermont where he served as mayor in the 1980s. They discovered that Sanders really did practice the socialist solidarity he preached about rhetorically. During Bernie's mayoral tenure, Burlington formed an alliance with the Soviet city of Yaroslavl, 160 miles northeast of Moscow. When in 1988 he married his wife, Jane, the mayor decided...

Terrorists use terrorism because it works, although not against everybody. The Soviet Union’s flaws were without number, but the effete, obsequious squeamishness that characterizes the current American approach to Islam was not among them. From 1986: The Jerusalem Post said the Soviet secret police last year secured the release of three kidnaped Soviet diplomats in Beirut by castrating a relative of a radical Lebanese Shia Muslim leader, sending him the severed organs and then shooting the relative in the head. The incident began when four Soviet diplomats were kidnaped last September by Muslim extremists who demanded that Moscow pressure the...

In the late 1970s, in the American state of Connecticut, a hockey official got fired, took out a $9,000 cash advance on his credit card and convinced an oil company to help him launch a sports network called ESPN. By contrast, Russia’s new 24-hour sports network had a quintessentially Russian origin: Kremlin Decree Number 365. President Vladimir Putin signed that decree in mid-July, laying the groundwork for a dedicated federal sports network called Match TV. Putin hailed the network as a way to display “spectacular competition” and “popularize a healthy way of life.” The network launched this week, free of...

US Navy say "light in the West Coast sky" was a Trident II (D5) missile test at sea from the submarine "Kentucky" www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xLmB81v-BI

Late in September, we brought you "US Readies Battle Plans For Baltic War With Russia" in which we described a series of thought experiments undertaken by The Pentagon in an effort to determine what the likely outcome would be should something go horribly "wrong" on the way to landing the US in a shooting war with Russia in the Balkans. The results of those thought experiments were not encouraging.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter on Saturday accused Russia of endangering world order, citing its incursions in Ukraine and loose talk about nuclear weapons, and said the U.S. defense establishment is searching for creative ways to deter Russian aggressive and protect U.S. allies. [...] Carter said Russia is undertaking "challenging activities" at sea, in the air, in space and in cyberspace. "Most disturbing, Moscow's nuclear saber-rattling raises questions about Russian leaders' commitment to strategic stability, their respect for norms against the use of nuclear weapons, and whether they respect the profound caution nuclear-age leaders showed with regard to the brandishing of...

History, Identity and Holodomor Denial: Russia’s continued assault on Ukraine Holodomor Memorial in Washington D.C. as final touches are made in preparation for its official opening on November 7. (State Dept./D.A. Peterson) 2015/11/07 • Analysis & Opinion, History, News, Op-ed On Saturday November 7, a long-awaited memorial to a little-known modern genocide will be dedicated in Washington D.C. It will be accompanied by an exhibit at Union Station aimed at raising awareness among Americans of what Ukrainians call the Holodomor, literally “death by hunger,” an engineered famine which took the lives of anywhere from 4 to 10 million Ukrainians in...

Within weeks many of you will be looking across just hundreds of feet of water at some of the most modern technology ever invented in America. Unfortunately, it is on Soviet ships. - Secretary of the Navy John Lehman, May 25, 1983, to graduating class at Annapolis . ... Almost 70 percent of the present Soviet merchant fleet has been built outside the Soviet Union. This has released Soviet shipyards and materials for Soviet naval construction. All diesel engines in Soviet ships use a technology originating outside the Soviet Union. The Soviets provided 80 percent of the supplies for the...

How a Soviet mole in FDR's inner circle triggered Pearl Harbor – and its dire relevancy to our conflict today. ... On December 7, 1941, 353 Japanese aircraft delivered a shocking blow .. Nearly seven years later, Harry Dexter White, a senior official in the Roosevelt Administration, appeared to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities . Numerous witnesses, including Whittaker Chambers and Elizabeth Bentley, had implicated White in involvement with the Communist Party and the Soviet Union. ... Harry Dexter White, a Harvard PhD and Assistant Treasury Secretary, had played a major role in creating the World Bank...

Cuban military operatives reportedly have been spotted in Syria, where sources believe they are advising President Bashar al-Assad’s soldiers and may be preparing to man Russian-made tanks to aid Damascus in fighting rebel forces backed by the U.S. Cuban paramilitary and special forces units are on the ground in Syria, citing evidence from intelligence reports. Cuban troops may have been training in Russia and may have arrived in Syria on Russian planes.

As Europe seeks to diversify its sources of natural gas as an alternative to the politically sensitive Russian supply, a massive off-shore gas source in the Mediterranean is ready for exploration and drilling. There are game-changing stakes at play. Unfortunately, the Turkish leadership has threatened to use force to stop this from happening. Last October, Turkey sent the BARBAROS, its geophysics exploration ship, accompanied by naval vessels, into the Cypriot Exclusive Economic Zone waters. In November 2014, Turkish naval commander Admiral Bülent Bostanoğlu threatened the use of force against Greece, while speaking on board a Turkish naval corvette in Greek...

America's power is being tested to a greater extent, than in the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1961. Russia is attacking the Al-Qaeda linked terrorist organization, the Free Syrian Army, which is a so-called ally of America. China indicated that it will join the military strikes against the anti-Assad forces, because China considers Assad as an ally: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/100915-774990-china-joining-russia-to-humiliate-us-weakened-by-obama.htm China is now ready to fight to defend its unilateral control of the Spratley Islands in the South China Sea. Does America have enough military power to defeat a combined force of Russia and China?

American Decline: Chinese forces head to Syria to join with Russia in filling Obama's power vacuum and purportedly fight the Islamic State. A false move involving NATO member Turkey could mean world war. Russian and Chinese military sources now confirm that Chinese warships are en route to the Middle East to get in on some of the action of humiliating the U.S. In just a week and a half, Moscow has upended the dynamics of power in the Mideast by taking on the role that President Obama relinquished: acting like a superpower in a regional conflict that has implications extending...

When we read the papers or turn on the television (for those of us who have television), hardly a day or two passes by without the mention of new (or ongoing) actions by the Chinese government in a military capacity. Within the past year alone, China has extended her reach steadily beyond her own territorial waters and nearby sea-lanes. She has participated in numerous exercises, some of them jointly with foreign nations. Anyone can clearly witness her aggressive, outwardly expanding policies regarding territory and flexing her muscle. The most recent maneuver comes on the heels of the Russian actions in...

BEIRUT/MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia bombed Syria for a third day on Friday, mainly hitting areas held by rival insurgent groups rather than the Islamic State fighters it said it was targeting and drawing an increasingly angry response from the West. The U.S.-led coalition that is waging its own air war against Islamic State called on the Russians to halt strikes on targets other than Islamic State. "We call on the Russian Federation to immediately cease its attacks on the Syrian opposition and civilians and to focus its efforts on fighting ISIL," said the coalition, which includes the United States, major...

Galina Timchenko recalls how proud she felt when the Russian news website she edited reached 3 million users per day. When she reported the figures to the website’s owner, he was horrified. “At that moment something snapped inside and I understood that this is the end, because there cannot be such an influential resource that is not controlled by the Kremlin,” Timchenko said. A month later, she was fired and a more Kremlin-friendly editor was brought in to run the website, Lenta.ru. The shakeup at Lenta.ru last year came as the government was pushing through a slew of new laws...

When Osama bin Laden was banished from Sudan in 1996, he left the country in a rented Soviet jet — an aged and antique Tupolev flown by a Russian pilot he did not trust. With him were a few bodyguards, his military commander, Saif al-Adel, and two sons named Sa’ad and Omar — both young men in their late teens. Although it was the corrupt Islamic government of Sudan that had robbed Osama bin Laden of much of his vast personal wealth, he blamed America for his misfortunes, according to Pulitzer Prize-winner Lawrence Wright. “He held America responsible for the...