Free Republic

The most terrifying aspect of the collapse of US power worldwide is the US’s indifferent response to it. In Europe, in Asia, in the Middle East and beyond, America’s most dangerous foes are engaging in aggression and brinkmanship unseen in decades. As Gordon Chang noted at a symposium in Los Angeles last month hosted by the David Horowitz Freedom Center, since President Barack Obama entered office in 2009, the Chinese have responded to his overtures of goodwill and appeasement with intensified aggression against the US’s Asian allies and against US warships. In 2012, China seized the Scarborough Shoal from the...

The president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, announced a 30% increase in the minimum wage and pensions to protect Venezuelan people from an inflation that reaches an annual rate of almost 60 %. “Now, on the occasion of May First, I have decided to increase the national minimum wage and pensions of 30 % to bring the salary and pension levels for a proper life demand of our people,” said the president in a meeting with union leaders in Caracas. Maduro blames for the rising prices of consumer products to an “economic war” of enemies of the socialist government, and often...

----Our enemies are gloating, and our allies are grimly deciding where to go from here.---- Barack Obama had a foreign policy for about five years, and now he has none. The first-term foreign policy’s assumptions went something like this. Obama was to assure the world that he was not George W. Bush. Whatever the latter was for, Obama was mostly against. Given that Bush had left office with polls similar to Harry Truman’s final numbers, this seemed to Obama a wise political approach. If Bush wanted garrison troops left in Iraq to secure the victory of the surge, Obama would...

Scores of opponents of President Nicolás Maduro are marching in Caracas, vowing to remain on the streets in defiance of a high court ruling limiting protests. […] Opponents say the ruling is the latest attempt by the socialist government to muzzle dissent amid widespread discontent with runaway inflation and record shortages. …

In June 2012, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez banned all sales of firearms and ammunition to civilians: With Chavez’s new gun-control law, only the Venezuelan army, police officials and certain groups such as security and private detective firms are allowed to buy firearms, and then only from state-owned weapons manufacturers and importers. …According to a press statement, the Chavez government initiated a gun amnesty of sorts in order to phase in the new law and encourage people to give up their weapons peacefully and without incident in order to avoid necessary action such as house-to-house searches and arrests for illegal gun...

A Russian intelligence-gathering ship has been operating off the U.S. East Coast and near the Gulf of Mexico for the past month, the Pentagon said Thursday. “We are aware that the Russian ships Viktor Leonov and Nikolay Chiker are currently operating in waters that are beyond U.S. territorial seas but near Cuba,” said Lt. Col. Tom Crosson, a Pentagon spokesman. “We respect the freedom of all nations, as reflected in international law, to operate military vessels beyond the territorial seas of other nations.” The Leonov is an intelligence gathering ship outfitted with high-tech electronic spying gear. The Chiker is an...

While much of the world has focused on the ongoing crisis in Ukraine, opposition forces in Venezuela continue to battle the brutal regime of Nicolas Maduro. While opposition forces battle for their basic human rights, the world, and in particular the government of the United States has remained largely silent. In February of this year, opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez was arrested by government officials on charges of "inciting unrest" for leading, at the time, peaceful protests against the policies of Nicolas Maduro and his ruling United Socialist Party. Despite the overriding belief that he was being held illegally, few world...

Fresh violence has erupted in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, between police and opponents of President Nicolas Maduro. Masked protestors burned effigies of the president after a rally called "Resurrection of Democracy". Police responded to petrol bombs in the Chacao district with tear gas and water cannon..... On Sunday the rally started with a "Via Crucis" march, mirroring Jesus's walk to crucifixion. "We're staying in the street until we get our country back," student leader Djamil Jassir, 22. told Reuters news agency. Another protestor, Naybeth Ramirez, said: "There are many who have already died and it's for them that we're here....

Happy Easter, Happy Passover. On this Good Friday, we mark the tenth anniversary of Mel's movie, and over the weekend we'll have something with a lighter touch. Caroline Glick, my old colleague from The Jerusalem Post, has a column using a very Steynian word, "The Disappearance of America's Will": The most terrifying aspect of the collapse of US power worldwide is the US's indifferent response to it. In Europe, in Asia, in the Middle East and beyond, America's most dangerous foes are engaging in aggression and brinkmanship unseen in decades.

A fiendishly clever theory from Peter Beinart. Remember “Operation Chaos”? That was Rush Limbaugh’s plan to have GOP voters wreak havoc on the Democratic nominating process in 2008. With McCain’s nomination already all but assured and Obama clinging to an apparently insurmountable lead over Hillary, Rush encouraged Republicans in states with open primaries (i.e. states where you don’t have to be registered as a party member to vote in that party’s primary) to cross over and vote for Hillary in the Democratic primary instead. The idea was to drag the primary process out for Democrats as long as possible, forcing...

Editor's note: This column was co-authored by Tim Graham. For its second season, the creators of the FX series "The Americans" have chosen a new source for insight into the Cold War during the Reagan years -- one Lt. Col. Oliver North. It's a dramatic reversal from the first season, and it has infuriated some hard leftists. The show began with the shocking promise from creator Joel Weisberg that the series' heroes would be KGB agents: "We're making them the sympathetic characters. I'd go so far as to say they're the heroes." It quickly became apparent that these characters could...

"...And Leo was never a card-carrying communist; he was a Democrat all his life...he went to some meetings (Communist Party USA) and was interested in what they had to say..." - Eileen Ryan Penn, mother of Sean Penn, on her husband and Sean's father, blacklisted Communist...meeting attender...Leo Penn

Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) went after fellow Republican Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) and President Barack Obama on This Week With George Stephanopoulos sunday morning, telling ABC’s Jonathan Karl that Obama’s “five years of weakness” had emboldened Putin and that the U.S. needed to defend its values across the globe, in contrast to Paul’s less-interventionist foreign policy. “I’m a big fan of Rand Paul,” Cruz said, “but I don’t agree with him on foreign policy. I think U.S. leadership is critical in the world. I agree with him that we should be very reluctant to deploy military force abroad. But...

It’s not often that a U.S. government agency gets caught red-handed abiding by its charter and performing its publicly-avowed and legislatively-approved duties. But last week the AP "broke" a long and breathless story from Havana that nailed the USAID (United States Agency for International Development) for just that. In their own words, "a secret plan aimed at undermining Cuba’s communist government," was courageously exposed by the AP’s intrepid Havana bureau. Such is the magnitude of the scandal that a red-faced and snarling Senator Patrick Leahy is now chairing hearings on Capitol Hill where he grills USAID director Rajiv Shah on...

The assignment editor of the Venezuelan TV news network Globovision has been kidnapped, according to her father. Nairobi Pinto was seized by two masked gunmen at her home in the capital Caracas, her father Luis said. He asked the kidnappers to "see sense" and release his daughter.

This is a bad morning. I was greeted by a headline in the New York Times that said Defense Secretary “Chuck Mullet” Hagel was planning to submit a budget to Congress to cut the size of the military to a level not seen since 1940, before the U.S. entered World War II. The article went on to say that the Pentagon realized that this would be an inadequate force for even very small wars and certainly would not allow the U.S. to police the world and keep control of contingencies like a North Korean attack on the South or a...

Jay-Z causes controversy by wearing gaudy medallion of 'Five Percent Nation' group who believe whites are 'wicked and weak' • The Brooklyn-born rapper wore a medallion representing the Five Percent Nation at a Nets game last week • One of the main tenets of the Nation of Islam offshoot is that white people are 'weak and wicked' and that black men hold the power of God • When asked if the medallion holds any importance to him, Jay-Z said: 'A little bit' • Jay-Z was spotted wearing the nation's symbol last year while giving radio interviews for his new album,...

Antonio Rivero, a former general who went into hiding in February to avoid arrest for his role in the protests that have rocked the government of President Nicolas Maduro. Moving into Spanish, he apologised for the subterfuge involved in our rendezvous. “These are bad times for our country and we are having to take extraordinary measures,” he said in his first interview since going underground. >snip The general is now a prominent figure in the opposition Popular Will party.

The Tower of David skyscraper boasts a helicopter landing pad, glorious views of the Avila mountain range, and large balconies for weekend barbecues. Yet a 45-storey skyscraper in the center of Venezuela's capital Caracas is no five-star hotel or swanky apartment block: it is a slum, probably the highest in the world. Dubbed the "Tower of David", the building was intended to be a shining new financial center but was abandoned around 1994 after the death of its developer - banker and horse-breeder David Brillembourg - and the collapse of the financial sector. Squatters invaded the huge concrete skeleton in...

Venezuela's Roman Catholic Church accused President Nicolas Maduro's government on Wednesday of "totalitarian" tendencies and "brutal repression" of demonstrators during two months of political unrest that has killed several dozen people..... Monsignor Diego Padron, who heads Veneuela's conference of bishops, said the "principal cause" of the crisis was the government's attempt to implant a blueprint for government that Chavez left behind called "the fatherland plan." "Within it they are hiding the promotion of a totalitarian-style system of government, putting in doubt its democratic credentials," he said, reading a church communique'. Though defending students' and others' right to protest, the Church...