Free Republic

In my view, the most prominent feature of Russia’s decline has little to do with its struggling economy, runaway corruption, and poor governance; or even with its alarming demographic trends. It is about the process of re-Stalinization, which has dramatically defined and perpetrated the decay of Russian societal identity. Never before have such anti-Western, Great Power sentiments been as widespread in Russia as they are today. Despite his enormous crimes, for the majority of Russian people, Joseph Stalin represents the ultimate embodiment of these ideas. [1] Documentaries and feature films about Stalin and his era have flooded Russian screens. Bookstores...

David Smock, the longtime Agape Boarding School doctor in southwest Missouri, has been charged with four new child sex crimes, two of which involve an alleged second male victim. The four charges were filed Tuesday in Cedar County, according to an online court docket. Those new counts are in addition to the eight sex crimes filed in Cedar County against the Stockton doctor by the state Attorney General’s office in December. He also faces three similar charges in Greene County. All 15 counts against Smock are felonies. Smock, 57, was arrested in Arkansas in late December and has been held...

United Nations (United States) (AFP) – It was arguably the ultimate illustration of UN powerlessness: an emergency Security Council meeting designed to avoid war rendered redundant by Russia's invasion of Ukraine just minutes after the late-night session began. As UN chief Antonio Guterres and member state after member state on the 15-country council urged Vladimir Putin to step back from the brink, the Russian leader was already sending his troops across the border. The ambassadors of the United States, Britain, France and others reading pre-prepared speeches calling for Putin to pursue diplomacy seemed unaware of what journalists watching the proceedings...

Once again, Russian President Vladimir Putin has weighed in on the history of World War II. Speaking on Dec. 20 at an informal summit of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), he appeared to blame Poland for the outbreak of the war while downplaying if not altogether denying Soviet responsibility. “It was them,” he said, “who, while pursuing their mercenary and exorbitantly overgrown ambitions, laid their people, the Polish people, open to attack from Germany’s military machine, and, moreover, generally contributed to the beginning of the Second World War.” Putin’s remarks have triggered angry rebuttals. The Polish Foreign Ministry decried...

Experts in, and observers of, the Ukrainian crisis now universally agree that the life of President Volodymyr Zelensky is in danger and that he could be executed by Russian invaders soon. As Russian forces attacked infrastructure and headed for government buildings in Kiev Thursday morning, two prominent Ukrainians emailed Newsmax to voice concern for Zelenskyy. "They can try to kill or capture him," Dr. Violeta Moskalu, founding CEO of Global Ukraine, told us flatly.

Martell Williams and his attorney told reporters on Monday that the Waukegan teen was only let go after his sister produced a photo proving that he had an ironclad alibi for the time of shooting because he was taking part in a basketball game 20 miles away from the crime scene. 'I was scared. I just wanted to go home,' Williams said of his harrowing ordeal last week, reported CBS Chicago. Williams, flanked by his family and his attorney Kevin O'Conner, said that on February 16, he was sitting in class at Waukegan High School, where he is a freshman,...

Explanation: Beta Cygni is a single bright star to the naked eye. About 420 light-years away it marks the foot of the Northern Cross, famous asterism in the constellation Cygnus. But a view through the eyepiece of a small telescope will transform it into a beautiful double star, a treasure of the night sky in blue and gold. Beta Cygni is also known as Albireo, designated Albireo AB to indicate its two bright component stars. Their visually striking color difference is illustrated in this telescopic snapshot, along with their associated visible spectrum of starlight shown in insets to the right....

It's a video. No, I won't transcribe it for you and I don't care if you hate videos. Don't be a dick; just don't click.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden hit back Thursday against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, unleashing robust new sanctions, ordering the deployment of thousands of additional troops to NATO ally Germany and declaring that America would stand up to Russia's Vladimir Putin. He also acknowledged that the invasion -- and efforts to thwart Putin -- will have a cost for Americans. But he sought to reassure that the economic pain that may come with rising energy prices will be short lived in the U.S. As for the Russian president, Biden said, “He’s going to test the resolve of the West to...

Seventh Week in Ordinary Time Mark 9:41-50 Friends, in our Gospel, Jesus speaks, with incredible bluntness, about cutting off one’s hand and foot and plucking out one’s own eye. If these things are a block to your salvation, get rid of them, for it is better to enter life maimed than to enter Gehenna with all of your limbs and members. The hand is the organ by which we reach out and grasp things. The soul is meant for union with God, but instead we have reached out to creatures, grasping at finite things with all of our energies. The...

@VideoMattPresents shares a video of how @Joe Biden White House speaker Jen Psaki was lying through her teeth when she said the"Safe Smoke Kits" didn’t have in it Free Crack Pipes & Heroin needles. Video doesn’t say where they are made. But I will bet they are Made in ChYna. He paid $1.2 billion to Beijing for his free Covid tests. I’ll bet the Crack & Meth pipes were made there too. ...

A Republican Party primary will take place on March 1, 2022, in Texas' 32nd Congressional District to determine which Republican candidate will run in the district's general election on November 8, 2022.

Surveillance video captured the shocking moment when a thief kneeled next to an elderly churchgoer and prayed with her while an accomplice went through her wallet, later using her credit cards on a $7,000 shopping spree at Sam's Club. Linda Morrow, 78, arrived early for the 6.30pm service at Hilldale Baptist Church in Clarksville, Tennessee on February 9. The victim was sitting in the mostly empty pews when a younger woman with waist-long dreadlocks sat in front of her and started a conversation. Video shows her kneeling down next to the woman, holding her hands and bowing her head in...

If you hadn’t heard, Democrats and “the experts” have decided it’s time to return all the things they took from you. For your own good. Well, some of it. At least for a little while. President Biden’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky said Wednesday (surely after careful consideration of “The Science”) that Americans have earned a treat. “We want to give people a break from things like mask-wearing when these [Covid hospitalization] metrics are better,” she said, “and then have the ability to reach for them again should things worsen.” That same day, Saint Anthony Fauci...

Russian President Vladimir Putin has spelled out a nationalist rationale for his country’s military incursion into two restive provinces in eastern Ukraine largely controlled by Kremlin-backed separatists, but it is primarily about protecting Moscow’s energy interests. That was true in 2014, when Russia seized Crimea and I was a Moscow correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, for which I wrote dozens of stories about the insurgency in Donetsk and Luhansk that Russia helped foment. And it remains true now. To understand the Kremlin’s motivations in regard to its smaller, and relatively impoverished, neighbor, the key fact to know is that...

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Three former Minneapolis police officers have been convicted of violating George Floyd’s civil rights. Tou Thao, J. Alexander Kueng and Thomas Lane were charged with depriving Floyd of his right to medical care when Officer Derek Chauvin pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for 9 1/2 minutes as the 46-year-old Black man was handcuffed and facedown on the street on May 25, 2020. Thao and Lane were also charged with failing to intervene to stop Chauvin. The videotaped killing sparked protests in Minneapolis that spread around the globe as part of reckoning over racial injustice....

While the world watched in horror on Thursday as war ripped through Ukraine, American actor Sean Penn was meeting with the country's president and attending government press briefings for part of a VICE documentary he is filming. Drama-chasing Penn, 61 - who found himself in the cartel's firing line in 2016 after getting in touch with fugitive drug lord El Chapo - sat with his sunglasses on for the press briefing at the Ukrainian government offices on Thursday evening local time. He then met with President Volodymyr Zelensky, who posted a video of their meeting on his Instagram account. Their...

Americans were manipulated and turned against each other to hide government mismanagement, while many died unnecessary deaths. In July 2021, President Biden, members of his administration, and the rest of the Covid cartel – federal health agencies, Big Pharma, legacy media, and Big Tech – began blaming the unvaccinated for the prolonged pandemic and calling it a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.” On July 16, 2021, Salvador Rizzo, writing as the Washington Post’s fact-checker, and therefore an esteemed member of the Covid cartel, awarded Johnson four Pinocchios for stating what was objectively true: the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS)...

The Ukrainian capital of Kyiv is expected to fall to Russian forces within days and the country's resistance effectively crippled, US security officials fear. Troops are already closing in on the seat of Ukrainian power after taking control of the strategic Chernobyl nuclear power plant today, and will seize it within 96 hours, bringing a 'new Iron Curtain' down on Europe, Volodymyr Zelensky warned. Officials said Vladimir Putin plans to encircle Ukrainian forces in Kyiv and force them to either surrender or be destroyed, and the leadership of Ukraine will then fall in a week.

However the conflict in Ukraine now unfolds, it has already revealed how deeply and extensively America’s ruling factions have failed. For many, the revelation is a shock; for many others, an all too accurate forecast come true—and a long-delinquent bill come due. Every faction vying for control of our country shares in responsibility for the present situation and everything that will come with it. Neoliberals, convinced “soft” economic power could be used to weave a “rules-based international order” that would pacify the world, refused to recognize the flaws and shortcomings of their approach, rooted in an optimism that careened from...