Free Republic

Inspector of the Army Lt. Gen. Alfons Mais described the army as "standing bare" and said it would be limited in its capabilities should it be asked to assist in a NATO mission in a post he shared on his LinkedIn profile, Stripes.com reported. But Mais claimed in the post that the army would be limited in its capabilities to assist in a NATO mission: "The options we can offer policymakers to support the Alliance are extremely limited." According to the report, Mais appealed to his government to do more to boost its combat readiness in 2014, following the Russian...

"One small thing to be thankful for is that DJT is not in the White House as the Ukraine crisis unfolds. He'd side with Russia," tweeted Francis Fukuyama, author of "The End of History and the Last Man." The headline on Eugene Robinson's Washington Post column reads, "With Biden standing firm, Putin must wonder: Where's Trump when I need him?" You could find similar sentiment from foreign-policy experts strewn across social media. Surely, even former President Donald Trump's most passionate antagonists must be slightly curious as to why Russian President Vladimir Putin, the real villain of this tale, didn't move...

Hacker collective Anonymous has disabled several Russian government websites including the state-controlled "Russia Today" news service. Hackers identifying with the Anonymous collective announced they had launched cyber operations that briefly took down RT.com, as well as the websites of the Kremlin, the Russian government and the Russian defence ministry websites. RT.com confirmed the attack took place, saying it slowed some websites down while taking others offline for "extended periods of time". RT's coverage of the situation in Ukraine has been overwhelmingly from a pro-Russian perspective, showing fireworks and cheerful celebrations in the newly occupied territories. In the UK, MPs have...

When Russia's Vladimir Putin demanded that the U.S. rule out Ukraine as a future member of the NATO alliance, the U.S. archly replied: NATO has an open-door policy. Any nation, including Ukraine, may apply for membership and be admitted. We're not changing that. In the Bucharest declaration of 2008, NATO had put Ukraine and Georgia, ever farther east in the Caucasus, on a path to membership in NATO and coverage under Article 5 of the treaty, which declares that an attack on any one member is an attack on all. Unable to get a satisfactory answer to his demand, Putin...

They are not 'Liberal', they are tyrannical. They are not 'Progressive', they are destructive. They are not 'Democrats', they are socialists. They are not for 'peasants', 'workers', 'national liberation', or lately, for the 'environment' or for 'equity'. They are in for power. Power for power's sake. And deceit is their most formidable tool. Evil facades. And most of us fall for their deceit by calling them for what they want to be called. We help them hide their insidiousness. We are complicit when we continue calling them by their chosen labels: 'Liberal', 'Progressive', 'Democrat', 'Environmentalist', 'labor leader', 'non-binary', and on...

COVID has unchained leftists, who are now openly insisting that freedom is fundamentally evil. Beverley McLachlin, former chief justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, recently wrote an opinion piece in which she said of those in the Canadian truckers Freedom Convoy: “Freedom, misconstrued as a license to do and say whatever one wants, is dangerous.” The erstwhile jurist stated, “Let’s not allow the freedoms we cherish to become ugly freedoms.” She added, "Freedom without limits slides imperceptibly into freedom to say and do what you want about people who don’t look like you or talk like you.” Huh? The...

In February 2014, Russian kingpin Vladimir Putin invaded and subsequently annexed the Crimean Peninsula, which had been under Ukrainian jurisdiction. The timing was no accident, coming as it did only a handful of months after then-President Barack Obama reneged upon his own chemical weapons "red line" for Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, effectively leaving the resolution of the then-nascent chemical weapons crisis in Putin's hands. Putin, like a shark smelling blood, sensed weakness and acted accordingly. To this day, Crimea remains under de facto Russian control. It is not exactly a mystery what motivates Putin's actions on the geopolitical chessboard. He...

Something caught my ear in the car, listening to a radio simulcast of the Feb. 21 "PBS NewsHour." Anchor Judy Woodruff dryly reported that "Canadian police have arrested more than 190 protesters and issued 389 charges in connection with the so-called Freedom Convoy." The "so-called Freedom Convoy." It's a journalistic term, the use of which can be interpreted as distancing themselves from something that's not true. After 9/11, we heard about the "so-called War on Terror." Democrats hated that term. Dan Rather used to get out the 10-foot pole and report on "the Republican political lobbying group that calls itself,...

Liberals are not emotional adults. That is established fact and obvious to any objective observer. No one likes it when things don’t go their way. Whether it’s a being passed over for a promotion at work or the dissolution of a long-term personal relationship or a financial reversal, a setback is never welcome. What defines a person’s character is his reaction to adverse events. Mature adults will stop, take a breath, internalize the misfortune, evaluate their options and calmly pick a corrective course of action, with a minimum of hyperbolic arm-waving and verbal histrionics. Young children, of course, haven’t attained...

Twitter, Instagram and Facebook are quiet about whether the Kremlin and high-ranking Russian officials who are using the platform to give updates about Russia's advance on Ukraine and spread Russian propaganda will continue to have unfettered access to their accounts. Twitter declined to comment to Fox News Digital on Thursday on whether it will take steps to block Putin or high-ranking Russian accounts from posting as the war escalates. Instagram and Facebook did not immediately respond to Fox News' request for comment. Russia's verified Twitter account for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has nearly 380,000 followers and regularly posts Kremlin...

Free speech certainly isn't very "free" when it can be targeted by the State as indisputable proof that its critics are guilty of treason. The Democrats' favorite Harvard Law luminary, Laurence Tribe (the reigning godfather of the "living, breathing Constitution" lie that has justified its being regularly rewritten willy-nilly by an oligarchy of nine) took to Twitter to casually speculate that Tucker Carlson and "the GOP's Trump wing" are committing "treason" for being more interested in Biden's runaway inflation, unprecedented illegal immigration, and North America's rising police state than the local regional squabbles of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of...

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has shocked the former Soviet satellite states of Central and Eastern Europe, drawing strong condemnation even from the region's most pro-Kremlin politicians. For some of the countries that fled the Soviet bloc following a series of anti-communist revolutions more than 30 years ago, footage of tanks and troops rolling in to punish a nation trying to pursue its own independent course looks painfully familiar. Two until now major pro-Russian voices in the European Union, Czech President Milos Zeman and Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban, didn't mince their words in criticizing Moscow's most aggressive action since the...

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“The streets are quiet and calm in the Ukrainian capital,” a news presenter on Russia’s state-run Perviy Kanal TV channel told viewers in a Friday morning news program, while showing live webcam footage of Kyiv on a giant screen behind her desk. “It is also an ordinary day in Kharkiv,” she said as the footage switched to an apparent live stream of a deserted city center, Ukraine’s second largest, which international media have reported Russian forces have launched missile strikes on and are advancing toward. “Against the background of lies from the Western media, we are showing you exactly what...

This comedian (?) was discovered by many on Joe Rogan. He's non-PC, to say the least."Any room on your rainbow for a cowboy who likes to take a gander at that?" Video Link

The Russian assault on Ukraine confirmed vulnerabilities in safeguarding American energy security. With the U.S. now importing more oil and gas from the rogue nation, it’s time to pursue energy independence again. Make no mistake: preservationist environmental policies are squarely to blame for our present situation of high gas prices and energy bills. If President Biden is serious about punishing Russia, he wouldn’t just impose harsher sanctions; he’d equally scale back his extreme climate agenda. To punish Russia, our nation must unleash energy dominance again. Here’s how. Revoke Executive Order 13990To mitigate the damage caused by energy dependence, the Biden...

Ukrainians are being urged to arm themselves to resist the unprovoked Russian invasion of their country. The immediate question is, "with what?" noting that Ukraine has exactly the kind of gun laws the Democratic Left wants to inflict on the United States. Handguns are illegal unless licensed, and licensing is "may-issue" the same way it is in New York. It is also necessary to have a license to purchase a long gun (as is the case in Illinois with its firearm owner ID card), and authorities can exercise discretion as to who can have a license. There are at most...

All Ukrainian border guards protecting a tiny island in the Black Sea from Russian invaders were killed yesterday after refusing to surrender to warmonger Vladimir Putin’s forces and defiantly telling a Kremlin warship: ‘Go f*** yourselves!’. The small contingent of soldiers, reportedly 13 in number, were posted on Snake Island in the Odessa region near NATO ally Romania and were defending the territory after Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine early Thursday morning. In a radio message, the soldiers were told by a sailor on board the vessel: ‘This is Russian military warship. I suggest you lay down your...

I will be supporting Donald Trump in 2024. The Durham revelation that the Clinton campaign spied on candidate Trump before the election and President Trump after should be enough to see that virtually everything Trump claimed was happening…was actually happening. So what does this have to do with 2024? Everything, including the election fraud of 2020. Every single American with a functioning brain knows that Donald Trump won the election in 2020 and that everyone from Mark Zuckerberg to the mainstream media to the Democrat party to Never Trumper “conservatives” conspired to steal it. And they did. Of course, the...

In an ideal world, maybe we could ignore what's happening in Ukraine but we have to see the world as it is, not how we want it to be: Russia is calling and wants its Ukraine back. I generally appreciate Tucker Carlson, but every time he discusses Ukraine and Russia, I bristle — especially when he contends that America has no interest in Ukraine. I know some of you might agree with Carlson, but you can be a solid conservative who is just as war-weary as the next guy and still see a security interest in Ukraine without being a...