Free Republic

For those trying to keep up with the fast-moving events in Ukraine, it may be helpful to consider some lessons of history. Mistakes made in the past week, added onto developments covering the last two or three centuries, have left the United States and its European allies -- in particular the largest of them, Germany -- unable to prevent President Vladimir Putin's Russia from absorbing an as yet undetermined part of a theoretically independent Ukraine. One lesson of history is contained in the aphorism, "If you set out to take Vienna, take Vienna." It's attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte, who in...

Guy Reffitt has been in jail since he was arrested by the FBI nearly 14 months ago. Reffitt, like dozens of Americans who protested the unlawful election of Joe Biden, isn’t in jail because he was convicted of a crime. Neither is Reffitt in jail because he has a criminal record—he does not—or a history of threatening his Bonham, Texas neighbors or community. Instead, Reffitt has languished behind bars for more than a year because Joe Biden’s Justice Department asked a federal judge to keep him detained awaiting trial for his participation in the Capitol protest on January 6, 2021....

One of Amazon’s guiding leadership principles is to “earn trust.” If Amazon Web Services (AWS) customers took that motto to heart, they would be searching for a new cloud provider. Between its continued security breaches and its sleazy practice of locking customers into exorbitant bills, all that AWS has earned is the expectation that it will cost its clients dearly in both data and dollars. Last month, a cloud security company uncovered two critical vulnerabilities in AWS’s system that went undetected by the cloud provider. These vulnerabilities placed AWS customers at serious risk for a dangerously long period of time....

I'm pretty sure that this has been posted already. Some really interesting facts about Ukraine natural resources. How the independent, sovereign, democratic nation of Ukraine ranks: 1st in Europe in proven recoverable reserves of uranium ores; 2nd place in Europe and 10th place in the world in terms of titanium ore reserves; 2nd place in the world in terms of explored reserves of manganese ores (2.3 billion tons, or 12% of the world’s reserves); 2nd largest iron ore reserves in the world (30 billion tons); 2nd place in Europe in terms of mercury ore reserves; 3rd place in Europe (13th...

Ukraine Government Is Handing Out Guns To Citizens, What Happened to Gun Control? Ukraine Citizens Guns:https://www.mrcolionnoir.com/go/uscca/ I've had countless conversations with people who swear the idea that anyone would fight back with guns against a tyrannical government is ridiculous. The government in Ukraine is not only telling its citizens to buy guns and carry them, they're saying we will give you guns so that you can fight back against what they consider to be a tyrannical government. It's time to wake up people. You'll never be progressive enough to outrun reality.

Over 1,200 have already been arrested across the country. It takes a certain kind of bravery to protest in President Vladimir Putin's Russia, especially on the day he sends his country to war. I watched hundreds of people on a bitterly cold evening in Moscow on Thursday, as they marched against what the government here describes as a "special military operation" in Ukraine. Over 1,200 have already been arrested in more than 50 towns and cities across the country for publicly opposing the attack. Most of them were young. Kids who, in another country, would have bright, happy futures. A...

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...