Free Republic

According to David Frum of The Atlantic and author of Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy (2020), Russia's Ukraine invasion has been greatly aided by high energy prices, especially natural gas, in the ongoing energy boom. Frum notes that the price of Russian gas on spot markets surpassed $10 per million metric BTUs in June 2021 before tripling to the current $30 per million metric BTUs. The sharp rise in energy prices has helped Russia's foreign exchange reserves hit $630 billion, or 42% of the country's $1.5 trillion GDP. With those massive financial resources, Russia could inflict real havoc on world energy...

The Swiss-based company behind the Nord Stream 2 pipeline has filed for bankruptcy and fired all 106 of its employees, a local official confirmed to Swiss radio broadcaster SRF.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports” that she would not be wearing a mask tonight at President Joe Biden’s first State of the Union address. Pelosi said, “Tonight will be a great speech. I’m really looking forward to it. I think it will be pivotal in terms of COVID as well, which has had a direct impact on the attitudes and rates that people give to governance because COVID still has its remnants. But I think tonight will be pivotal in terms of our values. His vision, his plan, his knowledge, and his connection...

Vladimir Putin was said to be looking 'ashen and bloated' in a meeting today as the global condemnation of his invasion of Ukraine continued. In an image released by the Kremlin, the Russian president was seen in Moscow sitting with the Governor of Saint Petersburg Alexander Beglov. The pair sat opposing each other across a desk in the Kremlin and viewers on social media picked up on the under-pressure Russian leader's apparently pale appearance. One said: 'Putin does not look well... he's ashen and bloated.' Another noted that he was sitting very close to Mr Beglov, despite the fact that...

THIS is the shocking moment a group of Mexican cartel gangsters line up mourners at a funeral and shoot them dead against a wall. Around 17 victims were massacred in the town of San Jose de Gracia, Michoacan on Sunday. The shocking clip which was shared on social media shows the moment dozens of men storm the wake and violently drag mourners outside. The video believed to be filmed by a nearby neighbour, through a window shows the people lined up against a wall, most of them holding their hands behind their heads, while the gunmen are seen pointing their...

For the second consecutive year, a record number of handgun carry permits were issued last year in Minnesota. The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension on Tuesday released its annual permit to carry report, which showed 106,488 permits were issued in 2021 on 110,078 applications. That’s up nearly 10.3% from 2020, when a record 96,554 permits were issued. According to the BCA, 176 permits were suspended last year, 40 were revoked, 1,165 voided and 1,627 denied. More permits were issued in Hennepin County last year than any other county, by a wide margin. The five counties that issued the most permits...

Youtube video at link. (17 minutes) Sorry I can't give a more complete summary. But this was a fascinating discussion with Bill Brownden, who was a big investor in Russia before he was exiled. Discussion is of the impacts of the sanctions and how they are going after the Russian Oligarchs. As well as Putin's motives.

On Tuesday morning, “journalist” Daria Kaleniuk confronted British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, demanding NATO enters the war in Ukraine, despite massive public objections to Western nations becoming involved.Kaleniuk, however, is scarcely the “journalist” Western media outlets are portraying. Instead, The National Pulse can reveal, Kaleniuk is a long-time political activist recently used in the Joe Biden 2020 campaign. Additionally, Kaleniuk serves as a World Economic Forum (WEF) Global Young Leader.

On Moday Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy (R) stated that Alaska is ready to do its part in helping the U.S. reduce its dependence on foreign energy if the Biden administration will allow it to do so and argued that oil from Alaska is better for the environment than oil from Russia. Dunleavy said, “I think we should do both. I think we should push renewables, and we should push oil and gas. "And I don’t understand why we aren’t doing that, especially given what’s happening over in Russia. We’ve had the same issue with Iran and others that are not...

Zi Faámelu was born and raised in Crimea, an area of Ukraine that was invaded and taken over by Russia in 2014. Now the 31-year-old lives in Kyiv, the capital city that has been under Russian siege for nearly a week. She is running out of food and hasn't left her house for days as gunfire erupts outside. And she says she can't leave. Faámelu, who is transgender, said that transphobia is pervasive in the city and neighboring countries, and fears that if she leaves, the tension of the ongoing conflict will make her more susceptible to violence. Faámelu was...

Think about the madness of this… Joe Biden is running around trying to look tough, hitting Russia with sanctions over Vladimir Putin’s obscene invasion of Ukraine. But at the same time, we pay Russia in the vicinity of $70 million per day for oil imports. In other words, during these seven days of Putin’s criminal war against Ukraine, we’ve sent this same Putin during those same seven days close to a half-billion dollars! What the hell is going on? On the one hand, Biden claims to be crippling Vlad with sanctions, while on the other hand, we’re slipping him $70...

The West must not build military facilities in any countries of the former Soviet Union, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was quoted as saying on Tuesday. Lavrov, quoted by Russian news agencies RIA and TASS, also said Moscow found it unacceptable that some European countries hosted U.S. nuclear weapons and was taking measures to prevent Ukraine from acquiring similar weapons.

The war of the Ukrainian people against Russian invaders continues on many fronts – military, diplomatic, volunteer and informational. NOW ANOTHER FRONT IS STARTING – A LEGAL WAR. Ukrainian government agencies and various organizations are beginning to gather evidence of war crimes committed by the Kremlin and Russian armed forces in Ukraine. This needs to be done now to be ready to act in the near future, because wars typically end with significant legal consequences: changes in the system of governance of the world order, the punishment of international criminals, and so on. Kyiv has already taken the first step...

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has brought Republican neocons out of the woodwork, agitating for escalation and U.S. military involvement. The same people who brought us the Iraq War and a 20-year occupation of Afghanistan that ended last year in an ignominious and chaotic U.S. withdrawal would now like us to go to war with Russia, a nuclear power, over Ukraine. Why? Partly because they’re reacting emotionally to the war, which is understandable up to a point. But mostly they would like to leverage a military conflict with Russia to regain control of the Republican Party, whose voters have become...

Although Russia and Ukraine have captured the world’s attention, it’s hard to get an accurate picture of what exactly is going on. But despite the info ops, elitist jibber-jabber, and declarations that Russia has lost, we can know one thing for sure: This war is nowhere close to being over. That hasn’t stopped the self-appointed “experts” in foreign policy and media from making sweeping declarations about the outcome, namely that Russia is losing or has already lost, just a few days in.“Russia has proved unable to secure air superiority over the tiny Ukrainian air force — despite having the second-largest...

Remember that “horse dewormer” that the FDA, CDC, NIH, CNN, and Sanjay Gupta all told you not to use? A new paper recently published in the Journal of the AMA (JAMA) shows that Ivermectin works way better than the COVID vaccine in keeping you from dying from COVID. This was an open-label randomized trial done in Malaysia with around 250 patients in each arm. One arm got IVM + standard of care, the other arm got the standard of care. Of course, JAMA never would have published this if they thought that people would actually look at the data. The...

For the first time in over a year, Joe Biden’s Justice Department has nothing to say about a January 6 defendant. Matthew Perna’s heartbroken family will say goodbye to him this week. After more than a year of enduring nonstop torment by the U.S. Justice Department, the D.C. District Court, and the news media over his minor involvement in January 6, Perna, 37, hanged himself in his garage on Friday night. His funeral is scheduled for Wednesday. In a loving yet raw obituary, his family minced no words about who they hold responsible for his suicide: Matthew Lawrence Perna died...

That’s one of the many troubling findings in the report submitted Tuesday by a state-appointed special counsel to the Wisconsin Assembly. Nearly $9 million in Zuckerberg grant funds directed solely to five Democratic strongholds in Wisconsin violated the state’s election code’s prohibition on bribery. That conclusion represents but one of the many troubling findings detailed in the report submitted today by a state-appointed special counsel to the Wisconsin Assembly. Last August, Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos authorized the Office of Special Counsel, headed by retired state Supreme Court justice Michael Gableman, to investigate concerns about election integrity and the 2020...

As hacking by nation-states has grown more pervasive in recent years, Microsoft has long called for the creation of a new Geneva Convention governing cyberspace. But now, for the first time, the tech giant appears to be suggesting that cyberattacks tied to the war in Ukraine could potentially be considered war crimes under existing international law. On Monday, Microsoft (MSFT) said that in the hours leading up to Russia's invasion, it detected a new form of "offensive and destructive" software targeting Ukrainian institutions. Microsoft also said it has observed a barrage of cyberattacks zeroing in on Ukraine's agricultural, commercial, finance...

MADISON, Wis. — The special counsel investigating Wisconsin's 2020 election said Tuesday that the state Legislature should "take a very hard look at the option of decertification of the 2020" presidential election. The release of investigator Michael Gableman's 136-page "interim report" comes amid a nationwide GOP effort to reshape elections following President Joe Biden's victory over Donald Trump. The report was met with bipartisan criticism. Republican Assembly Majority Leader Jim Steineke immediately rejected the call to decertify the election, saying it was a "fool's errand." "Still not legal under Wisconsin law," Steineke tweeted. "Beyond that, it would have no practical...