Free Republic

Day 10 of People's Convoy

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday that the NATO alliance is “ready” for conflict with Russia if necessary after the US Embassy in Ukraine accused Russian President Vladimir Putin Friday of committing a war crime by ordering an attack on Europe’s largest nuclear power plant. “Ours is a defensive alliance,” Blinken said prior to a meeting with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg in Brussels. “We seek no conflict. But if conflict comes to us, we are ready for it, and we will defend every inch of NATO territory.”

Disinformation, Ukraine, and Unholy WarIn 2013, Vladimir Putin was still something of a hero to many Christians in the West. That was the year when we released the book Disinformation, which I co-authored with Lieutenant General Ion Mihai Pacepa, the highest-ranking defector from the Soviet bloc. One of the first talks I gave on the book was at the Catholic Information Center in Washington, DC.When I spoke about the very serious threat that Putin presented to Catholicism, Christianity, and religion itself, an audience member challenged me. He argued that Putin was not like the previous, atheistic Communist leaders. He claimed...

S&P Global slashed Russia’s credit rating on Friday for the second time in a week, stating that recent capital controls measures are increasingly likely to cause a default. The sovereign is now rated CCC-, for both its local-currency and dollar debt. That is two notches above a default level. A week ago, Russia was rated investment grade. The speed of its descent into the deepest levels of junk status is unprecedented, according to an S&P spokesperson.

Not sanctioning Russia’s energy sector neutralizes other western sanctions and damages the credibility of the U.S. and our European allies.As Russia continues its invasion of Ukraine, the United States and western allies have imposed a new round of economic sanctions. But these won’t achieve the desired effect as long as there is a carve-out for Russia’s energy sector. Last week, the United States imposed sanctions on four large Russian banks and restricted certain Russian state-owned enterprises from raising money in international markets. On Monday, the U.S., the European Union, and the United Kingdom took an extraordinary step to sanction Russia’s...

New video evidence from a documentary in the making about Roger Stone offers new details about his involvement in efforts to undermine the results of the 2020 presidential election, according to The Washington Post, which reviewed more than 20 hours of film. Stone, a longtime political adviser to former President Trump, is having a documentary made of him called “A Storm Foretold.” A Danish film crew has followed him around the past two years to produce the film. Video from the crew shows Stone involved in numerous aspects of the Trump campaign to unwind the election, including knowledge of a...

Trump not only successfully deterred Russia from acting against Ukraine, he effectively deterred a lot of bad behavior across the planet. A recent Harvard-Harris poll found that 62 percent of Americans believe that Russia would not have invaded Ukraine if Donald Trump were still in the Oval Office. As former senior intelligence officials under President Trump, we agree with that view. Russia invaded Georgia in 2008 when George W. Bush was president. Russia took Crimea in 2014 when Barack Obama was president. Russia has now invaded Ukraine with Joe Biden as president. However, when Donald Trump was president, Russia did...

Keystone Pipeline Would Have Delivered 830,000 BARRELS OF OIL PER DAY to US — More than Current Daily Russian Imports.. BIDEN KILLED THE PIPLINE, paving a way for this INVASION.. https://twitter.com/ChuckCallesto/status/1499773950846386180

The American College of Rheumatology (ACR) released two updated guideline papers for the treatment and management of Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis (JIA). These two guidelines are companions to previously updated JIA guidelines released by the ACR and Arthritis Foundation in 2019 covering the treatment of polyarthritis, sacroiliitis, uveitis and enthesitis. The original JIA guidelines were published in 2011 and 2013, and this update reflects the ever-changing rheumatology field with new criteria on how to define disease and new medications to treat those diseases. "As rheumatologists, our patients and caregivers expect us to review the literature and weigh the evidence so that...

While Russian forces continue to bombard Ukrainian population centers (while an attack on a nuclear power plant last night turned out to be far less destructive than initially reported), American bureaucrats are already looking past the invasion in Ukraine to focus on China and its continuing support for President Vladimir Putin.To wit, the SCMP reported Friday that State Department counselor Derek Chollet warned that there will be serious consequences for Beijing if it helps Moscow in evading sanctions.If China tries to help Russia evade sanctions in the wake of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, it will face countermeasures, a senior US...

Russia is targeting children with the message that its invasion of Ukraine is a disinformation campaign, releasing a 30-minute video with a child star to embellish the propaganda on Thursday. In the video obtained by The Daily Telegraph from the Ministry of Education, 12-year-old singing prodigy Sofia Khomenko tells child viewers 'we are going to have a lesson about world peace'. She is joined by two male presenters who explain the truth behind the events in Ukraine, at least from the ministry of education's point of view.

...many did not think the EU would play the SWIFT card on Russia. It turns out they were correct...SWIFT is the international payment system. Cutting off a top country from SWIFT access is a very big deal.When the US and EU trotted out the SWIFT sanction card, I thought I got that one wrong. Closer inspection by Eurointelligence and others shows it's Not So Swift After All.FAZ informs us that the Swift sanctions are essentially dead in the water. Only seven banks, representing a quarter of the Russian banking sector, are subject to the sanctions. What happened is that once...

“I think I have a better idea on how to fight inflation. Lower your costs, not your wages.” If the American people needed a reminder of just how disconnected from reality career politicians are, President Joe Biden put a magnifying glass over the permanent Washington political class during his sixty-two-minute State of The Union address Tuesday evening. President Biden’s baseless assertion that American businesses—large and small—are indiscriminately cutting wages is far from reality on main street. In fact, Biden’s assertion was a direct insult to small business owners across the country who are fighting tooth-and-nail to remain open as we...

BREAKING: #SCOTUS finds death penalty for Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was improperly thrown out by lower court. 6-3 — Shannon Bream (@ShannonBream) March 4, 2022 #BREAKING Supreme Court reinstates death sentence for Boston Marathon bomber. (via AP) — WBZ | CBS Boston News (@wbz) March 4, 2022 Here's the opinion from Clarence Thomas in United States v. Tsarnaev: https://t.co/zeCKqPOiCa. The court divided along ideological lines, with Breyer (joined by Kagan and in part by Sotomayor) dissenting. — SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) March 4, 2022

Disgraced Hollywood movie producer Harvey Weinstein has been caught with contraband in jail, accoridng to reports. Weinstein is currently being held in L.A. County jail as he awaits trial for rape. He was caught with contraband Milk Duds in November, prompting a reprimand from L.A. County jail guards, according to prisoner records. The Milk Duds were found during a search on November 10, after Weinstein had a face-to-face meeting with Shawn Burkley, one of his attorneys. Weinstein claimed to the guards that he had brought the Milk Duds with him when he was extradited from New York last July. The...

Despite a stronger than expected February jobs report that showed an employment increase of 678,000 jobs and a 3.8 percent unemployment rate on Friday morning, the American economy is still struggling to keep up with inflationary pressure and grappling with damage caused by pandemic lockdowns and restrictions according to Labor Department data. Payroll employment rises by 678,000 in February; unemployment rate edges down to 3.8% https://t.co/1Y9cSWJUIB #JobsReport #BLSdata— BLS-Labor Statistics (@BLS_gov) March 4, 2022The report shows that in February, 4.2 million Americans remained out of work "because their employer closed or lost business due to the pandemic," a lasting testament...

In a move critics are calling “unwise and potentially destructive,” the United Methodist Church has delayed its General Conference meeting for a third time amid the COVID-19 pandemic, prompting theologically conservative United Methodists to announce the official launch of a new denomination. On Thursday, General Conference organizers announced they are postponing the meeting to 2024 “due to COVID-related and governmental policies/constraints.” The 2020 General Conference originally had been set for May 2020 in Minneapolis but was rescheduled for Aug. 29 – Sept. 7, 2021. It was rescheduled again for 2022 at the same venue. Commission Chairperson Kim Simpson said the...

Lindsey Graham & John McCain in Ukraine in December 2016 preparing for a proxy war with Russia all the way back then.Then, Trump came in and stopped it all from happening.(1 minute and 11 seconds video in link below) https://twitter.com/MrsT106/status/1499724607431102470

Americans have lost faith in his leadership. But he shows no desire to win them back.Heading into last night’s State of the Union address, US president Joe Biden faced a grim political situation.Some 70 per cent of Americans believe the country is going in the wrong direction, according to an Associated Press-NORC poll. Worse still for Biden, Americans have lost faith in his leadership during his first year in office. His approval rating has dropped to 37 per cent in a recent ABC News-Washington Post survey. Only Donald Trump had a lower rating (by one percentage point) at the same...

Gas prices have been going up since Joe Biden began cutting off energy sources in the name of global warming Leftism on his first day of office. Now, a year later, Bidenflation has taken hold, Russia has attacked Ukraine, and the price of a barrel of oil on Wednesday stood at a gasp-inducing $112/barrel. We’re looking at gas prices close to $7.00/gallon.Just four months ago, Don Lemon the rest of his CNN buddies waxed rhapsodic over Joe Biden for an eight-cent drop in gas prices. Now, as prices skyrocket, Joe Biden’s getting the blame, too.A Fox News poll released a...