Free Republic

New details of Moscow's intelligence work in Cuba were disclosed by Vasili Mitrokhin, a former KGB archivist who defected to Britain in 1992. ...Russian KGB officer Nikolai Leonov became "firm friends," with Mr. Castro's younger brother Raul in Prague in 1953 and then worked together with Fidel from 1956 and after he took power in 1959. The book, the second volume of what is known as the Mitrokhin archive, also reveals how Moscow sought to indirectly defeat the United States during the Cold War through large-scale "disinformation" and influence operations in the developing world. "The KGB really believed they could...

Earlier this month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had a high-profile meeting with his Hungarian counterpart, Viktor Orbán, in Budapest. Argentina’s libertarian president, Javier Milei, has called Orbán his “comrade in this fight for the ideas of freedom,” and Italy’s Giorgia Meloni is Orbán’s “Christian sister.” Last year, Donald Trump hosted the Hungarian leader three times at Mar-a-Lago. How did this one country in Europe become a beacon for right-wing ideas—and leaders—around the world? Once upon a time, Hungary was the poster child of “regime change”—the peaceful transition from communism to democracy. The process was indeed peaceful. But was it...

Recently, the incoming Trump administration has expressed a desire to expand the territory of the United States. One option for achieving this is the annexation of Marie Byrd Land, a region of Antarctica that is currently unclaimed by any nation and whose exploration was pioneered by the U.S. Annexing this land can be done in a realistically achievable manner and would deliver practical gains. Marie Byrd Land is a region in West Antarctica that currently comprises the largest unclaimed piece of land on the surface of Earth. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) describes it as stretching east of the Ross...

Ben Rhodes, the president’s Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications, recently told the New York Times Magazine that newspapers no longer have foreign bureaus, so “they call us to explain to them what’s happening in Moscow and Cairo.” The average reporter Rhodes encounters is 27 years old and “their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.” One of the things they know nothing about is the major movement of modern times, Marxism-Leninism, also known as Communism, which first appeared nearly 100 years ago in the Union of Soviet Socialist...

Scientists found that the level of carbon-14, an isotope of carbon, was much higher in rings from that year than usual. Some years later, looking at air samples from ice cores, scientists saw that there were elevated levels of beryllium-10 and chlorine-36 as well. The common factor in all these elements is that they are created when extremely high-energy subatomic particles hit Earth's air and ground. .... The only way to get particles at energies like this is from space, where powerful magnetic fields in exploding stars...can accelerate the particles to such high speeds. But the 774 event was so...

Hide in Plane Sight Family of Possible 727 Pilot: "He Is Not a Terrorist" W A S H I N G T O N, June 18 - While international authorities continue their search for a missing jetliner, fearful that it could be used in a terror attack, the family of the American believed to have been piloting the aircraft worries about his fate. Workers at Luanda Airport in Angola watched dumbfounded on May 25 as a Boeing 727 taxied down the runway and took off - without permission. The plane - which ABCNEWS has learned was refitted to haul...

Wisdom the albatross, photographed in 2022. Image credit: Keegan Rankin/USFWS The oldest known wild bird – an albatross named Wisdom – has laid an egg at the ripe old age of 74, after finding a new mate earlier this year. Wisdom was first identified and banded by biologists after she laid an egg at Midway Atoll in 1956. As albatrosses do not lay eggs before the age of five, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service now estimates her age to be at least 74 years old. Every year in November, this population of albatrosses returns to Midway Atoll in the...

The Democratic Party, in its infinite wisdom—or perhaps simply its knack for unaccountable government spending—has managed to turn the Justice Department into a highly effective money laundering operation for its favorite interest groups. This is not some new caper, by the way; it's a practice perfected under the Obama-Biden regime, and it has reached grotesque proportions since Biden's triumphant (or rather, cognitively uncertain) return to the Oval Office. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), under the capable stewardship of Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, needs to tackle this glaring example of unchecked executive abuse. To put it plainly, these "settlements"...

Cables lying on the seafloor bring the internet to the world. They transmit 99 percent of international data, make transoceanic communication possible in an instant, and serve as a loose proxy for the international trade that connects advanced economies.Their importance and proliferation inspired Telegeography to make this vintage-inspired map of the cables that connect the internet. It depicts the 299 cables that are active, under construction, or will be funded by the end of this year. In addition to seeing the cables, you'll find information about "latency" at the bottom of the map (how long it takes for information...

The Post & Email has received tonight a decclassified FBI report admitted in evidence in the case brought against W. Mark Felt and Edward S. Miller by President Jimmy Carter’s U.S. Attorney General, Mr. Griffin B. Bell. This document was obtained by an American citizen, who wished to remain anonymous, via a FOIA request. Mr. W. Mark  Felt is none other than the informant who spoke with reporters from the Washington Post, exposing the Watergate Scandal:  who went by the name “Deep Throat” a fact that points to his political neutrality in American politics.What is not know about Mr. Felt...

For nearly fifty years, from the end of World War II until 1992 millions of people in Eastern Europe endured the oppression and brutality of Communism, courtesy of the former Soviet Union. For decades Soviet Russia maintained control over Poland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Hungary, East Germany, Romania, the Baltic and Balkan countries, and all of the ‘Stans’ with an iron fist. Tolerating no dissent in those countries, and responding brutally if it occurred. Ask the Hungarians in 1956 and the Czechs in 1968. In 1956 the Soviet Union sent troops and tanks to crush the Hungarian popular uprising, killing and wounding...

On Friday, Israeli President Isaac Herzog visited the Arab-Israeli village of Kafr Qassem and addressed a memorial to the victims of the Kafr Qassem Massacre. In that event, which took place on October 29, 1956, on the first day of the Suez Campaign, forty-nine people were killed. Speaking at the memorial ceremony, Herzog said, "I am standing here before you today with my head bowed and my heart pained, on the sixty-fifth anniversary of one of the saddest events in the history of our country - an event whose gravity has never been in question. For it is clear to...

On this date, Howard Smith of Virginia, chairman of the House Rules Committee, introduced the Southern Manifesto in a speech on the House Floor. Formally titled the “Declaration of Constitutional Principles,” it was signed by 82 Representatives and 19 Senators—roughly one-fifth of the membership of Congress and all from states that had once composed the Confederacy. It marked a moment of southern defiance against the Supreme Court’s 1954 landmark Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka (KS) decision, which determined that separate school facilities for black and white school children were inherently unequal. The Manifesto attacked Brown as an...

I'm Eatin' High On The Hog by Mac Wiseman (1956) is our tune today. THE WESTERNER https://thewesterner.blogspot.com/

Swingin' Monday was a holiday, so we'll have Swingin' Tuesday with Adolph Hofner & The Pearl Wranglers and their 1956 recording of I Get So Lonesome (Since You're Gone). Hofner began his recording career with Jimmy Revard and the Oklahoma Playboys. In 1938 he was offered a contract with Bluebird Records and formed the group Adolph Hofner and His Texans. During WWII he recorded as Dolph Hofner & His San Antonians, and in 1950, sponsored by Pearl Beer, he formed Adolph Hofner & The Pearl Wranglers. THE WESTERNER https://thewesterner.blogspot.com/

Charlton Heston, who shined a bit brighter than the rest of the Hollywood crowd. He was taller than the others...he’d played Moses in the movies... Heston had campaigned in 1956 for Stevenson and in 1960 for Kennedy. That was safe enough. But for those who made their living in the motion picture industry, the anti-communist congressional hearings in Washington and the purge of suspected party members in Hollywood had a deterrent effect on the political activities of filmmakers and actors. Yet at the very same time, a great movement was building in the late 1950s and into the early 1960s—and...

2/25/2010 - SHEPPARD AIR FORCE BASE, Texas (AFNS) -- The members of Sheppard Air Force base learned about the legacy of Buffalo Soldiers during a banquet Feb. 19 here. Buffalo Soldiers were the first African Americans to serve in the "regular" U.S. Army immediately after the Civil War. "The Buffalo soldiers were mostly former slaves from all over the nation, but a lot of them were from the South," said Trooper Fred Gray, the former president of the Lawton-Fort Sill, Okla. Chapter of the 9th and 10th Horse Cavalry Association of the Buffalo Soldiers. "They made up about 20 percent...

April 3, 1956, southern west-Michigan was struck by multiple tornado's, one of which was an F5. "A documentary focusing on the tornadoes of 3-April-1956 which struck portions of West Michigan. Originally created for the 50th commemorative anniversary of the event on April 3, 2006. Re-mastered November 2011. ©2006, 2011 National Weather Service, Grand Rapids, Michigan. Produced by Blake Naftel and Ernie Ostuno.

As many of you will recall, Obama made a trip to Pakistan when he was at Occidental College. I am seeing indicators that this relates to the Awans' network and to Iraq and Iran's nuclear programs, which I'm putting out here for others to help fill the missing pieces in and to get this to the right people. First, a recap of Obama's Pakistan trip:Obama’s Russia Problem: Obama's Links to Soviet-era Spy Rings and Terrorist NetworksAt Occidental College, Obama became involved in radical student politics, deliberately networking with activist students and professors, as he mentions in his autobiography. In 1981,...

Typhoon hits Kyushu, Japan; wrecked houses / flood damage / fires rage at night / school children in classroom, widespread destruction from typhoon, in BG, outside school window, 0:38:34 - VS Hurricane hits Louisiana on gulf coast; flood waters, rescue workers, wrecked homes / two mailboxes, just above flood water