Free Republic

T he head of the Russian Orthodox Church has awarded Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov with an order for "glory and honor." Patriarch Kirill gave the order to Zyuganov in Moscow on June 27, one day after the longtime communist leader celebrated his 70th birthday. Kirill said Zyuganov -- who in 2010 called for the re-Stalinization of Russia and has called the Soviet Union "the most humane state in human history" -- deserves the award as "one of the most famous Russian politicians who has expressed interest in the welfare of the nation and the protection of traditional moral values."...

In the same case, the court sentenced in absentia Konstantin Kobzar, the former deputy head of Ukraine’s state bodyguard department and head of the presidential security service, to 10 years of imprisonmentMOSCOW, April 28. /TASS/. A Kiev court has sentenced former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich in absentia to 15 years in prison on charges of incitement to defection and illegal border crossing, according to the Prosecutor-General’s office’s Telegram channel. In the same case, the court also sentenced in absentia Konstantin Kobzar, the former deputy head of Ukraine’s state bodyguard department and head of the presidential security service, to 10 years...

Sahand destroyer -- which can sustain voyages lasting five months without resupply -- joined Iran's regular navy at a base in Bandar Abbas on the Gulf. The Sahand has a flight deck for helicopters, torpedo launchers, anti-aircraft and anti-ship guns, surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles and electronic warfare capabilities, state television reported. "This vessel is the result of daring and creative design relying on the local technical knowledge of the Iranian Navy... and has been built with stealth capabilities," Rear-Admiral Alireza Sheikhi, head of the navy shipyards that built the destroyer, told the state news agency IRNA. Iran launched its first...

Meg Whitman’s Nightmare, Marc Van der Hout, a UN Narc Turns out Van der Hout’s the brains behind the Nicandra “Nicky” Diaz Santillan Dream Team. He he was part of yet another Dream Team pairing with David Cole as co-counsel of the “LA 8″ that resulted in the release of illegal Arab nationals. Van der Hout and Cole bought enough time in the courts for their defendants to become permanent residents of these United States.

Where was our news media? Where was our president and congress? Why does the official move from Washington go against American private citizens and their guns, and not an all out war against the drug cartels using fully automatic military weapons, hand grenades, launchers and machine-guns? Why is the president pushing for an international gun law that will bring registration and finally gun control to we American citizens? Who is for free and lawful American citizens? Where are our statesmen? Where are our patriots and where are champions for the Constitution and freedom and safety of American citizens? This is...

NEW YORK (AFP) – A dual US-Lebanese citizen has been extradited from Paraguay and charged with supporting Lebanon's Hezbollah militant force, US officials said Friday. Moussa Ali Hamdan, 38, appeared in court in Philadelphia following his extradition and has been charged with providing "material support to Hezbollah, a designated foreign terrorist organization," the federal prosecutor's office in Pennsylvania said in a statement. Hamdan was arrested by Paraguayan authorities June 15 on suspicion of supporting terrorism and was subsequently handed over to US custody. He is accused in the United States on 28 counts including conspiring to supply Hezbollah with proceeds...

(CNSNews.com) - Amid growing concern about the illicit drug trade across the U.S.-Mexico border, the terrorist groups Hezbollah and Hamas have been linked to South American drug trafficking organizations–and the money Hezbollah and Hamas make from narco-trafficking is used to finance their organizations, according to the non-partisan Congressional Research Service (CRS). “International terrorist groups, including Hamas and Hezbollah, have also reportedly raised funding for their terrorist activities through linkages formed with DTOs in South America, particularly those operating in the tri-border area (TBA) of Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina,” stated CRS in an April 30 report. As evidence that Hezbollah and...

Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, has a new project. ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — Late one night last November, a plane carrying dozens of Colombian men touched down in this glittering seaside capital. Whisked through customs by an Emirati intelligence officer, the group boarded an unmarked bus and drove roughly 20 miles to a windswept military complex in the desert sand. The Colombians had entered the United Arab Emirates posing as construction workers. In fact, they were soldiers for a secret American-led mercenary army being built by Erik Prince, the billionaire founder of Blackwater Worldwide, with $529 million...

The Color Revolution is restless. Beginning in the former Soviet republics in the early 2000s, it moved along the coast of North Africa with the so-called Arab Spring in the 2010s, and, into the current decade, has spread further. The ostensible purpose of Color Revolutions—named after the Rose Revolution, Orange Revolution, and Tulip Revolution in Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan, respectively—is to replace authoritarian regimes with Western liberal democracies. American and European intelligence services are often heavily involved in these revolutions, with ambitions not only to spread modern ideologies but also to undermine geopolitical opponents. The West’s favored methods of supporting...

Yemen's government said Sunday it will accept a truce offer only if the rebels operating in the country's north comply with six previously laid-out conditions. The Shiite Muslim rebels, known as the Houthis, had indicated Saturday that they were open to a cease-fire and to accepting the government conditions. But they demanded an end to military operations first. The intractable stance on both sides means the conflict, which had lasted more than five years, is likely to continue. In August, Yemen laid out cease-fire terms that included removing checkpoints, ending banditry, handing over all military equipment and weapons, and releasing...

BERLIN – Polish authorities have arrested an alleged Mossad spy from Israel wanted in connection with the slaying of a Hamas agent in Dubai, the German federal prosecutor's office said Saturday. A man using the name of Uri Brodsky is suspected of working for a foreign spy agency in Germany and helping issue a fake German passport to a member of the Mossad hit squad allegedly behind the killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in January, the German spokesman told The Associated Press.

Iran has reported the test-firing of long-range rockets said to have been allocated to its proxies in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. The Iranian Army launched the Fajr-5 during its exercise near the borders of Afghanistan and Pakistan in May 2010. During the Velayat-89 exercise, army units fired the Fajr-5, which were said to have struck their targets. "These missiles are called Fajr-5 and belong to the Fajr-class missiles, and have not been tested in any previous exercise," Iranian Army deputy commander Gen. Kioumars Heidari said. "They were tested for the first time in Velayat-89 exercise zone." Fajr-5 was unveiled...

An explosion in southern Lebanon last week destroyed what is believed to have been a Hezbollah weapons depot. This latest in a series of mysterious “accidents” in Hezbollah-controlled precincts proved, as one Israeli official wryly remarked, that those who “sleep with rockets and amass large stockpiles of weapons are in a very unsafe place.” With the Party of God’s overland supply route through Syria choked off by the 22-month-long uprising against Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, and Israel virtually in total control of the maritime route, Hezbollah’s stockpile is being systematically degraded.Yet the arsenal of Iran’s other regional proxy force, Hamas,...

Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared South Africa's ambassador to the United States, Ebrahim Rasool, persona non grata and ordered him expelled from the United States. This immediately deprived him of diplomatic immunity and required him to leave the US in just a matter of days.Using X as his medium to announce the defenestration of Rasool, Rubio was blunt.South Africa's Ambassador to the United States is no longer welcome in our great country. Ebrahim Rasool is a race-baiting politician who hates America and hates @POTUS. We have nothing to discuss with him and so he is considered PERSONA NON GRATA.The...

Angry outbursts over agreement allowing Russian Navy to stay.Politicians pelted Ukrainian lawmakers with a smoke bomb and eggs as the parliament approved an agreement that will keep the Russian navy based in the Crimean Peninsula. Chamber speaker Volodymyr Litvyn was forced to take shelter under his umbrella as he was hit by eggs after deputies from newly elected President Viktor Yanukovich's coalition approved the extension to the Russian Black Sea Fleet's base in Crimea. Ukrainian nationalists, led by former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and former President Viktor Yushchenko, regard the base as a betrayal of Ukraine's national interests. They wanted...

Both CNN and the Washington Post reported yesterday that the Iranian regime is plotting to kill President Trump. Jewish World Review has posted the Washington Post story in accessible form here. Intelligence concerning the plot derives from a human source and is apparently unrelated to the attempted assassination of Trump over the weekend.NRO’s Jimmy Quinn quotes Rich Goldberg’s tweet on the rationale for such an operation: “Donald Trump is an existential threat to the Islamic Republic of Iran. The regime knows maximum pressure will return.”The incompetence of the Secret Service presents something of a national security crisis. The Post drily...

At the tail end of the fiery Oval Office exchange pitting Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky against President Trump and Vice President Vance, Trump spent two heated minutes on a theme the media will likely bury. “Putin went through a hell of a lot with me,” said Trump. “He went through a phony witch hunt where they used him and Russia. Russia. Russia. Russia.” What Trump did not say, but he might have, is that the constant scapegoating of Russia and Putin made America’s proxy war against Russia an easy sell. What Trump might also have said is that before he...

Starting in May 2010, The Washington Examiner reported, drawing on emails obtained by Citizens United, “Clinton Foundation staff pushed Hillary Clinton’s State Department to approve a meeting between Bill Clinton and a powerful Russian oligarch as her agency lined up investors for a project under his purview.” His name was Viktor Vekselberg of Renova (a Clinton Foundation donor) and the project under his purview was the Skolkovo Innovation Center, which is being built near Moscow. The following month, Bill Clinton would receive $500,000 for a speech in Moscow from a Renaissance Capital, a Russian investment bank with ties to the...

The plot thickens. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Jeffrey Epstein tried to blackmail Bill Gates after learning about an affair Gates had with a young woman. Epstein learned that Gates had an affair with a Russian bridge player and when Gates shot down a donation request from Epstein, Jeffrey sent him an email reminding the Microsoft founder what he knew. According to The Wall Street Journal: “The Microsoft co-founder met the woman around 2010, when she was in her 20s. Epstein met her in 2013 and later paid for her to attend software coding school. In 2017, Epstein...

Irvine - Closing arguments will resume today in the trial of 11 students accused of disrupting a speech at UC Irvine by the Israeli ambassador to the United States. The students who interrupted the speech last year "meticulously" planned the disruption and one of the activists afterward boasted, "We pretty much shut them down," a prosecutor said Monday in arguing they should be found guilty of violating laws governing conduct at public meetings. But defense attorneys countered in their closing arguments that just because the students planned to protest the meeting doesn't mean they are guilty of the misdemeanor charges...