Free Republic

PARIS — Marat Gabidullin's face is lined from years of exposure to the elements, and his hair is thinning. But at 56, he has the trim physique and muscular arms of a man 30 years younger. He wears a chunky ring bearing the image of a skull.The skull is the symbol of the Wagner Group — a private Russian mercenary force believed to be financed by an oligarch with close ties to President Vladimir Putin. The group is fighting alongside the Russian army in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region. And it's widely believed that at least some of the "little green...

A week after a mysterious virus began to spread in China, the State Department enacted a level 4 travel advisory against the country on Thursday night. Citing the Coronavirus outbreak, the State Department advised U.S. citizens to not travel to China for any reason – and for anyone currently in China to leave as soon as possible. The State Department’s decision comes on the heels of the World Health Organization declaring the Coronavirus a global emergency. The declaration from the WHO seems suspiciously delayed – announced a full week after the virus accelerated spread in China. However, if you look...

Moscow legislators backtracked on claims that they are considering the return of a monument honoring the founder of the Soviet secret police to the center of the city. The city parliament made no plans concerning the return of the statue of Felix "Iron Felix" Dzerzhinsky, legislature speaker Vladimir Platonov said on Ekho Moskvy radio Saturday. City lawmakers have no right to pitch such initiatives anyway and can only rule on their funding, said Platonov, a member of the ruling United Russia party. Fellow city lawmaker Andrei Metelsky said earlier Saturday that the Dzerzhinsky statue was a historical landmark and could...

Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz says sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein was killed as part of a ‘foreign operation’, but refused to divulge which government was responsible for his death. Gaetz made the comments during an appearance on Benny Johnson’s show. In August 2019, Epstein was found unresponsive in his jail cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City after supposedly committing suicide by hanging. Multiple violations of normal jail procedures allied with the convenient failure of two cameras in front of Epstein’s cell prompted conspiracy theories suggesting Epstein was murdered in order to keep his high profile client list...

Deaths from fentanyl appear to be going down for the first time in a decade after reaching astronomic levels - but experts warn there's a 'horrific' reason behind it. They say the drug is simply running out of people to kill, after claiming the lives of around 320,000 Americans in the last decade. Last year, around 75,000 people in the US were killed by the lethally potent drug, which was slightly down on the previous year and the first time deaths have fallen annually since 2011. Dr Caleb Banta-Green, an addiction expert at the University of Washington, says King County,...

Bodansky: What If Bashar Didn't Do It? [Syria Chemical Attack] September 03, 2013 BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: All right. So here's the deal. Last week, Obama reverses himself and says that he's not gonna go into Syria. Remember, they're using nerve gas. John Kerry goes out there, 1,500 people, 2,400 people, a lot of kids, nerve gas, sarin gas, got the proof.Look, I'm gonna get into all the hypocrisy.Yes, Kerry dining with Bashar back in 2009 and talking about what a great guy Bashar was. The bottom line is this administration is as incompetent as Jimmy Carter. There's only one...

The former National Security Agency contractor did not name any particular US or international lawmakers but warned many didn’t belong to the “tribe” of Bitcoiners. Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who has been in exile in Russia since 2013, warned attendees at the Bitcoin 2024 conference about politicians trying to woo them over crypto. In a July 26 speech held virtually at the crypto conference, Snowden said many lawmakers were trying to earn the “love” of Bitcoiners, hinting at those attending the Nashville event. He did not explicitly refer to United States or international politicians, though US...

Daniel Burrell was arraigned in Nantucket District Court Friday on a fugitive from justice court warrant, according to court records.A former senior adviser to John Kerry’s presidential campaign was arrested Friday on Nantucket on a warrant out of Las Vegas following the sale of his foreclosed mansion on the island, multiple outlets reported. Daniel Burrell was arraigned in Nantucket District Court Friday on a fugitive from justice court warrant, according to court records. He was ordered to be committed to Barnstable County Correctional Facility after not posting bail, which was set at $10,000 cash... Burrell, a businessman in private equity...

The most deadly witness in the Biden impeachment inquiry is due to testify Tuesday in a closed-door interview on Capitol Hill. He will be able to lay out in forensic detail the times he knows that Joe met with Hunter’s business partners, both during and after his vice presidency. He will bring documents in which the Chinese talked of their delight about doing business with the “B family” and the encrypted messages and emails in which Joe was referred to either directly or in code as “the big guy” or by Hunter as “my chairman.”

The detention of Pavel Durov, the founder of the Telegram messaging app, in Paris on Saturday has raised questions about the future of a platform that has come to define the public perception of Russia’s war in Ukraine. Russia’s invasion in 2022 helped transform Telegram from a niche communication tool for Russia’s educated classes into a global phenomenon. The app has allowed millions of people to follow battlefield developments in near real time, turned soldiers into the narrators of the conflict unfolding around them and gave both propagandists and dissidents a pulpit in the struggle for the hearts and minds...

The Washington Examiner reported that Kamala Harris's running mate, Tim Walz, maintained close ties and even donated money to an organization headed by an antisemitic Muslim Imam. According to the report, Walz maintained close friendship ties with Imam Assad Zaman, who heads the "American-Islamic Association in Minnesota." In recent years, Imam Zaman used his Facebook page to share official Hamas press releases, shared posts from antisemitic blog sites, and in 2015 even shared a link to the propaganda film, "The Greatest Story Never Told," which praises Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and was released in 2013. As Governor of Minnesota, Walz...

President of the National Assocation of Police Officers and Boston Police Officer Thomas Nee is a member of Vice President Joe Biden's gun control task force, which was created by President Obama in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. Nee's son, Joseph Nee, was convicted in 2008 for planning to commit mass murder of students and teachers at Marshfield High School in Massachusetts, similar to that of Columbine in 1999. After spending nine months in prison, Nee's conviction was upheld by the Supreme Judicial Court. Nee told police the plan involved taking ammunition and explosive devices into...

Obama bundler Jodie Evans, far left, protests in Yemen with al Qaeda tied group al Karama, June 17, 2013. Photo via al Karama. Obama bundler Jodie Evans and Code Pink, the leftist group she co-leads, have been found to be working with a group whose leaders have recently been declared terrorists and al Qaeda supporters by the Treasury Department. This is not the first time the Democratic Party allied group has been caught in bed with terrorists. As this writer has reported over the years, Code Pink works with terrorists, state sponsors of terrorists, the Democratic Party and President Barack...

The sprawling citrus orchard that Victor Story toured recently sure looked like a steal at $11,000 an acre. The investors who owned it were going to lose money, and potential buyers such as Story might have stood to reap a handsome reward. But as he bumped along the 40 acres of groves in a large SUV, Story was taken aback by the sickly look of the trees. Their leaves were an inch shorter than normal and yellowing. Full-size oranges were still apple green. Other mature oranges that should have been the size of baseballs were no bigger than ping-pong balls....

It’s November 2023, and, following the October 7 attacks by Hamas terrorists that killed some 1,400 Israelis and at least 31 Americans, thousands of demonstrators march through New York City, calling for the destruction of the Jewish state. Chants of “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” echo through the streets, along with “there is only one solution: intifada revolution.” Among the crowd is the infamous Palestinian American activist Linda Sarsour, who warns through a megaphone that a cabal of wily Jews has conspired to place “their little posters” (of kidnapped Israeli civilians) across the city, seeking...

<p>The Right Sector played a leading role in January's violent anti-Yanukovych protests in Kiev.</p> <p>The Right Sector is the most radical wing of Ukraine's Maidan protest movement that toppled President Viktor Yanukovych in February.</p> <p>Activists claiming to be Right Sector members were involved in Kiev's Maidan protests [link at URL] from late November but the group did not attract much attention until violent clashes with police in central Kiev on 19 January, in which it played a leading role.</p>

WASHINGTON—Eleven pages of State Department documents released on Jan. 7 in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch show that Jonathan Winer, an assistant to then-Secretary of State John Kerry, used his private email address to convey information he received from former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele to top U.S. diplomatic officials. “I will send them to her [his assistant, Nina Miller] from my non-State email account, not copying myself,” Winer said in response to a December 2014 email from Paul Jones, principal deputy assistant secretary for European Affairs. Jones wanted Winer to use the State...

An anti-Israel activist who served as an expert witness on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in a recent terrorism trial was hosted for a meeting with senior White House officials, according to visitor logs released by the Obama administration and media reports.Michael Sfard, an anti-Israel activist who has reportedly been paid by the PLO to serve as an expert witness in terrorism trials against it, met in December 2014 with a senior White House National Security Council (NSC) member for a meeting about the Middle East, according to the logs and reports.Sfard, a lawyer, serves as the legal...

John “Zip” Connolly is apparently one of those hoodlums who cares what his obituary says about him after he’s dead and gone. At age 82, the infamous ex-FBI agent seems obsessed with clearing at least one indelible stain off his remarkably squalid (even by Boston G-man standards) underworld career. He’d prefer not to have “Mob hitman” in the first sentence of his death notice. There’s not much he can do about the racketeering conviction, or all his tawdry connections to the Bulger Crime Family. But “Mob hitman” is a bit much. Sadly, Zip has failed yet again to remove “assassin”...

Senior officials from the Biden administration held indirect talks last week with the Iranian regime in the Gulf state of Oman to avoid “escalation” in the region — even as Iran’s proxies continue to attack Israel and global shipping. The effort is one of few diplomatic meetings between the U.S. and Iran, and recalls the secret meetings between President Barack Obama’s envoys and the Iranian regime in Oman in 2013 that set the stage for the Iran nuclear deal.