Free Republic

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — The Latest on the 80th anniversary of the start of World War II (all times local): 7:00 p.m. Russian President Vladimir Putin wasn’t invited to attend ceremonies for the 80th anniversary of the day World War II started in Poland. But his Foreign Ministry tried to make sure the Soviet Union’s role in ending the war got acknowledged at least. The ministry tweeted on Sunday: “One may have varying opinions on Soviet policy during the initial period of World War II, but it is impossible to deny the fact that it was the Soviet Union that...

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Sunday asked Poland’s forgiveness for history’s bloodiest conflict during a ceremony in the Polish city of Wielun, where the first World War II bombs fell 80 years ago. “I bow my head before the victims of the attack on Wielun. I bow my head before the Polish victims of Germany’s tyranny. And I ask forgiveness,” Steinmeier said in both German and Polish. “It is the Germans who committed a crime against humanity in Poland. Anyone who claims it is over, that the national-socialists’ reign of terror over Europe is a marginal event in German history...

It started 15 years ago as a hostage taking in a small town in southern Russia. It ended three days later in bloodshed that left hundreds dead, the majority of them children, in one of the worst terror attacks in Russian history. Some three dozen Chechen militants took more than 1,200 people hostage at a school in Beslan, North Ossetia, on September 1, 2004. The drama ended days later after Russian forces stormed the school. The standoff and resulting battle saw 334 people killed, 186 of whom were children. "I was lining the students up [to address them]. When I...

In events marking 80 years since Nazi invasion of Poland that started the war, genocide of Jews was swallowed up like it never happened. The right-wing nationalist government in Poland can celebrate a great victory. In the long war over the “culture of memory,” an objective it set for itself upon coming to power in 2015, the last bastion was conquered yesterday. After Israel’s recognition last year of the Polish narrative – which emphasizes the suffering of the Polish nation and minimizes its part in causing suffering to another nation – now Germany and the United States have also been...

1777: A force of militiamen from New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Vermont - led by Gen. John Stark - clash with a detachment of British General John Burgoyne's army in the Battle of Bennington (near present-day Bennington, Vt.). The Americans rout the British, and the amount of supplies captured during the engagement leads to Burgoyne's forthcoming defeat at Saratoga - which convinces the French to join the war. 1780: Following his successful campaign in the south, Lord Cornwallis engages Gen. Horatio Gates' force in Camden, S.C.. The Americans are annihilated, taking nearly 2,000 casualties in just one hour. The infamous cavalry...

I was working at the Trane Home Comfort Center in South El Monte, CA. Door to door sales.

Of the rock festivals of the sixties, the Woodstock Music and Art Fair was by far the most famous. Held on a 600-acre dairy farm near Bethel, N.Y. on August 15–17, 1969, the festival is the iconic representation of the drug-addled culture and sexual revolution that upended American life. This August marks the fiftieth anniversary of the era-defining event. Some have called for celebrating with another concert. The occasion is hardly a cause for celebration—so many of the cultural changes after Woodstock had catastrophic consequences. Most do not know that the concert was a disaster—even from an organizational point of...

Twenty years ago on Friday, Russian president Boris Yeltsin appointed his fourth prime minister in less than 18 months: Vladimir Putin, then a relatively unknown security services chief with scant experience of politics. The departing Yeltsin was casting around for a successor and few could have predicted that two decades later Putin would still be ruling Russia, having taken on a dominant role in world affairs. But the anniversary comes at a time of uncertainty in the leader's reign. Putin's approval ratings remain at a level most Western leaders would envy but they have taken a hit from a stalling...

The revolution has been canceled, or at least postponed for a while. Apparently, we are told, there were some “unforeseen setbacks.” That’s the vague explanation provided for the catastrophic failure of Woodstock 50, a doomed attempt at recreating the famous 1969 music festival in upstate New York for its 50th anniversary. Michael Lang, a cofounder of the original Woodstock and the mastermind behind this recent planned reincarnation, endured months of nightmarish organizational impediments — bureaucratic issues, lagging enthusiasm, and the withdrawal of a host of significant investors and performers — before ultimately throwing in the towel earlier this week.

Playing behind the scenes of New York City’s Saturday blackout which left 73,000 locals – not counting tourists – in Midtown Manhattan and the Upper West Side without power are the ongoing power grid “hack attacks” being exchanged between the U.S. and Russia. Maybe Russia just scored one on us. A sampling of open-source evidence confirms that Russia is fairly embedded in the U.S. grid and taking offensive measures against us. For instance, Russian hacking operatives (known alternately as Energetic Bear or Dragonfly) were caught in 2014 compromising software updates that would, in turn, provide access to power switches. A...

The Washington Monument has been transformed into a stunning tribute to the first moon landing through a dazzling series of projections. Crowds packed the National Mall to watch the 17-minute show, which was projected three times each on Friday and Saturday, marking the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission. Cheers rose from the crowd as the Saturn V rocket was seen lifting off. The show also included various scenes of the stages separating, the moon landing, and splash-down as the hero astronauts returned to Earth.

As America prepares to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo moon landing, The New York Times is busy celebrating the Soviet space program and bashing America’s. A Times op-ed Thursday highlighted how the Soviet Union was oh-so-diverse, sending women and people of color into space long before stuffy, old America got around to doing the same. As the USSR retreats into the rearview mirror of history, there is a growing tendency to romanticize its disastrous reign through the lens of contemporary wokeness. Sure, Communists tortured and executed dissidents, starved their own people by the millions and operated gulags —...

Gay Holocaust: It has already begun — in the very citadel of the West JUL 17, 2019 9:00 AM BY ALEXANDER MAISTROVOY On the fiftieth anniversary of Stonewall riots, an Israeli historian, Yuval Harari, gave an interview to the Guardian in which he warned that the 21th century could be the Gay Holocaust. Harari is known as the author of popular bestsellers and is a guru for progressives. In his opinion, the main threat to the LGBT community comes from countries where they, having obtained the desired freedom, have turned into scapegoats: in Eastern Europe, most of all, Poland, Hungary,...

Ted Kennedy might have become president - Richard Nixon certainly thought the runt of the litter was going to be the Democrat nominee against him in 1972. But the Kennedys' dreams of a restoration of "Camelot" were shattered 50 years ago this week, as Teddy's mother's 1967 Delmont 88 Oldsmobile plunged off a small bridge on Chappaquiddick Island into a tidal pond, drowning Mary Jo Kopechne. Teddy killed the 28-year-old "girl," as he called her, and he was allowed to plead guilty to ... leaving the scene of an accident. Not vehicular homicide, or drunk driving, or reckless driving, or...

RUSH: I have people all over the place, “Rush, what is this all about? What is really going on here?” Sometimes the question disappoints me because I would hope that it would be obvious. I think it’s obvious to more and more people what’s going on here, but I will take the opportunity here to explain it in abbreviated form yet again. I’ve had so many people say to me, “You know, Rush, this nothing new. People have been saying ‘love it or leave it’ for I don’t know how long, my whole life.” Remember there used to be all...

One small holograph for man. One giant holograph for the Washington Monument. The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing with a life-size projection of the Saturn V rocket on the Washington Monument on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. The Saturn V rocket is now iconic for carrying the Apollo 11 crew to the moon in 1969. The projection-mapping-artwork will occupy 363 of the Monument's 555 vertical feet. On Friday and Saturday, the semi-centennial show will switch to a 17-minute film that recreates the Apollo 11 launch.

This is link to the commemoration (and re-enactment)of the Battle to free Mogilev Belarus from the Nazis June 28, 1944. It is quite the production and we know someone who participated yesterday. Not a lot of news comes out of Belarus, but they are definitely proud of their history and teaching younger generations about freedom. Hopefully it will catch on more.

Most everyone in America was and is in favor of marriage equality. Most everyone was and is in favor of marriage equality because most everyone wants the law to treat all marriages equally. The debate in the United States in the decade and a half before Obergefell v. Hodges wasn’t about equality. It was about marriage. We disagreed about what marriage is. Of course, “marriage equality” was a great slogan. It fit on a bumper sticker. You could make a red equal sign your Facebook profile picture. It was a wonderful piece of advertising. And yet it’s completely vacuous. It...

On July 20, 1969, American astronauts Neil Armstrong (1930-2012) and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin (1930-) became the first humans ever to land on the moon. About six-and-a-half hours later, Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon. As he set took his first step, Armstrong famously said, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." The Apollo 11 mission occurred eight years after President John F. Kennedy (1917-63) announced a national goal of landing a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s. Apollo 17, the final manned moon mission, took place in 1972.

It was the escalator ride that would change history. Four years ago on Sunday, Donald Trump descended through the pink marble and brass atrium of Trump Tower to announce his candidacy for president , the first step on a journey few believed would take him all the way to the White House. It turns out the 2015 event might not have happened, at least not on June 16. And the over-the-top staging that featured a crowd including paid actors could have been even more theatrical if one early idea hadn't been scrapped. (Trump nixed suggestions to feature a live elephant....