Free Republic

<p>Mystery writer Mickey Spillane dies after a long illness, a nursing home spokesman says. He was 87.</p>

Many people, inside and outside of the conservative movement are asking questions about where it is going, and whether or not it is on the verge of collapse. Historian and author George Nash addressed the “Uneasy Future of Conservatism” at the Heritage Foundation on June 19th. The event was sponsored by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, an organization that seeks to provide college-aged students with an understanding of America’s founding principles. “In 2006, conservatism is middle-aged,” said Nash, “and on the right, there is a sense that political success has not been matched by change.” The government it seems is still...

Not every Bolivian likes to be under the thumb of Hugo Chavez’s minime, Evo Morales. Residents of the eastern province, Santa Cruz, which is full of industrious immigrants and enterprising native-indigenous Bolivians who’ve moved there, want instead to have autonomy. They hate communism and want freedom.

Leaders Mark 1956 Anti-Communist Protest By Associated Press June 28, 2006, 8:18 AM EDT WARSAW, Poland -- The presidents of Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic and Germany gathered in the city of Poznan on Wednesday to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the first anti-communist protest of 1956. President Lech Kaczynski was joined by counterparts Horst Koehler of Germany, Laszlo Solyom of Hungary, and Vaclav Klaus of Czech Republic to remember clashes that broke out between workers and communist militia in June 1956 in the western Polish city. With a military band playing, Kaczynski gave a red-carpet welcome to his fellow presidents...

Poznan 1956 – beginning of the end of communism? 28.06.2006 How important were the Polish 1956 workers revolts in bringing down communism forty year later? Michal Kubicki reports Popular textbooks on Polish history describe the workers’ revolt in Poznan 59 as the first in a series of crises which eventually led to the collapse of communism in 1989. How important was it for Poland and the entire Soviet bloc? The other key events in Poland’s post-war history are the workers’ riots on the Baltic coast in 1970, the protests of 1976 which gave rise to the establishment of the Workers’...

New Yorkers for Immigration Control and Enforcement (NY I.C.E.) will rally in front of Revolution Books at 9 West 19th Street (between 5th and 6th Avenues in Manhattan) to bring illegal alien supporters out of the shadows. Building on the momentum established earlier this month with the NYC “Hands Along the Border” rally, NY I.C.E. will continue to protest against illegal aliens and their supporters. A primary objective of NY I.C.E. is to expose the supporters of illegal aliens, bringing them “out of the shadows”. NY I.C.E. has chosen this location because the counterprotestors at the previous rally reported to...

<p>HONG KONG -- A leader of China's state-controlled Catholic church said Friday he suspected the Vatican appointed an anti-communist Hong Kong bishop to be cardinal because the pope wanted to play a role in the Communist Party's demise.</p> <p>Liu Bainian, vice chairman of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association, noted that the Roman Catholic Church was active in toppling communism in Poland in 1989. Liu suggested that Hong Kong Bishop Joseph Zen, whose appointment to cardinal was announced last month, would be part of a similar strategy in China.</p>

An anti-communist May Day coup Bumped off Letná, the KSÈM regroups By Iva Skochová Staff Writer, The Prague Post May 03, 2006 Communist Youth Union members gather at Výstavištì May 1. Letná Park in Prague 7 has always been a popular gathering place for communists on May 1, or Labor Day, since it was traditionally the site of regular party rallies during the Cold War, scenes of pomp and circumstance where the virtues of the worker were extolled. So when the Confederation of Political Prisoners (KPV), an anti-communist group, managed to get a permit for its own demonstration on Letná...

Ba'athist Bile by Wayne Boettcher Posted: 04/14/2006 This week's column is a report of an event some friends and I attended. The propaganda speech by an Iraqi woman named Eman Ahmed Khamas (or Khammas) was recently held in Tucson, Arizona at a Unitarian Universalist church. Sponsored by various "anti-war" groups such as Code Pink, Khamas is touring America to accuse US troops of bizarre atrocities and attempt to get people to believe that life was better for the Iraqis under Saddam Hussein. It may have been better for her, since she worked in a government approved job as a...

The recent murder of Allen Ngai Leung, a famous Chinese-American community leader in San Francisco's Chinatown, has exposed a political tension that has silenced many of Chinatown's leaders who favor Taiwan and are against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Leung was killed at the scene by a masked gunman disguised as a robber, who fired four shots into Leung after breaking into his business, Wonkow International Enterprises, located at the intersection of Jackson Street and Kearny Street on the afternoon of February 27. The police and the majority of the Chinese-American community leaders in Chinatown have largely been keeping silent...

PACE anti-communist resolution aimed at Russia - Duma deputy MOSCOW. Feb 9 (Interfax) - A resolution condemning the crimes committed by totalitarian communist regimes passed by the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) in January is fraught with legal implications for Russia, said Russian State Duma Veteran Affairs Committee Chairman and ex-Federal Security Service (FSB) Director Nikolai Kovalyov. "This document is doubtlessly aimed at Russia and pursues far- reaching ends: first recognize the Soviet Union regime as criminal and totalitarian and then advance legal claims, including financial ones, against Russia as the USSR's successor," Kovalyov told Interfax on Thursday.

US diplomats arranged for Cuban dissidents to get a pep talk from former Polish President Lech Walesa today in the latest chapter of Washington's long-running ideological battle against President Fidel Castro's communist government. "The system will fall because nobody believes in communism," said Mr Walesa, the founder of Poland's Solidarity movement which toppled Poland's communist government and led to the collapse of Soviet influence in Eastern Europe. "You are close to your goal," he said in Warsaw in a video conference with dissidents gathered at the Havana home of the top US diplomat in Cuba, Michael Parmly. The video conference...

A vintage blue taxicab converted into a seagoing vessel and carrying several Cuban immigrants was intercepted Tuesday off Key West by the Coast Guard, a television station reported.

It seems like just yesterday that I was riding back from the Piggly Wiggly after grocery shopping with my mother. Of course, it wasn't yesterday. It was more like the summer of 1970. If memory serves me correctly, I was five years old.While we were riding in our 1965 Pontiac Catalina, I heard a reporter on the radio say something about a war in Vietnam. I didn't know we were in a war until I asked my mom if we were fighting the Germans again. That's when I first heard that terrible word. "No, son, we are fighting the communists."...

I'm an active participant in wikipedia. Generally, it's a wonderful project that allows people to share their knowledge and find some more. There are, however, things that make me feel disappointed and disgusted. The biggest problem there is bias. As there are many leftists out there, they tend to show the history in a way that is favorable to them. Not only that they write the biased articles, where all achievements of Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan (RIP) or Augusto Pinochet are belittled, and the alleged "achievements" of the socialist and communist governments are applauded; some of them also do make...

Human rights charges against Chilean ex-dictator Augusto Pinochet will not likely succeed, observers say, but if it's found that he profited illegally, his supporters would likely turn their backs on him. Special to The Herald SANTIAGO, Chile - As two Chilean judges consider putting ex-dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet on trial for human rights abuses and alleged corruption, observers say that despite the crescendo of legal actions, Pinochet will likely remain untouchable on human rights grounds. But if it's proved that the 88-year old Pinochet profited through illegal activities, what support he has enjoyed from the armed forces and a divided...

A whopping 71 percent of the Vietnamese-American community plans to vote for President Bush in the upcoming election, according to a recent national poll by the multi-ethnic news agency New California Media. Dan Tran, a member of Vietnamese Americans Against John Kerry, isn’t surprised. Instead he anticipates an even higher percentage, predicting Vietnamese will virtually vote unanimously for Bush. “I think 90 percent of the Vietnamese in America will vote against Kerry,” he said. Amid an already heated election littered with issues surrounding Iraq and the economy, in the eyes of some Vietnamese the sole factor determining their vote has...

WARSAW (AFP) - Lech Walesa, the anti-communist trade union leader who went on to become president of Poland, received a special honour from the Warsaw government for promoting his country abroad. Walesa, 61, whose Solidarity union drove Poland's break with the former communist bloc, received a special diploma from Foreign Minister Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz. "I have always done my best to represent Poland at hundreds of meetings with thousands of participants on every continent, and I have to say, without modesty, always with success," Walesa said after receiving the award. Walesa, who was awarded the Nobel Peace prize in 1983 and...

WARSAW (AFP) - Jacek Kuron, one of the key figures in the anti-communist opposition in Poland and a founding member of the Solidarity trade union movement, has died in Warsaw, Polish national radio reported. He was 70. A historian and sociologist, Kuron was one of the first intellectuals to openly criticise the communist regime in the late 1960s, but he always remained a man of the left. Co-founder in 1976 of the Committee for the Defence of Workers (KOR), the embryo of the democratic opposition, he was involved in setting up Solidarity, the first free trade union in the Soviet...

ComtedeMaistre's comment: About a week ago, I commented on the great changes that have taken place in the Disney Corporation, where a once family friendly pro-American company, was taken over by new management in the 1980s, and turned into a smut and violence peddling corporation. And I mentioned the fact that the new Disney is not representative of the values of the company's founder, Walt Disney. A freeper who uses the moniker, "this-ol-patriot", was kind enough to post the a transcript demonstrating how pro-American the late Walt Disney was, and I thank the freeper for making the transcript available. Disney...