Free Republic

The Polish prime minister has said the government is preparing to introduce “military training” for all adult males in the country and that the initiative should be ready “by the end of the year”. Donald Tusk told parliament on Friday that if Russia took control of parts of Ukraine, then Poland would find itself in a “difficult geographical situation”. He said: “We are preparing large-scale military training for every adult man in Poland. Our goal is to finalize the plan by year’s end to ensure a well-trained reserve force ready for potential threats. “If Ukraine loses the war, or if...

TSA Unable To Detect 33% Of Land Mines Sent Through Security A mechanical engineer from the Army's Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey was stopped by TSA officers at Newark Airport after they found two Claymore mines in her bag. This would be a victory for the TSA had they not just let the woman's co-worker through with a similar mine in their checked baggage. Which government agency deserves your scorn, the one whose employees tried to bring anti-personnel mines (even inert ones) on a plane or the one whose employees didn't detect a third of them?

The Syrian military in the past month planted a band of anti-personnel mines along stretches of the border with Turkey, where last year more than 10,000 Syrian refugees fled the Assad regime's crackdown on the pro-democracy "Arab Spring" uprising, Syrian witnesses said. After a family of five were reported severely injured in a new minefield last month, Syrian civilians, operating with primitive means — an axe, a rope and the guidance of a volunteer who'd had mine- clearance training in military service — unearthed hundreds of those mines and reopened the way to safety, volunteers said. The mines were Russian...