Free Republic

Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree to re-establish the Moscow and Leningrad Military Districts, according to the document posted on the government’s legal information web portal on Monday.

UMAN, Ukraine (AP) — Police have detained about 100 activists of Ukraine's nationalist party who protested the annual pilgrimage of Hasidic Jews in southern Ukraine.

We all know how annoying can spam be. Although there are highly sophiscated tools nowadays, which can reduce the amount of spam in your mailbox to the minimum, it’s still at least unpleasent to see all those “penis enlargement” mails. But people working in this “business” aren’t safe anymore: Alexey Tolstokozhev (btw, in Russian his name means ‘Thick Skin’), a Russian spammer, was found murdered in his luxury house near Moscow. He has been shot several times with one bullet stuck in his head. According to authorities, this last head shot is a clear mark of russian hit men (known...

JERUSALEM - In a case that would seem unthinkable in the Jewish state, police said Sunday they have cracked a cell of young Israeli neo-Nazis accused in a string of attacks on foreign workers, religious Jews, drug addicts and gays. Eight immigrants from the former Soviet Union have been arrested in recent days in connection with at least 15 attacks, and a ninth fled the country, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said, in the first such known cell to be discovered in Israel.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Forgotten and broken down Soviet-era arcade games are being restored for Moscow's newest museum, just opened by volunteers nostalgic for childhood days spent playing games like "Tankodrom" and "Sniper." ADVERTISEMENT Secret military factories across the Soviet Union churned out the arcade games from the late 1970s, but they were discarded in favor of shinier western imports after the collapse of communism in 1991, explain the museum's founders. While youngsters in the West played Pac-man on their first home computers, their Eastern bloc counterparts from Dresden to Vladivostok were queuing up to play the latest arcade games.

Who decides when to kill?The technical aspects of extrajudicial retribution had been worked out well in Chechnya. There were thousands of Russian citizens who dissapeared without a trace there - sounds like whole new ways to uphold the law and order have been discovered. An ex-army officer, who had served in Chechnya had told me how people "dissapear", in such a way that neither their relatives nor the law enforcement agencies can find them. The captives are being interrogated under torture, then taken to a remote location, piled into 3-5 men pile and then blown up using a powerfull explosive...

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4The security agencies intimidateThe document that was quoted is naturally against the Constitution, the norms of criminal law and any ideas that we may share about a state where extrajudicial punishments are not possible. In any case, this is exactly what the leadership of our country has been saying. But it is quite obvious that inside our country there exists a dedicated system of security agencies aimed exactly at carrying out extrajudicial punishments. But should the quote from an undated and unsigned document be trusted? The person who had leaked the document to...

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3Do the interests of the state require to kill?There is yet another example. In Kaliningrad a gang was uncovered by RUBOP agents. Apparently behind the gang stood officers from a local FSB branch. One of the gang members whose job was kidnapping and extortion, was an intelligence agent himself. While being videotaped durign his interrogation he confessed to having shot a businessman, well known in the city, using an automatic weapon. He also claimed that he was acting under orders from... the head of the "department of counterterrorism and protection of constitutional order" of the...

Part 1 Part 2Demolition crew from the FSBIn the middle 90's a series of terrorist acts took place in Moscow. The most tragic one was a trolley bus exploding on Strastny Boulevard. Much was being said about a coordinated attack on Moscow (by the Chechens - comm. JadeEmperor). But all of a sudden it was uncovered that the bus was blown up not by the Chechen militants, but... by an ex-KGB colonel. He was found guilty by a trial. Also it was found out that the attempted bombing of a railroad bridge across the Yauza river also was not carried...

Part 1Part 2 The Wetwork SpecialistsThe journalist Dima Holodov was murdered in Vladivostok in 1994 - the same time frame, when the two gangs were uncovered, which had ties to GRU and MVD. An investigation of his murder during the first two month led to those very same two organizations. The suspects were a group of servicemen from the 45-th regimen of the VDV, which belonged to the GRU. During the investigation it was found out that the group supposedly did not report directly to the unit commander. Are such things possible in an ordinary military unit? Of course they...

SPARE ORGANSHow secret services have created parallel structures for carrying out extrajudicial sentences.How murders are carried out in the interests of the state. A secret instruction. After the death of Alexander Litvinenko in London something seemed to change in Russia. Not everyone has formulated exactly what, but everyone has felt on order of their own "gut feelings" something, which makes the insides tense in anticipation of some unknown danger. Although our state has nothing to do with this murder. So say the officials. But somehow we don't believe them. Perhaps, one of the reasons for this is we remember, how...

These days, even Jews who have never been to a synagogue are happy to assert that separateness: they are rossiiskiye, Russian citizens, but not russkiye, “Russians”. As many as 100,000 Russian-Israelis have gone back to Russia, says Rabbi Avraham Berkowitz, the director of the Lubavitch-run Federation of Jewish Communities, one of Russia's two main (and rival) umbrella groups. In a fast-growing market with a population over 20 times the size of Israel's, they often get better work. Today, a Russian Jew in Moscow will be more expensively dressed than his cousin in Tel Aviv: a big reversal from ten years...

For those FReepers who can understand Russian, I guess freedom of speech is not totally dead there just yet. If they have had internet in Brezhnev's era no provider would have dared to host something like this. http://pop.gzt.ru/mp3/putin.mp3 The clip does contain *some* profanity and real soundbites from Pootie-Poot's speeches.

The last person to meet Alexander Litvinenko before he succumbed to the agonising effects of radioactive poisoning is a self-professed expert in nuclear materials. International 'security consultant' Mario Scaramella, who joined Litvinenko for the now infamous clandestine meeting in a London sushi bar, headed an organisation which tracked dumped nuclear waste, including Soviet nuclear missiles left over from the Cold War.

"The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has proposed a system which will in essence make it mandatory for you to have permission before leaving or entering the country, effectively putting everyone on a no-fly list unless the government says otherwise. Interestingly, the proposal does not seem to cover personal travel, only that on some sort of carrier like an airline or cruise vessel. While this certainly is concerning, it isn't exactly new, as a passport is already required for circumstances covered under the proposal." US Citizens To Require ''Clear

Russian rock, which helped change the face of the Soviet Union in the 1980s, seems to be adrift in the Putin era. As some former rock heroes seek benefits from the state, what was once the Russian rock fraternity has cracked. Perhaps the last straw was the dispute that erupted after perestroika-era rock idol Vyacheslav Butusov played for 5,000 activists of the pro-Kremlin youth movement Nashi on July 24.

"TRUTH is generally the first casualty in war. On the battlefields of the Middle East, especially when Israel is involved, reason also has a hard time of it. For neither Israel nor the Jews are seen, whether by themselves, their friends or their foes, as a nation and a people like others." Read the entire article here: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19867862-601,00.html