Free Republic

A monument to Soviet dictator Josef Stalin erected in Moscow's metro is stirring debate, with some Russians welcoming it as a historical tribute, but others saying it's a mistake to commemorate someone who presided over so much suffering. -snip- Nearly 700,000 people were executed in Stalin's 1937-38 Great Terror amid show trials and purges of his real and perceived enemies. Many other Soviet citizens were sent to the Gulag, a grim network of prison camps, spread across the world's largest country. The Moscow metro said in a statement that the new version of the monument, which was presented to the...

You can find many unusual things in gardens, but stumbling upon a treasure worth millions of Dollars isn’t exactly common. Michel Dupont, a 52-year-old farmer from Auvergne, accidentally discovered a gold deposit on his land valued at 4 billion Dollars. This discovery stands as one of the most significant finds in French history. However, Dupont’s joy was short-lived, as the government soon informed him that everything found beneath his garden legally belongs to the state. The discovery occurred while Dupont was walking along a stream on his farm and noticed a strange shimmer in the water. He dug into the...

The amazing part of communism is the ability to exert the most ridiculous statements oblivious of the irony or hypocrisy involved. It’s as if they assume that whatever they say will be given equal weight with obvious truths and common sense, when most of their statements are in conflict with both. In recognizing the dogma surrounding this, it isn’t so much that they put exaggerated lies forward as the truth, but that they seem to garner so many listeners. One must stand back and marvel, not at the lies or liars involved, but those who stand ready to accept it,...

Joe Biden celebrated the ‘joy’ of Kwanzaa on Sunday. Kwanzaa is a phony holiday created in 1966 by black radical Ron Everett — aka Dr. Maulana Karenga, a violent felon who tortured two naked black women.

Woke may be dying, but history warns: every collapse of the left births a new epoch—often more radical than the last. The other day, The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by Eric Kaufmann, a professor of politics at the University of Buckingham in England, proclaiming the death of woke and the end of the Progressive Era. This is more than a “vibe-shift,” Kaufmann writes; it’s “the end of the 60-year rise of left-liberalism in American culture.” He continues, arguing that the backlash against the left’s aggressive embrace of identity politics and its imposition of that politics on every aspect...

NewsNation political contributor Chris Cillizza said Thursday that fresh polling data paints a dire picture for the Democratic Party. Just roughly one-third of Democrats said they were “very optimistic” or “somewhat optimistic” regarding the future of their own party, according to a Wednesday poll conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Cillizza said on his YouTube channel that this survey, alongside another poll, underscores how damaged the party has become. WATCH: VIDEO AT LINK.................. “The extent to which Democrats, Democrats think the Democratic brand is broken is pretty stunning to me, and we have a bunch of...

Dick Morris is spearheading a campaign to stop presumed Secretary of State John Kerry from tapping an “overt Castro sympathizer” to be in charge of U.S.-Cuban policy. Morris says one of Kerry’s closest confidants is Fulton Armstrong, who has served for years as his assistant for Cuban and Latin American relations on the Senate staff of the Foreign Policy Committee. … Morris said when John Bolton was up for Ambassador to Cuba, he said there was evidence Castro was amassing biological weapons for use against the U.S. and moved to declassify a report about it. “Fulton Armstrong opposed that and...

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa slammed Afrikaner refugees who left for the United States on Tuesday, saying that it was “cowardly” for them to leave racial discrimination and threatened expropriation. Ramaphosa spoke the day after after the first flight of 49 white Afrikaners granted refugee status by the U.S. arrived in Washington, DC. As many as 70,000 more have sought to apply to enter the U.S. under the policy. Ramaphosa, who styles himself as a pro-business moderate, and is set to speak to U.S. President Donald Trump later this month, made the remark at a surprise visit to a local...

The strange beliefs of Nicholas Kristof A couple of years ago, to celebrate the Catholic feast of the Assumption, Nicholas Kristof wrote a column called “Believe it or Not” (New York Times, 8-15-03), in which he scoffed at the naïve religious beliefs of Americans and in particular at the absurdity of believing in the Virgin Birth of Christ. This year, to celebrate Christmas, I wish to reply to his charges. In publishing his column, Kristof showed considerable bravery. Not by attacking religious believers (which is mere political correctness) but by exposing his own beliefs, which are touchingly old-fashioned and naive....

Russia and China warned on Wednesday that Donald Trump’s proposed “Golden Iron Dome for America” missile defense system would destabilize global security and turn outer space into a new arena for armed confrontation. “The recently announced large-scale ‘Golden (Iron) Dome for America’ program is deeply destabilizing,” the two sides said in a joint statement during a visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping to Moscow. The U.S. plan “explicitly provides for a significant strengthening of the arsenal for conducting combat operations in space,” it added. -snip- Moscow and Beijing claimed nuclear states must “reject Cold War mentality” and avoid seeking military...

My country, Venezuela, is on the verge of social and economic collapse. This slow-motion disaster, nearly 15 years in the making, was not initiated by falling oil prices or by mounting debts. It was set in motion by the authoritarian government’s hostility toward human rights and the rule of law and the institutions that protect them. -excerpt- I am writing from a military prison, where I have been held since February as a result of speaking out against the government’s actions. I am one of scores of political prisoners in my country .... -excerpt- ... Venezuela’s road to ruin was...

French President Emmanuel Macron and EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen are hosting a Paris conference to attract US researchers ready to relocate because of President Donald Trump's policies. EU commissioners, scientists and ministers for research from member countries will discuss, among other things, financial incentives at the gathering to lure disgruntled American scientists across the Atlantic. Paris's Sorbonne university is hosting the conference, called "Choose Europe for Science". Under Trump, universities and research facilities in the United States have come under increasing political and financial pressure, including from threats of massive federal funding cuts. Research programmes face closure,...

"There are very, very few people in the West who seriously believe that".. The Associated Press complains that President Trump is calling their political allies “Communists”. For years, President Donald Trump blamed “communists” for his legal and political troubles. Now, the second Trump administration is deploying that same historically loaded label to cast his opponents — from judges to educators — as threats to American identity, culture and values. In 2025, communism wields big influence in countries such as China, Vietnam, North Korea and Cuba. But not the United States. “The core of communism is the belief that governments can...

The United Nations could become unable to pay its staff and suppliers by September and its peacekeepers by mid-2025, following an outsized projected deficit and a leaked White House proposal to end funding for the intergovernmental body,.. The U.N.’s $200 million deficit in 2024 is measly compared to the $1.1 billion deficit the organization is projected to incur at the end of 2025, barring any budget cuts, .. The deficit reportedly will hobble the organization’s ability to pay salaries and suppliers by September. The U.N. is billed to inform its member states Saturday that its $3.7 billion budget intended to...

For years, President Donald Trump blamed “communists” for his legal and political troubles. Now, the second Trump administration is deploying that same historically loaded label to cast his opponents — from judges to educators — as threats to American identity, culture and values.Why? Trump himself explained the strategy last year when he described how he planned to defeat his Democratic opponent, then-Vice President Kamala Harris, in the White House election.“All we have to do is define our opponent as being a communist or a socialist or somebody who is going to destroy our country,” he told reporters at his New...

Will Zelensky attack ther Victory Day parade and escalate the war to the maximum? On the one hand, we all know ‘talk is cheap’, so it may be that Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky is just posturing when he hints that his forces may well attack the May 9th Victory Day Parade in Moscow, Russia – an event that will gather thousands of people, including as many as 20 heads of state. This would amount to an especially damning escalation since Putin declared a 3-day truce from May 8-10 – a proposal that Kiev sneered at, but hasn’t publicly rejected. However,...

Russia's President Vladimir Putin signed a decree late on Tuesday renaming the airport in Volgograd as Stalingrad, as the city was known when the Soviet army defeated the Nazi German forces in the biggest battle of World War Two, APA reports citing Reuters. "In order to perpetuate the Victory of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945, I hereby decree ... to assign the historical name 'Stalingrad' to Volgograd International Airport," the decree published on the Kremlin's website said.

 In the unlikely event that the President were ever impeached, what would Senator Mitch McConnell's position be regarding arbitrary restrictions on the scope of prosecution?  On Sunday, November 24, 1963, my sister and I were watching TV in our pajamas. Our Mom was standing behind us, watching too. We watched Lee Harvey Oswald get shot by Jack Ruby on live TV. We listened to various news stories through the years for explanations of those memorable events. As a teenager I listened to a "Boston Conspiracy Conference" carried live for several days in the 1970s on KPFK, socialist radio in Los Angeles. I...

Stalin, a cynical and clever leader, didn’t experience any epiphany but simply knew that taking it easy on the Orthodox Church was important for winning the war. First, many Soviet citizens remained secretly religious (which was not directly forbidden), so the “legalization” of Orthodoxy helped to keep the nation at war united – quite a crucial thing. Second, the Allies were pushing Stalin towards loosening his grip on the religious: the oppression of the faithful was bad publicity, internationally speaking. Third, in 1943 the Red Army was regaining the Soviet lands previously occupied by Germans. The occupants, trying to gain...

This is interesting. This is a 1954 radio show. At the 17:30 mark they discuss socialism, communism, collectivism, fascism, free enterprise, and government enterprise. It’s a very different conversation than would be had today. It’s also interesting to consider why they would do this on such a show. In 1954, the McCarthy hearings took place, Vietnam split into communist north and republican south, and the Soviets began launching large ICBMs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KeSIgMDlxL4