Free Republic

Symposium: When an Evil Empire Returns By Jamie GlazovFrontPageMagazine.com | June 23, 2006  The Cold War is back. Russian President Vladimir Putin, a former KGB agent, is leading his country back into the dark ages of Soviet totalitarianism and instigating a global confrontation between Russia and the United States -- as well as between Russia and the West as a whole. The Russian President has consistently rolled back democratic freedoms. And he is proving that the genie can be placed back into the bottle: he has centralized authority and suffocated dissent in the media and in the nation at large. Reformers making efforts to build...

America isn't a democracy but a constitutional republic designed to limit majority rule and protect individual rights. This distortion enables narratives that label dissent as dangerous, especially in portraying Trump as a "threat to democracy" -- a claim pushed by institutions caught spreading falsehoods about him. What appears as consensus is actually assigned opinion enforced by media and political power, as "conspiracy theories used to silence dissent are proving to be true. What follows is not just a list of lies -- it’s a pattern of systemic deception that reveals where the real threat lies. The Concealment of President Biden’s...

President Donald Trump blamed Joe Biden's White House team of "treasonous thugs" for hijacking control of the country due to the then-president's declining mental state. In a social media post Tuesday, Trump said Biden's team committed "treason" by opening the southern border to "criminals of all kinds, shapes, and sizes." "Joe Biden was not for Open Borders, he never talked about Open Borders, where criminals of all kinds, shapes, and sizes, can flow into our Country at will. It wasn't his idea to Open the Border, and almost destroy our Country, and cost us Hundreds of Billions of Dollars to...

CARACAS, VENEZUELA - Maria Corina Machado doesn't hesitate when asked her feelings about the possibility of going to prison for up to 28 years for "treason to the nation" and conspiracy. "I'm scared, I'm very scared; I have three kids," the political activist says softly, sitting in her small office in the Caracas headquarters of Sumate, the organization that led last year's unsuccessful bid to recall President Hugo Chávez from office. Mr. Chávez's landslide victory in that vote only added to the troubles of Ms. Machado, Sumate's vice president and the woman who has come to symbolize the anti-Chávez opposition....

I nominate Recep Tayyip Erdogan, president of Turkey, as the most inconsistent, mysterious, and therefore most unpredictable major politician on the world stage. His victory in a referendum last Sunday formally bestows him with near-dictatorial powers that leave Turkey, the Middle East, and beyond in a greater state of uncertainty than ever.Here are some of the puzzles:Mystery #1: Holding the referendum. The Turkish electorate voted on April 16 in a remarkable national plebiscite that dealt not with the usual topic – floating a bond or recalling a politician – but with fundamental constitutional changes affecting the very nature of their...

The president, especially when he’s elderly, is one of the most closely monitored men in the world. It is possible for someone to be in an advanced stage of cancer without previous warnings, but that’s less likely to be the case with a former president. Biden’s party and the party’s media had spent years lying about his mental capacities and are now busy lying that they knew about his mental state which gives them very little credibility when claiming that no one knew anything about Biden’s physical state. There had been previous warnings that Biden had more serious physical problems...

A new book revealed that aides to Kamala Harris secretly planned for the possibility of Joe Biden's death in office as early as 2023, further fueling concerns over the former president's age and fitness for office. Questions about Biden's ability to serve another term grew throughout his presidency, with critics pointing to his advanced age and moments of confusion. Despite mounting concerns, Biden and his team insisted he was fit for re-election. However, behind closed doors, Democratic officials reportedly held secret discussions about contingency plans in case Biden had to withdraw or was unable to complete his term, the Guardian...

The Hur tapes expose what we knew all along: The Democrat cover-up of Biden’s cognitive decline is the biggest scandal in U.S. political history. It might be a bigger scandal than we knew. We found out today that Joe Biden has an advanced form of prostate cancer, and it has spread to his bones. How long did people know he had cancer, and who knew? I am reposting two medical opinions because they open up an important question about how long everyone knew Biden had cancer. In 2022, Biden said he had cancer, and we thought it was just another...

Rep. Jim Clyburn claimed “still” believes former President Joe Biden could’ve served out another four years as president, despite mounting evidence of cognitive decline. “Yes, I thought that back then. I still think that, but I don’t know that,” Clyburn told CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday when asked if Biden could’ve served out another term that he would’ve completed at age 86. Still, Clyburn, 84, who is widely credited with rescuing Biden’s then-flailing presidential bid in 2020, admitted that Biden’s disastrous debate performance against President Trump in June of last year had him second-guessing that belief. “I watched that...

Ethiopia’s brutal Marxist dictator, known as the African Pol Pot, became the first fallen leader to be found guilty yesterday of genocide in his own country after a 12-year trial.Mengistu Haile Mariam, the former President, who fled to Zimbabwe in 1991, was accused along with top members of his military Government of killing thousands during his 17-year rule. The period was marked by vicious crackdowns on opponents, disastrous wars with neighbouring countries and rebel groups and devastating famines in which starvation was used to force peasants into submission. “Members of the Derg [Government] who are present in court today and...

Axios obtained the audio of former President Biden’s October 2023 interviews with special counsel Robert Hur. In the first segment below, recorded on the first day of interviews, former President Biden was questioned about where he kept documents. Biden had difficulty recalling that it was 2015 when his son Beau died. Biden also shared that President Obama discouraged him from running for president.The interview tapes reveal the scope of cognitive decline the control agents around Joe Biden were trying to keep hidden from the country. As the tapes reveal, Joe Biden was not in any capacity to be in office....

Why did the DNC, White House staffers and even seasoned journalists lie to the American people when they decided to run cover for Joe Biden? It's not enough just to say, “Politics. We want power.” What was the strategy to make you do something so egregious, asks Victor Davis Hanson on today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words:”

The head of Budapest’s Office for the Protection of Sovereignty claimed that tens of millions of dollars from the United States and the European Union have funded left-leaning media institutions over the past three years, with the intent of overthrowing the conservative government of Viktor Orbán in Hungary. Supposedly independent media outlets in Hungary have been propped up by money from the now-axed United States Agency for International Development (USAID), other State Department programmes, as well as from the European Commission, Tamás Lánczi said this week. The top man at the Office for the Protection of Sovereignty said that the...

Demonstrators in Paraguay have set fire to the country's Congress amid violent protests against a bill that would let the president seek re-election. Protestors stormed the legislature, breaking windows and fences. The countries 1992 constitution, introduced after 35 years of dictatorship, strictly limits the president to a single five-year term. But sitting President Horactio Cartes is attempting to remove the restriction and run for re-election. Protestors were photographed smashing in windows of the congress building in Asuncion on Friday night and setting fire to the interior.

The Miami Herald is reporting Hugo Chávez early demise was recognized long before the rest of the world was privvy to the details of a late diagnosed and lethal cancer. With the help of Cuban brothers Fidel and Raúl, and Chávez' hand-picked successor Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan presidential election was moved from December 2012 to October 2012, two months that the report says were crucial. In October Chávez could still stand before his supporters to applaud his re-election, but there was no certainty that he could do so in December. He returned to Cuba for a fourth round of cancer treatments in early...

A wealthy ally of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has placed a bounty on the heads of two former U.S. military and intelligence officials as part of what U.S. officials told the Washington Free Beacon is an effort by the Turkish government to threaten and intimidate Americans who they believe are working to undermine Erdogan. A bounty of three million Turkish lira, or nearly $800,000, was placed on the heads of former Pentagon official Michael Rubin and former top CIA official Graham Fuller for what Erdogan's allies claim is their role in a 2016 failed coup that nearly toppled Erdogan's...

On July 7, 1846, a contingent of Marines raised the American flag over Monterey, California, to mark a proclamation by U.S. consul Thomas Larkin that the territory was being annexed as a consequence of the war with Mexico. Much of the future state had already been taken from Mexico's nominal control by an uprising of American settlers under the Bear Flag. Victory in the Mexican War meant that the country gained Texas, California, and everything in between, comprising most of what is now New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming. Next to the War of Independence and the Civil...

Peru’s President Pedro Castillo announced on Wednesday that he will dissolve Congress temporarily and install an emergency government – hours before lawmakers were due to make an impeachment vote in congress. In a televised speech from the Presidential Palace on Wednesday, Castillo said he will call for early parliamentary elections to work on a new constitution. The embattled president, who has survived two impeachment attempts, also declared a national curfew from Wednesday from 10 p.m. local (5 p.m. ET) to 4 a.m. local. Congress appeared defiant however, beginning its session on Wednesday with lawmakers singing the national anthem. Francisco Morales,...

Jeanine Áñez was detained in the early morning in her hometown of Trinidad and was flown to the capital, La Paz. She had earlier warned that officials were searching for her, terming it “abuse and persecution” in Twitter posts. The arrest of Áñez and warrants against numerous other former officials further worsened political tensions in a South American country already torn by a cascade of perceived wrongs suffered by both sides. Those include complaints that Morales had grown more authoritarian with nearly 13 years in office, that he illegally ran for a fourth reelection and then allegedly rigged the outcome,...

Moscow legislators backtracked on claims that they are considering the return of a monument honoring the founder of the Soviet secret police to the center of the city. The city parliament made no plans concerning the return of the statue of Felix "Iron Felix" Dzerzhinsky, legislature speaker Vladimir Platonov said on Ekho Moskvy radio Saturday. City lawmakers have no right to pitch such initiatives anyway and can only rule on their funding, said Platonov, a member of the ruling United Russia party. Fellow city lawmaker Andrei Metelsky said earlier Saturday that the Dzerzhinsky statue was a historical landmark and could...