Free Republic

Citing “discrepancies in content,” the German magazine Der Spiegel has removed a video showing the testimony of an evacuee from Mariupol’s ‘Azovstal’ factory, a stronghold of the neo-Nazi Azov militants and other Ukrainian fighters. The woman in the video had revealed that her family were basically being lied to, held hostage, and used as human shields by the Ukrainian militants. Der Spiegel published the three-minute video on Monday. It featured Natalia Usmanova, who had worked at Azovstal before the conflict and sheltered there with her husband and children. In the recording, Usmanova tells reporters that Azov militants “kept us in...

Following are key excerpts from an article today in Der Spiegel, the weekly German magazine, entitled "Searching in Vain for the Obama Magic." The article by Der Spiegel writer, Gabor Steingart, is a scathing commentary of President Obama's Afghanistan speech at West Point on December 1, in which he announced, three months after the request, that additional troops would be sent into battle. The article does an excellent job of connecting the dots of Obama's deception and contradictions that were spread throughout the speech, in an attempt to calm his peacenik Democrat party, and to somehow appear "deserving" (a joke)...

Sarah Palin is a fresh-faced fishing and hunting wild card in the US presidential race. She just might be able to lure the media away from Obama. But can she attract enough voters from the Right to make up for those she might lose McCain in the Center? Who is Sarah Palin? More importantly, what does McCain's pick for vice president think or know about foreign policy? Even after her speech at Wednesday's Republican National Convention she remains both a mystery and a subject of intense curiosity. She is by turns characterized as a savior of the Republican party, an...