Free Republic

Drunk recruits. Insubordinate soldiers. Convicts. They're among hundreds of military and civilian offenders who've been pressed into Russian penal units known as "Storm-Z" squads and sent to the frontlines in Ukraine this year, according to 13 people with knowledge of the matter, including five fighters in the units. Few live to tell their tale, the people said. (snip) "Storm fighters, they're just meat," said one regular soldier from army unit no. 40318 who was deployed near the fiercely contested city of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine in May and June. (snip) Russian state-controlled media has reported that Storm-Z squads exist, that...

U.S. Senator John McCain has again called on the United States to send weapons to Ukrainian forces fighting pro-Russia separatists in the east of the country. At a press conference in Kyiv on June 20 with two other visiting U.S. senators, McCain (Republican-Arizona) said it would be "disgraceful and shameful" for the West not to act as Russian President Vladimir Putin, in McCain's view, sought to dismember Ukraine. McCain, one of the most vocal supporters in the U.S. Congress on arming Ukraine, said the Ukrainians had "proven they are willing to fight." Speaking alongside McCain, U.S. Senator Tom Cotton (Republican-Arkansas)...

Bewildered in recent years by all the vitriolic hatred directed toward the U.S. from foreigners? Turns out it’s not all real. The propaganda machine of the Kremlin during Russia’s communist era, known as Pravda, has reinvented itself and is making a resurgence, this time through “Kremlin Trolls” who litter onine news sites and social media with Vladimir Putin’s agenda. Yesterday, in a huge expose, The New York Times labeled it “the biggest trolling operation in history … a highly coordinated disinformation campaign, involving dozens of fake accounts that posted hundreds of tweets for hours, targeting a list of figures precisely...

Konstantin Goldenzweig resigned from the Kremlin-backed NTV channel Renowned Russian journalist Konstantin Goldenzweig has resigned from state-funded TV channel 'NTV' after becoming disenchanted with the Kremlin's misinformation campaign. He announced the move through Facebook on June 9, TJ reports. "I want to thank all my colleagues who helped me, taught me, encouraged me and were my friends. And continue to be my friends. And sorry for taking part in this propaganda madness. There is only one banal conclusion: the deals with your own conscience are only as good as those you can cancel" - Goldenzweig wrote.

When Lyudmila Savchuk heard about the assassination of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov earlier this year she was shocked and saddened. “I felt the bullets between my own shoulders,” she said, recalling how the Kremlin critic was gunned down near Moscow's Red Square in February. Yet within hours of Mr Nemtsov's death, Ms Savchuk and her colleagues were going online to pour bile on the former deputy prime minister and claim he was killed by his own friends rather than by government hitmen, as many suspect. “I was so upset that I almost gave myself away,” she said. “But I...

Newly declassified documents from Operation SOLO, an FBI program to infiltrate the Communist Party of the United States, reveal that a journal called Freedomways, which was influential in the black community for decades, was subsidized by the Soviet and Chinese Communist Parties. Freedomways grew out of a Soviet campaign, launched after the Russian revolution, to exploit the “Negro question” in the U.S. and manipulate blacks and members of other minority groups for Communist purposes. The goal was a “Soviet America.” In 1981, a communist-inspired Black Liberation Army, with the help of the Weather Underground, waged a campaign of terrorism and...

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) fired at Sens. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), among others, calling their ideas “fiscally irresponsible and dangerous to the country” and “just as bad as the Democrats” after they voted to raise defense spending on Thursday without offsetting that with spending cuts to discretionary federal programs. Paul had introduced an amendment that would have raised defense spending, but offset that increase with cuts elsewhere, such as the Departments of Education, Energy and Commerce. That amendment competed with an amendment from Rubio that would have increased defense spending with no offsetting spending cuts—just a blanket...

linkage

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)96%, a 2016 Republican presidential candidate, defended his decision to vote for Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) that would fast-track the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (T-TIP) and Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA)—among other deals—during a Thursday interview with the Hugh Hewitt radio program. Hewitt started his line of questioning with coming out of a commercial. “Let’s take that opportunity, then, to go and talk about free trade—TPA, TPP, Export-Import Bank. Sen. Cruz, for clarity’s sake, can you quickly give us an overview on where you are on those three issues, as there’s quite...

Washington, DC1031 Despite staying largely silent on the issue—he’s quietly supported it for weeks, but hasn’t said anything at all in quite a long time—Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker crossed most conservatives by coming out in support of Obamatrade on Thursday evening in an interview with Bloomberg’s Mark Halperin. Walker, Bloomberg’s Halperin and John McCormick wrote, “expressed agreement with President Barack Obama on the pressing issue of fast-track trade legislation.” “Walker said he supports giving Obama the authority to submit trade agreements to Congress for an expedited, up-or-down vote without amendments,” they wrote, before quoting Walker himself. “If we don’t go...

WASHINGTON, DC: When it comes to increasing skilled workers on H-1B visas, one could say presidential candidate Ted Cruz is a bit of a black sheep amongst the GOP.The Republican presidential candidate wants to increase the H-1B visas by 500 percent from its 65,000 to 325,000. Cruz, who announced his run for the Oval office this morning, had made the proposition in 2013 as an amendment to the Senate’s comprehensive immigration bill.While the Senate’s Judiciary Committee torpedoed Cruz’s amendment, they did approve an increase of 180,000 in the H-1B cap, but the House never acted on the legislation.It’s not clear...

Thousands of civilians have fled their homes in northern Syria as Kurdish forces carry out what appears to be a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Sunni Arabs. A source from one of the largest humanitarian organisations working inside Syria told The Times that the Kurdish people’s protection units (YPG) — the west’s closest allies in the war against Islamic State — have been burning Arab villages in areas of northeastern Syria under their control.

Passing this corporate giveaway masquerading as a “free trade deal” is a lengthy process; a process that begins today with a Senate vote on Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), also known as “fast track.” Passing TPA would be Congress agreeing to neuter itself to a yes or no vote on a trade pact and ceding its power to amend it. Even worse, it would give trade deals this expedited process for six years, thus outlasting the current Administration, and applying to other “trade” deals like the TTIP. Mind you, TPA is being voted on while the TPP text remains completely hidden...

Discovered inside the huge tranche of secretive Obamatrade documents released by Wikileaks are key details on how technically any Republican voting for Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) that would fast-track trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal would technically also be voting to massively expand President Obama’s executive authority when it comes to immigration matters. The mainstream media covered the Wikileaks document dump extensively, but did not mention the immigration chapter contained within it, so Breitbart News took the documents to immigration experts to get their take on it. Nobody has figured how big a deal the documents...

Paul Ryan, Boehner, McConnell et al. Over the weekend an anniversary was marked with little fanfare — the second anniversary of the implementation of the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement. The U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement passed with the usual fanfare, supported by the usual suspects. Barack Obama hailed the agreement’s implementation on March 15, 2012. In the middle of his re-election campaign, he cheerfully promised the agreement would increase American exports to South Korea by $10 billion and would create 70,000 U.S. jobs. One of Barack Obama’s signature efforts for his second term is the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade deal...

A Syrian Army fighter takes position at the demarcation line in East Ghouta

Israel built and exploded so-called "dirty bombs," explosives laced with nuclear material, to examine how such explosions would affect the country if it were to be attacked by the crude radioactive weapons, the Haaretz daily newspaper reported Monday. Israeli defense officials and scientists refused to comment on the report when reached by The Associated Press. However, Israel has what is widely considered to be an extensive nuclear weapons program that it has never declared.

There has been a complete dismissal by some that the dubious management of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp, created by Gov. Scott Walker has led to a new investigation. Characterized a " partisan witch hunt" by his defenders, the reality is that GOP legislators have serious concerns about how unsecured loans were made and never repaid. In addition, GOP prosecutors, as well as the bypartisan audit team, soundly refute that dismissal. GOP legislators removed Walker as Chairman of the WEDC earlier this week. Here is a link to an article outlining GOP concerns on one of those loans, which is...

Senseless head-butting needs to give way to sensible brain-storming Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has called on America to end its attempt to remove Syria’s President Assad from power in return for Russia’s co-operation to militarily confront Islamic State. Lavrov reportedly told Bloomberg on 2 June 2015 : “The U.S.’s “obsession” with [Syria’s President] Assad isn’t helping in the common fight against the threat from Islamic State… “People put the fate of one person whom they hate above the fight against terrorism. Islamic State can go “very far” unless stopped, and air strikes alone “are not going to do the...