Free Republic

When Russian President Vladimir Putin granted citizenship to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden on Monday, the news revived a long-simmering debate about the propriety of his revelations of U.S. government secrets. At the same time, it prompted reiterations of a widely-embraced falsehood: that Snowden “fled to Russia.” That disinformation-trafficking wasn’t limited to random people on social media. Among others, The New York Times, The Guardian, ABC, Christian Science Monitor and Canada’s CBC all asserted in the past week that Snowden “fled to Russia” in 2013 after revealing that the United States government had created a mass surveillance regime targeting its own...

When Russian President Vladimir Putin granted citizenship to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden on Monday, the news revived a long-simmering debate about the propriety of his revelations of U.S. government secrets. At the same time, it prompted reiterations of a widely-embraced falsehood: that Snowden “fled to Russia.”The disinformation-trafficking wasn’t limited to random people on social media. Among others, The New York Times, The Guardian, ABC, Christian Science Monitor and Canada’s CBC all asserted in the past week that Snowden “fled to Russia” in 2013 after revealing that the United States government had created a mass surveillance regime targeting its own citizens,...

A Florida prosecutor suspended by Ron DeSantis for defying a new 15-week abortion law says a federal judge’s decision to send his reinstatement appeal to trial means a reckoning is coming for the state’s Republican governor. Andrew Warren, a Democrat, was removed as Hillsborough county state attorney on 4 August after saying he would not enforce the abortion ban or prosecute providers of gender transition treatment for young people. DeSantis cited Warren’s alleged “woke agenda” in reasons for his decision. At a hearing in Tallahassee on Monday, Judge Robert Hinkle denied motions from DeSantis to dismiss Warren’s lawsuit, and another...

Summons delivered to eligible men at midnight. Schoolteachers pressed into handing out draft notices. Men given an hour to pack their things and appear at draft centres. Women sobbing as they sent their husbands and sons off to fight in Russia’s war in Ukraine. The first full day of Russia’s first mobilisation since the second world war produced emotional showdowns at draft centres and even signs of protest, while it appears Russia could be considering far more than the 300,000 new conscripts claimed by the defence minister, Sergei Shoigu. One woman in a small village in the Zakamensky region of...

Russian leader seems keen to curry favour with Chinese president as battlefield setbacks and sanctions bite Vladimir Putin has told Xi Jinping that he understands China’s “questions and concerns” about the war in Ukraine, in a rare nod to tensions between the two states caused by the Russian invasion. The remarks came as Xi and Putin met on Thursday for the first time since the war began, at a summit in Uzbekistan where the Russian president was expected to court the Chinese leader personally as an ally in his conflict with the west. invasion that drew the most attention. In...

The New York Times reporter Fady Hanona is just one of hundreds of Jew-haters associated with the American media. The Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi was one of the bitterest critics of Jews and Israel and a defender of Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda. Still, in the eyes of Wash Post and majority of the US media – he is a “hero”. Similarly, NYT found a perfect reporter as Fady Hanona to fill pages of this newspaper with Jew hatred. And most painful fact is – Fady Hanona would continue working for The New York Times unless his nefarious writings...

When Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began in the early hours of 24 February, with mass missile strikes and the advance of a land force from several directions, many key Ukrainian officials were apparently caught by surprise. Some were fast asleep. There had been rumours of a Russian invasion for weeks, and the previous evening US and Ukrainian intelligence received information that pointed to an invasion that night with almost certainty. Yet there was little in the way of last-minute efforts to fortify towns close to the border, or to warn citizens to brace for the inevitable. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was...

Still getting used to the feel of his gun and military fatigues, Anton suddenly found himself surrounded by Ukrainian forces as bullets flew by, with one striking his arm. “It was our first confrontation with the enemy; we hadn’t even fired a shot. They ambushed us, and we couldn’t fight back. We had to surrender,” said Anton, a 21-year-old Russian serviceman, in an interview with the Guardian. Anton was taken captive by Ukrainian forces near Mykolaiv on 2 March with five other soldiers from his unit, as Russian forces were staging an offensive on the strategically important shipbuilding city near...

Clinton stooge Robert Reich seemed to forget the meaning of the word “contradiction” when attacking the world’s richest man’s libertarian views on the internet. The former Secretary of Labor scaremongered to his readers how Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s “vision for the internet is dangerous nonsense.” But then Reich immediately contradicted himself in the subheadline for his April 12 Guardian op-ed : “Musk has long advocated a libertarian vision of an ‘uncontrolled’ internet. That’s also the dream of every dictator, strongman and demagogue.” Uh, what? Apparently Reich doesn’t understand the definition of the word “libertarian”: “Libertarians are classical liberals who strongly...

The Russian people know little about Putin’s war on Ukraine because Putin has blocked their access to the truth, substituting propaganda and lies. Years ago, pundits assumed the internet would open a new era of democracy, giving everyone access to the truth. But dictators like Putin and demagogues like Trump have demonstrated how naive that assumption was. At least the US responded to Trump’s lies. Trump had 88 million Twitter followers before Twitter took him off its platform – just two days after the attack on the Capitol, which he provoked, in part, with his tweets. (Trump’s social media accounts...

Like the New York Times with its roster of anti-Israel contributors, such as the anti-Israel post-Zionist Peter Beinart, the Washington Post favors op-ed contributors on Israel-Palestine who are very much on the side of the Palestinians. A recent example, featuring the Palestinian Mariam Barghouti, is reported on here: “Washington Post Publishes Op-Ed by Mariam Barghouti, Who Compared Israel to Nazi Germany,” by Rachel O’Donoghue, Algemeiner, April 1, 2022: It would appear that having a documented history that has included comparing Israel to Nazi Germany does not preclude one from offering their opinions on the editorial webpages of The Washington Post,...

Robert Kapito, the president of asset management behemoth BlackRock, earns about $20m a year and is worth around $400m. You can buy a lot of fancy trinkets with that kind of money but alas it doesn’t seem to purchase much self-awareness. We are in the middle of a cost of living crisis, with low-income households disproportionately affected by the highest inflation in 40 years. People are struggling to heat their homes and worrying about feeding their families thanks to rocketing food prices. Kapito’s reaction to all this? To complain to a bunch of energy executives about how entitled young people...

The unit was started by young university-educated Ukrainians who had been part of the 2014 Maidan uprising and volunteered to use their technical skills in the resistance against the first Russian invasion in Crimea and the Donbas region. Its founder, Volodymyr Kochetkov-Sukach, was an investment banker who was killed in action in 2015 in Donbas – a reminder of the high risks involved. The Russians can latch on to the drone’s electronic signature and quickly strike with mortars, so the Aerorozvidka teams have to launch and run. Honchar is an ex-soldier turned IT marketing consultant, who returned to the army...

... With each passing day, it is becoming clearer that Putin’s gamble is failing. The Ukrainian people are resisting with all their heart, winning the admiration of the entire world – and winning the war. Many dark days lie ahead. The Russians may still conquer the whole of Ukraine. But to win the war, the Russians would have to hold Ukraine, and they can do that only if the Ukrainian people let them. This seems increasingly unlikely to happen. Each Russian tank destroyed and each Russian soldier killed increases the Ukrainians’ courage to resist. And each Ukrainian killed deepens the...

There are different constellations in the Never Trump firmament and it’s unclear if they can unite As Joe Biden lurched from crisis to crisis with plummeting approval ratings, the Republican party seemed largely content to bury its internal differences and enjoy the show. But not for long. Earlier this month Alyssa Farah Griffin, once communications director for President Donald Trump, made clear that her loyalties have shifted to former vice-president Mike Pence and the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell. “Put me squarely in the Pence/ McConnell camp,” Farah Griffin wrote on Twitter. “Certain denunciations must be unequivocal.” This drew a...

"Former US president Donald Trump said that many American Jews don’t love Israel, otherwise, they would have voted for him and charged that Israel used to have “absolute power over Congress.” Trump’s comments from an interview with Israeli journalist Barak Ravid in July were broadcast Thursday on the Unholy Podcast, hosted by Yonit Levi of Israel’s Channel 12 news and Jonathan Freedland of The Guardian." "“There are people in this country that are Jewish, no longer love Israel. I’ll tell you, the evangelical Christians love Israel more than Jews in this country,” Trump said."

Former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows turned over to the House select committee investigating the 6 January Capitol attack a PowerPoint recommending Donald Trump to declare a national security emergency in order to return himself to the presidency. The fact that Meadows was in possession of a PowerPoint the day before the Capitol attack that detailed ways to stage a coup suggests he was at least aware of efforts by Trump and his allies to stop Joe Biden’s certification from taking place on 6 January. The PowerPoint, titled “Election Fraud, Foreign Interference & Options for 6 Jan”,...

The liberal media has to find a new way to keep its COVID-19 scare strategy going: Have “health journals” sound the alarm on the “climate crisis.” The Guardian is leading the charge. It screeched in its story’s headline: “More than 200 health journals call for urgent action on climate crisis.” The journals are reportedly “publishing an editorial calling on leaders to take emergency action on climate change and to protect health.” The editorial demanded action to keep global temperature increases below “1.5C” and “halt the destruction of nature.” Too bad for The Guardian that Hoover Institution Visiting Fellow Bjorn Lomborg...

The efficacy of a drug being promoted by rightwing figures worldwide for treating Covid-19 is in serious doubt after a major study suggesting the treatment is effective against the virus was withdrawn due to “ethical concerns”… He found the introduction section of the paper appeared to have been almost entirely plagiarised.It appeared that the authors had run entire paragraphs from press releases and websites about ivermectin and Covid-19 through a thesaurus to change key words. “Humorously, this led to them changing ‘severe acute respiratory syndrome’ to ‘extreme intense respiratory syndrome’ on one occasion,” Lawrence said….“Because the Elgazzar study is so...

A New York Times business correspondent in Hong Kong, a weekend editor at The Guardian who lives in New York, a British Business Insider reporter with a focus on the Saudis, and the executive editor of The Daily Beast. A 48-year-old blogger who works for Rachel Maddow, a union activist who covers “extremism, far-right politics and media disinformation” for The Huffington Post, and the 29-year editor of the Arkansas Times. A breaking news reporter at The Washington Post who wrapped up her most recent internship in May 2016, a 2016 University of Pennsylvania graduate who covers “young people doing big...