Free Republic

Controversial Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been described as the savior of the Islamic world and as a new Ottoman sultan. But likening him to the wizard Saruman from The Lord of the Rings is novel—as was done earlier this week by a leader in the Turkish opposition party: “[Turkey has become] a country where headlines and program flows can change with one phone call as if it were Middle-Earth in Lord of the Rings. The [person] who does it is like a Saruman the White who has lost all sense of shame,” Republican People’s Party’s [CHP] deputy...

GulagBound.com is live blogging beginning this Sunday morning, as events of critical importance are planned in the Sur del Lago region of Venezuela (translated "South Lake" with its key city, Santa Barbara). Just last Sunday, hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans gathered in Caracas and in cities around the world, to peacefully protest against the Marxist dictatorship of Hugo Chavez and to demand their land and freedoms be returned to them. It has not happened. One week later, they will be taking as yet unspecified measures at the farms of Sur del Lago and are planning for confrontation with Venezuelan military....

1969 ARMSTRONG WALKS ON MOON: At 10:56 p.m. EDT, American astronaut Neil Armstrong, 240,000 miles from Earth, speaks these words to more than a billion people listening at home: "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." A moment later, he stepped off the lunar landing module Eagle and became the first human to walk on the surface of the moon. The American effort to send astronauts to the moon has its origins in a famous appeal President John F. Kennedy made to a special joint session of Congress on May 25, 1961: "I believe this nation...