Free Republic

Obama’s race to chaos By Michael Goodwin If you’re confused about the Saudi Arabia-led air attacks against Islamist rebels in Yemen and can’t tell one group of head-choppers in Iraq and Syria from another, don’t despair. All you need is imagination. Close your eyes and imagine that those countries and terrorists have nuclear weapons. Imagine their barbarism going nuclear as they blow up cities, wipe out ethnic and religious groups and turn the region into cinders. Now open your eyes and realize you’ve seen the future, thanks to President Obama’s policies. It is a future that will be defined by...

Antiwar pickets in Moscow. Moscow continues to arm terrorists in eastern Ukraine and worldwide threaten nuclear holocaust in Lent. While the "I-Putin & Co." releases to the 15th anniversary of the reign of aircraft " visiting the Kremlin "worth billions of dollars, his serfs trample each other in line for free hot dogs and eat pancakes with shovels. Here's a "spirituality" of cheap brace. But not all Russia is in lethargic sleep and propaganda has not poisoned all Russians. And Eclipse always ends with light. Most importantly, is the desire to go to the light and know the truth. Photo:...

Vladimir Putin has an army of professional trolls running thousand of fake Twitter and Facebook accounts to flood social media with pro-Russia propaganda. Hundreds of workers are paid £500 a month to work exhausting 12-hour shifts bombarding the internet with comments placing Putin in a more favourable light. The trolls work under strict condition which see them banned from talking and even forging friendships with one another.

The head of the legislature in Russia's Chechnya region says that Russia will provide arms to Mexico if Washington supplies weapons to Ukraine. Chechen Parliament Speaker Dukvakha Abdurakhmanov said the arms would be aimed at reigniting U.S.-Mexican disputes over “territories annexed by the United States in the American states of California, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and part of Wyoming.”  “We will perceive arms shipments to Ukraine as a signal to respond in kind,” Abdurakhmanov said in a March 24 statement posted on the Chechen parliament’s website. Abdurakhmanov is a close associate of Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin-backed strongman who...

Dumpers with black gold pass through the checkpoint "Butane" and Donetsk. Russia steals a Ukrainian coal ukrainepress.ru Observation mission of the Organization for security and cooperation in Europe, which is based on the Russian border crossings "Gukovo" and Donetsk in the Rostov region, said that continues to record the facts export to Russia of coal of Donbass. The weekly report of the Mission for the period from 18 to 25 March, UNIAN reports. "The Observer Mission has continued to monitor the dump trucks that transport coal from Luhansk oblast in the Russian Federation through the border pass" Gukovo, "the statement...

The U.K. has sent extra military support to one of its overseas colonies at the bottom of the world, the Falkland Islands, amid concerns that it is facing increased risk of attack from Argentina, backed by Russia. Two troop-carrying Chinook helicopters and a new surface-to-air missile system have been sent by the U.K. to the remote islands in the South Atlantic, known as Las Malvinas in Argentina. They were the subject of a short-lived war between the U.K. and Argentina in 1982, and lie to the east of Argentina, 8,000 miles away from Britain.

When Alexander Zhitinev left in November to fight with the pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine, winter had just begun unleashing its fury on the wind-lashed steppe of this impoverished 18th century frontier town. Zhitinev's work as a mechanic had dried up because laid-off metalworkers could no longer afford their cars. His family was surviving on about $250 a month from his wife's job as a hospital cook. Zhitinev, 39, and a friend, Ilya Borisov, left their families behind, lured more by the promise of $2,600 a month than by the vision of their recruiters for a return of Russia's czarist...

File this under "If they had been doing their damn jobs" Go to about the 6 minute mark...the experts and the talking heads are only just beginning to figure out what they should have known Obama would do all along.

Russia has gone on the offensive in the Baltic, warning Denmark that if it joins Nato’s missile defence shield, its navy will be a legitimate target for a Russian nuclear attack. “I don’t think that Danes fully understand the consequence if Denmark joins the American-led missile defence shield. If they do, then Danish warships will be targets for Russian nuclear missiles,” said Mikhail Vanin, the Russian ambassador to Denmark, to the Jyllands-Posten newspaper.

I'll even admit he's on the exact same page as me, re. Ukraine/Kremlin...  Trouble is: 1) I DO NOT trust him to do anything he says- there's something about the Jebster that seems shiftier and less genuine -at least to me- than Dubya. And there appears to be more of a sense of entitlement politically. 2) Jeb Bush is no conservative- he's denounced Ronald Reagan's legacy of practical common sense and towering achievement as somehow irrelevant, an unforgivable sin. 3) The Jebster is about as popular as a fart in an elevator... even within the Republican Party. 4) Others with actual conservative credentials/achievements/principlesoffer the same...

In a new interview with Playboy, former Vice President Dick Cheney accused President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder of "playing the race card" and said that he could "go on for hours" about all of the ways Obama has "undone" the work of President George W. Bush.Although the article claims that Cheney's "preoccupations revolve around the books in his study and the purchase of just the right gifts for his grandchildren," it sounds more like he's kind of obsessed with Obama. Calling him "the worst president in my lifetime," Cheney said his criticism of Obama and Holder has nothing...

With Greece digging around in the couch cushions to try and scrape up €2 billion by Friday in order to make payments to the IMF, the ECB, and Goldman, and with celebrity FinMin Yanis Varoufakis doing his absolute best to sink the entire ship with a series of epic PR faux pas, one is left to wonder just where Athens will turn when Berlin and Brussels finally reach the end of their ropes with what increasingly looks like gross incompetence in the Aegean. We may have gotten the answer to that question today via Reuters: Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras...

More than 45,000 Russian troops as well as war planes and submarines started military exercises across much of the country on Monday in one of the Kremlin's biggest shows of force since its ties with the West plunged to Cold War-lows. President Vladimir Putin called the Navy's Northern Fleet to full combat readiness in exercises in Russia's Arctic North apparently aimed at dwarfing military drills in neighboring Norway, a NATO member.

Vladimir Putin is 'alive' but 'neutralised' as shadowy security chiefs stage a stealthy coup in Moscow, it was claimed last night. Former FSB chief Nikolai Patrushev was behind the plot, claimed chairman of the pro-Kremlin national Islamic Committee, Geydar Dzhemal. Snip... 'I think that Putin is neutralised at the moment, but of course, he is alive,' said Dzhemal, seen as a Kremlin loyalist. 'He is under the control of the power-wielding agencies, who have, in my opinion, organised a coup d'etat.' snip.. 'My information is that Patrushev met Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov in Pyatigorsk on 11 March and tempted him...

The investigation was defined with the main version of the murder Nemtsov Source of "Interfax" noted that in favor of this version show evidence gathered consequence, both direct and indirect. There is no doubt that the murder is a custom character. The investigation into the murder of co-chairman of the RPR-Parnassus Boris Nemtsov almost decided on a priority version, informs "Interfax" referring to a source familiar with the situation. Someone from abroad "ordered" policy to discredit and destabilize power. "To date, work out all the possible versions, but the investigation is inclined to consider the main - the murder aimed...

Where is he? Where did he disappear to? Where? At week’s end, we still do not know more about the whereabouts of President Vladimir Putin than we did at the start of the week, when it first began to be noticed that he had not been seen in public since March 5. The last two weeks since the murder of opposition Boris Nemtsov on February 27 have brought not only widely disparate theories of the case, rapid arrest of the suspects, and reversals in their testimony under claims of torture, confirmed by some human rights activists although disputed by others...

An odd report from state TV has sparked a new round of speculation Kremlin-controlled TV informed millions of Russians about a meeting between President Vladimir Putin and his Kyrgyz counterpart Almazbek Atambayev. Nothing unusual about that, right? Wrong. The meeting between the two leaders of the former Soviet republics isn’t due to take place until Monday. But that didn’t stop the newsreader on the Rossiya 24 channel reading out the following item – all in the past tense. “The Kremlin also reports that Vladimir Putin met with Kyrgyzstan President Almazbek Atambayev on Monday. They talked about cooperation in investment and...

Ukrainian and Russian media have wondered where the missing Vladimir Putin: he allegedly did not appear in public for a week, and state media replicate his legacy application. President's press secretary Dmitry Peskov, the second day in a row denies illness leader, while experts put forward new hypotheses about what is actually happening with Putin. New time tried to weed out the most incredible of them, leaving the five most plausible hypotheses sudden disappearance Putin: 1. Putin ill. This version came after reports of an influential international agency Reuters, which quoted a source in the Kazakh authorities handed over on...

New York (AFP) - CIA Director John Brennan said the United States does not want to see a chaotic collapse of the Syrian regime as it could open the way to Islamist extremists taking power. The spy agency chief said Washington had reason to worry about who might replace President Bashar al-Assad if his government fell, given the rise of the Islamic State group and other jihadists in Syria. "I think that's a legitimate concern," Brennan said when asked if the US government feared who might succeed Assad. Speaking at an event at the Council on Foreign Relations, he said...

Vladimir Putin has said there was nothing bad about the Nazi-Soviet Pact, the non-aggression treaty which led to the carve-up of Poland at the outset of the Second World War, suggesting Britain and France were to blame for Adolf Hitler's march into Europe. […] Mr. Putin said that Western historians today try to “hush up” the 1938 Munich Agreement, in which France and Britain—led by Neville Chamberlain, the prime minister—appeased Adolf Hitler by acquiescing to his occupation of Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland. […] Mr. Putin appeared to think Moscow’s own agreement with Hitler—the 1939 Nazi-Soviet or Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact—was fine, however. “Serious research...