Free Republic

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...

MOSCOW (Sputnik) – New Russian Navy destroyers, originally intended to be equipped with Ukrainian gas turbine engines (GTE), will receive Russian-made engines exceeding the Ukrainian analogues, a United Shipbuilding Corporation spokesman told RIA Novosti on Monday. "The first three patrol ships of the project 11356 and the first two ships of the project 22350 are already equipped with GTEs manufactured in Ukraine. Subsequent ships of both projects will be equipped with Russian-made power units with characteristics superior to Ukrainian GTEs," the spokesman said. He added that the modernization of existing Russian GTEs has begun and will be finished in late...

In a significant move to deter possible Russian aggression in Europe, the Pentagon is poised to store battle tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and other heavy weapons for as many as 5,000 American troops in several Baltic and Eastern European countries, allied officials say. The proposal, if approved, would represent the first time since the end of the Cold War that the United States has stationed heavy military equipment in the newer NATO member nations in Eastern Europe that had once been part of the Soviet sphere of influence. Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the war in eastern Ukraine have caused...

Britain has pulled out agents from live operations in "hostile countries" after Russia and China cracked top-secret information contained in files leaked by former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, the Sunday Times reported. Security service MI6, which operates overseas and is tasked with defending British interests, has removed agents from certain countries, the newspaper said, citing unnamed officials at the office of British Prime Minister David Cameron, the Home Office (interior ministry) and security services. SNIP Russia and China have both managed to crack encrypted documents which contain details of secret intelligence techniques that could allow British and...

VIDEO: 6 minutes After the Islamist AKP party cruised to defeat in last weekend’s parliamentary elections, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government announced the border would be closed to Syrians fleeing ISIS as “there is no longer a humanitarian tragedy,” in the words of Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmuş. Kurtulmuş further claimed Wednesday that people were “fleeing strikes by coalition forces and the progress of Kurdish fighters in the region.” He laid blame not on the Islamic State but on the anti-ISIS coalition for driving Syrian refugees into Turkey with “reasonless and meaningless” airstrikes. More than 13,000 Syrian refugees fled across...

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has warned European Union leaders that violence from Islamic extremists could escalate if the EU rejects Turkey as a member... Turkey signed the association agreement for EU membership in 1963 and it is expected that a two-day EU summit this week will finally decide to begin formal membership talks, probably in the second half of next year... Taking Turkey’s 69 million, mainly Muslim, population into the Union is widely disputed... In Germany, leader of the Christian Social Union Edmund Stoiber told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that his party in government would do what it...

Shortly after Ukrainian troops captured two Russian Spetsnaz soldiers, a Ukrainian special forces unit of the Dnipro-1 Battalion shot down a $6 million Russian Forpost drone near Avdeevka in Eastern Ukraine. The Russian government was quick to distance itself from the soldiers, and even went so far as to parade their families in front of the media to deny their active status. However, the drone that was shot down that day is not something the Russian government can deny owning and operating... (includes a video)

Here is a live map of different war zones. You can zoom in or out just like on Google Maps. Hover over different icons and more. Check out how close ISIS is to Baghdad. Yikes!

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...

Between fear of Russia, urgency from the Army, and lobbying from General Dynamics, funding to upgun the Army’s GD-built Stryker armored vehicle has grown 350 percent in three weeks. In mid-May, the House approved a $79.5 million addition to the administration’s budget request. Yesterday, the Senate, not to be outdone, voted $371 million — four and a half times more. The House Appropriations Committee has actually approved $411 million on Tuesday, but that hasn’t passed the full chamber yet. Why does Stryker have such momentum? Some of our sources cynically pointed to General Dynamics’ lobbying operation, which is one of...

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 survey published by the Pew Research Center on Wednesday showed that the majority of Germans would be against their country using military means to defend a NATO ally against Russian aggression. Despite the notion that an attack on one is an attack on all being enshrined as Clause 5 in the NATO Charter, 58 percent of Germans said they would be against helping a NATO member on the border with Russia militarily. Only 38 percent of Germans said they would agree with the triggering of Clause 5 under such circumstances. …

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

Earlier this spring, the cybersecurity firm Kaspersky was testing an advanced antivirus software on one of its computers when it stumbled on something big: As the Moscow-based company puts it, it was "one of the most skilled, mysterious and powerful" spy viruses in the world. The piece of software was so sophisticated that it left few traces. It didn't leave files on the disk drive, and to stay hidden, it burrowed inside a computer's kernel memory, which is the place where a computer's most basic software is kept.Kaspersky says it assigned a team to watch its movements, and the team...

Archbishop Georg Gaenswein, prefect of the papal household, greets Russian president Vladimir Putin upon his arrival at the Vatican, June 10, 2015. Credit: Bohumil Petrik/CNA. Vatican City, Jun 10, 2015 / 01:44 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- In the second meeting between Pope Francis and Russian president Vladimir Putin, held on Wednesday at the Vatican, the discussion focused on the current crises in both Ukraine and the Middle East. Under Putin, Russia has annexed the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine; and according to the Ukrainian government and Western nations, Russian arms and soldiers are fighting alongside pro-Russian separatists in the east of the...