Free Republic

The mess in Venezuela is getting worse, but while that country is literally starving to death under the yoke of an incompetent, corrupt and malignant socialist dictatorship the hopes of a Ukrainian-style peaceful revolution or bloodless coup that would end the Nicolas Maduro regime are dimming. That was the most apparent conclusion following last week’s attempts by the U.S.-recognized interim president Juan Guaido to ship desperately-needed food and medicine into the country. The government fired on aid workers at Venezuela’s borders both with Colombia and Brazil, setting trucks laden with humanitarian aid ablaze and kicking off civil unrest everywhere. Conditions...

You don't often hear about protests in Cuba, despite the hellish conditions of that socialist dictatorship, but I suspect that's going to change, and maybe pretty fast. Alberto de la Cruz at Babalu blog reports that protests are breaking out on the communist island dictatorship in the wake of Venezuela's popular fight for freedom: Video from Cuba shows hundreds of Cubans marching on the streets of Havana this Saturday in protest of the communist Castro dictatorship. This rare show of massive dissent in Cuba comes on the eve of the Castro regime’s sham referendum vote to ratify a new communist constitution....

Massive 1994 Bolivian earthquake reveals mountains 660 kilometers below our feet Liz Fuller-Wright, Office of Communications Feb. 14, 2019 2 p.m. Most schoolchildren learn that the Earth has three (or four) layers: a crust, mantle and core, which is sometimes subdivided into an inner and outer core. That’s not wrong, but it does leave out several other layers that scientists have identified within the Earth, including the transition zone within the mantle. Princeton seismologist Jessica Irving worked with then-graduate student Wenbo Wu and another collaborator to determine the roughness at the top and bottom of the transition zone, a layer within...

Yes, we expect places such as Russia and Iran to stick up for Venezuela's hellhole regime, along with its fellow Latin socialist hellholes Cuba, Bolivia, and Nicaragua.  But Bloomberg is reporting that U.S. NATO ally Turkey seems to be all in for helping Nicolás Maduro spirit the nation's gold out of the country for his potentially comfortable retirement.  The picture emerges of a dictator about to make off with the light bulbs on the way out. div class="article_body bottom mrf-hidden"> Back around when Maduro was eating that big steak dinner in Istanbul in front of Venezuelans for an Instagram post, here's what had been really going on, as Bloomberg...

His name is Touraj Esmaeeli, and you haven’t heard it before. And yet, he’s a big story. He worked as a top advisor to the Iranian intelligence service, as an expert on that country’s cyberwar against the United States and other Western countries. Several of his colleagues have been arrested since last spring, accused of spying, but the spybust hasn’t been widely covered. Esmaeeli scooted off to Istanbul, where he first checked in to a hotel and then barely escaped a combination of Iranian and Turkish agents who had come to arrest him. He has taken refuge in a Western...

Good Morning. The third attempt to form a new Swedish government since last September's General Election is underway this week..... The British Prime Minister Theresa May making her final pitch for her controversial Brexit plan considered a sellout to the European Union by those who campaigned for a total separation from the EU when Brexit was approved in the June 2016 referendum..... The leading political party in the polls in France right now, the National Rally led by Marine Le Pen, held a national convention over the weekend to roll out its list of candidates for the European Parliament elections...

The 1,500-year-old Pumapunku temple in western Bolivia is considered a crowning achievement of Mesoamerican architecture, yet no one knows what the original structure actually looked like. Using historical data, 3D-printed pieces, and architectural software, archaeologist Alexei Vranich from UC Berkeley has created a virtual reconstruction of Pumapunku—an ancient Tiwanaku temple now in ruins. Archaeologists have studied the site for over 150 years, but it wasn’t immediately obvious how all the broken and scattered pieces belonged together. The surprisingly simple approach devised by Vranich is finally providing a glimpse into the structure’s original appearance. Excitingly, the same method could be used...

Security Council became a kangaroo court, turning a perverted version of “international law” against the Trump administration for its just defense of the Jewish state of Israel and Israel's right to choose its own capital On December 6th, President Trump announced his decision to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and to instruct the State Department to begin the process of relocating the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Two days later, at a special meeting of the United Nations Security Council, the other 14 members of the Council, including U.S. allies such as France, the United...

(National Sentinel) Threat: Massive caravans of migrants heading north to the United States are a problem for many reasons, but one of those reasons that gets overlooked, downplayed, or outright rejected by the Left and its compliant media is that they can be used as a means of infiltrating really bad people into the country. Like terrorists. In written testimony prepared for House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Terrorism hearing Wednesday, the State Department’s top counter-terrorism official Nathan Sales warned that Hezbollah is deploying “large caches of military equipment and explosives” in Bolivia, as well as delivering some to jihadists currently...

The thought of Karl Marx, a German political agitator whose theory of “scientific socialism” wreaked havoc on the world for most of the 20th century, would seem to have been consigned to the ash heap of history following the fall of the Eastern Bloc communist regimes from 1989 to 1991. After decades of mass murder claiming tens of millions of victims, as well as the totalitarian oppression of hundreds of millions more, the reputation of Marxism had been destroyed almost completely, seemingly assuring its final demise.However, a resurgence of interest in Marx’s thought has been ongoing since 2008, when the...

A Chinese space force in Argentina, Russian control of Venezuelan gas and South American armies equipped with the latest Chinese and Russian hardware. Until recently, it might have sounded like the plot of a geopolitical thriller in a region once considered America’s backyard. But this is what Defense Secretary James N. Mattis faced on his visit this week to several South American nations, where economic and military posturing by Beijing and Moscow has been on the rise for the past decade. Analysts say Chinese loans in recent years have allowed authoritarian leaders to consolidate power in Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua,...

U.S. Ambassador To Belgium Howard Gutman, who was a top Obama campaign bundler, reportedly “solicited prostitutes, including minors.” Gutman was also a Palin-basher who challenged her parenting skills. (VIDEO-AT-LINK) The New York Post reported, via Weasel Zippers: A State Department whistleblower has accused high-ranking staff of a massive coverup — including keeping a lid on findings that members of then-Secretary Hillary Clinton’s security detail and the Belgian ambassador solicited prostitutes. A chief investigator for the agency’s inspector general wrote a memo outlining eight cases that were derailed by senior officials, including one instance of interference by Clinton’s chief of staff,...

The United States has hammered another nail into the “coffin” of the 1947 UN Partition Resolution that called for the internationalization of Jerusalem.The Czech Republic, Romania, Slovakia, the Philippines, Guatemala, Honduras, Bolivia, and various other countries are considering to follow in the footsteps of the United States.The Christian evangelical sector of American voters was what finally clinched Trump’s resolve to transfer the embassy from Tel Aviv and recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.The “price” Israel will pay appears to be continued restraint in construction and an occasional building freeze in Jerusalem.The embassy will open in west Jerusalem, with...

“We keep talking about the so call ‘White Helmets’ in the west as heroes, when the people of Aleppo didn’t even know them by this name. They told me those people in the pictures I showed them were DAESH.” “Good Morning to all the official members and attendees of this conference. My name is Carla Ortiz and I am a film maker. It is an honor to be in your presence and have few minutes to share my testimony. We all know of the horrific stories and war in Syria, But YET we have THE CHOICE TO TURN THE NEWS...

Russia’s proposed UN Security Council resolution envisaging a speedy and realistic investigation into Douma incident was voted down by a triple veto. US, UK and France all voted against it. However an earlier US-proposed resolution, which proposed an investigation mechanism that couldn’t possibly work and would have opened an avenue for the American use of force had to be vetoed by Russia alone. Bolivia was the only other nation to vote against it as China merely abstained. China did so albeit it had previously called for restraint and for no side to resort to force which should have naturally made...

Israel is currently holding talks with 10 different nations over the possible relocation of their embassies from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely revealed Thursday... Hotovely told American Jewish leaders that Israel is currently engaged in talks with 10 different countries regarding the relocation of their embassies... Hotovely also discussed the politicization of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), and the Palestinian Authority leadership's use of what Hotovely termed "fake refugees" as a political weapon against Israel. "For the first time, the Israeli leadership is no longer willing...

Bolivian President Evo Morales met with German and Swiss officials in Bern, Switzerland, on December 14 to sign an agreement on building one of the largest infrastructure projects of the century—a coast-to-coast railroad across South America. The Central Bi-Oceanic Railway Corridor, or “Panama Canal on Railway Tracks,” will stretch from the Pacific coast of Peru, through Bolivia, and across Brazil to the Atlantic Ocean. The total length of the projected route is 2,333 miles. Paraguay, Argentina and Uruguay also plan to add connection routes to the corridor. Germany and Switzerland will assist in the ambitious project’s construction and will also...

South America’s new transcontinental railway is considered to be one the biggest infrastructure projects of the century and is also known as the “Panama Canal on railway tracks.” A 3,755-kilometer land connection is set to be built between the continent’s Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Bolivia is a landlocked country, so the Andean nation is especially keen on getting the ball rolling soon. Bolivian President Evo Morales met Swiss President Doris Leuthard to sign a memorandum of understanding on the construction of the transcontinental railway. Morales met with representatives of German and Swiss railway firms, and Germany’s State Secretary of Transport,...

RUSH: Nikki Haley, our U.N. ambassador, had the tweet of the year. Nikki Haley tweeted the following: “At the U.N. we’re always asked to do more & give more,” meaning America. The U.N., we, the United States. We’re always asked to do more and give more. “So, when we make a decision, at the will of the American ppl, abt where to locate OUR embassy, we don’t expect those we’ve helped to target us. On Thurs there’ll be a vote criticizing our choice. The U.S. will be taking names.” That is her tweet about the vote today at the U.N....

The United Nations general assembly has delivered a stinging rebuke to Donald Trump, voting by a huge majority to reject his unilateral recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. The vote came after a redoubling of threats by Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the UN, who said that Washington would remember which countries “disrespected” America by voting against it. Despite the warning, 128 members voted on Thursday in favour of the resolution supporting the long-standing international consensus that the status of Jerusalem – which is claimed as a capital by both Israel and the Palestinians – can only be settled...