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Raoul Wallenberg, famous for rescuing thousands of Jews during WWII - and President Obama's personal hero - will be posthumously presented with a Congressional Gold Medal on Wednesday. Integration minister slams migration myths (01 Jul 14) Scores protest neo-Nazi talks in Gotland (28 Jun 14) "It's absolutely fantastic that the congress has chosen to recognize Wallenberg in this way," Lena Posner-Korosi, President of the Council of Sweden's Jewish communities, told The Local on Wednesday. The Congressional Gold Medal is the highest civilian award bestowed by the US Congress - an honour Posner-Korosi said Raoul Wallenberg certainly deserved. "He had truly...

A senior Russian official finally admitted that Stalin's secret police shot dead Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved tens of thousands of central European Jews from the gas chambers of Auschwitz in 1944 and 1945. For decades the Soviet authorities insisted that Wallenberg had died of a heart attack in 1947 in a Soviet prison, but speculation about his fate grew into a full-blown mystery as gulag inmates surfaced to report sightings of the Swede in Siberia into the 1950s.

He deserves a few lines or even a few pages in history books, but he was so mediocre as a person and so unremarkable as a politician that it would be difficult for him to leave any kind of a mark in history.He needed constant doctors' supervision, and all the places where he lived were equipped with medical devices.He was slowly dying before the eyes of the whole world.Of course, his painful condition began to reflect on his ability to rule the country. He was forced to often interrupt his duties or shift them to a constantly growing staff of...

President-elect Joe Biden said he had a “little bit of a cold” after coughing and repeatedly clearing his throat during a Monday address to the nation. Fox News reporter Thomas Barrabi revealed Biden spoke to supporters after his speech in a virtual call and touched on his condition.

(Warning, reading this thread is a thought crime.) Leonid Brezhnev was democratic leader of the enlightened Soviet Union from 1964 to 1982. President Joseph Biden could serve an equally lengthy term with help from cybernetics and cryogenesis, so we'd better start working on our jokes. These ones about Brezhnev's mental acuity need updating for the new President. During Brezhnev's visit to England, Prime Minister Thatcher asked the guest, "What is your attitude to Churchill?" "Who is Churchill?" Brezhnev said. Back in the embassy, the Soviet envoy said, "Congratulations, comrade Brezhnev, you've put Thatcher in her place. She will not ask...

Over the last 11 years, Russia has suffered two devaluations of the ruble and the most prolonged decline in the standard of living in this century, with the economy at the start of this year only 8.8 percent larger than that in 2008. That means that the Russian economy has grown on average 0.88 percent a year, just over a third of the world economy’s growth rate, roughly half of the growth of the American GDP and nine percent of the growth of the Chinese economy over this period, official statistics show. Not only is this period of stagnation now...

Eighteen years ago, Vladimir Putin was named Russian prime minister putting him on course to become the ruler of Russia under various titles ever since. Those born on August 9, 1999, who became legally adults today have never lived under any other leader. In the intervening period, Putin has won enormous authority not only among those who have known no other ruler but also among their elders, but he has also suffered the fate of previous Moscow rulers who remained in office a long time: he and his regime have become the subject of Russian anecdotes that resemble those Soviets...

Just wait awhile, it will soon be like that in the USA. Dissenters in Brezhnev's Russia weren't shot, as was the case when Stalin was in charge. Instead, dissenters lost their positions. They became outcasts. And many were sent to mental institutions. The same has already started to happen with professionals here. If a professor questions global warming, he will be denied tenure. If a businessman questions affirmative action, he will be called a racist and will be forced to resign. And the list goes on.

Harold Eberle: "Christianity Unshackled: Are You A Truth Seeker," Destiny Image Publishers, 2009 Stalin was responsible for about 20 million deaths and Mao Zedong's regime for approximately 70 million.  Pol Pot, who led the Communist Party faction known as the Khmer Rouge, killed over 1.5 million of his own Cambodian people.6 Add to these numbers the atrocities committed by Soviet dictators like Lenin, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev. Also add atheists like Fidel Castro and Kim Jong-il. All total, atheistic regimes have slaughtered more than 100 million people within the last 100 years. That averages to more than 1 million people per year....

This week at the UN left the distinct feeling of Cold War deיja vu. Russia and China were arrayed against the United States and Western Europe in blocking an anti-Syrian resolution at the UN. .... The Russian Foreign Ministry condemned the defeated resolution as one that fomented tension, and "contained one-sided accusations against Damascus and an ultimatum-like threat of sanctions against the Syrian authorities.” .... Xinhua, the Chinese news agency, approvingly quoted the Syrian ambassador who claimed that the US and the Western Europeans "are undermining international legality and they are leading the whole world into a new colonial era...

A computer-generated picture of an aged Putin wearing Mr. Brezhnev's trademark medal-encrusted uniform. MOSCOW—Vladimir Putin's plan to return to the presidency next year, which could open the way for him to rule for another 12 years, has drawn critical comparisons to long-serving Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. While many in Russia and the West see Mr. Brezhnev's reign as one of stagnant totalitarianism, for Mr. Putin's spokesman the analogy isn't a bad thing at all. "Brezhnev wasn't a minus for the history of our country, he was a huge plus," Dmitry Peskov told Dozhd, an independent Russian television network. "He laid...

Ted Kennedy's KGB Correspondence By Kevin Mooney on 6.22.10 @ 6:08AM Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's self-serving, secret correspondence with Soviet agents during the height of the Cold War included proposals for collaborative efforts designed to undermine official U.S. policy set by Democratic and Republican administrations, KGB documents show. With the media now reporting on the late senator's just released Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) file, now is an opportune time for a more expansive investigation into Kennedy's KGB contacts. The agency took a keen interest in a 1961 "fact-finding" trip the Massachusetts Democrat took to Mexico and other parts of...

One of the most famous paintings on the Berlin Wall, depicting Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev kissing his East German counterpart Erich Honecker, has been destroyed by the authorities. The artist is fuming, but he says he will paint a new image. It was an image that went around the world. Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev leaning in to kiss his East German counterpart Erich Honecker, a larger-than-life painting daubed onto a remnant of the Berlin Wall. Before long it became one of the most famous pictures on Berlin's East Side Gallery, the mural bedecked Wall which is now Berlin's longest remaining...

An almost ten minute excerpt from a 1982 Canadian Broadcasting Corp. documentary on the KGB. The posted section focuses on Communist Cuba's involvement in training, funding and giving orders to the Weathermen.Much of the info comes from an interview with Larry Grathwohl, who is in the film No Place to Hide.The CBC documentary ties the Weathermen, the Cuban government and a French-Canadian seperatist group,the FLQ.The documentary also features an interview with an unnamed Cuban and an unnamed figure involved with the FLQ and a 1965 plot by balck radicals to bomb the Statue of Liberty.The video was just posted today....

Afghan Fundamentalism: The Role of the U.S., Russia, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia David Storobin, Esq. - 12/12/2004 Victor Boot was a graduate of Military Institute for Foreign Languages in Moscow, a known school for Russian intelligence. He was the son of the son-in-law of foreign Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, who initiated the Russian policy of secretly assisting Islamic terrorists. In 1997, Boot arrived in the United Arab Emirates for the first time. From UAE, it was easier for Boot to funnel Russian weaponry to Afghanistan. In June 2001 - less than three months before September 11 - Pakistani intelligence described...

Many remember Leonid Brezhnev as a mumbling dotard with dark bushy eyebrows and a cuirass of medals pinned on his broad chest. But more Russians today would rather live under Brezhnev, who would have turned 100 on Tuesday, than any other Soviet or post-Soviet leader, with the exception of President Vladimir Putin. "Brezhnev himself lived well, and he allowed others to live," said Marina Pukhalskaya, a Moscow pensioner who received free higher education, a relatively prestigious job as a civil engineer and, eventually, a free apartment during an 18-year rule that some quipped would never end. People who knew...

In Soviet times, to challenge the state was to risk one's freedom and one's life. But is it any different now in the new world of oligarchs and opulence? Here, Russia's best-known cultural journalist, Artemy Troitsky, fears for his country's future   At least in Brezhnev's time you knew where you stood. We had no illusions. Public life was black and white. Censorship was overwhelming. Journalists wrote under instruction and according to the social and political orders of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Now, in the new Russia of sushi bars and oligarchs, the situation is more shameful...

While Soviet troops occupied Afghanistan in 1980, Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) worked in close concert with high level Kremlin officials to alter the direction of U.S. policy, according to documents made available through a KGB defector.

Even if one rejects Golitsyn's overall thesis -- viz., that Gorbachev's changes comprised a long-term strategic deception -- one must still acknowledge that Golitsyn was the only analyst whose crystal ball was functioning during the key period of the late 20th century. When the Soviet Empire collapsed in 1989, the CIA was chastised for failing to foresee the change. "For a generation, the Central Intelligence Agency told successive presidents everything they needed to know about the Soviet Union," said Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, "except that it was about to fall apart." Sovietologists both inside and outside CIA were indeed baffled,...

EVER since Mehmet Ali Agca, a Turkish gunman, shot the late Pope John Paul II on May 13, 1981 in St Peter’s Square in Rome, investigators have tried to solve one of the 20th century’s greatest mysteries: did Agca act alone or was he obeying communist orders? This week an Italian parliamentary commission will officially conclude that Agca was part of a huge conspiracy masterminded by the GRU, the Soviet military secret service, on the orders of the politburo and Leonid Brezhnev, general secretary of the Communist party. The findings are already being considered by a Rome prosecutor who may...