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The 27th Day is a 1957 Cold War science fiction B-movie. However, don’t let the B-movie label turn you off. I think it’s quite good. It features an intelligent script and good acting. It's difficult to find it on Region 1 DVD. However, it has recently been uploaded to YouTube. I don’t know how long it will be there before it gets yanked, so you may wish to download it. The screenplay is by John Mantley, who adapted it from his novel. It stars Gene Barry. The actor with the great voice who plays the alien is Arnold Moss. He...

MOSCOW (AFP) – Fifty years after his father was shot down by the Soviets in an incident that marked a turning point in the Cold War, Francis Gary Powers Jr on Friday visited the wreckage of his dad's U-2 spy plane. "It's a wonderful display," Powers Jr said while standing in the hall of the Central Armed Forces Museum in Moscow which holds the wrecked plane and other material commemorating the so-called "U-2 incident" of May 1, 1960. On that day, Francis Gary Powers, a US pilot carrying out a secret mission for the CIA to photograph Soviet nuclear sites,...

MOSCOW — Fifty years ago Saturday, U.S. pilot Francis Gary Powers was shot down while flying a U-2 spy plane over the Soviet Union, a dramatic episode of the Cold War that pushed the rival superpowers closer to confrontation. Now his son has come to Moscow on a mission of his own: By telling his late father's story, he hopes to help preserve Cold War history and prevent future generations of Russians and Americans from ever again facing the threat of nuclear war. On May 1, 1960, Powers was in the cockpit of the world's highest-flying plane, concentrated on keeping...

The Polyus military testbed was put together on a crash basis as an answer to America's Star Wars program. It was built around a surplus TKS manned spacecraft and was meant to test prototype ASAT and Star Wars defense systems. It failed to reach orbit, but it had succeeded, it would have been the core module of a new Mir-2 space station. Its mere presence could have decisively changed the shape of the Cold War in its final months. In 1985, it became clear that the Energia launch vehicle would be ready for launch before the Buran space shuttle that...

Ultimately, South Vietnam became a casualty of American domestic politics: Watergate, the oil crisis and a general crisis of national confidence. The 1973 Paris Peace Agreement was a flawed deal forced on Saigon with promises of future support that were soon broken. President Nixon was hounded from office. The emboldened Democratic Congress cut aid to South Vietnam and left the Paris Peace Agreement unenforceable. President Ford was too weak politically to force the issue, even if he had wanted to. Hanoi seized the opportunity in the spring of 1975 and invaded the South. The South Vietnamese mounted a spirited defense...

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Robert Buchar, an associate professor and author of the Cinematography Program at Columbia College in Chicago. A political refugee from former Czechoslovakia, he is the producer of the documentary, Velvet Hangover, which is about Czech New Wave filmmakers, how they survived the period of “normalization” and their reflections on the so-called Velvet Revolution of 1989. He is the author of the new book, And Reality be Damned… Undoing America: What The Media Didn’t Tell You About the End of the Cold War and Fall of Communism in Europe. The book is based on a documentary...

During the Cold War, the U.S. crafted special export laws to protect against Soviet theft of missile technology. Now, some policy experts say, those laws are outdated, threatening U.S. dominance in technology and hurting American businesses. Products that include “dual-use technologies”—from computer chips and satellites to car-safety features—often need government licenses to be sold overseas. Obtaining such licenses is complicated, expensive, and can take a long time—during which customers may take their business elsewhere. For example, U.S. satellite makers have seen their market share dwindle from 60% to about 25% because of the cumbersome process, according to former National Security...

Fact--Poland was the first country in the former Communist 'Soviet Block' in Eastern Europe to openly defy and stage an act of civil disobedience against the Marxists who controlled the government and corporations. Fact--Polish freedom fighter Lech Walesa led worker/citizen strikes and protests against the Communist regime during the late 1970s and 80s. Fact--Once the Soviet Union was dismantled, largely due to the policies of U.S. President Ronald Reagan, Poland was freed from its years of bondage to Soviet Marxist domination. Fact--Eventually Lech Walesa became the President of Poland. Fact--For 20 years Poland has been one the strongest allies of...

MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin on Wednesday became the first Russian or Soviet leader to join Polish officials in commemorating the anniversary of the murder of thousands of Polish officers by the Soviet Union at the beginning of World War II. Mr. Putin cast the executions as one tragedy out of many wrought by what he called the Soviet Union’s “totalitarian regime.” “We bow our heads to those who bravely met death here,” Mr. Putin said at a site in the Katyn forest close to the Russian city of Smolensk, where 70 years ago members of the Soviet...

The Pentagon was on the verge of retiring the U-2 spy plane four years ago, but Congress blocked the mothballing, saying the plane still had plenty of life and utility. The plane, which was designed to detect nuclear missiles during the Cold War, is now playing a greater role in spotting roadside bombs in the war in Afghanistan, according to an article in The New York Times. The plane can fly at twice the height of commercial jets to evade anti-aircraft missiles, but its sensors can detect spots where dirt has been disturbed to plant roadside bombs. This capability, which...

After nearly five decades, guys like James Noce finally get to tell their stories about Area 51. Yes, that Area 51. The one that gets brought up when people talk about secret Air Force projects, crashed UFOs, alien bodies and, of course, conspiracies. The secrets, some of them, have been declassified. Noce, 72, and his fellow Area 51 veterans around the country now are free to talk about doing contract work for the CIA in the 1960s and '70s at the arid, isolated Southern Nevada government testing site. Their stories shed some light on a site shrouded in mystery; classified...

The Cold War-era Western European Union defence alliance, set up in the wake of World War II, is to cease functioning, its assembly's head Robert Walter said on Wednesday. "The WEU as an organisation will be wound down within a year or so," said British parliamentarian Walter, who presides over the Paris-based assembly of the international grouping. The body was initiated by Belgium, Britain, France, Luxembourg and the Netherlands in 1948 and later expanded to include Germany, Italy, Spain and others. Its founding principles were "to afford assistance to each other in resisting any policy of aggression," and "to promote...

The U-2 spy plane, the high-flying aircraft that was often at the heart of cold war suspense, is enjoying an encore. Four years ago, the Pentagon was ready to start retiring the plane, which took its first test flight in 1955. But Congress blocked that, saying the plane was still useful. And so it is. Because of updates in the use of its powerful sensors, it has become the most sought-after spy craft in a very different war in Afghanistan. As it shifts from hunting for nuclear missiles to detecting roadside bombs, it is outshining even the unmanned drones in...

China sees climate change as another opportunity to help topple the United States from global preeminence, which remains its primary strategic goal in world politics. On March 7, Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi held a press conference at the 3rd Session of 11th National People's Congress meeting in Beijing. He presented a masterful example of the diplomatic art of using the language of international peace and cooperation while at the same time promising that "[w]e will continue to firmly uphold China's sovereignty, security, and development interests and conduct all-round diplomacy." In the process, Mr. Yang demonstrated why, as important as...

I have spent much time during the past few evenings helping my son study for his History test later in the week. As I worked with him through his studies, I found that his class is presenting a new version of History, a version that never occurred. And while you can make a case for different interpretations of events that happened centuries ago, his text book and curriculum distorts events that I saw with my own eyes. The Book in question is published by McDougal Littell and is called World History Patterns of Interaction. The test covers much of the...

Conason continues mining this vein of chimera: “Eventually America learned that the Wisconsin Republican’s famous list was a fabrication, that he was a liar and a demagogue as well as an alcoholic—and that his authoritarian appeals to fear were worse than useless in defending our security. But by then, McCarthyism’s self-serving and fundamentally unpatriotic promoters had inflicted grave damage on the body politic and international prestige of the United States.” Liberals have been embarrassing themselves for decades with this McCarthy business. Point out an unsavory association, and they squeal like stuck pigs about the scourge of McCarthyism. In the mind...

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said on Wednesday that the western military alliance will debate the bloc's nuclear policy in Estonia next month. He said a "discussion" is planned after the foreign ministers of Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Norway requested "a major debate" on NATO's nuclear policy at their next gathering in Tallinn on April 22 and 23. However, Rasmussen stressed that the talks, which come as President Barack Obama mulls a drastic cut in the US nuclear arsenal, will have to balance calls to remove outdated weapons with a need for a strategic nuclear "deterrent." The...

The late Alexander Haig blamed George H.W. Bush for the world's dim view of the United States' after the collapse of the Soviet Union, saying the former president misread events and in the world, refused to get rid of Iraq's Saddam Hussein and squandered America's dominance. The late Alexander Haig blamed George H.W. Bush for the world's dim view of the United States' after the collapse of the Soviet Union, saying the former president misread world events, refused to get rid of Iraq's Saddam Hussein and squandered America's dominance. In never-before-published excerpts from a July 2000 interview with Fox News'...

After eight years of refusing my requests for an interview about the Nixon presidency, retired Gen. Alexander M. Haig Jr., accosted in the Fox News green room, finally relented. Our tape-recorded session -- held in Haig's downtown office on July 27, 2000 -- lasted nearly three hours. I published some portions in a book I wrote on Watergate but decided to keep the vast majority private until Haig's death. Haig, who served as secretary of state under Reagan and chief of staff in Nixon's White House, died Feb. 20 at age 85. In the interview, he was in rare form:...

The Kola peninsula is a cape in northwest Russia. This region borders Norway and Finland and has direct access to the ocean. Because of its strategic position the Russian army had hundreds of bases were there. During the terrible 1990s, the Russian army's budget was cut so costs had to be also. One way to save was to give up some bases and concentrate bases down to one. So many of the army bases and supporting housing were abandoned. The other way to reduce costs was to pay less to the personnel, so during 1990s many  Russian soldiers and...