Free Republic

The race for the Republican Party presidential nomination in the United States has been a contest of "idiocy and ignorance," former Cuban leader Fidel Castro said on Wednesday in a column in Cuba's state-run press. Castro and the communist Cuba he created have been the target of much rhetoric in the lead-up to Florida's Republican primary next week, with top candidates Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich taking hard-line positions to appeal to the state's large population of Cuban exiles. Castro did not cite them, but expressed his general disgust with the Republican field. "The selection of a Republican candidate for...

It appears that Barack Obama has again ignored the rule of law by signing a defense appropriations bill that prohibits him sharing vital United States leading-edge strategic US missile technology with Russia, yet he has told both houses of Congress that he plans to share the US missile technology anyway. Why is this important? Because it goes light-years beyond partisan politics and into an area where our national defense will be put at unreasonable risk. It is believed that the Russians will pass this technology onto China, Iran and North Korea. I find it bitterly ironic that this president pushes...

Russia has given Iran its bear hug and warns Israel and the West that an attack on Tehran would be considered an attack on Moscow. The threat heightens the prospect of World War III in the event of a military strike on Iran. “Iran is our neighbor,” Russia's outgoing ambassador to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, told reporters in Brussels. “And if Iran is involved in any military action, it’s a direct threat to our security.”

Russia fears Israel will push the United States into a military conflict with Iran which could retaliate by blocking oil shipments from the Gulf, a confidant of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said. "There is a likelihood of military escalation of the conflict, towards which Israel is pushing the Americans," Nikolai Patrushev, who heads the Kremlin's Security Council, told Interfax news agency. Patrushev, a former head of the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, said Tehran could respond by blocking the Strait of Hormuz between Oman and Iran, through which 35 percent of the world's seaborne traded oil passes. "It cannot...

Last weekend’s massive protest in Moscow’s Prospekt Sakharova will result in a new Soviet-style Russia not an Arab Spring-like revolution. The West had better beware because the Russian bear is coming out of hibernation. Twenty years ago this month the Soviet Union crumbled and from those ashes rose a promising Russian democratic republic. But Soviet-era corruption reared its ugly head in Russia’s December 4th parliamentary elections. That corruption sparked numerous protests, calls for new elections and earned Russia’s prime minister an accusatory message from a U.S. senator. Senator John McCain​ (R-AZ) tweeted Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin a satirical message....

Soviet nationalism in its most influential form goes back to World War II, when the Soviet Union's victory was made possible by a new brand of nationalism: Russian in that it fit within a thousand-year-old history of expansionism, but Soviet in that it was achieved via modern technology, bureaucratic organization, and civic-mindedness. This new ideology kept the USSR afloat after 1945.... In the end, the sclerotic Soviet economy wasn't able to satisfy citizens' demands. Mikhail Gorbachev had hoped to transform the Soviet Union into a modern socialist state "with a human face." Instead, he hastened its collapse.... Boris Yeltsin, Russia's...

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Thursday expressed regret that the leaders of the USSR did not fight to the last to prevent its collapse two decades ago. "The USSR should have started timely economic reforms and changes as well as reforms to strengthen democratic change in the country," ex-KGB agent Putin told Russian television viewers in a phone-in. "They should have consistently, fearlessly and steadfastly -- without burying their heads in the sand or waving their arses in the air -- fought for the territorial integrity of our country," he said.

As prime minister for the past four years, Vladimir Putin never really went away. But his looming reincarnation as the all-powerful, executive president of Russia – the country's "paramount leader" in Chinese parlance – poses a stark challenge for which the US, Britain and other beleaguered western powers seem ill-prepared. As president, potentially until 2024, Putin has one overriding objective: the creation of a third, post-tsarist, post-Soviet Russian empire.

Russia has turned on a new incoming missile early warning system in its westernmost region in response to US plans for a missile shield in Europe. President Dmitry Medvedev ordered the system to be activated on a visit to the radar unit in Kaliningrad, a Baltic region bordering EU countries. The unit is equipped with the new Voronezh-DM radar system. Mr Medvedev has warned Russian missiles could be deployed on the EU's borders if the shield is installed. Washington wants an anti-missile shield ready by 2020, arguing that it is necessary to provide protection from the potential missile threat posed...

"First, I am instructing the Defense Ministry to immediately put the missile attack early warning radar station in Kaliningrad on combat alert. Second, protective cover of Russia's strategic nuclear weapons, will be reinforced as a priority measure under the programme to develop out air and space defenses. Third, the new strategic ballistic missiles commissioned by the Strategic Missile Forces and the Navy will be equipped with advanced missile defense penetration systems and new highly-effective warheads. Fourth, I have instructed the Armed Forces to draw up measures for disabling missile defense system data and guidance systems if need be... Fifth, if...

Russian warships are due to arrive at Syrian territorial waters, a Syrian news agency said on Thursday, indicating that the move represented a clear message to the West that Moscow would resist any foreign intervention in the country's civil unrest.

But are they all talk? Some advice for where to take action.From Tymoshenko in Kiev to Khodorkovsky in Chita, a new iron curtain has descended across the continent.Last week, Speaker of the House John Boehner finally confronted President Barack Obama regarding his failed “reset” policy in Russia. He pointed out that despite Obama’s plans and promises, Russia is standing with Iran, not us, in the confrontation over revelations about Iran’s nuclear program. The news came even as the world learned that a Russian scientist had been helping Iran to develop those lethal nukes, and that Russia intended to bestow even...

MANAGUA (Reuters) - Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, a former Marxist guerrilla leader, looks likely to win re-election on Sunday after heavy social spending won him strong support among the country's poor. Ortega has overseen a period of economic progress in his five years in power, backed by financial aid from his socialist ally in Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez.

Twenty-first-century Russia may look like a liberal democracy, with elections, law courts and parliament. In truth there are two parallel states. One is for show. The other is almost completely corrupt, with part of it run by a clique of secret servicemen who owe their allegiance ultimately to the prime minister, Vladimir Putin, and the small group of former KGB thugs who surround him. Stay in with them, and you stay safe. Fail to pay your dues, and you risk personal destruction. ....the so-called siloviki, the strongmen who control modern Russia, with a career background in the intelligence or security...

In China, Russia's Putin calls US a parasite AP– 8 hrs ago BEIJING (AP) — Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is likening the U.S. to a parasite following his meetings with Chinese leaders to push ahead energy deals and draw the once wary neighbors closer. In an interview with Chinese state media released Tuesday, Putin said that the U.S. itself is not a parasite for the world economy but that its dollar monopoly is. Putin said his criticism was meant to help find a solution to problems in the world economy.

Freedom: A Ukraine court's decision Tuesday to imprison Orange Revolution heroine and former Premier Yulia Tymoshenko on bogus charges over a gas deal she made with Russia is a travesty. Now only Russia can benefit. Ukraine's internal politics reared its ugly head again when Judge Radion Kireyev found Tymoshenko "guilty" of exceeding her authority as prime minister over a gas deal she signed with Russia in 2009 and sentenced her to seven years' prison. Her crime? That she didn't get a low enough price for the gas Ukraine buys from the barons of Moscow — who hold a monopoly on...

Progressive TV and radio star Thom Hartmann took time off from covering Van Jones and his “Rebuild the Dream” movement on Wednesday to briefly talk to this columnist about his relationship with the Vladimir Putin regime of Russia. The conversation quickly went sour when Hartmann objected to questions about how much he is being paid by Moscow. He grabbed my video camera, covering the lens briefly in the process, and stomped away, objecting to “gotcha” questions.The entire spectacle was captured on camera and posted on YouTube.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9Rz9fKXXdE During another embarrassing incident, Van Jones refused to sign a copy of his...

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...

THE prevailing wisdom is that Vladimir Putin's return to the Russian presidency is bad news. That may be, but there is also reason to welcome his not-so-surprising Kremlin homecoming, because it will remove the fiction of Russian reform and modernisation that the presidency of Dmitry Medvedev represented. This in turn should allow US and European policymakers to see the country as it is, rather than as they would prefer to imagine it. For the past several years, Putin has served, nominally, as Prime Minister under Medvedev. Medvedev assumed the presidency in 2008 as part of a carefully choreographed process by...

Russia's Putin says wants to build "Eurasian Union" Mon, Oct 3 2011 By Gleb Bryanski MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said he wants to bring ex-Soviet states into a "Eurasian Union" in an article which outlined his first foreign policy initiative as he prepares to return to the Kremlin as the country's next president. Putin said the new union would build on an existing Customs Union with Belarus and Kazakhstan which from next year will remove all barriers to trade, capital and labor movement between the three countries. "We are not going to stop there and are...

In September 2010, Germany’s Der Spiegel explained that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has a “soft spot for the Arctic,” with Putin saying Russia “will put huge amounts of money into environmental protection” and is “planning to do a serious spring cleaning of our Arctic territories.” He was up there petting polar bears to drive home his new heartfelt cause. I’m not kidding. Researchers had to first sedate the bear he caressed as he spoke, though. Putin also didn’t let the bear go without first attaching a transmitter. Old KGB habits die hard, I guess. That was then. Today, Putin...

In April 2006, two years into the second term of “President” Vladimir Putin of Russia, I formed a Russia blog called La Russophobe for one purpose: to warn the world that Putin, a proud KGB spy, would not surrender power as the Russian constitution required him to do in 2008 after two terms as “president.” Instead, we at LR warned, Putin would hold power forever — just like Brezhnev and Stalin, his heroes. When Putin announced he would become prime minister in 2008, the writing was on the wall. LR begged the world continuously thereafter to see that Putin was...

9/21/11 The most senior US military officer has accused Pakistan's spy agency of supporting the Haqqani group in planning and conducting last week's attack on the US embassy in Kabul. "The Haqqani network... acts as a veritable arm of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Agency," Adm Mike Mullen told a Senate panel. In July he said Pakistan sanctioned the killing of journalist Saleem Shahzad. Pakistan's government called that statement "irresponsible". Pakistani officials have consistently denied links with militant groups. 'Credible intelligence' At least 25 people died during the 20-hour attack on the US embassy, Nato headquarters and police buildings in Kabul on...

Polish foreign minister Radek Sikorski in a private conversation with US diplomats in 2008 said that Germany protects Russian interests in Nato in return for access to the Russian market. According to a US cable recently published by Wikileaks, Sikorski, in a conversation with the then US under secretary for global affairs Paula Dobriansky in Warsaw on 23 April 2008 "Wryly commented that many accused Poland of being the US Trojan horse in the EU when it joined in 2004, but there is another Trojan horse in Nato". The cable went on: "Asked what the US strategy should be towards...

The US and EU have called for Assad to stand down. Most allies of Syria have deserted him. Saudi Arabia was ultimately unable to support the oppression of the Sunni Muslim majority. Bahrain and Kuwait have recalled diplomats. Turkey, in a closer alliance with Saudi Arabia, may yet be vital in providing regional unity and leadership in removing Assad. It is surely a sign of crisis when even Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Bahrain are appalled by the Syrian record on human rights. But major hurdles remain, not least the stance of Russia. With a veto on the UN Security Council...

Moscow is preparing a list of U.S. officials it will ban from Russia in retaliation for a White House policy to keep Russian human rights abusers out of the U.S. Russia's Foreign Ministry this week began preparing a list of officials connected to the U.S. apprehension of suspected arms dealer Viktor A. Bout and convicted drug dealer Konstantin Yaroshenko, according to reports in the Russian press. The State Department last month announced that it has a list of Russian officials connected to the 2009 slaying of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky who would be denied visas to visit the United States...

Now that America has no way to put people into space, we have to rely on the Ruskies. They might have been Communists for almost 80 years but they sure understand market economies (specifically, supply and demand) because the pre-negotiated deal of $51 million per U.S. astronaut expires at the end of 2013. The General Director of Russian Federal Space Agency, Anatoly Perminov, said in 2010: We have an agreement until 2012 that Russia will be responsible for this. But after that? Excuse me but the prices should be absolutely different then! The Comrade was right… NASA just inked a...

Russia: U.S. intelligence has apparently concluded that Moscow was behind last September's bombing of the U.S. Embassy in the nation of Georgia. But the Obama administration still thinks Russia is our friend. The more things change, the more they stay the same. In the 1970s, President Carter celebrated America's liberation from its "inordinate fear of communism" and boasted after the 1979 Vienna Summit that "President Brezhnev and I developed a better sense of each other as leaders and as men." Less than six months later, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. Today, President Obama takes Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to Ray's...

"Today in the Senate, I met with Senators Jon Kyl and Mark Kirk. The meeting is very useful because it shows that the alternative to Barack Obama is a collapse of all the programs of cooperation with Russia," he said. "Today, I had the impression that I was transported in a time machine back several decades, and in front of me sat two monsters of the Cold War, who looked at me not through pupils, but targeting sights."

ASTANA — Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday joined the Chinese and Russian leaders in a rare encounter at a summit in Kazakhstan, where he launched a new attack on the "slavers and colonisers" of the West. Host Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev urged the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), a security group regarded as a NATO rival founded in 2001, to take a more active role in ensuring regional security. But most attention was focused on Ahmadinejad, who was absent from last year's SCO meeting in Tashkent after the UN Security Council agreed sanctions against Iran and was making a rare...

ASTANA, Kazakhstan - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called Wednesday for a security alliance of several former Soviet nations and China to form a united front against the West. Ahmadinejad's address to fellow heads of state at the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Kazakhstan will likely deepen suspicions that the bloc is intended as a counterweight to the United States across the region. In a summit declaration signed by all the member states, the organization also attacked missile defense programs in another apparent dig at the United States.

WASHINGTON, June 9, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Today, Voice of Russia (VOR) Radio announces the launch of two U.S. stations in New York and Washington, D.C. The new stations will air live programming with the Russian perspective on international news, culture, arts and events over 1430 AM and 1390 AM frequency, respectively. The stations mark the first time VOR will produce programming directly from the United States rather than broadcasting news from the Moscow-based radio program. "This is a very significant move for Voice of Russia because it is the first time in the history of the station that material being...

A group of 14 acclaimed Russian intellectuals, including human rights activists, artists, film directors, writers and aides of the late President Boris Yeltsin have published an open statement condemning the present regime for “completely destroying the institution of democratic elections in Russia.” Election results are shamelessly falsified by the authorities, while opposition parties and activists are “unconstitutionally” denied registration to run in elections under cooked up pretexts. As a result, subjects of the Russian state are disfranchised from the political system rendering it illegitimate. The statement describes as “vicious” the so called “vertical of power”—a system of personalized authoritarian rule...

With the Palestinians demonstrating and the International Monetary Fund in turmoil, it would seem odd to focus this week on something called the Visegrad Group. But this is not a frivolous choice. What the Visegrad Group decided to do last week will, I think, resonate for years, long after the alleged attempted rape by Dominique Strauss-Kahn is forgotten and long before the Israeli-Palestinian issue is resolved. The obscurity of the decision to most people outside the region should not be allowed to obscure its importance. The region is Europe — more precisely, the states that had been dominated by the Soviet...

SKOLKOVO, Russia -- President Dmitry Medvedev on Wednesday warned of a new Cold War era if Russia and the West fail to agree on missile defense, in the first major news conference of his presidency. Despite the startling warning to the United States and Europe, Medvedev confounded expectations he would use the event to finally announce if he intends to seek a new Kremlin mandate in 2012 elections. Russia is increasingly worried about US plans to build missile defense facilities in ex-Communist eastern Europe and is also offended that NATO appears to have shunned its proposals for a joint missile...

SKOLKOVO, Russia (AFP) – President Dmitry Medvedev warned Wednesday Russia could pull out a new nuclear disarmament treaty and enter a new Cold War with the West if the two sides failed to agree on a new missile defence shield. Medvedev told reporters that the United States' decision to push ahead with the European shield despite Russia's objections will force Moscow "to take response measures -- something that we would very much rather not do."

.. inadequacies and deficiencies of the existing international monetary and financial system.. In 1998 Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov, a strategist and master spy, conceived of an economic alliance between Russia, India and China. The purpose of this combination was to counter the international influence of the United States. By now it should be apparent that Russia and China intend to launch an attack against the U.S. dollar. Do we yet realize that such an attack is possible? And have we reckoned the political consequences?

Ukraine has resisted pressure to join the Moscow-led union, preferring instead to pursue a free-trade agreement with the European Union. During a meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart, Putin said the customs union would stimulate growth in whole sectors of the Ukrainian economy as he touted the benefits of the economic integration formed when the countries were all part of the Soviet Union. “The technological links from the Soviet period are still functioning, and one partner cannot be efficient without another,” Putin said. “That is what we must think about and give a second wind to the capabilities formed during the...

The Russian central bank has put into effect its latest moves in the fight against inflation with some style. After raising interest rates on Monday for the first time since 2008, the authorities late on Tuesday widened the trading band for the rouble – and were happy to see the currency rise sharply on Wednesday, by a full 1 per cent against a US dollar/euro basket. As well as gaining some ground in the anti-inflation front, the central bank can claim another modest advance towards its aim of liberalising the rouble. Governor Sergei Ignatiev should be pleased with this week’s...

LONDON, March 8 (Reuters) - Western cuts and swiftly rising defence spending in emerging economies are redrawing the global strategic map, a leading think-tank said on Tuesday, with the danger of conflicts between states also rising. In its annual Global Military Balance report, the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) said the shift in economic power was already beginning to have a real military effect and closing any strategic gap. "Western states' defence budgets are under pressure and their military procurement is constrained," said IISS director general John Chipman. "But in other regions -- notably Asia and the Middle...

Leftists Advance: Nation by Nation The Venezuelan people are not the only ones suffering under this resurgence of fanatical left-wing leaders. The BBC reported in 2005 that 75 percent of South Americans were governed by leftist rulers, all of whom had risen to power in the preceding six years. And the trend has only accelerated since then, with some analysts using the term “Pink Tide” to describe the phenomenon that has enveloped Latin America. Bolivia: With strong backing from Chavez, former coca farmer Evo Morales of the Movement for Socialism assumed power in 2006. His party now controls about two-thirds...

Brazilian philosopher, Olavo de Carvalho is an expert on the Latin American Left and its ties to Islam, Russia and China. Olavo de Carvahlo In this interview, with Jeff Nyquist, de Carvahlo eloquently and forcefully states a theme I've long promoted on this blog - that Russia, China, Cuba, Iran radical Islam and the Latin American Left, co-ordinated by Cuba and Brazil through the Sao Paolo Forum, are working together to destroy the the United States of America. I emphasize - not to weaken, to marginalize, to impoverish - but to DESTROY the USA. As Carvalho explained, “The Russian-Chinese influence...

Lenin's goal of world communism was based on long term deception, please read his writings. His plan was to create regional governments, by destroying national sovereignty then ultimately merging the regions together into a one world system. Look today at the EU , who Gorbachev himself so smugly calls the "EU Soviet"; 1400 faceless spokesman in Brussels who control all of Western Europe. Chris Story, former Thatcher advisor explains. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFA4B1rCKvg And in America's open border policies, destruction of state sovereignty through intentional out of control spending and legislated treaties like NAFTA and GAT that creates a three nation state (US,...

Oil in itself is apolitical; but if some countries use it as a growth factor, then others turn it into weapon. Do you know what the difference is between Saudi Arabia on the one hand and Russia and Venezuela on the other? The answer is that they use oil differently. The Saudi Kingdom just makes money with oil. The Kremlin and Caracas use oil as a political weapon. Their paths are opposite indeed. The hydrocarbon policy looks like a cold war more and more. One cannot say that the petroleum business was not mixed with politics before; however, now this...

The White House briefing room stepped back into the Cold War today when press secretary Robert Gibbs found himself in a spontaneous debate with a Russian correspondent over the role that American freedoms played in the Arizona shootings. Andrei Sitov, who covers Washington for the official Russian news agency TASS, was the last reporter Gibbs called on. Sitov is a fixture at the daily briefing, almost always asking straightforward questions about foreign policy. But on this day, he prefaced his question by offering “my condolences to all the Americans” grieving Saturday’s violence. He then suggested that such an outburst of...

Russia has been conducting a race to build up its military, but no one seems to be noticing. While the economic recession is causing many European nations to slash and downsize their defensive capabilities, Russia has been extending its reach militarily. Did any of you catch the article about Russia purchasing not one but two helicopter carriers from France? The Mistral-class carrier also doubles as an amphibious assault craft, carrying ground forces and materiel. The Baltic states and Georgia are raising diplomatic hell over it but it appears that France is savoring the deal, worth over $1.5 billion. "The Baltic...

Outspoken former Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean apparently isn't planning to celebrate Ronald Reagan's 100th birthday February 6, around which there are coast-to-coast events planned. Instead, the former Vermont governor is shrugging his shoulders, asking what all the fuss is about? At a media roundtable today, Dean suggested that Reagan had little impact other than stopping the social progression begun under FDR and seemed to dismiss the Gipper's efforts to crush communism, giving the last Soviet premier, Mikhail Gorbachev credit for ending the Cold War, a statement sure to draw sneers from Reagan fans and even historians. While Reagan is...

5. (S) Rahmonov added, "Actually, It's the Russian special services who cause trouble here....it's coming from the Kremlin, and some of it comes from the top. We can never forget that Putin himself is a 'chekist' (career intelligence officer) at heart." 6. (S) Rahmonov said, "I want to tell you a secret why I insisted that the Russian Border Guards had to leave Tajikistan. You know they're part of the KGB. I had credible information they and (jailed General Gaffor) Mirzoyev were plotting a coup against me. ....Only after I moved against Mirzoyev did Putin finally understand that their game...

The release of over 250,000 diplomatic cables has revealed a lot about the intricacies of U.S. diplomacy. However, one aspect of the WikiLeaks release that has been much under the media's radar is what the leaked cables have said about Russia and its surrogate-state sponsorship of what would most accurately be described as an international terrorist network. In a diplomatic cable dated August 6, 2008, regarding a meeting between U.S. and Russian experts on the export of Man-Portable Air Defense Systems (MANPADS) from Russia, the State Department expressed its concern about "Russian ammunition, sold to Venezuela ... found in possession...

Icky LeaksSensitive diplomatic communications have been published by the Wikileaks Web site, and some of this sensitive material concerns Russia. The importance of Russia as a global power has been downplayed since the fall of the Soviet Union. Leaked U.S. State Department cables give us a glimpse of how dangerous Russia is becoming. The true nature of the Russian regime has not been a popular topic of public discussion; but in secret meetings between diplomats, statesmen and law enforcement officials, there is growing concern. Russia has become the center of international corruption, drawing other states into her orbit.From the leaked...