Free Republic

The Russia Today (RT) Moscow-funded propaganda channel, which is backing the murderous regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, aired a special program on Tuesday night on how progressives in the U.S. can “Take Back the American Dream” by defeating Republicans. The propaganda effort was broadcast throughout the United States and produced in collaboration with major liberal groups such as the Campaign for America’s Future, MoveOn.org and Demos, all of them Soros-funded. The host was Thom Hartmann, who regards himself as the nation’s number one progressive radio talk-show host. The “National Teach-In to Take Back the American Dream”

Vladimir Putin praised Cold War-era scientists on Thursday for stealing U.S. nuclear secrets so that United States would not be the world's sole atomic power, in comments reflecting his vision of Russia as a counterweight to U.S. power. Spies with suitcases full of data helped the Soviet Union build its atomic bomb, he told military commanders. "You know, when the States already had nuclear weapons and the Soviet Union was only building them, we got a significant amount of information through Soviet foreign intelligence channels," Putin said, according to state-run Itar-Tass. "The were carrying the information away not on microfilm...

India to Buy 71 More Russian Helicopters The Indian Air Force (IAF) is planning to procure 71 more Mi-17 V5 helicopters, including 12 for the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Business Standard daily reported on Monday. These would be in addition to the 80 already ordered from Russia. Of the 71 helicopters to be ordered, 59 would be provided to the IAF for replacing its old Mi-8 and Mi-17IV choppers and six would go to the Border Security Force. The remaining six would be distributed among the other central armed police forces, IAF officials said. On Thursday the IAF put...

Russia needs to launch a major military buildup to prepare for life in a dangerous world where international law is breaking down, the West feels free to intervene in sovereign countries, and rivals could invade Russia to seize its rich trove of natural resources, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has warned. In his fifth programmatic article detailing what he will do if he wins a new six-year presidential term in elections that are now less than two weeks off, Mr. Putin pledged, among other things, the biggest rearmament program in Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Over the next...

Russian Air Force to Receive New Attack Aircraft by 2020 The deliveries of new close air support aircraft to the Russian Air Force will start by 2020, Air Force spokesman Col. Vladimir Drik said. “The Air Force units will start receiving this aircraft by 2020,” Drik said on Monday. “It will gradually replace highly-reliable Su-25SM Frogfoot attack planes.” According to Drik, the new aircraft will meet the demands of modern warfare and feature elements of “stealth” technology, the whole range of tactical weaponry, modern radar and navigation equipment. Meanwhile, Russia will continue to upgrade its outdated Su-25 attack aircraft to...

As the violence in Syria worsened in recent days, amateur video showed the forces of President Bashar al-Assad rolling through the besieged city of Homs in vintage Soviet battle tanks. Other photographs, including satellite images released by the State Department, showed deployments of Soviet-designed truck-mounted rocket launchers and two models of a self-propelled howitzer whose sweet-scented names in Russian, Gvozdika and Akatsiya (Carnation and Acacia), are no reflection of their fearsome firepower. Seemingly undeterred by an international outcry, Moscow has worked frantically in recent weeks to preserve its relationship with the increasingly isolated government of Mr. Assad, even as the...

China accused Western countries of stirring civil war in Syria and two Iranian warships docked at a Syrian naval base, underscoring rising international tensions over the near year-long crisis. -excerpt- "Hama is cut off from the outside world. There are no landlines, no mobile phone network and no internet. House to house arrests take place daily and sometimes repeatedly in the same neighborhoods," an opposition statement said.

Putin Pledges 400 ICBMs for Russia in Ten Years Russia’s armed forces will receive over 400 modern intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), more than 100 military spacecraft and over 2,300 new tanks within the next ten years, Prime Minister and presidential candidate Vladimir Putin said. Earlier media voiced fears that by 2020, Russia’ ICBM arsenal could reduce by more than half as over 400 missiles would go beyond their maximum service life without timely replacement. “Within the next decade, the armed forces will receive more than 400 modern ground- and sea-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, eight ballistic missile submarines, about 20 general...

This is from a direct-mail fundraising piece from "StateDepartmentWatch.org". They say that the current congress "will decide the fate of eight strategically and economically vital islands in Alaska...and the U.S. will get nothing in return." This is the first that I've heard this claim and I don't know if it's valid.

Quietly, State Dept. Turns Over American Islands to Russia, Others In recent years several U.S. islands have been ceded to Russia and other countries, without congressional approval or public debate. These islands, many uninhabited, are significant because they hold potential mineral, gas, oil and fishing rights – not to mention potential strategic military value. So where exactly are these disputed islands? The Arctic islands, which lie west of Alaska and north of Siberia, include the islands of Wrangell, Herald, Bennett, Jeannette and Henrietta. The islands in the Bering Sea make up the westernmost point in Alaska’s Aleutian chain and include...

(Reuters) - Two Iranian naval ships have sailed through Egypt's Suez Canal into the Mediterranean, in a move likely to be keenly watched by Israel. "Two Iranian ships crossed through the Suez Canal (on Thursday) following permission from the Egyptian armed forces," a source in the canal authority said Friday. The destroyer and a supply ship could be on their way to the Syrian coast, the source added. Iran and Syria agreed to cooperate on naval training a year ago, and Tehran has no naval agreement with any other country in the region. Two Iranian warships sailed along the strategic...

It is one of the enduring mysteries of the second world war. More than 800 Jews based in this hospital in the middle of Nazi Berlin survived the war, seemingly — and bizarrely — protected by Adolf Eichmann, the architect of the Final Solution. So who were they and why were they saved? Russian soldiers fighting their way through the rubble of Berlin in the last days of the war turned the corner of Iranische Strasse, in the district of Wedding, and came across an elegant building almost intact. Fanning out to search the structure, the Russians ransacked the place,...

Within days of the defeat of Germany in World War II, Winston Churchill ordered his war cabinet to draw up contingency plans for an offensive against Stalin that would lead to ``the elimination of Russia'', according to top secret British documents. The resulting battle plan included the use of up to 100,000 German troops to back up half a million British and American soldiers attacking through northern Germany. It assumed that Stalin would invade Turkey, Greece, Norway and the oilfields of Iraq and Iran in retaliation and launch extensive sabotage operations in France and the Low Countries. A 29-page report, ...

These photographs are part of a chilling collection of WWII photographs taken by a German soldier in the aftermath of Dunkirk. Today on Remembrance Day, they are a fitting reminder of the fields which played host to some of the bloodiest battles of World War One in which 10 million soldiers died. The pictures show the lifeless beaches of northern France littered with thousands of allied vehicles left behind following the infamous evacuation.One disturbing snap shows the rotting corpse of a British soldier lapping at the shore. Others show the devastation inflicted on the town of Dunkirk following days of...

Europe rewrites the Holocaust in order to revive patriotic traditions free from guilt. Nearly 70 years after the massacre of more than 27,000 Jews in Rostov, on the banks of the River Don, the Russian Ministry of Culture has announced it will replace the plaque adorning the monument to the dead. But once the text of the new inscription was revealed, it became clear that this was not merely an exhibition of the low level officialÂ’s love of new unveilings and plaque dedications. Rather it was another attempt by a European state to revise the history of the Holocaust and...

Egypt, a country called typically Russian resort, is grasped by the so-called "date revolution." Interfax-Religion correspondent Yelena Verevkina asked renowned expert in Islam Alexander Ignatenko what is the role of Islamists in undermining foundations of this "beach paradise." Alexander Alexandrovich, what is the role of Islamist underground in organizing disorders in Egypt? - I think their role is not too significant as the things happening in Egypt, can be called revolution "two in one." On the one hand, it is a revolt of people who have been oppressed by gerontocratic corruption regimen, but on the other hand, it is so...

Speaking on matters beyond the realm of the spiritual, a top Orthodox Church cleric said Russia must play a greater role in responding to ongoing global events that could deteriorate into a world war. "There are many processes occurring in the world in which Russia should play a much more active role,” Vsevolod Chaplin, a high-placed cleric in the Russian Orthodox Church, said in an interview with the Svobodnaya Pressa ('Free Press') publishing house. “The economic and social contradictions that have cropped up in the world are so powerful that they are sure to blow up into serious military operations."...

When the Air Force Special Operations Command decided to buy 2,861 made-in-China Apple iPad tablet computers in January to provide flight crews with electronic navigation charts and technical manuals, it specified mission security software developed, maintained and updated in Russia. The command followed in the path of Alaska Airlines, which in May 2011 became the first domestic carrier to drop paper charts and manuals in exchange for electronic flight bags. Alaska chose the same software, GoodReader, developed by Moscow-based Good.iware, to display charts in a PDF format on iPads. Delta Air Lines kicked off a test in August for electronic...

Russian security forces have killed a leader of an Islamist rebel group in the North Caucasus who was accused of plotting a botched suicide attack in Moscow and calling for more bombings. Ibragimkhalil Daudov was found dead in a forest on Tuesday after being wounded at the weekend in a shootout when police stormed a nearby house where he was hiding in the mainly Muslim region of Dagestan, Kommersant newspaper reported. Daudov escaped after the shootout, in which four gunmen were killed, but lost a lot of blood and froze to death, Kommersant quoted security officers as saying, Reuters reports....