Free Republic

Zimbabwe's opposition says it will bring the government to its knees with Kenya-style mass protests if President Robert Mugabe carries out extensive plans to rig tomorrow's presidential and parliamentary elections. But Mugabe has vowed to use the army to crush any demonstrations and warned Zimbabweans not to waste their votes on opposition candidates who would never be allowed to take power. Mugabe, 84, would struggle to extend his 28-year rule in a clean election, amid widespread hunger, mass unemployment, 100,000% inflation and a currency that devalues so fast that the few people with jobs are paid in billions of Zimbabwe...

Venezuela threatened to declare war on neighbouring Colombia last night, raising the prospect of the U.S. being drawn into conflict in South America. Venezuela's Left-wing president Hugo Chavez ordered ten tank battalions to the Colombian border and put war-planes under emergency stand-by. The tension follows Colombia's decision to send its army to strike against anti-government guerrillas hiding in the jungles of Ecuador. The surprise attack - launched without Ecuador's permission - killed Raul Reyes, a top commander in the Left-wing Colombian rebel group Farc, and about 16 of his men. President Chavez yesterday closed the Colombian embassy in Caracas, warning...

It shall be the policy of this Nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union. -- President John F. Kennedy, Oct. 22, 1962 Now that's deterrence. Kennedy was pledging that if any nuke was launched from Cuba, the United States would not even bother with Cuba but go directly to the source and bring the apocalypse to Russia with a massive nuclear attack. The remarkable thing about this kind of threat is...

SEOUL (Reuters) - South and North Korea agreed on Thursday to hold soccer matches in the South's capital next month to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the end of Japan's occupation of the peninsula. Negotiators from the two sides, divided at the end of the Japanese rule in 1945, agreed to hold a men's match in Seoul on Aug. 14 and a women's match two days later, Pyongyang's official KCNA news agency and Seoul's Yonhap news agency reported. The agreement came as senior diplomats from the two, the United States, Russia, China and Japan are in the Chinese capital of...