Free Republic

Cold War: The White House has announced our absence at ceremonies marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Meanwhile, Russia has been practicing a nuclear invasion of an abandoned Poland. The Berlin Wall has been a famous backdrop for American presidents sounding the battle cry of liberty in the struggle against tyranny. It was there that John F. Kennedy expressed our solidarity with the encircled residents of that outpost of freedom with his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner." And it was there that Ronald Reagan, with a defiant "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall," voiced our...

A BUST of Russia's muscle-flexing strongman Vladimir Putin is being created as a gift for ex-Hollywood bodybuilder and California's current governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. The bust is currently being made in Putin's home city of Saint Petersburg on an order of Russia's Bodybuilding and Fitness Federation and will be delivered to the movie star-turned-politician in March. "Putin is such a complex personality. He's left no one indifferent," Alexander Chernoshchyokov, a Saint Petersburg-based sculptor who has been working on the Putin bust since June... In 1991 the Russian artist made a sculpture of Schwarzenegger and Vladimir Dubinin, the president of the bodybuilding...

Czechs are used to betrayal by their Western allies. It was at Munich in 1938 that British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain sealed their doom in exchange for a piece of paper promising "peace in our time." The fact that this further gutting of missile defense came on the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland on Sept. 17, 1939, is an eerie coincidence. "Just after midnight I was informed in a telephone call by President Barack Obama that (his) administration had decided to pull out from the planned missile defense shield installations" in the Czech Republic and Poland, the...

Strategic Defense: With Iran on the verge of a deliverable nuke, the administration tells our allies in the dead of night that we will scuttle missile defense plans in Eastern Europe to please the Russians.Czechs are used to betrayal by their Western allies. It was at Munich in 1938 that British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain sealed their doom in exchange for a piece of paper promising "peace in our time." The fact that this further gutting of missile defense came on the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland on Sept. 17, 1939, is an eerie coincidence. "Just after...

It was almost the 'sorry' that Poland has waited seventy years for. But just as Vladimir Putin inched towards an apology for Russia's invasion of Poland in the wake of the Nazi-Soviet pact in 1939, he pulled back from the precipice, placing the blame for the outbreak of the Second World War squarely on Britain and France. At a ceremony marking the outbreak of the war in Gdansk, Poland today, Mr Putin downplayed Russia's responsibility, emphasising instead the Soviet Union's role in fighting the Nazis. And in an article published in Poland yesterday he argued that Britain's policy of appeasement...

President Hugo Chavez says he has a new book for President Barack Obama: "What is to be Done?" by communist Vladimir Lenin, founder of the Soviet state. Chavez says he'll "give it to Obama at the next meeting." "What is to be Done?" is Lenin's political treatise on the role of intellectuals and the proletariat in promoting revolution, written more than a decade before he led the Bolshevik takeover of Russia in 1917.

The following text is a transcript of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's speech at the opening ceremony of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.Good afternoon, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, --snip-- Excessive intervention in economic activity and blind faith in the state's omnipotence is another possible mistake. True, the state's increased role in times of crisis is a natural reaction to market setbacks. Instead of streamlining market mechanisms, some are tempted to expand state economic intervention to the greatest possible extent. The concentration of surplus assets in the hands of the state is a negative aspect of anti-crisis measures in...

The world enters 2009 with Russia in play in a way it hasn't seen in decades. The relevant comparison isn't 1998, when the Russians engaged in default and devaluation but remained within the bounds of their existing political and economic system (as Lenin said, two steps forward, one step back). The history to consider is 1989--as key aspects of the Russian system could change for the worse. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin certainly isn't a risk taker. The carefully managed "transition" to President Dmitry Medvedev and the extension of presidential terms to six years underscore that Putin prefers to leave...

LIMA -- Chinese President Hu Jintao said Sunday that China and Russia should strengthen strategic coordination at a time when the global political and economic structures are undergoing the most profound changes since the end of the Cold War. Hu made the remarks at a meeting with his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev on the sidelines of the 16th Economic Leaders' Meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Lima, Peru. China and Russia should make concerted efforts to overcome the impact of the ongoing global financial crisis, maintain the sound momentum of their economic growth, and push ahead with...

The US is turning on old friends in Europe, writes John Laughland. Before he denounced the "prevailing influence" of the US in the "anti-constitutional coup" that overthrew him, President Askar Akayev of Kyrgyzstan used an interesting phrase to attack those who were stirring up trouble in the drug-ridden Ferghana Valley. A criminal "third force", linked to the drug mafia, was struggling to gain power. Originally a label for covert operatives shoring up apartheid in South Africa before it was adopted by the US-backed "pro-democracy" movement in Iran in November 2001, the third force is also the title of a book...

The Georgia conflict has reduced hopes that a Barack Obama presidency could help mend U.S.-Russian ties, but the Democratic candidate would still be a better partner for Moscow than his Republican rival, John McCain, a senior lawmaker said. Konstantin Kosachyov, head of the State Duma's International Affairs Committee, said the fact that Obama's stance on Russia has moved closer to that of McCain's since the war with Georgia would complicate relations with the next U.S. administration. "Both Obama and McCain took a very hard stance … and this will certainly be an abiding factor for developing ties with Russia for...

Barack Obama's chief campaign strategist David Axelrod, once worked for a man who was an identified member of the Communist Party USA, a registered agent of the Soviet Union and a paid disseminator of Soviet black propaganda. This man went on to become a key Chicago political fixer who helped elect communist linked politicians including the late Chicago mayor Harold Washington and former US Senator Carol Moseley Braun. This man knew Barack Obama and was a key member of an organisation which endorsed Barack Obama in his 2004 US Senate race. Barack and Michelle Obama were active members of this...

The First Time I Heard of Barack During the period of roughly February 1992 to mid 1994, I was making frequent trips to Moscow, Russia, in the process of starting a software development joint-venture company with some people from the Russian scientific community. One of the men in charge on the Russian side was named V. M.; he had a wife named T.M. V. was a level-headed scientist while his wife was rather deeply committed to the losing Communist cause - a cause she obviously was not abandoning. One evening, during a trip early in 1992, the American half of...

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....

AP jerks, link http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9359O4O0&show_article=1

Russian stocks went into a freefall Tuesday, as investors continued to pull money out of the local markets on concerns over declining commodity prices and global risk aversion. In Moscow, the ruble-denominated MICEX stock index tumbled 9.08% ... The dollar-denominated RTS stock index fell 7.5% to end at 1,395 points. It is down 39% this year. More than $9.6 billion of the RTS index's market capitalization was wiped out Tuesday...

Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin claims he acted "rationally" in executing and imprisoning millions of people in the Gulags, a Russian school book claims. The book, A History of Russia, 1900-1945, will be used as a teaching guide in Russian schools, 55 years after Stalin died. It is designed for teachers to promote patriotism among the Russian young, and seems to follow an attempt backed by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to re-evaluate Stalin's record in a more positive light. Historians believe up to 20 million people died as a result of his actions, many times more than were killed under Hitler's...

Yesterday, Barack Obama told a Virginia audience “We’ve got to send a clear message to Russia and unify our allies. They can’t charge into other countries. Of course it helps if we are leading by example on that point.” Faced with a geopolitical challenge that demands unwavering Western fortitude and American stewardship, Barack Obama apologizes for the misuse of American strength and initiative. This speaks of a worldview in which America’s faults are always kept at the fore and a national security paradigm in which the U.S. must seek to understand enemy action as a manifestation of American arrogance. This...

It’s time for a sober reassessment of the Russian invasion of Georgia. This is more than a Putin power play or a cynical attempt to be taken seriously by the West. This is annexation. From the Wall Street Journal: Russian troops seized control of the economically vital Georgian port of Poti Tuesday morning, a day after Moscow said it had begun pulling its forces out of Georgia. At about 9 a.m. local time, some 70 Russian peacekeeping forces entered the port grounds on seven armored personnel carriers, according to Georgian government and port officials. They detained 20 Georgian soldiers stationed...

Russian agents came close to carrying out the perfect assassination on British soil when they killed Alexander Litvinenko... Security sources have disclosed that the former Russian spy would have died within hours had the poisoned tea he was given been served hot. Litvinenko, a former KGB agent who had become a critic of the government of Russia's then president, Vladimir Putin... Security sources say that during the meeting Litvinenko took just a few sips of the tea but left the remainder of the cup because it was cold. "If Litvinenko had drunk all the tea he would have been dead...

LONDON, June 4 -- For much of the world, Sen. Barack Obama's victory in the Democratic primaries was a moment to admire the United States, at a time when the nation's image abroad has been seriously damaged. From hundreds of supporters crowded around televisions in rural Kenya, Obama's ancestral homeland, to jubilant Britons writing "WE DID IT!" on the "Brits for Barack" site on Facebook, people celebrated what they called an important racial and generational milestone for the United States. "This is close to a miracle. I was certain that some things will not happen in my lifetime," said Sunila...

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has urged France to distance itself from America, comparing the US to a 'frightening monster'. "How can one be such a shining example of democracy at home and a frightening monster abroad?'' Putin said in an interview with French newspaper Le Monde in Paris released on Saturday. "France, I hope, will continue to conduct an independent foreign policy,'' said Putin. He said the US was creating a new Berlin Wall in Europe by pushing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to expand into ex-Soviet states Georgia and Ukraine. The former Russian President also voiced concern...

Publisher Peter Osnos, who admits to personally working with former Bush White House press secretary Scott McClellan on his new book, What Happened, began his career as an assistant to I.F. Stone, the pro-communist "journalist" named as a Soviet agent of influence who was the uncle of Weather Underground communist terrorist Kathy Boudin. But the connections don't end there. Boudin's son Chesa was raised by Barack Obama associates Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, who were Boudin's comrades in the communist terrorist group, after Kathy Boudin went to prison for her involvement in an armed robbery and assault that took the...

On February 22, 2008, Ben Smith of Politico reported a story that ran under the headline, “Obama once visited ‘60s radicals.” It concerned how, “In 1995, [Illinois] State Senator Alice Palmer introduced her chosen successor, Barack Obama, to few of the district’s influencial liberal at the home of two will known figures on the local left: William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.” Dr. Quentin Young, described as “a prominent Chicago physician and advocate for single-payers health care,” [1] was quoted as saying “I can remember being one of small group of people who came to Bill Ayers’ house to learn that...

Dmitry Medvedev may be Russia's president but Vladimir Putin has kept his place in the Kremlin. When Putin came to his old office in the Kremlin on Monday to propose the names of ministers for his government, the former president made for his customary seat on the left of the desk. But he paused before sitting down and told President Medvedev: "Now this is your place," Russia's Kommersant daily reported. "Oh, what's the difference?" Medvedev answered and immediately sat on the right of the desk, where Putin's guests traditionally perched for the eight years of his presidency.

Mikhail Gorbachev has accused the United States of mounting an imperialist conspiracy against Russia that could push the world into a new Cold War. With Dmitry Medvedev due to be inaugurated today as Russian president, the Soviet Union's last leader said that the White House's claims of peaceful intentions towards its former superpower rival could no longer be trusted. Delivering one of his most scathing attacks on the US, Mr Gorbachev told The Daily Telegraph that a US military build-up was under way to contain a resurgent Russia. From Nato's expansion plans in the former Soviet Union to Washington's proposals...

A Russian website alleged that Alina - seen here in one of her more provocative poses - was seen kissing Putin in a Moscow restaurant Alina Kabaeva, is one of a number of young and beautiful Russian dancers and athletes who, under Mr Putin's patronage, have lately become deputies in the Duma - Russia's lower parliament. Known as Putinskie Krasotki - 'Putin's Babes' - they were brought in with the cynical but successful aim of 'sexing up' his United Russia party. The bloc took more than 60 per cent of the vote in the December elections. One Russian spin-doctor boasted...

Russian Oscars censored24/03/2008 13:13  - (SA)    Moscow - A series of jokes about President Vladimir Putin and president-elect Dmitry Medvedev were censored from the screening of Russia's equivalent of the Oscars film awards ceremony, newspapers reported on Monday. The jokes - mild by Western standards of satire - at Friday's "Nika" awards, were cut by private television station CTC in its broadcasting Saturday of the event, according to Moskovsky Komsomolets. "All the juicy stuff from the broadcast was edited out," the daily said. One of the comments axed, the newspaper said, was an allusion to uncertainty over whether Medvedev or his...

Each year a group of KGB Commissars would get together for a weekend of bear hunting.  A helicopter would fly them to a clearing deep in the forest, leave them with their guns and camping gear, then pick them up two days later. Now the hunting weekend has ended, and the Commissars are waiting in the clearing with their equipment and with the carcasses of three bears. The helicopter swoops in and lands, the pilot steps out and takes one look at the waiting cargo. "Comrade Commissars," the pilot says.  "I'm sorry, but I cannot take all three bears on...

<p>1. Russians Suspected in Shooting of Kremlin Critic Near D.C.</p> <p>One year ago, Kremlin critic Paul Joyal was gunned down in the driveway of his suburban Maryland home. The case remains unsolved — but some see the hand of Russia in the shooting.</p>

<p>One year ago, Kremlin critic Paul Joyal was gunned down in the driveway of his suburban Maryland home. The case remains unsolved — but some see the hand of Russia in the shooting.</p> <p>Joyal, 53, is the former chief of security for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and a former business partner of retired Soviet KGB Gen. Oleg Kalugin.</p>

Beating up on divorced ("deadbeat") dads makes great politics in the United States, and apparently Russian presidential candidate Dmitry Medvedev (pictured) has figured it out. United Press International says: "Medvedev has also gone hunting for votes with the forensic skill of a U.S. campaign strategist. He has targeted the women's vote by promising to increase child benefits so that the mother of a second child will get a state handout of more than $12,000, and alimony payments will be increased sharply. "While American strategists talk of 'soccer moms,' Medvedev is appealing to the 'divorced moms.' One Russian child in three...

MOSCOW -- President Vladimir V. Putin today backed First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev as a candidate to succeed him, abruptly snatching away the shroud of secrecy that has obscured the hunt for a new Russian leader. Still, news of Putin's surprise endorsement startled many analysts as it raced through the capital today. Medvedev, an ambitious young Kremlin bureaucrat with strong business ties, had earlier been seen as a likely successor to Putin. But in recent weeks, as an increasingly strident Putin railed against foreign influence and basked in the naked adoration of the Russian masses, Medvedev's name was hardly...

President Vladimir Putin, when he is not busy restoring autocracy to a country that has known little else, has taken on the task of refreshing Russian history with a novel perspective—his own. He is on record lamenting the collapse of the Soviet Union as "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century." It was worse, apparently, than World War I, worse than World War II—worse, even, than the creation of the Soviet Union. Last year, the president informed a group of history teachers that Russia "has nothing to be ashamed of" and that it was their job to make students "proud...

BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan — The leaders of Russia, China and Iran said Thursday that Central Asia should be left alone to manage its stability and security — an apparent warning to the United States to avoid interfering in the strategic, resource-rich region. The veiled warning came at a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and on the eve of major war games between Russia and China. The SCO was created 11 years ago to address religious extremism and border security in Central Asia, but in recent years, with countries such as Iran signing on as observers, it has grown into...

THE elderly couple did not hesitate to open the door when they saw Dimitry Mukhin through their spy-hole. Mukhin, a psychiatrist who lived in the neighbouring building, had recently paid a friendly visit to ask if they needed anything. But this was no courtesy call. As Emilia Tomareva and Albert Uzikov let him into the Moscow flat where they had lived for decades, Mukhin rushed in with two men in white coats and a policeman. The shocked couple were bundled into an ambulance with their hands tied behind their backs and locked up in separate psychiatric hospital wards, even though...

For the past several years, the Russia of Vladimir Putin has been sending very clear signals that it is no longer the weakened, troubled and Western-dependent state that it was following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Russia is once again a proud and assertive nation, increasingly recognizable by its actions to historians of its czarist and Communist predecessors. Many will say that its recovery is based on shallow foundations, in fact that it rests almost totally upon the high price of oil and gas - and Russia's fortunate possession of vast supplies of those vital commodities. That is true....

Republican presidential candidate John McCain said Wednesday that the issue of illegal immigration angered people unlike no other, including the unpopular war in Iraq, and sparked unprecedented death threats against him. "It is unbelievable how this has inflamed the passions of the American people," the Arizona senator said in remarks at The Aspen Institute, a public policy forum. In an interview, he declined to elaborate on the threats he had received. Still, McCain said, he continued to support a temporary worker program for the 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States. Derided by critics as amnesty, the program was...

Russian and Chinese troops are joining forces this week in the first military exercises by an international organisation that is regarded in some quarters as a potential rival to Nato. Thousands of soldiers and 500 combat vehicles will take part in “Peace Mission 2007”, organised by the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in the Chelyabinsk region of Russia. Russian officials have also proposed an alliance between the SCO and a body representing most of the former Soviet republics. Scores of Russian and Chinese aircraft begin joint exercises tomorrow before a week of military manoeuvres from Thursday that will include Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan...

The Venezuelan president bonds with regimes that the rest of the world -- and his own compatriots -- shun. THE LATEST Global Attitudes survey by the Pew Foundation contains a lot of bad news for the United States, but there was one relative bright spot in Latin America: Venezuela. According to Pew, 56 percent of Venezuelans say they have a favorable view of the United States, a higher number than in Britain or Canada. Seventy-one percent say they like U.S. television and movies and a stratospheric 84 percent feel positively about Americans. Though only 23 percent say they have confidence...

PORTSMOUTH — A Russian man attempted to pass off a phony $100 bill at the New Hampshire State Liquor store shortly before 8 p.m. Thursday, according to the store manager, who said a cashier discovered the bill was bogus. No arrest was made, according to police, but the incident was the talk of the store because Russians are known to be staying in the city ahead of Russian President Vladimir Putin's scheduled visit with President Bush in Kennebunkport, Maine, on Sunday. Liquor store manager Mike Smith said the man, accompanied by four other Russian men, attempted to purchase two bottles...

Under Mr. Putin, the handful of people who run Russia also own it. Government officials are on the board of Russia's largest state-run companies. First Deputy Premier Dmitri Medvedev is chairman of the board of Gazprom, Igor Sechin, deputy head of the Kremlin administration, is chairman of the Rosneft oil company, and Igor Shuvalov, an assistant to the president, is chairman of Russian Railroads. The capitalization of Gazprom is $236 billion, Rosneft $94 billion and Russian Railroads $50 billion. It is estimated that the people around Mr. Putin control companies that account for 80% of the capitalization of the Russian...

Russian president Vladimir Putin called on Sunday for a radical overhaul of the world’s financial and trade institutions to reflect the growing economic power of emerging market countries – including Russia. Mr Putin said the world needed to create a new international financial architecture to replace an existing model that had become “archaic, undemocratic and unwieldy”. His apparent challenge to western dominance of the world economic order came at a forum in St Petersburg designed to showcase the country’s economic recovery. Among 6,000 delegates at the biggest business forum ever held in post-Soviet Russia were scores of international chief executives...

Early coverage of Al Gore's new book, The Assault on Reason, has focused on the fact that the book is largely an assault on the Bush administration. But they have glossed over the most significant and alarming theme that Al Gore has taken up: his alleged defense of "reason" includes a justification for government controls over political speech. Judging from the excerpts of Gore's book published in TIME, his not-so-subtle theme is that reason is being "assaulted" by a free and unfettered debate in the media--and particularly by the fact that Gore has to contend with opposition from the right-leaning...

Chinese Fighter Jets to Reach Pakistan Russia has officially sanctioned China to re-export aircraft engines to Pakistan. The permit revives the chance of supplying 150 China’s JF-17 fighter jets to Pakistan and the $238-million contract for delivering aircraft engines from Russia with the optional extension to $3.75 billion. In president’s administration, they don’t think deliveries will cloud military and engineering cooperation of Russia and India, which budget is estimated at $1.5 billion a year. It was a source with Russia’s government that leaked information about Russia’s-Chinese agreement for joint assembly of JF-17 fighter jets with RD-93 engines of Klimov works’...

AN old joke runs that even paranoids have enemies. But what can we make of the quasi-dictator of a middleweight state who insists on making enemies of those who'd hoped to be his country's friends? Russian President Vladimir Putin reminds me of the old Soviet Inturist organization: Instead of figuring out how to make a thousand bucks from happy tourists tomorrow, Inturist went to absurd extremes to squeeze an extra fiver out of disgruntled visitors immediately.....

Russia’s First Vice Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov set an unusual goal for the national defense complex, which he is personally in charge of. The official ordered to design a new air defense missile system that would guarantee air, missile and space protection at once. The development of the new Russian super weapon was entrusted to air defense concern Almaz Antei. The concern will be used for the creation of a special design bureau that is set to unite all scientific and technical air defense schools used in the Air Force, the Navy, land troops, automatic control systems and anti-missile defense....

This past week, the chief proponent of Jihadi Islam and the use of terror to force people to believe in his religion, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, traveled to Latin America to create an alliance with three atheistic Communists: Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, and Rafael Correa of Ecuador. This emerging "Marxist-Islamist entente," as it has been described, has caught a lot of folks by surprise. How in the world, they ask, could Chavez toast Ahmadinutjob by hailing him as the leader of "a revolution kindred to the Venezuelan revolution: the Islamic revolution." What could the imposition of...

ADAM SMITH never met Vladimir Putin, but, as with so many other things, he anticipated his appearance. Nobody can accuse the great Scot of protectionist proclivities, but he did warn that there are times when free trade takes second place to national defence. He proposed laying “some burden” on foreign commerce “when some particular sort of industry is necessary for the defence of the country ... (since) defence is of much more importance than opulence”. America, Britain and other free-trading countries have long welcomed foreign investment on the ground that it enriches the nation by bringing capital, jobs and foreign...

US authorities are to examine Roman Abramovich’s ties to the Kremlin as part of a national security review of a $2.3bn (£1.18bn) bid for Oregon Steel by a company controlled by the Russian billionaire. Experts in Washington say the US government panel that reviews foreign deals will scrutinise the proposed takeover, announced last month, more closely if Mr Abramovich is found to be acting with the backing of the Russian government. Mr Abramovich is believed to be close to Vladimir Putin, Russian president. The Russian steel company, Evraz, is controlled by Mr Abramovich and Alexander Abramov, group director. Evraz and...