Free Republic

Cables lying on the seafloor bring the internet to the world. They transmit 99 percent of international data, make transoceanic communication possible in an instant, and serve as a loose proxy for the international trade that connects advanced economies.Their importance and proliferation inspired Telegeography to make this vintage-inspired map of the cables that connect the internet. It depicts the 299 cables that are active, under construction, or will be funded by the end of this year. In addition to seeing the cables, you'll find information about "latency" at the bottom of the map (how long it takes for information...

The Post & Email has received tonight a decclassified FBI report admitted in evidence in the case brought against W. Mark Felt and Edward S. Miller by President Jimmy Carter’s U.S. Attorney General, Mr. Griffin B. Bell. This document was obtained by an American citizen, who wished to remain anonymous, via a FOIA request. Mr. W. Mark  Felt is none other than the informant who spoke with reporters from the Washington Post, exposing the Watergate Scandal:  who went by the name “Deep Throat” a fact that points to his political neutrality in American politics.What is not know about Mr. Felt...

For nearly fifty years, from the end of World War II until 1992 millions of people in Eastern Europe endured the oppression and brutality of Communism, courtesy of the former Soviet Union. For decades Soviet Russia maintained control over Poland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Hungary, East Germany, Romania, the Baltic and Balkan countries, and all of the ‘Stans’ with an iron fist. Tolerating no dissent in those countries, and responding brutally if it occurred. Ask the Hungarians in 1956 and the Czechs in 1968. In 1956 the Soviet Union sent troops and tanks to crush the Hungarian popular uprising, killing and wounding...

On Friday, Israeli President Isaac Herzog visited the Arab-Israeli village of Kafr Qassem and addressed a memorial to the victims of the Kafr Qassem Massacre. In that event, which took place on October 29, 1956, on the first day of the Suez Campaign, forty-nine people were killed. Speaking at the memorial ceremony, Herzog said, "I am standing here before you today with my head bowed and my heart pained, on the sixty-fifth anniversary of one of the saddest events in the history of our country - an event whose gravity has never been in question. For it is clear to...

On this date, Howard Smith of Virginia, chairman of the House Rules Committee, introduced the Southern Manifesto in a speech on the House Floor. Formally titled the “Declaration of Constitutional Principles,” it was signed by 82 Representatives and 19 Senators—roughly one-fifth of the membership of Congress and all from states that had once composed the Confederacy. It marked a moment of southern defiance against the Supreme Court’s 1954 landmark Brown v. the Board of Education of Topeka (KS) decision, which determined that separate school facilities for black and white school children were inherently unequal. The Manifesto attacked Brown as an...

I'm Eatin' High On The Hog by Mac Wiseman (1956) is our tune today. THE WESTERNER https://thewesterner.blogspot.com/

Swingin' Monday was a holiday, so we'll have Swingin' Tuesday with Adolph Hofner & The Pearl Wranglers and their 1956 recording of I Get So Lonesome (Since You're Gone). Hofner began his recording career with Jimmy Revard and the Oklahoma Playboys. In 1938 he was offered a contract with Bluebird Records and formed the group Adolph Hofner and His Texans. During WWII he recorded as Dolph Hofner & His San Antonians, and in 1950, sponsored by Pearl Beer, he formed Adolph Hofner & The Pearl Wranglers. THE WESTERNER https://thewesterner.blogspot.com/

Charlton Heston, who shined a bit brighter than the rest of the Hollywood crowd. He was taller than the others...he’d played Moses in the movies... Heston had campaigned in 1956 for Stevenson and in 1960 for Kennedy. That was safe enough. But for those who made their living in the motion picture industry, the anti-communist congressional hearings in Washington and the purge of suspected party members in Hollywood had a deterrent effect on the political activities of filmmakers and actors. Yet at the very same time, a great movement was building in the late 1950s and into the early 1960s—and...

2/25/2010 - SHEPPARD AIR FORCE BASE, Texas (AFNS) -- The members of Sheppard Air Force base learned about the legacy of Buffalo Soldiers during a banquet Feb. 19 here. Buffalo Soldiers were the first African Americans to serve in the "regular" U.S. Army immediately after the Civil War. "The Buffalo soldiers were mostly former slaves from all over the nation, but a lot of them were from the South," said Trooper Fred Gray, the former president of the Lawton-Fort Sill, Okla. Chapter of the 9th and 10th Horse Cavalry Association of the Buffalo Soldiers. "They made up about 20 percent...

April 3, 1956, southern west-Michigan was struck by multiple tornado's, one of which was an F5. "A documentary focusing on the tornadoes of 3-April-1956 which struck portions of West Michigan. Originally created for the 50th commemorative anniversary of the event on April 3, 2006. Re-mastered November 2011. ©2006, 2011 National Weather Service, Grand Rapids, Michigan. Produced by Blake Naftel and Ernie Ostuno.

As many of you will recall, Obama made a trip to Pakistan when he was at Occidental College. I am seeing indicators that this relates to the Awans' network and to Iraq and Iran's nuclear programs, which I'm putting out here for others to help fill the missing pieces in and to get this to the right people. First, a recap of Obama's Pakistan trip:Obama’s Russia Problem: Obama's Links to Soviet-era Spy Rings and Terrorist NetworksAt Occidental College, Obama became involved in radical student politics, deliberately networking with activist students and professors, as he mentions in his autobiography. In 1981,...

Typhoon hits Kyushu, Japan; wrecked houses / flood damage / fires rage at night / school children in classroom, widespread destruction from typhoon, in BG, outside school window, 0:38:34 - VS Hurricane hits Louisiana on gulf coast; flood waters, rescue workers, wrecked homes / two mailboxes, just above flood water

Freedom From Truth: FFRF is beyond all reason by Daniel Clark “Our purpose is to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church,” At least that’s what Freedom From Religion Foundation Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor wrote in a thinly veiled threat to the Allegheny County Council, to dissuade it from installing a plaque in the county courthouse that says “In God We Trust.” That principle, like everything else the FFRF stands for, is a lie. If Gaylor and friends can point to anything in the U.S. Constitution that prohibits a Pittsburgh courthouse from acknowledging God, this particular resident...

BACKSTORY 11-08-2002 Dateline: PARIS American billionaire investor George Soros, on trial in a 14-year-old insider trading case, told a court Friday that he didn't have privileged information when he bought shares in French bank Societe Generale. Soros and two other businessmen are on trial at the Paris Criminal Court, accused of benefiting from insider knowledge when they bought the bank's stock in 1988 before a failed takeover that pushed up the price. "I have been in business all my life and I think I know what is insider trading and what isn't," said the president of Soros Fund Management, in...

Hope you enjoy.Band Of Gold

The United States does not consider the Golan Heights to be a part of Israel, State Department spokesperson John Kirby stressed on Monday, a day after Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu vowed the Golan Heights "will forever remain under Israeli sovereignty." "The U.S. position on the issue is unchanged," Kirby told reporters during a daily briefing at the State Department in Washington, according to Haaretz. "This position was maintained by both Democratic and Republican administrations. Those territories are not part of Israel and the status of those territories should be determined through negotiations. The current situation in Syria does not allow...

Is America a better place today than it was back in 1956? Of course many Americans living right now couldn’t even imagine a world without cell phones, Facebook or cable television, but was life really so bad back then? 60 years ago, families would actually spend time on their front porches and people would actually have dinner with their neighbors. 60 years ago, cars were still cars, football was still football and it still meant something to be an American. In our country today, it is considered odd to greet someone as they are walking down the street, and if...

Newly declassified documents reveal the extent of America’s nuclear target list during the Cold War, showing the U.S. military was prepared to hit thousands of sites in the communist world stretching from Beijing to Moscow to East Berlin. The 800 pages of documents from a 1956 plan known as the “Atomic Weapons Requirements Study” were released by the National Archives and published this week for the first time by the National Security Archive at George Washington University. “As far as can be told, no comparable document has ever been declassified for any period of Cold War history,” the organization said,...

Ben E. King, the smooth, soulful baritone who led the Drifters on “There Goes My Baby,” “Save the Last Dance for Me” and other hits in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and as a solo artist recorded the classic singles “Spanish Harlem” and “Stand by Me,” died on Thursday in Hackensack, N.J. He was 76. His lawyer, Judy Tint, said Mr. King, who lived in Teaneck, N.J., died at Hackensack University Medical Center after a brief illness, offering no further details. Mr. King was working in his father’s Harlem luncheonette in 1956 when a local impresario, Lover Patterson, overheard...