Free Republic

Old Russia is no more. Current RUssia is doomed. New Russia will emerge. Examples of Russian society disintegrating: Senator Gurilov asserts that: 1. 80% of Russians approve of everything Putin does; 2. The remaining 20% should be exterminated. The monument of Desse Ukrainka, an Ukrainian heroine whose statue is in Moscow, is often gifted with flowers by Russians, whenever there's a strike in Ukraine in which many civilians are killed. The layers of these flowers are routinely arrested. Human rights organizations are being destroyed all over Russia. One politician promises returning refugees from Russia a welcome back to their "wonderful"...

The Russian nation is more dependent on an autocrat and security state than any other European nation, and it has been for centuries — even before the Soviet era — whether it was the streltsy, Preobrazhensky Guard, Okhrana, Cheka, KGB, or siloviki. The wealthy aristocrats, now called oligarchs (previously boyars) never made a serious bid to circumscribe the autocrats’ power, unlike in most European nations; the Russian Orthodox Church has been dependent on the state since at least 1700; and, as for the masses, they have always been viewed as an instrument of the state or a resource to be...

At least 35 people were killed and another 48 injured in a stampede Tuesday that broke out during a funeral procession for the Iranian general killed last week in a U.S.-led airstrike, according to Iranian state media. The incident occurred in Gen. Qassem Soleimani's hometown of Kerman, in southeastern Iran, according to Iran's state media. The report quoted the head of Iran's emergency medical services, Pirhossein Koulivand, according to the Associated Press. Iran has promised retaliation on American interests in the Middle East after an airstrike Thursday at Baghdad International Airport killed the leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps'...

For Hispanic girls in Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, the United States and elsewhere, the 15th birthday marks the most lavish celebration of their lives. Designating a girl’s transition from childhood to adulthood, the quinceañera is a two-part festivity that traces back to both indigenous and European cultural traditions and has become an increasingly opulent affair in recent years. Parents may even spend more on their daughters' "Sweet 15" quinceañeras than their weddings, in fact, which is why some refer them as mini bodas, or miniature weddings. Not counting the birthday presents a young girl might receive, a low-end quinceañera in...

New Year’s resolutions: get outdoors more often, read more books, and stop hanging out with people who only bring up the Holocaust as a way to illustrate unrelated arguments and never to talk about the systematic murder of six million Jews. This week the editorial board of the Chicago Tribune published an editorial, “Wedding Cakes And Conscience,” contending that a baker in Colorado being forced to design a wedding cake for a gay couple would constitute a violation of his freedom of expression. To illustrate the point, the Tribune encouraged readers to understand Colorado baker Jack Phillips’ predicament, saying, “imagine...

Workers have begun to dismantle the statue of a Greek goddess from Bangladesh's Supreme Court complex, after an outcry from Islamists. The sculpture of Themis - the goddess of justice - wearing a sari was less than six months old, but Islamist groups demanded its removal by Friday. They claimed it hurt the religious sentiments of Muslims and it prompted mass protests in the capital, Dhaka. PM Sheikh Hasina agreed to its removal, but secular groups opposed it.

WASHINGTON, D.C., October 11, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – “Conservative Catholics” are the latest Americans to be smeared by members of Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign, leaked emails revealed on Tuesday show. Catholic beliefs are bashed as “backwards” and conservative Catholics are termed responsible for “an amazing bastardization of the faith” in one of the more than 1,000 hacked emails from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta released Tuesday afternoon by WikiLeaks. “I imagine they think it is the most socially acceptable politically conservative religion,” writes Clinton campaign Director of Communications Jennifer Palmieri. “Their rich friends wouldn't understand if they became evangelicals.”...

Games such as Mass Effect, Gears of War and Halo: Reach frequently suffer from lower frame rates or frame rate dips and drops, owing to the vertical sync that negates screen tearing but in the process brings this problem. This issue usually occurs when the gameplay has plenty of action and movement from the on-screen characters. The action tends to put more stress on the tri-core CPU of the Xbox 360, and even more on the Xbox One, which attempts to simulate the architecture. The frame drops also lead to the problems with the controls. The report reveals that the...

At least for now, after it's flop of a debut the left have been very quiet about using it...I wonder why...

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Surveillance video of a bank robbery surprised detectives when it showed the bandit holding a gun in a strange manner, even backward during the holdup. "(The robber) is holding it in a manner that he's probably not familiar with handguns and was afraid it was going to go off," Orange County sheriff's Detective Jason Sams said. "If that was a fake gun, he would be holding it normally because he wouldn't care." Investigators said the bandit was wearing a new Cleveland Indians baseball cap when he walked into the Fifth-Third bank on the corner of University Boulevard...

Mayan leaders announced that priests will purify a sacred archaeological site to eliminate "bad spirits" after US President George W. Bush visits next week. "That a person like (Bush), with the persecution of our migrant brothers in the United States, with the wars he has provoked, is going to walk in our sacred lands, is an offense for the Mayan people and their culture," Juan Tiney, the director of a national association of indigenous people and peasant farmers, said Thursday. Bush's seven-day tour of Latin America includes a stopover beginning late Sunday in Guatemala. On Monday morning he is scheduled...

ATLANTA - Timothy "Bud" Badyna has broken world records. He ran a marathon in under four hours. He finished a 10K race in 45 minutes. Wait a minute, you say, that's not so fast. Right. But Badyna set those records running backward. Badyna, dubbed "Backwards Bud" by fellow runners, holds the Guinness World Record for fastest backward run in a 200-meter race (32.78 seconds), set in 2001. In the early 1990s, he held the record for backward marathon (3 hours, 53 minutes) and 10K (45 minutes, 37 seconds). Those records have since been broken. So the 39-year-old hospital nurse from...

WASHINGTON - Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco asked Congress on Wednesday for help in rebuilding her devastated state, saying Hurricanes Katrina and Rita "knocked us down but they did not knock us out." Appearing before the Senate Finance Committee, Blanco in her opening statement did not mention former FEMA director Michael Brown, who on Tuesday had blamed state and local officials in Louisiana for not responding appropriately to the storm. "We are looking forward, not backward, " Blanco said. Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour and Alabama Gov. Bob Riley also were testifying before the committee via teleconference hookup from their state capitols....

The defining moment of my visit to New Orleans a year ago occurred in a gift shop. I'm somewhat embarrassed to admit this, but at least it wasn't the kind that sells feather boas and t-shirts with jazz-playing lobsters. I wasn't a sorority girl nursing my hangover at Café Du Monde during Mardi Gras; I was a tourist visiting what used to be a sprawling, stately slave plantation. I was busy mulling over that subtly troubling experience, browsing through the gift shop's bookshelves, when I came to a curious array of volumes. The title The South Was Right! jumped out...

Putin: Ally or Terrorist? by William F. Jasper Counting Vladimir Putin as an ally against terrorism ignores his career in the murderous KGB/FSB and his ongoing support for terrorist regimes and organizations. ‘‘Lena Goncharuk, aged 38, said that she was the only one to survive out of a group of six who were ordered out of the cellar where they had been hiding and shot at point blank range. Resting in her hospital bed, her voice barely rising above a whisper, she said she had survived only by pretending to be dead." So reported Paul Wood from the Chechen border...

The state budget deal contains some devastating compromises, including one that will hit California's kids hard: Republicans agreed to drop their demand to revise a 2002 law that largely prohibits schools from hiring private firms for food, transportation, and janitorial and landscaping services. The failure to repeal this law and give districts more control over funding puts California at odds with national trends in utilizing public- private partnerships to improve public education and condemns many districts to financial straits. Schools across the country have saved millions through outsourcing, thus directing more resources to classrooms. When the St. Louis school district...

It appears that "no compromising" can get you in trouble. Perhaps positive results should be the goal.