Free Republic

The New Yorker is running a contest. What should we call our era? Some possible candidates: Terrible Twenties, the Age of Emergency, Cold War II, the Omnishambles, the Great Burning, and the Assholocene. Try as I might, I cannot understand the last one. Regardless, it’s absolutely the case that there has been a dramatic turning of events and our lives. It’s not just national. It’s global and devastating. I’m going with the Terrible Twenties. Everyone seems to agree that this moniker applies, regardless of class or political leanings. You can take your pick of the symptoms: ill-health, inflation, political division,...

John is joined in conversation by Peter Hitchens to discuss the current leftist ideologies infiltrating western society, his understanding of the Ukrainian war, his insight into the future during a time of international unrest, and the decline of education in Britain. Once a correspondent living in Russia during the collapse of the Soviet Union; Peter reveals his critiques on the current state of political affairs in Russia and the rest of Europe. 00:32 Introduction 1:34 Moscow after the Soviet Union 7:44 The Marshall Plan 10:32 Russia at the start of democracy 11:24 The consequence of Prejudice 17:28 What the west...

Heedless of the consequences, or perhaps welcoming them, America’s Cold Warriors and their media platforms have recently escalated their rhetoric against Russia, especially in March. Anyone who has lived through or studied the preceding 40-year Cold War will recognize the ominous echoes of its most dangerous periods, when actual war was on the horizon or a policy option. Here are only a few random but representative examples: § In a March 8 Washington Post opinion article, two American professors, neither with any apparent substantive knowledge of Russia or Cold War history, warned that the Kremlin is trying “to undermine our...

On Wednesday Russian leader Vladimir Putin threatened the West with unstoppable intercontinental nuclear missiles. Putin announced that Russia had developed an intercontinental nuclear missile that can’t be stopped or shot down by any country’s defence system The Russian leader said the rocket travels 20 times the speed of sound and has unlimited range. Now we know where Putin gained the technology to build the missiles. –Hillary Clinton. Diana West at The Daily Caller reported, via Andrew Bostom: This shocking set of emails that the Examiner reported on shows the nexus of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s foundation, Hillary Clinton’s State Department,...

PRESIDENT Obama has deployed US special forces troops along Lithuania’s border with “aggressive” Russia. Tensions between Washington and the Kremlin have reached Cold War levels amid reports Vladimir Putin is deploying nuke-ready missiles in the Russian province of Kaliningrad – which borders Poland, Belarus and Lithuania.

The war in eastern Ukraine is a Kremlin-manufactured conflict. The arrival of "little green men" in Crimea in February 2014 transformed the conflict from a domestic altercation between citizens and their government to an international crisis. Russian President Vladimir Putin publicly acknowledged in a government-sponsored documentary that he carefully planned and orchestrated the military takeover of the Crimean peninsula. No such admissions have been made about the war in the Donbas. From the outbreak of fighting in the east, the official Kremlin narrative has framed the Ukrainian crisis as a civil war between the Ukrainian government and pro-Russian separatists. In...

KIEV — Vladimir Putin continues to chip away at Ukraine while the west just watches. In the past year, Ukraine has lost 9% of its territory, 1.3 million people have fled Russian-occupied regions, 6,200 people have died and 30,000 have been wounded. On July 17, one year ago, Russian missiles blew up a Malaysian plane over Ukraine, killing 298 passengers on board, a war crime barely mentioned. Ukraine’s economy has been damaged and the country’s payments on debts, due to years of exorbitant Russian gas prices, are the same as defense costs. Russia’s aggression is at bay because, in the...

Everyone in Moscow tells you that if you want to understand Russia's foreign policy and its view of its place the world, the person you need to talk to is Fyodor Lukyanov. Lukyanov is the chair of Russia's Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, as well as the editor-in-chief of the journal Russia in Global Affairs, which are something like the Russian equivalents of America's Council on Foreign Relations and Foreign Affairs — though the Russian versions are considered much closer to the state and its worldview.

The United States comes up constantly when you talk to Russians about their country's place in the world. But the conversations tend to go a lot differently than many Americans might expect. In the US, the common view is that Russians feel aggrieved by the loss of the Soviet Union and all the respect that came with being a global superpower. Russia's acts of aggression in Europe, in this telling, are all about challenging the American-led order as a way to prove Russia's might and importance. This aggression is wildly popular among Russians, many Americans believe, because it makes them...

This year, several Russian lawmakers called for an investigation against Mr. Gorbachev, charging him with having caused the collapse of the Soviet Union. To accuse someone of having brought about the end of a state responsible for the murder of millions, the imprisonment of tens of millions and the oppression of hundreds of millions is a bit like accusing someone of having brought down Nazism. But the people who run post-Soviet Russia don’t see it that way. Mr. Putin saw a regime – the regime he served – unwilling to maintain power by force. Unlike the Chinese communists, who in...

The West has forgotten the foreign-policy lessons that predate 1945. Will everyone please stop talking about a new Cold War? However badly things work out between Russia and the United States and the West, a new Cold War isn’t in the cards because Russia today isn’t the Soviet Union. Sure, there are similarities. We are in a diplomatic and geostrategic conflict with Russia, which was the heart of the old Soviet Union. Also, Russia wants much of the real estate that belonged to the Soviet Union before it collapsed. And Vladimir Putin is a former KGB colonel who now waxes...

A leading anchor on Russian state television on Sunday described Russia as the only country capable of turning the United States into "radioactive ash", in an incendiary comment at the height of tensions over the Crimea referendum. "Russia is the only country in the world realistically capable of turning the United States into radioactive ash," anchor Dmitry Kiselyov said on his weekly news show on state-controlled Rossiya 1 television. Kiselyov made the comment to support his argument that the United States and President Barack Obama were living in fear of Russia led by President Vladimir Putin amid the Ukraine crisis....

The U.S. government and the Russian government have both been forced into positions where neither one of them can afford to back down. If Barack Obama backs down, he will be greatly criticized for being "weak" and for having been beaten by Vladimir Putin once again. If Putin backs down, he will be greatly criticized for being "weak" and for abandoning the Russians that live in Crimea. In essence, Obama and Putin find themselves trapped in a macho game of "chicken" and critics on both sides stand ready to pounce on the one who backs down. But this is not...

A donor to a Democratic representative and a number of groups devoted to reducing the U.S. nuclear stockpile received a prestigious White House award for scientific achievement on Monday. Article Link: Donor to Groups Devoted to Reducing U.S. Nuclear Stockpile Receives Scientific Achievement Award | Washington Free Beacon (http://freebeacon.com/donor-to-groups-devoted-to-reducing-u-s-nuclear-stockpile-receives-scientific-achievement-award/)Posted with Article Posting Assistant: (http://code-happy.bahits.com/?p=62)

National Review published a rather overheated piece the other day that contained an entertaining line: “Russia has become the Soviet Union with a better suit”. The idea that Russia is fundamentally the same as the Soviet Union is a popular one, particularly on the political right where “Soviet” has for decades served as a synonym for “bad.” Barely a day goes by without someone bemoaning Putin’s “Soviet” character or the “neo-Soviet” policies that Russia pursues in its part of the world. However this idea is deeply mistaken and extremely misleading, and can only be held by deliberately ignoring a huge...

US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden, who has been holed up in a Moscow airport for more than two weeks, has agreed to an offer of political asylum from Venezuela, a top pro-Kremlin lawmaker said on Tuesday.

An Egyptian magazine claims that six American Islamist activists who work with the Obama administration are Muslim Brotherhood operatives who enjoy strong influence over U.S. policy. The Dec. 22 story published in Egypt's Rose El-Youssef magazine (read an IPT translation here) suggests the six turned the White House "from a position hostile to Islamic groups and organizations in the world to the largest and most important supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood." The story is largely unsourced, but its publication is considered significant in raising the issue to Egyptian readers. The six named people include: Arif Alikhan, assistant secretary of Homeland...

The Obama administration, especially DOD secretary Robert Gates and DHS secretary Janet Napolitano has been attempting to disarm America by cutting the most important portions of the national budget and increasing threat of national security, in terms of a new era of Cold War against China, and against war on terror as well as illegal immigrants crossing the Mexican border, while the Obama administration has been trying to spend tax payers' money on unwanted Obamacare. In 2010 December, photos of China's stealth fighter prototype J-20 during taxi flight test appeared on websites in China, assumed to be leaked by unknown...

(Link only.) Perhaps the biggest catch since the Cold War, or so the article says. Head of US deep cover.

In March when the coward Adam Gadahn called for Muslims serving in our Armed forces to follow “Brother Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood murderer, at least one Muslim soldier may have taken his words to heart. On August 23, 20 year old Pfc. Naser Abdo, an infantryman assigned to the 101st Airborne Division, decided that although his unit was deploying to fight in Afghanistan he was not going. Instead his is now claiming Contentious Objector (C.O.) status. Contentious Objector requirements The Department of Defense allows Contentious Objector status to be granted to soldiers who object to “war in any form.”...