Free Republic

Eisler's new book which is a counter-terrorism plot set in the U.S. is quite good. He has a series of sources in the back in the form of www links which make interesting reading and background. Two of these links are about operation Gladio, which I had never heard of since I don't live in Italy or read Italian newspapers. It relates to a 1950's NATO 'leave behind' pre-positioned tools and structures for organized country-by-country active resistance in the event the Soviets overran Europe. The 'Gladio' portion operated in Italy from 1950 to 1990 and reportedly had counter parts in...

The foreign ministers of India, Russia and China were meeting Wednesday in the Indian capital in a bid to strengthen relations and to explore cooperation on issues such as counterterrorism and energy security, Indian officials said. The meeting between India's External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and their Chinese counterpart Li Zhaoxing is part of efforts by the three countries to forge a trilateral forum to work more closely on regional security issues, the officials said. "This will be the second stand-alone meeting of its kind," said Navtej Sarna, external affairs ministry spokesman. The foreign ministers...

MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political commentator Andrei Kolesnikov) - Public unrest recently swept through Hungary. Triggering it were revelations by Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany, which revealed that the Cabinet had been lying to the nation about the economic situation. As often happens with public action, Hungarians chanted diverse, and often mutually exclusive, mottoes. The activists were also a motley crew, including hoodlums. The figure "1956" loomed behind the drama. Hungary possesses a dynamic civil society, which exploded with indignation at the revelation that the government was telling it fairly tales-an instance of politics shrugging off morals. The public thirst for the...

Ukraine will be paying Russia $130 per 1,000 cu. meters of gas in 2007, Russia’s Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov said in Kiev on Tuesday. The parties did not comment reports that Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich managed to secure moderate gas prices for his country in exchange for political trade-offs. In any case, successful talks with the Russian premier helped Viktor Yanukovich show his abilities in putting relations with Russia back on track.

Russia is correct to argue that energy security is a two-way street, former U.S. Ambassador to Lithuania Keith Smith told the Prague Energy Forum today. However, he noted, many in the Kremlin seek not merely security, but control. Below, RFE/RL presents the complete text of Smith's remarks to the forum.Keith Smith: The prominent attention given energy issues at the EU-Russia "summit" in Lehti, Finland, on October 20 was quite illustrative. The summit demonstrated that there is a converging perception in Western and Central Europe regarding the risks of energy dependency on Russia. This may or may not be fair,...

KYIV, October 13, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- Professor Francis Fukuyama is best known for his idea that the world settled on liberal democracy after the ideological struggle of the Cold War. After giving a lecture at the 10th Anniversary of the Economic Education and Research Consortium in Kyiv, he spoke to RFE/RL Ukrainian Service correspondent Marianna Dratch about the unrealistic expectations of the Orange Revolution, the development of civil society in Ukraine, and how his ideas on liberal democracy have been misunderstood and misused.

Fans remember Anna German, a Polish singer who became a star in the Soviet Union while keeping quiet about her tragic past. For millions of Soviet citizens, she was a Polish star who sang about love in melodic, accented Russian at a time when others were singing odes to communist glory. But she was actually born in a remote part of Uzbekistan, and only later did her mother take her to Poland, fearing for her life amid Stalin's purges. She was Anna German, a singer who moved fluidly between Russian, Polish and Italian, and won fame for romantic songs...

Kazakh Foreign Minister Qasymzhomart Toqaev called for closer energy links between Kazakhstan and the EU in an address to the European Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee on October 3. Toqaev is on a two-day visit to EU and NATO headquarters in Brussels. Toqaev also lobbied for EU support to Kazakhstan's bid to chair the Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe (OSCE) in 2009, promising democratic reforms and arguing that the OSCE -- which he described as a "Eurasian" body -- could benefit from some Central Asian leadership. Brussels, October 4, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- Kazakh Foreign Minister Toqaev's visit to Brussels...

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has arrived in Poland on a one-day visit aimed at improving relations between the two countries.

RIGA, August 16, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- August 21 marks the 15th anniversary of Latvia declaring full independence from the Soviet Union, after the failed coup attempt in Moscow a few days earlier. Since then Latvia has gone from strength to strength, joining the European Union and NATO in 2004. "June 17, 1940, the Soviets came in, and in 1941, the Germans came in and pushed back the Soviets," says Oskars Gruzins, a young guide at the Museum of Occupation in the heart of old Riga, as he shows tourists a large map of Latvia. "After the Germans were defeated, the...

MOSCOW, August 14 (RIA Novosti) - International rating agency Fitch said Monday that Russia's move to cut oil supplies to a major Lithuanian refinery could be political. After an accident on the Druzhba pipeline in western Russia in July, crude supplies to Mazeikiu Nafta were interrupted, and have not been fully resumed. "If supplies of Russian crude oil by pipeline to MN are not resumed within the next few weeks, this could lead one to conclude that political rather than technical reasons are to blame for the supply disruption, as the Lithuanian refinery was recently acquired by Polish PKN and...

KIEV, Ukraine – Chief Rabbi of Ukraine Azriel Chaikin and the Israeli Ambassador to Ukraine Naomi Ben-Ami met with the leader of the Ukrainian Cossacks Anatoliy Schevchenko and the General Judge of Cossacks Igor Kozlovsky. At this meeting, the Cossack leaders assured the Chief Rabbi of Ukraine and the Israeli Ambassador of their support of Israel as it combats terrorism. As a dean of a local higher-education institution, Mr. Schevchenko said his teaching staff was doing everything possible to explain to their students the importance of supporting Israel as well as the need to fight against anti-Semitism and national and...

Georgia stopped Thursday the electric energy import from Russia and will need no our energy even in the abstract starting from March 2007. As to the gas dependency, it will end even sooner, in late 2006. It was Georgian Deputy Energy Minister Achil Nikolaishvili that told Interfax about stopping import deliveries of electric energy via Kavkasioni power line August 2. Kavkasioni delivers no more than 100MW to Georgia in summer. After rebuilding Ingur Hydroelectric Power Station and putting in operation its three units, the power grid of the country got additional 600 MW in generating capacity, said officials of Georgian...

A court decision declaring Yukos -- once Russia’s largest oil company -- bankrupt has finally brought to an end the sad story of confrontation between private business and a powerful state. But the ruling also highlighted the unhealthy nature of the country’s raw-materials-based socio-economic system. On August 1, the Moscow Arbitration Court ordered the bankruptcy and liquidation of Yukos, a decision that various commentators gloomily described as either a “death sentence” for the company or as its “funeral.” As was widely expected, the court upheld a vote one week earlier by Yukos’s creditors. The latter, led by Russia’s Federal Tax...

Lithuania Pipe Dry, Belarus Gets Oil Supplies By Andrei Makhovsky and Darius James Ross Reuters MINSK -- Russia is keeping Belarus well supplied with crude oil even though it shares a pipeline with Lithuania, which Moscow has cut off, after citing a leak, officials in Belarus said Thursday. Their comments may add to speculation that Russian pipeline monopoly Transneft used this weekend's minor leak as a pretext to cut flows to Lithuania as punishment for choosing a Polish buyer for its Mazeikiu refinery over Russian bidders. Mazeikiu was bought in May by Poland's PKN Orlen. Oil officials in Belarus said...

After four months in deep freeze, Ukraine has a new government. But some fear the new government will deal a fatal blow to the spirit of the Orange Revolution. KYIV, August 4, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- Lawmakers in the Ukrainian parliament have finally put an end to Ukraine's four-month political impasse, voting to approve Viktor Yanukovych as prime minister. Speaking just before the vote, Yanukovych -- who has experienced a remarkable political comeback since his defeat to pro-Western Viktor Yushchenko in the 2004 Orange Revolution -- vowed to work to unite a Ukraine riven by discord: "I am confident that this...

When Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev visited Riga on July 18, the overriding topic of discussion was how best to send Kazakh oil to energy-hungry markets in Europe and Scandinavian via Latvia. Nazarbayev did his best to give the impression of a pragmatic leader unburdened by the political strains caused by the long-standing disputes between his closest ally -- Moscow -- and West European powers over energy issues. His time in Riga provided an impressive display of his multi-vector approach to interstate relations. Answering questions from Latvian journalists, Nazarbayev stressed that Kazakhstan has no intention of constructing a transportation route to...

PRAGUE, July 28, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- A Gazprom subsidiary recently issued a report recommending a dramatic change of strategy for the Russian gas industry. It determined that Russia should decrease exports of natural gas to European markets and concentrate instead on developing new gas fields to keep up with domestic demand. The Research Institute for the Economics of the Gas Industry, NIIGazekonomika, determined in its late 2005 report that domestic consumption of natural gas is increasing at a faster pace than projected in Russia's two-year-old Energy Strategy The company, a fully owned subsidiary of Gazprom responsible for researching economic and...

PRAGUE, July 28, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili has ordered the Abkhaz government in exile to move from Tbilisi to the Kodori Gorge. The move is a bold step toward restoring central control over the breakaway province. The Kodori Gorge, a remote mountain valley in the northeast of Abkhazia, is the only part of the province still controlled by the Georgian authorities. Most of Abkhazia has been ruled independently of Tbilisi since achieving de facto independence in 1993.

PRAGUE, July 26, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- Early on July 25, Georgia deployed up to 1,000 troops to the lower reaches of the Kodori Gorge, which straddles Georgia and Abkhazia, in a bid to rein in an armed Svan militia commanded by the region's former governor, Emzar Kvitsiani. The Svans are an ethnic group closely related to the Georgians, and their traditional home is in the high mountains of northwest Georgia. The military situation, and Kvitsiani's whereabouts, remain unclear. The Georgian television station Rustavi-2 reported on July 26 that at least four people, including two police officers, were hospitalized after fighting...