Free Republic

The Biden administration has pledged to provide $1.5Bln 'a month to Kiev' to keep the Ukrainian economy afloat and is pushing the EU to commit to a similar package, Bloomberg has reported. "How will politicians explain that huge funds can be made available to Ukraine but not to support the EU citizens?" the strategic analyst said. "The attempt to justify such a choice, recalling the famous 'EU values', is dangerous because the EU Treaties never speak of 'values'. The risk is to ignite a series of 'EU exits'." Meanwhile, the EU is facing a severe economic slowdown, the Organisation for...

"He is running out of props... so he is grasping at whatever mirage might save him," University of Pitts, Prof. of Intern. Affairs Michael Brenner said "Thus, the idea of joining NATO." The fantasy that his Western masters would allow Ukraine to join NATO revealed the imaginary nature of the world Zelensky lived in, Brenner observed..... "Of course, it never will happen because it would mean all-out war with Russia. Even the lunatics in Washington are not that suicidal," he said. "He is at once script writer, director and central character. The worlds of fiction and actuality have merged in...

Russian air forces destroyed a tracking radar station of the Ukrainian army in the Mykolaiv region and six weapon and missile depots in the eastern and southeastern parts of Ukraine, TASS quoted the Russian defense ministry as saying on Saturday.Russian air defense systems downed 13 Ukrainian drones and destroyed five HIMARS missiles in the air, the ministry said, according to state news agency TASS.

Moscow, July 12, Interfax - An absolute majority of members of the Russian Presidential Council on Human Rights and Civil Society Development (HRC) are opposed to lifting the existing moratorium on the death penalty in Russia, council head Valery Fadeyev said on Tuesday. "As regards the HRC, we discussed this subject, not recently, some time ago, and a majority [was] against death penalty. This wasn't formal, we didn't vote, but it became clear during the discussion that an absolute majority is against it," Fadeyev told reporters. He went on to say that he himself has repeatedly said that it is...

As a journalist, John Scott Lewinski hustles around the world, writing for more than 30 international news organization covering news, lifestyle and technology. As an author, he is represented by the Fineprint Literary Agency, New York.The Covid-19 pandemic has warped humanity’s mindset, turning fear into an intellectual value. Panic is now the smart choice, and those who reject it are considered dangerous barbarians. Sociologists, political theorists and other experts credit the ongoing coronavirus pandemic with forging countless changes in global society. Some are practical, some psychological. Some are temporary, while others will remain in evolving forms. It’s difficult to deduce...

Mexico’s national oil company launched its first gasoline station outside of the country’s borders on Thursday in Houston, the first of several stations planned for the city. After Mexico opened its borders to foreign investment in the country’s oil fields in 2014, state-owned Petróleos Mexicanos, know as Pemex, has started to test its brand strength by competing in the U.S., with that effort beginning in Houston, said José Manuel Carrera Panizzo, the company’s chief of alliances and new business development. “We want to be put to the toughest test,” Carrera said of the competitive Texas gasoline market. “We’re trying to...

When I visited Venezuela’s Paraguaná oil refinery complex, the world’s second largest, in 2007, anxieties seemed to flare like its burn-off pipes. Employees warned of the plant’s “precarious” state; a major equipment upgrade was a year behind schedule and the refineries were operating well below capacity. Paraguaná “isn’t living up to its original design,” one supervisor told me, because the state-run oil monopoly, Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) “doesn’t want to cover the costs.” Critics called the refineries, on Venezuela’s western Paraguaná Peninsula, an example of how PDVSA was failing to make meaningful investments under Venezuela’s left-wing President Hugo Chávez, even...

IPOJUCA, Brazil — More than 40,000 laborers swarm the port complex here in northeast Brazil, building a refinery for the state oil company. Five thousand others toil at a shipyard, another government-led project. Real estate prices are soaring and unemployment is falling in this region along the Atlantic coast, once known for its festering poverty. In a show of the extraordinary sway that Brazil’s government wields in nearly every important area of the economy, President Dilma Rousseff is accelerating an array of stimulus projects throughout the country aimed at blunting a slowdown that has reduced Brazil’s economic growth to a...

Last Week, President Obama made a proposal that if passed will doom us all to US Government Run Health Care “I strongly believe that Americans should have the choice of a public health insurance option operating alongside private plans,” Obama wrote. “This will give them a better range of choices, make the health care market more competitive, and keep insurance companies honest.” Obama says public health insurance operating alongside private plans, but that is not really the truth. If You have a group of competitors, one is the government with virtually unlimited resources so they can keep its prices artificially...

MOSCOW — Its only known address is a half-collapsed abandoned building, and its only telephone number doesn't work. But somehow a secretive lobby group, with reputed links to Russia's intelligence services, has emerged as a possible source of inspiration for President Vladimir Putin's state-of-the-union speech. When Mr. Putin gave his annual televised address on May 10, military analyst Ivan Safranchuk immediately thought the President's words about national defence sounded different from the rest of the speech. "That part seemed out of place," the Moscow director of the World Security Institute said a few hours after Mr. Putin's appearance. "Maybe there...

"The lunach of a 24-hour BBC News channel could be getting closer as the corporation extended its BBC World News service to offer hours of early morning news," Brand Republic reports. "BBC World has secured a three-hour block on BBC America, replacing half-hour bulletins. It marks the first time BBC World News has broadcast for three hours straight in the US." More: "Jeff Hazell, BBC World's director of distribution and business development, hinted at a move to launching a 24-hour BBC World News channel in the US." "The US is a major focus for us and this new agreement with...

Buried in the fine print of Unocal's latest filing with regulators is an interesting dissection of the behind-closed-doors dealing that has played out as Chevron and China's CNOOC Ltd. bid against each other for one of this country's oldest oil companies. According to the filing, Unocal on July 16 almost secured a higher all-cash offer of $69 per share from CNOOC, a subsidiary of government-owned China National Offshore Oil Co. But the wheels fell off when the national oil company insisted Unocal lobby on CNOOC's behalf before Congress, according to Unocal's updated proxy statement filed with the Securities and Exchange...