Free Republic

Away from the battlefields of Georgia, Russian politics this week has been framed by two shots, both fired on the same day, one supposedly by mistake, the other on purpose. The first shot, given blanket coverage by the Russian media, was fired by the country's macho prime minister, Vladimir Putin. Once a year, at about this time, a series of images are traditionally released showing Mr Putin at his swaggering, swashbuckling best. We've seen him at the helm of a fighter jet or tossing opponents to the floor on a judo mat. Last year Mr Putin became something of a...

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has been subjected to an intense amount of media and public scrutiny since she was named as John McCain’s vice presidential pick one week ago. Many of the attacks have come in the form of unconfirmed reports on the Internet. Among them: 1) Palin “Joined a Secessionist Political Party” The Charge: Unsubstantiated Internet reports insisted Palin was once a member of the Alaska Independence Party, which critics call a secessionist political movement and supporters say is dedicated to seeking greater state control over federal lands across Alaska.The Facts: Palin has been a registered Republican since 1982....

H/t Kimberly M. Did the Code Pink members who interrupted John McCain's speech last night use MSNBC press badges to get into the hall? Not according to Code Pink itself, which claims the two women "obtained passes to the convention from disaffected Republicans." Right. There is another much more intriguing explanation out there. According to Shay at Booker Rising, which describes itself a newsite for black moderates and black conservatives [emphasis added]: "I took the shuttle bus back to Minneapolis, and I overheard a convention organizer named Phil telling a convention delegate that the protesters on Wednesday night got through...

How The West Was Won The rapid and unexpected decline of the Sunni insurgency in Iraq was officially recognized this week, when Maj. Gen. John Kelly, commanding the Marine Expeditionary Force, turned operational control of Anbar Province over to the Iraqi army and police. Anbar, a vast expanse of desert the size of North Carolina, had been the stronghold of the Sunni insurgency. For years, foreign fighters loyal to al-Qaida had sneaked across Iraq's northwestern border with Syria, into Anbar and down a "rat line" of safe houses in Haditha, Ramadi and Hit. From Fallujah, the arch terrorist Zarqawi...

(CNN) -- Democrats accused Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin of mirroring "divisive" attacks by President Bush Wednesday night and said showed she wasn't qualified to be on the ticket. "The speech that [Alaska] Gov. Palin made was well delivered, but it was written by George Bush's speechwriter and sounds exactly like the same divisive, partisan attacks we've heard from George Bush for the last eight years," said Bill Burton, the campaign spokesman for Sen. Barack Obama. "If Gov. Palin and John McCain want to define 'change' as voting with George Bush 90 percent of the time, that's their choice,...

ST. PAUL, Minn. - Barack Obama has struggled for 18 months to lock down the support of a traditionally Democratic group, Jewish voters.In the past week, John McCain may have helped Obama with his Jewish problem by choosing Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate.(snip)But Democrats hope Palin's social conservatism, her paper-thin record on Israel, and - perhaps most importantly - her cultural roots in evangelical Christianity may be a major turnoff to Jewish voters, just as Republicans have tried to reach women disappointed that Obama didn't choose Hillary Clinton,(snip)There is almost always an inverse proportion between a candidate's popularity among...

Here's Your Handy-Dandy Propaganda Detector Roy Clark Journalists love slogans about journalism, and one of their favorites is Hemingway's insistence that writers need to "develop a built-in bullshit detector." The tools of skepticism are at the center of the reporter's craft. To be used in the public interest, these tools must be dusted off and sharpened, especially in this season of overheated political advertising, spectacle and oratory. Read on, and I will share with you seven of my favorite propaganda detection tools. The cool thing is that, unlike my power drill or lawnmower, these tools need not be returned. In...

Despite record lows in solar magnetic activity, thought to influence the climate, trends continue to point to a clear rise in temperatures worldwide. This is reflected by increased melting and other significant changes.

Pop legend Michael Jackson has been on a string of dates with Hollywood actress Pamela Anderson and the two have been secretly meeting in Malibu. According to a source, "It was all arranged by their people in total secrecy, very cloak and dagger. Michael is such a private person. He gets nervous when he thinks people are following him around, so he chose somewhere neutral for their first date. "They were very chatty. Pamela was being her usual flirty self and Michael seemed to be responding. They are such a strange couple but they seemed to really hit it off,"...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was feted by Russian media on Sunday for saving a television crew from an attack by a Siberian tiger in the wilds of the Far East. Putin, taking a break from lambasting the West over Georgia, apparently saved the crew while on a trip to a national park to see how researchers monitor the tigers in the wild... The 55-year-old former KGB spy, who cultivated a macho image during his eight years as the Kremlin chief, was shown striding through the taiga in camouflage and desert boots before grappling with the feline foe.

Putin Saves TV Crew From Escaped Tiger Russians are lauding Prime Minister Vladimir Putin after he reportedly saved scientists and a film crew from a huge escaped tiger in the Russian Far East. The tiger was no match for the judo champion and former KGB agent with a tranquilizer rifle. In an act of bravery that could (almost) be made for TV, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin saved a Russian film crew from an enormous escaped tiger in eastern Russia Sunday, adding yet another set of images to his cultivated portfolio of manliness. The incident took place in a national...

Already struggling to maintain a lid on the AIDS epidemic in Iran, which has infected as much as 30% of the 70 million population with full blown AIDS or HIV, the islamic regime has now threatened prison and execution to any doctor who reveals any details about the CHOLERA outbreak that is spreading like wildfire throughout the country with major cities as contamination centers.

Gordon Brown's tough message to Russia today was overshadowed when Kremlin strongman Vladimir Putin shot a runaway tiger, apparently saving the lives of a group of TV journalists. On the eve of an emergency Brussels summit over the Georgia crisis, Mr Brown said measures need to be taken to prevent further 'Russian aggression'. But Mr Putin, intent on proving he is not someone to be messed with, turned action man to fire a tranquiliser dart that rendered the escaped animal helpless. The extraordinary episode happened during a trip to the far east of Siberia in what was clearly a stunt...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was feted by Russian media on Sunday for saving a television crew from an attack by a Siberian tiger in the wilds of the Far East. Putin, taking a break from lambasting the West over Georgia, apparently saved the crew while on a trip to a national park to see how researchers monitor the tigers in the wild. Just as Putin was arriving with a group of wildlife specialists to see a trapped Amur tiger, it escaped and ran towards a nearby camera crew, the country's main television station said. Putin quickly shot...

Ministry of Illusion: Nazi Cinema and Its Afterlife From Amazon This massively documented study of Nazi cinema...notably succeeds in analysing how Nazi films created a dreamworld that seemed neither realistic nor fantastic, but agreeable and persuasive--indeed closer to Hollywood than to Stalinist cinema. Above all, [Rentschler] stresses how films belong to a German cultural continuum, reaching into the present. Fifty years after Siegfried Kracauer's landmark book From Caligari to Hitler, this is the study that's long been needed of the movies' most disturbing triumph. (Sight and Sound ) Fifty years after Kracauer's monumental 'From Caligari to Hitler' comes the next...

The Internet provides vast amounts of information but it can also spread vast amounts of misinformation, or even deliberately misleading disinformation. For more than two weeks, scarcely a day has gone by without e-mails pouring in to me, asking about columns that someone has written and brazenly spread around the Internet with my name on them. Most of these e-mails have come from regular readers who are savvy enough to recognize columns that have a different style and substance from my own columns. We usually think of "identity theft" as involving using someone else's name for economic fraud. But identity...

'We Should Have Trampled on Georgia' By Carmen Eller in Moscow A quick war is the best propaganda: The conflict in the Caucasus has further strengthened the Putin-Medvedev leadership duo, according to new polls. Many Russians are hoping the pair will continue leading the country back toward's super-power status and that they will pursue that aim more energetically. "Alexander" is the first caller on the "Curve" morning show at Echo of Moscow, a radio station critical of the government. The young listener is the first to be given the opportunity to answer the host's question about the Caucasus conflict: "Did...

Few things seem so silly as a peacock preening its gaudy tail or an elk clanking through the trees with its cumbersome antlers or even a male human displaying his hairy chest, but now we know that these secondary sexual characteristics have evolved because they attract mates, and in the animal kingdom, procreation leads to better odds of survival. These days, the study of evolution has shifted from the question of why such male traits exist to what makes them work and where they came from. In Thursday's edition of the science journal Cell, a team lead by world-renowned University...

DHP Review: Religulous Posted by Dirty Harry on Thursday, August 21st, 2008 While more entertaining and better paced, director Larry Charles‘ Religulous can’t help but remind of Morgan Spurlock’s dreadful Where In The World Is Osama bin Laden?, especially at the end where both films are undone by their attempts to close on serious points the preceding 90 minutes of antics simply can’t sustain. It’s surprising Charles let this one get away from him. After all, he also directed Borat, and one of the few saving graces of that humiliation-fest was that it never lost sight of the fact that...

A few speculators dominate vast oil market Regulators: Swiss energy firm holds 11 percent of contracts on NYMEX Regulators had long classified a private Swiss energy conglomerate called Vitol as a trader that primarily helped industrial firms that needed oil to run their businesses. But when the Commodity Futures Trading Commission examined Vitol's books last month, it found that the firm was in fact more of a speculator, holding oil contracts as a profit-making investment rather than a means of lining up the actual delivery of fuel. Even more surprising to the commodities markets was the massive size of Vitol's...

This is the Apocalypse of St. Bill the Stoned. Though funny, smart and often profane, Religulous doesn't want to send you out of the theater with a smile on your lips. The final moments of the film aren't laugh out loud funny, but a parade of images of death and destruction. This, Bill Maher says, is what humanity is in for if it doesn't get rid of the nuerological disorder that is religion. You probably know my bias going into this film. I believe that religion is not just irrational but anti-rational, a Bronze Age worldview that should have been...

Liu Xiang sent to Olympic death by China's £1 billion image-building exercise On the back of yesterday's China Daily, the English language newspaper in Beijing, the face of Liu Xiang filled a broadsheet page. But the tears had been airbrushed out, so to speak. By Kevin Garside Last Updated: 2:54PM BST 20 Aug 2008 Comments 29 | Comment on this article China's Olympic pin-up was selling the Nike brand and his country. He is the face of Nike in China, and of China across the globe. He didn't develop an ankle spur, injure his Achilles or damage his hamstring on...

China to show propaganda opera at Olympics Bandian Rijiu, who plays the Tibetan king, and his bride Deng Mian, the Chinese princess, rehearse in Beijing Jane Macartney in Beijing “This is a wedding. It's a festive occasion. Look happy, much happier. Do that scene again and this time let's really feel your joy. Move the audience ...” The famed Peking Opera director Gao Mukun barked out his orders to the chastened cast of a show timed as a finale for the Beijing Olympics. The Tibetan performers hooted with delight and kept their smiles in place for the last scene of...

From Comments: McCain does not have the judgment needed to be president anybody with half a brain knows it. The GOP once again is trying to bamboozle the American electorate with garbage...George W Bush was garbage and proved to be worse than garbage as the pretend president... Mwahahaha, I really enjoy seeing Putin stick the long and hard one up the collective keisters of Little Bush & co. (In a time when no one seems to be able to rein in the Washington criminals, not even the Democratic congress, you accept any help you can get.)...

On April 17, a month and a half after Scheunemann stopped working for Georgia, his partner signed a $200,000 agreement with the Georgian government. The deal added to an arrangement that brought in more than $800,000 to the two-man firm from 2004 to mid-2007. For the duration of the campaign, Scheunemann is taking a leave of absence from the firm. "Scheunemann's work as a lobbyist poses valid questions about McCain's judgment in choosing someone who — and whose firm — are paid to promote the interests of other nations," said New York University law professor Stephen Gillers. "So one must...

An eyewitness account from the conflict zone.

The crimes of georgian's army in S. Ossetia.

I hope everyone has heard about the war in South Ossetia and Georgia. You probably are convinced by what the media reports, in particular that “Russia is the aggressor against innocent Georgia”. Our government is backing Georgia and also telling us about Russia’s aggression. But that is a lie. I have always made fun of the conspiracy theory people, but I find myself in the same position–criticizing the government and sounding crazy. But I cannot keep quite when such an injustice is going on; so please do not take my words as that of a crazy man who hates America–on...

Maybe you've noticed them in some of Sen. Barack Obama's recent television ads, the small print footnotes at the bottom of the screen as the narrator attacks Sen. John McCain. They cite newspaper articles, editorials, think tank reports and congressional votes. The print is so small and flashes so quickly, you'd have to freeze the frame to really read them. But the message behind these barely noticeably source citations is important. They are intended to add credibility and weight to the accusations being made. In Obama's case, the source citations are intended to back up the accusations, said Kathleen Hall...

Russia's assertions that it was provoked into war by "genocide" in South Ossetia and that it is observing a cease-fire in Georgia came under new challenge Thursday, as the U.S. stepped up diplomatic pressure on Moscow. Washington agreed to base missile interceptors on Polish soil, in a new sign of how Russia's invasion of Georgia is redrawing the geopolitical map. On the ground in South Ossetia -- the contested region where fighting broke out last week between Georgia and Russia -- there was little evidence that Georgian attacks killed thousands of civilians, as Russia has said. Doctors said they had...

The leaders of South Ossetia and Abkhazia believe that Georgia’s botched military assault means they now have a better chance than ever of getting international recognition for their independence. Their respective leaders, Eduard Kokoity and Sergey Bagapsh, said they see no need to hold another referendum on their status, since their nations have already expressed their wills. After the meeting with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, the two leaders of the breakaway republics held a news conference in Moscow. (WATCH the media conference) Abkhazian leader Sergey Bagapsh said: “As for our independence and our movement to that goal, no one can...

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has criticised media reports on Wednesday which had claimed that Russian tanks were on their way to Tbilisi. Lavrov told a news conference that a Russian convoy driving away from Gori had been on a mission to safeguard weaponry abandoned by the Georgians – and had never been destined for the country’s capital. “The weapons were ready for use, including the tanks,” he said. “It would have been mad to turn a blind eye to that and pass by the munitions. Anyone with bad intentions - a madman - could have jumped in a tank...

It started as a fairly predictable digital conflict, mimicking the one in the real world and displaying no shortage of “conventional” cyberwarfare: Web pages were attacked, comments were erased, and photos were vandalized. A typical prank on the Georgian Foreign Ministry’s Web site visually compared Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili with Adolf Hitler. As Russian tanks lumbered southward over mountainous Ossetian terrain, Russian netizens were seeking to dominate the digital battlefield. But sophomoric pranks and cyberattacks were only the first shots of a much wider online war in which Russian bloggers willingly enlisted as the Kremlin’s grass-roots army. For Russian netizens,...

It is just an hour's drive south-west of Kabul on Afghanistan's main highway before you start to see dramatic evidence of how the insurgency is closing in on the capital. The first thing to notice are the holes in the road - the tarmac ripped up by bombs - which the traffic has to carefully veer around. Then it is the burned-out skeletons of trucks left by the side of the road, or some still standing where they were ambushed and burned - an obvious reminder of how security so close to Kabul has been steadily deteriorating.

Census report sees minorities becoming majority by 2042 BY OLIVIA WINSLOW | olivia.winslow@newsday.com 6:11 PM EDT, August 13, 2008 In a new report out Thursday, the U.S. Census Bureau projects the nation will become much more diverse by midcentury, with minorities forecast to become the majority population by 2042, experts said. The growing national diversity is also a trend seen locally, particularly among Hispanics, experts said. "Hispanics are primarily drawn here by economic opportunity," Koppelman continued. "If the economy remains robust on Long Island, this population will continue to expand." The Census Bureau projects that minorities, now roughly one-third of...

Chinese Olympic organizers acknowledged Tuesday they were struggling to handle an unforeseen and baffling problem inside Summer Games venues and at the showpiece Olympic Park. Two weeks after announcing they had sold every one of the record 6.8 million tickets offered for the Games, Olympics officials expressed dismay at the large numbers of empty seats at nearly every event and the lack of pedestrian traffic throughout the park, the 2,800-acre centerpiece of the competition. (snip) To remedy the problem, officials are busing in teams of state-trained "cheer squads" identifiable by their bright yellow T-shirts to help fill the empty seats...

The spectacle of yet another Leftist Democrat, John Edwards, looking the American people dead in the eye and lying to them is nothing new. The news spinners of the mainstream media have tried to portray the Edwards Affair as a sex scandal. It is not. It is a truth scandal. It is, in fact, part of a spiraling truth scandal that seems to have engulfed the Left. While it is easy to compare Edwards' infidelity to Clinton's infidelity, unfaithfulness in marriage is not the problem. Adultery is as old as the Decalogue. God thought enough about the subject to include...

Barack Obama's campaign is rolling out a number of centrist Republicans who are endorsing the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee over Republican rival John McCain - in a show of his ability to win cross-over votes. A conference call Tuesday featured former Iowa Rep. Jim Leach, former White House intelligence adviser Rita Hauser and former Rhode Island Sen. Lincoln Chafee, who represented his state as a Republican, but switched to become a Democrat so he could vote for Obama in the primary. Leach predicted that a lot of Republicans and independents are going to be attracted by Obama's campaign. The Obama...

Over the past couple years, we’ve noticed a suspicious number of ticket camera editorials by the Orlando Sentinel. After looking more closely, we noticed that nearly every editorial in the Sentinel was strongly in favor of installing ticket cameras. Furthermore, we noticed that nearly every pro-camera article was written by one member of the Sentinel’s Editorial Board, George Diaz.This seemed odd, so we decided to look into it further.After some quick research, we discovered that George Diaz appeared at a symposium held by The National Campaign To Stop Red Light Running in late 2007.As we covered on this blog previously,...

Gaza smuggling tunnels are for milk, say Palestinians Gaza smuggling tunnels are for milk, say Palestinians Palestinian officials from the Gaza Strip have distributed a set of carefully-staged photographs they say are evidence that the smuggling tunnels running under the Gaza-Egypt border are for milk and other essential goods, not weapons. The photographs show masked Palestinian militants lifting jugs of milk and sacks of baby food from the entrance to one of the tunnels on the Gaza side of the border. Israel insists that the tunnels, of which intelligence estimates indicate there are hundreds, are used to import small arms...

The conflict in South Ossetia has already claimed the lives of at least 2,000 people. More than 30,000 have been displaced. Many of those have no idea where their families and friends are. Or even if they’re alive. They have no idea what will happen next. In this video, RT shows you how ordinary people suffer in war. Warning: many of the images are disturbing. Click the VIDEO button.

Most people must have seen at least some of the Olympic Opening Ceremonies on TV by now, if only as news segments. You can't have helped but notice the beautiful new stadium with three tiers of elevated seating, packed to the gills with 91,000 people. We know there were 91,000 because that's how many seats there are and they were pretty much all filled It was impressive; truly a sea of humanity, and a vast assembly. But even with a carefully designed, purpose built, stadium most of the viewing public are at least 300 - 450 feet away from seeing...

In 1990, Theresa Schiavo, an American citizen, had a cardiac arrest that caused irreversible brain damage which led to a persistent vegetative state diagnosis. A few years later, this diagnosis became a source of conflict over the interruption of artificial nutrition. The "Schiavo Case" was widely discussed from a medical, ethical and social standpoint in the United States and elsewhere. . . . [A]n article to be published in the September 23 issue of Neurology, . . . examines the media coverage featuring this famous case. The study reviewed American daily newspapers that were most prolific about this story: the...

AUGUST 4--An Osama bin Laden disciple serving life in the United States's only "supermax" federal prison believes that jailers are putting his health in jeopardy by X-raying all his food trays and commissary items in search of contraband items. Convicted terrorist Mohamed Al-Owhali alleges that the Bureau of Prisons security measure unreasonably increases his "daily exposure to potentially carcinogenic radiation," which the al-Qaeda operative claims violates Eighth Amendment prohibitions against cruel and unusual punishment. The 31-year-old Al-Owhali, who is being held at the "supermax" lockup in Florence, Colorado, was convicted of conspiring to bomb a U.S. embassy in Africa, an...

In Isi Leibler's "Candidly Speaking" (July 29), we read the same myths regarding the kingdom of Saudi Arabia; sweeping statements are presented as immutable fact. In 2005, one of my closest professional partners (as well as closest friends) and I planned for and created a model for a Saudi-sponsored interfaith dialogue to be ideally hosted by King Abdullah in Spain. We worked on the concept in Riyadh, where I live. (For the record, she is Jewish and visits the kingdom frequently.) We submitted the business plan to specific members of the royal family, and three years later the dialogue materialized...

Like so much in our world that seems genuine at first, the photograph that graced the front pages of some of America's most respected newspapers earlier this month was in fact a fake. As The Jerusalem Post reported at the time, on its front page, the digital manipulation of the image, which depicted Iranian missiles being test-fired, is readily apparent in the launch pad cloud of exhaust and the mid-air smoke trails of two of the four missiles depicted. The clouds and trails are, incredibly, identical. Iran's Revolutionary Guard, which released the photograph along with some belligerent rant, was clearly...

Western media outlets have reported on the Iraq war by relying heavily on Iraqis -- young men quickly trained to be photojournalists and reporters. Yet their motives and loyalties have not always been beyond dispute. Yesterday, this was evident once again. U.S. military forces detained Reuters photographer Ali al-Mashhadani due to "security concerns." He was handcuffed and led away by U.S. military forces in Baghdad's Green Zone, while he visited a government facility to obtain a U.S. military press card, Reuters reported yesterday. Twice before, U.S. military forces had detained al-Mashhadani, also due to security concerns; he was reporting at...

Palestinian officials from the Gaza Strip have distributed a set of carefully-staged photographs they say are evidence that the smuggling tunnels running under the Gaza-Egypt border are for milk and other essential goods, not weapons.

After meeting with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown today, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, came before the microphones... SNIP But the Pentagon said that wasn't true, that Obama was more than welcome to come, it was just that he couldn't bring the media or campaign staff. So here's what Obama said about it all: "The staff was working this so I don’t know each and every detail but here is what I understand happened," Obama said. "We had scheduled to go, we had no problem at all in leaving, we always leave press and staff off -- that is why we...

Today, the Los Angeles Times ordered its bloggers not to talk about the story. Here, via Kausfiles, is the memo from an editor there: Hey bloggers, There has been a little buzz surrounding John Edwards and his alleged affair. Because the only source has been the National Enquirer we have decided not to cover the rumors or salacious speculations. So I am asking you all not to blog about this topic until further notified. If you have any questions or are ever in need of story ideas that would best fit your blog, please don't hesitate to ask Keep rockin,...