Free Republic

Decades after the fall of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe, Soviet World War II monuments continue to arouse significant controversy in many former Eastern Bloc countries where they are either being dismantled by law or vandalised by activists. In certain countries the past few years have seen a spike in these activities. The Ukrainian “decommunisation law” which passed on April 9, 2015 opened the way for the removal of public art bearing communist symbolism. While war monuments were officially exempt... In Poland, the process of dismantling Soviet war monuments was accelerated by an amended “decommunisation” law, which came into...

It started out with an isolated case here and there. In 2005, Oriana Fallaci was put on trial in Italy for her anti-Islam book The Force of Reason. In 2010 and again in 2011, politician Geert Wilders was tried in the Netherlands for publicly criticizing Islam. In 2011, the Danish Lars Hedegaard was found guilty by a Danish court of hate speech for having, in the privacy of his own home, made reference to the frequency of incest rape in Muslim communities. (The verdict was later reversed by the Danish Supreme Court.) Also in 2011, Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff was tried...

Germany is being laughed at… migrant humour reveals the sad truth, migrants are taking the mick. The political elite and leftist media have tried to convince Germans that the young illegal ‘refugee’ men (soldiers) coming in the hundreds of thousands to Germany will help the declining workforce. Their arguments have long been that migration is to fill an increasing void in population to sustain labour and industry. This short video, that has gone viral, clearly reveals that to not be the case. As well as statistics showing that the majority of migrants are not working at all, rather living off...

It never ceases to amaze me how the populist Right, or what speaks in its name, overestimates its strength both here and in Western Europe. One needn’t be an enemy of these activists to recognize the exaggerated nature of their claims. Those in the media who now demand a border wall insist that the “people” want this goal achieved immediately if not sooner. In fact, according to Ann Coulter, Trump “scammed the American people” by not giving them the wall they’re clamoring for. But according a nationwide poll by The Hill, 51 percent of American voters oppose Trump’s project, while...

Following the law is for the little people, and enforcing secure borders is only for elites. That seems to be the conclusion after the family of John Kerry rejected rules about land access in France, while demanding that migrants and hikers be kept away from their multi-million dollar property. Kerry, the former liberal senator, presidential candidate, and secretary of state, spends a significant amount of time at his family’s ancestral home in Saint-Briac-sur-Mer, a beach escape and resort playground for the elite. It’s a lifestyle that most people in America and indeed the world can’t afford, and Kerry’s family seems...

<p>There is a mass movement in France that is spreading around the world. The French government of President Macron is reeling. The protests have been successful in stopping implementation of a “green” tax on fuel. Police have been out in mass.</p>

Many African heads of state are surprised by Europe’s open border policy and urge the continent to change it, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said to German tabloid Bild. Kurz, who was on a trip in Africa, said some heads of state urged him to “stop your policy of open borders in Europe” as it leads to African youth leaving the continent. “This only motivates the African youth ‘to break up’ in the first place,” the Austrian Chancellor quoted his unnamed counterparts. According to Ethiopian President Sahle-Work Zewde it’s better if the African youth remained in their countries and don’t even...

Many people this holiday season will experience the joy of attending a local performance of “The Nutcracker” ballet by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. It’s the most implausible American tradition imaginable, an import from fin-de-siècle Russia straight to your hometown. It’s living proof of the capacity of music and the art of dance to leap the bounds of time and space and delight us forever. Perhaps some viewer’s own children will perform in it, and that’s part of the appeal. What theater goers don’t entirely realize is that they are watching something even more wonderful than what they see. In this one...

Poland took another step towards weening itself off Russian energy supplies on Wednesday by signing a 20-year agreement with San Diego-based Sempra Energy to import U.S. liquefied natural gas. In the coming years, Warsaw plans to replace Russian gas with pipeline supplies from Norway and shipments of LNG, or gas super-chilled to liquid from for transport by sea. This is a big deal," said Assistant Secretary Francis Fannon, who heads the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Energy Resources. Fannon told CNBC's "Power Lunch" that Poland is "stepping up and answering the call on energy security" for Europe.

Anders Vistisen, a Danish People’s Party member of the European Parliament, was chastised by British member Claude Moraes for using the phrase “illegal migration” during a discussion of illegal migration. Moraes rejected Vistisen’s argument that the phrase conformed to terminology used in the 2007 Lisbon Treaty on immigration and insisted that the correct phrase is “irregular migration because it is the phrase that parliament has been using for the last decade.” Afterwards, Moraes allowed that “I should have expected this kind of insensitivity from a Dane. This isn’t their ‘first offense’ in such matters. Remember, it was Denmark that held...

Yellow Vests have now spread to Portugal! A few hundred “yellow vest” protesters took to the streets throughout Portugal on Friday in an attempt to stop traffic, inspired by the French revolutionary “gilets jaunes”. There were roughly 100 protesters crossing with police at a central square in Lisbon with other access roads blocked in the northern city of Braga earlier. One protester, Joao Viana, 50, tells why she is protesting: “The reason why I joined this protest today is because this really is the voice of the people. “The movement is not aligned to any political party and we simply...

Professor Felice Daddetto, Professor emeritus of the University of Louvain, asserts that the number of secular Muslims is declining as more are becoming radicalised. Il Giornale explains that Professor Daddetto believes that the secular world and its values has become less attractive to contemporary Islam and that is the reason more Muslims are becoming more reactionary in their faith. He says, “There is a bit of disaffection, but there is no mass abandonment of the faith, the phenomenon affects at most 10 to 15 percent”. He also states that at least 80 per cent of Muslims in Europe claim to...

Two Scandinavian women recently went on a hiking trip in Morrocco. Shown below, their names were Louisa Jespersen, from Denmark, and Maren Ueland, from Norway. Their photos appear below: Men abducted and killed the pretty pair. Louisa was beheaded with a small knife and suffered horribly. Here is another shot of the pair. They were obviously great friends: Moroccan authorites have arrested and now are questioning the three suspects shown below: Whether very liberal or conservative, this double murder is sad; the authorities later stated that the murderers had ISIS sympathies. What would lead such a gorgeous pair to go...

Yesterday, the Finnish Ministry of Justice announced in a press release that violation of entry bans may lead to imprisonment from the beginning of 2019. The President of the Republic confirmed amendments to the law by which a new provision on breaches of entry bans was added to the Criminal Code. To date, breaches of the ban have in general led to fines for foreign offences. In the future, the penalty for breach of the ban shall be fines or imprisonment for a maximum of one year. According to the new provision, a foreigner who arrives in Finland even though...

A 20-year-old Syrian refugee has been charged for terrorist activities and by the correctional court in Charleroi, Belgium. Newspaper HLN reports that the man, named Ahmed A., tested a bomb in his back garden in Mouscron. The Syrian national was already monitored after an FBI warning, Belgian officials said. The charges against the man are: Preparing a terrorist attack and participating in terrorist activities. After his arrest the man told via a translator that the explosives were to be used for fishing, but these remarks were rejected by the magistrate. She said the man was tracked down after his online...

After recent events in London over the past week The British Yellow Vest Movement has spread to the north of England. Patriots in Manchester reacted over the weekend, coming together and setting up a Facebook page, later embarking on the BBC, Media City in Salford Quays sending the security guards into a frenzy claiming they were not allowed to be on public property outside of the Beeb’s premises. In just a matter of hours the group had swelled to significant numbers with messages of support being received from America, Canada, Australia and The Netherlands.

Professor emeritus of the University of Louvain, Felice Dassetto, has claimed the number of secular Muslims in Europe is in steep decline and more are becoming radicalised. Professor Dassetto said the secular world and its values are becoming less attractive to contemporary Islam and that Muslims are turning toward more reactionary forms of the faith, Il Giornale reports. “There is a bit of disaffection, but there is no mass abandonment of the faith, the phenomenon affects at most 10 to 15 percent,” Dassetto said, noting that at least 80 percent of Muslims across Europe now claimed to be religious. Dassetto...

Swedish Moderate Party leader Ulf Kristersson insists that it’s “crucial” for young Swedes to learn Arabic if they are to be successful in the future. During a speech at Haymarket Hotel in Stockholm, Kristersson said that in order to assure Sweden’s “competitiveness in the increasingly globalised economy,” it’s crucial for the long term success of Swedish students “to master not only English, school-level French and school-level German, but also Arabic and Chinese.” Some may take Kristersson’s remarks as another sign that Sweden, which has accepted large numbers of migrants from the Middle East in recent years, is becoming increasingly Islamic....

The French officers who denounced the Marrakesh deal have exposed themselves to disciplinary sanctions by the military. Paris: The international conference on the Global Compact for Migration was held on 10 and 11 December 2018 in the Moroccan city of Marrakech, but top level military figures denounced it as treason in an open letter the head of state. Contacted by L’Opinion, the Ministry of the Armed Forces called the move “inadmissible and unworthy”. The open letter was sent by 13 officers opposed to France signing the Compact. The Minister of the Armies, Florence Parly dismissed the remarks contained in the...

French police union Alliance Police Nationale called for a “black day for the police” for 19 December in France. The protest is to be “Act 1” just like the “yellow vests”, according to The Local. The police union is staging their own protests against the embattled Macron’s upcoming cuts to the police budget. “Police are not doing well and nobody is listening,” states Frédéric Lagache, the deputy secretary general of the Alliance union. He tells The Daily Express that the 2010 budget is “insufficient”. The French police officers are being run ragged due to constant deployments at the “yellow vest”...