Free Republic

It’s been suggested that Americans would be better off if the United States was more like Sweden. Do the Swedes know something that we don’t? Sweden: Lessons for America? A Personal Exploration by Johan Norberg delves into the economic and social landscape of the Swedish scholar’s homeland. Join him to see that the lessons to be learned from Sweden may not be the ones you expect. The one-hour documentary follows Norberg on a journey through the history of Sweden’s economic rise, from one of the poorest countries in the world to one of the most prosperous. The program illuminates key...

President Trump on Monday warned that a soft stance on illegal immigration risked subjecting the United States to the same kind of refugee crisis that is roiling Europe. “For those who want and advocate for illegal immigration, just take a good look at what has happened to Europe over the last 5 years. A total mess! They only wish they had that decision to make over again,” the president tweeted. The migration crisis in Europe was fueled by refugees from the Syrian civil war and ignited by German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision in 2015 to open the borders to them....

Video Link It's a short left video report. And, of course, they want to make it solely about children. I do hope these countries start taking a sensible attitude. It's not a hard line at all. It's hard line to the native children of these countries to destroy their futures. I doubt these countries will do enough to matter on a large scale, though, but it's a start. And even if they do it's probably too late, but better now than later. Big problems ahead for all of us in the West. PS: Obviously the 2nd pic left out the...

Dozens of migrants clashed with Bosnian police Wednesday while trying to cross from Bosnia into Croatia and enter the European Union. Shouting “pen borders!” the migrants surged through one Bosnian police cordon before being stopped by another outside a border crossing in northwestern Bosnia. Several people appeared to have been hurt amid the skirmishes as the migrants refused to leave and blocked traffic. “We are refugees,” one man from Iran said. “We want to leave this country.” Croatian police said they put up a fence on their side of the border to block the migrants from entering. They said two...

The humanitarian superpower Sweden has once again shown that it has no problem giving one vulnerable person preference over another when deciding whom to expel and who should be allowed to stay for humanitarian purposes. When Denis was only 5 years old, his mother was found dead in an apartment in Södertälje. As his Ukrainian father has renounced custody, he is now an orphan. Now the Swedish Migration Agency has decided that he will be expelled to Ukraine all by himself. There, he will probably end up in an orphanage since he has no family there who can take care...

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has said that the “culture war” is not being fought on Hungary, but it being fought in Europe which is succumbing to a “creeping” cultural surrender. Addressing the audience at a ceremony to celebrate the revamp of the Budai Vigadó, which houses the country’s heritage museum, Prime Minister Orbán remarked that though he “hear[d] that there’s a culture war going on in Hungary”, he believes the central European country is rather existing in a state of “culture peace”. The Hungarian leader warned of a “creeping pan-European cultural self-renunciation”, and argued that if the continent’s cultural...

Debate in Europe framing illegal immigration from the third world as a problem is “dangerous”, the United Nations (UN) refugee chief has warned, insisting that the mass movement of peoples has been “a source of progress and prosperity since people first began to migrate”. “Distorted” political debate on the subject has led to Europe becoming “obsessed” with a migrant crisis that “does not exist”, Filippo Grandi said, urging EU politicians to stop squabbling “over a few boats” [of illegal immigrants]. In an interview published in the German press Thursday, he dismissed plans backed by Austria and Italy among other member...

Emmanuel Macron has said funding should be withdrawn from pro-sovereignty nations reluctant to hand more power over to Brussels, and that countries which refuse to welcome third world migrants must be thrown out of the Schengen area. “Europe is not a menu à la carte, it’s a political project,” the French president declared, speaking at the end of an EU mini-summit on migration in Salzburg Thursday evening. “Countries that do not want more Frontex or solidarity [in housing and feeding third world migrants] will leave Schengen. Countries that don’t want more Europe will no longer [get access to] structural funds,”...

For most of Germany’s postwar history, the conservative CDU/CSU and the Social Democrats (SPD) were the undisputed twin poles of German politics. Known as Volksparteien, literally “popular parties,” these big-tent associations of interests have led every government since 1949. They were the German equivalents of the Republicans and Democrats in the United States or Tories and Labour in the United Kingdom. But their popularity is eroding alarmingly. In the words of venerable German political scientist Herfried Münkler, the Volksparteien look increasingly like “last year’s models.” The most recent Deutschlandtrend survey, published on September 20, put support for the CDU/CSU at...

28-year-old Syrian national Ibrahim Ali, who came to Canada as a refugee, has been accused of murdering a 13-year-old girl in Burnaby, British Colombia, whose body was found last year. The Syrian refugee, who came to Canada through a private sponsorship programme, was arrested last week by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) after a large-scale investigation into the death of the 13-year-old, who was found in Burnaby’s Central Park in July 2017. In court, the 28-year-old was charged with first-degree murder. He required an Arabic interpreter, with proceedings delayed as the court waited for the interpreter to arrive.

STOCKHOLM (AFP) - The Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, said Wednesday that "Europe belongs to the Europeans" and that refugees should return to their native countries to rebuild them. Speaking at a conference in Sweden's third-largest city of Malmo, home to a large immigrant population, the Dalai Lama -- who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 -- said Europe was "morally responsible" for helping "a refugee really facing danger against their life". "Receive them, help them, educate them... but ultimately they should develop their own country," said the 83-year-old Tibetan who fled the capital Lhasa in fear of...

The European Parliament has voted to pursue unprecedented disciplinary action against Hungary over alleged breaches of the EU's core values. Prime Minister Viktor Orban's government has been accused of attacks on the media, minorities, and the rule of law - charges which he denies.

Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) has recorded an increase of closed murder cases in 2017 involving at least one “non-German” suspect, reported Welt Am Sonntag on Sunday. The number rose to 83 last year, up from 62 the year before, marking a 33 percent increase. In total, 731 people died as a result of murder or manslaughter in 2017. The figures solely comprise closed cases. The BKA’s 2017 report did not specify nationality or whether a suspect was an EU citizen. […] A debate about the link between foreign nationals and murder in Germany was triggered by riots in...

Michael Kretschmer, prime minister of the German state of Saxony, knew he was entering the lion’s den. But even he looked unprepared for the boos, whistles and catcalls that greeted him in Chemnitz, a city boiling over with rage and hurt.  Addressing a town-hall meeting of locals reeling from the murder of a 35-year-old man in the city last weekend, Mr Kretschmer insisted they should have distanced themselves from the rightwing extremists who hijacked their peaceful protest over the killing, which authorities suspect was carried out by a Syrian and an Iraqi. “It’s not a good thing to be in a...

A German man who used a homemade bomb to attack a mosque in the eastern city of Dresden was Friday sentenced to nearly 10 years in jail for what prosecutors called a xenophobic crime. The accused, Nino Köhler, had apologized during his trial to the imam and his family. No one was hurt in the attack. The bomb damaged the door of the Fatih mosque while the family were inside on September 26th, 2016. That same evening, the accused planted another homemade pipe bomb that slightly damaged a convention center in the city, which was days away from hosting festivities...

A shining effigy of controversial Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has suddenly appeared in southwestern Germany—to the surprise and chagrin of locals.The 13-foot statue, painted gold, depicts Erdogan with his hand, outstretched and pointing at the horizon. Erdogan is a divisive figure in Germany—which has a diaspora of around 3 million people of Turkish nationality or descent—and when residents of Wiesbaden, 20 miles west of Frankfurt, woke up to a monument honoring the man, they had questions for city officials."We have received calls from a string of irritated citizens—it is not clear to people that it is part of the...

This is the astonishing moment migrants stormed a packed tourist beach and clambered up a cliff after jumping off their boat in southern Spain. Holidaymakers watched open-mouthed as the semi-inflatable Zodiac carrying around 50 Moroccans - including about ten children - beached near a luxury hotel area on Spain's Costa de la Luz.Footage shows refugees sprinting up the popular Barrosa Beach at about 3.30pm on Sunday before attempting to scale cliffs. The incident happened near a purpose-built residential and tourist resort called Sancti Petri which boasts shops, restaurants and several four and five-star hotels. A tourist filming the scene could...

Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio on Monday threatened to veto the European Union’s seven-year budget plan should the bloc not do more to share the burden of migrant arrivals. “In Europe, the music will change,” Di Maio wrote on Facebook less than two days after the country’s latest clash with Brussels over who should take in migrants rescued at sea. […] Di Maio last week threatened to withhold Italy’s EU contributions if the bloc did not agree to take in rescued migrants that the government had blocked on a ship in the port of Catania, in Sicily. …

Shocking pictures show large wooden barricades have been put up around property in the posh West London neighbourhood. The famous annual carnival celebrating British African-Caribbean will see hundreds of thousands of people flock to the area to enjoy the colourful parade and street food. But the event has been marred with violence in the past, with multiple stabbings and violent attacks occurring previously. And this year, cops are reportedly taking no chances with thousands of officers set to monitor revellers. Pictures of revellers at this year's carnival are already going viral on social media.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has declared Germany “is a nation of immigrants and will remain so”, asserting: “There are no half or whole Germans, no biological or ‘new’ Germans”. Speaking at Berlin’s Bellevue Palace, where a small group of people with Turkish heritage had been invited to share their views on immigration, integration, and xenophobia in Europe, the German president strongly denounced “exclusion of and discrimination against people with foreign roots”. “A permanent suspicion of immigrants, no matter how long they have lived in Germany, is not only harmful for the individuals involved but it is a cause of shame...