Free Republic

The U.K. has a new Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Tech and the Digital Economy, Conservative MP Saqib Bhatti, and the politician seems very enthusiastic when talking about things like “cooperation” with Big Tech, particularly in terms of elections. That’s because, critics will say, those in power want to absolutely control the conversation, what can and can’t be said online, and thus directly influence the vote; whereas those in power say, it’s all just a perfectly benevolent effort to make sure misinformation plays no part in the campaign.

It is difficult to imagine a greater shock than seeing the Hamas slogan “from the river to the sea” projected onto Big Ben in London. It flows in large letters on the most iconic tower in the United Kingdom, perhaps the world. The screening was authorized by the Metropolitan Police, who had already allowed parades through the streets of London with the flags of ISIS, the Taliban and Hamas after October 7th. “The Islamists are in charge of Britain,” wrote former Home Secretary Suella Braverman in the Telegraph. “October 7 transformed the idea of liberating Palestine 'from the river to...

Palestine protesters used powerful lasers to write the words of an infamous antisemitic message on the Elizabeth Tower, best known worldwide as the Big Ben clock at Britain’s Parliament. Messages including “From the river to the sea, Palestina will be free” were projected onto the side of the Elizabeth Tower during a large Palestine protest in Westminster’s Parliament Square on Wednesday night. As the demonstration roared outside, Parliament faced problems of its own, as conflicting left-wing party attempts to vote on a resolution in favour of a Gaza ceasefire saw a major break with convention potentially permanently damaging the authority...

An elderly English couple was shocked to receive a letter from their county’s council ordering them to sell their home to house migrants. The North Northamptonshire Council sent a strongly-worded letter to Jose and Ted Saunders in January claiming their £200,000 home could be subject to compulsory purchase from the government to be used to house young migrant men. “I couldn’t believe it,” said retired carer Jose, 76. “We moved to Rushden to help provide childcare for my grand-daughter and found this nice little place to live.” “What on earth is the council doing forcing people to sell their houses...

Iran-backed Houthis sunk a British ship in the Red Sea on Monday and attacked two US ships in the Gulf of Aden. The US is also investigating a US Reaper drone that crashed in Yemen on Monday. According to reports: “The United Kingdom’s Maritime Trade Operations Agency (UKMTO) reported Monday that the Houthis sunk a ship traveling in the Red Sea , south of the port city of Mukha in Yemen. It is the the first time since the start of Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza that a crew had to abandon their ship because of the Houthis.”

Way back in 2005, when I was an MP in the Netherlands, my party was strategising about the upcoming local elections. I belonged to the centre-right VVD, and we were particularly concerned about appealing to the nation’s growing migrant community. After much discussion, the leaders settled on Laetitia Griffith to represent us in Amsterdam. She was black and had roots in Suriname, a former Dutch colony in the Caribbean. She could pull in the city’s Creole vote. More importantly, the VVD’s strategists thought she could win over some of the city’s Muslim population. In the hope of making this task...

Britain’s decline over the past 25 years has been staggeringly rapid. Almost everything is getting worse, and almost nothing is getting better. Our public and private institutions are broken, presided over by an incompetent, selfish and narcissistic ruling class. Living standards, when adjusted properly for living and property costs, are declining. Even the simplest things don’t work any longer. Queuing, scarcity and congestion are rife, our infrastructure is embarrassingly poor, and the honest and hardworking face endless bureaucratic battles to obtain what they are due. Free riding, crime, disorder, fraud, littering and generalised rule-bending are rife, and all too often...

British police have escalated their actions against Christian street preachers in Uxbridge, London, threatening arrests over allegations of hate crimes and violations of anti-social behavior laws. The crackdown follows the enforcement of a Public Spaces Protection Order by the London Borough of Hillingdon, aimed at regulating activities in Uxbridge Town Centre. The Metropolitan Police targeted Christian missionaries, including Pastor Dwayne Lopez, for preaching from the Bible on Uxbridge High Street, the U.K.-based group Christian Concern reported.The incident, captured on video last week, was prompted by a public complaint about the content of their preaching, specifically citing verses from 1 Corinthians...

Severe penalties for countries that refuse to take them.. The EU has passed a migration pact dubbed “the suicide of Europe” which could lead to the continent being flooded with as many as 75 million new migrants. The European Parliament’s LIBE committee passed the act on Wednesday, which formalizes the distribution of migrants to member states and punishes those that refuse to take them. Because cultural enrichment and diversity is “our greatest strength,” countries that try to maintain their national identity without being subsumed by migrants will be hit with severe financial penalties. Marine Le Pen, the leader of National...

A deal cut between the government in Northern Belgium (Flanders) and farmers organizations. This follows protests... Tonight in the UK results of two Special Elections for House of Commons seats...Labor Party taking both seats... The drama in Washington over a "national security threat" now identified as a potential Russian weapon in space... The US Defense Department leaking...cyber-attack on an Iranian vessel more than a... Greece's parliament passing a law establishing civil same-sex marriage... Pushing back on criticism from President Donald Trump, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg... The Biden Administration Justice Department indicting a former FBI informant who alleged wrongdoing by...

Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson had a mini-meltdown after being exposed during the Tucker Carlson-Vladimir Putin interview for sabotaging the Ukrainian peace deal. During the interview, Putin confirmed reporting that first emerged last year about Johnson’s role in prolonging the war. David Arahamiya, the leader of Ukraine’s ruling party, revealed that Johnson had scuppered a peace deal that would have put an end to hostilities just a few months after the Russian invasion. ... Putin reiterated in his interview with Tucker Carlson that Russia supports a negotiated settlement with Ukraine, and plans were very much underway to making that...

A man has pleaded guilty to murder after stabbing his 19-year-old wife to death at their home in south London. Sahil Sharma plunged a knife into his wife Mehak Sharma’s neck at a property in Ash Tree Way, Croydon, on October 23 last year. The 24-year-old then rang 999 shortly after 4.15pm and confessed to the call operator that he’d killed her. Police and paramedics rushed to the scene where they found Mehak unresponsive having suffered catastrophic knife injuries. Emergency crews battled to save her but she was pronounced dead around 20 minutes later. Her family were informed after she...

London, February 2, 2024 – Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) Mike Freer, who has represented the Finchley and Golders Green constituency in North London since 2010, announced his resignation on Thursday. This decision comes in the wake of escalating Islamic and left-wing threats and violence directed at him and his family, primarily due to his support for Israel and his vocal condemnation of antisemitism in the United Kingdom. Freer, who has dedicated 30 years to public service, stated that he will not seek re-election as a Conservative Party candidate in the upcoming general election. His resignation follows a series of...

The Birmingham-born photographer Brian Griffin, who has died at the age of 75, was one of the most influential British photographers of his era, acclaimed for his album covers for Depeche Mode, Iggy Pop and Elvis Costello

@devonviews Rape in England and Wales has risen by 340% in just 10 years. The Home Office needs to get a grip

ITALY -- Italian regulators said they told OpenAI that its ChatGPT artificial intelligence chatbot has violated European Union’s stringent data privacy rules. The country’s data protection authority, known as Garante, said on Monday that it notified San Francisco-based OpenAI of breaches of the EU rules, known as General Data Protection Regulation. The watchdog started investigating ChatGPT last year, when it temporarily banned within Italy the chatbot that can produce text, images and sound in response to users’ questions. Based on the results of its “fact-finding activity,” the watchdog said it “concluded that the available evidence pointed to the existence of...

Immigration is expected to add 6.1 million people to the UK population by mid-2036, according to official projections that add pressure on British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak over a sensitive issue in the run-up to an election. The UK's population will grow from 67 million in mid-2021 to 73.7 million in mid-2036, driven almost entirely by migration, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) forecast on Tuesday. Migration has become a dominant political issue in Britain and will figure prominently in a national vote later this year where Sunak's ruling Conservatives are forecast in opinion polls to lose power. The projected...

With many major airlines now committed to sustainability and ‘green’ fuels, a protest at one of the UK’s airports focused on private jets. On Saturday, January 27, Greta Thunberg, the 21-year-old Swedish environmental activist, took a stand against the increasing use of private jets, joining forces with Extinction Rebellion at Farnborough Airport. The demonstration took place in the morning with the airport brimming with protesters, objecting to the proposed 40 per cent rise in annual flight numbers. Most Read on Euro Weekly News Spain to pioneer mobile national ID H&M announces major store closures in Spain Finance Roundup for Spain...

Britain’s warships cannot attack Houthi targets on land because they lack the firepower, in a situation described by former defence chiefs as a “scandal”. None of the Royal Navy’s destroyers or frigates have the ability to fire missiles at targets on land, leaving the US to carry out the majority of strikes on Houthi targets with support from RAF planes based 1,500 miles away. A British defence source said HMS Diamond, the destroyer stationed in the Red Sea, had not joined retaliatory strikes on Houthi targets because it did not have “the capability to fire to land targets”. The Ministry...

The British Conservative Party is facing an “extinction event” with a comprehensive poll predicting a defeat on the scale of the loss to Tony Blair’s Labour in 1997 on the backs of growing anger over failures to control migration and the rise of the Nigel Farage-founded Reform UK. A YouGov survey of 14,000 people released in The Telegraph newspaper on Sunday found that the Conservatives will win just 169 seats in the House of Commons, a decline of 196 from the last general election in 2019. This would outpace the seismic defeat of the party in 1997 when Sir John...