Free Republic

THE face of human trafficking is changing as different nationalities capitalise on the lucrative migrant smuggling trade, new information has revealed. In 2015 Romanians were the most prolific smugglers, with 350 rounded up Millions of migrants have either made their way to western Europe, are stuck in camps at borders or have died while trying to make the perilous crossing. The latest figures show hundreds of thousands are still attempting to cross the continent, with a rise in traffickers jumping on the migrant smuggling bandwagon. Europol, European Union’s law enforcement agency, recently released figures documenting the shifting trends in the...

Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn gave the unexpected warning on Sunday during a special celebration for the Church festival "Holy Name of Mary". According to the Archdiocese of Vienna, the Cardinal said: "Will there be an Islamic conquest of Europe? Many Muslims want that and say: Europe is at its end." He asked God to have mercy on Europe and to show mercy to its people, which he said "are in danger of forfeiting our Christian heritage." Cardinal Schoenborn, who is also the Archbishop of Vienna, explained that people could already feel this loss, "not only economically, but above all, in...

MUSLIMS want to eradicate Christianity and conquer Europe - the Catholic cardinal tipped to be the next POPE has incredibly claimed. Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn gave the unexpected warning on Sunday during a special celebration for the Church festival "Holy Name of Mary". According to the Archdiocese of Vienna, the Cardinal said: "Will there be an Islamic conquest of Europe? Many Muslims want that and say: Europe is at its end." He asked God to have mercy on Europe and to show mercy to its people, which he said "are in danger of forfeiting our Christian heritage." Cardinal Schoenborn, who...

A scholar of Islam has warned of civil war across Europe as more young Muslims facing poor job prospects turn to radical groups, it has been reported. Professor Gilles Kepel, from the Sciences Po in Paris, France, said a growing 'Jihad Generation' is likely to continue to carry out terror acts in European cities. The aim of their terror activity is to both incite hatred towards Muslims and, in doing so, cause further radicalisation among young people, the professor of political science said.

… Interior Minister of Germany Thomas de Maizière told the Bild newspaper in an interview that German security services know 520 potential terrorists and another 360 people who are designated as “known to the police” due to their ties with terrorists and similar dangerous extremist elements. …

Traditional parties are starting to get nervous about the upcoming Berlin state parliament election as the upstart far-right AfD party has been gaining support. A poll by broadcaster ARD and research group Infratest dimap released on Thursday evening showed that the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) could gain 15 percent of the vote in the upcoming Berlin state parliament elections set for September 18th. The AfD’s support in Berlin has been hovering around 15 percent in the Infratest dimap polls since April. The current reigning Social Democrats (SPD) got just 21 percent in the poll, followed by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s...

Prime Minister Netanyahu struck back after Dutch Parliament member Tunahan Kuzu refused to shake his hand earlier today. “We again saw today a clear example of who wants peace and who doesn’t. I will continue to represent Israel’s position with pride throughout the world and to strengthen its international standing. As Menachem Begin said, “he who snubs his nose will remain with a snubbed nose,” the Prime Minister said. Kuzu, a former member of the Dutch Labor Party, is aligned with the DENK immigrant advocacy movement. …

Germany is preparing to train troops to be deployed within its borders for the first time since World War II amid fears of terrorist attacks. The country’s armed forces will hold joint drills with police early next year, officials confirmed. […] Plans to involve soldiers in counterterrorism operations — and the suggestion troops could also be used to beef up security in public places — have proved controversial in a country only seven decades removed from totalitarian rule that’s still grappling with guilt from the Nazi era. A 2012 constitutional court ruling paved the way for the deployment of the...

A sociologist from the Karlsruhe University of Education is giving a presentation on Wednesday about why both immigrants and Germans alike should take integration classes. “The motto must be: integration classes for all,” said professor Annette Treibel ahead of her presentation at a conference in Rostock called “Integration — How does it work? Education, work and culture”. The day-long series of lectures and discussions is focused on how the country should address the social implications of hundreds of thousands of refugees who have come to Germany. Treibel will be giving a talk about how integration is for both “old and...

Chancellor Angela Merkel defended her refugee policy on Wednesday, saying that the situation had improved drastically — for Germans as well as refugees. “We have just been through a year that demanded a lot from us, but the situation now is so much better than it was a year ago,” the Chancellor told the Bundestag in a discussion which was actually on the federal budget. Merkel mentioned reinforcement of the Frontex EU border defense agency, a new NATO mission in the Mediterranean and a refugee deal signed with Turkey in March as evidence of progress in coping with an influx...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats fell to third place in a state election on Sunday behind the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) and anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, TV exit polls showed. In a stinging defeat for Merkel one year ahead of parliamentary elections, the upstart AfD won 21 percent of the vote in their first election in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern state by campaigning hard against the chancellor's policies on refugees, according to an exit poll by the ARD TV network.

France’s National Front (FN) leader and presidential candidate Marine Le Pen said on Saturday she would hold a referendum on France's membership of the European Union if she won the 2017 elections. The French presidential elections are scheduled for spring 2017.

The Christian Democrats and their Bavarian allies in the Christian Social Union are looking into measures against the problem that they have identified as “child marriage,” defined as unions in which at least one partner is younger than 18 years old. “The priority of child welfare and the equal treatment of men and women are pillars of our society and our understanding of our values,” legislators from the right-wing bloc wrote in a strategy paper quoted in Thursday’s edition of the Passauer Neue Presse. That paper estimates more than 1,000 such unions have been registered in Germany — largely connected...

The German army are planning stricter checks of their soldiers as officials fear that jihadists could be using the armed forces as a way to train. The German Cabinet finalized an amendment on Wednesday to military law that will have military intelligence agency MAD soon more thoroughly scrutinize each applicant for connections to jihadist or extremist groups. “There are currently indications that Islamist circles are trying to send so-called ‘short-term soldiers’ into the Bundeswehr so that they can receive such training,” according to the explanation of the amendment, which will come into force on July 1st 2017. […] Since 2007,...

The refusal of some EU countries to accept Muslim refugees is “unacceptable”, Chancellor Angela Merkel said Sunday as Germany called for quotas to divide the influx throughout the bloc. “That’s not right at all that some countries say: ‘generally speaking, we don’t want to have Muslims in our countries’,” Merkel told German public television channel ARD.

A year ago Germany showed itself as a country offering help. Security wasn’t an issue, but today it’s clear that terrorists have misused refugee routes and extremists are recruiting members amongst refugees. The terrorist attacks in Würzburg and Ansbach in July were not related to the arrival of so many refugees in the autumn of 2015. Both assailants were already living in Bavaria. But the fact that people, who had been taken in by Germany, then took an ax and a bomb, respectively, and turned on those who had offered help, has highlighted the disturbing side of migration. Many now...

Half of Germans oppose German Chancellor Angela Merkel seeking a fourth consecutive term, according to a survey published on Sunday in the newspaper “Bild am Sonntag.” The survey, conducted by the polling company Emnid, asked 501 Germans in August whether or not they would like to see Angela Merkel serve another term as Chancellor after the federal election in second half of 2017. Results showed that 50 percent of poll participants were against a new term for the Chancellor, while 42 percent were in favor. She has come under fire from both citizens and fellow politicians for her refugee policies....

The Polish foreign minister has said that Germany all too often follows its own interests at the expense of its partners, as Chancellor Angela Merkel prepares to visit Warsaw. […] Merkel is set to arrive in Warsaw on Friday for talks with Prime Minister Beata Szydlo, as well as the heads of state of the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary. The quartet have had increasingly tense relations with Berlin since Germany took in hundreds of thousands of migrants last year and started pushing for an EU-wide quota system, whereby refugees would be redistributed across the union. But foremost on Waszczykowski’s...

Eastern EU countries on Friday pushed for the bloc to create a joint army as they met with Germany for talks on sketching Europe’s post-Brexit future. “We must prioritize security, and let’s start by building a common European army,” Hungary’s rightwing prime minister, Viktor Orban, said at talks with Czech, German, Polish and Slovak leaders. […] Leftist Czech Premier Bohuslav Sobotka, for his part, said that “we should also begin a discussion about creating a common European army.” […] In an early response to Britain’s shock vote to exit the EU, Poland’s powerful rightwing leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski called for EU...

A French politician who hopes to run for president next year has come up with an original idea of how the country can combat the “culture of fear” in the wake of recent terror attacks. Compulsory martial arts classes in France’s schools would help children respond to the fear of attacks in a productive but safe way, centrist politician Jean Lassalle believes. “There is fear everywhere,” Lassalle said to Le Figaro newspaper. “That leads some people to go around with a knife. But with martial arts, you develop self-control and learn to defend yourself peacefully.” …