Free Republic

Sky sources say Steven Woolfe has suspected bleeding on the brain after being punched in the face by a fellow MEP. ...-A party spokesman said Mr Woolfe was "taken suddenly ill" in the European Parliament building in Strasbourg on Thursday morning.

Geert Wilders, the far-right politician who is seen as a likely contender to become prime minister when Dutch voters go to the polls next year, was convicted on Friday of inciting discrimination and of insulting a group for saying that the Netherlands would be safer with fewer Moroccans....The effect of the verdict on Mr. Wilders and on his party’s chances when the Dutch elections are held in March is unclear, but the trial seems to have improved his party’s standing, rather than diminishing it, among voters.If the Party for Freedom wins the most seats in the elections, Mr. Wilders could...

The Danish government has revealed that of the suspected 800 “underage” asylum seekers they believed to be lying about their age, 600 of them were adults according to medical tests. The Danish Immigration Service (Udlændingestyrelsen – DIS) has suspected hundreds of “underage” migrants over the past year have been lying about their age in order to get preferential treatment and other benefits from the Danish government. The DIS was granted the ability to use medical tests to assert the real age of those suspected of lying and have said that at least 600, or three quarters of the migrants, were...

... Europe wonders why its house is falling apart. The death of Europe is in sight. Still hazy and not yet inevitable... Europe is reaching its end not because of its sclerotic economy, or stagnant demography, or dysfunctions of the superstate. Nor is the real cause the massive influx of ... migrants. Those desperate people are just the latest stiff breeze against the timber of a desiccated civilization. Europe is dying because it has become morally incompetent.... it stands for shallow things, shallowly. Europeans believe in human rights, tolerance, openness, peace, progress, the environment, pleasure. These beliefs are all very...

"It seems citizens of the world are facing a government onslaught of attacks on freedom of speech. Right now in the United States many are fearing the threat to our freedom of speech on the Internet. Many Alternative Media websites are being mocked as “fake news”. In Amsterdam populist anti-Islam lawmaker Geert Wilders is being accused of “hate speech”. Speaking at the end of his trial he branded it as a politically motivated “charade” that endangered freedom of speech."

DUTCH right-wing Freedom Party has soared ahead to lead the polls ahead of the parliamentary elections. The party, led by the controversial Geert Wilders, would beat prime minister Mark Rutte’s ruling conservative liberals if elections were held today. The Freedom Party (PVV) can count on 29 seats out of the 150-seat chamber, according to the latest IPSOS poll, making it the largest party in the Netherlands. In the space of one month the popularity of the PVV has surged with an increase of six seats.

PARIS — For Europe, 2016 has brought a series of political shocks: near-record numbers of immigrants arriving from the Middle East and Africa; a vote by Britain to leave the European Union and renewed threats by Russia to meddle on the continent. But 2017 could be even bumpier. There will be at least three elections in Europe next year: in Germany, France and the Netherlands for sure, and now perhaps in Italy, too. Just about everywhere, political establishments are being blamed for tepid growth, for too few jobs and for favoring global financial markets over the common citizen. The latest...

Angela Merkel is suddenly becoming more hawkish than Geert Wilders and Marine Le Pen. To everyone's surprise, the German chancellor is suddenly speaking out against the burqa. Not only does she think it's "unGerman" to wear one, but she even believes the burqa should be banned completely. That's rather surprising coming from a politician who has never hidden her support for the Grand Multicultural Idea. Angela Merkel has called for a burqa ban wherever “legally possible” and says the full Islamic veil is “not appropriate” in Germany. The German chancellor made the comments at a Christian Democratic Union (CDU) conference...

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has suffered a heavy defeat in a referendum over his plan to reform the constitution, exit polls suggest. An exit poll on state broadcaster RAI suggests 42-46% voted to back reform, compared with 54-58% voting No. Two other polls gave the No vote a similar lead of at least 10 points. Mr Renzi, who has said he would resign if he lost the vote, is due to make a statement at midnight (23:00 GMT) from his official residence in Rome. The referendum was regarded as a barometer of anti-establishment sentiment in Europe. The vote asked...

THE EUROPEAN UNION looks set to be shattered by a potential influx of Eurosceptic country leaders who refuse to toe the line of the Brussels elite This weekend Austria could be set to elect its first far-right leader while Italy could simultaneously lose its Europhile Prime Minister. Both outcomes would be a massive blow to the Union as fear begins to spread around the the corridors of Brussels - both nations have put a vote to the people and could start the process of engineering themselves out of the EU. The beleaguered EU boss Jean-Claude Juncker is watching his superstate...

Rome (AFP) - Media silence was imposed across Italy Saturday on the eve of a constitutional referendum crucial for Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who has staked his future on the government reforms. In the frantic final round of campaigning which ended on Friday, Renzi's rivals vowed to defeat referendum proposals to streamline parliament and force the centre-left leader out of office. The 41-year-old premier is hoping for a last-minute turnaround in voter sentiment, having pledged to quit in the event of a "No". While all media comment on the referendum is now banned until polling ends at 11:00 pm (2200...

A call earlier this week between President-elect Donald Trump and British Prime Minister Theresa May — in which they agreed on the need for more NATO member states to commit two percent of their GDP on defense spending — brought European security debate back into the limelight. Although Trump gained notoriety in Europe for his skepticism of America’s alliances, there has been a surge of high-ranking politicians and government officials on both sides of the Atlantic saying that Europe is not doing enough for its defense. Earlier British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said that Europe should “step up to the...

Italy’s prime minister, Matteo Renzi, only 41, once seemed to have solved the riddle of how to survive Europe’s populist, anti-establishment tempest. But with a critical national referendum on Sunday, the populist wave is now threatening to crush him and plunge Italy into a political crisis when the European Union is already reeling. From Washington to Brussels to Berlin, fears are rising that Italy may be stumbling into its own “Brexit” moment. What should be an inward-looking referendum on whether to overhaul Italy’s ossified political and electoral system has taken on much broader import. Financial analysts warn of a potential...

RUSSIA has massed 55,000 troops along their eastern border as they prepare to unleash a "frightening war" upon Europe. -------- Military bosses claim Vladimir Putin has sent his mighty army to disputed frontiers along Eastern Europe. Putin’s mass military deployment comes as Russian lawmakers threatened a looming “frightening war” unless their enemies back down over the annexation of Crimea. Russia has been at loggerheads with NATO ever since it seized the peninsula on the Black Sea in 2014. Shockingly earlier this year Russia withdrew from the International Criminal Court after the organisation branded its occupation illegal and said it was...

The one and only state of the Jewish people, back in their historical homeland, is a beacon of democracy in the Muslim-Arab sphere devoid of human rights, left behind by social and economic progress and subject to frequent bouts of bloody unrest. Yet Israel is singled out, again and again, for condemnation. The European Union, self-appointed human rights watchdog, is at the forefront of the attacks. This is a puzzling phenomenon. Why is Europe turning a blind eye to the deadly legacy of violence, chaos and backwardness left by the Islamic occupation of the Middle East and North Africa? Why,...

The incoming Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN) told a room of policymakers in Europe on Wednesday that “migration is not the problem but the solution”, and said politicians should ignore voters. Speaking in Lisbon at the Vision Europe Summit, António Guterres said European nations have no right to control their borders and that they must instead take in floods of the world’s poorest people. “The idea that management of migration is a matter of national sovereignty is extremely limited. The truth is that in the meantime, the real controllers of international mobility are the smugglers and criminal organisations. It...

ISTANBUL - Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has warned the European Union that if it continues threatening his country he will open the border gates and allow hundreds of thousands of migrants to flood into EU countries. Erdogan, in a speech Friday, reacted furiously to a non-binding resolution approved the previous day by the European Parliament demanding that the bloc freeze membership negotiations with Turkey over the government's heavy-handed crackdown following a failed coup in July. "We are the ones who feed 3-3.5 million refugees in this country. You have betrayed your promises," Erdogan told the EU. "If you go...

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim has warned Europe that without Ankara's help it could be "flooded" by waves of migrants and cutting off talks with the bloc would be far more damaging to Europe than Turkey. "We are one of the factors protecting Europe. If refugees go through, they will flood into Europe and take it over, and Turkey prevents this," Yildirim said in comments broadcast live on television. "I accept that cutting off ties with Europe would harm Turkey, but it would damage Europe 5-to-6 times more."

Savage indignation over a civilization’s suicide.

ITALY is set to deal a hammer blow to its government as the latest polls revealed voters will punish Matteo Renzi's administration in the upcoming referendum. The prime minister's failure to reach out to working class suggest large regions will snub Mr Renzi's plan for constitutional reform. A Demos poll has revealed Mr Renzi's reforms will be rejected by an 11 percentage point margin in the south of the country - where most of the poorest regions are located - compared with a seven-point margin across the country. As the nation prepares for a momentous referendum, which could spark an...