Free Republic

The European Union's new Copyright Directive stands to dramatically change the way we consume news and other online content. Although originally intended to ensure creators and news organizations are fairly compensated for their work, the directive will more likely make quality news harder to find, throw financial and technical roadblocks in the way of smaller online publishers and creators, stifle free speech and negatively impact internet culture. Article 11 requires online news aggregators like Google, Facebook or Twitter to pay licensing fees to news organizations when showing snippets of their coverage, and forces news organizations to charge these fees. ....

EXCERPT: We have a new bourgeoisie, but because they are very cool and progressive, it creates the impression that there is no class conflict anymore. It is really difficult to oppose the hipsters when they say they care about the poor and about minorities. But actually, they are very much complicit in relegating the working classes to the sidelines. Not only do they benefit enormously from the globalised economy, but they have also produced a dominant cultural discourse which ostracises working-class people. Think of the ‘deplorables’ evoked by Hillary Clinton. There is a similar view of the working class in...

There is a growing feeling of distrust in governments and the media among the general population, according to the Edelman report. It states that there has been a 3 percent increase between 2018 and 2019 in the level of distrust towards the government and the media. Overall, the general feeling of distrust has hit a record high this year from 2017. There is also a clear difference between mass population and the informed public, with the return to the largest-ever trust gap between these two, since 2017. This trust gap is particularly evident in developed countries, including the U.K., Canada,...

The ban is a huge win for the administration and lays down another marker in its effort to tighten the sanctions noose around Tehran. A top Trump ambassador is winning kudos for his part in convincing Germany to ban Iranian airline Mahan Air amid allegations 'it ran weapons to Syria.'......Iran’s Mahan Air is shut down in Germany, immediately. “Since arriving in Berlin, Ambassador Grenell has literally hit the ground running delivering on the president’s priorities,” said a key ally and senior Senate Republican aide. “At the top of that list has been to ensure Europe doesn’t circumvent President Trump on...

Europe was never a full partner in its own defense. The very question—Will Europe ever fully partner with the U.S., or will the European Union and NATO continue to downplay the necessity of military readiness?—is no longer meaningful as posed, because the political energies of Europe’s elites are absorbed as they try to fend off attacks on their legitimacy by broad sectors of their population. The notion that Europeans and Americans were full partners in the NATO alliance and that this “kept the Russians out…etc.” was always a fiction, albeit a useful one. Today it is dysfunctional, an obstacle to...

Marine Le Pen delivered a speech in Paris to thousands of her National Rally party supporters, who chanted “Macron, resignation!” as she spoke. She denounced Macron and the EU as agents of globalisation with contempt for ordinary people. She also said the European Parliament elections in May ought to be a referendum on whether Macron stays in office. “If Macron does not have the wisdom to go back to the people by dissolving parliament, then let the political arbitrage come from European elections,” she said. “The European Union as it stands is a menace to our identity and to our...

The vigilante group Soldiers of Odin has begun patrolling streets and public places in Oulu, in response to several cases of rape and sexual assault committed against Finnish children by migrant men. The patrol visits, among other things, shopping centres in the city, as these have been identified as places where foreigners are looking for victims to rape and molest. The initiative comes shortly after the police have warned the population against taking the law into their own hands, Ålands Nyheter reports. Soldiers of Odin (SOO) is an anti-immigrant group founded in Kemi, Finland, in October 2015. The group was...

France recently seized an unannounced number of third century A.D. Roman gold coins as well as an ancient gold plate allegedly with a pedigree linking the material to the Lava Treasure... first encountered about 25 years ago when three Corsicans diving for sea urchins spotted gold in the shallow waters there... the official French national police statement released Oct. 27 in which it says, "This submerged treasure, identified as a maritime cultural asset, belongs to the state." ...As Ancient Coin Collectors Guild spokesman Wayne G. Sayles commented in the October 2010 issue of The Celator magazine, "[coins are] utilitarian objects...

A bank was attacked, a government building was vandalised and rioting broke out next to Napoleon Bonaparte's tomb as 84,000 anti-government Yellow Vests demonstrated all over France for the 10th weekend in a row. Protesters threw firecrackers, bottles and stones at police who used tear gas, water cannon, flash ball guns and baton charges to push them back at Les Invalides, where the body of the former French emperor and military leader lies in a sarcophagus underneath a golden dome. According to official figures, the biggest demonstration on Saturday occurred in the southern city of Toulouse, where around 10,000 people...

The 5-year-old stepson of a British woman who lives as a man, with the child’s mother, is now “transitioning” to a girl, the couple has revealed. They also complain that they’ve suffered “insults” at the hands of people online and their neighbors, and they’ve also been reported to social services. What, exactly, these insults are was not specified in an article covering the couple on Heart. They’re adamant, however, that they’re not responsible for the child’s gender confusion and that the “transition” is what’s best:

10th straight week. This is big and it isn't limited to Paris. Macron is in trouble.

In a resounding 509 to 138 result, the Bundestag has voted to classify the northern African states of Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco — along with Georgia in the Caucasus — as safe countries of origin for the purposes of German immigration law. As a result of the vote, it will be easier for German authorities to deport migrants from these countries who have arrived without visas. The SPD’s Helge Lindh said the move was necessary to remove false hope that citizens of the listed countries may have of applying for asylum or refugee status in Germany. While the CDU/CSU and...

A fireman who joined France's Yellow Vest protest movement is in a coma after being shot in the head 'like a rabbit' by a police officer using a controversial flash ball gun. Horrific images show Olivier Beziade, a father-of-three in his 30s, lying on the floor in Bordeaux on Saturday after being hit from behind. He is wearing one of the high-visibility motoring jackets from which the Yellow Vests get their name.

A 28-year-old Frenchman has been sentenced to six months in jail after he published a Facebook post attempting to organize a ‘Yellow Vest’ blockade of a local petrol refinery, according to local reports. Hedi Martin was arrested in Port-La Nouvelle, southern France on January 3, shortly after publishing the post on Facebook, la Dépêche reports. In his post, Martin called for a ‘Yellow Vest’ blockade of the petrol refinery in the coastal town, urging people to “stand up to the CRS [riot police],” according to WSWS. State prosecutors noted video footage of Martin on his Facebook page at several Yellow...

BRUSSELS/PARIS - In Tehran on Jan. 8 during a meeting with European envoys, Iranian officials abruptly stood up, walked out and slammed the door in an extraordinary break with protocol. The next day, the European Union imposed its first sanctions on Iran since world powers agreed the 2015 Vienna nuclear arms control deal with Tehran. The sanctions were largely symbolic but the stormy meeting encapsulated the unexpected shift in European diplomacy since the end of last year. Smaller, more dovish EU countries have joined France and Britain in a harder stance on Tehran, including considering new economic sanctions, diplomats say....

File this one as yet another instance in which the liberal media took President Trump’s bait, hook, line, and sinker, launching into apocalyptic meltdowns and illustrating for the American public how, for those on the right not in The Resistance, they’re the opposition party.  On Thursday afternoon, CNN suffered a network-wide meltdown over Trump’s letter canceling Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s overseas trip less than an hour before take-off, calling the President a “childish” and “cranky” schoolboy who’s only concerned about “pure politics.”  PANIC! CNN Goes DEFCON-1 Over ‘Childish,’ ‘Cranky’ Trump Canceling Pelosi’s Trip   Surprising no one, carnival barker and chief...

FRENCH President Emmanuel Macron has been branded “irresponsible” for suggesting the introduction of “annual quotas” on migration as a topic for part of the three-month national debate aimed at mollifying yellow vest protesters.In a sweeping letter to the French pubic, Mr Macron said he had heard the public’s anger and shared its impatience for a “more prosperous country and a fairer society”. He then mentioned the possibility of introducing annual immigration quotas, saying it would not apply to asylum status. He said: “As regards immigration, once our asylum obligations have been met, would you like us to be able to...

In late November, as the Gilets Jaunes—or Yellow Vests—protest movement took hold in France, Martin Goillandeau and Makana Eyre wrote for CJR that participants were harassing, and even assaulting, journalists. Since then, the protests have become a weekly occurrence. So, too, have threats against reporters. “The harassment and violence have got worse,” Eyre told me this morning. “I went to the Saturday protests in Paris to shoot photos and see how big it would get. This was the first time that I really felt nervous with my camera… I saw people interfering with broadcasts, shouting at media teams, and getting...

Discovery suggests women worked as top artists in Middle Ages more often than thought They couldn't figure out the blue. Scientists studying tartar from the teeth of medieval skeletons hoped to learn a thing or two of about diets of the Middle Ages. But when they put the teeth and jaw of one woman under a microscope, they were surprised to see hundreds of tiny flecks of blue, reports the BBC. After much sleuthing, they figured out that the blue came from lapis lazuli, a rare and expensive stone ground into powder to make dye for sacred manuscripts. Typically, male...

... Nigel Farage launched a scathing attack on Theresa May following her crushing defeat in Parliament, arguing she should now resign. After being asked whether the Prime Minister should step down, Mr Farage replied: “Of course she should.” The former Ukip leader told Channel 4 News: “If we’d gone for Brexit, if we had a Prime Minister that believed in Brexit, it would have been done and dusted by now. The problem is we have somebody who didn’t believe in it, and we saw tonight after she lost by that massive margin of 230.” News presenter Jon Snow asked: “So...