Free Republic

What we now face is regime change. That is why these strange crowds have begun to gather round ancient and forgotten monuments, demanding their removal and destruction. They do not know what they want, or understand what they are destroying. But that no longer matters. They think their moment has come, and they may well be right. This is why the memorial to Winston Churchill, and the Cenotaph itself, were shamefully boarded up on Thursday night – an act of appeasement if ever there truly was one. That is why police chiefs kneel like conquered slaves to the new gods...

Evidence of woven textile from 5,000 years ago has been found for only the second time in Scotland. The piece of Neolithic fabric has not survived, but archaeologists did find the impression it left on the wet clay of a pot millennia ago. The discovery was made by archaeologists examining markings on pottery from Ness of Brodgar in Orkney. Evidence of Neolithic woven textile in Scotland was first found at Flint Howe, near Stranraer, in 1966. An impression of the fabric had also been spotted on a piece of clay... Organic material from prehistory only survives under certain conditions, and...

In Berlin, organizers expected 1,500 people to show up. Instead, an estimated 15,000 protested in Alexanderplatz, Berlin’s city center, with signs that read “Germany is not innocent” and “Black Lives Matter,” German media outlet DW reported. Demonstrators held a moment of silence that lasted eight minutes and 46 seconds, the amount of time the former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneeled on George Floyd’s neck. But the protests extended far beyond Berlin, with rallies organized in nine other cities across the country. Munich saw a crowd of at least 20,000 people and 14,000 people rallied in Hamburg. Even German football...

LONDON — European Union officials are preparing to bring antitrust charges against Amazon for abusing its dominance in internet commerce to box out smaller rivals, according to people with knowledge of the case. Nearly two years in the making, the case is one of the most aggressive attempts by a government to crimp the power of the e-commerce giant, which has largely sidestepped regulation throughout its 26-year history. The European Union regulators, who already have a reputation as the world’s most aggressive watchdogs of the technology industry, have determined that Amazon is stifling competition by unfairly using data collected from...

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European officials aim to speed up trials for coronavirus vaccines containing genetically modified organisms, two EU sources told Reuters, in a move that could help shots developed by companies like AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson. The European Commission is expected to put forward the plans as early as next week. They are part of a wider EU strategy aimed at securing enough doses of a possible vaccine for the bloc as it fears lagging behind the United States and China. The reform is expected to reduce member states’ power to impose extra requirements on drug companies when...

Two revealing falsehoods have been foisted on a taciturn populace. One, that the raging mob violence has really anything to do about George Floyd, Black Lives Matter, or opposition to police brutality. Two, the rioters and looters, largely spearheaded by Antifa, are similar to the heroes who landed on in the beaches of Normandy under a hail of heavy machinegun fire. ItÂ’s a stirring version of alternate history. And it may even win Pulitzer Prize one day. But both these arguments were exposed as baseless, however, by the recent days of mayhem and violence across Europe.What weÂ’re currently witnessing...

Serbia: Muslim migrants rob Belgrade churchgoers in the middle of church service JUN 7, 2020 4:00 PM BY ROBERT SPENCER “According to the latest update of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), there are currently 8,052 migrants in Serbia, the majority of them in 19 refugee centers across the country. Their stated countries of origin are Afghanistan, Syria, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iraq, Iran, Morocco and Palestine.” Hmmm, what do all those countries (and “Palestine”) have in common? Could it be an ideology that holds Christianity in contempt and considers Christians “the most vile of created beings” (cf. Qur’an 98:6)?...

Move would cut 9,500 American service members from Germany, where 34,500 are permanently assigned... President Trump has directed the Pentagon to remove thousands of American troops from Germany by September, a move that would dramatically reshape the U.S. military posture in Europe and reflects growing tensions between Washington and Berlin over military spending and other security issues, U.S. government officials said Friday. The removal order would reduce the U.S. troop presence in Germany by 9,500 from the 34,500 service members who are permanently assigned there. It would also cap at 25,000 the number of American troops.

The far-left extremist Antifa movement and its allies have carved a wave of violence, destruction, and even murder for decades in Europe and their history should serve as a warning to the United States of America. Antifa — despite the claims of its defenders and proponents — does not stand just for simply anti-fascism but rather for the organisation Antifaschistische Aktion, originally the paramilitary arm of the Pro-USSR German Communist Party (KPD). Its actions today are not merely against fascism, but explicitly for a mix of anarchism and communism by any means necessary. While anarcho-communist movements have existed in some...

After Donald Trump claimed most protesters in the US were “antifa,” Germany’s Social Democrats rushed to declare solidarity with the movement. But which movement? And why did other politicians object?Quite a few people, not least the President of the United States, seem a little confused as to precisely what “antifa” is. Unlike many of the gaps in Donald Trump’s knowledge, there are some reasonable historical justifications for this particular confusion. In Germany, politicians and the public have been wrestling with the term for around a century now — without coming any closer to an uncontested definition. What the word means...

Hungry McDonald’s customers have been queuing for up to two hours today after it reopened 168 drive-thrus — with police being called out to manage traffic at some of its restaurants. The fast-food giant is set to reopen nearly 1,000 restaurants for drive-thru and McDelivery customers over the next three days. In a bid to try and stop the lengthy queues when drive thrus return, McDonald’s is announcing its chosen restaurants on the day they open — but an hour’s notice still gave customers plenty of time to queue today. There were reports of customers waiting up to an hour...

US President Donald Trump announced his intention to designate “Antifa” as a terrorist organization. Petr Bystron, AfD Spokesman on the Foreign Policy Committee of the German Bundestag, commented: “Donald Trump is doing the right thing in designating these violent extremist groups as terrorists. Antifa is an anti-democratic hate group whose radical left-wing ideology rejects the free market and freedom of speech. The Alternative for Germany applauds President Trump’s announcement and urges the EU and German government to follow suit and finally act against these openly violent and extremists gangs. American Antifa is modeled on German Antifa, and finds its supporters...

London — Thousands of people marched through London on Sunday to support demonstrations across the United States in response to the Minneapolis death of George Floyd. Starting at Trafalgar Square and moving through the city to the U.S. Embassy, British demonstrators chanted slogans including "I can't breathe," and "Black Lives Matter." "This is our respect to people in America who are suffering right now," Paige Adjarhore, 18, told CBS News. "We're too far away to go there and help them, but this is us showing that we support them. We're with you and we feel your pain," she said. "What...

The Nordic countries of Denmark and Finland are reporting no increase in the spread of coronavirus since opening their respective schools, further suggesting that children are less likely to be sickened by COVID-19 and spread the virus. Denmark began sending its children back to school on April 15, just over a month after Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen issued an extensive nationwide lockdown. They were kept spaced apart in classrooms and on playgrounds, while sanitation measures such as hand-washing stations and deep-cleaning procedures were put into place. Similar measures were put into place in Finland to keep children from congregating in...

Today in history, on May 29, 1453, the sword of Islam conquered Constantinople. Of all Islam's conquests of Christian territory, this was by far the most symbolically significant. Not only was Constantinople a living and direct extension of the old Roman Empire and contemporary capital of the Christian Roman Empire (or Byzantium), but its cyclopean walls had prevented Islam from entering Europe through its eastern doorway for the previous seven centuries, beginning with the First Arab Siege of Constantinople (674–678). Indeed, as Byzantine historian John Julius Norwich puts it, "[h]ad the Saracens captured Constantinople in the seventh century rather than...

April 24, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — Controversy broke out in France at the end of March when a government decree made an anti-epileptic drug — clonazepam, Rivotril in France, known as Klonopin in the U.S. — available outside its specific marketing authorization, in order for it to be used on patients with respiratory distress in the context of the COVID-19 epidemic. Critics say the drug can now be used to kill off the fragile and the elderly. One of the reasons for their fears is that there is a formal contraindication for use of the molecule in case of respiratory distress,...

France's Determination to End Free Speech by Judith Bergman May 26, 2020 at 5:00 am Private companies will now be obliged to act as thought police on behalf of the French state or face heavy fines. "Under the pretext of fighting 'hateful' content on the Internet, it [the Avia law] is setting up a system of censorship that is as effective as it is dangerous... 'hate' is the pretext systematically used by those who want to silence dissenting opinions.... A democracy worthy of its name should accept freedom of expression." — Guillaume Roquette, editorial director of Le Figaro Magazine, May...

BERLIN -- The European Union’s top diplomat has called for the bloc to have a “more robust strategy” toward China amid signs that Asia is replacing the United States as the center of global power. EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell told a gathering of German ambassadors on Monday that “analysts have long talked about the end of an American-led system and the arrival of an Asian century.” “This is now happening in front of our eyes,” he said. Borrell said the pandemic could be seen as a turning point in the power shift from West to East, and that...

Billionaire financier George Soros said the European Union could be forced to directly tax its citizens as the bloc faces collapse due to the coronavirus pandemic. Covid-19 has wreaked havoc across the continent and stalled swathes of the global economy with governments forced to ramp up borrowing to levels not seen in peacetime history. Mr Soros, 89, believes perpetual bonds - bonds that cannot be redeemed but provide continuous interest payments to investors - could keep the EU afloat. But to fund these bonds, the EU may need to directly tax the citizens of its member states. In a transcript...

BERLIN (Reuters) - German exporters are regaining momentum in their trade with China, epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, Martin Wansleben, managing director of Germany’s DIHK chambers of industry and commerce, told Reuters on Thursday. German manufacturers depend on both demand and supply chains from China, their country’s biggest trading partner. “In China, the economic trough seems to have bottomed out,” Wansleben said, adding that “70 to 80% of German companies are able to produce and deliver again in the Middle Kingdom”.