Free Republic

The consistent theme from my travels so far in Europe– the UK, Scandinavia, Lithuania– has been noticeably higher prices. Shockingly so, in some instances. London, where I spent a rather pleasant and rare sunny weekend with friends and colleagues, has gone from being ‘stupid’ pricey, to just plain absurd. Tube prices, taxi fares, food prices, restaurant bills, train fares… it all keeps going up. And to cap it all off, the British government’s VAT increases have ensured that absolutely everyone is paying a little bit more. Here in Lithuania, the buzz around town is the spiraling gasoline prices, which have...

Let’s be clear. The global economy is not working for the majority of people in our country and the world. This is an economic model developed by the economic elite to benefit the economic elite. We need real change... We need a president who will vigorously support international cooperation that brings the people of the world closer together, reduces hypernationalism and decreases the possibility of war. We also need a president who respects the democratic rights of the people, and who will fight for an economy that protects the interests of working people, not just Wall Street, the drug companies...

Three years into the tenure of Hassan Rouhani who himself and many in the West promised to be a “moderate” and “reformist” poised to bring about change in Iran, we have only witnessed an unprecedented spike in human rights violations, including horrendous public floggings and especially executions. Overt 2,400 executions in the past three years is the report card Iran and Rouhani carry, with Amnesty International and many other international human rights organizations registering Iran sent nearly 1,000 people to the gallows in 2015 alone. Various religious minorities, including Arabs, Baha’is, Christians, Jews and others have also been targeted...

North Korea has sent hundreds of workers to labor as “state-sponsored slaves” in member states as Pyongyang seeks to circumvent international sanctions aimed at starving it of money over its nuclear weapons program, rights campaigners said on Wednesday (5 July). North Korean laborers commonly work 10-12 hour shifts, six days a week, but up to 90% of their pay is sent back to the hermit state, according to the European Alliance for Human Rights in North Korea (EAHRNK). Most are working in Polish shipyards, construction sites and farms. North Koreans are also employed in leisure and clothing firms in Malta,...

A young left-wing German politician has admitted she lied to police about the racial background of three men who raped her in case it triggered reprisals against refugees in her country. Selin Gören, the national spokeswoman of the left-wing youth movement Solid, was attacked by three men in January in the city of Mannheim where she works as a refugee activist. The 24-year-old was ambushed late at night in a playground where she said she was forced to perform a sex act on her attackers.

In most sane circles, the act of rape is reprehensible and it makes absolutely no difference who perpetrated the act. However, in what will inevitably make blood shoot out of one's eyes to read, a politician in Sweden actually makes a distinction on the severity of the act depending on who committed it.Swedish Left Party politician Barbro Sorman, who represents a district of the capital Stockholm, said on Twitter that it is "worse" when Swedish men rape women compared to when immigrants rape women because of cultural differences according to Breitbart."The Swedish men who rape do it despite the...

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Boris Johnson’s surprising announcement on Thursday that he would not seek the leadership of the British Conservative Party — and by extension, succeed David Cameron as prime minister — leaves five candidates for the job. In a series of votes, Conservative members of Parliament will whittle down the list to two finalists, and the party’s roughly 150,000 members will choose between them. The process is expected to be completed by Sept. 9. The Conservative Party, which won a majority in Parliament last year, has a five-year mandate that lasts until 2020. But given the turmoil after voters decided that Britain...

Voters will have to wait before migration can begin to be cut despite Britain deciding to leave the European Union, Theresa May has warned. The Home Secretary, who is the front-runner in the Conservative leadership election, promises to reform the EU’s rules on “free movement” of people, which currently allow an unlimited number of migrants to move to the UK to live and work. However, she stops short of promising to abolish free movement altogether, warning that it will “take time” before the numbers of immigrants come down. The issue of cutting migration is one of the critical battlegrounds in...

Breaking: Boris Johnson: I'm not standing as Tory leader

The Clinton Scandals will provide endless TV entertainment, which may be more like a reality TV show with the Kardashians. Most people think it will be Donald Trump. He may give us some frank insults that are badly needed now and then to keep people focused, but the Clintons will provide never ending intrigue and scandals. Now we have the new one involving Hillary’s hedge fund manager son-in-law who is the husband of Chelsea Clinton, who set up in 2012 a Greek bond fund with a special arrangement with none other than Goldman Sachs expecting a bailout to boost...

The dust of conflict has not yet settled and surely it will take some time for it to settle, for the simple reason that many people had not even been aware that we as a nation no longer ruled ourselves. We had our own Parliament – of course we ruled ourselves. Alas, that simply was not true. We were under the dominion of a foreign body called the EU, whose laws pre-empted our laws, whose Courts were superior to our Courts. It all happened by stealth, by bits and pieces, by treaties like Maastricht, so that the man-in-the-street hardly noticed...

ITHACA, NY--Nearly six months after the Presidential election, former Monty Python star John Cleese needs some new material.According to the Cornell Daily Sun, Cleese, in an appearance on campus, turned serious and launched into an attack on former President George W. Bush: Americans... are “much too respectful to the president,” said Cleese, who went on to say that George W. Bush would not be able to survive a single press conference in England. “It’s pathetic!” he exclaimed. “This is the most important country in the world ... It’s embarrassing because we want America to be great. There is emotion when...

German politicians and media organizations from across the political spectrum have been scathing about Nigel Farage after he announced his resignation as leader of UKIP, Britain’s anti-EU political party. Farage announced on Monday that he was stepping down as leader of UKIP, saying he wanted his life back. But critics have accused him of irresponsibility, as the decision means he will disappear from the political limelight with the UK’s exit from the EU, which he has long sought, looking set to become reality. “First they lied and stirred up anger, then they created chaos and now they’ve run away. Nigel...

In a move which no doubt has American immigration officials baffled, the Swiss are denying citizenship to Muslim after Muslim for failing to integrate into their society.

This July 4, let's not mince words: American independence in 1776 was a monumental mistake. We should be mourning the fact that we left the United Kingdom, not cheering it. Of course, evaluating the wisdom of the American Revolution means dealing with counterfactuals. As any historian would tell you, this is a messy business. We obviously can't be entirely sure how America would have fared if it had stayed in the British Empire longer, perhaps gaining independence a century or so later, along with Canada. But I'm reasonably confident a world in which the revolution never happened would be better...

Sweden said on Friday it would phase out some taxes on nuclear power and build new reactors to replace aging plants and secure energy supplies for decades to come. Nuclear power providers in Sweden have said they would be forced to shut the country's loss-making nuclear reactors unless a tax on nuclear capacity is abolished, risking a spike in electricity prices and energy shortages for industry. "The aim is ... to make sure we can always guarantee electricity at competitive prices, in a stable and sustainable way, both in the short and long term," Energy Minister Ibrahim Baylan told reporters....

Swedish state-run TV won’t air a new documentary about anti-Semitism and jihad in case it offends the ever growing Muslim population in Sweden. “Watching the Moon at Night” is a new documentary largely funded by Swedish state broadcaster SVT and tries to tackle the looming questions of anti-Semitism among Muslims and its links to terrorism. Though the television channel has largely funded the creation of the documentary they are now refusing to air it on Swedish television because critics say they fear a potential backlash from Muslims and the politically correct establishment, reports Danish national paper Berlingske. Created by acclaimed...

Only a fraction of the many asylum seekers who came to Sweden last year have got jobs, new figures show. Only a microscopic part of the 162,000 refugees who last year sought asylum in Sweden have so far got jobs. In fact only 494 of the thousands of asylum seekers in the labor market, writes SVT. This corresponds to 0.3 per cent of all asylum seekers that came last year. A valid ID is all that is requires, according to the television channel, for a person who has come to Sweden to be able to work while he is waiting...

A Proposed free mobility labour zone between Australia, New Zealand, the UK and Canada has strong support, according to a poll. A survey commissioned by the Royal Commonwealth Society in London found that 70 per cent of Australians, 82 per cent of Kiwis, 58 per cent of Brits and 75 per cent of Canadians are in support of reciprocal open borders between [these UK] nations when it comes to living and working in them. If the UK exits the EU, it would no longer be bound by the EU’s free labour movement laws. end of except, i added in brackets...