Free Republic

In the wake of yet another foiled ISIS-inspired terrorist plot, this one by a Canada-based Pakistani seeking to kill Jews in New York on the anniversary of last year’s Hamas attack in Israel, everyone is loudly proclaiming: “ISIS is back.”And yet, this analysis is wrong.For someone or something to “be back,” it has to have left in the first place. This return can be surprising or expected, but in the end it is of note. With respect to the ISIS terrorist group, it has not “resurged” because it never went away in the first place.The group has been around since...

The artistic director of the infamous Paris Olympics Opening Ceremony has admitted that the LGBT-themed performance was “political” and described Saint Joan of Arc as one of the “greatest transvestites” in French history. Speaking to the Le Monde newspaper this week, Thomas Jolly acknowledged political bias his Opening Ceremony for the supposedly politically-neutral Olympics in Paris, which sparked international criticism over a performance seemingly intended to mock Christianity with a drag queen-themed apparent reimagining the Last Supper of Jesus Christ.

When Emmanuel Macron called the snap National Assembly election in June my sense was that this election was ultimately about electing a majority that was Pro-Capitalist and Pro-Israel. The new majority would weather tough times ahead driven by military conflict with Russia, economic conflict with China and the Middle East conflict in general. Pivotal in that majority would be the National Rally which in the end did not finish first like the New Popular Front of the Left did but together with Macron's centrist forces and Les Republicains the Mainstream Right create that majority... an angry man confronted President Macron...

Recent intelligence information revealing dramatic progress in Iraq's nuclear-weapons program has given a new urgency to U.S. and British efforts to build international support for war with Iraq, according to Iraqi opposition leaders interviewed by Insight in London. The information, from recent defectors and other sources working with the broad-based Iraqi National Congress (INC), indicates that Baghdad has made "a recent breakthrough" in production of the fissile material needed to produce the bomb. It was buttressed on Sept. 24 when the British government released an "unprecedented" white paper based in part on classified intelligence information on Iraq's weapons of mass...

Mar 12, 2002 (AP Online via COMTEX) -- U.S. officials received a warning as early as 1995 that Islamic militants were plotting to attack an American nuclear site, but did not pass along the information to the agency that oversees nuclear facilities or to the plants themselves, The Associated Press has learned. The warning came in police interrogations of convicted terrorist Abdul Hakim Murad and from a computer seized in the Philippines from Ramzi Yousef, mastermind of the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. Both men were linked to Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida terrorist network, and...

In the past any period under France's Fifth Republic constitution of 1958 where the National Assembly was controlled by a political party different from the President was a period described as "cohabitation". But this week President Emmanuel Macron launching a new chapter of Fifth Republic history by selecting a Prime Minister not formally leading any political faction but with a track record of government service as part of the Liberal Capitalist "Right". Michel Barnier holding posts... In a Friday night appearance on TF1 television new Prime Minister Michel Barnier saying "I will respect all political forces"... Many thousands protesting some...

Could Finland´s next President be a foreigner? Finland´s current President Alexander Stubb speaking to the public. Finland´s President Alexander Stubb Credit: Alexander Stubb, Facebook Finland´s future President may be a foreigner, said current President Alexander Stubb during a recent presidential Q&A session on the local Yle Radio Suomi. The Finnish President emphasised that 10 per cent of residents in Finland have foreign backgrounds and argued that the future could see a foreign national leading the country. “Racism should not be politicised. Every nation has to go through this discussion,” emphasised Stubb. “In Finland, 10 per cent of people were not...

The consultations on a new government offered up by President Macron continued Monday with Jordan Bardella and Marine Le Pen of the National Rally... And by Monday night Mr. Macron was able to say that there was no way for a united Left to lead a new government. The media messaging kept hinting at displaying notions of a government without the LFI that would include other parties of the New Popular Front Left... This weekend plotting to break the Socialist Party away from the New Popular Front alliance through making a Socialist personality Prime Minister in the cards... On Thursday...

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic on Thursday announced a $3 billion deal to buy 12 French warplanes, in a move that shifts his country away from its dependence on Russian arms. The announcement about the Rafale multi-purpose fighter jets was made during a joint news conference in Belgrade with French President Emmanuel Macron during a two-day visit to Serbia as part of what French officials have called a strategy of bringing Serbia closer to the European Union.

Two Ukrainian drones shot down over the water near the port city of Sevastopol... The Dutch Defense Minister says that a computer failure at the country's Ministry of Defense was not the result... The Biden-Harris Administration request to allow it to ease student debt loans rejected... In Las Vegas former Democrat elected official Robert Telles found guilty of murdering an investigative journalist... The Biden-Harris Administration imposing sanctions on a Jewish settler group and a Jewish settlement security coordinator in Israel... In Yemen heavy rainfall causing at least 33 deaths... Prosecutors in Sweden charging two men with hate crimes for burning...

Free speech is dying in once-liberal democracies that are now ruled by unaccountable administrative bureaucracies. Reading the corporate media coverage of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov’s arrest in Paris this week, you’d think he was a Kremlin spy or an international terrorist, not the founder of a popular social media app with nearly a billion users.The charges against Durov — whom the media never fail to inform us was born in Russia — include “complicity in the distribution of child pornography and selling of drugs, money laundering, and a refusal to cooperate with law enforcement,” according to The New York Times....

Pavel Durov was released. After bail was promptly posted, he left prison. He did not talk to journalists, got into a car with guards and drove away.

Goal of the Authoritarian Deep State is to either #1 Shut down Telegram or #2 Coerce Durov into Censoring Content/Sharing Telegram User Data - French prosecutors say Telegram messaging app CEO has been freed from custody, will appear in court

Telegram founder Pavel Durov has told police that he was supposed to have dinner with French President Emmanuel Macron on the day of his arrest, respected French investigative newspaper Le Canard Enchaine has reported. “Macron is perfectly capable of this kind of deceit aimed at fulfilling the mission demanded by his masters: jailing all those who defend freedom of expression! We demand explanations from Macron!” Les Patriots Party leader Florian Philippot wrote in a social media post commenting on the story. The Elysee Palace rushed to deny the newspaper’s claims.

~THE POST-DEMOCRATIC ERA (1): Since they took the tyre iron to him, whoever's really running the United States government has given up the time-consuming pretence that Joe Biden has anything at all to do with it. After his farewell address to the DNC, the dead husk of a moth-eaten sock puppet flew Air Force One for a week's vacation with some California billionaire. When that was done, he flew it again from the Golden State back to his beach house in Delaware for a second, week-and-a-half-long vacation: Biden's schedule is absolutely blank. Meanwhile, Emily Goodin reports Biden was "visibly shaking"...

The detention of Pavel Durov, the founder of the Telegram messaging app, in Paris on Saturday has raised questions about the future of a platform that has come to define the public perception of Russia’s war in Ukraine. Russia’s invasion in 2022 helped transform Telegram from a niche communication tool for Russia’s educated classes into a global phenomenon. The app has allowed millions of people to follow battlefield developments in near real time, turned soldiers into the narrators of the conflict unfolding around them and gave both propagandists and dissidents a pulpit in the struggle for the hearts and minds...

On Saturday, the CEO of the popular messaging app Telegram was arrested at Le Bourget airport in France for refusing to comply with the country’s censorship laws.Pavel Durov, 39, was arrested on the tarmac as he got off his private jet from Azerbaijan.On Saturday evening Mike Benz, the founder and Executive Director of the Foundation for Freedom Online released a video explaining who he believes is behind this arrest – The US State Department.Benz is an authority of the Deep State and the US government operations in Europe and abroad.Mike Benz:SNIPOne of the things they’re talking about in the space...

Since Pavel Durov, the Russian-born billionaire and founder of the Telegram messaging app, was arrested on landing in Paris on Saturday evening, there has been more speculation than substance about his fate. The headline in a Russian newspaper summed up the story: “The arrest (or detention) of ‘Russia’s Zuckerberg’, Pavel Durov, is one of the most important, but mysterious global news stories,” declared Nezavisimaya Gazeta. True. Except that "mysterious" is a bit of an understatement. Why did French police detain him? What charges will he face? Has it anything at all to do with his recent visit to Azerbaijan, where...

There you go: impeachment procedure launched against Macron by La France Insoumise ("France's unbowed"), the main political force in the New Popular Front coalition that won the elections, after Macron said he wouldn't honor the election results. They also call for a protest movement all around France. This is a translation of their communiqué (itself a reply to a communiqué by Macron where he outright rejects a government led by the New Popular Front, who won the elections): "The President of the Republic has just made a decision of exceptional gravity. He does not recognize the result of the universal...

Bernard-Henri Lévy takes on the Israeli crisis. Born in 1948 in French Algeria to a family of Sephardic Jews but raised from infancy in France, where he has spent his long and productive life, Bernard-Henri Lévy has led a distinguished career as a philosopher, war correspondent, and prolific author and commentator. Unlike many members of his generation in France, he was not seduced by Marx, and has in fact spent much of his life criticizing Communism and other forms of tyranny, championing oppressed peoples around the world, and defending Israel and the United States at a time when most of...