Free Republic

A Front National local councillor has embarrassed France's far-Right party by announcing his recent conversion to Islam – and urging fellow members to join him. Maxence Buttey, 22, offended officials of the anti-immigration party by sending them a video in which he praised the "visionary" virtues of the Koran and urged them to become Muslims. Mr Buttey, a councillor in the eastern Paris suburb of Noisy-le-Grand, said the Front National and Islam had much in common. "Both are demonised and very far from the image portrayed in the media," he told Le Parisien newspaper. "Like Islam, the FN defends the...

Rochereau's books are arranged in neat piles on the mantelpiece, his collection of sabres hangs on a wall, and his bed is still covered by the same lace spread as when, nearly a century ago, he left home for the last time. A vial on the desk sports a label saying it contains "the earth of Flanders in which our dear child fell and which kept his remains for four years". On his bed the medals he was awarded for bravery, the croix de guerre and the Legion of Honour, are displayed in a glass case next to his képi...

Lebanon-based Hizbullah chief Hassan Nasrallah has rejected a call by visiting United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for his terrorist organization to disarm, saying "The resistance is here to stay." Ban told a news conference Friday after meeting with Lebanese leaders, "I am deeply concerned about the military capacity of Hizbullah and... the lack of progress in disarmament," referring to the requirement for the terrorist group to disarm set forth in the ceasefire agreement with Israel that ended the 2006 Second Lebanon War. Instead, Hizbullah has increased its weapons arsenal to a level beyond that which it had prior to the...

Since 2011, France has enforced a so-called “burka ban” on Muslims covering their faces in public, making it the first European country to take such measures against publicly-demonstrated Islamic dress codes. About five million Muslims live in France. Offenders in and around Paris usually receive a fine, but on Oct. 3, the ban reached a new level of enforcement, as a Muslim woman was kicked out of the Bastille Opera house after refusing to uncover her face. Performers of La Traviata didn’t notice the woman until the second act, at which point they refused to continue performing until she was...

Vandals attacked a giant green inflatable sculpture in one of the most famous squares in Paris in the early hours of Saturday after its resemblance to a sex toy sparked an outcry. The 24-meter-high canvas artwork by U.S. artist Paul McCarthy was unveiled on Thursday in Place Vendome, famous for its luxury jewellery stores and the Ritz Hotel. "An unidentified group of people cut the cables which were holding the artwork, which caused it to collapse," police told Reuters. "The person responsible for the piece then decided to deflate it to avoid it being more seriously damaged." The deflated sculpture...

Professor Odon Vallet is an expert in the history of religions and civilizations and, since he is deemed a strong and radical "Progressive", he is a favorite in the French media to speak as a secular-friendly voice on Catholic issues. He was interviewed by popular daily "20 Minutes" on the results of the 2014 assembly of the Synod of Bishops: In what sense did the provisional text [the Forte relatio] signal an important step? The provisional text included two overtures. One regarding the remarried divorcees. The other regarding homosexuals. It was not a revolution, but an evolution. It was not...

The city in the pictures is Marseille, France's second largest city, for many years considered as one of the cleanest, most beautiful cities in the world. See what it looks like now. In her best-selling book The Force of Reason, the great, pioneer counterjihad writer Oriana Fallaci talked about Marseille as a symbol par excellence of the devastation, ugliness and filth brought by the Muslim invasion of Europe. Europe, she wrote, is becoming unrecognisable. Marseille is "no longer a French city, it is a Maghrebin city". Arabic ​is the first language spoken in Marseille, and French only the second. 95%...

Manufacturers of French arms are back in Cairo The Tribune offers a series of new industrial land conquest of French armaments. Egypt, which has offered this year for four corvettes 1 billion euros, shows again interested in the Rafale. Egypt and God will surprise to the French armament industry in 2014 in the absence yet of major contracts signed by more traditional customers in France (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Singapore, Malaysia .. .) For DCNS scored a real coup in Egypt thanks to a very efficient commercial "raid". In less than six months, the naval group sold in Cairo four corvettes...

Karen Hughes, President Bush’s newest undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and the caretaker of America’s image abroad, has her work cut out for her. A Zogby survey of 3,900 Arabs in Morocco, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates has uncovered massive distrust of U.S. motives in the Middle East. Unkindest cut of all, Arabs would prefer that President Chirac and France lead the world rather than us, and, rather than have us as the world’s lone superpower, they would prefer the Chinese. While Arabs are not as rabidly anti-American as in the aftermath of the...

An Air France plane has been isolated at an airport in Madrid after a patient was reported to have a fever and shivers. The situation is being treated as a suspected case of ebola, a health ministry official was quoted as saying.

A nurse who authorities believe may be infected with Ebola was rushed to a Paris-area hospital on Thursday afternoon for tests and treatment, French paper Le Parisien reported If the woman, who has not been named, is confirmed to be infected with the disease that's killed over 4,000 people in Africa she would be the first person infected in France.Two other suspected cases in Paris in the last seven days, including one involving an American national, turned out to be false alarms. Health authorities believe she could be infected because she treated the Doctors' Without Borders aid worker who arrived...

A few days ago President Obama, in an interview he gave France's Canal+ TV Channel, said that the American people need to be better educated about Islam, since US could and should be regarded as a Muslim country. He said that the number of Muslims residing in the US makes it "one of the biggest Muslim nations". In reality the US has one of the smallest percentages of Muslims of any Western country. The number of Muslims in the US is approximately 4.5 million, 1.5% of the population, one of the smallest minorities in the US. Since there are approximately...

French police were called to local park to investigate a group of "bearded" men in traditional Arabic dress on Monday after they were spotted carrying imitation weapons and conducting military-style combat exercises, reports local media. As officers approached, the group of six "apprentice jihadists" shouted "infidels" at them, and that they "would burn in hell", reports theLocal.fr. When the men were questioned, their leader claimed they were training to "avenge the deaths of their Muslim brothers who died under gunfire", and as they were searched they shouted "Allahu akbar" at the officers

In a Trans-Atlantic debate over cigarette packaging, North Carolina’s governor poses a rhetorical question to the Irish and French governments: Would Guinness be recognizable labeled simply as “beer?” Or would champagne sell as well in a bottle lacking its distinctive curves? Gov. Pat McCrory has written letters to French and Irish officials decrying plans in those countries to force manufacturers to package their cigarettes in plain containers. McCrory argues farmers and manufacturers in the top U.S. tobacco-producing state would be hurt by the proposals to remove brand logos and colors from cigarette boxes. “Plain packaging laws are a direct assault...

France’s foreign minister said on Tuesday that Paris should recognize a Palestinian state only if doing so would help achieve peace, not as a symbolic gesture. However, if negotiations between the Palestinians and Israel fail, Paris “would not shirk its responsibilities” but would recognize the Palestinian state, the minister, Laurent Fabius, said in answer to a question in parliament. His remarks came a day after British lawmakers voted to recognize Palestine. Their vote will not alter government policy, but it does carry symbolic value as Palestinians pursue international recognition. “From the moment when we say that there are two states,...

Thousands march in France, Germany, Austria to support Kobane Kurds Created 2014-10-12 10:37 By RFI France - Syria - Turkey - Germany - Austria At least 5,000 people demonstrated in Paris on Saturday to call for international help for Kurds fighting the Islamic State (IS) armed group in the Syrian city of Kobane. Similar protests took place in Germany and Austria, where two men were seriously injured by IS sympathisers. “What are you waiting for? Another massacre?” read a banner on the Paris protest, where the red flag of the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK), currently in peace talks with the...

Pre neanderthal bones 200,000 years old have been discovered on a building site, and could shed light on every day behaviour of our extinct relatives It is thought that these pre neanderthal bones could shed light on the everyday behaviour of our closest extinct relative. They were discovered in Northern France by chance on a building site and it is though the arm bones could be as much as 200,000 years old. It is a rare find, only 12 other sites in Europe have discovered such significant archeological remains. The bones are of particular scientific interest because they hint at...

With Washington pressure rising, secretary of state heads to Vienna next week as target date for agreement on curbing Tehran atomic program nears America’s top diplomat is plunging back into Iranian nuclear talks, keeping one eye on the longtime US adversary and the other on political developments at home, as pressure rises in Washington for a deal ensuring the Islamic Republic cannot become a nuclear state. The prospect of a Republican takeover of the Senate means Secretary of State John Kerry will be on a tight leash with a late-November deadline approaching for an agreement. Kerry, European Union negotiator Catherine...

As many as 2.5 million French men and women live abroad—and more are leaving every year, mostly heading to London. The French Foreign Ministry said 1.6 million people left the country last year, The Independent of London reported Saturday. The data include those who had registered at French consulates abroad. “The real figure is twice as high,” Hélène Charveriat, the delegate-general of the Union of French Citizens Abroad, told the Independent. […] “Young people feel stuck, and they want interesting jobs. … Businessmen say the labor code is complex, and they’re taxed even before they start working. Pensioners can also...

Pat Buchanan, the columnist, author, and until recently MSNBC's token right-winger, garnered a lot of sympathy when he was fired from his job at the left-leaning news network apparently because of a book he wrote. Too bad, as reported in the Daily Caller, Buchanan had to ruin things by articulating how obnoxious his views really are. In essence, he suggested that Israel with its 300 estimated nuclear weapons was a bigger threat to the United States than is Iran with its nuclear program on Russian television. Buchanan went on about how his favorite Jewish conspiracy, which he called the "neocons,"...