Free Republic

EMMANUEL MACRON duped supporters to get to the top and his En Marche! movement will fail to live up to expectations, his own party members have blasted. The damning verdict will come as a blow to the French President whose reputation has been left battered after poll results revealed his popularity has plunged after just 100 days in office. President Emmanuel Macron promised to reform labour laws in the lead up to his election victory as he planned to kick start the revitalisation of the French economy. But members of the En Marche! party say it was a “giant swindle”...

The Ministry of National Defense is suing the French government for alleged kickbacks paid to French officials for the purchase of Dassault Mirage 2000 fighters between 1992 and 1997, an official said. The ministry has acquired the services of an elite French legal firm for one year for the suit, costing NT$177 million (US$5.86 million), a senior official who has knowledge of the matter said. The France-based legal firm is to represent Taiwan until July 23 next year, but the ministry is to continue the case if the court of arbitration does not reach a verdict by July next year,...

French Revolution Attacking the American Revolution The Google firing confirms a working hypothesis I have been pondering recently. The French Revolution is attacking the American Revolution. The American Revolution was sparked by the Enlightenment, Judeo/Christian moral beliefs, mixed with Greek and Roman philosophy and political theories. At its best, the American Revolution promotes universal human equality–a work still in progress–individual freedom, freedom of thought and speech, the rule of law, etc.. The French Revolution, in contrast, is Utopian, collectivist, authoritarian, intolerant, and punitive. It is anti-religion generally and anti-Christianity specifically. It accepts the belief that the ends justify the means....

A man has been arrested following the suspected terror attack in Paris earlier today. Police confirmed they have made one arrest after six soldiers were injured when a BMW ploughed in to them close to military barracks in a Levallois-Perret suburb, north west of the French capital. A French official said the arrest was violent, and police opened fire on the 37-year-old suspect. The terrorist suspect was ‘seriously wounded’ in a fierce gunfight with police officers close to the northern port town of Boulogne-sur-Mer. He was shot five times, while an officer was also hit by a bullet before the...

(CNN)Police in Paris are searching for a BMW car and its driver who rammed into a group of soldiers outside a barracks in a suburb northwest of Paris on Wednesday morning. France's counter-terror unit is investigating the attack, which left six soldiers injured, three seriously, according to Paris police. The soldiers' injuries are not life threatening. The attack happened at the Place de Verdun in Levallois-Perret around 8:00 a.m. local time. Levallois-Perret, a quiet and affluent neighborhood, is home to the headquarters of the DCRI, France's counter intelligence agency. "There was no doubt that this was a deliberate act," the...

...But politicians in charge wanted to send a strong message to Greenpeace, which had intensified its anti-nuclear efforts with the Rainbow Warrior – a much bigger ship than previous ones it had used. "It could have forced its way into the nuclear testing zone and the only way to stop it would have been to shoot at it, which wouldn't be a great look for the French." French authorities would have considered the mission successful, regardless of Pereira's death, Arboit says. "If it wasn't for him, no one would be still talking about the Rainbow Warrior," he adds, bluntly. Life...

* In the last 30 years, more mosques and Muslim prayer centers have been built in France than all the Catholic churches built in the last century. * The Church of Santa Rita used to stand in the fifteenth arrondissement of Paris. A few weeks after Father Hamel was murdered by Islamic terrorists, the French police cleared the church. It is now a parking lot. Police dragged the priests out by their legs as a Mass was being celebrated.* In France there are laws protecting old trees. But the state is free to flatten old Christian churches. The vacuums...

Late last night, the Eiffel Tower was evacuated after a knife-wielding Mauritanian-born man shouted “Allahu Akbar” (an Arabic term meaning “Allah is greater [than your God or government]”) before trying to force his way past security. The man, presumably Muslim given what he chose to scream and given the fact that Mauritania is 100% Muslim, was arrested. No one was hurt in the incident. Police arrested the would-be-intruder at around 11.30pm, just half an hour before the tower stops admitting visitors.

French President Emmanuel Macron’s popularity has slumped less than three months since he took office, according to a YouGov poll published Thursday. Macron has slipped seven points, with just 36 percent of respondents having a positive view of the president who was elected on May 7. Forty-nine percent have a negative view, a rise of 13 points, according to the poll for the Huffington Post and the CNews TV channel. The poll of 1,003 people was carried out on July 26-27. It confirms a downward trend already shown by a previous poll, carried out by Ifop on July 17-22, which...

It wasn’t a bad week for the eurozone. Greece was able to borrow money from the bond market for the first time in two years, securing €3 billion ($3.5 billion). The International Monetary Fund increased its growth forecast for the eurozone as a whole, especially for southern European members, which were hard hit by the financial crisis. But despite the positive signals, the eurozone is hardly crisis-proof and much work remains to shore up the currency union. This was made clear by German Chancellor Angela Merkel two weeks ago, when she visited French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris. “We will...

France’s highest administrative court on Monday rejected the government’s appeal against an order to provide water and sanitation facilities for hundreds of migrants sleeping rough in the northern port of Calais. In a written decision seen by AFP, the Council of State said the state’s failure to provide for the migrants’ basic needs “exposed them to inhuman and degrading treatment, dealing a serious and clearly illegal blow to a basic right.” […] The court upheld a June 26 order by a court in the northern city of Lille for the state to supply the migrants with running water, toilets and...

France’s first center for deradicalization is set to close after less than a year, the government announced on Friday. The Pontourney center in central France was inaugurated in September 2016 with the aim of working with young people to convince them to turn their backs on extremism. Officially labeled a center for “Reintegration and Citizenship”, it was targeted at 18-30-year-olds who had been exposed to radical ideologies, but the Interior Ministry said on Friday that “the experiment has not been conclusive” and that the center would be permanently closed. The center had capacity for up to 25 people, who were...

A rights group has accused French police of using pepper spray on migrants in Calais on a regular basis but authorities deny the claims. French police are regularly using pepper spray against migrants in Calais, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Wednesday, an accusation denied by authorities. In a report entitled “Like living in hell”, the use of pepper spray against migrants massed in the northern coastal city is described as “routine”. “Police use of pepper spray in Calais is so common that many asylum seekers and migrants had difficulty recalling precisely how many times they had been sprayed,” the report...

PROTESTERS have built a wall in an attempt to stop migrants from using a shelter. A 59-feet long and six-feet tall wall has been constructed in front of a hotel, which is set to welcome 85 migrants. The French government has sent migrants based in Paris and Calais to welcome centres across the country. But residents of Semeac in the French Pyrenees constructed a barrier around the disused Formula 1 hotel as they believe that their small town will not be able to cope with the number of new arrivals.

French people are in uproar after a picture was posted online of a Camembert cheese that had clearly been cut in a flagrant violation of fromage etiquette. The post on on the French page of the site Reddit was titled "How my mother cuts Camembert..." (Le manière dont ma mère coupe le camembert), It was flooded with comments from French people, who reacted with a mixture of mockery and anger at the way the famous French cheese from Normandy had been cut. "We've guillotined people for less than that," wrote Raleur Francais. Another wrote "... well you just can't choose...

Protesters in a town in southwest France have built a nearly-two-meter-high wall around the entrance to a disused hotel to try to prevent it being turned into a migrant shelter. Working under cover of darkness, a few dozen residents of Semeac in the Pyrenees mountains erected a wall 18 meters (60 feet) long and 1.8 meters high barring access to the Formule 1 hotel, a spokesman for the group confirmed. “We [are] not against taking in migrants,” Laurent Teixeira told AFP. “But you have to take account of the citizens.” Teixeira accused the authorities of failing to consult residents about...

Theatre goers watching the premiere of “Dunkirk” at Calgary’s Westhills Cinemas on Friday night got a surprise encounter with a 97-year -old man who was at the battle in 1940. The Battle of Dunkirk took place during the Second World War between the Allies and Nazi Germany in Dunkirk, France. Calgarian Ken Sturdy, dressed in a jacket adorned with medals, viewed the movie and was impressed by what he saw...

A poll out Sunday shows the popularity rating of France’s new President Emmanuel Macron has slumped 10 points to hit 54 percent over the past month. While Macron has made a strong start on the world stage and won a solid majority in parliament, his first three months in power have not been completely trouble-free. He was widely criticised by opponents and the press as heavy-handed after a row over budget cuts that ended with the resignation of a highly-regarded military chief. The 39-year-old leader has also backed a controversial bill to toughen France’s security laws that includes measures some...

Around 30,000 French troops held back Nazi divisions near the city of Lille to protect their allies during the evacuation code-named Operation Dynamo. Renowned French film critic Jacques Mandelbaum called Nolan "witheringly impolite" and slammed the director's "deplorable indifference" towards his country's contribution to the epic evacuation. "Where in the film are the 120,000 French soldiers who were also evacuated from Dunkirk? Where are the 40,000 who sacrificed themselves to defend the city against a superior enemy in weaponry and numbers?" he asked in his review in French newspaper Le Monde.

President Donald Trump was compared to another murderous world dictator on Thursday night as MSNBC’s Hardball host Chris Matthews suggested Trump is just like former Ugandan dictator Idi Amin and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un since Trump and Kim “love the parades” where they can serve as the star alongside military demonstrations. The comparison arose while Matthews and his Hardball Roundtable discussed Trump’s latest blockbuster New York Times interview where the President raved about the crowds he claimed were there to see him at the Eiffel Tower and the immaculate Bastille Day parade he witnessed. MSNBC’s Chris Matthews Compares Trump to...