Free Republic

President Barack Obama is holding a video conference with European leaders to discuss their push for peace in Ukraine and other global security issues. The White House says other leaders planning to be on the Tuesday morning call include British Prime Minister David Cameron, French President Francois Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and European Commission President Donald Tusk.

Madonna claimed Friday that the anti-Semitism in France and elsewhere in Europe has become so bad that “it feels like Nazi Germany.” Speaking to French radio station Europe 1, the 56-year-old singer lamented that France was once a country “that embraced everyone and encouraged freedom in every way, shape or form,” Us Magazine reported.

ISIS has announced that Lebanon will be the next state to fall under the sway of its “caliphate.” According to Beirut's Daily Star newspaper, the only reason ISIS hasn't attacked yet in force is because they haven't decided on the mission's commander. The Lebanese army is one of the least effective in the Middle East—and that's saying something in a region where the far more capable Syrian and Iraqi armies are utterly failing to safeguard what should be their own sovereign territory. So France is going to send a three billion dollar package of weapons to Lebanon and the Saudis...

When he was seven years old, Max-Hervé George was given a magic ticket by his father. It lets him turn back the clock, to invest with perfect hindsight week after week, steadily accumulating a fortune. The ticket is a life insurance contract and Mr George, now 25, has fought for years in the French courts to preserve its magic. He could be a billionaire by the end of this decade and, by the end of the next, his contract would be worth more than the insurance company which stands behind it, Aviva France. There is no mystery to the financial...

Since January 15 the French army’s “Opération Sentinelle” has protected 722 Jewish schools and synagogues, some 24/7 even when the establishments were empty. The operation came to be regarded as too dangerous for the soldiers who were regularly targets of attacks. Over time the men were worn out. (snip)

The foreign nationals aged 70, 54 and 36 — who work for the Doha-based international broadcaster — were taken into custody Wednesday afternoon after police spotted a drone flying in the Bois de Boulogne woods in western Paris, said Paris prosecutors' spokeswoman Agnes Thibault-Lecuivre. She said is was unclear what the trio were trying to accomplish. "Three Al-Jazeera English journalists have been held by police in Paris while filming a report on the city's recent mystery drones," the network said in a comment from its base in Qatar. "We will comment further when more information is available."

The journalists -- all foreign nationals -- were taken into custody on Wednesday afternoon after police saw a drone flying in the Bois de Boulogne woods in western Paris, Paris prosecutors’ spokeswoman Agnes Thibault-Lecuivre said. It was unclear what the trio was trying to accomplish, she said. Officials with Qatar-based Al-Jazeera did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The journalists can be held for a maximum of 24 hours under French law. Flying drones without a license in France is illegal and carries a maximum one-year prison sentence and a 75,000 euro fine. Wednesday’s incident comes on the...

This morning the BBC published details of a major poll of the attitudes of Britain’s Muslims. The headline on the front of the BBC website linking to the research states: “Muslims ‘oppose cartoon reprisals’”. This of course relates to attitudes within the Muslim community towards the recent Charlie Hebdo attacks. It’s a reassuring headline. It’s also wrong. Many Muslims - a majority - do indeed utterly oppose the murderous killings in Paris. But a very, very large number of Muslims don’t. Presented with the statement “I have some sympathy for the motives behind the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris”, 27...

The European Union’s executive has unveiled a vast plan to boost coordination between the EU’s 28 national energy markets to wean Europe off unstable Russian gas supplies and provide cheaper energy for consumers. European Commission Vice President Maroš Šef�ovi� on Wednesday called it “undoubtedly the most ambitious energy project” since the inception of the EU over half a century ago. He believes that improving links across borders in Europe’s energy grid could save businesses and consumers up to €40 billion ($45.4 billion) a year. A more energy-independent Europe will also increase the EU’s political options in eastern Europe. […] “Our...

After flying missions over Afghanistan and Libya, French Rafale fighter pilot "Sharpy" now faces fresh challenges on his new assignment against the Islamic State jihadist group in Iraq. "We are well-trained, we know all the procedures but you still need to get used to the territory," he said after landing his fighter on the carrier Charles de Gaulle following a nighttime sortie. French warplanes have formed part of the US-led coalition carrying out raids against IS jihadists in Iraq for several months. As in Afghanistan, the enemy is extremely mobile and often elusive. IS fighters embed in towns among the...

For the first time, a study shows that a drug used to treat HIV infection also can help prevent it when taken before and after risky sex by gay men. The results offer hope of a more appealing way to help prevent the disease beyond taking daily pills and using condoms, although those methods are still considered best. The study, done in France and Canada, is the first to test “on demand” use of Truvada, a pill combining two AIDS drugs, by people planning to have risky sex. The uninfected men who took it were 86 percent less likely to...

THE Eternal Love of The Father Virtue upon virtue , line upon line of My Word is truly a River of Life as you walk in My Love and not your own for as your Father in Heaven I AM with you always even onto forever but it is My desire you carry My Heart and not your own for your love can be injured But My Love for you ,in you and through you is an unstoppable Truth that sheds off the lies of the enemy and before which all condemnation Must Fall! For My Love is Sovereign and...

Drones have been seen flying over several sensitive landmarks in Paris in a night-time mystery that French police say is being taken seriously. At least five of the unmanned aerial machines were spotted between midnight on Monday and 0600 on Tuesday, and none of the operators has been caught. The first appeared over the US embassy and there were later sightings near the Eiffel Tower and Place de la Concorde. French police believe the drone flights could be linked. Small drones are easy to buy but their appearance in recent months over sensitive locations has worried French authorities.

Former film star Brigitte Bardot, France’s iconic blonde bombshell and “sex kitten” who reigned supreme from 1952 – 1973, has been on trial five times for insulting Muslims and “inciting racial hatred.” The prosecutor in her fifth trial, Anne de Fontette, wants a heftier fine and a tougher sentence: the equivalent of $24,000 and a two month (hopefully) suspended jail term. What crimes has Bardot committed in the land without a First Amendment, in the land of Hate Speech laws that are being slickly exploited by non-persecuted Muslims? Bardot has written: “I am fed up with being under the thumb...

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 19 — As Iraq confronts the possibility of a new war with the United States, its leaders appear to have concluded that they have one decisive advantage that they lacked during the countdown to the Persian Gulf war 12 years ago: this time, they seem convinced, the world is on their side and against the United States. "The world has abandoned America; it has become isolated," Saddam Hussein's No. 2 man, Izzat Ibrahim, boasted as he announced the result of this week's election: Iraqis, by official reckoning, had re-elected Saddam Hussein to his position of absolute power...

A Muslim political party will be contesting seats at next month’s regional elections in France, standing on a platform which includes promises to expand the halal industry and allow girls to wear the burqa. Critics have called the Democratic Union for French Muslims a “catastrophe”, claiming that it flies in the face of France’s secular history, but it’s founder insists that his party promotes religious tolerance. 10 percent of the French population is Muslim, giving the party a potential support base of around 6 million voters. “Muslims don’t feel well served by any of the traditional parties,” the party’s founder,...

Bardot has written: “I am fed up with being under the thumb of this population which is destroying us, destroying our country.”

Former film star Brigitte Bardot, France’s iconic blonde bombshell and “sex kitten” who reigned supreme from 1952 – 1973, is currently on trial for the fifth time for insulting Muslims and “inciting racial hatred.” Bardot has been fined four times and has also received suspended jail sentences.

Islam is a threat to both Christians and Jews, as we noted from the recent killing of 21 Egyptian Christians in Libya. But scholars of the history of anti-semitism tell us that Jews are the canary in the mine, meaning that they are often the first target for hate-mongers. As bad as anti-Christian sentiment is in the Muslim world, there are some Muslim countries that an openly-identified American Christian can visit, that are too dangerous for an openly-identified Jew of any nationality to visit. An openly-identified Jew visiting most Muslim nations puts his life at great risk, even in so-called...

Can better urban planning help prevent terrorist attacks? The idea sounds fanciful, even disrespectful to victims of extremist violence. But officials in Paris, still reeling from last month’s deadly terrorist attacks on a satirical magazine and a kosher deli, are putting some hope in a plan to re-zone the city and annex the notorious inner suburbs, or banlieues, where the terror plot was born. In what would be perhaps the greatest redesign of Paris since Baron Haussmann laid out its famed boulevards in the mid-19th Century, the “Métropole du Grand Paris” would attempt to bring the poor, heavily immigrant neighborhoods...

<p>ANKARA, Feb 19 (Reuters) - Turkey will go ahead with plans to order a $3.4-billion missile defence system from China, Defence Minister Ismet Yilmaz said, despite U.S. and NATO concerns over security and compatibility of weaponry.</p>

(AFP) Dozens more graves have been vandalised at French cemeteries, the interior ministry said Wednesday, as prosecutors said that the desecration of hundreds of Jewish graves over the weekend in Sarre-Union had a clear “anti-Semitic motive”. The interior ministry said crucifixes were overturned and gravesites disturbed in Tracy-sur-Mer, a tiny town next to the D-Day landing beaches, as well as in Saint-Beat in southwest France in the latest vandalism. Swastikas were found in two other towns, the ministry said. The discoveries came as five teens faced preliminary charges for desecrating hundreds of graves at a Jewish cemetery in the eastern...

Fighting has flared up again in the Ukraine. The Egyptians are sending soldiers into Libya as another North African state collapses into chaos. The militants of Islamic State are spreading their influence across the region. You’d think Barack Obama might have bigger foreign policy issues to worry about than a small state of 10 million people on the eastern edges of the Mediterranean. But Greece may be about to turn from a European into an American problem. As the game of brinkmanship between the radical Syriza government elected last month and the European Union gets played out, it has become...

China's Real Estate Market Crashing... Real Estate is the single biggest domestic lending segment in China. Combined with deflation in Iron Ore, Steel, Copper, and other industrial metals China's collateral quality is looking very very shaky compared to loan volume... SNIP While the world's attention is glued to events in Greece, the real action continues to evolve quietly thousands of kilometers east, in China, where the near record surge in new loans remains unable to offset the dramatic slowdown in shadow banking issuance. And while China's bubble-chasing, animal spirits have recently reoriented themselves from real estate to the stock market,...

US State Department reported to say Israelis would ‘twist details’ to undermine negotiations European officials have confirmed that the US State Department cautioned them against providing Israel with sensitive information on the current round of negotiations with Iran over its alleged nuclear weapons program, The New York Times reported Tuesday. The account came amid vehement denials by the White House and State Department that they had stopped updating Jerusalem on the progress in the talks, even though Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hinted Monday that Israel was indeed being kept in the dark. The report quoted an unnamed European official involved...

The White House is accusing Israel of "cherry-picking" information that distorts the U.S. position in nuclear talks with Iran. “There's no question that some of the things that the Israelis have said in characterizing our negotiating position have not been accurate. There's no question about that,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said during a press briefing on Wednesday. "We've also been very clear about the fact that the United States is not going to be in a position of negotiating this agreement in public, particularly when we see that there is a continued practice of cherry-picking specific pieces of...

In the aftermath of the killing of a man at a Copenhagen synagogue by a member of the Religion of Peace, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “This wave of attacks is expected to continue. Jews deserve security in every country, but we say to our Jewish brothers and sisters, Israel is your home.” Russian emigre Natan Sharansky echoed Netanyahu’s call, stating, “There is no future for Jews in western Europe.” In response, European leaders shouted down Netanyahu. “We know there are doubts, questions across the community,” said French President Francois Hollande, who was elected with in excess of 93...

Earlier last week, in an address before French immigrants to Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu proudly stated that his appearance in the rally last month in Paris and his planned address to the US Congress were in his capacity "not just as the prime minister of Israel but as a representative of the entire Jewish people." Rather than rally behind the prime minister of the Jewish State, Jews driven by a liberal agenda which is often counter to the interests of the Jewish people and the State of Israel chose to immediately go into attack mode. Social media platforms featured...

France on Monday signed an agreement with Egypt for the first foreign sale of its Rafale fighter jet, in a deal that will boost Cairo’s military as it tackles jihadists, AFP reported. Paris hopes the 5.2 billion euro ($5.9 billion) deal for 24 Rafale fighters to be delivered later this year will prompt others to snap up its latest combat jet. For Egypt, the agreement is a show of support for President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, who overthrew his Islamist predecessor in 2013 and wants to break a U.S. monopoly over Egypt’s arms supplies. In October of 2013, three months after Islamist...

Egyptian warplanes struck hard at ISIS militants in neighboring Libya, killing as many as 64 militants and destroying the Islamist terror group's training camps and weapons caches a day after a sickening video surfaced showing black-clad jihadists beheading 21 Coptic Christians. The strikes came in two waves after Egypt's President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi went on national television in the world's most populous Arab nation and vowed revenge was coming. The address was followed by the airing of military video showing the planes taking off for the mission and an Armed Forces General Command statement saying the strikes were "to avenge...

The Conservatives have opened up a four-point lead over Labour after the biggest surge in their support for two years, a poll has suggested. A Guardian/ ICM poll showed that the Tories are six points up to 36 per cent, only one point short of their result in the 2010 General Election. Labour support fell one point to 32 per cent, while the Liberal Democrats were also down a point to 10 per cent.

Saverne (France) (AFP) - French prosecutors said Monday they had taken five teenagers into custody suspected of vandalising hundreds of Jewish graves, an act that prompted fresh pleas for Jews not to turn their back on France. The boys are aged between 15 and 17 and all come from Sarre-Union in Alsace, eastern France, where around 300 tombs were defaced and damaged on Thursday. The youngest came forward after seeing the scale of the reaction across the country to the vandalism, prosecutor Philippe Vannier said. "Apparently, he was very, very affected by the scale of the reaction to this affair,...

PARIS—French police detained five teenage boys for questioning in relation to the desecration of a Jewish cemetery in the eastern part of the country, an incident that has raised anxiety among French Jews about their security. Philippe Vannier, a French state prosecutor in Saverne in the Alsace region, told a news conference on Monday that one teen had turned himself in, which then led the police to four others who are suspected of knocking over and vandalizing about 250 out of the 400 tombstones at the cemetery. Mr. Vannier said the five youths “had no known ideological views that could...

~snip~ "We know there are doubts, questions across the community," French President Francois Hollande said Monday. "I will not just let what was said in Israel pass, leading people to believe that Jews no longer have a place in Europe and in France in particular." French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said Monday the government would defend French Jews against what he described as "Islamo-fascism." "A Jew who leaves France is a piece of France that is gone," Valls told RTL radio ~snip~ German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Monday that her government will do everything possible to make sure Jewish sites...

Greece's pleas to stop the "fiscal waterboarding" of its devastated economy are substantively no different from President Obama's repeated warnings to Germany to stop bleeding the euro area economy with excessive fiscal austerity. Sadly, the president's reportedly more than a dozen phone calls to the German Chancellor Merkel in 2011 and 2012 urging supportive economic policies in the euro area fell on deaf ears. These calls were not just brushed aside; they were plainly ridiculed as Chancellor Merkel kept telling the media that "it made no sense to be adding new debt to old debt." But -- worrying about one-fifth...

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls on Monday slammed the attacks in Denmark by Islamist terrorist Omar Abdel Hamid Hussein on Saturday, in which two people were murdered, as being an act of "Islamo-fascism." Responding to the attacks in Copenhagen and the attacks on Paris last month, Valls said "to combat Islamo-fascism, for that is what it should be called, our strength must come from unity," reports AFP. Valls also responded to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's call for European Jews to come home to Israel in the face of widespread anti-Semitism and violence on the continent, noting Netanyahu is "in the...

France’s interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve described act in Sarre-Union as “despicable” France’s interior minister said several hundreds of tombs had been defaced at a Jewish cemetery in the east of the country, in what he called “a despicable act”. “The country will not tolerate this new injury which goes against the values that all French people share,” said Bernard Cazeneuve, without giving further details of the incident in the town of Sarre-Union. “Every effort will be made to identify, question and bring to justice the person or persons responsible for this ignominious act,” he added. France’s prime minister Manuel Valls,...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AltyhmrIFgo

Five adolescents aged 15 to 17 have been taken into custody in eastern France for questioning over a massive vandalism attack against Jewish graves, a local prosecutor said on Monday. All five are from the region of Sarre-Union in Alsace, where around 300 tombs were defaced over the weekend. The youngest came forward after being shocked by the massive reaction across the country to the vandalism, prosecutor Philippe Vannier said. "Apparently, he was very very affected by the scale of the reaction to this affair, including the statements from the highest state authorities," Vannier told reporters. The boy, who was...

Louis Jourdan, who crafted a Hollywood acting career in the footsteps of fellow dapper Frenchmen Maurice Chevalier and Charles Boyer and is best remembered for the musical “Gigi” and as the villain in James Bond pic “Octopussy,” has died at 93. According to his friend and biographer Olivier Minne, he died Saturday at his home in Beverly Hills.

Classical French Actor Louis Jourdan Has Died at 93 Louis Jourdan, a French actor famous for American film and television appearances in the Oscar-winning musical GIGI, MADAME BOVARY, CAN-CAN, and THE FIRST OLYMPICS: ATHENS, 1896, as well as Broadway appearances in shows such as ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN SEE FOREVER, has died. The Hollywood Walk of Fame winner was 93. Jourdan was ordered to make German propaganda films which he refused to do and fled to join his family in unoccupied France. There he started making movies again, ten films in two years. His father was arrested...

Louis Jourdan who crafted a Hollywood acting career in the footsteps of fellow dapper Frenchmen Maurice Chevalier and Charles Boyer and is best remembered for the musical “Gigi” and as the villain in James Bond pic “Octopussy,” has died at 93. According to his friend and biographer Olivier Minne, he died Saturday at his home in Beverly Hills. Jourdan offered a certain effortless charm that worked equally well in light heroic roles and more sinister ones. “He was the last French figure of the Hollywood golden age. And he worked with so many of the greatest actors and directors,” said...

Even as three Rafale fighters line up in Bengaluru for eye-popping aerobatics displays at the Aero India 2015 exhibition this week, senior ministry of defence (MoD) sources say the proposal to buy the French fighter is "effectively dead".The reason: During three years of negotiations between Dassault and MoD officials in the so-called "contract negotiation committee" (CNC), it has emerged that Dassault's bid was actually higher than that of the Eurofighter Typhoon, not lower as the MoD had announced on January 31, 2012. Dassault had submitted a sketchy commercial bid, and when the CNC obtained details from the French company to...

Egypt says it has bombed Islamic State targets in Libya, hours after the group published video showing the apparent beheadings of 21 Egyptian Christians. State TV said the dawn strikes had targeted camps, training sites and weapons storage areas. Earlier, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said Egypt had the "right to respond" against IS. A video emerged on Sunday showing a group wearing orange overalls being forced to the ground and decapitated. IS militants claim to have carried out several attacks in Libya, which is in effect without a government. "Egypt reserves the right to respond at the proper time and...

Yahoo Canada News - "HORRIBLE PHOTOS reveal ISIS marched 21 Coptic Christians to beach, beheaded them all" Image via Twitter/ @trscoop / The Right Scoop CAIRO (Reuters) - Islamic State released a video on Sunday purporting to show the beheading of a group of Egyptian Christians kidnapped in Libya, violence likely to deepen Cairo's concerns over security threats from militants thriving in the neighboring country's chaos. Egypt's state news agency MENA quoted the spokesman for the Coptic Church as confirming that 21 Egyptian Christians believed to be held by Islamic State were dead. In the video, militants in black...

Feb. 15, 2015 Hundreds Of Jewish Tombs Damaged In Northern France Hundreds of graves have been vandalized at a Jewish cemetery in eastern France, in what the president called an "odious and barbaric" anti-Semitic act against French values. The vandalism comes at a time of growing insecurity among French Jews and amid general religious tensions in Europe, after Islamic radicals attacked a kosher market and a satirical newspaper in Paris last month and similar attacks hit Denmark this weekend. French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said in a statement Sunday that a criminal investigation team is at the damaged cemetery in...

White House Warns Europe On Greek Showdown Washington blames Europe for the lack of global recovery and is losing its patience with EMU creditor states that fail to pull their weight By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard 13 Feb 2015 The Obama administration has leapt to the defence of Greece, warning Germany and Europe’s creditor powers that they must meet Athens half-way to avert a potentially dangerous rupture and a euro break-up. Caroline Atkinson, the US deputy-national security adviser, said the eurozone authorities had imposed the main burden of adjustment on the weaker deficit states and should do more to accept their share...

A French graffiti artist has told how he was attacked by a gang after refusing to take down a mural calling for religious harmony in Paris. The artist, known as Combo, 28, was left with a dislocated shoulder and bruises across his face after being set upon in a ghetto in the east of the capital. [snip] When asked whether Paris had changed since the Islamist attacks, Combo said: 'It is different, clearly.

I'm coming out of a week-and-a-half of sub-par health, and playing catch-up on the last few days' news. Much of it is just new trees in the same old forest: the remorseless retreat of American power in the world - ie, "Yemen Rebels Seize U.S. Embassy Vehicles As Diplomats Flee". But some of it is almost too cute. In Paris, the street artist Combo has been beaten up by four "young people" who objected to his "Co-Exist" poster: Combo declined to discuss the identity of his assailants. "It would only add fuel to the fire," he told the French newspaper......

our Muslims in Porte Dorée (the Golden door), a ghetto east of Paris, beat artist Combo after he refused to take down his Coexist street art. Combo suffered a dislocated shoulder, bruises and a black eye. Artnet reported, via Jihad Watch: It seems like something one would be hard pressed to disagree with: the word “coexist,” written on a wall using a Muslim crescent as the letter “C,” a Star of David as the letter “X,” and a Christian cross as a “T.”