Free Republic

France must repay the EU €1.07 billion ($1.2 billion) in agricultural aid paid to farmers due to fraud and mistakes over a four-year period, the European Commission said on Tuesday. The money, about 2 percent of the €40 billion that France has received from Brussels between 2008 and 2012 under the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy, must be repaid in three installments up to 2017, a European source said. France was penalized for failing to check farmers’ claims for subsidies, especially on environmental issues and calculating the area of arable land. …

An artwork depicting high-heeled shoes on Islamic prayer mats has been removed from an exhibition after a Muslim group warned of possible violence in the wake of the Paris attacks. The French-Algerian artist, Zoulikha Bouabdellah, withdrew the work from an exhibition in a northern Paris suburb with a large Muslim population after an Islamic group told local authorities it could provoke “uncontrollable, irresponsible incidents”. It is considered disrespectful to step on Muslim prayer maps with shoes.

...Pierre-Paul Riquet, the man behind one of the 17th century's greatest works of engineering -- and some say, works of art -- remains in Vauban's shadow, despite his life's accomplishment, which was classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996. This 150-mile long waterway was once known as the Canal Royal en Languedoc, for good reason. French revolutionaries may have removed the 'royal' from its title in 1789, yet this is a canal which remains fit for a king. Dappled sunlight streams onto its emerald-green water from between the leaves of the 42,000 plane and oak trees which line...

Victory! Something is changing. Some positive effects of the Charlie Hebdo atrocities are felt in Italy, with crackdown on the cult of Islam. First Massimo Bitonci, the mayor of the city of Padua, in the region of Venice (Veneto), Northern Italy, simply and clearly said: "No more mosques in Padua. The city council will not grant any more public space for the building of mosques and Islamic places of worship." Padua's councillor Marina Buffoni sent the city's police to Muslim meeting places, to confiscate posters and images of women in burka. She said: "These posters showed women completely covered...

A week before the attack on Charlie Hebdo, France’s leading gay magazine, Têtu, announced the winner of its annual beauty contest. His name was Matthieu Chartraire, and he was 22, doe-eyed and six-packed, with perfectly groomed hair, stubble and eyebrows. A pin-up in every way — until he started talking. To the anger of many of the magazine’s readers, the Adonis of 2015 turns out to be an outspoken supporter of the Front National. Têtu’s editor-in-chief, Yannick Barbe, refused to play censor. ‘It’s within his rights to vote for the FN even if we don’t share his beliefs,’ he said....

It’s been formally acknowledged that U.S. NATO ‘ally’ Turkey is providing safe haven to leaders of Hamas, a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) so designated by the U.S. State Department. By its very definition, an FTO should be considered declared enemy of the U.S. Despite this, Turkey doesn’t appear to be paying any price. Another player in all this is the small nation of Qatar. It is desperately trying to play both sides of a political fence as leaders of Hamas – to include the terrorist organization’s political leader Khaled Meshaal – has been forcibly relocated to Turkey. The reason these...

Gen. Jack Keane (Ret.) was on “The Kelly File” tonight following his testimony about terrorism at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. […] “Radical Islam has increased four-fold in five years,” Keane told Megyn Kelly. […] “This administration has been paralyzed by the fear of adverse consequences in the Middle East driven by the realities of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Keane told Kelly. …

For a long time, I have believed that the gun culture of the United States is dangerous and frankly stupid. So many people are killed by firearms going off accidentally or because they fall into the hands of children or madmen. Their easy availability is not just because they are a transportable and smugglable commodity, but also because there is a myth in American culture that claims that only by possessing guns were the American rebels able to defeat the British and gain independence. Even if that were so, and it is not, what might have been true 300 years...

The recent terrorist attacks in Paris once again pose a question that seldom gets discussed. To whom are these attacks aimed? Is it Christians? Jews? Non-Muslims in general? Could it be Western democracies or Western society as a whole? As media pundits shed their crocodile tears and two-faced politicians dramatize their insincere outrage, every Islamic terrorist since 9-11 knows very well who their targets are. It is the Left. These terrorists may be monsters, but they’re not stupid. They know that their carnage and destruction must make an impression on those most likely to assist their cause: anti-war pacifists, progressives,...

A French judge spared a baby girl from being named Nutella – changing her name to Ella instead to save her from a lifetime of teasing. “The name ‘Nutella’ given to the child is the trade name of a spread,” the court ruled, according to a La Voix Du Nord. “And it is contrary to the child’s interest to have a name that can only lead to teasing or disparaging thoughts.” The parents wanted to name the girl after the popular chocolate spread, but the judge said that the name was not in the interest of the baby girl, who...

A black Marianne has adorned city hall in Frémainville, France since 1999. The small town of Frémainville is one of the few in France where a black-skinned Marianne statue adorns city hall. But the city’s new mayor is replacing the minority Marianne, claiming she does not represent the French republic. Mayor Marcel Allègre, who won local elections in March, has removed the city’s emblematic black Marianne from the main hall where civil marriages are performed, and has placed an order for a new statue. “That black sculpture was a Marianne of liberty, but not a Marianne of the French...

Hollande, Merkel Speak Up for Europe’s Muslims Charlie Hebdo Attacks in Paris Have Fueled Debate Over Radical Islam By WILLIAM HOROBIN in Paris and ANDREA THOMAS in Berlin French and German leaders sought Thursday to reassure Muslims about their place in European society, cementing calls for unity after a series of attacks last week in France by Islamic extremists. Speaking at the Institute of the Arab World in Paris, President François Hollande said that Islam is compatible with democracy and Muslims are the main victims of Islamist militants. “Muslims are the first victims of fanaticism,...

...Abdullah, like other Saudi royals, had numerous wives — at least seven, and perhaps as many as 30. He had at least 15 daughters. Four of them, according to news reports, live under house arrest.... Fayez claims her daughters’ supposed incarceration, which has gone on for some 13 years, was both a mark of Abdullah’s vindictive streak and intolerance of his daughters’ modern, independent upbringing. She says the four have been locked away for more than a decade, subject to abuse and deprivation. Last year, various news stations managed to reach Sahar, 42, and Jawaher, 38, who live in a...

Official PA daily: Israel was behind the terror attacks in France because Israel "was the only one to benefit from them" Israeli Intelligence Service Mossad planned the attacks because Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu wanted - to encourage Jewish immigration from Europe - to take "revenge on European governments... because of their positions on the Palestinian cause" Poll: 84.4% of Palestinians think "Israel behind the murder of French [citizens]"   Nan Jacques Zilberdik    Following the terror attacks against the Charlie Hebdo magazine and a Jewish store in which Muslim terrorists killed 17 people in France earlier this month, columnists writing...

"In our petition we rely, among other sources, on an Amnesty International report that was published in 1995... "There was tension in Rwanda as early as January of 1994. Several of the world's most powerful states imposed international arms control regulations and on May 17 1994 there was a UN embargo. Israel breached the embargo, as did Russia, Belgium, South Africa, France, Spain and others. Many of the planes that transported the shipments were British. The last license to export arms was issued by the Israeli Ministry of Defense in October 1993, about half a year before the massacres began....

apzzyk12 wrote: As a comrade (progressive Democrat), I would like to remind the author that it was over the very strong objections of the TEA party that the Democrats passsed the Lilly Ledbetter Act , which allows women to sue at any time, if they have been paid less than the males for doing the same work. The the Federal system, one has some idea of what others make by their GS level, so there is very little discrimination in that system, while in the private sector it remains taboo for employees to compare wages.- Mitt Who?Dear Pzzy,Employees in the...

A French court has handed out convictions for anti-gay hate crimes on Twitter for the first time, after three people used the hashtag “let’s burn the gays”. In what a major French LGBT rights group called a “significant victory”, three people were convicted in a Paris court this week after they accompanied tweets with hashtags including “let’s burn the gays on…“ or "#brûlonslesgayssurdu).” During the same period in August 2013, “#Lesgaysdoiventdisparaîtrecar”, or “gays must die because…”, was also trending. French LGBT charity Comité Idaho, which organises the nation’s International Day Against Homophobia, brought the case to court after it filed...

Barack Obama's sixth State of the Union address was an homage to France. The president might not have intended it as such -- he mentioned the nation only glancingly when denouncing terror attacks in Pakistan and Paris. Yet France was at the heart of the president's address. France has everything that Obama finds wanting in his own country. His entire presidency is a prolonged effort to tear the United States away from free market economics and decentralized political power (what the French deride as the "Anglo Saxon model") toward the kind of socialist, government-dominated society France has achieved. France is...

Paris officials say Amedy Coulibaly, who killed four hostages at a kosher market and policewoman earlier this month, has been buried in a suburban cemetery. The burial Friday came after a debate over how to handle the bodies of Coulibaly and two other gunmen behind France's worst terrorist attack in decades. All three were killed by police.

[Author's note: Please note that the update of Jan. 16, 2013 substantially changes my understanding of the ZUS.] They go by the euphemistic term Zones Urbaines Sensibles, or Sensitive Urban Zones, with the even more antiseptic acronym ZUS, and there are 751 of them as of last count. They are conveniently listed on one long webpage, complete with street demarcations and map delineations. What are they? Those places in France that the French state does not fully control. They range from two zones in the medieval town of Carcassonne to twelve in the heavily Muslim city of Marseilles, with hardly...

Several French former soldiers have joined the ranks of jihadists fighting in Syria and Iraq, the country’s government confirmed on Wednesday, as it outlined a series of new anti-terrorism measures following the Islamist attacks in Paris. Most of the ex-soldiers, reportedly numbering around 10 and including former paratroopers and French foreign legionnaires, are said to be fighting on behalf of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Most worrying is the reported presence of an ex-member of France’s elite First Marine Infantry Parachute Regiment, considered one of Europe’s most experienced special forces units and which shares the “Who...

The European Central Bank will plough €1.1 trillion into the eurozone economy in a last-ditch attempt to breathe life into the European economy. At its monthly governing council on Thursday (January 22), the bank’s governing council agreed to start buying up to €60 billion of government bonds from March in an unprecedented quantitative easing program. The program is open-ended, and will run until September 2016 at the earliest. Speaking at a press conference following the governing council meeting, ECB president Mario Draghi said that the bond-buying program would remain in place “until we see a sustained adjustment in the path...

The vast majority of Muslims in Germany condemn the attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris. But they are concerned that a new wave of Islamophobia may wash over the country anyway. […] Germany has experienced a fundamental shift, from a republic that sought to keep immigrants at arm’s length to one that is now the second-most attractive immigrant country after the United States. But societal cohesion is currently being tested. The anti-immigration, Islamophobic protests in Dresden organized by PEGIDA have shown that there is still a significant amount of angst about foreigners in Germany and the Paris attacks have triggered...

Paris, the City of Lights: What will happen to all the art, icons, sculptures, statues, old Basilicas, archeological ruins, when Muslims become the majority in Paris and Europe On my third trip to Paris, it was ten days of drizzly and bone-chilling December. We stayed in a cozy but insufficiently heated hotel, just narrow and winding streets away from the magnificent Basilica of Sacré-Cœur in Montmartre. The stark white dome of Sacré-Cœur situated on top of the hill was visible on a sunny day from most points in Paris. Winding down the cozy village-like streets from the Basilica was Place...

France announced sweeping new measures to counter homegrown terrorism Wednesday, including giving security forces better weapons and protection, going on an intelligence agent hiring spree and creating a better database of anyone suspected of extremist links. Since three police were among those killed by the Paris terrorists, the prime minister said improving officers' weapons and protective gear was among the top priorities. France has repeatedly strengthened its counterterrorism laws over the years, including a measure passed in November that focused on preventing French extremists from joining fighters abroad. Another measure — expected to be activated in the coming weeks —...

The gunman who killed four shoppers at a Paris kosher store on January 9 was stopped by a police patrol just days before his deadly rampage but promptly let go, French weekly Le Canard Enchaîné reports. Amédy Coulibaly was shot dead by police after the hostage siege at the Hyper Casher grocery in eastern Paris. French authorities have also linked him with the fatal shooting of a policewoman in a southern suburb of Paris the day before. Coulibaly, who claimed allegiance to the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria, had coordinated his attacks with brothers Saïf and Chérif Kouachi,...

In the wake of the terrorist attack on a kosher market in Paris, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked French Jews to come home. I don't particularly like that advice. I think it would be a tragedy if centuries of Jewish French culture had to die out because Jews were chased out by Islamist thugs. The French government agrees -- for now at least -- and has posted armed soldiers everywhere Jews live and gather. Still, what Netanyahu understands is that there is strength in numbers. The more Jews there are in Israel, the stronger Israel will be. The flip...

What is the New York Times’ first response after Muslims massacred secular cartoonists and Jews? Start immediately collecting Muslim whining to bolster claims of Islamophobia. (via Israel Matzav) In the aftermath of the Paris attacks last week, the New York Times is understandably interested in hearing about the experiences of minorities in Europe these days. That is commendable. It’s just the kind of journalism that sheds light on everyday life of people facing adversity the world over. It’s important and informative and insightful, and we applaud it, and look forward to reading it.Scratch that. Actually, the Times is obsessively...

I’ve never been a fan of global conferences to solve problems, but when I read that the Obama administration is organizing a Summit on Countering Violent Extremism for Feb. 18, in response to the Paris killings, I had a visceral reaction: Is there a box on my tax returns that I can check so my tax dollars won’t go to pay for this? When you don’t call things by their real name, you always get in trouble. And this administration, so fearful of being accused of Islamophobia, is refusing to make any link to radical Islam from the recent explosions...

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo told CNN Tuesday she intends to sue Fox News in the wake of the channel's coverage of supposed "no-go zones" for non-Muslims. Hidalgo said the channel had "insulted" her city. "When we're insulted, and when we've had an image, then I think we'll have to sue, I think we'll have to go to court, in order to have these words removed," Hidalgo told CNN's Christiane Amanpour. "The image of Paris has been prejudiced, and the honor of Paris has been prejudiced."

French Police investigating a rape are run out of a Muslim neighborhood by "youths".http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=ca4_1421804623

When witnesses in the same building as Charlie Hebdo saw masked men with heavy weaponry enter the building they called police, like anyone in their position would do. But the three unarmed officers on bikes who showed up proved to be most unhelpful in the situation. According to the witness, the officers had to retreat after seeing the men were heavily armed. That wasn’t the only instance during the three-day terror spree where police found themselves utterly unprepared to take on the jihadists. The 27-year-old policewoman who was gunned down just south of Paris while attending a traffic accident was...

French police arrested a man on Sunday evening after he deliberately mowed down a dozen pedestrians in the eastern city of Dijon, badly injuring two of them and shouting "Allahu Akbar" ("God is the greatest"), authorities said. The previous day, French police in central France shot dead a man who stabbed and wounded three officers in a police station while shouting those same Arabic words.

France24: Paris mayor to sue Fox News over ‘no-go zones’ slur Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo told CNN on Tuesday that her city intends to sue Fox News after it broadcasted interviews asserting that there are “no-go zones” in the French capital where police and non-Muslims fear to tread.

940 cars were set on fire across France by frenzied revellers as they welcomed the arrival of the New Year, according to France’s Interior Ministry. The wave of arson - part of a bizarre and dangerous tradition frequently reported in mass celebrations as well as protests in the country - was actually a 12% improvement on last year’s New Year’s festivities when 1,067 cars were set ablaze.... Pierre-Henry Brandet, spokesperson for the Interior Ministry told French broadcaster BFM-TV that the car burning was most frequent in eastern France, as well as in the suburbs of Paris, particularly in the banlieues...

.....In May, the French voters elected Mr. Sarkozy as president because he had promised to restore the authority of the Republic over France’s 751 no-go areas, the so-called zones urbaines sensibles (ZUS, sensitive urban areas), where 5 million people — 8 percent of the population — live. During his first months in office he has been too busy with other activities, such as selling nuclear plants to Libya and getting divorced. While the French media publish nude pictures of the future (third) Mrs. Sarkozy, the situation in the ZUS has remained as “sensitive” as before. People get mugged, even murdered,...

Recently, Fox News was shamed into apologizing for one of their anchors talking about "no go" zones in Europe, where non-Muslims aren't welcome and even the police feel reluctant to enter. For the record, there are no "official" no-go zones anywhere in Europe.  What government on planet Earth would willingly admit that it doesn't control its own territory?  But in France, there are 751 neighborhoods the French government believe they don't fully control.  Daniel Pipes explains: They go by the euphemistic term Zones Urbaines Sensibles, or Sensitive Urban Zones, with the even more antiseptic acronym ZUS, and there are...

Prosecutors in southern France say five Russians from the Chechnya region have been detained on suspicion of preparing an attack. Local prosecutor Yvon Calvet said the suspects were detained January 19 in the town of Beziers near the Mediterranean coast, around 70 kilometers from Montpellier. French media reports say the five are also suspected of hiding a cache of explosives that was found near a stadium in Beziers

White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough said Tuesday it was his fault the White House didn’t send the president or another senior member of the administration to a unity rally in Paris earlier this month following the terror attack on a satirical newspaper. “We’ve said we regret we didn’t send someone more senior than out ambassador,” McDonough said in an interview with NBC’s “The Today Show. “That rests on me, that’s my job.” McDonough said he regretted the decision in particular because “the melee that ensued after that has covered up and obfuscated the very good progress that our...

One was a young policewoman, unarmed on the outskirts of Paris and felled by an assault rifle. Her partner, also without weapons, could do nothing to stop the gunman. Another was a first responder with a side arm, rushing to the Charlie Hebdo offices where a pair of masked men with high-powered weapons had opened fire on an editorial meeting. Among their primary targets: the armed police bodyguard inside the room. With the deaths of the three French officers during three days of terror in the Paris region and the suggestion of a plot in Belgium to kill police, European...

After the Islamic terrorist attacks in France, I have been amazed by the reaction of many of those in the media and Washington to these recent events. Over 40 different world leaders assembled in Paris to show their opposition to these terrorist attacks. But strangely enough, many of them were surprised that the President of the United States was nowhere to be seen for the event. The only thing surprising about this fact is the fact that anybody was actually surprised by it.

As parliaments in more and more European nations vote to recognize “Palestine,” European politicians insist they are doing so to promote the objective of an independent Palestinian state living in peace beside a secure Israel. But both the declared aims of Palestinian leaders and the pattern of European policy vis-a-vis Israel and the Palestinians give the lie to European averments of benign intent. Neither party of the divided Palestinian leadership has, to say the least, demonstrated an interest in peace with Israel. Hamas, now controlling Gaza and enjoying extensive popularity in the West Bank, openly trumpets its objective not only...

Dear French personnes, I’ve been deep in thought while drinking a Double Ristretto Venti Half-Soy Nonfat Organic Chocolate Brownie Iced Vanilla Double-Shot Gingerbread Frappuccino at Starbucks, and feel like I owe an apology to you people for ditching France last Sunday. I realize over 40 world leaders and as many as three million people walked in the France Unity March to show solidarity against the fatal terrorist attacks on the French satire magazine Charlie Hebdo. As you know, I’m the most powerful man in the world, and up until the country started to go downhill under my administration, the U.S....

Fox News issued an unusual on-air apology on Saturday night for having allowed its anchors and guests to repeat the false claim that there are Muslim-only “no-go zones” in European countries like England and France that are not under the control of the state and are ruled according to Shariah law. The statement was referred to as “a correction” by the Fox Report host Julie Banderas, who said that “over the course of this last week, we have made some regrettable errors on air regarding the Muslim population in Europe, particularly with regard to England and France.” “Now this applies...

Last week, France faced the threat that is arguably the toughest to defeat—a threat from within, from its own terrorists. By now, the stories are familiar. France has a problem with homegrown radicals. At least 900 French citizens are among the 2,000 to 3,000 westerners who’ve left home for jihadist training or to fight for ISIS in Syria and Iraq. In many ways, the western jihadist represents the worst threat. Able to speak the language fluently, completely familiar with their home countries, and possessing a key weapon -- an American, British, French, or German passport -- they can easily cross...

The French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo will publish a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed along with the words "All is forgiven" Wednesday on the cover of its first issue since Islamist militants killed 12 people at its central Paris offices. In a further show of defiance, the fearless magazine announced it would print three million copies – not the usual 60,000 – when it reappears on newsstands on Wednesday. It will also be translated into six languages including English, Arabic and Turkish, editor-in-chief Gérard Biard told a Paris news conference Tuesday. Daily newspaper Libération, which hosted Charlie Hebdo staff as...

Despite the French president calling for “unity” in the light of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, an almighty row broke out on Thursday after the National Front were not invited to Sunday’s Republican rally. France’s politicians were not able to show their new found unity for long. Just a day after the Charlie Hebdo shooting left 12 dead and had politicians calling for the country to unite, a row between politicians broke out after the National Front were not invited to take part in Sunday’s rally for “national unity” in Paris. For her part Marine Le Pen was furious that the...

“We have a lot of new friends, like the pope, Queen Elizabeth and (Russian President Vladimir) Putin. It really makes me laugh,” Bernard Holtrop, whose pen name is Willem, told the Dutch centre-left daily Volkskrant in an interview published today. France’s far-right National Front leader “Marine Le Pen is delighted when the Islamists start shooting all over the place,” said Willem, 73, a long-time Paris resident who also draws for the French leftist daily Liberation. He added: “We vomit on all these people who suddenly say they are our friends.”

The West has the capacity to win a war on radical Islam. But it won't. It won't because the West is too busy soul-searching to defend its core values. Western leaders mouth slogans about #JeSuisCharlie in the aftermath of the murder of 12 at the Charlie Hebdo headquarters, but they don't mean it; they suggest that the world stands united against radical Islamic terror even as they ignore the bullet-ridden bodies of four at a kosher supermarket in Paris. The proof: Look at the list of those who attended Sunday's unity march in Paris. The usual suspects showed up, except...

Much is being made of President Obama’s failure to attend the Paris unity march yesterday. Apparently Eric Holder was sent but he was nowhere to be found when 40 world leaders locked arms in a show of unity against Muslim terrorism. This isn’t even a matter of Obama leading from behind, it’s a matter of him not showing up. On the other hand, wasn’t the Paris unity march sort of odd? Where was the unity march with world leaders when the US was attacked on 911? Where was it when London was attacked? Where was it when Australia was attacked...