Free Republic

It’s easy to laugh at this weekend’s Unite the Right rally. It was pathetic. Media outnumbered white supremacists, and counterprotesters outnumbered the media. If that’s the alt-right in 2018, then public white supremacy in the United States is reverting back to its pre-2015 norm — when you could always find a couple dozen neo-Nazis to march somewhere, but you’d rarely see the kind of numbers we watched in Charlottesville. But as the alt-right fades (for now), let’s not forget its legacy. And let’s not turn our heads from its malignant influence. Consider what happened between 2015 and yesterday’s pitiful march.

French celebrations over the national football team’s World Cup victory on Sunday quickly turned to violence, with street clashes, vandalism, attacks on police, and scenes of looting in cities across the country. As many as a million people had been enjoying the “good-natured atmosphere” at an event on the Champs-Élysées in Paris following France’s 4-2 win against Croatia, which ministers had hoped would bring a “great moment” of “national unity”. But by 11 pm the jubilant mood had turned to chaos, with what local media describes as “bands of thugs” launching projectiles including bottles at police, who responded by firing...

The crash of EgyptAir flight MS804 in 2016 was probably caused by a fire in the cockpit, French investigators say. France's civil aviation accident bureau, known as BEA, said in a press release on Friday that "the most likely hypothesis is that a fire broke out in the cockpit while the aeroplane was flying at its cruise altitude and that the fire spread rapidly resulting in the loss of control of the aeroplane". The agency said that the crew could be heard discussing a fire on the cockpit voice recorder and that systems on board had detected smoke inside the...

Greenpeace activists flew a Superman-shaped drone into the no-fly zone around a French nuclear plant on Tuesday before crashing it against the building to highlight the facility’s lack of security. The drone, piloted by one of Greenpeace’s activists, slammed into the tower in Bugey nuclear plant, about 20 miles from the eastern city of Lyon, the group said in a video. “This action again highlights the extreme vulnerability of this type of buildings, which contain the highest amount of radioactivity in nuclear plants,” Greenpeace said, according to Reuters. The environmental group, which also crashed a tiny radio-controlled plane into the...

The Paris prosecutors' office said on Tuesday that the conditions of Oulkadi's release back to the Belgian capital included regularly reporting to police and a curfew. ~~ A total of 130 people died in a series of coordinated suicide bombings and shootings at the Stade de France, the Bataclan concert hall and at bars and restaurants in Paris on the night of 13 November 2015. Abdeslam's brother Brahim was among the suicide bombers.

Becoming president of the United States is one of the most difficult and consequential achievements for any person, in any place, in the entire world. The climb begins invariably against long odds, the process is grueling — for the candidate, his family, and his allies — and the prize is immense. With victory comes an informal title, the most powerful man in the world. It’s impossible to begin that journey without a measure of faith — in God, sometimes, in your team, sometimes, and in yourself, usually. If you decide to run, there has to be a belief not just...

Another Christian has lost his livelihood for good-faith wrongspeak. This time it was for articulating extremely basic Christian truth that it’s sinful to celebrate sexual immorality. Here’s BuzzFeed with the story: A high-ranking CrossFit employee was fired after tweeting his support for a CrossFit gym’s cancellation of a Pride event, citing his belief that celebrating LGBT pride is a “sin.” Russell Berger was the mega-successful fitness company’s chief knowledge officer, often de facto spokesperson, and a co-author of the Russells, a blog about scientific misconduct that he maintained with colleague Russell Greene. But Berger got into hot water Wednesday afternoon...

Many who had been sleeping rough are from Sudan, Somalia and Eritrea... riot police have cleared more than 1,000 migrants and refugees from one of the largest makeshift camps in Paris, where they had been sleeping rough for months...More than 2,000 migrants and refugees had been sleeping on pavements under bridges and canals in northern Paris. At about 6am, riot police arrived at the largest of the camps, where more than 1,700 people have been sleeping under a motorway bridge along canal Saint-Denis...The interior ministry said people would be housed in temporary shelter while their documents and administrative situation were...

Former President Barack Hussein Obama not only ordered agencies to spy on just President Trump, but turns out he ordered the CIA to spy on then french presidential candidate Marine Le Pen. In a huge bombshell revealed from Wikileaks, Barack Obama interfered and ordered the Central Intelligence Agency to spy on French presidential candidate Marine LaPen. The revelation was revealed when Julian Assange replied to President Donald Trump’s tweet about #Spygate being the biggest political scandal in U.S. history.

The cast and crew of a new documentary pose together on the famous red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival, ahead of a screening of their new film on French migrant rights. It tells the story of an olive farmer, Cedric Herrou, who's helped thousands of migrants cross the French-Italian border. His aid work has landed him in court a number of times, but has helped him become a symbol for activists fighting asylum law. The 38-year-old olive farmer, who stars in the documentary, says he won't let the glamour of the film industry go to his head: "I'm going...

On Tuesday night (April 23), President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump will welcome Emmanuel Macron, president of France, and his wife, Brigitte, for the first state visit of the Trump administration. According to a press release from the first lady's office, every aspect of the visit was "all carefully selected by First Lady Melania Trump, to complement and pay homage to the long-standing friendship between the United States and France." Let's get to the most important matter: what are they eating? The main course, we're happy to report, will include jambalaya, "which will be cooked in a New...

The National Assembly in France has passed new immigration laws that toughen up asylum rules by speeding up the application procedure and making it easier to deport people. The controversial law has brought widespread criticism from human right defenders and sown rare divisions within French president Emmanuel Macron's own Republic on the Move (LRM) centrist party. French lawmakers passed the bill 228 votes to 139, with 24 abstentions on Sunday (22 April) following a marathon debate that lasted 61 hours and attracted around 1,000 amendments. Some 14 members of the LRM party abstained with another voting against the bill. The...

Their relationship began with a show of machismo –- an extended, white-knuckle handshake on their first meeting last year in Belgium. Emmanuel Macron had reportedly studied Donald Trump’s style of domineering power-grabbing handshakes, apparently prepared to avoid being outdone by his counterpart. Instead, it was President Trump who at one point in the 5-second-long handshake attempted to withdraw his hand from Macron's firm grasp. The maneuver marked the start of what has become a close partnership between the two leaders, who recently joined forces along with the United Kingdom to strike Syria earlier this month. "It's no secret that President...

Manifesto citing Islamist radicalism as driving violence against France’s Jews, including killing of elderly woman, attracts more than 300 signaturesMore than 300 French dignitaries and stars, including ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy and actor Gérard Depardieu, have signed a manifesto denouncing a “new antisemitism” marked by “Islamist radicalisation”, following a string of killings of Jews.France’s Jewish community of more than half a million is the largest in Europe but has been hit by a wave of emigration to Israel in the past two decades, partly due to the emergence of virulent antisemitism in predominantly immigrant neighbourhoods. “We demand that the fight against...

Operations, situation update, Update : 11/04/2018 Read this week's update on operations. Armed Forces of French Guiana (FAG) CHIEF OF DEFENCE STAFF VISITS ARMED FORCES OF FRENCH GUIANA France's Chief of Defence Staff, General Lecointre, completed his trip to French Guiana this week. During his visit, the General visited the 9th Marine Infantry Regiment (9th RIMa) and the 3rd Foreign Infantry Regiment (3rd REI), Air Base 367, and went aboard Guyanese light patrol vessel La Confiance. He also went to Saint-Elie Lake to meet sappers of the Engineers Regiment involved in Operation Harpie as they worked on dismantling primary gold-mining...

French police battled Tuesday to evict anti-airport protesters and the creators of an alternative anti-capitalist settlement in western France during a second day of clashes. Some 2,500 officers raided the decade-old camp at Notre-Dame-des-Landes on Monday, destroying makeshift buildings topped with corrugated iron, a giant tent, a watchtower, and a sheep shed and cheese-making area. The assault in a wooded area near the city of Nantes has seen dozens of rounds of tear gas fired, as well as stun grenades,

It has now emerged that the brave officer wed his partner Marielle while on his deathbed in a hospital in Carcassonne. His bride wept uncontrollably as they said their prayers in the Catholic ceremony just hours before he passed away. The couple met during a tour of an abbey in France in 2016 and had planned a church wedding for June. Father Jean-Baptiste, the priest who carried out the moving service, said the pair had 'spent some 30 hours preparing for their marriage ceremony'. He added: 'I gave him the sacrament of marriage, and the sacrament of the sick'. Beltrame...

TREBES, France – France's top security official says a heroic officer who swapped himself for a hostage during an attack on a supermarket has died of his injuries. Interior Minister Gerard Collomb wrote in a tweet early Saturday that Col. Arnaud Beltrame had "died for his country."

PARIS (AP) — French President Emmanuel Macron’s government on Wednesday presented a bill to enforce tougher immigration rules, which human rights organizations criticize as repressive toward asylum-seekers. The government says the bill, presented at a Cabinet meeting, aims at accelerating expulsion of people who don’t qualify for asylum. It also wants to provide better conditions for those allowed to stay in the country, such as offering more French classes and job training. Interior minister Gerard Collomb said the plan is “balanced” and “is aligned with European procedures.” The plan will reduce the consideration period for an application for asylum to...

A Muslim singer who became an internet sensation following her performance on France's The Voice has quit the TV show after being criticised for comments she had made on social media. In one post, Mennel Ibtissem, 22, had expressed doubts about the terrorist nature of the 2016 Nice lorry attack. She said the message from the day after the attack was taken out of context. A video of her singing Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah had gone viral, being watched 900,000 times on YouTube. The social media comments, which have now been deleted, emergeFrench media reported that in a post about the...