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Caption -- A Syrian refugee family spend the day in the Aegean port city of Izmir, western Turkey, August 10, 2015. (Reuters) Slovakia will take in 200 Christian Syrian migrants instead of Muslims because of a lack of infrastructure -- including a shortage of mosques in the small Eastern European state -- its interior ministry told the BBC on Wednesday. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-33986738 Under a European Union relocation scheme to share the burden of thousands of Syrian migrants fleeing the civil war back home, member states will take in 40,000 new arrivals from Italy, Turkey and Greece. But Ivan Metik, an interior...

The government of Slovakia has said it will take in struggling migrants from Syria and other countries under a European Union scheme to share the burden of 40,000 new arrivals to the continent, but stipulated it will only be taking Christians, and not Muslims. "We want to help Europe with the migration issue. We could take 800 Muslims but we don't have any mosques in Slovakia so how can Muslims be integrated if they are not going to like it here?" interior ministry spokesman Ivan Metik said, arguing that the policy is not discriminatory. "We want to really help Europe...

Slovakia says it will only accept Christians when it takes in Syrian refugees under a EU relocation scheme. The country is due to receive 200 people from camps in Turkey, Italy and Greece under the EU plan to resettle 40,000 new arrivals. Interior ministry spokesman Ivan Metik said Muslims would not be accepted because they would not feel at home. The UN's refugee agency (UNHCR) called on countries to take an "inclusive approach" to relocation. But Mr Metik denied the move was discriminatory and said it was intended to ensure community cohesion. The number of migrants at the EU's borders...

"Since Slovakia is a Christian country, we cannot tolerate an influx of 300,000-400,000 Muslim immigrants who would like to start building mosques all over our land and trying to change the nature, culture and values ​​of the state," said Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico. Slovakia is the country that had its commemorative Euro coin depicting two Christian saints, Cyril and Methodius, at first rejected by the European Commission, which told Bratislava it would need to re-design the coins and remove Christian symbols, including halos and a cross-adorned stole. Eventually the Slovakia Euro was issued with halos and crosses. This...

Slovakia will hold a referendum on same-sex marriage in the predominantly Roman Catholic country on Feb. 7, the president said Thursday. President Andrej Kiska’s move comes after the Alliance for Family conservative group gathered about 400,000 signatures supporting the vote. Slovaks will be asked whether they agree that a marriage can be called only a union between a man and a woman, same-sex partners can’t adopt children, and that children wouldn’t have to attend school classes on sex education if their parents don't agree with them. …

What is nationalism? The word is suddenly and surprisingly important when talking about the times we live in. But we seem to be working without a shared definition. “You know what I am? I’m a nationalist,” Donald Trump said in an October rally in Houston. French president Emmanuel Macron slapped back at a commemoration ceremony for World War I in France. “Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism,” he said. “By saying ‘our interests first, who cares about the others,’ we erase what a nation holds dearest, what gives it life, what makes it great and what is essential: its moral...

Former President Barack Obama derided the American nationalism of President Donald Trump’s supporters as rooted in a “hatred” of foreigners, offering his remarks on Tuesday at Rice University in Houston, Texas. ....snip..... You start getting politics that’s based on, “That person’s not like me, and it must be their fault,” and you start getting a politics based on a nationalism that’s not pride in country, but hatred for somebody on the other side of the border, and you start getting the kind of politics that does not allow for compromise because it’s based on passions and emotions and identities. When...

Religious freedom is under threat in one of every five nations around the globe, in part because of an increase in “aggressive ultranationalism”, a Catholic NGO said in a report Thursday. Aid to the Church in Need found incidents of religious persecution in 21 countries in the two years to June 2018, including Niger, Myanmar, India and China. Acts of discrimination were reported in 17 other countries such as Algeria, Turkey and Russia, it said. It was the 14th edition of the aid group’s report covering all religions in 196 countries, carried out every two years with the assistance of...

lmost everything French president Emmanuel Macron has said recently on the topic of foreign affairs, the United States, and nationalism and patriotism is silly. He implicitly rebukes Donald Trump for praising the idea of nationalism as a creed in which citizens of sovereign nations expect their leaders to put the interests of their fellow citizens first and those of other nations second. And while critiquing nationalism, Macron nonetheless talks and acts as though he is an insecure French chauvinist of the first order.

France’s Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire has called for Europe to become an “empire” to compete with the United States after the country’s President Emmanuel Macron called for an EU army to defend against the NATO ally.

In five posts sent on Tuesday after his visit to France, Trump had blasted the key US ally over its near defeat to Germany in two world wars, its wine industry and Macron's approval ratings. "At every moment of our history, we were allies, so between allies, respect is due," Macron responded on Wednesday, citing French support for America's war of independence and US support during the two world wars. "I don't think the French expect me to respond to tweets but to continue this important history," he told French channel TF1 in an interview on the Charles de Gaulle...

On Sunday, French President Emmanuel Macron spoke at a ceremony marking the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I. There, he took the opportunity to slam President Trump's "America First" nationalism. "Patriotism," Macron said, "is the exact opposite of nationalism: Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism. By putting our interests first, with no regard for others, we erase the very thing that a nation holds dearest, and the thing that keeps it alive: its moral values." This statement has a sort of European charm. It's also false. And dangerous. Nationalism, when opposed to patriotism, can indeed be...

...French President Emmanuel Macron publicly condemned nationalism as “the opposite of patriotism” as self-proclaimed nationalist Donald Trump looked on stonily... However tangled its history, nationalism is an important force in global affairs that world leaders should respect. Mr. Macron’s disdainful remarks made for good headlines, but his inability to appreciate the role of nationalism in world politics exemplifies the failure of imagination at the root of many of Europe’s troubles. The instinctive antinationalism of leaders like Mr. Macron is rooted in the belief that Western Europe is the real Europe and that its history is a universal history with lessons...

In commemorating the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, French President Emmanuel Macron said: “Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism. By saying ‘Our interests first, who cares about the others,’ we erase what a nation holds dearest . . . its moral values.” That might sound nice, but Mr. Macron got it almost exactly backward. It is through the nation that moral values can be upheld and sustained. In America, our ideals are deeply intertwined with our national traditions... The pride that millions of Americans felt when Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon isn’t something they...

Macron's comments about nationalism: “Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism. Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism. By saying our interests first ... we erase what a nation holds dearest, what gives it life, what gives it grace, and what is essential: its moral values." Macron's premise seems to be that loving one's nation and putting its interests first is somehow synonymous with selfishly turning ones back on the rest of the world. Arguably, charitable giving is a valuable index of how much a nation and its people care about the rest of the world. The link is to a...

In Europe’s multilayered malaise of 2016, there are few things the educated elites of the Old World can agree on. But what almost everyone accepts as fundamentally true is that nationalism is evil, that it is one of Europe’s big weaknesses, and that the current so-called renationalization of EU politics is the root cause of the existential crisis the integration project is facing.

BRINDISI, Italy — The United Nations is seriously stepping up its campaign to undermine free speech, online freedom, and a surge in opposition to globalism worldwide. Pointing to what it calls “international law” against racism and “intolerance,” the UN is demanding a global crackdown on fundamental human rights as well as what is described as “nationalist populism.” In particular, the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment must go. As part of the attack, political and economic ideas the UN hates — populism, concern about corrupt elites, nationalism, individual liberty, borders, and more — are also now officially in the UN’s crosshairs. Basically,...

French President Emmanuel Macron’s thinly-veiled shots at President Trump over the weekend won at least one hearty American “oui” — from Ohio Gov. John Kasich. Mr. Kasich, a frequent critic of Mr. Trump, took to Twitter to second Mr. Macron’s attack on “nationalism” at a speech Sunday marking the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I. “@EmmanuelMacron is right,” Mr. Kasich tweeted, going on to quote what the French leader said in front of Mr. Trump, who has taken much criticism as racist for calling himself a “nationalist.”

PARIS (AP) - For President Donald Trump in Paris, America First meant largely America alone. At a weekend commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, the president who proudly declares himself a "nationalist" stood apart, even on a continent where his brand of populism is on the rise. He began his visit with a tweet slamming the French president's call for a European defense force, arrived at events alone and spent much of his trip out of sight in the American ambassadors' residence in central Paris. On Sunday, he listened as he was lectured on...

European Council President Donald Tusk has said that the United States is not interested in a “strong, united” Europe and called nationalism a “fundamental threat” to the European Union. The former Prime Minister of Poland turned top Eurocrat made the comments at a speech in his home country on Saturday, the day before Poland celebrated the 100th anniversary of its rebirth as an independent state, with Poles taking part in a march through Warsaw on Sunday condemned by the mainstream media as “far-right” nationalism. “For the first time in history we have an American administration which, to put it delicately,...