Free Republic

In May, Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters and Nick Mason published an open letter to the Rolling Stones encouraging the band not to perform in Israel. The Stones summarily disregarded Waters and Mason, and played to 50,000 adoring Israeli fans in June. Even the Stones realize that Waters and Mason’s denunciation of Israel as the new “Sun City” is off base. Israel is not apartheid-era South Africa; its security barrier is not the Berlin Wall. Waters and Mason are simply old-school hipsters who have latched on to the Palestinian cause to stay relevant. Their new film — The Wall — which...

PIE members were lobbying NCCL officials for the age of consent to be reduced and campaigning for “paedophile love”. Their view that children were not harmed by having sex with adults appears to have been adopted by those at the top of the civil liberties group. Today we publish extracts from an NCCL report written for the Criminal Law Revision Committee in 1976 when Mrs Hewitt was general secretary. It says: “Where both partners are aged 10 or over, but under 14, a consenting sexual act should not be an offence. As the age of consent is arbitrary, we propose...

If Britain were to join the United States, it would be the second-poorest state, behind Alabama and ahead of Mississippi. The ranking, determined by Fraser Nelson, an editor of The Spectator magazine, was made by dividing the gross domestic product of each state by its population, and it took into account purchasing power parity for cost of living. Several other European countries were also included in the ranking.

The abuse experienced by the children of Rotherham is beyond belief. Sexual abuse. Physical abuse. Psychological abuse. It is all laid out in brutal detail in the report by Alexis Jay. But one equally vicious aspect of the assaults on these children is identified in a less explicit way. And that is the manner in which the vast majority of the Rotherham victims were also racially abused.

Now and again, America puts its inequality on display to the world. We saw it after Hurricane Katrina and we have seen it again in the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri. A white police offer shoots dead a black man, after having stopped him for jaywalking. Britain’s police don’t have guns, so these scenes are unthinkable to us. But American-style inequality? We have plenty of that too, we’re just better at hiding it – as I say in my Telegraph column today. I came across a striking fact while researching this piece: if Britain were to somehow leave the EU and...

Britain's most senior counter-terrorism officer has said that almost half of British jihadists who travelled to Syria have evaded police detection. The Times says Mark Rowley, of London's Metropolitan Police, made the admission as he called for friends and relatives to report people they believe to be “aspiring terrorists”, saying there was “a lot at stake” following the killing of American journalist James Foley.He said that the growth in the number of radicalised individuals was posing a serious problem for police, especially as nearly half of those travelling to Syria were previously unknown to them.Mr Rowley added that police activity...

A British jihadist’s apparent role in the beheading of American journalist James Foley shows Britain has become an “incubator for terrorism,” and cries out for Prime Minister David Cameron to tackle the growing problem of radical Islam, critics of the government say. Former rapper Abdel Majed Abdel Bary, 23, is believed to be the hooded figure who loomed over Foley and blasted the U.S. airstrikes in Iraq before cutting off his head in a gruesome video released Aug. 19, a senior Western intelligence official told Fox News. If that proves true, it would only be the latest example of barbarism...

We’re still only seeing the tip of the iceberg in the horrifying crimes committed by Muslim settlers against the children of the UK. Prof Jay wrote: “No one knows the true scale of child sexual exploitation in Rotherham over the years. Our conservative estimate is that approximately 1,400 children were sexually exploited over the full inquiry period, from 1997 to 2013. What we do know is that the authorities were complicit in it. For at least 16-years gangs of mainly Asian (Muslim) men were able to target, groom and abuse girls as young as 11, with little to fear from...

Members of Britain’s Pakistani community reacted with outrage Wednesday amid reports that officials failed to act on sex abuse cases because of concerns about racism in the northern English town of Rotherham. Muhbeen Hussain, founder of Rotherham Muslim Youth Group, told the Daily Mirror on Wednesday that Muslims are disgusted that justice was not done—leading to some 1,400 children being sexually exploited over a 16-year period, mostly by Pakistani men. “Race, religion or political correctness should never provide a cloak of invisibility to such grotesque crimes.” …

Middle East Quartet Envoy, Tony Blair, applauded the ceasefire in Gaza and called to focus on a long-term plan to restore the region, which would include opening the Strip to the world, under the control of the Palestinian Authority. “Such a plan can allow Gaza residents to lead better lives, and Israeli citizens to live in safety and security,...

Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond has called the murder of US journalist James Foley an "utter betrayal of our country" as the government hunts down the suspected Briton who carried out his beheading. Mr Hammond pledged more military support to Kurdish fighters opposing Islamic State (IS) militants in Iraq, and said the battle against "the enduring threat from Syria and Iraq" was likely to last a generation. But he reiterated that Britain would not be putting "boots on the ground" for a military operation as the government tries to tackle the IS threat, whose members "are turning a swathe of Iraq...

Around 1,400 children were sexually exploited in one town over a 16-year period, a damning report has said. The report on events in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, between 1997 and 2013 found that in more than a third of these cases the youngsters were already known to agencies. It said there had been "blatant" collective failures by Rotherham council's leadership. [...] "children who had been doused in petrol and threatened with being set alight, threatened with guns, made to witness brutally-violent rapes and threatened they would be next if they told anyone" [...] She said the first of these reports was...

At least 1,400 children were subjected to "appalling" sexual exploitation in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013, a report has found. Children as young as 11 were raped by multiple perpetrators, abducted, trafficked to other cities in England, beaten and intimidated it said. The report, commissioned by Rotherham Borough Council in 2013, revealed there had been three previous inquiries.

There is a pervasive belief that poverty is a key driver of terrorism... Bill Clinton has stated “we have to create more opportunity for those left behind by progress, thus reducing the pool of potential terrorists.” This framing of poverty and development as national security issues continued with the Obama administration. In Obama’s reckoning “our security and prosperity depend on the security and prosperity of others.” As the head of USAID put it: “On the logo of USAid, it says ‘from the American people.’ but our work has to be seen as ‘for the American people.’ Development is a fundamental...

British diplomats in Washington are apologizing for Twitter posts that made light of the 200th anniversary of their troops torching the White House in the War of 1812. The apologies were prompted after the British Embassy posted a picture Sunday of Patrick Davis, deputy British ambassador to the United States, with a caption saying he was participating in "the anniversary of burning of the White House with a BBQ.” The picture was followed by another, about an hour later, that showed a White House replica atop a sheet cake, flanked by sparklers. The caption said: “Commemorating the 200th anniversary of...

Labour Member of Parliament Yasmin Qureshi has caused outrage after comparing the idea of young British Muslims joining ISIS to the idea of young Jewish Britons joining the Israel Defence Forces.Qureshi, who has previously had to apologise for offence caused by comparing the situation in Gaza to the Holocaust, also claimed that most British Muslims going to Iraq and Syria were going for "humanitarian reasons" in a bizarre Sky News interview yesterday.She said: "From my understand [sic], most have gone to actually help people so its been humanitarian work. We understand now from some the [sic] intelligence services giving us...

'Sunday marks the 200th anniversary of the Burning of Washington, and the instrumental role played by a County Down man. British Army Maj Gen Robert Ross, from Rostrevor, will forever be remembered as the man who burned down the White House. The Burning of Washington took place in 1814, during the War of 1812 between British forces and the United States of America. The major general led the troops who set alight public buildings including the Capitol, Washington Navy Yard and, most infamously, the President's Mansion. One eyewitness testified to Ross personally being involved in the piling up of furniture...

THE VIDEO of a British jihadist beheading an American hostage was probably staged, with the actual murder taking place off-camera, according to forensic analysis. Footage of James Foley’s death at the hands of a man with a London accent provided a powerful propaganda tool for Islamic State when it was uploaded on to the internet and broadcast around the world last week. Now it has emerged that the Briton might be a frontman and not the killer. His identity has almost certainly been established by the security services, but they have yet to act for fear of endangering the lives...

American and British intelligence officials are eyeing a British-born rapper as the militant who beheaded journalist James Foley. A senior Western intelligence official told Fox News that 23-year-old London rapper Abdel Majed Abdel Bary is the suspect believed to be Foley's executioner. U.S. intelligence officials are not commenting publicly on the reports, but a well-placed source told Fox News that Bary's Egyptian-born father was extradited from London to the United States in 2012 for his alleged connection to Usama bin Laden and the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in Africa. Bary traveled to Syria last year to fight with ISIS, the...

A British journalist working for Al Jazeera was held against his will while trying to get an interview at London’s Finsbury Park Mosque, which formerly was run by the notorious Al Qaeda cleric Abu Hamza, recently convicted on multiple terror charges. In an article Sunday, journalist Ben Flanagan documented his visit along with video footage filmed on his cell phone, and shows how he was locked in a room and not let out until police came. …