Free Republic

France’s state-owned rail company SNCF says a 'massive attack' aimed at paralysing the high-speed network is causing delays and cancellations. A series of coordinated arson attacks on the train infrastructure of France's largest rail company, SNCF, caused a significant number of trains to be re-routed or cancelled on Friday morning, according to the transport company.... The attack is expected to disrupt the transport system on the opening day of the 2024 Paris Olympics.... International travel to and from the UK beneath the English Channel and to neighbouring Belgium has also been disrupted by what SNCF called a series of coordinated...

BUTTE COUNTY, Calif. - A 42-year-old Chico man was arrested early Thursday morning by CAL FIRE arson investigators, assisted by District Attorney investigators, on suspicion of starting the Park Fire. Butte County District Attorney Mike Ramsey has identified the suspect as Ronnie Dean Stout II, 42, of Chico. Ramsey said Stout has two prior strikes. The first one was a felony conviction for child molestation and this was in Butte County. The second one was a felony conviction for robbery with great bodily injury. This was out of Kern County, Ramsey said. Butte County DA Mike Ramsey said the man...

A leftist activist has been arrested for burning down a gun shop owned by Cornel Rasor, a Republican candidate for the Idaho State House of Representatives, on the Fourth of July. The activist, Jennifer S. Meyer, is accused of burning down Cornel Rasor’s Army Surplus Store in Sandpoint, prompting celebrations from her fellow leftists. Meyer has reportedly made signs for the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) and a local arts commission. It appears the fire that consumed Cornell Razor’s Army Surplus store (located just 1 block away from where Sandpoint Pride is held) was ARSON, not a “stray firework.”...

Full-time residents of Ruidoso will be allowed to return to their village Monday morning as federal authorities seek to prosecute whoever started a pair of New Mexico wildfires that killed two people and destroyed or damaged more than 1,400 structures. The FBI said it is offering a reward of up to $10,000 for information leading to the arrests and convictions of those responsible for the South Fork Fire and Salt Fire in southern New Mexico, which forced thousands to flee. The federal agency also said it was seeking public assistance in identifying the cause of the fires discovered June 17...

A suspect arrested in relation to arson attacks at University of California, Berkeley is a 34-year-old PhD student who lived in his parents' million-dollar home and called the U.S. a "fascist hellhole." California and federal law enforcement say that 34-year-old Casey Goonan was arrested on Monday for allegedly committing four acts of arson at Berkeley during pro-Palestinian anti-Israel protests on campus. His attorney confirmed that officials had raided Goonan's parents' home in Pleasant Hill on Monday at about 10 a.m. A CalFire news release said that Goonan had been booked into the Alameda County jail on suspicion of arson and...

Pro-Palestinian activists took credit for a felony arson attack outside of UC Berkeley’s Koshland Hall on Thursday. Details about the fire were scarce on Friday. But it is at least the second case of arson at Cal that pro-Palestinian activists have claimed responsibility for this month. A UC Berkeley police vehicle was set on fire on June 1. On Thursday morning, an anonymous “student intifada” post took credit for the latest incident. “UCLA students were attacked last night so we retaliated with a firebomb on UCB campus,” the post said. “We unloaded a firebomb on the side of a campus...

CLAIM: The Biden campaign is repeating a lie that former President Donald Trump tear-gassed peaceful protesters gathered outside of the White House in Lafayette Square for a photo-op. VERDICT: FALSE. This has been debunked countless times and has been proven false. The inspector general of the U.S. Department of Interior released a report in June 2021 that exonerated Trump from claims that he had tear-gassed peaceful protesters gathered in Lafayette Square in June 2020 to walk through the park to have a photo-op at St. John’s Episcopal Church.

A Quebec man who posted conspiracy theories online that forest fires were being deliberately set by the government has pleaded guilty to starting a series of fires himself that forced hundreds of people from their homes. Brian Paré, 38, pleaded guilty Monday to 13 counts of arson and one count of arson with disregard for human life at the courthouse in Chibougamau, Que. Prosecutor Marie-Philippe Charron told the court that two of the 14 fires set by Paré forced the evacuation of around 500 homes in Chapais, Que...

A college professor suspected in a series of arson fires in remote forested areas of Northern California near the massive Dixie Fire has been charged in connection with one of the blazes in Lassen County and was ordered held Tuesday in the Sacramento County Main Jail. Gary Stephen Maynard, 47, is believed to have worked at a number of colleges in California, including Santa Clara University and Sonoma State University, where a Dr. Gary Maynard is listed as a lecturer in criminal justice studies specializing in criminal justice, cults and deviant behavior. ...Maynard was arrested Saturday following an investigation that...

A former college professor has been sentenced to five years and three months in prison over a string of arson fires in Northern California in 2021 as fire crews were battling the second-largest fire in the state’s history. Gary Stephen Maynard, 49, of San Jose, pleaded guilty in February to three arson counts in connection to fires in the Shasta National Forest and near the Dixie Fire in the Lassen National Forest. The Dixie Fire burned over 1,500 square miles after igniting on July 13 and destroyed over 1,000 homes. Maynard was accused of setting fires behind firefighters battling the...

https://twitter.com/BillboardChris/status/1788824460159750469 Remember the reporting of bodies of murdered indigenous children found in unmarked mass graves at residential schools in Canada?All a hoax. Never was a single shred of evidence. Not a bone. Nothing.Ground-penetrating radar had picked up underground ‘anomalies’ near a residential school in Kamloops, BC. They could be rocks for all we know.But someone decided to make up a story of 215 dead bodies of children. The Washington Post reported mass graves. Reporters wrote that the bodies of 3-year-old children had been found.All a hoax.Soon, reports of other unmarked grave sites hosting murdered indigenous children sprang up across the...

St. William Catholic Church in Cashion, Arizona, was destroyed in an overnight fire May 1. The fire broke out just before 1 a.m. Local station Fox 10 Phoenix reported that firefighters arrived and found flames coming from the attic of the church. The roof of the church ultimately collapsed as firefighters fought the flames. "This is a devastating loss to this community," Avondale Fire Battalion Chief Steve Mayhew said. "This church is a pillar of this community, so definitely a lot of heartbreak this morning." "I also run the pantry here at St. Williams — that's gone," Gonzalo Ortiz, a...

A Coptic Orthodox church in British Columbia was destroyed in a fire on Monday, July 19, just days after an attempted arson attack damaged the church’s door. Local police said they were alerted to a fire at St. George Coptic Orthodox Church in Surrey around 3:17 a.m. on Monday. By the time the fire was extinguished, the building was almost entirely demolished and only a single wall was left standing. No one was reported injured in the fire. “While today is a day of sadness, we will not be deterred and we will rebuild,” said Bishop Mina of the Coptic...

PORTLAND, Ore. (KPTV) - Over a dozen patrol cars were damaged or destroyed in a suspect arson attack at the Portland Police Bureau’s training facility early Thursday morning. Just before 2 a.m., Portland Fire & Rescue and Portland police officers responded to a fire at the training facility in the 14900 block of Northeast Airport Way. When crews arrived to the scene, police say they found at least 15 vehicles in a fenced training area were burning. Firefighters were able to quickly extinguish the flames. No injuries were reported. I understand people in our community are hurting, but in no...

A letter posted to an infamous left-extremist website claims responsibility for a mass-arson attack against Amazon delivery trucks this week, and promises an “exciting week of action against Tesla” for “the social revolution”. 16 Amazon vans were burnt in Berlin on Tuesday night, while around the city multiple left-wing protests progressed as part of the May 1st ‘May Day’ worldwide leftist day of action in remembrance of an 1889 meeting of the Marxist International Socialist Congress in Paris. As reported police suspected arson and “masked” individuals were witnessed nearby at the time, but now a prominent extreme-left website — often...

Senator Bernie Sanders' Vermont office was set ablaze by a suspected arsonist who is on the run. Burlington firefighters were called to the senators office on the third floor of One Church Street around 10:45 am on Friday. Police said an unidentified man entered the vestibule of the office, sprayed an accelerant on the door and set it on fire, reported NBC5.

A home belonging to a family of Pakistani migrants was set ablaze in the German town of Wächtersbach on Christmas Day 2023. Phantasmal right-wingers were immediately blamed for the arson. The family members, meanwhile, were depicted as victims of so-called Islamophobia and xenophobia. This narrative, agreeable to European leftists and the liberal media, recently went up in smoke. A convenient spark The fire began around 1 a.m. on Christmas morning and did roughly $379,000 in damage. The fire brigade found anti-migrant slogans scrawled inside the smoldering ruins. Der Spiegel reported that the words "foreigners out" had been spray-painted on some...

Attacks on churches have increased nearly 800 percent in less than six years, indicating that “hostility against U.S. churches is not only on the rise but also accelerating,” a Family Research Council (FRC) report found. Between 2018 and 2023, FRC identified 915 acts of hostility against churches in the United States by analyzing open-source documents, reports, and media outlets. In just the last year alone (between January and November of 2023), 436 acts of hostility against churches occurred, according to the report. “This was more than double the number of incidents in all 12 months of 2022, which was 195....

On Thursday, Atlanta authorities arrested a male suspect on arson charges in connection to an attack that occurred in protest of the future site of the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, dubbed "Cop City" by left wing agitators. John Robert Mazurek, 30, has been charged with first-degree arson. He is accused of being involved in the arson of a police special operations center that occurred in July 2023, according to Atlanta News First. Police said that officers had been occupying the center when the arson occurred. According to authorities, eight police motorcycles were set on fire in the parking deck...

A federal agency said the fire at the office of the Center of the American Experiment is being investigated as arson. Fire damaged the offices of a high-profile politically conservative think tank last weekend in Golden Valley, and a federal agency said Friday it is investigating the blaze as an act of arson. Center of the American Experiment said in a news release Friday that the fire was detected about 2 a.m. Sunday at its headquarters located just south of Interstate 394 and east of Hwy. 169. The think tank's spokesman, Bill Walsh, said two other conservative organizations in the...