Free Republic

While America's so-called "establishment", the legacy political system and mainstream media, appear to be melting, and transforming before our eyes into something that has yet to be determined, Europe also appears to be disintegrating in response to the Trump presidential victory: as the FT reports, in a stunning development, Britain and France on Sunday night snubbed a contentious EU emergency meeting to align the bloc’s approach to Donald Trump’s election, exposing rifts in Europe over the US vote. Hailed by diplomats as a chance to “send a signal of what the EU expects” from Mr Trump, the plan fell into...

The Swedish government has announced plans to beef up its defence forces by fitting its fleet of Gripen fighter jets with long-range cruise missiles. Defence Minister Karin Enström said the high-precision missiles would chiefly act as a deterrent to other countries that might be considering an attack on Sweden. “They would give new capabilities by offering a longer reach, but also the ability to fight targets that are further away,” she told Sveriges Radio (SR) on Thursday. She said the move would “increase the effectiveness” of Sweden’s defence. The cruise missiles would be added to the next generation of Gripen...

Less than fifteen years after the last Soviet troops pulled out of the Baltic States, a new survey has shown that young Swedes are still in the dark about the fate of its neighbours behind the Iron Curtain. A poll carried out by Demoskop on behalf of the Organization for Information on Communism (Föreningen för upplysning om kommunismen - UOK) found that 90 percent of Swedes between the ages of 15 and 20 had never heard of the Gulag. This can be contrasted with the 95 percent who knew of Auschwitz. "Unfortunately we were not at all surprised by the...

Between 100 and 200 Iranian dissidents protested in Stockholm on Monday against a visit to Sweden by Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki. Protesters threw eggs at the door of the Swedish Institute of International Affairs where Mottaki was due to deliver a speech, and shouted slogans denouncing the Iranian regime. The group also called for the release of political prisoners. A large police force was on hand to prevent the demonstrators from entering the building. In his address, Mottaki stressed that Iran's nuclear programme was "peaceful" and posed "no threat to international peace and security." The UN Security Council imposed...

Bildt: North Korea nuclear test 'extremely serious' Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt has described North Korean claims that it has carried out an underground nuclear weapons test as "an extremely serious development." The test would have consequences both for stability in East Asia and for international efforts to stem the proliferation of nuclear weapons, Bildt said in a statement on Monday morning. "While it has been assumed for a long time that North Korea has a few nuclear charges, a test of this kind is a conscious and serious provocation directed at the entire international community," he said, adding that...

Carl Bildt Sweden's new Foreign Minister Former prime minister Carl Bildt has been named as the Minister for Foreign Affairs in the new government presented by Fredrik Reinfeld on Friday. Ten of the 21 new ministers are women, and nine ministers are Moderates. 57 year old Carl Bildt was prime minister of Sweden from 1991 to 1994 and was the UN Secretary General's Special Envoy for the Balkans between 1999 and 2001. He has been on the board of Vostok Nafta since 2002 and is also on the board of Lundin Petroleum AB, a part of the Lundin Group of...

UN Commissioner to the Balkans Carl Bildt on Saturday called for recognizing Islam as part of the European culture, asserting that Muslims in Balkan formed a unique and positive factor in European affairs. In a statement on the Balkan Convention for Development and Cooperation, which took place in Macedonia, Bildt told KUNA that Muslims in the Balkans, especially in Bosnia and Kosovo, proved that they are characterized with tolerance and cooperation with other societies, noting that they were victims of the others, not visa versa. Bildt, who is the former UN commissioner for Bosnia and former Sweden's prime minister, said...