Free Republic

When a politician in the West says something critical about Islam, he gets a week’s worth of attention, at best, too often quite hostile attention, and then the brief contretemps between supporters of the message and defenders of the faith (the faith being Islam) is soon forgotten. But this time, the broadside against Islam was delivered by John Cleese, he of Monty Python and Fawlty Towers fame. The background to Cleese’s remark is this: during Ramadan, 3,000 Muslims swarmed into Trafalgar Square to say their prayers, bums in the air, heads bumping on the pavement so as to raise even...

In the Italian city of Turin — with the help of local government and the Catholic Church — public and ecclesiastical spaces are being taken over by Muslims celebrating the end of Ramadan with mass prayer. This is “Interfaith” in action. In the same way, Christians can go to Mecca or Riyadh and celebrate Easter in public spaces, right? Right? Just try it and see what happens. Many thanks to Gary Fouse for translating this article from Il Giornale: Public spaces “occupied” by Ramadan: Here is the axis between Muslims and the LeftIn Turin, Mayor Lo Russo is in...

A banner draped over a 9/11 memorial, which was advertising a new Islamic portion of a Contra Costa County cemetery, was removed after receiving backlash. The owner of the Memorial Gardens Cemetery said he recently sold a portion of the property to an Islamic family who plans to open memorial garden. He said he gave them permission to put up signage but did not authorize them to drape it over the 9/11 installation. He ordered it to be removed as soon as he learned about it. Workers took it down just before noon, but many said it should have never...

In every era of human history, a single resource has defined the structure of power. In ancient times it was land. In the industrial age it was steel and coal. In the twentieth century it was oil. And now, in the twenty‑first century, as artificial intelligence becomes the engine of global transformation, the world is entering a new phase where energy—abundant, reliable, scalable energy—determines not only economic strength but the very conditions under which nations and their citizens will live. What we are witnessing today is not a series of isolated geopolitical events but a deliberate rearrangement of the global...

These are very early days, and there are good reasons to be skeptical of any public statements made by elected officials, diplomats, and other trained liars. But Trump announced his trade deal with the Europeans, the largest features of which are agreements to purchase American energy and arms. Those are major investments. A lesser component was the opening of European markets to more American goods at lower tariffs than what European goods will face coming here. Jim Geraghty uses cars to helpfully illustrate one problem for American manufacturers for breaking into the European market. Europe’s regulatory environment and lifestyle just...

In the decade I served on a school board, I learned a great deal about group dynamics. The most important lesson, I suppose, is that there are people -- most often highly neurotic people -- who deliberately create chaos. They undermine every effort to rationally deal with issues that require solutions. They violate norms like crediting the work of committees that were designated to analyze what needs to be done and offer solutions for the board to act on, dispiriting those desirous of accomplishing what must be done. They go behind the backs of board members to undercut the systematic...

Eris – the most recent “Covid variant” – is supposedly causing spikes in cases all over the world. The story goes that England, Ireland and US are all being hit hard, it’s reached Australia too. In yet another blow to the “BRICS will save us” crowd, India and China are playing along. “Scientists” are even clamoring for the return of masks. We’ve already been over everything you need to know about “Eris” here. Long story short, “Covid” is just another made up name for the flu, and the “variants” are coats of paint they slap on the narrative to try...

China is expanding its influence in South America to counter the U.S. dominance in the Western hemisphere, according to security expert Joseph J. Humire. “They’ve been building it gradually, systematically, over many, many years—over decades,” Humire recently told EpochTV’s “China Insider” program.Trade and investment in the region have been integral to Beijing’s efforts in this regard. But this trade comes with conditions, he said. “Those conditions are often the loss of your sovereignty, the loss in some cases of your territory … and in some cases, China is able to hoodwink you into bringing them into their geopolitical orbit,” Humire,...

As many in Black Lives Matter call for Caucasians and law enforcement officers to kneel before them, one can't avoid the obvious comparison to a similar situation in the past. All across social media and in mainstream media reports, images and videos of people kneeling “in solidarity” with Black Lives Matter protests seem to all be missing one important component. To kneel in solidarity would mean that everyone is kneeling together, but that’s not the case. If you look at the images, you’ll notice the kneeling is only happening on one side. While Caucasians and law enforcement officers kneel to...

Hillary Clinton donor Clare Bronfman is pleading guilty to charges stemming from her co-leadership of the NXIVM sex cult, an accused human trafficking organization in upstate New York closely tied to major Democrat politicians. The New York Times reports: “On Friday afternoon, Ms. Bronfman, 40, is expected to plead guilty in a Brooklyn federal court to charges arising from a complaint filed last year against her and several other followers of the group’s leader, Keith Raniere, according to a court docket…The charges to which Ms. Bronfman and Ms. Russell will plead guilty have yet to be disclosed. But their decisions...

Are you ready for a future where China will employ millions of American workers and dominate thousands of small communities all over the United States? Such a future would be unimaginable to many Americans, but the truth is that it is already starting to happen. Chinese acquisition of U.S. businesses set a new all-time record last year, and it is on pace to absolutely shatter that record this year. Meanwhile, China is voraciously gobbling up real estate and is establishing economic beachheads all over America. If China continues to build economic power inside the United States, it will eventually become...

For those with their eyes open, China's long-term strategy to achieve worldwide domination is obvious. It is a basic strategy that has been used for millennia to subjugate others. It goes as follows: provide loans that are beyond the ability of a distressed or unsophisticated borrower to ever pay back; and when the borrower inevitably falls behind in the required debt-service payments, foreclose and seize the borrower's desirable assets and/or extract wanted concessions. It's called "debt-trapping." Predators have long used this strategy to turn poor people into indentured servants; payday lenders to get worker's paychecks; monopolies to crush competitors; mafiosos...

There is no doubt that China wants to subjugate Asia, echoing Japan's role during World War II.  For those who think China's economy might overtake the United States economy, and thus make China a more formidable adversary, this article aims to provide detail on China's main constraint in that ambition: that its domestic coal production is near its peak and will then go into long-term decline. Even if China can keep its energy supply constant with an accelerated expansion of its nuclear power sector, the cost of producing coal from deeper mines will mean that the costs of industrial...

VIDEO – Bill Clinton: Rebuild Detroit with Syrian Refugees Julia Hahn 29 Aug 2016 Washington D.C.340 In a previously little-noticed video from February at the Clinton Global Initiative, former President Bill Clinton suggested that the U.S. use Syrian refugees to rebuild Detroit. “The truth is that the big loser in this over the long run is going to be Syria. This is an enormous opportunity for Americans,” Bill Clinton said about the Syrian migrant crisis. Detroit has 10,000 empty, structurally sound houses—10,000. And lot of jobs to be had repairing those houses. Detroit just came out of bankruptcy and the...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Can I share with you something from the New York Times back on January... What was this? If I may read it... It's January 27th. This is March the 22th. So almost two months. The headline is: "Donald Trump Finds New City to Insult." Dateline London: "He incensed Paris and London by saying that some of their neighborhoods were so overrun with radicals that the police were too scared to enter. He raised Scottish tempers by threatening to pull the plug on his investments there, including his luxury golf courses, if British politicians barred him from entering...

Sen. Ted Cruz blamed an "extreme strain of Islam" for Tuesday's terrorist attacks in Brussels, which saw at least 34 killed and 170 injured after two explosions hit the Belgian capital. Cruz also argued in a statement that the attacks are not "isolated incidents." The two attacks took place outside of the Brussels airport and the Maelbeek metro station near the European Union less than a week after Salah Abdesalah, the terrorist behind the Paris attacks in November, was captured.

Cruz: "It is striking that the day after Donald Trump called for America weakening NATO withdrawing from NATO we see Brussels, where NATO is headquartered, the subject of a radical Islamist terrorist attack."Cruz supporters: "How dare you say Cruz is blaming Trump for Brussels? Cruz said no such thing."

The French see René Descartes, a 17th century philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, as the truest expression of their national mind. I am afraid they are right.Descartes rejected authority in intellectual life and insisted on reconstructing knowledge on plain sense and strict reasoning, hence his famous motto, cogito ergo sum (“I think and therefore I am”). However, he also disdained experience as long as it could not be boiled down into logical and mathematical terms. This approach, so much at odds with the empirical and pragmatic approach favored in the Anglo-Saxon world, is indeed a hallmark of French culture -- including...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative CDU party was humiliated in key regional elections on Sunday as voters delivered their verdict at the ballot box about her open-door refugee policies. Exit poll results in three out of 16 German states foretell a wipeout in next year's general election as the hard-right capitalized on public disquiet and altered the political landscape forever. Baden-Wuerttemberg - solidly middle class and home to blue chip companies like Porsche and Daimler - was won by the Green Party after Merkel's CDU lost nearly 11 percent support since the last vote there in 2011.

President Barack Obama has been quietly pushing new plans to bring thousands of additional Syrian refugees into the country, despite the concerns of state and county officials and the outrages committed by welfare-dependent migrants in Europe. Obama’s special assistant to the president for immigration policy, Felicia Escobar, recently announced plans to increase America’s intake of migrants, according to the Washington Examiner. “We want to make sure that we can increase our numbers of refugees that are able to settle here,” Escobar said. “The need globally is so, so, so massive right now, given all the displacement and conflict around the...