Free Republic

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz were reportedly trapped inside a Malaga hotel by anti-separatist protesters on Friday night. Sánchez, the country's acting Prime Minister, is set to remain in power after striking a deal with a Catalan separatist party. It would secure his party another four years in power. Spain's Popular Party won the July elections but were unable to successfully form a majority. The deal with separatists now means the Socialists and Sánchez would have the required numbers. It has sparked anger from the right leading to anti-separatist protests breaking out in Madrid and...

He is preparing for an investiture vote which is expected to see him form a new government and avoid a repeat election. That can only happen if he can secure the parliamentary support of Catalan separatists. The Socialists were runners-up in July's general election, behind the conservative People's Party (PP). However, PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo failed to form a government in an investiture vote in September, receiving only the support of the far-right Vox out of the main parties. It is now Mr Sánchez's turn and he is close to securing enough parliamentary support to form a new administration...

For the second time in his tenure, an official trip to India by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has become defined by a cascading series of gaffes, snubs and diplomatic embarrassments... After a short meeting between Trudeau and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India’s Ministry of External Affairs issued a statement saying that Modi spent most of the encounter reprimanding Trudeau for allegedly letting Canada become a safe haven for secessionist extremists... And all of this was before Trudeau’s aircraft broke down, stranding the Canadian delegation in New Delhi until a rescue plane could be dispatched from CFB Trenton... Trudeau had...

Day 163 of the Iranian national uprising for democracy was eventful in Iran's provinces. nationwide uprising entered its 163rd day on Saturday in different parts of the country against the mullahs' brutal dictatorship. The Iranian opposition MEK has published the names of 17 more martyrs of the February 25 nationwide uprising. So far, the names of 664 martyrs have been published. Mass demonstrations in BaluchistanOn Friday, February 24, the 162nd day of the nationwide uprising, the brave people of Zahedan held demonstrations after Friday prayers for the 21st week after the Zahedan Bloody Friday. The demonstrations took place despite the...

Two people became victims of shelling of the territory of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) by the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU). This was reported by the Donetsk News Agency. They noted that the shelling was carried out last night. The DPR announced the death of one military and one civilian from the shelling of the Armed Forces of Ukraine "As a result of the Ukrainian aggression, one serviceman of the DPR People's Militia was killed, another was seriously injured, two were shell-shocked," the DPR People's Militia said. According to the ministry, another victim is a civilian. He died...

Revolutions need air and fuel in the same way fires do. They need to feed. They need to gather strength. The Marxist revolution sweeping this nation has plenty of air and fuel. It is fed constantly by super-heated rhetoric about white supremacy, systemic racism, and the inherent evil at the heart of the American dream. At the same time, the revolution is protected and nurtured. Federal and state law enforcement agencies do not hunt down and dismantle the networks spreading the real violence in America’s cities and streets. Instead, they spend their time chasing the bogeymen of “white supremacist groups”...

The unification of Italy in the 19th century was at first greeted with enthusiasm, but this soon evaporated among the Sicilians. Namely, the island was poor and many Sicilians felt the central government neglected them just as badly as foreign rulers had, and things got even worse when Mussolini’s Fascists rose to power in the 1930s. Italy’s entry into World War II on the Axis side caused even more resentment, and a Committee for the Independence of Sicily was founded in April 1942. When the American-led Allied invasion of the island occurred in July 1943, the island became the scene...

Murdock, Minnesota's City Council voted 3-1 to grant permit allowing Asatru Folk Assembly (AFA) to gather at former Lutheran church AFA practices a pre-Christian, European spirituality that revolves around Norse gods; it only admits white people with northern European descent Southern Poverty Law Center has added AFA to its list of hate groups Critics of AFA have launched an online petition seeking to stop it, which so far has drawn more than 123,000 signatures Murdock officials said rejecting AFA's permit request could have violated its religious rights and led to an expensive legal battle

The protests on Saturday were calm and respectable but as the day progressed things began to disintegrate as police officers began using force against the Yellow Vest protesters near the Montmartre district. Protesters gathered near Madeleine Church, as well as near the Louvre Museum and Sacre-Coeur Basilica and later in the evening tried blocking traffic on the Champs Elysées. Riot police surrounded them in an attempt to disrupt the demonstrators. Today’s demonstration yielded more than 100 being detained, according to the Paris Police Prefecture. There were an estimated 23,800 protesters throughout the country, not bad for the Saturday before Christmas,...

TN Pandit was the first anthropologist to enter the isolated Andaman island of North Sentinel, back in 1967. He says he was surprised when he heard that an American evangelist, John Allen Chau, had been killed by the Sentinelese. Speaking to ET at his residence in New Delhi, 83-year-old Pandit narrated his experiences of interacting with the Sentinelese, among the few remaining isolated tribes in the world. The tribe is not hostile, nor do they raid their neighbours, Pandit says.They only say, ‘leave us alone.’ They make it amply clear that outsiders are not welcome in their habitat. One needs...

Former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont couldn't vote in the election because he's currently in self-exile in Belgium, but he and his party won yesterday's elections in Catalonia, exit polls show. This means that Catalonian voters have strongly rebuked the aggressive anti-independence stance of Madrid and the European Union. In all, 70 out of the 135 seats in Catalonia's parliament will now be occupied by separatist parties, with Puigdemont's Junts per Catalunya (Together for Catalonia) being the largest of those parties. The only party that's larger than Puigdemonts JPC is Ciudadanos (Citizens). Ironically, that's a unionist party. The reason the unionist...

A potentially violent showdown looms in Spain on Sunday, where tens of thousands of Catalans intend to carry out an independence referendum deemed unconstitutional by the country’s courts. Hundreds of independence supporters slept overnight on Friday and Saturday in some 160 schools that are designated polling places, vowing to keep them open for voters. But local police planned to remove them on Sunday — by force if necessary, Spanish government sources told Reuters. Catalan officials have said polls will open at 9 a.m. The Madrid government has ordered separatists to vacate the schools by 6 a.m. And while both sides...

The new U.S. special envoy for Ukraine peace negotiations said he was stunned by the number of cease-fire violations in the ex-Soviet nation’s war-torn east after making his first visit to the region. Kurt Volker, who was recently appointed as Washington's point man for talks on ending the war between Kyiv's forces and Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine, made the comment in a July 23 interview after spending the day at the front lines of the conflict. "The level of cease-fire violations on daily basis is astonishing," Volker told RFE/RL by telephone from a train bound for Kyiv, where he...

Democratic Minnesota Representative and Democratic National Committee chairman candidate Keith Ellison once called for slavery reparations and a separate country for black Americans in a university newspaper column. Ellison’s writings while a student at the University of Minnesota law school– under the name “Keith Hakim”– raised eyebrows when he announced his first congressional run in 2006. The Weekly Standard noted that “Ellison refers to ‘Minister Louis Farrakhan,’ defends Nation of Islam spokesman Khalid Abdul Muhammad, and speaks in the voice of a Nation of Islam advocate… ‘Hakim’ demands reparations for slavery and throws in a demand for an optional separate...

WASHINGTON — Several Democratic members of the Congressional Black Caucus Tuesday refused to denounce Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison’s call for a black state. One congressman stated, “I don’t see anything really objectionable.” . . . The Georgia Democrat said he wouldn’t comment on whether Ellison would have to denounce these comments. While Rep. Lewis said previous groups espoused similar ideas for a black state, the New Black Panther Party currently supports it. The group’s co-leader proposed an idea very similar to Ellison’s. He said that African-Americans should claim a “black nation” in “Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Alabama, and Georgia.” Ellison’s...

As a third-year student at the University of Minnesota Law School in 1989-90, he wrote two columns for the Minnesota Daily under the name “Keith Hakim.” In the first, Ellison refers to ‘Minister Louis Farrakhan,’ defends Nation of Islam spokesman Khalid Abdul Muhammad, and speaks in the voice of a Nation of Islam advocate. In the second, ‘Hakim’ demands reparations for slavery and throws in a demand for an optional separate homeland for American blacks.”

Judicial Watch announced today that it has filed an Urgent Motion for Injunction with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to stop a race-based, state-sponsored, Hawaiians only election that violates the fundamental constitutional rights of American citizens (Keli’i Akina, et al. v. The State of Hawaii, et al. (No. 15-17134)). The motion asks that the Appeals Court enjoin the counting of ballots, now scheduled for November 30, until the resolution of a Judicial Watch appeal of an earlier district court ruling in the case (Keli’i Akina, et al. v. The State of Hawaii, et al. (No. 1:15-cv-00322))....

BING TRANSLATION: EXAMPLE: http://zello.com/shared/YzkU "The MILITANTS are PREPARING ATTACKS in ADVANCE and try to PUT the BLAME for THEIR CONDUCT of the UKRAINIAN SECURITY SERVICES (link to one of the entries in open channels distributed by Zello http://zello.com/shared/YzkU-"zamylivaniâ eye with Boeing" is epic!:)) Terrorists have continued their tactics of preventive information about upcoming terrorist attacks. The active redirection of focus information aside charges of preparing provocative actions that the Ukrainian side. This tactic was borrowed by the Russian security services, which have to achieve a particular support from the civilian population or the other acts of aggression against the oppressed...

One phone call apparently was made at 4:40 p.m. Kyiv time, or 20 minutes after the plane crash, by Igor Bezler, who the SBU says is a Russian military intelligence officer and leading commander of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic. He reports to a person identified by Ukraine’s SBU as a colonel in the main intelligence department of the general headquarters of the armed forces of the Russian Federation Vasili Geranin regarding the shot down plane, which is about to be examined by the militants. The second intercepted conversation released by the Security Service of Ukraine was apparently between militants...

The terrorists in Donetsk are a disgrace! Today, pro-Russian terrorists broke into the Christian childrens home in Slovyansk and stole beds, mattresses and pillows. I am already angered that these morons don't have the decency to protect, but instead are causing unnecessary bloodshed! But now, to steal the beds of orphan children? I am angry! May the Ukrainian Army wipe these terrorists from the map and may God have mercy on their souls....because I do not! Praising God that the children who would normally be sleeping in those beds are here at Jeremiah's Hope camp sleeping safely in our care!...