Free Republic

There are no shortcuts to history, but don’t tell that to Barack Obama. In his ongoing campaign to appropriate John F. Kennedy’s aura, the presumptive Democratic nominee has accepted an invitation to speak in Berlin later this month. It’s not unusual for American presidential candidates to visit Germany’s capital in an election year. But the venue Obama’s handlers have chosen – Berlin’s symbolic and history-laden Brandenburg Gate – is obviously intended to recall Kennedy’s famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech in Berlin in 1963. The political subtext is clear: “BHO” is JFK’s political heir.

Only US presidents have been given the honour of speaking in front of the 18th Century gate, whose chariot of victory overlooked the Berlin Wall and the ecstatic party that followed its destruction in 1989. Angela Merkel's office this week made it clear that Mr Obama would be welcome in Berlin, but no more or less than his rival Senator McCain. "The mayor would be delighted to have Mr Obama take advantage of speaking at the Brandenburg Gate to spread his message," said the mayor's spokesman.

<p>Iranian calls for the destruction of Israel are almost routine these days. But for a former official of the Islamic Republic to call for the destruction of the Jewish state in the city where the Holocaust was planned adds a repugnant twist – especially as the German government sponsored the event that gave the man from Tehran a Western stage.</p>

Berlin - The United States opened a monumental new embassy in Berlin on Friday, returning the diplomats to their rightful place, 67 years after Washington declared war on the Nazis. Former US president George HW Bush, the ambassador to Germany William Timken, and his wife Sue Timken together cut a ribbon to symbolically let VIP guests enter the 130-million-dollar chancery. The multi-storey building occupies a commanding site between the Holocaust Memorial and Brandenburg Gate. US diplomats had left the site in 1941. During the decades of communism, the empty land had been part of a desolate no-man's land along the...

Germany has been commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Berlin airlift, when the Western allies kept the city supplied despite a Soviet blockade. Veterans of the airlift, many of whom are in their 80s and 90s, attended ceremonies in Berlin and Frankfurt. The American and British-led airlift lasted for more than a year, and involved planes delivering everything from coal to sweets. It was one of the biggest humanitarian air relief missions in history. "I find the courage with which this operation was carried out truly admirable," said German Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung. A small group of veteran airmen...

It was one of the most-amazing sights of the Cold War. By the hundreds, plane after plane thundered into the Berlin airports of Gatow, Tempelhof and Tegel, often arriving at the rate of one every three minutes. The supplies they delivered during the course of about a year sustained over 22,000 Western troops and over two million German civilians huddled in the ruins of the war-ravaged city. That the chief metropolis of a former, enemy nation could suddenly become a symbol of freedom revealed much about the strange, new era the world was entering. It also said much about the...

ANDREWS AIR FORCE BASE, Md., May 17, 2008 – The historic humanitarian efforts of the Berlin Airlift 60 years ago demonstrated to U.S. allies and enemies alike that the country would not be deterred from its commitments, the Air Force secretary said today. Two Oracle bi-planes perform aerial acrobatics during the Joint Service Open House at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., May 17, 2008. Thousands attended the event, which coincided with the 60th Anniversary of the Berlin Airlift. Defense Dept. photo by Fred W. Baker III  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. “It displayed a U.S. dedication to a...

In the past four months, six Muslim women living in Berlin have been brutally murdered by family members. Their crime? Trying to break free and live Western lifestyles. Within their communities, the killers are revered as heroes for preserving their family dignity. How can such a horrific and shockingly archaic practice be flourishing in the heart of Europe? The deaths have sparked momentary outrage, but will they change the grim reality for Muslim women? The shots came from nowhere and within minutes the young Turkish mother standing at the Berlin bus stop was dead. A telephone call from a relative...

At the age of 7, Mercedes Wild waved excitedly at each plane that circled over her Berlin home and landed at Tempelhof Airport, packed with supplies to feed Berliners during the Soviets' Cold War blockade. Today, 67 year old Wild is fighting against city plans to shut down the airport site in central Berlin. After years of debate, Berliners are to vote on the closure of the Nazi-built complex on Sunday. "It's quite emotional. The airport is a symbol of freedom," Wild said, standing in the almost empty, 1,200 metre-long building just a 10 minute drive from the Brandenburg Gate....

3/28/2008 - MACDILL AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. (AFPN) -- Air mobility leaders gathered for the annual Phoenix Rally to acknowledge past and present accomplishments while celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Berlin Airlift March 24 through 28 here. The theme of Phoenix Rally was "A legacy of global reach and hope," chosen to recognize the Air Mobility Command's past, present and future. At this year's conference, attendees acknowledge the historical accomplishments of Berlin Airlift along with special guest, retired Col. Gail Halvorsen, the Berlin Candy Bomber. "This year is special because we are celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Berlin...

An exhibition by Danish artists in Berlin has been closed because of threats received over a photo deemed to be offensive to Muslims, organizers said on Thursday. The exhibition, which opened in central Berlin on February 22, has been closed to ensure the safety of staff and visitors, Ralf Hartmann from the artists' collective Kunstverein Tiergarten said. The show by Danish art group Surrend is aimed at depicting what they say is the absurdity of extremism in all religions. One of the 21 photos is of the Kaaba – the cube-shaped building inside the Grande Mosque in Mecca – with...

BERLIN (AFP) — Germany on Monday deported to Iran an alleged Iranian secret agent who was jailed for life in 1997 for murdering four Kurdish dissidents in Berlin, officials in the German capital said. Kazem Darabi's Lebanese accomplice, Abbas Rhayel, has also been freed after serving 15 years in jail and was deported last week, prosecuting authorities told AFP. A lawyer close to the case had earlier said that both men were to be deported on Monday night. Darabi, 48, and Rhayel, a suspected member of the Iranian-backed Lebanese Hezbollah militia movement, were jailed for life for the 1992 murder...

Berlin dig finds city older than thought By DAVID RISING, Associated Press Writer Wed Jan 30, 1:59 PM ET BERLIN - An archaeological dig in downtown Berlin has uncovered evidence that the German capital is at least 45 years older than had previously been established, authorities said Wednesday. During excavation work last week in the Mitte district, archaeologists uncovered a wooden beam from an ancient earthen cellar, said Karin Wagner of the city-state's office for historical preservation. It was in exceptionally good condition, having lain under the water table for centuries, and scientists were able to determine from a sample...

As teenage residents of West Berlin during what many consider to be the first battle of the Cold War, Guenther and Gisela Petzold never knew how close the Berlin Airlift came to collapsing. It wasn't until years later, after the couple married and became U.S. citizens, that they learned of the difficulties surrounding the operation and how their neighbor played a critical role in the airlift's success. While the Petzolds didn't get to know retired Gen. T. Ross Milton until the trio met at an Oro Valley affair, they certainly benefited from his actions during the pivotal standoff between the...

BERLIN - Historic Tempelhof Airport — which played a key role in the Berlin airlift in the wake of World War II — will close to passengers in 2008, Germany's top administrative court confirmed Tuesday. The court threw out a bid to prevent Tempelhof's closure as part of plans to expand Schoenefeld airport, a former military airport on the city's outskirts, into Berlin-Brandenburg International Airport. Several airline companies that use the centrally located Tempelhof airport tried to block the closure. But the Leipzig-based Federal Administrative Court rejected their claims, approving an earlier decision by a Berlin-Brandenburg administrative court that argued...

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany's biggest synagogue, a century-old landmark which was torched by the Nazis and left to fester in communist East Berlin, reopened its doors on Friday in the latest sign of the country's Jewish revival. Located in the German capital's now trendy district of Prenzlauer Berg, the 1,000-seat synagogue has been returned to its former glory thanks to a painstaking 7-year restoration project that cost 7 million euros (4.7 million pounds). The restoration of the blue-domed temple follows last year's opening of a new synagogue in Munich and ordination of Germany's first rabbis since World War Two. But...

BERLIN - Construction workers unearthed a 2,200-pound Soviet bomb from World War II in a Berlin suburb Tuesday, forcing authorities to evacuate more than 4,000 people before defusing it. The bomb, which was buried 13 feet underground, was found Tuesday morning in the Lichterfelde district on the capital's southern edge. About eight hours later, specialists defused it, removing two detonators. People in the area were evacuated from their homes as a precaution, police spokeswoman Miriam Tauchmann said. Services on a nearby commuter train line also were disrupted for several hours. Unexploded bombs, relics of Allied bombardments before Nazi Germany's surrender...

"All war is stupid." -- John F. Kennedy Although support for the Iraq war diminishes daily, even among Republican senators, the neocons continue to write articles about why "we" must stand firm. That's what neocons do: They write articles and memos. "We" have an obligation to the Iraqi people, they tell us. "We" must stand by them in their struggle for "democracy." "We" have a moral obligation to continue the war. A war that may have been unjust at the beginning, it would seem, becomes a just war because we are "responsible" for the current civil war in Iraq --...

Beaten by her father, neglected by her mother, 6-week-old gorilla Mary Zwo seemed destined for tragedy - until kindhearted doctors who normally treat human patients fell for the tiny beauty of a beast. The ailing ape began receiving emergency treatment for dehydration and hypothermia over the weekend after her plight was discovered, German hospital officials said. She was whisked to the pediatric ward of the Muenster University Clinic in Stuttgart after zookeepers found her semiconscious and near death in the arms of her mother. And to the relief of her handlers, Mary Zwo, or Mary Two in English, was finally...

(On This Day In History) June 26, 1948 : Berlin Airlift Begins In response to the Soviet blockade of land routes into West Berlin, the United States begins a massive airlift of food, water, and medicine to the citizens of the besieged city. For nearly a year, supplies from American planes sustained the over 2 million people in West Berlin. On June 24, 1948, the Soviet Union blocked all road and rail travel to and from West Berlin, which was located within the Soviet zone of occupation in Germany. The Soviet action was in response to the refusal of American...

Western leaders searching for a long-term strategy to defend our civilization from fundamentalist Islam ought to reread the speech President Reagan delivered at the Berlin Wall 20 years ago this month. It was neither democracy nor capitalism Reagan foresaw bringing down the wall. It was Christianity. Reagan's demand that Soviet dictator Mikhail Gorbachev tear down the wall was the defining sound-bite of that speech, but it was another passage that defined the core meaning of the Cold War. Pondering what sustained Berliners, surrounded as they were by the Soviet menace, Reagan concluded: "Perhaps this gets to the root of the...

Commemorating 20th Anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s ‘Tear Down This Wall’ Speech Posted by Noel Sheppard on June 12, 2007 - 10:30. Twenty years ago, on June 12, 1987, President Ronald Reagan, standing on the west side of Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate, gave a speech that many believe signaled the beginning of the end of the Cold War.In this extraordinary moment in history, President Reagan challenged the Soviet Union’s Mikhail Gorbachev: General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this...

Berlin-Tempelhof, Hitler’s favourite airport, could yet be rescued by one of the world’s most influential Jewish philanthropists. Cosmetics billionaire, New York socialite and art collector Ronald Lauder – son of the celebrated Estée Lauder - is behind a €350m (£235m) project to turn the Third Reich architectural relic into a luxury fly-in health clinic for Europe’s super rich. Berlin's cash-strapped city fathers earlier this year finally cleared the way to develop the proposed new Berlin Brandenburg International (BBI) on the site of the present Schönefeld airport to the south east of the city, handling an annual 22 million passengers. Inner...

May 10, 2007 Tax inspectors seek slice of prostitutes’ earnings by Roger Boyes Berlin’s brothels are accustomed to all sorts of nocturnal visitors, but not, on the whole, to tax inspectors with clip-boards and stopwatches studying financial turnover. The cash-strapped German capital this week dispatched inspectors into establishments such as Lust Land to drum up revenue from the city’s 7,000 sex workers. “Prostitution is a strong economic sector in the capital,” says Gerry Woop, spokesman for Berlin’s economic administration. According to the German Institute for Economic Research, prostitution in Berlin has an annual turnover of €300 million (£203 million), making...

German cow dies after rampage through city Wed Apr 25, 12:33 PM ET BERLIN (AFP) - A pregnant cow has died two days after causing extensive damage as she went on the rampage through a German city for more than three hours, reports said on Wednesday. The Charolais cow, named Beate, escaped from a farm on Monday and charged through the northern city of Hanover, resisting the increasingly desperate efforts of police and local residents to capture her. Television crews and police cars joined the pursuit as Beate trampled on gardens and charged at cars, causing an estimated 25,000 euros...

BERLIN: Almost 70 years after the Nazis plotted the Holocaust, German Jews are celebrating Passover with the news that their community has become the fastest growing in the world. This extraordinary reversal of fortune has even seen Jewish immigration to Germany outstrip that to Israel. According to one rabbi, Israelis are flocking to Berlin, rather than German Jews making their aliya, or emigration, to Israel. "Berlin is the place to be," the principal of the Rabbinical Seminary in the German capital, Walter Homolka, said on Monday. Like Jews across the world, Mr Homolka was preparing for Passover, which celebrates the...

Jews flock to Germany By Harry de Quetteville in Berlin Last Updated: 2:36am BST 03/04/2007 Almost 70 years after the Nazis plotted the Holocaust, German Jews yesterday celebrated the Passover holiday with the news that their community has become the fastest growing in the world. This extraordinary reversal of fortune has even seen Jewish immigration to Germany outstrip that to Israel. Orthodox Jewes making Matzah, an unleavened bread for the Jewish holiday of Passover According to one rabbi, Israelis are flocking to Berlin, rather than German Jews making their aliya, or emigration, to Israel. "Berlin is the place to be,"...

It is curiously appropriate that the EU's celebrations today of the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome should have coincided with the news, heavily reported last week on the Continent but scarcely noticed here, that the EU's huge Galileo space programme is facing such a crisis that it may collapse. After the euro and the constitution, this scheme to project on the world stage what Le Monde described as "l'Europe-puissance", (Europe power) and to create 150,000 jobs, is probably the EU's most ambitious project to date. Its aborting, following that of the Constitution itself, would be richly symbolic. In...

BERLIN (EJP)--- A tragedy was avoided on Sunday after a smoke bomb, thrown through a window of a Jewish kindergarten in Berlin, failed to ignite. However, the school, located in a northwest neighbourhood of the German capital, was not spared by the spray painting of swastikas, other Nazi symbols and anti-Semitic phrases, such as “Auschwitz,” “Juden Raus” (Jews, get out) and “Sieg Heil”, on its outer walls, as well as on toys that had been lying around in the school’s playground. A police spokesman said the attack did not cause serious damage or endanger children or staff at the school....

US betrayed Berlin accord, says pro-North Korea paper by Harumi Ozawa Sun Feb 11, 7:15 AM ET North Korea has accused the United States of attempting to scupper a recent deal to lift financial sanctions on the communist state within a month, a report said. The Chosun Shinbo, a pro-Pyongyang newspaper for ethnic Koreans in Japan, said in its online edition Sunday that the renewed six-party talks had hit a snag because of "betrayal" by the United States, which refused to pledge energy incentives for denuclearisation. "The DPRK (North Korean) delegates participating in the six-party talks are expressing distrust over...

A citizens' group in Berlin turned out this week for a candlelight vigil to protest plans for a new mosque in their neighborhood. It will be the first to be built in the former East Berlin, where almost no Muslims live -- but no one can quite explain why it shouldn't be there.<--snip--> "The mosque is supposed to go up right here," says Günter Bronner, a blustery white-haired man with glasses pushed up on his forehead who's lived in the neighborhood for 42 years. He points to a drab piece of land at the end of the street where a...

One thing was clear at the topping out ceremony for the new United States Embassy in Berlin. The new building is a modern-day fortress. Officials at the United States State Department still haven't forgotten the 1985 debacle over their new embassy in Moscow. They were forced to drastically rebuild the costly structure after discovering that the Soviets had incorporated listening devices into concrete walls. The problem was so extensive that the embassy's upper floors had to be completely demolished and rebuilt. Last week the Americans completed the raw construction of yet another new embassy, this time in Berlin. And this...

10/5/2006 - ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AFPN) -- Retired Lt. Col. James and Ellie Spatafora possess a unique answer to a common question couples are quizzed about. When asked where they met, they answer that the seeds of their 56-year marriage were planted during the historic Berlin Airlift. The couple was able to catch up on old times with friends during a Berlin Airlift plaque dedication at Veterans Memorial Park here Oct. 4. More than 150 people attended the dedication, which was one of numerous events held during the weeklong reunion of the Berlin Airlift Veterans Association. The Berlin Airlift was a...

Ressam at times defiant in 2 days of questioning By Mike Carter Seattle Times staff reporter After more than a year of cooperating with federal prosecutors, Ahmed Ressam has become a sometimes difficult and defiant government witness. Ressam was at times surly and evasive during two days of closed-door questioning this week in Seattle by German lawyers who need his help prosecuting Mounir el-Motassadeq, a Moroccan accused of helping the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers. Ressam, convicted of conspiracy to commit an act of international terrorism, might be endangering his deal with federal prosecutors to serve as few as 27 years...

I guess I just don't get out much anymore. There's supposed to be this big Humanist Shin-Dig coming up in Berlin, with the 112 most important people in the whole wide world (MIPITWWW), and I don't hear about until three days before the kickoff. I haven't even heard of any of these 112 MIPITWWW. (Well, I have heard of one of them). This is how Dropping Knowledge describes the participants: "dropping knowledge is bringing together 112 visionaries whose innovative, creative or humanistic impact on the international public can deliver fresh ideas, perspectives, approaches and new solutions." It gets better...here's some...

On August 13, 1961 the Berlin Wall was erected and devided the city of Berlin for more than 28 years. The photographs shown on this page were taken by unknown photographers in the sixties after building up the wall.

The shrill, thin whistle of the train; the rattling wooden boxcars filled with moaning, miserable people; the tracks leading from the West and ending in a single track entering into the horror of Birkenau are memories emblazoned into the collective memory of the civilized world. I was one of the lucky ones to have escaped all that, and now I was retracing a train voyage in the opposite direction: from Krakow through Silesia to Wroclaw (long known by its German name, Breslau), through what was East Germany, into Berlin and Potsdam, ending in Munich. The journey of a group of...

Vandals scratched a swastika into one of the slabs of Berlin's Holocaust memorial, police said Sunday. Security officers found the swastika Saturday morning, police said. The damage was swiftly repaired. The memorial _ a vast field of more than 2,700 gray slabs situated close to the Brandenburg Gate in the heart of Berlin _ opened to the public in May 2005. Open around the clock, it drew some 3.5 million visitors in its first year, authorities said. In a separate incident, a 42-year-old man was detained after he was seen painting a swastika on the facade of the Swiss Embassy...

BERLIN, July 17 (Reuters) - More than 1,000 Lebanese and Palestinians staged an anti-Israeli protest at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate on Monday, police said.

A Berlin-based history society has unveiled an information sign at the site of Hitler's underground bunker, marking for the first time exactly where the Nazi leader took his life at the end of World War II. Just 200 metres away from Germany's memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, the Berlin Underworlds society has erected a sign giving details of the layout and construction of the bunker. The bunker is buried under a car park. "Visitors to this area ... have until now never received information about this site," Dietmar Arnold, head of the Berlin Underworlds organisation, told reporters....

Two weeks ago, I pointed out that we live in something close to the best of times, with record worldwide economic growth and at a low point in armed conflict in the world. Yet Americans are in a sour mood, a mood that may be explained by the lack of a sense of history. The military struggle in Iraq (nearly 2,500 military deaths) is spoken of in as dire terms as Vietnam (58,219), Korea (54,246) or World War II (405,399). We bemoan the cruel injustice of $3 a gallon for gas in a country where three-quarters of people classified as...

In most parts of Berlin today, one has to look hard to find the double strand of bricks embedded in sidewalks, >snip< the Berlin Wall was one of the most visible, despised, politically and ideologically charged boundaries on earth. It was also the quintessence of an unnatural border, one drawn not by nature, language, ethnicity or colonial hubris, but an artificial, man-made and deliberate cleaving of a culturally and linguistically homogenous society.  >snip<  very simply, no major world city had been cleaved in half so abruptly and violently. >snip< What happened in East Germany, many Germans are  realizing, was not...

BERLIN'S NEW TRAIN STATION A Glass Armadillo for Germany's Capital By Frank Thadeusz Berlin's new main train station -- the biggest in Europe -- opens this week. The €700-million railway project has several innovations including extra quiet tracks and high-tech loudspeakers, but for many its construction remains contentious. Hany Azer's finest hour came on a humid summer night. The man in charge of building Berlin's new Central Station had promised an unprecedented construction spectacle that both the media and locals wanted to see. The chief engineer and his crew had to lower two massive girder towers, weighing no less than...

BERLIN (Reuters) - A swan has fallen in love with a plastic swan-shaped paddle boat on a pond in the German town of Muenster and has spent the past three weeks flirting with the vessel five times its size, a sailing instructor said Friday. Peter Overschmidt, who operates a sailing school and rents the two-seat paddle boat on the Aasee pond, said the black swan with a bright red beak has not left the white swan boat's side since it flew in one day in early May. "It seems like he's fallen in love," said Overschmidt. "He protects it, sits...

Excerpt - BERLIN (Reuters) - A knife-wielding man attacked people streaming out of a gala ceremony for Berlin's new central rail station on Friday night, injuring up to 20 before being arrested, police said. "A crazy man ran down the street stabbing people arbitrarily," a policeman at the scene told Reuters. Police said some of the injured were in serious condition. The attacker was identified as a 17-year old German man from Neukoelln, a southern Berlin district with a large immigrant population. Police said he did not have a far-right background. ~ snip ~

LONDON, May 16 (IranMania) - Iran is working to obtain long-range missiles which could threaten the whole of Europe, the former head of Israel's military intelligence said, AFP reported. "Iran already has surface-to-surface missiles capable of being equipped with nuclear warheads with a 1,500 (930 miles) kilometer range but it will in the future have missiles with a range of 5,000 kilometers, which will threaten the whole of Europe," Aharon Zeevi told a conference in Tel Aviv. Iranian President Mahmoud "Ahmadinejad is promising the end of history in two or three years' time and I suggest that we believe him,"...

Man to adopt 1,000 in revenge on Berlin By Kate Connolly in Berlin (Filed: 09/05/2006) A German man is exploiting a loophole in the law to become the legal father of 1,000 foreign children so they can claim German passports. Jürgen Hass, who lives in Paraguay, says it is a personal "act of revenge" against the state. He has so far adopted 300 children from seven countries and plans to adopt a further 700 by the end of the year. Under a law on children's rights dating from 1998, a man can become the legal father of a child as...

BERLIN - A retiree in northern Germany flushed some 30,000 marks (euro15,300, US$18,900) down the toilet, believing the old bank notes were worthless, police said. Officials were alerted by a blocked pipe in the northern city of Kiel. A cleaning company employee extracted soggy bundles of bank notes, but more money got away as the water started flowing again. Investigators then discovered that the retiree had reported a blocked pipe at his house the same day. They visited the "slightly bewildered" man at his apartment and he confirmed that he had flushed the money away, a police statement issued late...

A GROUP of German priests and parishioners have begun a politically sensitive fundraising campaign to save the country’s last Nazi-era church. The Martin Luther Memorial Church in Berlin has embarrassed the authorities for six decades. The image of a Nazi storm trooper side by side with Jesus Christ has been carved into the pulpit, the entrance is lit by a chandelier in the shape of an iron cross and the organ was used to stir the spirits at a torch-lit Nuremberg rally. Throughout the church, consecrated in 1933, there are bare patches where swastikas, illegal since the end of the...

Israeli military protested at Berlin festival Amnesty International volunteers are using the Berlin Film Festival to criticize the Israel Defense Forces. Berlin members of the human rights organization staked out screenings of two Israeli films this weekend, collecting signatures demanding that Israel “establish an alternative civilian service as it is granted worldwide in many countries.” Amnesty activist Sibylle Auer, campaigning at a screening of “Close to Home,” a film about the emotional and political dilemmas facing a group of female soldiers in Israel, said the activists are trying to publicize the recent jailing of 18-year-old Uri Natan for refusing to...