Free Republic

Six people were detained Sunday for allegedly plotting an attack on the Berlin Half Marathon. Local police said the men supposedly planned to brandish knives in crowds and slash spectators and participants around them, according to The Washington Post. “There were isolated indications that those arrested, aged between 18 and 21 years, were participating in the preparation of a crime in connection with this event,” prosecutors and police wrote in a joint statement.Police reportedly tracked the main suspect and his co-conspirators for weeks when they discovered a plot to attack civilians at the event. Once suspicions were confirmed, the residences...

The number of Salafists in Germany has increased twofold since 2013, the interior ministry said Wednesday, surpassing December’s “all-time high.” The number of individuals classified as Salafists by regional authorities in state offices for the Protection of the Constitution reached 11,000, the ministry said, confirming an earlier report from German newspaper Tagesspiegel. Five years ago, the German intelligence agency BfV placed this number at 5,500 — half of the current total. Salafism is a fundamentalist Islamic ideology. Security authorities see Salafism as a potential entry point to Islamist terrorism. Just under 5 million Muslims live in Germany, meaning that the...

After the father of a Jewish child at a Berlin primary school told a newspaper about anti-Semitic bullying experienced by his daughter, Germany’s Jewish community called for more action on Tuesday. A girl at the Paul-Simmel-Grundschule was reportedly told she deserved to be beaten and killed by a schoolmate when she admitted to being Jewish, her father told the Berliner Zeitung on Saturday. “Our daughter was accosted by Muslim students because she does not believe in Allah”, he claimed. According to the father, the young girl was asked last week by a fellow classmate if she was a Jew. When...

Police pulled three security guards away on Thursday afternoon after they marched on the Israeli stand at the ITB Berlin tourism fair shouting “Free Palestine.” The men, who were employed at the ITB Berlin fair by a private security firm, surrounded the Israeli tourism board’s stand and shouted “Free Palestine” and “Freiheit für Palästina”, according to Tagesspiegel. Police pulled the men away and they were later suspended from their jobs. According to witnesses spoken to by Tagesspiegel, the three men appeared to be of Arabic background. …

Commissioned by the Propaganda Ministry to film the 1936 Berlin games, Leni Riefenstahl was set to showcase the triumph of German athletes as proof of Aryan physical and intellectual superiority over the rest of the world. But Jesse Owens, who earned gold in the 100-meter dash, the 200-meter dash, the long jump and the 4-by-100-meter relay, became the true star of Riefenstahl’s film. The close-up on Owens’s face, the white flare of the starting gun, Owens’s lurch, and then his upright run past his competitors in 10.3 seconds, and the ever-so-close tight shot of a perturbed Hitler. Owens had become...

After months of secret negotiations, a shadowy Russian bilked American spies out of $100,000 last year, promising to deliver stolen National Security Agency cyberweapons in a deal that he insisted would also include compromising material on President Trump, according to American and European intelligence officials. The cash, delivered in a suitcase to a Berlin hotel room in September, was intended as the first installment of a $1 million payout, according to American officials, the Russian and communications reviewed by The New York Times. The theft of the secret hacking tools had been devastating to the N.S.A., and the agency was...

The Soviet armies advancing into East Prussia in January 1945, in huge, long columns, were an extraordinary mixture of modern and medieval: tank troops in padded black helmets, Cossack cavalrymen on shaggy mounts with loot strapped to the saddle, lend-lease Studebakers and Dodges towing light field guns, and then a second echelon in horse-drawn carts. The variety of character among the soldiers was almost as great as that of their military equipment. There were freebooters who drank and raped quite shamelessly, and there were idealistic, austere communists and members of the intelligentsia appalled by such behaviour. Beria and Stalin, back...

The German federal police are expanding its anti-terrorism unit GSG 9 and installing a special squad in Berlin. The move is a reaction to ongoing terrorist threats in the capital. The federal police squad that deals with terrorist attacks is to become significantly larger, and will set up a second base in Berlin. “We’re talking about around a third of the current strength of the unit,” GSG 9 commander Jérome Fuchs told Berlin state broadcaster RBB on Monday, before adding that finding the right personnel would be a “big challenge,” and that “fitness, strength of character, and teamwork” were particular...

Organisers of Berlin's New Year's Eve celebrations are to set up a "safe zone" for women for the first time. The new security measures planned for the Brandenburg Gate party come amid concerns about sexual assaults. A large number of assaults and robberies targeting women at Cologne's New Year's Eve celebrations two years ago horrified Germany. Hundreds of women reported being attacked by gangs of men with migrant backgrounds.

The recent election of Republican Dean Tran of Fitchburg to the Massachusetts state Senate was an embarrassing rebuke to the state’s top Democrats, including U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Despite their opposition, Tran defeated Democrat Susan Chalifoux Zephir, a Leominster city councilor who had the support of the state’s Democrat Party hierarchy, as well as Charlene DiCalogero of Berlin an unenrolled candidate Claire Freda.

Since opening its doors in 2015, no unaccompanied minors have been deported from Germany. That is soon set to change, as Berlin has started building centers in Morocco to house deported minors, according to a report. The German government started constructing two youth centers in northern Morocco to house local “street children” as well as unaccompanied Moroccan minors who have been deported by Germany, according to a report from the Welt am Sonntag newspaper on Sunday. The pilot project creates a legal pathway for Germany to start deporting youths without needing to necessarily locate their families first. In recent years,...

German police descended on a Christmas market in Berlin after two bags of bullets were found under a nearby mosque last night. About 200 rounds of ammunition was found in an underground car park in West Berlin - but officers quickly ruled out any terror link. The discovery came with Germany still on high alert after a wave of terror attacks and almost a year after a jihadist killed 12 by crashing a lorry through a market in the city.

Relatives of the 12 people who were killed in last year's horrific terror attack at a Christmas market in Berlin have spoken out publicly against the treatment they've gotten from German Chancellor Angela Merkel. One of their complaints is that, although it was a widely publicized and horrific attack, Merkel has not expressed personal condolences. Apparently, "Mutti Merkel" is so busy creating an even bigger and more powerful EU that she can't spare the time to reach out to terror victims' families. The relatives wrote an open letter that was published by German news magazine Der Spiegel on Friday. In...

Debate has recently flared in Germany as to whether the prevalence of English in urban areas is a nuisance. We spoke to expats who told us why they have not learned the local language. When Jens Spahn, a politician from the Christian Democrats (CDU), recently condemned people who live in Berlin but speak English as “provincial, elitist hipsters,” he stirred up a national debate on the importance of learning the local lingo. Spahn argued that the use of English leaves out locals who can’t speak the global language and is detrimental to other newcomers who dedicate their time to learning...

The news report below shows the polarization in the crowd at a recent campaign rally for German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Many thanks to Nash Montana for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling. A note from the translator: That last sentence is very cryptic. I do not know what they mean. Do they mean to say that most who will vote in Berlin, will vote for others such as AfD? There’s no explanation for this, and comments are disabled on the original video.

Germany’s leading Jewish newspaper has fired sharp criticism at the capital city, arguing that Berlin is failing to take a strong enough stance against anti-Semitic activist groups. The Jüdische Allgemeine Zeitung (JAZ) published the strongly-worded article on Wednesday after several artists dropped out of a music festival currently being held in the capital when they found out that it was being backed by the Israeli embassy. The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, which seeks to isolate Israel internationally, put “massive pressure” on artists to withdraw from the Pop-Kultur festival due to a €500 donation from the Israeli embassy, JAZ...

From August, a train station in Berlin will be the testing ground for surveillance cameras with biometric face recognition capability. Here is an overview of the most important information and a look at the controversy. The test phase will take place at Berlin’s Südkreuz train station. It will include only selected participants and be conducted by the German federal police, Federal Criminal Police Office and the Interior Ministry in conjunction with Deutsche Bahn, the station operator. […] For the test phase, three specialized cameras have been installed that will film a particular entrance and an escalator leading to the station...

Schoolteachers and other school officials in Berlin have noticed a rising trend of anti-Semitism among pupils and say the expression “You Jew!” has become a common insult. A report conducted by the American Jewish Committee (AJC) of 21 schools in Berlin shows the level of antisemitism is growing among the primarily Turkish and Arab Muslim pupils. The group also found a disturbing rise in support for radical Islamism, according to German broadcaster RBB.

While the United States has continued to debate so-called “bathroom bills” targeting transgender people, Berlin’s justice minister is hoping to open up government building bathrooms to all. According to an audit report by the Berlin justice ministry seen by Tagesspiegel on Monday, many of the bathrooms in Berlin’s government administrative buildings could be converted into unisex facilities without great effort. “The building scan showed that having toilets for all sexes in many places would be simple to implement,” said justice minister Dirk Behrendt, who is also responsible for anti-discrimination projects. Such unisex toilets are intended to reduce discrimination against transgender...

Under the watch of Chancellor Merkel, millions of Muslim migrants have flooded Germany. Amid a spike in rapes, another frightening trend is emerging within Europe’s largest economy — Sharia Police.Gatestone Institute reports: A hundred Islamists are now openly enforcing Sharia law on the streets of Berlin, according to local police who are investigating a recent string of violent assaults in the German capital. The self-appointed morality police involve Salafists from Chechnya, a predominantly Sunni Muslim region in Russia. The vigilantes are using threats of violence to discourage Chechen migrants from integrating into German society; they are also promoting the establishment of a parallel...