Free Republic

Presenting the government's annual domestic intelligence report, Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble on Thursday said Islamic fundamentalists posed a bigger threat to Germany than neo-Nazis, anarchists or other extremist groups. Islamist terrorism "continues to be the greatest threat to stability and security in Germany and Europe," Schäuble said in Berlin. It is only thanks to hard work from German intelligence services and their partners in other countries that there have as yet been no serious terrorist attacks in Germany, Schäuble said. He said Germany continues to be a target for terrorists because of its growing military engagement in Afghanistan and the...

When Mika Brzezinski gushed over Pat Buchanan's knowledge of WWII history today, was she aware that her hero has criticized Britain for coming to the defense of her father's native Poland when Nazi Germany invaded it? Buchanan has been a member of the Morning Joe panel this week. Much of today's talk has focused, with a Bush-bashing panel of guests, on President Bush's condemnation of appeasement in remarks to the Israeli Knesset. At 8:12 AM ET, the show rolled video from last night's Hardball of Chris Matthews hectoring of radio talk show host Kevin James over the latter's inability to...

Fascism Was Anti-Religious Too Bethany Stotts, May 13, 2008 In our age of moral relativity, leaders like George W. Bush and Tony Blair have been cast as modern Adolph Hitlers—a practice which trivializes the “moral collapse” perpetuated by the Third Reich. Weekly Standard contributor David Gelernter, in contrast, is intent on magnifying these moral differences. Claiming inspiration from T.S. Eliot’s characterization of WWII as a choice between “Christianity” or “paganism,” the Yale professor said at the American Enterprise Institute that “The thesis I want to investigate, one that involves such a daunting tangle of complex issues and demands so many...

Millions of allied soldiers returned home after the defeat of the Hitler regime. Many were unable to speak about the horrors they experienced in Germany. One of those soldiers was Technical Sergeant Harold Bruce Welch – the father of First Lady of the United States, Laura Bush. It was during the "National Days of Remembrance 2005,” that Laura Bush, First Lady of the United States, first spoke publicly about her father’s experiences in the war. That he served in the 104th Infantry Division of the U.S. Army and participated in the liberation of the notorious concentration camp "Dora" in Nordhausen....

The German government has shrugged off a verbal attack on Chancellor Angela Merkel by Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez who called her a political descendant of Adolf Hitler and stopped just short of telling her to go to hell. The two leaders might meet at an upcoming summit in Peru. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has joined a long list of government leaders to receive a verbal savaging from Venezuela's outspoken President Hugo Chavez, but she appears to be intent on ignoring the abuse. Chavez, speaking on Sunday in his weekly TV and radio program, said of Merkel: "She is from the...

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Sunday attacked German Chancellor Angela Merkel, comparing her to Adolf Hitler in response to her criticism of the South American leader's policies. Merkel belongs to the political right, "the same right that supported Hitler, fascism," Chavez said on his television programme, Alo Presidente. Chavez's remarks came after Merkel said that the left-wing leader is not the voice of the region. Merkel, speaking in an interview to Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa ahead of the European Union-Latin American summit, indicated that leftist polices pursued by leaders like Chavez were not the solution. Pointing to the emergence of "left-wing...

BMW’s 2.0-liter four-cylinder diesel (earlier post) was named Best New Engine of the Year 2008 at the tenth annual International Engine of the Year Awards at Engine Expo in Stuttgart, Germany (6-8 May). The top six contenders in this category included two twin-turbos (one gasoline, one diesel), a V10 with 580bhp, the world’s first diesel boxer engine (from Subaru), and a fresh version of Volkswagen’s TSI. BMW’s 3-liter Twin Turbo gasoline engine was named International Engine of the Year 2008, as it was last year. (Earlier post.) The judges of the awards noted that the back-to-back win also confirms turbocharging...

Cologne, Germany - A senior executive at Russian gas monopoly Gazprom is under investigation in Germany over the claim that he was a German secret-police officer in the communist era, a prosecutor confirmed Tuesday. The newspaper Die Welt was set to name the man on Wednesday as Felix Strehober, chief financial officer of Gazprom Germania. It said it was possible he would be charged in Cologne with perjury after making a statutory declaration last year, 'I have never been a salaried employee of the Ministry of State Security (Stasi) or the equivalent.' Die Welt said more than 100 pages in...

Was hitler left or right wing?

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...

COMMONS VOTES ROME PACT; CHAMBERLAIN EXTOLS DUCE AS HITLER STARTS FOR ITALY BALLOT IS 316 TO 108 Labor Irate as Premier Praises ‘New Vision’ of Modern Italy HIS EYE ON ROME MEETING He Reveals Palestine Is Item in Deal – Accused of Distorting Approval by Roosevelt The British House of Commons delivered a salute to Premier Mussolini as Chancellor Hitler was on his way to Rome, ratifying the Anglo-Italian treaty, 316 to 108. Praise of Italian good faith by Prime Minister Chamberlain brought furious attacks from Labor and Liberal leaders. Revelation was made that Italy had agreed to cease agitation...

WASHINGTON (Routers) In an effort to drive a wedge between moderate Germans and those more extreme, the State Department issued new rules today, stipulating that the word "Nazi" was not to be used by department employees to describe the enemy. Germany recently declared war on our country, as part of its alliance with Imperial Japan, which itself attacked us at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii a little over a week ago, and with which we are now at war. "Nazism has a great many admirable features," said a department spokesman at Foggy Bottom, "and we want to make clear that despite...

These days, while walking in the streets of any major European town it is quite likely you may come across a young Muslim wearing a T-shirt bearing an interesting messages: "Read Quran, charge your iman" or "I love my Prophet -- Mohammed." These are only two of the many interesting messages a young German citizen of Turkish descent has been trying to spread using the T-shirts of his own making. You are likely to see these messages not only on T-shirts but also on bags, mugs, mouse pads and even bibs. Other messages include, "Keep smiling, it's sunnah," "Terrorism has...

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,3297686,00.html?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf Today is the centennial of Oskar Schindler's birth.

[Some color pics from Der Spiegel Online. Click the URL below] http://www.spiegel.de/flash/0,5532,10269,00.html

The head of Germany's foreign intelligence service, Ernst Uhrlau, is under pressure over a surveillance operation which targeted a whole ministry in the Afghan government. The scandal raises serious questions about the BND's ability to police itself. **** It was an extravagant promise, one delivered in a state of contriteness. Ernst Uhrlau, the president of Germany's foreign intelligence agency, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), said in a 2006 interview: "When it comes to the private sphere of a journalist, then I have to draw the line." The agency, he said, had "gone too far" and, in the future, "absolute respect for the...

Back in the mid 1970's, BMW exploded into the Midship Engine realm with a sexy little car called the M1. It has since been laid to rest and been reflected upon with sadness and envy. Jump to 2008, and BMW has released a concept design that they are dubbing the "M1 Homage." First off, BMW has made it very clear that this is a "concept design" and there are no "official" plans for production. However, keep in mind that there have also been rumors circulating that BMW was going to make a return to the Midship engine genre of...

PRAGUE REBUFFS HENLEIN; BARS PRO-GERMAN POLICY; STANDS BY ITS ALLIANCES NAZI AROUSES IRE Regime Ignores Internal Demands and Pushes Own Minority Plan MASK DOFFED, PRESS SAYS Reich Papers Bar Compromise – Czechoslovakia Will Not Last Year, One Forecasts Czechoslovakia, in a semi-official statement rejected the Sudeten demand that she give up her alliances. The Henlein domestic program was said to be so lacking in clearness that it gave no basis for negotiation. The government announced it would go ahead unperturbed with its own law to settle nationality problems. The non-Nazi press was hostile to Konrad Henlein’s speech. The German propaganda...

At the International Vienna Motor Symposium, which starts today, Volkswagen is announcing that its next-generation turbo diesel engine, BlueTDI - developed especially for the North American market - will initially be available in the U.S. version of the Jetta. The Jetta BlueTDI will come to North America sometime in the middle of this year, followed at some point by the Touareg BlueTDI. BlueTDI is the cleaner version of the already pretty clean TDI engine that VW uses in its European diesels (starting with the Tiguan last year). TDI meets the Euro-5 standard and BlueTDI is ready for the stricter...

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....

German police staged a series of raids Wednesday in an investigation of nine German citizens suspected of trying to win over converts to their radical version of Islam, prosecutors said. Munich prosecutors said that 16 properties in various parts of the country were searched as they sought incriminating publications and other evidence. They included the apartments of the suspects. They said the group originated in the southern town of Neu-Ulm, at the Multi-Kultur-Haus - an Islamic center that Bavarian authorities shut in December 2005, charging that it threatened the coexistence of Germans and foreigners as well as security in the...

BERLIN, Germany (CNN) -- A German warship was involved in fending off Monday's pirate attack on a Japanese tanker near the coast of Somalia, a spokesman for the German armed forces said Wednesday.

The haunting discovery of the watery graves of long lost Australian, German and Japanese sailors has uncovered vital clues to two World War II mysteries. The 66-year-old secrets of two of Australia's strangest wartime naval encounters have been at least partially revealed through the location of three sunken ships over the past 18 months. In November 2006, a Japanese midget submarine involved in a daring raid on Sydney harbour in the heart of the nation's biggest city was found off the beach of the Pacific east coast. The sub is believed to be the tomb of its two-man crew, who...

BERLIN: Germany will appeal to other European Union countries this week to take in more Christians from Iraq and attempt to reach a common policy toward Iraqi refugees, officials said Wednesday. The government here is already considering granting Christians preferential treatment over other religions and groups. Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble stated his intention to open Germany's doors to Iraqi Christians during interviews last weekend and expects full agreement Thursday when interior ministers from the 16 states meet near Berlin. The issue will also be discussed Friday by EU interior ministers at a meeting in Luxembourg. Schaeuble's position has been welcomed...

Diplomacy: Democrats have hammered the Bush administration for supposedly losing allies and global standing. But a look at U.S. ties shows Bush to be a master diplomat who is strengthening U.S. relations all over."The world owes President Bush a debt of gratitude in leading the world in our determination to root out terrorism," said British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, a man whose recent elevation to office was supposed to denote a "cooling" of relations with the U.S. and a tilt toward Europe. But Europe isn't really "cooling," either. France is now led by a man elected as "le Americain." Like...

The production version of Lifan's egregious MINI clone is set to debut this weekend at the Beijing Motor Show. The Lifan 320 as it's called has an 87-horsepower 1.3L underhood that drives the front wheels alone. We're sure that Lifan will point to the car's standard 5-door hatchback layout as evidence that its not a true MINI copy, but let's all be serious here. Droopy headlights, fat D-pillars and traditional placement of the extra doors don't temper the blatant rip-offedness of this Grade D doppelganger. Even the wheels are copies. On a more amusing note, who knew MINI's humorous...

BRITAIN MAY PUSH DEAL WITH REICH Chamberlain’s Vacation With Londonderry Seen as Step Toward Prompt Approach PEER IN TOUCH WITH NAZIS Conservatives Support Peace Program, but Labor Paper Voices Grave Doubt By FERDINAND KUHN, Jr. Special Cable to THE NEW YORK TIMES. LONDON, April 17. – With the Anglo-Italian agreement safely signed and almost universally approved, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain arrived in the far north of Scotland this morning to spend a vacation of almost a week as the guest of the Marquess of Londonderry. The Prime Minister is staying near Brora, a little seashore town in Sutherlandshire at the...

A new plan from US President George Bush which aims to cap greenhouse gases by 2025 has been dismissed as "disastrous" and "Neanderthal" by a group of ministers at a climate change meeting in Paris. This week Mr Bush said he wanted to stop the growth of US emissions by 2025, taking a stronger stance on the issue than in the past. However his plan, announced at a ministerial-level meeting of major carbon emitters, has drawn criticism from delegates from Australia, the European Union and some US participants. Germany says Mr Bush has taken climate change policy back in time,...

Russia denied Tuesday that it threatened to block the nomination of U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for a second term because of his position on Kosovo. Kosovo declared independence from Serbia Feb. 17. Thirty-seven countries recognized the move, but several countries, including Russia and China, have not, calling the unilateral declaration illegal. Vitaly Churkin, Russia's U.N. ambassador, called media reports Russia would block the second term for Ban "pure and simple fabrication," RIA Novosti reported. Ban issued a report in early April saying the U.N. would continue -- under a 1999 mandate -- to allow peacekeeping forces to operate in Kosovo,...

Russia and Ukraine will hold talks on the latter's bid for NATO membership, which Moscow opposes, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said here Tuesday... Ohryzko said Ukraine will make its final decision after a referendum on joining NATO and such a move will not pose a threat to Russia... Russia is worried at the eastward expansion of the U.S.-led military alliance, especially its support for Ukraine and Georgia's membership bids. A senior Russian military officer threatened last week to take military action if Ukraine and Georgia joined the alliance... NATO rejected the two nations' applications for membership at its three-day...

A 13-year-old German schoolboy corrected NASA's estimates on the chances of an asteroid colliding with Earth, a German newspaper reported Tuesday, after spotting the boffins had miscalculated. Nico Marquardt used telescopic findings from the Institute of Astrophysics in Potsdam (AIP) to calculate that there was a 1 in 450 chance that the Apophis asteroid will collide with Earth, the Potsdamer Neuerster Nachrichten reported. NASA had previously estimated the chances at only 1 in 45,000 but told its sister organisation, the European Space Agency (ESA), that the young whizzkid had got it right. The schoolboy took into consideration the risk of...

HEIDELBERG, Germany — German federal police have sent out “wanted” posters for two Germans who they say are training at a Pakistan terrorist camp and planning suicide attacks such as one carried out in Afghanistan last month that killed two U.S. soldiers, according to German media. The two are members of an Islamist cell that German police busted in September when three of its other members were brewing up bombs, authorities said, to kill Americans in Germany. The two men in the posters — one a German, the other born in Lebanon but a resident of Germany — have been...

I hope that the EU countries that made too early decision on recognition of Kosovo shall realize their responsibility for leaving pro-European forces in Serbia in the lurch’, former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder says for ‘Blic’. ‘That is why I hope that until April 28 they, especially the Netherlands, shall realize how important it is that the stabilization and association agreement (SAA) is signed and that the first step towards suspension of visa regime for the citizens of Serbia is made’, he adds.Schroeder, who visited Belgrade on the occasion of the 175th anniversary of the Swiss media group ‘Ringier’, the...

Apart from the sheer mass of the Clintons’ earnings, perhaps the most intriguing revelation contained in the release of the Clinton tax data last week was that Bill Clinton received a whopping $15 million advance in 2001 for what would become his autobiography, My Life. As even the New York Times noticed, this was significantly “larger than previously thought” — or, more exactly, than previously reported. For example, an August 7, 2001 article in the Times puts the figure vaguely at “over $10 million.” A Wall Street Journal report from the following day cites a more concrete figure of “close...

Angela Merkel shows she's keeping abreast of foreign affairs on a State visit last night - and teaching our Home Secretary Jacqui Smith a lesson into the bargain. Germany's Chancellor revealed her impressive decolletage while chatting to Norway's prime minister Jens Stoltenberg at the opening of Olso Opera House. And to his credit, Mr Stoltenberg maintained crucial, and diplomatic, eye contact with his guest at the inauguration of the cultural landmark.

A German appeal court has confirmed a 15-year prison sentence handed to a woman for killing eight of her newborn babies in the country's worst post-war infanticide case. The court in Frankfurt an der Oder in eastern Germany found that the fact 42-year-old Sabine Hilschenz was an alcoholic did not reduce her accountability for the crime. The divorced, unemployed dental assistant was found guilty of eight counts of manslaughter in 2006 for routinely killing her offspring. Hilschenz had told investigators that she did not harm the children but left them to die after giving birth alone every time following heavy...

A German opera house is to unveil a provocative new production staged in the ruins of New York's World Trade Centre. It features naked pensioners and Mickey Mouse masks, Hitler salutes and Elvis impersonators. The self-consciously outrageous September 11th staging of Verdi's 'A Masked Ball' has been dreamed up by Austrian director Johann Kresnik. He has described the concoction as a populist critique of modern American society, aimed at showing up the disparities between rich and poor, which attracting a large audience. "It will be a different, a provocative masked ball on the ruins of the World Trade Centre," he...

Many people are expecting Pope Benedict XVI to speak out in defense of human life and against abortion during his visit to the United States next week. What few people realize, however, is that the pope knows first-hand what happens when a society refuses to defend the most defenseless of its citizens. As a boy of fourteen, Joseph Ratzinger had a cousin who had been born with Down's Syndrome, only a bit younger than himself. In 1941, German state "therapists" came to the boy's house and probably informed the parents of the government regulation that prohibited mentally handicapped children from...

The new four-cylinder diesel family offers improved performance, torque, emission properties and fuel economy. Mercedes-Benz has introduced a new generation of four-cylinder diesel engines with improved performance, torque, emission properties and fuel economy. The new engine family will supersede four different powerplants. The new engine will debut in the C-Class this fall, but will eventually be fitted in a number of variants across a wide range of model series, including the Mercedes-Benz Sprinter. Mercedes-Benz says it also earmarking the engine family for use in hybrid vehicles. In its most powerful variant, the new 2,143 cc four-cylinder unit delivers up...

Germany's reputation for efficiency has been taken to a new level after an inventor and amateur chef dispensed with the need for waiters by designing an automated restaurant. The restaurant, in the southern town of Nuremberg, has caused such a sensation since it opened that its owner says it is now booked out for weeks in advance. "On weekends we are booked out five times a day," said owner and inventor Michael Mack. How about that: Weird news from around the world "People have a lot of fun, it's a real event." While Michelin starred restaurants aspire to greatness with...

The Munich-based energy and electrical giant Siemens has with "high likelihood" delivered sophisticated data surveillance systems to Iran, an Austrian investigative journalist disclosed in a public broadcast ORF report on Monday. Speaking from Vienna, journalist Erich Moechel told The Jerusalem Post that he was "99 percent certain" that "Monitoring Centers," used to track mobile and land-line phone conversations, had been sent to Iran. These systems could enable the Iranian intelligence service to document conversations between Israel and Iran and "build a communication profile." According to Moechel, the technology can show "how many telephone conversations over the last 10 years between...

Germany likes to call itself the "Land of Ideas" - and over the centuries it has certainly had plenty of them. It was Germans who invented the aspirin, the airship, the printing press and the diesel engine. But Germany has surely never produced anything quite as weird as the automated restaurant. I say "restaurant" - but it actually looks more like a rollercoaster, with long metal tracks criss-crossing the dining area. The tracks run all the way from the kitchen, high up in the roof, down to the tables, twisting and turning as they go. And down the tracks -...

With fuel economy reminiscent of the late VW Lupo, the new VW Golf Diesel Hybrid Concept seems to address the growing schism between American and Japanese hybrids and European Diesels. Green Car Congress recently reported on the unveiling of the car at the Geneva Auto Show. VW couples a new 7-speed DSG transmission with a 1.2-liter, TDI diesel engine and an electric motor capable of operating in all electric mode. The diesel engine puts out a max of 74 hp and 132 kb-ft of torque, and its electric counterpart puts out 20 kW and 103 lb-ft of torque at...

Hello all, I was visiting Nuernberg (alt. spelling: Nuremberg), Germany on Saturday with the USO. Same Bavarian city in which the Nazi war crimes trials were held 1945-1946. It's a very nice city, and I'd recommend a visit if you are in the area. Came across a small anti-China, pro-Tibet demonstration. It warmed my heart, and I had to take pictures: Not a bad poster!I love the graphic on her back! I just wished I took the picture at a better angle.Her sign says, "Solidarity with Tibet!" A sentiment I share.This is the church in which the demonstration was in...

It is rare that a government minister is blasted for reaching a decision that virtually everyone agrees with. That, however, is the situation Germany's Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel finds himself in. Gabriel, a Social Democrat, confirmed widespread speculation (more...) on Friday that his ministry was turning away from plans to up the percentage of bioethanol in gasoline sold in Germany from its current 5 percent to 10 percent. The higher level was set to go into effect next January, but with new numbers indicating that up to 3 million cars would be unable to process the higher bioethanol mixture, Gabriel...

More than 30 German elite police officers and soldiers are under investigation over allegations they trained Libyan security forces on their own account -- and without permission from their superiors. According to a report in the Friday edition of the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung, around 30 officers from across Germany carried out or organized training courses in Libya.

If Iran is not supporting al-Qaeda efforts why is it so many terrorists in Europe use Tehran as their transit point between Europe and the training facilities and gathering forces of al-Qaeda inside Pakistan? On April 1, the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) on April 1 notified leaders of Germany’s military, the United Nations and potential targets — including a five-star hotel in Kabul — that two men from Germany with known ties to terrorist groups could be planning a bomb attack against Germans in Afghanistan.The men are identified as Eric B., a 20-year-old German Muslim convert, and Houssain al-M.,...

Scandal surrounding special forces: more than 30 police-, Bundeswehr- and GSG-9- officers apparently trained Lybian collegues; in secret and illegally. They allegedly earned hundreds of thousands of Euros with their activities, now the interior minister of Northrine-Westphalia has filed charges. Düsseldorf - illegal discretionary earnings from Muammar al-Gaddafi: German security officers are facing a volley of reproaches. Without the knowledge of their offices they allegedly flew to Lybia in their free time - to train police officers of the authoritarian regime. "This behavior is completely unacceptable", the interior minister of Northrhine-Westphalia Ingo Wolf (FDP) said and confirmed that in his...

Politicians from Germany's main political parties have condemned a member of the far-left Left Party after she compared the Dalai Lama to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Christiane Schneider, the deputy floor leader for the Left Party in Hamburg's state assembly, sparked controversy with a speech she gave to the assembly Wednesday on the issue of how China is dealing with the ongoing Tibet crisis.