Free Republic

Many American journalists and others correctly objected to President Trump's lambasting of the U.S. media in his speech Thursday in Poland, noting that his words were damaging to our international status and democracies around the world. Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, tweeted that Trump "dilutes respect for American democracy & gives license to autocrats to crack down on their own media." Haass also was critical of Trump's denigrating of the U.S. intelligence community. How dare the president diminish his country's revered institutions (please, hold your laughter until the end) while abroad? Clearly, the man is a...

It is a tale of two New Yorkers. Donald Trump goes to Germany to defend Western civilization and promote economic growth. Bill de Blasio goes to Germany to throw verbal Molotov cocktails and promote socialism. One is the leader of the free world, the other is a great pretender. The mayor was in full Putz mode as he abandoned his City Hall post to join the anarchists, socialists and violent leftists trying to disrupt the G-20 summit. In the history of low moments in New York politics, de Blasio’s stunt stands out. His decision to join an international rabble marked...

Former Sen. Bob Dole on Saturday praised President Donald Trump's European trip, calling his speech in Poland "one for the ages" and saying that the nation "should be proud of the strong American leadership being restored by President Trump." "I want to congratulate President Trump and all Americans on the president's successful trip to Europe this week," Dole, 93, the five-term Kansas senator and former Republican presidential and vice presidential nominee, said in a statement released by the White House via Twitter.....

Hamburg: US President Donald Trump on Saturday waved to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and then walked up to him for an "impromptu" chat at the G20 summit here. Arvind Panagariya, India's Sherpa for the summit, tweeted the "Great moments" from the gathering. "In an impromptu interaction at G20 Summit, POTUS waves to the PM, walks to him, other leaders gather around. Gr8 moments," he posted, with a photograph of the two leaders chatting, along with Indonesia's Joko Widodo and another leader whose face is not visible. In another instance of the positive vibes between the two leaders, a video of...

Raging street battles that marred Germany’s G20 summit have sparked a political fight over how Hamburg could descend into “mob rule” and why Chancellor Angela Merkel chose a hotbed of leftist militancy as the venue. Germany’s top-selling Bild daily was withering in its condemnation of the chaos that saw far-left and anarchist radicals torch rows of cars, loot shops and hurl rocks and bottles from burning barricades at riot police. “One should use with caution the words ‘failure of the state’. Sadly, it applies in Hamburg,” the newspaper thundered Saturday, slamming the summit as a “debacle”. “Of course, the police...

At least 196 police officers have been injured in protests in the streets of Hamburg, Germany, where the G-20 summit is taking place. The demonstrations, which began Thursday ahead of the summit, continued Friday as thousands of officers clad in riot gear sought to prevent the mostly anti-capitalist protesters from disrupting the summit. One officer suffered a fractured limb, police said. Large fires burned in the streets of Hamburg after a second day of violent demonstrations. Protesters looted nearby buildings as well. While some groups of protesters staged peaceful demonstrations, others torched vehicles and hurled objects at officers. Police used...

Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner are using their current overseas trip to let loose, with the pair throwing caution to the wind as they make a very public display of their affection. The First Daughter even shared a photo of the couple as they strolled across a vast lawn in the city of Hamburg one day before the start of the G20, with Jared leading his wife by the hand as she tottered behind in a pair of her eponymous heels. 'We've landed in Germany and are looking forward to productive discussions at the G20 Hamburg Summit!' wrote Ivanka, who...

Summits of world leaders are usually highly choreographed affairs that leave little to chance. They are held in locations that are easily shielded from demonstrators. And policy differences are papered over by envoys behind closed doors well ahead of time. But the G20 meeting in Hamburg next week will be different. Host German Chancellor Angela Merkel has taken a high-risk gamble by choosing to hold the summit in the center of the northern port city, partly to show the world that big protests are tolerated in a healthy democracy. This has created a huge challenge for police. On the policy...

Authorities in Hamburg, the second-largest city in Germany, have begun confiscating private dwellings to ease a housing shortage — one that has been acutely exacerbated by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to allow more than two million migrants into the country in recent years. City officials have been seizing commercial properties and converting them into migrant shelters since late 2015, when Merkel opened German borders to hundreds of thousands of migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Now, however, the city is expropriating residential property units owned by private citizens. In an unprecedented move, Hamburg authorities recently confiscated six residential...

BERLIN — German firefighters on Sunday evacuated hundreds of passengers at Hamburg Airport after 50 people were injured by an unknown toxin that likely spread through the airport's air conditioning system. All flights were halted for several hours due to the evacuation, airport spokeswoman Karen Stein said. "We have cancelled all flight at least until 2 p.m. (1300GMT) and most parts of the airport have been evacuated," she said.

Islamic State and “Sharia Police” stickers have been seen on vehicles in Hamburg, and some fear that extremists may try and harass residents. However, police and security services have denied these reports. At least one witness has came forward claiming that she has seen Islamic State logos and sharia police slogans on a car in Hamburg. According to the woman, she saw a car at a traffic light populated by three women wearing the Islamic full-face veil, the hood of the car was described as having a large logo on it with a blue border which read: “Sharia Police”. Now...

Suppression of data about migrant rapes is "Germany-wide phenomenon." ◾Germany's migrant rape crisis has now spread to cities and towns in all 16 of Germany's federal states. Germany now finds itself in a vicious circle: most of the perpetrators are never found, and the few who are frequently receive lenient sentences. Only one in 10 rapes in Germany is reported and just 8% of rape trials result in convictions, according to Minister of Justice Heiko Maas. ◾Up to 90% of the sex crimes committed in Germany in 2014 do not appear in the official statistics, according to André Schulz, the...

A German pastor has decided to hold a Muslim funeral for a 17-year-old who died fighting for Islamic State in Syria, leaving many outraged. Pastor Sieghard Wilm of the protestant St. Pauli Church in Hamburg is stirring strong emotions after he made the choice to hold a Muslim funeral in his church for 17-year-old ‘Florent’, who died fighting for the Islamic state in Syria in July. The funeral will take place today.

She began her work in a Hamburg Refugee Reception center, but this experience destroyed any illusions she had. This is an employees first person account: *It's a long article, written as a first person interview and very enlightening, everyone is quite surprised a national newspaper has published this... Google translate does an excellent job translating.

She is just one of 120 women who were abused that horrific night in the square, which is dotted with bars, nightclubs and coffee shops, and is where Cologne locals have seen in the New Year for centuries. The men, speaking Arabic and seemingly either drunk or high on drugs, moved around in large groups among a gathering of around 1,000 male migrants and deliberately targeted women. The men easily outnumbered the 190 police officers on duty, who were quickly overwhelmed. In other cities across Germany, including Stuttgart, Dusseldorf, Hamburg, Munich and Berlin, where a tourist was sexually assaulted by...

German capital city Berlin has joined the sad parade of cities touched by migrant sex violence on New Year's Eve, with hundreds of assaults now reported to police in Cologne and other cities. Although on a smaller scale to the unrestrained and un-policed sex attacks in Cologne, the Berliner Morgenpost has now reported on assaults taking place on the street "in front of the Brandenburg gate". The revelation may prove difficult for the German media, which until now has stressed in most reports on the new year's rapes that Berlin was not caught up in the scandal. The paper reports...

The mayor of Cologne has summoned police for crisis talks after about 80 women reported sexual assaults and muggings by men on New Year's Eve. The scale of the attacks on women at the city's central railway station has shocked Germany. About 1,000 drunk and aggressive young men were involved. City police chief Wolfgang Albers called it "a completely new dimension of crime". The men were of Arab or North African appearance, he said. Women were also targeted in Hamburg.

BERLIN, Nov 29 Hamburg's bid to host the 2024 Olympics collapsed on Sunday after the majority of the city's residents voted against the multi-billion euro project in a referendum, killing off the candidacy and leaving officials in shock.

HAMBURG, Germany (Reuters) - A Moroccan accused of helping the September 11 suicide hijackers received training in encryption techniques at an al Qaeda camp in Iran in 1997, an Iranian defector said on Friday. But his testimony to a German court was promptly undercut by comments from Germany's intelligence services, who questioned his credibility and said his evidence was worth very little. Hamid Reza Zakeri, the cover name of a man who says he worked in Iranian intelligence and defected in 2001, was testifying toward the end of Germany's second major trial of suspected members of al Qaeda's Hamburg cell....

When Science is Betrayed – and What Lessons We Should Learn By: Msgr. Charles PopeThere is a great reverence for science in our culture. On the one hand, rightly so. Science has made enormous strides that have changed life as we know it. Profound discoveries have eradicated diseases, improved health, increased the world’s food supply, led to a computer revolution, drawn us higher into outer space and deeper into inner space, revealed hidden mysteries of nature, and produced technologies unimaginable to even our recent ancestors.On the other hand, the reverence of science has tipped perhaps too far in the direction of a...