Free Republic

Angela Merkel Speaks Out In Support of Iranian Freedom Protesters… Obama Relaxes at Beach Monday, December 28, 2009 Jim Hoft German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke out against the repression of protestors in Iran and the violent attacks on democracy activists. DW World reported: In a strong statement to the press on Monday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel called the actions of Iran’s state security services “unacceptable.” She called on them to “avoid any further escalation of the violence and to pursue political dialogue to peacefully settle internally disputed matters,” and also to respect their commitment to the International Pact on Civil...

Angela Merkel on Wednesday became the first German chancellor to attend Armistice Day commemorations in France, where President Nicolas Sarkozy called for "an ever closer association of French and German policies". The leaders of Germany and France held a joint ceremony to commemorate the end of the First World War, saying it was now time to celebrate their countries' reconciliation and friendship. "French-German friendship is sealed with blood," Mr Sarkozy said under the shadow of the Arc de Triomphe, site of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, with Mrs Merkel at his side. Together they laid a wreath of flowers...

Pope Invites Tony Blair To Vatican Summit To Discuss Church's Fears That Politics Is Losing Its Religion By Nick Pisa November 2009 Catholic convert Tony Blair is among several world leaders being invited to attend a top level summit with Pope Benedict XVI to discuss the role of the Church in politics. The two-day summit will be held at the Vatican and will include other Catholic politicians from all over the world, including German chancellor Angela Merkel, U.S. vice president Joe Biden, former Spanish PM Jose Maria Aznar, and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Church officials have been quietly working...

In his first year in office, Bar ack Obama has visited more foreign countries than any other president. He has touched ground in 16 countries, easily outpacing Bill Clinton (three) and George W. Bush (11). It's an itinerary befitting a "citizen of the world." But there's one stop Obama won't make: He has begged off going to Berlin next week to attend ceremonies commemorating the fall of the Berlin Wall. His schedule is reportedly too crowded. John F. Kennedy famously told Berliners, "Ich bin ein Berliner." On the 20th anniversary of the last century's most stirring triumph of freedom, Obama...

Wow. I just noticed something. Our commander-in-chief is the least alpha of any of the leaders of our former enemies from World War II and the Cold War: Germany, Italy, and Russia. While I knew Obama exhibited beta behavior, I had no idea it was this bad. Give me a minute and I’ll lay out pictorial proof. We all know that Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi holds the title of “Intergalactic Alpha”. The 73 year-old silverback is banging 18 year-olds, has amassed a fortune, laid the smack down on his wife, and avoided indictment and/or lynching for his shenanigans....

Berlin - The pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) on Sunday endorsed a coalition deal designed to let them govern Germany in a conservative government led by Chancellor Angela Merkel for the next four years. An overwhelming majority of the more than 600 delegates at a special party congress approved the 124-page programme worked out with Merkel's Christian Democrats after three weeks of negotiations. The FDP would have five ministers in the new government, including the post of foreign minister for its leader, Guido Westerwelle, who is also set to become deputy chancellor. 'Germany will in future be governed from the centre,...

BERLIN — Germany's newly elected government unveiled its plans for the next four years on Saturday, spearheaded by 24 billion euros of tax cuts in spite of the country's mammoth debt mountain. "It is all geared to creating jobs," Chancellor Angela Merkel said, calling the coalition pact, finalised after three weeks of tough negotiations in the early hours of Saturday, Germany's "answer to the crisis." "We have agreed a coalition programme showing that we want to advance courageously into the future," she said. "We are aiming for growth, for the creation of an education republic and social cohesion." "The burden...

William White predicted the approaching financial crisis years before 2007's subprime meltdown. But central bankers preferred to listen to his great rival Alan Greenspan instead, with devastating consequences for the global economy. William White had a pretty clear idea of what he wanted to do with his life after shedding his pinstriped suit and entering retirement. White, a Canadian, worked for various central banks for 39 years, most recently serving as chief economist for the central bank for all central bankers, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), headquartered in Basel, Switzerland. Then, after 15 years in the world's most secretive...

Just when you might think capitalism’s global crisis would breathe new life into the left, it’s looking increasingly divided and tired. The reelection of Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany a week ago is highlighting a conservative surge in her country and Europe’s other powerhouse economies - Britain, France, and Italy - where the center-right is either firmly in power or about to get there. What happened? Much of the answer lies in the nature of modern European politics, where even the most ardent conservatives can still embrace social welfare policies that would seem leftist to Americans. And in recent years,...

Turkish hopes of joining the EU appeared to be all but over after Germany gave warning it was ready to join France and Italy in outright opposition to the country's membership. Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) and the Free Democrats (FDP) are both hostile to the accession of the overwhelmingly Muslim country of 71 million. The CDU is against the Turks joining for cultural reasons while the FDP leader, and probable new foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle has said the country's economy is too far below European standards to integrate comfortably with other members. With almost three million ethnic Turks living...

On Sunday, German voters elected their most business-friendly, pro-American government in decades. Angela Merkel -- the leading grown-up on the world stage -- returns as chancellor. Merkel's Christian Democrats and Christian Social Union (her party's Bavarian branch) actually lost a few seats, but the pro-business, Washington-friendly Free Democrats roared back to life and more than made up the difference. On the other hand, the Social Democrats -- Germany's establishment lefties -- took their worst beating in post-war history. The hard-left Greens fell, too. Only the nut-case Left Party gained a bit of ground, thanks to protest votes.

It was a victory for tax cutting, pro-business, labor union reform that swept the field in Germany! German Chancellor Angela Merkel savors conservative victory. Results in this weekend's parliamentary election in Germany has achieved what some in Europe call a "resounding triumph" for conservatives. One which saw the Social Democrats (socialists), who were part of the former governing coalition with Merkel, getting beat worse than at any time since World War II. Merkel can now govern without compromise with socialists. All of this on a low tax, pro-business, labor reform platform! Merkel's victory follows on the trend in other western...

BERLIN – German Chancellor Angela Merkel won a second term on Sunday, along with the center-right majority that eluded her four years ago — nudging Europe's biggest economic power to the right as it claws its way out of a deep recession. Voters sent the nation's main left-wing party, the Social Democrats of Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, into opposition after 11 years in government. It was the party's worst parliamentary election result since World War II. The conservative Merkel ended her four-year "grand coalition" with Steinmeier's party thanks to a record showing by her new coalition partner, the pro-business Free...

And so it begins. Angela Merkel and her conservative coalition scored a huge win in the German parliamentary elections today, handing the the lefties (the German version of the Obots) their worst defeat in years. It must have killed the New York Times to report this story.

German voters re-elected Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday and allowed her to ditch the center-left Social Democrats from her government and form a coalition with her preferred partner, the pro-business Free Democratic Party, instead, according to reliable projections. German Chancellor Angela Merkel won a second term in Sunday's federal election and will be able to form a government with the pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP), dumping the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) with which she ruled since 2005 in an uneasy coalition, projections showed. She will have a comfortable center-right majority in the Bundestag lower house of parliament with an...

Germany's Chancellor claims victory The voters of Germany have handed Chancellor a second time in office, a historic victory for center-right political parties in the Nation, a slap in the face towards terrorists who had threatened Germany with terrorist attacks, in an attempt to win the election for the leftist candidate, and for once in the history of Germany, a pro-business coalition. While the official results are not in, Merkel is the re-elected Chancellor in the Nation of Germany, her plans for tax cuts, and keeping nuclear power active in the Nation will move forward, an pro-war on terrorism Germany...

BERLIN -- Chancellor Angela Merkel claimed victory in national elections Sunday, with projections by public television stations putting her conservative party on a path to form a new center-right government and achieve Mrs. Merkel’s goal of ending the country’s “grand coalition” with Social Democrats. If the slim lead for her conservative Christian Democrats and the pro-business Free Democrats holds after all the ballots are tallied, Mrs. Merkel will finally have the chance to enact the kind of liberalizing economic reforms she proposed when she first ran for chancellor four years ago. The celebration will be muted by the knowledge that...

Merkel 'Heads For' New Coalition Angela Merkel said she wanted to be a chancellor "for all Germans" Chancellor Angela Merkel has been returned to power in Germany, exit polls suggest, after her conservative bloc won more than 33% of the vote. Mrs Merkel told supporters they had achieved "something magnificent", but said she wanted to be a chancellor of all Germans at a moment of crisis. Mrs Merkel's bloc now looks set to form a centre-right alliance with her preferred partner, the pro-reform FDP. She says the alliance will get Germany out of its worst crisis in 60 years. Her...

BERLIN (Reuters) - Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives appear to have won enough votes in a German election to form a center-right government with their preferred partners, the Free Democrats (FDP), exit polls showed on Sunday. An exit poll from ZDF television put support for Merkel's conservative bloc -- her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) -- at 33.5 percent and showed the FDP on 14.5 percent. A poll for ARD television gave the center-right an even clearer win.

PARIS (AFP) – The leaders of France and Germany called Friday for the United Nations to support a carbon tax on imports from countries who fail to back international efforts to fight global warming. French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel wrote to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon arguing that states that fail to back a deal at a climate summit in Copenhagen in December should be held accountable. "It would be unacceptable for the efforts of the most ambitious countries to be undermined by the carbon emissions released by lack of or insufficient action by other countries,"...

Documents published last week highlight the former prime minister's concern that the fall of the Berlin Wall could be a risk to Britain's national security. "We do not want a united Germany," Margaret Thatcher told President Gorbachev at a lunch meeting in the Kremlin in September 1989, two months before the fall of the Berlin Wall. "This would lead to a change to postwar borders, and we cannot allow that because such a development would undermine the whole international situation and could endanger our security." Among the 1,000 transcripts of Politburo and other high-level papers smuggled out of Russia by...

The Left Party, the old East German Communist Party — became the second biggest force in Thuringia with 26 per cent of the vote. Germany’s lacklustre national election campaign was thrown open last night when left-wing parties made a surprise surge in two key regional states. Early results from elections in Thuringia and Saarland showed that Chancellor Angela Merkel will face a much stronger opposition than expected in the general election. Political pundits had assumed that Ms Merkel would be a shoo-in on September 27 and that she was poised to rule Germany with a coalition of Christian Democrats and...

On the eve of the publication of a report on Iran by the International Atomic Energy Agency, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France have threatened tough new sanctions if Tehran does not show a willingness to negotiate on its nuclear program. At a news conference in Berlin on Thursday with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, Mrs. Merkel dangled the possibility of new penalties against Iran in the energy and financial sectors. “If there is no positive answer by September we will have to consider further measures,” she said, the Reuters news agency reported. The...

BERLIN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday raised the pressure on Israel to freeze its settlement building program and resume the Middle East peace process. "We must make progress in the peace process ... and a stopping of the settlement (building) is very important," Merkel said at a joint news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the German capital. "Time is of the essence," she added.

BERLIN — Chancellor Angela Merkel said Sunday that German troops would stay in Afghanistan until their goals were achieved, dismissing the possibility of setting a timeline for withdrawal. In an interview with ZDF television being aired Sunday night, provided in advance to the AP, Merkel said she could not commit to bringing the troops home in a specific timeframe. She said she wanted them home “as soon as possible” but not until the mission was complete. “We have a goal, and that is self-sustaining security for Afghanistan,” she said. She would not speculate on when that goal might be reached....

Frau Frump gives us the finest showing of girl power Melanie McDonagh The only thing to be said against Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, coming top in the Forbes list of the 100 most powerful women in the world is the nature of the list itself. Just think about it. Power isn’t like tennis: why should women be hived off into a separate little power category all of their own? In any list of the most powerful people on earth, Merkel would be right up there with the men: her fellow German the Pope, and not far behind Barack Obama...

Voters in Germany seem ready to elect a centre-right administration, according to a poll by Forsa released by Stern and RTL. 38 per cent of respondents would vote for the ruling Christian-Democratic Union (CDU) or its associate Bavarian Christian-Social Party (CSU) in next month’s election to the Federal Diet, up one point since late July. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) is second with 21 per cent, followed by the Free Democratic Party (FDP) with 13 per cent, the Green Party (Grune) with 12 per cent, and the Left Party (Linke) with 11 per cent. The next legislative ballot is scheduled...

Merkel moves on failing banks By Bertrand Benoit in Berlin and James Wilson in Frankfurt Published: August 6 2009 12:11 | Last updated: August 6 2009 12:11 Angela Merkel would give the German banking supervisor powers to dismiss the management of failing banks and suspend shareholders’ rights if re-elected chancellor next month, according to legislation drafted by her economics minister. The text, a copy of which was obtained by the Financial Times on Thursday, would give Bafin, the regulator, sweeping powers to fire managers and restructure systemically relevant banks that are threatened with insolvency. Such rules, if implemented, would replace...

More than 60 prominent German scientists have publicly declared their dissent from man-made global warming fears in an open letter to German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The more than 60 signers of the letter include several United Nations IPCC scientists. The scientists declared that global warming has become a “pseudo religion” and they noted that rising CO2 has “had no measurable effect” on temperatures. The German scientists, also wrote that the “UN IPCC has lost its scientific credibility.” This latest development comes on the heels of a series of inconvenient developments for the promoters of man-made global warming fears, including new...

Standing on two feet doesn’t make a person human, only standing on principles does. It is for this reason that I am saluting Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany: A German woman who has bravely divorced herself and her nation from the ignominious past of Nazi Germany. A German woman who is standing for principles at the risk of her nation losing considerable profits from recognizing the legitimacy of a fraudulent government of neo-Nazi Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Chancellor Merkel has unequivocally expressed her revulsion at the fraud and violence by the Islamic republic in reinstalling the maniacal Ahmadinejad in office for...

n Germany, 2009 is known as the ‘Super Election Year.’ Not only have the European Union elections already taken place, but come September, a new state government may be formed. The current Chancellor, Angela Merkel, plans to retain the top office as member of the Christian Democrats Union (CDU). Her challenger, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, hails from the Social Democrats Party (SPD) and currently holds both positions as Vice-Chancellor and Foreign Minister. Political scrutiny of the two candidates has revealed peculiar results. Critics characterize Mr. Steinmeier’s faults in much the same way as his rival’s. Charisma is an attribute that can neither...

The ninth meeting of the Russian-German Forum, Petersburg Dialogue, which was set up eight years ago under the initiative of then-president Vladimir Putin and then-Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, took place in Munich on July 14-16. Russia’s Dmitry Medvedev and Germany’s Angela Merkel held a meeting within the scope of the forum to discuss issues of cooperation between the two countries. Germany has become Russia’s major partner in Europe during the recent years. To which extent are the Russian-German relations strong? Pravda.Ru interviewed one of the leading German experts on Russia, an expert with the German Council for Foreign Politics, Alexander Rar....

The G8 summit in Italy is the sixth time Angela Merkel and Barack Obama have met - yet it seems all is not quite right between the pair. Does the US President have a problem with the German Chancellor, or she with him? It all began a year ago with Obama’s speech in Berlin. The young White House candidate wanted to address the crowd in front of the prestigious Brandenburg Gate, but Merkel refused. She did not want to anger the then president, George W. Bush. Obama has not forgotten the snub… According to the 'Washington Post', Obama has "encountered...

Professor Paul Rahe follows up on his post "Obama's gestures": Just under three weeks ago, I wrote a Power Line post drawing attention to a photograph released by the White House, showing President Obama nonchalantly leaning back in his chair with his feet on the desk, the soles of his shoes clearly visible while speaking on the phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In that post, I noted that some in the Israeli press interpreted the release of the photograph as an expression of contempt intended for Arab consumption, inspired by the hurling of a shoe at President Bush...

As the summer begins, White House watchers have spotted a new look by President Obama: The Evil Eye! Staffers have joked about the menacing glance, which comes when the president meets with world leaders who are not aligned with his progressive view. White House photographers have captured the "evil eye" in recent weeks, during sessions with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Colombia's Alvaro Uribev. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi got hit with the commander's malocchio last week in the Oval office. And at least one White House reporter has been on the receiving end of the daggers during a press...

BEWARE THE OBAMA 'EVIL EYE' Tue Jun 30 2009 07:43:56 ET As the summer begins, White House watchers have spotted a new look by President Obama: The Evil Eye! Staffers have joked about the menacing glance, which comes when the president meets with world leaders who are not aligned with his progressive view. White House photographers have captured the "evil eye" in recent weeks, during sessions with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Colombia's Alvaro Uribev. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi got hit with the commander's malocchio last week in the Oval office. And at least one White House reporter...

Germany telling us we need to pay higher taxes to save the world. LOL. She knows he's weak and will be laughing all the way to the global bank when zero puts the last nail in the U.S. economic coffin.

U.S. President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel will debate how to fix the economy and fight climate change on Friday in a White House meeting that is likely to highlight a range of differences between the two leaders

German Chancellor Angela Merkel was in Washington Thursday evening to receive an award for her contributions to trans-Atlantic relations. But with few politicians in attendance, she might have gotten the feeling that Germany no longer carries its former weight in the US capital. For a brief moment, the American-German relationship looked just as Germans like to imagine it. Chancellor Angela Merkel was on the stage on Thursday evening at the Library of Congress in the heart of the United States capital, where she had just received the Warburg Prize handed out by the Atlantik Brücke, an important trans-Atlantic organization. The...

The occupant of the White House may have changed recently. But the amount of ill-advised ideology coming from Washington has remained constant. Obama's list of economic errors is long -- and continues to grow. The president may have changed, but the excesses of American politics have remained. Barack Obama and George W. Bush, it has become clear, are more similar than they might seem at first glance. Ex-President Bush was nothing if not zealous in his worldwide campaign against terror, transgressing human rights and breaking international law along the way. Now, Obama is displaying the same zeal in his own...

German chancellor Angela Merkel has urged the ruling regime in Tehran to allow a full recount of the disputed presidential elections of June 12. “Germany sides with those Iranians who want to exercise their right to freedom of expression and assembly”, Merkel declared on Sunday; making it one of the strongest messages sent by any Western leader to Iran so far. Chancellor Merkel also called on Tehran to allow peaceful demonstrations, to refrain from using force against protestors, and to release imprisoned opposition figures. “Human and civil rights have to be fully respected,” she stated. Merkel further demanded that restrictions...

WHEN Europeans wish upon a star, they get an American president with a huge Third World chip on his shoulder. Those "sophisticated" Europeans dismissed "cowboy" Bush as a rube beneath their contempt. If the continent's opinion-makers could've changed their voter registrations, they would've flown to Chicago to vote for Barack Obama last fall. They got what they wanted. But it isn't what they expected. President Obama may be the least Europe-friendly occupant of the White House since James Monroe (the guy who put up a "Keep Out!" sign on our hemisphere). Bam clearly doesn't like Europeans. A big chill has...

In an embarrassing disclosure, a draft of the final communiqué to be signed off by world leaders at the end of the one-day gathering on Thursday appeared in the German magazine Der Spiegel. There were suspicions that the leak was a deliberate act of sabotage by sources within the German government, where Chancellor Angela Merkel is adopting a more cautious approach to fiscal moves to boost the national economy than Mr Brown, who will chair the summit. A Downing Street spokesman said the leak was an "old document with out of date figures" and that the £1.4 trillion was an...

Differences over Obama's itinerary in Germany suggest his ties with Angela Merkel remain awkward. The stopover is expected on Thursday, after a widely anticipated address by Obama on his Middle East policies in Cairo on June 4 and prior to his visit in France on June 6 to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the landing of the Allied troops at Normandy in 1944. In Germany, Obama plans to skip the capital in Berlin and instead visit the eastern states of Thuringia and Saxony. And even there, the German government has had little influence over his itinerary. The White House has...

German politicians entrusted with the fate of General Motors' Opel business need to show their mettle and set politics aside. The European autos market must shed capacity to preserve Opel's long-term viability in manufacturing mass-market cars. Based on the limited available details on the proposed bids for GM's European subsidiary, Fiat's proposed merger best ensures this path. Though that may mean more job cuts, legislators should support it. Angela Merkel, the German premier, is in a tight spot. The US government deadline for GM to restructure or enter bankruptcy is June 1. Germany must decide before then whether to leave...

BERLIN -- Germany chooses its president Saturday, a contest for a mainly ceremonial post that could help Chancellor Angela Merkel ahead of September's general election. The ballot pits incumbent President Horst Köhler, a conservative ally of Ms. Merkel, against Social Democrat challenger Gesine Schwan, a left-leaning intellectual, and will be settled by 1,224 delegates from Germany's national parliament and its 16 states. Although ordinary German voters can't take part, presidential elections are often a sign of which way the political wind is blowing in the European Union's most populous nation. Mr. Köhler, a former head of the International Monetary Fund,...

Berlin, Germany (AHN) - The U.S. government has formally requested Germany to take in 10 detainees from the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, German officials said Sunday. Although Washington has assured Berlin that the detainees pose no threat, Germany will assess the security risk they pose if they live in the country. Berlin will also consult other European countries, where the detainees can freely go to under existing European Union rules. A German minister and politician have expressed support for giving residency to the Guantanamo detainees. Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier favors residency on humanitarian grounds. Green Party head Jürgen Trittin...

BERLIN (Reuters) – The United States has made a formal request to Germany to take in some prisoners held at its military prison in Guantanamo Bay, a spokesman for Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said on Sunday. Confirming a report to appear in Monday's Der Spiegel news magazine, the spokesman said the ministry is currently reviewing the request. He declined to provide further details. Der Spiegel said the United States has asked Germany to take about 10 prisoners who cannot be sent to their home countries and who are classified as not posing a security threat. Schaeuble, a leader in Chancellor...

A giant image of Chancellor Angela Merkel wearing just bra and pants has been attracting intense attention on Berlin’s premier shopping drag, the ‘Ku'damm.’ The 100-metre-square mocked-up image of the half-naked world leader is part of a nationwide advertising campaign for an underwear company aiming to cash in on the success of a "cash-for-clunkers" scheme for old cars. Punters trading in their old underwear will get a €5 discount on a new pair, the advert promises, under the slogan: "The country needs new undies." The electronic advert - on a busy road junction in the heart of former West Berlin...

Obama backs Turkey EU accession Mr Obama said Western nations should engage with the Muslim world US President Barack Obama has arrived in Turkey on a two-day visit, after giving his support to Ankara's efforts to join the European Union. He said Turkey's accession to the EU would send an important signal to the Muslim world and firmly anchor the country in Europe. But French President Nicolas Sarkozy said it was up to the EU itself to decide who joined the bloc. Correspondents say security is extremely tight for Mr Obama's visit. Snipers and riot police have been deployed and...