Free Republic

A progressive Democrat in New York who called Israel’s killing of violent Palestinian protesters on the Gaza border a “massacre” scored a major upset over incumbent Rep. Joe Crowley in a contentious party primary. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 28, defeated Crowley, 56, by a margin of 58-42 percent in Tuesday’s election, toppling a lawmaker who was viewed as the successor to Rep. Nancy Pelosi as speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Ocasio-Cortez belongs to the Democratic Socialists of America and is a supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont Independent who ran as a Democrat in the 2016 presidential primaries. New...

The database, called Tuscan, is provided to every Canadian border guard and immigration officer, and empowers them to detain, interrogate, arrest and deny entry to anyone found on it. Hundreds of pages of documents obtained by the Guardian through Canada’s access to information system reveal the fullest picture yet of a database that, although employed in Canada, is maintained exclusively by the US. It contains the personal information of as many as 680,000 people believed by US authorities to be linked with terrorism, and functions effectively as a second no-fly list that is cloaked in secrecy. *** Tuscan – which...

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley will tell the organization on Tuesday evening at a joint press conference in Washington that their nation plans to leave its main human rights body, UN officials have confirmed. The announcement would come just one day after the UNHRC condemned the Trump administration for its policy of separating children from the families at the US-Mexico border. Haley had already threatened the exit, citing concerns that the council is biased against Israel. She said that the UNHRC was a “forum for politics, hypocrisy and evasion,” that included major human...

Donald Trump took to Twitter on Monday to fire off two tweets about the “tenuous” state of politics in Germany. Not for the first time, he showed his ignorance of developments in German society. Trump waded into the political crisis facing Chancellor Angela Merkel, declaring that the German people were “turning against their leadership” over immigration. “We don’t want what is happening with immigration in Europe to happen with us!” he said in a pair of tweets. “The people of Germany are turning against their leadership as migration is rocking the already tenuous Berlin coalition,” he said, adding that “crime...

Dr. Turley thinks the whole globalist dream is Humpty Dumpty – or at least, it soon could be ol’ HD: He seems to be saying that the German people’s rejection of open borders may well cause Mutti Merkel to be strapped into her rocking chair for a well-deserved rest. Further, if her coalition fails, then ultimately so does the globalist, multi-cultural project known as the Europe Union. Perhaps it’s too early to break out the champagne, but certainly, it’s time to order a bottle before supplies run out. Or maybe some Rhine wine would be more appropriate? Or, if you...

Remember Afghanistan? The longest war in American history? Ever? When it comes to wars, we Americans have a selective memory. The Afghan war, dating from October 2001, has earned the distinction of having been forgotten while still underway. President Trump’s Inaugural Address included no mention of Afghanistan. Nor did his remarks last month at a joint session of Congress. For the new commander in chief, the war there qualifies at best as an afterthought — assuming, that is, he has thought about it all. A similar attitude prevails on Capitol Hill. Congressional oversight has become pro forma. Last week Gen....

French carmaker Renault will maintain its presence in Iran while taking measures to avoid the risk of penalties for breaching renewed US sanctions, CEO Carlos Ghosn said Friday. “We will not abandon it, even if we have to downsize very strongly,” he said at the annual shareholders’ meeting in Paris. “When the market reopens, the fact of having stayed will certainly give us an advantage,” he predicted. […] Renault’s rival PSA, which produces the Peugeot and Citroën brands, has also announced it will quit Iran to abide by the US sanctions. But Ghosn signaled that Renault, which counted 160,000 cars...

As Chancellor Angela Merkel fights to save her government in a heated battle over immigration, an opinion poll Friday showed most Germans support the tougher line of her rebel interior minister. The survey found that 62 percent of respondents were in favor of turning back undocumented migrants at the border, in line with the stance of Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, who is openly challenging Merkel. And 86 percent want faster deportations of rejected asylum seekers, a process now often held up by bureaucratic hurdles and legal challenges, according to the Infratest dimap poll. The survey turns up the pressure on...

Germany is set to miss its 2020 greenhouse gas emissions target by 8 percent, according to German weekly magazine Der Spiegel. The German government set itself the goal of reducing national greenhouse gas emissions until 2020 by 40 percent compared to 1990 levels, but a draft government report estimates that the country will only be able to reduce emissions by 32 percent. Officials had previously estimated a shortfall of 5 percent to 8 percent. The document blames “unexpected economic developments and unexpected population growth” for the failure to meet the target. Increased economic activity and strong population growth generally cause...

German police have arrested a Tunisian man after discovering "toxic substances" at his flat in Cologne, officials said Wednesday, with prosecutors not ruling out a possible terror motive. The man and his wife, whose nationality was not released, were detained late Tuesday night after officers raided their flat and came across "unknown substances" that are now being analysed by specialists, Cologne police said in a statement.

As many as 60 Turkish imams and their families face expulsion from Austria and seven mosques are due to be closed under a clampdown on what the government has called “political Islam”. Austria’s chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, said the country could no longer put up with “parallel societies, political Islam and radicalisation,” which he said had “no place in our country”.

The 583 delegates of Die Linke (The Left) voted on Saturday in Leipzig in favor of the party executive’s motion which included its refugee policy. The party has a formal commitment for all who are looking for protection in Germany not to be turned away. The executive motion was based on a trio of proposals: bringing an end to conflict, including an end to arms exports; a social program for everyone in Germany to solve housing and employment difficulties; and finally, safe and legal escape routes as well as open borders for people seeking protection. The divisions within the party...

Germany was voted onto the United Nations Security Council for the sixth time on Friday, after it secured a two-thirds majority in the General Assembly. The place was effectively guaranteed going into the vote: Germany and Belgium ran unopposed for the two spots in the Western European and Others category. Israel was initially also in the running, but withdrew its bid last month. Germany received 184 votes from the 190 cast ballots. […] In a tweet, the German Foreign Office in Berlin said: “We are looking forward to this huge task and responsibility. Many thanks to all those who placed...

Following a major Spanish city’s vote to boycott Israel, the leader of Spain’s third-largest party called the Jewish state a “criminal country” during an interview aired by public television broadcaster. Pablo Iglesias Turrión, leader of the Podemos far-left party, said this in an interview earlier this week on RTVE. “We need to act more firmly on an illegal country like Israel,” said Iglesias Turrión, whose party in 2015 won 20 percent of the votes in the general election just one year after its creation. Last week, a motion promoted by a local fraction of Podemos on the city council of...

An Iraqi migrant suspected of the rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl in western Germany has been caught by Kurdish forces in Iraq, Germany’s Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said Friday, one day after German police issued an international warrant for his arrest. Ali Bashar, a 20-year-old asylum-seeker, was arrested in northern Iraq early Friday at Germany’s request, police said. He had fled from Germany to Iraq via Istanbul with his family on June 2. “I thank the participating Kurdish security forces for making the arrest possible,” Seehofer said. Susanna Maria Feldman, a resident in the western German city of...

“Clarity,” really? Not “charity”? The White House website says “clarity,” so that’s that. Anyway, a jihad group explained Ramadan this way back in 2012: “The month of Ramadan is a month of holy war and death for Allah. It is a month for fighting the enemies of Allah and God’s messenger, the Jews and their American facilitators.” So which is it? Is Ramadan a time of “peace, clarity, and love,” as Trump said last night, or is it a “month of holy war and death for Allah”? Islam’s core texts make it clear that the latter statement is closer to...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Wednesday she expected “contentious discussions” at a G7 summit this week, given differences with US President Donald Trump on trade, climate and security. Speaking two days before the Canada meeting of the club of major industrialized democracies, Merkel also said the leaders may not necessarily manage to agree on a final joint statement. “I think everyone knows there will be difficult discussions there, because G7 summits deal with the global economy, trade, climate protection, development—and foreign policy,” she told German parliament. […] Merkel vowed to enter the talks “in good faith”, but stressed that...

The Obama administration secretly sought to give Iran access — albeit briefly — to the U.S. financial system by sidestepping sanctions kept in place after the 2015 nuclear deal, despite repeatedly telling Congress and the public it had no plans to do so. An investigation by Senate Republicans released Wednesday sheds light on the delicate balance the Obama administration sought to strike after the deal, as it worked to ensure Iran received its promised benefits without playing into the hands of the deal’s opponents. Amid a tense political climate, Iran hawks in the U.S., Israel and elsewhere argued that the...

Shin Bet, Israel's security agency, said Tuesday that in recent weeks it thwarted a plot to assassinate Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Parliament will vote on Monday over whether to build a 70 km long, 1.5 meter-high fence along Denmark’s border with Germany. The aim of the fence is to stop wild boar spreading the swine flu virus into Denmark, but environmental organizations have expressed doubts as to its effectiveness and concerns over its effect on local wildlife. The barrier is one of a number of proposals put forward by the Ministry for Food and the Environment aimed at preventing the African swine fever virus from spreading amongst Denmark’s large pig population. A majority consisting of the government and Danish People’s Party...