Free Republic

Former US Presidential candidate and publisher of Forbes Magazine, Steve Forbes, used the platform of his magazine to pen an open letter to the prime minister and finance minister of Greece, Alexis Tsipras and Yanis Varoufakis. The full text of his letter appears below. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Dear Prime Minister Tsipras and Finance Minister Varoufakis: You may have won a four-month reprieve of sorts from your creditors, but your situation is desperate, and everyone knows it, most particularly Europe’s paymasters, the Germans. As you just painfully learned, your ability to blackmail your creditors is a fraction of what it once was. Businesses,...

Adolf Hitler started World War II by attacking Poland on September 1, 1939. Nazi Germany moved only after it had already remilitarized the Rhineland, absorbed Austria and dismantled Czechoslovakia. Before the outbreak of the war, Hitler's new Third Reich had created the largest German-speaking nation in European history. Well before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Imperial Japanese government had redrawn the map of Asia and the Pacific. Japan had occupied or annexed Indochina, Korea, Manchuria and Taiwan, in addition to swaths of coastal China. Attacking Hawaii, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Indonesia was merely the logical 1941 follow-up...

One is the plight of Greece, with the nation's leftist government and its creditors engaged in the latest round of brinksmanship over its debt. Greece is running out of cash, but international creditors are refusing to release bailout money unless the government makes concessions. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, elected on a platform of fighting back against European-imposed austerity, has refused to budge. Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, had expected to have a proposal from Tsipras several days ago, but he was "visibly angry," according to The Guardian... A Greek exit would pose a challenge to a beleaguered...

(Aug 2, 2012) POLISH officials have unveiled a statue of former President Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II, honouring two men widely credited in this Eastern European country with helping to topple communism 23 years ago. The statue was unveiled in Gdansk, the birthplace of Lech Walesa's Solidarity movement, in the presence of about 120 former Solidarity activists, many of whom were imprisoned in the 1980s for their roles in organising or taking part in strikes against the communist regime. The bronze statue, erected in the lush seaside President Ronald Reagan Park, is a slightly larger-than-life rendering of the...

Soviet Communism, the dark tyranny that controlled nearly 40 nations and was responsible for the deaths of an estimated 100 million victims during the 20th century, suddenly collapsed 20 years ago without a shot being fired. In just two years--from 1989 to 1991--the Berlin Wall fell, the Soviet Union disintegrated, and Marxism- Leninism was dumped unceremoniously on the ash heap of history. There was dancing in the street and champagne toasts on top of the Brandenburg Gate. For 40 years, the United States and the West had been following a policy of containment, détente, accommodation. Ronald Reagan decided it was...

An armed group battling Macedonian police over the weekend left 22 people dead and aimed to destabilize the country with terror attacks, the country's president declared Sunday in a nationwide television address. ... "Police have prevented coordinated terrorist attacks at different locations in the country that would cause serious destabilization, chaos and fear," Ivanov said. "The members of the group are extremists and criminals with remarkable military training and skills. That's why we have paid such a high price with the loss of lives." The attacks left at least 22 people dead, including eight police and 14 attackers Interior Ministry...

Reports claimed the government was prepared to reduce at least three different VAT rates to one, and limit exemptions. Prime minister Alexis Tsipras had opposed the move, claiming that the change would hit poorer people. The country will also press-on with privatisations it had also previously vowed to block, according to reports. However, Syriza has said that demands by creditors to reverse an increase in the minimum wage and cut pensions remain "red lines" that the leftist leadership is unwilling to cross... Mr Sakellaridis said that failure to reach an "honest compromise" with creditors would most likely lead to a...

Turkey, via their Deputy Prime Minister, is putting the word out on the street that it is open to a restoration of ties with Israel, even acknowledging that it is NOT Turkey’s place to criticize the recent Israeli election: snip Wow. The admitted refusal to criticize Israel over the election is definitely a change of pace for Turkey. I mean, when has Erdogan ever missed an opportunity to openly bash Israel? He was just ripping Netanyahu in January for just showing up to the Paris march against ‘radical Islam’, accusing him of killing 2500 Palestinians in the war last year....

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s president, has accused the EU of declaring “enmity” on his country as next week’s centenary commemorations of the massacres of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire descend into bitter rows over what to call them. Both the European Parliament and Pope Francis this week referred to the killings as a genocide, a term recognised by much of the rest of the world but fiercely disputed by Turkey. The European decision prompted a furious response from Mr Erdogan. “Such decisions are nothing but expressions of enmity against Turkey by abusing Armenians,” he said while on a visit to...

(Reuters) - The unification of Albania and Serbia's majority-Albanian former province of Kosovo is "inevitable", whether it happens through membership of the European Union or not, Albania's prime minister said on Tuesday. The suggestion was denounced in Belgrade, where a senior official accused Tirana's Prime Minister Edi Rama of "banging the war drums" over Kosovo, which many Serbs regard as the cradle of their nation and Orthodox Christian faith. Serbia and the West are sensitive to any talk of unification of Albania and Kosovo, something Western powers ruled out when they backed Kosovo's secession from Serbia in 2008. Kosovo and...

Greece has demanded nearly €279bn in reparations from Germany, more than the value of its current bail-out, as the cash-strapped country continues to pursue compensation for crimes carried out by the Third Reich. A parliamentary committee established by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras put an official number on the claim, which includes the cost of a forced Nazi loan made by the Bank of Greece and the return of archaeological treasures. Greece suffered a brutal occupation at the hands of the Third Reich in 1941, with over 40,000 people starving to death in Athens alone. SNIP--- Berlin moved to quickly to...

Greece is drawing up drastic plans to nationalise the country's banking system and introduce a parallel currency to pay bills unless the eurozone takes steps to defuse the simmering crisis and soften its demands. Sources close to the ruling Syriza party said the government is determined to keep public services running and pay pensions as funds run critically low. It may be forced to take the unprecedented step of missing a payment to the International Monetary Fund next week.

Leaving Kosovo: Exodus of young people as frustration soars By Guy De Launey BBC News, Kosovo 22 March 2015 From the section Europe "We are like two million birds in one cage, but we are hoping for a better life" The scene in Mitrovica's 7 Arte Cafe seems convivial enough. Fairy lights twinkle, a mixture of Albanian and English-language hits play over the sound system and the 20-somethings gathered around the tables regularly break into laughter. But the joviality papers over a grim reality for these young people. Kosovo may have unilaterally declared independence from Serbia seven years ago, but...

Greek Defence Minister Panos Kammenos said that if Greece failed to get a new debt agreement with the euro zone, it could always look elsewhere for help. "What we want is a deal. But if there is no deal - hopefully (there will be) - and if we see that Germany remains rigid and wants to blow apart Europe, then we have the obligation to go to Plan B. Plan B is to get funding from another source," he told Greek television show that ran in to early Tuesday. "It could the United States at best, it could be Russia,...

The German government stuck to its view on Monday that a third haircut, or debt restructuring, for Greece was out of the question but opened the door to a possible extension of Greece's current bailout programme.

he new far-left government in Greece dropped a bombshell on its first day in office by abjuring an EU statement on Russia. It said in a press communique on Tuesday (27 January): “the aforementioned statement was released without the prescribed procedure to obtain consent by the member states and particularly without ensuring the consent of Greece”. “In this context, it is underlined that Greece does not consent to this statement”. It added that its new PM, Alexis Tsipras, expressed “discontent” in a phone call to EU foreign relations chief Federica Mogherini. The EU statement on Russia, published on Tuesday morning,...

credit the world’s various political leftists for being brilliant at one thing. They have managed to assemble a coalition of interest groups whose vested interests should probably cause them to chase each other around in the street armed with shotguns. Nowhere is that awesome class divide among the left on greater display than in Europe where the Parlor Pinks infest Davos and the Street Marxians have taken electoral power in Greece. If you were to ask both Jeffrey Greene and newly-minted Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras whether they felt society should be unfettered by larger government or directed for its...

Despite all the fear-mongering by Nea Demokratia (ND), Syriza's victory over the incumbent is dramatically larger than expected (exit polls indicate a potential 12 point margin vs 7 point spreads in the run-up). However, as JPMorgan details, the fear-mongery was very evident in bank deposit runs as proxied outflows surge EUR8 billion last week - more than all of December and the rest of January combined...Via JPMorgan Flows & LiquidityGreek deposit outflows rise sharply this week The monthly Bank of Greece balance sheet data for the month of December revealed a significant increase in Greek bank ECB borrowing which...

The vote totals are still being finalized but the latest show the SYRIZA Party at 150 of the 300 seats in the Greek parliament with 36.3 percent of the vote. This is one vote short of an overall majority but multiple media sources including "The Wall Street Journal" are reporting that the conservative Independent Greeks, who broke away from the New Democracy (Republican type) Party in 2011 and are firmly against the EU austerity program will join up to stablilize the government. The Independent Greeks (ANEL) won 4.7 percent of the popular vote and 13 seats. The SYRIZA-ANEL alliance would...

Greeks began voting on Sunday in an election expected to bring to power the radical leftist Syriza party, which has pledged to take on international lenders and roll back painful austerity measures imposed during years of economic crisis. Barring a huge upset, victory for Syriza, which has led opinion polls for months, would produce the first euro zone government openly committed to cancelling the austerity terms of its EU and IMF-backed bailout programme. After its most severe crisis since the fall of the military junta in 1974, Greece's economy has shrunk by some 25 percent, thousands of businesses have closed,...