Free Republic

MURRIETA (CBSLA.com) — It’s the time of the year when Christmas decorations adorn houses for blocks in communities throughout the Southland. But one entry in the Annual Holiday Home Decorating Contest in Murrieta that features a mythical creature from European folklore has sparked complaints from residents. The house in the 37000 block of Floral Creek Circle features a large handcrafted Krampus, who is sometimes referred to as “evil Santa” or the “Christmas devil” and dates back to pre-Christian Germanic traditions. With a doll on its back and a broomstick in its hand, the clawed black creature is perched on the...

BERLIN - The mayor of the Austrian town of Gföhl said on Tuesday in city council meeting that journalists who reported on asylum seekers should be hanged like the Jews. The Austrian news outlet Heute.at reported on Wednesday that Gföhl’s mayor Karl Simlinger expressed fury about asylum applicants who would be lodged in a planned complex. “I don’t give a shit about asylum seekers, but the journalists are to be blamed. They should be hanged; they are like the Jews.”

AFTER 40 years of hesitation and seven hard years of reform and lobbying, Turkey is basking today in the most qualified of invitations to begin the process of joining Europe - a continent whose eastern half the Ottoman empire controlled for centuries. A European Commission report released yesterday, which paves the way for a deciding vote by the 25-member European Union at its December summit, was heavily qualified, and Turkish leaders were muted in their expressions of delight at their initial success. Presenting the decision to the European parliament last night, commission president Romano Prodi said it was a "qualified...

The second round of talks between Iran and six world powers - Russia, the United States, China, Britain, France and Germany - began Wednesday at the United Nations in Geneva. During the last round of talks three weeks ago, Iran unveiled a general proposal that would limit its nuclear program. Iranian negotiators then said Tehran would be willing to implement the steps as a trust-building measure as the talks toward a permanent solution continued. Last week, teams of nuclear experts from Iran and the world powers met at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna to discuss Iran's proposal. Tehran...

German soldiers cross into Belgium in August 1914 Photo: RA/Lebrecht Music & Arts Like one of Field Marshal Haig’s family whiskies, Max Hastings is a dram that steadily improves with age. His own trenchant views on war, and caustic opinions of the commanders who ran them, tended to obtrude too obviously in his early works, suggesting that if only he had been present at key military conferences costly errors would have been avoided. However, Hastings’s recent massive volumes on his specialist subject, the Second World War, have shown why his position as Britain’s leading military historian is now unassailable. They...

Bodies of WWI soldiers found in glacier ROME - The bodies of three Austrian soldiers killed in World War One have been found frozen and almost perfectly preserved in an Italian Alpine glacier. ADVERTISEMENT Mountain rescue worker Maurizio Vicenzi discovered the mummified bodies on Friday, encased upside down in ice at 11,940 feet altitude on San Matteo mountain near the Swiss and Austrian borders. ``Using binoculars, I saw what looked like a stain on the Forni glacier and went to look,'' Vicenzi, 46, from the northern Italian town of Peio told Reuters on Monday. ``When I got close I discovered...

THE BLACK stain on the ice was instantly recognisable. The technician checking a tarpaulin stretched over a section of the Presena Glacier in the Italian Alps—an experimental attempt to slow the melting— quickly called in a rescue party. The block of ice was airlifted to the nearby city of Vicenza. Inside were two soldiers who had fallen at the Battle of Presena in May 1918 and were buried in a crevasse.Their uniforms and their location indicated that they could well have been Kaiserschützen, specialised mountain troops who fought on behalf of the Austro-Hungarian Empire to defend these mountains from...

"We've been looking at how we can bring back confidence in the European Union," German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said in Warsaw late on Monday as he arrived for a meeting of ministers in the Future of Europe Group, which he launched in March. The 11-nation group is poised to submit a raft of recommendations to Herman Van Rompuy and Jose Manuel Barroso - heads, respectively, of the bloc's intergovernmental and executive branches, neither of whom are elected by the EU's 500 million people. "We have to understand that we are a community of values and we have to defend...

Several sadomasochists eagerly responded to an advert posted by an Austrian woman farmer seeking clients. But they didn't get the punishment they had hoped for. Instead, they found themselves doing farm labor in fetish gear, while paying for the privilege. To sadomasochists keen on fresh air and the country life, it must have seemed like a dream come true. A 35-year-old woman advertizing herself as a dominatrix promised strict discipline to paying clients on her farm in the northeast of Austria. Some 15 men responded to the advert posted in the Internet, and two or three took up the offer....

The Holy Roman Empire and the Ottoman Empire were at war.  Vienna had been under siege for months.  On 11 September a coalition of Christian forces, a Holy League blessed by Bl. Pope Innocent XI, arrived with Jan III Sobieski, King of Poland, to lift the siege.When he saw that the Turks were about to breach the walls of the city, Sobieski attacked earlier than he had intended.On 12 September at 4 am the battle was closed.   Sobieski had called on the protection of Our Lady of Czestochowa before the battle.He sent his forces of 81,000 against the Turks’ 130,000. ...

European banks would leave London “in very short order” if Britain voted to exit the European Union, a senior Goldman Sachs executive said in a newspaper interview published on Monday. Michael Sherwood, a vice-chairman at the bank, said the prospect of a British withdrawal was a real worry given Prime Minister David Cameron’s plans to hold a referendum on the subject if re-elected in 2015. … Goldman’s Sherwood predicted European banks would quickly relocate if Britain did sever its EU ties. “Forget what we would do. Every European firm would be gone in very short order,” he was quoted as...

Explanation: Medieval Albrechtsberg castle is nestled in trees near the northern bank of the river Pielach and the town of Melk, Austria. In clearing night skies on August 12, 2012 it stood under constellations of the northern summer, including Aquarius, Aquila, and faint, compact Delphinus (above and right of center) in this west-looking skyview. The scene also captures a bright meteor above the castle walls. Part of the annual perseid meteor shower, its trail points back toward the heroic constellation Perseus high above the horizon in the early morning hours. Entering the atmosphere at about 60 kilometers per second, perseid...

NARAL Pro-Choice America, formerly known as the National Abortion Rights Action League, appears concerned it may be losing the battle to depict a 20-week abortion ban as "extreme." The group expressed outrage that a host on NBC, a network usually sympathetic to abortion rights advocates, implied the 20-week ban is "reasonable." "Is it not reasonable to put late-term restrictions on abortion ... ?" David Gregory of "Meet the Press" asked Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on July 14. Gregory pressed Reid twice more, repeatedly using the word "reasonable," after Reid continued to dodge the question. Reid promised to "look at"...

JERUSALEM, July 22 (Xinhua) -- Ireland, Fiji and Nepal will send hundreds of troops to bolster the UN peacekeeping force in the Golan Heights, Israeli daily Ha'aretz reported Monday. The latest development comes weeks after Austria withdrew its 380 troops from the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force ( UNDOF), citing deterioration of security situation due to the escalation in Syria's unrest. According to the report, Ireland agreed to send a 150-strong well-trained and equipped infantry unit, which was previously part of the UN peacekeeping mission in Mali; Fiji would dispatch about 500 peacekeepers; and Nepal would redirect some 50 peacekeepers,...

My love for you is endless and so must your faith in me to overcome for you as I Am the one that rebukes the enemy ,chastises My children into obedience and causes the waters of their ways to part so that My righteousness "becomes" the grounded path unto Me "their inheritance" and I AM your All . These are days of blessing for those that seek My face for I AM your Shewbread of placement "The Manna of Revelation for YOUR DAYS IN ME ", I AM THAT I AM ForEverMore. Joshua 3 New International Version (NIV) Crossing the...

VIENNA — It was 1943 when Vienna’s Nazi overlords gave the order to destroy the city’s oldest Jewish cemetery, demanding it be leveled and the tombstones attesting to centuries of Jewish existence there be destroyed.Desperate to save their heritage, the city’s shrinking Jewish community decided to act. Defying the possibility of prison, deportation or execution, they buried the gravestones and kept them from Nazi hands.Some 70 years later, Jewish leaders in the Austrian capital say the long-lost stones have been rediscovered. It is a find they say could transform a small obscure graveyard into one that rivals the significance...

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia has stated that a Catholic college’s plans to host a priest who has advocated for the ordination of women would “damage the unity” of the Church, according to a statement released exclusively to The Cardinal Newman Society. In 2011, Fr. Helmut Schüller of Austria was a leader in a movement that issued a “Call to Disobedience,” which advocated for the ability of divorced and remarried Catholics to receive sacraments as well as the ordination of women and married men.Currently, Fr. Schüller is touring the United States on what’s called “The Catholic Tipping Point” tour. That...

July 4, 1940 — Churchill’s finest hour? DANIEL F. HARRINGTON On July 4, 1940, Winston Churchill stood before Parliament and delivered stunning news about the horrible events that had occurred the night before; events he himself put in motion. The new prime minister received his first standing ovation since assuming Britain’s highest post just two months before. The recognition brought tears to his eyes, though the news itself was sufficiently tragic to produce tears without the ovation. So what exactly did Churchill announce that fateful day? To understand what our English cousin did (Churchill was half-American by birth; his mother...

Bolivia is furious that a plane carrying President Evo Morales was forced to land in Vienna on Tuesday night after false rumors circulated that NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden was on board. The country has called it a "direct attack" on the leader. Bolivian President Evo Morales hadn't intended to spend Tuesday night enjoying the comforts of the VIP lounge in Vienna's international airport.

The European Union failed on Thursday to blacklist Hezbollah as a terrorist group in fear that such a move would lead to instability in Lebanon and the Middle East. Britain’s drive to reach a unanimous decision to blacklist Lebanon's powerful Shiite group has failed to persuade the 27-nation bloc, diplomatic sources said. Diplomats told Reuters that the discussions were not over, but Britain may escalate the issue to a higher level, possibly to a July meeting of foreign ministers. “There was no agreement and the understanding was the issue will be discussed further, but not in this (group),” a diplomat...