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Barack Obama showed up again in Berlin. Sadly, 194,000 of the fawning devotees that cheered him like a rock star in 2008 chose to skip the 2013 encore. Nonetheless, directly out of the Brandenburg gate, the president commenced with injecting race and gender into the conversationwhen he said "Angela and I don't exactly look like previous German and American leaders." Obama then informed the audience, consigned by invitation to stand in the blistering heat listening to his blather, that Michelle, Malia, and Sasha, rather than endure his grueling speech, chose instead to experience the "beauty and the history of Berlin"...

When John F. Kennedy delivered his “Ich Bin Ein Berliner” speech in front of the Schöneberg Rathaus on June 26, 1963, 450,000 people flocked to hear him. Fifty years later a far more subdued invitation-only crowd of 4,500 showed up to hear Barack Obama speak at the same location in Berlin. As The National Journal noted, “he didn’t come away with much, winning just a smattering of applause from a crowd that was one-hundredth the size of JFK’s,” and far smaller than the 200,000 boisterous Germans who had listened to his 2008 address as a presidential candidate. JFK had a...

... Obama is set to lay out his vision for advancing toward a world free of nuclear weapons during a speech Wednesday at the historic Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. A senior administration official says Mr. Obama will propose the United States and Russia cut their number of strategic nuclear warheads by up to one third below the level agreed to in a 2009 treaty. That pact, called the New START agreement, calls for the two countries to reduce their arsenal to 1,550 deployed strategic warheads by 2018.

In stark contrast to that of his presidential predecessors, Barack Obama’s message on Wednesday was pure mush, another clichéd “citizens of the world” polemic with little substance. This was a speech big on platitudes and hopeless idealism, while containing much that was counter-productive for the world’s superpower. Ultimately it was little more than a laundry list of Obama’s favourite liberal pet causes, including cutting nuclear weapons, warning about climate change, putting an end to all wars, shutting Guantanamo, ending global poverty, and backing the European Project. It was a combination of staggering naiveté, the appeasement of America’s enemies and strategic...

Appearing on MSNBC´s Andrea Mitchell Reports on Wednesday, NBC´s chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd came up with a long list of excuses for President Obama´s poor speech performance in Berlin: "I want to give you a little context here....there was an attempt to shrink the crowd size....Maybe they would have gotten 25, 30, 40,000 people....President Obama feeds off a crowd very well." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump] Todd then grasped at other reasons for the lackluster event: "...you had that very distracting glass and you could just see that the President

BERLIN (AP) — Five years and 50 years. As President Barack Obama revisits Berlin, he can't escape those anniversaries and the inevitable comparisons to history and personal achievement. With his own 2008 speech at Berlin's Victory Column and former President John F. Kennedy's 1963 historic denunciation of the Soviet bloc as markers, Obama will use an address at the city's Brandenburg Gate on Wednesday to renew his call to reduce the world's nuclear stockpiles. The White House said Obama will draw attention to his plan for a one-third reduction in U.S. and Russian arsenals, rekindling a goal that was a...

While Big Guy was busy charming world leaders, we had lunch. Fish and chips at Finnegan’s with Bono (!) and his lovely wife Allison, with whom we share a certain savoir faire. Allison’s a real fashion icon too! Imagine that a black slip – at the beach! (SNIP) Bono and Allison, like Big Guy and Lady M, also have two daughters; Jordan, in the gladiator outfit and Memphis Eve. I’ve no idea why they named her after a feminine hygiene product.                   Lady M and the girls had fish and chips, and Lady M also enjoyed a lobster starter, according...

Twenty-six years ago today, President Ronald Reagan gave a speech at the Brandenburg Gate near the Berlin Wall.And now the Soviets themselves may, in a limited way, be coming to understand the importance of freedom. We hear much from Moscow about a new policy of reform and openness. Some political prisoners have been released. Certain foreign news broadcasts are no longer being jammed. Some economic enterprises have been permitted to operate with greater freedom from state control. Are these the beginnings of profound changes in the Soviet state? Or are they token gestures, intended to raise false hopes in the...

Hezbollah has 950 members in Germany, including 250 in the capital, a reported released by Berlin’s domestic intelligence agency released last week showed. A Hezbollah-controlled orphans organization in Lower Saxony state used to raise money for the families of suicide bombers targeting Israelis, the 140-page German-language report examined by The Jerusalem Post also showed. The Lebanese terrorist organization had some 900 members in the Federal Republic in 2010, and 950 in 2011, around the same number it has now. … In a 2009 study of Orphans Project Lebanon, Alexander Ritzmann, a political analyst and senior fellow with the European Foundation...

Coiffed, groomed and impeccably suited, Mithal al-Alusi cuts an imposing figure at this trendy hotel. In the empty bar lounge, he makes himself at home to a breakfast of fresh fruit, strong coffee and a constant flow of cigarettes. The leader of the Democratic Party of the Iraqi Nation is in town to promote his vision for a new Iraq and accept an accolade from an unlikely sponsor – the American Jewish Committee – who honored him with a Moral Courage award at their annual dinner last week. His act of courage was an attempt to break Iraq's long-standing taboo...

When it comes to sex, Germans are not known for being squeamish. Yet a sex-education book that has been circulating in Berlin elementary schools has some parents up in arms. The book, “Where Do You Come From?” („Wo kommst du her?‟), which is recommended for ages 5 and up, shows a couple, Lisa and Lars, in various stages of arousal. … The text also veers toward the explicit. …

'In America, you have a right to be stupid, if you want to be... and we tolerate that,' Kerry said to a packed Internet cafe in Berlin.Kerry stopped in Berlin as part of his nine-country trip abroad - his first trip as secretary of state He recalled how he learned about the divide in postwar Berlin as a young man living with his American diplomat father

... Speaking at a town hall meeting Tuesday, Kerry spoke a few sentences of passable German to the delight of a crowd in a packed Internet cafe before regaling the audience with tales of his boyhood in Berlin in 1954. He recalled a clandestine bicycle ride into communist East Berlin. "I saw the difference between east and west. I saw the people wearing darker clothing. There were fewer cars. I didn't feel the energy or the movement." When he returned home, Kerry said, his father "got very upset with me and said: `You could have created an international incident. I...

BERLIN -- The Germans play "gotcha" with a decidedly Teutonic skill and attitude. The latest victim is Annette Schavan, Chancellor Merkel's education minister, who resigned her position in a gathering storm of accusations that she plagiarized the doctoral dissertation she wrote 32 years ago. The title sounds particularly apt: "Person and Conscience." She held on for a week, fighting back. She insists she will sue to regain her title of "doctor," revoked by Heinrich Heine University in Dusseldorf. In the age of the Internet, obscure dissertations once relegated to the memory hole, out of mind, unread or assigned to a...

(Reuters) - German firemen rescued a mysteriously naked man trapped in a narrow chimney in central Berlin, a spokesman said on Thursday. The fire brigade was alerted to the emergency after police failed to help the 39-year old man who was wedged 10 metres (yards) down the shoulder-width chimney. "The rescue workers, specialised in saving people at great heights, tried to pull the victim out from above with a crane and a sling," a fire brigade spokesman said. "At first he held on to the rope but then his strength failed him so we had to come up with an...

A proposal by gun store owners to open an indoor gun range in a residential neighborhood in Berlin has homeowners concerned saying it is close to their families. The Berlin Planning and Zoning Commission at 7 p.m. inside the council chambers at Town Hall. The meeting is open to the public. According to the town of Berlin's website, the proposal is to add an indoor gun range to the west side of the Berlin Turnpike in connection with an existing gun shop, BMG Guns & Ammo. The gun shop currently doesn't have gun range for people to practice, which is...

East Germany's secret police sold citizens to western pharmaceutical companies to use as human guinea pigs in drug trials • Tens of thousands tested with experimental drugs not approved in the West • One study of a drug for heart conditions saw six out of 17 patients die • Sinister practice exposed in disturbing new Germany documentary Former Communist East Germany secretly sold its citizens to western pharmaceutical companies to use as human guinea pigs in drug trials. Tens of thousands of sick people in the former German Democratic Republic were treated with medicines not approved in the West to...

The most striking proof that the Arab anti-Israel cause is a common meeting ground for both Nazis and Communists --and that the Arabs welcomed supporters of both ilks-- lies in the friendship of Carlos, the notorious master terrorist who served the PLO, with Fran*ois Genoud, an old Nazi, one of the leading Nazis in pre-War Switzerland, later a financier who provided funds for Habash's faction of the PLO. "Carlos" (his nom de guerre) was what is called a "red diaper baby." His fabulously rich father, a Venezuelan lawyer and owner of estates, gave "Carlos" the name Ilich, Lenin's patronymic, as...

BERLIN (AP) -- Berlin authorities say they shot and killed a 120 kilogram (265-pound) wild boar after it attacked and injured four people including a police officer in a residential neighborhood. ... Wild boars are relatively common in green Berlin, though rarely cause problems beyond digging up gardens.

Jewish institution hosts Judith Butler, who renews support of BDS movement; 700-strong audience cheers boycott call. BERLIN - The internationally renowned Jewish Museum in Berlin hosted a podium discussion on Saturday with US academic Judith Butler, who renewed her calls to boycott Israel. It appears to be the first anti-Israel event held in the Jewish museum since its opening in 2001 with the aim of exhibiting the 2,000- year history of Germany’s Jews. At least 700 people attended the event. The German taxpayer-funded museum’s decision to showcase a speaker in the capital city, which during the Nazi period served as...