Free Republic

BERLIN. Angela Merkel, the no-nonsense leader of Germany and protector of the euro, has a fearless new rival. Alexis Tsipras, the newly elected prime minister of Greece and the leader of the left-wing Syriza Party, who offers a different understanding of economics: Spend money whether you have it or not, and get someone else to pay up. Eager to reduce a multitude of problems to caricature, the Greeks regard themselves as caught between a stern German disciplinarian, the "austerity dominatrix," and the man playful Greek women call "Sexy Alexi." Nonsense is more fun, even if discipline is what welfare states...

A preacher at a mosque in Berlin’s southern Neukölln district has told worshipers that women should be confined to their homes and submit whenever their husbands demand sex. “A woman must turn her home into a flourishing garden for her husband, so that he does not flee from her like a leper or a lion,” Sheik Abdel Moez al-Eila told the congregation at the Al-Nur mosque. The sermon was delivered on January 23rd, but has only just come under broad public scrutiny after a video of the address surfaced on Sunday. The imam went on to say that women should...

BERLIN (AP) — Berlin police are investigating an attack on an Israeli citizen who was beaten by a group of young men after he asked them to stop singing anti-Semitic songs on the subway in the German capital on New Year’s Eve. Police spokesman Martin Dahms said Monday that police have not yet been able to identify the attackers, but are evaluating video footage of the incident. The victim, 26-year-old Shahak Shapira, who lives in Berlin, told The Associated Press that after he asked the seven men to stop chanting anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli songs and slurs, he recorded them on...

More than 150 kilometres of concrete, wire and guard towers ringed West Berlin from 1961 to 1989. But it’s not easy to carve up a city - and construction of the Wall threw up many freak instances. [....] "The owners had to pass through the death strip to reach their plots -- and for that there was an iron door in the Wall with a doorbell,...."

IRAN is facing an "international conspiracy" to over throw the Khomeinist re gime with a "velvet revolution," the official Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) claimed yesterday. The latest mascot of the plotters is supposed to be Roxana Saberi, a former Miss North Dakota now charged with espionage in Tehran. A US citizen with an Iranian father and a Japanese mother, the 31-year-old Roxana has worked in Iran on and off for years as a freelance reporter. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has called for Saberi's immediate release and safe return to the US. IRNA claims that the plot was first...

Lena Dunham is reportedly threatening to sue the right-wing website which last week accused her of sexually abusing her little sister Grace when they were children. In the wake of the allegations, the creator and star of HBO's Girls, has cancelled two stops on her book tour scheduled this week in Belgium and Germany for health issues. On Monday, she tweeted that she was 'deeply sorry' to miss the Antwerp Book Fair and a signing in Berlin, adding that she's 'so grateful for your energy and support'.

RUGEN, Germany. Americans groove on the exhilaration of argument and accusation as the midterm elections finally approach, but here in Germany there's the bitter remembrance of what it was like to have none of the above. Trading barbs and insults is the American way of campaigning, but East Germans recall fear, not free speech, as reams of barbed wire and blocks of cement turned into a wall and lookouts with guards who were ordered to shoot any of their own people trying to flee their encircled prison of a country. An American visitor quickly becomes aware of sharp contrasts in...

For more than a decade, Berlin has been governed by an openly homosexual mayor. But is the city, renowned for its tolerance, ready for a leader from a Palestinian background? It may have to be. […] … Berlin SPD parliamentary leader Raed Saleh only needs to open his mouth to stand out from the crowd. Saleh came to Berlin at the age of five with his Palestinian parents, and although his German is beyond reproach, he speaks the language with a distinct Arabic twang. “Berlin is a city of diversity; a city of 100 different accents,” Saleh told DW. “People...

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Fire authorities suspect “political motivations” for a late night blaze in a mosque in Berlin’s Kreuzberg district. More than 60 firefighters were called to the scene of a burning construction site at the Mevlana Mosque. No one was at the site when the fire broke out and no one was injured. …

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Edvin Blomdahl is seven-years-old. He also cycled from Sweden to Berlin, a journey of 370 kilometres, in four days. "We actually thought we would take a week to make the trip, but then we didn't have time. We thought we might have to take the train for part of it," the boy's mother, Linda Blomdahl Petersson, told The Local. "But then on the first day we biked 103 kilometres, and we thought, 'This may actually work'. When we booked the trip it felt like a half crazy idea." The family took their bikes to the Swedish town of Trelleborg, cycled...

A man set himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Berlin on Monday night. Police said it was too soon to say whether it was part of a political protest. Amid tensions in Berlin over pro-Gaza protests and a rise in anti-Semitism, the 46-year-old doused himself in a flammable liquid and then set himself alight with a cigarette lighter at 11.45pm on Monday. Police said the man, who is of Arab descent, only suffered minor injuries outside the Israeli embassy in south-west Berlin. A police spokesman told The Local his feet and legs were burnt and he was now...

A man set himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Berlin on Monday night. Police said it was too soon to say whether it was part of a political protest. Amid tensions in Berlin over pro-Gaza protests and a rise in anti-Semitism, the 46-year-old doused himself in a flammable liquid and then set himself alight with a cigarette lighter at 11.45pm on Monday. Police said the man, who is of Arab descent, only suffered minor injuries outside the Israeli embassy in south-west Berlin. …

After Jean-Claude Juncker’s election to the Commission Presidency in Strasbourg on Tuesday (15 July), excitement in Germany was felt across party lines. “(It’s) A good sign for Europe’s capacity to act,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel commented. “He will receive our total support,” said the country’s Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier. For the first time, European citizens have had direct influence on the appointment of the EU top job—and they successfully asserted their choice, Steinmeier said optimistically. Martin Schulz, the President of the European Parliament, spoke of a “historic day for European Democracy”. …

Rocks were thrown at police in Berlin during a protest by some 1,000 demonstrators—most of them Palestinians—against Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. As many as 10 demonstrators were arrested for breach of the peace and trying to forcibly free others already arrested in Saturday’s protest, a police spokesman said. One police officer was struck by a rock but was not injured. The march was unregistered; demonstrations in Berlin require a police permit. …

On June 26, 1948, the first American C-47 cargo aircraft were launched to supply West Berlin in what would eventually be known as the Berlin Airlift, following the Soviet Union's closure of water and land corridors between the western Allies sectors of occupied Germany and Berlin. Planes from the American, British, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand and South African Air Forces would eventually participate in the Airlift, flying over 200,000 flights over the next 11 months before the blockade was lifted.

A project named "The House of One," looking to create the world's first ever church, mosque and synagogue in Berlin, Germany, where people of different faiths can worship under one roof, is currently raising donations. "Under one roof: one synagogue, one mosque, one church. We want to use these rooms for our own traditions and prayers. And together we want to use the room in the middle for dialogue and discussion and also for people without faith," explained Pastor Gregor Hohberg, a Protestant parish priest, according to a BBC News report. "Berlin is a city where people come together from...

A €43.5 million project to construct a building where Jews, Muslims and Christians can pray together under one roof in the center of Berlin moved a step closer on Tuesday. Called the House of One, the building would become the first in the world built together by the three religions to pray in. It will house a church, synagogue and a mosque. …

Germany’s first burial area for lesbians will open on Sunday in Berlin. One of the founders told The Local that the leafy resting spot is for homosexual women to be buried as they lived—with those of the same sex. “We are the first real generation of emancipated, feminist, open lesbians, and we need somewhere to be buried,” said Dr. Astrid Osterland from Safia, an association for older, mostly gay women. Hitting back at criticism of the burial area in the Georgen-Parochial-Friedhof, Osterland explained that the project had “absolutely nothing against men”. They are welcome to have their urns here, but...