Free Republic

His name is Carsten Linke and he was recently promoted to a top post in Germany’s intelligence service, the B.N.D. The NY Times reports he was the “director of technical reconnaissance — the unit responsible for cybersecurity and surveilling electronic communications.” He was also a double-agent being paid cash to pass information to Russia. He was apparently asked for specific information on the location of US HIMARS launchers in Ukraine:Russia’s FSB spy service asked Carsten Linke last autumn via a courier to pass on precise information on the positioning of the Himars and Iris-T rocket systems that had been supplied...

The head of the German Federation Trade Unions (DGB) warned Sunday that major industries in the country were at risk of collapsing if Russian natural gas were to be cut off. "Because of the gas bottlenecks, entire industries are in danger of permanently collapsing: aluminum, glass, the chemical industry," Yasmin Fahimi told newspaper Bild am Sonntag in an interview. "Such a collapse would have massive consequences for the entire economy and jobs in Germany." Fahimi’s dire warning came a day ahead of an expected round of crisis talks between Fahimi and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in...

Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder has long been a personal friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Now, he may be attempting to mediate to end the war in Ukraine. Vladimir Putin and Gerhard Schröder have been close friends for decades Gerhard Schröder, who was German Chancellor from 1998 to 2005, has had a close relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin for more than two decades. Now the news portal Politico and the German mass-circulation Bild newspaper report he has traveled to Moscow and met with the Russian president on Thursday evening. The trip was not coordinated with the German government,...

Breaking — EU Will Not Sanction Russian Oil and Gas…

Recently he had come under massive criticism, but now Gerhard Schröder is intervening in the Ukraine conflict: the ex-chancellor apparently held initial talks with Russia's President Vladimir Putin on Thursday in Moscow - but not on behalf of the federal government. Chancellor Gerhard Schröder is in Moscow to hold talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin about the Ukraine war. Corresponding reports from the news portal "Politico" and the "Bild" newspaper were confirmed to the German Press Agency on Thursday evening. According to dpa information, the first talks between Schröder and Putin took place on Thursday. It was initially unclear whether...

A Bush aide's blunt words New adviser pulled no punches in his magazine pieces By Peter Baker Updated: 5:39 a.m. ET June 13, 2006 WASHINGTON - Bill Clinton is a "virtuoso deceiver" and Hillary Rodham Clinton a "true chameleon" guilty of "self-serving behavior, comparative radicalism, and dubious personal morality." Al Gore is a "mad dog" known to "foam at the mouth." John McCain is given to "showboating." And Jacques Chirac, Nelson Mandela, Gerhard Schroeder and Kofi Annan are all "feckless fools." Says who? President Bush's new chief domestic policy adviser. While most White House aides carefully trim their public commentary,...

Europe needs more integration, including a single finance minister for the bloc, if it is to remain competitive in the years to come—but Britain posed a major problem, former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder said. Britain would do its utmost to block any attempts to bring the 28-member European union closer together, as that would imply handing over more powers to Brussels, said the former chancellor on Thursday. … Among other moves, the 28-member European Union needed to appoint a single EU finance minister who would have the power to discipline states which failed to obey the rules, such as during the...

Dutch lawmakers who recently visited the Guantanamo Bay military prison said they were offended by a testy exchange in Washington with a senior congressional Democrat. The lawmakers said that Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told them that "Europe was not as outraged by Auschwitz as by Guantanamo Bay." Lantos, a Holocaust survivor, was responding to arguments that the United States should shut down the prison, located on a U.S. naval base in Cuba, the lawmakers said. Mariko Peters, a member of the Dutch Green Party, who began the exchange with Lantos, said she took...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - U.S. plans to site parts of a missile defense shield in Poland and the Czech Republic are "politically dangerous", former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said on Saturday. "From my point of view the missile defense system is politically dangerous. It is perceived as an attempt to isolate Russia, which is not in Europe's political interests," said Schroeder, who is a personal friend of President Vladimir Putin. "It is Germany's responsibility ... to persuade the United States to abandon these plans," he said at a round table discussion with political analysts and journalists. Schroeder, who formed his friendship...

Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, a fierce critic of the Bush administration, said Saturday that he's pulling for U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton to win the White House. "I'd be very pleased if Hillary Clinton would become the next American president," Schroeder said to applause from a largely Saudi audience at the Jeddah Economic Forum, which opened here Saturday. "But don't quote me too loud. I hope I'm not harming her by saying that." Schroeder made the statement during a discussion of global women leaders at a gender-segregated theater where a plastic barrier separated women from men. Clinton, a New...

GERMAN Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder met his conservative rival Angela Merkel on the weekend amid reports he was ready to concede defeat and allow her to become chancellor. The political stalemate caused by inconclusive elections three weeks earlier appeared to be nearing a solution, but no decision will be announced until Monday (local time). Ms Merkel and Mr Schroeder were to hold a further meeting after the outcome of Sunday's talks had been put to their respective party leaderships. The leaders maintained their promise not to comment after Sunday's discussions, just as they stayed silent after their first leadership summit on...

DRESDEN, Germany (AP) - Partial vote returns from the last district in Germany's parliamentary election Sunday indicated that conservative challenger Angela Merkel's party would gain one legislative seat, giving her some extra momentum in coalition talks to form a new government. With 172 of 260 electoral districts reporting, Andreas Laemmel from Merkel's Christian Democrats led with 37.2 percent, while Marlies Volkmer from Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's party received 32.2 percent. A third candidate in Dresden, Katja Kipping of the Left Party, made up largely of former East Germany communists, trailed with 19.2 percent. That result, if it holds, would give the...

BERLIN (AFP) - German opposition challenger Angela Merkel huddled with her closest advisors in a bid to get her election. After holding a clear advantage for much of the election campaign, Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats have seen their lead slashed in half by Schroeder's Social Democrats with just four days to go until Sunday's voting. Merkel now risks seeing her hopes of forming a coalition with her preferred partners, the Free Democrats, evaporate. In a campaign dominated by the economy and tax, Schroeder has apparently succeeded in scaring undecided voters away from the Christian Democrats by homing in on controversial...

BERLIN (AFP) - The German parliament is expected to pass a no-confidence vote against Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder at his request in a move aimed at triggering early elections this autumn. Schroeder, who is trailing badly in opinion polls and has failed to get Germany's languid economy moving, said in May he would seek the vote after the latest in a bitter series of state poll reversals. Although pollsters believe early elections could well put an end to his seven-year tenure, the embattled Schroeder has said he needs the vote to win fresh affirmation from voters. His spokesman Bela Anda said...

If I were Pope - and no, don't worry, I'm not planning a mid-life career change - but, if I were, I'd be a little irked at the secular media's inability to discuss religion except through the prism of their moral relativism. That's why last weekend's grand old man - James Callaghan - got a more sympathetic send-off than this weekend's. The Guardian's headline writer billed Sunny Jim as a man "whose consensus politics were washed away in the late 1970s". Is it possible to have any meaningful "consensus" between, on the one hand, closed-shop council manual workers demanding a...

If I were Pope — and no, don't worry, I'm not planning a mid-life career change — but, if I were, I'd be a little irked at the secular media's inability to discuss religion except through the prism of their moral relativism. That's why last weekend's grand old man — James Callaghan — got a more sympathetic send-off than this weekend's. The Guardian's headline writer billed Sunny Jim as a man "whose consensus politics were washed away in the late 1970s". Is it possible to have any meaningful "consensus" between, on the one hand, closed-shop council manual workers demanding a...

PRESIDENTIAL NEWS OF THE DAY: The President and First Lady attended St. John's Chruch in Washington this morning. The nation's governors are in Washington this week for their winter National Governors' Association meeting, and the President and First Lady are hosting a formal dinner tonight in the White House for them. I waited as long as poosible hoping some photos of the dinner would appear on Yahoo. But it's after 5:30pm Pacific, and none have appeared yet. So thise Dose is going up without them. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenneger waved the green flag to start the NASCAR Nextel Cup race...

Recent books have raved that the European Union is the way of the future. In contrast, a supposedly exhausted, broke and post-imperial United States chases the terrorist chimera, running up debts and deficits as it tilts at the autocratic windmills of the Arab World. That caricature frames the visit of the President to Europe as transatlantic pundits demand a softer George Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Donald Rumsfeld. Stop the childish bickering and the tiresome neocon preening, we are lectured ad nauseam by Euro and American elites. Don’t divide Europe, we hear endlessly. Even though the European press, EU leaders, and...

The little flute made the trite racket of meaningless "friendship" and the snakes all looked extremely European. Thus does the grand fence-mending excursion of George W. Bush now happily draw to a close. For a four-night tour, it had everything — fancy dinners, giant-sized photo ops, flatulent rhetoric, and close media analyses of handshakes and asides. In fact, Bush's charm offensive had everything — except charm. That leaves only offensiveness, which of course was provided by the Europeans and their lighthearted media. Columnists and news items blasted Bush and the U.S. — one Guardian ranter: "Why are we welcoming this...

MAINZ, Germany — He called Germany “a great nation,” characterized the country as beautiful, and said it was the key to maintaining good relations with the rest of Europe. President Bush addresses U.S. military troops Wednesday at Wiesbaden Army Airfield, Germany. Bush also met with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder at Mainz.(Raymond T. Conway / Stars and Stripes ) Sixteen years after his father paid Mainz a visit, President Bush came to town Wednesday to meet with German leaders to discuss issues and massage egos strained by the war in Iraq. The trip to Germany, which included a stop in nearby...