Free Republic

Manufacturer in Nuremberg sends anti-Semitic mail to owner of Tel Aviv toy store after business deal turns sour. Eti Doron wanted to buy toys from a company in Germany for her store in Tel Aviv, but when the deal fell through she started receiving anti-Semitic letters. Doron provided The Jerusalem Post with emails in which Walter Adler, who identifies as the founder of Hoff-Interieur, a manufacturer based in Nuremberg, calls Jews a disease and praises German poet Günther Grass for saying Israel is a danger to world peace. “We see that you have decided to be a real Jew, not...

"Senate Hs Committee Report Finds Online Jihadist 'Activity' Leads To Violent Islamist Extremism" by Anthony Kimery 02/28/2012 ( 9:12am) SNIPPET: "Violent Islamist extremists use the Internet to recruit, radicalize and mobilize individuals -- including Americans -- and “the threat of violent Islamist extremism has become increasingly decentralized and its messaging has followed that same trajectory,” according to a report issued Monday by both the majority and minority staff of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs." SNIPPET: "The report concluded that “the United States currently has a haphazard approach to dealing with global Internet radicalization and propaganda,” and...

ERLIN (Reuters) - Angela Merkel's hand-picked choice for the ceremonial post of president resigned Friday in a scandal over political favors, dealing a blow to the German chancellor in the midst of the euro zone debt crisis. In a curt five-minute statement at the Bellevue presidential palace, Christian Wulff acknowledged that he had lost the trust of the German people, making it impossible to continue in a role that is meant to serve as a moral compass for the nation. "For this reason it is no longer possible for me to exercise the office of president at home and abroad...

BERLIN - The German government released on Monday the findings of a two year inquiry into modern anti-Semitism in the Federal Republic, showing that latent anti-Semitism affects one of every five Germans. The 202 page study, entitled "Anti-Semitism in Germany," covered a wide spectrum of German anti-Semitism, including hatred of the Jewish state as a manifestations of anti-Semitism within the Left movement and Islamic-animated loathing of Israel and Jews, especially from Iran's regime and the Turkish media. Dr. Wahied Wahdat-Hagh, a member of the ten member commission, told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday, that the "experts came to the conclusion...

The Daily Mail stirs up some Euro anxiety with a headline today "Is a super-volcano just 390 miles from London about to erupt?" The story talks about the little known Laacher See volcano in northwestern Germany. It last erupted about 12,000 years ago and the Daily Mail believes it is due to erupt again. It is not considered extinct, merely inactive. An eruption of the Laacher See volcano would destroy much of Europe as we know it. London is 390 miles away. The German capital of Bonn is about 25 miles away. The potential eruption of the Laacher See volcano...

PHOTO CAPTION - SNIPPET: "Officials believe that more members of the so-called Düsseldorf cell may still be at large." SNIPPET: "Halil S. is a man who knows his way around computers. When he went online..." SNIPPET: "German security officials allege that the 27-year-old is the fourth member of the so-called "Düsselfdorf Cell." The group is believed to be the al-Qaida cell currently active in Germany and tasked with carrying out a major attack in Europe. Three other members of the cell, Moroccan Abdeladim el-K. and two accomplices, were arrested in late April and are being held in custody. Authorities believe...

BERLIN – Rising criticism from prominent German- Iranians, NGOs and the federal commissioner for culture and media prompted an elite cultural foundation on Tuesday to eject Iran’s acting Deputy Foreign Minister Mostafa Dolatyar from its board of trustees because he called for the destruction of Israel. According to a report in Iran’s Mahan News in 2010, Dolatyar said, “We hope that the prophecy of the Imam [Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini] regarding the downfall of this regime [Israel] will occur very soon and that we will witness it.” A spokesman for Bernd Neumann, Germany’s federal culture commissioner, told The Jerusalem Post that...

SNIPPET: "In July, the British government warned that Al Qaeda’s exploitation of social networking websites is on the rise." SNIPPET: "The massive and multifarious network of websites and social media has presented a challenge to authorities in trying to combat it. Additionally, civil liberty concerns have conflicted with government efforts to spy on communications. Reducing terrorist activity on social media sites has been particularly difficult because users have adopted new forms of communication to conform with the new formats. Many Arabic speakers on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and other sites use Arabizi, a form of colloquial Arabic written in the Latin...

As ever with enviro-scholars, Professor Markham knoweth not what he hath wrought. Highlights: Germany is driving the Climate Change campaign. Many major international enviro-organizations (Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Birdlife International, etc.) are controlled by their German chapters. Several militant leaders of Germany’s confrontational early-1980s environmentalist protests were, a decade later, running government ministries. While Germany’s big enviro-organizations masquerade as citizens’ crusades, they are in fact top-down bureaucracies full of cynical well-paid careerists who work in tandem with state and corporate elites. Only 40 (forty) persons within Greenpeace-Germany’s half million members may vote for the board of directors. WWF-Germany has...

The chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management has said that the need for a German-led fiscal integration in the eurozone would make it increasingly unattractive for all the countries who joined to stay in the single currency. Jim O’Neill, whose division manages more than $800bn (£500bn) of assets, said that countries as diverse as Portugal, Ireland, Finland and Greece could pull out of the single currency rather than have to operate under a single eurozone treasury. Yesterday, Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, said the market turmoil could last for a decade and there was still “a chunk of work” to...

Half-timbered buildings and medieval romance -- that's what the Chinese wanted. But the architecture firm Speer thought it knew better, and built a modern German residential quarter on the outskirts of Shanghai. Now that it is complete, though, nobody wants to live there. Even Oktoberfest was cancelled. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is posing in his tailcoat and laurel wreath, while Friedrich Schiller next to him is clutching a scroll. The two bronze statues proudly guard a cobblestone square surrounded by trees. "Passersby keep asking me who these two gentlemen are," says one café owner waiting for customers on a scorching...

GERMAN sailor Stefan Ramin was on the trip of a lifetime when it turned into a nightmare on an island in the middle of nowhere. He set off on 2008 with his girlfriend and traversed the globe looking for paradise - but it took a horrible twist when he reached Nuku Hiva in French Polynesia. The remote tropical island was the last place Mr Ramin was seen before remains, believed to be his, were uncovered. Experts believe he was "hacked to pieces and burned" and eaten by suspected cannibals. Testing will conclude whether the ashes belong to Mr Ramin, Radio...

Of course you know that Germany and the Ottoman Empire were allies in WWI. With their defeat they were both cut down to size and in the case of the latter, Turkey was all that was left. But did you know that Germany’s historic Middle East policy had always given primacy to German relations to Turkey. Yet these relations are dicey due to the backlash in the EU to accepting Turkey for membership and the current debate in Germany regarding immigration. Paul Williams writing in Family Security Matters on 22 September 2010 reports "Our country is going to carry on...

Germany's top court averted potential disaster for the eurozone Tuesday by clearing rescue packages for struggling economies, as lawmakers in three of Europe's major capitals voted on key finance reforms. Share prices soared across Europe in the wake of the ruling, with German stocks at one point rising by more than three percent. The markets were also keeping a close eye on events in the French, Italian and Spanish parliaments where governments are trying to force through austerity packages in the face of widespread opposition. In its ruling, the Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe, western Germany, said MPs should have a...

U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, speaking at West Point, said last week that “Any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should have his head examined.” In saying this, Gates was repeating a dictum laid down by Douglas MacArthur after the Korean War, who urged the United States to avoid land wars in Asia. Given that the United States has fought four major land wars in Asia since World War II — Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq — none of which had...

A 25-year-old man sued the Gretna Police Department Tuesday, alleging his civil rights were violated by a police officer who sicced his canine on him without provocation, leading the dog to bite

An amateur sleuth armed with determination and intuition helped cops crack the murder of Leiby Kletzky by tracking his path to doom. Yaakov German isn't a cop or a private detective. He's a property manager and father of 12 with a reputation as a do-gooder. By banging on doors and scrutinizing grainy video, he uncovered crucial clues that led cops to confessed killer Levi Aron. "At the end of the day, he should be given the credit for the cracking of the case," said Rabbi Jack Mayer of the NYPD's Clergy Liaison Program. His investigation into the disappearance of the...

“German prosecutors say they have arrested a teenager on suspicion he supported a terrorist organization by posting Islamist propaganda texts and videos on the internet seeking to recruit suicide bombers and otherwise radicalize viewers. Harry M., alias Isa al Khattab, is accused of supporting the Islamic State of Iraq, the al-Qaida front group in Iraq, and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan which hopes to create an Islamic state across Central Asia.” SNIPPET: “...arrested in the northern German city of Neumuenster”

There are perils associated with apparently using Google Image Search to get material for your official news broadcast. When a German television news channel, N24, was reporting a story on Navy SEAL Team Six, the unit which spearheaded the operation which ultimately killed Osama bin Laden, the channel accidentally used a fan-made logo for the Maquis, an anti-Cardassian rebel group which originally appeared in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, in place of the SEAL Team Six emblem.

The news just boldly went ... somewhere it probably shouldn't have gone. A German newscaster must be wishing his colleagues would beam him up after TV channel N24 accidentally displayed the logo for a 24th century terrorist group depicted on the TV show "Star Trek" -- rather than the real world Navy SEAL team that took out Usama bin Laden. The news team intended to show the logo for SEAL Team Six, the special ops team that ultimately killed the notorious chieftan of the Al Qaeda terrorist organization. Instead, it accidentally used a fan-made logo for the Maquis, an anti-Cardassian...