Free Republic

Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz has made clear his strong stance on unlimited mass migration after he refused to take part in an EU-wide effort to distribute the migrants of a fishing boat that landed on an Italian island Monday. Calling on the nations of Europe to work harder to prevent illegal migration to the continent, Kurz also pointed to the fact that migrant ships could be sent to countries outside of the European Union to disembark their human cargo. The comments came after 450 migrants were picked up from a wooden fishing boat on Saturday, and brought to Sicily to...

Theresa May has defended Donald Trump’s approach to last week’s Nato summit, claiming it made all the difference in encouraging European allies to “step up” their defence spending. The US president left the Brussels talks in disarray after setting a January deadline for other alliance members to increase defence spending and hinting that the US may quit Nato if they failed to do so. For the second year in a row, Trump caused turmoil at a Nato summit, criticising the Germans, turning up late for a meeting, ignoring the issues on the table and securing an emergency discussion on spending....

At the close of the Trump-Putin meeting in Helsinki, Hodges told DW that Trump’s attitude toward NATO is worrying, his attack on Angela Merkel was “a terrible mistake” and his friendship with Putin is “inexplicable.” DW: What did you make of President Vladimir Putin’s meeting with his US counterpart Donald Trump in Helsinki? Do you share what seems to be the common view: that it was a diplomatic disaster that undermines multilateral alliances like NATO?Hodges: I’m reluctant to say anything is a disaster so immediately after it happened. It’s just going to take a little bit of time for things...

Hannity

The archive of Iranian nuclear documents seized by the Israeli Mossad from a Tehran warehouse in January shows that Iran’s program to build nuclear weapons “was almost certainly larger, more sophisticated and better organized” than was suspected, unnamed nuclear experts were quoted as saying in the New York Times on Sunday, after being shown selected documents from the haul by US reporters. One of the Iranian documents specifies plans to build a first “batch of five weapons” and discusses sites for possible underground nuclear tests, the Times reported, after one of its reporters was given limited access to the haul...

Later they kissed and made up. But before that, at that NATO summit in Brussels, President Trump let them know who’s boss. No more rolling over…and while he was respectful to the Queen, and contrary to the habits of his predecessor, he did not bow. He focused on Angela Merkel, since she represents them all. He schooled her for double-dealing – that pipeline to Russia that puts Germany at the mercy of Putin who can turn off the energy spigot any time he wants, and then who ya gonna call? The United States, of course, which will have to come...

How Angela Merkel’s open borders roiled Europe and undermined her Across the chancelleries of Europe, a realization is dawning. It began at the outskirts of the continent and has now made its way to the heart of Angela Merkel’s government in Berlin. It is the realization that even Merkel is mortal. For the entirety of this century so far, Merkel has been a constant. She has been leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) since 2000, when she publicly turned on her former political mentor, Helmut Kohl, over a party-funding dispute. And she has been chancellor of Germany since 2005,...

Theresa May’s hopes of winning support for her Brexit compromise have been dealt a huge blow as Justine Greening has become the first senior Conservative to support calls for a second referendum. The prime minister’s effort to keep Britain in parts of the single market is the “worst of both worlds” and will satisfy no one, the former education secretary says in an article for The Times.

Coming off a contentious NATO summit and a trip to the U.K. in which he seemed to undercut the government of America's closest ally, President Trump took aim at another Western institution just days before his high-stakes meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. In an interview with "CBS Evening News" anchor Jeff Glor in Scotland on Saturday, President Trump named the European Union -- comprising some of America's oldest allies -- when asked to identify his "biggest foe globally right now." "Well, I think we have a lot of foes. I think the European Union is a foe, what they...

When asked which world leader was the greater threat to world security, 64 percent of respondents chose US President Donald Trump over his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. That’s according to a YouGov poll published on the eve of Trump’s meeting with Putin in Helsinki. And the German antipathy toward Trump doesn’t end there: 56 percent of respondents thought that Putin was more competent than Trump, with only 5 percent preferring the latter on that score. Thirty-six percent of Germans find Putin more likable than Trump, while 6 percent say the opposite — although most respondents refused to indicate a preference...

Does a nation have a right to defend its culture? Or does opposition to massive immigration of people from different cultures with a history of non-assimilation amount to racism? The latter was clearly the view of two of Joy Reid’s guests on her MSNBC show this morning. Reacting to President Trump’s criticism of massive European immigration, expressed during an interview with the UK’s The Sun newspaper, guest Bobby Ghosh said: “[Trump] is saying Europe has allowed too many immigrants; it’s spoiling European culture. That is classic racist speak." A bit later, David Cay Johnston said:Get the rest of the story...

Donald Trump apologised to Theresa May over an incendiary interview criticising her premiership, and hailed UK-US relations as the “highest level of special”. After intensive talks at Chequers, an emollient US president showered praise on the “incredible” Prime Minister and said she was “doing a fantastic job”.

President Trump has warned at a NATO summit that German dependence on Russian gas poses a major security threat to the West. It’s about time somebody said it! This problem has been brewing for decades. In fact it goes right back to the communist era of the Soviet Union, when the Russians saw the burgeoning green movement as the perfect way to undermine their enemies in the free West. Originally, the Soviets funded the “Peace Movement” in Western Europe mainly as a way of promoting the campaign for nuclear disarmament (in the West, that is, not behind the Iron Curtain)....

UK premier Theresa May is reported to have told her Cabinet that a change to her Brexit plan was not possible, after consulting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The two leaders have met twice in the past week.

LIKE vinyl records and popped collars, rows between the United States and Europe over Russian energy are making a comeback. In the early 1980s Ronald Reagan’s attempts to thwart a Soviet pipeline that would bring Siberian gas to Europe irritated the West Germans and drove the French to proclaim the end of the transatlantic alliance. The cast of characters has shifted a little today, but many of the arguments are the same. In Nord Stream 2 (NS2), a proposed Russian gas pipeline, Germany sees a respectable project that will cut energy costs and lock in secure supplies. American politicians (and...

THE crisis in Ukraine has alarmed the rest of Europe—not just because of the prospect of war, or chaos on its borders, but because a row with Russia over Ukraine's unpaid gas bill threatens energy security in the rest of the continent. Europe could survive a short interruption of a few weeks to the pipelines across Ukraine, assuming that other Russian gas kept flowing. The European Union has built in more resilience since the last upset in Ukraine, in 2009. Now it is hurrying to reduce its reliance further. But measures such as better storage, more interconnectors and diversification of...

Trump joined world leaders at the Art and History Museum in Brussels •He and First Lady Melania Trump were greeted while a jazz band played •Waiters carried trays with white wine, but neither Trump nor Melania grabbed one •He could be seen smiling and chatting amiably with world leaders •Melania, who speaks German among other languages, spoke one-on-one with Germany's Angela Merkel •She changed out of her navy blue Calvin Klein dress into a white $7,450 Elie Saab dress •Earlier Trump posed for a 'family photo' •He demanded countries DOUBLE defense spending to 4 per cent of GDP •Early he...

America is a nation obsessed with political approval ratings like no other. But the U.S. media seems ignorant to the fact that President Trump is currently one of the most popular leaders of a major Western nation in the world today. Guffaw if you like, but those who are both regarded and regard themselves as “better” leaders have lower numbers than the American president — and while his are trending up, some of theirs are in free fall. When Barack Obama left the world stage, having commanded a mid-40s average approval rating over the course of his presidency, the New...

President Donald Trump exposed in a spectacular way, in front of millions of home viewers, how the Europeans milk money from the United States for “protection against Russia,” while they give millions of dollars for getting supplied with oil and gas from the same, supposedly “enemy,” country. Trump is not the first U.S. president who brings this up to the European allies. But he will be the first U.S. president who will definitely do something to fix this decade-long anomaly. Thomas Lifson adds: Trump's critics that contend he is in Putin's pocket have some explaining to do how this fits...

The U.S. ambassador to Germany urged Berlin on Tuesday to stop Iran withdrawing large sums of cash from bank accounts in Germany to offset the effect of new U.S. sanctions imposed after Washington withdrew from a 2015 nuclear deal. Richard Grenell, a longtime critic of the accord, told the mass-circulation daily Bild that the U.S. government was extremely concerned about Tehran’s plans to transfer hundreds of millions of euros in cash to Iran. “We encourage the highest levels of the German government to intervene and stop the plan,” Grenell said. […] Bild first reported on Monday that German authorities were...