Free Republic

European governments are working with the United States on plans to overhaul the World Health Organization, a top health official for a European country said, signalling that Europe shares some of the concerns that led Washington to say it would quit. The European health official, who spoke on condition of anonymity while discussing initiatives that are not public, said Britain, France, Germany and Italy were discussing WHO reforms with the United States at the technical level. The aim, the official said, was to ensure WHO’s independence, an apparent reference to allegations that the body was too close to China during...

Chancellor Angela Merkel outlined her objectives Thursday for Germany’s forthcoming six-month presidency of the European Union, saying a more global role and enhanced international governance are a way forward for the troubled bloc. “The dramatic global consequences of the (coronavirus) pandemic demand that Europe takes on more global responsibility,” Merkel told the Bundestag lower house of parliament.

Merkel outlined her objectives Thursday for Germany’s forthcoming 6-month presidency of the EU, saying a more Global role and Enhanced International Governance are a way forward. This is not the first time Merkel has touted an E.U. global role...Her simple solution remains: more E.U. in more places more often. The presidency of the Council of the European Union passes among member states on a rotating basis and lasts for a six-month period, with Germany taking the role from July 1 until the end of the year.

A pair of top Democrats has introduced a bill aimed at blocking President Trump’s plan to withdraw thousands of U.S. troops from Germany. The bill, introduced by Senate Foreign Relations Committee ranking member Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) and House Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) in their respective chambers, would prohibit funding to implement a withdrawal in Europe unless several conditions are met. “The current U.S. troop presence in Germany is in the U.S. national security interest. Full stop,” Menendez said in a statement. “The administration has made no effort to explain how our country is stronger because of this...

Arab clan gangs have threatened to kill police officers who attempt to enforce the law in the troubled area of Marxloh in the city of Duisburg, claiming only sharia applies to them. The Marxloh area has become a hub for Arab clan gangs in recent years. Last month, police faced down a mob of around 200 residents when attempting to arrest a local teen. After using tear gas and calling for reinforcements, it took 36 police to finally detain the youth who had hidden in a residential building. Just days after the incident, police received threatening emails, allegedly from Marxloh...

Starting in the 1970s psychology professor Helmut Kentler conducted his "experiment." Homeless children in West Berlin were intentionally placed with pedophile men. These men would make especially loving foster parents, Kentler argued. A study conducted by the University of Hildesheim has found that authorities in Berlin condoned this practice for almost 30 years. The pedophile foster fathers even received a regular care allowance. Helmut Kentler (1928-2008) was in a leading position at Berlin's center for educational research. He was convinced that sexual contact between adults and children was harmless. Berlin's child welfare offices and the governing Senate turned a blind...

Germany's domestic intelligence agency is putting the Brandenburg branch of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party under surveillance, the Brandenburg Interior Ministry confirmed on Monday. The move was prompted after the AfD in the eastern German state voted to keep Andreas Kalbitz, a member who had been expelled by the national party, as its regional chief. The branch's decision caused a rift within the party. German intelligence believes there is "sufficiently important evidence" to indicate that the branch was "striving against the free democratic order," said the state head of Germany's domestic intelligence agency (the Bundesverfassungsschutz), Jörg Müller. There...

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tells the story of a major drama that unfolded behind the scenes at the UN Security Council shortly before former US President Barack Obama left office. New details about some drama involving Israel, Russia, and the US that played out behind the scenes at the United Nations Security Council some four years ago are coming to light. more.... It appears that Russia demonstrated a rare willingness to use its UNSC veto on Israel's behalf to block a resolution led by then-US President Barack Obama, which would have compelled Israel to set up a Palestinian state based...

Boris Johnson will warn the EU today Britain will choose a no-deal Brexit if a trade agreement is not struck by the end of next month. The threat comes despite the head of the World Trade Organization suggesting that doing so could slow the UK’s economic recovery from coronavirus, and that a deal similar to current arrangements would be better for jobs. WTO director-general Roberto Azevêdo highlighted agriculture and the car industry as two of the biggest victims if a deal could not not be struck, due to the heavy tariffs they would be subject to under trade rules. The...

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg warned Saturday that China’s increasing influence had created a “fundamental shift in the global balance of power” that should not be overlooked. In an interview with Germany’s Welt am Sonntag newspaper, that was released in advance, the Norwegian official said that Beijing had the second-largest defense budget in the world after the United States, and was investing heavily in nuclear weapons and long-range missiles that could reach Europe. “One thing is clear: China is coming ever closer to Europe’s doorstep,” he said. “NATO allies must face this challenge together.” […] Stoltenberg stressed that no member country...

Conservative British politician and Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage has left his talk show at LBC radio after he made comments comparing the Black Lives Matter supporters to the Taliban. Farage faced a storm of backlash after tweeting about protesters demonstrating against police brutality and racial discrimination. Protests in the United States over the death of George Floyd, a black man who died while police custody, have spread around the world, including England. “A new form of the Taliban was born in the UK today,” Farage tweeted Sunday. “Unless we get moral leadership quickly our cities won't be worth living...

oncologist says medics can too easily put Covid on death certificates ... The Covid-19 death toll may be less than half of what has been recorded because many victims of the pandemic would have died soon anyway, one of Britain's leading medics has said. Professor Karol Sikora, a senior oncologist who has built a huge Twitter following for his positive takes on the virus crisis, said doctors were sometimes too eager to put Covid-19 on death certificates. ... This was in contrast to Germany, where a death can only be recorded as being caused by Covid-19 when the clinical team...

A dark and shuttered United Nations building in New York will not play host to world leaders for a week of speeches come September, as the globalist body contemplates being silent for the first time in 75 years. A bitterly disappointed president of the U.N. General Assembly confirmed Monday the annual gathering of leaders and bureaucrats been cancelled because of the march of the global Chinese pandemic.

The Wall Street Journal reported on June 5 that President Trump directed the Pentagon to permanently reduce the U.S. military presence in Germany by 9,500 troops. This corresponds to an approximately 27.5-percent troop reduction  and would cap the U.S. military presence in Germany at 25,000. This move is coming just days after German Chancellor Angela Merkel rebuffed an invitation from President Trump to attend a G7 leaders summit in Washington later this month. Politco writes: Trumps' withdrawal plan appeared to be less a form of direct retribution for Merkel's G7 decision but rather a follow-through on previous threats to reduce the U.S. military presence in...

Another wave of demonstrations kicked off across the globe on Saturday, with tens of thousands—from Germany and France to Mexico and Australia—turning out in solidarity with U.S. protesters against the death of George Floyd, while also denouncing racism and police brutality within their own countries. In London, tens of thousands of people peacefully gathered in Parliament Square on Saturday afternoon, holding signs paying homage to George Floyd, before demonstrating in front of the U.S. embassy. A fresh wave of anti-racism protests kicked off across Germany on Saturday, filling up cities like Berlin, Dusseldorf, Cologne and Nuremberg. Thousands crowded into Alexanderplatz...

Move would cut 9,500 American service members from Germany, where 34,500 are permanently assigned... President Trump has directed the Pentagon to remove thousands of American troops from Germany by September, a move that would dramatically reshape the U.S. military posture in Europe and reflects growing tensions between Washington and Berlin over military spending and other security issues, U.S. government officials said Friday. The removal order would reduce the U.S. troop presence in Germany by 9,500 from the 34,500 service members who are permanently assigned there. It would also cap at 25,000 the number of American troops.

Trump orders Pentagon to remove thousands of troops from Germany: report BY J. EDWARD MORENO - 06/05/20 03:36 PM EDT 2 Trump orders Pentagon to remove thousands of troops from Germany: report © Getty Images President Trump has directed the Department of Defense to send 9,500 troops home from Germany, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, which would bring the total stationed there down to 25,000. A defense official told the Journal the plan, which was ordered by national security advisor Robert O'Brien, has been underway since September and is not related to rising tensions between Trump and German...

SIG Sauer, long the target of disarmament campaigners in Germany, announced Thursday it intended by year’s end to close its factory at Eckernförde near Kiel, capital of Germany’s northernmost state of Schleswig-Holstein. It blamed “locational handicaps” hindering its diverse pistol and sports guns sales, claiming a “few other local producers” were preferred in government purchases for Germany’s police forces and Bundeswehr military. Public broadcaster NDR quoted manager Tim Castagne as saying the workers’ council at the Eckernförde site, established in 1951, had been briefed about some 125 job losses as well plans to fulfil purchase orders. ”Due to its international...

After Donald Trump claimed most protesters in the US were “antifa,” Germany’s Social Democrats rushed to declare solidarity with the movement. But which movement? And why did other politicians object?Quite a few people, not least the President of the United States, seem a little confused as to precisely what “antifa” is. Unlike many of the gaps in Donald Trump’s knowledge, there are some reasonable historical justifications for this particular confusion. In Germany, politicians and the public have been wrestling with the term for around a century now — without coming any closer to an uncontested definition. What the word means...

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas on Tuesday said peaceful protests against police brutality in the United States were “more than legitimate” and called for press freedom for those covering the demonstrations. “The peaceful protests that we see in the US, involving many moving gestures, including by American police officers, are understandable and more than legitimate,” he told reporters at a news conference. “I can only express the hope that the peaceful protests don’t turn violent, and even more the hope that they will have an impact,” he added. […] “With regard to the incidents involving Deutsche Welle, of which we...