Germany (News/Activism)
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<p>GREER, S.C. (AP) — BMW is celebrating its 20th anniversary of building cars in the United States by investing $1 billion in its plant in South Carolina to build two of its new X-series vehicles at the facility that ushered in a wave of foreign automakers building Southern plants.</p>
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Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice accused Barack Obama of dramatically weakening the United States' position in the world, drawing a straight line between Obama’s ever-yielding foreign policy and the increasing troubles around the world. Rice “Right now, there’s a vacuum,” she told a crowd of more than two thousand attending the National Republican Congressional Committee’s annual dinner last night in Washington, D.C. “There’s a vacuum because we’ve decided to lower our voice. We’ve decided to step back. We’ve decided that if we step back and lower our voice, others will lead, other things will fill that vacuum.” Citing Bashar...
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The West has not yet reached a stage where it will be ready to impose economic sanctions on Russia, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said, stressing that she hopes for a political solution to the stalemate over Ukraine crisis. The chancellor said she is “not interested in escalation” of tensions with Russia, speaking after Wednesday meeting with the South Korean president in Berlin. “On the contrary, I am working on de-escalation of the situation,” she added, as cited by Itar-Tass. Merkel believes that the West “has not reached a stage that implies the imposition of economic sanctions” against Russia, advocated by...
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(Additional reporting by Adrian Croft, Jeff Mason and Steve Holland; Editing by Kevin Liffey and Paul Taylor) (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama told the European Union on Wednesday it cannot rely on the United States alone to reduce its dependency on Russian energy, as relations with Moscow chill over its seizure of Crimea from Ukraine. Speaking on a visit to Brussels to discuss trade relations and the Ukraine crisis, Obama said concluding a new transatlantic trade pact, now under negotiation, would make it easier for Washington to license more gas exports. :snip: During a 65-minute lunch, European Council President...
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Most of us already suspect that environmentalists are dictatorial wolves dressed in the democracy sheepskin. Despite all the lip service they pay to justice and liberty, they are really all about state power and regulation. So it is with Germany’s authoritarian statists and greens, who not long ago called for the enactment of a nationwide “Veggie Day” once a week in order to start weaning people off climate-killing diets containing meat. Fortunately the citizens roundly rejected the nonsense, sending the wackos off – to return another day. Electric heater German city of Bremen attempts to form a green police to...
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Mounting tension in the Crimea is prompting calls for compulsory military service to be reintroduced in Germany. A number of German ex-generals have raised fears over the nation’s military strength should it be drawn into a NATO-led conflict. “We need compulsory military service. There is no other way for Germany to guarantee national defense within the [NATO] mutual defense alliance,” retired NATO general Egon Ramms told Bild newspaper. “[It certainly can’t be done] on a voluntary basis.” Ramms was commander of the Allied Joint Forces Command between 2007 and 2010, one of the highest-ranking positions in the NATO alliance. …
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Germany’s defense minister, Ursula von der Leyen, said on Sunday that NATO should show greater support for member countries who could face military aggression from Russia. However, the comments were met with sharp criticism from some German parliamentarians, who accused her of contributing to the escalation of tension around Russia’s actions in Crimea. In an interview with German public broadcaster ARD, the defense chief dismissed those critics and stood by her position. “It’s important to make clear that NATO isn’t just something on paper, but that we are there for each other,” von der Leyen said in comments that were...
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Germany’s top court ruled on Tuesday morning that politicians have too much influence over the country’s state broadcaster. The Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe decided that several aspects of broadcaster ZDF’s state contract were against the constitution. […] Politicians can also have “no decisive influence” over the selection of members for the television board, the court added. …
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AbstractOn February 28, Russian troops, aided by pro-Russian local militia, occupied important sites across the Crimean Peninsula under the pretext of “protecting Russian people.” Now Crimea is under Moscow’s de facto control and the Russian parliament has voted to annex the region into the Russian Federation. The failure of the Obama Administration’s Russian “reset,” the unilateral disarming of Europe, and the U.S. reduction of forces and disengagement from Europe have led Russia to calculate that the West will not respond in any significant way. The Administration can demonstrate America’s commitment to its NATO allies and support for the Ukrainian...
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World leaders played an interactive nuclear war game designed to test their responses to a terrorist atomic "dirty bomb" attack that threatened the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. David Cameron joined Barack Obama, Angela Merkel and Xi Jinping and other world leaders to play a "nukes on the loose" war game to see how they would cope with a terrorist nuclear attack. The German chancellor grumbled at being asked to play games and take tests with the Prime Minister, US and Chinese presidents around a table with dozens of heads of state at a nuclear summit in The...
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Checking out Rembrandts and checking in with European allies, President Obama seems blind to the rubble around him. The U.S. leadership vacuum has left NATO as ravaged as a post-World War II battlefield. In May 1945, a sizable force of Allied bombers flew photographers over European cities to document the destruction of what was then, and remains, the worst war in history. Their images of urban craters and flattened buildings are permanent reminders of the evils of totalitarianism. One can't help wondering, if Barack Obama had been on board, whether he would have looked down and remarked on the day's...
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Some 150 Israeli Arabic-speaking Christians on Sunday demonstrated outside the European Union mission in Tel Aviv, demanding that the international community stop nitpicking against Israel and start combatting the severe persecution of Christians everywhere else in the Middle East. “Nations, organizations and international missions are quick to raise an accusing finger against Israel at every opportunity,” said Father Gabriel Nadaf, spiritual father of the Israeli Christian Recruitment Forum, which organized the rally. Those same nations and organizations “don’t life a finger against the ethnic cleansing of Christians in the Middle East,” the priest continued. Father Nadaf went on to explain...
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Today, the G8 minus 1 met in the Hague and, rather than kick out Russia outright, simply reformed as the G7, thereby punishing (in their minds) Russia for annexing part of the sovereign nation of Ukraine. ("Countries of the G7 end their membership in the G8," read the headline of the Soviet-era wire agency ITAR-TASS.)Really, though, it was the organization--and Russia--returning to a more natural state: The G8 just went back to being the organization it was until 1998, when Bill Clinton invited Russia in, hammering what he hoped would be the final nail in the Cold War coffin. Since then, Russia underwent...
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Europe’s far left is set to almost double its deputies in the upcoming European Parliament elections in May. Poll predictions indicate that the European United Left/Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL) group is set to become the parliament’s third or fourth largest group, with the number of deputies rising from the current 35 to around 60. At third place, it would replace the liberals (ALDE), behind the center-left S&D and center-right EPP. […] The parties are against what they describe as neo-liberal policy-making at the EU level, want more funding for social programs, and want to create what they describe as “another...
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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D–Nev.) is facing a revolt among Republicans for adding controversial language to an aid package for Ukraine.The Senate is expected to vote on the Ukraine measure next week. The controversial provisions, which have support of the Obama administration and liberals from both parties, would increase U.S. financial support to the International Monetary Fund.A growing number of Republicans warn that attaching the IMF language would reduce U.S. power while expanding Russia’s influence on the global stage in the wake of its annexation of Crimea.>>> Q&A: Why Do Conservatives Oppose the IMF Reform Package?Yesterday, Sen. Ted Cruz...
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Vladimir Putin running rampant in Ukraine showcases how the Obama administration's abdication of global leadership is making the world a more dangerous place. Instead of providing clarity to our nation and our allies, the Obama administration offers tortured semantics. "Kinetic action" glamorizes the failed policy of leading from behind in Libya. A "spontaneous protest" explains the coordinated al Qaeda attack on American officials in Benghazi. The interim agreement over Iran's nuclear program -- described by one of our closest allies as a "historic mistake" -- is in this universe referred to as a display of "international unity." And on Friday,...
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President Obama promised Friday there would be “costs” if Russia moved troops into Ukraine, but he didn’t specify what those costs might be. Sen. John McCain has several suggestions for Obama, including the sanctioning of high-level Russian officials; restarting missile defense plans in Eastern Europe; and bringing Georgia, a former Soviet republic, into NATO. McCain said he plans to push from the Congressional side, he told The Daily Beast in an exclusive interview Saturday evening. McCain wants the administration to expand its threat to pull out of the G8 Summit in Sochi scheduled for June. That limited move is unlikely...
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The leaders of the Group of Eight have suspended Russia's participation in the body over Moscow's activities in Ukraine, the French foreign minister said Tuesday. In an interview with Europe-1 radio, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said that "it is envisaged that all the other countries, the seven leading countries, will unite without Russia," The Associated Press reported. The other seven members had already pulled out of preparations for a G8 summit set to be held in June in the Russian city of Sochi. Fabius and French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian earlier postponed a trip to Moscow to meet with...
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The world's leading industrial powers threatened further sanctions to deter the Kremlin from invading other parts of Ukraine and boycotted what was to be a Group of Eight summit hosted by President Vladimir Putin. Meeting for the first time since last week's annexation of Crimea by Russia, Group of Seven leaders said they won't attend the planned G-8 meeting which was to have to been held in Sochi, site of the Winter Olympics, and will instead hold their own summit in June in Brussels. "We remain ready to intensify actions including coordinated sectoral sanctions that will have an increasingly significant...
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