Free Republic

In view of the events in Ukraine, the government and many media have switched from level-headed to agitated. The spectrum of opinions has been narrowed to the width of a sniper scope. The politics of escalation does not have a realistic goal – and harms German interests. ___ Düsseldorf. Every war is accompanied by a kind of mental mobilization: war fever. Even smart people are not immune to controlled bouts of this fever. “This war in all its atrociousness is still a great and wonderful thing. It is an experience worth having“ rejoiced Max Weber in 1914 when the lights...

Russian intervention in Ukraine, including for expressed humanitarian purposes is “unacceptable” without Kiev’s authorization, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her US counterpart Barack Obama agreed in a telephone call Saturday. Such a move “violates international law, and will provoke additional consequences,” the White House said in a statement afterwards, referencing the numerous economic sanctions already in place against Moscow. …

Germany, France and Britain have proposed reactivating a European Union mission on the Egypt-Gaza border to help stabilize the Palestinian enclave after a month-long war, a German diplomatic source said on Wednesday. […] Egypt, which was not involved in the negotiation of the 2005 agreement, has repeatedly shut the Rafah border over the past year, significantly increasing pressure on Gazans, who already face a rigid land and sea blockade imposed by Israel. […] Egypt wants any discussion over Rafah to take place bilaterally with the Palestinian Authority, rather than as part of any deal between the Palestinians and Israel to...

Poland has asked the United States to open its market quickly to Polish apples banned by Russia in a sanctions war over the crisis in Ukraine. Poland's ambassador to Washington, Ryszard Schnepf, said he had met Michael Scuse, a senior official in the US Department of Agriculture, about the steps needed to open up the US market, the Polish press agency PAP reported. "We are interested in a quick decision because the situation is extraordinary," Schnepf was quoted as saying. "He told us to begin the procedure. We have a new meeting planned for August 18 with the heads of...

I wrote about Bruno Kreisky last year in the context of discussing Austria’s Islamization. There’s no doubt that Kreisky was a real demented piece of work, on a par with Norman Finkelstein or M.J. Rosenberg. Austria’s Socialist Chancellor, Bruno Kreisky, despite being of Jewish ancestry, was fond of Muslim terrorists and Nazis. He had a habit of filling his cabinet with former Nazis while comparing Zionism to Nazism. His political success rested on a welfare state built with Soviet money funneled through commercial orders and turning a blind eye to terrorist attacks carried out with Soviet and Polish machine guns...

SPIEGEL has learned from reliable sources that Israeli intelligence eavesdropped on US Secretary of State John Kerry during Middle East peace negotiations. In addition to the Israelis, at least one other intelligence service also listened in as Kerry mediated last year between Israel, the Palestinians and the Arab states, several intelligence service sources told SPIEGEL. Revelations of the eavesdropping could further damage already tense relations between the US government and Israel.

Ancient inscribed slab brought to light April 19 2004 at 03:15PM Potsdam - A team of German and Egyptian archaeologists working in the Nile Delta has unearthed "quite a remarkable" stele dating back 2 200 years to Ptolemaic Egypt which bears an identical inscription in three written languages - like the famed Rosetta Stone. Announcing the find on Monday, University of Potsdam chief Egyptologist Christian Tietze said the stone fragment was "quite remarkable and the most significant of its kind to be found in Egypt in 120 years". The grey granite stone, 99cm high and 84cm wide, was found "purely...

German companies are ranked second in the world for industrial plagiarism, a global study released on Friday found. Just under a quarter of all plagiarized technical products examined were sold by a German company, the study by the Federation of German Machine and Equipment Builders (VDMA) has found. Germany was behind China, but ahead of Turkey and India in terms of the number of copies sold. Most German firms involved in plagiarism targeted competitors in the high-tech sector, in contrast to Chinese manufacturers, which usually copied low-quality goods. …

Politicians from various parties can imagine Germany participating in a mission to control the Rafah checkpoint between the Gaza Strip and Egypt. “I personally believe that it’s our duty, and that we must not turn a blind eye to what’s going on,” said Reinhold Robbe, the chairman of the German-Israeli community and a former parliamentary commissioner for the armed forces. “Germany has a special responsibility because of its history.” […] “Together with our European partners, we are ready to make a contribution, for example with an EU monitoring mission of the border crossing,” (Foreign Affairs minister Frank-Walter) Steinmeier told Bild....

A majority of Germans have rejected former President Christian Wulff’s famous statement that “Islam is now also a part of Germany”, with 52 percent against the idea. Just 44 percent of people surveyed by the Forsa opinion institute for Stern magazine agreed with the former head of state that Islam was part of Germany. However, a second question asking how people thought Germany should deal with hostility to Muslims found that 53 percent of people believed that it should be treated as seriously as anti-Semitism. …

ISTANBUL -- April marked the 65th birthday of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, formed at the height of the Cold War to stop the huge postwar Red Army from overrunning Western Europe. NATO in 1949 had only 12 members, comprising Western Europe, Canada and the United States. Its original mission was simple. According to the alliance's first secretary general, Lord Hastings Ismay, NATO was formed "to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down." Western Europeans were terrified of the Soviet Union, which had just gobbled up all of Eastern Europe. They feared that the American army...

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman has called for EU “inspectors” to monitor Gaza’s borders amid efforts to extend a ceasefire, in a German newspaper interview published Thursday. “Not police or soldiers. But Germany and the EU must dispatch inspectors to Gaza to monitor the Palestinians’ trade with the neighboring countries,” Liberman told the mass-circulation Bild daily in comments published in German. “The EU already did that once at a crossing in Rafah in the south of Gaza,” he said. …

The daily Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper reported on Monday that the German government had canceled a deal to provide Russian forces with a fully-equipped combat training camp. The newspaper said the Economy ministry revoked permission for the camp to be built, granted by Germany’s previous coalition government to Düsseldorf-based defense company Rheinmetall. It claimed to have seen a “written document” that includes the decision to scrap the project, worth some €100 million ($134 million). […] Russia … accused Germany of acting under pressure from the United States and called March’s decision “unconstructive.” …

London could lose more than a million jobs if Britain quits the EU and fails to adopt more outward-looking trade policies, according to a report commissioned by Boris Johnson, the London mayor. In those circumstances, the capital could shed 1.2m jobs and lose out on tens of billions of pounds of gross domestic product, the report says.

Germany's high-tech isolation wards remained on alert on Friday, ready to receive Ebola patients should they be required to. German airports seemed less prepared for the potential dangers of the viral epidemic, however. Hamburg's University clinic Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE) said on Friday it remains prepared and ready to take Ebola patients from the outbreak in west Africa, despite not expecting any in the immediate future. It received two requests this week to treat Ebola patients but those requests have now been cancelled. "Of course our treatment centre is as always ready for use for patients with highly infectious diseases," spokeswoman Christine...

Guards at the Auschwitz Birkenau concentration camp memorial site shouted at Jews who sang “Ani Maamin” – a song based on lines from Rambam (Maimonides) which was known as the Hymn of the Camps – during a visit to the camp and fined their guide 1,000 zloty, or about $350. So says the guide, Rabbi Rafi Ostroff, who is also the head of the Etzion Bloc Religious Council. Ani Ma'amin has several tunes, one of which was composed by a Hassidic rabbi in the cattle cars en route to the Nazi concentration camps. The song was then adopted by other...

BERLIN—A German will for the first time become chief of staff of the U.S. Army in Europe, a sign of further cooperation between the two nations despite a chill caused by allegations of U.S. spying here. Brig. Gen. Markus Laubenthal from Germany's Bundeswehr will report to Lt. Gen. Donald Campbell, the U.S. commander for U.S. Army Europe, known as USAREUR, with headquarters in Wiesbaden, Germany. "This is a bold and major step forward in USAREUR's commitment to operating in a multinational environment with our German allies," Gen. Campbell said. The appointment of a German to the position has been several...

Thanks to the Independent, we may know the answer, and it is a doozy, because according to some it is nothing shy of a sequel to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact: allegedly Germany and Russia have been working on a secret plan to broker a peaceful solution to end international tensions over the Ukraine, one which would negotiate to trade Crimea's sovereignty for guarantees on energy security and trade.

A German Army General has been appointed to Chief of Staff of U.S. Army Europe. This is the first time a non-U.S. officer has held this position.

Police arrested a second suspect on Wednesday in connection with an attempted arson attack in which Molotov cocktails were thrown at a synagogue in western Germany. Another man who said he was Palestinian has denied involvement. Prosecutors in Wuppertal said they had arrested a 19-year-old from Syria on Wednesday in connection with the Molotov cocktail attack on the city's Bergische synagogue in the early hours of Tuesday morning. Police believe three young men threw a number of burning bottles into the synagogue entrance-way in an apparent attempt to burn it down. Officers found broken bottles on the ground at the...