Free Republic

Germany’s main Jewish leader, who in 2010 became the first person born after the Holocaust to take the job, says he’s stepping down. Dieter Graumann said Friday he won’t seek a second term leading the Central Council of Jews in a vote Nov. 30. […] Graumann was among leading critics of a 2012 German court ruling that male infant circumcision amounts to bodily harm. Parliament later approved legislation explicitly permitting the practice. …

Ukraine, Russia and the European Union signed a deal on Thursday that will see Moscow resume vital supplies of gas to its ex-Soviet neighbor over the winter in return for payments funded in part by Kiev's Western creditors. After several failed rounds of talks in recent weeks as conflict rumbles on despite a ceasefire with pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine, the accord also eases concerns that a new "gas war" could disrupt winter supplies if energy to EU states, notably through pipelines shut down across Ukraine since June. With overnight temperatures already nudging below freezing in Ukraine, European Commission President...

An entire German high school class is being investigated by authorities, the Daily Mail reports Wednesday, after the 29 ninth-graders were found to have been communicating to each other in Nazi slogans on a regular basis. Students in class 9A at the Landsberg Gymnasiums near Leipzig had formed a specialized WhatsApp group for the anti-Semitic comments, and regularly made anti-Jewish slurs and posted photos of themselves making the “Heil Hitler” salute, local media reported. German newspaper Bild even published several photos of the students—with their faces blurred—who had also donned “Hitler mustaches” and called the cultivator of the Holocaust a...

Germany’s intelligence service believes Islamic State jihadist fighters in northern Iraq possess anti-aircraft weapons that could take down passenger jets, according to a newspaper report Sunday. […] In the briefing, the BND reportedly warned that Islamic State (ISIS) fighters possess portable rocket launchers captured from Syrian army stocks. Some dated from the 1970s, while others were modern and advanced. …

THE BUSH NAZI CONNECTION Richard Draheim is a policy analyst and speaker. He appears on the Dallas political affairs TV magazine America Outside the Beltway as a panelist and is a featured columnist for The Dallas Libertarian Post.

A tidy English Tudor there had once been occupied by William “Billy” Parker Cook after he graduated from UC Berkeley and got married. That was before he set off to fight in World War II, and before the mission — on Dec. 23, 1944 — that ended with him and five crew mates shot down over Germany. The Allied forces never recovered the bomber or the crew, and so the Alameda home was a touchstone. “This man perished before I was born,” said Bruce Cook, 62, of Newport Beach (Orange County), whose middle name, William Parker, comes from his uncle....

OAKLAND, Calif. – A World War II airman whose remains were found more than 60 years after he was shot down over Germany will finally be laid to rest. A burial with full military honors for Lt. William "Billy" Cook is set for Sunday at a cemetery in Oakland. The 27-year-old airman and his five-man crew were on a Dec. 23, 1944, mission when they were shot down over Germany.

Germany will get an early Christmas present of around €779 million from the EU, thanks to weaker than expected GDP growth. It will receive the rebate on its contributions to the European Union on December 1st, while Britain will have to pay €2.1 billion on the same day. “The British economy is growing much faster than the others, and the logic is the same as with tax: if someone earns more, they pay more tax,” EC spokesman Patrizio Fiorilli told AFP. …

ISIS’ call for “lone wolf attacks” has hit North America. The attack took place while two soldiers were standing in a parking lot in Montreal. One soldier was wearing his uniform. The man behind the wheel, 25-year-old Martin Roulea, intentionally hit the armed forces members and then attempted to make a getaway from police in pursuit. However, Roulea lost control of his getaway car during the chase and flipped. As Roulea made his exit from the vehicle, police exercised the use of deadly force. One of the soldiers Roulea hit didn’t survive. ... one thing is vividly clear: From the...

Germany’s pilots and train drivers are taking it in turns to bring the country to a standstill with strikes that have cost the economy tens of millions of euros in the last two weeks. Are unions abusing their power or standing up for their rights? After a 50-hour strike by the train drivers unions, GDL, Deutsche Bahn said the loss of the weekend’s services cost the company “tens of millions of euros”. One analyst said that the latest strike in escalating industrial action by pilots union Cockpit will cost Lufthansa €30 million. But all parties accuse the other of the...

Older workers in Germany are allowed more time off than younger ones, a court ruled on Tuesday, saying the difference was not discriminatory. Younger employees of a shoe manufacturer in Rhineland-Palatinate brought a case against their employer for giving two extra days off per year to their colleagues aged 58 and over and appealed it to the country’s highest labor court. But Germany’s anti-discrimination law (AGG) allows for different treatment for workers based on their age, experience or length of service under certain conditions, the judges said. …

The German family structure is changing, with nearly a third of every family no longer living in the “classic model” and big differences in what family looks like in the former East and West, statistics agency Destatis announced on Monday. The 2013 Microcensus showed that 70 percent of families consisted of a married couple and at least one child under the age of 18. And while the classical model still dominates, the figures show it’s in decline. In 1996, 81 percent of families centered on a married couple.Today, 20 percent of children live with single parents, up six percent from...

Germany does about-face on refusal to grant 30-percent discount for vessels Germany has agreed to slash about one-third off the price of three fast missile boats, which Israel wants to buy, putting to rest a crisis between the two countries. he vessels, priced at almost $1 billion, are intended to protect the gas rigs off Israel’s shore. According to the daily Haaretz, Israel had asked for a 30-percent discount such as it had received on the purchase of German submarines. But at the beginning of May, German’s national security adviser Christoph Heusgen told his Israeli counterpart Yossi Cohen following the...

A German newspaper has reported that the government is developing a special aircraft designed to transport Ebola patients. At present, only the US has planes equipped for the task. The German government has commissioned flag carrier Lufthansa to develop special aircraft equipped to carry patients infected with the deadly Ebola virus, a newspaper reported on Sunday. Citing government sources, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung reported that officials planned to develop several planes that were designed to safely carry such highly infectious patients. According to the paper, the planes are meant to be ready by mid-November, which is when the first German...

A regional judge in Munich is embroiled in a highly charged dispute over her statement in a civil case that German anti-Semitism was limited to the Nazi period of 1933-1945, suggesting that post-Holocaust anti-Semitism is not a factor in Jew-hatred. The Munich regional judge, Petra Grönke-Müller, sparked outrage on October 8 with her courtroom assertion during a civil case that “a fiery anti-Semite is someone in Germany who talks, with conviction, in an anti-Semitic way and, with conviction, does not condemn the Third Reich and cannot view the period 1933-1945 as separate from the background of history.” […] Speaking to...

For more than a decade, Berlin has been governed by an openly homosexual mayor. But is the city, renowned for its tolerance, ready for a leader from a Palestinian background? It may have to be. […] … Berlin SPD parliamentary leader Raed Saleh only needs to open his mouth to stand out from the crowd. Saleh came to Berlin at the age of five with his Palestinian parents, and although his German is beyond reproach, he speaks the language with a distinct Arabic twang. “Berlin is a city of diversity; a city of 100 different accents,” Saleh told DW. “People...

“Luna” drones promised by Germany to monitor the Russian-Ukrainian border may not be sent after all—they can’t handle the bitter cold expected in the Ukrainian winter. “It’s a technical problem of the Luna system that it can't be controlled reliably at temperatures below −19°C [−2°F],” German MP Gernot Erler told public broadcaster Deutsche Rundfunk. Winter temperatures in the region would often plunge far lower at the drones’ operational heights of 3,000 meters and above, Bild reported, citing a military source. German drones were supposed to join unmanned planes provided by France and Austria in the Organization for Security and Cooperation...

After an 800-man brawl outside a mosque in Hamburg on Tuesday German police deployed 1,300 officers on Wednesday night, but were still unable to separate warring Islamic fundamentalists and Yazidi Kurds in violence which again led to a hospitalisation for the third night running, reports theLocal.de. Gangs have been taking to the streets of Germany for much of this week, as “peaceful” protests by Yazidi Kurds were attacked by “ISIS terrorist Militias” of Salafist Muslims armed with broken bottles, machetes, and in some cases even firearms. The violence echoes that of the ISIS conflict in Syria and Iraq, and the...

Here we go again. Another sovereign debt crisis on the periphery of the EU is underway and many of the same factors that led to previous debt meltdowns are present. Germany is headed for a triple dip recession. Continent-wide deflation is nearly a reality. And many EU nations are smashing the debt limits demanded by treaty, thus threatening the Euro itself. All of this is impacting the percentage of debt in relation to GDP in several countries, making government bonds more expensive and debt servicing a nightmare. The Hill: Among Europe's most recent economic tremors has been the growing evidence...

In a 20-minute address to the German parliament on Thursday, covering a range of policy issues, German Chancellor Angela Merkel placed emphasis on the crisis in Ukraine. Merkel’s speech came ahead of direct talks with Russian and Ukrainian leaders at the European-Asian ASEM summit that also opens on Thursday in the Italian city of Milan. “The situation on the ground in Ukraine is dire,” Merkel said in front of Bundestag lawmakers, adding: “I will speak face-to-face with [Russian President Vladimir Putin] and [Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko] about ways to move forward in constructive fashion while in Milan.” […] Merkel’s address...