Free Republic

More than 25 years after the Berlin Wall’s fall, Russian lawmakers are mulling a proposal to condemn West Germany’s 1990 “annexation” of East Germany as Moscow’s answer to Western denunciation of its seizure of Crimea. Sergei Naryshkin, speaker of Russian parliament’s lower house, on Wednesday ordered legislators to consider an appeal from a Communist Party deputy to denounce the reunification of Germany as an illegal land grab of East Germany by its western neighbor. The collapse of Socialist rule in East Germany—officially known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR)—heralded the end of the Cold War, and was met with jubilation...

The German government stuck to its view on Monday that a third haircut, or debt restructuring, for Greece was out of the question but opened the door to a possible extension of Greece's current bailout programme.

A Lubbock Texas judge made international headlines earlier this year for his prediction that if President Obama is reelected on Tuesday, it will open the door for a United Nations invasion. Judge Tom Head told a local radio station in September that the president will: “Try to give the sovereignty of the United States away. He’s going to call in the UN troops, personnel carriers, tanks and whatever.” The proclamation drew widespread scorn and ridicule both at home and abroad. Even the office of the Secretary General weighed in on Head’s prediction. “It’s absolutely ridiculous,” said a spokesperson for UN...

he new far-left government in Greece dropped a bombshell on its first day in office by abjuring an EU statement on Russia. It said in a press communique on Tuesday (27 January): “the aforementioned statement was released without the prescribed procedure to obtain consent by the member states and particularly without ensuring the consent of Greece”. “In this context, it is underlined that Greece does not consent to this statement”. It added that its new PM, Alexis Tsipras, expressed “discontent” in a phone call to EU foreign relations chief Federica Mogherini. The EU statement on Russia, published on Tuesday morning,...

THE NEW government in Athens may seek billions of dollars from Germany in payment for crimes committed by the Nazi’s in Greece during World War Two. In his first act as prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras visited the memorial site at the Kaisariani rifle range; where Nazi occupiers executed 200 Greek prisoners in reprisals for the killing of a German general in 1944. Earlier this month, Tsipras said that if he were to win the election, he would seek war reparations from Germany along with a write-down of Greece’s debt. "We are going to demand debt reduction, and the money Germany...

The new Greece of Alexis Tsipras will run out of money by early March. It will then face a series of escalating crunch points that will end in default and a return to the drachma unless it can reach a deal with EU creditors. Greece must repay €3.4bn to the International Monetary Fund in February and March. Tax revenues have collapsed as Greeks preempt what they hope will be a repeal of austerity taxes. “There is only €1.9bn left in the cash kitty, and the government has spending costs of $2.5bn coming up. Somebody needs to lend the country money...

It’s been formally acknowledged that U.S. NATO ‘ally’ Turkey is providing safe haven to leaders of Hamas, a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) so designated by the U.S. State Department. By its very definition, an FTO should be considered declared enemy of the U.S. Despite this, Turkey doesn’t appear to be paying any price. Another player in all this is the small nation of Qatar. It is desperately trying to play both sides of a political fence as leaders of Hamas – to include the terrorist organization’s political leader Khaled Meshaal – has been forcibly relocated to Turkey. The reason these...

An Egyptian appeals court on Monday convicted a doctor of manslaughter and performing female genital mutilation that led to the death of a 13-year-old girl, sentencing him to two years and three months in prison in the country’s first case that came to trial over the widespread practice .... It is practiced in 29 countries, mostly in East and West Africa, but also in Iraq and Yemen. Rights groups see it as a way to control female sexuality that causes physical and psychological damage.

The French authorities killed three murderous savages yesterday. That was the only good news on a day in which a third hostage siege began in Montpellier. The bad news started at the top, with President Hollande's statement after the Charlie Hebdo slaughter and the Kosher grocery siege: Those who committed these acts have nothing to do with the Muslim religion. Yeah, right. I would use my standard line on these occasions - "Allahu Akbar" is Arabic for "Nothing to see here" - but it's not quite as funny when the streets are full of cowards, phonies and opportunists waving candles...

Germany has decided to stop arms exports to Saudi Arabia because of “instability in the region,” German daily Bild reported on Sunday. Weapons orders from Saudi Arabia have either been “rejected, pure and simple,” or deferred for further consideration, the newspaper said, adding that the information has not been officially confirmed. The decision was taken on Wednesday by the national security council, a government body that includes Chancellor Angela Merkel, Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel and seven other ministers, it said. …

The vote totals are still being finalized but the latest show the SYRIZA Party at 150 of the 300 seats in the Greek parliament with 36.3 percent of the vote. This is one vote short of an overall majority but multiple media sources including "The Wall Street Journal" are reporting that the conservative Independent Greeks, who broke away from the New Democracy (Republican type) Party in 2011 and are firmly against the EU austerity program will join up to stablilize the government. The Independent Greeks (ANEL) won 4.7 percent of the popular vote and 13 seats. The SYRIZA-ANEL alliance would...

Exit polls suggest a historic victory for the anti-austerity Syriza party in Greece's closely fought general election. One poll suggested Syriza took 35.5% of the votes, and the other suggested it took 39.5%, well ahead of ruling New Democracy party on 23%-27%. It is unclear whether Syriza has enough votes to govern the country alone. Syriza's Alexis Tsipras has pledged to renegotiate Greece's debt arrangement with international creditors....

LEIPZIG, Germany – Wednesday night saw a flare of violence and an accompanying police operation on a scale without precedent in recent German history. A group opposing militant Islam in Europe has called a demonstration, the city is deafened by political slogans played over loudspeakers, property is vandalised, and explosives are thrown at police in colossal running battles that involve thousands of people. If you got your news from the mainstream media, what is increasingly known in Germany as the ‘liar press’ (Luegenpresse), the story might very well end there. Then again, the report might also throw in salacious details...

About 3.1 million wage and salary earners in Germany had an income below the poverty threshold, according to Saturday’s edition of the Saarbrücker Zeitung newspaper. The paper cited an overview from Germany’s Federal Statistical Office showing the most recent available data, which covered the year 2013. It also showed the numbers of workers struggling to make ends meet jumped from about 2.5 million in 2008—an increase of 25 percent in five years. Data based on household surveys showed that those living on low wages were cutting back on food and heating, among other things, to save money. According to a...

Germany would be prepared to negotiate a free-trade agreement between the European Union and Russia as a way out of the deadlocked Ukraine conflict, Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Thursday. Merkel told the World Economic Forum in Davos that Germany was “ready” to open talks about “possibilities for cooperating in a collective trade area”, the Süddeutsche Zeitung reported. But she said that a precondition for the plan, suggested by Russian President Vladimir Putin several years ago but ignored by European leaders, would be a comprehensive peace agreement in Ukraine. …

The European Central Bank will plough €1.1 trillion into the eurozone economy in a last-ditch attempt to breathe life into the European economy. At its monthly governing council on Thursday (January 22), the bank’s governing council agreed to start buying up to €60 billion of government bonds from March in an unprecedented quantitative easing program. The program is open-ended, and will run until September 2016 at the earliest. Speaking at a press conference following the governing council meeting, ECB president Mario Draghi said that the bond-buying program would remain in place “until we see a sustained adjustment in the path...

Members of the National Right to Work Foundation believe two German labor groups have failed to completely disclose their full level of involvement in the United Auto Workers’ attempts to set up shop in Chattanooga. As previously reported, the UAW wants to formally establish itself at Chattanooga’s Volkswagen plant. The UAW’s attempts have so far been unsuccessful. VW workers, by a tally of 712-626, for instance, voted in February not to join the UAW. Members of the NRTW represent an unspecified number of VW workers who oppose the union. They say that VW’s Global Works Council and IG Metall, a...

Landlord took former tenant to court for refusing to pay for damage to the marble floor of the bathroom he said was caused by stray drops from the tenant’s habit of relieving. . . . It might seem standard practice for most men to take aim from a standing position, but some sections of German society have a bizarre obsession with obliging men to answer nature’s call while seated. It is not uncommon to find home-made signs in German bathrooms commanding men to adopt a seated position.

European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi announced the launch of an open-ended, expanded monthly 60 billion euro ($70 billion) private and public bond-buying program on Thursday. The long-anticipated introduction of euro zone government bond purchases will bring the ECB's buying program into line with the U.S. Federal Reserve's quantitative easing (QE). The program will be open-ended, lasting until at least 2016, Draghi told reporters at his regular media conference on Thursday, and will start in March this year. The hope is that it will boost the region's painfully low inflation rate, which came in at an annual minus 0.2...

The vast majority of Muslims in Germany condemn the attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris. But they are concerned that a new wave of Islamophobia may wash over the country anyway. […] Germany has experienced a fundamental shift, from a republic that sought to keep immigrants at arm’s length to one that is now the second-most attractive immigrant country after the United States. But societal cohesion is currently being tested. The anti-immigration, Islamophobic protests in Dresden organized by PEGIDA have shown that there is still a significant amount of angst about foreigners in Germany and the Paris attacks have triggered...