Free Republic

Not a single voter from the EU’s 28 member states — which have a total population of 508 million — has yet to vote in favor of Turkish membership. But MEPs voted 375–133 to back the initiative by President of Cyprus Nicos Anastasiades, who asked the Dutch EU Presidency to add Turkish to the bloc’s 24 official languages in order to boost attempts to reach a reunification agreement on the Mediterranean island. The move, expected to add £25m to the EU’s annual budget, has infuriated critics who last night said it was further proof that Turkey’s accession to the EU...

A German comedian whose satirical poem about Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has unleashed a bitter row about freedom of speech has decided to suspend his own TV show, he announced on his Facebook page on Saturday. Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday authorised criminal proceedings sought by Turkey against the popular comic Jan Boehmermann who could be convicted under the rarely-enforced section 103 of the criminal code -- insulting organs or representatives of foreign states. Merkel's decision has appalled rights bodies such as Human Rights Watch which on Saturday called on the German authorities to defend freedom of speech "even...

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has spent the last two years as head of state ensuring that if someone insults him, he doesn’t just find about it — he does something about it. A doctor compares him to the fictional character of Gollum? Bring him to court. A teenage student questions his authority at a school assembly? Have him spend the night in jail. German comedian Jan Böhmermann sits beneath a framed portrait of Erdogan while on a German television show and reads a satirical poem accusing him of watching child porn and repressing Turkish minorities, including Christians? Demand that...

Merkel allows prosecution of German comedian who mocked Turkish president By Rick Noack April 15 at 9:30 AM German Chancellor Angela Merkel has cleared the way for the prosecution of German comedian Jan Böhmermann, whose poem mocking Turkey's president has become the centerpiece of a clash between Germany's free-speech traditions and the government's efforts to safeguard its important relations with Turkey. In a news conference Friday, Merkel emphasized that it will now be up to German courts to decide whether Böhmermann is guilty of insulting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. But critics — including members of her own government —...

Israeli activist reveals a package sent by company in Germany to 'Tel Aviv, Palestinian Territory,' comments: 'Europe is on psychedelics.' An Israeli activist on Thursday night exposed on Facebook how a company sent a package from Germany to Tel Aviv, located not in Israel but in "Palestinian Territory" according to the postage. The Facebook post with a picture of the package was uploaded by Enough is Enough, a page founded by activist Anna Berg who is a Swedish Jew living in Israel. "According to the company that sent this package from Germany, Tel Aviv is... wait for it... Palestinian. Yes,...

<p>BERLIN (AP) -- Berlin police say they've raided 10 residences in the German capital in a crackdown against far-right hate speech on social media.</p>

The shift in European attitudes toward the flood of largely Muslim immigrants seeking new homes continues this week. After months of insisting on an open door, humanitarian policy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is once again revising her position and bowing to pressure from her citizens. The latest move on the part of the government is to insist that there will be no free riders on the welfare state train, and any new arrivals seeking to make Germany their home are going to have to start acting a bit more like Germans. This will include learning to speak the language...

The CSU aims to ban foreign funding of German mosques to stave off extremism. The proposal has Muslim supporters, but opponents say the regulation violates a key constitutional right. […] “German must become the language of the mosques,” (CSU General Secretary Andreas) Scheuer said in the conversation that covered integration issues, among other topics. […] Scheuer has two main measures in mind for a potential new law. First, mosques, Islamic cultural centers and other Muslim institutions, like kindergartens, should not be allowed to take money from abroad anymore. The CSU hopes that this ban on foreign funding would stop the...

Everyone wants a piece of Djibouti. It’s all about the bases. ... the New Jersey-sized nation. Yet its quiet stability within the volatile Horn of Africa has made the country of just 875,000 people a hub for the world’s superpowers. ... The stars and stripes flutters alongside the runway where military and passenger planes touch down: Camp Lemmonier, America’s only permanent military base in Africa, hosts 4,500 troops and contractors who conduct missions against al-Qaeda in Yemen and al-Shabab in Somalia. The outpost, leased for $60m a year, shares an airstrip with the international airport, ... Djibouti also hosts France’s...

Germany’s Social Democratic-left justice minister is using the migrant crisis as a pretext to ban the display of the human form in public, blaming sexual images in advertising for the Cologne New Year’s Eve rape attacks. Federal Justice Minister Heiko Maas has unveiled an amendment to the national competition laws — which also govern advertising — for force a “modern gender image” on the nation.

Our new motto: Strength through moral equivalenceWhen John Kerry toured the Hiroshima Peace Memorial and Museum this week before meeting foreign ministers at the G-7 Summit, Reuters reports that he had witnessed “haunting displays [of] photographs of badly burned victims, the tattered and stained clothes they wore and statues depicting them with flesh melting from their limbs.” “It is a stunning display. It is a gut-wrenching display,” explained Kerry. “It is a reminder of the depth of the obligation every one of us in public life carries … to create and pursue a world free from nuclear weapons.” Iran exempted,...

THE Bismarck, the German battleship which sank with the loss of more than 2,000 sailors, was scuttled by her own crew, according to a news docu-mentary to be screened this weekend. The Second World War flagship, the pride of Hitler’s naval fleet, sank so quickly that it must have been deliberately aimed at the ocean floor by desperate commanders, according to the programme, made by the Titanic film director, James Cameron. Semi-crippled after an aircraft-launched torpedo knocked out her rudder, the Bismarck was hounded across the Atlantic by a chasing British naval pack. Then, on 27 May, 1941, in what...

The center-left Social Democratic Party said on Tuesday that Germany should scrap a law against insulting foreign leaders — which has been used by the Turkish President to target a German comedian. “The honor of a head of state is just as important as the honor of a normal citizen,” SPD leader in the Bundestag (German parliament) Thomas Oppermann said in Berlin. SPD MPs are ready to repeal the paragraph banning insults against foreign leaders, Oppermann went on, calling it an “antiquated rule” that should not be updated but simply abolished. Changing the law would also allow the federal government...

Billionaire financier George Soros has warned that the European Union is in mortal danger of collapse if it doesn’t agree a massive cash injection to fix the refugee crisis. In an essay written for the New York Review of Books, Soros also claimed that a humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding in Greece. “The asylum seekers are desperate. Legitimate refugees must be offered a reasonable chance to reach their destinations in Europe,” the investor wrote in the publication.

Almost 6,000 refugee children and minors were reported missing in Germany last year, according to its interior ministry, amid growing concerns that traffickers and criminals are preying on thousands of vulnerable young people travelling amid the flow of refugees into Europe. The exact scale of the crisis is unclear, because rudimentary and overwhelmed registration systems mean Europe does not have a clear picture of the number of children arriving on its shores, or close tracking of their onward route. Some of those who vanish may never have registered, paranoid that officials will lock them up. Others may have been reunited...

At least 29 German soldiers have traveled to Syria or Iraq in recent years, an internal military report has found, with some believed to have joined terror group ISIS. The internal report from the military counter-intelligence service MAD, seen by DPA, also showed that 65 active soldiers are currently under investigation on suspicion of having Islamist sympathies. Since 2007, the Bundeswehr (German army) has identified 22 soldiers in its ranks as Islamists and relieved 17 of them from their duties. The remaining five had reached the end of their service by the time the investigation concluded. …

Deutsche Bank, Germany’s biggest lender, on Tuesday added its voice to a growing protest by major companies against legislation recently passed in some US states targeting gay and transgender people. The bank said in a statement that it would “freeze plans to create 250 new jobs at its Cary, North Carolina, location” by the end of 2017. The decision was “due to state-wide legislation enacted in North Carolina on March 23 that invalidated existing protections of the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender fellow citizens in some municipalities and prevents municipalities from adopting such protections in the future,” the...

Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Bono, the lead vocalist of rock band U2, offered warning about the refugee crisis taking place due to turmoil in the Middle East and in Africa. Bono told “Morning Joe” this crisis threatens the existence of Europe and could be a hurdle for the next president of the United States to overcome. “What I learned from my trip along the border of Somalia and these camps along the borders of Syria saying – but what I learned from that trip with a lot of this work to get undone and furthermore, that it threatens the...

The Danish government is charging hundreds of its citizens with human smuggling for giving rides to refugees, the Washington Post reports. Denmark has been aggressively combating the wave of migrants from Germany. The government strongly reduced the benefits it provides, migrants are banned from public transportation, and authorities often confiscate their possessions. Denmark even placed ads in Lebanese newspapers, warning people against coming to the Scandinavian country. At the same time, Danish citizens who take migrants to the Swedish border are arrested for human trafficking. While the government is primarily based around the center-right, the strongly anti-immigrant Danish People's Party...

A majority of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza approve of attacks against Israeli civilians and believe that an armed intifada would help them on the path to statehood, a recent poll has found. The survey, carried out by the the Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research and published on April 4, found that 60 percent of Palestinians support “armed attacks against Israeli civilians inside Israel,” while 65 percent think that escalating the current wave of violence into an armed intifada would help Palestinian national aspirations in a way that negotiations could not. A plurality also believes...