Free Republic

When it comes to Christians, news from Pakistan in recent years has seldom been good. An increasingly beleaguered minority in an Islamic republic, they have become targets of harassment and violent attacks, often motivated by tensions and conflicts between Islamists and the West on the world stage. This week, however, brings a notable exception. On Saturday there will be a state funeral at St Patrick's Cathedral in Karachi for the German-born Catholic nun and doctor, Ruth Pfau, who died last week at the age of 87 after giving 50 years of her life to the service of patients with...

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday called on Turks living in Germany not to vote for the two parties in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s ruling grand coalition or the Greens in next month’s legislative elections, calling them “enemies of Turkey”. Upping the stakes in an intensifying row with Berlin, Erdogan said ethnic Turks in Germany should not cast their ballots either for Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the Social Democratic Party (SPD) of Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel, or the Greens. “I tell all my kinsmen in Germany… not to vote for them. Neither the Christian Democrats nor the SPD nor the...

One person was killed and one person was injured in a stabbing attack in the German city of Wuppertal-Elberfeld today, according to police. Wuppertal police are still searching for one or more suspects related to the stabbings. No information has been released about the possible motive of the attack. This marks the second reported stabbing attack in Europe today, as one person was killed in Finland during a stabbing attack that left several others injured.

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that the European Union can’t pursue a lawsuit accusing tobacco giant R.J Reynolds of taking part in a global money-laundering scheme that sponsored cigarette-smuggling in Europe. In a 4-3 ruling, the justices said the EU has no right to sue in U.S. courts because federal racketeering laws don’t allow recovery for injuries occurring outside the United States. The EU and 26 of its member states allege RJR coordinated the scheme with the help of Colombian and Russian criminal groups and laundered money through New York-based financial institutions. The EU claims the company’s actions hurt the...

Alexander Gauland, the top candidate for the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany, has told DW there should be a clear path for repatriating migrants. Accepting refugees is not in Germany’s interest, he said. Alexander Gauland is the top candidate for Alternative for Germany (AfD) in September’s general election. In an interview with DW Editor-in-Chief Ines Pohl and moderator Jaafar Abdul-Karim, he said that Germany and Europe’s borders should be closed. The former, long-time member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) said it is wrong that people without papers can enter Germany. “These people shouldn’t even be allowed into...

LOVE DRUG: WESTERNERS ARE KINDER TO MIGRANTS WHEN GIVEN THE ‘LOVE HORMONE’ OXYTOCIN AND PUT UNDER PEER PRESSURE, SCIENTISTS FIND ACADEMICS NOTE THAT PEOPLE TEND TO BE MORE ‘ALTRUISTIC TO FAMILY AND FRIENDS THAN TO PERFECT STRANGERS’ – BUT THINK THEY KNOW HOW TO CHANGE THIS. Researchers from the University of Bonn said that humans tend to be generally kinder to friends and family than strangers. “Given the right circumstances, oxytocin may help promote the acceptance and integration of migrants into Western cultures.� The suggestion that Westerners should be given drugs to make them more welcoming to foreigners is likely...

The German cruise missile Taurus KEPD-350 has a lot of demand in South Korea. The nearly 1,000-kilogram high-tech weapon made by an eponymous German firm, Taurus Systems, has a range of almost 500 kilometers. It has been specifically designed to penetrate highly capable air defense systems in low-altitude flight. The weapon is capable of both hitting deep underground bunkers as well as destroying large surface areas. South Korea's significance for Taurus, based in Germany's Bavaria state, is seen by the fact that the company set up a representative office in Seoul in 2014. In October 2016, 177 cruise missiles were...

Merkel is hellbent on destroying the whole of Europe. Not only is she succeeding, she’s not finished. Will the German people vote for more of these destructive, suicidal policies? If they do, then they are beyond hope. Europe Can ‘Cope’ With More Migrants, Merkel Claims German Chancellor pushes for an EU-wide migrant relocation plan. August 11, 2017, By Vijeta Uniyal, Truth Revolt: Having learned nothing from her past mistakes, Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel called upon the EU to double its refugee intake. “Merkel willing to resettle more refugees,” reports Germany’s most-read newspaper, Die Welt. “The EU can cope with twice...

Despite the turbulence of the Weimar years, Germany has followed a steady capitalist economic model since the end of the Second World War. But that doesn’t mean people like the idea, a new study shows. Contrary to the US, where belief in capitalism is as entrenched as hot dogs and baseball, Germany has always had a more complicated relationship to the philosophy of competitive markets. This is, after all, the country that gave us the founding communist thinkers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. And a study published by Statista and YouGov on Tuesday shows that only 16 percent of Germans...

The Alternative for Germany (AfD) have their nose ahead of the other minor parties in Germany, putting them on course to become the third largest party in the Bundestag after September’s election, a new poll has found. The poll published by INSA and Bild on Tuesday found that the far-right AfD are on course to win 10 percent of the vote at the September 24th vote. That would put them in third place behind the Social Democrats (SPD) on 25 percent and Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) on 37 percent. The far-right party, who were set up in 2013 and...

I spoke this morning with a friend who lives in Germany. Unsolicited, the friend (who assumed, as Leftists always do, given my socio-economic status, that I am a Leftist too) began to trash Trump. I got the usual litany: Trump will kill Americans because he refuses to save Obamacare; Trump will kill Americans and Koreans because he's threatening repercussions if Kim Jong-Un engages in an overtly aggressive act against the US or its territories; and Trump will kill the entire world because he withdrew from the (meaningless, but expensive) Paris Accords. How in the world could Americans elect the racist,...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday slammed as “disgusting” the role of white supremacists in a violent protest in Virginia and an “evil attack” against counter-demonstrators that left one woman dead, her spokesman said. In sharply worded remarks, Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert expressed shock at the weekend rally by Ku Klux Klan members and other white nationalists in Charlottesville. “The scenes at the right-wing extremist march were absolutely repulsive — naked racism, anti-Semitism and hate in their most evil form were on display,” he told reporters. “Such images and chants are disgusting wherever they may be and they are diametrically...

Angela Merkel wants more migrants. “Echoing her ‘wir schaffen das’ [‘we can do this’] mantra from the beginning of the migrant crisis,” Merkel is pushing for the EU to take in 40 thousand more migrants. The “migrant mayhem” because of Merkel’s reckless immigration policy has not fazed her, since the public backlash against her seems to have subsided. Back in February, Merkel “urged Europe to take in more refugees and said Islam is ‘not the source of terror.'” Only three months before that, however, Merkel did a complete u-turn in response to embarrassing electoral defeats and threats to her power....

Not long ago, he was seen as a bearer of hope, not just for his own party, Germany’s Social Democrats, but for the whole of the embattled European left. He was nicknamed “Sankt Martin”, the man who had the potential to topple Angela Merkel... *snip* The polls show Schulz’s SPD trailing Merkel’s CDU/CSU alliance by about 14%, having been almost neck-and-neck just a few months ago.

Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Friday that she opposed any use of force to resolve the conflict with North Korea, after President Donald Trump said the US military was “locked and loaded”. “I don’t envision a military solution to this conflict, but rather consistent work as we’ve observed at the United Nations Security Council,” Merkel told reporters. “Germany will very intensively take part in the options for resolution that are not military, but I consider a verbal escalation to be the wrong response,” she said when asked about Trump’s latest tweets on North Korea. Merkel called for “very close cooperation”...

Prosecutors in the southwest German city of Saarbrücken are investigating an Iran-born AfD politician over accusations that she made Islamophobic statements. A prosecutor’s office spokeswoman said on Wednesday that AfD politician Laleh Hadjimohamadvali — a candidate in the upcoming national elections — is suspected of defamation of religious groups, as well as incitement to hatred. Hadjimohamadvali was born in Iran and has said that she fled to Germany to get away from Islam in the 1980s after the 1979 Iranian Revolution led to the establishment of an Islamic Republic. According to the Saarbrücker Zeitung, Hadjimohamadvali said during a party gathering...

Germany on Wednesday urged North Korea and the United States to show “restraint” after apocalyptic threats from President Donald Trump and Pyongyang in their mounting war of words. “We are watching the increasing rhetorical escalation regarding the Korean Peninsula with the greatest concern,” foreign ministry spokesman Martin Schäfer told reporters. “That is why we call on all sides to use restraint.” Schäfer said Berlin was convinced a “military option” could not be “the answer in the quest for a nuclear weapon-free” region. He urged the international community to “thoroughly implement” the latest round of sanctions against North Korea approved by...

Angela Merkel’s main rival in the upcoming election opened up this week in an interview about the balance between freedom and security, as well as about what Europe’s military strategy should be. Six weeks before Germany’s national election in which Merkel will seek a fourth term, her main rival Martin Schulz is lagging behind in the polls. In the most recent survey at the end of July by Stern, RTL and Forsa Institute, Schulz sank to his lowest level of support since being nominated as the Social Democrats’ (SPD) chancellor candidate. Just 21 percent of respondents said that hypothetically speaking,...

Linda Wenzel, 16, who disappeared from Pulsnitz near Dresden in Germany on July 1 last year, was detained in Iraq, along with other female supporters of the group, after the Battle of Mosul, which saw ISIS fighters forced out of the ancient city. The new video shows a distraught Wenzel with her arms secured by armed men being escorted through the streets amid a crowd of cheering Iraqis. Lorenz Haase, senior public prosecutor in Dresden, confirmed the teenager had been “located and identified in Iraq”. Wenzel, who is thought to have converted to Islam after being groomed on social media,...

The scene is a German town called Gleiwitz close to the Polish border. Here, on the night of August 31, 1939, a small group of Nazi intelligence agents, dressed in Polish uniforms, burst into a German radio station. There they broadcast anti-German messages in Polish before dumping the bodies of prisoners they had just hauled out of the Dachau concentration camp, who had been made up to resemble Polish saboteurs then shot and mutilated to make identification impossible. A few hours later, Adolf Hitler rose in the Reichstag and announced that the Gleiwitz incident — which he, entirely deceitfully, blamed...