Free Republic

President Barack Obama will drop in on three of America's most important allies this week, possibly for the last time. But he isn't expecting an adoring reception in any of them. The U.S. relationship with all three nations is distressed, and Obama will be doing more than a little damage control. In Saudi Arabia, where he lands on Wednesday, Obama will try to soothe anger over his nuclear deal with Iran and his increasingly public complaints about the Saudi kingdom. In London, he’ll make amends for comments about British foreign policy that rattled the teacups at 10 Downing Street. And...

The Central Council of Muslims responded in unequivocal terms to a hard anti-Islam stance announced by the populist Alternative for Germany party over the weekend. “For the first time since Hitler’s Germany there is a party that once again is discrediting a whole religious community and threatening its existence,” Central Council of Muslims chairman Aiman Mazyek told public broadcaster NDR on Monday morning. He was responding to interviews with the AfD leadership published on Sunday that commit the party to a tough anti-Islam line. […] The party’s deputy chairman, Alexander Gauland, went further in comments to the FAS (Frankfurter Allgemeine...

The Tata Steel sale has revived the battle between protectionists and free traders, a debate that became particularly acute in the run-up to the creation of the World Trade Organisation in 1995, which marked the success of “free traders” all around the world. In the protectionist camp, there is now a wide range of political parties from the extreme left to the extreme right: from Syriza to Ukip, from the Front National to Podemos. The common element for all these parties is that they dream of returning to a time when “we were in control”; when we could easily open...

The Chancellor says income tax could rise by 8% and billions would be cut from public services if the UK votes to leave the EU... says Treasury analysis has found that UK tax receipts would be £36bn-a-year lower after 15 years... the amount the officials calculate the exchequer would lose if Britain was forced to enter a trade deal similar to that which Canada has recently negotiated. The figure is the same as eight pence in the pound added to income tax. The 'Canadian model' is the scenario that many who want to leave say would be in Britain's best...

Germany's right-wing populist AfD party drew heavy fire Monday after two of its leaders labelled Islam incompatible with the country's values and constitution. The three-year-old Alternative for Germany party, which harshly opposes Chancellor Angela Merkel's liberal refugee policy, plans to adopt an anti-Islamic manifesto at a conference this month. The chairman of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany Aiman Mazyek charged that "the AfD is riding a wave of Islamophobia". "It is the first time since Hitler's Germany that there is a party which discredits and existentially threatens an entire religious community," he told public broadcaster NDR. The opposition...

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...

Up late, and watching CNN and the Pope has landed on the Greek island of Lesbos, and the "refugees" have smartphones taking pictures and selfies with the Pope.

In a move authorities hope will reduce the frequency of sexual assault by Muslim immigrants, the portrayal of sausages and "scantily clad" women (i.e., those without headscarves) in advertisements will be banned. German Justice Minister Heiko Maas said "the action is a common sense measure designed to protect our citizens from rape and molestation by those from a different culture. In interrogation after interrogation, offenders from Asia and Africa have professed themselves to be irresistibly driven to attack women shortly after viewing ads in which 'uncovered women' or 'uncovered sausages' have been shown. Rather than futilely expecting immigrants to adapt...

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...

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>

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 —...

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...

It's the death of Germany: "Germany has announced plans to ban images of scantily-clad women in adverts in response to the sexual assaults in Cologne on New Year’s Eve. German Justice Minister Heiko Maas said the move to ban ads which “reduce women or men to sexual objects” is an attempt to create a “modern gender image”. The proposal, if introduced later this year, would see courts decide on what qualifies as sexist." If this doesn't convince you that Europe is committing cultural suicide, I don't know what will. Instead of telling foreign rapists to get out of the country...

Bono understands your plight. He knows you pay a lot in taxes. He wants you to pay more: Tuesday on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, U2 frontman and anti-poverty activist Bono called for the U.S. to send more assistance to Europe to shore up the European Union as it buckles under the Third World migrant crisis, even though Americans are struggling to bear their own tax burdens. “I know the American taxpayer is really hurting at the moment and the same in Europe,” Bono said. “But I think between Europe and America there is a consensus building that, you know, the corruption...

...Gross was questioned after multiple complaints were filed with prosecutors by Polish citizens over an article published in 2015 in which Gross said Poles killed more Jews than Germans during the German occupation – a claim that challenges a widespread conviction in Poland that the Polish response was almost exclusively honourable. Gross made the comparison in an article published by Project Syndicate in September critical of how Poland and other eastern European countries have reacted to the migrant crisis. He decried as “heartless” the region’s opposition to accepting refugees and argued that the attitude was rooted in the region’s “murderous...

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...

GERMANY has announced plans to ban images of scantily-clad women in adverts in response to the sexual assaults in Cologne on New Year’s Eve. German Justice Minister Heiko Maas said the move to ban ads which "reduce women or men to sexual objects" is an attempt to create a "modern gender image”. The plan has been called political correctness gone mad by its critics, who said it was the first step towards a “nanny state”.

Sunday, April 10, 2016 Islam is Colonialism, Palestine is Colonialism Posted by Daniel Greenfield At Israeli Apartheid Week, campus haters claim to be fighting “colonialism” by fighting Jews. Columbia University’s Center for Palestine Studies, dedicated to a country that doesn’t exist and which has produced nothing worth studying except terrorism, features diatribes such as Palestine Re-Covered: Reading a Settler Colonial Landscape”. This word salad is a toxic stew of historical revisionism being used to justify the Muslim settler colonization of the indigenous Jewish population. You can’t colonize Palestine because you can't colonize colonizers. The Muslim population in Israel is a...