Free Republic

World's biggest beer festival is expected to attract 7 million tourists.

NEW YORK, May 17, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- AJC Executive Director David Harris issued the following statement in response to an op-ed by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, which appeared in The New York Times today: (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20100816/AJCLOGO) AJC is a global advocacy organization that has long been committed to achieving a peaceful settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict based on a two-state accord. In that effort, we have met countless times with Palestinian officials, as well as with leaders of surrounding Arab countries, to help build a foundation of coexistence and trust. We wish for nothing more than an end to...

Two Muslim converts and two Turks go on trial in a bomb-proof courtroom in Düsseldorf today accused of plotting to blow up German civilians and US soldiers. “The world will burn!” boasted an intercepted e-mail sent between the accused, who are alleged to have wanted to wage an Islamic holy war in the heart of Europe. Three of the men — Fritz Gelowicz, 29, Daniel Schneider, 23 and the Turkish national Adem Yilmaz, 30 — are accused of attending a training camp on the Afghan-Pakistani frontier run by an Uzbek-based terror organisation known as the Islamic Jihad Union. Intelligence services...

Police in Namibia have intercepted a suspicious object with a detonator and a running clock in luggage on an Air Berlin plane en route from the country's capital, Windhoek to Munich. Germany's Federal Crime Office (BKA) said it was not clear if the object found during loading of the Airbus jet yesterday was an ignitable explosive. Germany stepped up security measures after saying it had received intelligence pointing to a planned attack in the country towards the end of this month. Security was stepped up at potential targets such as train stations and airports.

Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has euologized Abu Dauod, the mastermind of the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes at the Munch Olympics in 1972 and who died Saturday. “He is missed. He was one of the leading figures of Fatah and spent his life in resistance and sincere work as well as physical sacrifice for his people's just causes,” said Abbas. Dauod, a former commander of the Fatah party that Abbas now heads, died late Friday night as the age of 73. Abbas’ eulogy and praise for the planner of the murders came less than a month after he told...

Reflections on Germany(Munich) I’ve been walking the last two days through Munich. Much of the city core was bombed out by the allies by spring 1945. Yet today there is little evidence of such destruction. The museums are among the best in the world, the streets and parks spotless, the infrastructure superb, and the people as hard at work as ever. To walk an urban street in Germany is a different experience from say in Athens or Istanbul—traffic follows law, pedestrians are respected, horns are used rarely, trash is absent. In other words, things work and work well. Such observations...

Defense: The administration proudly reveals a state secret to our enemies before a U.N. conference on nuclear nonproliferation. It wants to lead by example on disarmament, but Iran and North Korea aren't following. Not since the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact that sought to outlaw war as an instrument of national policy has there been such a stunning display of dangerous naivete. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton disclosed U.S. nuclear secrets to the U.N. conference while proudly proclaiming it showed America is sending "a clear, unmistakable signal" that this nation is committed to nuclear disarmament. Kellogg-Briand laid the groundwork for Munich in...

  Striking Back: The 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre and Israel’s Deadly ResponseBy Aaron J. Klein Random House, $24.95, 256pp. In a sensational new book, Striking Back: The 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre and Israel’s Deadly Response, Aaron J. Klein, Time Magazine military and intelligence affairs correspondent, mines newly declassified documents and over 50 interviews with high ranking Israeli intelligence, military, and political figures to finally tell us what really happened at the 1972 Munich Olympics—and after.Striking Back is authoritative and definitive—if by necessity somewhat incomplete.  It will be many years before all the details are revealed, but Klein manages enough to...

Arms Deal: President Obama signs away U.S. nuclear security and gives the Russians a veto over whether we can defend ourselves. Our nuclear umbrella is in tatters as another piece of paper proclaims peace in our time. Completing a process of disarmament and appeasement that manifested itself in the dismantling and defunding of U.S. military power that began with his inauguration, President Obama signed a new strategic arms limitation treaty with a grinning and very happy Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Thursday in the Czech capital. How fitting this document was signed in Prague, which isn't far from Munich where...

NOT long after a portly, jovial priest in the German industrial city of Essen was accused of sexually abusing three boys in 1979, he was offered a new home in Munich by Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI. Ratzinger, who was Archbishop of Munich and Freising at the time, wanted Father Peter Hullermann — known to friends in the church as “Hulli” — to undergo psychotherapy. A psychiatrist quickly concluded that Hullermann was untreatable, however. “I told the church officials that Hullermann must never be allowed to work with children again,” said Werner Huth, the psychiatrist, in an interview...

SNIPPET: "BERLIN: The take-off of a German flight to Tokyo was delayed after two dozen Japanese tourists on board fell ill with violent stomach cramps, German police said. Shortly before take-off on Saturday afternoon, the Airbus A340 carrying some 300 passengers returned to the airport terminal in Berlin after the tourists complained of stomach pains and nausea, said a police statement." SNIPPET: "The victims also complained of vertigo, vomiting and circulation problems, according to doctors, though their lives were not thought to be in danger, said the police statement. Doctors were still trying to ascertain what had caused the sickness,...

At the threshold of my career as a journalist in Paris I was once the unwitting victim of a classic Mossad honey trap. Little did I know that Patricia Roxborough, the girl who pursued me and made sure she was the object of my desire, was a trained assassin of the feared Israeli intelligence service. We met, by chance, through friends in 1969. I was an impressionable 21-year-old learning the ropes of being a foreign correspondent in the French capital. Roxborough said she was a Canadian freelance news photographer. She was tall, beautiful and intelligent and her flashing eyes hinted...

SNIPPET: "MUNICH, Germany (Reuters) - Munich international airport was re-opened on Wednesday after a three-hour shut down caused when a passenger left the security check even though his laptop computer set off an explosives detector, police said. About 1,200 police did not find the man in their search of the terminal, which was shut down and completely evacuated. "

A terminal at the Munich airport was closed and passengers were evacuated Wednesday after a security breach in which a laptop tested positive for explosives and its owner fled, AFP reported.

The Taliban have a new target: beer and bratwurst. In perhaps their most bizarre threat to date, Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan have threatened to bomb the Oktoberfest festival in Munich, Germany, which attracts millions of visitors ever year, along with several landmark buildings and government officials. The threats, while perhaps farfetched, follow a series of warnings from the Taliban and Al Qaeda and underscores a concerted effort by the insurgents to weaken Germany’s resolve for the fight in Afghanistan. Germany has responded by banning all air flights over Munich for the rest of the 16-day festival, which ends Oct. 4....

Czechs are used to betrayal by their Western allies. It was at Munich in 1938 that British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain sealed their doom in exchange for a piece of paper promising "peace in our time." The fact that this further gutting of missile defense came on the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland on Sept. 17, 1939, is an eerie coincidence. "Just after midnight I was informed in a telephone call by President Barack Obama that (his) administration had decided to pull out from the planned missile defense shield installations" in the Czech Republic and Poland, the...

Strategic Defense: With Iran on the verge of a deliverable nuke, the administration tells our allies in the dead of night that we will scuttle missile defense plans in Eastern Europe to please the Russians.Czechs are used to betrayal by their Western allies. It was at Munich in 1938 that British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain sealed their doom in exchange for a piece of paper promising "peace in our time." The fact that this further gutting of missile defense came on the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland on Sept. 17, 1939, is an eerie coincidence. "Just after...

Alliances: The U.S. has expressed a willingness to barter away missile defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic. Now the Polish foreign minister says he hopes his country doesn't regret trusting the United States.The Brussels Forum is a privately organized high-level meeting of the most influential North American and European political, corporate and intellectual leaders to address pressing challenges currently facing both sides of the Atlantic. One of the pressing issues discussed at this year's conference was whether the U.S. is serious about bartering away plans for missile defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic in exchange for...

Munich - Plans for a new mosque to be built in Munich got the official go-ahead Wednesday, after years of political wrangling. The city council approved building plans for the 10-million-euro (13 million dollar) mosque to be built in the city centre, despite opposition from Bavaria's Christian Socialist Union (CSU) and another regional party. A broad political majority voted in favour of the project, including Social Democrats (SPD), Federal Democrats (FDP), Greens and the Left Party, according to a city spokesman. The Turkish-Islamic mosque organisation Ditim now has to obtain the funds to buy the land for the mosque by...

BOSTON — A flight from Munich, Germany to Washington has been diverted to Boston because a passenger complained of "flu-like symptoms." Airport spokesman Phil Orlandella said United flight 903 was being diverted to Boston early Friday afternoon after a 53-year-old female passenger told flight attendants about her symptoms.