Free Republic

COLOGNE, Germany — With its wood-paneled piano bar and luxurious spa, the four-star Bonotel assures visitors paying up to $300 per night that it meets the "international standard of a first-class hotel." But starting next year, the hotel's marble-and-mirrored lobby and "quiet, peaceful ambience" will play host not to indulgent travelers but desperate asylum seekers. Germany's fourth-largest city spent almost $7 million to buy the Bonotel this summer. Its doors will soon be shut and its 93 opulent rooms filled with asylum seekers, a move underscoring how Europe's economic powerhouse has been overwhelmed by an influx of people seeking a...

The Duke of Wellington said of his close-run victory over Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo that the French "came on in the same old way, and we sent them back in the same old way." Something like that happened to the Democrats in Tuesday's midterm elections, as they lost the Senate, a few more seats in the House and additional governorships. They came on with the same old strategy, but this time they went down with it. Obama and the Democrats chose not to defend the administration's record of the last six years. On foreign policy, no Democratic chorus...

CAIRO — The Arab League warned Sunday that Israel has reached a “red line” after fresh clashes in Jerusalem, urging international pressure to stop what it branded “violations” in the holy city. Clashes around the flashpoint Temple Mount and the al-Aqsa Mosque compound — the third holiest site in Islam and Judaism’s holiest — prompted Israel on Thursday to close the site for a day. The Temple Mount and adjacent neighborhoods have seen months of violence, with the mosque compound a rallying point for Palestinian resistance to perceived Jewish attempts to take control of it...

The Houthis, Iranian backed rebels have taken control of Yemen’s capital, Sanaa. The comparison to Hezbollah is apt as Reuters is reporting that the Houthi are blocking the appointment of Yemen’s president. So what’s Iran’s interest in Yemen? It was spelled out by Michael Segall of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs two and a half years ago. A couple of Segall’s observations are sobering: "Iran regards Yemen in general, and its Shia northern part in particular, as a springboard for subversion and for creating a tangible threat to Saudi Arabia, its main religious-political rival in the region. Iran also...

Al-Qaeda-aligned militants are withdrawing from their last major stronghold on Somalia's southern coast, residents in Barawe have told the BBC. They said that al-Shabab battle-wagons loaded with their weapons had been leaving since the morning. African Union forces and Somali government troops have been closing in on the town - an official says they are about 20km (12 miles) away. Barawe is in a strategic position 200km south of the capital. The African Union says the militants have been using it as a base to launch attacks on the capital, Mogadishu.

We’ve got a problem in the Twin Cities that is based in our large and still growing population of Somali immigrants. Somalis have been immigrating to Minnesota for more than twenty years now. They have taken advantage of all the services that our state and local institutions offer. They have been welcomed with open arms, in Minnesota’s characteristic style. Yet Minnesota’s Somali community — a/k/a “Minnesotans” — is the most fertile ground in the United States for the recruitment of terrorists by foreign terrorist organizations in Africa and the Middle East. We are concerned that they may choose to return...

President Obama on Wednesday delivered a speech at the United Nations filled with his usual soaring rhetoric of global collectivism and the importance of “international norms.” But the president also displayed a shocking naivete about global affairs, religion, Islam — a Pollyannaish interpretation on the state of the world and America’s role in it. Although Mr. Obama won a Nobel Peace Prize just eight months into office, the president made his annual trip to the ineffectual world council to deliver a call to war. “Ladies and gentlemen, we come together at a crossroads between war and peace, between disorder and...

While incumbent Minnesota Sen. Al Franken (D) has a comfortable lead in opinion polls, some are wondering if his relatively muted response to ISIS actively recruiting soldiers from Minnesota will come back to haunt him in November.Minnesota has been a hotbed for ISIS recruitment, with over a dozen residents of the Twin Cities traveling to the Middle East to fight for the Islamic State. Two have been killed. Mike McFadden, the Republican candidate for Franken's seat, has jumped on the issue of ISIS in Minneapolis by portraying Franken as ineffectively combating the terror threat.More from ABC: Hours after the release...

At 22, Kadra Mohamed is a civilian employee of the police department, a community liaison officer making a courtesy call to a merchant, a time-tested neighborhood policing method. Still, this visit -- and many she makes -- breaks new ground. In March, the St. Paul Police Department hired Mohamed, its first female Somali community liaison officer, a move designed to improve the sometimes tense relations with 80,000 Somali-Americans in the Twin Cities -- more than half of them in St. Paul -- the nation's largest Somali community. Each time she wears her crisp blue police department uniform with its thick...

Amir Meshal has a fascinating history. He's originally from New Jersey, but back in 2007 he was detained and interrogated by the FBI in Kenya after escaping from Somalia. Somehow, his travels brought him to Minnesota, and to a mosque in Bloomington, which kicked him out this summer. Friday prayers bring hundreds to the Al-Farooq Youth and Family Center, which is perhaps the largest mosque in the Twin Cities. But not everyone is welcome -- not after Meshal began attending prayer and hanging out earlier this year. In June, the center called police and had Meshal, 31, removed and ticketed...

This was one of the headlines greeting me when I woke up this morning, and in a week filled with generally dreary news it was a small ray of sunshine. A US airstrike six days ago took out Ahmed Godane in Somalia. A leader of the militant Islamist group al-Shabaab has been killed in an American air strike, military chiefs have confirmed.The death of Ahmed Godane was announced on Friday by Pentagon press secretary Rear Admiral John Kirby, who declared it a “major symbolic and operational loss”.The lethal strike in Somalia took place on Monday, but military analysts were...

Ahmad Abdi Godane, the late leader of Somalian militant Islamist group al-Shabaab, was killed in a U.S. air strike, both the Pentagon and Somalia’s premier confirmed on Friday. The demise of the reclusive leader—of whom very few confirmed photos exist—was hailed by the White House as “a major symbolic and operational loss” for the al-Qaeda linked group. Due to al-Shabaab’s activities under Godane’s leadership and his allegiance to al-Qaeda, the U.S. State Department had listed him as one of the world’s eight top terror fugitives, with a $7 million reward for information leading to his arrest, the third-highest level of...

Over the course of two decades, the federal government’s Refugee Resettlement Program has forcibly infused the Minneapolis-St. Paul area of Minnesota with a large dose of Somali culture, and the transition has not always been smooth. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., told WND that while many of the Somali transplants have been hard-working citizens, the experiment has been costly for her state. And too many Somalis remain dependent on public assistance. “We have the largest population of Somalis in the United States, and Somalia is a failed state. It is based on piracy for ransom and fraud,” Bachmann said. “It is...

The Pentagon said Friday that it had confirmed the death of a key Somali militant leader allied with al-Qaeda who had been targeted in a U.S. airstrike earlier this week. Ahmed Abdi Godane, a co-founder of a network blamed for its brutal tactics in Somalia and for the attack on an upscale Kenyan shopping mall last year, was killed Monday in an attack carried out by U.S. drones and other aircraft, the Pentagon said.

The US reportedly targeted Ahmed Abdi Godane in a military strike on Somalia overnight, but the Pentagon has kept a tight seal on the operation other than to acknowledge that one took place. Godane runs al-Shabaab, the Somalian radical Islamist terror network that took credit for the massacre in a Kenyan mall a year ago, and Godane is widely believed to have run that operation: Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon’s press secretary, said in a statement late Monday only that “we are assessing the results of the operation and will provide additional information as and when appropriate.” Godane...

U.S. military forces attacked the extremist al-Shabab network in Somalia Monday, the Pentagon said, and a witness described ground-shaking explosions in a strike that reportedly targeted the group’s leader. Al-Shabab had attacked the upscale Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya, killing at least 67 people a year ago this month and the U.S. had targeted planners of the bloody assault. There was no immediate comment from al-Shabab and U.S. commanders were waiting to determine the attack’s outcome. “U.S. military forces conducted an operation in Somalia today against the al-Shabaab network. We are assessing the results of the operation and will provide...

Breaking News U.S. Military Conducts Operation In Somalia By Barbara Starr September 1, 2014 (CNN) -- U.S. military forces conducted an operation Monday against the Al-Shabaab network in Somalia, Pentagon press secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby said. "We are assessing the results of the operation and will provide additional information as and when appropriate," he said.

Minnesotans? Or “Britons.” Or “Norwegians.” Call them what they call themselves: Muslim members of the ummah: As many as 15 Somali-American men have left their homes in Minnesota in recent months to travel to the Middle East and join up with ISIS, the jihadist army at war with Syria and Iraq, according to Minnesota Public Radio. The fighters appear to have made the decision to go fight with Islamic State of Iraq and Syria/Levant while the terror group was fighting to overthrow Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, but some may now be in Iraq, where the marauding group is seeking to...

A young Calgary man who is believed to have been killed in Iraq fighting for ISIS was “dead inside” long ago, says his former best friend. Social media reports on Friday said Farah Mohamed Shirdon, a 21-year-old Somali-Canadian, had died overseas. It’s unclear when he joined the terrorist group Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham but in an ISIS video that surfaced four months ago, Mr. Shirdon can be seen burning his Canadian passport and threatening Canada and the United States. ... On a Twitter account believed to belong to Mr. Shirdon, a tweet from June read, “Beheading Shias is...

1,200 migrants – mainly from Eritrea, Sudan and Afghanistan, with groups from Somalia, Pakistan and Chad – are now camped out in Calais' forests, hoping one day to cross the Channel to Britain.(VIDEO-AT-LINK) In his 20 years as a lorry driver, Sean Baker, a former soldier, thought he had seen it all. But nothing, he said, compares to the chaos in Calais at the moment. "Just this morning I was filling up my truck with fuel and two migrants jumped in," he said. "I shouted at them and they hopped out. It's mayhem. It happens every hour. "I had one...