Free Republic

'Revelations about the execution of a notorious Nazi war criminal, immortalised in Schindler's List, have raised questions about how the mass murderer died and whether he was even hanged at all. For decades Amon Goeth, who was responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Jews and Poles during World War Two, was believed to have been filmed being executed in 1946. A black and white video shows executioners twice botching a hanging before he was eventually killed. But historians claim in a new National Geographic documentary called Bloody Tales that the video was from 1947 and shows Dr...

In 2014, all EU countries will hold parliamentary elections that may be won by the opponents of European integration. Recent EU measures to stabilize the situation in Cyprus showed that the foundations of the ideology of the Western world based on the Catholic and Protestant faiths have been undermined. The West is trying to explain its hurried decisions with the pressure from the Russian Federation. After the summit in Brussels approved a plan of Cyprus "rescue" (by providing a tranche of 10 billion euros in exchange for the withdrawal of 10 percent of all deposits in the country), it became...

After the Federal Reserve reaffirmed its easy money policy Wednesday, Chairman Ben Bernanke was asked whether the U.S. would ever think of taxing bank depositors as Cyprus has done. He said that was very unlikely but Jim Rickards, senior managing director of Tangent Capital Partners, says the Fed already has its hands in depositors’ pockets. “Nobody is stealing more money from bank depositors than Ben Bernanke,” Rickards tells The Daily Ticker. Bernanke's doing that, Rickards says, by maintaining interest rates near zero.

Reader "MB" who lives in New Zealand is concerned about confiscation of deposits. He writes ... Hi Mish Apparently articles are appearing in a NZ newspaper editorials saying that the NZ government has the same policy of confiscation as that being used on Cyprus by the EU. In the event of a banking crisis, the government will be able to take deposit funds to bail out a bank. MBTheft? A letter to the Reserve Bank of New Zealand states Reserve Bank policy looks like theft. As a super-annuitant who depends on interest from term deposits to top up my pension,...

'Best-selling author James Herbert, who wrote the horror classic The Rats, has died aged 69. His publisher, Pan Macmillan, confirmed that he died at his home in Sussex this morning. No cause of death was given. Jeremy Trevathan, his editor for 10 years, described him as "one of the keystone authors in a genre that had its heyday in the 1970s and 1980s". He is survived by his wife, Eileen, whom he married in 1967, and their three daughters Kerry, Emma and Casey. Herbert's first novel, The Rats, depicted London overrun by mutant flesh-eating rodents and sold 100,000 copies within...

High profile-gang rapes in India have been in the headlines since December. The phenomenon is growing across Europe too, but tends to be under reported due to the high incidence of Muslim perpetrators which makes it politically incorrect to mention. In December 2011 a Swedish mother-of-two was subjected to a brutal gang-rape by 12 Afghan immigrants in a refugee camp . ... The main perpetrator Rafi Bahaduri, 25, had already committed four other rapes in Sweden. The case is not unique. There is a growing trend of gang-rapes perpetrated against white women by Muslim rapists. In the U.K. there has...

The heroic last stand of a young soldier who died trying to defeat an insurgent sniper team has been recognised with the posthumous awarding of the Victoria Cross (VC), the country's highest recognition for valour. Lance Corporal James Ashworth, aged 23 from Kettering, Northamptonshire, was killed by enemy fire when he made a lone advance on an insurgent position that was engaged in a deadly battle with his platoon in the Nahr-e Saraj district of Helmand, Afghanistan. His family (pictured top) were invited to a special media event at Lille Barracks, home of 1 Grenadier Guards, today, where Commander 12...

Argentina has attacked David Cameron for his criticism of the new Pope's stance on the Falklands as the diplomatic dispute over the islands intensifies"It is striking that the prime minister should dare to rebuff the Pope, " said Alicia Castro, Argentina's ambassador in London, in the latest salvo since the Pontiff was elected. She was responding to Mr Cameron's comment that he "respectfully" disagreed with Pope Francis, who as cardinal in Buenos Aires said last year that Britain had "usurped" the islands from Argentina. .... While still a cardinal, the man who is now the new Pontiff had expressed the...

Our Graphic Raises Funds For Margaret Thatcher Statue in UK http://thepeoplescube.com/peoples-blog/our-graphic-raises-funds-for-margaret-thatcher-statue-in-uk-t10875.html By Red Square | 3/19/2013, 9:48 pm Among the many parodies of Obama's "Hope" poster we made during the 2008 elections was Margaret Thatcher's image captioned as "Iron." It has been since a popular selling item at our online store. But last month we were also contacted by the treasurer at the Grantham Museum in England, who asked for permission to use this image in their campaign for a Margaret Thatcher statue in Grantham, Lincolnshire, where the future Prime Minister was born and raised. Grantham already has a statue...

Asked why he stole from banks, the American robber Slick Willie Sutton is supposed to have replied, ‘because that’s where the money is’. Eurozone leaders have made the same calculation. Ever since the debt crisis struck, it was clear that, sooner or later, savers would be gouged. Until now, this gouging has mainly happened through quantitative easing, inflation and record low interest rates. But, in Cyprus, such measures weren’t enough. It’s true, Eurocrats concede, that Cyprus’s economy is tiny, accounting for just 0.2 per cent of the eurozone. But the patience of the donor countries such as Germany is wearing...

During the Great Depression criminals like Bonnie and Clyde, Willie Sutton, Pretty Boy Floyd, John Dillinger and Baby Face Nelson robbed banks. They attained some degree of folk hero status by sticking it to banks that some felt were responsible for the Depression era misery.  With liberal ideas firmly in the saddle, civilizing us, so to speak, we have come a long way from those dreary days. No longer would we applaud such criminals. Instead, today, we send them to Congress, or parliament, or the legislature, where governments try to achieve folk hero status by robbing banks and depositors alike....

'It is 200 years since the birth of David Livingstone, perhaps the most famous of the missionaries to visit Africa in the 19th Century. But as author and Church historian Stephen Tomkins explains, the story of an African chief he converted is every bit as incredible as Livingstone's.'

'Events are being held in Scotland and London to mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of Scottish missionary and explorer Dr David Livingstone. Representatives from the governments of Scotland and Malawi will attend a day of events at the David Livingstone Centre in Blantyre, South Lanarkshire. A memorial service will also be held at Westminster Abbey in London, where Livingstone was buried in 1874. Other bicentenary celebrations will also be held in Africa. Dr Livingstone grew up in poverty but went on to explore central and southern Africa where he became the first European to "discover" and name Victoria...

'Forty veterans of the World War II Arctic convoys have become the first recipients of a new medal. Prime Minister David Cameron hailed the men as a "group of heroes", as he presented them with the newly-created Arctic Star. The Arctic convoys, reportedly called the "worst journey in the world" by Winston Churchill, took supplies to the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1945. More than 3,000 men died while on the convoys. Cdr Eddie Grenfell, 93, was given his Arctic Star at a special ceremony in Portsmouth earlier as he was too ill to travel to the ceremony at Number...

Adolf Hitler’s place in history has been distorted because Germany lost the Second World War, an op-ed in the official Palestinian Authority newspaper Al-Haya Al-Jadida has claimed. Instead, Hitler was well-organized, hated alcohol, and went to bed early while Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt were alcoholics, the op-ed, printed on the eve of President Barack Obama’s visit to the Middle East, claimed. “Had Hitler won, Nazism would be an honor that people would be competing to belong to, and not a disgrace punishable by law,” the piece written by Hassan Ouda Abu Zaher said, according to a translation provided by...

British politicians struck a last-minute deal on press regulation Monday, unveiling new rules that aim to curb the worst abuses of the country’s scandal-ridden media. The deal agreed upon by all three major parties came on the same day a lawyer announced in court that there could potentially be hundreds more hacking victims of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire. Victims’ groups had lobbied for an independent watchdog whose powers are rooted in legislation, while media groups had opposed any potential press law, saying it threatens press freedom. After months of political wrangling, the new deal is a complicated compromise. Politicians touted...

Physicist Walks Out of Gender-Segregated Debate At London University A renowned American physicist created a row at University College London last weekend when he stormed out of a debate hosted by an Islamic group because men, women and couples in the audience were segregated. The physicist, Lawrence Krauss, is a professor at Arizona State University. Krauss is a noted atheist who served on President Barack Obama’s science policy committee during the 2008 presidential campaign. The debate, sponsored by the Islamic Education and Research Academy, was entitled: “Islam or Atheism: Which Makes More Sense?” A YouTube clip posted by Stand for...

War hero Corporal Johnson Beharry, who saved the lives of 30 soldiers in Iraq, has married his girlfriend in a ceremony at a London registry office today. The decorated soldier and his glamorous bride Mallissa Venice Noel were photographed leaving Old Marylebone Town Hall after today's service, which took place under a veil of military-style secrecy. Guests at the wedding were ordered to hand over their phones before the ceremony after Cpl Beharry and his fiancee signed a magazine deal. Friends and family who attended the wedding had to give in their phones to make sure photographs of the happy...

Stock markets across Europe and Asia tumbled today as investors reacted to an unprecedented raid on bank accounts in Cyprus prompted by a £8.6billion bailout by the European Union. As the Cypriot parliament delayed a crucial vote on the measure for the second time, angry scenes erupted on the streets of the capital Nicosia. Protesters who stand to lose ten per cent of their savings stood outside the Parliament building holding anti-German banners which left doubt where they believe the blame lies for the latest crisis to envelope the eurozone. Meanwhile, many Britons who have moved to the Mediterranean island...

'The lies of two Iraqi spies were central to the claim - at the heart of the UK and US decision to go to war in Iraq - that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. But even before the fighting started, intelligence from highly-placed sources was available suggesting he did not, Panorama has learned.'