Free Republic

Michael Buhrman, 31, began his career in the nuclear industry after being honorably discharged in from the Navy nuclear program in 2005, where he had worked as a reactor operator and nuclear electronics technician. After watching the movie, “The Town” featuring Ben Affleck, which features four friends who decide to rob a bank, Buhrman was inspired to feed his adrenaline through a life of crime. The well-paid senior reactor operator started attempting to recruit other workers at the Dresden nuclear power plant in order to form a gang to rob banks “to get back at the system.” Buhrman did succeed...

Churches in Dresden are to deliver sermons on love and sex. Among the themes to be explored is the “tender love” between men in the Bible and “everyday eroticism”. Gisela Merkel-Manzur is organizing the program of eight sermons over the next two months at two Protestant churches in Löbtau parish. She believes one of the reasons sexuality has been insufficiently addressed by the church is because of internal disputes about homosexuality. The sermons include one on Jonathan and David—Old Testament figures who appear in the Books of Samuel. The nature of their relationship, and the possibility that they were homosexual...

It's the 68th anniversary of the Dresden bombing. In Britain, we don't think about it as much as, perhaps, we should. The bare facts. More than 1,200 RAF and USAAF bombers attacked the city between the 13th and 15th of February 1945, in four raids. They dropped 3,900 tons of high explosive and incendiary bombs, killing between 22,000 and 25,000 people, almost all civilians. The city's anti-aircraft defences had all been moved to defend the industrial works of the Ruhr valley. The details are chilling.

Following a small explosion in an IKEA store in Dresden on Friday evening, the German headquarters of the Swedish home furnishings chain is calling on all branches in the country to be extremely vigilant. A device exploded in the Dresden store at around 8 pm, police confirmed on Saturday. Two people, aged 32 and 41 years old, suffered possible inner-ear trauma from the blast but there were no other injuries. The blast also damaged the floor and some of the furniture on display in the kitchen department. No one has admitted to carrying out the attack and there are so...

BERLIN (JTA) -- A Dresden politician was fined for playing loud klezmer music outside City Hall to disturb a neo-Nazi march. Stephan Kuhn of the Green Party was ordered Wednesday to pay a $210 fine, which will benefit an organization that helps victims of right-wing violence. Neo-Nazis held a commemorative march on Feb.13, 2008, on the anniversary of the World War II firebombing of Dresden by Allied forces, which right-wing extremists have taken to calling the "bombing Holocaust." In protest, Kuhn blasted the music at the neo-Nazis from the windows of the Green Party parliamentary fraction offices. According to the...

There is no moral equivalence between aggressor and defender, or between those who use violence to start a war and those who use it to end one. People who cannot understand such a fundamental truth are ignorant of history and lacking in wisdom, regardless of how many diplomas from prestigious universities hang on their walls. To be blunt, they are moral idiots.

Do you have a relative who served the United States during World War II? Perhaps you yourself served? I hope you are suitably ashamed for what you and your country did. Because your president has used the omnipotent power of his sacrosanct hindsight to declare that your nation was involved in war crimes. Remember when the Obama DHS said we should be afraid of our combat veterans? Apparently it's not just the ones returning home now; it goes back to at least World War II. Be ashamed. Be very ashamed. Shame, after all, is the hip new way to be...

IN his press conference Wednesday night, President Obama offered a nice little sermonette on "shortcuts." Asked about his decision to release the "torture memos" and ban waterboarding, Obama said: "I was struck by an article that I was reading the other day talking about the fact that the British during World War II, when London was being bombed to smithereens, had 200 or so detainees. And Churchill said, 'We don't torture,' when . . . all of the British people were being subjected to unimaginable risk and threat . . . Churchill understood, you start taking shortcuts, over time, that...

When discussing war crimes during World War II, two events usually get thrown out as indictments of the Allies: dropping atomic weapons on the Japanese and the raid of Dresden, in which 25,000 people died mostly of the raging fire that swept the German city. Critics accuse the Allies of deliberately attacking a civilian population center with little military value as a payback for Nazi attacks on Britain. This perception gained a lot of credence through Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse 5, his autobiographical tale inspired by his eyewitness experience at Dresden as a POW. Interestingly, though, Germans apparently tend to view...

Crammed together in their unwieldy aircraft and utterly dependent on one another, the bomber crews of the Second World War forged friendships that often only death could break. Which is why Pilot Officer Reg Wilson never forgot the night more than 60 years ago when he lost two friends in the night skies over Germany. As he entered his old age - the memories of his youth perhaps more powerful than ever - Mr Wilson began a quest to find their remains. Yesterday he told how at last he had succeeded in finding one of those friends, flight engineer Sergeant...

A NEW study claims no more than 25,000 people were killed in the massive Allied bombing of Dresden in the Second World War – far fewer than many scholars have believed. Four years of research being carried out by a team of historians and academics has cast doubt on previous claims that up to 135,000 may have lost their lives in the eastern German city over two days in 1945. The bombing of Dresden became arugably the most controversial operation carried out by British and US forces during the Second World War as it involved creating firestorms by dropping incendiary...

Did Hitler's crimes justify the Allies' terror-bombing of Germany? Indeed they did, answers Christopher Hitchens in his Newsweek response to my new book, "Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War": "The stark evidence of the Final Solution has ever since been enough to dispel most doubts about, say, the wisdom or morality of carpet-bombing German cities." Atheist, Trotskyite and newborn neocon, Hitchens embraces the morality of lex talionis: an eye for an eye. If Germans murdered women and children, the British were morally justified in killing German women and children. According to British historians, however, Churchill ordered the initial bombing of...

Berlin, Germany (CNS) - Tom Cruise was left furious after a crew member on his latest film set passed wind during a minute's silence. The Hollywood actor - who is currently shooting World War II drama "Valkyrie" in Berlin - had paused filming to honor the anti-Nazi heroes portrayed in the movie when one employee decided to use the tribute to break wind. Fellow star Christian Berkel - who plays anti-Hitler plotter Albrecht Mertz von Quirbheim - said, "The film's director Bryan Singer, the screenplay writer Christopher McQuarrie and Tom Cruise asked us all to observe a moment's silence shortly...

Dresden vs. Auschwitz By Aviva Lori In February 2005, Dr. Gilad Margalit visited Dresden. The winter of 2005 was cold, but at the events marking the 60th anniversary of the Allied bombing of the city it was hot. Very hot. About 5,000 neo-Nazis descended on Dresden from all over Germany and from throughout Europe for the big demonstration on February 13, a Sunday. It was a colorful, violent demonstration that sought to carve out territory in the streets and especially in the national consciousness. The massive physical presence of the demonstrators only heightened the growing recognition in Germany in recent...

This weeks Sci-Fi listing: Sun: 9/8 - Dresden Files --> Sci-Fi Wed: 8/7 - Jericho --> CBS If you miss seeing Babylon 5 or Babylon Crusade here is the link to see those shows for free --> http://video.aol.com/video-category/in2tv-sci-fi/1716

This weeks Sci-Fi Listing: Sunday: 9/8 Dresden Files -- SciFi Channel 10/9 Battlestar Galactica -- SciFi Channel Monday: 8/7 Heros -- NBC Wednesday: 9/8 Jerhico -- CBS

This weeks Sci-Fi Listing: Sunday: 9/8 - The Dresden Files --> Sci-Fi Channel 10/9 - Battlestar Galactica --> Sci-Fi Channel Monday: 9/8 - Heros --> NBC Wednesday: 8/7 - Jerhico --> CBS

The French presidential candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen provoked outrage among British veterans yesterday when he compared the September 11 attacks on the United States to RAF-led bombing raids during the Second World War. The National Front leader said both were "terrorist acts as they expressly targeted civilians to force military leaders to capitulate". Mr Le Pen, 79, also dismissed the al-Qa'eda atrocities in 2001 as a mere "incident". He told the Roman Catholic newspaper La Croix: "Three thousand dead — that is how many die in Iraq in a month and it's far less than the deaths in the Marseille...

Firestorm: Allied Airpower and the Destruction of Dresden By Marshall De Bruhl Random House, $27.95.One of my favorite talk radio hosts recently interviewed a member of the evangelical Christian left who expressed sentiments -- to call them arguments would be an overstatement -- against the war in Iraq. The conversation, fairly typical of such exchanges, went something like this: “When have you been in favor of the United States actually using military force?” “Well, I guess you would have to say World War II was what you would call a good war." “What about Dresden? You bring up Abu Ghraib...

On the night of February 13-14 1945, two waves of British Lancaster bombers devastated the east German city of Dresden. The targets of these raids were Dresden's rail lines as well as a series of smaller factories that were producing gunsights and other precision optical devices for Germany's war effort. High explosive bombs were dropped first and were followed up by incendiary bombs which turned Dresden into a giant firestorm. The worst damage occurred in the inner city and immediate eastern suburbs of Dresden. According to a Dresden police report, at least 12000 dwellings were destroyed as well as a...