Free Republic

Just a hair over a week ago (ten days to be exact), an official arm of the German government declared the populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party - now polling as Germany's most popular party in the country - a 'right-wing extremist' group. Yeah, right - so big deal, no? I mean, they've been calling them that forever. Actually, it was a big deal. It made the epithet an official label, opening the party and every last one of its members to constant, sanctioned (instead of surreptitious) government surveillance. It was also the first necessary step in the process of...

Brainchild of the KGB As Ion Mihai Pacepa, onetime director of the Romanian espionage service (DIE), later explained, the PLO was conceived at a time when the KGB was creating “liberation front” organizations throughout the Third world. Others included the National Liberation Army of Bolivia, created in 1964 with help from Ernesto “Che” Guevara, and the National Liberation Army of Colombia, created in 1965 with help from Fidel Castro. But the PLO was the KGB’s most enduring achievement. In 1964, the first PLO Council, consisting of 422 Palestinian representatives handpicked by the KGB, approved the Soviet blueprint for a Palestinian...

A day that changed the course of German history forever: On November 9, 1989 the pressures of revolution brought down the Berlin Wall. This episode of History Stories illustrates how months of protests and mass demonstrations lead up to this fateful day. Archival footage of news coverage of the events as they unfolded is paired with powerful statements from East Berliners as they crossed over to the other side.

History and controversy is expected to be made at the Tokyo Olympics this summer after the transgender weightlifter Laurel Hubbard was effectively guaranteed a place in the women’s super heavyweight category. While the 43-year-old has not yet been named in the New Zealand team, an International Weightlifting Federation insider confirmed to the Guardian that she would automatically qualify because of amended rules approved by the International Olympic Committee. Sebastian Coe expects Tokyo Olympics to go ahead after test event in Japan The insider said that while teams did not have to be named until 5 July, under the new qualification...

A Los Angeles County health inspector was captured on video dancing inside a brewery after incorrectly ordering the owner to close his doors on Super Bowl Sunday for violating COVID guidelines. Bart Avery, an owner of Bravery Brewery in Lancaster, California, told Fox News that the inspector came to the establishment around 11am on February 7. Avery claimed the inspector told an employee that the business was in violation of county guidelines because there was no food truck and needed to close just moments before she broke out in a dance.

The U.N human rights chief says she expects the U.S. administration of President-elect Joe Biden will be “much, much better” when it comes to human rights, and warned of shrinking “democratic space” in Hong Kong — saying her office will be monitoring the rights situation there. Michelle Bachelet spoke to reporters in Geneva in a catch-all news conference to recap the year and look ahead to 2021. She cited concerns about the inequalities exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic and systemic racism like that highlighted by the Black Lives Matter movement. Bachelet hailed “a series of promising pledges” by Biden, on...

Chancellor Angela Merkel said Friday that the drastic limits placed on people’s freedoms to curb the coronavirus earlier this year had weighed heavily on her, bringing back memories of life in surveillance-riddled East Germany. Speaking on the eve of the 30th anniversary of German reunification, Merkel told the RND newspaper group she was acutely aware of the sacrifices she was asking of Germans when the country went into lockdown in March. “That I had to tell people they could only be out in the street in a single household or just two persons at a time, that no events could...

Accepting three million Hong Kongers should not pose a huge burden to the five core Anglosphere countries. Right now, they need all the help they can get. In a fierce but very typically British exchange, BBC editor Andrew Marr grilled the nonchalant Chinese ambassador to Britain, revealing amateur drone videos showing chained people boarding a train flanked on both sides by black-armored troops. In a time when Department of Homeland Security agents are decried by the U.S. speaker of the House as stormtroopers for defending federal properties, videos from China show what a genuine totalitarian system looks like.A full city...

The world witnessed Stalin's Purge, Hitler's Holocaust, Mao's Cultural Revolution, Pol Pot's Forced Exodus, and Saddam's brutal mass killings. Africa is no stranger to atrocities to the likes of Idi Amin and Mobutu Sese Sekos. Here is another act of genocide carried out by former Ethiopian leader Mengistu Haile Mariam, who is a Communist leader of the Workers Party. Mengistu was part of the Derg, which was the military junta that came to power by overthrowing Haile Selassie in 1974. He ruled from 1977 to 1991. His first act was "Red Terror", in which he attacked anti-Communist guerillas. He detained,...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Friday that her leadership style is partly shaped by her upbringing in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR). Merkel made the remarks in an interview with German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung a day ahead of the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. “For 35 years, I experienced the official opinion as different from my own,” Merkel said, referring to the communist leadership of the former East Germany. “I was alone with my opinion, or shared it with very few people. That’s why it does not bother me when others see things differently.”...

When the Berlin wall was being built, people whose houses were on the dividing line, were ordered to move to the interior. Instead, many opted to escape to Western Berlin through the windows, like this woman. East Berlin police tried to grab her and drag her back, but people on the other side pulled her to safety. At the link - a series of amazing clips from 1961 of people escaping. Here's an example: https://imgur.com/gallery/QbDbVJS 

Jennifer Zeng grew up admiring the Communist Party of China and adhering to its stringent rules. But her life changed forever when she embraced religion and was swept up in a government crackdown on Falun Gong. Arrested four times as a young adult and held in as a prisoner in a labor camp, she quickly woke up to the horrors of living in a socialist state. After being subject to brutal torture, Zeng managed to escape China and now tells about the evils of socialism and communism. At a time when more Americans are embracing Karl Marx’s teachings, Chris Wright...

At the Yale Daily News, East Germany had nothing on the paper's opinion editor, Isis Davis-Marks. The Nazi SS had nothing. The Castroite Cuban turbas had nothing. Mao's cultural revolution had nothing. Here's what Davis-Marks has in mind for Yale college kids: Everyone knows a white boy with shiny brown hair and a saccharine smile that conceals his great ambitions. He could be in Grand Strategy or the Yale Political Union. Maybe he’s the editor-in-chief of the News. He takes his classes. He networks. And, when it comes time for graduation, he wins all the awards. One day, I’ll turn...

In a 1,500-word article about the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, The Washington Post waited until the 25th paragraph to note that the self-declared socialist faces an “obstacle” to winning the presidency. The paper said that “…Sanders has not faced the kind of media scrutiny, let alone attacks from opponents, that leading candidates eventually experience.” The authors, Philip Rucker and James Wagner, added, “Sure to follow his summer surge is an autumn of investigations that could reveal new details about his personal background and record.” One of the more interesting members of the DSA is Kurt Stand, a communist spy for...

Soviet leadership ordered John Paul II hit: Italian commission MOSCOW : Leaders of the former Soviet Union ordered the assassination bid on Pope John Paul II in 1981, the head of an Italian parliamentary commission announced. But the post-Soviet intelligence service of President Vladimir Putin immediately dismissed the allegation as an absurdity. Italian Senator Paolo Guzzanti said the findings of the commission showed "beyond all reasonable doubt" that Moscow's military secret service, the GRU, was responsible for the shooting as the late pope greeted pilgrims in St Peter's Square. The assertion, for years a favourite of conspiracy theorists in Italy,...

LIVING IN EAST Germany during the Cold War meant being watched. By your government. By your neighbors. And even, at times, by your own family. The East German secret police, one of the most intrusive and oppressive spying operations ever assembled, collected millions of files on people it suspected of being enemies of the state. The German Democratic Republic dissolved in 1990 with the fall of communism, but the documents assembled by the Ministry for State Security, or Stasi, remain. This massive archive includes 69 miles of shelved documents, 1.8 million images, and 30,300 video and audio recordings housed in...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has confirmed plans to rapidly expand the scope and size of Germany’s intelligence services including its domestic spy agency. Citing cyber attacks and the ongoing situations in Syria and Ukraine, the German Chancellor made the case that the intelligence agencies must cooperate with each other and with their international counterparts to counter what she believes are new threats to Germany, reports Die Presse.

In the previously unseen footage, Kim Philby gives a seminar to East German spies A previously unseen video of one of Britain's most infamous spies describing his career as a Soviet agent has been uncovered by the BBC. The tape is of Kim Philby giving a secret lecture to the Stasi, the East German Intelligence Service, in 1981. It is the first time the ex-MI6 officer can be seen talking about his life as a spy from his recruitment to his escape. He describes his career rising up the ranks of MI6 whilst providing its secrets to the Soviet Union's...

Germany’s hippest young comedian faces a jail sentence of up to five years if Turkey decides to press charges over a poem he wrote insulting its head of state. Jan Böhmermann knew what he was doing when he read out a self-penned poem insulting Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan live on his late night show on Thursday evening. He introduced the piece by speaking directly to the Turkish president. “What I’m about to read is not allowed. If it were to be read in public — that would be forbidden in Germany,” Böhmermann said, before proceeding to perform his “smear...

A survey published on Wednesday shows 44 percent of Germans want the government to set an upper limit on how much companies can pay their employees. The number of respondents in favour of Germany setting a maximum salary clearly outweighed those who were against it, with only slightly over a quarter saying it was a bad idea. Twenty-nine percent, meanwhile, were undecided, the survey by Die Zeit showed. The idea was particularly popular in former communist east Germany, where a majority of 58 percent said they wanted salaries capped.