Angela Merkel’s decisive victory over Social Democratic rival Frank-Walter Steinmeier in last Sunday’s German elections is bad news for Tehran and the Mullah regime’s nuclear aspirations.  more

With five weeks remaining before the German general elections, all the polling data continues to shows the Social Democrats badly trailing the rival Christian Democrats of Chancellor Angela Merkel.  more

With general elections upcoming in Germany on September 27, many signs suggest that the Social Democrats are prepared to enter into a coalition with a party which includes remnants of the former East German Communist Party.  more

Which German politician said the following? “As a citizen, I would not like again to become the object of Anglo-Saxon financial capital. Germany does not protect me from this, but only Germany in Europe does.”  more

Last week, Felicia-Amalia Langer, an outspoken critic of Israel, was awarded one of Germany’s highest honors: the Federal Cross of Merit. The comments of a representative of the Baden-Württemberg government at the ceremony reveal that Langer’s anti-Israeli militancy was part and parcel of the reasons for presenting her the award.  more

Last week, Germany bestowed one of its highest honors upon lawyer and author Felicia Langer. Langer is known in Germany as a ferocious critic of Israel who does not hesitate to draw parallels between Israel and apartheid South Africa and Nazi Germany.  more

On July 13, 1989, three Iranian Kurds were shot to death gangland-style in Vienna. Now another witness has come forward to corroborate earlier reports that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was an accomplice to the murders.   more

The Obama Administration is reported to be “gravely concerned” that by permitting Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four accused 9/11 co-conspirators to plead guilty it could be fulfilling their “desire” for martyrdom. But is it in fact the aim of KSM and his co-conspirators to incur the death penalty and thus achieve “martyrdom”? Well, ever since   more

In connection with my article “Wannabe Martyrs? Zacarias Moussaoui and the Gitmo Five”, NewMajority is making available here the complete transcripts of Zacarias Moussaoui’s testimony at his 2006 trial. Moussaoui took the stand twice during the trial: first on March 27 and then again on April 13. The trial transcripts for the two dates are   more

“Tomorrow, I will visit Buchenwald,” Obama said in Cairo, “which was part of a network of camps where Jews were enslaved, tortured, shot and gassed to death by the Third Reich. Six million Jews were killed – more than the entire Jewish population of Israel today.” Buchenwald was indeed part of the network of concentration   more

Given that the trial has been closed to both the public and press, it is difficult to know what exactly has been going on in the trial of Youssouf Fofana and the other members of his so-called “Gang of Barbarians.” As discussed in my earlier FF report here, Fofana and twenty six co-defendants are on   more

In his recent book Unser Kampf: 1968 – “Our Struggle: 1968” – German historian Götz Aly discusses an emblematic and still widely-debated episode in the history of post-War Germany: the fatal shooting of student protestor Benno Ohnesorg by a police officer in West Berlin in June 1967. As flagged by the heavily ironic title, Aly’s   more

The photo of Ilan Halimi whose publication by the magazine Choc is supposed to represent such a scandal in France has in fact already been shown in the French media. (On the photo, see my earlier report here.) In an interview yesterday on France’s Europe1 radio, Choc editor-in-chief Paul Payan pointed out that the photo   more

The photo is worthy of the name of the magazine whose cover it adorns: “Shock” or “Choc” in French. It shows a man whose head has been wrapped in duct tape. His face is completely covered except for a small space that has been left for his nose. The nose is bloodied. The man’s hands   more

On Saturday, the German daily Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) published an interview with Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa on the current prospects for Middle East peace negotiations. Among other things, Moussa observes that peace with a Netanyahu government is “of course” possible, since “Netanyahu has the advantage of being clear about his   more

It was revealed today that Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzón has opened an investigation into allegations of torture at Guantánamo Bay. What inspired Garzón to open his investigation less than two weeks after Spanish Attorney General Candido Conde-Pumpido announced his opposition to such a move? Well, it appears precisely to have been the additional memos   more

A young boy is lying on a gurney, apparently in a hospital. He is unconscious. He appears to be bleeding profusely from a wound or wounds to his midsection. Is this Mohammed Al-Dura?
The Palestinian boy known by that name was reportedly killed by Israeli gunfire at the Netzarim Junction in the Gaza Strip on Sept.   more

US Special Envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke is supposed to have had a brief, but “cordial” encounter with Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Mahdi Akhunzadeh at the Afghanistan conference in The Hague last week. At least this is what Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said. The two men agreed to “stay in touch,”   more

Earlier this month, Friederike Böge of Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) spoke in Kabul with Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef: a former Taliban official who is rumored to be a key player in facilitating potential talks between the United States and the Taliban. On Zaeef’s account, he has already had a visit from a representative of   more

There is outrage in Europe. Jean-Marie Le Pen has done it again. In a debate in the European Parliament on Wednesday, Le Pen repeated his well-known remark about the Nazi gas chambers being “a detail of the Second World War.” Indeed, he could hardly have avoided repeating it, since Le Pen was in fact quoting   more