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You must be nicer to Muslims, Britain is told by UN human rights chiefs By Mail Foreign Service Last updated at 8:34 AM on 25th July 2008 Britain was told yesterday by a United Nations committee to take firm action to combat 'negative public attitudes' towards Muslims. The nine-member human rights committee also criticised some of the UK's antiterror measures. The body, which is composed of legal experts, said it was concerned ' negative public attitudes towards Muslim members of society' continued to develop in Britain. Be nice: Britain has been told to take firm action and combat negative public...

In the Summer of 1864, just about 9 months before the Union's victory in the Civil War, 7,000 Union men were lost in twenty minutes in Cold Harbor, Virginia. In 1940 in World War II, after the Fall of France, Britain stood virtually alone against Nazi tyranny. 1942 was an extremely bleak year for America in World War II, as the Japanese took over much of the Pacific, before we turned the tide at Midway. During these wars, there were people who thought the fight just wasn't worth it. What would the world look like today if these people had...

European Union foreign ministers say they will not support a military strike on Iran but want more talks to try to resolve worries Tehran might be developing nuclear weapons. British Foreign Secretary David Miliband says it is now up to Iran to respond to global powers and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana after talks in Geneva on Saturday.

WASHINGTON (AFP) — US President George W. Bush promised Kosovo's visiting president and prime minister Monday he would try to convince more nations to embrace formal diplomatic ties with their young country. "I pledged that the United States would continue to work with those nations that have not recognized an independent Kosovo to convince them to do so as quickly as possible," Bush told reporters. He spoke as he met in his Oval Office with Kosovo President Fatmir Sejdiu and Prime Minister Hashim Thaci, who were making their first US visit as leaders of an independent Kosovo. "I'm a strong...

New TV Series Has 'Extremist' Christian Beheading 'Moderate' Muslim Last week, the BBC aired a new TV series titled "Bonekickers" touted as a "groundbreaking" show where "history comes alive," and a series that is "Based in fact." The premier episode, though features an odd thing if "fact" is the aim of the Beeb's new TV series: a Christian beheading a Muslim. Yeah, THAT is really a "fact" based premise, isn't it? Of course, the few remaining Christians in Britain have found themselves a bit put out by this "fact based" show where it is a Christian beheading a Muslim instead...

MANILA, July 17 (Reuters) - The Philippines will hold a plebiscite early next year in more than 700 southern villages to set up an ancestral homeland for Muslims, part of a deal with the country's biggest rebel group, officials said on Thursday. Hermogenes Esperon, the president's peace adviser, told reporters the proposed Muslim homeland would also be empowered to collect about 75 percent of taxes from oil, mines and fisheries in the area. He was speaking in Manila a day after government and Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) negotiators hammered out a deal in Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital. "The...

Two years after Israeli reservists Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev were abducted by Hezbollah guerillas in a cross-border raid, coffins said to contain their bodies were taken to the Lebanese side of its border with Israel as part of a prisoner exchange to bring them home. The swap, overwhelmingly approved Tuesday by the cabinet, began at around 9 A.M. Wednesday at the Rosh Hanikra crossing, under the auspices of the International Red Cross Committee. A convoy carrying the bodies of the two Israelis reached the Rosh Hanikra crossing on the Lebanese side of the border at about 8:30 A.M., where...

IRAN is poised to launch terror attacks in Britain if the West presses ahead with military strikes against its nuclear facilities, intelligence experts warned last night. As tensions in the Middle East continued to grow, they warned that the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah had already established sleeper cells in Britain and mainland Europe tasked with carrying out bloody reprisals. Likely UK targets include nuclear power stations, military bases, Government buildings and high-profile politicians and members of the Jewish community

Western flattery ignores the dark reality of Russia By Garry Kasparov Published: July 10 2008 18:21 | Last updated: July 10 2008 18:21 Recently we have witnessed a flurry of high-profile and contradictory statements on the Russian state. In a role reversal, Russia’s leaders have been abnormally candid while several prominent western politicians and pundits have lavished undeserved praise. Russian president Dmitri Medvedev was bold enough last week to state that democracy is irrelevant to the Group of Eight leading nations. It is sad to see that some of Europe’s leaders seem to agree with him. He also accidentally told...

Limits of Diplomacy by Leslie Sacks According to certain presidential candidates, there are no limits to diplomacy. History however, as well as Psychology 101 proves otherwise: a) Neville Chamberlain's particular diplomacy in World War II gave Hitler an extra few years' head start in building his genocidal war machine. Emboldened by appeasement politics, Hitler overran Czechoslovakia and Poland. Perhaps we did not offer The Fuehrer enough compromises; perhaps enough peace agreements were not signed; perhaps we did not exhibit enough understanding for Hitler and his Mein Kampf. b) According to our liberal friends (or anti-Bush friends - the terms seem...

Washington, July 09: Democratic presumptive presidential nominee Barack Obama on Wednesday urged "aggressive diplomacy" as well as economic sanctions to get Iran to change its actions after Tehran's missile test. Iran earlier today test-fired a missile it said is capable of reaching Israel, angering the United States amid growing fears that the standoff over the contested Iranian nuclear programme could lead to military conflict. The Shahab-3 was among a broadside of nine missiles fired off simultaneously at 8:00 am (0900 IST) from an undisclosed location in the Iranian desert, state television pictures showed. "There's no doubt we're seeing rising tensions...

The United States will pledge $400 million in aid to Kosovo next week at a donors conference expected to raise more than $1 billion for the newly independent state, a senior U.S. official said on Wednesday..... The Bush administration requested the bulk of its pledge from the U.S. Congress more than a year ago, well before Kosovo declared independence, out of a certainty that the region would need financial help whenever it declared independence.

Irate parents said a religious education teacher at the Alsager High School in England told students to wear Muslim headgear during a lesson on Tuesday. "But if Muslims were asked to go to church on Sunday and take Holy Communion, there would be war," the grandfather of one of the students said.

The lyric from the old pop song that proclaimed "Don't Know Much About History," is a label that could well be applied to many Americans. But despite the fact that surveys occasionally tell us that many college seniors place the Battle of Gettysburg as happening sometime in the middle of World War II, the study of history isn't merely for those hobbyists who like to pose as Civil War or Revolutionary era soldiers. Even as we debate the largely unpopular wars being fought with Islamists in Iraq and Afghanistan, the focus of another crucial debate currently raging on the bookshelves...

The travel section of the paper featured a story on Kosovo the other day with a recommendation that readers visit this latest "must see" spot on the globe. It made me laugh. Almost forty years ago--1971 to be exact -- I traveled in what was then called Yugoslavia and is now called Kosovo. The memories of that trip remain so vivid and so utterly at odds with this report.

Government and police spokesmen would have us believe that the carnage in Jerusalem on Wednesday was unavoidable. Husam Taysir Dwayat, the convicted rapist, burglar and drug dealer turned jihadist who mowed down innocent people with his bulldozer on Jaffa Road was not suspected of links to terrorist organizations. The sociopathic, violent criminal who had "returned" to Islam over the past month raised no red flags. There was nothing to be done. No one is to blame. If the protestations of the government and the police that nothing could have prevented Dwayat from using his bulldozer to murder three people sound...

American Deputy Secretary of State John Bolton believes the United States committed a serious mistake when it recognized the independence of Kosovo. He fears such policy may escalate tensions in the Balkans. In an interview for the Russian news agency Interfax, Mr. Bolton remarked that Washington’s policy was on autopilot since the regime of the late Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic. But the situation has changed considerably after the democratic government took over, which, in Mr. Bolton’s opinion, makes support for Kosovo’s independence a pointless atavism.

On February 17, 2008, Kosovo declared independence from Serbia. Some are concerned about what NATO, the United Nations, and the European Union have nurtured there since the military and humanitarian intervention in 1999. James Jatras, a U.S.-based advocate for the Serbian Orthodox Community, put it bluntly last year when he said Kosovo was a “a beachhead into the rest of Europe” for “radical Muslims” and “terrorist elements.” It’s an assertion without evidence. “We’ve been here for so long,” said United States Army Sergeant Zachary Gore in Eastern Kosovo, “and not seen any evidence of it, that we’ve reached the assumption...

[JURIST] The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) [official website] announced Wednesday that it will prepare a report [press release] on allegations of organ trafficking in Kosovo. Former prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) Carla Del Ponte [BBC profile; JURIST news archive] has alleged in a new book [JURIST report] that about 300 Serbian and other non-Albanian prisoners were victims of organ trafficking during the 1998-1999 war in Kosovo, but that a 2003 probe by her ICTY team failed to obtain sufficient evidence to prosecute. In response, parliamentarians submitted a motion [text] in...

Serbs in protest against mosque construction 26 June 2008 | 15:19 | Source: FoNet BERIVOJCE -- Serbs from the village of Berivojce near Kosovska Kamenica are obstructing work on a building site where Albanians have begun illegally building a mosque. The Serbs are demanding that UNMIK and the Albanian authorities in Kamenica put a stop to the work and the “further irritation of the Serb populace”, reads a statement from the Kosovo Ministry. Over a hundred Serbs are protesting. One Serb representative, Boža Stanojević, said that a number of Kosovo Police Service members were harassing and provoking Serb protestors. “It...

THE HAGUE • Albanian Kosovo journalist Baton Haxhiu yesterday told a UN tribunal trying him for revealing the name of a protected witness that he had done no wrong as the man's identity was already known. "Quite a few people knew his name.... Kosovo is a small country, secrets do not last long-especially when they concern the leaders of an armed struggle against the Serbs during the Kosovo war," he told the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague. Haxhiu, editor of the daily Express newspaper, stands accused of contempt for having named a protected witness during...

American School Books Redefine 'Jihad' to Exclude Violence -- Where is Media? By Warner Todd Huston | June 8, 2008 - 21:49 ET In yet another example of why the west could be too weak to fight the sort of global terrorism that takes the form of Islamofascism, a textbook monitoring group is charging that American textbooks have been cleansed of mentioning the violence inherent in the Islamic "Jihad." Now, our children will not be taught what "Jihad" truly means, nor that it has been used as an excuse to kill their fellow citizens because our schools have sanitized Islam...

A gigantic poster of genocidal Bosnian Serb war criminal Radovan Karadzic hung on the outside wall of a hideous communist-style apartment block. “Get a picture of that,” I said to my friend and traveling companion Sean LaFreniere as I drove our rented car through the outer suburbs of Serbia's capital Belgrade. I had the wheel and he had the camera. “Too late,” he said. We were driving fast on a four-lane road and were almost out of the city. Our road trip from Serbia to Kosovo via Bosnia, Croatia, and Montenegro was just beginning. “That’s okay,” I said. “We’ll probably...

GRAFENWÖHR, Germany — Soldiers from 1st Battalion, 4th Infantry Regiment deployed to the Balkans earlier this year to provide Kosovo Forces with armored capabilities during Kosovo’s declaration of independence from Serbia, according to Army officials. Information on the deployment was kept under wraps until now because of the mission’s sensitivity. In the days following Kosovo’s declaration of independence, protesters marched in the northern city of Kosovska Mitrovica. Kosovo Force troops and U.N. police closed the border with Serbia after hearing that protesters were being bused to Mitrovica to join the protest. During the deployment 1-4 soldiers were manning Bradley fighting...

British Nazi-Al Qaeda Links? They are unmistakable and definite The Independent reported on July 10, 2005 that Al Qaeda may have hired a gang of “white mercenary terrorists� to carry out the London bombings.The Daily Mirror reported on July 16, 2005 that the four bombers may have been “duped� into carrying their bomb-laden backpacks on to the Underground and a bus. There is also intelligence that points to Italian neo-fascist, Pentagon Task Force 121, and Balkan Islamic fundamentalist links to the London bombers. French counter-terrorism official have reported that Balkans or Eastern European-origin military grade explosives were used in the...

MOSCOW, June 23 (RIA Novosti) - Russia is not opposed to an EU mission replacing the UN force in Kosovo, but the move should have the formal backing of the UN Security Council and Serbia, a senior Russian diplomat said on Monday. "We are not opposed to the European Union taking on part of the responsibility for what is happening in Kosovo," Vladimir Chizhov, envoy to the European Communities, said adding a European mission should be approved by a UN Security Council resolution and Belgrade. Chizhov said UN Security Council Resolution 1244 was currently the only legal basis for an...

In her book "The Hunt: Me and War Criminals," Carla Del Ponte, former chief prosecutor at The Hague, reveals the gruesome details of the hundreds of Serb prisoners whose bodies were stripped of their organs during the Kosovo war. According to her sources, senior figures in the KLA were aware of the scheme, in which hundreds of young Serbs were reportedly taken by truck from Kosovo to northern Albania, where their organs were removed. Miss Del Ponte provides grim details of the reported organ harvesting and of how some prisoners were sewn up after having kidneys removed. Miss Del Ponte...

Europe Fears Obama Might Undercut Progress With Iran By Glenn Kessler Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, June 22, 2008; A14 European officials are increasingly concerned that Sen. Barack Obama's campaign pledge to begin direct talks with Iran on its nuclear program without preconditions could potentially rupture U.S. relations with key European allies early in a potential Obama administration.

(UNITED NATIONS) - The United States on Friday defended UN chief Ban Ki-moon's plans to transfer some powers from the UN mission in Kosovo to the European Union despite opposition from Serbia and its ally Russia. US Ambassador to the UN Zalmay Khalilzad told the Security Council that Washington backed Ban's plan to reconfigure the UN mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) by transferring responsibilities in the areas of police, justice and customs to a EU mission. He told Ban that despite objections raised by Serbia and Russia, "You have to act. 1244 gives you that discretion," referring to the Security Council...

Lopez: How bad would a President Obama be for Israel? Why should that question matter to Americans? Glick: Senator Barack Obama would be bad for Israel most of all because he refuses to acknowledge that there is a jihad being waged against the free world. Indeed, he refuses to acknowledge that there is such a thing as an “enemy” in international affairs. And as a consequence, he is unable to understand what an ally is. As the U.S.’s most stalwart ally in the Middle East, and as the frontline state in the global jihad, Israel will likely suffer greatly if...

The Pentagon Gets Ready For President Obama June 9, 2008: U.S. military planners are working on how to deal with another round of major cutbacks, in terms of budgets and manpower. This is because one of the major candidates for Commander-in-Chief (president of the United States), Barak Obama, has a video in circulation, of a short speech he gave earlier this year, about how he planned on handling the Department of Defense. His major points were; "I'm the only major candidate who opposed this war from the beginning; and as president, I will end it. "Second, I will cut tens...

Libs. for Islamic Terrorists inc. - The "huffingtonpost" calls Iranian-Syrian invaders Hezbollah Islamists murdering Americans in Iraq, "resistance" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/27/hezbollah-sides-with-iraq_n_103692.html Hezbollah Sides With Iraqi "Resistance" _______ http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2030391/posts?page=1 IRAQ & US ACCUSE [SYRIA'S IRAN'S LEBANESE BASED] ISLAMIC HEZBOLLAH TERRORISTS OF CRIMES IN IRAQ

BEIJING (Reuters) - China on Thursday dismissed accusations from two United States lawmakers that it had hacked their office computers as alarmist and unfounded.

Obama's Defense Policy By Ed Lasky Barack Obama's defense policy plans threaten foreign policy consequences inimical to American interests, and would pose perilous problems for some of our key allies around the world, should he assume the Presidency. Senator Obama has made quite clear that he intends to eviscerate our most advanced defense programs. In a message to Caucus 4 Priorities, a liberal pacifist organization, (available on YouTube), the Senator called for major cuts in defense spending, for slowing or suspending the development of future combat systems, for the abolition of spending on the "weaponizing of space" ("Star Wars") and...

U.S. military planners are working on how to deal with another round of major cutbacks, in terms of budgets and manpower. This is because one of the major candidates for Commander-in-Chief (president of the United States), Barak Obama, has a video in circulation, of a short speech he gave earlier this year, about how he planned on handling the Department of Defense. His major points were; "I'm the only major candidate who opposed this war from the beginning; and as president, I will end it. "Second, I will cut tens of billions of dollars in wasteful spending. I will cut...

Calling the post-Soviet world situation “an international disaster,” Senator Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) urged that U.S. policy “be directed toward supporting Prime Minister Putin's dream of eventually restoring Russian hegemony over Eastern Europe.” “A strong Soviet Union provided a counterbalancing force to offset U.S. imperialism,” Schumer contended. “In its absence, President Bush has been free to bully the world.” The New York senator argued that the “mutually assured destruction of the Cold War era helped keep American aggression in check. Now, there’s no telling what new atrocities will be perpetrated by this country.” As a start, Schumer insisted that all U.S....

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), who wrapped his party’s presidential nomination just this week, is already besieged by liberal constituencies demanding that he cut military spending to boost social programs. Two influential liberal groups have sent the presumptive Democratic nominee a letter pressing him to support cuts to defense programs to pay for universal preschool, relief for Americans facing foreclosure on their homes and expanded benefits for military veterans. The demands carry weight because the groups, the Black Leadership Forum and the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), represent two constituencies that are important to Obama’s political strategy: blacks and...

"Stolen Kosovo" Documentary Censored in Czech Republic: Suffering of Kosovo Serbs Cannot be Shown on National TV That there can be no freedom of expression under the dictatorial regimes was confirmed yet again by the state-owned Czech TV, supposedly a "public service" which took part in the financing of the Vaclav Dvorak's documentary "Stolen Kosovo" prior to Czech Government's recognition of the mafia state on Serbian territory, but now, after their FM announced recognition of the fake state, refused to air it. According to the Czech daily Aktualne, the representatives of the state television justify their refusal to show the...

While US Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama leads rival Hillary Clinton in the polls, Palestinians in Gaza are launching their own attempt to boost his campaign.

A US-born man pleaded guilty Tuesday to helping to train fellow Al-Qaeda agents to carry out bombings in Europe and the United States, after a five-year global investigation, officials said. The targets included European tourist resorts frequented by Americans, as well as US military bases, embassies and consular offices in Europe. "Today's guilty plea brings an end to the long, dangerous career of Christopher Paul, an Ohio native who joined Al-Qaeda in the early 1990s, fought in Afghanistan and Bosnia and conspired with others to target Americans both at home and abroad," said Acting Assistant US Attorney General Patrick Rowan....

The Associated Press announcement that Barack Obama has clinched the Democratic nomination for president has prompted former President Jimmy Carter, one of Georgia's three undecided delegates to the national convention, to officially pick a side. Deanna Congileo, a spokeswoman for Carter, confirmed that the former president has told the Obama campaign "they would have his vote after polls close tonight." Carter has strongly hinted that he would support Obama, but did not commit until Tuesday. Two other superdelegates -- Richard Ray, president of the Georgia AFL-CIO, and U.S. Rep. Jim Marshall of Macon -- said they'll continue to sit...

GOTEBORG, Sweden (AP) -- A world congress of newspapers condemned the U.N. Human Rights Council on Tuesday, saying it has repeatedly sought to undermine freedom of the press to protect religious sensibilities. The council's "proper role is to defend freedom of expression and not to support the censorship of opinion at the request of autocracies," said a resolution adopted by the World Association of Newspapers and World Editors Forum. The U.N. General Assembly formed the Geneva-based Human Rights Council in March 2006 to succeed the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, which was sometimes criticized for too heavily considering the views...

“If Yugoslavia was the laboratory of Communism, then Communism would breathe its last dying breath here in Belgrade. And to judge by what [Slobodan] Milosevic was turning into by early 1989, Communism would exit the world stage revealed for what it truly was: fascism, without fascism's ability to make the trains run on time.” - Robert D. Kaplan “You bombed my country.” These were the nearly first words I heard after clearing passport control on arrival in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, from a taxi driver who flagged me down inside the airport. “Fifteen countries bombed my country.” I didn't...

Exclusive: Dishonest Divisive Barry Obama Bill Siegel Barack Obama's Watertown response to President Bush's Knesset speech is precisely what Obama himself accuses Bush and John McCain of engaging in: a dishonest divisive attack, or perhaps better stated, a dishonest, distorting, divisive projection of his own thinking. President Bush said: "Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them that they have been wrong all along. We have heard this before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared, ‘Lord, if only I could have talked to...

Last week we noted the bizarre arguments of Seattle Times editorial writer Bruce Ramsey, who tried so hard to defend Barack Obama against President Bush’s “appeasement” speech that he actually ended up defending Hitler for annexing Austria. His exact words were: “What Hitler was demanding was not unreasonable.” If you think that’s an ahistorical pretzel of monumental proportions, though, you ain’t seen nothin’ — because here comes Pat Buchanan. According to old Pat, not only was the Anchluss not a problem, Hitler’s invasion of Poland was also perfectly understandable, given the Poles’ refusal to negotiate. Those darned stubborn Poles were...

When he is not accusing American Jewish leaders of McCarthyism, Zgibniew Brzezinski keeps busy by advocating the appeasement of Iran. In this Washington Post op-ed, for example, Brzezinski (along with William Odom) writes: Given Iran's stated goals -- a nuclear power capability but not nuclear weapons, as well as an alleged desire to discuss broader U.S.-Iranian security issues -- a realistic policy would exploit this opening to see what it might yield. The problem, though, is that no policy that takes Iran's stated goal seriously (i.e., sees it as an "opening") can be considered realistic. Indeed, it appears that even...

LAS VEGAS (Reuters) - U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama is distancing himself from expectations he would meet Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and taking a more cautious stand on talking to other U.S. adversaries. With criticism from Republicans turning harsher as Obama moves closer to winning the Democratic nomination battle against rival Hillary Clinton, the Illinois senator has shifted -- but not abandoned -- his position.Sen. John McCain, the Republicans' presumptive nominee for the November election, has expressed outrage that Obama would talk to Ahmadinejad, whose country does not recognize Israeland who has branded the Jewish state a "stinking corpse.""There's definitely...

YOU CAN'T APPEASE EVERYBODYMay 28, 2008 After decades of comparing Nixon to Hitler, Reagan to Hitler and Bush to Hitler, liberals have finally decided it is wrong to make comparisons to Hitler. But the only leader to whom they have applied their newfound rule of thumb is: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. While Ahmadinejad has not done anything as starkly evil as cut the capital gains tax, he does deny the Holocaust, call for the destruction of Israel, deny the existence of gays in Iran and refuses to abandon his nuclear program despite protests from the United Nations. That's the only...

Dutch police raided the home of Gregorius Nekschot (a pseudonym meaning "Gregory Deathblow"). Mr. Nekschot makes rude and often sexually explicit cartoons that poke fun at the multicultural society and at religious people, especially Muslims. The police confiscated his computer and a number of drawings. The cartoonist was also arrested and jailed for 36 hours but has been released until his court case is due. "Gregory Deathblow" — the first name refers to Pope Gregory IX who established Papal Inquisition — hides behind an alias.. made drawings for Mr. van Gogh's Web site until it ceased publication in 2004, after...

What did Chamberlain do? What is appeasement? And what happened to John McCain's arms? One of the little election year mini-dramas making the Internet rounds is of MSNBC's Chris Matthews' insistent questioning of talk show host Kevin James over the issue of appeasement. "What did Chamberlain do?" Matthews asks his Hardball guest repeatedly. Mr. James was unable to answer with historical specifics. As it happens, I've met Mr. Matthews, spending an afternoon with him several years ago at his MSNBC office in the company of a friend who was interviewing him for a profile in the Financial Times. The article...