Free Republic

Note: The following blog entry is a quote: Speaker At Hizb Al-Tahrir Conference In Lebanon Calls For Jihad In Cyprus, Balkans, Caucasus At the annual conference of the Islamist organization Hizb Al-Tahrir in Lebanon, on the subject of jihad, organization member Sheikh Adnan Mizyan said yesterday that in light of the fact that many countries of Muslims are today under occupation, including Palestine, Iraq, Cyprus, the Balkans, the Caucasus, Afghanistan, and Kashmir, the Islamic ummah must take jihad measures in order to free them. Source: Al-Safir, Lebanon, July 20, 2009 Posted at: 2009-07-20

BELGRADE, Serbia -- Serbia's war crimes court convicted a Croatian Serb on Tuesday for his role in the 1991 torture and killing of 200 Croatian prisoners at a pig farm during the Balkan conflicts. Damir Sireta was sentenced after a six-month trial to serve 20 years in prison for war crimes. He was the 14th former paramilitary convicted for the killings near the eastern Croatian town of Vukovar during Croatia's 1991-95 war for independence from the former Serb-led Yugoslavia - one of the worst massacres of POWs during the Balkan wars of the 1990s. Serb paramilitary units seized the victims...

BRUSSELS, Belgium, June 11, 2009 – With NATO defense ministers having agreed to reduce the alliance’s military presence in Kosovo from 14,000 to 10,000 troops by the year’s end, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates today urged that the reduction take place as an organized process. On the first day of an alliance defense ministers conference here, NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer announced the force reduction today, noting that Army Gen. Bantz J. Craddock, NATO’s supreme allied commander for Europe, has proposed moving toward a deterrent presence in Kosovo that will require fewer troops in the country. Gates said...

It was the best moment of Carl Walpusk's life. He was 19 years old, and the plane he was flying over Nazi-occupied Serbia had just been shot down. He jumped from the aircraft and pulled his parachute cord. Feeling the chute open, relief hit him. He realized he would make it. U.S. Airman Carl Walpusk and his wife Virginia. // Photo courtesy of Milana "Mim" Bizic "When you're that high up, you can't even tell you're moving," said Walpusk, now in his eighties. "But the last couple hundred feet, I tried to climb back up my chute." Despite his efforts,...

US Vice President Joe Biden offered Belgrade a clean slate in ties here Wednesday promising Serbia would not have to recognise the independence of breakaway Kosovo. "The United States does not, I emphasise, does not expect Serbia to recognise the independence of Kosovo," Biden told a joint media conference with Serbia's pro-Western president Boris Tadic. "It is not a precondition for our relationship or our support for Serbia becoming part of the European Union." Biden, the most senior US official to visit Serbia since Jimmy Carter came to the then Yugoslav republic as president in 1980, said the US administration...

Joe Biden, the US Vice-President, departed Washington for the Balkans on Monday, seeking to press a "reset button" with Serbia after relations plummeted over Kosovo's independence last year. More broadly, a US administration official said Mr Biden hoped to demonstrate President Barack Obama's commitment to engage with a region where Washington invested heavily in the past to end wars in the 1990s and promote stability. The Vice-President will be the highest-level US official to visit Serbia since Jimmy Carter who when he was president toured what was then Yugoslavia in June 1980. Mr Biden will spend Tuesday in Bosnia-Herzegovina –...

Washington D.C. — On May 5, 2009, Washington, D.C.’s City Council passed a resolution recognizing April 22 as the Nation’s Capital Jasenovac Day. The Resolution, prepared by RAS, the International Serbian Organization, and sponsored by the Chairman of the City Council, is to educate the residents of Washington, D.C. about the holocaust that happened at Jasenovac death camp during WWII. “This resolution signifies that the Capital City of the United States, home of the US Holocaust Museum, honors the innocent victims of the Ustasha Nazi regime, that their suffering and deaths will not be forgotten, diminished or revised, and that...

‘In a generation or two, the US will ask itself: who lost Europe?’ Here is the speech of Geert Wilders, Chairman, Party for Freedom, the Netherlands, at the Four Seasons, New York, introducing an Alliance of Patriots and announcing the Facing Jihad Conference in Jerusalem... The speech was sponsored by the Hudson Institute on September 25. Dear friends, Thank you very much for inviting me. Great to be at the Four Seasons. I come from a country that has one season only: a rainy season that starts January 1st and ends December 31st. When we have three sunny days in...

If there ever was any doubt about who is primarily responsible for the decline of the Big Three automakers, it disappeared when the Italian automaker Fiat demanded major union concessions to ride to Chrysler's rescue. Big Labor is big indeed in Italy, where pensions alone gobble up 14 percent of GDP and massive strikes are common. Coming to America from this environment, Fiat executives recognized the UAW for what it is: a parasite that sucks the vitality out of the American automaking genius of which Chrysler once was a major contributor. So the UAW had to make significant concessions to...

Note: The following text is a quote: Three Brothers Sentenced to Life Prison Terms for Conspiring to Kill U.S. Soldiers WASHINGTON -- Three brothers who were convicted of plotting to kill members of the U.S. military during an armed attack on a military base were sentenced today to life prison terms, Ralph J. Marra Jr., Acting U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey; David Kris, Assistant Attorney General for National Security; and Janice K. Fedarcyk, Special Agent in Charge of the Philadelphia Division of the FBI, announced. U.S. District Judge Robert B. Kugler sentenced Dritan Duka and Shain Duka...

BELGRADE, Serbia — A war crimes court on Thursday found four Serbian former policemen guilty of the massacre of 48 Kosovo Albanians and sentenced them to up to 20 years in prison. The Serbian court's judges said the victims of the worst single massacre of civilians during the 1998-99 Kosovo war included 14 children, two infants, a pregnant woman and a 100-year-old woman. After a three-year trial, two of the men were sentenced to a maximum of 20 years in jail, one to 15 years and another to 13 years. All the defendants had denied the charges. Three other men...

On April 10th, the day the Independent State of Croatia was born in 1941 to begin a state-mandated campaign of genocide against Serbs, Jews, and Romas, a U.S. judge, for the first time in Western history, issued (on behalf of Barry Lituchy) a permanent ban against a book containing testimonies of Holocaust/genocide survivors.Below: I. Brief History of the Lawsuit A. Initial demands of Lituchy, et al. B. Demands in the Complaint C. Claims in the Complaint D. The lawsuit against Kingsborough E. Preliminary Injunction F. Settlement demands G. Lituchy’s attacks II. Current Status A. Appeal to the Second Circuit III....

Michael Montgomery BBC Radio 4, Crossing Continents The man spoke plainly as he explained the horrors he lived through in a Kosovo Liberation Army prison camp 10 years ago. He told me about how he watched people beaten with steel pipes, cut with knives, left for days without food, and shot and killed. Civilians were detained by the KLA and kept in prisons where some were killed "What can you feel when you see those things?" he said. "It's something that is stuck in my mind for the rest of my life. You cannot do those things to people, not...

I first laid eyes on Richard Holbrooke (he won't remember) on Monday evening, September 21, 1992. Some ridiculously wealthy Manhattan socialite had thrown a party for Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic, then the new cause du jour, and some boutique human rights group — a bogus one, I realized in retrospect, now defunct, though its chieftain has since moved to greener pastures and is still active — had decided that I might be useful and had flown me up for the soirée. As it was, nobody was interested in me, I had a drink or two, ate some peanuts, and went...

Из других извора се сазнаје да ће потпредседник парламента Војтех Филип иницирати процедуру на првој седечој седници парлемента. The withdrawal of Kosovo recognition possible with the new Czech government 26 March 2009. The Czech Parliament Vice-Speaker, Voitech Filip, said that, after the voting of no confidence to the minority government, a possibility of reconsideration of the Czech decision to recognize independence of Kosovo is opened. The toppled government recognized the unilaterally proclaimed independence of Kosovo despite the stands of most parliamentary parties and the president of the state, which opens up a possibility of reconsideration of that decision, Filip told...

Croatia said Friday it would help former foe Serbia with EU integration, vowing not to behave like Slovenia by blocking the process over disputes left over from Yugoslavia's collapse. "Croatia will not be to Serbia what Slovenia is to us," Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader told reporters in Belgrade after meeting with his Serbian counterpart Mirko Cvetkovic. "It won't be good for any of us if we're bad towards our neighbours," he said in a dig at Slovenia, whose row with Croatia over their shared border is threatening the latter's hopes of joining the European Union by 2010-2011. The 18-year...

The United States is issuing unusually strong criticism of NATO ally Spain by expressing surprise at its decision to pull out its troops from the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Kosovo. State Department spokesman Robert Wood says the United States was "deeply disappointed" by the decision. He says Washington only learned of the move shortly before Spain announced it publicly. Defense Minister Carme Chacon made the announcement Thursday, saying, "The mission has been completed and it is time to return home." Asked if the United States shared that assessment, Wood said, "Not at all."

Even before their conquest of Constantinople in 1453, Ottoman Turks referred to The City’s inhabitants as “Rum,” or “Romans.” In this, they were simply following the local practice: that’s how Constantinopolitan Christians referred to themselves, and continue to refer to themselves to this day. They knew themselves to be citizens of the Christian Roman Empire. They would never have heard of the word “Byzantine,” a term first used to describe the Eastern Roman Empire in the 16th century, and had you called them “Hellenes” or “Greeks” they would have felt affronted, thinking you were calling them pagans. No, they were...

There is something happening inside Britain's Muslim communities. The disgraceful, treacherous protest in Luton last week at the homecoming of the brave Royal Anglian regiment is an indication of resurgent extremism. Does our Government have the political stamina to fight it? It's comfortable for us to think that these are the actions of a small minority – but are they? The vile mob that hurled abuse against returning troops does not operate in a vacuum, somehow removed from other Muslims. Only two weeks ago, the same group of extremists openly marched in Tower Hamlets, Britain's most densely populated "Muslim area"....

ICTY - Tribunal Update Zagreb awarded damages to families of victims killed in detention. Croatia secretly paid 1.8 million kuna (250,000 euro) to the families of people killed in the notorious Lora prison camp in the early 1990s, confirmed officials this week. Lora, a Yugoslav-era naval base in the coastal city of Split, was taken over by Croatian forces in 1991, the start of the Croatian war of independence, as the Serb-dominated Yugoslav army, JNA, forces withdrew. From 1992 to 1997, it functioned as a prison camp for mainly Serbian, but also Bosnian and Montenegrin, civilians and prisoners of war,...