Free Republic

Iranian media report that a British flagged oil tanker has been seized by Iranian forces. Iran claiming that the tanker was seized for violating maritime regulations.... Iran stated its intention in recent days to respond to the seizure of one of its tankers by the UK. Earlier Friday the Supreme Court in Gibraltar granted a 30-day extension for detention of the Iranian oil tanker.... The Pentagon making it official Friday that US forces are going to Saudi Arabia.... Amidst all the controversy surrounding them, its been almost forgotten that Congresswoman Ihan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan are...

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 1948 Ex-Mufti, Criminal Ally State Dept. Conceals Promised White Paper Book; Uses Whitewash Instead By OBSERVER On Mar. 19, 1942, the ex-Mufti of Jerusalem spoke to the Arab world by Rome radio and said: “If, God forbid, America and her allies are victorious in this war . . . then the world will become hell, God forbid. But Allah is too just and merciful to grant such murderous violators any victory.” After a long struggle and supreme sacrifices, the “murderous violators” became victors. They entered Germany while the ex-Mufti was still there with the bags of gold...

You may ask yourself, is it worth one of the best American non-fiction writers producing a book of just under 600 pages on an arrogant and abrasive egotist whose highest sustained rank in the State Department was that of a lowly assistant secretary? The answer is unabashedly yes. This is a remarkable work about a remarkable, if deeply flawed, statesman whose career was intimately intertwined with the 50 years of American decline from Vietnam to Afghanistan. Nearly all biographies have long, boring stretches you want to skip. This one has none. The access to Richard Holbrooke’s papers and to the...

A Bosnian Serb leader has wrongly called the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, where over 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed by Bosnian Serb troops, “a fabricated myth.” The comments defy international court rulings that say genocide was committed in the eastern Bosnian enclave. Both the International Court of Justice and the U.N. war crimes court for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, Netherlands, have ruled that the killings in Srebrenica were genocide. The Bosnian Serb wartime political and military leaders, Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, have been sentenced to life in prison for the Srebrenica genocide and other war crimes...

On the fringe of the headlines It is not very often that I can say this, but over the past few days I have been on the fringe of a news story that was being reported around the world. A few days ago, on 27th September, the Croatian daily newspaper Jutarnji published a story speculating that Kim Jong Il’s grandson, Kim Han Sol, had enrolled in the United World College in Mostar (Bosnia-Herzegovina). The story was quickly picked up by news media around the world, including AsiaOne in Singapore, Chosunilbo (South Korea), The Washington Post, the Huffington Post, Associated Press...

Kim Jong Il’s grandson calls his uncle Kim Jong Eun a ‘dictator’ By Olga Khazan , Updated: October 19, 2012 With hipster glasses, near-perfect English and progressive ideas, Kim Han Sol certainly doesn’t seem like a stereotypical North Korean. In an interview with a Finnish broadcaster, the grandson of Kim Jong Il and nephew of current North Korean leader Kim Jong Eun comes off as a normal, well-adjusted teen who dreams of going back to North Korea to “make things better, make it easier for the people there.” Kim was born in 1995 in Pyongyang but went to an international...

Taking charge of Group of 77, which encompasses 134 developing countries, Abbas slams Israel’s ‘occupation of the state of Palestine,’ condemns ‘terrorism in all its forms’ Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas assumed the chairmanship of the largest bloc of countries at the United Nations on behalf of “the State of Palestine” on Tuesday in New York City. The Palestinians are slated to serve as the leader of the bloc, known as the Group of 77, for the next year. In a speech at the UN headquarters, Abbas called the task of leading the Group of 77 “a great responsibility.” "I...

The Trump administration is working to score what it hopes to be another foreign policy win, this time by encouraging leaders from Serbia and Kosovo to sign a peace agreement in a ceremony that could take place at the White House. Trump recently sent letters to both Thaci and Serb President Aleksandar Vucic, asking they accelerate negotiations in an effort to resolve their impasse. As first reported in the Washington Post, Thaci and Vucic published their versions of the Trump letter online. “Failure to capi­tal­ize on this unique opportunity would be a tragic setback, as another chance for a comprehensive...

By April 1992, with its Soviet ally freshly dissolved, Yugoslavia as the world had known it was gone in a bloody and violent breakup, leaving some 100,000 dead, 2.4 million refugees, 2 million internally displaced, and seven independent nations in its place. While those ethnic tensions still simmer in much of the former Yugoslavia, so too is a growing sentimental recollection of life in a country much of the younger generations can only learn about in history books and museums like Milakovic’s Yugodom. A Gallup poll from last year showed that many people in the former Yugoslavia look back fondly...

Dozens of migrants clashed with Bosnian police Wednesday while trying to cross from Bosnia into Croatia and enter the European Union. Shouting “pen borders!” the migrants surged through one Bosnian police cordon before being stopped by another outside a border crossing in northwestern Bosnia. Several people appeared to have been hurt amid the skirmishes as the migrants refused to leave and blocked traffic. “We are refugees,” one man from Iran said. “We want to leave this country.” Croatian police said they put up a fence on their side of the border to block the migrants from entering. They said two...

The president of Bosnia’s autonomous Serb Republic has accused the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo of using its development agency to interfere in the Balkan country’s election process, a charge dismissed by the embassy as a “wild” conspiracy theory. Milorad Dodik said the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) was implementing its aid program through non-government organizations to conceal what he said was its real agenda of countering Russian influence in the region. “Aiming to directly interfere in internal affairs of the Republika Srpska and Bosnia, USAID ... tries to avoid all institutions and to grant funds under cover of the...

The U.S. government once wanted to plan false flag attacks with Soviet aircraft to justify war with the USSR or its allies, newly declassified documents surrounding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy show. In a three-page memo, members of the National Security Council wrote, "There is a possibility that such aircraft could be used in a deception operation designed to confuse enemy planes in the air, to launch a surprise attack against enemy installations or in a provocation operation in which Soviet aircraft would appear to attack US or friendly installations to provide an excuse for U.S. intervention." The...

Behind the Headlines by Justin RaimondoAntiwar.com April 8, 2002 WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA POSTREL?Post-9/11: Who speaks for libertarianism – the Old Right or the Neocon Clones? A note from the author: I apologize, in advance, for the sheer length of this column, but since it addresses the sell-out of basic libertarian principles by people and institutions who purport to speak in its name, I thought it important to address these questions thoroughly, with extensive quotations from those I name. Too bad, in attacking Antiwar.com, these pathetic losers didn't do the same – but then what can one expect from craven...

<p>CHICAGO (AP) &#8212; A Muslim charity leader linked by prosecutors to Osama bin Laden's terrorist network was sentenced yesterday to more than 11 years in federal prison for defrauding donors.</p> <p>Enaam Arnaout, 41, a Syrian-born U.S. citizen who said he has met bin Laden but opposes terrorism, was calm as the sentence was imposed by U.S. District Judge Suzanne B. Conlon.</p>

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Sunday voiced alarm over the growing “alienation” between Russia and the West, stressing the need for dialogue as post-Cold War tensions peak. Speaking to the Bild am Sonntag newspaper, Steinmeier said last month’s poisoning of a former Russian spy in England, which Britain and its allies blame on Moscow, was “a very serious incident”. “But we should be at least as worried about the galloping alienation between Russia and the West, the consequences of which stretch far beyond this case,” the former foreign minister said. Moscow vehemently denies involvement in the nerve agent poisoning of...

Federal authorities on Wednesday began legal proceedings to strip U.S. citizenship from two Bosnians, including one living in Oregon, for war crimes including executing civilians during that country’s civil war in the 1990s. The move by the U.S. Justice Department comes years after Rasema Handanovic and Edin Dzeko were extradited and later convicted by courts in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2011. After serving her sentence, Handanovic returned to Beaverton, Oregon, according to a statement from the Justice department, while Dzeko has not yet been released by Bosnian authorities. The department filed denaturalization lawsuits against the pair in federal courts in...

Perseverance is The blood , sweat and tears of the persecuted for My names sake but be reassured that all of Heaven is with you in all you do and say by My spirit and for My glory . 1 Corinthians 9:24 24Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Hebrews 12:1 Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let...

The wartime commander of Bosnian Croat forces, Slobodan Praljak, has died after he drank a liquid he said was poison seconds after UN judges turned down his appeal against a 20-year sentence for war crimes against Bosnian Muslims, a court spokesman confirms. Praljak, 72, tilted back his head and took a swig from a bottle shortly after appeals judges confirmed his sentence for involvement in a campaign to drive Muslims out of a would-be Bosnian Croat ministate in Bosnia in the early 1990s. "I just drank poison," he said. "I am not a war criminal. I oppose this conviction."

The final hearing at a United Nations war crimes tribunal was dramatically halted Wednesday when a former Bosnian Croat military chief claimed to have taken poison.Slobodan Praljak yelled, “I am not a war criminal!” and appeared to drink from a small bottle, seconds after judges reconfirmed his 20-year prison sentence for involvement in a campaign to drive Muslims out of a would-be Bosnian Croat ministate in Bosnia in the early 1990s. …Slobodan Praljak, 72, tilted back his head and took a gulp from a flask or glass as the judge read out the verdict.“I just drank poison,” he said....

Bosnia’s war crimes court on Monday acquitted the wartime commander of Srebrenica, who was accused of committing atrocities against Serbs during the 1992-95 Balkan conflict. The acquittal of Naser Oric immediately prompted anger from Serbian leaders, with Serbian Defense Minister Aleksandar Vulin saying the court ruling “threatens security, trust and reconciliation in the whole of the Balkans.” Oric was accused of war crimes against three Serb prisoners of war who were slain in villages around the Bosnian town of Srebrenica in the early days of the conflict. A panel of judges presiding over the trial ruled Monday the prosecution did...