Free Republic

With two weeks to go before the World Cup, it’s time to get acquainted with who’s going to Brazil. Slate’s team-by-team previews will run in reverse order of the countries’ predicted finish at the World Cup. Team No. 24: Croatia. There’s a famous Twilight Zone episode, “The Odyssey of Flight 33,” in which an airplane gets lost in the clouds. As the crew emerges from the fog, they find that they’re millions of years in the past. Looking out the airplane window at the dinosaurs below, the co-pilot, quaking with fear, addresses his passengers: “We’re in trouble.” Feeling trapped in...

JASENOVAC -- A commemoration marking the 69th anniversary of the breakout of prisoners of the Ustasha death camp Jasenovac was held on Sunday [May 4, 2014.](Beta/Hina) Attending the event, Croatian President Ivo Josipović said genocide had occurred at that location and that it should never be forgotten. Josipović called on everyone to protect the memory of the people who had died in that camp, a place that would remain in collective memory forever, the Croatian electronic media reported. "Evil should be called by its real name, opposed and denied any opportunity to happen ever again," he stated. Evil is not...

"Confidence thrives on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection and unselfish performance. Without them it cannot live." Franklin Delano Roosevelt REMEMBERING GENERAL DRAZA MIHAILOVICH: A TRULY GREAT MAN WHO LEFT HIS MARK FOREVER. Taking to the hills of Serbia with only a few Serbian patriots to mount the first real resistance to Hitler's occupying forces in Europe was impressive by all human standards. The guts it took and the resolve necessary for these men and their leader to initiate such a courageous act against the Nazi war machine that in 1941 appeared to be invincible...

On April 22, 1945, a group of surviving inmates broke out of Nazi Croatia’s main death camp, Jasenovac. Just fifty years later, their memories – and the grisly history of Jasenovac – had become prey to politics, propaganda, and historical revisionism more concerned with the 1990s Yugoslav wars than with the truth about “Independent Croatia” and its factory of death. South Gate of Jasenovac III “Brickworks” camp; (via Donja Gradina Memorial Association) On April 10, 1941, four days after armies of the German Reich and their allies attacked the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Croat nationalists (Ustasha) allied with Hitler and Mussolini...

MLAKA -- Patriarch Irinej of the Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC) on Tuesday held a memorial service in Mlaka near Jasenovac, the site of Croatia's WW2 death camp.(Photo: Tanjug, file) April 22 is the anniversary of the Jasenovac breakthrough staged by the camp's prisoners. The day is also marked in Serbia as Holocaust Remembrance Day. After liturgy services lead by Patriarch Irinej, Metropolitan Amfilohije of Montenegro and the Littoral and Bishop Jovan of Lipljan and other clerical dignitaries, a commemoration was held to honor the Jasenovac victims. "The church in Mlaka is built on the land of the sufferers where hundreds...

Angelina Jolie, is like the criminal in a low budget film who always returns to the scene of the crime. Jolie is shameless in returning to Bosnia after her propagandized rape movie entitled, In The Land of Blood and Honey—an irresponsible piece of film footage costing $50 million to produce that has failed miserably at the box office earning less then $5 million. Did she return to Srebrenica to mourn the dead or to rehabilitate her damaged career? Bringing with her William Hague, the British Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs is like bringing a fox to a...

President Barack Obama on Wednesday sought to debunk criticism that America has acted hypocritically in condemning Russia’s actions in Ukraine, dismissing any comparison to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, MSNBC reported. The president also argued that the comparison between Crimea and Kosovo makes no sense. “Russian leaders have further claimed Kosovo as a precedent, an example, they say of the West interfering in the affairs of a smaller country … But NATO only intervened after the people of Kosovo were systematically brutalized and killed for years.” “And Kosovo only left Serbia after a referendum was organized not outside...

The Yugoslav Army Headquarters building hasn't been rebuilt after being damaged by cruises missiles in April 1999 during NATO's bombing of Serbia over Kosovo. Belgrade (AFP Photo) Exactly 15 years ago, on March 24, NATO began its 78-day bombing of Yugoslavia. The alliance bypassed the UN under a “humanitarian” pretext, launching aggression that claimed hundreds of civilian lives and caused a much larger catastrophe than it averted. Years on, Serbia still bears deep scars of the NATO bombings which, as the alliance put it, were aimed at “preventing instability spreading” in Kosovo. Questions remain on the very legality of the...

Royal cousins Wilhelm II and King George V went to war As nations gear up to mark 100 years since the start of World War One, academic argument still rages over which country was to blame for the conflict.Education Secretary for England Michael Gove's recent criticism of how the causes and consequences of the war are taught in schools has only stoked the debate further. Here 10 leading historians give their opinion. Sir Max Hastings - military historian Germany No one nation deserves all responsibility for the outbreak of war, but Germany seems to me to deserve most.

ZAGREB - Alen Budaj, an associate of the Jerusalem-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, has said that the coutries that are legal successors to the former Yugoslavia, Serbia in particular, must send a strong diplomatic protest to the Vatican over its intention declare Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac a saint. The Vatican has officially confirmed that Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac will soon be declared a saint. Immediately upon the entering of the Germans in Zagreb, on April 10, 1941, Stepinac supported the establishment of the Independent State of Croatia (ISC), which was declared a state by the Ustasha (Croatian fascist movement), and in 1945, he...

Sensational confession of Ibran Mustafic, Bosnian Muslim war veteran and politician: "We were killing our own people in Srebrenica."At least 1,000 Bosnian Muslims from Srebrenica were killed by their compatriots during the breakthrough to Tuzla in July 1995, because there were lists of those who ” have to be prevented from reaching the freedom,at any cost” said one of the founders of the SDA in Srebrenica, Ibran Mustafic. ** Ibran Mustafic is the author of the book “Planned Chaos” whereas some of the crimes committed by soldiers of the (Muslim) Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina against Serbs are for the...

Minarets instead of church towers, muezzins instead of churchbells. A different France.The secular and libertarian magazine Causeur asks: “Is this the end of the bell towers of France?”. Until last week, the church bells of Boissettes, a town of five hundred inhabitants in the district of the Seine, were ringing every half hour. Then, the Administrative Court of Paris has stopped the bells, as an alleged violation of the 1905 law on the separation of church and state. The story seems a perfect epitaph to an essay that appeared ten years ago by Danièle Hervieu -Léger, “Catholicisme, la fin d’un...

Academics of the University of Sarajevo announce the [WWI] conference Aleksandra' Note: I have only one question at this time: Will Serbia's position be represented at this World War One conference in Sarajevo in June of 2014, and will Serbs be present at this conference? Sincerely, Aleksandra Rebic ***** A major international conference about the First World War will see 120 scholars from 28 countries meet in Sarajevo in 2014. The conference, The Position of the First World War in the History of Europe, will be held on the 19th-21st June 2014 at the University of Sarajevo. Scholars from 26...

ANDRIĆGRAD -- Plans for the start of World War I existed 13 months before the Sarajevo assassination and 14 months before Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia.The Serbian Kingdom soldiers are seen during the Battle of Kolubara (Wikipedia) This can be inferred from a copy of the letter that Director of the Archives of Serbia Miroslav Perišić presented in Andrićgrad, in the RS, Bosnia. Governor of Bosnia-Herzegovina Oskar Potiorek sent this letter to the then Minister of Austria-Hungary Bilinski on May 28, 1913, and its copy was made public at the history department of Kamengrad (Andrićgrad) on Sunday. Perišić noted that...

"Night March of the Serbian Army" French WWI postcard Aleksandra's Note:As a lovely, sparkling snow falls steadily over Chicagoland on this last day of 2013, December 31st, it seems most appropriate to pay tribute to those Serb military forces and civilians who embarked on a now legendary exodus from Serbia in the late fall and winter of 1915/1916 southward through Montenegro and Albania to the coast of the Adriatic Sea. The Great Serbian Retreat, also known as the "Albanian Golgotha", was an extraordinary human event in the history of the 20th Century. Though it was a retreat, seen by the...

Flag of Serbia 1882-1918 On a summer day after the end of World War Two, dark forces took the life of a warrior who had fought valiantly for his beloved homeland and the human and democratic rights of his people. A military man to his core, he had also been a humane commander and a visionary, a true hero whose moral standards and ethical principles exemplified virtues known to humanity since the birth of Jesus Christ. He was General Dragoljub-Draza Mihailovich – a Serb, born in Serbia, the homeland for whom he would give everything, including his life. Since his...

Mrs. Zimmerman's boy has some bad blood going with the Croatians. They just awarded him the French Legion, and then he gets sued for accusing Croatians of murdering lots of Serbs. They did, of course, did the whole Nazi thing, too. Conundrum.You don’t want to make flippant racial comments in France – that would be the takeaway for legendary singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, who’s just been charged with incitement to racial hatred following an investigation of comments he made comparing Croats to Nazis and slave owners, AFP reported. Answering a question from the French Rolling Stone in 2012. about race relations...

Zagreb (AFP) - Voters in staunchly Catholic Croatia cast ballots on Sunday in a controversial referendum whose results are expected to outlaw same-sex marriage in the European Union's newest member state. Some 3.8 million eligible voters were to decide on whether to amend the country's constitution to include a definition of marriage as a "union between a woman and a man". The current constitution does not define marriage. Passions have run high in Croatia ahead of the vote, with the Church-backed 'yes' camp citing the defence of traditional family values, and their opponents accusing them of discrimination against gays. Despite...

<p>Bob Dylan is getting sued in France by Croatians over a quote he gave to a magazine.</p> <p>He may have been a prominent Civil Rights movement supporter, but Bob Dylan is being sued for racism.</p>

Nebojša Glogovac as Colonel Draza Mihailovich in "Ravna Gora" "At the Salonika Front and the Battle of Kumanovo, Draza Mihailovich fought for his country of Serbia long before the Second World War. It should be said that Josip Broz Tito also fought before the Second World War, but it was on the side of Austria-Hungary and against the Serbs."Serbian Actor Nebojsa Glogovac on the eve of the premier of the fourth episode of the "Ravna Gora Series" on Radio-Television Srbije, in which Colonel Draza Mihailovich, whom Glogovac plays in this series, is presented on screen for the first time. The...