Free Republic

Leaving Kosovo: Exodus of young people as frustration soars By Guy De Launey BBC News, Kosovo 22 March 2015 From the section Europe "We are like two million birds in one cage, but we are hoping for a better life" The scene in Mitrovica's 7 Arte Cafe seems convivial enough. Fairy lights twinkle, a mixture of Albanian and English-language hits play over the sound system and the 20-somethings gathered around the tables regularly break into laughter. But the joviality papers over a grim reality for these young people. Kosovo may have unilaterally declared independence from Serbia seven years ago, but...

STANOVC, Kosovo — The extended Cakaj family has built a few dozen homes here, along Tony Blair Street, between the Dubai supermarket and the French peacekeepers base, in a clannish faith that closeness would bring security. But recently the family of Kosovo Albanians has begun to splinter, as a disastrous economy, static politics and a newly created opening in the border with Serbia have enticed tens of thousands of Kosovars to leave their troubled land in search of opportunity and work. “My son had no choice,” said Xhevat Cakaj, but to leave their enclave for Germany with his wife and...

The new Greek government has plenty of challenges ahead of it: A towering debt, chronic unemployment and relations with the rest of Europe. But it also has an urgent security problem. Greece has become an unwitting crossroads -- both for jihadists trying to reach Iraq and Syria from Europe, and for fighters returning home from the Middle East.

There's growing evidence that Greece helped to lubricate Milosevic's war machineBy Takis Michas in AthensAs Greece prepares to take on the mantle of the European Union presidency in January 2003, the time has come for Athens to examine the role it played in aiding the regimes of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic and his Bosnian Serb associates Radovan Karadic and Ratko Mladic.Besides a general failure to confront the scale of war crimes perpetrated by Bosnian Serb and Serbian forces during the Nineties, there's mounting evidence of Greek complicity in Yugoslav sanction-busting during the conflicts. A recent report published by the...

Muslim Albanians in Kosovo are capturing Christians, dissecting them alive, tearing out their organs, killing the victims, and then selling the organs to Saudi Arabia and Turkey, the two major nations of the Antichrist. We learned this from a local Serbian Christian and veteran Special Forces officer in Serbia’s military, named Lazar. We interviewed him and this is the information he conveyed to us. He said “They also kill people and sell their organs in Turkey and Saudi Arabia.” He then said, They abduct people in Kosovo, Serbian people — in some cases Albanian people — and they take their...

...its lowest levels against the dollar for almost a year, amid investor nervousness about emerging markets. By evening trade in Istanbul the currency had fallen beyond TL2.30 to the US dollar, more than 1 per cent down on the day and the weakest level since January, when the Turkish central bank moved to increase interest rates -- a dramatic shift in policy that at the time halted a precipitous drop in its value. ...Turkey is far from alone in being affected by strong US economic data that has heightened expectations of a US Federal Reserve interest rate rise and so...

Recently, the House passed, by an overwhelming margin, a resolution to condemn the Russian Federation for actions considered hostile and aggressive within its sphere of influence, specifically with regard to the politically torn country of Ukraine. Ten Members voted “nay,” myself among them. I wish to explain why I took this unpopular position. Above all, while Vladimir Putin’s government may well have engaged in questionable behavior toward neighboring countries, Resolution 758 was nothing more than gratuitous, needlessly provocative and shortsighted. Moreover, reasonable observers the world over can see it as tantamount to a declaration that Russia is America’s enemy. The...

From Times OnlineOctober 26, 2007 Putin warns Europe over Iran and Kosovo at EU summit (Miguel A Lopes//EPA) Vladimir Putin at the EU-Russia Summit at Mafra Palace, near Lisbon, today Jack Malvern and agencies Tensions between Russia and the West over sanctions against Iran will be laid bare today as President Vladimir Putin attends a summit with EU leaders in Portugal. The Russian leader described supporters of tough policies as "mad people wielding razor blades" after the US imposed economic sanctions on the Islamic republic yesterday in an attempt to curb its nuclear programme. Mr Putin, who is at the...

Maria Bamieh, a British prosecutor at the heart of EULEX corruption revelations, says the only way to restore faith in the EU rule of law mission in Kosovo is by holding an external enquiry. The scandal erupted on Monday (27 October) when Kosovo daily Koha Ditore wrote, citing evidence from leaked EULEX documents, that senior officials colluded with suspects in criminal cases, took bribes to shut down investigations, and quashed internal EULEX probes. …

To make a difference going forward, Trey Gowdy and the House’s Benghazi select committee may want to ask how the U.S. got involved in Libya in the first place. What they will discover is that Barack Obama borrowed a page from the Clinton playbook on Kosovo, a lethal exercise in mendacity unparalleled in recent American history. Much of the mischief I unearthed in my forthcoming book, You Lie!, I expected to find. This nugget surprised me. In his March 2011 address to the nation, Barack Obama laid out the case for America’s surprise military intervention in Libya. “We knew that...

Kosovo police say they have arrested at least 40 people in a major operation targeting Islamic radicals suspected of fighting alongside extremists in Iraq and Syria. […] The police operation is the largest ever against suspected Islamic radicals in Kosovo. Authorities have been on alert as a growing number of ethnic Albanians have joined militants in Syria and Iraq and appeared on social media in attempts to lure more followers. …

The Battle of Kosovo 1389 “Why do Serbs celebrate defeat?” comes the question, every June 28. The short and simple answer is, they don’t. But a longer and more complicated answer is needed to explain it properly. June 28 (or 15th, in the Julian calendar), Vidovdan, is the date on which the Orthodox Christian host of Prince Lazar confronted and battled the Ottoman Turks at the Field of Kosovo in 1389. At the end of the day, both Lazar and the Turkish sultan Murat I were dead, and the Turks had left the field. Initial reports, in fact, spoke of...

..."Free" Serbia, as such, would continue to “exist” until 1459 when the Serbian lands finally and completely fell to the Turks, and a whole new chapter in Serbian history began that was to last for several centuries. During those centuries, Serbs would become integral to the “Eastern Question” involving another great empire, that of Russia. They would become increasingly significant to the Austrians, who would not only use and covet the Serbs as able warriors to keep the Turks from the gates of Vienna, but who would come to have their own self-serving agenda with regards to the Serbian lands....

Russian President Vladimir Putin charges that Western support for the newly declared state, torn from Serbia this week, is "immoral and illegal" behavior that will provoke a global storm of separatism and explode the international order. Jubilant Russian nationalists claim that "Western betrayal" has freed the Kremlin from any obligation to follow international laws in its own neighborhood. Kosovo was seized by NATO in a 1999 war after Serbia was accused of the ethnic cleansing of the tiny territory's mainly Albanian population. Russia opposed the war, but was persuaded to help negotiate a truce following 78 days of NATO air...

Could the Balkans, rather than previously accepted areas such as the Strait of Gibralter, have been the entry point for the first men in Europe? ORESHETZ, Bulgaria (AFP) - A team of 20 Bulgarian and French archeologists are trying to prove this theory after 11 years of excavation and research in the Kozarnika cave in northwestern Bulgaria. The digging up at this mountainous site of traces of human activity dating back 1.4 to 1.6 million years throws into question theories about when and where man first set foot in Europe. According to current theories, the Europeans' prehistoric ancestors came into...

Commenting on the recent recognition that NATO bombed Serbia without the permission of the UN Security Council , the Serbian president said yesterday that it is reasonable to expect that Serbia should be back on her feet by and with a compensation made ​​for injustice. Marking that the NATO bombing of Serbia 1999 was uncivilized method precedent " for ever , and for ages " , something which would shame even d barbarous nations from pre-Christian period , Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic in yesterday's speech on the occasion of the Day Of Army of Serbia at the central celebration in...

U.S. President Barack Obama has caused confusion after claiming yesterday that Kosovo held a UN-assisted referendum for self-determination – misleading people over the true origins of the country. The U.S. President used the example to hit out against Russia's annexation of Crimea, but experts have noted that no such referendum took place, and implied that Obama's "incredible mistake" should elicit a retraction or correction from the White House.

Barack Obama’s speech on Ukrainian crisis seems to have left the public confused as he claimed that Kosovo broke away from Serbia “after a referendum”. But attentive listeners quickly pointed Obama’s gaps in history – there was no referendum in Kosovo. President Obama was speaking Wednesday at The Center for Fine Arts in the heart of Brussels, Belgium, and was telling the youth crowd mostly about Russian-Ukrainian conflict over the strategic Crimean Peninsula. He lashed out at Russia for “violation of international law, its assault on Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.” Obama recalled the conflict around Kosovo and NATO’s involvement,...

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...

Speaking at the press conference after the EU-US summit yesterday the US President wrongly suggested that Georgia "is not currently on a path to NATO membership". In fact the country has been on the path to membership since 2008. At the North Atlantic Council in Bucharest that year the attending Heads of State and Government agreed the following statement: "NATO welcomes Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. We agreed today that they will become members of NATO." Former Georgian Ambassador to London Giorgi Badridze, told Breitbart London: "President Obama's remarks could hardly have come at a worse time –...