Free Republic

When then-Sen. Barack Obama made a short video for the "peace caucus" delegates to the 2008 Iowa Caucuses, he captured the enthusiastic support of his party's pacifist wing. It was enough to propel him to the Democratic nomination. Hillary Clinton's ad -- showing a red telephone ringing at 3 a.m. -- only emphasized to party pacifists that Obama was their man. And, of course, leading antiwar figures like George Soros heavily bankrolled MoveOn.org and other liberal media outlets -- all echoing the same pacifist line. Pacifism -- as the name implies -- ought to lead to peace. But it too...

This week, the Globe and Mail asked General Lewis McKenzie (Retired) to write the obituary of American diplomat Richard Holbrooke. It was a good idea. The two men had crossed paths more than once on the global stage of the Great Game. McKenzie declined. Holbrooke had just died and the general knew that what he had to say would hardly produce the standard panegyric. When I caught up with McKenzie, he was shoveling snow after a spell away from home. I asked for an interview and to my surprise, he agreed. “I’m just going to tell you what I thought...

(Sarajevo) In the past 17th of November there was a final judgement by the Bosnian-Herzegovinan Federal Government in Sarajevo, has ordered the vacation of the residence of the Archbishop of Vrhbosna-sarajevo, Vinko Cardinal Puljuic, from the Episcopal Palace. The residence, the property of the Curia, was confiscated in the past by the Communist regime, to house there Communist or Muslim spies, according to Corrispenza Romana.

SARAJEVO -- During the past week, an international Wahhabi organization has launched a campaign in Bosnia-Herzegovina calling on non-Muslims to convert to Islam. The organization, which calls itself "Poziv u Raj" (Invitation To Heaven), has been putting up slick billboards and posters and distributing leaflets in Sarajevo, Bihac, Sanski Most, Maglaj, Zenica, Travnik, Tuzla, and Tesanj. The group also has been organizing public lectures in Bosnian cities and towns by a Greek man and a German man who recently converted to Islam. Those recent converts have repeated the group's call for non-Muslims to convert to Islam. They have also been...

Three Bosnian Islamists were arrested in Sarajevo on Thursday on charges of terrorism and illegal weapons trafficking, prosecutors said. Rijad Rustempasic, Edis Velic and Abdulah Handzic were arrested on charges of terrorism, the Prosecutor's Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina said in a statement. Rustempasic was also suspected of illegal weapons trafficking, the statement added. The arrest follows an intense investigation including interviews with “nearly 70 different witnesses and several suspects, and collected over 1000 pieces of evidence from here in Bosnia, as well as from Germany and Austria, and elsewhere," prosecutors said. All three suspects were previously detained by Bosnian...

The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in the Hague is considering imposing a defense lawyer on former Bosnian-Serb president Radovan Karadzic against his will. Radovan Karadzic Much of the, for want of a better term, "news coverage" of the Radovan Karadzic war crimes trial in The Hague has teetered fatuously somewhere between the hysterical and the completely irrational. The coverage often amounts to little more than shrill and often childish name-calling with Karadzic continually referred to as a "butcher", a "demon", a "monster" and every other spiteful epitaph our so-called "journalists" can think to hurl at him. Comparisons...

In a country with plenty of serious problems, from a flailing economy to a dysfunctional government, attacking Santa is probably not the cure-all, Anes Alic writes for ISN Security Watch. By Anes Alic in Sarajevo for ISN Security Watch Thanks to a rather absurd, and so far unpopular, move by officials in the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, Santa will not being coming down the chimneys of public schools this year. Though a strong tradition for the past half a century, a decision supported by the Islamic community and the nationalist Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) party has banned Santa from his usual pre-New...

CANNON IN HOSPITAL YARD, BOYS WITH GRENADES AND PITS FULL OF DEAD BODIES (Muslim controlled Sarajevo) General Milosevic’s defense witness testifies about his wartime experience in Sarajevo. He claims he was subjected to daily mental and physical torture, that he was forced to witness an execution at Pofalici and saw a BH Army cannon fire shells from the Sarajevo State Hospital compound. The cannon was “set in a highly visible spot as a taunt” to the Serb forces, who were thus forced to target it, the witness says General Dragomir Milosevic’s defense witness, testifying under the pseudonym T60 and with...

I am currently in the process of writing a novel, and one of the scenes in this novel is going to take place in Sarajevo. Problem is, I've never been there and don't really know what the place is like beyond what you can read on the internet. If there are any FReepers who have been there and could give me an idea of what the city's like, I'd appreciate it. It will really help me with my book.

Sarajevo, 28 June (AKI) - A well known Bosnian underworld figure and war-time military commander Ramiz Delalic, known as 'Celo', was killed Wednesday night in Sarajevo, local media reported on Thursday, without giving details. Delalic (44) has been investigated for allegedly shooting at a Serbian wedding party in Sarajevo in March 1992, killing local Serb, Nikola Gardovic. Delalic had a criminal record, but during the 1992-1995 Bosnian civil war he became a commander of the Ninth motorized brigade of the Bosnian Muslim army. His killing is the latest in a string of shootings, some fatal, of underworld figures in the...

2,200-year old amphoras contained wine SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina, April 9 (UPI) -- Parts of amphoras believed to be 2,200 years old uncovered in a Bosnia-Herzegovina swamp are suspected to have carried wine, experts said Monday. Snjezana Vasilj, head of a Bosnian team of archaeologists, said a preliminary analysis showed amphoras, found at what are believed remains of the first-ever discovered Illyrian ships, were used for transporting wine, the Bosnian news agency FENA reported. Late in March, Vasilj and her team found what they believed were the Illyrian ships in the Desilo location, more than 20 feet under the water level of...

SARAJEVO (AFP/EJP)--- Sarajevo is to host this month an international conference on Holocaust studies in southeastern Europe, organizers said Thursday. The aim of the conference is to "define areas in need for further investigation" as the "research and teaching on the Holocaust in the post-communist countries of southeastern Europe has fallen well behind this international development," the German Goethe Institute, co-organizing the event, said in a statement. Several dozen participants from the region -- from Albania, Bosnia, Croatia, Romania, Serbia and Slovenia -- will participate in a three-day conference that is to begin on October 27, it added. Participants from...

SARAJEVO -- At least three Bosnian citizens are on the UN list of individuals aiding the al-Qaeda terrorist network. Dragan Lukac, assistant director of the Bosnian state security agency, said in an interview with the daily Nezavisne Novine that three Tunisians, who are on the UN terrorist list, were granted Bosnian citizenship after the country's 1992-1995 civil war. "It's difficult to say where they are at the moment, but we can say with great certainty that they are not in Bosnia and don't use Bosnian passports," Lukac said. He named the three Tunisians as Mahrez ben Mahmud ben Sashi al...

Sarajevo, 29 June (AKI) - Investigators are probing the Bosnian branch of the humanitarian organisation Revival of Islamic Heritage Society Kuwait (RIHSK) for possible terrorist links and financing of an Islamic terrorist organisation, Bosnian daily Nezavisne vovine reported on Thursday. RHISK channelled some 14 million euros to its sister organisation in Bosnia from January 1, 2002 to December 2005, the paper said, quoting unnamed prosecution sources. The Bosnian organisation - registered under the same name as RIHSK and translated into Bosnian - hasn’t kept records on how the money was spent, the paper said. Nor has it ever submitted final...

The people of Sarajevo, renowned for their pluralism, have been shaken after a series of incidents including the murder of a Muslim woman by her Islamic extremist son who questioned her faith. Upholders of Bosnia's moderate version of Islam say the problem caused by an influx of hardline fighters during the country's 1992-1995 war has worsened in recent months, highlighted by the gruesome murder. "Bosnia's tradition of Islam is tolerant, it promotes pluralism and we should not allow those representing a one-track ideology to teach us," says Jasmin Merdan. The 26-year-old -- a practising Muslim who portrays himself as a...

(CNSNews.com) - Fourteen miles from the U.S. Capitol, a basement-run organization with alleged ties to Hamas and al Qaeda is a crucial link in the planning of any future terrorist attacks against the United States, according to several terrorism experts who analyzed documents and other information obtained in a CNSNews.com investigation. The United Association for Studies and Research (UASR), based in Springfield, Va., is publicly identified as a Muslim think tank but has multiple ties to the terrorism underworld, according to the CNSNews.com sources, who are both inside and outside government. "UASR is a front organization for a terrorist group,"...

A Swedish teenager who is being held in Sarajevo suspected of terrorist offences has been identified by Bosnian police as a radical Islamist known by the code-name Maximus. The 18-year old has had email contact with three men arrested in Britain suspected of planning an attack on the White House, police sources in the Bosnian capital told weekly newspaper Slobodna Bosna. “There is definitely a link between Sweden, Denmark and Britain,” said Mirsad Fasic, a journalist at Slobodna Bosna. “In the computer that was taken from the apartment rented by the Swede and the Dane with Turkish ancestry, there were...

Authorities in Denmark and Bosnia arrest ten people suspected of plotting terror attacks on Western embassies in Sarajevo and uncover a cache of explosives and other weapons, along with a videotape showing the suspects making bombs and asking God for forgiveness for the “sacrifice” they are about to make. Authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Denmark have arrested eight teenagers in the last ten days, on suspicion of plotting terrorist attacks on Western embassies in the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo. ISN Security Watch intelligence and police sources in Bosnia say the eight suspects - all between the ages of 16 and...

Researcher Says Balkan Hill Is Pyramid Visocica Hill Is 2,300 Feet High SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- A Sarajevo-born researcher said he has discovered an ancient pyramid in the hills of central Bosnia.

Al Qaeda 'financed from Eindhoven' 23 April 2003 AMSTERDAM — A director of the Islamic foundation Al Waqf al Islami in Eindhoven, Ahmad Al Hussaini, is included in a list of 20 Saudi Arabian business leaders alleged to have provided financial support to the Al Qaeda terror network. A prominent Al Qaeda member drew up the list, according to US firm JCB Consulting, which is investigating the financing of Osama bin Laden's network on behalf of 600 families of the September 11 terrorist attack victims. JCB spokesman Damien Martinez told Dutch current affairs television programme Nova on Tuesday night...