Free Republic

You would never know, by skimming through Le Monde, and Le Figaro, let alone the international media, that the Treaty of Lisbon, short of some deus ex machina, will be ratified sometime between now and February 8. The French news is full of American politics. This is another great decoy for Sarkozy. Besides his marriage (which is now old news), there is the great American election to distract the French from the scenario that will unfold in their National Assembly and Senate over the next two days.Those of you who know French may be interested in this video from Nicolas...

08 February 2008, 16:47 CET (BELGRADE) - A bomb blast rocked a Slovenian-run shopping mall in Serbia on Friday, while another had to be evacuated following an anonymous bomb threat, B92 radio reported. An explosive device went off early Friday at the entrance of Mercator Center in the New Belgrade area of the capital, which is located next to a police station, shattering glass but causing no casualties, the report said. The blast occurred at around 5:00 am (0400 GMT), according to a statement by police, who launched a probe but revealed no possible motives. Several hours later, employees and...

A human tongue has been served up in a hospital canteen's chicken risotto — and bosses reckon it was accidentally dropped into the food by a doctor.

(LJUBLJANA) - Slovenia became the first former communist state to assume the rotating EU presidency on Tuesday, with Kosovo and ratification of the bloc's new constitutional treaty at the top of its agenda. The small central European state, which borders Austria, Croatia, Hungary and Italy, took over the presidency at the stroke of midnight Monday, and will hold it for six months before passing the baton to France on July 1. "The EU's presidency is moving ... from the west to the east," Slovenian Foreign Minister Dimitrij Rupel said after officially taking over the role from Portugal's Foreign Minister Luis...

What is a fair voting system for the European Union? It looks as though, thanks to Poland, European leaders will be forced to debate this difficult question at their summit this week. Since the simplified draft treaty is substantively identical to the old and rejected constitution - minus some cosmetics - the voting system proposed is going to be the same one: passage of legislation requires a coalition of countries representing at least 55 per cent of the member states and 65 per cent of the population. The Poles have threatened a veto unless the second of those two numbers...

Released : Thursday, May 31, 2007 9:08 AM A Muslim community in Slovenia is planning to build the country's first mosque and an Islamic cultural center in Ljubljana. Slovenia's mufti Nedzad Grabus and Ljubljana Mayor Zoran Jankovic signed a letter of intent on the sale of land for the mosque and adjoining buildings, the Serbian B92 radio reported. The Muslim worship center will be built on an area of 4 acres and initial plans say it will be completed in the next six years. The Islamic community of Slovenia of 40,000 Muslims will pay $8.2 million for the building site...

LJUBLJANA, Slovenia, March 31, 2007 – Slovenia’s deployments to multiple countries for NATO, the United Nations and the European Union drew praise here yesterday from the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Navy Adm. Edmund P. Giambastiani met with Defense Minister Karl Erjavec, Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. Albin Gutman and Gutman’s deputy, Maj. Gen. Alojz Steiner, at the Defense Ministry of this nation at the crossroads of central Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Balkans. “Slovenia has contributed substantially to a variety of operations across NATO,” the admiral said at a news conference. “Clearly, the most...

Released : Friday, February 02, 2007 2:47 PM LONG-simmering tensions over the maritime border between Croatia and Slovenia have resurfaced over the last week, writes John McLaughlin. Slovenia has lodged a formal diplomatic protest over Croatia's extension of an offshore drilling contract for state-controlled oil company INA, and Croatia has sharply rejected Slovenia's position. In its diplomatic note, Slovenia protested strongly against the award on January 5 of a five-year extension to INA's existing oil and gas drilling contract in the northern Adriatic. Slovenia argued that the move amounted to a unilateral grab by Croatia of a sea area that...

Ljubljana, 11:00 European Union will not set Ratko Mladic's arrest as a precondition for resumption of stabilization and association negotiations with Serbia, Slovenian Foreign Minister Dimitrij Rupel said. In an interview with weekly newspaper European Voice, Rupel said the "tough terms" should be set out in the final stage of negotiations not at the start of the process. "Belgrade's cooperation with The Hague Tribunal does not necessarily mean that Mladic should be arrested and handed over to The Hague," Rupel said. Slovenian media say the EU countries have no common position as to the interpretation of the "constructive cooperation", which...

LJUBLJANA, Slovenia, Jan. 1 (UPI) -- Slovenia Monday became the first post-communist country to enter the euro zone when it replaced its tolar currency with the euro. Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa called the change the "biggest national achievement" since the country joined the European Union two years ago, Ljubljana's media said. Slovenia became the 13th EU member country to embrace the euro and the first of the 10 new EU members that joined the bloc in 2004. Financial transactions, at the exchange rate of 239.64 tolars to one euro, will be carried out both in tolars and euros through...

Officials celebrated as the EU flag was raised in Bucharest Huge celebrations have been held in Romania and Bulgaria to mark their accession to the European Union, 17 years after the fall of Communism. Tens of thousands attended concerts in the two capitals, Bucharest and Sofia. The Romanian president said EU entry was an "enormous chance for future generations", while Bulgaria's leader said it was a "heavenly moment". Their accession means the EU now has 27 members and half a billion people, and stretches as far east as the Black Sea. The day we are welcoming - 1 January...

By Carol Kaufmann Photographs by Arne Hodaliè Why did Romans, Celts, and even prehistoric settlers submerge their personal belongings, from swords to dishes, in a shallow river in Slovenia? Archaeologist Andrej Gaspari is haunted by pieces of the past. His hometown river, the Ljubljanica, has yielded thousands of them—Celtic coins, Roman luxuries, medieval swords—all from a shallow 12-mile (19 kilometers) stretch. Those who lived near and traveled along the stream that winds through Slovenia's capital of Ljubljana considered it sacred, Gaspari believes. That would explain why generations of Celts, Romans, and earlier inhabitants offered treasures—far too many to be...

THE nearest the cheerful, obsessively tidy former Yugoslav country of Slovenia comes to hell on earth these days is when a British stag party lands in the capital, Ljubljana. But since President Janez Drnovsek experienced a spiritual rebirth, baffled Slovenians have been warned that they are living on the edge of the apocalypse.Frequently dressed in Indian clothes and sometimes playing the flute with laurel leaves in his hair, the president has cast off the trappings of power. After he was diagnosed with kidney cancer, Drnovsek, 56, left his presidential palace in Ljubljana, sacked most of his staff and moved with...

The president of Slovenia has given up his palace for a mountain hut and habitually decks himself in leaves to celebrate nature.Adopting a New Age existence after being diagnosed with cancer, Janez Drnovsek, 56, has moved from the presidential palace in Ljubljana to the village of Zaplana, where he lives alone with his dog on a vegan diet of organic fruit and vegetables, while he bakes his own bread. He has even been known to "greet the trees" by dressing up in cloaks of leaves. Mr Drnovsek appealed this week to his fellow countrymen to join him in embracing the...

ZAGREB, Croatia Croatian and Slovene armed police were deployed Thursday at a disputed border area as tension between the two neighbors rose after Croatia accused several Slovene journalists of illegal border crossing and escorted them back to Slovenia. A regional Croatian mayor, Josip Posavec, called on both sides to "immediately remove all armed men so that the peace returns here."

Hitler's bugs 25.8.2006 - Michael Manske If we say Hitler and beetles, you may think of a fascist dictator and an old Volkswagen car. But there's another kind of beetle linked to the notorious German dictator, lurking in the caves of Slovenia. Michael Manske of Radio Slovenia International has more on this curious story: Slovenia has a number of endemic animals, most famously the proteus anguinus, commonly referred to as a "cave salamander" or "human fish". The amphibian is proudly displayed on the ten-tolar coin. But another cave dweller has recently started getting a lot of unwanted attention from around...

"Eight countries - Germany, Austria, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Lithuania Luxembourg and Malta - are blocking the idea that the EU should pay for projects using embryonic stem cells for genetic research. They insist the common EU budget should not be used for activities banned in some member states, despite the argument that such research could be crucial in finding cures for chronic diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's." "Germany has stepped up its resistance. Its research minister Annette Schavan sent a letter on Thursday (20 July) to the presidency condemning the idea of EU cash being used for stem cell...

The first new entrant since 2003 to the twelve-member eurozone has been agreed by the European Commission. Slovenia's application to join the single currency on 1 January 2007 was accepted by the Commission. The application by the former communist state must now be approved by the European Parliament and EU member states, who will set the exchange rate. However, Lithuania's application for euro membership was rejected because its inflation rate was too high. If all goes to plan, EU finance ministers will fix the exchange rate between the euro and the tolar, the Slovenian currency, on 11 July. The euro...

BRUSSELS, May 16, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- Slovenia today became the first new EU member state to get the green light to join the EU's common currency, the euro. Meeting in Strasbourg, the European Commission ruled the country meets all the necessary criteria and can adopt the euro as of January 1, 2007. The Commission turned down the application of a second candidate for early entry, Lithuania, saying the country's inflation is too high.

EUROPE DAY Did you know there was a "Europe Day"? A day to celebrate the EU? Me neither. But May 9th is it. Here's some thoughts of mine on the poor doomed European Union: Question: What do you get when you take two world wars, add the two most malign ideologies of the century, throw in genocide, the collapse of religious institutions, radical secularism, a political elite sealed off from opinions it finds distasteful, spiraling social costs, deathbed demographics and growing numbers of an unassimilated immigrant population? Answer: You get Europe in the new millennium - mired in aggressive pacifism,...

Article Tools RSS Printer Friendly E-Mail This Page Discussions SOFIA: A US push to give special NATO partnerships to Australia and other Pacific-rim allies ran into trouble at a top-level meeting due to end Friday after European members voiced scepticism, diplomats said. The proposal would see Australia, New Zealand and possibly Japan and South Korea extended privileged status with NATO that would reflect their active role in some Alliance missions while stopping short of offering membership. Foreign ministers from the 26-nation Alliance discussed the issue, among other topics, at a conference in the Bulgarian capital Sofia that began Thursday. But...

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Morten Messerschmidt, a member of the Council of Europe and of Denmark's Parliament for the Danish People's Party. He is involved in the debate about the effects of Muslim immigration to Europe, Islam and terrorism. FP: Morten Messerschmidt, welcome to Frontpage Interview. Messerschmidt: Thanks. FP: Tell us the impact that Muslim immigration is having on Europe. Messerschmidt: We are seeing over the entire continent how the extreme groups of Islam are trying to impose their fundamentalist ideology, which has created awful results in the Middle East, to our part of the world. We see it...

Migrant workers 'boost UK growth' Migrant workers from Eastern Europe are providing a positive boost to Britain's economy, according to a report. New immigration has helped to keep inflation under control, boost output and raise tax revenue, research by Ernst & Young has suggested. Workers from Poland and Slovenia are among those "plugging gaps in a variety of industries", the report said. The UK is one of only three EU states to grant full labour rights to citizens from the 10 recent accession countries. The Ernst & Young Item Club Spring Forecast, which uses the Treasury's own forecasting model for...

Asia Rising Donald Rumsfeld infamously made a distinction between Old Europe and New Europe. He has been scored ever since for his sweeping and impolitic language, but he wasn't sweeping enough: In geopolitical terms, all of Europe is old, the world's most tourist-friendly museum piece. For the future of high-stakes U.S. diplomacy and of great-power politics, look no further than Chinese President Hu Jintao's visit to the U.S. It is Asia that should occupy an outsized place in our strategic thinking, and it is Europe that should be the relative afterthought, not the other way around. The media and foreign-policy...

Demographics may bring about what the Moors and Ottoman Empire couldn't: a Muslim Europe Anyone know where we can find some Etruscans? You know, members of the Etruscan civilization that existed in ancient Italy, predating even Rome? Well, there aren't any. The Etruscans were absorbed by the Roman civilization and ceased to exist as a distinct people. Ominously, if a growing number of experts and cultural observers are right, it's entirely possible that the same question may be asked 100 years from now -- only about Italians or Spaniards or Russians. As writer Mark Steyn glumly put it in The...

(AgapePress) -- Anyone know where we can find some Etruscans? You know, members of the Etruscan civilization that existed in ancient Italy, predating even Rome? Well, there aren't any. The Etruscans were absorbed by the Roman civilization and ceased to exist as a distinct people. Ominously, if a growing number of experts and cultural observers are right, it's entirely possible that the same question may be asked 100 years from now -- only about Italians or Spaniards or Russians. As writer Mark Steyn glumly put it in The New Criterion, "Much of what we loosely call the Western world will...

BELGRADE, 5 April - The Serbian State Prosecution Office for War Crimes has announced it will charge the Slovene nationals who murdered three Yugoslav National Army's (JNA) conscripts in 1991 with war crimes. The execution of the three soldiers is considered the first war crime in Former Yugoslavia. The murders took place at the Holmec border crossing, and were filmed by the Austrian ORF. Just a few weeks ago the state prosecutor in the Slovene capital Ljubljana brought charges against Mrs. Neka Miklavcic-Predan, the director of the Slovene chapter of the Helsinki Human Rights Group,for publicly referring to the murders...

've had a recurring experience in the last few months. I'll be reading some geopolitical tract like Sands Of Empire: Missionary Zeal, American Foreign Policy, and the Hazards Of Global Ambition by Robert W. Merry, and two-thirds of the way in I'll stumble across: "With the onset of the Iraq War and European opposition, many Americans embraced a severe anti-European attitude. 'To the list of polities destined to slip down the Eurinal of history,' wrote Mark Steyn in the Jewish World Review, 'we must add the European Union and France's Fifth Republic.' "

This latest attack targets a Slovenian friar and comes the same day the Vatican confirms Benedict XVI’s visit to Turkey, scheduled for November. Ankara (AsiaNews) – With the battle cry “we will kill you all” a group of youths launched themselves in attack on a Franciscan friar in Izmir (the ancient Smyrna). The attack took place within the confines of St. Helen’s parish. Speaking with evident emotion, Msgr Luigi Padovese, Apostolic Vicar of Anatolia, says “The boys grabbed him by the throat shouting “we will kill you all””. According to the bishop this latest aggression is “fruit of rampant fanaticism”....

MACDILL AIR FORCE BASE, Fla., Jan. 29, 2006 – For more than a year, Albanian army Maj. Ilirjan Balliu has served as the senior national representative for Albania with the 63-nation coalition organized to combat global terrorism. Shortly after his arrival to U.S. Central Command here, Balliu had breakfast with a U.S. military officer. As the two shared conversation and coffee, the U.S. officer revealed what was on his mind. "'If you would have told me years ago that I would have been sitting at a U.S. military base, eating and talking to an Albanian military officer, I wouldn't have...

According to People's Daily online, Serbian Assistant Minister of Energy and Mining Slobodan Sokolovic said that relevant ministries in Serbia, Croatia and Italy will be signing a memorandum of intent by mid-January in Rome, adding that Slovenia is expected to participate as well. Sokolovic said that an agreement would launch a company for the development of the oil pipeline project, whose primary task would be to work out all the needed studies and state accords. According to assessments, the building of the 1,500 km oil pipeline from the Romanian port of Constanza to Italy's Trieste would cost about two billion...

Not so long ago, American conservatives seemed to be converting the world to their ideas. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, country after country abandoned socialism for free markets, embracing such Reaganite themes as incentives, individualism, and responsibility. It looked as though the sun would never set on the friends of American conservatism. Yet today, American conservatives have never felt so alone. This is not a matter of how many people around the world like American conservatives, but of how many are like them. To be sure, many political movements don't have counterparts in other countries. But Europe and...

ZAGREB, Croatia (AP) - Heads of state from central and southeast Europe insisted Friday that European Union enlargement continue and include Turkey as well as the Balkan states that emerged from the bloody wars of the 1990s. Despite the 25-country bloc's difficulty in agreeing on common constitution, the EU must carry on to include Bulgaria and Romania by 2007, and eventually Croatia and Turkey, according to the 15 leaders attending a summit in Zagreb to discuss European integration and expansion. "The integration process ... has no alternative, and it must not be stopped or thrown in doubt," Croatian President Stipe...

ZAGREB, Croatia (AP): Croatian lawmakers on Thursday unanimously adopted a resolution condemning neighboring Slovenia over a border dispute. Parliament also backed the government's resolve to seek international arbitration over the issue, which is dividing the otherwise friendly nations. Tensions between the two former Yugoslav republics spilled over into a diplomatic furor after Slovenia's parliament on Tuesday passed a law declaring a patch of open water in the northern Adriatic a national ecological zone, also reserving for itself a host of other rights. Croatia reacted by branding the move an effort to annex Croatian territory. Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader said,...

After the 2000 elections, George W. Bush became president without a majority vote. Many Europeans snickered at the sorry spectacle of the world's oldest continuous democracy devolving into Third-World election chaos. Few critics cared to hear about the nature of America's two-century-old Electoral College.

The UN atomic watchdog adopted by vote Saturday an EU proposal that sets Iran up for referral to the UN Security Council, a spokesman said, in what would be a sharp escalation of the West's face-off with the Islamic Republic. The vote was by 22-1, with 12 abstentions on the 35-nation board of the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA spokesman Peter Rickwood told reporters.

SARAJEVO (Reuters) - Hamlet has become a Muslim prince at the Ottoman court in an adaptation of Shakespeare's tragedy which its Bosnian director says reflects the world after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. In possibly the biggest theater co-production the war-torn Balkans region has seen in some 20 years, Haris Pasovic is seeking to put "Hamlet" into a 21st Century setting. "One of the most important issues of the 21st century is the world's increased understanding of the Muslim issue following the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York," Pasovic, himself a Bosnian Muslim, told Reuters...

Qatar pledged $100 million in humanitarian assistance Saturday to help Americans recover from Hurricane Katrina, heading a list of more than a dozen countries joining an outpouring of support. They added to the more than 50 countries who had made pledges by the end of the day Friday. ``In these difficult circumstances, the people and the government of the state of Qatar would like to assure the people of the United States of its support and desire to assist the people in the affected area along the United States Gulf Coast,'' said a statement from the oil-rich Persian Gulf state's...

In an accelerating drive, more than 50 countries have pledged money or other assistance to help Americans recover from Hurricane Katrina. Cuba and Venezuela have offered to help despite differences with Washington. Oil giant Saudi Arabia and small countries like Sri Lanka and Dominica are among the nations making pledges. "I hope that will remind Americans that we are all part of the same community," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday as offers kept pouring in. None has been turned down, Rice said at a news conference, disputing a report from Moscow that a Russian offer had been rejected....

Europe's weather crisis eased on Thursday as fires were put out in Portugal and flood waters receded in central Europe, but the death toll rose in Romania and Austria after heavy rains. Since June, the flooding in central and eastern Europe has caused 103 deaths, while fires in drought-stricken Portugal, Spain and France killed 37, according to figures compiled by news agency AFP. Portuguese firefighters said on Thursday they had brought under control all blazes that have ravaged the centre and north of the country over the past two weeks, thanks to the arrival of cooler weather. A villager...

The new chasm between Europe and the United States seems to widen still — even as transatlantic diplomats assure us that it has narrowed — despite a common heritage and a supposedly shared goal of global democracy, free markets, and defeating terrorists. Europeans sell arms to autocratic China that will threaten democratic Taiwan. They legitimize the terrorists of Hamas and Hezbollah, and mostly caricature the American efforts at democratizing the Middle East. All this follows the past appeasement of Yasser Arafat, strife over the Kyoto protocols and the International Criminal Court, and the use of the United Nations to hamstring...

Responding to Islamist terrorism in Britain and elsewhere, Germany is considering introducing a Muslim public holiday. As Mathias Dopfner, chief executive of Axel Springer, put it: "A substantial fraction of Germany's government - and, if polls are to be believed, the German people - believe that creating an official state Muslim holiday will somehow spare us from the wrath of fanatical Islamists." Great. At least the 1930s' appeasers did it on their own time. But, in recasting appeasement as yet another paid day off, the new proposal cunningly manages to combine the worst instincts of the old Europe and the...

LJUBLJANA (Reuters) - Protesters began a hunger strike on Saturday to demand basic rights for thousands of nationals of former Yugoslav republics whom Slovenia struck from its records after declaring independence. Seven people began the hunger strike at Sentilj, on Slovenia's border crossing with Austria, in the second action of its kind by a group which calls itself "the erased" after the thousands Slovenia removed from its population records in 1992. They want Slovenia to give them the right of residence which in turn enables them to get jobs and health insurance. Slovenia, a prosperous Alpine state of 2 million...

My favourite headline last week was in the International Herald Tribune: "EU leaders and voters see paths diverge." Traditionally in free societies, when the paths of the leaders and the voters "diverge", it's the leaders who depart the scene. But apparently in the EU this is too vulgar and "Anglo-Saxon", and so the great permanent Eurocracy decided instead to offer up Euro-variations on Bertolt Brecht's jest about the need to elect a new people. Whatever the rejection of the European constitution means, it certainly doesn't mean the rejection of the European constitution. "I really believe the French and Dutch did...

A couple of days before Sunday’s referendum on the European constitution, Jean-Claude Juncker, the “president” of the European Union, let French and Dutch voters know how much he values their opinion: “If at the end of the ratification process, we do not manage to solve the problems, the countries that would have said ‘No,’ would have to ask themselves the question again,” “President” Juncker told the Belgian newspaper Le Soir. Got that? You have the right to vote, but only if you give the answer your rulers want you to give. But don’t worry, if you don’t, we’ll treat you...

The Eurofetishists can't seem to agree their line on this referendum business. On the one hand, the Guardian's headline writer was packing up and heading for the hills — "Europe is plunged into crisis" — and EU leaders warned that "Europe" might cease to function. Oh, come on. We won't get that lucky. On balance, Jean-Claude Juncker, the "president" of "Europe", seems closer to the mark in his now famous dismissal of the will of the people: "If it's a Yes, we will say 'on we go', and if it's a No we will say 'we continue'." And if it's...

WESTERN EUROPE It is likely Western Europe will slowly be Islamicized over the next two centuries, even in time the remoter areas like Norway, Ireland, and Portugal, as Muslim populations, through high birthrates and immigration, surpass the numbers of native Europeans. Only if the Muslims become more secular, in the manner of many Turkish Muslims, by several generations in Western Europe will that region avoid becoming Austro-stan, Belgo-stan, Holland-stan, etc. What might eventuate will be some sort of hybrid Euro-Middle Eastern culture, such as Albania and Bosnia have today. Both those nations, formerly purely European racially and at least nominally...

The Axis occupation of former Yugoslavia and the domestic reaction to it present a complex picture. The legacy of these experiences has still not been completely overcome. The German-led onslaught on the Kingdom of Yugoslavia began on 6 April 1941 and ended with that country's capitulation 11 days later. Known from 1918 to 1929 as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, the Serbian-dominated state did not make a serious effort to remove the sources of its main domestic problem, namely Croatian discontent, until 1939. In that year, the Belgrade authorities cut a deal with Vlado Macek of the Croatian...

KUMROVEC, Croatia (AFP) - Twenty-five years after the death of former Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito, the citizens of his shattered federation still cling to nostalgic memories of better days under his benign dictatorship. ADVERTISEMENT click here "We will never have such a nice life as we had with Tito. He appreciated all classes, notably the poor," said Josip Banjsak, 58, a guard at the Tito museum in his native village of Kumrovec, northwestern Croatia. "He was a simple man, ready to talk to everyone, but at the same he was really an exceptional personality." Tito died of old age...

Newcomers Reflect on a Year in the EU By ANDREA DUDIKOVA, Associated Press Writer ZAHORSKA VES, Slovakia - Day in and out, Frantisek Danihel steers his ferry back and forth over the slow-moving Morava River, linking what were two separate worlds only a year ago — the European Union and its aspiring members. On a formal level, the barriers dissolved on May 1, 2004, when Slovakia and nine other mostly former communist nations joined what they had long viewed as an exclusive Western club. Yet opinions are mixed among EU newcomers about how much they have gained from membership and...