Free Republic

WASHINGTON, Dec. 22, 2008 – The number of daily attacks in Iraq has dropped nearly 95 percent since last year, a U.S. military official said yesterday. Iraq suffered an average of 180 attacks per day this time last year. But over the past week, the average number was 10, Army Brig. Gen. David G. Perkins, a Multinational Force Iraq spokesman, said. “This is a dramatic improvement of safety throughout the country,” Perkins told reporters during a wide-ranging news conference in Baghdad yesterday. He added that the country’s murder rates have dropped below levels that existed before the start of American...

How low will they go?? As low as laser blinding Greek Police: "A riot policeman is aimed at with a laser light pointer during riots outside the Athens Polytechnic. Small bands of Greek rioters hurling firebombs attacked an environment ministry building, shops and banks in Athens on Saturday during an eighth day of protests following the killing of a teenager by police." And that's not all: "A warning from Serb intelligence about the mobilization of an extremist Islamic organization in Greece has put the Greek authorities on high alert. Several days ago, Serb intelligence briefed a Serb parliamentary Committee that...

LAWRENCEVILLE, N.J., Dec. 5, 2008 – The New Jersey National Guard is celebrating the 15th anniversary of its alliance with the republic of Albania through the State Partnership Program. The State Partnership Program, launched by the National Guard Bureau and the U.S. State Department in the 1990s, was started to foster alliances between U.S. states and former Soviet countries, officials said. Soldiers and airmen with the New Jersey National Guard have worked with their counterparts in Albania since 1993 to modernize the former communist nation’s defense forces and prepare it for membership in NATO. Albania is scheduled to join...

NAJAF, Iraq, Sept 30 (Reuters) - In the holy Iraqi Shi'ite city of Najaf, Iranian tourists throng the streets, speak to shopkeepers in Farsi and pay in Iranian money. Farsi chants blare from speakers at a nearby shrine. The scene would probably horrify both the United States and Iraq's Sunni Arab neighbours, who suspect Shi'ite non-Arab Iran of nefarious and subversive influence in Arab lands. Even some of Najaf's citizens are wary of Iranian leverage. But the city, a centre of religious and political power in Shi'ite-majority Iraq, benefits from Iranian tourism and aid. The uniforms of rubbish men sport...

The youngest state in Europe, Kosovo, is known for its majority Muslim population that is only episodically observant, likes very much beer and the local grappa called raki, and is extravagantly fond of the US. Commentators like to call this particular brand of religion "Islam-lite," and favourably compare the "good Muslims" that it breeds with other Muslims who fall for fundamentalism. How long this state of affairs will last is debatable nowadays. The reason is not that the jihadists are taking over, as a vicious and unrelenting propaganda spearheaded by Serb nationalists intimates. On the contrary, it looks like Islam...

Albania's government said on Friday it was looking into the sudden death of an arms industry figure who was helping prosecutors investigate a weapons sale to the United States and an explosion that killed 26 people. Television pictures showed businessman Kosta Trebicka, his head covered in blood, sprawled on his back on a dirt road in a remote area of eastern Albania, where he had been hunting. His off-road car was nearby, and appeared to be damaged.

Link only, AP.

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain has enjoyed strong support from a lobbyist group that backs the Kosovo Liberation Army despite allegations the KLA is a Muslim terrorist group with ties to criminal drug networks and al-Qaida. The Albanian American Civic League, or AACL, regards the KLA as "freedom fighters," said the AACL's president, former Republican congressman Joe DioGuardi of New York. They're "not terrorist, like the Serbs and Greeks say," DioGuardi insisted in an interview with WND. But Islam expert Robert Spencer, editor of the popular website Jihad Watch, contends radical Islam is the driving force behind the Kosovo...

It's a centuries-old tradition, but even modern-day Albania is still plagued by blood feuds. Thousands in the country don't leave their homes for fear of falling victim to revenge murders....

On February 17, 2008, Kosovo declared independence from Serbia. Some are concerned about what NATO, the United Nations, and the European Union have nurtured there since the military and humanitarian intervention in 1999. James Jatras, a U.S.-based advocate for the Serbian Orthodox Community, put it bluntly last year when he said Kosovo was a “a beachhead into the rest of Europe” for “radical Muslims” and “terrorist elements.” It’s an assertion without evidence. “We’ve been here for so long,” said United States Army Sergeant Zachary Gore in Eastern Kosovo, “and not seen any evidence of it, that we’ve reached the assumption...

WASHINGTON — An American ambassador helped cover up the illegal Chinese origins of ammunition that a Pentagon contractor bought to supply Afghan security forces, according to testimony gathered by Congressional investigators. A military attaché has told the investigators that the United States ambassador to Albania endorsed a plan by the Albanian defense minister to hide several boxes of Chinese ammunition from a visiting reporter. The ammunition was being repackaged to disguise its origins and shipped from Albania to Afghanistan by a Miami Beach arms-dealing company. The ambassador, John L. Withers II, met with the defense minister, Fatmir Mediu, hours before...

PRIŠTINA -- A movement whose goal is the unification of "all Albanian territories" was founded in Priština today. The organization, dubbed Movement for Unification, also appointed Avni Klinaku as president. "The main goal of this party is the unification of Albanian territories into one country and the resolution of the social problems of the citizens of Kosovo," Klinaku told the founding assembly. Klinaku was also the founder of the National Movement for the Liberation of Kosovo, an organization which was one of the founders of the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA.

What Serbia's election says about the European Union's enlargement A BRITISH tabloid set a high standard for bombast when it once took credit for the re-election of a Tory government with the headline: “It's The Sun Wot Won It”. This week European Union leaders were taking credit for another election upset: the unexpected success of the pro-European coalition led by the Serbian president, Boris Tadic, in the general election on May 11th. The Serbs had “clearly chosen Europe,” said the French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner. Jan Marinus Wiersma, a Dutch member of the European Parliament, declared that the election was...

MOSCOW — The United States Army has begun a broad review of procedures used to supply security forces in Afghanistan and Iraq with foreign arms, prompted by an allegation of fraud and questions about the competence of the main private supplier of ammunition to Afghanistan. The company, AEY Inc. of Miami Beach, was suspended last month after Army investigators accused it of shipping aged Chinese rifle cartridges and claiming they were Hungarian. The Army decided to review its contracting procedures as several arms-industry officials said that long before the suspension, it was clear the Army had erred by not recognizing...

Cindy McCain's hair is a mess. An icy wind whips through it as she tromps across hillsides still slick from snow on the Albanian border, wearing well-worn hiking boots and carrying her Prada purse. She's looking out at mine fields and visiting schools where children must thread their way around left-over munitions. One headmaster told her he uncovered a cluster bomb when he had gone out to plant a tree. At another school, the principal said that work on a new sports field was halted when workers found more than a dozen unexploded bombs.

LAREDO, Texas — An immigrant smuggler who was leading authorities on a high-speed chase when his SUV slammed into a steel post in a wreck that killed five passengers was sentenced to 30 years in prison, officials said Tuesday. There is no possibility of parole for Fernando Lemus-Gonzalez, 33, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Texas. In February 2007 Border Patrol agents tried to stop Lemus-Gonzalez on suspicion of smuggling illegal immigrants. He led authorities on a chase through Hebbronville before losing control of the SUV and hitting the post. Five of the nine illegal...

BELGRADE- The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has released a new report that the axis between South American drug cartels and the Albanian mafia have reached "alarming proportions". According to reports by several intelligence agencies, Kosovo is a distribution center on the crossroads of global routes and pathways of drug trafficking. “This represents reason for concern, primarily because of the new pathways of drug trafficking, and inclusion of cocaine in the range of products offered by the groups that are active along the Balkan drug route.... The Albanian mafia has recently begun taking over the control of...

At the end of The Pickwick Papers, Samuel Pickwick decides to retire. He had founded the Pickwick Club in order to mix “with different varieties and shades of human character … Nearly the whole of my previous life having been devoted to business and the pursuit of wealth.” His curiosity satisfied at last, he declares the club dissolved. The Pickwick Club then ceases to exist. This is an unusual turn of events in human affairs. Clubs, societies, organizations, leagues, and alliances, once born, rarely die other than by violence. An uncle of mine was a pillar of a club called...

For Immediate ReleaseOffice of the Press SecretaryApril 5, 2008 President's Radio Address   President's Radio Address  Audio  En Español       In Focus: NATOTHE PRESIDENT: Good morning. I'm speaking to you from Europe, where I attended the NATO summit and witnessed the hopeful progress of the continent's youngest democracies. The summit was held in Romania, one of the 10 liberated nations that have joined the ranks of NATO since the end of the Cold War. After decades of tyranny and oppression, today Romania is an important member of an international alliance dedicated to liberty, and it is setting a bold example for other...

Former Chief Prosecutor at the International Court of Justice in the Hague has given details of suspected atrocities by ethnic Albanians in Kosovo in 1999. Carla Del Ponte's book 'The Hunt: Me and War crimes' claims that before killing Serbs and members of other ethnic communities, Kosovo Albanians removed their organs to sell for transplants. According to Del Ponte, a one-time prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, the kidnapped Serbs were given a medical test. Those who passed were treated well, fed and looked after until they were brought under the surgeon’s knife. From several concentration...