Free Republic

It is certainly time that the West considered systematically whether it has irreconcilable differences with Islam. The belligerence of many Islamic spokesmen and the unassimilable quality of many Muslim immigrants in the West, as well as the spectacular terrorist provocations of extreme Islamic groups, make this a very legitimate question. But it is not so easy to answer. Some passages of the Koran, and some of Muhammad’s more purposeful remarks, certainly incite the inference that mortal conflict is inevitable, an impression heightened by the neurotic obsession of a great many Muslims with the red herring of Israel. It is hard...

Former President Bill Clinton declared his strong support for the Ground Zero mosque in an interview broadcast on September 12. As the author suggests in Chronicles Online, it is right and proper that he should: the bomber of Serbia and the prophet of Islam are remarkably similar in their moral principles and various other proclivities. Clinton suggested a clever new spin to the promoters of the project. Much or even most of the controversy, he said, “could have been avoided, and perhaps still can be, if the people who want to build the center were to simply say, We are...

“Conservative” Joseph DioGuardi’s “sensational” election as the GOP Senate candidate in New York has shaken up the Republican Party, gloats the Tropoja-based Albanian Minerals President M. Mujaj in the Wall Street Journal Blog. “The American people have spoken,” this self-styled compatriot of ours is telling us. “The American way of life needs to be rebalanced. Households need to stop spending what they don’t have. Local and state governments need to slash their budgets to live off whatever tax revenues they generate [...] The American people voted for change.” What Mr. Mujaj does not mention is that former Congressman DioGuardi is...

KABUL | Tue May 5, 2009 4:15pm IST KABUL (Reuters) - Bibles in Afghan languages sent to a U.S. soldier at a base in Afghanistan were confiscated and destroyed to ensure that troops did not breach regulations which forbid proselytising, a military spokeswoman said. The U.S. military has denied its soldiers tried to convert Afghans to Christianity, after Qatar-based Al Jazeera television showed soldiers at a bible class on a base with a stack of bibles translated into the local Pashto and Dari languages. "I can now confirm that the Bibles shown on Al Jazeera's clip were, in fact, collected...

Greece's problems did not start with Goldman-Sachs although Taki Theodoracopoulos on 18 February makes a good argument in "High Life, Goldman Sachs Turned The Greeks Into Crooks," in which he wrote: "Bravo Goldman Sachs. You've done it again. As in the U.S. subprime crisis, this house of ill repute created a deal which helped the Greeks obscure billions in debt from the budget overseers, then charged the Greeks hundreds of millions of Euros for helping them hide the debts." As tragic as World War II was for Greece, Greece faced an even greater threat as brothers were pitted against brothers...

Serbia continues to get the bulk of the blame from many in academic and media circles for today’s catastrophe in the Balkans. An example is Professor Staric in his recently published book entitled Confronting The Yugoslav Controversies. While attempting to appear even-handed, Prof. Staric clearly shows his anti-Serb bias with statements such as, “After Slovenia and Croatia, which were the most developed republics of the former Yugoslavia, had declared their independence on June 25, 1991, the Serbs did not like to lose their ‘cash cows’,” and “The Serbs (mainly) and Croats have clearly shown that they are unable to live...

The March 11, 2006 death of former Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic while in U.N. custody at The Hague was the tragic end to an unjust war and prosecution. The U.N. war crimes tribunal had tried unsuccessfully for four years to convict Milosevic. Since 2004, the health of the former Yugoslavian President had been in decline. For several months before his death, Milosevic claimed that he was being poisoned and requested a trip to Russia for medical treatment. Of course, all requests were denied by the U.N. A January blood test given to Milosevic showed traces of the rarely used antibiotic...

BAQOUBA, Iraq | The U.S. commander of the Multi-National Force -- Iraq on Tuesday ordered a top-to-bottom review of mental health services for U.S. troops in the country after the worst act of U.S. soldier-on-soldier violence in the Iraq war. Army Lt. Col. Brian Tribus, media relations chief for Multi-National Force - Iraq, told The Washington Times that Lt. Gen. Charles Jacoby ordered procedures "to look into [mental health] services available and delivery of those services." Gen. Jacoby also requested that the Army inspector general review all mental health services available to troops in Iraq, Col. Tribus said. Five U.S....

The crowning memorial at Ground Zero was supposed to be the "Freedom Tower," a glass tower stretching into the heavens and restoring New York's skyline and America's pride. Freedom Tower model by architect Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP. Last month the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey changed the name from Freedom Tower to "One World Trade Center." The explanation from Port Authority chairman Anthony Coscia was all about business, "As we market the building, we will insure that it is presented in the best possible way -- 1 World Trade Center is the address that we're using."...

On April, 4, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) marked its 60th jubilee. In Serbia, my home country, many people are doomed not to celebrate their 60th birthdays- they will die of cancer. In 1999 NATO bombed Serbia with depleted uranium bombs, which caused a cancer outbreak in the region. Serbia's soil, water and air will remain polluted for a few more decades, taking lives of hundreds of Serbs. There isn't a single word about it in NATO's official reports. One may read there about NATO's contribution to peace in Kosovo. 1 While NATO exists, there will exist such parallel...

Spanish prime minister Jose Luis Zapatero has reaffirmed that Spain will not recognise Kosovo as independent, newspapers in Kosovo and Serbia reported on March 10 2009. "Spain's position on the unilateral declaration of Kosovo's independence is known - it is non-recognition," Zapatero was quoted as saying by Kosovo daily Koha Ditore. "We have maintained this position and we will continue to do so in the future." Addressing a joint news conference on March 9, Serbian president Tadic said that his country would never recognise Kosovo, which unilaterally declared itself as independent in February 2008. "Serbia will not give up on...

The United States has reconfirmed its support for the new state of Kosovo and has promised to lobby for more recognitions, according to a report in Pristina daily Koha Ditore. The newspaper said that Kosovo leaders president Fatmir Sejdiu, prime minister Hashim Thaci and foreign minister Skender Hyseni were given these guarantees in a meeting on February 26 2009 with US secretary of state Hillary Clinton. "The US together with its European allies will continue to give its large and substantial support for the newest democracy in the world," Koha Ditore quoted Clinton as saying. "Support for Kosovo is coming...

The fate of the 14th-century abbey, one of the best-preserved medieval churches in the Balkans, has been darkened by ethnic violence. Time stands still within the Visoki Decani Monastery, nestled among chestnut groves at the foot of the Prokletije Mountains in western Kosovo. Declared a World Heritage Site in 2004, Unesco cited the 14th-century abbey as an irreplaceable treasure, a place where "traditions of Romanesque architecture meet artistic patterns of the Byzantine world." The Serbian Orthodox monastery represents, according to art historian Bratislav Pantelic, author of a book on Decani's architecture, "the largest and best-preserved medieval church in the entire...

The wars in the former Yugoslavia are not a field of study known for having spawned objective and dispassionate literature. Perhaps no topic is more controversial than the role of Al Qaeda in the Balkans in the 1990s. This much is known: Several thousand foreign mujahedin from the wider Islamic world fought on the Bosnian Army’s side during the 1992-1995 war, and Al Qaeda was closely involved in their transport and activities there. Almost everything else is highly contested. Sensational claims have been made that the Bosnian government itself was closely linked to Al Qaeda, and that Bosnia’s wartime president,...

Nietzsche is an atheist German philosopher who lived from 1844-1900 and together with others of the radical left of that time like Arthur Schopenhower created the intellectual atmosphere for Karl Marx and his Communist Manifesto. They called for changing society – but not to improve the life of people but to use them to gain power and keep it. He created the concept of "overman," the man stronger than others with the right to step over the weak, which attracted Hitler. The alternative to Marxism is not capitalism, as so many people believe. The only alternative is an answer to...

Thus, while Kosovo's status as part of Serbia is unquestionable, South Ossetia and Abkhazia can make a good case they were part of Soviet Georgia but never the current independent state of Georgia. (The same would apply to Transdniestria with respect to Moldova and Nagorno-Karabakh with respect to Azerbaijan. When will they follow suit?) In Kosovo, Washington sowed the wind, and now Georgia has reaped the whirlwind. Only a return to the negotiating table to address comprehensively Kosovo, South Ossetia, Abkhazia and similar trouble spots elsewhere can prevent this malignant precedent from spinning further out of control with incalculable consequences...

The West Begins to Doubt Georgian Leader Five weeks after the war in the Caucasus the mood is shifting against Georgian President Saakashvili. Some Western intelligence reports have undermined Tbilisi's version of events and there are now calls on both sides of the Atlantic for an independent investigation. But now, five weeks after the end of the war in the Caucasus, the winds have shifted in America. Even Washington is beginning to suspect that Saakashvili, a friend and ally, could in fact be a gambler -- someone who triggered the bloody five-day war and then told the West bold-faced lies....

Barack Obama, the Democratic Party’s candidate for US president, indulged in a campaign swing through Europe. His vice-presidential running partner, Joe Biden, if tempted to do the same, may as well avoid Belgrade. Memories run deep in the Balkans, but among Serbian nationalists, uppermost on their minds is that long-term senator and foreign policy committee figure Biden was strongly in favour of the 1990s bombing of Belgrade. Popular Serbian newspaper Blic reminded its readers on August 28 that Biden was one of those who proposed resolution on bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999. “He also believes that all changes in Serbia...

The secrets of the crushing of Yugoslavia are emerging, telling us more about how the modern world is policed. The former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia in The Hague, Carla Del Ponte, this year published her memoir, The Hunt: Me and War Criminals. Largely ignored in Britain, the book reveals unpalatable truths about the West's intervention in Kosovo, which has echoes in the Caucasus. The tribunal was set up and bankrolled principally by the United States. Del Ponte's role was to investigate the crimes committed as Yugoslavia was dismembered in the 1990s. She insisted that this...

American blunders fostered the situation, and now the United States will pay a high global price War became unavoidable in the Caucasus when Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili sent the country's military to "liberate" the autonomous region of South Ossetia from its Moscow-backed local authorities. While Georgia and Russia bear principal responsibility for a conflict that both have been courting for years, the United States also shares the blame. And now America's interests will suffer, not only in Georgia and the former Soviet Union but around the world. South Ossetia, Abkhazia, and even Georgia itself may seem like small and distant...