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European papers are dismayed by Switzerland's popular vote to ban the building of minarets. Some fear it will backfire, sending the wrong signal to the Muslim world and setting a precedent for other parts of Europe. Several papers criticise the type of democracy practised in Switzerland, which allows ordinary people rather than elected representatives to decide on such matters. However, one popular Swiss tabloid defends the ban as a starting point for a debate on tolerance.

NOUAKCHOTT, Mauritania – Three Spanish aid workers were kidnapped by gunmen Sunday while delivering supplies to impoverished villages in the desert nation of Mauritania, a police official said. The two men and one woman were attacked while delivering supplies to villages along a 240-mile (400-kilometer) road that links the capital Nouakchott to Nouadhibou to the north, the official said. He asked that his name not be used because he was not authorized to speak to the media. (snip) Mauritania, once known as a predominantly moderate Muslim nation on Africa's western coast, has been rocked by back-to-back attacks by an al-Qaida...

Some of he facts for this article, and some of the legal conclusions, come from an article on 13 November, 2009, on Frontpage,com by David Horowitz, entitled “The Worst Decision by a US President in History.” The title alone makes clear that Mr. Horowitz sharply opposes President Obama’s decision to have alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammad and his confederates tried in federal court in New York City rather than before a military tribunal. The ACLU, and its ally, the pro-Castro, Center for Constitutional Rights, have praised Obama’s decision as “presenting American justice to the world.” Since the ACLU is...

Despite BOR's incessant interruptions, Lt Col Peters does a great job in setting the record straight on what this act of cowardice really was......the last minute is most powerful.

A white pupil was battered with a hammer at a school where politically correct teachers were afraid to deal with racial tensions, the High Court heard yesterday...

Whoever advised people to be skeptical of what they read in the papers must have had in mind this week's coverage of the documents about CIA interrogations. Now that we've had a chance to read the reports, it's clear the real story isn't the few cases of abuse played up by the media. The news is that the program was thoughtfully developed, carefully circumscribed, briefed to Congress, and yielded information crucial to disrupting al Qaeda. In other words, it worked—at least until politics got in the way. That's the essential judgment offered by former CIA Inspector General John Helgerson in...

Chechen fighters are claiming they used an anti-tank grenade to cause a deadly disaster at a dam in Siberia, a letter on a Russian rebel website has said. “Glory to Allah,

An Asian man who called police officers "white redneck hooligans" has been found guilty of making racist remarks.     Butt turned up at the scene on Parr Lane, Unsworth, Greater Manchester last year, shortly after his brother was taken away by police Hassan Butt, 29, also accused officers of acting "like the Gestapo" and asked them: "Why are you treating me like a Paki?"Butt, who once admitted having claimed he was a terrorist to make money from the media, was convicted of committing a racially aggravated public order offence by District Judge Diana Baker at Manchester Magistrates Court....

PJM reports exclusively on U.S. government participation in the convention of the Islamic Society of North America — a group with known ties to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. Pajamas Media has obtained a copy of the following internal email sent to Justice Department employees:..

On June 4, President Barack Obama declared, "I've come here to Cairo to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world." Awed by Obama's rhetoric, many commentators - blogger Juan Cole and MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann, for example - suggested that an "Obama Effect" could usher in a new era of hope and change in the Middle East, and a pro-American outcome in Lebanese elections earlier this month seemed to cooperate with the theory. After Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's reelection in Iran, we can now say with confidence: There is an Obama Effect, but it has less...

The recent convert to Islam who allegedly shot and killed a U.S. soldier at a Little Rock, Ark., recruiting booth had ties to a number of global locations linked to extremists, including Yemen, Somalia and Columbus, Ohio, ABC News has learned. Yemen and Somali are known hotbeds for terrorism. Columbus, Ohio, has been an area of domestic concern for authorities who have observed a number of Somali Americans traveling from there to Somali to wage jihad. Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, 24, upon his arrest Monday shortly after the fatal shooting, allegedly confessed and told authorities he acted alone, according to court...

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — A 23-year-old man upset about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan opened fire from his truck at two soldiers standing outside a military recruiting station here on Monday morning, killing one private and wounding another, the police said. The gunman, identified by the police as Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad of Little Rock, fled the scene and was arrested minutes later a short distance from the recruiting station, in a bustling suburban shopping center. The police confiscated a Russian-made SKS semiautomatic rifle, a .22-caliber rifle and a handgun from his black pickup truck. The two privates, who were...

Dramatic daylight terror raids on a university may have been linked to a plot to blow up a shopping centre or nightclub, police fear. Students at Liverpool John Moores University watched in shock yesterday as two men were hauled outside and forced to the ground by armed police.  Witnesses said the duo  -  students at the university's Business School  -  were wearing combat trousers and hiking jackets, and claimed there were rumours of 'a bomb' on the premises.  (edit) The raid was one of a series carried out simultaneously across the North-West in which 12 suspects believed to be...

COPENHAGEN — A Danish press freedom group said today it is selling copies of a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad that caused outrage across the Muslim World. Some 1,000 printed reproductions of a drawing depicting the prophet wearing a bomb-shaped turban are being sold for 1,400 kroner ($250) each, said Lars Hedegaard, chairman of the Danish Free Press Society.

SERBIANS marked the 10th anniversary of the start of a NATO blitz on the former federal republic of Yugoslavia on Tuesday with commemorations honouring over 3,000 victims. Air-raid sirens sounded at noon throughout the country, while schools opened classes with a minute's silence for the 89 children who were killed in the 78-day bombing campaign, which was initiated without UN security council backing. NATO claimed that it had launched Operation Allied Force in order to force then president Slobodan Milosevic to stop a military crackdown against Western-backed separatist insurgents in Kosovo province and pull out his troops. But the US...

The United States is issuing unusually strong criticism of NATO ally Spain by expressing surprise at its decision to pull out its troops from the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Kosovo. State Department spokesman Robert Wood says the United States was "deeply disappointed" by the decision. He says Washington only learned of the move shortly before Spain announced it publicly. Defense Minister Carme Chacon made the announcement Thursday, saying, "The mission has been completed and it is time to return home." Asked if the United States shared that assessment, Wood said, "Not at all."

Even before their conquest of Constantinople in 1453, Ottoman Turks referred to The City’s inhabitants as “Rum,” or “Romans.” In this, they were simply following the local practice: that’s how Constantinopolitan Christians referred to themselves, and continue to refer to themselves to this day. They knew themselves to be citizens of the Christian Roman Empire. They would never have heard of the word “Byzantine,” a term first used to describe the Eastern Roman Empire in the 16th century, and had you called them “Hellenes” or “Greeks” they would have felt affronted, thinking you were calling them pagans. No, they were...

Julia Gorin's unpublished letter to the Washington Times: The Washington Times recently gave print space to William Walker, described as a retired U.S. Foreign Service officer and former ambassador. But Walker is much more than that. In Kosovo, he remains a hands-on operative who has trained, and implemented the demands of, our terrorist ally the KLA — which as predicted now controls the Serbian province as its “legitimate” rulers. The piece (“A Separate Take from Serbia”, Feb. 24) was presented as a response to an op-ed by Serbian President Boris Tadic, when in fact it was an attempt by essentially...

As someone who often denounced the repression of the late Slobodan Milosevic, I do not minimize his responsibility for the 1999 conflict in the Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija. Nevertheless, William Walker's heaping of every foul claim human malice can concoct on Serbs collectively, even more than on Milosevic himself, is another matter ("A separate take from Serbia," Op-Ed, Feb. 24). I live in Kosovo and know firsthand what actually happened - and did not happen - during the NATO war against my country. Mr. Walker describes the terrorist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) as "a tiny band" fighting "systematic"...

Serbia's contest against secession sets a new Balkan standard A year ago today, a great disturbance with global implications was felt throughout the international system - the unilateral declaration of independence by the ethnic-Albanian authorities of Serbia's southern province of Kosovo. This blatant attempt at secession is in direct violation of United Nations Security Council resolution 1244 (1999), the U.N. Charter, and the Helsinki Final Act. As a result, a vast majority of U.N. member states, including many with multiethnic populations, have refused to recognize Kosovo's independence. At the time, we stated clearly that Serbia would never recognize Kosovo's unilateral...

February 16, 2009 – 7:15 pm A Kosovo Albanian from the city of Kacanik has been arrested in a cafe in the southern village of Strpce in Serbia’s province of Kosovo report police spokesman Arber Beka. The arrested Albanian wore a suicide vest loaded with explosives. He was arrested in the cafe called Kvatro around 8:00 pm today. Police and NATO troops have surrounded the perimeter and are investigating. The arrest came after a cafe patron spotted that one of the three Albanians who just walked into the cafe had wires under his jacket. The police was immediately called in...

The arrests and weeklong detention of two Coptic Christians at the Cairo International Book Fair on February 1 has reignited the seemingly endless tension that continues to grow between Christians and Muslims in Egypt. State security officials arrested Mina 'Adil Shawki and 'Issam Kadees Nassif after they were seen handing out Bibles at the book fair. An Egyptian human rights center said police filed a report against the two men for "defaming Islam." The men, from the Upper Egyptian governorate Assiut, were released from detention on February 5, but their case has many activists in an uproar over the perceived...

PRISTINA, Kosovo: The European Union's most ambitious police mission to date will take over the policing of Kosovo from the United Nations on Tuesday, after months of delay and protests on both sides of the ethnic divide. The force, known as EULEX, will have over 2,000 police and justice workers monitoring and advising Kosovo's authorities on tackling corruption and organized crime. "Kosovo is part of Europe and I think it's a duty for the EU to bring this help and this support to Kosovo," the head of the mission, Yves De Kermabon, told The Associated Press in an interview over...

A Russian church for a Saudi mosque? Belief Blog (View Blog) POSTED December 03 2008 12:11 PM BY Julia Duin This delightful story just came in thanks to getreligion.org: The Saudis have recently asked permission to build a mosque in Moscow, a city where there are only four mosques and 2 million Muslims. The Russians, however, are saying they want, in return, an Orthodox church in Saudi Arabia. As we all know, the Saudis have a habit of constructing mosques in dozens of world capitals while forbidding houses of worship for any religion whatsoever outside its Wahabist brand of Islam....

Armed Islamists will attack pirates, says militant Last Updated: Friday, November 21, 2008 | 3:08 PM ET A group of armed Islamist militants is reportedly headed to a Somali port Friday to attack pirates holding hostage a massive Saudi Arabian oil tanker.Ships belonging to Muslim countries should not be seized, Abdelghafar Musa, a fighter with the Islamist group al-Shabab, told the Associated Press. This undated picture taken at an unknown location shows the Saudi oil supertanker MV Sirius Star, which has been hijacked by Somali pirates. (Christian Duys/Associated Press)"We are really sorry to hear that the Saudi ship has...

Pristina. The Greek Foreign Minister Dora Bakoyanis has said that Greece would soon recognize the independence of Kosovo, the Serbian TV channel Studio B reports, citing Kosovo press. In an interview for the Albanian TV channel Vision Plus Bakoyannis has said that the exact date for the recognition is still not clear, but it would happen soon. According to the Minister the Kosovo problem was one of the oldest on the Balkans.

GORA -- Kosovo Albanian authorities have torn down a school built from the Serbian government funds in the Gora area. Beta news agency reported on Saturday that the school, financed by the National Investment Plan (NIP), was located in the village of Mlike, inhabited by one of the province's minorities, the Goranis. Gora municipal president Alija Abdi said that citizens unsuccessfully tried to prevent bulldozers, accompanied by KFOR soldiers and Kosovo Albanian inspectors, from demolishing the premises, including new toilets and an IT classroom. The justification for this act, Abdi said, was that the reconstruction and building works on the...

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...

Skip to comments.(reprise) DFU SONG: End of the Innocence (end of the legacy...blame Clinton for 9/11) DFU SONG PARODIES | 2001 | Lyrics, Doug from Upland Posted on 03/24/2004 9:45:53 PM PST by doug from upland MIDI - END OF THE INNOCENCE For several years they sang his song…he was a hero to their cause In denial many lived…he placed himself up above the laws He knew all of the right things to say…down through…hell and then back believers would goIn eight long years he's done to us…more damage than you know For his neglect we would finally pay...

Revealed: Saudi women preaching hate in the British mosque that promised to clean up its act 18 months ago Last updated at 00:41am on 31.08.08   Hardline female ‘preachers of hate’ are radicalising Muslim women at one of Britain’s top mosques.The Saudi Arabian preachers were secretly filmed ordering women to murder gays and ex-Muslims. Undercover reporters from Channel 4’s Dispatches recorded the lectures in the women’s section of Regent’s Park Mosque in London.An unnamed Saudi woman is seen mocking other religions – labelling Christianity ‘vile’ and an ‘abomination’. Another, known as ‘Angelique’, claims Britain is a ‘land of evil’....

The arrest of Radovan Karadzic in Serbia on Tuesday has provided yet another occasion for all the tired old propaganda about the Balkans wars to be taken out of the cupboard and given one last airing. In particular, the war is presented as one between a Serb aggressor and an innocent victim, the Bosnian Muslims, and the former is accused of practising genocide against the latter. Even if one accepts that crimes against humanity were committed during the Balkan wars, it should be obvious that both these claims are absurd. First, the Serbs were no more the aggressors in the...

Serbia's interior minister says officials found copies of Bosnian Serb government documents in the Belgrade apartment where former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic lived prior to his arrest last week. Ivica Dacic said the documents included materials on Bosnian Serb military staff meetings during the conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 1990s. He said officials turned the materials over to Serbia's war crimes court. Meanwhile, court officials say the court has not yet received Karadzic's appeal against a judicial order authorizing his extradition to the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague. Karadzic's lawyer, Svetozar Vujacic says he mailed out...

Yesterday I saw the World Net Daily article suggesting Islamofascist terrorist organizations, including the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, will be providing security for Obama in Palestinian territory. Tony Blair, in a recent trip to Israel, cancelled a trip into Palestinian territory because the Palestinians intended that arrangement for him.I did not blog this then because I tend to want other sources to back up what World Net Daily says. Today, I think it is safe to say the Obama campaign confirmed the story in an indirect way.Major Garrett reports there is some squabbling over Obama's speech in Berlin. Obama wants...

8 July 2008 | 16:36 | Source: Beta PRIŠTINA -- Representatives of civil society in Kosovo will start lobbying for Kosovo's recognition, write Priština media. Daily Koha Ditore claims that there is financial support from George Soros and the Kosovo Fund for Open Society: “The lobbying group will include Veton Suroi and Blerim Shala, the coordinator of the former Kosovo negotiating team, Luan Shllaku, the director of the Kosovo Fund for Open Society, and Muhamet Mustafa, the dean of the Reinvest University.� The group‘s work will be based on the plan and recommendations of former international envoy to Kosovo Martti...

S ixty prominent leaders from Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Qatar, and Iraq have supported development of closer ties with Kosovo and fast recognition of Kosovo independence by the Arab states. The conclusion came from the conference “Kosova and the Arab world� organized in Amman, Jordan, by the Al Quds Center for Political Studies and Forum 2015 from Prishtina. Speakers at the conference were Kosovo intellectuals like Veton Surroi, Muhamet Mustafa and Qemalj Morina, and influential intellectuals and civil society leaders from the Arab world. “Kosovo topic arose interest among the Arab participants at the conference, who saw it important to...

16 July 2008 Gjakova _ The UN authorities in Kosovo have pledged to hold talks with council officials in Gjakova after it emerged a park is being built over the remains of a Serbian Orthodox Church. Local Serb radio KIM found that the construction of the park in Gjakova (known in Serbian as Djakovica), an overwhelmingly ethnic Albanian town in western Kosovo, is now in its final stages. A metre of soil was placed on top of the church’s foundations and trees and flowers planted over it. Some 20 workers from the Bala construction company were finishing work at the...

Last update: 3:22 p.m. EDT July 17, 2008 GRACANICA, Serbia, July 17, 2008 /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ -- The following statement was issued today by His Grace ARTEMIJE, Bishop of Ras and Prizren, and pastor of Orthodox Christians in the Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija: "On July 21, President George W. Bush is scheduled to meet with Hashim Thaci, styled by some 'Prime Minister' of the separatist Albanian Muslim administration in the Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija. As pastor of the Orthodox Christian people of Kosovo, I protest to the fullest possible degree the fact that President Bush would...

The travel section of the paper featured a story on Kosovo the other day with a recommendation that readers visit this latest "must see" spot on the globe. It made me laugh. Almost forty years ago--1971 to be exact -- I traveled in what was then called Yugoslavia and is now called Kosovo. The memories of that trip remain so vivid and so utterly at odds with this report.

American Deputy Secretary of State John Bolton believes the United States committed a serious mistake when it recognized the independence of Kosovo. He fears such policy may escalate tensions in the Balkans. In an interview for the Russian news agency Interfax, Mr. Bolton remarked that Washington’s policy was on autopilot since the regime of the late Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic. But the situation has changed considerably after the democratic government took over, which, in Mr. Bolton’s opinion, makes support for Kosovo’s independence a pointless atavism.

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...

[JURIST] The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) [official website] announced Wednesday that it will prepare a report [press release] on allegations of organ trafficking in Kosovo. Former prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) Carla Del Ponte [BBC profile; JURIST news archive] has alleged in a new book [JURIST report] that about 300 Serbian and other non-Albanian prisoners were victims of organ trafficking during the 1998-1999 war in Kosovo, but that a 2003 probe by her ICTY team failed to obtain sufficient evidence to prosecute. In response, parliamentarians submitted a motion [text] in...

GRAFENWÖHR, Germany — Soldiers from 1st Battalion, 4th Infantry Regiment deployed to the Balkans earlier this year to provide Kosovo Forces with armored capabilities during Kosovo’s declaration of independence from Serbia, according to Army officials. Information on the deployment was kept under wraps until now because of the mission’s sensitivity. In the days following Kosovo’s declaration of independence, protesters marched in the northern city of Kosovska Mitrovica. Kosovo Force troops and U.N. police closed the border with Serbia after hearing that protesters were being bused to Mitrovica to join the protest. During the deployment 1-4 soldiers were manning Bradley fighting...

MOSCOW, June 23 (RIA Novosti) - Russia is not opposed to an EU mission replacing the UN force in Kosovo, but the move should have the formal backing of the UN Security Council and Serbia, a senior Russian diplomat said on Monday. "We are not opposed to the European Union taking on part of the responsibility for what is happening in Kosovo," Vladimir Chizhov, envoy to the European Communities, said adding a European mission should be approved by a UN Security Council resolution and Belgrade. Chizhov said UN Security Council Resolution 1244 was currently the only legal basis for an...

(UNITED NATIONS) - The United States on Friday defended UN chief Ban Ki-moon's plans to transfer some powers from the UN mission in Kosovo to the European Union despite opposition from Serbia and its ally Russia. US Ambassador to the UN Zalmay Khalilzad told the Security Council that Washington backed Ban's plan to reconfigure the UN mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) by transferring responsibilities in the areas of police, justice and customs to a EU mission. He told Ban that despite objections raised by Serbia and Russia, "You have to act. 1244 gives you that discretion," referring to the Security Council...

A group comprising survivors and relatives of the victims of the massacre in Srebrenica have called on a court in The Hague to lift the United Nations' immunity. The six thousand Bosnians want to bring charges against the UN and the Netherlands for their role in the fall of the Muslim enclave. But that can only happen if the judge in The Hague makes legal proceedings against the UN possible. The judge will consider the request and deliver a ruling in mid-July. The Muslim enclave in Srebrenica fell on 11 July 1995 into the hands of Bosnian Serb troops who...

The disconnect between what Democrats are saying about Iraq and what is actually happening there has reached grotesque proportions. Democrats won an exhilarating electoral victory in 2006 pledging withdrawal at a time when conditions in Iraq were dire and we were indeed losing the war. Two years later, when everything is changed, they continue to reflexively repeat their "narrative of defeat and retreat" (as Joe Lieberman so memorably called it) as if nothing has changed. It is a position so utterly untenable that John McCain must seize the opportunity and, contrary to conventional wisdom, make the Iraq War the central...

Synagogue walls daubed with anti-Jewish graffitiBenedict Moore-Bridger and Robert Mendick 15.05.08   Message of hate: a council worker cleaning anti-Israel graffiti off a wall in Stamford Hill   London's Jewish community has been targeted by a wave of anti-Semitic graffiti. Residents were today warned to look out for suspicious activity following the racist attack in north-east London. Vandals sprayed shops, pavements and walls outside four synagogues in Clapton Common and Stamford Hill on Tuesday night. Worshippers were yesterday confronted with slogans such as "Jihad to Israel" and "Jihad to Tel Aviv". Hackney council is removing the graffiti, which consisted...

Lee Smith laments that American Muslims have to read almost exclusively about scary Muslims and slightly less scary Muslims in the mainstream American media. “One can only sympathize with American Muslims,” he writes, those who may or may not be religious, but surely have no attachment to the obscurantist fanatics that drove them from the region, and must now be wondering what is wrong with the New York Times that the only Muslims that register with the paper of record are very scary ones, and less scary ones. I have noticed and been annoyed by this tendency myself, and it...

To see photos: please go to Bernard KouchnerInvolved in Albanian Organ Market Milijana Mitrovic was one of Carla del Ponte`s sources for information on death camps in which organs were taken from people, the Kurir daily writes. She claimed Albania is not only a Serbian “blue tomb”, but organs were taken from Romanians, Greeks, Montenegrins, Russians and Arabs as well. The very Albanian political top was in on it, along with KFOR and UNMIK representatives. Among other things, Mitrovic claimed that thanks to the fact she was close to an influential Albanian businessman, she had the opportunity to see the...

PRIŠTINA -- The Kosovo Albanian government will not investigate Carla Del Ponte's claims that Kosovo Serbs were kidnapped to have their organs removed. This was reported today in Priština by the Albanian language daily Express. The former chief Hague prosecutor, now Switzerland's ambassador to Argentina, wrote in her book "The Hunt" that she investigated allegations that after the end of the 1999 war in the province, some 300 Kosovo Serbs were kidnapped, transported to Albania, where they had their organs removed, after which they were killed and buried in mass graves. She also said the 2003 probe into the case...