Free Republic

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called on opposition lawmakers in Kosovo on Wednesday to stop setting off tear gas in parliament, and on the young country to combat corruption, Islamic radicalism and ethnic division. In the Balkans for the first time as secretary of state, Kerry's brief stop in Kosovo underscored Western concern over the slow pace of progress 16 years after a U.S.-led NATO air war set the former Serbian province on the road to independence.

Many companies and business publish internal newsletters or magazines, and America’s intelligence services are no different. The CIA runs the pulpy fount of weirdness that is Studies in Intelligence while the NSA puts out the Cryptologic Quarterly. The agencies often declassify and digitize back issues of these magazines for the public. The articles are a wealth of weird, wonderful and fascinating takes on historic and current events written by people who have access to secret information not privy to the public. A recently declassified article from a 2000 issue of Cryptologic Quarterly is a doozy.

Serbia is this Wednesday marking a day of remembrance for the Serbs who were killed or exiled in the wars during the 1990s.A convoy of ethnic Serb refugees expelled from Croatia 20 yearsa ago (Tanjug, file) The government also declared today a day of mourning for the victims of Croatia's Operation Storm that took place 20 years ago and resulted in the expulsion of over 200,000 Serbs, while more than 2,000 were listed as killed or missing. A memorial service for the victims in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina will be held in St. Marko's Church in Belgrade. At noon, bells will...

Croatia's Operation Storm was a joint criminal enterprise whose goal was to expel the Serb people in Croatia from the areas they lived in for centuries.This has been stated by the head of the Coalition of Refugee Associations Miodrag Linta. He spoke for Serbia's state broadcaster RTS on the occasion of the upcoming 20th anniversary of Croatia's military and police campaign. Linta said that over 220,000 Serbs were expelled from Croatia during Operation Storm, while around 2,000 were killed - 1,200 of them civilians. At the same time more than 40,000 residential and business premises owned by Serbs were set...

Portrait of General Mihailovich by Wisconsin artist Jim Pollard. JUSTICE PREVAILS EVEN IN DEATH - A VICTORIOUS VINDICATION FOR GENERAL DRAZA MIHAILOVICH! On May 14, 2015 what so many of us have been hoping and praying for all these years finally came to pass! As the world marked the 70th anniversary of the end of World War Two, one of the war's greatest heroes and martyrs was officially rehabilitated by the Higher Court in Belgrade, Serbia! The historic decision was final, reversing one of the most unjust convictions in the history of mankind, and restored all civil rights to Serbian...

The U.N. Security Council delayed a vote on a British-drafted resolution that would condemn the 1995 massacre at Srebrenica during the Bosnian war as “a crime of genocide” until Wednesday after Russia informed council members it would veto the measure. Supporters of the resolution had been hoping for its unanimous approval to mark the 20th anniversary of the slaughter by Bosnian Serbs of some 8,000 Muslim men and boys who had sought refuge at what was supposed to be a U.N.-protected site. But leaders of the Bosnian Serbs and Serbia, who have close religious and cultural ties to Russia, have...

According to Italian media reports, the Vatican congregation concluded June 24 that the alleged Marian apparitions are inauthentic, but recognized the site as a place of prayer.If reports in Italian media outlets are to be believed, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith met June 24 to discuss the alleged Marian apparitions in Medjugorje, reaching the conclusion that they are inauthentic, but recognizing the site as a place of prayer. On Thursday, Vatican watcher Gianluca Barile wrote that, “for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in fact, the ‘apparitions’ do not have any supernatural character; therefore,...

And you thought Sidney Blumenthal was shady. Few people have heard of Cody Shearer, the unsanctioned diplomat, private eye, and Clinton flunky whose name surfaced in connection with the so-called intelligence reports Sidney Blumenthal was channeling to Hillary Clinton during her time at the State Department. But this shadowy fixture of the Clinton machine was everywhere in the 1990s — including war-torn Bosnia, where he became the subject of a State Department investigation after he represented himself as an agent of the U.S. government and took cash from a genocidal warlord. Now evidence suggests Shearer, working with his partner Blumenthal,...

(Aug 2, 2012) POLISH officials have unveiled a statue of former President Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II, honouring two men widely credited in this Eastern European country with helping to topple communism 23 years ago. The statue was unveiled in Gdansk, the birthplace of Lech Walesa's Solidarity movement, in the presence of about 120 former Solidarity activists, many of whom were imprisoned in the 1980s for their roles in organising or taking part in strikes against the communist regime. The bronze statue, erected in the lush seaside President Ronald Reagan Park, is a slightly larger-than-life rendering of the...

Soviet Communism, the dark tyranny that controlled nearly 40 nations and was responsible for the deaths of an estimated 100 million victims during the 20th century, suddenly collapsed 20 years ago without a shot being fired. In just two years--from 1989 to 1991--the Berlin Wall fell, the Soviet Union disintegrated, and Marxism- Leninism was dumped unceremoniously on the ash heap of history. There was dancing in the street and champagne toasts on top of the Brandenburg Gate. For 40 years, the United States and the West had been following a policy of containment, détente, accommodation. Ronald Reagan decided it was...

Kristen Martin recalls her time as an intern for Bernie Sanders, in a contribution to the left's discussion of Sanders' campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.TO THOSE who have spent any significant amount of time in Vermont, it is clear that Bernie Sanders is widely beloved by his constituents. The support for "Bernie," as his supporters fondly call him, was clear on May 26 as thousands flocked to Sanders' presidential campaign kickoff rally on the edge of Lake Champlain in Burlington, Vermont. The "People's Assembly," organized by a group including former Occupy Wall Street activists and environmentalists, spoke to a...

The new report issued Monday is the first to tackle LGBT rights since Jordanian Prince Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein was named U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, called for all countries to provide legal protections for same sex couples and their children in a report issued Monday. Hussein stopped short of recommending countries to call those protections “marriage,” but the report suggested that whatever these partnerships are called, they should make all the same protections available to same-sex couples. “States should address discrimination by: …. Providing legal recognition...

Aleksandra's Note: In full disclosure, I have not read this book, FATHERLAND, by Nina Bunjevac. This post is about a challenge to the contents of this book that was first published in 2014, and is now available in several languages. The book includes illustrations by the author who is also a graphic artist. "Fatherland", which tells the tragic story of a Serbian family's struggle after WWII changed their homeland forever, has received a number of favorable reviews that can be found by searching the internet, as can the summary of the contents. The following brief summary is found on Amazon:...

WHAT IS OWED TO THE SERBS. One of those moments you never forget: Before the dawn on March 25, 1999, I stepped outside the door to find The New York Times there on the ground with the headline announcing that NATO had begun its bombing campaign against the Serbs in the former Yugoslavia on March 24, 1999. I remember looking at that front page of the paper before picking it up and thinking - "They are really doing it. It's no longer a threat. It's real. It's real. What a mistake. What a mistake." Then I picked up the paper...

Leaving Kosovo: Exodus of young people as frustration soars By Guy De Launey BBC News, Kosovo 22 March 2015 From the section Europe "We are like two million birds in one cage, but we are hoping for a better life" The scene in Mitrovica's 7 Arte Cafe seems convivial enough. Fairy lights twinkle, a mixture of Albanian and English-language hits play over the sound system and the 20-somethings gathered around the tables regularly break into laughter. But the joviality papers over a grim reality for these young people. Kosovo may have unilaterally declared independence from Serbia seven years ago, but...

The Crimean Peninsula "is of huge importance for the Russian nation, just as the Temple Mountain is for people of Jewish faith," Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday in an attempt to defend Russia' annexation of the formerly Ukrainian region. .... "The west wanted to run Yugoslavian scenario in Russia. Just as Hitler failed to destroy Russia with his misanthropic ideas, everybody should just remember how these things end. Our army crushed the Nazis and liberated Europe," Putin said Continuing with his World War Two analogy, Putin said that there was also a need to cooperate to prevent such large...

Credit: Dark Prayers by Trey Ratcliff via Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)  What do good people do when unspeakable evil is forced upon them?The entire course of Sister Lucy Vertrusc’s life was upended when she answered this question. A nun in the war-torn former Yugoslavia, Sr. Vertrusc and two of her fellow religious sisters were raped by Serbian soldiers in 1995. Soon after, Sister Lucy Vertrusc found that she was pregnant.In a heartrending letter to her Mother Superior, the young sister explains her difficulty of understanding the violent incident as part of the plan of a God she always knew to...

Many believe the world is run by a secret organization like the Illuminati, and the people we think are in power are nothing but stooges. It sounds implausible, but is it really a crazy idea? Yes. Yes, it is. And yet there have been secret organizations that created the world as we know it. 10The Carbonari After Napoleon’s defeat in 1814, the European powers had to decide what to do with the territory that he’d ruled as part of the First French Empire. The borders of Europe were redrawn at the Congress of Vienna, mainly decided by Great Britain, Russia,...

NATO's anti-Russian political rhetoric has surpassed the propaganda of the times of the aggression against Yugoslavia, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Thursday. In recent time, NATO issued some publications, in which the Alliance tried to present causes of the crisis in Europe in its usual tendentious manner, traditionally shifting responsibility to Russia, the ministry noted. Russia not afraid of NATO expansion - Putin Russia never evaded cooperation with the North Atlantic Alliance, proposing to build it on the basis of equality. "Despite disagreements (NATO expansion, deployment of missile defense systems and the alliance’s non-compliance with international laws), Russia during...

The Yugoslav Army Headquarters building hasn't been rebuilt after being damaged by cruises missiles in April 1999 during NATO's bombing of Serbia over Kosovo. Belgrade (AFP Photo) Exactly 15 years ago, on March 24, NATO began its 78-day bombing of Yugoslavia. The alliance bypassed the UN under a “humanitarian” pretext, launching aggression that claimed hundreds of civilian lives and caused a much larger catastrophe than it averted. Years on, Serbia still bears deep scars of the NATO bombings which, as the alliance put it, were aimed at “preventing instability spreading” in Kosovo. Questions remain on the very legality of the...