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BELGRADE -- Today marks the 16th anniversary since the beginning of Croatian army and police Operation Storm that led to the exodus of more than 200,000 Serbs from Croatia. Tadic and Krkobabic in attendance (Beta) Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC) Patriarch Irinej held a memorial service at St. Mark’s Church in downtown Belgrade for the victims of the 1995 military operation aimed against Serb areas of Croatia. The memorial service was attended by Serbian President Boris Tadic, Deputy Prime Minister in charge of refugee issues Jovan Krkobabic, and by other government officials. Representatives of more than 100 refugee and home clubs...

Aleksandra's Note: Today, July 17, 2011, marks the 65th anniversary of the death of General Dragoljub-Draza Mihailovich, Supreme Commander of the Yugoslav Army in the Homeland during WWII. Among the many honors of distinction that can be attributed to General Mihailovich is leader of the first organized and successful resistance to the Nazis in all of occupied Europe. The anniversary of a death can be marked in an infinite number of ways. On this day I've chosen to share the words of Mihailovich himself. It is my hope that those who aren't familiar with who General Mihailovich really was will...

The European Union and Croatia on Friday concluded accession negotiations and thus, the Balkan country will become the 28th Member State of the organization in 2013. "We concluded today that the accession negotiations with Croatia have reached their final stage," said Herman Van Rompuy, President of the European Council.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Top Senate Democrats and Republicans agreed Monday on a resolution backing limited U.S. involvement in the NATO-led military campaign against Libya, days after the expiration of the legal deadline for President Barack Obama to seek full-blown congressional authorization. Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., and Sen. John McCain, the top Republican on the Armed Services Committee, introduced the non-binding resolution along with five other Republicans and Democrats. (SNIP) Also backing the resolution were Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich.; Joe Lieberman, I-Conn.; Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga.; Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.; and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

Today, May 4, 2011 is the 31st anniversary of the death of Josip Broz Tito, the lifetime President of Yugoslavia. Some adore him, some hate him, some are disgusted by the very mention of his name nowadays. Yugoslavia was the country of my birth and childhood. This is what I have to say about it, now, from a distance. The good aspects of Communism were the following: free health care for all, free education for all, including University education, high respect for workers' rights (there was no way you could get fired - unless you did something really stupid, but...

"Real Heroes" 1942 "What Kind of Man is a Hero?"By George J. Hecht, President and Publisher "Real Heroes" Comics and Founder of "Parents Magazine""Does War make heroes? On first thought you say, 'Yes, of course, war makes heroes.' And in a way it is true. A great many famous men would never have been known as heroes if war had not brought them fame. But on the other hand, the uniform does not make the man. He has to have the stuff inside him, before he puts on that uniform....Most of the "Chetniks" in Mihailovich's growing army of guerrilla fighters...

The Krajina Chronicle By Srdja Trifkovic The Krajina Chronicle reviewed by Amb. James Bissett, Chairman of The Lord Byron Foundation for Balkan Studies.Srdja Trifkovic is no stranger to Chronicles readers, many of whom have found his articles commenting on foreign affairs, with particular attention to the Balkans, to be insightful, penetrating, and written with authority. His latest book, The Krajina Chronicle, provides further confirmation of his extraordinary talent. The book is a history of the Serbian warrior-farmers who formed the first line of defense against Islamic invasions into the Habsburg Empire. It is a story of heroism and tragedy that...

America’s population of white children, a majority now, will be in the minority during this decade, sooner than previously expected, according to a new report. The Census Bureau had originally forecast that 2023 would be the tipping point for the minority population under the age of 18. But rapid growth among Latinos, Asians and people of more than one race has pushed it earlier, to 2019, according to William Frey, the senior demographer at the Brookings Institution who wrote the report about the shift, which has far-reaching political and policy implications. The single largest increase was among Hispanics, whose birthrates...

America attacked Libya without provocation on March 19, 2011. America attacked Libya by the order of President Barack Obama. The President authorized this action based on authority of the United Nations. The President did not authorize this action based on either the Constitution or Federal law. America has conducted missile strikes, and air strikes, against Libyan military targets. These facts are not in contention.

Last Monday [March 21, 2011] marked the one-year anniversary of the death of Arthur “Jibby” Jibilian, the WWII O.S.S. radioman who risked his life in Operation Halyard to help rescue more than 500 U.S. pilots who were shot down over Yugoslavia. This was done with brave assistance from the Tuskegee Airmen. The operation was part of the largest WWII rescue from behind enemy lines, and since it couldn’t have happened without the Serbs, the story has been suppressed and remains largely unknown to Americans. Few people can boast Jibby’s patriotic credentials, yet when our fighting men and women were sent...

The justice or injustice of a cause may in large part be measured by the ethics displayed by those who uphold it. The ongoing campaign to whitewash the former regimes of Slobodan Milošević and Radovan Karadžić and to justify their genocidal crimes against the Bosniaks is about as unworthy a cause as it is possible to imagine; consequently, the people who wage it do so in the most dishonest and malicious manner possible. Their campaign is fundamentally an expression of hatred – for Bosniaks, Croats, Albanians, anti-fascist Serbs, Jews and others who opposed the genocide. So their tactics are of...

STANTON, Ky. — The arrest of a Croatian woman in small-town Kentucky for alleged war crimes two decades ago in the former Yugoslavia "brings her long run from justice to an end," a U.S. marshal said. U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert E. Wier ordered that Azra Basic, 52, be held without bond pending an April 1 status hearing and appointed her a lawyer. Prosecutors argued that no bail amount would guarantee Basic's presence in court. Federal agents arrested Basic on Tuesday. A complaint filed by U.S. Attorney James Arehart accuses Basic of committing crimes at three camps in the early 1990s...

To the Editor Edmonton Journal March 17, 2011 The letters of poet Goran Simic and history professor Srdja Pavlovic in the wake of Canada's deportation of Dr Srdja Trifkovic are rich in rhetoric, but anemic in factual content. Trifkovic is slammed with the pseudo-psychiatric smear "denial".When Hitler announced on 1 September 1939 that Germany had been attacked by Poland, the Poles denied it. That's not "denial". It is a secondary school teacher's job to purvey standard information. However a university professor's role is to train university students to be critical and to develop fresh information. For example, a search of...

The virus of the "Arab revolution" seems to be spreading to Europe. Mass anti-government demonstrations took place in Croatia; there were protesters' clashes with the police. Nationalist trace is visible in these events directly related to the outcome of the war in Yugoslavia 15-20 years ago. A rally with thousands of participants gathered in Zagreb on Tuesday. The participants demanded the resignation of Prime Minister, leader of the Conservative party Croatian Democratic Union Jadranka Kosor. The main opposition, Socialist Party, was not favored either as the protesters burned its flag in the same way as they have the Conservative banner....

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has warned the feuding ethnic factions in Bosnia and Herzegovina that if they did not resolve their differences, their country was in danger of missing its opportunity to join the European Union and NATO and become a vibrant part of the modern, democratic West. Unfortunately, there are few indications that her message will be heeded. The elections that took place shortly before Clinton’s visit once again confirmed that Bosnia is a fragile, artificial political entity with little prospect for improved viability. Most media accounts in the United States and Europe highlighted the victory of...

BELGRADE, Feb. 24 (Xinhua) -- After having torn apart their common former homeland during the bloody wars of secession during the 1990s, the armies of the former republics of Yugoslavia -- at least most of them -- are being united again as part of an international peacekeeping unit, reported Radio Sarajevo on Thursday. Meeting in the Montenegrin capital of Podgorica, military experts from the U.S.-Adriatic Charter discussed the prospect of soldiers from Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Slovenia, along with Albania, forming a joint unit of NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan. The unit's tentative name...

March 27, 1999: it was the fourth night of Operation Allied Force, the NATO bombing campaign against Serbia. The effort's initial phase had gone remarkably well; U.S. and allied aircraft had inflicted heavy damaged on Serb air defenses and other critical targets, without the loss of a single NATO aircraft. When the Serbs tried to fight back, they generally paid a high price; three of their MiG-29 Fulcrums had been shot down in the early hours of the conflict, and a number of surface-to-air missile (SAM) batterys had been knocked out of action as well. But the Serbs would soon...

Reading "Masters and Commanders," Andrew Roberts's magnificent account of British and American leaders in World War II, I was struck by how many of them, working prodigious hours and under great strain, were struck down by heart attacks while in their 60s. This doesn't happen anymore, I thought, with the blood pressure and cholesterol medicines many of us routinely take. But it does, as we were reminded by the sudden death at age 69 this week of Richard Holbrooke, who was working prodigiously as Barack Obama's special representative for AfPak, i.e., Afghanistan and Pakistan. Holbrooke was known in cynical Washington...

This week, the Globe and Mail asked General Lewis McKenzie (Retired) to write the obituary of American diplomat Richard Holbrooke. It was a good idea. The two men had crossed paths more than once on the global stage of the Great Game. McKenzie declined. Holbrooke had just died and the general knew that what he had to say would hardly produce the standard panegyric. When I caught up with McKenzie, he was shoveling snow after a spell away from home. I asked for an interview and to my surprise, he agreed. “I’m just going to tell you what I thought...

ABC News has learned that Richard Holbrooke, the US Special Representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, has died. On Friday, Holbrooke was rushed to the hospital with a torn aorta. He went through more than 20 hours of surgery. Earlier this evening, speaking at the US State Department, President Obama sang Holbrooke's praises and called him "a tough son of a gun." Holbrooke, 69, was a former ambassador to the United Nations and served as chief negotiator at the Dayton Peace Accords, which ended the war in Bosnia. The New Yorker's George Packer wrote a nice story about Holbrooke last year,...