Free Republic

MK Ahmed Tibi on Saturday night slammed Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman over his remarks following the Bedouin violent ‘Day of Rage’. "The audacity of a fascist immigrant who sits on land which he stole from its Arab owners,” Tibi charged, responding to Liberman’s remarks that the Bedouin had stolen state land and were controlling it by force. “The Bedouin in the Negev did steal any land and they did not come here either on a plane or by boat,” he added. In his comments following the violent protests in the Negev, Haifa, Samaria and Gaza, Liberman called for a new...

Bar Vanunu, Mayor of the Binyamin community of Adam, formerly known as Geva Binyamin and situated 4 kilometers northeast of Jerusalem, told Arutz Sheva the decision to allow Arabs to work land at the entrance to the community is "outrageous." "This is very disturbing to the residents and presents a security hazard," Vanunu said. "It is a plot by the left to steal our land on behalf of the Arabs. Not to be immodest, but if I had been mayor three years ago, this never would have happened." According to Vanunu, the Civil Administration sends soldiers with the Arabs every...

A county that originally paid $2 million for a tract of land it had seized to construct a park has been found guilty by a jury of greatly undervaluing the property and has been ordered to pay up to an additional $19.25 million to the developer the county seized it from. The jury decided unanimously that York County, Penn., should have paid developer Peter Alecxih Jr. a total of $17.25 million for land it took as part of an eminent domain seizure in 2004. With interest of up to $4 million, the $21.25 million price tag for the Highpoint parcel...

Land reform in South Africa is a key ANC policy but it is going badly wrong. Rosie Goldsmith, Reporter for Radio 4 Crossing Continents, met black claimants and white farmers who are caught in the struggle over land. Bernhard Mojapelo is university educated, with a good job in the city. But his main passion in life is for a vast stretch of barren rural scrubland. Thanks to South Africa's land reform, he and his tribe have been able to lodge a claim for it. "Land is a source of life," Bernhard says. "When we were dispossessed and driven away from...

Thu 25 May 2006 11:52 AM ET (Updates with U.N. statement, details) PRISTINA, Serbia and Montenegro, May 25 (Reuters) - U.N. police in Kosovo fired tear gas to disperse a crowd of ethnic Albanians who stoned a United Nations convoy escorting Serb defence lawyers in the west of the province on Thursday. Three U.N. police officers and one translator were wounded when villagers blocked a road and lobbed stones at vehicles escorting two Serb members of a defence team accredited to the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, a U.N. statement said. "Police then had to clear the crowd,...

Kosovo Prime Minister Agim Ceku has says independence for mostly ethnic-Albanian Kosovo of Serbia's government in Belgrade is near. "A great dream of independence is close and it is only months away," said Ceku Monday in his regular weekly address in Kosovo, Serbia's southern province whose population of 1.8 million is 90 percent ethnic-Albanian........

Western peace prevention continues in former Yugoslavia* PressInfo # 234 March 9, 2006 By Jan Oberg, TFF director If you believe that Western politics should serve as a model of decency, fairness and principled policies, consider these topical news from ex-Yugoslavia: • Kofi Annan's envoy on Kosovo, former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, tells Der Spiegel that Kosovo is heading for independence. In a tone that can only be characterized as arrogant, he tells the Serb side that they should know the rules of the game and know their own best interests. This simply means he is no mediator who listens...

07 March 2006, 11:46 Serbian hierarch: The problem of Kosovo could become a boomerang on a European scale Moscow, March 7, Interfax - Metropolitan Amfilohy of Montenegro and Primorje thinks that independence of Kosovo would entail negative consequences for the whole Europe. ‘The problem of Kosovo could become a boomerang on an European scale’, Serbian hierarch said in an interview published by Kommersant daily on Tuesday. First, ‘new problems would arise in the Balkans because of the incorrect solution of the problem of Kosovo’ (separation of Kosovo - IF). ‘A precedent would be created, and many people in Europe and...

In the talks about Kosovo's future, the former Yugoslavia is being treated as a carcass to be dissected by Western diplomats. by Philip Cunliffe This year promises to be a testing one for politics in the Balkans. Talks on the administrative devolution of Kosovo finished in Vienna earlier this week, between representatives of the Kosovo Albanians and the Serbian government. The talks, conducted under the aegis of the six-nation 'Contact Group' (composed of America, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Russia), are seen as stepping-stones to resolving the 'final status' of the province, since it was left in political and legal...

-- Giving the Kosovo region independence would encourage terrorism and jihadists inside Europe that rival al-Qaida, the bishop of Kosovo warned Saturday. Artemije Radosavljevic, who heads the Serbian Orthodox Church in Kosovo, spoke to more than 100 members of St. Sava Cathedral in Parma on Saturday afternoon. Though his visit featured typical gestures of goodwill and bonding -- traditional dances by the church's youth and a banquet of Serbian food like kielbasa and cabbage -- Bishop Artemije gave the crowd the same pleas that he is making in Pittsburgh and Chicago on his nearly two-week trip across the United States....

PRISTINA, Serbia and Montenegro (Reuters) - A senior British diplomat has told Serbs that independence is the best solution for the disputed Serbian province of Kosovo in talks due within days, Serb negotiators said on Tuesday. "[John] Sawers told us the Contact Group had decided Kosovo should be independent. He said Kosovo would be multi-ethnic, but in the end independent," Goran Bogdanovic, a Kosovo Serb, told Belgrade radio B92, after meeting the political director of the British Foreign Office late on Monday. A second Serb negotiator in Belgrade, who attended a meeting between Sawers and the Serbian prime minister on...

"We're accustomed to live here. We returned to our own house and we will accept whatever God has prepared for us," said Grandmother Momirka. She is one of 500 residents determined to stay in her home despite the hostile Albanian environment. Located between Djakovica, Decane, Prizren and Pec, Orahovac is one of the smallest Serb enclaves. The former small town with its own municipal assembly, court and secondary school has become a barbed wire-enclosed concentration camp for Serbs. Their freedom of movement is limited to a circumference of 500 meters. In order to go outside this they need an armed...

[This] article written for the [Bosnian Institute] website argues that Western politicians have been mistaken in accepting the notion that Kosova is 'an integral part of Serbia', so that Belgrade must necessarily be involved in discussions about Kosova's statusAs negotiations between Serbia and Kosova about the latter’s status are about to begin under UN auspices, one is prompted to pose the obvious question: ‘Why is Serbia involved at all?’ Or, to put it in another way: ‘Why do Western governments assume that the wishes of Kosova’s inhabitants are insufficient grounds for recognising its independence, and that such a step requires also Belgrade’s acquiescence?’Answers to such questions refer...

Do you know Nancy Pelosi? Her job is leading the Democratic Party in the House of Representatives. They should have asked for references. Here's her reaction to the Supreme Court's recent decision on "eminent domain": "It is a decision of the Supreme Court," said the minority leader. "So this is almost as if God has spoken." That's not the way Abraham Lincoln saw it: "If the policy of the government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court . . . the people will have ceased to be their own...

Eco-Logic / Powerhouse Commentary... Feds cooperate with U.N. programs to steal private property By Jennifer Foster June 1, 2005 I am reaching out for help for a lady who has become a very good friend of mine. She lives in the 1933 Ivanpah General Store, located in the East Mojave Desert. Her home happens to lie in the middle of the Mojave National Preserve, which is under management by National Park Service (NPS). NPS's crimes against the environment and human rights out there would be unbelievable - if my husband and I had not witnessed these crimes for ourselves. Connie...

GRANTS PASS -- Property rights advocates who complain they were blindsided by government restrictions on the use of their land filed claims for compensation or waivers early Thursday, putting to the test a new Oregon law that allows such claims. Dorothy English, 92, of Portland, and Gene and Barbara Prete of Sisters, who were part of the campaign that won voter approval of Measure 37 last month. They filed their Measure 37 claims Thursday morning with Multnomah County and Deschutes County, respectively. It was the first day such claims could be filed. "We're excited this day is finally coming," Gene...

They'd lost everything. Their home and property and everything else. It was all stolen by their own government for one reason. They were white. They got out with the clothes on their back, a small tapestry scarf and a piece of china. That's all they had to show for a lifetime of honest, hard work. Oh – they got out with something else. Their lives. And considering how many weren't so lucky, that was the most important. They emigrated to the United States with the dream of starting over.

Jarbidge Shovel Brigade members are planning a cross-country convoy to southern Florida this fall to support agricultural producers who say they are being swamped out by the federal government. The local brigade will team up with Klamath Bucket Brigade and volunteers from Ohio to lead a fund-raising auction similar to one that helped raise money for farmers in Oregon's Klamath Basin last year. Brigade members say the problem in Dade County is similar to those in Elko and Klamath because it involves placing the needs of endangered species above man's property rights. But Shovel Brigade attorney Grant Gerber said farmers...

Buried in an astounding amount of unconstitutional pork within the new Farm Bill (signed by President Bush May 13, 2002) is a key provision, the brainchild of Congressman Wayne T. Gilchrest, from Maryland’s 1st District. In the works for over two years, Gilchrest’s "project" would create the Delmarva (Delaware-Maryland-Virginia) Conservation Corridor(s). Ostensibly designed to "find a way to help sustain agriculture…and help guarantee the environmental integrity of the Delmarva Peninsula for generations to come", according to Gilchrest, "…the Secretary of Agriculture will be able to direct conservation funding on a priority basis to the most economically and ecologically valuable land...

By Tom Holt Between Sierra Club-style lobbyists for costly environmental regulation and property-rights advocates, do land trusts such as The Nature Conservancy, or TNC, offer a compromise "third way" - a means to achieve environmental goals using market-based mechanisms? Too many Republicans and free-market advocates have fooled themselves into believing so. Unfortunately, there is a huge gap between the market-based theory of land trusts and the reality of taxpayer and landowner abuses that occur routinely in land-trust practice. Land trusts, in theory, have appeal, if one disregards the significant fact that trusts exist to remove property from commerce. Trusts acquire,...