Free Republic

End the Criminal Israeli Siege of Gaza NOW! Stop the Collective Punishment of the Palestinian People! Coalition Calls for Emergency Protests Jan. 25-26 in Washington, San Francisco, Anaheim and other cities Washington DC: Friday, Jan. 25 (time tba), at the Israeli Embassy, 3514 International Dr. N.W. San Francisco, CA: Friday, Jan. 25, 4 6 p.m., Israeli Consulate, 456 Montgomery St. (near California) Anaheim, CA: Saturday, Jan. 26, 1 p.m. 512 S. Brookhurst St. (Bet. Orange Ave. & Broadway) New York, NY: Saturday, Jan. 26, 1 p.m., at the Israeli Embassy, 43rd St. and 2nd Ave. Chicago, IL: Tues., Jan. 29,...

"We were not preparing any terrorist acts, nor the murder of Mufti Muamer Zukorilić. It's a joke that we were planning to attack the Novi Pazar police station, we have families and children, what would we achieve with this, police would kill us and our children," he told a panel of judges. Hodžić also denied that he and others accused of plotting terror attacks were planning to strike at U.S. embassy in Belgrade, and Serbia's National Theater, also in the capital. "I swear on Allah, there are guys here, who, if you set them free now, wouldn't know how to...

Hashim Thaci, one-time guerrilla turned PM of Kosovo, has promised to break away from Serbia. It's independence, Jim, but not as we know it.Hashim Thaci, the former Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) guerrilla leader, has been formally installed as the prime minister of Kosovo. Ruling over a new coalition government, he has promised to declare the province’s independence from Serbia within weeks. The United States and Germany have agreed to recognise Kosovo, and to get the rest of Europe to follow suit. However, Kosovo’s long anticipated declaration of independence will not create an independent state. Rather, it confirms that Kosovo will...

The accused Muslim terrorists whose trial started today in Serbia refused to rise when the judge entered the courtroom and later declared that they "acknowledge only Allah" and accused the Serbian prosecution of submitting an indictment that looks like it was written by the US President George Bush. In the courtroom, the accused Muslims declared that Americans and Jews stood behind the 9/11 attacks and cursed both the Americans and Jews wishing that the Allah, the Muslim god, bring down damnation on the two peoples. "When 2001 the Americans and Jews, may Allah damn them until the judgment day, brought...

Note From Ravnagora: Though written over 60 years ago, this essay resonates today. Like so much of what was happening at that time, particularly with regards to the Serbs, the fate of General Draza Mihailovich should have served as a harbinger to those who would be in charge of world events and their consequences in the future. ******************** THE MYSTERY OF MIHAILOVICH By Donovan Touche “TRUTH” London December 27, 1946 Was General Mihailovich a great patriot, foully done to death, or was he a collaborator? That is the mystery of Mihailovich. I would not have presumed to intervene in this...

Serbia refuses to give up Kosovo—even if it means giving up its shot at entering the European Union.There's a dark joke going around Serbia these days: "Russia finished the cold war with America—so Serbia is carrying on with it." Given the hostile stance of the two former superpowers over Kosovo, the assessment may be close to the mark. This week Washington heads to the United Nations Security Council's debate on Kosovo, with most of Europe alongside it, pressing for independence. But Serbia's Parliament has overwhelmingly rejected any future EU-imposed mission in Kosovo, and stands with the support of Russia and...

As Kosovo goes, so goes northern Cyprus? That's the way the Turkish Cypriots see it. They can't see any distinction between the West's plans for a new "independent" state of Kosovo and the aspirations of Turkey for an independent Turkish Cyprus. It's just one more reason against the creation of a new state of Kosovo, where none has ever existed before. The real problem with these fanciful new "independent" states is that they are not independent at all. Both will be aligned with Islamic world, where freedom, individual liberties and respect for peaceful neighbors and non-Muslim minorities are virtually unknown...

BELGRADE -- The 125th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Belgrade and Washington comes at a difficult time. The anniversary marks the date on which King Milan Obrenovic; signed a decree, putting into effect the Trade Agreement and the Consular Convention between Serbia and the United States. The issue of the status of Kosovo, Serbia's southern province under international interim administration since the end of the 1999 war there, is at the center of serious misgivings between the two countries. Washington insists on supporting the province's independence, while Serbia's top state officials reject this, and issue sometimes strongly worded statements critical...

ext of report by Bosnian edition of Croatian daily Vecernji list, on 11 December Dzevad Galijasevic - a controversial politician, chairman of the New Democratic Party in Bosnia and Hercegovina, and former mayor of the Maglaj Municipality - recently presented in Belgrade his new book, "The Era of Terrorism in Bosnia and Hercegovina". This is the final book in a trilogy of sorts that talks about the arrival of mujahidin in Bosnia-Hercegovina, exposes the organizations that support them, and details illegal as well as legal activities they are involved in. Galijasevic holds the view that Alija Izetbegovic's Islamic Declaration laid...

Dec 28 2007 TWO Albanian pimps trafficked a young woman into the UK then repeatedly raped her and forced her to work in a Crawley brothel.The pair threatened to kill the Polish university student if she ran away.She was eventually rescued by police.Desperate to stop her testifying in the trial, the so-called "Albanian mafia" sent the 24-year-old harrowing messages, including pictures of a gravestone with her name and her sister's name carved on it. Stefan Berdufi, 38, from Redhill, and 20-year-old Agim Qosja, from Merstham, subjected the girl to a campaign of abuse. The victim, who can not be named...

Kosovo will declare its independence from Serbia any day now. Serbia, Russia and a handful of other states ardently oppose this decision, but that will not stop Kosovo from breaking away. This should make us wonder: How can such a minute little province act so boldly? A few days prior to this announcement Wolfgang Ischinger, the German diplomat responsible for representing the EU in its policy toward Kosovo, gave the world a glimpse of his vision of what Kosovo’s independence might look like. “It will be a state entity,” he said, “which will continue to be under broad international observation....

http://www.rts.co.yu/wupload/video/kraj-2612.ram Russian TV documentary. Unfortunatly dubbed in Serbian, but you can see how does life of Serbs on Kosovo looks like.

NATO commanders are now contemplating certain unfavorable scenarios that no one wanted to talk about 8 years ago when the war plans were still on the table and an exit strategy could have been forged. While diplomatic recognition can come as swiftly as the victors care to uncap their pens, real control on the ground will be a different matter. The geographic partitioning of Serbia, in this case, will look interestingly similar to another failed peace initiative: the treaty of Versailles and the disappearance of Weimar Germany. Firstly, there are simple strategic problems on the ground that will deny Kosovo...

the political consequences of a declaration of independence could be far reaching, says Dusan Reljic of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) in Berlin. "Any kind of unilateral declaration of independence by Kosovo violates international law," Reljic told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "And the UN and international law are going to be damaged by a unilateral declaration that is not opposed by the UN." "History does not stop the day the US recognizes the independence of Kosovo. A new phase, even more complicated phase might start," Reljic says. "We are not seeing any kind of endgame in the Balkans...

PRISTINA, Serbia (AFP) — A group of Kosovo Albanians [muslims] appealed Tuesday for donations after they ran out of money to build a statue of former US president Bill Clinton. "With this act we will express sympathy, love and respect to president Clinton," Agim Rexhepi, head of the Friends of America association, told reporters. The three-metre (10-foot) tall monument is still under construction in a studio in the city of Podujevo, 40 kilometres (25 miles) north of the Kosovan capital Pristina. "The main work that remained unfinished is casting the statue in bronze. It can only be done outside of...

WHILE most were asleep, we've walked to the brink of yet another war in the Balkans. Kosovo is a part of Serbia. That's a legal and political fact. It wants to break away and appears to have secured British and American agreement, but not, alas, the agreement of either Serbia, whose land it is, or Russia, which will veto any breakaway in the UN. The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) rules the roost and has said it will make a unilateral declaration of independence soon. The Serbs cannot allow Kosovo, sacred to their orthodox Christian heritage for 1000 years, to go...

Why We Should Oppose Independent Kosovo Fjordman - 12/8/2007 Hans Rustad runs Document.no, the largest independent weblog in my country. A recent post there contained criticism of me, and I have already answered some of it. However, Mr. Rustad also claimed that I support a revisionist view of the Balkan wars of the 1990s which is "just as factually wrong, immoral and politically dangerous as David Irving's Holocaust revisionism." I consider that statement to be too awful to ignore, and decided to write a reply in English. I have said repeatedly that I believe the Balkan wars were far more...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 5, 2007 – As negotiations on Kosovo’s “final status” are expected to reach a political stalemate Dec. 10, a top commander in NATO’s Kosovo Force said today his troops are prepared for any potential conflict in the breakaway province. The commander of Kosovo Force’s Multinational Task Force East said the mood in Kosovo is “anxious” days before talks led by the United States, the European Union and Russia are likely to end in disagreement. Provincial leaders of the 90-percent ethnic Albanian enclave in southern Serbia are expected to unilaterally declare Kosovo’s independence in January or February. “When the...

Tens of thousands of Serbs are preparing to flee the troubled Balkan province of Kosovo because of fears that the region is on the brink of a devastating war. Talks to find a political solution to the future of the region collapsed last week, eight years after Nato intervened to end violence that left more than 2,000 dead. With Kosovo's new Albanian-led administration poised to declare independence from Serbia, the old hatreds are resurfacing. Many Serbs - who account for less than 10 per cent of the population - are packing their bags, fearing a new wave of "ethnic cleansing"...

On December 10, the US-EU-Russian troika seeking a mutually acceptable settlement of the future status of Kosovo will make its report to the United Nations and to the world. Given the current position of the Russian government, it is unlikely that any agreement will be reached. If this is the case, I believe that further delay would be highly inadvisable. This process, which started far too late thanks to the neglect of the Bush Administration in its first term, has run its course. With Russia threatening to veto any arrangement submitted to the U.N. Security Council, we must be prepared...