Free Republic

The center of Skopje, the capital of North Macedonia, a Balkan country born just 33 years ago as an independent state, is awash in history. A statue of Alexander the Great looms over the central square. One of his father, Philip II of Macedon, towers above a nearby piazza atop an oversize pedestal. The city is also littered with tributes in bronze, stone and plaster to generations of other heroes from what the country sees as its glorious and very long history. The problem, though, is that most of the history on display is claimed by other countries. Present-day North...

PRISTINA -- On March 24, 1999, NATO launched Operation Allied Force, an aerial bombing campaign to expel Serbian troops from Kosovo. After 78 days, the air strikes ended on June 10 with the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1244, leading to the withdrawal of Yugoslav forces and the establishment of the UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo. The campaign -- aimed at stopping ethnic cleansing that resulted in more than 13,000 civilians killed during the Kosovo War, which took place from 1998-99 -- facilitated the return of more than 800,000 refugees to their homes. Twenty-five years later, Kosovars are...

With his calm voice and authoritative demeanor, Col. Douglas Macgregor gives the initial impression of a knowledgeable and dispassionate observer/analyst. Since the beginning of 2022, the Colonel, with an impeccable ‘American hero’ background has become the “go-to” analyst for many in the American conservative media, including Tucker Carlson. Carlson is a top professional and no doubt, has a decent-size crew of researchers even when not on Fox. Given these resources, it's inexplicable that he is charmed by Macgregor, who has not put a foot right in his analysis and predictions since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on...

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—Eva Edl turned 10 years old in a World War II-era death camp. She believes she may die in a United States prison. Charged by President Joe Biden’s Justice Department with violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, Edl faces up to 11 years in prison and $350,000 fines. She is about to turn 89 years old. “When I was indicted, I began to prepare to die there,” she said thoughtfully in a phone interview with The Daily Signal. “Right now, I am ambivalent. … I’m doing the best I can to get...

Did you feel it? Small, brief earthquake. A couple movements, pause, then shaking. One cat took notice. The other slept through it.

On this date in 1943, Slovenian student Lojze Grozde was executed by communist partisans. An ardent young Catholic, the 19-year-old Grozde was on his way from boarding school in Ljubljana in Italian-occupied Slovenia* to visit some relatives when he was stopped at a roadblock. Partisans who found the devotional book The Imitation of Christ on his person were a mite hostile, since the Holy See was not exactly at loggerheads with fascism. All of Yugoslavia had become one gigantic dirty war, and though individual Catholics might fall anywhere on the political spectrum, the institutional church did not shy from working...

[Make sure to read Daniel Greenfield’s contributions in Jamie Glazov’s new book: Barack Obama’s True Legacy: How He Transformed America.]After Biden’s withdrawal, the fighting ended in Afghanistan and moved into Europe.Even before the Taliban takeover, a massive traffic in migrants and drugs flowed over the ‘Balkan Route’ that took Afghans into Iran, Turkey and then Eastern Europe. One of the biggest holes in Europe’s armor was the former Yugoslavia, illegally invaded and partitioned by the Clinton administration, with a large Muslim population in Bosnia and heavy criminal organizations across the former republic that tie together the Russian mob, local gangs,...

NATO has condemned as "totally unacceptable" attacks by demonstrators in Kosovo that left some 25 of its peacekeepers injured. Police and NATO troops clashed with Serb protesters in the north where there has been unrest over the installation of ethnic Albanian mayors. Tear gas and stun grenades were used to deter protesters in Zvecan, after they tried to invade a government building. NATO soldiers also formed a security cordon around two other town halls... The NATO-led troops in Zvecan at first tried to separate protesters from the police, but later dispersed the crowd using shield and batons, AFP reported. Several...

(Video of the riot in the Kosovo region by the Serbian minority against Albanian rule the local police and US led KFOR troops getting beaten up)

NATO peacekeeping soldiers formed security cordons around three town halls in Kosovo on Monday as police clashed with Serb protesters, while Serbia's president put the army on the highest level of combat alert. The tense situation developed after ethnic Albanian mayors took office in northern Kosovo's Serb majority area after elections the Serbs boycotted. In Zvecan, one of the towns, Kosovo police - staffed by ethnic Albanians after Serbs quit the force last year - sprayed pepper gas to repel a crowd of Serbs who broke through a security barricade and tried to force their way into the municipality building,...

NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg called on Kosovo to tone down tensions with Serbia on Sunday, two days after clashes between Kosovan police and protesters who are opposed to Albanian mayors taking office in ethnic Serbian areas. Stoltenberg, the transatlantic military alliance's Norwegian secretary-general, said he had spoken to European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell about Kosovo and that Pristina and Belgrade must engage in the EU-led dialog. "Pristina must de-escalate & not take unilateral, destabilizing steps," Stoltenberg said in a tweet. Serbs, who form the majority of the population in Kosovo's northern region, do not accept its 2008 declaration...

There have been skirmishes between armed ethnic Serb protesters and Kosovo police. The reason is that a while ago, Kosovo ordered that drivers surrender Serbian-issued license plates and replace them with Kosovo plates. On Dec. 10, Serbs living in northern Kosovo started erecting barricades. Kosovo residents confronted them, and Kosovo police blocked the border checkpoints. A traffic jam ensued, and so did a small shootout, including the use of a stun grenade. The shooting has died down but the threats have mounted. A shootout over license plates may seem excessive, but this is the Balkans. It is a relatively small...

The situation in Kosovo is "on the brink of armed conflicts", Serbian prime minister Ana Brnabic said Wednesday, amid mounting tensions in former Belgrade province's volatile north. "We have to give our best, all of us together, to try to keep the peace. We are really on the brink of armed conflicts, thanks to unilateral moves from Pristina," Brnabic said during a meeting with Serbian NGOs. Ethnic Albanian-majority Kosovo declared independence in 2008, but Belgrade still does not recognise it and encourages the territory's Serbs to defy Pristina's authority. Hundreds of ethnic Serbs, outraged over the arrest of an ex-police...

Searchers have located the wrecks of five B-24 bombers that crashed into the Adriatic Sea during World War II, three of which are associated with 23 still-missing crew members. The search mission – conducted over a two-week period in August off the coast of Croatia – was a partnership between Project Recover and the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency. It was the culmination of a lengthy process of researching military records and obtaining needed permits from Croatia, Mark Moline, the mission leader and a cofounder of Project Recover, said in a phone interview Thursday. Along with the B-17, the B-24 Liberator...

Boris Malagurski is a Serbian-Canadian film director, producer, writer, political commentator, television host and activist, his films include the documentary series The Weight of Chains.

Accessible only by car via miles of winding, dusty Croatian roads, Gornja Siga – current population zero – is an unlikely testing ground for a plan to shape the world’s political future. It is a secluded area where verdant forest meets white sand on a western bank of the river Danube. The only signs of life are a single dilapidated building with a curious flag flying outside, pheasants, deer, the occasional wild boar, and eagles and falcons overhead. Yet last Monday the Eurosceptic Czech politician Vit Jedlicka and two other libertarians declared this 7 sq km of Serbo-Croat no-man’s-land the...

Nazi Arab: 1930s, 1940s & beyond Hitler was clear about his disdain for the Arab world, writing in Mein Kampf: "As a völkisch man, who appraises the value of men on a racial basis, I am prevented by mere knowledge of the racial inferiority of these so-called 'oppressed nations' from linking the destiny of my own people with theirs".[1] And the Grand Mufti al-Husseini has said "that after the Jews, the Germans would destroy the Arabs— he knew this."[46]In the 1930s, Arab students returning from studying in Europe were determined to found the Arab Nazi party.[2]In February, 1932, the predominat...

A charity named after Winston Churchill has provoked fury by rebranding itself amid concerns over his views on race. The Winston Churchill Memorial Trust has removed pictures of the wartime leader from its website and is changing its name to the Churchill Fellowship. Volunteers at the trust said it was 'rewriting history'. One told The Sun: 'He was voted, by the people, as the Greatest Briton in a BBC poll in 2002 but is now erased from his own charity by the woke brigade. ... ...Controversies surrounding his rule include whether he could have acted more decisively to prevent the...

PODGORICA, Montenegro (AP) — Montenegro has registered the first same-sex partnership in the staunchly conservative country that is striving to join the European Union, authorities said Sunday. The announcement is seen as a major step forward for the LGBT community in Montenegro, which has suffered harassment and isolation in the past. The strongly patriarchal nation last year passed a law allowing same-sex partnerships as part of reforms needed to move closer to EU membership. Government Minister Tamara Srzentic says she is proud that the law has been used. “Today is an important day for the LGBTQ community in Montenegro,” Srzentic...

In his first appearance before the Hague-based Kosovo Specialist Chambers on Monday, former leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army turned top politician Hashim Thaci rejected charges accusing him of wartime crimes.“I read them and I do not agree with any of them,” said Thaci, who stepped down as Kosovo’s president last week before he was sent to The Hague for trial.“The indictment is completely without basis and I plead not guilty,” he added.Thaci’s defence lawyer David Hooper complained to the presiding judge that the defence team received late notice of the indictment.He also noted that allegations of organ-harvesting made by...