List of confiscated Bosnian Wahhabi contraband

During the raid on the Bosnian Muslim Wahhabi village of Gornja Maoca, authorities have confiscated following that they plan to use as evidence against this Islamic extremist group:

18 pistols
7 shotguns
30 rounds for pistols
8 hand grenades
21 knives
1 sword
936 pieces of ammunition
3 sets of weapon cleaners
20 military uniforms
32 parts of military items
47 radios
70 cell phones
19 cell cards
1,478 DVDs, CD and diskettes
421 audio and video cassettes
40 laptops
4 cameras
6 battery powered lights
2 stamps
34,565 EUROs
2,480 Bosnian marks
25,000 Australian dollars

Authorities have spent 134,000 Bosnian marks or about $93,000 on arresting these Wahhabis.

Folks in the field say that the authorities are dispatching agents across Bosnia to talk to imams and have them list all Bosnian Muslim locals suspected of being sympathetic to the Wahhabis.

The cabinet of Bosnian Muslim Community’s chief Imam Mustafa Ceric has issued an appeal to the imams not to cooperate with these agents saying that the “Imams are nowadays targets of intelligence services. They have to be aware of the attempts to recruit them, set them up and attack them. Us, the Imams, we have to protect ourselves,” said Muharem Hasanbegovic who is Ceric’s chief of staff.

Hasanbegovic says that Bosnia has, at least, 3 secret police structures and many internationals that are procuring information about them.

Meanwhile, the official Bosnian Muslim Community that is led by the office of the Reis-ul-ulema (leader of the faithful) is gripped by the attempts of the extremist Imams, with whom the Wahhabis sympathize, to wrest the leadership for themselves.

Current Reis-ul-ulema, Ceric, aims to become Reis-ul-ulema of Europe so once he achieves that, extremists that congregate around Muhamed Porca in Vienna plan to seize power from him. Wahhabis, who are in a rapid expansion across the Balkans, are Porca’s natural base.

The desire to anoint the Bosnian Imam with the European Islamic leadership is one of the driving forces behind the constant mythological carping of some sort of an alleged Srebrenica genocide of Muslims so that European Muslims would happen to have, even though mythological, but their own desperately sought Islamic Holocaust.

Comments Off

Bosnian Croats plan referendum on secession?

Bosnian Croat leader Leo Plockinic said that Bosnian Croat parties are planning to separate themselves from the domineering Bosnian Muslims by holding a referendum on secession from the Bosnian Federation report Serbian media.

“The referendum will not be held if the Bosniaks accept a peaceful decision of Bosnian Federation into two entities,” said Plockinic and is quoted by news agency Tanjug.

Bosnia itself is divided into two entities: the Bosnian Serb Republic and the Bosnian Federation. The Federation is a splice of Croats and Muslims, but the Croatians have been fleeing this entity and their numbers are reducing.

Plockinic is a leader of an ostensibly NGO called Croatia Liberatas. Plockinic was a target of an assassination in December of 2009 when it was discovered that the bolts on his car’s left wheel have been loosened up.

Plockinic accused Bosnian Muslim secret service AID that was created by the Islamist government in the 1990s that was supported by the US.

Comments Off

Survey: Who hates Serbs the most

83.2% of Kosovo Albanians hate Serbs. 50.4% Croats and 47.2% Albanians in Albania also hate Serbs.

These are some of the conclusion reached by a Gullup poll conducted by the Balkan Monitor that is available here.

74.2% of Kosovo Albanians and 70.5% Albanians in Albania support formation of a Greater Albania that is to incorporate lands violently conquered by Albanians from Montenegro, Serbia, Macedonia and Greece.

47.3% of Kosovo Albanians and 39.5% of Albanians in Albania believe that the formation of Greater Albania is inevitable in a very near future.

This belief also implies that more violent ethnic cleansing of non Albanians is believed to soon ensue. Click on the map on the left for a larger photo of the Greater Albania map.

63.8% of Serbs in Serbia said that they will never recognize Kosovo.

69.1% of Montenegrins view Serbia as a friend; 54.8% in Macedonia view Serbia as a friend followed by 44.3% in Bosnia. Only 6.9% of Croatians view Serbia as a friend.

Comments Off

Pope assassin wants to live in Croatia

Turkish assassin who shot and wounded Pope John Paul II on May 13, 1981 wants to live in Croatia and write a new Bible. Mehmet Ali Agca told the Croatian daily Vecernji that he would love to live in Croatia because it a “Catholic country”.

Spain and Italy have rejected Agca’s request for asylum because he is a terrorist.

Croatia has not declared its intentions on the asylum of Agca.

Photo: Mehmet Ali Agca being released.

Comments Off

Croatia: NAZI graffiti on WWII monument

A monument to the fighters killed by NAZI forces in the WWII has been spray painted with a Swastika and the traditional Croatian NAZI symbol “U” for Ustasha. Ustashas ran several death camps in Croatia in WWII where they killed hundreds of thousands of Serbs and Jews.

This is the second time that this particular monument, near the city of Osijek, has been spray pained with the Croatian NAZI insignia.

Police said that they are seeking the perpetrators.

The monument, bellow, says “Memorial mark to Osijek’s anti-fascists shot 1941 to 1945″

Comments Off

US to anoint new Montenegro leader

Montenegro’s Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic is visiting Washington in order to get an approval for his political successor, says Deutsche Welle.

Leader of Montenegro opposition Movement for Change, Koca Pavlovic, says that Washington told Djukanovic that he must step aside but, Deutsche Welle adds, in order for Washington to even consider hearing Djukanovic’s requests, Milo had to establish diplomatic ties with Kosovo Albanians.

Having input on who will be his successor is important to Djukanovic because he needs someone who will not extradite him to Italy where an anti-Mafia case against him is frozen.

In 2007, Bari-based prosecutors “named Djukanovic as the boss of an enterprise from 1994 to 2002, consisting firstly of mafia members from Puglia, southern Italy, and two Swiss businessmen.” In April 2009 “Italian organized crime prosecutors asked a court in Bari to suspend charges against Montengrin Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic” which, obviously, can reopen anytime if Djukanovic is not sufficiently servile.

Now, it is unclear how much influence Washington had on this suspension but, from a perspective of controlling US interests in the region, Djukanovic’s legal problems in Italy are a wonderful leverage gifted to a large power against a regional, insignificant chieftain of some utility seeking to save his skin and his ill-gotten money. It was rather easy for Washington to press “this button” and ups! there it is: Montenegro recognized Kosovo.

Deutsche Welle says that Djukanovic vows to pressure Bosnian Serbs and, we all presume, get them to accept Muslim domination. This vow, perhaps, was the immunity button.

In Washington, Djukanovic will see Biden and H. Clinton and Deutsche Welle says that he paid lots of money to lobbyists to arrange for that meeting.

Deutsche Welle says that Washington will be careful as to whom they will anoint as a new Montenegro leader but a (psycho)analysis of available bodies already exists and it is clear that the anointed one will have less international criminal baggage who will deepen relations with Albanians in Kosovo then sign visa-free travel with Albania, join Croatia in military threats on Bosnian Serbs and, above all, use all means, large and small, to increase tension with Serbia.

Comments Off

Terrorist Jackal served YU communists

Carlos the Jackal, who is serving a life in prison in France, is set to publish a book, and in it, sources in Bosnia say, the famed terrorist will spill some secret high level diplomatic beans and one among them is his vacation in Dubrovnik, Split and Zagreb, all in Croatia and apparently the favored spot for world’s notorious figures of the likes of Carlos the Jackal and Osama bin Laden whom Carlos glorifies.

Newspaper Slobodna Bosna claims that it got hold of excerpts of the Jackals memoirs from which they quote:

I enjoyed and relaxed in Dubrovnik, Split and Zagreb until German informants and the French found out where I am. They begun pressuring the Yugoslavs so in September 1976 they arrested me in the Zagreb hotel Esplanada with a fake Algerian passport… When Tito heard that they captured me, he immediately ordered they let me go and to secure me a run to a country of my choosing. Despite heavy pressure from France and Germany, Tito never admitted that I visited and was arrested in Yugoslavia, and all the documents related to that were destroyed.

This episode that Slobodna Bosna claims to be such a bean-spilling event has, however, already been reported by the likes of Patrick Bellamy from the TruTV channel that specialize in true-life sensationalism. Writes Bellamy:

In September 1976, Carlos and Klein flew to Belgrade and spent three weeks holidaying in Yugoslavia. Their movements came to the attention of West German intelligence that in turn notified Belgrade’s National Security Council demanding that Carlos and his accomplice be arrested and extradited back to Germany. The NSC complied and arrested both men. When Carlos was taken into custody he was in possession of an Algerian diplomatic passport issued under a false name.After just four days in custody, Carlos was released by order of Marshall Tito because Tito did not want the political embarrassment of having Carlos in Belgrade because French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing was due to arrive for an official visit. When the United States and German governments criticized Tito’s decision they were told that there was no evidence to indicate that Carlos had ever been in Yugoslavia. Meanwhile Carlos and Klein had been put on a plane to be taken to Baghdad via Damascus. When the plane arrived in Damascus, they were refused permission to take off again. Being unarmed, Carlos believed that he and Klein would be shot if they left the plane. Their fears were confirmed when armed secret service police posing as cleaning staff tried to board the aircraft but failed to gain access when the pilot informed them that the plane constituted foreign territory.

Bellamy goes even further:

Five hours of intense negotiations followed during which the “cleaners” loosened the plane’s wheels to prevent it taking off. Only after the intervention of two Yugoslav diplomats was the plane released and allowed to fly to Baghdad where the terrorists were supplied with free accommodation, bodyguards and a chauffeured limousine. Carlos stayed in Iraq for three weeks but was in constant fear of reprisals, especially when he learned that Saudi Arabia had put a million dollar bounty on him.

Other parts Slobodna Bosna claims to have seen do manage to add some new things though.

For example, Jackal’s secretary was a “Yugoslav Krista Margo-Frolic” who went by the name of Margaret Stadil Man. Jackal dispatched her to Belgrade in 1982 on a “secret mission” and the communist secret service, Jackal is quoted as claiming, gave Margo-Frolic and orange Opel loaded with explosives and weapons. Jackal was quoted as saying that the communist spies helped her drive the car to France where the stuff was used to kill 2 and wound 63 in Paris on April 22.

Then few more revelations on the cozy relationship Yugoslav communist secret service held with the terrorist:

“On August 25, 1983, also with the help of the Yugoslav secret service, I planted explosive in the residency of the French Consulate in Bonn. After the action I moved from the east to the west Berlin with a falsified Yemeni passport in a vehicle with Yugoslav license plates with a Yugoslav driver called Bojan,” Slobodna Bosna quotes the soon to be published Jackal’s text and cross-references it with a letter a former Yugoslav spy by the name of Hafizovic wrote that was intercepted by the East German Stasi.

The paper then quotes former Yugoslav spy Bozidar Bozo Spasic who claims that the entire former Yugoslavia was an open field where the Jackal and various Palestinian terrorists mingled freely. He says that the YU secret service cut a deal with the Jackal that if arrested, these terrorists would not be extradited to the countries where they were sought but to places like Egypt, Algeria or Libya. In exchange, the Jackal promised no terror attacks on Yugoslavia.

Spasic says that the Yugoslav secret service engaged the Jackal during the Sarajevo Winter Olympiad in 1984 and asked him to tame down the Croatian Ustashe terrorist.

Spasic says that the YU spies got credible evidence that Croatian Ustashe from Karlsruhe and Nurnberg were planning attacks in Sarajevo and Carlos sent out his men to quash the threat.

Spasic says that after that “favor” the Jackal never came back to the former Yugoslavia.

Comments Off

Who in Serbia wants NATO membership

No political party inside the current ruling coalition in Serbia opposes NATO membership but their ambiguity on the issue is deliberate in order to, says Belgrade political analyst Dejan Vuk Stankovic, allow the opposition to “vent” so that, once the venting gets done with, a “serious debate” (read: pro-NATO propaganda) can occur.

G17 Plus, Social Democrats, Social Democrat League of Vojvodina, Union of Vojvodina Hungarians and Serbian Renewal Movement are openly pro-NATO each emphasizing their own reasons why membership would be beneficial.

G17 Plus, whose roots are made up of academic economists, uses cost-benefit approach and says that a “ledger” can be made of the costs associated with Serbia’s current military neutrality versus benefits that can accrue both financially and militarily.

The Hungarian Party argues that NATO membership is, above all, a political act and that it is hypocritical to be an EU member but not a member of the alliance that occupies it.

While Tadic’s Democratic Party political party appears split on the issue with Jeremic for strict neutrality and Sutanovac pro NATO – it is tactfully buying time until the UN resolves the status issue of Kosovo, which they are alluding will be favorable and lead to new status talks.

Meanwhile, Sutanovac keeps publicly rubbing an “inconsistency” in Serbian policy between the publicly popular friendship with Greece, Romania and Spain (all NATO members) and the opposition to NATO that is also publicly popular.

Serbian Socialists, the party once despised by Washington, is neutral on the NATO issue but the leader of the party, Ivica Dacic, has been invited to Washington for the Breakfast Prayer with Obama so his views on NATO membership may soon change.

Meanwhile, Serbia’s publicists are urging a referendum on the issue as a way to codify the predominant negative feeling Serbs have about NATO.

Russia has said that it is willing to respect Serbia’s decision on the issue one way or another and, to the disappointment of those who look to Moscow, Russia is not interested in extending its customs union offer to Serbia. Moreover, the case of Montenegro clearly illustrates that Kremlin is as happy to own Montenegro’s assets while NATO gets more ports on the Adriatic. Russia may even be content to give up its Balkan peons in order to tear the real figure away from NATOs chessboard – Turkey: | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |.

To win the hearts of the Serbian public, NATO may want to do something drastic in favor of Serbs and the most opportune field is in Kosovo.

Then again, there is no need for that because, as history suggests, Balkans is ideologically extremely versatile playground: every big power was able to find its soul mate and use it to exterminate the other ethnic community.

Comments Off

Osama bin Laden visited Croatia, report

Osama bin Laden stayed in Croatia for days in the 1980s says Croatian daily newspaper Vecernji.hr.

The then 29-year old Osama was part of a 3-men delegation that came to Zagreb, Croatia, seeking to purchase weapons for the Afghan fighters.

Vecernji.hr cites a document by the Yugoslav Federal Department of Commerce from 1986 that was a classified document marked as a “military secret”.

The document’s Notes section describes that Osama bin Laden arrived in Croatia on October 25, 1986 along with Fathi Muhammed Ali, Afghan mujahedeen representative, Osman Kaldirim, an ethnic Turk from the US. The men were accompanied by Yugoslav-born Zorica Ridjesic and Milica Karadzoglu. Karadzoglu was married to a Turkish national. Aleksandar Markovic, representative of the Yugoslav export company Genex, was also part of the crowd.

Yugoslav military Colonel Stankovic ordered that the men be first debriefed. Lieutenant Colonel’s Jovanovic and Jurisic interrogated the three visitors.

Vecernji.hr says that Osama and the men said that they had $100 million to spend and that besides conventional weapons they also wanted to buy poison.

The report says that Osama had talks with bankers at the Zagreb-office of Beobanka. It is unclear how much money he deposited there but the report says that the negotiations after the deposit quickened up.

Vecernji.hr says that Osama then flew to Belgrade where he asked the Yugoslav communist politicians for help in the fight against the Russians; that Osama visited the weapons factory in Capljina and wanted to buy poison that was produced in the Potoci factory near Mostar.

After reviewing his requests, the communists decided not to sell him the poison because Yugoslavia had a policy that poison is sold only to governments.

Vecernji reminds that in 1992 bin Laden created a “humanitarian” organization in Croatia, Al-Kifah, located in the street Krizni Put 105 and that the organization was ran by the Algerian national Kamr Ad Din Khirbani who lived in Vila Velebit 5, Zagreb.

Khirbani then moved to Bosnia, then Albania and became the chief suspect in the attack on the US assets in Rome.

Comments Off

Bosnia new Nazi graffiti urges Serb killing

“Knife, Swastika, Banjaluka” is the latest Bosnian outburst of Nazi-love in the Muslim dominated Sarajevo that clearly associates the instruments of death (knife) with an ideology Muslims allied with in the WWII (Nazi) and the administrative capitol of Bosnian Serbs (Banja Luka).

The graffiti also conveniently appeared on the eve of the Serbian Orthodox Christmas, January 6.

Just above the Swastika, the authors left some poetry in which they lyricize of how Serbs were once a penis but now are testicles… topped off with their traditional Sieg Heil.

The Bosnian Muslim police say that the graffiti was written on the Dutch-donated trolley and that they are searching for the culprits but arresting them does not mean that they have arrested the nostalgic Nazi emotion that the Bosnian Muslim society is rebuilding.

Comments Off

Serbs invited for prayer breakfast with Obama

News agency BETA says that the US Embassy in Belgrade has confirmed that following individuals from Serbia have been invited to the annual Prayer Breakfast with the President:

- Interior Minister Ivica Dacic, Socialist from Milosevic’s party

- Rasim Ljajic, Muslim politician from Raska region that resigned recently (over Mladic he claims)

- Vuk Draskovic, leader of Serbian Renewal Movement and former Foreign Minister

- Vlajko Senic, official from the G17 party

Dacic’s invitation is the first one for an official from Milosevic’s party. Socialists were generally banned from visiting the US. Dacic did not state whether he will go to the US.

Ljajic said that he will go to Washington if more meetings get scheduled for him with the State Department.

At one time, about 600 Serbian politicians were banned from traveling to the US. The number today is down to about 40, mostly individuals wanted for war crimes and some Albanians from Kosovo.

Comments Off

Bosnian Muslim couple held girl as sex slave

Bosnian Muslim couple from Tuzla held an 18-year old Belgrade girl as a sex slave, a sign that the Muslim tradition of holding Christian girls captive is making inroads among Muslims in the Balkans.

The authorities did not disclose the name nor the ethnicity of the girl, but her being from Belgrade is indicative of her ethnic background.

Bosnian news outlet san.ba reports that the couple – F.H. (38) i A.H. (35) – befriended the girl from Belgrade in Sarajevo then offered her to go to Zagreb with them but once there, the girl was enslaved.

Besides sex, the girl was forced to steal for the couple. The couple’s daughter, who stole along with the girl, was used to keep the enslavement ongoing.

The slavery was uncovered after the girl was caught stealing in the center of Zagreb. The girl was placed in a Safe House but she ran away from there. The police is looking for her.

The wife has been arrested but the father is on the run along with his daughter.

This case is a significant rewind of history because it brings back the Muslim tradition of an argat: a captivity of a Christian girl in a Muslim family.

During the occupation of the region from 1400s until being liberated in early 1900s, Muslims in the Balkans prized when a Christian girl was made an argat. Some Albanians in Kosovo held a Christian family at a gunpoint until they give up the daughter.

Granted, such tradition was not always coerced nor sexual in nature. However, once part of the family the argat girl was “urged” to marry one of the males in the family and coercion was used in case she was reluctant.

Comments Off

Islamic terror warnings counterproductive for Serbia?

In 2005, Steven Woerhrel submitted his report to the Congressional Research Service in which he argued that the “United States has a variety of instruments to fight terrorism in the Balkans. One is the direct involvement of U.S. troops in Bosnia and Kosovo.”

Besides money and diplomatic favors, Woerhrel noted that the long term solution is the Euro-Atlantic integration of the region.

The report admits what many Serb analysts have been warning: that the Balkans will “continue to play a role in terrorist plans”.

Indeed, in the past year, several FBI arrests inside the US involved Muslims from the Balkans – either Bosnian Muslims or Kosovo Albanians – who took part in planning to kill Americans. Just few days ago, 3 Bosnian Muslims have been arrested on Islamic terror charges.

Serbian analysts have been rather meticulous in detailing the Balkan cells in the global Islamic terror nexus placing some of the most prominent Balkan Muslim leaders as central figures of that nexus.

Over the years, however, the official Washington has interpreted this Serbian contribution to the fight against Islamic terror with cynicism.

Media in the West discounts even the most credible Islamic terror warnings Serbia makes: Those warnings are always publicly passed on as “alleged” and the word terror is placed in quotation marks as though incredible if Serbia warns of it.

International Herald Tribune, for example, carried an Associated Press story titled Fifth Muslim arrested in Serbia for alleged terrorist activity while arrest of Albanian terrorists was titled as Arrest of “Terrorists” Sows Discord in Montenegro by the British funded BiRN. Al-Jazeera joined this party with a title Serbian police arrest ‘terrorists’.

Even concrete actions by the Serbian government, beneficial to the international fight against the Islamic terror, have gone unnoticed and/or undermined.

Actions such as Serbia’s arrest of the Madrid bombing mastermind, feeding the US intelligence on Saddam’s bunkers during the Iraqi buildup or sentencing of local Muslims who planned to blow up the US Embassy in Serbia have gone by with a Washington yawn.

Serbian warnings of Islamic radical infiltration of Kosovo’s separatists was returned by western diplomatic recognition of those very same Islamic separatists: US recognized these terrorists as an independent nation.

This Washington cynicism is amply explicated by Woerhrel:

Charges of terrorism are often used as political weapons among countries or ethnic groups to try to attract international support for their cause. For example, Serbian and Bosnian Serb politicians often make charges of Al Qaeda training camps in Bosnia and Kosovo in an effort to discredit Bosniaks and Albanians.

Of course, Woerhrel fails to mention that the “Bosniaks” and Albanians fail to reciprocate and hardly ever report these Al Qaeda camps that develop in their very midst.

Echoing this general US cynicism about anything Serb, Woerhrel goes on to argue that this Bosniak and Albanian failure is a “rivalry” that is actually good for the US:

On the other hand, this rivalry between groups and the international focus on terrorism may have some positive aspects. It may push countries in the Balkans to cooperate zealously with the United States on terrorism issue, in hopes of securing U.S. support for their regional goals and Euro-Atlantic integration.

In other words, Serbian attempts to uncover Islamic terror among Balkan Bosniaks and Albanians is a poltroon attempt to extract favors from the US in order to gain regional dominance. Those favors, apparently, are allocated for Muslim Bosniaks and Albanians just because they silence to report Islamic terror cells growing in their midst.

The fact that such anti-Serb policy dominates in Washington and is one of the determinants of the US behavior in relations to Serbs, such cravenly relationship Serbs have with the US on the issue of the Islamic terror in the region needs re-examination, both in Belgrade and Banja Luka.

Of course, US can pressure Serbs with dire consequences if they are not cravenly or promise Bosnian Muslims that they will dominate if sufficiently “western minded” yet the insincerity the policy US has in the Balkans does no long term good for the US especially now that Serbia has applied for the EU membership.

For Belgrade or Banja Luka, however, expecting the failed approach to produce different diplomatic results is the slope of hope down which Serbia hasn’t gained anything ever since Saudis have forced their Balkan interests on the Washington.

Comments Off

Bosnian Muslim spins Jewish discrimination

Haris Silajdzic is welcoming the European Human Rights Court condemnation of the Bosnian Muslim constitutional law that prohibits Jews from running for a political office even though Silajdzic is one of the architects of this particular Bosnian Muslim anti Jewish legislation.

Silajdzic’s reason for this spin: he wants direct presidential, majority rule, elections across Bosnia.

Silajdzic claims that the reason Jews are discriminated in Bosnia is not because the Bosnian Muslim Constitution sanctions that but because Bosnian Muslims themselves are precluded to impose a Muslim President on Bosnian Serbs.

In essence, Silajdzic’s claim is that Jews are discriminated against because Serbs refuse to submit to the Bosnian Muslim domination.

Now, just small tidbits about Silajdzic’s background are sufficient to question his degree of Jew-loving.

The official website of the Silajdzic’s Party says that he got his college degree in Libya where he studied Islamic studies and the Arabic language and that he got a doctorate in the American-Albanian relations. To complete the Balkan Islamic indoctrination loop, Silajdzic was a professor of Arabic in the Pristina University teaching Kosovo’s Albanian Muslims some of his acquired Islamic wisdom. Of course, some American high-schools are rated higher then the University of Pristina but, Silajdzic, managed to leap forward and join Harvard as a lecturer, right around the time when Saudi’s were pumping millions into that university while politically sponsoring Silajdzic and his Bosnian portage Izetbegovic who has a major boulevard in Riyadh named after him.

Yet, this is not the only Jew-hatered Silajdzic is masking.

Bosnia’s legal system also prohibits Jews from owning property if a third party of Muslims objects to the sale.

Bosnian Muslim graffiti reads Ubij Zidova: "Kill a Jew."

In an environment where Bosnian Muslim Jew-hatered is expressed as explicitly as graffiti urging murders of Jews to more subtle ones like raising money for Palestinian Muslims and claiming Israel is a “genocidal entity” it is rather easy to find an objecting Muslim and deprive a Jew of property.

From the Jerusalem Post:

A law passed [in Bosnia] earlier this month allows people living in state-owned apartments that were nationalized under the former Yugoslavia’s socialist regime to purchase the dwellings. But the law – backed by lawmakers from the country’s Muslim majority – provides that any apartment previously owned by the Muslim community cannot be purchased if the community objects to the sale.

The law would mean that Holocaust survivors or their heirs wouldn’t obtain fair compensation for their former property, according to Jakub Finci, chairman of the country’s small Jewish community.

This is the same Finci who succeeded in getting the European Court of Human Rights to condemn the other anti-Jewish law.

Comments Off

Coincidence or a conspiracy?

IMF, traditionally under the European control, has been busy dispensing political favors in the Balkans. To further appease the Albanian extremists in Kosovo, IMF maneuvered to declare that separatist entity a member of the IMF, a right reserved to independent nations. In return, Serbia got a promise for a $3.5 billion, or thereabouts, loan so that the cash strapped government can financially survive.

Coincidence or a conspiracy? Because someone has been arguing the case to me that the IMF auctioned off Kosovo’s membership to Serbia for 3 billion Euros with a promise to Belgrade to borrow more.

Another recent Coincidence or a conspiracy? dispute is the report by Serbian daily Blic citing some unnamed Serbian diplomat who claims that Serbia will cut a deal with the US on Kosovo where Washington will stop pressuring Serbia to recognize Kosovo while Serbia will make sure Kosovo Serbs get “integrated” into the independent Kosovo institutions.

Aside from the Balkan travails though… Britain has shown tremendous dedication to eradicate “radical” Islam by banning an American radio talk show host from traveling to the UK!

Comments Off

Sobering speech by Serbia’s c.bank chief

Serbian central bank Governor Radovan Jelasic told the IMF and World Bank panel that he sees economic gloom for Serbia in 2009 that will extend over into 2010.

“What do I expect at the end of 2009?” asked the Governor rhetorically in his speech to the panel titled Global Crisis in Europe and Central Asia.

Then he answered:

I am afraid, nothing good.  Fiscal income will deteriorate even further while the shadow economy will gain in importance.  Governments will focus almost exclusively on financing current consumption (wages and pensions), even through accumulation of fresh debt, while capital investments will be substantially cut back.

The Governor said that banks will “face a deteriorating loan portfolio” and that their primary preoccupation will be refinancing bad loans, loan more to the government, cut its costs and hoard cash.

As there is no chapter 11 type of creditors’ protection scheme, the number of bankruptcies [the Governor probably meant liquidation] will increase as well.

The Governor also warned of a regional financial contagion and urged that Austria extends its promise not to disengage its banks from the entire region and not just Serbia.

Once we have finalized our deal, I hope in a matter of days, the deal makers should focus on all other countries as spill over effect is very large:  a rumor regarding any bank in Serbia or Croatian circulates in the region in matter of hours and could cause irreversible damages.

The Governor appealed to the politicians to stop spreading false expectations [see my previous blog].

The entire speech is available here.

Comments Off

In hope of the Ambassadorial luck

Serbia’s forthcoming Ambassador to the US, Vladimir Petrovic, says that he will focus on developing a close relationship with the  National Security Council in order to counterweight the State Department’s disastrous influence on the US policy making on Serbia.

So we have the NSC Affairs, for example, who prepare meetings with foreign leaders and in connection with the President’s foreign travel and advises and provides Presidential briefings on policy matters.

The presumption here is that Serbia can get more Presidential sympathy though the National Security Council (NSC) that is the tool of the President rather then with the State Department that is the tool of the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

So is the Ambassador Petrovic overly optimistic and if so, what are the obstacles to Petrovic’s mission?

For starters, under Obama, the NSC is packed with the Secretary of State who brings her State Department policy along with her personal baggage to the table.

Second, that the NSC sentiments of Serbia are in a shared animus with the State Department is attested in the recent book on the NSC history by David Rothkopf who, among other things, was the managing Director of the Kissinger Associates that have handled Serbia’s car import in the 1980s, the Yugo.

Says Rothkopf in Running the World:

The Albanian majority in the province of Kosovo… had been disappointed by the agreement in Dayton, which, in their view, failed to recognize their long-standing and [in Rothkopf's and NSC's view, my point] justified demand for independence. [page 372]

Rothkopf also cites the case of Carter’s VP meeting on the Iran crisis when he “lamented that there was not a single Iranian expert in the room”.

Although Rothkopf quotes General William Odom as saying that experts are inept policy makers in the high level policy meetings because they the are “in love with the people from the area” and thus prejudice the rationality… presidents still love them.

Which raises the obvious question: who gets to pick these experts and why. Witness, for example, recent “expert” testimony of Paddy Ashdown and Ivo Banac, two individuals who made a career in bashing Serbs presumably out of hatred, to the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe.

There are also limits what NSC staffers can do, not only because they cannot be recipients of money, but also, as Rozanne Ridgway who worked on various Reagan teams on Soviet Union says from her experience: “Unless the decision comes from the top, nothing happens. You can’t make policy from the bottom [NSC staff] up.”

Having Biden up on top sure threads heavy against what Petrovic hopes to develop with the NSC.

Finally, we do find in Rothkopf that presidents make informal agreements with other countries, or perhaps even entities such as Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian separatists. Brent Scawcoft was, for example, adamant to find out what “kinds of informal agreements we may have with other countries” as the Reagan administration was taking over from Carter.

Then, of course, there are secret executive agreements that the US presidents make with other countries and entities and such agreements do not have to be disclosed to the Congress nor the NSC.

“In year 1889 to 1939, of 1441 international compacts 917 were executive agreements and only 524 treaties,” informs us Arthur Schlessinger, a statistic that suggests the meaninglessness of treaties bunch of which Serbia signed in the past recognizing its borders to include Kosovo.

To illustrate these secret executive agreements and their potency, for example, in 1992, James Baker summoned Lawrence Eagleberger to launch a media campaign against Serbia only after the Saudi Sultan approached the Bush senior administration to aid the Bosnian Muslims against the Serbs and to warn Milosevic on attacking Kosovo (so-called Christmas warning) in time when Albanian separatists were not even armed nor did Belgrade, preoccupied with Croatia and Bosnia, have an inkling to attack Albanians.

We wish future Ambassador luck.

Comments Off

Pious Muslims busy across the world

There has been a remarkable convergence of expressions of Islamic piety across the world today.

First in Israel, a Muslim kills a Jewish teenager with a pickax:

A pickax-wielding Palestinian terrorist… infiltrated the Jewish community of Bat Ayin in Etzion Bloc region near Bethlehem and murdered Shlomo Nativ, a 13-year-old Israeli boy, splitting his skull with a pickax.A terrorist group calling itself the Martyrs of Imad Mughniyeh, named for the Hezbollah terror mastermind who was killed last year, claimed responsibility for the attacks in an e-mail to The Associated Press. The same e-mail also said the terror group Islamic Jihad also was involved.

Then in Egypt, we have Muslim villagers going on a pogrom of Bahai religious group because one Muslim described that a particular village was “full of Bahais”.

Egyptian villagers have set fire to Bahai homes after a member of the religion said on television the village was “full of Bahais,”… The villagers also threatened the village’s roughly 30 Bahais with death, the official said, after which all of them fled. The arson attacks were the culmination of unrest that began with stone throwing immediately after a Bahai named Ahmed called a television talk show that was discussing the religious minority…

Reading this AFP report one gets the impression that those darn Bahai are indeed at fault, not to mention the Copts whose churches get burned down on regular basis just like the Serbs in Kosovo.

Not to be outdone, though, the Swat Valley Muslims in Pakistan released a video of a woman being beaten publicly while two other Muslim men held her to the ground. From Associated Press:

The two minute video shows a woman in a body-covering burqa face down on the ground with two men holding her arms and feet. A third man in a black turban with a long beard whips her backside repeatedly, causing her to scream repeatedly and shout “Stop it, stop it! It is painful!”

A crowd of men watches silently in the background, and a voice can be heard saying “hold her hands tightly.”

Meanwhile, the recently indicted Sudanese President was greeted by thousands “of chanting, singing people” as he made his way at the 22-member Arab League meeting. A deserving welcome for the modern-day Saladin who conquered Sudan for Islam – never mind that he is indicted for genocide.

… and then we have Netherlands badgering Serbia because some loose general by the name of Mladic inflicted the first defeat to the Jihadist forces in Europe.

Of course Serbia is to be badgered not just by Netherlands but by England who is already seeking ways to Islamize their armed forces. From the London Guardian:

The defense minister, Bob Ainsworth, has appealed to British Muslims to joined the armed forces, saying that it was “vitally important that our army, navy and air force are reflective of the hugely diverse society in which we live”.

It is just mesmerizing what is it that the Brits are Guarding after all.

Comments Off

Serbia borrows $34.9 from World Bank

Serbia got another loan, this time from the World Bank to fill up budgetary gaps caused by decrease in tax revenue caused by the economic slump.

The $34.9 million loan is amortized over 20 years, with an 8 years grace period (no payments needed) and the annual interest is the average of the six-month LIBOR rate.

Serb finance Minister Diana Dragutinovic said that the money will go straight into government account to fill up the hole in spending.

She said that the World Bank agreed in 2007 to aid Serbia and, she says, this is the first in such package.

The World Bank will approve at least one more loan to Serbia this year but did not specify the size.

World Bank’s Simon Gray, who signed the loan, said that Serbia deserves help because it already conducted successful reforms that streamlined the procedure for corporate registration, that it privatized its energy sector and insurance and is working on streamlining real estate licensing.

The World Bank loan comes hours after Serbia’s Foreign Minister got assurances from Austria that Austrian banks, hit hard by loan losses, will remain in Serbia and will not take flight with its capital.

Serbia was worried that Austrian banks may transfer some of the capital out of Serbia in order to help recapitalize the parent bank against loan losses.

On March 27, Serbia and the Austria agreed that the banks will remain in Serbia and have signed a memorandum of understanding that calls for stress testing of the Serbian banking, and for the IMF support of Serbian Central Bank that will provide support for the banks in possible danger.

“We are aware that it is in our own collective interest and in the interest of Serbia for all of us to subscribe to coordinated commitments to maintain our overall exposure to Serbia,” the agreement says but it obligates Serbian Central bank to perform bank stress tests and to fill in the holes “within the framework of the multilateral support programs, on bilateral basis with the NBS”.

Translation: The banks want Serbia’s central bank to provide them with help by borrowing from IMF.

Serbia’s escalation of debt should not set of any alarms yet because, as of the end of January, Serbian total external debt is $27.7 billion or 55% of country’s Gross National Product. Of that total debt only 8.5% is in short term loans which can cause crisis of payments and a run on the currency.

Growth of Serbia's external debt

However, of the $25.4 billion that is short and medium term debt $16.8 or 66% is owed by private enterprises so any inability of the private enterprise to service such a large stock of private debt can lead to massive collapse in the economy.

In a sign of a rapid financial deterioration of Serbia’s private enterprise, the government has already asked IMF to “reprogram” some $7 billion of the enterprise loans, a code word for inability of private enterprise to pay its debts.

This is why Serbia’s private business has warned of an economic tsunami that will wipe out half the economy.

Comments Off

Serbia: maximum debt to cure borrowing defaults

Last week, Serbia’s economist Stojan Stamenkovic warned that Serbia faces bankruptcy.

“Serbia needs to do everything so it can maintain its foreign currency liquidity because without that there is a threat like in 1980 when the country went bankrupt,” Stamenkovic told Serbia’s daily Politika.

Yesterday, Serbian Minister for Economy, Mladjan Dinkic, told Belgrade daily Vecernje Novosti that Serbia will not go bankrupt.

“Some countries have in this crisis, bankrupted, like Iceland, Letonia, Hungary is on the edge of collapse. We will for sure escape that,” said Dinkic.

Then again, Dinkic is the guy who, on several occasions in the past, said that, despite the global recession, Serbia will not see its economy shrink.

Serbia’s industrial production takes a dive

Today, the IMF told Serbia to expect its economy to shrink by 2% in 2009 and asked the government to freeze the wages and pensions for next 18 months if it wants IMF help to “reprogram”, euphemism for can no longer pay, about $7 billion of private debt obligations.

As of January 31, 2009 Serbia has $27.7 billion in total external debt of which some $19 billion is borrowed by private firms so the $7 billion it seeks to “reprogram” represents a rather astounding debt default rate of 37%.

Not surpassingly, from South America to Europe, politicians like Dinkic publicly claim that the government is on top of it.

“There is an intentional policy of setting positive expectations. I don’t think the government itself believes its numbers,” says Ilan Goldfajn, an economics professor at Rio’s Pontificia Universidade Católica, about the Brazilian government that, like Dinkic, belittled this financial crisis by calling it a “ripple”.

In fact, Dinkic reassured the public that the Serbian government is in the absolute agreement on how to handle the crisis, so if we are to properly understand what Goldfajn is saying, that means that Serbia will put a lipstick on the pig at every point it grows into a larger of a disaster.

“We are cutting the spending, we are pumping in liquidity in the economy, especially the private sector, because it employs 1.6 million people that feed the 550,000 that work for the government,” said Dinkic.

So why hasn’t the government spending been cut in the past when times were good? Why is the government allowing 1.6 million employed in the private enterprise to subsidize 550,000 government employees?

The politics in an economy whose population is shrinking like Serbia’s has a tendency to seek to inflate the living standard now at the expense of labor productivity which determines the wage in the long run. Hence we see, for example, that wages in Serbia increased in February by 6.4% from the previous month in real terms while the Statistical Office does not even tabulate country’s total labor productivity.

One way to inflate the living standard is by excessive borrowing, and like many other countries, Serbia hopes to get out of its deflating debt by borrowing to the maximum.

Comments Off