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Post by TsarSamuil on Apr 8, 2013 14:05:12 GMT -5
rt.com/news/croatia-cyrillic-vukovar-protest-494/25,000 protest against Cyrillic signs in 'Croatian Stalingrad' RT.com April 08, 2013 12:44 Tens of thousands Croatians have demonstrated against the introduction of the Cyrillic alphabet on street signs in the town of Vukovar, the stage of 1991 siege that started the bloody 1991-95 war. Serbs make up about 35 per cent of the town’s population. According to current Croatian legislation, ethnic minorities have the right to use their respective languages for official purposes such as the names of public institutions or streets in areas where they make up a third of the population. However, crowds pushed for Vukovar to be excluded from the law requiring the use of Cyrillic. "There's no way that we accept Cyrillic," the organizers' spokesman Dragutin Glasnovic told AFP. "Vukovar should be treated differently due to a special respect for its victims, on whom Croatia was founded." Protesters from all across Croatia wore T-shirts with the inscription "For a Croatian Vukovar - No to Cyrillic", holding banners such as "Vukovar will never be Âóêîâàð [the name of the city in Cyrillic].” Many veterans of Croatia’s 1991-95 war paraded in their military uniforms. The reason for the protesters’ demand is the conflict at the beginning of 1990s, when Vukovar was besieged by the Yugoslav National Army and Serb forces. The city fell after three months and was almost completely destroyed. Vukovar has sometimes been called the ‘Croatian Stalingrad’. Serbs are the country’s largest minority, constituting 4 per cent of Croatia’s population of 4.2 million people. Respect for minorities' rights was a key condition for Croatia to join the European Union. Its entry into the bloc is set for July 1, following the ratification by all 27 EU member states.
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Post by Raven on Apr 8, 2013 17:17:23 GMT -5
EU is something wrong and Croatia is among biggest proofs of it.
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Post by TsarSamuil on Apr 9, 2013 17:37:05 GMT -5
So Croatia has to respect minority rights, while Latvia can ignore them? Prob only reason EU would pressure Croatia at all, is to give Serbs some carrot to give up on Kosovo..
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Post by Raven on Apr 10, 2013 12:01:36 GMT -5
EU is in fact Magna Germania. That`s the essence of the story
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Post by TsarSamuil on Apr 19, 2013 12:53:11 GMT -5
Croatia: Molotov cocktail thrown at Serbian consulate.
FoNet, Novi list
Region | April 17, 2013 | 14:17
RIJEKA -- An unidentified perpetrator threw a glass bottle containing a flammable substance at the Serbian Consulate General in the Croatian town of Rijeka last night.
However, the bottle did not explode.
Police have determined that the perpetrator tried to set the liquid on fire and then threw the bottle at the Consulate’s door.
The bottle broke and the flammable substance spilled but it did not catch fire, Rijeka-based daily Novi list has reported and added that the building was not damaged and that the police are looking for the perpetrator.
Rijeka Mayor Vojko Obersnel has strongly condemned the throwing of the Molotov cocktail on the Serbian Consulate.
“Rijeka has always been tolerant and it will stay that way despite irresponsible individuals. Unfortunately, I have to say that growing nationalism we have an opportunity to see every day will probably lead to more events of this kind,” he pointed out.
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Post by TsarSamuil on Dec 2, 2013 14:24:54 GMT -5
Croatians vote to prevent gay marriage.
B92, Beta, index.hr
Region | December 2, 2013 | 11:21
ZAGREB -- The initiative of the group "On behalf of the family" to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman has won the most votes in a referendum in Croatia.
Thus, the citizens of Croatia decided by majority vote to bring to their constitution the definition of marriage as only the union between a man and a woman.
Based on more than 99 percent of the counted votes, in favor were 65.75 percent of voters, while 33.63 percent were against, said the Central Election Commission.
The turnout was 38 percent - "the lowest so far", according to the Croatian media.
Croatians who live abroad supported the proposed definition with the highest percentage - 73.26 percent voted "yes", while 26.21 percent were against.
Croatian President Ivo Josipović said that the results of the referendum should be respected, "but should not lead to new divisions, especially not to forming a policy of discrimination against those who are different."
"I expect that the results will not be an obstacle to jointly support legislation that will guarantee the safety to same-sex unions," said Josipović.
The referendum was called on the basis of 750,000 signatures collected by the conservative civic initiative "On behalf of the family," which had the support of the Catholic Church in Croatia and right-wing political parties.
They wanted to in advance exclude the possibility of giving equal rights for homosexual and heterosexual communities when it comes to marriage.
Prime Minister Zoran Milanović announced after the vote that the government will in a week or two propose "a law on partnership" that will give certain rights to gay communities, as his Social Democratic Party promised during the election campaign.
Both Milanović and Josipović were against the constitutional definition of marriage as the union between a man and a woman.
Representatives of the LGBT community and civil society in Croatia, gathered in the campaign "Vote Against," warned that the referendum was "a continuation of discrimination against a social group already deprived of its rights," and said they expected that the government would soon pass a law on partnership.
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Post by TsarSamuil on Dec 5, 2013 15:35:11 GMT -5
Nationalist outbursts in Croatia "not isolated incidents"
Tanjug
Region | December 5, 2013 | 12:26
BELGRADE -- Serb National Council (SNV) in Croatia chairman Milorad Pupovac has said that nationalist outbursts and attacks against non-Croats "are not isolated incidents."
He cautioned that the incidents should not be ignored.
Pupovac told Tanjug that the “campaign against civil and European values and minority rights of the Serbs” is a dangerous game because it has elements reminiscent of the 1990’s (when armed clashes broke out in Croatia).
“This is a dangerous trend led by various institutions in Croatia, part of the Catholic clergy, part of non-governmental organizations close to them, part of the Croatian war veterans' associations and the extreme right-wing political parties,” Pupovac said commenting on the recently frequently occurring incidents glorifying extreme nationalism and fascism in Croatia.
Pupovac met with Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandar Vučić, Finance Minister Lazar Krstić and Minister of Regional Development and Local Self-Government Igor Mirovic in Belgrade on Tuesday.
The SNV chairman said that they discussed ways “to improve the position of the Serbs in Croatia in the wake of the negative trends while taking care not to worsen relations between Serbia and Croatia” and ways to assist returns of Serb refugees.
A campaign against official use of the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet in Vukovar and other cities in Croatia has been ongoing for three months now, and signatures are being collected for a referendum aimed at limiting the putting up of bilingual signs to the municipalities where minorities make up at least 50 percent of the population, instead of one third as required by the law currently in force.
In the protests against the use of the bilingual signs, Croat extremists and war veterans are tearing down and smashing to pieces signs containing names of institutions in the Cyrillic script, and as of lately, chantings of "Za dom spremni" (For homeland - ready!), a Croatian Ustasha greeting from the time of the Nazi Independent State of Croatia (NDH), during which horrible genocidal crimes were being committed against Serbs, have become increasingly frequent.
Zagreb-based website Index.hr has said that the director and employees of the Jasenovac Memorial Park, dedicated to the memory of the mostly Serb, Jewish, and Roma victims of the WW2 Ustasha death camp, wo condemned statements and acts extolling the NDH and the shouting of the Ustasha greeting on December 1, have themselves received threats, and were accused of being "traitors with anti-Croat sentiments."
On December 3, Croatian Minister of Education, Science and Sports Željko Jovanović received threatening messages, containing an Ustasha-styled anti-Serb phrase, "let his Serb seed and tribe be exterminated," Tanjug reported.
Pupovac told Radio television of Serbia (RTS) on Wednesday that it was "very unpleasant to hear the anti-Serb shouts that can be heard on television, radio and in the streets."
He stressed that the Serb people in Croatia would be pleased if the European Union could see “that which it has to see, and that is the abuse of provisions in the treaty of Croatia’s accession to the EU.”
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Post by TsarSamuil on Mar 2, 2014 12:25:32 GMT -5
Didn't know about this place, looks like paradise!  must visit! www.np-plitvicka-jezera.hr/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plitvice_Lakes_National_Parkwhc.unesco.org/en/list/98upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f7/Plitvice-2003.JPGupload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/Plitvicer_Seen_1.jpgimages.boomsbeat.com/data/images/full/1208/1-jpg.jpgLong Description Plitvice Lakes National Park contains a series of beautiful lakes, caves and waterfalls. These have been formed by processes typical of karst landscapes such as the deposition of travertine barriers, creating natural dams. These geological processes continue today. The Plitvice Lakes basin is a geomorphologic formation of biological origin, a karst river basin of limestone and dolomite, with approximately 20 lakes, created by the deposition of calcium carbonate precipitated in water through the agency of moss, algae and aquatic bacteria. These create strange, characteristic shapes and contain travertine-roofed and vaulted caves. The carbonates date from the Upper Trias, Juras and Cretaceous Ages and are up to 4,000 m thick. In order to maintain and preserve the natural characteristics of the lakes, the whole of surface and most of the subterranean drainage system has to be embraced by extending the original borders of the park. The new areas comprise layers of karstified limestone with dolomites of Jurassic age. There are 16 interlinked lakes between Mala Kapela Mountain and Pljesevica Mountain. The lake system is divided into the upper and lower lakes: the upper lakes lie in a dolomite valley and are surrounded by thick forests and interlinked by numerous waterfalls; the lower lakes, smaller and shallower, lie on the limestone bedrock and are surrounded only by sparse underbrush. The upper lakes are separated by dolomite barriers, which grow with the formation of travertine, forming thus travertine barriers. Travertine is mostly formed on the spots where water falls from an elevation, by the incrustation of algae and moss with calcium carbonate. The lower lakes were formed by crumbling and caving-in of the vaults above subterranean cavities through which water of the upper lakes disappeared. The forest, that comprises pure stands of beech at lower altitudes and mixed stands of beech and fir at higher levels, can also be classified in terms of underlying strata of dolomite and limestone complexes. The dolomite communities comprise tertiary pine, hornbeam, spruce and beech-fir forests. The limestone communities have a smaller number of forest types but cover a larger area with communities of spruce and fern, spruce in beech, coppiced hornbeam with sumac, maple and heather. Hydrophytic communities of black alder, grey ivy, willow, reeds and bulrush communities are found. There are a large mosaic of meadow communities, depending on altitude, geology soils and other ecological factors. The area is fauna-rich, including European brown bear, wolf, eagle owl and capercaillie. There are records of 126 species of bird, of which 70 breed. The area was the cradle of the prehistoric Illyrian tribe of Japuds dating from 1000 BC. The Japudic culture was followed by the Romans and from the 8th century AD was occupied by Slavs. Archaeological remains include a prehistoric settlement on the site of the current Plitvice village, fortifications, Bronze Age tools and ceramics. Source: UNESCO/CLT/WHC    |
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Post by TsarSamuil on Mar 12, 2014 8:25:41 GMT -5
Former Croatian PM convicted of graft, sentenced to 9 years in jail.
English.news.cn 2014-03-12 07:49:18
ZAGREB, March 11 (Xinhua) -- A Croatian court on Tuesday sentenced former Prime Minister Ivo Sanader to nine years in jail after convicting him and the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) of corruption.
The Zagreb county court said that Sanader, who was then the leader of HDZ, and four other people siphoned money from state institutions and companies from 2003 to 2009 for the party and for themselves.
HDZ, now in opposition, has governed Croatia for 16 of its 22 years of independence. Tuesday's verdict made the conservative party the first political party sentenced for corruption.
Sanader was told to return some 2 million euros (nearly 2.8 million U.S. dollars) while HDZ was ordered to pay nearly 3.8 million euros back.
Sanader denied the charges and said the charges were politically motivated. HDZ said it would appeal the verdict.
Along with Sanader and the HDZ, the four others including HDZ former treasurer, accountant and spokesman, were sentenced to one or three years in prison respectively.
Tuesday's trial was the second conviction for Sanader, who was sentenced to 10 years in jail in another corruption trial in 2012.
Sanader served as the prime minister from 2003 until 2009 when he resigned without explanation. He was later expelled from the party and fled the country but was arrested in Austria and sent home for trial.
The trails against Sanader was part of an anti-graft drive started in Croatia years ago that fostered the country's attempt to join the European Union, which it succeeded in doing in 2013.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 6, 2014 16:05:43 GMT -5
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Post by Deleted on Dec 6, 2014 16:14:23 GMT -5
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Post by TsarSamuil on Dec 7, 2014 12:23:45 GMT -5
Oh oh...that looks bad..  |
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Post by TsarSamuil on Dec 30, 2014 12:29:36 GMT -5
Croatia heads for presidential run-off: exit polls.
English.news.cn 2014-12-29 05:34:41
ZAGREB, Dec. 28 (Xinhua) -- Croatia's presidential election headed for a run-off after no candidate had won Sunday's elections, exit polls showed on Sunday.
The incumbent President Ivo Josipovic got 38.9 percent of votes while his main competitor Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic from HDZ (Croatian Democratic Union) managed to win 38.1 percent, according to exit polls by RTL television.
Young activist Ivan Vilibor Sincic won 15.6 percent of the votes and Milan Kujundzic, candidate of right wing parties, won less than 10 percent.
With none of the candidates being expected to win more than 50 percent of the votes, the two candidates who get most votes will compete in a run-off scheduled on Jan. 11.
Croatia's presidential election kicked off early Sunday morning, the first since the country jointed the European Union (EU) in 2013.
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Post by TsarSamuil on Jan 19, 2015 18:01:16 GMT -5
News Analysis: Narrow victory for Croatia's first female president-elect.
English.news.cn 2015-01-12 22:12:52
ZAGREB, Jan. 12 (Xinhua) -- Croatian opposition party presidential candidate Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic beat her incumbent rival in a run-off vote on Sunday, becoming the first female head of state in the country.
Grabar-Kitarovic, 46, former foreign minister and a diplomat, served as the assistant secretary general for public diplomacy for NATO and Croatia's ambassador to the United States, scored a narrow victory with 50.43 percent of the vote against Ivo Josipovic with 49.57 percent, based on the 99.51 percent of ballots counted, according to the state election commission on Monday.
Her victory showed that Croatia, a new member of the European Union (EU), is ideologically highly divided and the citizens expect change to get out of the recession which lasted six years, driving nationwide unemployment rates to nearly 20 percent, analysts in Zagreb said.
Professor Ivan Rimac from the University of Zagreb's law department said on Croatian public television network HTV, that Grabar-Kitarovic won due to her rhetoric about the unity of Croatia.
"We have had enough of divisions," she said in her campaign, calling those who voted for Josipovic to become part of her team and to unite so as to help Croatia emerge from crisis.
She said she would see that Croatia became one of the most developed countries in the EU and the world.
Analysts believed Josipovic's defeat was partly owing to the fact the ruling coalition, which supported Josipovic's candidacy, had failed to reform the huge and inefficient public sector, improve the business climate or attract EU development funds.
Some viewed Grabar-Kitarovic's victory, backed by the largest opposition party Croatian Democratic Union, was likely to bolster the party's position ahead of parliamentary elections scheduled for late 2015.
However, others said Grabar-Kitarovic won the presidential office with the votes of people who no longer live in the country.
According to the election data, Grabar-Kitarovic received 91.11 percent of the vote abroad, while Josipovic won 8.89 percent only. In the countries with the largest Croatian communities, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Germany, Grabar-Kitarovic won 93.80 percent and 94.12 percent of the vote respectively.
Some political observers stressed the fact that Grabar-Kitarovic's unexpected win by a margin of some 20,000 votes only meant the victory would undermine her authority.
Also, as head of state, she too would be held partly responsible for the poor economy, they said.
Profile: Croatian first female president Kitarovic.
English.news.cn 2015-01-13 05:21:29
ZAGREB, Jan. 12, (Xinhua) -- Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic, a politician and diplomat, became the first female president in Croatian history after defeating incumbent president Ivo Josipovic in a run-off on Sunday.
The President-elect, 46, who had served as a foreign minister, ambassador to the United States and NATO assistant secretary general for public diplomacy, was born in the coastal town of Rijeka. Her grandfather Victor was one of the founders of Croatian Peasant Party (HSS).
Kitarovic spent her childhood in the small village of Lubarska in the hinterland of Rijeka where her father has a butcher shop and a ranch with 22 cows.
As a child she was helping her parents milking cows and taking care of cattle. With the experience she likes to joke that she is one of the few career diplomats who can milk a cow.
At school, she was hardworking and ambitious. In high school she joined a students exchange program studying in the United States. Graduated in English and Spanish at Zagreb University, she also speaks Portuguese, knows German, Italian and French.
She obtained a master degree in political science and in the late 1990s, she studies international relations and security policy in the United States with a Fulbright scholarship. In Zagreb University, she met her husband Jakov Kitarovic, who graduated from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing. They married in 1996 and have a daughter and a son.
In the 1990s, Kitarovic entered the ministry of foreign affairs and started her career. At the same time she joined the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), which named her to the presidential candidacy.
In 2003, she became minister of European integration and she took the post of minister of foreign affairs in 2005 when the two ministries connected.
She continued her career as Ambassador to the United States in 2008. She became assistant NATO Secretary General for Public Diplomacy in 2011.
Kitarovic will assume her new position on Feb. 19. During her campaign, Kitarovic promised that Croatia will be among the most prosperous countries in the European Union and the world.
"There is no place for triumphalism, we have to work tonight," she said, calling citizens to unite, take out Croatia from economic crisis and take it in welfare.
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Post by TsarSamuil on Feb 1, 2015 20:09:59 GMT -5
'Chance for a new start': Croatia writes off debts of 60,000 poorest citizens.
RT.com
February 01, 2015 08:51
Croatian government have gotten creditors on board a plan to erase the debts of some 60,000 poorest citizens. The “fresh start” scheme targets less than 1 percent of the entire debt, but is hoped to boost the economy in the long-term.
The unorthodox measure was voted for by the government on January 15 and comes into force on Monday. To be eligible to participate debtors must have no savings or property, have a debt no greater than about $5,100 and live on welfare or an income of no higher than $138 per month.
"We assess that this measure will be applicable to some 60,000 citizens," Deputy Prime Minister Milanka Opacic said as he was introducing the bailout. "Thus they will be given a chance for a new start without a burden of debt."
Some $31 million worth of bad debts are expected to be written off by creditors who have signed up to the government’s scheme. Those include several banks, telecommunication companies, major utilities, several major cities and municipalities as well as the government’s own tax agency. None will be refunded for their losses.
The program would return access to bank accounts to about 20 percent of the 317,000 Croatians, whose accounts were frozen in July last year due to debts. The entire population of the small Mediterranean nation is 4.4 million.
"This is the first time that any (Croatian) government is trying to solve this difficult problem and we are proud of it," Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic told a cabinet session.
In addition to debt erasing Milanovic’s government is considering other measures to help its debt-stricken citizens amid the economic recession, which has been plaguing the country for six years in a row. Zagreb wants to follow the example of Bulgaria and fix a favorable exchange rate for mortgage loans taken in Swiss francs.
The Swiss currency was popular among lenders due to its long-running stability, and mortgage loans denominated in francs were popular in many Eastern European nations. But the economic turmoil in the Eurozone put pressure on the Swiss franc, which was pegged against the euro since 2011, when market volatility made investors rush to the Swiss safe-haven currency.
The pegging ended in mid-January, sending the franc’s value up 20 percent against other currencies. This led to franc-denominated debts costing much more for foreign borrowers.
Hungary was lucky to dodge the damage due to a program launched by the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban in 2011, which forced a conversion of franc-denominated mortgages into the Hungarian national currency at a fixed rate. Banks operating in the country took the hit, but now the Hungarian government is celebrating saving its citizens from a hard fall.
Poland and Romania are considering a similar move, while Croatia has amendments to its Credit Institutions Act already floating in the legislature.
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must visit!
